Psycho Cop

Highway B.

On September 16, 1986, a self-employed building contractor traveling east on Highway B, a two-lane road linking Plain and Sauk City, Wisconsin, accelerated to pass a pickup truck. Normally, he would not have paid attention to a pile of plants in the bed of a truck, but this was two days after President Reagan’s nationally televised address launching a new war on drugs, and the plants looked like marijuana. Even more suspicious, the truck had out-of-state plates. So the civic-minded contractor decided not to pass the truck, but followed it five miles into Sauk City, intending to follow the vehicle home and report the address to the police.

Entrance to Derleth Park, where 34 marijuana plants were found.

Halfway through town, however, the driver of the pickup realized he was being followed and turned onto a dead-end street leading into August Derleth Park, driving to an isolated parking lot near the banks of the Wisconsin River.

Rather than follow the pickup into the park, the contractor spun his car around and drove two blocks to the Sauk City Police Department. He raced downstairs and confronted Betty Neumeyer, the dispatcher.

“I just followed a truck carrying marijuana into town!” he said excitedly. “He drove into Derleth Park. It’s a white Ford pickup with Texas plates. The driver is wearing a cowboy hat.”

Neumeyer picked up her microphone and called Officer 63, the only policeman on duty. She tried three times to reach him, but received no reply. Conservation Warden John Buss happened to be standing at the xerox machine, overheard the conversation, and realized Neumeyer was having trouble locating a squad car.

“Betty,” said Buss. “I don’t have a firearm and I don’t have my credentials, but I can drive down to the park and maintain radio contact. I won’t stop the guy, but I’ll watch him for you.”

“I’d appreciate that,” said Neumeyer.

Buss ran upstairs, hopped into his truck and drove toward the park entrance. As he turned the corner, Buss spotted a white Ford pickup with Texas plates traveling toward him in the opposite direction. The pickup swerved around Buss and made a left turn on Water Street. The driver looked to be in his late forties, a typical good ole boy in a cowboy hat.

Buss radioed Neumeyer. “I’m following a vehicle matching the description,” he said. “The tailgate is down and there appears to be a green leafy substance in the back….suspect is turning right on Washington Street….”

A few minutes later, Officer John Mueller, age 40, returned to this squad car and was notified a white Ford pickup believed to be containing controlled substances was parked in a driveway at the corner of Oak and Ash streets.

Mueller started his engine and headed across town. His day usually consisted of issuing warnings for minor violations or refereeing family squabbles. Drugs were a more dangerous matter. He popped another piece of gum into his mouth and chewed furiously.

Mueller was considered a model officer, professional, polite, well-groomed, affectionately dubbed “John Boy” by local tavern owner Jeff Lawson on account of his youthful appearance. But on September 16th, Mueller was uncharacteristically haggard,  his normally greased and combed hair unkept. His uniform, normally starched and spotless, was dirty and wrinkled. Mueller was planning on getting married in a few months and the sudden change might be explained by the proximity of the event, at least that’s what some people thought.

The truth, however, was more bizarre. Mueller thought he was engaged in a top-secret mission for the Federal Government, a mission so sensitive not even the Federal Government knew of its existence because Mueller’s directives came direct from the White House.

He was admittedly a bit foggy on the exact nature of the current assignment as messages were delivered in code, sometimes in newspaper headlines, sometimes during incidental meetings on the street with strangers. The messages were often difficult to decipher and their intensity had been mounting since Sunday night…the night Mueller watched President Reagan’s speech…the night Mueller stopped taking his Thorazine because the commander-in-chief told him drugs were evil.

Hopefully, it would not be long before Mueller learned more details concerning his current mission. Meanwhile, his snub-nosed .357-caliber Magnum revolver was loaded and close by his side.

After following the pickup to the driveway, Warden Buss, age 26, executed a U-turn and parked nearby. The individual with the cowboy hat knew he was being watched because rather than get out of the truck, he stayed scrunched down in the front seat, occasionally peering over his shoulder at Buss.

Wisconsin River.

Buss was a relative newcomer in town. In 1982, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin with degrees in biology and environmental law enforcement, he’d become a State Conservation Warden assigned to the Sauk City area in October 1985. Buss was a devoted outdoorsman with a wife, kids, and a pair of pedigree hunting dogs. His number one concern at the moment was the apprehension of midnight dumpers who were polluting the nearby lakes and rivers. He’d never been involved in a drug bust before.

In a statement given at the Sauk City Police Department that day, Buss described the arrival of Officer Mueller at the scene:

When John arrived, I advised him to look over his right shoulder at the pickup truck. I advised him I was unarmed, did not have my credentials, but I’d stay and backup. John turned on his squad lights and parked behind the pickup. I got out, walked over to him, and explained the whole scenario. John got out and approached the truck. I stood to the left behind him. John opened the door and asked for identification.

“What for?” said the individual.

“Get out of the truck,” said John.

The individual swung his body around placing his feet on the running board and said, “This is as far as I go.”

John grabbed his arm and started wrestling him out of the truck. I came over and grabbed the guy’s left arm.

John slammed the guy to the cement, and I was pulled down with him, like hanging onto a rope.

I mean, BOOM!, we went down. There was really no need for that because the guy wasn’t really resisting to the point of fighting. John pulled out his handcuffs and put them on one wrist. I put them on the other.

“Relax,” I told the guy, “I’m a State Conservation Warden.”

I searched him for weapons, pulled out a pocket knife and wallet, and tossed them back at John. John was saying a bunch of stuff. I don’t remember what, but it was like he was talking to someone else. Then John walked back to his car. The guy started to roll over on one side. “Just lay there and hang tight,” I told him.

I walked behind the truck and found some green leafy substance in the back. I was looking at some seeds when John came up.

“John,” I said, “do you have any evidence bags to put this in?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said John. “This is resisting a Federal Agent.”

He was talking slowly, chewing his gum overly hard, and staring at the truck as if he could eat a hole right through to the pavement. It went through my mind that maybe John was working with the Feds somehow. I just kept picking up leaves and seeds. John walked over to where the individual was lying on his belly in handcuffs.

I heard a shot, looked up and saw John shoot the guy in the back of the head a second time. I saw orangish muzzle flash coming from his gun. John was standing upright, holding his gun with both hands.

John turned around, looked at me with real starry eyes, and started marching toward me, as if he was in front of a drill instructor. He was holding the gun at a 45-degree angle. He stopped about three feet away, with the gun pointed at my belt.

“John,” I said, “You’re not going to shoot me, are ya?”

I was going to take off running because the guy was lying down on his stomach and John shot the fucker…I’m sorry…the individual….in the back of the head. But there was no place to run.

John was looking right through me. “Don’t…worry,” he said. “This….is…resisting….a….Federal….Agent….”

I figured I was going to get it. I mean, I was scared. I wanted to disappear, just disappear. John holstered his gun, walked back to his squad car, and got inside. I looked at the guy on the ground and saw a lot of blood. The body was quivering. I knew he was dead or mortally wounded.

I don’t know if I ran, walked, flew, or what, but I went back to my truck, got in and backed down the road. When I felt I was far enough away, I stopped and opened the door. This might sound crazy, but I had a shotgun loaded with buckshot in the truck and I thought, if John comes down I road I’m going to have to kill him.

I tried to call in, but John got on the radio before me, so Betty told me to stand by. Basically, John said he had a 10-42, which means end of duty, although we sometimes use it to mean a traffic fatality, instead of saying over the radio that someone is dead. He requested an ambulance.

Finally, I got on the radio and said, “We got a 10-33, we need officers. Get one and two down here,” meaning the sheriff and chief deputy. At the same time I made a few notes.

John got out of his car, walked up to the body, and took off the handcuffs. I think he felt I’d left. He was looking around, but he never made eye contact with me. Then he marched into the middle of the road. People were coming out of their houses, gathering around.

John stopped in the middle of the street and started directing traffic like a Milwaukee police officer, real rigid.

But there wasn’t any traffic.

The deceased in his driveway.

The twin cities of Sauk City and Prairie du Sac are nestled around the bend of the Wisconsin River about 150 miles northwest of Chicago. The towns have a combined population of 54,000, and share a school district, sewer system, weekly newspaper, and police force. Despite their closeness, they maintain separate identities: Sauk City was settled primarily by Germans, while Prairie du Sac was settled by English. The nearest major city, Madison, is 25 miles to the southeast.

Battle of Bad Axe.

Sauk City has a rich past. On July 21, 1832, Black Hawk and 50 braves fought a holding action against 1,000 government troops in a forest south of town. The lopsided battle succeeded in giving the Sauk women and children time to cross the Wisconsin River to safety. Unfortunately, the tribe was massacred 12 days later at the Battle of Bad Axe.

After the natives were disposed of, the white settlers moved in, led by Count Augustin Hrzstzy, who founded a vineyard nearby. His vines continue to produce today even though the Count left abruptly, moving to Napa Valley, where he founded the California wine industry.

“Many Germans who came here were members of the Frei Gemeinde,” says Tracy Madison, editor of the weekly Sauk Prairie Star. “They were local intellectuals, very cultured and well-read.”

A larger, less progressive contingent of German settlers moved into the state and formed the Wisconsin Synod, an ultra conservative wing of the Lutheran Church. It was in this tradition John Mueller was raised, the second of seven children.

John Mueller at the trial.

Mueller was born in Jefferson, a town similar to Sauk City but located halfway between Madison and Milwaukee. His father changed careers several times, working as a security guard, mortician, postal clerk, and finally food store manager. In 1964, Mueller graduated in the middle of his class at Lakeside Lutheran High School, where he was a member of the school band. On the surface, Mueller seemed a typical teenager. He worked a paper route, collected stamps and restored old cars. There was, however, something odd about the boy. “John was a good kid, but always just a little bit different,” says Harry Minshall, owner of the funeral home where Mueller’s father had been employed.

Upon graduation, Mueller enlisted in the air force. He was granted high-security clearance, became a communications officer, and was posted in both Japan and Thailand. Mueller refuses to discuss his work for the air force, except to say that he was a radio technician involved in top-secret matters. Immediately after leaving the service, he was hired by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Created by President Harry Truman in 1951, the NSA was the most powerful intelligence agency, larger than the CIA,  but its very existence was considered classified and not revealed until 1975 in a Congressional investigation.

Most of the public never learned about the agency until 1983, when James Bamford published The Puzzle Palace, which is likely the official cover story parading as an expose.

NSA HQ.

Located inside Fort Meade, halfway between Washington and Baltimore, the NSA HQ is the Taj Mahal of eavesdropping “almost the size of the CIA’s Langley with the United States Capitol sitting on top. In 1978, the agency controlled 68,203 people, more than all the employees of the other intelligence community put together….no law had ever been enacted prohibiting the NSA from engaging in any activity,” according to Bamford.

The NSA was a secret agency with a license to wiretap anyone. Long before computers and smart phones, the agency’s capacity for electronic surveillance on virtually anyone was staggering.

The agency always had a special interest in the civil rights and anti-war movements, which overlapped considerably. In 1971, President Richard Nixon sought NSA assistance to dismantle the counterculture through a nationwide data base for drug users. Many years later, the NSA claimed to have shut down that project after only two years.

In 1969, at the close of his second tour of duty, Mueller called his parents and informed them he was going to England for a three-year tour. They assumed he was still in the service, but he wasn’t. Mueller’s work in England was sensitive and he couldn’t tell his parents the truth. He relocated to Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, 80 miles west of London, and purchased a red MGB sports car.

Like many servicemen during the waning years of the Vietnam War, Mueller had difficulty adjusting to civilian life. Within a matter of months, he was displaying signs of a mental breakdown that seems to have been precipitated by an unhappy love affair.

A nurse who interviewed him later wrote: “John talked about the girl with whom he was serious. He appeared to have many feelings, some of resentment, but could not express them. It was shortly after John wrote her a letter and got no reply that he smashed up his car while drinking.”

After wrecking the car, Mueller returned to his apartment, went into a frenzy, and smashed everything in sight. He was hospitalized and lost his job. Three weeks later he was discharged with a prescription for Stelazine, an antipsychotic.

In September 1970, Mueller boarded a plane and returned to his parents’ house in Jefferson, where his mental health continued to deteriorate. Despite his problems, Mueller made a sudden, unexpected move one week after coming home: He married a woman five years his junior. At the time, the family knew something was wrong, but kept silent.

Mueller found a job working for the Jefferson Well Drilling Company and seemed determined to lead a normal, domestic life. The plan failed.

On the night of June 30th, after much encouragement from his family and his wife, Mueller admitted himself into the Madison Veteran’s Administration Hospital. According to a psychiatrist’s report: “Several family sessions were held and it came out John thought he had murdered a prostitute while in England. The accuracy of this statement was not confirmed, but John continued to believe he had committed such an act. He told his minister that he knew he would never be forgiven for anything he had done, and would never accept the minister’s reassurances that he would be forgiven.” The diagnosis? Acute paranoid schizophrenia.

On August 5th, Mueller was discharged on a daily dose of 800mg. of thioridazine (the maximum allowable dosage), combined with 200mg. of Thorazine. (In other words, enough tranquilizer to turn the average human into a lead-footed zombie.)

Six months later, Mueller was hired as a law enforcement officer, working for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department. The following year, his wife gave birth to a boy. Mueller was not present for the birth, however, having been recently admitted to the veteran’s hospital, where he remained for four months. Hospital records made pubic during the trial contained the following summary:

“After exhibiting several days of agitated schizophrenic behavior, including gouging his eyes superficially with a pencil, (Mueller) tended to gradually improve his behavior….Although we had some hesitation about his return to police work, and are hopeful that he will begin to consider other less threatening work options, we discharged him to outpatient treatment, to be followed weekly by psychology and social work service. He was to continue his medications, Thorazine 50mg. four times daily.”

The Sheriff of Jefferson County wanted to keep Mueller on the force on a part-time basis working jail duty. However, Mueller grew dissatisfied with this arrangement and quit.

Hopes that Mueller might regain his mental health received a severe setback in 1974, when he discovered his three-year-old son Danny was suffering from reticuloendotheliosis, a rare blood disease. Mueller had difficulty accepting his son’s illness, eventually concluding it was God’s punishment for his own sins. In March, Mueller suffered another breakdown and was taken to the hospital, where he exhibited inappropriate behavior (smiling while discussing his son’s illness and boasting of earning $100,000 a year as a salesman).

Strange enough, after being discharged, Mueller was hired as police chief of Mazonanie, a small town south of Sauk City with a reputation as the local “Dodge City.” He held that position for four years and remained emotionally stable, despite his son’s death in 1975.

In 1978, a daughter Paula was born. Mueller and his wife met with their pediatrician, Dr. Dvorak, and discussed Danny’s death in detail for the first time. Although Dvorak wasn’t sure of the cause of death, he admitted that valban, cortisone and cobalt treatments may have been a contributing factor.

According to Mueller’s wife, the statement had a lasting effect on Mueller, leading him to believe his son had been killed by drug treatments.

Later that year, after a dispute with the town board (a board Mueller would later accuse of being involved with drugs), he was fired. Mueller went to a junior college for a period and attended a training session in Texas in hopes of buying into a job-motivational teaching franchise.

The night he returned, his wife jokingly spoke of getting a divorce. Mueller was unable to sleep and had a number of crying spells. His wife called the hospital and Mueller’s doctor recommended an additional 25mg. of chlorpromazine, which allowed Mueller to sleep.

The following night, however, Mueller was unable to sleep even with the additional medication. Several times during the night, he hallucinated blood on his wife’s arm and leg, and was unable to stop thinking about his son’s death. On July 9th, he was driven to the hospital and remained under observation for six days.

“We felt John’s calm appearance and behavior represented his attempt to control with rigidity his fragmented thinking,” wrote the attending doctor. “With his observing ego, he was probably acutely aware of this fragmentation and wanted to appear normal. As he had been maintained on chlorpromazine as an outpatient, we attempted to control him by increasing doses. However, on the second hospital day he acutely decompensated, because acutely agitated, disorganized, and paranoid, with blocking and required tranquilization with I.M. and seclusion.”

After his release, Mueller went through a succession of menial, dead-end jobs. His wife insisted they separate and remained apart until their divorce became final in 1983. At the divorce proceeding, Mueller’s wife suggested a program of “mental health consultation” be established, a suggestion that went ignored.

Mueller’s violent tendencies surfaced several times during his visits to the hospital. On January 1, 1982, he escaped while undergoing treatment and wound up in a “scuffle” with a stranger in a city building. The stranger later dropped the charges after discovering Mueller was a mental patient. The next morning, Mueller refused medication and attempted to leave the ward without permission. He was stopped by a nurse smoking a cigarette.

“What’s that smell?” he said. “That’s cyanide. Put it out.”

Mueller grabbed the cigarette and tried to put it out on the nurse’s arm. After “Code Orange” was called, he was removed to the quiet room.

“It is God’s will that I go in there?” he asked repeatedly. “I want to see God’s will. I’ll go into the quiet room, but its against my will.”

Mueller continued to refuse medication, stalked around the room, and constantly looked over his shoulder as if someone was sneaking up on him.

The next day, Dr. John H. Greist, the psychiatrist who wrote the most probing and detailed analysis of Mueller, visited the quiet room. According to his notes that became available during the trial, Greist:

“Entered seclusion room at 11:41 am with Mrs. Keepman while Mr. Mueller was asleep. He appeared to be asleep. When awakened, he attempted to sit up, then lay down again. I asked to feel his pulse and he quickly rose and moved back against the window, pointed at me and said something about ‘Satan.’ He appeared frightened, was staggering, and moved toward the door, grasping, but not hurting, Mrs. Keepman. We gradually moved him to return to his mattress after considerable persuasion.”

Downtown Sauk City.

In the spring of 1983, Mueller’s brother, Wayne, was working for a car dealership in Sauk City, and noticed an announcement in the Sauk City Star for a police officer. He sent the paper to his brother and suggested he apply for the job. Mueller passed the oral exam with flying colors and was sent to the Madison Area Technical College Police Academy, where he also excelled. He was chosen to give the class valedictory speech, which was later described as being “carefree.”

Thanksgiving was frequently an upsetting holiday for Mueller, and shortly after assuming his duties with the Sauk City police force (the weekend before Thanksgiving), Wayne noticed his brother was having problems sleeping again. A restraining order had just been placed on Mueller limiting visits with his daughter.

“John talked slow, in left field, cooked supper, which was cold, was drinking more beer than usual, and wanted me to leave the apartment to see a friend even though my family was there,” recalls Wayne. Later that night Mueller’s landlord informed Wayne that his brother had been up the past two nights pacing the floor. Wayne visited his brother, who claimed to be upset about over his recent divorce. John also objected to his daughter being allowed to listen to rock music, which he described as being “really evil.”

Wayne went home, but had to return after a late-night phone call. This sequence was repeated a second time, and Wayne drove his brother to the hospital. He returned home at 5:30 am, and received yet another phone call. “I should watch out if I were you,” said John, “because they are out to get me.” Wayne asked who “they” were, but received no reply.

Later that week, when Wayne visited his brother in the hospital, John informed him that he needed “to go to Washington, DC, to meet with the generals in the Pentagon to solve the world’s problems.” Wayne told a psychologist his brother went into a trancelike state, babbling words that were recognizable but didn’t fit together to make sense, and then said, ‘the Holy Ghost has just spoken, believe it.'”

Eagle Inn.

Although Mueller managed to hide his mental illness from most people, he had a harder time fooling women than men. At his favorite hangout, the Eagle Inn, where he ate most of his meals, the younger waitresses were certainly wary of him. Mueller asked a few for their phone numbers, but they refused. Mueller followed one of them home in his squad car, and she got so flustered that she fell and twisted her ankle.

However, there was one woman who was not afraid of Mueller: Patsy Murphy. An attractive divorcee with two children age 8 and 11, Murphy had already been through one bad marriage plagued by alcohol and violence. As far as she was concerned, Mueller was a dream date who showered her with attention, sent her romantic letters, and behaved with impeccable manners. Even more important, he was a quiet man willing to listen thoughtfully to her many problems.

In August 1986, Mueller and Murphy visited the Wisconsin Dells. Within a month, they were engaged to be married. Mueller found a house in Prairie du Sac he wanted to buy. He needed money and became interested in starting a photography business as a side hustle.

On September 10th Mueller visited a local attorney to seek advice on filing a suit against a woman who had accused him of molesting girls while on duty. The following day, he called his brother Lynn and asked him to come over and look at a house he wanted to buy. Lynn felt his brother was having trouble focussing his thoughts and asked what was wrong. Mueller replied: “There’s lots of pressure, a lot going on.”

On September 14th Mueller got off work at 7 pm, and drove straight to Murphy’s house. For several days he’d been looking forward to seeing the President’s speech concerning the war on drugs. Still dressed in his uniform, Mueller sat rigidly in front of the television, staring intently at the screen, saying nothing until the speech was over. After dinner, he drove home and threw all the alcohol in his apartment away. The President had told him drinking was evil, and Mueller always obeyed his President. He also decided not to take his medication. Without a tranquilizer, however, Mueller was unable to sleep. He spent the night pacing the floor, listening to a cassette tape titled “How to Relax” by Norman Vincent Peale.

The following day, Mueller and his fiancee had a meeting with Mueller’s pastor concerning their upcoming wedding. Murphy, a Catholic, was planning to convert to the Lutheran faith. Mueller arrived at Murphy’s house looking unkempt and frazzled. He explained his unusual appearance by saying he’d “been up all night with diarrhea.” Murphy offered him some coffee, but he requested water. “Well, you know where the water is,” said Murphy. Mueller then changed his mind and asked for coffee.

While driving to the church, Murphy admitted she was nervous. Mueller uncharacteristically walked ahead of her into the church.

During the meeting, Mueller seemed preoccupied with minor matters, while Murphy tried to plan the details of the ceremony. The pastor asked if Murphy was aware of Mueller’s background. Murphy confessed she knew very little about her prospective husband. At this point, Mueller became agitated and asked to leave the room. While he was gone, the pastor told Murphy about Mueller’s mental problems. Mueller abruptly entered the room and stated it was time to leave.

The couple drove to Mueller’s apartment, which was, atypically, in a state of disarray. A bottle of pills from the Veterans Administration Hospital was on the table. “What are these for?” asked Murphy, picking up the bottle.

“You know, for a chemical imbalance caused by my drinking problem,” said Mueller evasively, while leading her into the living room.

“What do you want to tell me?” asked Mueller.

“I don’t think much of your pastor,” said Murphy.

Mueller began to cry. “If he’s going to get personal, I don’t ever want to go back to that church.”

Later that night, Mueller arrived at the Eagle Inn for dinner and discovered the booths were full. He took a seat at the counter and ordered the daily special. Les Tesch, the owner of a local gardening store, sat behind him.

“I always had a lot of respect for John,” says Tesch. “I felt he was the most sensible, down-to-earth officer on the force. We got into a discussion while he was waiting for his food. I told him I was 100% behind Reagan. I don’t think we have room in our society for people who take drugs. I told him they should get capital punishment. They should be blown away. John didn’t say anything. He just nodded his head.”

That night Mueller was unable to sleep and paced the floor continuously. At 8:30 am he arrived at Murphy’s house for breakfast looking wild and glassy-eyed. His hair was uncombed, he couldn’t sit still, and he swore repeatedly. “He’s been caught with his pants down in the squad car,” he said of one of his fellow officers. Mueller’s hands were shaking. He ate a slice of toast with peanut butter, got up to leave, kissed Murphy, and left a smear of peanut butter on her face.

Later that night, he called Murphy at work and spoke in a slow, robotic voice. “Is this Patricia or Peaches,” he asked. “What are you doing? Don’t ask me any questions. I’ll do the asking. You tell me the whole story. Tell me what you did. I know it’s been bothering you for a long time.”

“What’s the matter? asked Murphy. “Give me a hint.”

“You know,” replied Mueller.

“Stop it,” said Murphy breaking into tears. “You’re scaring me.”

“Keep it warm, keep it real warm just for me,” said Mueller. “I’m hanging up now. I’ll be here until two. You can tell me the whole story. Bye-bye.”

Murphy knew something was seriously wrong and called Mueller’s pastor. The pastor called Mueller, but Mueller refused to discuss anything, saying he had to leave for work. Murphy then called Neumeyer at the police station and asked to speak with Chief Rentmeester.

“John sounds really strange,” said Murphy. “I’m afraid something is wrong.”

Neumeyer relayed the message to Rentmeester, who responded by saying Mueller had been quietly lately, but that he was always quiet.

A few hours later, Mueller unholstered his .357 and pumped two rounds into the back of John Graham’s head. Fired at point-blank range, one of the bullets entered on the left side of Graham’s neck, creating fractures in and around the second and third cervical vertebrae and damaging the spinal chord before exiting on the right side of the neck. The second entered behind the left eyebrow, caused extensive brain damage, and exited through the right ear. Either shot would have been sufficient to kill.

Det. Sgt. Manny Bolz was the first member of the Sauk Country Sheriff’s Department to arrive at the scene of the shooting. After hearing details of the murder, he arrested Mueller and delivered him to the county jail. Bolz searched the August Derleth parking lot and found 34 marijuana plants in the bushes. He also searched Graham’s toolbox in the truck and found a baggie containing a groomed marijuana bud. Bolz’s case was not against Graham, however, who was dead, but against Mueller, and a search of his home was even more revealing.

The small, second story apartment was filled with religious books and Republican Party propaganda. There were framed photos of Bush and Reagan, a flag folded military style on a chair, a notebook filled with letters addressed to Reagan, and several self-improvement books, including How to Sell Yourself, Write Better, Speak Better, The Miracle of Speech Power, and Professionals at Their Best.

While Mueller’s strange life gradually unfolded during his trial, the unfortunate victim remained something of a mystery. “I didn’t even know John Graham existed,” Chief Rentmeester told James Romenesko of Milwaukee magazine. “Nobody in our department ever had contact with the man, even as much as giving him a warning ticket.”

Unfortunately, Crystal Graham couldn’t provide much insight into why her husband might have been driving a load of marijuana, and continued to insist he did not smoke nor cultivate cannabis. Mrs. Graham portrayed her husband as a genial, laid-back country boy whose only interests were hunting, fishing, and listening to the Statler Brothers. This does not seem strange, however, if one considers Mrs. Graham is a former undercover narcotics officer herself.

“(My husband) would talk to most anyone,” she said. “He couldn’t sit still. Four walls would get to him. He was a collector of anything and everything, and especially if it had something to do with hunting. He loved knives and guns.”

Townhome where the Grahams resided.

Born in Winter Garden, Florida, Graham was the son of migrant workers, and spent most of his youth traveling the country working on farms. He joined the air force and was stationed in San Antonio, where he married Crystal Olson. That same year he obtained a job with the phone company in Orlando, Florida. Crystal, meanwhile, joined the Orlando Police Department.

In 1971, she was given the plum assignment of infiltrating the office of a local chiropractor who was suspected of providing cannabis medication for an extra fee to clients. Crystal enjoyed this sort of clandestine work, She got into the office by answering a help-wanted ad placed by the chiropractor and got the job. For several weeks, she witnessed drug transactions and later became the state’s chief witness at the suspect’s trial.

As a result of her undercover work, Mrs. Graham became the first female officer to win the National Police Officer of the Year award, which is why she bristles at any suggestion her husband was a stoner, despite evidence to the contrary. According to her somewhat farfetched scenario, her unemployed husband was coming home with the marijuana just to show her so he could say something like: “Honey, you ain’t gonna believe this, but this stuff is growing wild. Now just look. I can go down there and cut it, and here it is,” she said.

Four days after the shooting, at the suggestion of his attorneys, Mueller was interviewed by Dr. Greist, who attempted to find out if Mueller was disassociating during the shooting. He asked Mueller to describe what happened on September 16, 1986, beginning at any previous point in time that made sense to him.

Mueller spoke at the incredibly slow rate of ten words per minute.

“I was laid off and initiated looking for work in various aspects of the employment market, and during the months of employment search learned of the Sauk-Prairie Police Department opening.

On April 11, 1984, Deputy Ward, Officer and Mrs. Chileen and I attended a meeting in Milwaukee. Vice President Bush presented an address at this meeting. Christmas, 1984, is a memorable event. The White House received Christmas cards from me. The President and Mrs. Reagan sent me a Christmas card. The Christmas card arrived on or about January 12, 1985. The return address on the Christmas card was the White House. The President and Mrs. Reagan’s congratulations for my support are contained in the Christmas card. Continuing correspondence made many changes.

In September of 1985, I traveled to Washington, DC, for the purpose of sightseeing. The Capitol tour is a highlight of my trip. When I returned to work, I was blessed with much work. Since then, my interest continues with the programs of the President.

My familiarity with all programs is limited. However, I listen intently to the words of the President.

On Tuesday, September 16, Lieutenant Harmon reported to my residence at his convenience. At approximately 1410, Lieutenant Harmon and I proceeded to Lieutenant Harmon’s residence. En route to the lieutenant’s residence, Lieutenant Harmon stated a phrase that was not familiar to me. However, I interpreted the phrase in connection with government action. The phrase was: the wild geese are flying. The meaning has been defined to me as specific commando action.

I never heard that phrase prior to Tuesday, September 16.

Continuing our travels to Lieutenant Harmon’s residence, we met no opposition, that is, we did not receive any calls. When I changed shift, I then proceeded on patrol and was requested to ask the police chief to call the police department. I delivered the message to the police chief and then was requested to assist another officer. Conservation Warden John Buss requested assistance with a vehicle containing controlled substances.

My thoughts were to administer action to prevent illicit controlled substances. At the time, I believed to be serving in my official capacity as a government servant. I believed that a continuing obligation existed and continue to believe this obligation exists. The obligation I believe exists with the specific nature of my duties with the National Security Agency. In 1969 and 1970, I believe a formal obligation existed. Since 1970, I believe the informal obligation still exists.

The shooting cannot be considered a part of my informal obligation. The actions taken at the scene of the controlled substances on Tuesday, September 16, are not a part of the written obligation that exist. The reasoning I use with that is at the present time our nation is plagued with illicit drugs. Everyone is concerned about this devastating enemy is doing what they can do in their own way to eliminate the existence of illicit controlled substances. I believed and still believe that in defense of our country, state and cities, an action that is threatening to harm the people our a nation, a strengthening move must be taken.”

Three days before Oliver North claimed innocence in the Iran-Contra-Cocaine affair on account of righteousness, John Mueller appeared in Circuit Court in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The proceedings did not take long. The prosecuting attorney, defense attorney, and four psychiatrists all agreed Mueller was suffering from chronic paranoid schizophrenia. Judge James Evenson ordered Mueller taken to the Mendota Mental Health Center in Madison. During the sentencing, Mueller looked passively around the room, an eerie smile fixed on his face. He continued to maintain his innocence, and was quite upset to learn he’d been fired from the Sauk City police force.

For many decades, Mueller’s grasp on reality had been tenuous and he reached for the firmest anchors he could find: God and country. But both let him down.

In a world where most people support the delusion an old man is watching everything they do, how can anyone maintain a sense of reality? It’s a paranoid’s fantasy, yet billions subscribe to it largely because influencers in the media, schools and government support the delusion.

Crystal Graham’s attorneys eventually presented a $2,880,000 lawsuit against the Village of Sauk City.

Mueller was one of the few associated with the case who was eager to talk to me.

“I would like to allow you to make some interviews,” he said over the phone, sounding confident, clear-headed, and effusively polite and gracious. “The condition would be some monetary amount,” he continued. “The amount would be $10,000. Until you meet this condition, I would ask you not to speak to my fiancee or my family.”

“Blessed are those persecuted on account of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Oliver North, Feb.26, 1987

I asked Mueller if he’d been following the scandal unfolding in Washington, the one that blamed the surge of cocaine into North America on a CIA-created army in Central America using Colombian cocaine to fund a war on Communism.

“Oliver North was a man who ordered generals around,” replied Mueller. “it’s strange that my life would be connected with his.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to either of us, Big Pharma was already preparing plans to addict countless millions on recently invented psychoactive substances like Prozac, Ritalin, Zoloft and Adderall.

While claiming a war on drugs with one hand, they began drugging the nation with the other.

 

Moretum & the hidden history of cannabis

Moretum, an early poem by Virgil

A poor farmer named Simylus awakes before dawn and rekindles the embers in his hearth.
Simylus grinds grain and wakes his African slave Scybale to fetch wood for the fire. He makes dough with the flour and kneads a loaf of bread. While he waits for it to bake, he mixes garlic, cheese, coriander seeds, vinegar, and a variety green leafy herbs in a mortar and pestle, and spreads the result on hot bread and consumes it before starting out to plough his field. The poem is most notable for coining the term “e pluribus unus,” a reference to moretum being ready to eat once the various colors and ingredients have merged into a single light-green paste.

 

Long before humans appeared on earth, tools had already been invented by earlier primates. We don’t know which came first, fire or the mortar and pestle, but it wasn’t until primates discovered both that most of the energy that had been required by the stomach and intestines to process plants could redirect into developing bigger brains. Our distant ancestors in Africa discovered early on that pounding plants, seeds and nuts with stones made both cooking and digestion easier.

The Ebers Papyrus, named for German Egyptologist Georg Ebers, contains the first written description of a mortar and pestle. It dates to 1550 BC, although it likely was copied from much earlier scrolls. Containing 700 medicinal remedies and incantations, the scroll is 20 meters long (approximately 110 pages). Ebers bought the manuscript from Edwin Smith in 1872, and three years later, Ebers published the first translation.

In the 16th Century BC, the Phoenicians were developing their alphabet, the first hymns of the Rig Veda were recorded in Sanskrit, and the Sumerian civilization was eclipsed by Babylon. Sumerians had invented beer, discovered opium (the happy plant), and learned how to make flour by pounding wheat berries. One of their favorite treats was pistachio encrusted dates. A mortar and pestle would have been used to pound the pistachios into powder before dipping the honey-soaked dates.

The Rig Veda describes the making of soma, which was considered the greatest medicine, the “king” of healing plants. There are numerous mentions of “pressing stones” used and the clacking sounds they made. Strangely, virtually no historian seems to realize “pressing stones” is Sanskrit for mortar and pestle.

Bhang.

In the 1920s, some historians began pointing out the obvious: soma was most likely cannabis. In fact, the descriptions of soma match the current recipes for modern bhang, which remains a popular drink in parts of India. Whole kolas, leaves and flowers, are blanched in boiling water and then pounded into a paste using a mortar and pestle. Typically, almonds, spices and hot milk are added, but the ancient recipes often included opium and ephedra.

In the late 1930s, Reefer Madness was launched by the just-created Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and a well-funded campaign to demonize cannabis swept across the world. At the same time, a campaign to misidentify soma as a mushroom was initiated by a vice president of America’s most powerful bank.

Check with Wikipedia today and you won’t find much of anything useful in the description of soma. The academic community refuses to accept the obvious and continues to obscure the real history of cannabis.

Someday this house of cards must fall.

Moretum.

Meanwhile, I encourage everyone to get a mortar and pestle. Pestos are easily made using any nut or seed with any green plant and any spices. Our modern pesto recipe originated in Northern Italy in the 1600s, but for millennia before that it was known as moretum.

 

Also made in mortars was Manna, the food that saved the Jews from starvation. Manna was just hemp seeds crushed into hempseed flour, which was baked into wafers. I have a separate blog on that subject if you seek further proof and clarification.

Poem attributed to the young Virgil and comprised of 124 hexameter lines and written in the Greek tradition (as in Callimachus’ Hecale and other poems involving meals with gods and people, aka Theoxeny).

Moretum

Already had the night completed ten
Of winter’s hours, and by his crowing had
The winged sentinel announced the day,
When Symilus the rustic husbandman
Of scanty farm, solicitous about
The coming day’s unpleasant emptiness,
Doth slowly raise the limbs extended on
His pallet low, and doth with anxious hand
Explore the stilly darkness, groping for
The hearth which, being burnt, at length he finds.
I’ th’ burnt-out log a little wood remained,
And ashes hid the glow of embers which
They covered o’er; with lowered face to these
The tilted lamp he places close, and with
A pin the wick in want of moisture out
Doth draw, the feeble flame he rouses up
With frequent puffs of breath. At length, although
With difficulty, having got a light,
He draws away, and shields his light from draughts
With partially encircling hand, and with
A key the doors he opens of the part
Shut off to store his grain, which he surveys.
On th’earth a scanty heap of corn was spread:
From this he for himself doth take as much
As did his measure need to fill it up,
Which ran to close on twice eight pounds in weight
He goes away from here and posts himself
Besides his quern,’ and on a little shelf
Which fixed to it for other uses did
The wall support, he puts his faithful light.
Then from his garment both his arms he frees;
Begirt was he with skin of hairy goat
And with the tail thereof he thoroughly
Doth brush the stones and hopper of the mill.
His hands he then doth summon to the work
And shares it out to each, to serving was
The left directed and the right to th’ toil.
This turns about in tireless circles and
The surface round in rapid motion puts,
And from the rapid thrusting of the stones
The pounded grain is running down. At times
The left relieves its wearied fellow hand,
And interchanges with it turn about.
Thereafter country ditties doth he sing
And solaces his toil with rustic speech,
And meanwhile calls on Scybale to rise.
His solitary housekeeper was she,
Her nationality was African,
And all her figure proves her native land.
Her hair was curly, thick her lips, and dark
Her colour, wide was she across the chest
With hanging breasts, her belly more compressed,
With slender legs and large and spreading foot,
And chaps in lengthy fissures numbed her heels.
He summons her and bids her lay upon
The hearth some logs wherewith to feed the fire,
And boil some chilly water on the flame.
As soon as toil of turning has fulfilled
Its normal end, he with his hand transfers
The copious meal from there into a sieve,
And shakes it. On the grid the refuse stays,
The real corn refined doth sink and by
The holes is filtered. Then immediately
He piles it on a board that’s smooth, and pours
Upon it tepid water, now he brought
Together flour and fluid intermixed,
With hardened hand he turns it o’er and o’er
And having worked the liquid in, the heap
He in the meantime strews with salt, and now
His kneaded work he lifts, and flattens it
With palms of hand to rounded cake, and it
With squares at equal distance pressed doth mark.
From there he takes it to the hearth (ere this
His Scybale had cleaned a fitting place),
And covers it with tiles and heaps the fire
Above. And while Vulcanus, Vesta too,
Perform their parts i’ th’ meantime, Symilus
Is not inactive in the vacant hour,
But other occupation finds himself;
And lest the corn alone may not be found
Acceptable to th’ palate he prepares
Some food which he may add to it. For him
No frame for smoking meat was hung above
The hearth, and backs and sides of bacon cured
With salt were lacking, but a cheese transfixed
By rope of broom through mid-circumference
Was hanging there, an ancient bundle, too,
Of dill together tied. So provident
Our hero makes himself some other wealth.
A garden to the cabin was attached,
Some scanty osiers with the slender rush
And reed perennial defended this;
A scanty space it was, but fertile in
The divers kinds of herbs, and nought to him
Was wanting that a poor man’s use requires;
Sometimes the well-to-do from him so poor
Requested many things. Nor was that work
A model of expense, but one of care:
If ever either rain or festal day
Detained him unemployed within his hut,
If toil of plough by any chance was stopped,
There always was that work of garden plot.
He knew the way to place the various plants,
And out of sight i’ th’ earth to set the seeds,
And how with fitting care to regulate
The neighbouring streams. And here was cabbage, here
Were beets, their foliage extending wide;
And fruitful sorrel, elecampane too
And mallows here were flourishing, and here
Was parsnip,’ leeks indebted to their head
For name, and here as well the poppy cool
And hurtful to the head, and lettuce too,
The pleasing rest at end of noble foods.
[And there the radish sweet doth thrust its points
Well into th’ earth] and there the heavy gourd
Has sunk to earth upon its belly wide.
But this was not the owner’s crop (for who
Than he more straightened is?). The people’s ’twas
And on the stated days a bundle did
He on his shoulder into th’ city bear,
When home he used to come with shoulder light
But pocket heavy, scarcely ever did
He with him bring the city markets’ meat.
The ruddy onion, and a bed of leek
-For cutting, hunger doth for him subdue-,
And cress which screws one’s face with acrid bite,
And endive, and the colewort which recalls
The lagging wish for sexual delights.
On something of the kind reflecting had
He then the garden entered, first when there
With fingers having lightly dug the earth
Away, he garlic roots with fibres thick,
And four of them doth pull; he after that
Desires the parsley’s graceful foliage,
And stiffness-causing rue,’ and, trembling on
Their slender thread, the coriander seeds,
And when he has collected these he comes
And sits him down beside the cheerful fire
And loudly for the mortar asks his wench.
Then singly each o’ th’ garlic heads be strips
From knotty body, and of outer coats
Deprives them, these rejected doth he throw
Away and strews at random on the ground.
The bulb preserved from th’ plant in water doth
He rinse, and throw it into th’ hollow stone.
On these he sprinkles grains of salt, and cheese
Is added, hard from taking up the salt.
Th’ aforesaid herbs he now doth introduce
And with his left hand ‘neath his hairy groin
Supports his garment;’ with his right he first
The reeking garlic with the pestle breaks,
Then everything he equally doth rub
I’ th’ mingled juice. His hand in circles move:
Till by degrees they one by one do lose
Their proper powers, and out of many comes
A single colour, not entirely green
Because the milky fragments this forbid,
Nor showing white as from the milk because
That colour’s altered by so many herbs.
The vapour keen doth oft assail the man’s
Uncovered nostrils, and with face and nose
Retracted doth he curse his early meal;
With back of hand his weeping eyes he oft
Doth wipe, and raging, heaps reviling on
The undeserving smoke. The work advanced:
No longer full of jottings as before,
But steadily the pestle circles smooth
Described. Some drops of olive oil he now
Instils, and pours upon its strength besides
A little of his scanty vinegar,
And mixes once again his handiwork,
And mixed withdraws it: then with fingers twain
Round all the mortar doth he go at last
And into one coherent ball doth bring
The diff’rent portions, that it may the name
And likeness of a finished salad fit.
And Scybale i’ th’ meantime busy too
He lifted out the bread; which, having wiped
His hands, he takes, and having now dispelled,
The fear of hunger, for the day secure,
With pair of leggings Symilus his legs
Encases, and with cap of skin on ‘s head
Beneath the thong-encircled yoke he puts
Th’ obedient bullocks, and upon the fields
He drives, and puts the ploughshare in the ground.

Holy Knight Defenders of the True Story of the Grail

Everyone knows the nation has been swamped by a crisis in violence, although nobody seems to know how to fix the problem. Much trauma today can be traced to the insane war on drugs that continued for decades and we have casualties on both sides. It never should have happened. Cannabis is the world’s greatest medicine and there was no need to destroy lives over a healing plant that grows everywhere.

My current mission is to build Dizzyhippieland (working title), a dogma-free ceremony site for helping those with PTSD. I will start by erecting a memorial to the victims of the war on drugs, including law enforcement officers killed and injured, as well as growers and users of marijuana.

The plan is to recruit 12 of the coolest people in the world. These volunteers will build and occupy their own hobbit homes around a lake or riverbank. There will be bike trails through the forest lit by LED lights that one can ride day and night. (My primary vehicle is a solar-powered trike called the Elf. I already have a fleet of them ready to move to the site, as well as a fleet of pedal boats.) These are the rides at Hippiedizzyland. No cars or combustion engines allowed inside and everything will be solar powered. The volunteers will be allowed to rent out their homes and/or use them to vend arts and crafts.

In April, I’ll unveil my new 420 ritual. Although I never got credit for spearheading 420, I was the first person to create 420 ceremonies outside Marin County. My new 420 ritual is based on Peter Schumann’s puppet theater and you can find an elaborate script on my Facebook page.

I was 16 when I founded my first counterculture publication in Urbana, Illinois. Ours was a fascinating town stuffed with colorful characters. Johnny Roselli was a frequent visitor as the 20-something who inherited the local TV station and newspaper was his favorite mistress. Chicago “men of honor” came down often to shoot quail in the cornfields.

More important to me, the town was a seething hotbed of revolutionary thought. This energy got focussed at the Unitarian Church on campus. A beatnik coffeeshop called The Red Herring opened in the basement.

My tribe created garage rock. I went from a shy wallflower with no friends to having supreme confidence with my new trajectory in life. The power and glory of music should not be underestimated. Music, math and spirituality ride together.

I witnessed the full illumination of the biggest local rock star Jim Cole. He transformed quick after his first public performance on the sidewalk of Green Street. Watching the footage of early Elvis on his toes, his entire body charged with electric energy, reminded me of Jim. He reached an illuminated state while his life became performance art.

Where did this power come from? Every super hottie in the twin cities wanted to eat Jim alive and they squealed with delight during his performances. Jim wasn’t the only one in the band soaking up those juices. The 15-year-old guitar player Mark Warwick wrote “Only Me,” one of the first psychedelic rock songs. The next year, I created The Tin Whistle.

After I moved to NYC, I got into punk, because I understood the connection between punk and garage rock. I founded the Soul Assassins and began creating psychopunkadelia.

Then I landed at the dying High Times, which I quickly turned into the magazine success story of the 1990s. Everything I did while at High Times was recorded on video and I hold the only copies of the footage. I kept notes, letters, audio and video tape, photos, and original art from 1964 until the present. It represents the world’s most valuable counterculture archive and is income-producing. The archive will be moving to the Church of the Holy Grail at Dizzyhippieland.

Most of the so-called cannabis churches today are hoodwinks working out-dated dogmas. I gag when I see people calling themselves “reverend this or that” or “Weed Jesus.”

I provide something different: real enlightenment. I have ransacked the history of religion and magic and distilled the ancient wisdom down to its ultimate essence. First, let your mind be free of all dogma. There is only one rule: don’t hurt anybody. Once you strip away the fake dogma, you can follow your heart, where the real Bible is already written.

My revival movement involves spreading peace culture. My ceremonies are always free to attend. I hand out hymnals and do singalongs of my spirituals, which are dogma-free.

If not for prohibition, I believe we’d have a lot more weed spirituals. You can find my hymns on my Youtube site under The Seeds of Doubt. Check out my anthem, In Search of the Grail. The real secret of the grail saga was not the cup itself but the medicine that went inside, an elixir capable of bringing peace to the kingdom. The grail story is really about the power of cannabis to bring peace.

I’m not interested in chasing money. I am interested in exposing fake gurus and weed religion carpetbaggers who spread Santa Claus stories about everlasting life.

I’m looking for a few dozen acres in the Catskills with a private lake or riverbank where I can erect a phoenix on a commanding site so that when the sun rises on April 20th, it appears between the phoenix’s wings to illuminate a crystal on top of a peace pole.

If you contribute $5 or more to building Dizzyhippieland, your name will be on that memorial (provided you rank among the first 420 donors).

Kudos to Larry Green for being the first to send a donation. Jiffy Schnack was the first volunteer. He was an artist-in-residence at Area when I first met him. Since then, Coke La Rock, Busy Bee, Grandmaster Caz, and Shawn “Ammo” McQuate have saddled for the ride.

Maybe you’d like to ride with us? I am looking for capable artists, musicians, performers, carpenters, mechanics. You’d be allowed to develop your own rockstar compound on the site if accepted onto the crew.

It’s not a full-time gig and there won’t be pay beyond room and board.

There’s nothing plastic about Dizzyhippieland, although everything is constructed cheaply. Tents, tipis, Christmas lights, and non-toxic spray paint create much of the set pieces. There will be numerous stages, saunas and massage tables because they are useful in healing. There will be fireworks and burns at the center of the lake during major ceremonies. The stage faces the lake with the sun behind it, and the lake acts as a sounding board. The music becomes magical from this lake effect.

The growth of the site will depend entirely on how many people come to the ceremonies, the first of which will occur between April 19-21, 2023.

Of course, if any cannabis companies step forward and want to help sponsor such a place, I would welcome them.

And their karma might soar because they did something for peace and not plata.

https://gofund.me/e2ef5a94

The Real Secret of the Holy Grail

Mani was the greatest avatar of the ancient world and also the greatest portrait painter and calligrapher. He inspired the greatest religious revival of his time, but did not wear expensive robes, nor cultivate toadies. What Mani did was successfully integrate the best of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity.
Mani’s bible equated spiritual energy with light, and considered the light of the sun as Jehovah, and light of the moon as Jesus.
Mani used the Zoroastrian sacrament of mixing hot milk with cannabis flower to heal the blind and lame, serving this elixir in a sacred chalice. The origins of the grail story start in ancient Scythia, long before Mani’s time, and centuries before the arrival of Jesus.
 
Mani lived several hundred years after the mythical birth of Jesus, but he was the most famous Gnostic of his time, and considered himself one of Christ’s appointed agents on earth, just as many Buddhists in India considered him the living Buddha.
Execution of ManiMani was lured back to Persia under false pretense, skinned alive and decapitated for the crime of trying to end war over religion. The gate in Persia where his head was put on a pike still bears his name, although nobody seems to know anything about him. That gate is his only trace.
A holocaust soon followed on Mani’s followers, and it did successfully tamp down his philosophy for centuries, but eventually, all across Europe, a movement very similar to Mani’s appeared. It became known as Catharism. It had no leader. Cathars rejected the crass commercialization of Rome 300 years before Martin Luther came to similar conclusions. They believed in a connection between light and spiritual energy, and worshipped a form of Christianity with a Buddhist flavor, rejecting heaven and hell for reincarnation, just like Manichaeism. 
 
The Pope in Rome at first tried to negotiate with the Cathars in France, around Languedoc. After that failed, he declared the first crusade, the Albigensian Crusade, which could have been an even bigger and more horrific ethnic cleansing than Mani’s. The closest thing I can imagine is the Rape of Nanking. Entire towns were destroyed, women and children raped, and then murdered. It didn’t matter if one was Cathar or Catholic. “Let God sort them out,” said the evil Pope.
 
The last hold-outs were in Montsegur. In 1244, their fort was stormed after a brutal 10-month seige. The 200 inhabitants were thrown on a bonfire.
 
But the night before the siege ended, a small group successfully slipped through enemy lines, carrying their greatest treasure to safety, a green-stained goblet. Perhaps this was an actual artifact from Mani, and if so, would have been the sole surviving possession from the greatest avatar of the ancient world.
 
Monument to the murdered Cathars.

Many decades earlier, Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote Parzival, a search for the grail. His grail castle is called Monsalvat, which is similar to Montségur and has the same meaning: “safe mountain.”

The book Crusade Against the Grail by Otto Rahn in the 1930s revived interest in the connection between Catharism and the Holy Grail, and painted Parzival as a veiled account of the Cathars. That research fascinated Heinrich Himmler, who made Rahn an archaeologist in the SS, which, later, helped inspire Raiders of the Lost Ark.
 
It’s a bit lonely connecting these dots from Scythians to Zoroastrians to Mani to Catharism to Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s been a solo adventure, but I’m hoping others will pick up and follow the trail. This is the true secret of the holy grail. It’s not about the actual chalice but the elixir that went inside.
Eventually the real story has to get out.
Maybe I can fit it into Pot Waco.

Green Easter drops on 420 Eve

On April 19th, 2021, at 4:30 PM, a ceremony for peace by Steven Hager and the Seeds of Doubt will premiere on Youtube. Several songs from the film have already been posted on the site. “In Search for the Grail” is the film’s theme song.

A brief history of religion

Study the Scythians to help navigate the missing history of religion. Their religion was documented by Herodotus, the father of Western history.

Scythians believed god sent them three golden objects: a golden cup, a golden plough, and a golden battle ax.

The cup was too hot too touch, but one day a boy was able to pick it up. His offspring became the royal Scythians, in charge of appointing the Enares, who ran the ceremonies. The family with the plough was put in charge of planting hemp and other crops in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. During the summer, they moved their herds up the mountain fields to graze, and returned to the banks of the Black Sea during the winter. I could write a long time about their customs, even though they had no written language and everything we know comes from Persia or from Greece, in other words, their enemies. The Scythians built and controlled the Silk Road, which meant they were also involved in the slave, drug and spice trades. Silk didn’t appear until millennia later.

When the straits of Bosphorus were first breached, possibly due to a meteor strike, sea water flooded into the Black Sea burying all the towns and villages on the shore, as well as several islands. The survivors move away, some to Turkey, some to Persia, some to Afghanistan. They develop flood myths.

Meanwhile, in Bactria a new avatar emerges, Zoroaster, who is using the Scythian sacraments, and popularizes drinking hot milk mixed with cannabis, which turns out to be the most effective delivery system, both for medicinal and inspirational purposes. Zoroaster is a barefoot holy man, not a warrior like Heracles, the previous avatar. He carries a magic stick instead of a magic sword. He saves the tribe through feats of magic, not through feats of strength.

The first Zoroastrian king of Persia (Cyrus the Great) defeats the corrupt Babylonian empire and replaces it with a more enlightened form of government. He frees the Jews enslaved by Babylon and says, “Take this money and go back to Jerusalem and rebuild your temple and write down the history of your tribe.”

Naturally, they create a new avatar to update Abraham, named Moses, who is a composite of Zoroaster and Cyrus. Like Zoroaster, Moses goes to the top of “smokey” mountain and comes back with god’s rules after conversing with a burning bush. Like Cyrus, Moses was a foundling whose real identity was kept hidden.

Alexander the Great’s father becomes the first to defeat the Scythians in battle, opening the way for his son to march across the Silk Road and conquer Bactria. Meanwhile a new avatar emerged in India and became popular in Bactria. His name was Buddha. The great pantheons of Indian, Greek, Egyptian and Persian gods had been rejected by Zoroaster, who created the first monotheistic religion, but Buddha creates the first “no gods” religion in which your fate is ruled by karma, not by whims of some god.

Alexander embraces Buddhism before he dies and for centuries afterwards the entire Middle East becomes Buddhist with a Greek flavor. Judea borders the Greco-Buddhist empire, and soon the most advanced Jews are working on a new avatar, inspired by Buddha. Stories and scrolls are written to celebrate this new movement, which is vegetarian and seeks to stop the slaughter of birds and animals inside the temple.

This is a small, tiny movement, but one that troubles Rome, so they send one of their citizens to persecute these new Christians causing trouble in the temple, interfering with the slaughter of animals and birds, which makes a lot of profit (and Rome gets a cut).

The persecutor is unable to wipe out the movement, so he joins it and becomes its biggest influencer after the movement’s leader, James, is thrown off a tower and murdered. Thus ends any talk of vegetarianism.

Two hundred years later, a boy is born of a Christian father and Zoroastrian mother in Persia, and develops unique theories on religion at a young age, amazing the Magi while only 12. He successfully merges all religion to end war, and becomes a hunted man in return. He is such a vegetarian he won’t eat roots, only freely fallen fruits, nuts and vegetables. Lured out of safe haven in India he is skinned alive and decapitated for the crime of trying to end war. His murder makes him famous worldwide and the mercenary army of Rome begins flocking to his religion in droves, reading the bible he wrote by himself in his own unique calligraphy. He was the greatest portrait painter of his time. His temples spread over the world, until it got so big, Rome got worried again.

That’s when Constantine embraces a small cult designed to give comfort to the poor, and transforms it into an imperial juggernaut to take over the world. Many elements of Mani’s life are incorporated into the story of Jesus.

Not a single temple, bible, nor painting of Mani’s survives the great Inquisition, although pockets survive in modified form, like the Cathars in France. Eventually the Pope will order them all slaughtered to stop the spread of Mani’s dualism.

Mani had been healing the blind and lame, not with magic, but with the original oil of Moses, a mixture of cannabis resin suspended in olive oil with some spices, and a tad of opium and ephedra if available.

Rome disappears Mani and disappears cannabis at the same time. The Scythian holy grail, which was about the substance inside the cup, is transformed into the Christian Eucharist.

Confessions of an Acid Queen

Johanna at 26

Johanna Harcourt-Smith was 26-years-old when she met Timothy Leary. After Leary turned informant, she was branded a CIA-honeypot by Allen Ginsberg and shunned by just about everyone. For a time, most of the counterculture turned on Leary and his acid queen.

The primary person Leary ratted out was a lawyer named Michael Kennedy who’d engineered Leary’s prison escape through the terrorist Weather Underground. Leary was only told they “were political people,” not that they were terrorist bombers responsible for the death of a San Francisco policeman. The Weather Underground sought to use Leary as a publicity tool by sending him to Algeria to live with Eldridge Cleaver. They wanted to replay the film Algeria, which documented the success of a terrorist Islamic-Marxist revolution led by downtrodden Muslims, who had no rights in French Algeria. Hundreds of thousands died in their fight for independence, and the Weather Underground was envisioning a similar scenario in the USA, except led by middle-class teenagers. The real mission, however, was driving the left violent in order to marginalize and isolate it from the mainstream.

In 1969, Leary successfully legalized cannabis for a brief moment when he appealed a pot conviction all the way to the Supreme Court and won, so the antiquated 1937 Marijuana Tax Act had to be swiftly replaced by the Controlled Substances Act, which broadened the reign of terror on medicinal plants.

In 1987, when I arrived at High Times the entire editorial staff had recently been fired over the Christmas holidays. The magazine was teetering on insolvency and circulation had cratered. The advertising base consisted of two companies selling lookalike pills obviously intended to be sold as real on the blackmarket. Caffeine was likely the primary ingredient. The magazine had recently relocated to save money on rent, and the files that survived were in a shambles. There were no photo files, and no manuscript log for unsolicited articles. All unsolicited material disappeared into a black hole. The publisher was an accountant who kept the magazine running by cutting expenses. But the publisher turned out to be a puppet for lawyer Kennedy.

Tom Forcade (aka Gary Goodson)

Tom Forcade had created a trust to gift the company to loyal employees in the event of his demise, but when Kennedy learned of this, he immediately engineered a trip to the bank vault where the document was stored, and wrote his name on the list of trustees, while promising to serve as “protecter” of the agreement.

Soon Tom was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and Kennedy conspiring with Tom’s widow and family, including Tom’s lawyer uncle, the author of the trust. He was a former tank commander in WWII who’d been recruited into military intelligence. Employees began exiting en mass, mostly through sudden firings, but some because the thrill was gone. High Times became a treacherous environment run like an intelligence operation, where information was on a need-to-know basis.

Since the counterculture media had died or been co-opted by the 1980s, being put in charge of a nationally-distributed magazine represented a huge opportunity and I had no problem turning the financial situation around instantly just by upgrading the magazine’s content and focusing on celebrating the remaining counterculture, which included the Grateful Dead followers and Rainbow Family. One day A. Craig Copetus, one of the original High Times employees, visited the office. He seemed surprised to hear Kennedy had taken control. “Right before he died, Tom held a meeting and told us not to let Kennedy get control,” said Copetus. Obviously, Tom had second thoughts about that trip to the bank vault.

Micheal Kennedy

I sent a letter to Kennedy outlining my plans for creating universal, non-violent ceremonies that would focus on ending the drug war. I was already doing these cannabis-infused ceremonies in Amsterdam as part of the Cannabis Cup, as well as filming them, and felt a class-action lawsuit could be successfully mounted to protect hippies from persecution by claiming pot was a legitimate sacrament. To bolster these claims, I’d been accumulating evidence Zoroastrianism, the foundation for Judaism and Christianity, had originated as a cannabis cult, and the smoking bush of Moses was a reference to the inspirational power of cannabis. Despite offering a splendid opportunity for Kennedy to double-pay himself and get tremendous publicity for himself (and for the magazine), and increase sales, and especially because it would save countless thousands from jail and financial ruin, Kennedy never responded to the letter.

What Kennedy did instead is launch a series of campaigns to have me fired. A series of publishers were installed, all instructed to “start looking for a new editor.” Attempts were made to kill the Cannabis Cup, but I managed to offload that to Michael Esterson for a licensing fee. The agreement also kept videotaping alive as Esterson agreed to cover that cost. But as soon as the WHEE! festival became profitable, and Mountain Girl agreed to move the festival to her estate, Kennedy summoned me to his office, where he unexpectedly declared WHEE was dead. Kennedy informed me it was a huge waste of time and resources. Bolstering this lie required support from the publisher, who was Mike Edison at the time, who would soon be fired, and who later write a revenge memoir branding me as incompetent. Apparently, among my many crimes was believing the assassinations of the 1960s deserved further investigation, and that a group of teens from Marin had invented 420.

The next year, the trust dissolved and Trans High Corporation gifted to the employees. I was given some token shares along with a handful of other real employees, but Kennedy and Tom’s family held the majority. Kennedy moved into the High Times office and began running the operation into the ground. Meanwhile, I could never comprehend why Kennedy was so angry with me all the time since I’d been making him millions and sales sank without me at the helm. He was living on billionaires row on Central Park South, his summer residence was an ocean-front property in the Yale enclave in the Hamptons, and he also had a winter home in Palm Beach, as well as an estate in Ireland. I was a single dad living hand-to-mouth with two kids with a disabled wife to support at a different location, and just eking by thanks to the debates I was doing on college campuses against the former head of the New York DEA.

Buffalo Mailer

One day, I was summoned to Kennedy’s office where he introduced me to Buffalo Mailer, Norman Mailer’s son. Kennedy wanted Buffalo to provide some young energy to the aging editorial staff, so he was being installed as Executive Editor and I needed to introduce him to staff as if it was my idea.

The following day, I was again summoned to Kennedy’s office upon arrival in the morning, where a shame-faced Mailer held a copy of a just-released New York magazine, which contained an interview with Richard Stratton where he announced his next project: running High Times. Kennedy had made a secret deal with Stratton and Mailer was Stratton’s stalking horse. I felt sorry for Mailer, for allowing himself to be dragged into participating in a slimy hoodwink. At the editorial meeting later that morning where Mailer announced the real situation to the staff, only Natasha shed tears for me. The others were already angling for elevation on the masthead.

Richard Statton

I was moved out of the office so as not to interfere with the transition. I could never understand why nobody wanted my participation as I’d always thought of magazines as a team effort, and the goal was assembling the best possible staff. My investigative journalism had been a significant part of the magazine’s success, so why wouldn’t that continue? Instead, my contribution was limited to a 500-word monthly column, for which I was paid a steadily dwindling salary.

One day I got an email from Johanna saying she wanted to talk. I’d believed the stories about her being a CIA agent, but I was having second thoughts about that, as well as the truth concerning Kennedy’s participation in the Weather Underground. I knew Bill Ayers remained a close friend since I’d recently edited Kennedy’s adopted daughter’s wedding video.

I soon began formulating my alternative history of the 1960s, in which Tim Leary and Charlie Manson are manipulated pawns deployed to de-tooth the counterculture. Knowing I was on treacherous ground, I sent an email to Kennedy requesting permission to interview Johanna. Strangely, I got a response right away, and it contained an emotional plea not to because the memories remained an open wound. That email was nothing like any other email I ever received from Kennedy. It wasn’t like him to show weakness.

Johanna died recently from breast cancer, but she was able to finally get her story out. She’d watched Wormwood on Netflix and felt compelled to contact the filmmaker, who’d instantly agreed to interview her. During the film, it becomes apparent Johanna felt she was being manipulated into Leary’s orbit and it was through surveillance on her that the CIA was keeping tabs on Leary. But she’d never been a knowing participant. And I believe this is the way a lot of intel operations work. Few have any clue to the unseen strings or who the puppet masters might be.

Teenage Johanna

Johanna had become promiscuous at age 15, and a parade of powerful people connected to arms trafficking and illegal drugs soon became her friends and lovers. She became part of the Rolling Stones jet-setting entourage. At 26, she was likely nearing the end of a glamorous career as swinging super hottie, when Aleister Crowley devotee Anita Pallenberg (who’d inspired the Stones “Sympathy for the Devil” phase), told her to look up Leary because he was available and hiding out in Switzerland.

At their first meeting Leary pulled out Crowley Tarot deck.

Johanna and her mother

I was disappointed the film never delved into whether Johanna could have been sold by her mother to the CIA as an MK/Ultra sex slave. She’d had a raging libido from the age of 15, and typically held at least eight males under her command at all times. The reason Wormwood resonated so deeply could have been because her role as an acid queen was ordained.

The sad truth about Leary is he was half-visionary and half-huckster. His first book on the psychedelic experience was based around the Tibetan Book of the Dead, magic incantations intended to lead the dying to nirvana, basically the same hoodwink MI6 operative Somerset Maugham deployed in the Razor’s Edge, in which the secrets of the universe are located in Eastern philosophies. Imagine leading people from India or China to adopt Catholicism as the true faith. Enlightenment is not like climbing a mountain. You don’t reach the top and become released from temporal bondage. There is no nirvana, no heaven, no hell, no eternal soul. You’re just replacing one Santa Claus story with another. The real secret to magic and religion is it only works on believers.

Strangely, the Weather Underground celebrated the Manson murders, and held Charlie up as a counterculture hero for “killing pigs.” They also celebrated Sirhan Sirhan for the same reason. Both Leary and Manson were held in isolation at the same prison, but their cells strangely located next door, allowing them to communicate.

“They took you off the streets so I could continue your work,” said Manson.

Something heavy went down…

The ancient Persians considered Balkh the “mother of all cities,” which may be why something heavy went down 5,000 years ago. Balkh was the largest, richest and most important oasis on the road connecting China and India to Europe. In fact, the trail split not far from the city’s immense walls, the southern route tailing off towards the Khyber Pass, while the northern led into the Hindu Kush to Kashgar.

Just as in Sumer, Turkey and Egypt, irrigation methods soon created immense gardens and orchards to support a growing population, and most crops were planted safely inside the city walls. Priests were placed in charge of water and seed distribution, as well as prayers and divinations for a good harvest.

One day there appeared a prophet in the city who instigated a major shift in cosmology. Up until his arrival, it had been assumed the universe was dominated by a vast multitude of greater and lesser spiritual energies, and each community had been free to make up their own pantheons.

When he first appeared on the scene, Zoroaster was a very controversial figure. He apparently accused some of the priests of practicing the dark arts and claimed their magic was fraudulent. It’s strange how today Zoroaster is known as “the first magician,” when, in fact, he seems to have gotten his start by exposing fake magic. During this time, an evil eye accusation could result in an execution. So if a priest accused you of giving someone the evil eye to explain why disaster had befallen them, you were pretty much a lost cause. I’m speculating here, but I believe Zoroaster may have put an end to such superstition.

One thing for sure, Zoroaster obliterated the ancient pantheons that had stood for millennia, replacing them with two forces, one good, and the other evil. It’s gone down in history as the origin of monotheism, even though in practice there were many lesser spirits in play. The other important contribution was the creation of a epic hero involved in seeking enlightenment, which supplemented the prior epic hero involved in feats of heroic strength. It was the first time a philosopher/scientist/astrologer emerged to replace the warrior avatars.

A number of epic hymns were written to celebrate Zoroaster’s quest for enlightenment. Some even attribute the first half dozen to Zoroaster himself. In a nutshell, he went to the top of smokey mountain, communicated with a magic plant, and came back down with the good god’s official rule book.

One day, a new young king of Balkh decided this new prophet Zoroaster was onto something heavy. And that’s when fire temples began sprouting all along the Silk Road serving a mixture of cannabis and milk with spices. This was Zoroaster’s Eucharist for healing the blind and lame, as well as curing depression, a magic staircase to the mind of the good god.

Known as soma in India, haoma in Persia, and shuma in China, the medicine helped transform Zoroaster into becoming the most famous prophet of his time. And, of course, after his death, magical stories about him increased and rapidly erased any human figure. This is the natural trajectory any mythic figure must undergo simply because people want to take their religion with a heavy dose of enchantment. So the debunker of fake magic became the world’s greatest magician.

There’s also been a lot of hoodwinking going on about when he really lived. Lately, there’s even been an attempt to date Zoroaster after Moses, when, in fact, Moses was obviously based on Zoroaster because it was the first Zoroastrian king of Persia (Cyrus the Great) who defeated the corrupt Babylonian empire and freed the Jews. Not only did Cyrus free the Jews, he gave them funds and instructions to rebuild Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. This all happened before the Jews had a written language, and in gratitude, Moses was fashioned as the Jewish Zoroaster, and most of the cosmology lifted right out of the Avesta.

And, of course, in short order, something heavy went down in Jerusalem.

Forever Fun

It’s unfortunate how little video footage got captured during the first Whee! festival outside Eugene, Oregon. The entire adventure had begun as my plot to establish a Weed Woodstock. (Although, in truth, the original was funded almost entirely by weed money, and the event helped cement Woodstock as a weed distribution center.)

I remember taking the trustees to lunch at some five-star restaurant and saying, “You have to be committed to a new event for five years, because that’s how long it may take to break even.” But I assured them after five years, my Whee! fest would be as big if not bigger than Woodstock. And I believed this because the event was promoted as a prayer for world peace, a serious non-denominational ceremony recognizing cannabis as the sacrament of peace culture.

Of course, Whee! exploded immediately, drawing 20,000 to the event, most of whom got in for free and were fed free by a non-stop crew kitchen, and anyone could volunteer to be crew.

After the OM circle, someone handed a bottle of whiskey to Felipe and said he was done with this. Felipe and I did a bunch of powerful ceremonies together, and that was certainly one of the best.

But the day after the event ended, we invited the Pranksters to our motel room to celebrate and eat pizza. Only Ken Babbs showed up, and this is what transpired. The next day, we went to see Kesey, and he introduced me to non-linear video editing, just going prosumer. I had been a devoted follower of improvisational ritual theater as practiced by the Pranksters, and took this direction very seriously, devoting the rest of my life to capturing video of the ceremonies I was staging. Sure glad I kept these memories, and if you want to know what Hager ceremonies look and feel like, this will clue you in.

As soon as I got back to New York, the trustees informed me that Whee! had been a financial failure. Although I knew that was a lie. Through immense efforts I manage to resurrect one more Whee! at the same site the next year before my precious Whee! ceremony was cast to the winds, and thus ended my longstanding campaign for the recognition of spiritual rights for cannabis users.

 

Chef Ra Escapes Babylon

Tom Forcade had multiple film projects in the works when he committed suicide. He’d recently bought controlling interest of a smuggling project, and went to show a rough cut to Robert Evans in Hollywood. Forcade had just paid an editor to whip the chaotic footage into a story. He put a lot of effort into trying to make sense of that footage, some of which involved footage of a real smuggling operation, but Evans sadly told him the edit still wasn’t working.

Apparently, Forcade’s moves into Hollywood contributed to two things: cocaine and guns. According to Gabrielle Schang, Forcade didn’t carry a pistol until after being introduced around Hollywood. He’d been a dealer and distributor and magazine publisher, but was also branching into smuggling and film at the same time. His most precious documentary project involved filming the Sex Pistols historic tour of America. Forcade bought a plane and sent Jack Combs on a mission. He never recovered from Jack’s fatal crash at the end of that ill-fated mission. And that also ended any High Times forays into the film world until I arrived.

Before coming to High Times, I’d launched a moderately successful film project called Beat Street, and never lost sight of expanding my efforts into the world of film and video. When prosumer equipment finally reached the realms of the masses, I began documenting everything, quickly evolving into the most video-centric magazine editor on the national stage. I shot thousands of hours of footage, and often assembled 7-person crews to do four-camera edits with live switching of my major events. All this was working towards the creation of a counterculture television network.

The first project I pitched to the trustees was a Chef Ra travel guide to Jamaica. I was creating an entire galaxy of High Times stars and Ra was intended to be one of the brightest.

Imagine my surprise when the trustees tell me they are putting up thousands of dollars to make the Chef Ra film. That was the good news. The bad news was the project was being given to the aspiring filmmaker son of the head trustee. I didn’t get to play any role in the film until the end. They spent a week in Jamaica and shot a lot of random footage and needed Ra to help work it into a story.

That’s not the best way to make a great documentary and it showed in the final product. But it remains the best portrait of Jim Wilson we have, and since Jim co-wrote the script used to stitch the scenes together, it carries his creativity and compassion.