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Between the media
attention and the publication of The Law Enforcement Guide to Wicca, word quickly got around that a
Wiccan officer was on the staff of the Vancouver Police Department. It didn’t
take long before my phone started ringing and my mail box filled up. Suddenly
investigators from all over North America where sending me questions and
requests. Investigators from my own department started showing up in my
office with paper sacks full of “occult paraphernalia” that they had found.
These investigators had found themselves faced with “weird” cases that they
could not solve. Their line of logic seemed to be “this guy is weird, so he
must know about these weird things.” Before I realized what was happening, I
had become an “occult crime consultant.” Other Wiccan law enforcement officers that have “come out”
have found themselves the center of similar attention. Texas Probation
Officer Rey Gutierrez made the following observation to me in a recent
letter: “Regardless of what they personally believe, they tend to come to me for
answers when it comes to something they do not understand. One co-worker
found (after my presentation) that her daughter was practicing Wicca. To that
point my co-worker thought her daughter was into Satanism and was completely
freaked about it. I helped her understand some of the Wiccan beliefs and I
help her translate some runic writing that her daughter had. I have also been
called by local police departments to help decipher codes and (what they
thought were strange writings). The law enforcement response has been
generally good.” Since 1991 the hysteria that all of this misinformation
generates has created a lot of consulting work for me. I don’t mean to
suggest that all this work is due to a lot of “occult crime” out there. Quite
the opposite. Most of what has been brought to me by well meaning persons
turns out to be quite commonplace. These well meaning persons apply the
incorrect information regarding the occult to which they have been exposed to
everyday situations and arrive at the most amazing conclusions. A perfect example is a case that was referred to me by
Vancouver PD Detective Gord Bader. He sent the following note to me in 1995: “Do you know anything about a group who live in the old church on 38th or
39th and Dunbar? Local residents speculate it to be a cult/Wiccan/Satanic
group. All of the windows are blocked off, hippy type people are coming and
going, etc. As well, cat heads and animals cut in half found in the area.
Some owners in the area have had their cats go missing, only to show up with
their heads missing. I don’t know if any of this is related to the church or
even if it is happening. Let me know. Thanks.” I easily found the church. Thirteen years earlier the
Anglican Church had deconsecrated it, closed it down and sold it off. The
windows weren’t boarded over. The building was in relatively good repair and
part of it was being used as a residence. A search of police records revealed
no reports of mutilated animals found in the area. I observed people in
interesting costumes coming and going at all hours from this former church.
Some of these people might have been described as “hippy types.” The sign outside
of the former church read: BALLET
SCHOOL How some citizen perceived people in dance tights and tutus
as Satanic Hippie Cult members is a mystery to me. I wrote back to Detective
Bader and informed him that “the only thing that David [the owner] has in
common with Satanism is that both he and Anton LaVey are bald.” I’ve investigated many equally silly cases. I once had a
case referred to me by Canada Immigration concerning an individual who was
applying for landed immigrant status. His neighbor had told Canada
Immigration that he had seen this individual practicing Satanic rituals on
his property. Once the complainant had described to me what he had witnessed,
I realized that what this individual’s neighbor was practicing was Native
Indian Sweat Lodge rituals, not Satanic rituals at all. In
May of 1992 I was contacted by the Mountrail County Sheriff’s Department in
Stanley, North Dakota. Paul Ogden, the Chief Deputy, was investigating
incidents of vandalism and burglary at a local fishing and camping resort.
The vandals had carved “some strange writing” into a picnic table. Ogden sent
me a copy of the carving and asked if I could decipher the characters. Ogden
thought that the writing looked like a “Wiccan alphabet.” The vandals had
carved the outline of a hand into the table. Inside of this they had
inscribed characters which I was easily able to identify as Germanic runes:
The suspects were using these runes in a simple substitution cypher to form
English words. The two words were “live long.” It appeared that the vandalism
was the work of some criminals with an interest in Odinism, not Satanists or
Witches. I had one of our patrol officers come to me in the Gang Crime Unit one day to say that he had found what he feared might be a Satanic ritual site. He took me to a site near Jericho Beach Hostel where a circle had been created. The perimeter of this circle |
Careful What You Ask For, Part II
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Before I realized what
was happening, I had become an “occult crime consultant.” |
