Tag: Mind Control

Another lost guru Part 4

MK-Ultra   

Adding to the barrage of allegations of drug use and drug trafficking coming from multiple sources aimed at the Church of Naturalism, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported the California State Franchise Tax Board was in the midst of a year-long investigation of the church at the time of the slayings.  The probe investigated allegations asserting drug customers wrote off their cocaine buys from the church as “donations” and subsequently claimed the transactions as tax deductions.  Anonymous sources alleged the cocaine buyers were able to purchase the drugs by check or credit card.  Reportedly, the church took both BankAmericard and Visa.  “They had one of those stamp-type machines like you see in a service station.  And they had all kinds of vouchers,” a source told the Herald Examiner.  Church secretary, Susan Shore, who claimed to be the sole surviving member of the Church of Naturalism, denied the allegations, claiming she had no knowledge of the tax board investigation.

People with stories to tell about the Church of Naturalism’s involvement in drug trafficking were seemingly coming out of the woodwork.  Missing from the narrative, however, were all the individuals they supposedly counseled, helped kick drug habits and trained for gainful employment.  Where were the recovering rock musicians, movie stars and sports celebrities with tales of how George Peters rescued them from the throes of drug addiction?  According to the Herald Examiner, their tax deductible donations, made in exchange for private “treatment,” involved “instruction in the use rather than abuse” of various drugs.  Indeed, one attendee at Church of Naturalism revelries told the Herald Examiner, “People spilled more coke on their shoes at one of George’s parties than they put up their noses anywhere else.”  

While surviving member Susan Shore attempted to put to rest rumors of drug use and narcotics trafficking, she dropped a bombshell of her own in the November 14, 1982 edition of the Herald Examiner.  In the article, Shore revealed that at the time of George Peters’ death the two had been working on a film about his involvement in the secret CIA program MK-Ultra.  “I was writing the story of his life prior to the founding of the church, when he was supposedly one of the people with whom the CIA was doing a lot of experimentation with drugs….The story involves espionage and experimentation with drugs to see how far you could make something go,”  Shore told the Herald Examiner.  “We were going to make a film that was going to expose what the government was doing back in the early 1960s.”

According to the Herald Examiner, Peters claimed he was a subject of LSD experiments while a member of the Navy in 1957.  He volunteered for these experiments and participated in two additional ones after he was discharged.  However, the newspaper conceded it could not verify if he ever served in the Navy.  

At least one of the experiments Peters described to his friends involved a program to abduct transients, drug them unconscious and deposit them at a new location.  The subject was then reprogrammed by Peters or another operative and given a new identity and life history, the Herald Examiner said.  

The Herald Examiner also reported that Peters had spoken of his connection to the MK-Ultra program during a July 1981 symposium at the University of California Santa Cruz where he delivered a talk titled The Social and Cultural Implications of Consciousness Research. 

As insane as the Herald Examiner’s account of Peters’ alleged involvement in secret experiments sounds, it pretty closely tracks with an experience he relates to his one-time ghostwriter, Lionel Rolfe, and also resembles the approach he would come to adopt as an LSD guru.  In Fat Man on the Left:  Four Decades in the Underground, Rolfe mentions that Peters had “an ‘enlightenment experience’ at the hands of the CIA” prior to reinventing himself as a guru.  Rolfe recounts a bizarre story Peters told him of an encounter with a mysterious man named David, who claimed to be an alien, but actually worked for the CIA.  David intended to use Peters as a subject in the CIA’s MK-Ultra program.  After drugging Peters, David relentlessly stalks him, trying to get Peters to give up the most intimate and closely held secrets of his life.  During these games of ‘Truth or Consequences,’ “Peters had to tell his life story over and over again, and if things didn’t mesh in a psychological profile, David would hassle him until he got what he wanted.”  Eventually, Peters confesses to David about a homosexual experience he had in high school.  The admission brought him great peace and caused him to have “a classic enlightenment experience.”

According to Peters’ former wife, Katherine Peters, it was this experience that led him to form the Church of Naturalism.  “‘George was so lonely and insecure when I met him that he felt he could only keep people around by buying their friendship,’” Katherine Peters told the Herald Examiner.  “All that changed, she said, when he recounted a homosexual affair at the age of 13 during a bizarre game of Truth or Consequences.”  

After the admission, Peters was transformed.  “I thought I could take over the world,” Peters wrote following the Truth or Consequences game.  “I thought I had the power and I knew what was right.  Then I thought of Hitler and remembered he thought he was right too….  So I thought of the sentence: ‘I will help anyone at anytime as long as it hurts no other.’  By this method, I could leave the world a better place than I had found it.”  This became the gospel of the Church of Naturalism.

Whether or not there was any truth to Peters’ account of being pursued by the shadowy David and forced to endure the Truth or Consequences game as a form of mind control programming, the story resembles in many respects the approach he would come to use in his life as a guru.  Additionally, whether or not he plucked transients off the streets at the direction of the CIA and gave them a new identity and purpose, it could be argued that as a guru this is more or less what he did.  The newspaper accounts at the time of his death could not confirm whether he had made any of his CIA claims prior to the MK-Ultra revelations in 1977, nor could they confirm whether he served in the Navy as he claimed.  However, a closer examination of the transformation of George Fitzpatrick to George Peters reveals that he almost certainly served in the Navy, and that the Navy did indeed conduct drug experiments.  Moreover, George Peters’ claims of being the subject of these experiments predates the MK-Ultra revelations by more than a decade.

Sources:

The Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Herald Examiner

The San Francisco Examiner

The Chicago Tribune

Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground by Lionel Rolfe  

Mind Styles, Life Styles by Nathaniel Lande

Another lost guru Part 2

Interviews

As morning broke on Saturday, November 6, 1982, residents of Woodstock Road, Los Angeles, California emerged from their homes eager to provide details regarding the mysterious group that occupied the fortress-like compound in their midst.  Despite denials from investigators, an almost unanimous assertion among neighbors of the Church of Naturalism Inc. was that the group was involved with drugs.  “We thought it was a drug factory,” said a 26-year-old neighbor named Kerry.  “It was too secretive to be a normal house.  We thought they were doing angel dust up there.” 

Another neighbor named Robin, who worked as a secretary for a television producer, also suspected the group was involved with drug trafficking.  “There was constant traffic at all hours, early morning and late at night, and they’d only stay a little while.  The strange thing was the flow of old beat up cars driven mainly by black men.  I always knew something weird was going on.”  Robin also revealed that she’d attended a costume party at one of the homes on the compound and had been introduced to the host who claimed to work in the mental health field. 

Despite the claims of neighbors, investigators continued to assert that no evidence pointed to a narcotics motive.  “We don’t have anything to show it’s drug related,” Detective Hank Petroski told reporters.  “We looked and found no drugs or drug paraphernalia.”  At least partially undercutting Petroski’s statement was a large sign that read “DRUGS” in mirrored letters visible inside the garage.

A nearby resident named Scott, who worked as a film editor, also spoke of frequent visitors to the property and the paranoid security personnel who guarded the compound.  He told reporters, whenever someone got too close to the front gate, security guards “popped out of the bushes” demanding, “What do you want?…They had a real defensive attitude.”  Neighbors reported they often heard gunshots on the property, which they assumed was target practice, and that muscular men could be seen lifting barbells.  “Everyone’s suspicious when there are locked gates and real defensive guards,” Scott added.  According to Scott, one of the estate’s servants revealed to him that the group “wanted to make a movie about cocaine.”  Indeed, the San Francisco Examiner reported that police sources claimed George Peters “was producing a film about cocaine at the time of his death,” and that Peters “was seen over the summer interviewing and filming participants of a Santa Monica conference on ‘Cocaine Today’….” 

As the weekend progressed, a dozen or so current and former members of the Church of Naturalism and employees started showing up at the group’s estate.  Most were reluctant to talk, but a few spoke fondly of their former friend, George Peters.  “George Peters had the gift of gab coupled with independence of thinking,” said Jay Friedheim, one of the church’s organizers from its early days.  “George always tried to take care of people on the fringe of society….We thought we were going to change the world.”  Peters former common law wife, Katherine Peters, who started the church with George after she met him in Chicago in the early sixties, said, “He was a father in a way.”  A woman named Susan Shore, who shared the rear house with Peters, revealed the church made income from a relationship counseling service called Loveline, a documentary film company called Mentor Media, computer programming and auto repair.  Friedheim indicated the compound’s heavy security was necessary because of the group’s work counseling drug addicts.  As one former church employee said, “They felt safe up here, away from the beaten path.” 

However, it would take less than 24 hours for the idealism to fade and for serious questions to arise about the happy band of altruists who just wanted to change the world from the fortified confines of their $5600 per month Laurel Canyon hideaway.  Despite detectives’ insistence to the contrary, Woodstock Road residents’ conviction that something fishy was going on at the Church of Naturalism’s secretive compound would prove accurate as revelations of previous drug arrests, allegations of strange beliefs and unorthodox practices and even charges of mind control began to spill out into the public.

Sources:

The Los Angeles Times

The San Francisco Examiner

The Chicago Tribune

Another lost guru Part 1

Crime Scene

As detectives made their way up the narrow winding lane, an abandoned Cadillac limousine was the first indication that something had gone terribly wrong in this Laurel Canyon neighborhood.  Hemmed in by thick brush on either side of the lane, the wrecked vehicle that now confronted them took up the better part of tiny Woodstock Road.  However, the vehicle’s damaged front end and shattered windshield didn’t appear related to the present location and position in which the vehicle came to rest.  The large caliber handgun that lay in pieces on the road next to the Cadillac also indicated that there was likely more to be discovered in this Mount Olympus neighborhood.  Strange scenes were nothing new to the detectives called to investigate crimes inside Laurel Canyon, an area of Los Angeles which had a peculiar knack for giving up its dead in a most bizarre and cruel fashion.   Only a year earlier, four people had been bludgeoned to death less than a mile away at the home of porn star John Holmes.  In 1969, the Tate murders occurred four miles away, with the slain bodies of other young women turning up along Mulholland Drive at around the same time.  With that in mind, investigators continued their ascent up Woodstock Road, stalked by a spirit of dread.  

About 1000 feet further on, detectives turned into a drive that led into a six acre private estate.  Across the drive lay a large wrought-iron gate, some 80 feet from where it had been ripped from its hinges, presumably by the damaged Cadillac they’d previously encountered.  The gate had once been attached to a six-foot fence that enclosed the property.  Topped with coiled razor wire, the security fence and spotlights gave the property the appearance of a heavily fortified compound, rather than an elegant residential estate.  Video cameras monitored the front gate and visitors had to press a buzzer to be admitted to the property.  There were two ranch-style homes, each with its own swimming pool, and a large statue of Buddha on the property.  Around 2:30 that morning, November 6, 1982, a security guard for the estate was alerted to a commotion, which hastened him to investigate.  After phoning the rear dwelling and receiving no answer, he ran to the home where he discovered a man lying dead in the living room, prompting him to immediately phone authorities.    

Inside the rear home, police discovered two badly beaten men dead from apparent gunshot wounds.  The second body was discovered in the bedroom.  Both were fully clothed and there appeared to have been a struggle.  Investigators were able to identify the victims as George Peters, 43, and James Henneberry, 31.  Investigator’s immediate assessment was that the two men were murdered during the course of a robbery, speculating that intruders accessed the property through an unlocked back gate.  Detectives learned the Cadillac was registered to the Church of Naturalism Inc., and that Peters served as chairman of the board and Henneberry the church treasurer.  

According to interviews with the security guard and a woman who shared the front house with Henneberry, Henneberry played pool until 2 a.m. when he walked over to the rear home where Peters resided to grab a cup of tea.  There Henneberry, presumably, interrupted a robbery in progress, struggled with intruders and was slain along with Peters.  The assailant or assailants then fled the scene by crashing the church’s limousine through the iron gate, abandoning the vehicle further down the road and possibly fleeing on foot. 

While the crime itself and the motive seemed fairly straight forward, the victims, the group they led and the location they occupied were shrouded in mystery.  And as interviews with neighbors and church members unfolded and facts emerged, the truth about the enigmatic George Peters and the Church of Naturalism he founded remained elusive.  Because, apart from the many things that remained unclear about George Peters, one thing that was clear was that his name was not George Peters.  He became George Peters when he left his old life behind and embarked on the life of a professional guru.  As gurus go, Peters had at one time shown some promise, attracting a fair amount of publicity and a modest following.  But unlike other more notable gurus whose ambitions led them to California, Peters’ project never really achieved full flourishing, and the circumstances of his death would call all of Peters’ ideals and ambitions into question.  

As George Peters lay there dead in his fortified, heavily guarded compound, the victim of a robbery gone horribly wrong, one could be forgiven for wondering whether the self-help guru occupation was genuine, or simply a persona he had constructed for himself to conceal other ambitions.  Indeed, to hear George Peters and his cohorts tell it, it is even possible the former LSD guru and Church of Naturalism founder could have been the invention of someone or something else altogether.  

Sources:

The Los Angeles Times

The San Francisco Examiner

The Chicago Tribune