Tag: occult

Before Oom became omnipotent: The clairvoyant vagrant

While Oom the Omnipotent, Pierre Bernard, is nowadays credited with introducing yoga practices to America’s elites, his numerous other accomplishments included founding a tantra commune, managing a baseball team, and serving as a bank president.  He was a yogi, a hypnotist, an occultist, a scholar, and a lecturer.  He also dabbled in dog racing.  Indeed, there was a time when Oom the Omnipotent exerted a mesmerizing influence over some of the flakiest of America’s upper crust.  However, it wasn’t always so.  Becoming omnipotent requires a great deal of trial and error, mostly error in Bernard’s case.  Not to mention that in one’s quest for omnipotence, one is bound to run afoul of local law enforcement authorities who are often reluctant to accommodate a man on his quest for omnipotence.  For certain, in Bernard’s case chasing omnipotence was mostly accompanied by scandal, run-ins with the law, charges of fraud and unshakeable impotence. 

Oom was born Perry Arnold Baker to Erastus W. Baker and Kittie C. (Givens) Baker in Leon, Iowa in 1875.  The couple soon divorced, however, and Kittie remarried to John C. Bernard, with young Perry taking on the surname of his stepfather.  After Perry was sent to Lincoln, Nebraska to live with a cousin, he met Sylvais Hamati and became Hamati’s pupil.  The pair eventually landed in San Francisco in 1893.  Billed as Hamati’s pupil, Bernard taught hypnotism and promoted its use to treat psychological maladies.

In May of 1897, Perry A. Baker partnered with Dr. H. M. Thornton in a venture called the Pacific Hypnotic Institute at 44 Sixth street in San Francisco.  Scandal erupted when the parents of young Edward Kline complained to police that their son “has stayed away from home and been entirely under the influence of the disciples of Mesmer.”  Despite the parents’ repeated efforts to see their son, Baker and Thornton denied knowledge of Kline’s whereabouts.  However, during an interview with an officer McMurray, Perry Baker’s powers of omnipotence began to kick in and he spilled the beans on the recent activities of the young Kline.  

“He said the boy is an excellent subject and when under hypnotic influence is a great clairvoyant.  He sees wonderful things.  The lad is particularly valuable as a subject for students of hypnotism, Baker’s pupils, to practice their newly developing powers upon.  He yields readily to their influence.  In fact, of all his subjects, Baker said, Kline was the favorite.  Baker said that he pays Kline $5 a week, and gives him his board and lodging for his services, and added that the boy is worth three times as much,” the San Francisco Call and Post reported.

During a court hearing convened to determine if Edward Kline was a vagrant, Perry Baker testified that his powers of hypnotism saved the boy’s life.  According to Baker, the boy’s parents objected to his desire to marry a young girl for whom he had tender feelings.  This caused Kline to become suicidal.  “Perry explained that young Kline was saved from death by carbolic acid poisoning by hypnotic powers that were thrown upon him,” said the Call and Post.  Of course, this was all news to his mother who knew nothing of her son’s designs to marry.

But the tale became a great deal stranger when Edward Kline himself made revelations to the court so astonishing that they caused Judge Campbell to comb his whiskers vigorously with his fingers in anxious disbelief.

According to Kline, there was a club of lawyers and businessmen who met weekly on the fifth floor of the Parrot building on Monday evenings.  “The lawyers, so the lad stated, would throw him into a trance to make use of his clairvoyant powers.  They would send his mind to read the minds of their clients in order to secure more facts as to cases in hand.  They would also get him to go out on similar occult expeditions to probe the minds of opposing counsel in order to get ‘tips’ as to what their next moves would be.

“Others, the boy stated, were in search of information as to mining stocks and the probability of certain horses winning at the races.  

“From what he could learn from these seekers for inside facts the lad said he believed he gave them pretty straight ‘pointers.’”

The boy went on to testify that “he feels sure that those for whom he has been a subject will come to his rescue and try to prove that he is not a vagrant and that his mental submission to their wills is not in any way an injury to him,” the Call and Post read.

Ultimately, Judge Campbell decided there was no evidence to support the charge of vagrancy and terminated the inquiry.  He then made a rather unorthodox ruling, ordering the boy be hypnotized to “make him think he has a desire to stay with his mother, and then to send him home.”

Apparently, Judge Campbell’s solution worked because the boy returned home “and declared his intention to remain at home with his mother.”  Additionally, in a follow-up call to the Call editorial room, Baker and Thornton took full credit for young Kline’s change of heart.  “‘You remember,’ said Thornton, ‘that Kline said in court he would rather go to the reform school than go home.  Now he says that he is glad to be home, and that he intends to stay there.  That is because of the hypnotic suggestion I gave him.  The suggestion will influence him as long as I choose.’”

Free from the sinister influence of the Pacific Hypnotic Institute, Edward Kline’s mind slowly began to emerge from captivity.  As the San Francisco Examiner reported a few days later, “Young Kline refers now to the hypnotists as fakirs and declares that they used belladonna and chloroform on subjects and students.  He has not yet recovered from the effects of his stay in the studio.  His nerves are much unstrung.  His mother says that his actions at times are very peculiar.  Young Kline has many marks on his body to show where he was struck, and where pins were stuck into his flesh while he was in either a condition of hypnotism or under the influence of chloroform.”

While it is not known how the lawyers and businessmen of the Parrot building fared after their clairvoyant was returned to his family, there can be no doubt that Perry A. Baker aka Perry Bernard aka Pierre Bernard learned a valuable lesson.  Whatever hypnotic powers or occult wisdom Bernard may or may not have possessed, he certainly grew in his knowledge and ability to exert influence over others and brainwash the unsuspecting, a skill that would serve him well and he would repeatedly employ in his quest to become Oom the Omnipotent.

Sources:

Census records

The Leon Journal-Reporter

The San Francisco Call and Post

The San Francisco Chronicle

The San Francisco Examiner

The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America by Robert Love (2010)

Another lost guru Part 5

Origins

As evasive as George Peters tended to be about his life prior to becoming a guru, much of what he did reveal to journalists, prospective biographer Lionel Rolfe and Church of Naturalism collaborator Susan Shore turns out to be verifiable.  Census records confirm George Peters’ real name was George P. Fitzpatrick and that he was the son of Cyril G. and Ada Florence (Farwell) Fitzpatrick.  He was born in 1938 or 1939 and spent the first decade plus of his life being raised in New York.  Corroborating information revealed to Lionel Rolfe, newspaper reports indicate his father was a New York City detective, but Cyril’s alleged wartime stints in Army Intelligence and White House Secret Service could not be confirmed.  In fact, the exploits of Cyril G. Fitzpatrick, New York City robbery detective, appear in newspaper accounts both before and after World War 2, making it clear that whatever intelligence work he may or may not have been involved with during the war ceased when he returned to his robbery division gig after the war ended.  Following Cyril’s death in 1953, Peters’ mother married Ward McCarron in 1954, and the couple along with George resided in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  

As Peters revealed to Rolfe, it was around this time, when Peters was 16, that “he married a young woman who claimed to be French.”  Indeed, newspaper reports from October 1955, describe an episode where George Fitzpatrick, son of Mr. and Mrs. Ward McCarron, eloped with Jo Ann LaNette, 15, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jacques LaNette, Fort Lauderdale.  The pair had planned to go to New York, but only had enough money to buy bus tickets to Baltimore.  Eventually, the teenage couple returned home to Fort Lauderdale, and in 1956 George P. Fitzpatrick joined the Navy.  An announcement in the Fort Lauderdale News dated March 18, 1956 confirms he graduated from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago.  While not an official Navy confirmation of service, it seems unlikely Peters and his parents would falsely fabricate such an announcement, and it backs up Peters’ account and other previously unverified newspaper reports. 

With much of Peters’ origin story seeming to conform to reality, the questions become even more relevant: did the Navy and/or CIA perform mind control LSD experiments on the future cult guru George Peters?  Could the American military or intelligence community bear some responsibility for creating the LSD promotor and new age occultist?

Whether or not George Peters was one of its subjects, it is absolutely the case that the Navy performed LSD experiments on human subjects.  A Department of Defense memo dated September 20, 1977 revealed that the Navy participated in five programs where drugs were administered to human subjects for the purpose of mind control or behavior modification.  The programs ran from 1947 to 1973, and probably the most well known was called Project Chatter.  Led by Navy Lieutenant Charles W. Savage, Project Chatter research was conducted at the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland and ran from 1947 to 1953.  Peters claimed his experience occurred in 1957, placing it outside the timeframe of Dr. Savage’s involvement.  However, it’s possible the program continued under someone else’s direction, or Peters could have participated in a myriad of other LSD programs underway at the time.

It is widely reported that at one time the CIA purchased a significant portion of the world’s LSD supply and seemingly made it available to just about any researcher or institution willing to study its effects on humans.  Famously, author Ken Kesey participated in LSD experiments at the Menlo Park VA hospital around the time he began One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1960.  Also, in the 1950s, LSD pioneer Dr. Sydney Cohen conducted experiments at Wadsworth VA Hospital in Los Angeles, California.  Where George Peters was introduced to LSD cannot currently be determined, but California would be as likely a place as any.  

By 1960, it appears Peters had abandoned his family, which included a wife and three children.  In a newspaper feature from the 1980s, the then remarried but former Mrs. George Fitzpatrick describes being broke in San Diego in 1960 with a five-month-old baby she could no longer care for.  So she put the child up for adoption, as she would do with Peters’ two other children.  As a member of the U.S. Navy, it seems probable that he and his family spent some time living in San Diego.  While in California, did he become a subject of the LSD experimentation going on at the time, and did that experience cause him to become disillusioned and wander from his family?  Whatever life-altering, consciousness scrambling experience befell him, the trip was only going to get much longer and much stranger. 

Sources:

The Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Herald Examiner

The San Francisco Examiner

The Chicago Tribune

The Fort Lauderdale News

The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) 

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

Mind Styles, Life Styles by Nathaniel Lande 

General Counsel of the Department of Defense memo, September 20, 1977

The Vanishing Collectors

On Tuesday, October 9,1990, a meeting of the city council of Sedona, Arizona convened at 7:00 p.m.  After the meeting was called to order and the Pledge of Allegiance recited, a brief moment of silence was observed.  Next the roll was taken and the floor opened for public comment.  Second to approach the microphone was a clean-cut young gentleman who introduced himself as Ben Porterfield and informed the gathering that he had submitted an application for the position of City Magistrate.  According to the minutes of the meeting, Porterfield “advised he wanted to give the Council an opportunity to match a face with a resume and that he would be available after the meeting for questions.”

As Ben Porterfield took his seat for the duration of the meeting, it is not known if he questioned the decision to use an alias on his application.  Perhaps a man who aspires to administer the law for a municipality ought to do so under his real name.  This might hurt his chances of getting the job, he possibly thought, especially if they do a background check which was certain to be the case.  Also, he may have wondered if managing a trailer park counted as relevant experience for issuing warrants and reviewing matters of law.  No matter, Ben Porterfield, or whatever the young man’s name was, had a number of ongoing projects in various stages of development.  Whether or not he got the City Magistrate position was of little consequence.  

Unsurprisingly, Ben Porterfield was passed over for the position of City Magistrate of Sedona, Arizona.  Months later, however, some who attended the city council meeting that night may have wished they’d taken a greater interest in the man at the microphone with the face and the resume.  Because Ben Porterfield was eventually going to become the subject of an arrest warrant, possibly issued by the newly appointed Sedona City Magistrate, and the target of a manhunt for absconding with an indeterminate quantity of Sedona residents’ precious bodily fluids.

Just a few months after the meeting, as the year drew to a close, concerned parents began presenting their teenage offspring at local medical clinics for examinations.  At the same time, the Sedona Police Department started receiving reports of a mysterious couple who were offering area teenagers ten dollars to draw a vial of their blood.  It took authorities a few weeks, but eventually they were able to zero in on a mobile home at the Windsong Trailer Park, located along U.S. 89A in west Sedona.  The trailer belonged to Benjamin and Sarah Porterfield, managers of the park.

Sedona Police Chief Bob Irish was at a loss to explain why these two individuals were collecting the blood samples.  “The possibilities of it are only limited by your imagination.  At this point, it is one of the most bizarre situations I have ever seen.”  At the time, it was thought that at least a dozen teens had allowed some of their blood to be extracted for money.  According to accounts, the teens were taken into a bathroom where a syringe was used to extract a sample of their blood.  “It looked okay to me,” said a 15-year-old who lived next door to the couple.  “They would unwrap each needle and put a brace on your arm and have you fill out a questionnaire.  You had to be 14 or over, and you could only give three times.  But the questions were really weird, like, ‘Did you use Clearasil…Are you on drugs or alcohol?’”  The young woman went on to reveal that her boyfriend and his friends had sold their blood numerous times to the couple and that the pair had taken more than 100 samples from at least 30 teen-agers.  Interviews with additional teens revealed the couple posed as representatives of the government and that the blood was needed for the testing of lasers.

Blood wasn’t the only thing the strange couple was collecting.  According to authorities, the pair had been collecting rent checks from Windsong residents and depositing them into their personal account.  This led to an arrest warrant being issued for a Benjamin and Sarah Birdsong on charges of child abuse, embezzlement, impersonating medical personnel, aggravated assault and operating a clinical laboratory without a license.  Apparently the age requirement and the questionnaire subjects were asked to fill out were insufficient to secure licensing for the couple’s blood drawing enterprise.  Investigators were also not entirely clear regarding the true identity of the individuals.  Chief Irish thought the couple’s names were possibly aliases and that they were known to have used the names Millett and Stewart when they lived in the Phoenix area.

On Monday, January 7, 1991, Sedona Police and an official from the Arizona Department of Health Services served a search warrant at the Camp Verde home of Benjamin and Sarah Porterfield.  The couple were not present at the time of the raid and had been last seen at the residence the previous Friday.  Items taken from the home by police included two handguns, two shotguns, a Mac-10 submachine gun with silencer, an IBM computer, a printer and computer storage disks – the standard items necessary to get a teen blood-buying business up and running.  Also taken in the raid were a book of satanic rituals, the Satanic Bible by Anton Lavey, photocopies, posters and banners containing occult logos and satanic imagery.  Satanism quickly moved to the top of the list of possible motives for the strange couple’s blood-buying activities.  “It seems to be the forerunner as far as theories,” said Chief Irish.  The chief further speculated the blood might be used as part of an “occult-type” ceremony, admitting that, “The worst-case scenario would be drinking it (the blood).” 

Meanwhile the search for the pair continued in earnest.  The couple owned two vehicles, a 1968 Ford pickup and a 1974 Volvo station wagon, that were now missing from the couple’s Camp Verde home.  Acting on a tip, authorities closed in on a motel in Mesa, Arizona, but missed capturing the pair by two hours.  Later, authorities admitted they could not confirm that the motel occupants were the fugitive couple.  Investigators now believed the actual identity of the pair to be Charles E. Stewart, 32, and Sharon M. Smythe, 23, who went by the aliases Benjamin and Sarah Porterfield while living in Sedona.  A number of town residents had encountered the couple, describing them as friendly but very private.  None interviewed were able to provide any worthwhile leads.  An 11-year-old neighbor of the Porterfield’s described how he was well treated by the couple who would buy parts for his bicycle and take him on camping trips.  He did admit, however, that they had some strange habits.  “I never saw any of that devil stuff.  But there was always weird, loud music in the middle of the night.  All the time, they would go camping in Boynton Canyon and then we would hear about animals that were sacrificed up there.”

Investigators continued to pore through materials seized from the couple’s home.  A computer specialist was called in to examine the contents of the Porterfield’s home computer.  At one point, the expert thought the couple may have booby-trapped the device to erase its contents if tampered with.  Eventually, however, the computer revealed little useful information about the Porterfield’s or their secret government research into blood lasers.  Occult experts brought in to examine the satanic materials concluded they showed nothing to indicate active occult involvement.  The elusive couple, who seemed to become more mysterious with every bit of information discovered about them, had seemingly vanished with potentially over a hundred vials of blood extracted from the town’s teen-age population, all while abandoning a cache of weapons and a computer.  Perhaps Chief Irish was wishing he’d introduced himself to Ben Porterfield when he had a chance.  “I remember at a City Council meeting, he went up to the microphone and said, ‘I’m Benjamin Porterfield, and I’m available to meet with you.’  He looked like a clean-cut, all-American kid,” Irish recounted.         

It should be noted that many residents and visitors to Sedona claim the city rests on a large energy vortex composed of a number of smaller vortices, the most significant of which is the Boynton Canyon vortex.  These swirling concentrations of energy are linked with any number of strange phenomena.  Perhaps a mystery couple collecting blood samples from local teens is a fairly mundane occurrence in an area where unexplained healing powers, strange spirits, ghostly hauntings, UFO activity, and Interdimensional Portals are part and parcel of the landscape.  And if two mysterious travelers conducting highly sensitive scientific research should suddenly be called to deliver their collection of samples back to their obscure corner of space and time, and if the pair of strangers should suddenly vanish through the interdimensional doorway from which they possibly emerged, perhaps it should come as no great surprise.

The devil’s trailer Part 6

Aftermath

A day after his conviction was handed down, as a possible death sentence loomed on the horizon, and with the immensity of his situation weighing on him like a granite headstone, John Fryman shifted into panic mode.  “I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I didn’t do these things,” Fryman told Cincinnati television station WCPO-TV in a telephone interview.  “Her footprints were in the blood, not mine,” said Fryman as he desperately tried to pin the blame on Beverly Cox.  Fryman also hammered at his defense, questioning why neither he nor Cox was called to the witness stand.  Defense attorney Shiavone continued to stand by his client, but didn’t offer much in the way of alleviating Fryman’s mounting anxiety.  ”John is a very scared young man.  The electric chair, which he used to talk about so freely, is becoming a reality.  He’s confused, and I hope we can move on and save his life Tuesday,” Schiavone told reporters.

On the eve of Fryman’s sentencing, the grieving mother of Monica Lemen charged the convicted killer with playing mind games as he tried to shift the blame for Lemen’s murder onto Beverly Cox.  “He plays mind games.  People involved in psychology can get people in their confidence, and do things to people that are naive and not used to being around jailbirds.”  Patricia Lemen explained her daughter began receiving letters from Fryman in 1981 after she accompanied a friend to the Cincinnati Correctional Institution to visit the friend’s uncle.  Mrs. Lemen related how Fryman had threatened her daughter.  “She said Johnny drained the blood from an owl, and said to Monica, ‘I could do this to you…and spread your blood on the wall.’”  Patricia Lemen said she was not aware of the threats, or of Fryman’s involvement in satanism until after her daughter’s death.  The grieving mother was still trying to come to terms with the loss of her daughter.  “I feel like Monica went on a trip and didn’t come back.  But I know it’s permanent.”  Lamenting the life her daughter would never have, Mrs. Lemen described Monica as an “achiever, who wanted to get ahead by going to school for business administration and wanted to be all she could be.”

At John Fryman’s sentencing hearing on Tuesday, September 22, 1987, the only two people who really knew what took place at the mobile home on Sammy Drive in Fairfield, Ohio took the stand to deliver their testimony.  Beverly Cox, whose cooperation with investigators and prosecutors was instrumental in convicting John Fryman of aggravated murder, gave a tearful account of the horrific events of February 9th, 1987, and the personal struggles which led to her participation in those events.  According to Cox, on February 9th John Fryman told Cox he was going to bring Monica Lemen back to their trailer and kill her.  When the pair arrived, Cox hid in a bedroom closet, during which time she heard a gunshot.  Fryman told Cox to come out of the closet.  Monica Lemen lay dead in the “sorcery room” of the couple’s home, and Fryman told Cox, “Baby, you’ve got a dead body in the trailer.”  “He was all happy about it,” Cox testified.  The next day, Cox said, she held Lemen’s ankles while Fryman sawed off the legs to make it easier to remove the body from the trailer.  She also helped clean up the blood.  Cox said she assisted Fryman because she was afraid.  Cox’s testimony mostly mirrored the written confession Fryman gave police with a few extra details thrown in.  

In additional shocking testimony, Cox detailed her fear of Fryman and the dark magic he exploited to exert power over her mind and possibly her soul.  Cox said she learned about satanism from Fryman who variously referred to himself as Todva the Crazy and the prince of evil.  She claimed Fryman had her under his influence, “I didn’t know if I was coming or going.”  According to her testimony, she became free of Fryman’s psychic control in April, two months following the murder.  “I see it all now.  I see what he’s done.  I don’t believe any of that stupid crap anymore,” Cox testified.  However, further testimony and Cox’s jailhouse letters to Fryman revealed the young woman’s struggles with evil forces go back much farther than her acquaintance with Todva the Crazy.  Cox testified that her interest in satanism, demons and black magic extended back to high school when she wrote a report on witchcraft.  She stated that her former husband was a satanist and his mother was a witch.  According to Beverly Cox, the devil had been stalking her family for hundreds of years.  In an April 16 letter to John Fryman, Cox wrote, “He tried to get my father, but could not, so he went after me.  This devil had me.  I was going to kill myself.”  She described to Fryman an exorcism or ritual that took place in the jail to free her of a demonic spirit that had “settled around her,” and seized control of her mind and soul.  “I was pounding the walls with my fists, pounding my head against the walls, pacing the floor.  My body went blue.  I could not stop shaking.  It was horrifying,” Cox wrote.  On the stand, Cox characterized that jail cell experience as a “demon or spirit in the room that was removed out.”  The blueness in her legs she attributed to poor circulation.  Cox said her parents, Victor and Francis Dawson of Cincinnati, came to the jail on April 4th with her confirmation Bible.  “Dad was telling me everything was going to be alright, that Johnny couldn’t do anything to me.  Dad started to read the Bible.  He said everything will be explained, evil and hell are all around us.”  According to Cox’s testimony, a priest, the Rev. Walter Sherman of Trinity Episcopal Church in Lawrenceburg, IN, accompanied Cox’s parents to the jail the day of the exorcism ritual, and jail records corroborated her testimony.  However, Rev. Sherman, who sat in the courtroom with the Dawsons, denied taking part in the ritual to reporters, and claimed not to have met the Dawsons until April 19. 

When it was Fryman’s turn to take the stand, he refused to take an oath, and proceeded to deliver an hour-long monologue in which he characterized Beverly Cox as a sinister femme-fatale that murdered Monica Lemen out of jealousy and skillfully cast the blame on him.  The only time Fryman expressed anything resembling regret was when he described dismembering Lemen’s dead body.  “I knew I couldn’t just carry her body out in broad daylight.  We ended up cutting her legs.  It’s something I can’t explain, it was totally irrational.”  Regarding his written confession, he called it “totally bogus” and said, “I had no reason to kill Monica Lemen.”  

While acknowledging he went by the satanic name Todva, Fryman denied an involvement in satanism, blaming Cox for his trailer’s devil themed decor.  “I catered to this woman’s madness,” Fryman said of Cox.  No word yet on whether HGTV has optioned “Sorcery Room,” a home improvement series in which Beverly Cox shows you how to take that old outdated spare bedroom and turn it into a modern, functional space for practicing occult magic.  Fryman also surprised the court by revealing a wicked swastika tattoo inside his lower lip.  He referred to the symbol as a “wheel of life” and claimed it was a good sign.  And in yet another instance of Fryman’s flair for the dramatic, he related a story Cox had told him about her visit to a psychic that seemed to foreshadow the tragic events.  “She (the psychic) said she and another person would be arm in arm with a mutilated body between them,” Fryman told the court.     

Despite not taking an oath prior to delivering his suspect testimony, and his lack of remorse and failure to take responsibility for the crimes, Fryman was ultimately spared the death penalty and given life in prison.  As for Beverly Cox, she got off with a jailhouse exorcism and time served in protective custody.  Cox also received $25 for every day she was in the Butler County Jail.  Immediately following her testimony, she took her $5300 and embarked for Germany to stay with her sister who was serving in the military there.  At some level, it does seem that Beverly Cox managed to elude justice in this case.  To what extent she was an innocent victim of the evil magician Todva, or a willing participant and advocate for the evil deeds committed by the pair, it will most likely never be known.    

Justice was swift in the severed legs case with slightly more than seven months elapsing between the commission of the crimes and the sentencing of John Fryman.  However, it took quite a bit longer for the justice system to make Little Cedar Grove Baptist Church whole again.  The headstone that John Fryman and Beverly Cox had stolen from the church for use as a satanic altar sat in the basement of the Butler County Courthouse for five years following the trial.  Stained by soot and candle wax, the headstone weighed 450 pounds and took four trusties of the Butler County Jail to move and load onto a truck for transport.  How Fryman and Cox were able to move the hefty slab of granite from the church to his trailer’s sorcery room is unknown.  Barring a levitation spell cast by Todva the Crazy, is it possible the pair had help from others within their magic circle?  

At the time of its theft, the headstone occupied a space leaning against a column inside the church.  The inscription on the stone read, “To the memory of Elizabeth, wife of William Tyner, who departed this life Aug. 2, 1810, age 36 years 3 days.”  The Rev. William Tyner was the church’s first minister.  According to the July 29, 1954 edition of the Brookville Democrat, it was the only headstone uncovered with the discovery of the burial ground and thirty other grave markers on the church site.  The headstone featured “the intricate engraving of willow tree, coffin and lamb as well as the delicate etching around the word ‘Sacred.’”  Apparently it was not so sacred that caretakers refrained from uprooting the ancient headstone and placing it inside the church.  

Whether or not the act of disturbing the burial ground produced a cosmic disturbance that would ultimately result in an unspeakable evil revealing itself at the Cedar Grove site is a matter for speculation.  However, historical events do not appear to rule out the possibility.  Regarding that previously mentioned earthquake that hastened the construction of Little Cedar Grove Baptist Church, E. A. Wood wrote in 1894 that “quite a number of the members of this church who had become careless as to matters spiritual, interpreted this violence as a visitation of the Almighty upon them on account of their sinfulness”.  Additionally, Wood reported that the fledgling congregation struggled mightily to keep Freemasons out of its midst, the baptists in those days being not so liberal “and very antagonistic to secret fraternities.”  Ultimately, however, the church’s leaders relented and restored membership to congregants who had refused to renounce Masonry.  It wasn’t long after this fateful decision that the congregation began to fade out of existence.  According to Wood, “The church continued to prosper until about 1850, when the Reaper began to gather the harvest and the members of the old church were gathered in.”  

If there was a spiritual struggle between those seeking the Lord’s favor and malevolent forces that sought to inflict destruction and despair on the Little Cedar Grove community, John Lee Fryman seemed eerily attuned to that conflict.  Despite possessing an education in the science of human behavior, and for a time showing a desire to use it to help others, Fryman instead chose to push further and explore the murky pathways that lay beyond the boundaries of scientific understanding.  There he saw something, something that led him to make an offering of the severed legs in order to, as he stated, “increase the power of that spot.”  Whether the devil made him do it, or he took it upon himself to curry favor with his dark master matters little.  It is a certainty that John Lee Fryman lost himself in a domain beyond his understanding and ability to control.  He wandered willingly down a dark path, which he could have turned back from at any time, but instead chose to follow the pull of black magic and mystery until he was gathered into its black abyss.

Sources:

The Cincinnati Enquirer

Dayton Daily News

The Indianapolis Star

The Indianapolis News

The Star Press (Muncie, Indiana)

The Brookville Democrat

Franklin County Historical Society

The devil’s trailer Part 5

Trial

In the weeks leading up to his trial, John Fryman did little to help himself, mostly ignoring his lawyer while scheming ways to manipulate the court.  At a competency hearing on September 10, 1987, Fryman revealed to the court a plan to fake insanity.  “I was going to fake insanity,” Fryman told Butler County Common Pleas Court Judge John R. Moser.  “I am well aware of sociology and psychology and know how to do that.  Now I believe the facts will show that I don’t have to do that.  I think I can stand on the facts of the case without having to push things around.”  Undoubtedly thinking they’d dodged a bullet, the prosecution must have been relieved that Fryman had shelved his plan to “push things around” and manipulate the court into accepting his insanity.  

Nevertheless, the competency hearing continued with conflicting testimony coming from a number of experts who examined Fryman.  Psychiatrist Charles A. Feuss interviewed Fryman for an hour at the Butler County Jail and found the young man to be well oriented and able to talk about his case in a “clear and concise fashion.”  According to Feuss’s testimony, Fryman blamed the killing of Monica Lemen and the shooting of Tammy Sue Rose on his accomplice Beverly Cox.  Fryman also told Feuss that his attorney wants him to plead insanity, but that he doesn’t want to and doesn’t think he’s insane.  Dr. Donna Winter of the Butler County Forensic Center spoke to Fryman on three occasions and also found him competent to stand trial.  

However, Dr. Robert H. Fisher, director of the Butler County Forensic Center, disagreed with his colleagues, finding Fryman extremely agitated during interviews, and unable to comprehend his relationship to the charges against him.  Fisher testified that Fryman suspected his attorney, F. Joseph Schiavone, was “part of a system of maneuvers against him designed to make Beverly Cox heroic and innocent while he is thrown to the wolves for crimes he denies committing.”  The alleged conspiracy also included listening devices in his cell, CIA involvement and an impostor posing as his attorney.  Responding to the injustices committed against him, Fryman told Dr. Fisher he (Fryman) would “lead the way to the electric chair.”  

Picking up on Dr. Fisher’s testimony, Fryman’s attorney argued, “The man is totally confused, judge.  When a man’s on trial for his life, he doesn’t spend seven months misleading his defense attorney and saying he will lead the way to the electric chair.  He is not competent.  He needs hospitalization.”  

In the end, Judge Moser was unconvinced by arguments for Fryman’s incompetence.  Ordering the trial to proceed, the Judge stated, “He may be different.  He may be strange.  He may be unusual.  But different, strange and unusual (do not) mean he’s not competent to stand trial.” 

The following day, a suppression of evidence hearing was held to determine if statements made by Fryman to authorities following his arrest would be admissible at trial.  While in Indiana State Police custody in Connersville, Fryman admitted to shooting Monica Lemen but claimed it was an accident.  Fairfield Police Sergeant Eddie Roberts testified Fryman told police that Monica Lemen entered the “sorcery room” located in the rear of his mobile home.  There she began reading an inscription Fryman had written on the closet door.  Fryman said he then picked up a .25 caliber handgun that was laying on the altar, and, as he inserted the clip, the gun discharged.  Cincinnati police specialist Carey Rowland testified that when Fryman was asked about the inscription, Fryman told Rowland “demons did it through him,” and Fryman admitted that he often saw demons.  At a later date, Fryman admitted to Cincinnati homicide detective Robert Hennekes, “I probably made a mistake telling you guys all this.  I should have acted crazy,” Hennekes told the court.  Additionally, Fryman also gave authorities a written statement implicating himself in the Fairfield gas station robbery and the shooting of Tammy Sue Rose.  

As in the competency hearing, Fryman’s attorney F.Joseph Schiavone made little headway with Judge Moser.  A motion to suppress Fryman’s statements to authorities was denied, and a motion for a 30-day continuance also ran into a brick wall.  Pleading for the continuance, Schiavone argued that his client had only begun to cooperate, and that he needed more time to prepare an adequate defense.  “This is a complex case with a lot of witnesses and hundreds of pieces of evidence.  We find ourselves on the eve of trial with only three days for this defendant to bring me up to date,” Schiavone argued.  However, an unyielding Judge Moser was not persuaded, asserting that Fryman’s refusal to cooperate with his lawyer was his choice.  “I don’t think the court can allow a defendant to control the trial docket by changing his strategy,” the judge said.  With that, Judge Moser set jury selection to begin the following Monday morning at 9:00 a.m.

The trial got underway Monday, September 14, with jury selection lasting a mere two hours, leaving enough time on the first day for the 12 jurors to tour the crime scene.  As it turns out, the trailer had three rooms painted all black.  Additionally, the living room was adorned with statues of a witch, a winged black cat and several black candles.  Pictures of unicorns added a lighter touch to the home’s mostly unforgiving dark interiors.  From the ‘sorcery room,’ where the murder was alleged to have taken place, an inverted cross, a silver chalice, a knife and a ram’s head had been confiscated by police along with the headstone ‘altar’ and the closet door that contained the inscription Monica Lemen had allegedly been reciting when she was shot. 

At the close of the first day, defense attorney F. Joseph Schiavone met with reporters outside the courtroom to make a preemptive case to the press on his client’s behalf.  In his remarks, Schiavone described Fryman’s earlier admissions of responsibility in the death of Monica Lemen as an effort to protect his then-girlfriend Beverly Cox.  According to Schiavone, when Fryman was arrested, he admitted to accidentally shooting Lemen to Indiana authorities because he believed Cox was pregnant and he hoped to get a light sentence so he could be quickly reunited with Cox and their baby.  Regarding a later statement to police where Fryman copped to premeditated murder, Schiavone said that Fryman believed Cox was being sexually abused in jail and he made the statement hoping she would be freed.  “He read the law on capital punishment and tailor-made his statement to fit it, all to protect Beverly,” Schiavone said.  With opening statements set for the following day, Schiavone seemed to be making a desperate attempt to gain sympathy for his client, promoting a “protect Beverly” rationale for the confessions while preparing to transition the following day to a “blame Beverly” defense. 

During opening statements on Tuesday, Butler County Prosecutor John Holcomb did not shy away from allegations of satanism and black magic as being factors in the slaying of Monica Lemen, even as detectives had previously tried to downplay the angle.  Addressing the court, Holcomb said John Lee Fryman was motivated by “a mixture of anger, the occult, black magic and satanism…John Fryman arrived at the conclusion in his mind that he would kill Monica Lemen, and lured her to his trailer…John Fryman took Monica Lemen to what he called his sorcery room…and had her read a satanic incantation that was painted on the door.  While she was doing that he shot her in the back of the head with a .25 automatic.”  Holcomb told the court the pair had been pen pals when Fryman was serving time for robbery in the Lebanon Correctional Facility.  On the day of the murder, Fryman lured Lemen to his trailer on the pretense of helping her cash some stolen checks.  Holcomb assured the court that when jurors hear the evidence, they’ll conclude Fryman “deserves only to die” in the electric chair.   

In his opening statement, Fryman attorney F. Joseph Schiavone launched headlong into a “blame Beverly” defense.  According to Schiavone’s version of events, on February 9 John Fryman left Lemen and Cox alone together at his mobile home while he went to Middletown to buy marijuana.  While away, Beverly Cox killed Lemen out of jealousy because both women loved Fryman.  When Fryman returned, he found Monica Lemen dead in his living room.  “Beverly Cox was hysterical.  All she kept saying was it was an accident.  Blood was on the floor,” Schiavone said.  Fryman responded by saying, “Don’t worry.  I’ll take care of everything.”

Interestingly, the prosecution and defense not only differ in regards to who pulled the trigger, but also as to where the actual killing took place.  The prosecution contends the shooting occurred in the “sorcery room,” while the defense seems to assert that Lemen was killed in the living room.  Descriptions of the mobile home indicate that these are two different rooms with the ‘sorcery room’ located in the rear of the trailer.  From newspaper accounts, there is no mention of the location of the killing being a point of contention at trial, and all accounts have investigators pointing to the “sorcery room” as the location of the actual shooting.  If the two rooms are the same room, then the point is irrelevant.  But if the defense is describing a different location for the commission of the murder from the generally accepted one, then it seems like a pretty bone-headed maneuver that could be easily discredited.

Nevertheless, Schiavone pressed ahead with the defense assertion that Beverly Cox was also responsible for the shooting of gas station attendant Tammy Sue Rose.  According to Schiavone, two days following the Lemen shooting, John Fryman was pumping gas at the Clark Service station when Beverly Cox entered the station.  Fryman said he heard two “pops,” and when Cox returned to the car she “had a smile on her face and money from the gas station.”  If we are to believe the defense account, it seems like everytime the hapless John Fryman lets his girlfriend out of his sight for even a few minutes, she goes off and shoots somebody.

While the defense mostly portrayed Fryman as an unwitting accomplice to the remorseless, trigger-happy psychopath, Beverly Cox, it did concede that Fryman sawed off Lemen’s legs the day following the shooting to make it easier to remove the body from the trailer.  Concluding his opening remarks, Schiavone related a touching account of Fryman’s boundless love and devotion to the murderous Cox.  Having received letters from Cox describing ongoing sexual abuse while in jail, Fryman decided to take the fall to protect the woman he loved.  “He said bring me a Quarter Pounder and a Coke and I’ll make a statement.  The Quarter Pounder was given to the woman he loved, it wasn’t for him.  And so was the confession,” Schiavone told the court.  One can only imagine the tears that were shed in the courtroom that day upon hearing this heartwarming tale.

Among the witnesses called that day was Lemen’s live-in boyfriend Dennis Whitt who testified that he last saw Lemen on February 9.  Whitt said Lemen received a phone call from Fryman who arranged to pick her up.  Whitt testified Lemen had become fearful of Fryman following a confrontation in December at Fryman’s trailer.  “She said he threatened to kill her and write her name in blood on the wall,” Whitt said.  Witnesses also testified that Fryman had helped Beverly Cox acquire a gun for $45 because she was fearful of her ex-husband.  It was the same gun found in Cox’s purse when the pair were arrested.

When day three of the trial got underway, the jury was presented with a courtroom reconstruction of the satanic altar discovered in the trailer of John Fryman.  Fairfield Police Officer Ed Roberts testified that the items were confiscated following a search of Fryman’s trailer.  The altar consisted of a tombstone that sat atop a wooden frame, topped by two black candles, a bell, a chalice, a book of black magic, a butcher knife and ram’s skull.  It was revealed the previous day that the tombstone came from the same Indiana churchyard where Monica Lemen’s severed legs were discovered.  The saw that was used to sever Lemen’s legs was placed underneath the altar.  Additionally, the sorcery room’s closet door from which Monica Lemen allegedly “read a satanic incantation” as John Fryman shot her was displayed for the court.  On the door in Runes language was written an “Invocation to Satan” which when translated read:  “In the name of Satan, the Ruler of the earth, the King of the world, I command the forces of Darkness.…Come forth and answer to your names by manifesting my desires!”  

A number of details emerged regarding the numerous confessions John Fryman made to authorities in the months following his arrest.  In a written statement to police, Fryman admitted killing Lemen because she insulted him by bringing another magician to his trailer to kill him.  Fryman further confessed that for two weeks he told Beverly Cox he intended to kill Lemen, adding that Cox hid in a closet when Lemen came to the trailer.  Fryman wrote that it was his idea to cut off Lemen’s legs and that Cox helped him.  “Bev cut the jeans away.  I cut her flesh with the butcher knife on the altar, and her bone with the wood saw under the altar.”  In his statement, Fryman also revealed that he placed Monica Lemen’s deceased body in a dumpster, and that he chose the Indiana churchyard to leave the legs because it was a place where he practiced “magic.”  “I drove to Indiana.  I went to the church, as it was a place I practiced magic.  By throwing the legs there, I increased the power of that spot,” Fryman stated.  Fryman’s written statement also included an admission that he shot Fairfield gas station attendant Tammy Sue Rose in the face and stole $175 from the cash register while Beverly Cox waited in their car.  

It was a damning statement, which may as well have been written in cold blood.  Defense attorney Schiavone’s attempts to deflect blame onto Beverly Cox were of little merit against his client’s own words.  As Prosecutor Holcomb told reporters after the court had recessed for the day, “(Fryman) confessed five or six different ways.  What more do we need?  I think all the elements are there.”  Fryman’s own statements were so damning that Holcomb felt no need to call Beverly Cox to the stand unless needed to rebut Fryman’s testimony.  But that wouldn’t happen, because the following day the defense rested without calling Fryman or any other witnesses.  “He has no obligation to take the stand and be abused by the prosecutor.  They haven’t proved anything against him,” Schiavone told reporters.  Despite defense efforts to argue that Fryman’s statement came about as a result of pressure applied by Cox through a series of letters written to Fryman in the months since their arrest, Fryman did concede that the part about cutting off Lemen’s legs was true and pleaded guilty to gross abuse of a corpse. 

Closing statements got underway on Friday, September 18, 1987.  Prosecutor Holcomb continued to hammer on Fryman’s multiple confessions as proof he committed the crimes and the budding sorcerer’s involvement with black magic as the motive.  “In his own words he said it’s a perfect statement to put him in the electric chair – and it is….Being an admitted so-called magician, he would have had to do the killing to increase his powers.  You see, it makes sense that he did it; it doesn’t make any sense that Cox did it.”  Holcomb also cast doubt on the defense claim that Fryman took the blame out of love for Beverly Cox.  “Why does he want to take the blame for her if she has immunity?  He should be putting the blame on her because she’s going to go free anyway.”  Finally, in an act of biblical drama worthy of the great Charlton Heston, Holcomb held up the Holy Bible and delivered his closing remarks:  “He went against that ancient law, ‘Thou shall have no other gods before me.’  Moderation in dealing with wickedness only adds foolishness to the crime.  Find him guilty as charged.”

It was pretty much curtains for the defense after that bit of theater.  According to Schiavone’s closing statements, the motive boiled down to two jealous females battling for the affections of a promising young magician who owned a pretty wicked trailer.  “The devil didn’t make this man do this.  What made this happen was Beverly Cox’s jealousy of Monica.  It was a female rivalry….  Beverly Cox sits 200 yards away from this witness stand laughing because she pulled it off–she pulled off her little trick….  (She) has made a fool of the state of Ohio.  Don’t let her make a fool of this jury.”

The jury deliberated 6½ hours before returning a verdict of guilty of aggravated murder while committing felony kidnapping.  That specification made Fryman eligible for the death penalty.  Additionally, Fryman was convicted for attempted murder and aggravated robbery, stemming from the gas station holdup and shooting of Tammy Sue Rose.  A sentencing hearing was set for the following Tuesday with Judge Moser presiding.  In remarks to reporters, defense attorney Schiavone did not take issue with the outcome.  “Naturally, we’re very disappointed.  It was an uphill battle.  Unfortunately, John insisted on confessing at almost every juncture in this case.”  For his part, prosecutor Holcomb voiced what many must have been thinking.  “I think the guy earned it, he deserved it and he got it.  This is a bizarre business.  The evidence shows this man worked at being evil.”  

That John Fryman worked at being evil, there could be little doubt.  The practitioner of black magic who maintained a sorcery room in his home was clearly trying to increase his stature in the world of the dark arts.  But there was also the earnest college student who was only a few credits short of completing his degree, and the attentive care home worker who received positive reviews from supervisors.  Could he have pursued a different path?  One former acquaintance of Fryman’s described him as someone who didn’t stand out in any way.  And maybe that was the problem.  Perhaps his embrace of black magic stemmed from a desire to be noticed, to be taken seriously, to increase his power and stature, and to be feared.  Playing it straight relegated him to a life of obscurity, but immersing himself in the world of dark spirits garnered him prestige and a small following, conferring on him the designation of Todva the Magician.

Sources:

The Cincinnati Enquirer

Dayton Daily News

The Indianapolis Star

The Indianapolis News

The Star Press (Muncie, Indiana)

The Brookville Democrat

Franklin County Historical Society

The Collectors

On Tuesday, October 9,1990, a meeting of the city council of Sedona, Arizona convened at 7:00 p.m.  After the meeting was called to order and the Pledge of Allegiance recited, a brief moment of silence was observed.  Next the roll was taken and the floor opened for public comment.  Second to approach the microphone was a clean-cut young gentleman who introduced himself as Ben Porterfield and informed the gathering that he had submitted an application for the position of City Magistrate.  According to the minutes of the meeting, Porterfield “advised he wanted to give the Council an opportunity to match a face with a resume and that he would be available after the meeting for questions.”

As Ben Porterfield took his seat for the duration of the meeting, it is not known if he questioned the decision to use an alias on his application.  Perhaps a man who aspires to administer the law for a municipality ought to do so under his real name.  This might hurt his chances of getting the job, he possibly thought, especially if they do a background check which was certain to be the case.  Also, he may have wondered if managing a trailer park counted as relevant experience for issuing warrants and reviewing matters of law.  No matter, Ben Porterfield, or whatever the young man’s name was, had a number of ongoing projects in various stages of development.  Whether or not he got the City Magistrate position was of little consequence.  

Unsurprisingly, Ben Porterfield was passed over for the position of City Magistrate of Sedona, Arizona.  Months later, however, some who attended the city council meeting that night may have wished they’d taken a greater interest in the man at the microphone with the face and the resume.  Because Ben Porterfield was eventually going to become the subject of an arrest warrant, possibly issued by the newly appointed Sedona City Magistrate, and the target of a manhunt for absconding with an indeterminate quantity of Sedona residents’ precious bodily fluids.

Just a few months after the meeting, as the year drew to a close, concerned parents began presenting their teenage offspring at local medical clinics for examinations.  At the same time, the Sedona Police Department started receiving reports of a mysterious couple who were offering area teenagers ten dollars to draw a vial of their blood.  It took authorities a few weeks, but eventually they were able to zero in on a mobile home at the Windsong Trailer Park, located along U.S. 89A in west Sedona.  The trailer belonged to Benjamin and Sarah Porterfield, managers of the park.

Sedona Police Chief Bob Irish was at a loss to explain why these two individuals were collecting the blood samples.  “The possibilities of it are only limited by your imagination.  At this point, it is one of the most bizarre situations I have ever seen.”  At the time, it was thought that at least a dozen teens had allowed some of their blood to be extracted for money.  According to accounts, the teens were taken into a bathroom where a syringe was used to extract a sample of their blood.  “It looked okay to me,” said a 15-year-old who lived next door to the couple.  “They would unwrap each needle and put a brace on your arm and have you fill out a questionnaire.  You had to be 14 or over, and you could only give three times.  But the questions were really weird, like, ‘Did you use Clearasil…Are you on drugs or alcohol?’”  The young woman went on to reveal that her boyfriend and his friends had sold their blood numerous times to the couple and that the pair had taken more than 100 samples from at least 30 teen-agers.  Interviews with additional teens revealed the couple posed as representatives of the government and that the blood was needed for the testing of lasers.

Blood wasn’t the only thing the strange couple was collecting.  According to authorities, the pair had been collecting rent checks from Windsong residents and depositing them into their personal account.  This led to an arrest warrant being issued for a Benjamin and Sarah Birdsong on charges of child abuse, embezzlement, impersonating medical personnel, aggravated assault and operating a clinical laboratory without a license.  Apparently the age requirement and the questionnaire subjects were asked to fill out were insufficient to secure licensing for the couple’s blood drawing enterprise.  Investigators were also not entirely clear regarding the true identity of the individuals.  Chief Irish thought the couple’s names were possibly aliases and that they were known to have used the names Millett and Stewart when they lived in the Phoenix area.

On Monday, January 7, 1991, Sedona Police and an official from the Arizona Department of Health Services served a search warrant at the Camp Verde home of Benjamin and Sarah Porterfield.  The couple were not present at the time of the raid and had been last seen at the residence the previous Friday.  Items taken from the home by police included two handguns, two shotguns, a Mac-10 submachine gun with silencer, an IBM computer, a printer and computer storage disks – the standard items necessary to get a teen blood-buying business up and running.  Also taken in the raid were a book of satanic rituals, the Satanic Bible by Anton Lavey, photocopies, posters and banners containing occult logos and satanic imagery.  Satanism quickly moved to the top of the list of possible motives for the strange couple’s blood-buying activities.  “It seems to be the forerunner as far as theories,” said Chief Irish.  The chief further speculated the blood might be used as part of an “occult-type” ceremony, admitting that, “The worst-case scenario would be drinking it (the blood).” 

Meanwhile the search for the pair continued in earnest.  The couple owned two vehicles, a 1968 Ford pickup and a 1974 Volvo station wagon, that were now missing from the couple’s Camp Verde home.  Acting on a tip, authorities closed in on a motel in Mesa, Arizona, but missed capturing the pair by two hours.  Later, authorities admitted they could not confirm that the motel occupants were the fugitive couple.  Investigators now believed the actual identity of the pair to be Charles E. Stewart, 32, and Sharon M. Smythe, 23, who went by the aliases Benjamin and Sarah Porterfield while living in Sedona.  A number of town residents had encountered the couple, describing them as friendly but very private.  None interviewed were able to provide any worthwhile leads.  An 11-year-old neighbor of the Porterfield’s described how he was well treated by the couple who would buy parts for his bicycle and take him on camping trips.  He did admit, however, that they had some strange habits.  “I never saw any of that devil stuff.  But there was always weird, loud music in the middle of the night.  All the time, they would go camping in Boynton Canyon and then we would hear about animals that were sacrificed up there.”

Investigators continued to pore through materials seized from the couple’s home.  A computer specialist was called in to examine the contents of the Porterfield’s home computer.  At one point, the expert thought the couple may have booby-trapped the device to erase its contents if tampered with.  Eventually, however, the computer revealed little useful information about the Porterfield’s or their secret government research into blood lasers.  Occult experts brought in to examine the satanic materials concluded they showed nothing to indicate active occult involvement.  The elusive couple, who seemed to become more mysterious with every bit of information discovered about them, had seemingly vanished with potentially over a hundred vials of blood extracted from the town’s teen-age population, all while abandoning a cache of weapons and a computer.  Perhaps Chief Irish was wishing he’d introduced himself to Ben Porterfield when he had a chance.  “I remember at a City Council meeting, he went up to the microphone and said, ‘I’m Benjamin Porterfield, and I’m available to meet with you.’  He looked like a clean-cut, all-American kid,” Irish recounted.         

It should be noted that many residents and visitors to Sedona claim the city rests on a large energy vortex composed of a number of smaller vortices, the most significant of which is the Boynton Canyon vortex.  These swirling concentrations of energy are linked with any number of strange phenomena.  Perhaps a mystery couple collecting blood samples from local teens is a fairly mundane occurrence in an area where unexplained healing powers, strange spirits, ghostly hauntings, UFO activity, and Interdimensional Portals are part and parcel of the landscape.  And if two mysterious travelers conducting highly sensitive scientific research should suddenly be called to deliver their collection of samples back to their obscure corner of space and time, and if the pair of strangers should suddenly vanish through the interdimensional doorway from which they possibly emerged, perhaps it should come as no great surprise.