Remembering The Devil

Since my hometown wants to idolize a rock star that calls himself a demon why don't we review this. Trifling with the Devil is not a good idea. This hideous creature is very real. I believe that if we trifle with Satan God periodically allows us a glimpse of what he is like, or what he would be like if his character was transmuted into a human being.

The 2015 massacre in Paris was just plain satanic. The terrorists at the concert ordered people to beg for mercy and then laughed while they shot them anyway. The band playing was "Angels of Death" and the song that was playing when the massacre began was "Kiss the Devil". If we want to listen to a song about kissing the Devil, God was just allowing us to see what the Devil is really like.

In 1968 there was a very popular movie, Rosemary's Baby, about a woman having a baby with Satan as the father. It was directed by Roman Polanski. The following year Polanski's own wife, actress Sharon Tate, was not far from giving birth. She was at home with a group of friends. Suddenly several members of Charles Manson's "family" broke in. Manson himself wasn't there but Charles Watson announced "I am the Devil and I am here to do the Devil's work". Everyone in the house, including Sharon Tate and her unborn baby, were horribly massacred. Sharon Tate had been in an earlier movie referencing the Devil. If we are going to make movies about the Devil at least we should remember what he is really like. He is not very nice.

A local high school, in Kenmore NY, has the "Blue Devils" as it's mascot. I can't imagine children with a religious upbringing having to go to a school with the Devil as it's mascot. Anyway one of the school's own honor students once really shocked virtually crime-free Kenmore, and gave a reminder of what the Devil is like, by massacring his own family with a knife and also killing a neighbor.

When it comes to music the popular country-rock song "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" was released by the Charlie Daniels Band in 1979. The Devil approaches a fiddle player with a fiddle made of solid gold and challenged the fiddle player to a contest, with the stakes of the player's soul against the solid gold fiddle. Satan's fiddle playing was backed up by a band of demons. But Satan's fiddle playing was no match for that of the Georgia fiddle player, named Johnny. Satan graciously laid down the golden fiddle in admission of defeat. Unfortunately that isn't the way Satan works in real life. Just after this song was released what was surely the worst thing to happen to modern Georgia began. It is the murder spree known as the "Atlanta Murders of 1979-81" or "The Atlanta Child Murders". At least 28 people were killed. The killings stopped when Wayne Williams was arrested. He was convicted of two murders but the rest have never been solved. There may, of course, be bodies that have never been found.

The Rolling Stones had an album and a single that referenced Satan, "Their Satanic Majesties Request" and "Sympathy For The Devil". The following year the founder of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones from my native Gloucestershire, died mysteriously in a swimming pool. This turned out to be the founding of the "27 Club", the rock musicians that have died at age 27. Right in a row there was Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and, Jim Morrison. Among the other famous musicians who later joined the club was Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.

This creature is nothing to trifle with. 

THE ACID KING OF LONG ISLAND

Here is something especially for New York City and Long Island. This is something that I have never seen pointed out. If you think the house at Amityville is spooky, just read this.

So much has been written about the "Acid King" of Long Island, NY, Ricky Kasso. For someone who died at 17 he has a movie made about him and there is a band named "The Acid King", with his photo on the cover of their first album. "Acid" used to be a slang term for LSD.

I remember when this happened and, back in the 1980s, I read the book "Say You Love Satan" about it. Let me state now that I have no direct experience with drugs and, even when I listened to music, I never liked Heavy Metal. All that I know about this is what was in the news.

I have never made a specific study of crime. But I always followed the news and quite a bit of what is in the news is crime.

In Northport, on the north shore of Long Island, there were several high school dropouts who hung around the park on the waterfront, listened to Heavy Metal music, and did drugs. The ringleader was 17-year-old Ricky Kasso. Among them was Gary Lauwers, also 17.

According to news reports the group, particularly Ricky Kasso, was into Satanism. This does seem to have some truth to it as Kasso had been arrested for digging up an old grave, reportedly to get bones for use in a ritual. 

Kasso and some others also went to the famous, reputedly haunted, house in Amityville where a man had once killed his family, in observance of a pagan day. If news reports are to be believed, Kasso would perform rituals and take drugs in cemeteries, seeking to get in contact with Satan. There was satanic graffiti in the park where the group would hang out.

Gary Lauwers reportedly made the mistake of stealing bags of "angel dust" from Ricky Kasso's jacket while Kasso was passed out. Lauwers returned some of the drugs, and promised to pay for the rest. But it would ultimately cost him his life.

One night Ricky Kasso and several other teenagers, including Gary Lauwers, went up to a wooded area in town to take drugs. Kasso had a knife with him and seemed to have decided that Gary Lauwers was going to be a sacrifice to Satan. 

Kasso tried to light a fire with some sticks but they were too wet. He ordered Lauwers to use some of his clothing to get the fire going. When Gary Lauwers wouldn't put any more of his clothing in the fire, Kasso attacked him and stabbed him with the knife. He ordered Lauwers to "say you love Satan", and proceeded to stab him to death. Others at the murder scene later said that Kasso took the cawing of a crow, while he was stabbing Lauwers, as Satan voicing approval. Gary Lauwers' face was reported to be virtually unrecognizable due to knife wounds.

Also according to news reports Kasso openly boasted about the killing, and took a number of people to see the body. Gary Lauwers had run away from home so many times that he hadn't been missed. 

Finally someone notified the police about the body. Kasso and one of the others that had been at the murder were arrested shortly after, sleeping in a car. The famous photo of Kasso sneering like the Devil was taken at the police station. Not long after being arrested Kasso committed suicide in his cell by hanging with a bedsheet.

While Ricky Kasso no doubt killed Gary Lauwers, and had been arrested for digging up an old grave, there is a lot of controversy about this whole subject. I happened to talk to some people from Northport not long after this happened. They described it as a "media circus gone wild" around "a few dropouts who did drugs". They said that the graffiti was relating to Heavy Metal bands, not overt Satanism.

Certainly part of the reason that this got so much attention was that it took place in a town that was well-to-do, and virtually all white, where things like this aren't supposed to happen.

Ricky Kasso was born on March 29, 1967. He killed Gary Lauwers on June 19, 1984. This means that, on the date of the murder Ricky Kasso was 6,293 days old, including the day of the murder. What I have never seen pointed out is that, if we add 6,293 days from the date of the murder it brings us to 9/11, September 11, 2001.

What would Ricky Kasso have thought had he known that, when the ritual killing of Gary Lauwers was exactly as old as he was when he committed the murder, planes would bring down the World Trade Center towers and many people would claim to have seen the face of the Devil in the smoke?

Remember that the way to foil the Devil is with the power of Jesus.