Sparsely, Sage and Timely
By David V. Mitchell25 years after the rattler in the mailbox
This fall is the 25th anniversary of a flurry of violence by two San Francisco Bay Area cults, People’s Temple based in San Francisco and the Church of Synanon based here in Marshall. In Synanon’s case, the violence had actually been underway for a year, but it was 25 years ago this fall that the public in general became aware of it.
In 1958, Synanon had started in Santa Monica as a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, and over the next few years gained national prominence. Synanon founder Charles Dederich was widely credited with doing what no one else could do: cure narcotics addiction.
Less widely known was how few addicts took the Synanon cure and were then graduated to productive lives in the outside world. Many of those cured were quietly absorbed into the Synanon corporation as employees. In 1967, Synanon abolished "graduation" altogether and the next year began touting itself as an alternative-lifestyle community. As such, it recruited a number of lawyers, architects, doctors, and businessmen – some of whom continued to work outside but turned their income over to Synanon.
In its new form, however, Synanon was not entitled to a nonprofit status, so in 1975 directors of Synanon filed with the state a revision to its articles of incorporation, stating that one of its "primary purposes...is to operate a church." By 1977, Synanon lawyers were referring to the "cult" at Synanon.
Indeed, Synanon had evolved into a corporate cult that used its members as a low-paid workforce. By virtue of first calling itself a treatment program and later a "church," Synanon enjoyed nonprofit status, and the profits for founder Dederich were substantial: a $500,000 "pre-retirement bonus" and $100,000 per year as a consultant thereafter. Later some of Dederich’s cronies atop the cult also shared in its wealth.
Much of Synanon’s income traditionally came from members being coerced into turning over their homes, bank accounts, and cars after moving in. In justifying this demand, Synanon presented itself as a utopian community that would take care of all its members’ future needs. In addition, members who came from wealthy families were constantly pressured into hitting up relatives for donations to the nonprofit. For awhile, donations of assets by members and their families were the largest source of income for Synanon.
During the 1970s, however, Synanon became increasingly dependent on its Advertising Gifts and Premiums (ADGAP) business. ADGAP in essence was merely a middleman operation for telemarketing knick-knacks to businesses (cocktail glasses etched with company names, keychains engraved with company logos etc.) As of 25 years ago, ADGAP (which started in 1968) was grossing almost $10 million annually.
But like Jim Jones of People’s Temple, Dederich became increasingly demanding as time progressed. In 1977, all males over 18 who had been in Synanon five years or more were coerced into having vasectomies, and all pregnant women were coerced into having abortions.
Meanwhile, Synanon members started a campaign of violence against people with whom it had conflicts. This change in Synanon policy was made explicit on Sept. 5, 1977, when Dederich announced the Church of Synanon’s "New Religious Posture."
"We’re not going to mess with the oldtime, turn-the-other-check religious postures," Dederich told the membership, as a tape recording seized by Los Angeles Police revealed. "Our religious posture is: Don’t mess with us; you can get killed dead, literally dead." Nor was this mere rhetoric. By Oct. 11, 1978, Synanon had twice tried to murder courtroom adversaries and had beaten a number of other people without justification.
• Marshall-Petaluma Road rancher Alvin Gambonini had his face bloodied by Synanon members who also rammed his vehicle into a ditch. Why? Synanon had an access easement across Gambonini’s land, but rancher understandably felt the access easement did not give Synanon the right to post signs on his property, so he removed them. Gambonini sued Synanon for the attack and in time collected about $80,000.
• A small fracas erupted in Tomales when a group of Synanon members sped into town intent on taking revenge against the driver of a purple pickup truck. It seems that a Synanon member felt the truck while on the winding Marshall-Petaluma Road had passed too close to his oncoming motorcycle. The motorcyclist rounded up some other Synanon men, and they all headed into Tomales to punish the driver. The purple pickup truck, however, was never found, but a confrontation erupted between Synanon members and townspeople. One Synanon member took a punch at a townsperson but missed and struck another cult member in the face.
• Yet another incident on the Marshall-Petaluma Road involved Synanon members assaulting two young men from the Sebastopol area. They too were driving pickup truck that a member felt was too close when it passed him. The Sebastopol pair were seized and taken to one of Synanon’s three facilities in Marshall; their heads were shaved; and Synanon members threatened to kill them. The two later sued the cult and collected substantial damages.
• On March 20, 1978, Synanon members beat an ex-member, Tom Cardineau, who on his honeymoon had made the mistake of taking his new wife to the Walker Creek Ranch so she could see where he once had lived. Members who left were referred to as "splittees," considered traitors, and treated as such.
• Elsewhere around the state, Synanon members had begun attacking people from Santa Monica to the Central Valley city of Dinuba, Tulare County. As the cult turned more and more violent, it created its own goon squad, which it dubbed the "Imperial Marines."
In the fall of 1978, cult violence peaked, and Synanon’s attacks could no longer be ignored by authorities, who up to then had refused to acknowledge there was a pattern to violence by Synanon members. On Sept. 21, an ex-member named Phil Ritter, who was helping Time magazine defend itself against a Synanon libel suit, was attacked at his Berkeley home as he got out of his car. Synanon members clubbed him from behind, apparently with ax handles, knocking him to the ground. They continued to club him as he lay injured on the ground. Ritter’s skull was broken in the attack, and brain fluid leaking into his spinal column caused him to develop spinal meningitis. He went into a coma for a week, but just when death seem imminent, he recovered.
The beating proved pivotal in bringing other Synanon violence to public attention. Other ex-members, seeing what had happened to Ritter, became worried about their own safety. To demonstrate to authorities the danger they were in, the ex-members assembled a list of assaults by Synanon members and presented it to the California Attorney General’s Office.
However, on Oct. 10, 1978, only three weeks after the attack on Ritter, Synanon members tried to murder a Los Angeles attorney, Paul Morantz, who had just won a $300,000 lawsuit against the cult on behalf of a woman who’d been confined against her will. With encouragement from Dederich, two followers, Joe Musico and Lance Kenton (son of band leader Stan Kenton), placed a 4.5-foot rattlesnake in Morantz’s mailbox after cutting off its warning rattles.
When Morantz reached for his mail, he was bitten, and only a quick response from paramedics with anti-venom serum saved the lawyer. As it was, his skin blistered, turned black, and peeled off. In addition, he lost strength in his right hand. In July 1980, Dederich, Kenton, and Musico would plead "no contest" to murder-conspiracy charges.
West Marin residents were still reeling from revelations of violence by a cult in their midst when another cult took over the headlines. Anticipating an exposé in New West magazine, Jim Jones had taken his People’s Temple to Guyana where he attempted to create a Jonestown colony in the jungle.
Conditions were harsh, and Jones’ authoritarian leadership became increasingly crazed. His followers, however, had no way to leave. Prompted by constituents who had heard from desperate relatives in Guyana, Congressman Leo Ryan visited the jungle encampment on Nov. 18.
Initially, all seemed well, but as Ryan and his entourage prepared to leave, People’s Temple members began slipping them notes begging to be rescued. When Ryan returned to the jungle airstrip where he had landed, he was followed by People’s Temple gunmen who shot and killed him, three newsmen, and a defector from the cult.
Meanwhile back at the jungle colony, Jones realized his reign was about to collapse and directed his followers to drink a poisoned beverage. Those who didn’t were shot. Ultimately, 912 people died, including Jones.
While People’s Temple for all intents and purposes died that day, it took roughly a decade for the Internal Revenue Service to put an end to the last vestiges of the Synanon corporation – even though the cult had long since disbanded as a group.
Nor were Synanon and People’s Temple the only cults to alarm the Bay Area at that time. Following up on fraudulent purchases made with a credit card belonging to an ex-Hare Krishna member, Berkeley Police raided the home of one of the cult’s local leaders and found three 55-gallon cans filled with bullets. It turned out there was bad blood between a few Hare Krishnas in Southern and Northern California.
During this tumultuous period, the Bay Area’s undisputed expert on cults was UC Berkeley professor Margaret Singer. As a psychologist, she understood the brainwashing cults used to recruit and control their members. As a result, she was constantly advising law enforcement agencies as to what various cults had in common and where they differed.
Cults, she once told me, have existed for centuries in numerous countries. They tend to form when societies are in upheaval and normal social networks break down. During the Gold Rush, there were an estimated 50 cults in California, she noted.
Perhaps the final irony of these days being the 25th anniversary of Jonestown, the Ritter beating and the rattlesnake attack was the coincidental death on Sunday of professor Singer at the age of 82.