Got another letter from Ishmael Gradsdovic, this one postmarked 17 February 1995 and addressed to "The Punks."
Woah! Have I got some news for you! Earth Orbit types will remember those two cats from across the crick we found some drug-addled night when they were playing good tunes and we were eating good food or something like that. B---- tells me they moved out, but anyway, I ran into one of them at a truckstop in Buttfuck, Tenn. and he recognized me. In the ensuing discussion, we got around to burning man. He tells me that he heard of burning man because of one of his friends from Tahoe who went. This Tahoe friend says that Burning Man is actually well-known in Tahoe but for a weird reason. Seems some guy came back from Burning Man this year, ended up in Tahoe, and went on this real twisted crime spree -- sadistic murders, eating pets, smearing blood on the walls like a child fingerpainting -- his lawyer now claims that he was taken to Burning Man against his will and was brain-washed by drugs and the "cult-like practices" of the Burning Man [2] people. Yeah! That's how they're putting it. He was a normal Joe until he went out in the desert -- then he went apeshit on the orders of the Burning Man Davidians. The more details I get about this story, the more I realize that this guy is the hick hitcher we picked up -- that we're the ones who "forced" him into our murder cult.
But it gets better: Apparantly he wasn't "ok" before he got to the desert. All that "Nebraska farmboy" stuff was a line. He's actually a paranoid fellow who was convinced that he was being pursued by Christians trying to kill him -- he thought by going out to the desert, he'd elude them for a while. His story as he told it to his counselor (more on this figure later) is that he used to be in the military, and was with a counter-intelligence group in El Salvador that was known as "the kidney stones from the U.S.A." (sounds better in Spanish) because of their ruthless methods of intimidation. They'd tie the hands of those suspected of insurgent activities, then put nooses on their necks and stand them on [3] stools. Then the members of the squadron would draw straws and go in one at a time and pick one victim to anally rape and torture in front of the other victims. The point was to try to make the torture so disgusting and vividly painful that the others would kick their own stools out to kill themselves rather than risk such a death. If you were able to do this -- to prevent your comrades from enjoying rape & torture that day, they would grudgingly call you the winner and buy the beers next time...
Pretty vile -- and this sort of thing has been documented. But the reason I'm telling you this (this is stuff the prosecution uncovered to counter the defense story, but is considering withholding for fear that it might actually help the defense's insanity plea) is that the counselor who heard this story, the one prosecutors have quietly called to Tahoe, was a religious counsellor, a preacher, a man called Brother Jed Smock.
[4]So Brother Jed may not make it to Poly this February after all. Prosecutors aren't able to pay him state funds yet, since he's not officially a witness, but although he told his flock in Ohio that he's decided to go "with no monetary gain in mind -- just a desire to aid in the pursuit of justice" -- there's another story here.
Brother Jed's wife, Cindy Smock, was no virgin when she married. Far from it, in fact. She was the Disco Queen of her campus, etc. etc. Jed has always had a few angry words to say in his diatribes about the man who stole his wife's virginity and innocence and led her on wicked paths. Cindy, perhaps sensing a more uncontrollable depth to his rage than most others expected, claimed not to remember the boy's name. But recently, bearing in mind God's prohibition on lies and on disobeying the husband, she gave in and told him the name. Last time she heard from him was... in Tahoe where they both went to high school.
So it's looking like Brother Jed's on the [5] warpath. Cindy herself has told friends that bloodshed wouldn't surprise her at all.
Okay, I'm discussing this in the truckstop and this woman at the next table leans back and says she went to high school in Tahoe and would this Cindy be Cindy Lassiter? Why yes! She says "I thought so," and goes on to say that Cindy was a cheerleader in the class above hers, a very popular girl who used to hang out with her and her older brother who had a crush on her.
So I say that I hope her brother wasn't the devirginizer, because Brother Jed's gonna kill whoever that was. So she says no, her brother never got anywhere with Cindy because she was going out all though high school with "this math geek named D---- F----." Yep. That D---- F----. From the description, I'm almost positive.
And if I found out this easy, Brother Jed's gonna figure out in no time at all whose face is in the target. So tell D----! Quickly, before Brother Jed arrives and we have splattered faculty on the walls of the CSL!
-- Ishmael
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