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THE FRANKLIN COVER-UP -- CHILD ABUSE, SATANISM, AND MURDER IN NEBRASKA |
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CHAPTER 15: KATHLEEN SORENSON'S STORY At the time of his death, Gary Caradori was known to be pursuing two tracks -- the Washington, D.C. connection, and satanism. A satanic magazine was seen by a farmer at the site of Caradori's plane crash in rural Illinois; the magazine disappeared without a trace, and without further mention by the news media or the National Transportation Safety Board. Caradori told Senator Schmit he had some Franklin leads to follow up, while he was in Chicago for the All-Star Game. One place he planned to visit was a satanic book store. The Douglas County grand jury acknowledged that the allegations in the Franklin case "necessitated our studying satanic and pedophile activity in eastern Nebraska, particularly in the Omaha metropolitan area." The testimony of two victim-witnesses who did not know each other, Loretta Smith and Paul Bonacci, placed King in the middle of such activity. Smith's testimony was apparently so sensitive, that the Douglas County Attorney's office made an unprecedented appeal to the presiding judge of the Douglas County Circuit Court, Judge James M. Murphy, to have it sealed in perpetuity. (When I became Paul Bonacci's attorney, this judge failed in an attempt to prevent me from representing or assisting Paul, which would have left him to be represented by a public defender. Eventually, Judge Murphy had to disqualify himself from the case, as a result of his attempt to injure me.) Murphy granted the request to seal Smith's grand jury testimony. Its nature, however, was clear by the references to it in the jury's final report: In 1988 an Omaha girl, who was an inpatient at Richard Young Hospital, described a number of gruesome cult activities which she claimed to have witnessed between the approximate ages of 9 and 12. ... According to the girl, she became involved in a cult where older male members sexually molested her and killed infants and children to establish their dominance over other cult members. Smith had named Larry King as present at ritual sacrifices, along with school superintendent Deward Finch and the person called Kings Horse, identified by videotaped witnesses as King's henchman, the other Larry. *** Satanic activity is not new in Nebraska and the surrounding midwestern states. Some families have passed it from generation to generation, over fifty or a hundred years. Satanic practices have spread into the highest levels of society, where Larry King traveled. A Nebraska woman now in her forties, who calls herself "a little wild" in her youth, tells how she was approached at age 15 and asked if she were a virgin. A virgin was needed, it was explained, for certain occult ceremonies. When it appeared she might go (she didn't), she was told, "Don't be surprised at the wealthy and powerful people you will be seeing at the ceremony." In 1974, ritualistic cult activity in parts of rural Nebraska was a big enough story to be featured in a Washington Post article, "'Devil Cult' Sought in Nebraska Cattle Mutilations; Ranchers Enraged by Weird Deaths." It reported: There is angry -- and serious -- talk among Nebraska ranchers about helicopter-equipped devil cultists and fertility ritualism. ... Since spring, 21 cases of cow or horse mutilations have been authenticated in a five-county area and some observers think the number should really be about 50. But it is difficult to determine the cause of death of a yearling after five or six days in open country. However Pierce County rancher Eugene Scott last week found a calf which had been dead only five hours, according to the examining veterinarian. Its sex organs had been removed and the body drained of blood. State Patrol investigator E.M. Hastreiter said no blood or tracks were found on the scene. Mutilation stories began in May and at first authorities attributed the acts to varmints, mostly coyotes. But then a veterinarian called to examine the dismembering and draining of a cow near Madison in June said he was concerned "that a human element was involved." In most cases blood has been drained and reproductive organs removed. A helicopter frequently has been seen hovering over the area about the time of the mutilation. A copter with a spotlight was seen over the Lancaster County farm of Richard Benes the night of a confirmed mutilation there. Knox County Sheriff Herbert Thompson, who is investigating seven mutilations, also reports the simultaneous sighting of unidentified helicopters in that area. Dr. Richard Thill, Germanic professor at the University of Nebraska, who also teaches noncredit witchcraft courses, has been reviewing the reports and calls them "ritualistic." ... Whatever is happening has nerves on edge. Nightly, cowboys in trucks with Citizen's Band radios and rifles patrol the prairies. Patrols are made almost nightly in the counties of Knox, Cedar, Antelope, Madison, and Burt. In the blaze of publicity, and in face of the armed patrols, the ritualistic activity was driven underground, or into other, even more horrible forms. According to testimony from Paul Bonacci, Larry King had been recruited to a satanic cult by December 1980 at the latest. In his written history, Bonacci described how King picked him up after school one day in December, "and took me to the Triangle which is in a wooded area in Sarpy County. I witnessed a sacrifice of a human baby boy. Everyone was chanting and it was a yearly ritual around the time of Christ's birth to pervert the blood of Christ. They used daggers and cut the boy and filled a cup with his blood and mixed urine in it and forced all of us to drink from the cup and chant 'Satan is Lord Lucifer our King. Realm of darkness come now empower us your slaves.' Then they all began to chant some weird sounds and I got scared and was threatened I'd become the next sacrifice if I told anyone about it." Bonacci said he witnessed the participation of another Franklin-related figure: "I did see [Alan] Baer take part in satanic activity on several occasions." Bonacci spoke to Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber about his activities as a member of four different satanic cults in Nebraska, some of which had 50 to 100 members. *** A groundbreaking account of satanic activities in Nebraska came from Kathleen Sorenson, the foster mother who took in Nelly and Kimberly Patterson after they fled from the Webbs. Mrs. Sorenson decided to speak out about what she had learned from children in her care. Together with her eldest foster daughter, a survivor of ritualistic abuse, she spoke at public forums around the state, gave radio and television interviews, and appeared on Geraldo Rivera's nationally televised special on satanism. This is the report Kathleen Sorenson gave on a Christian TV interview program aired in Nebraska in 1989, based on her experience with over 30 children who spent months or years in her home. We got involved and learned about this subject because we were foster parents and worked with a number of children. And several years back, several of the children began, after a period of time and building up trust, began to talk about some very bizarre events that had happened in their past and they were frightening and very confusing. I really didn't know what to think. We went to the police, and we went to social services and there was really nothing anyone could do. These children we worked with are now adopted, in safe homes, and probably would never have talked had they not felt able to trust the people they were living with. There are certain things that are in common in the childrens' stories when we talk about devil worship. ... There are things that come up in every single story, such as candles. They all talk about sex. Sex is without a doubt a part of every area of this, all sorts of perverted sex. That is what you will first hear, about the sex, about the incest, and it is so hard to believe. But once we get that, we have learned that we can go on and ask and find out. .. and it will involve pornography; that is always part of it. Part of the reason is that they can use that to threaten the children. "We have pictures, we will show the police if you talk." It makes the children feel that they are in great danger, and they are all very frightened of the law. They talk about the garish make-up that the people in the group wear, they talk about singing that they didn't understand. Obviously that is chanting, and that has come up in every one of these stories, and none of them call it chanting. There will be dancing. Most often that will involve sexual acts. There will always be a leader and they will be very frightened of the leader. These children, from a very young age, and I am talking about children who came out of birth homes, the family they were born to, worshipped the devil. That's all I can share, and I don't pretend to be an expert. All I can tell you is what the children have told me. My husband and I say, we know things we shouldn't know. That's true, and I thought very carefully before I agreed to do the program, because we have heard so much, and it is so ugly, and so frightening, that you hesitate to tell it to people. It's very heavy to know. I don't want people running around looking in their closets and not leading normal lives. You don't want to think you are giving people ideas. I don't want people to say, if a child starts to talk about some of this, "They probably saw it on that show Kathleen did." But we're hearing more and more. And it is becoming very, very out in the open, and I think it's time for people to know that this is not fun and games; this is not something that we can laugh at -- or ignore. The children I have talked to have all had to murder before the age of two. That is something beyond anything I could comprehend. But in some way, whether with the help of an adult's hand over theirs, by having them practise, by getting them excited to be part of the adult scene, they do murder. And the evil thing that happens is, that they really believe that they want to. They want to do what the older people are doing, and they are praised for that. And that becomes their goal, to be like the adults. There is a little part in them, that natural good, God-given part, which knows that it is wrong. But in a group, and in the excitement of everything, they want to do that. They enjoy the sex. Children are capable of enjoying the sex. I didn't know that. Well, why would they fight against it? A child will eat a bag of candy if you give it to them. They will take part in these things willingly. When they get out and begin to talk, it is very difficult for them to realize, we didn't realize it at first, that they actually wanted to do it. They are told they will never get out, no one will ever believe them, that there is no freedom, that "the law will get you," they are hopeless before they get someone willing to listen. They are threatened with death. Every time a child is killed in their group, they are told, "If you tell, this will happen to you." They have every reason to believe that. So even when they are into the [foster care] system, and with another family and begin to feel somewhat safe, they still expect these people to show up on the doorstep. They believe that these people know everything they are doing, everyone they're talking to. One teenager told me that she had been told, that if she ever got married, that they would fool her, it would be one of them and she wouldn't know it ahead of time. They set them up to fail in every area. It is very prevalent in the midwest, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri. Some people have speculated recently that these states are headquarters. ... As you listen to us talk about these things, there will be a natural part of you which will deny much of what you hear, and believe me, we did too. I would like to share this with you, partly in the children's words, so that you can hear the things that they said that nobody could make up, that no child could know. That's what eventually convinced me, along with the deep emotion. The grieving, screeching damage and hurt that they cry out with as they talk. The children I will be talking about, these are all children that I personally talked to. They are today between the ages of 5 and 17. When they talked they were between the ages of 5 and 15. When these things occurred to them, they were between the ages of, well birth, but of when memory enters in, I would say a year and a half to eight. So we are talking about very small children. ... We are talking about children forming consciences at that time, learning right from wrong. These children do not know. They come out and do not know what is right. They are confused. What they did before, that they were rewarded for, is such a horror to anybody else, that they are shunned. And most often they have been in multiple placements, they will go to a home, they will steal, they will lie, they will hurt animals. One little guy would sharpen pencils and try to stab people. I don't mean poke, I mean stab. People don't like that in their homes. They don't have any idea what it is, they just think, "We have a weird kid." Many are sent to psychiatric hospitals where they are labeled psychotics, schizophrenics, and who would want them in. I praise God that he brought so many of them into my life, and through our home, and that there are other families like ours, it is just a movement of the Holy Spirit, the only way I can explain it. ... I will begin with the first stories that we heard, which will seem horrible to you, but are very mild to me, because we have progressed and heard far worse things. The first story is about two little boys who were 7 and 9 when they talked, and they told about sexual abuse at one point, and were very grieved. We talked about good and bad touching and we thought we really had gotten to the bottom of it, and then that afternoon the little one began to cry, and when we couldn't get the answer from him, the older brother said, "He is probably crying because he was in the room, when they killed his friend." That was the first one we know about. And as they described that, they talked about that particular victim being brought into a room, hands and arms tied, mouth taped, and how there had been X's marked on his body, on his vital organs. That was bad enough. Within a very few weeks we learned that it was not the adults who had killed that child. It was this oldest boy, who was talking. The next person that we talked to was a little boy, who was very borderline mentally. He had language problems, it was very hard for him to explain himself. And when he began to come out of it, everyone was startled the way he talked. We were real sure, we knew he had not been around these other children and heard anything, but we began to question ourselves, "Are we asking strange questions. Is there something odd about us which makes children come and dump these things on us?" The part which made me believe this child's story, he talked about different babies being killed, but this particular one being stabbed, he curled up in a fetal position, he was 9 years old when he was telling the story. He curled up in a fetal position, and his eyes got real glazed, and he said, "They cooked that baby on the grill." And I thought, he has really flipped out. I mean, I didn't know. And he said, "Oh, gross, it smelled like rotten chicken, or rotten deer." He then went on to tell us how they would cut out the heart, or cut off the sex organs, and save them in the refrigerator. A very typical thing that these kids talk about. They worship the sex organs. ... They kept it for another ceremony. I asked him where the bodies went. I did not get any answers from that child about what happened to the bodies, but the other two boys, who I spoke about first, eventually, they talked about throwing the babies in the fire. And I asked about that, "You mean they were dead when they threw them in the fire?" And the littlest one said, "No, no. Them was alive and them threw them." And by this time we were really getting freaked out. What were we going to do? How can you help these kids? Where do you find a therapist who can deal with this? ... But God set up a support system. Other families were helping us, and that really helped. The next child I will share about, and I am going sort of by categories here, how we learned, and the types of killings, this little girl is 11 today, she was 9 when she first talked. It was a very painful thing when she first started to share the sex things. The sex things are so harmful to the children and they are so embarrassed and it is so personal to the children, and they know that they enjoyed that. They know that. We had been through all that. She began to draw pictures of cats, and the cats all had tails that were on the other side of the page, or their leg was someplace else. As we began to work with her and talk, she said that she had had to kill a pregnant cat. She first said that they had killed a pregnant cat. We said how did you know it was pregnant. Well, she could not explain that, but as we got into it, she confessed that she had had to kill the cat. And I asked her. And her description was, "With a knife, I put it in her bottom, and twisted it." Now you tell me, does a kid know that? If I ask a kid how do you kill a cat, do you think they will say that? Those are the kinds of details these children tell us. Later, and they eventually cut the cat open, and that was how they knew the cat was pregnant. And they eat parts of the cat, and the feces and the blood. And again, this was just the beginning. It progressed, and the next time she had to kill a baby, the same way -- put the knife in the bottom and twist. The baby was alive and he was screaming. And that child hears that, to this day, and has nightmares and flashbacks. And they cut the baby open, and they ate the baby. They do this, so there are no bodies left, and they burn what is left and grind up the bones. And she talked about that, pouring gasoline on the bodies and burning them in the back yard. And I used to think that was nuts, but I have heard it enough times now that I know it must be so. ... We know there are mortuaries involved, to cremate the bodies, and that makes sense. ... The most horrible story about fire that I have to tell, and this is extremely, extremely disturbing, it was a little girl, she was a teenager when she was telling me. And she was describing a barn where they used to go to have their meetings and they used to gather outside the barn, and there would be chanting. And then as they went inside the barn they would be split into different groups. And she was never with any of her family, they all went to different places. And I asked her where she had to go and she said "I was always in the burning room." And as she went on to describe the burning room, I thought, how she came out of this, with any sanity at all, I don't know. She was a very small child. They would take in children, probably pre-schoolers, and they would hang them from the rafters in this barn, and there would be as many as five or ten hung in a row. They would be fully clothed, which is unusual, because frequently they are naked. The children, like this girl, were all given candles. And you can picture the ceremony as she described it. And the candles were lit. Then the adults would go forward and would pour liquid from a cup on each of the children's clothing, which was obviously gasoline or kerosene. And then they would give a signal and the others would have to go forward and set the children on fire. When they were done they would cut them down. The first child that this girl had to kill was a cousin, a little cousin. What does that do to you? But you couldn't object, because the children that objected were killed. Frequently, she said, people would come in families, not knowing that their child would be sacrificed, and she described the screams when they realized that their child had been killed. ... This child, about two years ago, just fell to the ground at Christmastime, everyone thinks that Christmas is such a wonderful time. And she confessed that she hated Christmas, she couldn't wait until everything was put away, because all she could hear was babies crying. Christmas is the time when the most babies die. And she covered her ears and cried for 2-1/2 hours, and screamed, "Stop it, stop it, stop it! Talk to God and make him stop it!" All she could hear is the screams and the babies crying. ... Christmas for the children I have talked to, has been one of the worst times. I have had three children tell me about a very similar ceremony, and I will kind of merge that and tell you how it went. They were taken to a church, and all the children, it is a very festive occasion, and they are taken to the front of the church, and a small child is now brought in, two of them talked about babies and they put them on a platform. The adults are all celebrating and dancing, and singing and the children are getting into the spirit of it, and what they are doing is forming a circle around the child, and of course the child represents the child Jesus, and they begin mocking, and spitting, and calling names, and then they encourage the children to begin doing it, and you can imagine how it gets out of control. And at some point they hand all of the children knives and then they are all hacking, and slashing until the baby is dead, and then they all celebrate because the child Jesus is dead. *** Kathleen Sorenson was aware that it was dangerous to tell the public what she did. She appealed to friends, "Pray for me." She died in a head-on car crash in October 1989. Former FBI abuse specialist Ted Gunderson evaluated the accident in which Kathleen Sorenson was killed as a satanic contract suicide. The other driver didn't die, but well could have; in satanic lore, a person who loses his life in such a contract murder/suicide will be reincarnated with more power, granted by Satan. Kathleen was driving on a long, narrow stretch of road between Fremont, Nebraska and her home in Blair. At least several people knew the road she would be on, and at what time. A car was traveling in front of her, which was possibly the "spotter" car used in such a situation. Another car, coming from the opposite direction, crossed the center line and rammed into Kathleen's car, killing her. Both the young woman driver and her husband had prior arrest records for cruelty to animals, a common marker for satanism. Not long after Sorenson's death, a teenager in a youth care facility told a worker, "You better watch out or we will get you like we got that lady from Blair." The youth went on to describe a ceremony of drawing lots for the privilege. *** One of the most potent weapons of the satanists is the inability of the average person to comprehend such hideous events as described by Kathleen Sorenson. A few years ago, if anyone had recounted something like her testimony to me, I would have recommended that they be hauled off to the loony farm. Today, I have no doubt that much -- maybe all -- of it is true. I have been confronted with documentation of a world I did not know about or believe existed. I understand why normal people, reading Kathleen Sorenson's words, will have what psychiatrists call a "denial syndrome." Dr. Densen-Gerber addressed this phenomenon, when she testified before the Senate Franklin committee on December 29, 1990: I want to say one thing. I would not want the committee to disband. I think that that is not in the best interest of the average Nebraska citizen for the reasons that I have said. I would also not want the material to be turned over to any other committee. Because it takes two to three years for the average person to get through the automatic denial that goes along with this kind of material. The first human defense mechanism against untenable horrific facts is to say that they don't exist. Dr. Densen-Gerber testified that a particular satanic ritual, in which a two-year-old child was placed in the cavity created by a Caesarean section delivery of a baby, was so horrible that she herself refused to understand what some of her patients were telling her. I've been in this field for an awfully long time. I should have realized that's what these three patients were telling me. It was so horrific for me to contemplate. Taking a two-year-old child and placing it in an open uterus, in a dying woman. To have this child covered with blood. I used denial myself after all these years. ... [This] has occurred, according to Sorenson, in Nebraska, and now she's dead. And the same thing that is described, this ceremony, was described by Bonacci as occurring in Nebraska. She reviewed her prison interview with Paul Bonacci, conducted the previous day: 1) He has an extraordinary memory for detail, making him an invaluable witness, 2) He does not lie, 3) He has precisely described satanic rituals used by international cults which it were impossible for him to have known, unless he participated in them. Oh, he calls one personality a computer chip in his head. He keeps it together by this meticulous obsessive attention to detail. So that he can give you times and dates that I have never seen in any other child abuse case. I have never seen a child who could do this kind of thing. ... So that he is an unusual witness. ... He doesn't fabricate, he'll say "I don't know," if he doesn't know. ... And then you have, what I think that you may have here. You have an internationally-connected cult. In which persons move from one place to another and [have] very set rituals and are busy attempting to bring about a force of evil of the anti-Christ. Now he knew such things, as for instance, let me give you an example. In discussing the Caesarean section, which was done here in Nebraska, the Triangle. When he was there the girl was fifteen, as he describes her two year old son had to have sex with her prior to her death, prior to the hysterotomy or C-section. ... The two year old had sex with his mother. The mother was a believer, he states that she was not tied down, though she was drugged, and a lot of them had drugs. The baby was removed and the blood drained, the chalice passed, the high priest urinated in the chalice, in the blood. Because part of the way of the reverse Christian belief is to take the blood and defile it. But only the high priest may do it. And he knew it. ... The baby was dismembered. ... The next thing that he said is that the child would not stop crying and so they eliminated that child as well. And ate the flesh. And the mother died and she was also eaten by the cult. And I said, "well, what happened to the bones and teeth?" And he said that they were ground in a machine. Which is one of the ways that they do do it. He described it extremely well. Occasionally you have to ask a question in a matter of fact way. So instead of saying was there anything done with any body part that was unusual, I said "Who ate the eyes?" Because part of this ritual is the eating of the eyes. And because the concept is that when you eat the eyes of the fetus or the new born, you gain sight, that's a Celtic Druid ritual which has been taken by these individuals. And without a change in voice or anything else he said Malachi ate the eyes. ... And I said but you were supposed to eat the eyes [as the third-ranking member in the cult]. And he said I was out of favor and was not permitted to eat the eyes. ... But I have to tell you the detail that he knew about how the rituals are conducted have convinced me he has been at ritual events. There is no other way that this child could know.
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