Why I Decided To Investigate the Marilyn Manson Case

Yesterday evening I was driving to a movie theatre to see a movie, when I came upon an accident involving a vehicle with a student driver and a traffic light pole. It was the funniest car accident I had ever seen, with a vehicle that said STUDENT DRIVER in the back crashed into a pole, just one block away from a police station. In itself, it was like something out of a comedy movie. As I was stopped at the traffic light watching two fire trucks and an ambulance on the scene, and the student driver with his teacher to the side unharmed, I couldn't help but laugh at the possible backstory my mind conjured up for the scene in front of me (sorry for the bad photo above, there were too many flashing lights everywhere and I was driving).

I arrived at the movie theatre, a nearly century old favorite hang out of mine, to see for the sixth or seventh time on the big screen since it came out in 2007, the film Zodiac, which brilliantly tells the story of the unknown Zodiac killer, who operated in the late 60's and early 70's in the Bay Area of California. I had last seen this movie in the same theatre right before the pandemic, and since it draws a large crowd they played it again. Back when I saw it a few years ago, it inspired me to do more research into the case, just like it inspired me the time I saw it before this. It is an excellent movie about conducting an investigation, which if studied can yield dozens of helpful tips for anyone embarking upon an investigation. This time I saw it with a new sense of awareness that reinvigorated me.

After seeing the car accident, which I couldn't help but find humorous, and then seeing Zodiac, I was vividly reminded of an old friend of mine. His name was Brian. A little more about him in a bit and how he ties into this.

After watching Zodiac before the pandemic and being inspired to investigate the Zodiac killer case, the pandemic suddenly hit and another old Hollywood case was reopened and being talked about involving my favorite actress, Natalie Wood. One of my earliest memories was me sitting at the kitchen table in 1981 as my mother was cooking dinner, and seeing on the news a breaking report of the tragic death of Natalie Wood. When I asked my mother who she was, I was told she was a famous actress. Later on, as I began to watch Natalie Wood films, such as Miracle on 34th Street and Rebel Without a Cause, not only was I always struck by her beauty and talent, but I always associated her with her tragic death. Now that I had some time during the pandemic, I decided to study everything about her death to look into the mystery. Within two weeks, her daughter released a documentary about her on HBO, with an aim to drive people away from defining her by her tragic and mysterious death and focus more on her fascinating life. What ended up happening was me watching all her films and interviews and reading every book about her, and I realized how much more fascinating her life is compared to her death.

Then suddenly the allegations came out against Marilyn Manson. It was February 1, 2021. From the start I started investigating the matter. I reread every Manson interview and I read and heard and saw every interview Evan Rachel Wood had ever given, and whatever else I could find about the other accusers. I also watched and rewatched all her movies. Suddenly I found myself going from an in-depth investigation into Natalie Wood to an in-depth investigation of Evan Rachel Wood, and what I basically saw was two people who were basically very much the same beyond the same last name, except one chose the right path and the other chose the wrong path when a critical time came for them to make a life-changing decision. Despite my very busy life, I couldn't hold in my findings any more, and decided the Marilyn Manson case needs to be documented and investigated for all its worth. This is when I started Marilyn Manson Uncanceled. If I had not watched Zodiac before the pandemic to inspire me, and if I had not done the in-depth investigation into Natalie Wood, then I probably would not have continued with my investigative run into the Marilyn Manson case. Not because of lack of interest, as I have always been very interested in Marilyn Manson since 1998 and he has meant a lot to me, always reading his interviews and never missing a tour, and was even a fan of Evan Rachel Wood, but I just didn't have the time necessary to do what I really wanted to do with it. This continues to be my problem, but I have learned to just take my time with it and use the little spare time I have towards it.

One of the tools I have used from my background in investigating things, especially crimes, comes from a three year period, between 2001 and 2004, when I worked as a full-time security guard at a Japanese women's college while I was studying for my second Master's degree. The security guard experience was interesting in itself, but my primary education in investigating crimes and mysterious deaths came from hanging out and chatting with my manager for about 30 hours a week, whose name was Brian (I will withhold his last name).

Brian was a fascinating guy, probably the most fascinating I ever met. Whenever I knew I was going to work with him on any given day, I was happy, because I knew it was going to be very interesting, to say the least. He had lived in Florida for many years with his wife, and now he had settled back in the Boston neighborhood where he was raised, and took on a position as a manager of security at this Japanese women's college. We talked about everything, but what was most interesting to me was the stories of his life.

For example, Brian was a soldier in Vietnam, and he would vividly describe to me what it was like when he and his team were assigned to a secret mission to fly over Cambodia to capture photos for the United States government. For years, the government denied any activity by the U.S. army in Cambodia, but he was a part of it, and he almost died doing it. He never told me if he killed anyone nor did I ask, but he did describe being on that plane and watching fellow soldiers getting shot from gunfire below by the Cambodians and him just hoping that the bullet riddled plane would prevent a bullet from hitting him.

When we talked about music, he would tell me what it was like seeing The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie and others live at their peak. If we talked about movies, he would tell me about seeing The Exorcist or Jaws or The Godfather on opening night.

The Japanese women's college was reportedly haunted. We had many of the female students from Japan, as well as a few employees, running to us, sometimes with fright and tears, sometimes in awe, after they had what they believed to be a supernatural encounter. Brian and I would investigate every claim. In fact, I even wrote a 20 page report on our investigation that I was hoping to one day publish. Personally, I never had a supernatural encounter there, but Brian did: one night he saw a big bright orb following him that was outside a window of a dark classroom he was in while on one of his security rounds as I sat at the front desk.

What was most fascinating about him was that Brian was a retired Crime Scene Investigator, a job he held in Florida for sixteen years. Now anyone who knows anything about being a Crime Scene Investigator, especially where he was in Florida, knows that to last sixteen years in that position is very rare. Most Crime Scene Investigators hardly last nine years, and for every year after that your risk of committing suicide increases. Not only is the schedule grueling, but what you witness is humanity at its darkest. 

 

(For the next two paragraphs, things will get a little graphic, so be warned.)

And Brian indeed witnessed humanity at its darkest. What Brian is most known for is being the lead Crime Scene Investigator on three of the murders of the infamous female serial killer Aileen Wuornos. He described to me all the details of retrieving the bodies of her victims from the Floridian swamp she left them in to rot, all three at different times and at different locations. He said the most vivid recollection of it all was seeing the thousands upon thousands of maggots feeding off those bodies, inside and out. Through Brian's efforts, he was instrumental in connecting one of those victims to Aileen Wuornos, which led to her arrest and conviction and eventual execution (no, he never saw the movie with Charlize Theron; he refused to watch it).

Aileen Wuornos

Almost every day he would tell me about a case he had worked on, and sometimes even bring in photos. One of the places he was most often called to investigate was where sky divers would land, nearby his office. He said that he was called there at least twenty times because a sky diver's parachute never opened, and what always amazed him was that they would almost always land feet first, causing their lower legs to be buried under the earth in a hole they created while the rest of their body just leaned to the side. He showed me the photos and I confirmed it. He described being called to a scene in a garage where a man did so much cocaine before he put a shotgun to his head, that he was alive for almost twelve hours afterward because his heart was still beating and only one side of his head was blown off, leaving him unable to speak and only gurgle. Once he was on the scene when another man with a shotgun was surrounded by police, and the pursued man took the gun and shot himself directly in the face, causing his brains to splatter all over the wall behind him. Another time he investigated the death of an elderly man who was pushed in front of a train by some unruly youths, and he described what it was like to find an eyeball out of its socket attached to the train. The most horrific murders he ever saw, according to Brian, were to witness the aftermath of "homosexual rage", as he called it. This is when a homosexual man discovered his partner had been cheating on him with another man. He called it "homosexual rage", because those were always the worst. On one occasion, one homosexual man tied his boyfriend to a bed and slowly tortured him to death by taking off of him small chunks of skin with the point of a knife, leaving small holes all over the body, from head to toe.

As Brian told me all these stories over the course of three years, he told me about the details of his process in determining the true story behind every incident. He did this with dozens of his cases, and I listened to every word. Not only this, but for fun, especially when we worked an overnight shift together, we would go over some famous cases and do an investigation into those. For example, we did some investigating into the O.J. Simpson murder as well as the Kurt Cobain suicide (did Courtney really kill him?), which yielded interesting results.

Though this is not my only background in research and investigation, it is among the most interesting worthy of sharing. The reason I started off talking about how the car accident and Zodiac reminded me of Brian is because of something he told me and something I saw every day. He told me that what kept him going for sixteen years in that line of work was a genuine interest in the work and keeping a good sense of humor throughout. Basically, be serious about it, but have "fun" too. He told me how irreverent it was at a crime scene. There was a lot of crude joking and laughter about the situation. This is how you deal with the situation. You find the humor behind the tragedy. Whenever Brian would recall one of his graphic tales, I still picture him till this day giggling at the most gruesome details. He was always a calm, cool and collected guy, with a white mustache and balding head with white hair, but he always knew when to turn on the humor and also when to turn on the seriousness.

There is much more I can say, but my only point here is to explore one aspect of why I decided to investigate the Marilyn Manson case. And if I lose focus, I will now have a resource to go to in order to put me back into focus. It is also meant to inspire everyone else investigating the Marilyn Manson case. To ask yourself why you started it in the first place and what your purpose in all of it is. Often times with long drawn out cases, it is easy to lose focus and get involved in distractions that have the opposite effect on helping with the case. Sometimes we may focus on ourselves too much and not on the subject that requires our attention. Yesterday I was reminded, after the car accident and seeing the ever-inspiring movie Zodiac, to reflect on these questions personally and refocus my attention on the Marilyn Manson case, and not waste the little time I have to devote to it on petty, distracting, secondary and selfish issues.