Presumed Guilty by Matt Dalton

Author:Matt Dalton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2005-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

Cults and Coincidences

Because of the hostility I was facing in Modesto, and because we couldn’t afford to hire anyone, I decided to call Brad, a longtime friend, to accompany me on some of the interviews I was doing out in the airport district. Now that Brad was there, I felt a lot more comfortable in Modesto.

When he came to town, the temperature was 109 degrees. I had been sleeping on the floor of the office, protected by my tent from scurrying rodents. I had soon learned that I was staying next door to what became a nightclub on Friday and Saturday nights. Brad arrived on a Friday, and we decided to go down to the nightclub and talk to some of the local people and find out what we could about the town.

We met a group of young girls who had grown up in Modesto. I asked one of them, a college student at California State University, Stanislaus, whether there was a lot of satanic cult activity in Modesto.

“A lot of the kids around here are into occult games like this,” she said, as she pointed to several groups sitting on the ground behind the nightclub, playing a game that resembled Dungeons and Dragons. “Some of these people really believe this stuff. The more hardcore element hangs out in the airport district. Those people are way out there. I stay away from them.”

A berobed young man with long black hair walked by. Skull-and-crossbones earrings dangled from his earlobes, and a patch of hair sprouted from his chin.

“Is that the devil?” my friend asked.

I laughed.

Many of the patrons were dressed like that. There was definitely a theme to the evening.

“Is this a satanic night, or is it always like this?” I asked.

“Same people, same thing,” one of the girls in the group said.

She went on to explain that the airport district was where a lot of people went for their drugs, which was something I already knew. An agent from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had told me that California’s Central Valley manufactured a large percentage of the methamphetamine in the United States.

The following night, according to the satanic calendar, was a ritual day of death known as the Night the Demon Revels. I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to visit the airport district and look for some unusual activity. Brad and I were driving up and down the dirty streets of the airport area when we decided to call on my new source, Billy J——, to find out if he had seen his ex-wife or former in-laws.

As we drove by, we could see a Modesto Police Department patrol car parked in the driveway to Billy’s house. What looked like an undercover police car was also parked there. We went down the street, made a U-turn, came back, and parked across the street, a few hundred feet away. Detectives Brocchini and Grogan, followed by an officer in uniform, walked to the undercover car. We watched the police drive away, then we went up to the house.

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