Remembering Satan

by Lawrence Wright

  ACCLAIM FOR Lawrence Wright’s

  REMEMBERING SATAN

  “One of the real landmarks in journalism. The story itself is almost unutterably weird and would be fascinating no matter how well it was told but in the thoroughness of his reporting, and in his thoughtful treatment of the many issues the story touches, Wright has painted a perfect miniature of our time.… Remembering Satan is an edge-of-your-seat tale.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Skillfully and spellbindingly recounted.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Brilliantly reported and compellingly written.… Wright persuasively challenges the entire ‘recovered memory movement.’ ”

  —Texas Monthly

  “Wright is particularly good at giving a fair and succinct account of this troubling controversy.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “[A] gripping and brilliantly constructed book.”

  —The New York Review of Books

  “Wright makes brilliant use of this mind-boggling story to cast grave doubts on the whole notion of recovered-memory-syndrome.… Admirably, Wright delivers a cool-headed, meticulous account of the case.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Compelling reading, expertly written.… Wright tells an incredible true story.”

  —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “A cautionary tale about the dangers of so-called recovered memories.… Remembering Satan is stunning.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  Lawrence Wright

  REMEMBERING

  SATAN

  Lawrence Wright is the author of City Children, Country Summer; In the New World; and Saints and Sinners. His articles have appeared in Texas Monthly, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Magazine. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and two children.

  BOOKS BY LAWRENCE WRIGHT

  Remembering Satan

  Saints and Sinners

  In the New World

  City Children, Country Summer

  FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MAY 1995

  Copyright © 1994 by Lawrence Wright

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

  Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage

  Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and

  simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,

  Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by

  Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1994.

  Portions of this work were originally published in The New Yorker.

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the Knopf edition as

  follows:

  Wright, Lawrence.

  Remembering Satan/by Lawrence Wright.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. False memory syndrome—United States—Case Studies. 2.

  Ritual abuse victims—United States—Case studies. 3. Adult child

  sexual abuse victims—United States—Case Studies. 4. Ingram,

  Paul R.—Family. I. Title.

  RC569.5.R59W75 1994

  364.I′536—dc20 93-23561

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79067-5

  Author photograph © David MacKenzie

  v3.1

  For Tina Brown

  lucky star

  Acknowledgments

  This book first appeared, in large part, in The New Yorker magazine, and I am grateful for the wise counsel of my editor, Kim Heron, and the tireless assistance of fact checker Peter Wells. I also would like to thank the investigators in Olympia—Joe Vukich, Brian Schoening, Neil McClanahan, and Loreli Thompson—who were generous with their time and always helpful. Prosecutor Gary Tabor was always accommodating, and I thank him for his courtesy.

  Elizabeth F. Loftus, at the University of Washington, has done much of the groundbreaking work on memory, and she afforded me a considerable amount of her valuable time and insight. Richard Ofshe, who has written about the Ingram case himself, was extremely helpful and insightful.

  I owe a particular debt to Ethan Watters, a fine journalist who wrote about the Ingram case in Mother Jones. His research and perceptions about this case are reflected throughout this book. Thanks also to Cheryl Smith, who helped me decipher the workings of the polygraph, and Jan Mclnroy for combing through the manuscript with her careful eye.

  Ann Close, my editor, and Wendy Weil, my agent, have been my invaluable companions and supporters for many happy years, and once again I acknowledge my gratitude for their advice and friendship.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  A Note on Sources and a Few Words About Journalism

  1

  On the morning of Monday, November 28, 1988, the day that Paul R. Ingram was to be arrested, he dressed for his job, at the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, where he had worked for nearly seventeen years, went downstairs and ate breakfast, and then, to his surprise, suddenly vomited. He thought at first it must be the flu; then he realized that it was simply fear.

  Ingram, who was forty-three, was already a familiar figure to most citizens of Olympia, Washington. Until that day, he had served as the chief civil deputy of the sheriff’s department and the chairman of the local Republican party. He had been active in the deputy sheriffs’ association and in the Church of Living Water, a Protestant fundamentalist congregation. He was the father of five living children. (A retarded daughter had recently died in a state institution.) As a politician, he was seen as a bridge between moderate conservatives and the Christian Right. As a police officer, he was more highly regarded by the public than by other police officers. Tall and square-jawed, with oversized glasses and a brown mustache, Ingram was known in his department for being a hard-ass type who enjoyed traffic patrol. Although Ingram claimed that he gave as many as five warnings for every ticket he issued, it is also true that he routinely made more stops than most officers. He developed a reputation for handing out speeding tickets for driving just five miles over the limit, and yet his personnel file contained not a single complaint; instead it was filled with commendations from citizens who wished to thank him for the courtesy he had shown while issuing their citations.

  At eight o’clock that Monday morning, Ingram drove into the parking lot of the courthouse complex, which sits atop a hill beside Capitol Lake. Across the way, the white marble capitol looms, ghostlike, above the low-lying town, and beyond it one can see Budd Inlet, the farthest-reaching finger of Puget Sound. The briny air is full of the calls of seagulls, and the northern light is thin, even on a sunny day when the brooding Olympic Mountains are visible to the northwest and Mount Rainier shows off its snow-capped splendor fifty miles to the east. One can look at a map and imagine that the city is more vibrant than it actually is. The main highway on the western side of the state, Interstate 5, strings together Seattle and Tacoma, then reaches over to include Olympia before heading to Portland on its way to California. Olympia was once the largest port in the state, but with the decline of the timber industry the South Sound is virtually empty of maritime commerce. Neither the ferries nor the hydrofoils which course through the North Sound make a stop in Olympia. The city a
chieved a measure of regional fame through two local products that bear its name: the pale beer that is manufactured at the Olympia Brewery Company above the falls at the mouth of the Deschutes River, and the sweet, thumbnail-size oysters that grow in the bay. The brewery has long since sold out to Milwaukee interests; and as for the oysters, pollution and overharvesting have reduced them to an occasional, expensive delicacy.

  Olympia became the capital of Washington Territory in 1853, when it was a bustling frontier outpost; now it is made up largely of bureaucrats, and the city bustles only when the legislature is in session. St. Peter’s Hospital and a cardboard-box plant operated by Georgia Pacific are the other leading employers. Olympia is bordered by the townships of Tumwater and Lacey, making up what is known as the Tri-Cities, with a population of 68,000—Olympia proper accounting for just over half of that number. There are no skyscrapers, and parking is rarely a problem. Most people who live here like the slow pace, the modest scale, and the cozy society of small-town life. For many of them, the failure of the city to realize its early promise of becoming an industrial port like Tacoma or a sophisticated, international urban center like Seattle is a blessing that has allowed Olympia to stay charming and humane, if somewhat dull and self-satisfied.

  Perhaps because of its beauty, its classical name, and a shroud of mystery that hangs over it—in the form of frequent fog or drizzle—Olympia has acquired a reputation as a spiritual center. J. Z. Knight, a well-known New Age channeler who owns a large estate off the Yelm Highway, is widely regarded as the richest woman in the county; the local lore is that her horse stables have chandeliers in every stall. Celebrity acolytes such as Shirley MacLaine and Linda Evans have sometimes passed through Olympia on their way to visit Knight. A small coven of witches runs a local herb shop. Like most Washingtonians, Olympians pride themselves on their tolerance in such matters, and it would be fair to say that the town is better known for its New Age believers than for its fundamentalist Christians; but both elements are deeply entwined with the life of the town, and are sometimes loudly at odds.

  Fifteen minutes after Ingram arrived at work, he was summoned to the office of his boss, Sheriff Gary Edwards. An affable man with few enemies, Edwards was a rare Republican officeholder in a county long regarded as a stronghold of liberal Democratic politics. Ingram was not just an employee; he was an important political ally of Edwards and a friend for nearly a decade. In 1986 Edwards had appointed Ingram to be his chief civil deputy, causing some grousing on the part of those who had been leapfrogged by the junior officer; but Ingram had performed well in that position. He was better suited to administrative work than to investigations. Like Edwards, Ingram seldom gave offense; he seemed cheerful and unflappable—qualities Edwards had in abundance and which he apparently sought in his staff. With his earnest, friendly manner, Ingram was the kind of cop who was tailor-made for public appearances. He spent much of his time in schools talking to kids about the dangers of drug use, although he continued to do traffic patrol as he commuted to and from work.

  Joining Edwards and Ingram in that meeting was the number two man in the department, Undersheriff Neil McClanahan. Intense and ambitious, McClanahan had risen through the ranks even more quickly than Ingram. They had known each other well since 1972, when both were young deputies and shared a county car. McClanahan wore glasses and a trim brown mustache, and when he put on his tweedy rain hat he bore a certain resemblance to Peter Sellers in the role of Inspector Clouseau—a point McClanahan would jokingly make about himself. It wasn’t surprising that the careers of Paul Ingram and Neil McClanahan paralleled each other, since their skills and interests were similar; and although they were friends, they were also competitors in the small but still quite political hierarchy of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office. McClanahan’s first action when he joined the other two men that morning was to relieve Ingram of the automatic pistol that he habitually wore in an ankle holster.

  “Paul, there’s a problem,” Edwards said. He asked if Ingram knew about the charges of sexual molestation that his two daughters, Ericka and Julie, had made. (Ericka and Julie were then twenty-two and eighteen, respectively.) Ingram said that he did; however, he said he could not remember having ever molested his daughters. “If this did happen, we need to take care of it,” Ingram said, but he added, “I can’t see myself doing this.” If he did molest the girls, then “there must be a dark side of me that I don’t know about.” These responses were disturbingly equivocal—a variation on the “maybe I did and maybe I didn’t” theme that police often hear from suspects who are bargaining for a plea. But Ingram went on to say that if the charges were true, then not only his daughters but also his sons would need help. “I’ve never thought about suicide before, but if it turns out that I have done something, I want you to get all my guns out of the house, just in case,” Ingram said, in a voice that sounded more puzzled than despairing. He requested a lie detector test, so he could “get to the bottom of this.”

  “I hope you’re not going to make these girls go through a trial,” Edwards said. The sheriff may also have been thinking of the reputation of his department, although at this very early stage in the investigation the prospect of a trial seemed remote. In fact, until this point, Edwards had confined the investigation to an administrative proceeding, such as might occur when citizens complain about an officer’s erratic driving. An administrative inquiry might lead to a disciplinary hearing, which itself could result in a suspension or the loss of a job. It could all be handled very quietly.

  Ingram willingly agreed to talk to investigators without a lawyer present, and so at nine a.m. McClanahan escorted him to the office of detectives Joe Vukich and Brian Schoening, who handled sex offenses. Both men knew Ingram well; in fact, his office was directly across the hall. Brian Schoening was a pale, sandy-haired veteran, a gravel-voiced grandfather with gray, unsurprised eyes. Ingram was the last man in the department that Schoening would have suspected of sexual abuse, but he had seen enough of the kinky underside of human nature to know that pleasant faces can hide appalling desires. Joe Vukich had met Ingram in 1976, even before joining the force; after that they worked the same district, and Ingram had often invited the baby-faced rookie over to his house for barbecue and card games. As far as Vukich could tell, Ingram was a decent, easygoing family man and all-American husband. Ingram was both men’s superior in the department; so from the beginning the interrogation was uncomfortable and conflicted for everyone, including the suspect.

  Several hours into the questioning, Vukich turned on a tape recorder to take Ingram’s official statement. Ingram now said, “I really believe that the allegations did occur and that I did violate them and probably for a long period of time. I’ve repressed it.”

  Vukich asked Ingram why he was confessing if he couldn’t remember the violations, and Ingram replied, “Well, number one, my girls know me. They wouldn’t lie about something like this. And, uh, there’s other evidence.”

  “And what, in your mind, would that evidence be?” one of the detectives asked.

  “The way they’ve been acting for at least the last couple years and the fact that I’ve not been able to be affectionate with them, uh, even though I want to be,” Ingram said. “I have a hard time hugging them, or even telling them that I love them, and I just know that’s not natural.”

  “Besides having a hard time being close to them, do you recall anything of a physical nature you may have done that could have been abusive, such as striking them?”

  “Whew … I don’t recall, uh, striking the girls,” Ingram responded. “I don’t lose my temper very often, but occasionally I do, or—or they may think that I’m, you know, arguing rather than, uh, conversing with them. Those may be looked at by them as abuse.”

  “If I asked you if you—and this is a yes-or-no answer-touched Julie inappropriately sexually, what would you say?”

  “I’d have to say yes.”

  “And how about Ericka?”

  “A
gain, I would have to say yes.”

  “What would you think the age of Ericka would’ve been when these things first started happening between you and her?”

  “I can’t recall myself, but I know that the age of five has come up in a couple of conversations.” Ingram had first heard about the charges a week before.

  “What do you remember?” the detectives pressed him.

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  It’s not unusual in a police investigation for a suspect to say that he doesn’t remember having committed a crime, especially if the crime is a sex offense. Oftentimes, the explanation involves the use of alcohol or drugs, but the claim of a faulty memory can also be a ploy on the part of the suspect to flesh out the charges—to see what evidence, if any, the police have. It was the experience of Schoening and Vukich that a suspect who said he didn’t remember anything was either avoiding the truth or standing on the threshold of a confession; so at this point guilt was the tacit assumption that underlay the interrogation. Ingram wasn’t saying “I didn’t do it”; he was saying he couldn’t see himself doing it.

  Vukich turned off the tape recorder while he and Schoening attempted to move Ingram to accept his guilt. During the next twenty minutes, they told him that his daughters were shattered by his abuse, and provided him with some of the details that the girls had included in their statements. Ingram continued to be suspended between his statement that his daughters wouldn’t lie and his assertion that he couldn’t remember the abuse. He would later assert that Vukich assured him that the memories would return if he did confess (although there’s no way to know if that assertion is true). According to notes that Schoening took during the interrogation, Ingram began praying feverishly. When the detectives turned on the tape recorder again, Schoening noted that Ingram was staring at the wall, clutching his hands, and that he then went into a “trance-type thing.” Ingram began describing a scene in which he came into his older daughter’s bedroom and removed his bathrobe. Then, he said, “I would’ve removed her underpants or bottoms to the nightgown.”