The Acid King
Page 25
“I started using drugs when I was ten,” she said. “A lot of kids can’t talk to their parents. A lot of kids don’t have anybody to talk to, and so they just turn to drugs.”
Breskin made note of Michelle in his pad. Her honesty and bravery stood out, and he wanted to interview her for his upcoming article.
“I don’t think the youth can say, ‘Get the guy who sells the angel dust and I won’t use it’ no more than the drunk can say ‘Close the bar and I won’t get drunk,’ ” Richard Manning, a local father of nine, told the audience. “If this meeting serves any purpose for me, I think I should leave, not with a finger pointed, but with a finger hooked. Let’s not kid ourselves: it’s our fault—all of us. Let’s see what the heck we can do. I think, by and large, the problems exist because of attitudes in the home. You can’t drink a case of beer on the weekend and then break your kid’s head because he had a can when he went to the beach.”
Manning’s indictment of hypocrisy drew a considerable amount of applause. However, one father, twenty-eight-year-old Bob Harrison, dismissed Manning’s theory. A devoutly religious man, Harrison felt there were much more sinister forces at work.
“I just want to talk about some of the influences,” Harrison said. “Parents really need to listen to what their children are listening to. Some of these songs use a technique called ‘backmasking.’ What they do is put a message backward in the song. You know that song ‘Hotel California’? Look at that album. The leader of the Satanic Church is on the cover of that album. If you look at other songs, like Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ they actually have a backmask technique in that song talking about the power of Satan. That’s what your children have been listening to all this time, and hidden messages can translate into action. ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ by Queen? If you play that backward, it says, ‘It’s fun to smoke marijuana.’ Now, I’m a born-again Christian, and I don’t know where you all come from religiously, but those things really hurt me. These songs urge rebellion against authority. They’re trying to rip our children away from us. They’re attacking our nation. Just know who you’re letting into your home by letting them listen to this music.”
To Breskin’s surprise, a large portion of the audience actually stood to applaud, despite Harrison’s accusations being completely baseless. While some fringe fundamentalist Christian groups had recently accused popular rock acts of sneaking odes to the devil into their recordings, few in the secular world actually took the idea seriously. Ricky Kasso may have played a few records backward in a half-baked attempt to hear Satan’s voice, but these hijinks weren’t any more responsible for Gary’s murder than horror movies on TV or cheesy paperbacks from the library.
Sensational allegations aside, one person sitting in a pew that night, Betty Koerner, had tired of the squabbles about drugs, Satan, and bad parenting. She knew what these vague concepts were code words for—Ricky. The troubled son of Koerner’s friend and next-door neighbor was dead, and now her community was looking for someone to blame. When Koerner heard all these people getting up on the pulpit to denounce “bad parenting,” she knew who they were really attacking—Dick and Lynn Kasso. Having remained the couple’s friend for nearly two decades, Koerner decided it was high time someone stepped in to defend them.
“This is a family that doesn’t know if they have a home to come back to,” Koerner told the crowd. “We have to make them feel they have a home.”
Koerner then read from a letter Lynn Kasso had sent, thanking her for tending to her plants and making sure the lawn was mowed. Breskin could see Mrs. Koerner was largely alone in her attempt at humanizing the Kassos. He jotted down her name in his notebook, alongside Michelle DeVeau and Tony Ruggi, who also spoke that night.
The two-hour meeting may not have solved all of Northport’s problems in one go, but it gave Breskin enough names to continue his research, and he was glad for it. The Daily News and the Post would eventually abandon the village in search of some other tragedy to exploit, but Breskin would remain.
Chapter 48
“SO, WHAT WAS THE PLACE formed in reaction to?” Breskin asked as he sat down across from Tony Ruggi. He had heard the counselor speak at the Methodist Church meeting and convinced him to go on record for the story.
“About fifteen or sixteen years ago, there was a fatal car accident involving some young people,” Ruggi replied. “The investigation revealed that the kids were involved with drugs. Up until that time, the community was very unaware of drug use in the area. The typical response was that drug use was something that took place in the ghettos of the city—that it was something lower-class people were involved in. Needless to say, the community had to react in some way, and the agency was formed. We’ve been here for about fifteen years.”
“I’m a big believer in multicausality,” Breskin said. “I don’t believe in pinning this solely on devil worship, or drugs, or any one thing, but would it be fair to assume that the kids involved in this murder, along with the kids who saw the body and didn’t say anything, are heavily involved in drug use?”
“That’s a fair assumption to make,” Ruggi admitted.
“Did you have contact with those kids?” Breskin asked. “There’s that old saying; ‘You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves.’ No truer words have ever been spoken. Nonetheless, Ricky Kasso didn’t really seem to want to help himself much, from what other people have told me.”
Ruggi sighed. He knew this wasn’t true in Ricky’s case. He had spent the past two years watching Ricky walk through the front door, trying to get his life together. While he had indeed failed miserably, taking an innocent life along with his own, Ruggi didn’t believe Ricky’s desperate attempts to stabilize his existence should be erased from history either.
“This is a tough area,” Ruggi said, feeling the burden of what he knew.
“Remember, Kasso is not on trial here,” Breskin offered.
“Yeah . . . ,” Ruggi replied, lost in thought.
He hadn’t originally intended to reveal his association with Ricky, but he was now having second thoughts. Who else was going to stand up for the kid? Certainly not the Daily News or the Post, who had quickly turned him into the world’s most famous “Satan killer” with nearly two weeks of sensational front-page coverage. What Ricky had done to Gary was inexcusable, but Ruggi also felt the public shouldn’t judge him based solely on the final month of his short life. They needed to see the whole picture.
“I knew Ricky,” Ruggi finally said. “I knew Ricky fairly well, in fact. I met him when he first ended up on the street. He was typical—very confused. A lot of almost incoherent thoughts because of the drug use. He used to come down here in the evenings for coffee and we would talk. He was interested in music. I’d work a little guitar with him and show him some chords. He always seemed to be reaching out, but he had a basic concept that he would be dead by the time he was twenty, so he just wanted to have fun.”
“Where did that concept come from?” Breskin asked. “Jim Morrison?”
“It didn’t even go that far,” Ruggi replied. “All I can say is, there were things that he felt were bad and wrong in his life, whether they were real or imaginary.”
Breskin sensed the “specifics” Ruggi were avoiding were related to Ricky’s parents.
“The kids I’ve spoken to feel like Ricky was thrown away by his family,” Breskin said.
“I really don’t want to say anything against the family,” Ruggi replied cautiously, “but all I can say is Ricky did feel that way. He was very confused and was medicating himself with drugs. He was hurting a lot and the drugs were making him feel good. He knew the dangers of drugs. He was not a dumb kid. He was a very bright kid. He would say, ‘I know the drugs are bad for me, but they make me feel good. I’m not going to live past twenty anyway, so I’m just going to enjoy myself.’ ”
“Did he want to live past twenty?” Breskin asked.
“No,” Ruggi replied flatly. “
He didn’t want to because he had nothing to look forward to. He had nothing. He had no job, no education, no family, no anything, so what’s the use of living? The only thing he might have had was the drugs. But last winter, there was a sudden change. He stopped doing hallucinogens. He decided he wanted to make contact with his family, go to school, and get a job. It seemed to come out of almost nowhere. He went back to his family and conformed to their rules. He cut his hair. He changed the clothes he was wearing. So, for a kid on the street, that is making an effort. We were very hopeful. We liked this kid. Then, something went wrong. Something happened. I mean, I’ve heard there were problems with the family. I heard there was a big fight over something in school. The next thing I know, he’s back out on the street again. From that point on, he went downhill extremely fast. The next I heard about him was when I heard on the radio that he and Randy Guethler had been picked up for grave robbing. I remember thinking, ‘This kid is really losing it now.’ ”
“Was he committed to the idea that he was a representative of the devil?” Breskin asked, trying to gain some further insight into the occult aspects of Gary’s murder.
“We talked about the devil on occasion,” Ruggi replied. “Ricky got a lot of that from library books. He got his list of the dignitaries in Hell out of a library book. He went looking for things. I think what appealed to Ricky was the idea of a loser fighting back against the establishment. He would talk about it and sometimes he would laugh about it.”
Breskin remained perplexed. So many, it seemed, had seen the writing on the wall for Ricky, yet no one made any sort of real effort to help him. Sure, hindsight is always twenty-twenty, but grave robbing? Public displays of Satan worship? These were not your average suburban problems.
“Did anyone say to him, ‘Damn, Ricky, you really had it together there for a while—what’s the story?’ ” he asked.
Tony nodded.
“His response was, ‘It’s no use. I just can’t win,’ ” Ruggi replied. “He was defeated, at that point. I think that’s why he went downhill so fast. . . .”
* * *
Once Breskin was finished interviewing Tony Ruggi, he hopped back into his rental car and drove over to Seaview Avenue for his next appointment. Parking only a few doors down from the Kasso home, Breskin was there to interview Betty Koerner. He walked up the driveway and was shown inside the two-story cedar shake home by the petite housewife.
“So, why do you think the Kassos didn’t come back?” Breskin asked as he sat down with Betty and her daughter, Selina, in their living room. “Their son had just been charged with murder. To me, it sounded like they had tried and tried and tried to help him out and then disowned him.”
“I think it was the shock of the grave-digging arrest,” Koerner replied. “They had three girls up there to deal with and get emotionally set. I think they had to get adjusted to it.”
“Do you think there was a great deal of guilt for not coming down and then, the next thing they knew, Ricky was dead?”
“She didn’t say that,” Koerner replied, “but I think that’s only natural.”
“I think there was a lot of guilt,” Selina offered. “The newspapers made a point of saying Troiano’s parents were at the arraignment but the Kassos weren’t, and I remember Lynn saying she thought that was out of line. She didn’t really say why she didn’t go to the arraignment, but one of the things she did say was, ‘This was just one more thing Ricky did. This had been going on for so long that this was the final act.’ He had been cutting himself off emotionally from them for years, so it wasn’t as if a normal son or daughter had done this. I think they didn’t go because they just didn’t want to deal with him.”
“I would say things like, ‘Lynn, there’s always hope,’ ” Koerner continued, “and she’d say, ‘Oh, he’s so far gone. His mind is gone.’ I’d say, ‘Well, as long as there’s life, there’s hope,’ and she’d say, ‘Maybe so.’ He came home before the holidays and he was very sick with pneumonia. He was so thin. They got him help and medication, and he was fine. The same thing happened in the spring. Lynn was annoyed at him because he never came back for his prescription. I kept reminding her, ‘This is not the son you raised. Don’t feel responsible for this. Some evil thing has taken over his body.’ He just got thinner and thinner and looked so sunken. You have to wonder if the drugs didn’t get him first, would his health have?”
“Did they feel he had a chemical imbalance?” Breskin asked.
“No,” Koerner replied. “She never suggested that to me. She felt his mind was gone.”
“Yeah, but you know how some people think they are born alcoholics?” Selina said, trying to better explain Breskin’s point.
“No, she never said anything like that,” Koerner replied. “She just felt he was gone on drugs. Kelly and Jody were disgusted and ashamed. The family is not that way. They’re not drinkers. They’re good people.”
“I’ve heard rumors that Ricky was cremated because Dick and Lynn couldn’t find a funeral home that would take him,” Breskin said.
The rumors were unfounded. The Brueggemann Funeral Home took care of Ricky’s final arrangements with zero fuss, as they had provided their services for the Kassos in the past. However, with Dick and Lynn refusing to grant any further interviews, no one outside the family knew this.
“That is sick!” Koerner gasped. “She did not say that to me, but if it’s true, that’s sickening! If there was going to be a service, I wanted to go in support because I felt there probably wouldn’t be flowers because of the way the media played up all this cult nonsense about this terrible murderer who had killed this Ivy League kid! The newspapers used Gary’s eighth grade picture where he looked like a Harvard graduate. The media played it up like Ricky was some wicked, vicious animal and that’s why these terrible threats have come upon the family! Gary was a bad kid too, no better than Ricky! They were all into bad stuff!”
“What kinds of threats?” Breskin asked.
“For the past three summers,” Koerner replied, “Dick and Lynn have rented out their home to a nice elderly couple with no children. The threats they got were just horrifying. People called up in the middle of the night and said, ‘Murderer! Killer! We’re gonna cut your balls off! We’re gonna kill your wife, cut out the eyes out of all of your daughters, and burn your house down!’ They finally decided to move out a few days ago.”
“I was told Mr. Kasso told the renters that he didn’t have a son when they asked about his family,” Breskin replied.
Koerner understood the origin of that rumor.
“When I spoke to that man,” she replied, “he said he had seen a picture of Ricky in the house but didn’t ask any questions because he didn’t know if he was dead or not. He said this was the first he had heard of their son.”
“Some people think the Kassos are a good and decent family,” Breskin said, “but I’ve also heard from a lot of kids that Mr. and Mrs. Kasso didn’t give a damn for Ricky and had disposed of him. They had tried and tried, and then they gave up.”
Breskin understood that Lynn and Mrs. Koerner were good friends, but at some point, she had to at least acknowledge some sort of truth lying at the root of these rumors. Koerner, however, didn’t waver in her loyalty to Dick and Lynn.
“No, they did not give up,” she firmly insisted.
“I’m just saying what I’ve heard,” Breskin countered. “I’m putting as many pieces together as I can. . . .”
Chapter 49
CHIEF ROBERT HOWARD REACHED INTO the plastic cooler sitting outside in his backyard and pulled out a can of soda, turning his eye toward David Breskin.
“You want a drink?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine,” Breskin replied as he parked himself in one of Howard’s folding lawn chairs.
Howard, still on vacation, looked more like someone’s laid-back uncle than a seasoned police chief.
“What’s your experience been with drugs in this town?” Breskin asked.
“The kids tell me if a cop sees them in the park smoking a joint,” Breskin said, “they look the other way and the kids look the other way. It’s just understood.”
“They’re not supposed to look the other way,” Howard replied with dismay. “But if we bring someone in on a simple marijuana possession charge, the courts automatically dismiss it. Even if you make an arrest, you have to release without bail. You could compare it to a traffic ticket. It’s sort of a waste of time and paperwork. The police enforce what society wants us to enforce. We get the message. This isn’t unique to Northport Village. The press has been pushing that we have Satanic worshippers, drug use in the park, and that the police do nothing about it.”
“Yeah, well, the ‘Satanic worshippers’ quotes come straight from the Four Musketeers—Dunn, Henry, Keahon, and Gallagher,” Breskin countered. “I’ve not only seen the quotes in the Post and the Daily News but also in the New York Times.”
“Dear God, I hope they’ve been misquoted,” Howard sighed.
Breskin reached into his bag and grabbed a newspaper.
“Here,” Breskin said, opening the paper to read aloud. “It says, ‘The cult, according to Assistant DA Bill Keahon of Suffolk County, is known as the Knights of the Black Circle. It has about twenty teenage members and held gatherings for several years in the Northport area involving the sacrifice of animals.’ ”
“If Keahon said that, he is certainly misinformed,” Howard scoffed. “I think I know Northport Village and what goes on here a little better than he does. I’m sure he probably might not have even known where Northport was prior to this case.”