The Acid King

by Jesse P. Pollack

  The jury deliberated for the next three days while Keahon, Naiburg, and Jimmy waited anxiously. On Thursday, April 25, Naiburg was spending his afternoon pacing around outside the courthouse, hoping for word on his client’s fate. Finally a security guard named Phil stepped outside, told Naiburg that the jury had reached a verdict, and winked. A calm came over Naiburg, who was friendly with Phil. He knew guards sometimes hung out near the deliberation room, and maybe he had heard a sneak peek of how this was all going to end. Naiburg raced up the steps and back inside the courtroom.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Judge Copertino said, “have you reached a verdict?”

  “We have, Your Honor,” Claire Maturo, the jury foreman, replied.

  “Will the defendant please rise?” Copertino asked.

  Jimmy stood and stared blankly at the eight men and four women who held the remainder of his life in their very hands.

  “We find the defendant . . . not guilty.”

  Jimmy’s mother, Mary Troiano, fell into her husband’s arms and began to weep.

  “Oh my God!” she cried. “Thank God!”

  Vincent Troiano held his wife close and clenched his eyes shut, holding back a river of tears. Finally, when he was ready, he lifted his head to the ceiling and quietly uttered some thanks of his own.

  A few rows back, Nicole Lauwers sat stunned. She turned to her boyfriend, John, and scoffed, “Well, I guess if I ever do anything bad, I’d better call Eric Naiburg.”

  At the prosecution’s table, William Keahon grabbed his papers, shoved them into his briefcase, and stormed out of the courtroom, quickly brushing past the wave of reporters. There was no hiding his frustration.

  Jimmy, on the other hand, had shown no visible reaction since the verdict had been handed down. Suddenly Phil the security guard approached the table and said, “Hey, don’t you think you should thank your lawyer?”

  The dazed young man turned to face Naiburg and mumbled a soft “Thank you . . .”

  After nearly a year, the “Long Island Satan Case” was finally over.

  Epilogue

  When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

  —Maxwell Scott (as portrayed by Carleton Young),

  The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

  IN THE AUGUST 22, 1993, issue of the New York Times Magazine, journalist Ron Rosenbaum opened his article, “The Devil in Long Island,” by recounting an anecdote related to him by former Newsday editor Gary Hoenig:

  Some years ago in Northport—not far from the birthplace of Pynchon, who is, far more than the frequently invoked F. Scott Fitzgerald, the true literary avatar of the Long Island soul—two allegedly angel-dusting, devil-worshiping teen-agers [sic] were branded as “ritual cult murderers” of another teen-ager [sic] in the Aztakea woods.

  It was one of the first such episodes in what would become an overhyped national trendlet, and perhaps the first signal that something sinister was stirring out there behind the split-level shutters of Long Island’s suburbs. But this particular story about the unprintable photo, one I heard from a former Newsday editor who swears it’s true, isn’t about the killing itself; rather about something that happened the night after the death became public.

  It seems the paper had dispatched a photographer to get a nighttime shot of the supposedly spooky, satanist ritual killing ground out there in the woods, something that would capture the diabolical horror of it all. But when certain pictures came out of the darkroom, they just weren’t . . . suitable. Unusable. Not because they were too terrifying (at least not terrifying in a Luciferian way). But because many photographs of the alleged cult coven’s killing circle prominently featured a large boulder, across the face of which was scrawled the following somewhat-less-than-terrifying cult slogan:

  SATIN LIVES!

  A check with the Newsday photo library disclosed that contact sheets of all unpublished photos had been discarded. Nonetheless, 10 years later, it can be said with confidence: Satin still lives on Long Island.

  Rosenbaum’s article was not without errors. By this point, the Ricky Kasso story had taken on almost mythic proportions, and nine years without the benefit of instantaneous Internet fact-checking had passed. The “boulder” had actually been a wooden block inside Cow Harbor Park’s wood forest playground, and the photograph was used, appearing on the front page of the July 6, 1984, edition. Rosenbaum later dismissed the confusion by explaining that Hoenig had “conceived a dramatic spread of murder scene photos, only to abandon the project when he discovered that the self-proclaimed Satanists couldn’t even spell their dread Lord’s name.”

  Despite the inherent flaws in Rosenbaum’s apocryphal story, the piece does call attention to a key issue in the media’s initial coverage of the Lauwers murder: Why were the local Long Island papers willing to print the “Satin” photos, but not the larger news outlets? The answer is, most likely, a simple one—a story about half-baked Satanists who can’t spell “Satan” doesn’t sell newspapers. However, the Suffolk County Police, along with the district attorney’s office, telling the world that a group of cult members stood around a bonfire chanting while Ricky sacrificed Gary to the devil definitely would. So, the larger paper ditched the “Satin” photos in favor of Ricky’s wide-eyed glare or a shot of the gazebo “where cultists hung out.”

  Cold hard facts rarely stand a chance in the face of confusion and a well-crafted legend.

  What far too many of these news outlets fail to remember are the numerous people left behind to pick up the pieces long after the scribblers have all left town.

  A true testament to their bravery and dignity in the face of unspeakable tragedy, the Lauwers family never left Northport, fully aware that one cannot outrun a devastating memory. Herbert Lauwers died from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1989. Those close to the family say he never got over how brutally his youngest child had been taken from him. After her husband’s death, Yvonne remained in the little house on West Scudder Avenue, occasionally receiving visits from those who knew and loved Gary.

  One of those visitors was Johnny Hayward. While Johnny had left Northport a few years after graduating high school, he still made a point to travel home to check in on his best friend’s mother, doing so every year for nearly a decade and a half. One day in the late 1990s, Yvonne Lauwers turned to Johnny and asked him not to return. While she had always loved Johnny like a son of her own, the pain of seeing him—a walking relic of her son’s short life—had become too much. Johnny understood, hugged her good-bye for one last time, and left. Still looking to confront the past, he walked a few blocks away to visit Aztakea Woods. As Gary had no grave to visit, he decided to pay his respects where his best friend had died. Instead he found a new neighborhood of homes built over the infamous patch of woods. Walking away, Johnny wondered if these homeowners knew what they were living on top of.

  “The original development built over those woods was called ‘Overlook,’ ” Grant Koerner recalls. “I will never forget seeing the signs and saying, ‘Isn’t that ironic? Yes, you are overlooking something. . . .’ ”

  Unlike others who were once close to Ricky, Grant made it through the horrors of 1984 relatively unscathed. He grew up, became an architect, but never forgot his neighbor from Seaview Avenue.

  “When I hear the name Ricky Kasso,” he says, “my thoughts immediately jump to playing together in the sandbox in the backyard; I don’t jump to the murder or drugs. Some people can handle certain layers of stress, and others can’t. You ever see that old black-and-white film of that bridge twisting like a rubber band? What happened with that bridge is they tested it for everything except for one frequency of wind. And, on that day, that frequency of wind hit that bridge and turned that thing into liquid, because it wasn’t designed for that one perfect day. And I sort of think that’s what happened with Ricky. You add all those combinations up, plus the inability to cope with them, or society not being up to dealing with that at the moment, and boom. I think it was just a bad storm of
all those layers.”

  In 2017 the author of this book discovered through the Freedom of Information Act that the New York State Commission of Correction Medical Review Board had conducted an internal investigation into Ricky Kasso’s suicide in the Suffolk County jail. It found that, despite what had been told to the media, “supervisory logs of the unit in which Mr. Kasso was housed reveal that less than minimum required thirty-minute checks were made by officers during the period immediately preceding discovery of the subject hanging in cell.”

  The review board ended its report by recommending that “Suffolk County Correctional Facility administration take appropriate steps to ensure that impulsive adolescent detainees committed to the facility for bizarre crimes who are known to have histories of physichaitric [sic] treatment and drug intoxication and/or abuse, be managed under constant supervision until extensive mental health evaluations reveal that they may be cleared for less restrictive supervision,” and that the supervision of detainees be “consistent with Minimum Standards for Management of County Jails.”

  The four-page report, which wasn’t completed until nearly two years after Ricky’s death, was addressed to Suffolk County Sheriff Eugene T. Dooley, and shows copies to Louis Howard, the presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature; Martin B. Ashare, the Suffolk County Attorney; and Suffolk County District Attorney Patrick Henry. There is no indication that Ricky’s parents or the press were notified of the report’s existence or its findings. Instead there is every indication that for thirty-three years, the file sat collecting dust inside an Albany office building, almost two hundred miles from Northport.

  The Kassos eventually decided to stay in the village, determined not to let Ricky’s legacy affect their lives. When Dick and Lynn finally retrieved their son’s ashes from the Brueggemann Funeral Home several months after his death, they placed the plastic box containing his cremains on a basement shelf next to some old Christmas decorations. He would remain there for several years, never to be placed in an urn or spread in a meaningful location. For Dick and Lynn, it was simply easier trying to forget Ricky had ever existed. Kelly and Jody seemed happy to go along with this, but consequently, Wendy was denied any closure or understanding. While her older sisters were already well-known and well-liked enough not to face any kind of harassment, Wendy was left to deal with bullies shouting, “Say you love Satan, Wendy!” every day on her school bus. Not one for confrontation, she sat in her seat, staring out the window, remembering all the times her big brother would smile and wave to her from the sidewalk as the bus drove by.

  As the years went on, Dick Kasso began to behave strangely. He started having trouble completing simple tasks around the house and soon forgot who his family was. Friends recall him later breaking into the basement of a neighbor’s home, thinking it was the New York Giants locker room. He was eventually diagnosed with Lyme disease, which had gone undetected for many years, and was confined to an assisted living facility. He died in May 1991. A few years after her husband’s death, Lynn Kasso took Ricky’s ashes from the basement shelf and privately disposed of them in an undisclosed location.

  No one was told until after the ashes were long gone.

  Sometime later Lynn packed up, left the house on Seaview Avenue to her daughters, and bid Northport farewell for good.

  In August 2007 Yvonne Lauwers passed away at the age of seventy-nine. Four months later, Gary’s older brother, Michael, died of cancer that had been initially misdiagnosed. He was only forty-seven years old and left behind a loving wife, Heather.

  “I’m the only one left,” Nicole Lauwers-Law says with a somber laugh.

  Today, like many others, Nicole chooses to remember Gary as he was in life and not for the way he died. Her memories are filled with the images of the little blond boy whom she would take along on dates, bring home to play Legos with her own children, and drive to work as he grew into adolescence.

  Albert Quinones left Northport not long after the murder, shunning all requests for interviews, including one with the author of this book. He now lives in Manhattan, where he works in construction.

  Jimmy Troiano’s elation stemming from his not-guilty verdict was short-lived. Immediately after the ruling, Judge Copertino ordered Jimmy back to jail without bail, pending trial for his June 1984 burglary arrest. He was later sentenced to several years in prison, and he publicly accused Copertino of throwing the book at him as revenge for being acquitted of Gary’s murder.

  “They’re biased against me because they think I slipped through a loophole in the system,” Troiano told Newsday. “They forget the twelve people who found me not guilty.”

  Unsurprisingly, Copertino denied this.

  After he was eventually released from jail, Jimmy moved upstate to Albany, telling the few friends and family he had left that prison had helped him stay sober and find God. He quickly grew bored of clean living, however, and on December 12, 1991, Jimmy walked into the Albany Savings Bank on Wolf Road and robbed a teller of nine hundred and seventy dollars in cash. He initially got away with the crime, but over the next year, Jimmy racked up a variety of arrests and charges, including petit larceny, possession of crack cocaine, and third-degree burglary. He was eventually arrested for the bank robbery in January 1993, bragging to officers that he had “beaten a murder charge on Long Island and would beat this one too.”

  He was convicted and sentenced to further jail time.

  However, Jimmy was released just in time to appear in a Discovery Channel documentary that aired in 2000. With cameras in tow, he returned to Northport for the first time in nearly two decades, walked around Cow Harbor Park, and pinned the blame for Gary’s murder on Ricky alone. With a big smile on his face, Jimmy also showed off his newborn son, again claiming to be drug-free.

  Less than four years later, now living in Maine, Jimmy wrapped his hands and face in bandages, covered them in ketchup, and rode his stepson’s bicycle to his local CVS Pharmacy in Bath. There, he produced a firearm, which was later determined to have been a pellet gun, and handed a note to pharmacists Shannon Grady and Eric Morse that read:

  GIVE ME ALL OXYCOTIN

  80’S 40’S 20’S AND FETNAL PATCHS NOW!

  I HAVE A GUN!

  I WILL USE IT!

  Morse, who usually worked at a different CVS location, had trouble opening the store’s safe. Impatient, Jimmy hopped over the counter and rushed toward Morse, who was eventually able to unlock the safe. When the door was opened, Jimmy grabbed three bottles of Ritalin and ran outside. There, he was greeted by members of the Bath Police Department, who arrested him on the spot.

  When he was brought to trial for this latest bout of criminal activity, the judge took one look at Jimmy’s record and sentenced him to 151 months in jail, declaring him “every bank teller and pharmacist’s nightmare.”

  As of this writing, Jimmy Troiano is serving out his sentence at the McKean Federal Correctional Institution in Lewis Run, Pennsylvania. He is scheduled to be released in October 2018.

  Shortly after Rich Barton’s interviews with Newsday and Rolling Stone were published, a group of Jimmy Troiano’s friends broke into the Barton home, doused the basement bedroom where Ricky and Jimmy had once slept with gasoline, and lit the house on fire. Rich and his family were unharmed, but their home on Maple Avenue was completely gutted. He eventually left Northport and joined the marines, serving two tours of duty.

  The international media furor over the Knights of the Black Circle gradually fizzled out, but the legend remains. Today, hundreds of websites, YouTube videos, and blog articles still incorrectly refer to Ricky Kasso as the “leader” of the “Satanic cult” Knights of the Black Circle, completely unaware of John Gallagher’s press release blunder.

  Paul McBride died in February 2000. Friends recall the founder of the Knights freezing to death in his mobile home after a night of drinking. He was laid to rest in Northport Rural Cemetery, where his loved ones left two small statues of the Labrador retrievers he had so lo
ved in life.

  Jonathan McCuller, the Knights’ cofounder, eventually wrote and published a memoir called The Hard Way: Book One. Today he remains disturbed by how he and his friends were villainized by the press, and finds the ordeal hard to talk about.

  Brendan Brown never forgot his encounters with Ricky Kasso. In 1995 he formed the rock group Wheatus, and five years later, their song about adolescent life in suburban Northport, “Teenage Dirtbag,” hit the top ten on the rock charts in America, the UK, and Germany, while simultaneously going straight to number one in Australia, Belgium, and Austria. Brown would revisit his memories of Ricky on the 2009 record The Lightning EP. He still writes, records, and tours with Wheatus today.

  At only twenty-six years old, David Breskin left his mark on the world of investigative journalism, with Rolling Stone eventually selecting “Kids in the Dark” as one of the magazine’s landmark articles for their twenty-fifth anniversary collection, “The Great Stories.” Not long after the article’s initial release, Breskin was contacted by Chicago-based writer Rick Cleveland, who asked to adapt the story into a stage play. Breskin asked if he could cowrite, and Cleveland agreed. The theater adaptation of Kids in the Dark opened to rave reviews on April 2, 1987, at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago.

  Six months later, on October 1, 1987, Dell Books published Say You Love Satan, a paperback retelling of the Kasso story by author and self-professed “occult expert” David St. Clair. St. Clair, the author behind titles such as How Your Psychic Powers Can Make You Rich, Child Possessed, and David St. Clair’s Lessons in Instant ESP, traveled to Northport, hoping to interview those who had known Ricky and Gary. When his attempts were largely rebuffed, St. Clair returned home, plagiarized several sections of “Kids in the Dark” word for word—along with countless articles from Newsday and the New York Times—and filled in many of the blanks with imaginary scenes, dialogue, and characters. St. Clair nevertheless declared his book a work of nonfiction, featuring the “chilling truth behind the shocking headlines.”