The Dead Priest of Sedona

by Charles Williamson

  Margaret reached for an old copy of The Commentaries of Gaius Julius Caesar on the Gallic War from her Latin class of nearly four decades ago. She translated, “Some tribes build enormous images with limbs of interwoven branches which they fill with live men. The images are burned and the men die in the surrounding flames.”

  Margaret picked up another book and turned to the green post-it. She opened it to show a nineteenth century drawing labeled the Wicker Man. It was a drawing of unspeakable horror. It showed scores of men crammed into a woven thirty-foot high figure. The carved head was the only part of the figure not filled with writhing victims.

  On another page, Margaret showed me an etching of a bearded victim, stretched across a flat stone altar in a grove of trees. He was held fast by four Druids. A white robed Druid with a crown of mistletoe stood over the helpless sacrifice, ready to cut into his exposed abdomen. Both were done to illustrate ancient practices, but they brought home the horror of the Druid customs.

  “Father Sean didn’t believe that these barbaric practices died out in the ninth century. He believed they persisted through the Reformation, and Mike, I think they’re still with us here in Arizona today.”

  We talked for another hour, but not of murders and Druids. I needed some time with Margaret without the pressure and distress of the case intruding. My whole impression of Sedona had changed. I needed some time to digest that change. Sedona now seemed more sinister, even a little frightening. I hoped those feelings would pass when the case was solved.

  Margaret had called our son while I was in Flagstaff. She had all the current reports about the grandkids. We discussed Christmas plans; the kids would be here for two weeks in December. I had seconds of the delicious chocolate cake before we headed to bed.

  Early the next morning, I sat with my coffee at the dining room table and read each section in the books marked by Margaret. I was convinced that this was not just a serial killer. Every bit of the evidence now pointed to a fairly large group of people following the ritual killing methods of the ancient Druids. I still thought there might be a connection to the local Wicca Covens. I knew that Father Sean had been investigating them, and he’d written a report called Wicca in Sedona to his superiors in Rome.

  Margaret made a delicious egg casserole for breakfast, which we shared at the kitchen table. She thought eggs were brain food and wanted me to be in top form. After Margaret had left for work to take care of some monthly reports, I stood on the cold deck, a hot cup of coffee in my hands. As I stared at another Sedona sunrise, I had an idea. The Navigator had not yielded any prints because of the fire. It had a license plate stolen from another car. Maybe we could find a stray print on the plate that was moved from the Navigator to that other car. In LA, a stolen plate would be too low a priority to get much attention, but it would still be in the evidence storage. If I could get fingerprints that connected the Navigator to the Wood family, we could get a warrant. Chad had mentioned that the Woods had a son named Walter in Los Angeles. I wondered if he had ever been fingerprinted.

  Vatican City

  Monsignor Francisco de Navarro was walking through St. Peter’s Square after his meeting with the Holy Father. A drizzle chilled the autumn air, and he wrapped his cloak around his torso against the chill. The priest was headed toward his room to send the e-mail that had been approved. There had been another death, and he shared the burden of the death of that young man because of his silence. The Holy Father had not given him the permission he’d hoped for, but at least he was willing for the Jesuit to talk with the American authorities. Francisco would pray for wisdom before the phone call. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

  CHAPTER 30

  I finished my coffee, and drove to the office. When I turned on my computer, I found an e-mail message from Monsignor Francisco de Navarro, the most senior member of the Jesuit Order. The e-mail had his direct phone number. He suggested that I call between 8:00 AM and 9:30 AM Pacific Standard Time. The senior Jesuit assumed that Arizona was in the same time zone as Los Angeles where the order’s West Coast Province was headquartered. It was 8:30 in Sedona, half an hour until the window for a call. My Spanish was not good enough for this type of discussion. I decided to ask Rose Rios to help. I assumed that the superior general could speak English, but this sort of questioning would go more easily if the priest could answer in his own language. I decided to ask Chad to join us. We were partners in solving this case.

  When Rose got to the office, I explained our call. I wrote out six questions so she could have a few minutes to translate into her most tactful Spanish. When Chad arrived, I placed the call, greeting Monsignor Francisco de Navarro in my best college Spanish. I explained that Rose was my assistant, and that she would help when my language skills failed. I did not mention that Chad was also present. The conversation went on for over half an hour with Rose taking notes in Spanish and helping with an occasional translation. Monsignor de Navarro was fairly fluent in English, but he was pleased that the discussion occurred in his native language.

  In brief, de Navarro reported that our local priest, Sean Murphy, had been conducting an investigation at the direct request of Pope John Paul, and the project was reaffirmed by his successors Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. From his early childhood in Poland, John Paul had heard stories indicating that the Druid and pagan cults might survive in remote parts of Eastern Europe. The Holy Father learned that Father Sean was one of the best-known historians of ancient and medieval European religions. He’d asked the Jesuit priest to conduct a confidential investigation to determine if the ancient Druids had survived into modern times.

  Chad’s Spanish was good enough to follow most of the conversation. He looked skeptical that our serial killers had a direct connection to ancient Europeans. I thought it was possible

  The Jesuit superior general explained that the pontiff had grown concerned about the rapid growth of pagan customs and practices in formerly Christian areas. The church did not understand why people who have known Christ would reject him for these primitive religious practices. Why did Christians risk their immortal souls for this fad of Neo-pagan beliefs? Father Sean’s second assignment included trying to determine why these cults were growing so quickly and what the Church could do to reclaim these lost souls. From Rose’s skillful translation of the conversation, we learned of the Druids of northern England.

  “Much of Father Sean’s investigation was conducted at the Vatican Library and in Poland and Scotland,” the superior general said. “He was able to demonstrate that there were pockets of pagan practices up until the Reformation in northern England. He found a trail of barbaric Druid practices. It led into the heart of the Roman Catholic Church in a convent in northwestern England in the sixteenth century. The possible involvement of Catholic monks in these practices is the reason that the Holy Father insisted on secrecy. He had given me permission to give you all the details, but he hopes that they will not become public.”

  “I’ll do my best not to embarrass the Church,” I said. Chad frowned but remained silent. Rose took detailed notes. I wished that I’d asked permission to record the conversation so that I could provide the sheriff with a complete transcript.

  “In 1573, Thomas Woodhouse suffered martyrdom at Tyburn, England at the hands of the brutal Protestants.” From Chad’s expression, I assumed he regarded his English ancestors as being on the opposite side of this issue.

  “St. Thomas was slowly disemboweled because he refused to renounce the True Church. During a long incarceration, the martyr wrote an account of his secret journey through Protestant England. The report was smuggled out of his prison by a sympathetic washerwoman. In 1574, the manuscript reached Rome; however, that was a time in which the Vatican could do nothing to influence events in England because it was totally in the hands of the heretics. It was a time when priests were being brutally murdered for their faith. The manuscript remained unnoticed in the archives of the Vatican Library until Father Sean discovered it five years ago.
At my request, he never published this account.”

  I asked about the method of Woodhouse’s martyrdom. It seemed similar to the way the ancient Druids sometimes killed prisoners to foretell the future from their entrails.

  The Jesuit leader said, “About a dozen priests were killed in this horrible manner in the sixteenth century in England by the heretic Tudors and the eternally damned Henry VIII. However, it was for spectacle rather than prophesy.”

  Chad said an obscenity under his breath at the mention of heretic and eternally damned Tudors. I hoped the Jesuit had not heard it. I thought about asking Chad to leave, but he ran his fingers across his lips in the children’s sign of zipping his mouth.

  Francisco de Navarro continued the story. “The Blessed Thomas Woodhouse was from Lincolnshire and had been a tutor for a prominent family in Wales. He was traveling thorough Cumberland, in northwestern England, when he stopped near the abandoned Furness Abbey. The Tudor monsters had scattered or imprisoned the monks. A Catholic family took Thomas Woodhouse into their home. They told him the terrible secret of Furness Abbey and of the stone circle at Swinside. The family had learned of the horrible blasphemy by sheltering several monks in the period immediately after the disbanding of the abbeys.”

  At the mention of northern England, I thought of the Wood’s family origin in that section of England. The Jesuit continued his story.

  “The great stone abbey at Furness had been one of the most important in England. It was located in a very remote area, as far from Rome as any large monastery in Europe. During its four and a half centuries, the Cistercian order of Furness Abbey grew rich and dominated the surrounding shire. Within the walls of the abbey, a black secret was hidden. The old pagan ways were kept alive among a select group known as the Gray Fathers. Woodhouse learned that about twenty percent of the monks at Furness Abbey were members of the secret order.”

  “Some of the monks were really pagans? That’s hard to believe,” I said.

  “Father Sean was also shocked by the claims made by Saint Thomas Woodhouse in the report he wrote in 1572 to one of my predecessors as superior general. Woodhouse claimed that the Gray Fathers were actually Druid priests who practiced the ancient ways, including human sacrifice, in the primeval forest and at the stone circle at nearby Swinside. It would be easy to dismiss the report as a fabrication of the Protestants to discredit the monks of Furness. However, the report on the rituals was so exact and complete, that it was written either by someone who was a scholar of ancient Druid practices or someone who learned about the practices directly from someone who knew them first hand.”

  I asked Superior General de Navarro to explain the practices described in the report.

  “The report claimed that the Gray Fathers of Furness Abbey would abduct some unfortunate man every October. They would force the man into a metal cage, which was hung from a large tree. They would burn their victim alive over a fire of oak and mistletoe.” At this point Rose made the sign of the cross and closed her eyes as if she could force that image out of her head. She had seen the drawing in the USA Today of our murder site with our local priest in a similar cage. “They performed this perversion on the night of October 31 at midnight. After any especially difficult winter or in times of trouble, they performed a second human sacrifice in the winter, in gross violation of the Christmas season. In their winter rite, they would bind the victim with ropes to a large stone. They chanted in the old language as they dropped the bound sacrifice from a small boat into the frigid waters of Morecambe Bay. In the summer, the Gray Fathers were reported to travel up to Swinside Stone Circle where they would dance nude under the stars of the summer solstice and perform unnatural sexual acts. The written account gives specifics that should not have been known in the sixteenth century.’

  “And you believe this report was true?” I asked.

  “It explained details of costumes and sacrificial objects used in the rites that were not discovered by archaeologists until the twentieth century. The Gray Fathers’ connection with the Church is an embarrassment, and I would like you to keep it confidential if possible.”

  Chad made a mocking blessing sign with his right hand in imitation of the pope. I was getting a little pissed at his reaction since the Jesuit leader was trying to help. I made no commitment and asked, “How did the trail lead to Sedona, Arizona?”

  There was a pause, and Rose repeated the question in case de Navarro had not understood my Spanish. “But Lieutenant Damson, the trail did not lead anywhere. Father Sean was not able to find any trace of the cult of the Gray Fathers in England. He also found nothing in the forests of Poland. The trails were all dead ends. After all, the letter from Thomas Woodhouse was more than four hundred years old. He was in Sedona to fulfill the second part of the Holy Father’s assignment. Father Sean was there to understand why Christians would abandon their faith to pursue the earth religions.”

  I asked another blunt question. “Monsignor de Navarro, you received a series of e-mailed reports from Father Sean while he was here in Sedona. I’m hoping that something in those reports can help with our investigation. We only know the names of the reports but not their content: Report Fifteen, Wicca in Sedona, Red Rock-Secret Mountain, Druids, Natural Dyes and Rituals, and Grove of the Great Juniper. Please, tell me all the details of these reports and any other relevant reports that you can remember.”

  There was a rather long pause before the senior Jesuit responded. “My son, this is one of the most difficult moments in my service as a priest. I’m sorry. I can’t explain anything that was learned from three of these reports: the Red Rock-Secret Mountain, the Druids, and the Grove of the Great Juniper. I do know they are quite important to your investigation. I will pray for the Lord to give you wisdom. Monsignor Costilla told me that you are a Catholic, and that you would understand why I couldn’t help you. Father Sean learned the information in these reports during the sacrament of confession. He was bound by restrictions on sharing this information, as am I. Even to me, Father Sean provided no names from this distressing information. I am truly sorry.”

  I was stunned at this impasse. It would be easier to change stones into bread, than to change the mind of the world’s senior Jesuit about the confidentiality of confession. “Monsignor,” I said. “I do understand that you can’t break the seal of confession, but surely there are ways that you could help with the case short of violating your oath as a priest. There have been many deaths here in Arizona. There will be more if we don’t solve this case quickly. We have almost nothing useful yet.”

  “A young man came to Father Sean. He had been seduced by evil, and he wanted to break free of it. He wanted to save his immortal soul. I do know that Father Sean insisted that the man go to the authorities with his information. I will pray that he comes forward now. I can say no more.”

  “If more deaths result from your silence, can you live with that? Point us in the right direction at least. Tell me where to look for this man,” I said.

  “I will pray for guidance for myself and for you my son. I can say no more,” the Jesuit said.

  Monsignor de Navarro did explain many details from the regular series of numbered reports. He also explained that there were two covens of witches that Father Sean was investigating. The Sedona priest was attempting to get some of the witches to renounce their heresy and to return to the Church. Rose took extensive notes, but Father Sean hadn’t used names in reporting any of his information. The regular reports described many observations regarding the Sedona New Age community. He reported extensively on the type of personality that was attracted to these earth-centered religions.

  Nothing seemed to be a useful clue for the Druid cases. Druids were not even mentioned in any of Father Sean’s regular reports. The report on natural dyes did indicate that there was a place in Flagstaff to purchase them. I would need to check that out.

  I ended the conversation with the frustrating feeling that de Navarro could lead us to the Druid cult if he were free to
disclose the information. I heard a sharp snap. I looked up sheepishly at the broken phone receiver. I had been unaware that I was twisting the plastic object in frustration. Rose smiled and went to her work area to retrieve another phone handset from her desk drawer. I was the mature even-tempered chief detective in this office, and I was embarrassed that Chad had seen that expression of my irritation. This was my second broken handset this week. Chad had mostly kept quiet during the conversation with the superior general, but I could see that he was mad as hell. He did not want to accept that this was a dead end.

  “Mike, I know you’re a Catholic, but you can’t let Francisco Big Shot get away with this evasion. You let his title intimidate you. You should have pushed the guy a lot harder. He knows something, and it’s our job to force him to tell us. These are murders. We should have this big shot priest arrested until he tells what he knows,” Chad said. I’d never seen him this mad.

  “Cool down partner,” I said. “He’s a Spaniard living in Italy. We don’t have a chance in hell of compelling him to tell us anything. I think we might get a little help if we run some things by him. He may feel that he can tell us if we’re going in the right direction. If we find any strong leads about the source of his information, I’ll e-mail the Jesuit and ask for guidance.”

  Still looking surly, Chad said, “Mike, I guess, it’s time for us to start on the list. I’m going to see what I can learn about our charming friends the Woods.”