Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open

Instead he said, “Listen, Jay, you’ve done what you can, maybe you oughta just head back home tomorrow…”

I already planned to pick up with Sherwood again in the morning. Maybe Zorn knew about Charlie’s past and wanted to contact him through Evan. Not that I had any idea why.

“Charlie, there’s a possibility this is somehow tied into Evan.”

His eyes lit softly and he grinned, his ground-down teeth showing through his beard. “Now you’re sounding a little crazy, Jay. Really, you’ve done all that you can, guy. Just go on home…”

“I will. Maybe in another day. But there could be something here, Charlie.”

He was about to say something else, then simply nodded, his eyes kind of runny and sullen and his energy trailing off.

I said I’d talk to him tomorrow. His urgency to find the truth about his son suddenly seemed to have dimmed. I thought it could be just another swing of his mood-the finality of what had taken place sinking in.

I went back and called room service and ordered an onion soup and a burger. I thought maybe I should call Kathy, but this Houvnanian thing was suddenly gnawing at me.

I was intrigued. I was pretty much just a kid back then, and I didn’t know much more about him than I’d read.

I took out my computer and went online.

G oogle came back with thousands of hits on the man and the horrifying events that happened on September 7, 1973. It was dizzying. I opened a link from Wikipedia.

Russell Houvnanian was thirty-four when his name became synonymous across the globe with senseless, gruesome murder.

He had been a drifter, the son of a Tennessee minister. He was kicked out of the army for psychological issues, then drifted across the country doing odd jobs, spent time in prison in Oregon for car theft and sexual battery. He moved down the coast to Northern California and took up on this commune at what became known as the Riorden Ranch, a wooded, undeveloped tract of sixty acres not far from Big Sur, which was owned by Sandy Riorden, the ex-wife of Santa Barbara real estate developer Paul Riorden.

The attached photo was the familiar one of Houvnanian being led away from the courthouse by a California marshal, leering and wild-eyed. He didn’t look radically different from the image I had carried in my mind. Houvnanian was mysterious and charismatic, and he had a mesmerizing effect on rootless youths, the article read, “who flocked to Big Sur back then, attracted by drugs, music, free love, and a sense of connection, contained in his chimerical vision of evangelical prophecy and influenced by hallucinogenic drugs and rock music.” He soon attracted a following. Paralleling himself with Jesus, he called his commune Gethsemane.

In Houvnanian’s brain, heaven was a false paradise and had been invaded by the devil, and the earthly battle to retake it was being played out in California. The true gospel was conveyed through rock bands like the Byrds, the Doors, and the Beatles. The name he gave his brand of prophecy and social revolution-End of Days-described the battle between the forces of Truth, represented by the spiritual young, his flock, who sought out love and beauty, and the temporal agents of corruption and the devil: wealthy property owners and their local proxies, the police, who were trying to push his followers out of their “heavenly garden.”

Houvnanian ultimately attracted a following of about sixty on the ranch, mostly runaway teens, musical wannabes, religious dreamers, all attracted to the environment he’d created of open sex, rock music, and LSD.

Eventually, this celebration of beauty and music gave way to a cult of fear and paranoia. In August 1973, he convinced his followers that a series of brushfires near the ranch were the work of Satan’s agents trying to force them out. Some of his threats of reprisal and a few minor acts of vandalism had attracted the attention of the local police, and the Riorden clan tried to force Sandy Riorden, herself a sometime follower, to shut down the commune.

On the night of September 7, 1973, Houvnanian and four “family” members broke into Paul Riorden’s Santa Barbara mountain estate, interrupting a dinner party, and ritualistically murdered him and five of his guests. They tied them up and forced them to watch as each was ultimately stabbed repeatedly or shot, the last victim, according to the police, being Cici Riorden, Paul’s new, young wife, and left cryptic symbols carved into their victims’ bodies.

Conjuring the image of the gaunt, chillingly reserved cohort Charlie had brought up to my father’s house that day sent a tremor down my spine.

That had been him!

The bloody murders, I went on to read, convinced Houvnanian’s followers that the final chapter of the conflict between good and evil had now begun. After sleeping in their van, they went to the home of George and Sally Forniciari, another wealthy Santa Barbara couple who had rebuffed Houvnanian in an earlier attempt to purchase the ranch, and murdered them in a similar fashion.

That night they had driven back to Big Sur and rounded up his clan to leave for Arizona when police surrounded the ranch, led by tips from Riorden’s sister, and arrested Houvnanian and several of his clan.

In all, Houvnanian and four of his followers, Telford Richards, Sarah Strasser, Nolan Pierce, and Carla Jean Blue, were convicted of nine counts of premeditated murder and sentenced to consecutive life sentences in California prisons.

Three others were convicted of aiding and abetting their actions and were currently serving thirty-five-year terms. One, John Redding, hung himself in his cell in 1978. Another, Alexandra Feuer, was released for medical reasons in 1998 and died shortly after from pancreatic cancer.

The third, Susan Jane Pollack, the daughter of a Wall Street executive, was set to be released in May 2010.

My eyes opened wide. That was four months ago.

Anticipation wound through me as I went back to Google and searched the links, finding the headline I was looking for: SUSAN POLLACK, HOUVNANIAN ACCOMPLICE, RELEASED FROM PRISON.

It was from the San Francisco Examiner and was dated February 10 of this year.

I found a photo of a mousy-looking middle-aged woman being escorted from the California Women’s Institution in Frontera by her lawyer. Susan Pollack didn’t look like a threat to anyone these days. She looked more like a librarian or accountant, her hair cut unflatteringly short, her smile wan and resigned. She looked exhausted and her words sounded repentant. In a brief statement, she said she regretted the role she played in the horrible events of thirty-five years ago, that she renounced her past associations and was looking forward to her new chapter in life.

“I was a lost and highly impressionable young girl,” Pollack said, “and, though I take all responsibility for my actions, I was easily manipulated and was under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. For more than thirty years I’ve regretted the unbearable pain I’ve caused. I fully renounce my past. I just want to live quietly and alone and go on to the next stage of my life.”

The article did not say where she was planning on living.

I closed my laptop and tried to think if there was any possibility, other than the remotest of coincidences, that Evan’s death could be linked to this killer. To Russell Houvnanian.

Charlie’s friend.

Could it somehow have been tied to Susan Pollack’s release from prison? Could Zorn have been trying to contact Evan? Maybe for information about her? Or to possibly warn him?

Or warn Charlie?

I heard my wife’s persistent complaint, how I always managed to get drawn in. This time I couldn’t even disagree with her.

My brain throbbed with the memory of how I’d once been in the same room with this gruesome murderer. Houvnanian.