My Lack of Respect for Anton LaVey as a Person

picture and caption from The San Francisco Examiner November 28, 1989

I mentioned yesterday that my sense of Anton LaVey has changed. The most significant of these has been in the last two years while researching the various people who were instrumental to the early “Magic Circle” phase of his career and, frankly, finding things out about who LaVey was willing to consider friends that have made me dismiss him as a human being.

Dismissing him as a human does not invalidate the parasocial impact of the idea and image LaVey co-created with his admirers. Indeed, it has been far more interesting to see what people do with the fictional image of LaVey as a kind of “magic feather” towards their development than there is anything of interest in this dead Magus. But, my respect for and veneration of those acts by individuals does not mean I should hold my tongue on the realities of who LaVey was. Indeed, I have been drafting a “Death of the Magus” piece about dealing with the teachings of people who are “problematic” or worse.

I will be blunt. Anton LaVey spent his entire life, from 1958 until he died in 1997, in a questionable financial situation with Donald Werby. Werby was a significant real estate figure in San Francisco. Gus Russo alleges in Supermob (2008) that Werby was connected with the Chicago Mafia’s move into the city.  

Werby was indicted on 22 counts of pedophilic rape for involvement with a prostitution ring focused on runaway teenage girls addicted to crack. As a result, Werby pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Werby agreed to pay a $300,000 fine and was sentenced to three years probation. All the felony sex charges, with their potential for prison time, sex offender registration, civil commitment, etc., were quietly dropped. A nearly 600 page transcript of the Grand Jury hearings were publicly released going into the details of his actions.

The original charges were brought in 1988, with the Grand Jury phase in 1989. By 1990 Werby had paid his pittance and moved on. He would die in 2002.

Most people, if they know Werby’s name in relation to LaVey, know him for the purchase of the Black House in 1992. LaVey was well aware of Werby’s proclivities as his arrest, indictment, and payout were the subject of considerable media coverage, as demonstrated by a simple search of Newspapers.com. LaVey knew precisely who and what Werby was and was more than comfortable accepting his financial support until his death. If LaVey’s daughter Zeena’s account of her father in “Anton LaVey: Legend and Reality” is to be trusted, LaVey knew firsthand what Werby was allegedly capable of under LaVey’s own roof and did nothing for fear of losing access to financial support.

I have wrestled for a few years with this. My knowledge of Werby began with his name being dropped in both Church of Satan writings about LaVey and Dr. Aquino’s account of his experiences with the Church of Satan. In Dr. Aquino’s case, Werby’s position as one of LaVey’s “commissioned” or “underground” Priests of Mendes was a significant part, though not the totality, behind his repudiation of LaVey in 1975. For Dr. Aquino, this had to do with the ethics of the Priesthood and his sense that if someone was bringing something of note to the Church, there was no need for secrecy. The information about sexual predation by Werby was not then known.

My knowledge of Werby’s past came as a result of a friend who pointed me in the direction of a few interviews and statements by Nikolas Schreck on the topic of Anton LaVey and Donald Werby. Mr. Schreck had left breadcrumbs which I was compelled to follow. Having done so and having the stack of San Francisco Examiner stories to back it, I owe Mr. Schreck thanks. We may disagree on other things, but his forthright sensibility on this topic cannot be ignored.

Mr. Schreck’s most forthcoming discussion of Werby and the LaVey Household can be heard here.

For me today, I cannot avoid the complete lack of character, ethics, or basic human decency that LaVey’s continued association with Werby represents. Similarly, unlike many, I am uncomfortable writing about Anton LaVey in any positive way without being honest in situating his lack of human decency for my readers. That his failing were hypocritical to the creed he claimed to be following suggests to me, among other things, that those who had their Initiations begin by his Work and the Church of Satan were right to repudiate him and move on when they did.

I am, however, still quite aware of the deeply embedded ways the image of “Anton Szandor LaVey” is for many people. Long before social media, LaVey was capable of leveraging parasocial relationships especially in those adolescent readers who found his book during pivotal moments in their development. If you are one of those people, that image in your mind that has so important was always a thing of your own creation. Reclaim that image for yourself and leave the dead to the dead.