Re: Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Op
Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:48 am
7. THE DEATH OF GODO PAULERAS ANGER'S INFANT LUCIFER
RECRUITS FOR VITO AND CARlS DANCE TROUPE WEREN'T LIKELY HARD TO come by, given that, according to Miles, Vito operated "the first crash pad in LA, an open house to countless runaways where everyone was welcome for a night, particularly young women." By the mid-1960s, the group had expanded into a second communal location in addition to the basement studio at 303 Laurel Avenue: the ubiquitous Log Cabin. According to Jack Boulware, writing in Mojo, architect Robert Byrd and his son built a new guesthouse (aka 'the treehouse') on the property in the early 1960s, and the "following year, a communal family of weirdos moved into the cabin and treehouse, centered around two underground hipsters named Vito Paulekas and Carl Franzoni, organizers of freeform dance troupes at clubs along the Sunset Strip." By 1967, the dancers were splitting "their rent with staff from the hippie publication The Oracle. Retired journalist John Bilby recalls at least thirty-six people living and partying at the Log Cabin and treehouse, including the band Fraternity of Man. 'Tim Leary was definitely there, George Harrison and Ravi Shankar were there,' Bilby says."
For the record, Fraternity of Man was a one-hit-wonder band best known for the ever-popular novelty song Don't Bogart Me. Tim Leary was, in this writer's humble opinion, best known for being a painfully obvious CIA asset. And The Oracle was a San Francisco-based publication with intelligence ties that specialized in pitching psychedelic occultism to impressionable youth. Leary, it probably should be noted, also had a home of his own in Laurel Canyon.
According to Barry Miles, "Franzoni's commune ended in May 1968," as that was when The Oracle moved out and our old friend Frank Zappa moved in. The lead Mother "had visited Carl at the Log Cabin on a previous trip and realized it was perfect for his needs." And it was an easy move for Frank, since he was already living in Laurel Canyon at the home of Pamela Zarubica (aka Suzy Creamcheese) at 8404 Kirkwood Drive, where Zappa had met his new wife, Gail, and where Gail's old kindergarten pal, Jim Morrison, was known to occasionally pass the time. Ms. Zarubica/Creamcheese was yet another member of Vito's dance troupe.
As multiple sources remember it, Miles is mistaken in his contention that Franzoni's commune came to an end; Frank Zappa took over as ringmaster, to be sure, but Franzoni and all his cohorts stayed on. Carl had a room in the basement, where he was known to bowl in the middle of the night, usually naked and intoxicated. The doomed Christine Frka had a room down there as well, as did other future GTOs. Various other members of the dance troupe occupied other nooks and crannies in both the main house and the guesthouse/treehouse. Indeed, as Miles noted correctly, the freak dancers became so closely associated with the Mothers of Invention that "they got dubbed as 'the Mothers Auxiliary' and Carl Franzoni, in particular, was included in a lot of group photographs." Vito and Carl also received vocal credits on the band's debut album (as did none other than Bobby Beausoleil).
And that, in a nutshell, is the story of Vito and his freak dancers-or at least a sanitized version. Because there is, as it turns out, a very dark underbelly to this story. And much of it is centered around that angelic hippie child that the readers of Life magazine met in 1966, and who we now must sadly add to the Laurel Canyon Death List. For young Godo Paulekas, you see, never made it past the age of three. The specifics of the tragedy are difficult to determine, unfortunately, as there is little agreement in the various accounts of the event.
According to Barry Miles, "Vito and Szou's three-year-old son Godo had fallen through a trapdoor on the roof of the building and died." Michael Walker tells of a "two or three" year old Godo "fall[ing) to his death from a scaffold at the studio." An article in the San Francisco Weekly had it as "a five-year-old boy" who died when he "fell through a skylight." Super-groupie and former freak dancer Pamela Des Barres agreed with the skylight scenario, but not the age: "Vito's exquisite little puppet child, Godot, fell through a skylight during a wacky photo session on the roof and died at age three-and-a-half." Alban Pfisterer of the band Love recalled a much darker scenario: "[Vito) got married, had a baby, gave it acid, and it fell off the roof and died."
When Robert Carl Cohen digitally remastered his notorious Mondo Hollywood for DVD release, he added postscripts for all the famous and infamous people who were featured in his film. For "Godo" Paulekas, he inserted the following caption: "Died age two-victim of medical malpractice." Thus we appear to have a further muddying of the waters. So muddy in fact that in addition to there being various competing 'fell from some scaffolding/fell through a trapdoor/crashed through a skylight' accounts, there are also at least two medical malpractice stories!
Before reviewing those though, it would perhaps be instructive to examine the context in which this tragedy played out. We know, for example, that a musician and writer named Raphael told writer Michael Walker that he had been present one evening at Vito's place when Godo was brought out: "They passed that little boy around, naked, in a circle with their mouths. That was their thing about 'introducing him to sensuality."' We also know that Vito and Szou had a rather odd reaction to the death of their firstborn son and only child, as recounted by Des Barres: "I was beside myself with sorrow, but Vito and Szou insisted on continuing our plans for the evening. We went out dancing, and when people asked where little Godot was, Vito said, 'He died today.' It was weird, really weird."
Barry Miles, who was also close to the scene, had a similar recollection, though he attempted to put a more positive spin on the reaction of the parents: "Vito and Szou's three-year-old son Godo had fallen through a trapdoor on the roof of their building and died. That evening Vito, Szou and the gang went out as usual, dancing with an even fiercer intensity to assuage their grief." Godo died at 7:30 PM on December 23, 1966, some thirty-six hours before Christmas morning. On the side of reality that I live on, the death of a child at any time would deter most parents from going out and partying the night away-that it occurred virtually on the eve of Christmas makes Vito and Szou's actions that much more incomprehensible.
Adding to the weirdness factor is the full text of the quote from the San Francisco Weekly that I previously presented an edited version of: "[Kenneth Anger's] first candidate to play Lucifer, a five-year-old boy whose hippie parents had been fixtures on the Los Angeles counterculture scene, fell through a skylight to his death. By 1967, Anger had relocated to San Francisco and was searching for a new Lucifer." As some readers may be aware, he soon found his new Lucifer in the form of Mansonite and former Grass Roots guitarist Bobby Beausoleil.
And so it was that the soon-to-be convicted murderer replaced the cherubic hippie child as the face of Lucifer. But what was it, one wonders, that drew Anger's twisted eye to the young boy? Beausoleil has said that some of Anger's film projects were for private collectors: "every once in a while he'd do a little thing that wouldn't be for distribution./I Biographer Bill Landis has written that projects such as those led at one time to Anger being investigated by the police on suspicion that he had been producing snuff films.
Pamela Des Barres has shed further light on the dark edges of the freak troupe with this description of a scene that Vito had staged one evening in his studio: "two tenderly young girls were tonguing each other ... everyone was silently observing the scene as if it were part of their necessary training by the headmaster, Vito ... One of the girls on the four-poster was only twelve-years-old, and a few months later Vito was deported to Tahiti for this very situation, and many more just like it."
It was actually Haiti that Vito appears to have fled to, and then to Jamaica (which at the time had no extradition treaty with the United States), accompanied by his wife Szou and their new baby daughter Gruvi Nipples Paulekas, born on June 23, 1967. The couple would have several more offspring, each given an increasingly ridiculous name: Bp Paulekas, born on December 29, 1969; Sky Paulekas, born, bizarrely enough, on what would have been Godo's eighth birthday, December 1, 1971; and Phreekus Mageekus Paulekas, born on January 28, 1974, just a little more than a year before the couple divorced in March of 1975 in Northern California.
According to Miles, Vito's flight from justice occurred in December of 1968, though other accounts vary. Carl Franzoni, meanwhile, became embroiled in some unspecified legal troubles of his own and went into hiding, later resurfacing in Canada by some reports. At around that same time, Frank Zappa moved on to yet another location in Laurel Canyon, a high-security home on Woodrow Wilson Drive.
Also at around that same time, according to author Ed Sanders, the Manson Family came calling at the Log Cabin: "One former Manson family associate claims that a group of four to six family members lived on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the log cabin house once owned by cowboy- actor Tom Mix. They lived there for a few weeks, in late 1968, in a cave-like hollow in back of the residence." According to Franzoni, Manson also came calling at the Vito Clay Studio on Laurel Avenue: "Applebaum took over Vito's place when Vito vacated at Beverly and Laurel. So he inherited all the people that came after that... he was the beginning of the Manson clan. Manson came there because he had heard about Vito but Vito was gone."
It makes perfect sense, in retrospect, that Charles Manson and his Family came calling just as Vito fled the scene, and that a Mansonite replaced the freak child as the embodiment of Lucifer. For the truth, you see, is that in many significant ways, Charles Manson was little more than a younger version of Vito Paulekas. Consider, if you will, all of the following Mansonesque qualities that Paulekas (and to some extent, Franzoni) seemed to share:
• Vito considered himself to be a gifted artist and poet, as did our old friend Charlie Manson.
• Vito, according to Miles, "was something of a guru," as was, quite obviously, Chuck Manson.
• Vito surrounded himself with a flock of very young (often underage) women, as did Manson.
• Vito was considerably older than his followers, and so too was Charlie.
• When Vito addressed his flock, they listened with rapt attention as though they were being delivered the word of God, as was true with Manson as well.
• Carl Franzoni was known to wear a black cape and refer to himself as "Captain Fuck," while Manson was also partial to black capes and would at times declare himself to be "the God of Fuck."
• Vito is said to have had a virtually insatiable libido, as did, by numerous reports, Chuck Manson.
• Vito's flock adopted nicknames to aid in the depersonalization process, as did Charlie's.
• Vito's troupe included a Beverly Hills hairstylist named Sheldon Jaman, while Charlie's included a Beverly Hills hairpiece stylist named Charles Watson.
• Vito believed in introducing children to sexuality at a very young age, while in the Manson Family, as Sanders has noted, "Infant sexuality was encouraged."
• Vito apparently liked to stage live sex shows for his followers involving underage participants, which was also a specialty of Charles Milles Manson.
• Finally, Vito encouraged his followers to drug themselves while he himself largely abstained, thus enabling him to at all times maintain control, while Manson limited his own drug intake for the very same reason.
Franzoni and Manson were not, by the way, the only folks on the Laurel Canyon/Sunset Strip scene who developed a fondness for black capes in the latter half of the 1960s. As Michael Walker noted in Laurel Canyon, during that same period of time David Crosby had "taken to wearing an Oscar Wilde/Frank Lloyd Wright-ish cape wherever he went."
In unrelated news, Ed Sanders notes in his controversial The Family that, "Around March 10, 1968, a convoy of seven Process automobiles containing thirty people and fourteen Alsatian dogs journeyed toward Los Angeles." Vincent Bugliosi added, in his best-selling Helter Skelter, that in "1968 and 1969, the Process launched a major recruiting drive in the United States. They were in Los Angeles in May and June of 1968 and for at least several months in the fall of 1969."
As Gary Lachman wrote in Fortean Times in May 2000, the Process Church of the Final Judgement, often referred to as just "the Process," was "one of the most controversial cults of the Sixties." Formed in 1963 in London as an offshoot of Scientology, the group was the brainchild of Robert Moore, a former cavalry officer who would soon adopt the name Robert DeGrimston, and Mary Ann MacLean, the proprietor of an elite prostitution ring with ties to the UK's so-called Profumo Affair. According to various reports, MacLean was at one time married to famed pugilist and freemason Sugar Ray Robinson, who, as we will see in a later chapter, lived right around the corner from future Love frontman Arthur Lee during that time.
The group arrived in the States in 1968, establishing footholds in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans, New York and Boston. The organization soon began producing a magazine that, as Lachmann says, had an "editorial policy [that] favoured Hitler, Satan and gore." Singer/songwriter Marianne Faithfull, who appeared in an issue of the magazine, later distanced herself from the group, saying that "There was something almost like fascism about the Process." The cult's fascist mindset was amply illustrated by their choice of a symbol, which Lachman accurately describes as bearing "an uncanny resemblance to the Nazi swastika."
In The Family, Sanders describes the Process as a "death-worshiping church" composed of "hooded snuffoids" who were directly connected to the Manson murders. Maury Terry likewise fleshed out connections between the Process and New York's Son of Sam murders in his equally controversial The Ultimate Evil. Spokespersons for the cult, not surprisingly, vehemently denied any involvement in any such murderous activities. One thing is certain though: Processians were instantly recognizable on the streets of LA due to their curious habit of donning black capes wherever they went.
In other news, it appears as though Frank Zappa also displayed some of the same less-than-admirable qualities shared by Manson and Paulekas. As Des Barres observed, "Vito was just like Frank, he never got high either. They were both ringmasters who always wanted to be in control." And as Barry Miles noted in his Zappa biography, Frank's daughter Moon "recalls men with straggling beards, body odour and bad posture who crouched naked near her playthings ..." Also, the "Zappa children watched porn with their parents and were encouraged in their own sexuality as soon as they reached puberty. When they became teenagers, Gail insisted they shower with their overnight guests in order to conserve water." Apparently the Zappas were having a hard time paying their DWP bill.
By the early 1970s, Vito Paulekas had resurfaced up north in Cotati, California, with Carl Franzoni once again at his side. The two were, by all accounts, treated like rock stars in the funky little town, and they are to this day proudly and prominently featured on the city's official website. By some accounts, Vito even served as mayor of the town, with Franzoni assisting as his Director of Parks and Recreation. Paulekas also taught dance classes at Sonoma State College. Szou went to work for an attorney, leaving the hippie life behind.
Franzoni, meanwhile, turned up now and then on that early version of America's Got Talent known as The Gong Show (apparently as one of the 'Worm Dancers'). The Gong Show, of course, was the brainchild of Chuck Barris, who famously claimed that during the days when he appeared to be working as a mild-mannered game show producer, he was actually on the payroll of the CIA, and that while he was ostensibly serving as a chaperone to the couples who had won trips on The Dating Game, what he was really doing was carrying out assassinations. Possibly like that Harry Houdini guy, who we'll discuss in a later chapter.
Anyway, during the 1970s, the "cabin and treehouse scene," according to Jack Boulware, "grew creepy." Actually, it had always been pretty creepy; it likely just became a little more openly creepy. Eric Burden of the Animals moved in after Zappa vacated and the property continued to be communally occupied. In fact, it appears to have remained something of a commune throughout the 1970s, quite possibly right up until the time that it burned to the ground on October 31, 1981. Who paid the rent is anybody's guess-as is why such a prestigious property seems to have been made readily available to pretty much any "communal family of weirdos" who wanted to move in.
Vito Paulekas and Carl Franzoni appear to have remained in Northern California throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Vito married once again, for the fourth time, while he was in his sixties. Franzoni was still milling about the Santa Rosa area as of early 2013. In February of 2008, the aging freak, then reportedly seventy-four, rode along on a tour of 1960s hotspots offered by a local tour company and delighted the crowd by reenacting his distinctive dance style in front of Vito's former studio. The tour operator billed Franzoni as lithe King of the Freaks," a title formerly held by his mentor, Vito Paulekas. The original king, alas, had died in October of 1992. His memorial service was held, appropriately enough, on October 31, 1992-AII Hallows' Eve.
Returning now to the death of young Godo Paulekas, filmmaker Robert Carl Cohen, in an emailed defense of his medical malpractice claim, provided a detailed account of the incident-one that he said was told to him by Carl Franzoni on the evening of the tragedy and retold later by Vito himself: "Godo, two-and-a-half years of age at the time, was with his parents on the roof of 333 Laurel Ave. during a LA Free Press photo shoot. Two older children were holding his hands as they ran about. They led him onto a white-painted glass skylight, which collapsed. Godo fell through, sustaining a cut to his head and bruises. His parents took him to Hollywood Emergency Hospital, where the doctors stitched the cut on his head, and recommended he be taken to LA County General Hospital for observation overnight in case he'd sustained a concussion. A few hours later Vito received a phone call from LA County General that Godo had died. LA County DA [Evelle] Younger, convinced that Godo had been given drugs, ordered two separate autopsies by LA County Coroner Noguchi. The two autopsies both revealed that Godo had no drugs in his system, and that the cause of death had been strangulation due to the child's breathing his own vomit.
"Vito sued LA County for wrongful death due to medical malpractice. The charge was that, in contradiction to standard medical practice, Godo had been restrained by being strapped down on his back-something which is not normally done following a head injury (due to the possibility of the victim strangling on their own vomit). The reason this was done in Godo's case was probably because the child was offending the hospital staff by repeating some of the first words he'd learned, i.e: 'Fuck you!' The LA authorities offered Vito a $20,000 pre-trial settlement, which he refused. I suggested to Vito that, since the case would be tried by a jury of mostly conservative people, usually retired civil servants, he get his long hair cut short, shave his beard and goatee, and wear a business suit and tie. Vito declined changing his appearance. The jury ruled in favor of the hospital."
A member of the Paulekas family heard a much different account, this one also coming directly from Vito: "He [Vito] and Sue told me that Godo fell from the roof through the skylight, as often told, but died when, in the hospital, the District Attorney's office insisted on testing Godot for drugs to prove Vito was drugging his own child. The best way [to test] was with a spinal tap that killed him because he was so young. That was his story to me and he elaborated about his screaming child being tied down in his presence for the spinal tap and then suddenly becoming lifeless."
It is perfectly obvious that both versions of events cannot possibly be true. In one version, Vito was present when Godo died, while in the other he received notification over the phone. One version of reality holds that the boy was tested for drugs after his death, while the other version claims that the drug test was what killed him. Godo was restrained in both versions of events, but in one it's so that he could be administered the spinal tap that killed him, while in the other it is the restraints that killed him-restraints utilized because for some reason he was yelling "fuck you!" at the hospital staff and no one knew of a nonviolent way to deal with an injured three-year-old!
If the medical malpractice story is true, then why did Vito tell more than one version of it? This is clearly not a situation where memories could have faded over time-no parent could confuse such particulars as if they actually watched their child die ... before, of course, donning their dancing shoes and heading out to the Whisky.
There are, to be sure, a number of questions raised by the malpractice scenario, particularly with Cohen's account. For one thing, as if the reaction of the parents was not already difficult to understand, we are now being asked to believe that they went out dancing immediately after Godo was essentially murdered. Also, why is it that no one else who was making the scene in those days seems to remember a malpractice trial? And why were kids being allowed to play unsupervised on a roof? And would a toddler who crashed through a skylight and then fell a considerable distance among shards of broken glass really sustain only a minor cut and a few bruises? And would a hospital really be so callous as to inform parents of the death of a child by telephone? And if Vito was so quick to file suit against the city, why didn't he also sue his landlord for allowing such a dangerous condition to exist?
As it turns out, Godo's LA County Certificate of Death provides some insight into his short life and curious death. Clearly indicated is that the coroner found the cause of death to be "shock" due to "hemorrhage into deep cervical and superior mediastinal areas." The death was deemed to be an "accident" that occurred when Godo "fell through skylight while playing." He did, though, die at Los Angeles General Hospital, at 7:30 PM, precisely five hours after the accident occurred at 2:30 PM (though the times seem oddly approximate).
The timeline offered up by the document certainly seems a bit odd. Despite the fact that Godo died on December 23, his autopsy was not completed until April 13, a delay of nearly four months. Was that delay caused by the fabled second autopsy? Even if that were the case, four months seems like an inordinately long time to hold up the release of the body for burial. To further add to the mystery, even after the body was released, it was almost another full month before it was buried, on May 9, 1967. Why did it take some four-and-a-half months to lay the child to rest?
The tragedy was reported not by the parents, but by a "Mr. Marvin Cahn, Attorney." After a child has suffered a serious accident, do parents with nothing to hide generally delay the arrival of help by calling an attorney and having him contact the proper authorities? It appears that there are, and probably always will be, unanswered questions surrounding the short life and curious death of the angelic hippie child who missed his big-screen debut as Lucifer.
I'll let a member of the Paulekas family provide the final words on the King of the Freaks. Asked by the author if he believed that Vito was a possible pedophile, he answered, "Probably. But I believe you have to go deeper into the libido and drives of so many rock stars and famous people who had an unhealthy relationship with sex and drugs. Any biography of the rockers of that time and probably any time just skirts [around] the reality that their greatest secret and shame includes the sex they had and have with very young girls and boys. Roman Polanski just got caught ... I love hearing from people who tell me Vito saved their soul or protected them from danger when they were young and at risk ... I am sure some became survivors and others fell deeper into the abyss. So it goes."
Indeed.
"Vito would come in every night with an entourage-mostly four or five really greatlooking girls. It's a weird parallel, but it was like a nonviolent Manson situation, a little cult."
-- Lou Adler, manager/producer of the Mamas and the Papas, co-organizer of the Monterey Pop Festival, investor inlay Sebring's hair salon, and business partner of mobster/club owner Elmer Valentine
"I have said for years that there are some similarities between Vito and Manson ... Vito was sort of like a pimp. He was welcome as a VIP with the emerging rock crowd because he always showed up with these free thinking fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls that would be happy to satisfy their needs."
-- A member of the Paulekas family, in e-mail correspondence with the author
RECRUITS FOR VITO AND CARlS DANCE TROUPE WEREN'T LIKELY HARD TO come by, given that, according to Miles, Vito operated "the first crash pad in LA, an open house to countless runaways where everyone was welcome for a night, particularly young women." By the mid-1960s, the group had expanded into a second communal location in addition to the basement studio at 303 Laurel Avenue: the ubiquitous Log Cabin. According to Jack Boulware, writing in Mojo, architect Robert Byrd and his son built a new guesthouse (aka 'the treehouse') on the property in the early 1960s, and the "following year, a communal family of weirdos moved into the cabin and treehouse, centered around two underground hipsters named Vito Paulekas and Carl Franzoni, organizers of freeform dance troupes at clubs along the Sunset Strip." By 1967, the dancers were splitting "their rent with staff from the hippie publication The Oracle. Retired journalist John Bilby recalls at least thirty-six people living and partying at the Log Cabin and treehouse, including the band Fraternity of Man. 'Tim Leary was definitely there, George Harrison and Ravi Shankar were there,' Bilby says."
For the record, Fraternity of Man was a one-hit-wonder band best known for the ever-popular novelty song Don't Bogart Me. Tim Leary was, in this writer's humble opinion, best known for being a painfully obvious CIA asset. And The Oracle was a San Francisco-based publication with intelligence ties that specialized in pitching psychedelic occultism to impressionable youth. Leary, it probably should be noted, also had a home of his own in Laurel Canyon.
According to Barry Miles, "Franzoni's commune ended in May 1968," as that was when The Oracle moved out and our old friend Frank Zappa moved in. The lead Mother "had visited Carl at the Log Cabin on a previous trip and realized it was perfect for his needs." And it was an easy move for Frank, since he was already living in Laurel Canyon at the home of Pamela Zarubica (aka Suzy Creamcheese) at 8404 Kirkwood Drive, where Zappa had met his new wife, Gail, and where Gail's old kindergarten pal, Jim Morrison, was known to occasionally pass the time. Ms. Zarubica/Creamcheese was yet another member of Vito's dance troupe.
As multiple sources remember it, Miles is mistaken in his contention that Franzoni's commune came to an end; Frank Zappa took over as ringmaster, to be sure, but Franzoni and all his cohorts stayed on. Carl had a room in the basement, where he was known to bowl in the middle of the night, usually naked and intoxicated. The doomed Christine Frka had a room down there as well, as did other future GTOs. Various other members of the dance troupe occupied other nooks and crannies in both the main house and the guesthouse/treehouse. Indeed, as Miles noted correctly, the freak dancers became so closely associated with the Mothers of Invention that "they got dubbed as 'the Mothers Auxiliary' and Carl Franzoni, in particular, was included in a lot of group photographs." Vito and Carl also received vocal credits on the band's debut album (as did none other than Bobby Beausoleil).
And that, in a nutshell, is the story of Vito and his freak dancers-or at least a sanitized version. Because there is, as it turns out, a very dark underbelly to this story. And much of it is centered around that angelic hippie child that the readers of Life magazine met in 1966, and who we now must sadly add to the Laurel Canyon Death List. For young Godo Paulekas, you see, never made it past the age of three. The specifics of the tragedy are difficult to determine, unfortunately, as there is little agreement in the various accounts of the event.
According to Barry Miles, "Vito and Szou's three-year-old son Godo had fallen through a trapdoor on the roof of the building and died." Michael Walker tells of a "two or three" year old Godo "fall[ing) to his death from a scaffold at the studio." An article in the San Francisco Weekly had it as "a five-year-old boy" who died when he "fell through a skylight." Super-groupie and former freak dancer Pamela Des Barres agreed with the skylight scenario, but not the age: "Vito's exquisite little puppet child, Godot, fell through a skylight during a wacky photo session on the roof and died at age three-and-a-half." Alban Pfisterer of the band Love recalled a much darker scenario: "[Vito) got married, had a baby, gave it acid, and it fell off the roof and died."
When Robert Carl Cohen digitally remastered his notorious Mondo Hollywood for DVD release, he added postscripts for all the famous and infamous people who were featured in his film. For "Godo" Paulekas, he inserted the following caption: "Died age two-victim of medical malpractice." Thus we appear to have a further muddying of the waters. So muddy in fact that in addition to there being various competing 'fell from some scaffolding/fell through a trapdoor/crashed through a skylight' accounts, there are also at least two medical malpractice stories!
Before reviewing those though, it would perhaps be instructive to examine the context in which this tragedy played out. We know, for example, that a musician and writer named Raphael told writer Michael Walker that he had been present one evening at Vito's place when Godo was brought out: "They passed that little boy around, naked, in a circle with their mouths. That was their thing about 'introducing him to sensuality."' We also know that Vito and Szou had a rather odd reaction to the death of their firstborn son and only child, as recounted by Des Barres: "I was beside myself with sorrow, but Vito and Szou insisted on continuing our plans for the evening. We went out dancing, and when people asked where little Godot was, Vito said, 'He died today.' It was weird, really weird."
Barry Miles, who was also close to the scene, had a similar recollection, though he attempted to put a more positive spin on the reaction of the parents: "Vito and Szou's three-year-old son Godo had fallen through a trapdoor on the roof of their building and died. That evening Vito, Szou and the gang went out as usual, dancing with an even fiercer intensity to assuage their grief." Godo died at 7:30 PM on December 23, 1966, some thirty-six hours before Christmas morning. On the side of reality that I live on, the death of a child at any time would deter most parents from going out and partying the night away-that it occurred virtually on the eve of Christmas makes Vito and Szou's actions that much more incomprehensible.
Adding to the weirdness factor is the full text of the quote from the San Francisco Weekly that I previously presented an edited version of: "[Kenneth Anger's] first candidate to play Lucifer, a five-year-old boy whose hippie parents had been fixtures on the Los Angeles counterculture scene, fell through a skylight to his death. By 1967, Anger had relocated to San Francisco and was searching for a new Lucifer." As some readers may be aware, he soon found his new Lucifer in the form of Mansonite and former Grass Roots guitarist Bobby Beausoleil.
And so it was that the soon-to-be convicted murderer replaced the cherubic hippie child as the face of Lucifer. But what was it, one wonders, that drew Anger's twisted eye to the young boy? Beausoleil has said that some of Anger's film projects were for private collectors: "every once in a while he'd do a little thing that wouldn't be for distribution./I Biographer Bill Landis has written that projects such as those led at one time to Anger being investigated by the police on suspicion that he had been producing snuff films.
Pamela Des Barres has shed further light on the dark edges of the freak troupe with this description of a scene that Vito had staged one evening in his studio: "two tenderly young girls were tonguing each other ... everyone was silently observing the scene as if it were part of their necessary training by the headmaster, Vito ... One of the girls on the four-poster was only twelve-years-old, and a few months later Vito was deported to Tahiti for this very situation, and many more just like it."
It was actually Haiti that Vito appears to have fled to, and then to Jamaica (which at the time had no extradition treaty with the United States), accompanied by his wife Szou and their new baby daughter Gruvi Nipples Paulekas, born on June 23, 1967. The couple would have several more offspring, each given an increasingly ridiculous name: Bp Paulekas, born on December 29, 1969; Sky Paulekas, born, bizarrely enough, on what would have been Godo's eighth birthday, December 1, 1971; and Phreekus Mageekus Paulekas, born on January 28, 1974, just a little more than a year before the couple divorced in March of 1975 in Northern California.
According to Miles, Vito's flight from justice occurred in December of 1968, though other accounts vary. Carl Franzoni, meanwhile, became embroiled in some unspecified legal troubles of his own and went into hiding, later resurfacing in Canada by some reports. At around that same time, Frank Zappa moved on to yet another location in Laurel Canyon, a high-security home on Woodrow Wilson Drive.
Also at around that same time, according to author Ed Sanders, the Manson Family came calling at the Log Cabin: "One former Manson family associate claims that a group of four to six family members lived on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the log cabin house once owned by cowboy- actor Tom Mix. They lived there for a few weeks, in late 1968, in a cave-like hollow in back of the residence." According to Franzoni, Manson also came calling at the Vito Clay Studio on Laurel Avenue: "Applebaum took over Vito's place when Vito vacated at Beverly and Laurel. So he inherited all the people that came after that... he was the beginning of the Manson clan. Manson came there because he had heard about Vito but Vito was gone."
It makes perfect sense, in retrospect, that Charles Manson and his Family came calling just as Vito fled the scene, and that a Mansonite replaced the freak child as the embodiment of Lucifer. For the truth, you see, is that in many significant ways, Charles Manson was little more than a younger version of Vito Paulekas. Consider, if you will, all of the following Mansonesque qualities that Paulekas (and to some extent, Franzoni) seemed to share:
• Vito considered himself to be a gifted artist and poet, as did our old friend Charlie Manson.
• Vito, according to Miles, "was something of a guru," as was, quite obviously, Chuck Manson.
• Vito surrounded himself with a flock of very young (often underage) women, as did Manson.
• Vito was considerably older than his followers, and so too was Charlie.
• When Vito addressed his flock, they listened with rapt attention as though they were being delivered the word of God, as was true with Manson as well.
• Carl Franzoni was known to wear a black cape and refer to himself as "Captain Fuck," while Manson was also partial to black capes and would at times declare himself to be "the God of Fuck."
• Vito is said to have had a virtually insatiable libido, as did, by numerous reports, Chuck Manson.
• Vito's flock adopted nicknames to aid in the depersonalization process, as did Charlie's.
• Vito's troupe included a Beverly Hills hairstylist named Sheldon Jaman, while Charlie's included a Beverly Hills hairpiece stylist named Charles Watson.
• Vito believed in introducing children to sexuality at a very young age, while in the Manson Family, as Sanders has noted, "Infant sexuality was encouraged."
• Vito apparently liked to stage live sex shows for his followers involving underage participants, which was also a specialty of Charles Milles Manson.
• Finally, Vito encouraged his followers to drug themselves while he himself largely abstained, thus enabling him to at all times maintain control, while Manson limited his own drug intake for the very same reason.
Franzoni and Manson were not, by the way, the only folks on the Laurel Canyon/Sunset Strip scene who developed a fondness for black capes in the latter half of the 1960s. As Michael Walker noted in Laurel Canyon, during that same period of time David Crosby had "taken to wearing an Oscar Wilde/Frank Lloyd Wright-ish cape wherever he went."
In unrelated news, Ed Sanders notes in his controversial The Family that, "Around March 10, 1968, a convoy of seven Process automobiles containing thirty people and fourteen Alsatian dogs journeyed toward Los Angeles." Vincent Bugliosi added, in his best-selling Helter Skelter, that in "1968 and 1969, the Process launched a major recruiting drive in the United States. They were in Los Angeles in May and June of 1968 and for at least several months in the fall of 1969."
As Gary Lachman wrote in Fortean Times in May 2000, the Process Church of the Final Judgement, often referred to as just "the Process," was "one of the most controversial cults of the Sixties." Formed in 1963 in London as an offshoot of Scientology, the group was the brainchild of Robert Moore, a former cavalry officer who would soon adopt the name Robert DeGrimston, and Mary Ann MacLean, the proprietor of an elite prostitution ring with ties to the UK's so-called Profumo Affair. According to various reports, MacLean was at one time married to famed pugilist and freemason Sugar Ray Robinson, who, as we will see in a later chapter, lived right around the corner from future Love frontman Arthur Lee during that time.
The group arrived in the States in 1968, establishing footholds in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans, New York and Boston. The organization soon began producing a magazine that, as Lachmann says, had an "editorial policy [that] favoured Hitler, Satan and gore." Singer/songwriter Marianne Faithfull, who appeared in an issue of the magazine, later distanced herself from the group, saying that "There was something almost like fascism about the Process." The cult's fascist mindset was amply illustrated by their choice of a symbol, which Lachman accurately describes as bearing "an uncanny resemblance to the Nazi swastika."
In The Family, Sanders describes the Process as a "death-worshiping church" composed of "hooded snuffoids" who were directly connected to the Manson murders. Maury Terry likewise fleshed out connections between the Process and New York's Son of Sam murders in his equally controversial The Ultimate Evil. Spokespersons for the cult, not surprisingly, vehemently denied any involvement in any such murderous activities. One thing is certain though: Processians were instantly recognizable on the streets of LA due to their curious habit of donning black capes wherever they went.
In other news, it appears as though Frank Zappa also displayed some of the same less-than-admirable qualities shared by Manson and Paulekas. As Des Barres observed, "Vito was just like Frank, he never got high either. They were both ringmasters who always wanted to be in control." And as Barry Miles noted in his Zappa biography, Frank's daughter Moon "recalls men with straggling beards, body odour and bad posture who crouched naked near her playthings ..." Also, the "Zappa children watched porn with their parents and were encouraged in their own sexuality as soon as they reached puberty. When they became teenagers, Gail insisted they shower with their overnight guests in order to conserve water." Apparently the Zappas were having a hard time paying their DWP bill.
By the early 1970s, Vito Paulekas had resurfaced up north in Cotati, California, with Carl Franzoni once again at his side. The two were, by all accounts, treated like rock stars in the funky little town, and they are to this day proudly and prominently featured on the city's official website. By some accounts, Vito even served as mayor of the town, with Franzoni assisting as his Director of Parks and Recreation. Paulekas also taught dance classes at Sonoma State College. Szou went to work for an attorney, leaving the hippie life behind.
Franzoni, meanwhile, turned up now and then on that early version of America's Got Talent known as The Gong Show (apparently as one of the 'Worm Dancers'). The Gong Show, of course, was the brainchild of Chuck Barris, who famously claimed that during the days when he appeared to be working as a mild-mannered game show producer, he was actually on the payroll of the CIA, and that while he was ostensibly serving as a chaperone to the couples who had won trips on The Dating Game, what he was really doing was carrying out assassinations. Possibly like that Harry Houdini guy, who we'll discuss in a later chapter.
Anyway, during the 1970s, the "cabin and treehouse scene," according to Jack Boulware, "grew creepy." Actually, it had always been pretty creepy; it likely just became a little more openly creepy. Eric Burden of the Animals moved in after Zappa vacated and the property continued to be communally occupied. In fact, it appears to have remained something of a commune throughout the 1970s, quite possibly right up until the time that it burned to the ground on October 31, 1981. Who paid the rent is anybody's guess-as is why such a prestigious property seems to have been made readily available to pretty much any "communal family of weirdos" who wanted to move in.
Vito Paulekas and Carl Franzoni appear to have remained in Northern California throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Vito married once again, for the fourth time, while he was in his sixties. Franzoni was still milling about the Santa Rosa area as of early 2013. In February of 2008, the aging freak, then reportedly seventy-four, rode along on a tour of 1960s hotspots offered by a local tour company and delighted the crowd by reenacting his distinctive dance style in front of Vito's former studio. The tour operator billed Franzoni as lithe King of the Freaks," a title formerly held by his mentor, Vito Paulekas. The original king, alas, had died in October of 1992. His memorial service was held, appropriately enough, on October 31, 1992-AII Hallows' Eve.
Returning now to the death of young Godo Paulekas, filmmaker Robert Carl Cohen, in an emailed defense of his medical malpractice claim, provided a detailed account of the incident-one that he said was told to him by Carl Franzoni on the evening of the tragedy and retold later by Vito himself: "Godo, two-and-a-half years of age at the time, was with his parents on the roof of 333 Laurel Ave. during a LA Free Press photo shoot. Two older children were holding his hands as they ran about. They led him onto a white-painted glass skylight, which collapsed. Godo fell through, sustaining a cut to his head and bruises. His parents took him to Hollywood Emergency Hospital, where the doctors stitched the cut on his head, and recommended he be taken to LA County General Hospital for observation overnight in case he'd sustained a concussion. A few hours later Vito received a phone call from LA County General that Godo had died. LA County DA [Evelle] Younger, convinced that Godo had been given drugs, ordered two separate autopsies by LA County Coroner Noguchi. The two autopsies both revealed that Godo had no drugs in his system, and that the cause of death had been strangulation due to the child's breathing his own vomit.
"Vito sued LA County for wrongful death due to medical malpractice. The charge was that, in contradiction to standard medical practice, Godo had been restrained by being strapped down on his back-something which is not normally done following a head injury (due to the possibility of the victim strangling on their own vomit). The reason this was done in Godo's case was probably because the child was offending the hospital staff by repeating some of the first words he'd learned, i.e: 'Fuck you!' The LA authorities offered Vito a $20,000 pre-trial settlement, which he refused. I suggested to Vito that, since the case would be tried by a jury of mostly conservative people, usually retired civil servants, he get his long hair cut short, shave his beard and goatee, and wear a business suit and tie. Vito declined changing his appearance. The jury ruled in favor of the hospital."
A member of the Paulekas family heard a much different account, this one also coming directly from Vito: "He [Vito] and Sue told me that Godo fell from the roof through the skylight, as often told, but died when, in the hospital, the District Attorney's office insisted on testing Godot for drugs to prove Vito was drugging his own child. The best way [to test] was with a spinal tap that killed him because he was so young. That was his story to me and he elaborated about his screaming child being tied down in his presence for the spinal tap and then suddenly becoming lifeless."
It is perfectly obvious that both versions of events cannot possibly be true. In one version, Vito was present when Godo died, while in the other he received notification over the phone. One version of reality holds that the boy was tested for drugs after his death, while the other version claims that the drug test was what killed him. Godo was restrained in both versions of events, but in one it's so that he could be administered the spinal tap that killed him, while in the other it is the restraints that killed him-restraints utilized because for some reason he was yelling "fuck you!" at the hospital staff and no one knew of a nonviolent way to deal with an injured three-year-old!
If the medical malpractice story is true, then why did Vito tell more than one version of it? This is clearly not a situation where memories could have faded over time-no parent could confuse such particulars as if they actually watched their child die ... before, of course, donning their dancing shoes and heading out to the Whisky.
There are, to be sure, a number of questions raised by the malpractice scenario, particularly with Cohen's account. For one thing, as if the reaction of the parents was not already difficult to understand, we are now being asked to believe that they went out dancing immediately after Godo was essentially murdered. Also, why is it that no one else who was making the scene in those days seems to remember a malpractice trial? And why were kids being allowed to play unsupervised on a roof? And would a toddler who crashed through a skylight and then fell a considerable distance among shards of broken glass really sustain only a minor cut and a few bruises? And would a hospital really be so callous as to inform parents of the death of a child by telephone? And if Vito was so quick to file suit against the city, why didn't he also sue his landlord for allowing such a dangerous condition to exist?
As it turns out, Godo's LA County Certificate of Death provides some insight into his short life and curious death. Clearly indicated is that the coroner found the cause of death to be "shock" due to "hemorrhage into deep cervical and superior mediastinal areas." The death was deemed to be an "accident" that occurred when Godo "fell through skylight while playing." He did, though, die at Los Angeles General Hospital, at 7:30 PM, precisely five hours after the accident occurred at 2:30 PM (though the times seem oddly approximate).
The timeline offered up by the document certainly seems a bit odd. Despite the fact that Godo died on December 23, his autopsy was not completed until April 13, a delay of nearly four months. Was that delay caused by the fabled second autopsy? Even if that were the case, four months seems like an inordinately long time to hold up the release of the body for burial. To further add to the mystery, even after the body was released, it was almost another full month before it was buried, on May 9, 1967. Why did it take some four-and-a-half months to lay the child to rest?
The tragedy was reported not by the parents, but by a "Mr. Marvin Cahn, Attorney." After a child has suffered a serious accident, do parents with nothing to hide generally delay the arrival of help by calling an attorney and having him contact the proper authorities? It appears that there are, and probably always will be, unanswered questions surrounding the short life and curious death of the angelic hippie child who missed his big-screen debut as Lucifer.
I'll let a member of the Paulekas family provide the final words on the King of the Freaks. Asked by the author if he believed that Vito was a possible pedophile, he answered, "Probably. But I believe you have to go deeper into the libido and drives of so many rock stars and famous people who had an unhealthy relationship with sex and drugs. Any biography of the rockers of that time and probably any time just skirts [around] the reality that their greatest secret and shame includes the sex they had and have with very young girls and boys. Roman Polanski just got caught ... I love hearing from people who tell me Vito saved their soul or protected them from danger when they were young and at risk ... I am sure some became survivors and others fell deeper into the abyss. So it goes."
Indeed.