Goodfellas Part VIII: Sons of Cohn

Welcome to the eighth and final installment in what has been a long, strange journey. It began in November of 2017 with a standalone piece I published examining the implications of Donald Trump's time as CEO of the gaming company known as Resorts International for a brief period in the 1980s. While often overlooked. Trump's tenure at Resorts was likely a pivotal moment in the Orange One's public life. It effectively announced his arrival as a real player in deep politics.

For you see, Resorts International was not just any gaming interest. It had its origins in an entity known as the Mary Carter Paint Company, widely believed to be a CIA front used to sponsor anti-Castro operations in Florida during the early 1960s. By the end of the decade it had morphed into Resorts and opened up the Bahama's Paradise Island to legalized gambling. It had an assortment of powerful and curious backers that included President Richard M. Nixon, billionaire Howard Hughes, "rogue" financiers Robert Vesco and William Mellon Hitchcock and the inevitable Lansky associates. It also owned its own private intelligence company outright. It was known as Intertel and was heavily staffed with various members of the US intelligence community.

Both the Syndicate and Intertel were still heavily involved in Resorts at the time of Trump's CEO-ship. The two represented the confluence of powers that ultimately brought Trump into the White House.

This present series began as an attempt to trace Trump's ties to organized crime prior to Resorts, with part one focusing on the various wise guys who helped establish Trump's real estate empire in the early days. But at the end of that installment I began to focus on a curious individual known as Edward "Biff" Halloran, an alleged Genovese family member who had ties to an even more curious criminal enterprise.

With the second and third installments I began to consider "The Company," a Kentucky-based drugs-and-arms trafficking network founded and heavily staffed by former US military and law enforcement personnel. "The Company" appears to have had links to both the US intelligence community as well as the administration of Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown. During the heyday of The Company Trump would befriend Brown and become a regular at Caesars Palace, a Las Vegas casino Brown was a shadow owner of and which laundered money for the Company. During this era Trump would also begin making annual pilgrimages to the Kentucky Derby, where Company personnel were providing security for various high society balls held in honor of the race. Other curious types, such as the Clinton family, were making the rounds there as well.

Donald Trump with John Y. Brown as Hillary Clinton looks on

As I was wrapping up part three I began to consider the man widely regarded as Trump's political mentor and the individual who initiated Trump into the criminal underworld: his infamous attorney Roy Cohn. A former legal aide of Joseph McCarthy, Cohn was a major power in New York City with heavy sway over the mob. But beyond this, he was a key member of an international far right network and a vicious foe of the Kennedy family.

With the fourth installment I began to take a closer look at Cohn, noting his close ties to CIA Director William Casey and Republican lobbyists Craig Spence and Robert Keith Gray, all of whom were alleged to be key figures in the Franklin scandal. Said scandal involved a nation wide pedophile ring based out of Nebraska that was linked to the Bush I White House and generally catered to the rich and powerful, almost surely for the purpose of blackmail.

But Franklin was not the only blackmail ring Cohn has been linked too. With part five I began to consider the curious career of Thomas Corbally, a member of both the OSS and Kroll Associates who frequently worked as a private detective for Cohn (and later Trump). Corbally crops up in numerous sex scandals over the years, the most recently involving Heidi Fleiss, the so-called Hollywood madam, during the early 1990s. As the fifth installment was coming to an end I began to consider a far more serious sex scandal Corbally was a central player in: the Profumo affair.

John Profumo was the UK Secretary of State for War and a Privy Council member. In 1961 he had an affair with Christine Keeler, who at the time was also sleeping with Yevgeni Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache and GRU asset then stationed in London. When news of the affair broke in 1963, it brought down the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan.

Christine Keeler

Keeler had been set up with both men by MI5 asset Stephen Ward, who was also reputedly used by the UK as a back channel to the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ward's patron was Lord William Astor III, a fellow MI5 man who belonged to one of the most powerful Anglo-American dynasties around. The British branch of the Astor family had played a key role in launching the Round Table movement that spawned the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

As was noted in part six, Ward and Astor appear to have been involved in a curious network of British aristocrats engaged in sex parties with sadomasochistic and occultic overtones. Indeed, Ward himself was said to have a keen interest in the occult and members of this social circle such as J. Paul Getty Jr. and William Mellon Hitchcock (also a later shareholder in Resorts International) would later become major backers of the 1960s counterculture.

Corbally was also a member of this network, sharing a flat with Hitchcock in London at the time. In 1962 he befriended Ward and began learning of the seedier side of the British Establishment while also throwing sex parties at his flat. Reportedly, he is who provided confirmation of the Profumo affair to Macmillan via US Ambassador to the UK David Bruce, another OSS man himself.

But Corbally appears to have had an even more ambitious agenda than gathering dirt on the British Tories. As was noted in part seven, his interest in Ward's ring appears to have derived from allegations that John F. Kennedy had had an affair with at least two of Ward's girls in New York City during 1961. Corbally would eventually befriend one of these girls and provide information on what he had learned to the FBI in 1963. His attorney during these interviews was Roy Cohn, who owed much of his career to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. At the time both men were at war with the Kennedy White House and Corbally's revelations were no doubt most welcome.

The Process, or Lack Therefore Of

But Profumo indicates even more ominous dealings on the part of Cohn and Corbally. As I've stated several times before, Ward's ring was practically full blown Eyes Wide Shut and one of his reputed girls would go on to form a most notorious cult. The woman's name was Mary Ann MacLean (later DeGrimston) and the cult was called the of the Process Church of the Final Judgment.

It should be noted that there is no concrete evidence that Mary Ann was one of Ward's girls. As was noted in part six, former Process member Timothy Wylie rejected this claim outright on the basis the Mary Ann would have boasted of it at some point. Apparently the woman was prone to embellishing her past.

Mary Ann MacLean

But keep in mind, Ward's ring brought down one government in the UK and may have done the same to the Kennedy White House had JFK lived long enough after the scandal broke. Ward himself died during the trail via suicide (which is widely disputed) and several other individuals with knowledge of the ring suffered similar fates. In other words, Mary Ann would have had good reason to keep mum on any work she did for Ward, especially during the 1960s when many figures linked to the ring were still politically active.

Still, evidence of this is rather slim and I've only included it here due to later connections Cohn and Thomas Corbally made in New York City and the surrounding area during the late 1970s. But before getting to that, I need to briefly address some of the longstanding claims surrounding the Process. 

Since the early 1970s there have been allegations, most notably in Ed Sanders' The Family, that the Process was involved with the Manson Family. Both entities were active in San Francisco during 1967 and it is quite possible Manson encountered the group then, as did numerous other individuals. Certainly, there are indication that Manson was influenced by Process literature of the time.

Then, in 1988, journalist Maury Terry published The Ultimate Evil, a highly controversial account that linked the Process not only to Manson, but also the Son of Sam killings and the Cotton Club murder. Later additions also included the Atlanta Child Murders. Terry effectively outlined a nation wide cult network involved not just in murder, but drug and sex trafficking as well.

I've examined Terry's claims at length before in my account of the Process (which can be found here), and while I find much of his raw data compelling, many of his conclusions are highly problematic. To my mind, Terry overemphasized the importance of the Process and other occultic organizations like the Church of Scientology and American branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) in this network while almost totally ignoring its ties to the American militia and neo-Nazi undergrounds and the broader Fascist International.

I already noted Manson's ties to the far right at length in a recent post in the wake of the cult leader's death last year. It is highly recommended the reader check out this post as we shall return to several personalities noted in it. As for the Son of Sam cult, Terry makes frequent references to the group's obsession with Nazism and includes in its membership Army veteran and bodybuilder Fred Cowan. A fanatical neo-Nazi, Cowan murdered several of his coworkers at his place of employment on February 14, 1977 in New Rochelle. Cowan was a member of the far right Georgia-based National States' Rights Party (NSRP).

Fred Cowan

Cowan is not the only right wing terrorist the NSRP has produced over the years. Another was Frazier Glenn Miller, another Army veteran and long time FBI informant linked to several murders over four decades. The most notable were the Greensboro massacre and the Overland Park Jewish Community Center shooting.

And then there's NSRP co-founder J.B. Stoner. In 1980 Stoner was convicted on the 1958 bombing of the Bethel Baptist Church (which played a major role in the early Civil Rights movement) and authorities believed that he may have been involved in dozens of other bombings. Stoner also served on the legal team of James Earl Ray, the alleged assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., and some suspect he played a more direct role in the King assassination as well. And Stoner and other NSRP members have also been credibly linked to the Atlanta Child Murders which, as noted above, Terry has also believed were connected to the Son of Sam cult.

Finally, at least one notable NSRP members appears in the Kennedy assassination, as I noted before here. Interestingly, it is noted in a Warren Commission document that Captain Robert K. Brown was also in contact with NSRP in the months leading up to the Kennedy assassination. As was noted in part two of this series, famed mercenary Brown would go on to found Soldier of Fortune magazine, which was used extensively by The Company to recruit veterans for their operations. Also noted in that installment were allegation that The Company had provided "devil worshipers" with paramilitary training at a massive training compound in Kentucky. But moving along.

Robert K. Brown

The NSRP was almost surely not the only far right organization the cult network Terry proposes was in contact with. Consider the cities Terry cites as major bases of operations for the network: Los Angeles, Houston and two North Dakota cities, Bismarck and Minot. In Terry's thesis, this network was a kind of shoot of the OTO and used occult organizations across the nation.

And while the OTO had a presence in Houston and certainly Los Angeles during this time, the Dakota cities weren't exactly known as New Age meccas, either then or now. There was, however, one especially militant right wing network active near three of the four cities. This would be the Posse Comitatus network, founded by former military intelligence officer Colonel William Potter Gale. As was noted before here, Gale had played a key role in founding what would become in the militia movement during the early 1960s in Southern California and the Posse was something of a prototype of said movement.

This network would eventually reach across the nation and find a particularly militant member in North Dakota: Gordon Kahl, another former military man who famously engaged in a large scale shootout with police in 1983 that made him a hero of the far right. Kahl had founded a Posse chapter in North Dakota during the 1970s and had been very active in promoting it in the area around Bismark and Minot up until the Medina shootout in 1983.

Gordon Kahl

I've been unable to determine if a Posse chapter was active in Houston during this time, but another right wing paramiltarist surely was: Louis Beam, yet another former military man who helped promote the concept of "leaderless resistance" in the militia movement. Beam was involved with a militia in the Houston area during the early 1980s, reportedly using Camp Puller near Houston to train potential members, which included children as young as 8.

Gale, Kahl and Beam were all proponents of Christian Identity "theology," as was J.B. Stoner. All of these individuals were in contact with one another through a nationwide network that has been linked to numerous instances of terrorism over the years, including the Oklahoma City bombing (noted before here).

Christian Identity theology is a thoroughly racist ideology that depicts nonwhites as demonic, subhuman beings. As was noted before here, there is some overlap between Identity theology and that of Charles Manson, another reported cog in this network. Christian Identity grew out of a concept known as British Israelism, which held that the British were descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. It is interesting to note that in the early twentieth century, in the UK, there was some overlap between the British Israelists and Christian Scientists, including founder Mary Baker Eddy. Reportedly, Christian Science would later play a key role in the Round Table movement (which was sometimes known as the Milner Group):

"... Christian Science became the religion of the Milner Group after Milner's death. Among others, Nancy Astor and Lord Lothian were ardent supporters of the new belief. Christian Science was part of the atmosphere of Cliveden."

(The Anglo-American Establishment, Carroll Quigley, pg. 70)

The so-called "Cliveden Set," named after the Astor family estate, was an offshoot of the Round Table movement that fought for appeasement with Nazi Germany in the years leading up to World War II. Nancy Astor was the mother of Lord Astor while the Lothain family would later turn up in far right wing pursuits (noted before here). Clivden would later become the site of various sex parties, with Stephen Ward renting a cottage there during the peak of his influence (as was noted in part six). Reportedly Ward and Nancy Astor became quite friendly with one another during this time. But moving along.

Cliveden

Naturally, Maury Terry was totally oblivious to these connections and seemingly so are virtually every other researcher that delved into these murky waters. I can't speak for the rest of the pack, but in Terry's case I feel quite certain that there's a reason he's never chosen to pursue this angle. More on that in a moment.

There's one other point I would also like to make before moving on to the next section as well: the presence of military veterans in this network. Many of the most notorious members of these far right paramilitary organizations were veterans, as were many of the members of The Company. And so were many reputed members of the Son of Sam cult. Beyond Cowan, there was David Berkowitz himself, John Carr (the reported leader of Berkowitz's coven and a some time resident of Minot) and William Mentzer. And these are just the alleged members.

Certainly, it would seem like there is a lot of overlap among these supposedly unconnected networks...

Cohn and Son of Sam

As far as Roy Cohn goes, there has been one noteworthy individual to link the infamous attorney to the Son of Sam cult: David Berkowitz. The allegations come via Maury Terry, so they certainly should be taken with a grain of salt, but are interesting nonetheless.

"According to Berkowitz, the sex and drug soirees were held at upscale private residences in Westchester, Manhattan, Connecticut and Long Island's Hamptons. His telephone records, which documented calls to the Hamptons and to the Long Island summer homes of two Yonkers doctors, partially supported his statement. Further, two witnesses maintain that occasionally present at these parties were a Yonkers judge, at least two Westchester County politicians, a high-ranking New York State politician, a celebrated but later-murdered physician, a Nobel Prize-winning doctor, and two aides (one prominent) to then-mayor of New York City Abraham Beame.

"Berkowitz also revealed that he met Roy Cohn, the powerful and notorious attorney who once represented – besides numerous other 'high-society' clients – are dealer Andrew Crispo and the owners of the glamorous but scandal-ridden Studio 54 discotheque. 

" 'I was at a party at that big house he had in Greenwich [Connecticut],' Berkowitz said of Cohn, who died of AIDS in 1986. 'I didn't know him, but other people did, and that's how I went to a party there.' "

(The Ultimate Evil Maury Terry, pg. 534)

What then are we to make of these claims? Surprisingly, they are more plausible than they may initially seem.

For one, Terry had earlier alleged that these soirees featured underage prostitutes and as was noted in part six, Cohn was reputed to be involved in sex ring involving minors in New York City going back to the 1950s. Specifically, Cohn was said to keep a suite at the Plaza in Manhattan (one of the alleged locations of these parties) for such activities. Would it be a stretch for Cohn to carry on such activities at his Greenwich residence? Certainly his parties there were legendary, with Trump being a frequent guest by the early 1980s.

Cohn's former Greenwich residence

What's more, in addition to hosting sex parties, Westchester County was a the main base of operations for the alleged Son of Sam cult. And it just so happens that Biff Halloran, the Genovese family member who helped Bradley Bryant found The Company (noted in part two) was a resident of Westchester, owning a mansion in Pelham Manor. Halloran was also a client of Cohn and provided Trump with much of the concrete for his early building projects.

And then there's the matter of New York City mayor Abe Beame. Its totally plausible aides of Beame could have attended such parties, especially when they were held at Cohn's home, as Beame was very much a creature of the attorney. In fact, Beame largely owed his office to Cohn.

"The son of a Bronx judge, Cohn was reared in the clubhouse culture of the city, attending dinner parties as a teenager with Carmine DeSapio, Ed Flynn, and the other Democratic bosses who ruled New York. He had also met Abe Beame in his father's house, and over the years became an adviser to both Beame and new Brooklyn Democratic Chairman Meade Esposito. In fact, he played a pivotal role in 1973, when bridesmaid Beame, who was against city comptroller, finally won the mayoral election.

"It was Cohn who privately convinced the New York Times that Beame's leading opponent, Bronx Congressman Mario Biaggi, had taken the Fifth Amendment before a federal grand jury the year before. Cohn happened to know this because Biaggi had come to him for legal advice and told him that he'd refused to testify. When the Times published the charge against Biaggi, with the source cited as anonymous, Biaggi denied it, the testimony was eventually released, and Biaggi's candidacy was destroyed. The gambit made Roy Cohn a fixture in a Beame's government and Beame a trophy at Cohn's frequent parties.

(Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth, Wayne Barrett, pg. 82)

Abe Beame

Abe Beame was the embattled mayor of NYC during the Son of Sam killings. David Berkowitz was arrested in 1977, the year Beame was up for reelection. Beame's administration was riddled with corruption, having lead NYC into a major fiscal crisis. He was trailing badly at the polls when the murders began and would latch onto Sam in a desperate reelection bid.

"Concurrently, New York Mayor Abraham Beame was up for reelection and was trailing badly in the polls as the Sam case heated up. He almost closed a carnivorous gap in the wake of Berkowitz's arrest – with his highly visible portrayal as the man in charge whose police department just happened to end the reign of terror only a month before the primary. But despite his phoenixlike rise from the ashes, Beame narrowly lost that election and was out of office several months later.

"To state the obvious: new mayors initiate high-level changes in large police departments. Thus, many in power had a vested interest in a timely, uncomplicated resolution of the Son of Sam case. But the evidence reveals more than that. It also shows that events were manipulated behind the scenes by a handful of influential individuals who, although not directly involved in the shootings themselves, were compromise because they had interacted with cult leaders at high-society drug parties that featured sex with children."

(The Ultimate Evil, Maury Terry, pg. xiii)

Terry is of course referring to the above-mentioned parties alleged thrown at times at Cohn's Greenwich home and which included two Beame aides. In other words, Beame likely had a vested interest in the police reaching a tidy conclusion, namely that the Son of Sam killings were the work of a lone nut. Many police officers chaffed at this assessment, but this was the view the Beame administration endorsed.

Let us call this the "Phase One" story concerning the Son of Sam killings, with apologies to Peter Dale Scott. As Beame's chief patron, Roy Cohn would have been well placed to influence the "Phase One" story.

However, Cohn also would have been in an excellent position to craft the "Phase Two" story, namely the one embraced by Terry and his followers: that the Son of Sam killings were the result of cult comprised of demented former hippies and acolytes of the Process, the OTO and other such organizations.

And how would Cohn have done this, you may ask. Well, consider Terry's employer at the time the Son of Sam killings begun:

"The New York Post, a recent acquisition of Australian publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch, was heavily involved in coverage of the Son of Sam case. At times, it was guilty of sensationalism, but so were the rest of the media. The Post was losing money when Murdoch took the reins, and he immediately laid claim to the .44-caliber investigation, engaging the Daily News, particularly, in a battle of headlines as the probe continued. It was said in New York that Murdoch 'hung his head on Son of Sam.' 

"Two weeks after Berkowitz arrest, I sat in the office of Peter Michelmore, the Post metropolitan editor, and elicited his interest in the subject of John Wheaties Carr and the Carr illustration studio. The Post was headquartered at 210 South Street, near the Seaport, not far from the Brooklyn Bridge. Its city room reflected the paper's financial struggles, with antiquated typewriters and general disarray in evidence.

"Murdoch had imported a number of Australian writers and editors to work at the Post; people he knew well from his overseas operations. Michelmore, a distinguished-looking, gray-haired man of about fifty, was one of those. 

" 'I think this John Carr thing is good stuff,' he said, after I explained what I'd discovered. Michelmore summoned columnist Steve Dunleavy, another Australian, and assigned him to work with me to develop the story... "

(The Ultimate Evil, Maury Terry, pg. 144) 

Steve Dunleavy

Dunleavy would go on to become one of the leader reporters in the TV tabloid show A Current Affair. He served as the basis for the serial killer-glorifying journalist Wayne Gale in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. Dunleavy was a longtime favorite of Murdoch and it should come as little surprise that he is the one who first put Terry into contact with Berkowitz via a prison informant. This was at time when Terry alleges many police officers didn't have access to Berkowitz. But Dunleavy did and he was more than happy to help Terry establish a dialogue.

As noted above, John Carr was an Air Force veteran alleged to have been involved in the Son of Sam cult. Thus, it would seem Terry was already closing in on his cult hypothesis at this point and Murdoch's paper was more than happy to give him the contacts needed to eventually write what became The Ultimate Evil.

As was noted in part three of this series, Cohn and Murdoch were very close, with Cohn introducing the Australian press magnet to various high ranking officials in the Reagan administration during the early 1980s. Cohn played a key role in Murdoch's rise in other words and here is Murdoch helping lay the foundation of the "Phase Two" story concerning the Son of Sam murders.

Ruppert Murdoch is to the center while Cohn is at the right

Clearly, Cohn would have been in position to influence Terry's investigation and as such, it should hardly come as surprise that the Process, the OTO and the Church of Scientology were all linked to the murders while organizations such as the National States' Rights Party and the broader Christian Identity/militia network were almost entirely ignored. This no doubt would have gotten too close to Cohn's sinister circle of associates.

Before moving along, there is one other interesting indirect connection to the Son of Sam case Cohn had. The Post's chief rival in covering the Son of Sam case was the New York Daily News. During the killing spree Berkowitz allegedly sent Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin the infamous "Hello from the gutters..." letter that the newspaper later published in its entirety. The letter sparked hundreds of calls to the NYC police offering leads that were largely baseless. It is generally felt that the publication of this letter hurt the investigation and Breslin and the Daily News received a lot of criticism in the aftermath.

As was noted in part seven of this series, the Daily News was the newspaper that had linked Thomas Corbally to the Profumo scandal in 1963. After Roy Cohn threatened the paper with a six million dollar lawsuit, it promptly dropped the issue. What's more, there appears to have been no love lost between Breslin and Cohn. As such, this research can't help but wonder if the Son of Sam letter to Breslin and the controversy it stirred was another attack on the Daily News by Cohn.

Enter Corbally

As should come as little surprise to those of you who have been following this series, former OSS man, private detective-to-the-stars and blackmail specialist extraordinaire Thomas Corbally was also knee deep in this scene. But before getting to that, a bit needs to be said about another individual Terry linked to the Son of Sam cult. This would be showbiz promoter Roy Radin, who made a considerable fortune off of packing vaudeville shows and oldies music tours to various police unions across the northeast in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

Radin owned a home in the Southhampton area of New York known as Ocean Castle. As noted above, the Hamptons were one location for the sex parties Cohn was linked too and Berkowitz (via Terry) alleged that Radin's mansion was another such location. Radin and the mansion had made headlines in 1980 when actress Melonie Haller alleged that she had been beaten and rapped there. Radin claimed that it was consensual and the story largely died down by the end of the year.

Ocean Castle

Radin would once again make headlines in 1983, this time for his murder. The promoter had become obsessed with breaking into Hollywood and had established a working relationship with legendary producer Robert Evans, who helped shepherd such movies to the screen as the Syndicate-glorifying The Godfather and Chinatown, a WWII area film noir concerning a private detective investigating a wealthy California man who is revealed to be involved in pedophilia and incest.

Oh, and Chinatown was also directed by convicted pedophile Roman Polanski, whose wife Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson family. Elsewhere, Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola would go on to direct The Cotton Club, the film Evans would ultimately make with Radin's money. All of this begs the question of just how familiar Evans was with this network and how long the relationship had existed. 

Certainly Cohn and Corbally would have found more than a few elements of these films autobiographical and that likely wasn't by accident. As was noted in part five of this series, Evans was a key figure in the Hollywood-based prostitute ring Heidi Fleiss operated. In point of fact, Evans was something of a boyfriend to Fleiss and reportedly Fleiss had met Corbally via Evans. This was during the early 1990s and it would seem that Evans and Corbally had known one another for some time prior to this. Its quite possible their relationship stretched back to The Cotton Club project and even further back, if The Godfather and Chinatown are any indication.

Robert Evans

At the time The Cotton Club project began to heat up Evans was down on his luck and Radin appeared to have crucial financial support available. Another figure offering financial assistance was Karen Greenberger, who had cut her teeth selling cocaine in the Miami area a few years early. At the time she had married a key figure in the Medellin cartel which, as was noted in the second installment, had been supplying The Company with cocaine by the early 1980s. And in both cases, the contacts within the Medellin cartel were individuals linked to the Nazi-worshiping Carlos Lehder. More on Lehder's ties to the far right can be found here. 

This is not the only connection between The Company and Radin's murder either. Greenberger was close to fashion designer Leslie DeKeyser, frequently visiting him in Las Vegas, a city The Company was highly active in (noted in part three). In Sinister Forces Book III, Peter Levenda also notes that one of the Kentucky Derby figures allegedly involved with The Company was also close to DeKeyser. What's more Phyllis George, a former Miss America winner who was married to Robert Evans from 1977 to 1978, was the wife of John Y. Brown during the heyday of The Company. 

And then there was one of Radin's murderers, William Mentzer. Terry alleged that Mentzer was also involved with the Son of Sam cult, dubbing him "Manson II." He linked Mentzer to murder of Arlis Perry, a young woman for Minot, North Dakota who was brutally murdered at Stanford University in 1974 (as was noted in the prior installment, Stanford took over Clivden in 1968). At the time of Radin's murder, Mentzer was working for a security firm employed by pornographer Larry Flynt, another reputed Kentucky Derby regular. Previously Flynt had been using former OSS man and infamous arms trafficker Mitchell WerBell III for security. As was noted in part two of this series, WerBell likely had some type of working relationship with The Company prior to his death. Its also interesting to note Mentzer's security firm was also linked to WerBell's death, as was noted before here. 

As you can see, this whole network is rather incestuous and there even more direct links. For you see, Thomas Corbally was involved with the scene around Ocean Castle during the 1970s. The journalist who broke the Melonie Haller allegations in 1980, one Anthony Haden-Guest, has gone on record to note that Corbally was his source, among other things. Writing on The Daily Beast in 2014, Haden-Guest noted:

"In my piece I referred to the man who opened up a whole party world in the Hamptons for me only as ‘The Roman Senator,’ this being because he had kind of that look and because there was something of Roman decadence about the scene of which he was effectively the Godfather.

"Well, ‘the Roman Senator’ died ten years ago and his name was Tom Corbally. He was a terrific fellow, described in his obituary in the Guardian as a man who 'played significant roles in scandals and big-business battles on both sides of the Atlantic for forty years,' and in the London Times as 'a businessman and New York socialite cloaked in mystery and involved in international intrigue' who 'had friendships with Hollywood stars, business leaders and such international luminaries as Mother Teresa, Sir Jimmy Goldsmith of Britain and King Hussein of Jordan.' 

"The Hamptons world into which Corbally opened the door was small but intense, a clubby, pink and green trousered version of bondage, whippings and what have you, where—I quote myself—'sufferers from tennis elbow were likely to get a knowing look, or a coarse allusion to "thrasher’s arm" ' and where 'it seemed there was no shortage of lovelies longing to slip out of their Halstons into something uncomfortable.'

"I was shown photographs of shackled babes and a cute couple wincing as they were spattered with drippings from a lit candle.

"Corbally also showed me a collection of gizmos inventively put together from leather, glimmery metal, and rubber tubing...

"Why had Corbally been so ready to share? It turned out he was none too keen on some of the fresh faces horning in.

"The whole scene was supposed to be fun and games, he had said. But amateurs wouldn’t necessarily know where to draw those fine lines. 'You’ll do something wrong and you’ll end up in the headlines,' he had told them. He added that he had never accepted an invitation from Roy Radin." 

Thomas Corbally

Let this all sink in for a moment, especially the part about Corbally effectively being the "Godfather" of this whole scene. Also consider the similarities between these sex parties and the ones Corbally was involved in the UK over a decade earlier. Both were characterized by extreme sadomasochism, involved the wealthy and various VIPs and both were reputed to use minors at times. 

To this researcher's mind this lends a lot of credence to the allegations that Cohn was also involved in the scene. Corbally was Cohn's dog's boy and he was likely gathering blackmail material for his longtime attorney just as he had in the UK.  

This also provides a rather clear link between The Company and Radin's murder: Roy Cohn himself. Cohn was the attorney for Biff Halloran, who helped Bradley Bryant set up The Company and provided them with clients. And here's Corbally, Cohn's long time private detective, sniffing around the activities at Radin's house.  

It should be noted that another link is President Donald Trump himself, who also worked with both Halloran and Corbally. As was noted in part three, Trump was also very active in the Kentucky Derby scene by the early 1980s as well. 

Of course, none of this conclusively proves that Cohn was involved with the Son of Sam killings, but it does lend credence to the allegations concerning Cohn made by David Berkowitz to Terry, who in turn did absolutely nothing to follow up on these claims. But clearly Berkowitz was aware of this scene, which had only been hinted at occasionally to the general public, such as when Corbally leaked the Haller incident. This, along with Radin's eventual murder were probably a result of Radin's increasing instability. By all accounts, the drugs were bleeding him dry while also making him more and more on a loose canon. I suspect the Haller leak was a warning, and after he failed to pull his act together while The Cotton Club was going into production, he was eliminated.

Conclusions

For years Roy Cohn appears to have been a key intermediary between Overworld figures such as Hoover, Aristotle Onassiss and Trump on the one hand and on the other with underworld forces such as the Syndicate and The Company. But beyond this, Cohn was also a key key player in what appears to be a sex ring catering to extreme tastes (i.e. sadomasochism, pedophilia, etc) with both a national and an international scope.

I've compared the Profumo affair at times to Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, but the New York-based ring of Roy Radin, Thomas Corbally and likely Cohn himself appears to be a more apt comparison. In point of fact, Kubrick may even have partly based the film on insider knowledge he had of this ring. Eyes was nominally based on a novella called Traumnovelle by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler and Kubrick remained fairly faithful to its plot line.

One of the major points of departure, however, was the location: while Traumnovelle is set in Vienna, Kubrick relocated the film to New York City and the surrounding area. The infamous sex party depicted in the film takes place at an isolated country mansion outside of the city, and features several other elements present in the Stephen Ward and Radin circles, including masks and S & M. What's more, it is reputed that Ward's girls also worked out of New York City in the early 1960s, potentially servicing JFK, among others. This researcher suspects that Kubrick was well aware of this history and picked the New York setting with it in mind.

But beyond the sex rings, there's the even more ominous connection between Cohn and the alleged Son of Sam cult. While superficially this may seem incredible, it must be put into context.

Cohn was a part of a  broader international far right network I have dubbed the Fascist International. Up until the late 1980s, the key organizations representing this network were the American Security Council (in the US, noted at length before here), Le Cercle (Europe, noted at length here) and the World Anti-Communist League (WACL, the international coordinating body, noted at length here). As was noted in part three, Cohn was a member of Western Goals Foundation, a part of the US-based American Security Council network.

As was noted before here and here, both the WACL and Le Cercle were closely linked to Operations Condor and Gladio, effectively international terror campaigns carried out by the Fascist International with support from Western governments throughout the second half the twentieth century. And as was noted in those pieces, these networks frequently dealt in pedophile rings as well. And there was often an occult flavor --as was noted before here and here, the Propaganda Due Masonic lodge and followers of philosopher and occultist Julius Evola were used extensively in Gladio.

Julius Evola

If partners in Le Cercle and the WACL were engaged in such activities, is it such a stretch that their American counterparts would do the same?

And who would be better placed than Roy Cohn, who appears to have spent decades operating various honeytraps and who was well connected with a host of brutal killers?

And this dear reader cuts to the heart of why the Establishment is so terrified of Trump. Trump and many of his key backers such as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone are all proteges of Cohn. What's more, there are indication that they have carried on Cohn's work. Just consider Stone. As was noted before here, Stone appears to have been the one who brought down New York governor Eliot Spitzer after linking him to a prostitution ring and he was almost surely one of the individual who outed the NXIVM cult as well.

Ah, NXIVM --a cult that appears to have specialized in honeytrapping VIPs. Certainly it bares some similarities to how the alleged Son of Sam cult was used in New York state in terms of the sex parties. The killings, not so much.

But that may only be a matter of time. As Trump becomes more embattled, it is likely only a matter of time before these militia and Christian Identity networks from which the Son of Sam cult almost surely grew out of are activated. And if this happens, we are in for some interesting times indeed.

And with that I shall sign off for now. Until next time dear reader, stay tuned.