Mayor resigns, reveals false identity he created to escape "satanists"
Centerton, Arkansas mayor Ken Williams resigned last week after, er, an injection of "truth serum" made him realize that he was, um, brainwashed by satanists in the 1970s. Apparently, Williams also remembered that he is actually Don LaRose, a former preacher in Indiana who was married with two kids. In 1980, he ran away and changed his identity to escape the unspecified satanists. Williams's secret came out when his former family tracked him down through a Web site that, stay with me here, Williams himself runs about LaRose's disappearance. From 4029tv.com:
"I had no choice. The choice was to watch my family killed before my eyes or go with these people, and I chose instead to run," Williams said. He wouldn't explain from who he was running, saying only that he had been brainwashed.Link to 4029tv.com, Link to Williams's site "Whatever Happened to Don LaRose"
"I had multiple shock treatments," Williams said. "It took five years to get my memory back..."
Williams said his current wife is standing by him and the two of them want to continue living in Centerton. He said he plans to continue living as Ken Williams.
Also, his resignation was signed with two names, he said.
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I'd kinda like to know the deal with this, but it'll probably take a while for the truth to be deciphered. Williams' site reads suspiciously like a book treatment. Snap judgment? Crazynuts.
>"I had multiple shock treatments," Williams said. "It took five years to get my memory back..."
Immediately suspect.
Memory is highly malleable; the proteins that constitute the basic building blocks of memory are rebuilt and altered every time memory is accessed. Moreover, memories can be altered, created, or destroyed in the process.
I very much doubt his story, especially since it took him so long to build it up.
If you look at the "Guest Book" section of his web site, you see he has been answering posts as Don LaRose for a long time.
Don't know if anyone has read Mary Roach's book Spook (fairly new) but this reminds me of the chapter on reincarnation.
I wonder if the same psychological phenomenon is at work here. If reincarnation can be summed up as a psychological phenomenon at all then it would mostly likely manifest it self differently in cultures where reincarnation is not widely excepted.
Centerton is a major crazy magnet. I live about 20 miles away in Fayetteville. They've had people shoot at each other at (or maybe after) city council meetings, forcible oustings of mayors, etc. More than the usual small town political shenannigans. But, THIS does qualify as the weirdest thing there. But, I imagine upon reading that story a lot of locals just shook their head and muttered, "Fucking Centerton."
Do we have to put up with the FakeSteveBallmer spam here, too? WIRED seems unwilling or unable to do anything about this guy. Can BoingBoing do something about this pathetic also-ran?
LaRose's blog now claims that his alleged abductors were only pretending to be satanists, and he laments how the press has distorted his story.
http://donlarose.com/3.html
'cause it's so much more credible now...
Schizophrenia is a terrible disease. I hope he gets proper treatment.
Charles Flitcraft, a successful Tacoma business owner and family man, had disappeared, following a near-death experience: a beam falling from a construction site had impacted the sidewalk mere inches from him. He could easily have been killed, but random chance dealt him nothing more than a scraped cheek.
Shaken, Flitcraft rethought his entire life, and decided to drop out of sight and roam the world as a free spirit. This lasted for a few years, but eventually he drifted back to Washington state, not far from Tacoma. He remarried, started a new business, and apparently never noticed that his “new” life strongly resembled his old one.
Flitcraft couldn’t change who he fundamentally was..
Someone alert Ted Gunderson: FBI and anyone's whore if you need a soundbyte about satanists.
Well damn, no one's done a good Satanic Panic bullshit story in years.
When in doubt, blame the "satanists", the wonderful, all-purpose scapegoats, because after all, even the liberal media won't defend Satan! AND if you simply claim there are no Satanists, well, you're only playing into Satan's hand, because the greatest trick Satan ever pulled, was convincing people he didn't exist (although I always thought his greatest trick was convincing people they were doing God's work when they were really doing Satan's work). And if you can't find evidence of Satanic rituals, well that just proves what powerful witches they are: they used "magick" to hide all the evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Dae_Wilson
When is Kevin Trudeau going to out himself as a Satanic worshiper abductee?
Matt Staggs, his posts are gone and he's banned. Sorry it took that long to do it.
"Unspecified satanists" = his former wife, kids, life? That's what most of us are running from.