2 Whitey Warnke: The Satan Seller pp. 1-8

We begin our long journey. A couple of reminders for those of you who missed last week: the first is that I’m entirely aware that Mike Warnke is making most of this story up, there will be no need to remind me of that in the comments. The second thing is that for the most part I’m going to take the story he’s telling here at face value. This is because conspiracy books like this rarely hold up against themselves. This blog has covered 8 conspiracy books over several years and several different blog sites (the wordpress.com link is the oldest) and through that I can say one of two things happens: either the conspiracy begins unraveling due to the author’s incompetence (as in the case of Nesta Webster’s book that we just finished) or the conspiracy just descends into absurdity (Kaysing’s We Never Went to the Moon is a good example of that). The final note is that all page numbers are from the pdf not the book itself. I am using this version found at the internet archive.

Preamble over: let’s jump in.

Normally I would skip the acknowledgments, because there isn’t usually anything there however two names stick out: Pastor Tim LaHaye who is one of the co-authors of the depressingly successful “Left Behind” series. The other name is Bob Larson who doesn’t get the honorific “Pastor” for some reason. Larson is going to be a pivotal figure in the Satanic Panic as he attempts to debate “Satanists” which really amount to debating famous Goths during the 80s. Larson is a big figure in evangelical circles still. I wonder how much coaching Warnke received from him or was it vice versa.

Foreword

 “As deep as I got into occult practices and Satan worship, I never understood the inner reasons for people involved in occultism.”

That’s a bold statement to lead off the book: the thing I was doing I have no reason for. Why was Mike Warnke in the Occult? He can’t really say. That’s going to get really interesting the deeper we get into his story.

He tells us almost immediately that there are deeper reasons beyond the unlimited drugs, sex, and affluence—I’m holding out hope that we eventually circle back to this reasoning; but I’ve been burned by this before.

His revelation was that a person is like a triangle with three different needs: physical, mental, and spiritual. If a person is lacking in any of these three, they are not a total person. This kind of “observation” is cliché. Plato had the tri-partite soul, Freud had three parts of the mind, and somewhere along the way religious people adopted the “spiritual” need for humans. As an atheist, I don’t buy this. I’d replace it with emotional need if I was forced to pick.

This leads us to an important note as we go forward: I’m not going to nitpick all of the religious stuff. That would bog us down too much. That being said, I have to call it when I see it, “A person who does not have Christ on his spiritual side is consciously or subconsciously undergoing a search for spiritual fulfillment.”

I’m highlighting this statement because it shows you what kind of mindset we are dealing with. Spiritual fulfillment doesn’t mean “spiritual” it means “Christian.” Are you Hindu, Buddhist, or Jewish? You’re not a full person because there’s no Jesus in your life. He warns about people seeking spiritual fulfillment in drugs or occultism as those people taking a huge risk, and I agree for the drugs part. So it’s a good thing no one actually does that. No one is tying one off in a gas station bathroom hoping to find spiritual fulfillment. There are plenty of reasons someone ends up there, but it’s never “I’m going to find god at the bottom of this pile of meth.”

Chapter 1

“…the story of Mike Warnke begins in 1958, with me huddled in the corner of the big kitchen in our house in Manchester, Tennessee.”

Do not shift between third and first person in the same sentence. Now, I’m not sure who is doing the writing right now, but they are trying way too hard already. Just begin the story.

The writer tells us that Warnke is a small boy. This takes place in 1958 putting Warnke at the age of 12, and he’s huddled in the room because his father had just died of a heart condition.

Warnke blames his stepmother for the death of his father. His father was 55 while his stepmother was 23 and keeping up with her killed him. He explains that his father was an alcoholic so I’m not entirely sure that she killed him, but rather the drinking. Warnke claims that she abused him with a dog leash whenever she could. Now that her husband was dead she was going back to slinging hash (the drug not breakfast food) to meet guys and get the fast money.

We learn a little more about Millie (the stepmother) and Whitey (his father). Millie was pregnant when she was 17 by her stepfather, according to the local gossip. Whitey and Millie were having sex before Warnke’s mother died from complications related to a car accident.

The real juicy bit is that Whitey was involved in some dirt. He drove a fancy car that was full of bullet holes and he carried around a tommy gun for protection. That was just Whitey whose upbringing on the East Side of Cleveland where he was “fixing prizefights and racketeering in the Unions.”

I really want to know what the authors think “racketeering in the unions” is because I have the sneaking suspicion that these are just words that they know from dime store crime novels. Racketeering requires a “racket” and just placing the word “union” next to it doesn’t do the necessary work.

What we are learning is that Warnke’s father was as gangster as they come. He worked at a truck fueling rigs; but on the side he was selling uppers to the drivers (which he calls “bennies”). Whitey also cheated on his wife frequently as Mike reports he overheard him yell, “You go to hell! If I want to run around with the cute little chicks, that’s my business.”

The more confusing part is the other side job Whitey Warnke had, “He also picked up cash by selling what he could salvage off of wrecked trucks. That was also the reason he was so friendly with the local sheriff, I guess. There was plenty of corruption in those days—just wasn’t quite as organized in Coffee County, Tennessee, as it got to be later.”

If I place some scrap metal on my curb, a guy like Whitey Warnke will show up in minutes to grab it. Warnke isn’t even pulling stuff from people’s curbs, he’s just stripping wrecked trucks for parts. I want to be clear about my problem: it’s not making money. My issue is why this gets Whitey in cahoots with the local sheriff. Maybe the sheriff is giving Whitey the heads up on wrecks but even then, the wrecked truck has to go somewhere. I just don’t see what corruption is.

So that’s our set up. Whitey is from an abusive home, two dead parents, and is going to live with his Christian aunts (his deceased mother’s sisters).