Biography of Sister Vajirā (Hannelore Wolf)

by Hellmuth Hecker

14.10.1928 Hamburg – 7.12.1991 Maschen

In an upper class neighbourhood in Hamburg a wife lived in well to do conditions. She had two sons and no concerns. However, somehow she sought for a deeper meaning and came across Schopenhauer while reading. Then a wandering preacher of a Christian sect appeared in Hamburg who appealed to her religious feelings and she followed him. Soon she got a child from him: Hannelore Wolf. Although the sect worshipped the child as the God-sent heir to the master, he himself abandoned mother and child without giving any financial support. They had to live in St. Pauli in a damp cellar. The government child inspector, on the reason of neglect, gave the child to foster parents. Her foster father Bading was an employee at the department of finances in Hamburg. Hannelore grew up in this family together with two adopted sisters. After finishing school she followed a course in technical design. In the meantime, her physical father had turned to politics and had ended up in a mental home before the war. Her physical mother suffered a similar fate and died in the early 1950s.

Hannelore was looking for religious meanings. In early summer 1949 she noticed a poster that announced a four part introductory course to the teachings of the Buddha. It was held by Paul Debes. Thus she went to the university’s main lecture theatre where the talks were given on 23.6.1949. After the first talk she hesitated to go again, but nevertheless did so.

The talk was especially agreeable to her. I wrote to my friend Fritz Schäfer in Itzehoe on 25.6.1949: “It was great. It was dead silent in the hall and nobody left (same as during talk No. 1). The spiritual contact was remarkably close. Although nothing new was really said, I was completely taken.”

Hannelore was so much impressed that she listened to the next talks, came to the seminary group of Debes, and took part in his first “weeks of investigation” in an Adults’ Education College in the Lüneburger Heide area on 6-27.8.1949. I noticed her there. On her belt she wore a medallion with the inscription “In tempestate securitas.” She told me that the summary of the Buddha’s teaching was: “To increase good, decrease evil, avoid staying on.” The next year she only participated during 3 days of the 3 weeks study course of the second “weeks of investigation”. There she said that she wanted to become a nun in Ceylon. She remarked: “All of you like it too much around here.”

During both courses of “weeks of investigation” she had become friendly with Mrs. Erika v.d. Osten (PhD). … She suggested to Hannelore to become a private teacher for her son and daughter. Thus Hannelore moved to their place in Sept. 1950, and lived quite happily with the family. When Mrs. v.d. Osten’s husband returned from internment as a prisoner of war, the family moved back to Hannover. Hannelore returned to Hamburg and worked as a technical designer again. She also joined the circle of Debes-friends there.

She wrote to me in London on 12.4.1953, where I did some studies in order to prepare legislative on Army Service Refusal: “All of you are lovely and terribly worldly people. Always hanging out in the world without ever finding satisfaction.” After returning from London, I met her frequently at Dhamma talks. In autumn 1953 she founded, together with two female friends from the Debes group and me, a Dhamma discussion group … Hannelore played an influential role in the Buddhist circles and tried to deflate tensions.

In June 1954 the Sinhalese monk Ven. Nārada suddenly turned up in Hamburg. Hannelore took the opportunity trying to get a chance to go to Ceylon as a nun. Debes had tried in vain to find such an opportunity through sister Upalavanna. At the instigations of Ven. Nārada “Hamburg Buddha Mandala” was founded, out of which the Buddhist Society of Hamburg evolved on 9.10.1954. Ven. Nārada gave Pali names to many Buddhists and Hannelore, called Hanna, became Vajirā. The founding of the society and Hanna’s ambitions caused a lot of unrest. My brother in law, Wolfgang Seel, also a Buddhist and later working as a psychologist, who had good character knowledge, was of the opinion that it was much to early for Hanna to go to Ceylon and to isolate herself completely from her cultural background. It would not be good for her.

After much turmoil she finally got a chance to go to Ceylon. In 1955 the Vihāra Mahā Devi Hermitage at Biyagāma near Colombo was to be opened, where Buddhist nuns (dasa sila upāsikā = ten precept female followers) lived. Through the mediation of Ven. Nārada and Mrs. Salgado, the leader of a Buddhist women society supporting the Sangha, she could go there. After I had vouched for any possible costs of a return journey, she got her visa and departed on 1.4.1955. from Genoa by the ship called “Asia”. I brought her on board and she said: “Now I go away to meet the real life, and you return, hopefully in order to get fed up with the world.”

On board she got to know the astronomer Dr. Winfried Petri, who later converted to Buddhism. He was on his way to Ceylon to watch a solar eclipse. Together with him she visited Ven. Nyānatiloka and Ven. Nyānaponika in Kandy as well as the Island Hermitage of Polgasduwa, about which she wrote:

“After I had seen this island, I can only say: If someone does not become a saint here, he will never become one, because he is not internally capable of doing so, as the external conditions are perfect. … On the whole island there are only 3 monks and an upāsaka. Solitude is difficult to bear.”

After she had moved from the house of Mrs. Salgado to Biyagāma on 6.5.1955 where at that time ten young Singhalese women lived as nuns, she also took on the 10 rules and was ordained as Sister Vajirā by Ven. Nārada on the full moon of July. About her life she wrote: “By the way, I live here as if in a fairy-tale. In my whole life I have not had it so good and beautiful as here… I can’t describe the peace entering my heart when I see a sunset, which is different every day… I am surprised how gentle I have become, in any case, with regards to judging others.” (1955)

To provide her with even greater quiet, generous supporters built a nice bungalow for her in the palm-tree forest of the monastery garden. However, before long her moods changed. She suffered internal lack and noticed that she could not possibly meditate all day long. At the turn of 1955/56 she wrote, that she had reached the end of her wits. She felt relief when the cars of her donors came up the driveway to the monastery and would bring some diversification. Finally, she became even physically ill.

The abbess, Sister Sudhammā, was also a [school] teacher in Colombo. Sister Vajirā found it non-ascetic when a nun was earning money and wrote a critical memorandum in English with her views about the defects of the nun’s life. She sent me the text and requested me to make cyclostyle copies of it so that she could distribute it. When I declined, she turned to Mrs. v. d. Osten, who made the copies of the text. After the polemic pamphlet had been sent out, Vajirā made herself many enemies. They took offence that the stranger, who was living on the alms food of the country, knew everything better. The nuns, for example, switched off the power supply to her kuti and turned a cold shoulder on her. When I got to hear about it, I approached Ven. Nyānaponika for help, who made an extra effort and went to her and mediated with a lot of difficulties, so that at least she could remain at Biyagāma, now only tolerated with Buddhist equanimity.

Taking on scholastic work offered itself as a way out of her frustration. Having learned English quickly, she then started with intensive Pali studies and soon started to translate texts and carried on a correspondence about Dhamma topics. On her request, I sent her a type writer.

She once visited Sister Upalavanna, but the two women from Hamburg did not get along with each other. Dr Petri, still a Catholic at the time, wrote to me in his report about his journey to Ceylon, having expressed his reverence for Ven. Nyānatiloka and Ven. Nyānaponika:

“With the German postulant Vajirā I could not escape the impression of a rigid and completely unfeminine ambition… It seems that she envisions the founding of a Buddhist nunnery for Europeans following the example of Nyānatiloka, of which she was to become the first abbess. … She categorically refused to participate in any communal religious activities-not even making exceptions for the sake of doing others a favour.”

One of the dāyakas of the monastery who also donated for her benefit and whom she respected a lot, was Dr. Ananda Nimalasuriya from Colombo. He owned land east of Galle, at Heenatigala near Talpe, in the dry zone, which offered healthier conditions than the coastal zone near Colombo. He got a nice bungalow, a small hermitage, built there, to which she moved in 1959. Young Sinhalese women venerated her very much there, and one lived temporarily with her as a disciple.

In September 1961 I had sent her the first edition of my Ethik des Buddha. She replied that especially the description of renunciation was not convincing enough, which was true. She also wrote that she was learning the Dhammapada by heart in Pali and had started with an English translation with the text newly arranged. She also had visited Ven. Nyanāloka on Polgasduwa, and complained about the oppressive climate. Wolfgang Seel had written to her in September 1961 and had criticised her a lot. She did not reply. In any case, correspondence with German Buddhists, I included, faded away in 1961. Only with Mrs. v.d. Osten she continued corresponding.

Around autumn of 1961 the English monk Ven. Ñānavīra Thera, who lived 40 km from her in a kuti in the jungle as a hermit, had sent both to me and to her, a text he had written, A Note on Paticca Samuppāda, wherein he criticized the extension over three-lives interpretation. Vajirā had briefly met him and his friend Ven. Nyānamoli at the Vajirārāma monastery in Colombo in 1955. About that she wrote this to Germany at the time:

“I was told that he tried to live in solitude in the mountains, because he is a great friend of meditation; however he had to return because he did not get enough to live on.”

In 1956 Ven. Ñānavīra had written an article called A Proof of Rebirth in the Buddha Jayanthi magazine, which was published in Colombo to commemorate the 2500th anniversary of Buddhism. Vajirā liked it so much that she translated it into German and sent it to Max Ladner in November 1956. He agreed to publish it in the magazine Einsicht. However, Ven. Ñānavīra did not agree with the translation and publication which in the end didn’t take place.

On 12.11.1961 she thanked Ven. Ñānavīra for sending the Note, “which could have been written for me,” [original quote in English] for a letter of 9.11.1961 and notified him that she would like to meet him on Polgasduwa, where he was staying for a few days, to talk about his text. On 18.11.1961 she arranged that her supporters bring her there by car early in the morning. A conversation which lasted for several hours took place on the island. Thereupon an intensive exchange of letters followed. She wrote sixteen more long letters, the last one on 25.1.1962. His letters she burned, for which she apologised: “That I burnt your letters and notes was the most dangerous act that I ever committed.” (Clearing the Path, p. 530.) [quote in English]

Years later Ven. Ñānavīra, who had sent her letters to a friend, wrote about her:
“Sister Vajirā is an extremely passionate and self-willed person, with strong emotions, and apparently, something of a visionary … she alternates between modes-one could almost say attacks-of emotional periods and of admirable clear-headedness … emotion for her is quite normal, as it is for nearly all women.” (op.cit. p. 386, letter of 24.8.1964) [this quote and the following letters are left in English in Dr. Hecker’s book]

To her last letter, of 25.1.1962, in which she assumed that he controlled the wind-element through breathing exercises, he answered dismissingly on 29.1.1962, saying that the wind-element rather controlled him for the last ten years and disturbed his digestion, so that he could not exercise mindful breathing in and out. This letter was left lying in her kuti for years, until it was discovered after his death.

In the meantime the following had happened. On 5.2.1962 Mrs. Salgado had written to Ven. Ñānavīra: “I have to tell you something very sad. Sister Vajirā has gone out of her head. Please do not answer any of her letters on the Dhamma. Some girls have stayed with her for the last few days and came and told Mrs. Nimalasuriya that she is very bad.”

Upon his letter of 7.2. Mrs. Salgado wrote on 12.2.:

“We went on the 6th and brought sister to Colombo. She ran away in the night from Mrs. Nimalasuriya’s house and was walking along the streets, several followed her and with great difficulty put her into a car. Dr. Nimalasuriya, Dr. Shelton Fernando and their wives along with me forced her into a car and took her to Sulamin Hospital at 2 a.m. … Now she is much better after the treatment; there also, twice she has jumped through the window and roamed about, but the nurse and attendants managed to bring her back. Now Sister Vajirā says that she wants to get into a saree and at times says that she wants to go back to Germany. We are now wondering what to do with her. By this same post I am writing to Rev. Nyānaponika also.”

On 24.2. the Sinhalese Siridhamma wrote to Ven. Ñānavīra, that they had sent rs. 200-300 worth of clothes for Vajirā:

“Although she was speaking of marriage at one stage, prior to her departure, she had said that she would go back to her foster parents and lead a quiet life (single).”

On 26.2. Mrs. Salgado wrote to Ven. Ñānavīra:

“Just a line to inform you that Sister Vajirā left for home on the 22nd. She had recovered but not perfectly normal. She was well enough to go by herself, without anyone else to look after her. The Embassy made arrangements for her trip … she gave up her nun’s life and became a lay woman. She said that she does not want to be a nun again…”

At around the same time, I got three letters from Ceylon: One from Ven. Nyānaponika in Kandy; one from Ven. Nārada in Colombo; and one from the German embassy there. In this way I was informed about the above developments. The embassy wrote that Ms. Wolf had to be repatriated due to her health situation. Her situation had stabilized to relatively normal, but a ship journey could not be taken into consideration, so that I had to transfer the vouched travel costs for the airplane to the attaché at the embassy. They put her on an airplane and telegraphed me the time of arrival at Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel. On the morning of 24.2.1962 she arrived. I waited for her in the arrival hall and brought her to the car of Paul Debes, who had also brought his daughter Monika along. The four of us drove to Hannover. The drive over the Elbe bridges was full of obstructions because there was work going on everywhere to repair the damage caused by the flood disaster of 17.2.. About her inner flood she only spoke hesitatingly. She had fallen in love with Ven. Ñānavīra and had had the feeling that he had come through the air (wind-element) to her in her kuti. On Sunday 5.3. I went to Hannover where she was staying with Erika v.d. Osten. There she spoke about some more things, part of them she told me directly; part of them I heard through Mrs. v.d. Osten.

On 7.4. she moved from Hannover to Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel, where a Buddhist nature path practitioner, Else Münster, was living in a suburban house together with her brother. They provided Hanna with a spacious loft room, where she was taken care of. I visited her several times there. She told me that she dreamt of Ñānavīra every night. Because I did not agree with the opinions about the Dhamma which she expressed, I wrote a dismissive letter to her beginning of June. Apparently that caused another crisis. She declared that Ven. Ñānavīra had disrobed, was in London already, and would become King of Ceylon and she the Queen. Yes, that he was already waiting for her in her old house at Heimhuderstrasse. Else Münster quickly decided to take a taxi and bring her there. There she changed her ideas.

While I was on holiday in the Tessin in June-July 1962 she wrote to me that had secretly left the Münster family without saying goodbye and had returned with her suitcase to her foster parents who put her up. That was the beginning of a return to normal. With a lot of effort the foster parents managed to convince her to take up her profession again. And thus she started to work for the textile machine factory Artos in Hamburg on 1.9.1962. Her foster mother died around that time.

End of 1963 I met her and we drove to Rohlfshagen because she wanted to visit Debes one more time, before he went off on his journey to meditate in Burma and Ceylon for more than a year. She had gotten addicted to smoking, had become fat and remarked that she regrettably was only a caricature of herself.

Since I did not hear from her for almost two years, I wanted to visit her in 1964 at her foster father’s. She was there, as she said later, but did not open the door. On 2.7.1965 I tried to visit again, met the foster father on the stairs and thus got in. She said that everything seemed to her so far away; she did no really recall whether we had addressed each other in an intimate and casual or in a distant and formal way [in German “du” or “Sie”, “you” or “you”]. The inner split could only be overcome very slowly; there were hard battles. She did not want to have anything to do with Buddhism, and she had thrown away all the issues of “Buddhistische Monatsblätter” [periodical of Buddhist Society Hamburg]. She did not want to visit Mrs. v.d. Osten, and in any case did not want to have anything to do with women. She maintained that she had not received a copy of Ven. Ñānavīra’s Notes on Dhamma which had been published in the meantime, but she still held him in high esteem. She smoked one cigarette after the other. What she would like to do was travelling and going out.

After he foster father had married a 26 year old woman, whom she did not get along with, she moved to a room in Maschen in 1968, closer to the company she worked for. In 1971 she got a little apartment there and in 1978 her company moved to Maschen, too. Her job was the best therapy for her. She had to get focussed, had to get along with her colleagues and was too tired at night to follow phantasies. Every year she went on a four weeks’ holiday in Bavaria. Once she even went to England. Until 1966 she only wore sarees. When her boss forbade her this, she sewed long dresses for herself, which resembled the Indian ones. Her sewing machine was the only “luxury” in her spartanically equipped apartment without television or telephone. She continued shaving her head and wore a wig. She dismissed requests from Buddhists to meet her. Debes visited her in Maschen one more time.

In 24.3.1986 Samanera Bodhesako had written to her from Ceylon to request permission to publish parts of her letters to Ven. Ñānavīra in the planned book Clearing the Path. She sent me this letter on 8.4. and asked me to inform the Samanero of her agreement, which I did on 11.4. and added that he could cite her as Sister Vajirā. On 20.3.1988 he wrote me that the book was done and sent out. Also that she, too, had received a copy. On 23.6. I answered him that I had read the book with great interest and asked him if he had received a confirmation from her. I did not get a reply to this letter, which also contained some questions and corrections. He had died suddenly in Nepal on 19.8.1988.

On 31.3.1984 Hanna lost her employment at the company for which she had been working for 22 years, because they were reducing personnel. As a compensation she got 32,000 DM [€16,361.35]. She had never had that much money at one time. She gave in to the temptation to drown the shock of being pensioned in alcohol. Then, however, her Buddhist insight did appeal again: should she wait until her money was used up and she would be forced to stop drinking by external causes? For the time being she reduced it. She radically stopped smoking in 1988.

On 14.2.1989 I went to Maschen and visited Hanna. Most important in the two and a half hours of conversation was her statement that she was still a Buddhist. She had not been in Hamburg since 1978, not even for the burial of her foster father who died in 1982, and who supported her financially until his end.

On the evening of 7.12.1991, she had breathing difficulties, opened the windows of her apartment a bit and sat down at her desk. There her heart failed and she was in another world. That’s how she was found two days later. She was buried in nearby Hittfeld.


Revised translation of:
© Hellmuth Hecker:
Lebensbilder Deutscher Buddhisten
Ein bio-bibliographisches Handbuch
Band II: Die Nachfolger
Konstanz, 1997
Section 119. pp. 374-386.
Translation © Path Press, 2008

Larry King, a man well-known to children

The first alarm went off on June 10, 1985, when the Washington County, Nebraska, Sheriffs Department contacted a Nebraska Department of Social Services (DSS) social worker handling the case of Sean*, Sally* and Steve McArthur*. The children were living in foster care with Jarrett and Barbara Webb of Fort Calhoun.

The social worker wrote up the call:

The Sheriff’s department phoned today and stated they have the McArthur children in their custody and they had picked them up from the Webb home due to child abuse complaint. Sean had welts and scratches over parts of his back which he said the Webbs had beat him with a railroad iron and belt. They also had picked up the Webbs’ son Joey*, age 16. Joey also complained of being beaten by his parents. … Sean said the Webbs have been beating [them] for quite some time and this is not the first time this has happened to them. They were afraid to say anything the other times.…

Jarrett Webb worked for the Omaha Public Power District and was a board member of the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union, headed by Lawrence E. King, Jr. His wife, Barbara, is Larry King’s cousin.

Foster child Sean McArthur and adopted son Joey Patterson* Webb were removed from the Webbs’ custody that month. Other of their foster and adopted children—there were as many as nine in the house at one time—tried to make their break, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs. In August, Joey’s sister Kimberly Patterson* Webb (age 14) and another brother, Michael*, ran away, but were returned to the Webbs. In November, Nelly Patterson* Webb, 16, fled to the home of her grandmother, Ruby Patterson*.

The Fremont office of DSS reported on the reasons, in a document dated December 18, 1985:

Our office and a Deputy interviewed Kimberly [who had obtained permission to visit Nelly at their grandmother’s] and Nelly separately and together. Both girls stated numerous times that they refuse to go back to the Webbs…. Both girls have stated they have received “whippings” and “beatings” from both Barbara and Jarrett at different times. These started in 1978, approximately eight months after they moved into the Webb home. The girls said they were hit with objects: an extension cord, a belt, a “black thing,” (rubber hose) and a “railroad prop” (a narrow piece of heavy black rubber approximately two feet long with several holes in each end). Before they were struck, they were made to remove their clothing. They were mainly struck on the back or on the behind, but occasionally on the head or face.

Social workers removed Nelly, whose full name was Cornelia M. Patterson* Webb, from the Webb home and placed her with foster parents Ron and Kathleen Sorenson in Blair, Nebraska. Soon after this move, she was interviewed at the Washington County Sheriff’s Office by State Patrol Investigator Jane F. Tooley. Tooley found out that the abuse was not limited to beatings.

Tooley wrote in her report, dated January 30, 1986:

She stated that she had been sexually abused…. Nelly stated that when she was approximately nine or ten years of age, that Jarrett Webb kissed her for a long time and that she pulled away because she couldn’t breathe and it was nasty. She stated that he was french kissing her and she stated that he was slobbering in her mouth…. Nelly stated again that when she was approximately nine or ten years old that on one occasion Jarrett Webb made her take a nap with him in his bed and she stated “he played with all my body parts”… he touched her vagina and that he put his finger inside her vagina…. Nelly stated that when she was 10 and 11 years old, at night time when everyone was in bed, Jarrett Webb called her into his room a couple of times. When she didn’t come into the room he then told her to come in or he would whip her…. She stated that Jarrett Webb pulled the sheet down and pulled her on top of him.… She stated that she could feel his hair against her leg and knew that he didn’t have any underwear on.

When Nelly was 15, she told Tooley, Jarrett Webb punished her by ordering her to undress and lie on the bed, and then beating her with a rubber strap. Next, he made her lie on her back, put her legs in the air, and “he pressed himself between her legs,” and “started ‘humping her’…. He started beating her again with the strap…. He then started sucking on her breasts…. Nelly stated that she started crying and that Webb left.”

When, in February of 1986, the Department of Social Services requested immediate and emergency removal of Kendra* and Michael Webb from the Webb home, it listed eight separate concerns, among them:

2) Repeated allegations of physical abuse told to our Department by six children during separate interviews: a) of being struck for long periods of time while naked, by various objects, including a belt, rubber hose, and the “railroad prop”; b) denial of meals in the home

3) Sexual abuse of Nelly by Jarrett (supported by a polygraph test given to Nelly 1-30-86)

4) The intense concern by the children out of the Webb home for the physical and emotional well-being of the children remaining in the home….

DSS memos show that the Webbs aggressively sought to terminate their status as adoptive parents of Nelly and Kimberly, starting immediately after Nelly’s flight in November 1985. Under DSS rules, this would cut short an investigation into the mistreatment of the girls.

Reversing an adoption was not a routine procedure. “Regarding a relinquishment [of adopted children], the Department does not accept one easily,” noted one DSS social worker in her log of the Patterson Webb case. The Webbs insisted on it. Social workers recorded that in January 1986, Barbara Webb “was crying and carrying on,” inquired about “allegations” the girls were making, and wanted “to get relinquishment over with.”

Negotiations on behalf of the Webbs were conducted by attorney Gary Randall, whose brother Casey Randall was in the orbit of Larry King’s Franklin Credit Union; Nelly and Kimberly referred to Casey as “Larry’s maid.” Gary Randall arranged the relinquishment with the help of the very official who would have handled a criminal prosecution of the Webbs for child abuse, had there been one at that time—Washington County prosecutor Patrick Tripp.

In June 1986, in the face of a pattern of gross abuse of children by the Webbs, the state suspended their foster care license. Prosecutor Patrick Tripp again came to the rescue, deciding not to file sexual abuse charges or any other charges against Jarrett or Barbara Webb.

Instead of investigating her reports about the Webbs’ involvement in pornography and child prostitution, Tripp called Nelly Webb a liar—lie detector tests notwithstanding.

Tripp’s attitude was recorded by Julie Walters, a youth care worker called on to interview Nelly and Kimberly Patterson Webb in March 1986, because they had described abuse of boys residing at Boys Town, the large orphanage west of Omaha, where Walters was employed. In Walters’ fifty-page report on the child abuse described to her by the girls, Tripp figures as an adversary of the children:

When presented with Jane Tooley’s investigation, Pat Tripp, the Washington County prosecutor, said he didn’t believe Nelly and wanted her to take a polygraph test. At his request, Nelly was given four polygraph tests administered by a state trooper at the State Patrol office on Center St. in Omaha. The state trooper, after Nelly’s testing was completed, told Kathleen Sorenson he tried to “break Nelly down” but he was convinced she was telling the truth. He also told Nelly that she “passed” and that he believed her. Although the polygraph tests showed Nelly was not deceptive, Atty. Pat Tripp maintained he still didn’t believe what Nelly said. He said Nelly had fantasized those stories to the point that she believed they were true.

Tripp’s line, that child victims in Nebraska just invent abuses, and that therefore their complaints need not be seriously investigated, would be heard from one law enforcement agency after another, throughout the Franklin case, down to the perjury conviction of victim-witness Alisha Owen.

For Pat Tripp, there was a personal element in this case. He was a “good friend,” according to foster parents cited in a September 1989 report by legislative Franklin committee investigator Karen Ormiston, of two individuals named by Nelly and Kimberly Webb as involved with the Webbs—Fort Calhoun Superintendent of Schools Deward Finch and Fort Calhoun High School principal Kent Miller.

Between late 1985 and June 1986, thanks to Tripp, the Webbs escaped both a DSS investigation and possible criminal prosecution. Shortly after his refusal to file criminal charges in this case, Tripp quit as Washington County attorney. Today he is a prominent lawyer in Omaha.

Well-known as they were, Deward Finch and Kent Miller were small fry compared to another name that appeared in Walters’ report, the same person for whom Nelly and Kimberly said Casey Randall was the “maid”—Larry King. Walters wrote:

While the Webbs were away, the kids snooped through the house. They found: 1. pornographic video tapes in a bag under the Webbs’ bed (which the kids played on the VCR while Webbs were gone)—one tape specifically showing teenagers involved in sexual activity. Nelly and Kimberly knew from eavesdropping that Larry King supplied the Webbs with the video tapes; 2. pornographic magazines in the basement. Once when Sean was suspected of snooping around in the magazines he was not allowed to eat anything at the Webbs’ house for one week; 3. box of a lot of “romantic” novels in Mrs. Webb’s closet (i.e., mothers having sex with their sons); 4. stacks of 8” x 10” (approx.) “photo” envelopes marked “DO NOT BEND” in Mrs. Webb’s closet…; 5. photos of naked white women in Webbs’ bedroom dresser drawer.

Walters’ report also conveys the Webbs’ pricey lifestyle and the involvement of more people, including Larry King, in their activities:

Although at the 3/7/86 hearing, Mr. Webb stated that he earns $32,000/year, the Webbs’ home is furnished quite expensively ($2,000 paintings, crystal, silver, several VCRs, TVs, etc.). Also, Mrs. Webb wears a four carat diamond ring, a full-length fur coat, all custom-made dresses, expensive accessories. When they throw a party it includes caterers and limousines….

Larry [King] attends meetings/parties at the Omaha Girls’ Club… about every other week. He sometimes invited Joey Webb or Nelly by calling the Webbs and telling them to have one of the kids ready in so many minutes. Nelly said they had no choice about attending these functions. She said she attended only once about 2 years ago (age 14) but Joey attended regularly from the time he was in seventh grade (approx. age 12-13) until he left the Webbs’ home (age 16). When Nelly attended she and Larry King went alone in his limo. Other times, Mrs. King and Mr. and Mrs. Webb also attended.

Nelly described these functions as lasting about 45 minutes. She said she attended one held on a Fri. evening about 7: 00 p.m. There were about ten to fifteen older men present and about twenty-five young teenage girls there. The girls all signed a brown notebook Larry King had. Nelly has appeared very frightened and teared up when asked about [document illegible]….

Larry King either called or sent invitations to Nelly, Kimberly and Joey to attend parties at his home which are held about every other week. This began about two years ago. Again, Nelly said the kids had no choice about whether or not they would attend. They were driven over to King’s with Mr. and Mrs. Webb….

Nelly and Kimberly said they talked with boys at those parties who said they were from Boys’ Town…. From [Boys’ Town] year book photos, after examining ’83, ’84 & ’85 yearbooks, Kimberly said [four boys] had all attended some of Larry’s parties during the summers of ’84 and ’85. Nelly was afraid to mention any names but earlier had mentioned a “Brent” (whose picture she didn’t find in the yearbooks), who told her he had left Boys’ Town in ’84. Brent was “flown to another city somewhere” in Larry’s private plane to “work for someone else” after he and Larry had a disagreement….

At the parties there are usually about thirty adults present, male & females, more white than black guests because according to Larry “blacks get ignorant when they drink and tighter with their money and whites spend more money when they’re drunk.” Also present were some prostitutes (ages unknown but not teenagers) and [illegible] ages 16-22, and Nelly and Kimberly—about twenty kids total. If a man was interested in a young lady he held out a folded $50 or $100 bill in front of them and whispered something in their ear. Then they went upstairs or to some other area of the house. Nelly and Kimberly said the prostitutes told them they gave half of the money they got to Larry King. Larry also gave some of the boys at these parties new cars. The sexual activity was not always behind closed doors or confined to the upstairs rooms, and sometimes involved more than two people. Couples engaged in sexual activity were same-sex as well as opposite sex…. The money Joey told Nelly and Kimberly he made “working for Larry” the Webbs took from him supposedly to keep for him….

The girls talked about Larry King’s power to command underage youth to do his bidding:

Larry claims to donate money to Boys’ Town and be on the Board of Directors at Girls Club. Nelly said Larry has gotten Boys’ Town boys and other boys to his home by asking them to do some yard work. If Larry asks the young man to do something and he refuses, Larry might hit him. Nelly said Larry “has a bad temper.” Larry also tells the young men they’ll get hurt.

Julie Walters’ write-up contains the most explosive account by the Patterson Webb girls, which marked the pornography and prostitution network they were caught up in as a scandal of national scope. What they told was so awful, that it screamed for immediate investigation. In the course of attempts by law enforcement personnel and, later on, news media to belittle the children’s testimony, however, this particular item from Nelly’s account would serve the opposite purpose: How can anything she says be believed, the line went, if she says this? The passage in Julie Walters’ handwritten report reads as follows:

Nelly also accompanied Mr. and Mrs. King and [their son] Prince on trips to Chicago, N.Y. and Washington, D.C., beginning when she was 15 years old. She missed twenty-two days of school almost totally due to these trips. Nelly was taken along on the pretense of being Prince’s babysitter. Last year she met V.P. George Bush and saw him again at one of the parties Larry gave while on a Washington, D.C. trip. At some of the parties there are just men (as was the case at the party George Bush attended)—older men and younger men in their early twenties. Nelly said she has seen sodomy committed at those parties. At other parties during Larry’s trips, Larry had local prostitutes (in their 20’s & 30’s) there to entertain his male guests….

At these parties, Nelly said every guest had a bodyguard and she saw some of the men wearing guns. All guests had to produce a card which was run through a machine to verify the guest was, in fact, who they said they were. And then each guest was frisked down before entering the party.

This was not the last time that the name of George Bush would surface in the Franklin affair.

After the Patterson Webb girls raised Larry King’s name, Julie Walters asked some discreet questions about King of Boys Town employees, and of some people in the north Omaha community. Walters summarized what she was told:

“If you mess with him, you’ll get your legs broken.”

“On the outside he has all the appearances of an upstanding citizen; but underneath he’s very dirty.”

“Omaha has a very large underworld and he’s a very powerful man nationally. Maybe he doesn’t have all the connections personally but he knows the people who do.… [King] used to be very active in Big Brothers and took more than an appropriate interest in the young men.”

Walters also recorded information on Fort Calhoun school officials Deward Finch and Kent Miller, whose “good friend” Washington Country prosecutor Pat Tripp was. Finch would later be named by two other victim-witnesses as an associate of Larry King.

Walters wrote:

Kimberly overheard Mrs. Webb tell someone on the phone, “I got him [Finch] all the way. I caught him several times down there with black girls.” Nelly saw Mr. Finch leave the Webb home once as she returned home from school and Kimberly saw him leave the Webb house several times during daytime hours. Kimberly’s first period class at school is a study hall which is located across the hall from the school’s office. She said Mr. Finch would regularly call the Webbs and say, “It’s time for another meeting.” Mr. Finch would interrupt whatever he was doing when the Webbs arrived to meet with them, meeting in the school office sometimes for several hours. At some meetings, Kent Miller, principal of Ft. Calhoun H.S., was also present. Mrs. Webb almost always carried a large Gucci bag (almost the size of a shopping bag) with her into these meetings. Kimberly said Mrs. Webb carried some photo envelopes (from Mrs. Webb’s closet) with her at least once into these meetings, telling Kimberly she was going to show Mr. Miller pictures from their trip.

The Walters report was turned over to law enforcement agencies by March 1986. The DSS logs were also accessible.

Law enforcement officials failed to pursue the many clues and leads provided in these eyewitness accounts by children living with the Webbs, which might have taken them into a cleanout of child prostitution, pornography, and interstate transportation of child prostitutes from Boys Town. While they stalled, the trail grew cold. County Prosecutor Patrick Tripp called Nelly Patterson Webb a liar after she passed four lie detector tests. Nobody was indicted. Jarrett and Barbara Webb went free. And Larry King was invited back to sing the Star Spangled Banner at the Republican National Convention in 1988, as he had done in 1984.

The Franklin Cover-Up

John DeCamp

"They Look Like People": the horror of male loneliness. An extraordinary film about fear, failure, and friendship

In Perry Blackshear’s extraordinary and criminally overlooked 2015 film They Look Like People, two young men desperately attempt to stave off despair and the terror of relentlessly-encroaching psychic obliteration.

They Look Like People could almost pass for “mumblecore,” considering its brevity (a mere 79 minutes), its emphasis on character-driven, often improvised dialogue, its miniscule budget, and its no-name cast. Yet unlike most mumblecore fare, where the operative aesthetic is the very absence of aesthetic, They Look Like People looks and feels deeply cinematic. It bathes the viewer in fear and dread, through the use of grotesque visuals, frightening sound effects, and ominous voiceovers, creating a sense of rising tension and growing apprehension.

Though They Look Like People came out well before the “male loneliness epidemic” became a cultural touchstone, the film is a startlingly apt harbinger of this social crisis. Its two protagonists, Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews) and Christian (Evan Dumouchel), both lead lives of quiet desperation, albeit in very different ways.

Christian was once engaged to a girl named Kat, who appears to have left him recently. He now lives alone in a tiny city apartment on a desultory, nondescript street and works a dreary, nondescript corporate job. In spite of, or perhaps because of these unfortunate circumstances, Christian has passionately embraced a “self-improvement” ethos, and is determinedly willing himself to be optimistic about his future. He works out at the gym, and regularly listens on headphones to audio segments in which a sensual female voice tells him:

“You are a mountain. You are a hundred miles high. You are invincible. You are forever. You are an ocean. Weapons, swords, and knives all flow through you like nothing. You encompass the entire world in your depth. You are a fire. All that your enemies place in your way— betrayal, lies, poison— you devour and become stronger. You are unstoppable, you are holy, you are terrible.

Christian is convinced that he has turned a corner, and become a new man, one who is unafraid to pursue what he wants, one who is truly “dominant.” Yet it is obvious that in many ways, he remains painfully insecure. His efforts to flirt with his attractive work supervisor Mara (Margaret Ying Drake) are often awkward and ineffectual, in spite of Mara’s obvious reciprocity of interest.

Wyatt, on the other hand, faces an even more challenging— one might even say, harrowing— set of circumstances. Like Christian, Wyatt has seen a long-term committed relationship come to a painful end. While it isn’t clear who left whom, Wyatt believes that his ex-girlfriend, Hannah, has transformed into a hideous demon.

In fact, Wyatt has lately come to the conviction that a broad swath of humanity are being taken over by evil beings bent on humanity’s destruction. Not only has he seen it happen, he is getting terrifying phone calls in the wee hours of the morning, in which voices are warning him that the situation has grown dire indeed:

“Trust no one. Trust was no longer an option, once we discovered them. They were at Jericho. They surrounded the temple of Solomon. They were at Golgotha. They were once few, now they are everywhere. Their disguises have begun to fail; this is how we know they must strike soon. Even before you were one of the blessed, who could sense them, you knew they were out there. Suddenly they were right next to you. That is not a soldier with a gun, that is evil. That is not your co-worker, that is a demon. That is not a human, not a neighbor, not a lover, a brother, a mother, a father, a wife. That is a monster. That is your enemy. And that is what you must be ready to destroy.”

(Note: though many reviewers have assumed that Wyatt suffers from schizophrenia, it is important to note that the film never conclusively weighs in on whether his disturbing visions are hallucinatory or real.)

The ominous voiceover heard by Wyatt parallels, both in tone and treble, the hypnotic self-affirmations that Christian hears. Both men are enraptured by the voices that fill their minds; both are obsessed with the “mission” that each has been given. Though Christian is attempting the achievement of domestic dreams (“dominating” at work, finding a wife, having children), Wyatt is preparing for the commencement of all-out apocalyptic mayhem, but both are locked into their own private worlds… until the two men unexpectedly run into one another.

********************

By coincidence, or perhaps providentially, Christian one day sees Wyatt walking down a street near Christian’s apartment, and rushes up to greet him warmly. The two, we soon discover, are pals from boyhood, though they have been out of touch for a while. Wyatt is uncomfortable at first— he has only come to the city to see if a doctor he knows could possibly help with his condition— but he eventually agrees to spend a few days with his old friend.

After Wyatt accompanies Christian on an awkward would-be double date gone wrong, the two manage to reform their old bond. One night they hang out together, drinking, goofing off, and reenacting silly, long-forgotten childhood games. We begin to perceive that these two men share a deeply-rooted bond.

These moments of humor and levity, strangely, don’t seem out of place or tonally jarring, even in a movie that’s mostly a slow descent into deepening disquietude and alienation; in fact, Christian and Wyatt’s willingness to trust one another in spite of everything they think they know to the contrary, is what ultimately redeems the film’s otherwise grim proceedings.

*****************

Disaster eventually strikes for both protagonists. For Wyatt, of course, it has long been a foregone conclusion that the end is nigh; he has been preparing for such an eventuality for a while. Christian, however, is caught utterly by surprise when his professional life suddenly implodes, for mysterious reasons which are never made clear to him. Given that he has been optimistically projecting a ever-improving future for himself, Christian finds himself reeling on the ropes, like a prizefighter who has been sucker-punched.

Wyatt, meanwhile, is feverishly plotting how to respond to the start of open battle between the demon-parasite race and what remains of humanity. Over the last few days, he has witnessed numerous people, all of whom he thought he could trust, metamorphosing horrifically into monstrous entities. Now he fears the same thing happening to his boyhood friend, Christian, the one person in his life with whom he still feels a bond.

In the film’s final moments, the so recently demoralized Christian opts to put his faith in Wyatt, even though the latter seems increasingly unstable and his claims sound incredible. Wyatt, too, opts to have faith in Christian, even though everything he has experienced tells him to give up on his friend and consign him to oblivion.

It is a triumphant moment for both men, and a victory for humanity.

**************************

They Look Like People is almost impossible to categorize, genre-wise. It is equal parts horror, sci-fi, and paranoid thriller, with a bit of dark comedy thrown in for good measure. Though its “body snatchers” storyline is intense and riveting, the film is most moving in its depiction of Wyatt and Christian’s friendship, which endures against seemingly impossible odds, and redeems a lost, broken, despair-soaked world.

Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist, Muze, and The Rule of Wrath, and now the shocking memoir The Secret Life of an Alt-Right ‘Operative.’

https://substack.com/@andynowicki

The witness

 But there is within man also a tiny spectator who takes part neither in action nor in suffering, and who is always cold-blooded and the same. It is his service to see and be a witness, but he is without franchise in the life of man and it is not known why he exists in solitude. This corner of man’s consciousness is lit both day and night, like the doorman’s room in a large building. This heart doorman sits entire days at the entrance into man and knows all the inhabitants of his building, but not a single resident asks the doorman’s advice about his affairs. The residents come and go, while the spectator-doorman watches them with his eyes. His powerless knowledge of everything makes him sometimes seem sad, but he is always polite, distant, and he keeps an apartment in another building. In the event of fire the doorman telephones the firemen and watches further events from without.

While Dvanov walked and rode without memory, this spectator within him saw everything, but it never warned him and never helped him, not once. He lived parallel to Dvanov, but he wasn’t Dvanov.

He existed somewhat like a man’s dead brother; everything human seemed to be at hand, but something tiny and vital was lacking. Man never remembers him, but always trusts him, just as when a tenant leaves his house and his wife within, he is never jealous of her and the doorman.

This is the eunuch of man’s soul. It was to this that he was a witness.

Platonov
Chevengur

Weimar Germany vs Weimerica (bad vs worse)

 

Introducing "Esoteric 1933-ism

"Weimerica" is a term often used to describe the state of moral and spiritual degradation that has overwhelmed much of the West in recent years, with the United States being the undisputed leader of the Western world and the originator of its most nefarious and degenerate trends.

The referent to which it alludes is of course the Weimar Republic, a period in Germany which began after the catastrophic defeat of World War I in 1918, and remained in effect for 15 years, until it was brought to an end by the appointment of Adolf Hitler to the position of Chancellor in 1933.

The Weimar era was notorious for many things in Germany: economic upheaval, political instability, and a general collective psychic disruption due to living in the shadow of the catastrophe of the Great War. But the quality most often connotatively associated with Weimar is the onslaught of decadence.

Prior to the war, Germany was a staunchly conservative constitutional monarchy, which strictly held any public displays of impropriety in check. But after the chaos of late 1918 following the Kaiser’s abdication, the nation’s leadership was forced to sign the November armistice. That opened the floodgates: in the months and years to come, Germany was racked by chaos, turmoil, hyperinflation, and the sporadic sputter of attempted leftist revolutions. As a result, social mores were rapidly relaxed, and the results were often shocking, even horrifying.

Berlin proved to be the epicenter of much disreputable activity, which included but was not limited to the public flaunting of homosexuality, transgenderism, child prostitution, orgies, abortion, and other behaviors which had been forbidden just a few years prior. The nightclub culture of the period-- depicted so memorably in the 1966 Broadway musical "Cabaret" (later made into a movie in 1972)-- specialized in risque and ribald songs and dance numbers, which often openly celebrated aberrant sexuality.

Though some found the new openness “liberating,” it is fair to say that most Germans were not happy with this cultural shift. Yet, as with “wokeness” today, the bitter fruits of this largely unpopular societal transformation proved difficult to root out.

But what could one do? Times had changed. The war had been lost, Wilhelm II had slunk away into exile, his monarchy in ruins, the Versailles treaty had imposed humiliating restrictions on the German population, and a parliamentary democracy-- which nobody had really asked for-- had been installed. Tradition had been flung to the winds, but by whom, exactly, and to what end?

Germans largely felt, during this period, that their nation had been forced into a new phase by forces beyond their control. Changes had been imposed from above, not due to any settled consensus, and certainly not by "the consent of the governed."

***************************

Today in the West, we are faced with a similar situation. There is a sense of things spinning out of control, of our being ruled by unseen and largely unacknowledged forces who seem bound and determined to architect the degeneration of our societies. We are solemnly instructed to count ourselves fortunate not to live under despotic regimes like those that rule China or Russia, where human rights are not safeguarded as they are under Western "democracy," but this line, however superficially persuasive, quickly loses its flavor like chewed up bubblegum when one considers the disingenuousness of the sentiment.

It is true that the West has long enjoyed a higher standard of living than other parts of the world, and for the most part the rule of law obtains— insofar as late-night knocks on the door from the Stasi and coerced visits to the torture chambers of the Lubyanka, after you were overheard speaking ill of Party Comrade X whilst taking a cigarette break at the factory— don't generally happen here.

But an insidious "soft" totalitarianism (sometimes called "polite totalitarianism," though I resist this designation since I since nothing "polite" about it whatsoever) increasingly obtains in the West, whereby not conspicuously toeing the party line of the mandatory ruling ideology leads to the ruination of one's life, through the machinations of "soft" Stasi-like agents such as Human Resources commissars sniffing out objectionable internet content while antifa-affiliated "doxx" the addresses and job positions of intellectual deviants (and their family members). Before one knows it, one's use of Constitutionally-mandated freedom of speech to advance causes deemed “wrong” makes one effectively unhirable, and in some cases, deprived of a bank account.

It is true that dissidents in despotically-inclined non-Western countries generally have a harder time when it comes to facing imprisonment, torture, and other hardships from the state, but it is a sheer farce today to claim that Western countries' rulership work to protect their citizens' ostensible "human rights." As recent events have shown, it now not unusual for UK citizens to face jail time for posting "improper" tweets, and such brazen violations of free speech are the rule, NOT the exception, in Western countries today (the United States still remaining more "classically liberal" in at least this respect).

What is more, citizens of Western countries, which are, ostensibly "democracies," find themselves nevertheless constrained from being able to see their societal preferences met, if those preferences are trumped by the demands of oligarchic bodies, which wield inordinate power and seemingly cannot be vetoed, no matter how thoroughly disliked their edicts are.

The most glaring instance of this is the insistence of mass immigration, which, in tandem with an altogether apathetic disregard for the importance of border security, shows the contempt with which corporate and bureaucratic “elites” regard the well-being of the legitimate citizens of Western nations. It is considered “in bad taste” to draw attention to violence committed by illegal immigrants, and frowned on as “xenophobic” to emphasize the importance of protecting the border. But despite the best efforts of “nudge units” attempting to make people feel like reprobates for having common-sense perspectives regarding immigration (legal and illegal alike), a large number of the population still remain favorable to radical steps being taken to remove the “undocumented” population from the nation.

Even the Weimar authorities did not impose large numbers of cultural alien populations upon the Germans in the 1920s or early 30s. But those same authorities seemed unwilling to put a stop to the dismaying rise of cultural degeneracy spoken of above, a trend which tracks with Weimar going into effect in the first place and can be identified as one of its many disagreeable traits.

The conspicuous degeneracy of late-stage “Weimerica” is, of course, several times worse than that of Weimar Germany. There was nothing happening in Berlin that resembled “drag queen story hour,” nor did the Weimar period feature an actual campaign by establishment-affiliated medical professionals to convince parents to inject their children with hormones and mutilate their genitals, nor was it ever insisted that men pretending to be men should have access to women’s sports/spaces. Such contemporary outrages are, moreover, propped up by the corporate and bureaucratic establishment, who give billions of dollars to further these moral atrocities.

****************************************

Still, the parallels between Weimar and Weimarica are compelling enough to cause a person of traditional or simply “normal” beliefs and perspectives to earnestly wish for a “1933” moment, wherein an end is brought to all of this prevalent filth, and decency is finally restored. Whatever one thinks of Hitler or the National Socialist movement, they are at least to be credited for the decisive steps they took in 1933 to put a stop to Weimar forever.

May our own “1933” come soon!

Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist, Muze, and Love and Hidden Agendas, as well as the just-published The Rule of Wrath.

https://substack.com/@andynowicki

Andrei Platonov COLLECTED WORKS Preface by Joseph Brodsky

The idea of Paradise is the logical end of human thought in the respect that it, thought, goes no further; for beyond Paradise there is nothing else, nothing else happens. And therefore one can say that Paradise is a dead-end; it is the last vision of space, the end of things, the summit of the mountain, the peak from which there is nowhere to step except into Chronos, in connection with which the concept of eternal life arises.

The same may be said of Hell.

Being in the dead-end is not limited by anything, and if one can conceive that even there being defines consciousness and engenders its own psychology, then it is above all in language that this psychology is expressed. In general it should be noted that the first victim of talk about Utopia—desired or already attained—is grammar; for language, unable to keep up with thought, begins to gasp in the subjunctive mood and starts to gravitate toward timeless categories and constructions; as a consequence of which the ground starts to slip out from under even simple nouns, and an aura of arbitrariness arises around them.

In my view this describes the prose language of Andrei Platonov, of whom it can be said with equal veracity that he drives language into a semantic deadend and, more precisely, that he reveals in language itself the philosophy of the dead-end. If this statement is even half-justified, that is sufficient to proclaim Platonov one of the eminent writers of our age—for the presence of the absurd in grammar says something not just about a particular tragedy, but about the human race as a whole.

In our age it is not customary to examine a writer outside the social context, and Platonov would be a quite suitable subject for such analysis if that which he performs with language did not go far beyond the framework of the specific Utopia (the building of socialism in Russia), witness and chronicler of which he is in The Foundation Pit. The Foundation Pit is an exceedingly gloomy work, and the reader closes the book in the most depressed state of mind. If at this moment direct transformation of psychic energy into physical energy were possible, the first thing one should do on closing the book would be to rescind the existing world-order and declare a new age.

By no means, however, does this mean that Platonov was an enemy of this Utopia, the regime, collectivization, etc. The only thing one can say seriously about Platonov within the social context is that he wrote in the language of this Utopia, in the language of his epoch; and no other form of being determines consciousness as language does. But unlike the majority of his contemporaries—Babel, Pilnyak, Olesha, Zamyatin, Bulgakov, Zoshchenko, who concerned themselves more or less with stylistic gourmandizing, i.e., played with language, each at his own game (which in the final analysis is a form of escapism)— Platonov subjected the language of the epoch to himself, having seen in it such abysses that once he had peered into them he could no longer slide along the literary surface, concerning himself with clever manipulations of plot, typographical contrivances and stylistic point-lace.

Of course, if one is to study the genealogy of Platonov's style, one inevitably has to mention hagiographic "plaiting of words," Leskov with his tendency towards individualized first-person narratives, Dostoevsky with his choking bureaucratese. But in Platonov's case the important thing is not lines of succession or traditions of Russian literature, but the writer's dependence on the synthetic (or, more precisely, non-analytical) essence of the Russian language itself, something which, partly as a result of purely phoneticallusions, determines the formation of concepts which are devoid of any real content.

Even if Platonov had used even the most elementary means, his "message" would be relevant, and below I shall explain why. But his main weapon was inversion; he wrote in a totally inverted language; more precisely, Platonov put an equals sign between the concepts of language and inversion—"version" (normal word order) came more and more to play a service role. In this sense I would say that the only real neighbor Platonov had in language was poet Nikolai Zabolotsky during the period of Scrolls.

If for Captain Lebyadkin's poetry about the cockroach (in The Devils) Dostoevsky can be considered one of the first writers of the absurd, for the scene with the striker-bear in The Foundation Pit, Platonov should be acknowledged the first serious surrealist. I say "first" in spite of Kafka, for surrealism is not just a literary category, tied in our minds as a rule with an individualistic world-perception, but a form of philosophical madness, a product of the psychology of the dead-end. Platonov was not an individualist, quite the contrary— his consciousness was determined by the mass scale and absolutely impersonal character of what was happening. Therefore his surrealism is non-personal, folkloric, and to a certain degree akin to ancient, or for that matter any mythology—which one might call the classical form of surrealism.

In Platonov those who express the philosophy of the absurd are not egocentric individualists to whom God and literary tradition provide crisis-awareness, but repre-sentativesof the traditionally uninspired masses; and due to this fact the philosophy becomes far more convincing and utterly unbearable in its magnitude. Unlike Kafka, Joyce, or, let's say, Beckett, who narrate the quite natural tragedies of their "alter egos," Platonov speaks of a nation which in a sense has become a victim of its own language; or, more precisely, he speaks of this language itself—which turns out to be capable of generating a fictive world and then falling into grammatical dependency on it.

It seems to me that therefore Platonov is untranslatable, and in one sense that is a good thing for the language into which he cannot be translated. But nevertheless one has to congratulate any attempt to recreate this language, a language which compromises time, space, life itself and death, not because of "cultural" considerations, but because in the final analysis it is precisely in this language that we speak.

Joseph Brodsky

Franklin Scandal Timeline

1965

Peter Citron arrested for sexual child abuse in Scarsdale, New York, but abuse charges were dropped.

Larry King began four-year hitch in Air Force, spending a year in Thailand, handling

top-secret information.

1969

Craig Spence employed by ABC as a Vietnam correspondent.

1970

Larry King became manager of the two-year-old Franklin Community Federal Credit Union.

1978

Eulice, Tracy, and Tasha Washington placed in the Webb household.

1978

According to Paul Bonacci, he started attending orgies at Alan Baer’s apartment.

1979

Craig Spence relocated from Tokyo, Japan to Washington, DC.

1982

Shawneta Moore alleged she was recruited for pedophilic parties at the Omaha Girls Club and within six months started attending satanic rituals—she was nine years old. Robert Wadman hired as OPD Chief.

1983

Alisha Owen said she attended first Twin Towers party.

1984

Larry King held lavish party at “Southfork” ranch during the GOP convention—Paul Bonacci said that he and other children were served to pedophiles at the convention. Autumn: Eulice Washington said that Larry King flew her and other underage children to Chicago.

1985

Spring: Eulice Washington alleged that Larry King flew her and other underage children to New York.

December: Eulice and Tracy Washington removed from Webb household.

 1986

January: Eulice Washington passed NSP polygraph regarding repeated molestations by Jarrett Webb—no charges were filed against Webb.

March: Eulice and Tracy Washington, accompanied by foster mother Kathleen Sorenson, met with Boys Town youth worker Julie Walters on three occasions—Walters wrote a report on their allegations.

November: Charlie Rogers, a lover of Larry King’s, “committed suicide”—having told family members he feared for his life and if anything happened to him they should contact Douglas County Deputy Attorney Robert Sigler.

November: Omaha Mayor Mike Boyle fired OPD Chief Wadman for insubordination.

1987

March: After Mayor Boyle’s recall, a Douglas County Judge reinstated Wadman as OPD Chief.

1988

Larry King formed Council of Minority Americans—Jack Kemp, Alexander Haig, and former President Gerald Ford were on the “host committee.”

May: OPD’s Robbery and Sexual Assault Unit commenced “possible child pornography investigation” that implicated Rusty Nelson and Larry King.

June: OPD Robbery and Sexual Assault investigator Carmean interviewed Shawneta Moore at Richard Young Hospital, and she implicated Larry King in child exploitation and “devil worship.”

July: Carol Stitt, Director of Nebraska’s Foster Care Review Board, sent a letter to Nebraska Attorney General Robert Spire, notifying him of a “child exploitation ring” linked to “Larry King of Omaha.”

August: Larry King and the Council of Minority Americans held a $100,000 gala at the Republican National Convention—a video featuring Larry King and Jack Kemp, urging blacks to vote for George H.W. Bush, was shown at the gala.

November: The National Credit Union Association and FBI closed the Franklin Credit Union—regulators quickly determined that millions had been embezzled and the credit union had a second set of books.

November: Senator Loren Schmit introduced Legislative Resolution 5 (L.R. 5) on the floor of the Unicameral, and it was unanimously approved—L.R. 5 called for the formation of a subcommittee to investigate the failure of the Franklin Credit Union.

December: The Foster Care Review Board’s executive committee testified before the Unicameral and expressed their collective outrage about law enforcement’s inactivity regarding the child-abuse allegations.

December: In response to the Foster Care Review Board’s outrage, Nebraska Attorney General Robert Spire and OPD chief Wadman said that both agencies had conducted thorough investigations of the child-abuse allegations.

1989

 January: L.R. 5 was given a sweeping mandate to investigate the Franklin Credit Union’s financial collapse and also accusations that law enforcement hadn’t properly investigated the child-abuse allegations—Senator Loren Schmit was appointed Chairman of the Franklin Committee and Senator Ernie Chambers was appointed Vice-Chair.

February: The Franklin Committee named Kirk Naylor as its special counsel.

February: FBI’s Special Agent in Charge of Nebraska and Iowa, Nicholas O’Hara, and OPD Chief Wadman asserted that their agencies had found no evidence supporting child-abuse allegations.

May: Larry King was charged with 40 counts of embezzlement, fraud, and tax evasion.

June: The Franklin Committee held public hearings.

June: The Washington Times started publishing a series of articles on Craig Spence and Henry Vinson.

July: Senator Chambers, Kirk Naylor, and Jerry Lowe resigned from the Franklin Committee.

July: Concerned Parents formed because of law enforcement’s unwillingness to investigate the child-abuse allegations.

August: Craig Spence was arrested in New York City for possession of a handgun and cocaine.

August: Gary Caradori replaced Jerry Lowe as the Franklin Committee’s investigator.

September: Alisha Owen sentenced to between three and four years for writing “bad checks.”

November: Craig Spence committed suicide in Boston, Massachusetts.

November: Gary Caradori took videotaped statements of Alisha Owen and Troy Boner.

December: Gary Caradori took videotaped statement of Danny King.

December: The Franklin Committee showed the videotaped statements to ranking officials from Nebraska law enforcement, and then submitted the videotapes to the Nebraska Attorney General and US Attorney for the District of Nebraska.

1990

January: Nebraska Attorney General Robert Spire called for a grand jury to be impaneled.

February: The Douglas County District Court judges signed an order for a Douglas County grand jury to be impaneled, and appointed retired Lancaster County Judge Samuel Van Pelt as its special prosecutor.

February: Federal Magistrate Kopf preemptively ordered that US marshals transport Larry King to the US Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri for a “mental health evaluation.”

February: Peter Citron arrested for felonious sexual assault on two children.

March: The Douglas County grand jury formally convened at the Douglas County Courthouse.

March: Larry King declared incompetent to stand trial and was sent to the US Medical Facility in Rochester, MN.

March: The FBI pressured Danny King and Troy Boner to recant their videotaped statements to Caradori.

March: The Lincoln Journal and Omaha World-Herald reported that two of the victims videotaped by Caradori had flunked FBI polygraphs.

 April: The FBI interviewed Alisha Owen for the last time at York—she refused to recant her videotaped statements to Caradori.

May: Caradori videotaped Paul Bonacci at the Lincoln County Correctional Center,and he corroborated Owen, Boner, and Danny King on multiple accounts.

June: Caradori wrote a letter to renowned attorney, Gerry Spence, requesting legal representation because he was being “set up” to take a fall for fabricating the child-abuse allegations.

July: Caradori’s airplane mysteriously broke up over Lee County, Illinois, killing Caradori and his eight-year-old son.

July: The Douglas County grand jury declared the child-abuse allegations were a “carefully crafted hoax”—Alisha Owen and Paul Bonacci were indicted on perjury charges.

July: A federal grand jury indicted Henry Vinson on 43 counts, which included racketeering, credit card fraud, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, and money-laundering.

September: A federal grand jury exonerated Larry King of being an interstate, pedophilic-pimp and indicted Alisha Owen on eight counts of perjury.

November: After state and federal grand juries exonerated Larry King of child abuse, he

was declared competent to stand trial.

November: Alisha Owen’s brother was found dead in his cell—his death was ruled a suicide.

1991

January: The Franklin Committee was disbanded.

January: Troy Boner’s brother shot himself in the head playing “Russian roulette.”

January: Vinson pled guilty to conspiracy and credit card fraud.

February: Larry King pled guilty to his financial crimes and was sentenced to fifteen years in a federal prison.

February: John DeCamp filed civil rights lawsuits on behalf of Paul Bonacci against the Catholic Archbishop of Omaha, Larry King, Peter Citron, Alan Baer, Harold Andersen,Robert Wadman, and others.

May: The State of Nebraska v. Alisha Owen began with a pretrial hearing.

June: Alisha Owen found guilty on eight counts of perjury.

June: Vinson sentenced to sixty-three months in prison.

August: Judge Case sentenced Alisha Owen to between nine and fifteen years for perjury.

 

1992

February: Alisha Owen served sentence for her “bad check” conviction, and was released on a $500,000 surety bond as John DeCamp appealed her perjury conviction.

1993

October: Troy Boner submitted his “lie or die” affidavit to John DeCamp, confessing that threats from the FBI forced him to lie at the Douglas County grand jury and also at Alisha Owen’s trial.

 1994

December: Troy Boner was strong-armed at the Douglas County Courthouse shortly before a hearing for Alisha Owen—his testimony would have reiterated the contents of his October 1993 affidavit.

1996

March: Alisha Owen was sent back to prison.

1999

February: Federal District Court Judge Warren Urbom granted Paul Bonacci a $1 million default judgment against Larry King.

2000

September: Alisha Owen was paroled after serving four and a half years.

2001

April: Larry King was paroled after nine years and ten months.

2003

February: Troy Boner died in a Texas psychiatric hospital.

Nick Bryant