by John Carter
In addition to the explosion, Harding found numerous scientific notes in the debris, most of which contained chemical formulas. One interesting document contained Parsons’ notes concerning industrial explosions: “Texas City Disaster Report: 433 dead, 128 missing. [The explosive] cannot be detonated with rifle bullets, blasting caps or dynamite.” Parsons also had notes about a Los Angeles electroplating company explosion in 1947 that killed 15, and another explosion at Aerojet that killed eight. He had been a member of the coroner's jury on the 1947 incident.
A more curious fragment was obviously not a part of his professional work. The note read, “Let me know thy misery totally. And spare not and be not spared. Sacrament and Crucifixion. Oh my passion and shame…Mothers…Sisters…” Unfortunately, he got his morbid wish, as did his devoted mother.
Harding eventually determined that the blast occurred just behind Parsons, and to his right, just above floor level. Had the building not been of heavy timber construction, it probably would have been leveled. As it was, the entire half of the lower level containing his lab was gutted. Firemen reported that they noticed a “funny odor” when they arrived on the scene. Interestingly, considering she had purportedly found mercury there, Cameron said that the explosion occurred beneath the floorboards, lifting them up.
Martin Foshaug said that Parsons “had been experimenting in an effort to produce a ‘Super’ fog effect for motion pictures,” but this work certainly had nothing to do with the blast that killed him, since Parsons had left his special effects job with the Bermite Powder Company on the previous Friday, June 13.
On June 19, the newspapers reported that the cause of the explosion had been determined to be “fulminate of mercury,” a very sensitive and powerful detonator that Army Ordnance had stopped using because of the number of deaths it had caused. However, the size of the explosion seems excessive for fulminate of mercury. Harding, who had just joined the Pasadena police force, was assigned to his first investigation with the Parsons blast. He could have both been inexperienced and had based his conclusions on hearsay, rather than science, about mercury. Harding was told by a neighbor that Parsons was manufacturing the mercury explosive (illegally) in the garage laboratory. It was to be his last batch, Parsons had told the neighbor. Obviously, he was right. Harding searched for other storage places Parsons might have maintained, and stated that enough explosives remained in the lab to “blow up half the block.”
Harding's determination of the bomb device's origin was based on his discovery in the rubble of ingredients needed to make fulminate of mercury. Shrapnel from a coffee can was found in the wooden floor and in the walls, radiating out from the hole at ground zero, which led Harding to surmise that Parsons must have reached for the can when it dropped but wasn't quick enough. This development, Harding inferred, was why the explosion occurred low to the floor and why Parsons’ right arm was missing, since it was closest to the blast. Harding believed Parsons was mixing the chemical in the can when it dropped. Fulminate of mercury, he reasoned, “is made wet and gets more sensitive as it dries. A little friction, percussion, heat or agitation is enough to set it off.”
Based on Harding's findings, Detective Lieutenant Cecil H. Burlingame was told by the coroner's office that no inquest would be held. After an autopsy performed the next day by Deputy Coroner I.G. Mcfarland, the death was ruled accidental and attributed to “multiple injuries of entire body.” Burlingame told reporters that police had received reports in 1942 that Parsons was illegally storing explosives at 1003 S. Orange Grove Ave. Nevertheless, a search conducted in conjunction with the FBI had turned up nothing.
The Pasadena Independent talked to J.H. Arnold of the Bermite Powder Company, who told them that Parsons had stayed long enough with his company to finish a special effects project. Parsons had, in fact, been working on a “rocket propellant detonation and pyrotechnic short-interval delay” project, which was a confidential program at the company. Contrary to Cameron's testimony, his co-workers related that he had told them he was heading to Mexico to continue his research with explosives and miniature special effects. Arnold had asked him to stay long enough to see the tests of the confidential project, but Parsons was eager to get to Mexico. “He had been working hard,” Arnold told the investigators, also stating that Parsons was extremely safety-conscious. Said Arnold, “He worked carefully, had a thorough knowledge of his job and was scrupulously neat.” But Harding called him “criminally negligent” in the way he handled the explosives at his home lab. Arnold was surprised to hear that Parsons had so many explosives at home, which police learned had been there at least six months. Arnold added that Parsons at one time had his own powder magazine near Rialto, which was a legal storage place. His home, however, was in obvious violation of the Pasadena fire marshal's code. In addition, Arnold noted, six or eight months earlier Parsons talked about going into the dynamite business. Other comments came from T.E. Beehan, Secretary-Treasurer of Aerojet, who described Parsons as a “loner” and said, “He liked to wander, but he was one of the top men in the field.”
In their reportage about his life and death, the Pasadena Independent dug up some of the older stories about Parsons when he was at 1003 S. Orange Grove and recalled that in 1942 a letter had been sent from San Antonio, Texas by “A Real Soldier,” who wrote that a “black magic” cult was operating in the house. The same Detective Lt. Burlingame had investigated the letter incident and was told by Parsons that the “cult” was merely a “non-sectarian and non-political fraternity” which “held open forums on Sunday afternoons, and discussed philosophy, religion, personal freedom, and fortune telling.”
However, in 1944 police investigated a small fire at the house, during which investigation Detective O.A. Nelson found “considerable paraphernalia…which indicated that spiritual seances may have been held in the house.” Said Nelson, “It appears to be the home of some type of secret society.” Nevertheless, the matter was dropped.
Smelling a good story, the sensationalistic Independent announced in its obituary that on July 19 “secret rites” were held for John Parsons at Turner & Stevens Mortuary, Marengo Ave. and Holly St. However, the funeral home referred to the ceremony as a “private prayer service.” The obituary used his birth name, Marvel, and reported that Cameron was the only survivor. It also stated that cremation took place earlier that day at the Live Oak Crematory and that his body was embalmed by W.T. Stahlman. The Social Security number given on his death certificate, presumably provided by Cameron, is incorrect and belongs to a Virginia Wilson, also of California, who had been born the same year as Parsons and who lived until 1980.
On July 20, a private service was held for Ruth Parsons, also by Turner & Stevens, and her body was cremated as well. She was survived by a Mrs. Emma Aldrich of Santa Monica, California, apparently no relation to lodge member Meeka Aldrich.
On June 22, both the Los Angeles Times and the Pasadena Independent addressed a new development: George W. Santmyer (or Santmyers), a Los Angeles chemical engineer working with Parsons in a Naval Ordnance Department research project since January 1, suggested to the papers that something was amiss with the investigation. Police had found 500 grams of cordite (an ammunition component) and six filter papers containing fulminate of mercury residue in Parsons’ trash can, which was either at the back of the lab or just outside it, depending on the account. “For Parsons to have disposed of such materials in that manner,” said Santmyer, “would be the same as for a highly trained surgeon to operate with dirty hands. It's completely out of character for him.” Criminologist Harding, when asked, admitted that Parsons’ supposed sloppiness seemed “incongruous.” Harding also said that enough cordite and fulminate of mercury were found in the trash to blow up the garbage truck and drivers who would have picked up the can.
In his statement to the papers, Santmyer argued that someone else must have put it there, that Parsons would not have disposed of highly dangerous explosives at the last minute, nor would he have prepared
them for transportation on a long drive into Mexico, as everything he needed to produce fulminate of mercury could be easily purchased once he arrived there. Santmyer also stated that Parsons was “on the trail” of a completely new explosive that “was to be far superior to any existing commercial blasting material” and much safer to handle. According to Burlingame, however, Santmyer's questions weren't “sufficient to warrant us reopening the case.” Nevertheless, Santmyer was not the only person who smelled something fishy in the untimely death of John Parsons.
Something else was allegedly found after the death of Parsons that didn't make the 1952 Los Angeles Times. Amateur rocket advocate Harold Chambers, who worked at a technical bookstore in downtown Los Angeles for 40 years, was told on separate occasions by both Harding and Santmyer that an “odd, bizarre, fairly big box, decorated with snakes and dragons” was found in a trailer at Parsons’ residence. The odd box was found to contain home movies of Parsons and mother having sex, not only with each other, but also with Ruth's “big dog.” According to reports from Pasadena police, passed down to their friend Harold Chambers, we now have circumstantial evidence that John Parsons indeed fulfilled his goal to “exteriorize [his] Oedipus complex.”
Ruth Parsons’ “big dog” also made it difficult for police to attend to her suicide scene. After being attacked by Ruth's agitated beast, Pasadena police officers shot the dog in the head.
Chambers also reports that Don Harding, having discovered a syringe among the blast debris, partially filled with a morphine-like substance, believes that Parsons’ drug use contributed to his mishandling of explosives.
The high-reaching pioneer Parsons was gone but not forgotten. In 1969, Darker Than You Think author Jack Williamson wrote, “In Pasadena not long ago, walking across the grounds of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I was jolted to see Parsons’ name on a memorial tablet set up to honor the first martyrs to space. He had written me once about testing multicellular solid-fuel rockets designed after those in my story ‘The Crucible of Power.’ When I first heard about his death I wondered if my own rockets had killed him, but [L.] Sprague de Camp tells me that he dropped a bottle of picric acid.” It wasn't picric acid, but he had the right idea.
Rather than any “martyrs to space,” the JPL plaque actually honors the first successful series of JATO tests, which began on Halloween 1936. The monument was unveiled on Halloween 1968, the 32nd anniversary of the original date. “The Crucible of Power,” contained in the anthology The Best of Jack Williamson, describes the multi-cellular, solid-fuel rockets as follows: “[I]t was a four-step rocket, each step containing thousands of cellules, each of which was a complete rocket motor with its own load of alumilloid fuel, to be fired once and then detached.” No doubt Parsons would have also been interested in the solar religion of the story's Martians, whose high priest was called the “Lance of the Sun.”
While the police were content to let the tragedy stand as an accident ostensibly caused by his professional endeavors, others felt it had to do with the occult. In The Occult Explosion (published 1972), Nat Freedland interviewed filmmaker Renate Druks, who said, “Cameroun [sic] stayed with me at my Malibu Beach house for six months, pulling herself together after Jack died. I have every reason to believe that Jack Parsons was working on some very strange experiments, trying to create what the old alchemists called a homunculus, a tiny artificial man with magic powers. I think that's what he was working on when the accident happened.” Druks evidently was the source of Michael Hoffman's statement in Apocalypse Culture that “In 1952 Parsons was blown up in what is officially described as an accident but which others have said was a homunculus experiment that went bananas.” Before moving in with Druks, Cameron stayed briefly with Wilfred and Helen Parsons Smith. She also spent time alone in the desert.
Parsons’ friends did not believe he killed himself, at least intentionally. Indeed, he had too many plans, as reflected by his dying words: “I wasn't done.” It is somewhat ironic that these were the dying words of the man who claimed to be the Antichrist, while, according to the gospel tale, the dying words of Christ were the opposite: “It is finished.”
Druks, who later worked with avant garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger and who also studied magic under Jane Wolfe, related that Parsons was going to Mexico “to experiment with his new formula for an explosive ‘more powerful than anything yet invented.’” According to JPL employee Charles Bartley, Parsons told him he was going there to start a fireworks company, yet von Kármán stated that Parsons told him it was an explosives factory—which is admittedly not much different—that the Mexican government had hired him to set up. Von Kármán also said that Parsons told him the government was furnishing a 17th-century castle for him to stay in while he was there. Since there are few if any castles in old Mexico, perhaps Parsons or von Kármán confused palacio for castillo. Cameron related a similar account but stated it was in Baja California, rather than Mexico proper. These experiments were to be a step toward their eventual plans for working with the Israelis.
Decades later Cameron spoke of the explosion as coming from under the floorboards, implying murder rather than an accident or suicide. In the OTO newsletter The Magical Link, she stated that a good suspect was the explosives expert against whom Parsons had testified and who had been paroled immediately prior to the fatal explosion, a reference to Captain Kynette of the Los Angeles “spy squad,” found guilty of murdering another police officer in 1938. The weapon Kynette used was a car bomb, and Parsons’ testimony had been crucial in his conviction.
In recent years, one researcher was informed by the City of Los Angeles’ Hall of Records that Parsons’ will was still sealed and that he would have to get permission from the executor to obtain a copy. The executor was Ed Forman, who is dead. When I visited the Hall of Records, the clerk was unable to find any listing for Parsons’ will in the probate records for Los Angeles county. The will, in fact, was never probated.
On August 13, 1952, just a month after his tragic death, People Today published a half-page piece on Parsons in its “People in Crime” section, which included a delightfully sinister photo of Parsons. The article was entitled “L.A.'s Lust Cult” and is worth quoting in full, to demonstrate the general attitude toward Parsons at the time. The bold print appears in the original.
Rich, rock-ribbed Pasadena, famed for its roses, the California Institute of Technology, and as a retirement haven for Eastern millionaires, looks like the last place a black magic cult dedicated to sex would thrive. Nevertheless, the Church of Thelema (the name means “will”), a cult practicing sexual perversion, has been making converts of all ages, sexes, there since 1940. Among the believers: many prominent residents of the Pasadena-Los Angeles area; at least one member of Hollywood's movie colony.
The existence of the cult, reported to police in an anonymous letter mailed from San Antonio, Texas, in September ‘42 by “A Real Soldier” and in an October ‘44 letter, was only proven this June with the “accidental” death of high priest John W. Parsons.
Parsons, bushy-haired, 37-year-old scientist who was one of the inventors of JATO (jet-assisted take-off), was killed when an explosion rocked his lab in the carriage house of the old F.G. Cruickshank [sic] estate along Pasadena's “Millionaire's Row,” where he lived with his artist-wife and mother. Within hours of her son's death, the elder Mrs. Parsons had committed suicide by swallowing 50 sleeping pills. The estate, investigators soon learned, had been the ‘Temple’ where Thelemites ran their strange sexual orgies.
Parsons had served as high priest since the death, in ‘44, of local prophet Wilfred Smith, a disciple of Aleister Crowley, called “the sinister man” by French authorities. Crowley's chief commandment: “Take your fill of love…with whom ye will.”
Says an ex-member: “The inner circle followed this rule, especially at the fertility rites at the spring and fall equinoxes.” Torch-carrying hooded cultists, chanting prayers to “Thou burning rapture of girls, that disport in the sunset of passio
n,” concentrated on “begetting a royal race before dawn.” Other rituals: a Black Mass, patterned on a religious ceremony, in which High Priestess disrobed to tune of uninhibited chanting; “purifying” fire torture. Members are accepted in the cult—which also existed in Chicago and New York—on a probationary basis, must pass through 10 degrees before qualifying for participation in sex rites.
With the bizarre death of Parsons and the suicide of his mother, Thelemites have gone further underground. But, still active, they conducted a secret funeral for their dead high priest.
A sidebar to the article reads:
Thelemites follow code set down by founder Aleister Crowley, Englishman who died 25 years ago after a stormy life. Expelled from France and Italy, exiled from England, Crowley published his teachings under the title: Equinox. Its gist: Do anything you please.
Both the article and the sidebar contain a number of errors, including the date of Crowley's death, which was in reality in 1947, and of Smith's, which was in 1957.
In addition, at the time of the explosion Parsons was not the “high priest,” since, as early as January 1946, Crowley wrote a letter naming a successor to Parsons. Indeed, by October of the year Crowley had become disillusioned with Parsons and wrote to Culling, “About J.W. P. [Parsons]—all that I can say is that I am sorry—I feel sure that he had fine ideas, but he was led astray firstly by Smith, then he was robbed of his last penny by a confidence man named Hubbard.” And in December he wrote, “I have no further interest in Jack and his adventures; he is just a weak-minded fool, and must go to the devil in his own way. Requiescat in pace.”
Although Crowley may have found Parsons naïve and ineffectual, there are many who realize his key role in the aerospace/military industries, and not a few who believe he accomplished amazing things esoterically, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy that included “flying saucers,” which would not be surprising considering his fervent interest in space and his attempts both chemically and alchemically to “shoot for the stars.”