By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

In our book, Satanic Ritual Abuse and Mormonism, we wrote the following:

While we have been aware of the influence of the occult for many years, we were always somewhat suspicious of some of the tales of ex-Satanists. We have always tried to be very cautious about accepting stories concerning conspiracies unless strong evidence could be marshaled to support the accusations. We have seen too many people make the mistake of leveling serious accusations against individuals and organizations without carefully considering all of the facts. (page 1)

Unfortunately, we have learned that there is a serious question with regard to Mike Warnke’s story regarding his involvement in Satanism. Warnke is a noted Christian comedian who wrote the book, The Satan Seller. Mr. Warnke claimed that he became a satanic high priest and had 1,500 followers! Warnke, in fact, claimed to be working for the Illuminati.

Christian writers Jon Trott and Mike Hertenstein, who have done extensive research concerning Mike Warnke’s life, claim that they were unable to verify his claims concerning Satanism. They, in fact, feel they have evidence to disprove his published statements. They note, for example, that he started attending San Bernardino Valley College on September 13, 1965, and then make this observation:

Mike writes in The Satan Seller that it was after he started college that he first was introduced to drugs, sex, and finally Satanism. And he continues, it was only after the Satanists threw him out of their coven that he joined the navy. Warnke’s military records say he entered the navy on June 2, 1966. Therefore, whatever happened in Mike’s life regarding Satanism had to have happened between September 13, 1965, and June 2, 1966. (Cornerstone, vol. 21, no. 98, page 9)

This, of course, gives Mike Warnke less than nine months to become a Satanist and advance to his high position in Satanism. Trott and Hertenstein quote the following from Warnke’s book, Schemes of Satan: “In my own case, being away from home at college and not having any close friends there meant that almost no one could have known what was happening to me except, of course, the members of the Satanic Brotherhood, and they were not telling!” (Ibid.) Trott and Hertenstein go on to reveal the following:

In reality, Mike Warnke simply did what countless other freshmen have done: he found a new circle of friends. We found that new circle, and they were not part of the Satanic Brotherhood. None of these people are mentioned by Warnke in The Satan Seller or anywhere else.

Greg Gilbert was one of Mike’s first and closest friends at college. . . . Greg reflects upon the notoriety of his old college roommate. “After Mike became a star, I assumed that since he had gotten this far with his Satan story, he’d always get away with it. I never knew what to do. Who could you tell?”. . .

Greg’s college girlfriend, Dawn Andrews, gave us her assessment. . . . “I remember how upset I was when The Satan Seller came out, because what Warnke said was a lie. He has a very fertile imagination.”

Dyana Cridelich was another of Mike Warnke’s college friends introduced by Greg. “After he got famous, I always wanted to write him a letter and say, Mike, remember me? The one you gave the silver cross to? When were you able to have this coven of fifteen hundred people? Don’t you remember, about the most exciting thing we used to do was play croquet in Greg’s backyard?” (Ibid.)

The same article points out that Mike Warnke became engaged to a woman after he entered college and that she knew nothing about his satanic activities:

It was there that Lois Eckenrod, a girl who was soon to be his fiancée, joins the story. “Mike and I, met in September or October, that first semester at Valley,” Lois said. “It was only a couple of months before we got engaged. >Hardly a day went by that we didn’t see each other.”

His friends remember Mike Warnke as thin, with . . . short hair . . . Yet Mike says in The Satan Seller that when college started . . . His hair, he writes, was already collar length. Within a short time, he claims to have become a full-fledged hippie: “I . . . bought some black pants and freaky shins. My hair was longer than ever, and I bleached it blond . . .”

“He looked like everybody else,” says Greg. . . .

On his Mike Warnke Alive! album, Mike further claims: “I’d had hepatitis four times from shooting up with dirty needles. I had scabs all over my face from shooting up crystal. I was a speed freak. I weighed 110 pounds soaking wet. My skin had turned yellow. My hair was falling out. My teeth were rotting out of my head. I’d been pistol-whipped five or six times. My jaw had been broken. My nose had been almost ripped off. I had a bullet hole in my right leg. Two bullet holes in my left leg.”

Greg Gilbert and the others saw Mike on a daily basis, and say that it is totally impossible for Mike to have had hepatitis, facial scabs from injecting “crystal,” and wounds from being shot three times. “Without us knowing it? It’s a lie,” Greg says.

Lois’s reaction to Mike’s tale? “That’s just make-believe,” she states. “Mike never fell in with drugs . . . I was training to be a nurse, and I think I would have known if he was using drugs. I wouldn’t have dated Mike if he was drugged.”. . . Tim Smith . . . states he never saw Warnke with long hair or in the drug-induced emaciated state he claimed to be during that period. . . .

By Christmas of 1965, Mike and Lois were seeing each other on a daily basis. “It was pretty fast that we said we were going to get married,” says Lois. “Within two or three months of school starting, he gave me a rose ring with a diamond in it. It cost $60. He had to make payments on it. . . .”

In The Satan Seller, Warnke has gone through his drugs, sex, and promotion to high priest before Christmas of 1965. . . . Shirley Schrader says Mike had Christmas dinner in Crestline with the family. “He didn’t seem emaciated by drugs to me,” she says. . . .

According to The Satan Seller, Mike Warnke’s reign as a satanic high priest ends, apparently sometime in the spring of 1966, when Warnke crumples under the strain of too much responsibility and too many drugs. On a “Focus on the Family” radio broadcast, he described his appearance at this time: “I had white hair. It was about down to my belt . . . I had six-inch fingernails; I painted them black”. . . On the Mike Warnke Alive! album he describes his hair length the night before boot camp: “It hit me just below the pockets.” He continues: “The night before I went to boot camp I went to this party. . . . I smoked a bunch of dope and ate a bunch of reds . . . the girl I was with decided the thing that would really be cute is if she braided my hair . . . She . . . braided it all together, and hung a jingle bell on the end of each braid.”

Lois says she was the girl who gave Mike his going-away party. When she heard this story for the first time in 1979, she was furious. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard that!” she says. “I’m the one who gave him the going-away party! We never touched drugs. He never had long hair—his hair was short, short, short!”

Greg and Dawn . . . offered Lois the use of their apartment for the party. (Ibid, pages 9-12)

On page 8, Cornerstone has a photograph of Mike Warnke reportedly taken April 30, 1966. Instead of showing that he had white hair reaching down to his belt, it supports his fiancée’s claim that his hair “was short, short, short!”

The reader may wonder what effect the charges against Warnke will have on our views regarding Satanic ritual abuse. Actually, we have never cited Mike Warnke as an authority on this subject. Although we had no idea of the depths of the problem, we had heard there might be questions regarding his claims about Satanic involvement. Consequently, we did not consult his books in preparing our material.

Actually, Mike Warnke’s works present a problem with regard to the claim that human sacrifice takes place in Satanic rituals. When he was interviewed on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Warnke claimed he was never involved in such sacrifices:

WINFREY: Did you witness killings?

Mr. WARNKE: No, I never did. I never witnessed a human sacrifice . . . you just heard rumors of it even within the occult . . .
(The Oprah Winfrey Show, September 30, 1986, Transcript #8607, pages 8-9)

While Mike Warnke claimed he had 1,500 followers in the satanic cult, he stated that he had no first-hand information about human sacrifice. For this reason the book, The Satanism Scare, page 130, uses Warnke as a witness against those who hold to the idea of satanic ritual abuse. If Mike Warnke was really involved in an important position in Satanism, his statement that he had no personal knowledge of human sacrifices might throw some doubt on the stories told by the survivors of satanic ritual abuse. Unless, however, Warnke can in some way overthrow the strong case that Cornerstone has built against him, his testimony concerning Satanism is of no value to either side of the controversy.

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