F O L IO
BLOOD SPORE Of murder and mushrooms By Hamilton Morris
n July 2011, on the hottest from another source: “This dayI of the year, I received a information should be treated fragile-looking Maxell com- with due caution. Some of pact cassette from a retired these cops, if still living, could psychology professor and be very dangerous.” gerbil-aggression researcher The warning was delivered named Gary Davis. I had been by Paul Stamets, who had told the cassette contained a told me about the tape but recording of two police of cers never actually heard it. Once discussing their involvement a friend of Pollock’s, Stamets in the robbery and murder of has in recent decades become one Steven Pollock, a physi- recognized as the foremost cian and pioneering mycologist who—despite in- authority on medicinal mushrooms: a taxono- valuable contributions to the eld, including an mist, author, cultivator extraordinaire, and gen- improved technique for growing psychedelic eral fungal hype-man, Stamets travels the coun- mushrooms on Purina Dog Chow—remains large- try giving lectures on the different ways ly unknown. Carefully labeled mushrooms can save both the planet and the //, the cassette had for thirty years been stored human race. It was at one of these lectures, titled in a toolbox under two dozen inoperative WWII- “How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World,” era Geiger counters in Davis’s mother’s house. I that I first had the opportunity to question had offered to pay for the tape but Davis refused, Stamets in person about the story of the tape. In insisting he just wanted it to be heard by as many a sold-out room with theatrically dimmed lights, people as possible, then backtracking and suggest- Stamets begins by opening a specially designed ing he wouldn’t mind terribly if I sent him twenty carrying case and removing a large, concentri- dollars for beer. I was worried about the tape’s cally banded cylindrical fungus, which he then integrity and had been reading anxiously about hoists above his head. “This is agarikon,” he the myriad problems that befall aging magnetic declares with Mosaic solemnity, “and it will prove media—binder embrittlement, remanence reduc- to be as important for the survival of the human tion, even fungal contamination—and the trans- race as the discovery of re.” In agarikon, which action was further charged by a stern warning really looks very much like an unfrosted layer
Hamilton Morris’s last article for Harper’s Magazine, “I Walked with a Zombie,” appeared in the November 2011 issue. Page borders by Roderick Mills. Photography credits on page 56.
FOLIO 41
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 41 5/21/13 4:53 PM cake, Stamets has detected potent antimicrobial be a police officer from Castle Hills, Texas, compounds that he predicts will protect us from named Wayne Merchant, the other a self- intercontinental viral storms destined to sweep described “burglar” whose name is unclear. Of- the globe. He tells the audience of how he cured cer Merchant joins The Burglar in a diner where himself of a stammer with Psilocybe, treated his cheerful muzak unwinds on the radio, dishes mother’s breast cancer with Trametes, saved his clatter, and a cash register rings and the drawer aunt’s home from carpenter-ant infestation with shoots open. Unbeknownst to Of cer Merchant, Metarhizium, and how mycelium—the lamen- he is being recorded. The Burglar is distressed tous network that absorbs nutrients into the because he has been “fingered” for the “bull fungus—is both earth’s brain and the Internet’s moose job” and “shooting up a guy.” He is facing natural progenitor. He does all this wearing a hat serious “federal time.” It can be inferred that The made of mushrooms. Burglar knows much of the Castle Hills PD per- Listening to Stamets speak about fungi I think sonally and is acting as an informant in the this must be what it was like to listen to Thomas pursuit of a reduced sentence. The two discuss Edison talk about incandes- their involvement in an array of crimes, both cence, the research so deliri- petty and violent, before the conversation turns ously ambitious and diverse that to the unsolved murder of Pollock. it seems to teeter on the brink of insanity but, perhaps by : Ahrite, there’s one more thing virtue of its grounding in clini- that I don’t know how it got brought up, imma tell you what I heard. I heard on the cal studies and scienti c publi- street that you did it. cations, doesn’t leave one feel- : I did what? ing to be in the presence of : Pollock’s death. a mountebank—somehow : Whose death? quite the opposite—and when : Pollock—that mushroom doctor. Stamets utters his concluding : I don’t even know the son of bitch, remarks he is reward- I don’t even know where he lived. ed by a rabid stand- : They got—they claim—that I did it, ing ovation. The au- that I went in and killed him, robbed him dience wastes no and killed him for two hundred thousand cash, and killed him. time in swarming the : Hmmmmm. stage in hopes that Stamets will be able to help them find fungal succor for their n August 1977 Gary Lincoff had not yet au- human woes, and I thoredI the National Audubon Society Field am, of course, no dif- Guide to North American Mushrooms, nor was ferent. A man begins, he yet the president of the North American in a somewhat accu- Mycological Association or the chair of their satory tone, to inquire prestigious Mycophagy Committee. His first as to why his black- book, Toxic and Hallucinogenic Mushroom Poi- morel kit did not bear soning, was going to press that winter and, de- fruit, to which Stamets reminds him there are no spite a lack of formal mycological training (he guarantees of fruition, offers a diplomatic hand- held only a BA in philosophy), he was on his shake, and turns to the next person in line, which way to becoming a world-class authority on is me. I am hesitant to bring up the subject of Pol- bioactive mushrooms. He appeared profession- lock in public, but the press of mycophiles on either al, wore a suit, and publicly discussed the hallu- side of me leaves me no choice. I tell Stamets I have cinogenic varieties primarily in regard to modes obtained the Pollock tape and I think I can solve of treatment for those who had consumed the murder, in response to which his face changes. them. Yet he was part of a burgeoning group of “You know, Steve was assassinated by the police,” mycologists whose interest in “toxic” mush- he says, suddenly unaware of his surroundings. The rooms, particularly those of the genus Psilocybe, dissatis ed morel-kit customer takes a extended to their possible therapeutic applica- step backward toward the door. tions. It was in that summer of 1977 that Lin- coff attended the Second International Myco- he tape, heavy with hiss and wow and utter, logical Congress in Tampa, Florida. wasT as Davis described, a forty- ve-minute con- Lincoff was particularly interested in a talk versation between two men: one who appears to titled “The Hallucinogenic Species of the Ge-
42 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JULY 2013
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 42 5/21/13 4:53 PM nus Psilocybe in the World” being given by the whose greatest danger had once been the mis- leading Psilocybe taxonomist Gastón Guzmán. identi cation of toadstools, a frightening new There was another IMC2 attendee who shared dynamic had emerged. Lincoff’s fascination with Guzmán, but unlike Both Pollock and Lincoff were bearded. One Lincoff he wasn’t waiting in the air-conditioned might even go so far as to say extremely bearded, convention center; instead he’d chosen to stand certainly bearded enough that they could regis- outside, conspicuously sorting mushrooms in ter “the stock-reaction ‘hippie.’” (Pollock’s hair front of a hand-painted Winnebago Chieftain was so voluminous that it often that he had converted into a rolling mycologi- extended beyond the borders of cal laboratory. This was Steven Pollock. Young, photographs, his autopsy report hirsute, and wearing a Day-Glo T-shirt, Pollock correctly, if with understate- xedly examined mushroom specimens in the ment, observing that his hair parking lot, totally oblivious to the withering was “full in amount with no al- glances of academic passersby. Intrigued, Lin- opecia.”) And so, not wishing coff approached Pollock to ask what species to be shot, Lincoff and Pollock he’d been collecting, and Pollock brought him fastidiously ashed their IMC2 inside the Winnebago to have a look. Pollock badges and politely asked farm- had out tted the interior with an autoclave, pe- ers for permission. While tri dishes, desiccators, and everything else nec- searching a secluded field on essary to culture and preserve mushrooms on their hands and knees, Pollock the road, plus stacks of his first book, Magic and Lincoff looked up to nd Mushroom Cultivation (1977). Lincoff immediate- themselves surrounded by a ly realized that he had met IMC2’s most interest- herd of milk cows. Pollock had ing attendee, and so he didn’t hesitate to forgo written extensively about the history of Brah- the rest of the afternoon’s presentations when man cattle and how their dung and domestica- Pollock invited him to go hunting for a species tion in uenced global mushroom distribution, of bluing Panaeolus rumored to and he assured Lincoff they weren’t at risk of be- grow on the outskirts of Tampa. ing trampled. It was then that Pollock looked down between them and noticed a solitary spec- hile magic mushrooms were still obscure imen with an unusual appearance. It had a Wthroughout most of the world, Floridian farmers small, convex, caramel-colored cap undergirded were some of the rst to experience what Steven by gills of a purple hue and a long exuous stem Pollock would later call “the psilocybian mush- that thickened ever so slightly at the base, where room pandemic.” A 1972 eld guide warned pro- the faintest hint of indigo emerged like the vas- spective mushroom hunters to culature beneath the skin of a human wrist.1 Pollock brought the mushroom back to his [a]void registering the stock-reaction “hippie” in Winnebago laboratory, where he sterilized a the natives of the areas explored. Probably the old scalpel, longitudinally bisected the specimen, guise of mycology student will no longer serve as some “peace of cers” will arrest any suspicious and excised a small piece of internal stem tissue looking folks possessing eld mushrooms regardless to culture on agar. On his journey back to San of species. Antonio he observed a lens of mycelium slowly spreading across the media, developing the color To some farmers the mushrooms were perks— of freshly torched crème brûlée. Weeks later Pol- with entrepreneurial air they issued special blue lock noticed something else in the dish: stitched buckets for twenty- ve dollars a day as a means across the mycelium were glistening granules un- of formal Psilocybe-picking registration. But most like anything he’d ever seen. Starting small, they farmers’ response was one of hostility; some grew into gnarled, doorknob-size masses of would wait patiently until after a rainstorm, bruised esh, blue and turquoise and purple in when the manure-loving mushrooms emerged, color. Pollock photographed them, dissected and then ambush and brutally beat those tres- them, and—observing a long mycological passing on their elds. Tensions had peaked the tradition—he ate them. They had not the spring before Lincoff and Pollock visited, on the characteristic umami of fungi, but were nutty other coast in Parkland, where two unarmed and tart, something like a mix of cashew and men picking mushrooms under cover of night were discovered by a police of cer named Wil- 1 The mycologist Alan Rockefeller relates an alternative version of the story that sees Pollock and Lincoff in the liam Cobb, who shot them both in the back of pasture “smoking a doob,” which Pollock drops and then the head. Cobb explained later in court that the nds resting at the base of a new mushroom species. Lin- shots had been red in self-defense. In a practice coff insists that this version is apocryphal.
FOLIO 43
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 43 5/21/13 4:53 PM kiwifruit. Pollock soon came to realize this was an vigorous myceliogenesis, emerging phoenixlike entirely new species, and he named it Psilocybe from the ashes of burned forests. tampanensis, phoning Lincoff to declare that what All along the Mesoamerican biological cor- they had discovered in Tampa was nothing less ridor there is a history of slash-and-burn agri- than the philosopher’s stone. Though he would culture beginning with the Olmec. The same later write oridly that the species “clearly trans- re-farming ancient civilizations to record the port the fortunate consumer to states of spiri- rst use of psilocybian mushrooms may have tual transcendence and jubilation far beyond been unknowingly selecting for sclerotial the realm of ordinary psychedelics,” he report- character. Even as restorms in excess of 2200 ed his ndings to the journal Mycotaxon with degrees Fahrenheit rage through a forest, the the restrained conclusion: “A bioassay . . . soil one foot below the surface remains ther- has established that this fungus is psy- mally unbudged, cradling the fungus until the choactive in man.” environment becomes favorable for growth. Forest res are vital to the reproductive cycle ollock called it the philosopher’s stone, and for morels, for example, which sometimes wait Pthe rock of ages, the cosmic camote, the super- a century or more for re to initiate fruition. fantastic megagalactic camotillo, and several other (Morels in turn inspire such gustatory lust things, but what he had eaten is properly termed that laws had to be enacted in eighteenth- a sclerotium. Not to be con- century Germany to prevent the peasantry fused with bulbs, caudices, from burning down forests.) These res were corms, rhizomes, tubers, or oth- the only way to reliably produce morels, whose er hypogeal swellings, the scle- indoor cultivation proved impossible.2 rotium is a structure unique to In the kingdom of fungi the sclerotium as- fungi. Though frequently equat- sumes many forms. The Gogodala people of ed with truf es (and in the case Papua New Guinea’s Western Province live on of Psilocybe now marketed as a swampy alluvial soil completely devoid of the “psychedelic truf es”), the scle- stones required to make hard tools; instead rotium’s function they seek out the mushroom Pleurotus tuber- is fundamentally regium and carve its giant sclerotia into club different: whereas heads carried on hunting expeditions and into a truf e is a repro- battle. The dark purple tendrils that emerge ductive structure from orets of ryegrass parasitized by ergot, the that attracts ani- culprit for the medieval scourge of St. Antho- mals who post- ny’s Fire, are also sclerotia, and it was the sys- digestively dis- tematic study of ergot sclerotia by Albert Hof- perse its spores, a man that resulted in the discovery of LSD. sclerotium is a There is a parasitic Fibulorhizoctonia species vegetative struc- that forms sclerotia capable of mimicking the ture that serves size and shape of common termite eggs so ex- no direct repro- actly that the termites nurture the sclerotia as ductive purpose. If their own brood, tirelessly salivating on them a given environ- to maintain their moisture. With fungi of the ment cannot sup- genus Cordyceps, living caterpillars are mummi- port the growth of a mushroom, the mycelium—a ed by mycelium, gradually becoming rigid as a cottony subterranean net made of totipotent cells sclerotium consumes their soft tissue, then similar to animal stem cells—may produce a scle- sends a stroma bursting forth from their head rotium. The mycelium’s cellular threads bifurcate 2 It wasn’t until 1981 that the rst arti cially grown mo- and fuse with one another repeatedly, forming a rel was harvested. Ronald Ower, a graduate student at densely interwoven clod that can survive inde - San Francisco State University, achieved a breakthrough nitely and give rise to a mushroom should envi- when he treated the sclerotia of the yellow morel with a ronmental conditions improve. Save for the seed compound developed by Paul Stamets for growing psilo- cybian mushrooms. It required an additional ve years and the spore itself there are few biological struc- of experimentation, cultivation, and “ascus stroking” be- tures that rival the sclerotium’s adamantine resil- fore he could le a patent for his technique, but Ower ience; in certain species, sclerotia can survive be- never lived to see his work revolutionize the industry ing desiccated to the point of combustibility, with grow kits and a lucrative contract from Domino’s Pizza: he was murdered in a robbery three months before subjected to freezing temperatures, mired in acidic his patent was granted, his mangled body found in a soils, and deprived completely of nutrients. Some park and identi able only by the keys to his sclerotium varieties quiesce for decades before sudden and lab and a gold maxillary central incisor.
44 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JULY 2013
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 44 5/21/13 4:53 PM to disperse spores that will parasitize caterpil- parakeet seed, then to wheat, oats, barley, John- lars anew. So valuable are Cordyceps to practi- son grass, timothy grass, rye grain, alfalfa, clover, tioners of traditional Chinese medicine that in crimped oats, cannabis seeds, coffee grounds, 2009 seven Nepalese farmers were murdered, soybeans, brown rice, milo, millet, canary seed, dismembered, and thrown down a ravine by a and corn. gang of rival sclerotium collectors. Then came the manures. Sheep, horse, and cow, along with brous masses of elephant dung. * * * Always fresh, as Pollock abhorred commercially packaged stuff. He lled Reynold’s oven bags and : But I checked around and I understand sterilized them in his kitchen, using “pickup that Tommy Lyons had somethin’ to do with truck load” as a unit of volume in his recipes. it and you had somethin’ to do with it and one With candy thermometer and furrowed brow, he other person had something to do with it— would probe tall piles of composting feces to and that’s street information that I got. measure the activity of thermophilic bacteria, : Who’s Tommy Lyons? : Used to be a private investigator, you and when neighbors inquired about the smell or don’t even know him? the nature of his activities he would dismissively : I don’t know none of these people. state that he was conducting a “secret govern- That’s interesting—that is interesting. ment research project.” : I don’t know who would put that out, The culmination of Pollock’s research was the ’cause I never messed with drugs in my life, publication of his 1977 book, Magic Mushroom man. I mean, anybody knows me they know Cultivation, a work that abandoned all dogma I’m a burglar and they might know some other and superstition of the period and focused on the stuff but they know I don’t mess with drugs— economical use of brown rice as a growth sub- and that’s a denite drug-related thing. strate, a technique that subsequent chemical : No, I know you don’t deal with drugs. I’d like to know who put that out. analyses would demonstrate produces mushrooms : They’ve got an informant out some- of extraordinarily high psilocybin content. After where, they claim. that Pollock shifted his focus to selectively breed- : I’ll tell you what, that informant is ing P. t a m panensis until he had isolated a strain full of bullshit . . . that produced sclerotia of breathtaking enor- : They got an informant that put it out mousness. “He was growing things almost the size on me and I heard about you on the street. I of ostrich eggs,” recalls Lincoff. Perhaps the most did hear that about you. I heard that’s why exciting aspect of the tampanensis sclerotium was you left over that. that it was so alien, a trained mycologist with a scanning electron microscope would fail to iden- tify its taxon. It could be carried in pockets and taken on airplanes, and even increasingly t is somewhat surprising that Pollock should mushroom-savvy law enforcement had abso- haveI risen to prominence in the world of psy- lutely no idea what it was. Pollock wanted to chedelic mushrooms through sober, pragmatic introduce his discovery to the world and had a thinking. He strove to set himself apart from the long-nurtured vision of creating the first zany hallucinés and Psilocybe-panspermia theoriz- medicinal-mushroom research laboratory. P. tam- ers of the 1970s with hard, evidence-based culti- panensis, it seemed, was his ticket. vation techniques microcalibrated for optimized Recognizing the P. t a m panensis sclerotium’s yields. In 1975, freshly graduated from the Medi- market potential, Pollock founded a company cal College of Wisconsin, he felt most of his with a local mushroom fanatic named Michael psychomycological peers were “riffraff” who sul- Forbes and another physician and called it Hid- lied the eld with their unscientic crackpottery. den Creek. In March 1979, within a month of He took a position at the University of Texas incorporation, they began a campaign of month- Department of Pharmacology and occupied his ly print advertisements in High Times featuring a days with unremarkable biochemical investiga- seminude woman writhing in a macramé shawl tions, a residency in anesthesiology, studies on beneath the conical pileus of a hovering Psilo- hepatic opioid metabolism, grant writing, and cybe cubensis. Michael Forbes told me, “The rst the like. But he spent his nights absorbed with time I went to get the orders there physically independent mushroom experimentation, test- wasn’t enough room in the mailbox; we had to ing thousands of species/substrate combinations move the operation out of my house and into a in hopes of bringing facile mushroom cultivation factory by the San Antonio International Air- into the homes of those untrained in microbiol- port. Virtually overnight we were netting fty ogy. It began with the Purina, then moved to grand a month—that’s almost three thousand
FOLIO 45
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 45 5/21/13 4:54 PM kits.” Hidden Creek was by no means the rst Pollock needed to demonstrate a therapeutic distributor of mushroom-cultivation supplies— effect that addressed a recognized disorder, and by the late 1970s there was an array of so he began to focus on the perennially ill-de ned Psilocybe-spore and even manure vendors vying problem of autism. With the autistic children of for their share of the growing magic-mushroom his established patients as test subjects, he start- market, crowding the pages of High Times with ed an underground pilot study with tampanensis macroscopic photos of sun-dappled stalks and sclerotia. “He felt he’d found something that promises of contaminant-free transcendence. could treat autism and perhaps other mental But Hidden Creek placed themselves ahead of diseases,” Paul Stamets recalls. “He knew parents the competition by selling not spores but a living who were extremely distraught, really at the end mycelial culture called spawn, obviating long of their ropes ... and so he treated two or three colonization periods and doubling growth rates autistic children by providing them with P. t a m- (and remaining technically legal). Within a year panensis sclerotia and it had a remarkably positive Hidden Creek had become the largest effect, albeit temporary.” (Michael Forbes dis- magic-mushroom vendor in the world.3 putes this, saying that Pollock never actually conducted sclerotium experiments on autistic ut Pollock yearned to propel himself be- children. He suggests instead that Pollock fabri- Byond the riffraff and into the pantheon of cated the experiments in an effort to gain support alternative-medical greatness. He wanted AMA from the DEA to conduct of cially sanctioned validation, DEA licensure, research—one of many in- FDA-approved clinical trials, stances of Pollock’s using a
the first sclerotium RI . Pol- charlatan’s means to a doc- lock wanted to be the man tor’s end.) In July 1979, Pol- who not only brought mush- lock applied for a patent on rooms into the darkened the sclerotia of his tampanen- closets of clandestine cultiva- sis strain as a psychothera- tors but also put them on peutic medicine and began fluorescent-lit pharmacy sketching plans to build a shelves. Doing so would of mycological superlab on hun- course require nothing less dreds of acres of ranch land. than a revolution in the Once he had acquired the American medical establish- necessary funds he would ment, but he was up to the quit his unful lling job as a task.4 Those hoping to intro- pusher of synthetic psycho- duce psychedelics into the pharmaceuticals and begin pharmacopeia of allopathic medicine—and researching natural medicines full-time. But there have been several—have always encoun- there were only two ways of making the money tered a problem; they simply don’t t into a med- he needed to fund the lab: selling mushroom kits ical paradigm where the betterment of already- and selling prescriptions, and so he began doing well people is not considered a valid pursuit.5 both with newfound urgency. 3 Gray-market corporations generally do a poor job of “The magic mushroom people who are always maintaining detailed nancial records. David Tatelman, keeping your mind in mind,” Hidden Creek’s eerie founder of Hidden Creek’s closest rival, Homestead slogan, ran across the pages of every major drug Book Company, of Seattle, estimated Homestead’s av- magazine, and Pollock funneled all the pro ts erage yearly grow-kit revenue to be $275,000 during Pollock’s heyday, which would put Hidden Creek in the everything that has traditionally characterized an FDA- lead by a large margin. approvable pharmaceutical. Whereas early research often 4 Such lofty ambitions could easily be dismissed as delu- suggested relatively imsy bene ts, such as reducing the sional if it weren’t for the fact that Pollock was a bril- duration of the common cold or increasing the expectora- liant and dedicated scientist; his colleague Kenneth tion of mucus, recent research has found serotonergic psy- Blum recalled to High Times Pollock’s “drive to chedelics to act as potent anti-in ammatory agents and as achieve medical greatness in a very traditional sense. stimulators of hippocampal neurogenesis. Psilocybin is an Had Steve worn a tie, had short hair, worked under a alkaloid that bears strong resemblance to the neurotrans- government grant at Harvard, and sold prescriptions to mitter serotonin, and so exerts its primary pharmacologi- suburbanites, he would still be alive today.” cal effect on multiple subtypes of serotonin receptors. It is through such receptors that psilocybin both prevents cluster 5 Until recently, psychedelics weren’t believed to address headaches and induces its psychedelic effects. Although it any somatic disorders—they generally exert their thera- has many commonalities with such psychedelics as mesca- peutic effect after a single administration, and what exact- line and LSD, in recent years it has come to the forefront ly they do is dif cult to quantify, varying enormously from of medical research because of its high potency and the person to person. In short, they stand in stark opposition to comparatively short duration of its effects.
46 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JULY 2013
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 46 5/21/13 4:54 PM directly into funding his private mushroom re- the Quaalude was in its death throes and Pre- search, simultaneously expanding his home lab ludin had all but disappeared from pharmacy and taking frequent trips to such places as the shelves—but Pollock continued to give his pa- Brazilian Amazon and the Quercus forests of tients what they wanted, in the quantities they Mexico in order to chart the geographic distribu- wanted, as long as they paid in cash. Endurets, tion of psychoactive mushrooms. “We hardly ever gryocaps, chronotabs, gradumets, and spansules went out,” Mitzi Moore, his girlfriend, told High rained from the bright-orange pages of his pre- Times. “Our dates were spent shaking mushroom scription pad in such abundance that the state jars early into the morning, and the sex was often pharmacy board scheduled a special seminar on interrupted by technical raps about mushrooms.” Pollock to alert employees about his unscrupu- In 1979 alone Pollock discovered three novel lous business practices. His prescriptions pro- psychedelic species—Psilocybe armandii, Psilocybe scribed, Pollock is said to have bought his own wassoniorum, and Psilocybe schultesii—and pub- pharmacy to satisfy customers. An ever- lished articles on their taxonomy. He traveled so increasing number of new patients rang his often that local thieves began to take notice, and doorbell; on some days lines would ow out his his house was robbed twice during South Amer- of ce door onto his front lawn. Forbes remem- ican expeditions. He responded by purchasing bers, “The of ce was a who’s who of San Anto- steel doors and having iron grills installed over nio society. Drug use knows no socioeconomic his windows. His friends advised him to buy a boundaries, and so on a given day you would gun but he refused, opting instead to have Paul find scientists, government officials, and the Stamets train him in the Korean martial art of most strung-out junkies all waiting in line for hwa rang do. their turn.” Yet in the insular world of mycology In June 1980 the San Antonio Express-News many of Pollock’s colleagues were totally un- ran an article on Hidden Creek, with a photo- aware of his prescription writing, including his graph of a worker dressed in a Hawaiian shirt third Hidden Creek partner, who asked not to merrily preparing grow kits for distribution. They be named in this article. “Mike called me one were supplying head shops throughout the Unit- day to say that Steve had bought a pharmacy ed States and were ever ready to defend the le- and was writing illegal scripts for people, and gitimacy of their operation with, as the Express- man that put the red ag up! I said I want to dis- News’s reporter put it, “30 pages of legal jargon.” solve any business agreement I had with them,” Rising to prominence along with Pollock was he explained. “To me Hidden Creek was already Andrew Weil, also a psychomycophile and MD bordering on illegal, and I didn’t want the DEA often published in the pages of High Times, but to hunt me down.” one with deep pockets who didn’t need to deal Many great institutions have been built on a in the gray market to fund his exploits. Each criminal foundation. Stamets, whose early work man hoped to emerge as the great American dealt exclusively with psilocybian fungi, now en- natural-medicine guru, but to most it was clear joys prominent placement of his mushroom- that Weil, with his charisma and Harvard cre- based health supplements on the shelves of every dentials, was the likelier candidate. This didn’t Whole Foods in the country. For Pollock, who prevent the two from engaging in epistolary ar- was in his early thirties, the prescriptions read guments in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, like an unseemly chapter that could be ended where Weil attacked Pollock for being a super- when his account balance reached the $2 mil- cilious pedant and Pollock attacked Weil for lion required to build his superlab. Pollock took suggesting that Panaeolus subbalteatus induced so many patients that some days he made dysphoria when in fact subbalteatus was a “su- $10,000 in cash, and his practice continued to perb psychotropogen.” An early photo features expand, receiving requests from more than one Weil seated on a couch beside Pollock, the two hundred prospective patients each week. He eyeing each other suspiciously. When describ- began to provide inventive new services such ing to me his relationship with Pollock, Weil as extracting bullets from gunshot victims who was guarded, saying little more than “I never were afraid hospitals would report their wounds felt much of an af nity for him . . . he didn’t to police, using his kitchen as an operating seem to be very presentable.” Weil ended up theater. A low point noted by Mitzi was an oc- aunting his luxurious beard twice on the cov- casion when he wrote an opioid prescription for er of Time, Pollock dead on the front an unconscious woman who was carried into page of HighWitness News. his of ce by several men. He walked a vanish- ing line between criminality and medical n 1980 some of the last great psychopharma - bene cence—in a single day he could be ob- ceuticalsI were on the road to FDA banishment— served offering free treatment to the children of
FOLIO 47
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 47 5/21/13 4:54 PM low-income families and furtively providing co- task of calling family members of suspects to caine to female patients. He tested the anti- ask whether they thought their brothers, sons, addictive effects of psilocybin in hopes of curing and cousins were capable of murder. In all his opioid-dependent patients while shamelessly instances the answer to this question feeding the addictions of others. He bartered un- was “No.” usual mushroom specimens for Quaaludes and planted an acre of cannabis that he planned to ollock’s is a sedate neighborhood of near- distribute throughout the country in sealed cook- identicalP ranch-style tract houses—varying in ie tins around Christmastime. His erratic behav- color from cream to Creamsicle orange, built ior strained or destroyed many of his personal re- between 1971 and 1972, with gabled roofs, soli- lationships; Paul Stamets cut off communication tary elms, patio slabs, and wooden privacy with him almost completely. Pollock’s last letter to fences—once punctuated by Pollock’s outdoor Stamets was an indignant plea for reconciliation mushroom beds, Winnebago laboratory, and and help publishing micrographs of a novel vari- the streams of pimps, prostitutes, politicians, ety of Psilocybe with a reticulated spore, but and speed freaks who frequented his of ce. Pol- Stamets knew no amount of reticula- lock practiced medicine next door to the house tion could repair their friendship. in which he lived, the two connected in back by a large greenhouse: on the dexter he ate, ast summer I ew to San Antonio to visit slept, and researched herbal medicines; on the LPollock’s of ce, stationing myself at the Red Roof sinister he ran his business as San Antonio’s Inn SeaWorld, a lodging wholly impregnated with number-one Dr. Feelgood. the smell of a lite-beer can repurposed as an ash- Peter Susca had advised his client to get an tray full of pubic hair that is, in fact, nowhere examination table and physician’s scale to give near the city’s SeaWorld. I began systematically his of ce an air of legitimacy. Were Pollock to calling Pollock’s friends and colleagues, as well as have worn a lab coat, yoked a stethoscope about the detectives who were in charge of investigating his neck, and donned an elastic-banded head his murder, hoping to hear intimations of conspir- mirror it wouldn’t have been suf cient to save his atorial activity, or investigatory negligence, mal- doctorly image, but he agreed nonetheless and feasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance—really fea- on Saturday, January 31, 1981, brought an exam sance of any kind. I wanted to begin with a visit table to his of ce. He was due back before the to Gary Davis’s house in nearby Nixon to speak Texas Medical Board in three weeks to hear with him about the origin of the tape, but he was the outcome of an ongoing investigation into his by his own admission preoccu- practice. Police officers had been examining pied with having himself pharmacy dispensation records, nding around checked in to a mental institu- 10,000 Quaalude tablets issued in his name at a tion for a depressive phase of bi- single pharmacy. A hearing had been called the polar disorder. Undeterred, I preceding Monday after two undercover SAPD moved on to Pollock’s girlfriend of cers, working in conjunction with the medical Mitzi, but her exact location board, had posed as patients and received liberal was dif cult to ascertain as she prescriptions for dexedrine following pro forma had just been released from pris- examinations. Independently, DEA-sponsored on after serving a ten-year sen- airplanes were making reconnaissance ights tence for intoxication man- over Pollock’s marijuana plantation near Twin slaughter. Following Pollock’s Sisters. A grand jury had been convened to try death she had succumbed to Pollock for cannabis horticulture. The criminal opioid addiction, lost a suit investigation and police surveillance had caused against Pollock’s estate to recov- enough disturbance that Pollock’s secretary re- er kitchen utensils and stereo fused to come to work, but Pollock had immedi- equipment she claimed were her rightful property ately replaced her with Patti Halprin, at least the as his common-law wife, and nally, while driving third secretary he had hired within a year. her Saturn under the in uence of methadone and The day seems to have been unremarkable: Xanax, decapitated a pedestrian. Next I contact- Pollock dragged his newly purchased examina- ed Pollock’s attorney, Peter Susca, who greeted me tion table into his of ce and left it by the door with the question “How do I know you are who slightly askew, planning to assemble it later. Al- you say you are?” To which I could only respond though it was a Saturday, Pollock worked. He that I was a stranger, unable to prove myself oth- worked seven days a week, starting at noon and erwise. The detectives had long since retired from seeing patients until they stopped trickling in the SAPD, and so I began the sti ingly awkward around six o’clock, around thirty per day. Patti
48 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JULY 2013
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 48 5/21/13 4:54 PM Halprin, who had been hired only that Wednes- ing to the answering machine. Concerned, she day, arrived around one and went next door to drove to his of ce, arriving at eleven. She walked Pollock’s home to prepare him a bowl of chicken to the front door, holding in each hand a paper soup for lunch. When patients came into the of- bag containing one of the Cornish game hens fice Halprin looked down or at the wall; she she had prepared for their dinner. Though he didn’t like to watch Pollock prescribe, as she felt always kept his door unlocked, she found it bolt- it implicated her in what was clearly a criminal ed tight and received no answer after repeatedly enterprise, and she was probably further side- ringing the bell. She set down lined by Pollock’s insistence on always answering the bags and struggled over the the phone, which he refused to let anyone else fence enclosing Pollock’s back use, in order to keep the line open for business. yard. It was the coldest day of A parade of herniated spinal discs, stone-laden the week in the coldest month kidneys, and insomniac minds paid the cash of the year (though still not that that put mushrooms on the table. None of his cold—San Antonio is, after all, patients reported seeing anything unusual, nor sub-subtropical). It was fty de- did his secretary, and when Pollock called Mitzi grees outside, sweater weather, at four that afternoon he seemed cheery. At ve and when Mitzi saw the dark- she began to prepare two Cornish game hens, ened outline of Pollock’s body one for each of them. lying inside, supine on the oor, By six Pollock was expecting only one more she assumed he had knocked patient, and Halprin went home. When she ar- himself unconscious with a rived at her apartment she told her boyfriend small explosion while lighting she wouldn’t be returning to work the following the pilot to his furnace; appar- day; it had taken less than a week for her to re- ently he had done exactly this earlier that year. alize that Pollock’s practice—with its unremit- Mitzi climbed back over the fence and started ting phone calls and belligerent patients—was running frantically down Spring Brook avenue simply too frightening. That night, after Hal- looking for a house with the lights on. She stopped prin had gone, Pollock was alone in his of ce, at the porch of the Lowman residence. Emory foggy air roiling above the house on Spring Lowman answered the door with his fteen-year- Brook. He answered a phone call from Mitzi at old son, Christopher, and they told Mitzi they seven, and she asked him whether they could would call the police but she begged them not to, meet for dinner, but he said he still had another knowing an unexpected visit from the authorities patient coming. Mitzi told Pollock that she could destroy Pollock’s life. The Emorys followed loved him and wanted to marry, and Pollock her back to Pollock’s of ce, where Mitzi climbed said he would not get married until she had over the fence with Christopher. They shined signed a prenuptial agreement. ashlights through the bars on the glass patio door At half past nine Paul Stamets called Pollock. and onto the walls of the living room, which, it They hadn’t spoken in several months, but could now be seen clearly, were spat- Stamets knew Pollock was attempting to patent tered with blood. P. t a m panensis and he had found a reference he thought might be helpful. Their conversation was he presence, absence, and orientation of ob- repeatedly interrupted by calls on Pollock’s other jectsT in a crime scene take on a glowing signi - line. Pollock told Stamets to call back collect, cance equaled only in places of worship. Pol- knowing that his colleague, then a student at lock’s body was found in a corner beside the Washington’s Evergreen State College, could not front door with a one-inch laceration on his afford the long-distance charges. When Stamets forehead, his cream-colored sweater rumpled and called back the line was busy. He called a third soaked with blood, the front of his jeans slit time and Pollock picked up, and Stamets began to open, pocket linings inverted, with keys scat- recite the article’s title but Pollock interrupted him tered in a halo around his body. His right arm to say he had to run and get a pencil to write it was bent, his left arm ush against his side with down; by the time Pollock returned Stamets was several medium-length brown hairs entrained exasperated. He began again to recite the title of around the ngers. His new examination table the article, but Pollock interrupted him once more, lay between his body and a troop of twelve orna- saying, “Some patients have pulled up for treat- mental glass mushrooms arranged on a chest be- ment,” and then, “I’ll call you right back after they side the door. The house was ransacked— leave.” Stamets protested. Pollock hung up. mattress ipped off the bed frame and pillows Mitzi called Pollock repeatedly throughout the gutted, their stuffing strewn about the floor. evening, but each call rang four times before go- The furnace door was ung open, the contents
FOLIO 49
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 49 5/21/13 4:54 PM of the closets scattered, chairs overturned, draw- San Antonio, was astonished by what had been ers rummaged through, the cord of the phone left behind. Walter Pollock decided to defend his razored from the wall, and the freezer door ajar, son’s work, telling the police they were making a with two bags of blueberries thawing on the grave mistake destroying rare species that might ground in a pool of melted frost. have medicinal value. The elder Pollock succeed- The funeral was held on Tuesday, February 3, ed in stalling the police for a little more than a at Christ of the Hills, a Russian Orthodox mon- week by demanding a court order and taking up astery founded by the former real estate pitchman residence in his dead son’s home. Peter Susca re- and Texas television personality Sam Greene, calls, “Walter had ensconced himself in the home locally famous for both his business acumen and that Steven was living in—and he was a weird his transvestitism. Before his ordination he fellow, very strange bird—but he called me one dropped money from airplanes over San Antonio day to tell me that a DEA SWAT team had ar- and dressed in drag as “groovy granny Greene” to rived with some kind of ostensible authority, emp- promote land on the city’s undesirable South Side. tied everything out of the house, and told him it But in the previous ve years Greene had changed was going to be destroyed.” Walter Pollock’s resis- his name to Father Benedict, declared himself a tance couldn’t change the fact that psilocybin is a Russian Orthodox bishop, and formed an organi- Schedule I controlled substance. He met with Mi- zation called Ecumenical Monks Inc. He presided chael Forbes and tried to persuade him to move over the service wearing a black kamilavka and Hidden Creek to Haiti, where he claimed to have matching veil; the mourners wore white. criminal connections that could provide protec- Pollock’s body was presented in an open casket, tion, but after Forbes declined the offer he ew and each hand held a mushroom. The left clutched back to L.A. with what remained of his son’s sav- a large P. c u bensis strain Pollock had found in Oa- ings. The mushrooms were carted off by the San xaca, a big seller that Hidden Creek had advertised Antonio Narcotics Force, transported to the city as conferring psychic powers; in the right was a dump, doused with gasoline, and ignited. Seeth- different P. c u bensis strain he had discovered at ing cataracts of re reduced the fungi to ash while the Plantersville Renaissance Festival in Texas. In onlookers cheered and snapped photos. his breast pocket Michael Forbes tenderly tucked * a single P. t a m panensis sclerotium. A large platter * * of funerary sclerotia was presented to the mourn- ers, and a group of honky-tonk musicians known : I’ve never been caught doing nothing as the Supernatural Family Band began to play. in my life. Shot at a guy over here and they With Hidden Creek disintegrated, these P. t a m pa- got me on that. They got me dead on that. nensis sclerotia were treated as the last that would : I got a friend of mine, shot up a whole ever be grown. The weather was now freezing and buncha guys down on Broadway one night. : I mean that’s the case they’re gonna Conni Hancock, the band’s pedal-steelist, looked make on me, for sure they can make that case. out the window to see peacocks roaming the : Well this is interesting, though, there’s monastery grounds, leaving sagittate even street talk about me wasting a doctor. footprints in the Texas snow.6 : That’s what I heard. : Shit, I didn’t even know the turkey. hen Sergeant Odis Doyal entered Pollock’s I didn’t have no reason to waste him. Wmushroom greenhouse he found 1,753 quart jars : Well I heard that supposedly a source of growing magic mushrooms, what must then said that I went over there to rob him. So I have been the largest mushroom bust in Ameri- didn’t know him—I never met him in my life. can history. There were also ten pounds of desic- So that’s when I started digging around on the street. I can’t ask any cops, but supposedly . . . cated sclerotia, which had been specially prepared again it was a Castle Hills source that brought by Pollock days before his death to be analyzed for it out. new therapeutic alkaloids, as well as outdoor : I tell you what, I’d like to catch the mushroom beds, Queenline jars lled with purple source ’cause I’d like to bring a lawsuit. honey, innumerable agar slants and spore prints, : We might be able to get down to the and several sacks containing the methodically la- source, I don’t know. beled manure of exotic ungulates. Pollock’s es- : Well let me know if you nd out, tranged father, a real estate developer from L.A., goddamn. knew little of his son’s research and, arriving in 6 Though Hancock vividly remembers snowfall, not a sin- gle ake was recorded in Blanco or Bexar County for the entirety of 1981, and it seems likely that her memory The strange timing of Pollock’s murder begot owes to the hors d’oeuvres. paranoia of all shades and textures. Former pa-
50 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JULY 2013
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 50 5/21/13 4:54 PM tients gazed nervously at their inculpatory bottles chemist named Tom Van Doozer, Pollock’s for- of Quaalude, Pollock’s mycologist colleagues ate mer business partner turned archrival over a their experiments in anticipation of a coming in- stolen recipe for liquid inoculum. Van Doozer had vestigation, and mysterious tipsters rang the started his own company but was driven into SAPD to report suspects from all echelons of San bankruptcy when his line of kits suffered cata- Antonian society. There were rumors exchanged strophic failure from brown-rice among friends of a police cover-up and of a video- cloggage of inoculation ports, tape documenting the murder in toto, and it was leaving him penniless in a trail- frequently stated that Walter Pollock had offered er. Mitzi drew the scrutiny of a $500,000 reward to anyone with information the SAPD following her callous leading to the arrest of his son’s killer(s).7 request on the night of the mur- High Times’s obituarist, Mike Fellner, got from der to enter the crime scene and his interviews with detectives the impression they retrieve her kitchen utensils. were uninterested in, if not pleased by, Pollock’s Mitzi in turn spoke of corrupt demise. But even for the most unsympathetic in- police exacting revenge on Pol- vestigator there were piquant clues that couldn’t lock and of a mysterious local be ignored: a bloody towel in Pollock’s bathroom, woman she referred to as “the an unexplained bullet hole in the garage door, the black widow.” way his records had been ri ed through in an at- Elaborate theories tempt to hide or emphasize certain patient data, of government moni- and two mysterious phone calls from unidenti ed toring are a staple in women the night of the murder. Minutes before the diet of anyone in- Pollock’s death had been reported to dispatchers volved in the illicit a woman called the medical examiner’s of ce to drug trade, but unlike ask whether the body of a doctor had been brought the middling street- into the morgue, adding that she’d heard a doctor corner peddler, Pol- had been involved in a “disturbance with an at- lock was demonstra- torney.” Unaware of Pollock’s recent death, the bly and very closely medical examiner replied that no doctors had been being watched by brought in that day. This was followed by a call to multiple government Pollock’s of ce, at 2:04 . ., placed by a woman agencies. The previ- who supplied a fake name and inquired about Pol- ous September the lock’s whereabouts, probing detectives as they DEA had become im- photographed the crime scene. patient and moved in to destroy the cannabis The rst suspect was the infamous pimp Ar- crop it had been extensively surveilling. And just chie Lee Johnson. Even with Pollock’s manure as a grand-jury indictment of Pollock was coming hoard and outdoor mushroom beds, what really to seem inevitable, the charges were dropped and stuck out to neighbors was Johnson ominously a bullet found its way into his left occipital lobe. cruising Spring Brook in a pink Cadillac Finally, and most provocatively, Michael Eldorado. It was Pollock’s stentorian arguments Forbes divulged to me details of a plan hatched over Johnson’s debts, said to be as much as by Pollock three days prior to his death that, if $50,000, that had most traumatized Patty Hal- true, would be the most shocking evidence of prin.8 There had been rumors that Pollock’s death the mental and moral derangement Pollock’s was sought by no less high-pro le a gure than ambition inflicted on him. Pollock met with Ross Perot, the computer tycoon, drug-war vigi- Forbes to say, “I’ve got a plan: I’ve given Archie lante, and later presidential candidate who was Lee Johnson ve thousand dollars for each nar- rumored to have publicly sworn to destroy Pol- cotics of cer to have them killed.” Pollock had lock.9 Then there was an embittered shampoo become aware of the identities of the two under- cover cops scheduled to testify against him at 7 In actuality, no reward was ever offered by Walter Pollock, who refused to so much as pay for his son’s the medical-board hearing the following week. gravestone. Forbes believes their names were included in the 8 Michael Forbes denied the rumors that Archie Lee Johnson owed Pollock money, repeatedly emphasizing to preceding Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, Perot was me that Pollock was a Jew. seen rabidly proselytizing for the “Texans’ War on Drugs,” brandishing a bottle of concentrated marijuana 9 Although this claim could not be corroborated, Pol- smoke before rapt audiences, providing bodyguards for lock’s pro le, because of his books, grow-kit factory, cooperative snitches, pushing to allow wiretaps of sus- and prescription-drug racket, was high enough that he pected drug users, and promising nothing but the direst very well could have drawn Perot’s ire. In the months of consequences for “pill-pushing doctors.”
FOLIO 51
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 51 5/21/13 4:54 PM criminal complaint against Pollock, though the living in the apartment of a recent divorcé release of such sensitive information in an in- named Bob—only Bob, no last name. Bob was dictment is extremely unusual. The two of cers’ a recovering alcoholic who owned a liquor store real names were included in Pollock’s patient re- in downtown San Antonio. Bob had a strict cords, so it’s possible the “undercover” visit to his rule—he wouldn’t accept anything but legal of ce was not their rst. tender as payment—but in the summer of 1981 The recruitment of Archie Lee Johnson as an he broke his rule and allowed a drifter who assassin would have made sense; aside from being came in regularly to trade a tape recorder for a deeply connected to San Antonio’s criminal under- bottle of wine. Bob brought the recorder home world, Johnson was well known for having at- and while playing with it in front of Davis tempted the murder of a police of cer several years heard a strange conversation between two men; earlier. Forbes said he had tried to dissuade Pollock when the conversation turned to shooting the from such an undertaking. “I’d known Steve a long “mushroom doctor,” Davis realized they had time. I knew he was crazy. I knew he believed he stumbled on an important piece of evidence. was capable of doing anything—he had that med- He rewound the tape and replayed it obses- ical mentality where he wasn’t bothered by a bit by sively for days, and though there was no ex- death—but I at-out told him, ‘That is the stupidest plicit admission of guilt, Davis was certain fucking thing I’ve ever heard.’” To Forbes what hap- that the voice on the tape was that of Pol- pened next is clear: Archie Lee Johnson turned the lock’s killer. “He denies it,” Davis said. “But as hit against Pollock, and the two mysterious female a psychologist I can tell you he needs lessons callers were Johnson’s girls verifying that the job in how to lie convincingly.” was complete. Whoever entered the of ce, Forbes Davis insisted that Bob ask the drifter about believes, was acting with the complicity of the po- the origin of the tape, and when the drifter next lice, who neglected to collect obvious information came into Bob’s store he confessed he had stolen such as a statement from Johnson and phone re- it from the seat of an unmarked police car cords from the night of the murder.10 parked in front of metro squad HQ. Both Davis There is also the matter of the cassette and Bob were “scared shitless” that the corrupt tape’s unusual genesis; while Gary Davis was cop would track down the stolen tape and kill nishing up his MA in clinical psychology he them. Just as Forbes had spent years afraid to tell took a job studying ESP at the Mind Science anyone about Pollock’s proposed contract hit, Foundation in San Antonio. Although Davis Davis and Bob felt they had no choice but to wasn’t entirely committed to parapsychologi- keep quiet, and so the tape remained largely un- cal research, he was enticed by the fact that heard for thirty years, buried in Da- he was allowed to spend nights in the labora- vis’s mother’s house. tory and sleep on the waterbed that was used to relax subjects during experiments. In 1977 n March 5, 1983, following up on a con- he was helping the psychologist Harvey Gins- Ofidential informant’s tip, Detective Anton burg evaluate THC’s potential for reducing ag- Michalec interviewed a man named Virgil gression in the Mongolian gerbil, an animal Lyssy who had reported that two of his known for its infanticidal and cannibalistic friends had openly bragged about killing Pol- tendencies. Davis had the idea of modifying lock. Lyssy, a former reman dismissed be- the experiment to examine how psilocybin af- cause of a methamphetamine conviction, fected gerbil aggression and so consulted the lived with his cousin Arthur Lenz, a meth- local university’s mushroom expert—Steven amphetamine dealer, in northern San Anto- Pollock—to ask which psilocybin salt was best nio. Lyssy insisted that the detectives, having suited to intraperitoneal injection. The psilo- taken his statement, mention to his room- cybin gerbil experiments never materialized, mates that they were investigating a brawl in but Pollock and Davis became, if not friends, which he had recently injured his arm. close enough for Davis to recall that Pollock Alone in his bedroom Lyssy began to confess. “should have learned to use deodorant and In 1981 he had lived in the Green Oaks may have had a glandular problem.” apartment complex with two other men, Er- By 1980 Davis was an abnormal-psychology nest Dietzmann and Jerry Baker, all three lecturer at Texas State in San Marcos and was drug-dependent regular patients of Pollock’s. Together they had created a survivalist “pri- 10 Johnson was indeed not questioned in the police report, vate army” in which Lyssy was the cook. despite his being mentioned as a suspect in multiple state- ments from Pollock’s associates. Detectives did subpoena Dietzmann was a disabled Vietnam veteran Pollock’s phone records, but only obtained the call log for and gun collector who carried a semi- the month up to January 27, four days before the murder. automatic shotgun and a 9mm Uzi subma-
52 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JULY 2013
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 52 5/22/13 11:26 AM chine gun and, according to Lyssy, was both der but stated he could not remember who the “crazy” and wanted to “hurt somebody bad.” friend was or what time he had been there; Jerry Baker was equally enthusiastic about seemingly the only aspect of the day he could weapons and had a large collection of re- remember with any degree of con dence was arms, both purchased and stolen, which he that he had been using Quaaludes. Asked what was stockpiling for the advent of “World War he thought of the shooting, he said he had Three.” In the month preceding the murder, been “shocked.” Baker and Dietzmann had talked openly After he found out Lyssy had talked, Baker ed about their plans to rob Pollock for “big detectives, and when pulled over by police said he bucks,” but Lyssy hadn’t taken them seriously. “thought this would come down sooner or later.” On the night of the murder Lyssy was away Lenz failed a polygraph test.12 Everything that fol- in Austin, but he returned the following day to lowed pointed toward the three men’s guilt. The attend a Quaalude-prescription appointment he detectives noted that Pollock’s had scheduled with Pollock for February 2. On stolen credit card had been coming back he was shocked to nd stories of found on the road between his the shooting spread across the Express-News office and the Green Oaks and Pollock’s colleagues memorializing his life’s apartments. None of the three work on public-access TV. He also noted that suspects had alibis for the night Baker had shaved off his signature handlebar of the murder, and all appeared mustache. In late February Dietzmann and extremely nervous on question- Baker began bragging about the shooting to ing. It was what Michalec called Lyssy. They said they wished Lyssy could have a “gift case,” a rare convergence been there, described the slashing open of Pol- of witness testimony, physical lock’s pockets, the struggle, and the single shot evidence, and motive. Yet when to the back of Pollock’s head. Baker panto- Michalec brought the case be- mimed the murder with a nger-gun and then fore Bexar County district at- stated: “I put a bullet in his head.” Lyssy also torney Terry McDonald, said there had been a third person involved but McDonald refused for reasons claimed not to know who it was.11 He conclud- unknown to prosecute, and Michalec’s work wilt- ed his statement by repeatedly informing De- ed and was forgotten. In the notoriously prosecuto- tective Michalec that if Baker and Dietzmann rial state of Texas, where Pollock was hounded to found out he had spoken with law enforcement the point of madness for his nonviolent drug en- they would kill him. “They never did come out terprises, the three suspects were never charged. and say they actually did it,” he momentarily Dietzmann went on to become a pigeon racer of considered, “except for saying they put a bullet some local renown, placing sixth in the South in his head.” African Million Dollar Pigeon Race with his bird Michalec set about checking Baker’s and Ajar’s Dream. Jerry Baker became a carpenter, Dietzmann’s ngerprints against those pulled Arthur Lenz a smoker of mesquite BBQ. Virgil from the crime scene and immediately found a Lyssy unsuccessfully attempted suicide in 1996 and match. There were two latent prints created by died of natural causes several years later. All three Jerry Baker’s ring nger on the inside of Pol- suspects died free men. lock’s front door—not entirely damning if one When I called McDonald to ask why he had considers that Baker was a patient of Pollock’s. chosen not to prosecute the case despite such But another fingerprint was found wrapped robust evidence, he had a surprisingly good an- around the receiver of Pollock’s Code-A- swer. Contrary to information provided in the Phone—the same phone he refused to let any- police report, McDonald wasn’t actually district one, even his secretary, touch. The print was attorney during the period of the Pollock inves- that of the left thumb of Lyssy’s cousin and tigation. On my revealing the mistake to him, roommate, Arthur Lenz. It was clear to Micha- he was intrigued enough to contact Michalec lec that he had found his third suspect and that himself; Michalec had no explanation for the Lyssy had omitted Lenz’s name out of familial confusion. When I filed an open-records re- loyalty. Lenz, when questioned by the detec- quest with the Bexar County D.A.’s of ce to tives, admitted to having been at Pollock’s of- nd out who had been in charge of the prosecu- ce with a female friend on the day of the mur- tion, I was surprised to nd that they had no les on Pollock, and the DEA told me that it 11 Nothing Baker and Dietz mann supposedly said to Lyssy involved information kept secret by police, and Lyssy’s deviations from public reports are either false or cannot 12 Polygraphy is largely pseudoscience, though the tech- be corroborated. nique was considered valid at the time.
FOLIO 53
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 53 5/21/13 4:54 PM had destroyed four possibly relevant records. So owerpots and beneath gravestones, and with the the question of who is responsible for not pros- realization of this fungal ubiquity comes a second- ecuting looms unanswered, lost in a order realization, perhaps even stranger than that subterranean bureaucratic thallus.13 of rst learning to recognize mushrooms, which is that one’s entire life up to that point has been erhaps part of what has earned fungi their spent attentionally blind to something that is ev- auraP of mystery is the way they appear and dis- erywhere and always around us. Perhaps it is this appear without warning, thwarting attempts to realization, and the corollary fear of continuing to accurately chart the geographic distribution of overlook the obvious, that drives some myco- all but the most common species. Its body is hid- philes to such hallucinatory heights of fantasy, to den within the soil as an undifferentiated myce- a state of unremitting vigilance, eyes perpetually lial thallus, and what we see and call a mush- narrowed, minds bent on finding the precious room is a reproductive organ—what the fruit others squash under heel and haunted by the ethnobotanist Terrence McKenna, speaking knowledge that no matter how hard they look from the point of view of a fungus, called “the something will always have escaped them. part of my body given to sex thrills and sun It was in a short comb-bound book entitled bathing.” In 1996, an attendee of the Telluride The Golden Doorknob (2001) that Stephen L. Mushroom Festival discovered a single specimen Peele delineated twenty years of research he had of a new mushroom named Psilocybe telluridensis, been conducting on the history and cultivation and in fteen years of searching another speci- of P. t a m panensis sclerotia. Peele was one of a few men has never been found. Psilocybe alboquadra- post-Pollock psychomycophiles to work at pre- ta was observed once, in Zanzibar, in 1885, and serving the world’s diversity of psychoactive is now known only by a watercolor. In a recent mushrooms outside state and academic institu- lecture, Paul Stamets solemnly declared that Psi- tions, in a Pensacola-area trailer home he’d con- locybe baeocystis had disappeared from North verted into a fungarium. Peele, a former police America and was thought to be extinct, only to of cer from Virginia, used his law-enforcement be interrupted by an audience member who said background to obtain a coveted Schedule I per- he knew of a patch that came up every year in mit that allowed him to grow and research feder- the parking lot of a Bay Area Burger King. ally controlled mushrooms. In 1984, three years But one should not assume it is rarity that after Pollock’s death, he began writing frequent makes fungi mysterious, because once the eye updates on his P. t a m panensis experiments for is properly trained they begin to appear the Journal of Mushroom Cultivation, of which he everywhere—bracketed on stumps, nestled in was the editor in chief. With a monopoly on P. t a m panensis he sold cultures of the mushroom 13 For Michael Forbes, the central piece of evidence was for $510, a bargain relative to the $45,000 that not inside the of ce but directly outside: located on the some had appraised as its value. Peele declared right of the exterior surface of the door there should have tampanensis “the rarest mushroom in the world” been a doorknob, yet on the night of the murder the knob was nowhere to be found. Forbes has spent the better part and wrote with unrestrained schadenfreude that of thirty years polishing this theory until it shines with a “even Paul Stamets has lost his culture!” Still, he singular importance. The crime-scene photographs clearly was able to sell the species only half a dozen depict an empty hole, the product of a knob and spindle times. In the late 1980s he began to wonder avulsed entirely from the door. But the true signi cance was lost on journalists: they mistook the door’s knobless- whether it would be possible to reintroduce a ness, caused by the emergency medical personnel who functionally extinct species by laying giant out- bludgeoned their way into the crime scene with a tire iron, door plots of manure and inoculating them with for an indication of forced entry by Pollock’s killers, whom tampanensis spawn. He hoped the spores would they imagined “prying open the door and breaking off the travel north on the prevailing winds but became knob” or “ripping the knob off the front door” (at their most circumspect, they simply noted that the knob was discouraged when the mushroom remained un- “missing”). Yet Pollock never locked his door while work- reported in the wild. Rightly suspecting that his ing. On the off chance that Pollock had locked his door, mushroom license was on the verge of revoca- removing the knob wouldn’t have facilitated entry—the tion and fearing that the government might door was visibly out tted with a dead bolt. Forbes has no doubt the knob was intact when the murderers entered, burn his mushroom collection, he exported a and suggests that the door was de knobbed in a nal coup live culture to a European fungus library. de théâtre, staging the forced entry that so many mistook On June 4, 1995, stratospheric oscillations and as fact. But were the actors in this crime in fact actors? abnormally warm ocean temperatures in the At- Was the medical stage of Pollock’s of ce, with its ostenta- lantic suggested that a season of extreme weather tiously displayed controlled-substance-dispensary permits and prop examination table, the scene of a premeditated might be imminent. An of cial warning was is- contract killing organized by meta stagers to appear as the sued to residents of Pensacola, advising them to disorganized crime of deranged Quaa lude addicts? evacuate and take shelter inland. While his neigh-
54 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JULY 2013
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 54 5/21/13 4:55 PM bors ed, Peele recognized the coming Atlantic sclerotia didn’t garner much interest. With the hurricane season as a unique opportunity. He had implementation of the ban the brothers were already been growing massive beds of specimens forced to destroy their remaining mushroom and attempting to isolate various characteristics stock, and what had once been a minor novelty into a supposed 914 separate strains optimized for item to all but the most rare ed fungal connois- outdoor growth, and with news of the coming of seurs was suddenly the foundation of their busi- Hurricane Erin he quadrupled production, inocu- ness.14 When Gary Lincoff traveled to Amster- lating fty-pound bales of straw day and night and dam that year he was astonished to nd that the setting them outside in increasing numbers. Erin species he had discovered with Pollock—one he hit Pensacola on August 3 and churned counter- was certain had long since gone extinct—was clockwise up the coast of Florida, shattering build- being sold and advertised all over the city. The ings and extirpating trees. Then came Hurricane species had not only survived; it had overtaken Opal, which destroyed what remained and left the market in the form of vials labeled much of the city in ruin. But Peele cheered as his lled with injectable spores and arrayed in re- bales of fruiting tampanensis were torn from the frigerated display cases. Tourists were noncha- elds and carried into the wind, dispersing billions lantly leaving smart shops with what had once of spores into the stratosphere that later rained been the rarest mushroom in the world. down on North America in the summer breeze. With fteen temperature-controlled growth In mid-June Gastón Guzmán collected, for only chambers, each capable of accommodating 600 the second time in recorded mycological history, ten-pound bags of ryegrass media, a walk-in a wild specimen of Psilocybe tampanensis, growing autoclave the size of a bank vault, and a double- solitarily in a sandy Mississippi meadow upwind air-locked clean room where tanks of liquid my- from Pensacola; then he discovered a third in celial cultures are maintained by technicians Opal’s path, growing on bagasse in Louisiana. out tted in surgical scrubs, the Truf e Brothers Suddenly there were reports of sightings have created the superlab of Pollock’s dreams. in Alabama and southern Georgia. Inside the sclerotium-packaging facility, located in the bucolic pastures of Hazerswoude-Dorp twenty-nine-year-old schizophrenic amid verdant elds of ruminating Holsteins and AFrenchman living in Amsterdam did not pre- pert tulips, I watch a woman with a food-service dict he would bring Pollock’s research back to bun and a belly shirt smoke a the forefront of psychomycology when, in 2007, cigarette while weighing out ten-gram servings he ritualistically dismembered his dog in a van of tampanensis sclerotia with an affect better beside the Herengracht in order to “free its suited to the ladling of mac ’n’ cheese onto spirit.” Employing a technique he claimed to be school-cafeteria trays. The brothers estimate of Moroccan origin, he slit his dog’s throat, tore their annual output capacity at nearly 20,000 open its chest cavity, and spread its entrails all tons, a quantity large enough to necessitate the over his naked body. When discovered by po- use of a forklift in shuttling the product as it is lice he explained his behavior by telling them being processed. Standing outside, one brother, that he had consumed mushrooms. This, along Murat Kucuksen, a father of two with blue suede with the putatively mushroom-related bridge- shoes and a shock of white hair, tells me that jumping death, that same year, of a comely tampanensis is their biggest seller. At every smart French tourist named Gaelle Caroff, provided the shop in Amsterdam images of their mascot, a media impetus to pass the 2008 Dutch mushroom blue truf e hog named Mr. Truf es, can be seen ban. Protesters stormed the parliament building advertising their product alongside G-strings and armed with Super Soakers lled with a Psilocybe promotional yers for parties with such titles as spore solution, threatening to inoculate the lawns ★★★ ’ . The sclerotium, a of government buildings all over the city. One structure that exists to carry the fungus through hundred and eighty-six species were prohibited, inhospitable environments, has done ve of which were inactive edibles included in er- its job remarkably. ror, but the ban made one important omission: in no place did it mention sclerotia. n my last day in San Antonio I work up the Overnight the sclerotium became the hottest Ocourage to visit Pollock’s of ce and knock on the propagule in the Netherlands. Two Turkish en- trepreneurs who now dub themselves the Truf e 14 Though the Dutch government did mandate the de- Brothers had rst obtained a tampanensis culture struction of all remaining mushrooms, on this occasion no re was employed. The Truf e Brothers recall that from a sample Steven Peele sent to a European disposing of their stock was “the easy part,” with library and had been casually experimenting psychomycophiles lining up around their farm ready to with the species since the mid-1990s, but the consume every last specimen they had to offer.
FOLIO 55
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 55 5/21/13 4:55 PM door, expecting the house to be unoccupied. (Tax blind to his precarious surroundings. The histo- records had indicated the building was now ry of medicine is littered with similar accounts owned by Pollock’s bodybuilding half-brother, of megalomaniacal doctors driven to demon- Adam.) But the door is opened by an old woman strate the ef cacy of dubious treatments, but who introduces herself as Ona. I tell Ona that I the potential Pollock saw was not a hallucina- am a magazine journalist and am looking for a tion: psilocybin is a tremendously powerful rare mushroom species that was once cultivated chemical, one that very well may revolutionize by a notable mycologist who worked in her house, medicine in the years to come. The past decade pausing before I add that he was has seen a great resurgence in clinical interest: “shot in the head right where a Johns Hopkins study undertaken in 2008 es- we are standing.” Ona takes a tablished psilocybin’s ability to reduce the anxi- long drag of a cigarette through ety of patients with advanced-stage cancer. Pre- a stretch of toothless gum and liminary research conducted at the University looks at me with a skepticism so of Arizona has found a signi cant diminution piercing that I suddenly become of compulsive behavior among all of nine OCD suspicious of myself and ques- patients treated with psilocybin, and for cluster tion why I am here in the rst headaches it has proven so effective a treat- place, but then she invites me ment that many sufferers are willing to risk jail inside her dimly lit home, time rather than do without the drug. which is so cluttered that I can’t Pulling off I-10, I drive into Mission Park cem- readily discern how it relates to etery. The woman at the greeting center hands the original floor plan of Pol- me a bottle of water and a gilded business card lock’s office. I look around, shaped like a tombstone and tells me to call her soaking everything in while try- if I have any problems nding the grave, which I ing as hard as I possibly can to appear affable, expect I will, as it is reportedly unmarked. But trustworthy, noncriminal. I open the sliding glass then I nd myself standing over the footstone, door to a back yard of arid and infertile soil and installed just three years ago, and brush aside a immediately know there will be no mushrooms, bouquet of sun-bleached nylon poinsettias that but I’ve come so far that I get on my hands and have fallen from an adjacent headstone. With knees and futilely comb the sedge grass, picking the fraying petals of a thousand nylon owers up small pieces of inorganic detritus and examin- rustling in the wind I stare at the stone, feeling a ing them like a detective while Ona scowls at me sense of guilt for having excavated piles of evi- and continues to smoke. Finally she interrupts me dence that leave nothing behind but a large, to say I am “making [her] paranoid,” to which I empty hole. Then I look up to see a group of can only apologize effusively and ask that she birds gathered around what appears to be a large bear with me, before asking the ill-advised ques- mushroom and run toward it, only to nd once tion “Do you know where a burglar might enter the birds have cleared that it’s an everything ba- this house?” Sensing it is time for me to leave, I gel on a stick. n stand up, dust myself off, and walk back to my car assuring Ona repeatedly that I really am a jour- PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS: p. 41 Maxell cassette tape, by the author; p. 42 Psilocybe cyano brillosa and nalist, though I cannot immediately prove it, and a portrait of Steven Pollock, by Paul Stamets; p. 43 a have no plans to burglarize her. Then I proceed to drawing of the life cycle of a magic mushroom, by my last task in San Antonio, visiting Pollock’s Robin Klause, from Magic Mushroom Cultivation grave. (A few months later, Ona sends me a con- (1977), by Steven Pollock; p. 44 stone sculpture of a mushroom in the shape of a man, from San José tact request on LinkedIn.) Pinula, Guatemala, 300–100 .. © The Granger Pollock’s conception of psilocybin as a pana- Collection, New York City, and dried Psilocybe semi- cea, his unorthodox methodology, his numer- lanceata mushrooms © Vaughan Fleming/Science ous ethical lapses—all could lead one to dis- Source; p. 46 Hidden Creek advertisement, courtesy miss him as nothing more than a deranged vintageparaphernalia.com; p. 48 Psilocybe tampanen- sis, by Paul Stamets; p. 49 former of ce of Steven quack peddling sclerotial nostrums with a self- Pollock, by the author; p. 51 clipping from a news- ish disregard for patient safety. (This is not in- paper article about police destroying Pollock’s mush- cluding the hit he supposedly contracted on rooms © San Antonio Express-News/ZUMApress.com, two narcotics of cers, a notable breach of the Psilocybe cubensis in a mason jar, by Catherine Scates © Michael Beug; p. 53 X-ray of Psilocybe mush- Hippocratic Oath.) Yet for all his failings Pol- rooms © Nick Veasey/Getty Images; p. 56 footstone lock was a visionary, a hyperopic visionary who of Steven Pollock, by the author. All photographs saw only the end goal and conducted research are details.
56 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JULY 2013
Morris Folio CX 2.indd_0521 56 5/21/13 4:55 PM