Thirty-two years of Satan in popular culture

Publication of Selling Satan, written by two Christian journalists, exposing fraudulent claims of seminar leader Mike Warnke, "America's Number One Christian Comedian." Instrumental in creating the nation's "Satanic Panic," Warnke had often appeared on talk shows professing his previous life as satanic high priest with 6-inch fingernails.

Norwegian black metal musician/label owner ¯ystein Aarseth (aka "Euronymous") found brutally stabbed to death in a stairwell, knife blade embedded in skull. Aarseth's one-time friend Varg Vikernes (aka "Count Grishnacht"), a musician suspected in many church burnings, is convicted of murder and sent to prison at age 21.

Debut album by the Electric Hellfire Club, Burn, Baby, Burn!, features cover of a burning church. Singer and lyricist Thomas Thorn, a member of the Church of Satan, later tells the Church publication The Black Flame: "I'll probably catch a lot of flak for this, but the vast majority of people that come up to us and flash Church of Satan membership cards are some of the biggest dolts."

1994
While on tour in S.F., shock-rocker Marilyn Manson gets an invitation to meet with Anton LaVey at his home. At end of visit, Manson is made a priest in the Church of Satan; he poses for a photo with LaVey in front of a large Baphomet. (Photo is later reprinted in Manson's 1998 autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell; the New York Times best seller is dedicated to the memory of Anton LaVey.)

1995
Time magazine reports a computer program named SATAN is connected to a virus circulating on the Internet.

1996
HBO documentary Paradise Lost examines the 1993 case of three 8-year-old boys abused, mutilated, and murdered in Arkansas. Three teens are tried and convicted on largely circumstantial evidence. One suspect's father describes his son: "So what if he wore black T-shirts, black pants? Johnny Cash wears black, doesn't he?" Metallica soundtrack.

1997
At a birthday party thrown for San Francisco politico Jack Davis, Church of Satan priest Steven Johnson Leyba is sodomized with a whiskey bottle in a satanic ritual performance; the only-in-San-Francisco story makes world headlines.

1998
Publication of posthumous LaVey essay collection, Satan Speaks! Introduction by Marilyn Manson.

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