Table Of ContentLawrence Wright’s
ACCLAIM FOR
REMEMBERING SATAN
“One of the real landmarks in journalism. The story itself is almost
unutterably weird and would be fascinating no matter how well it was told but in
the thoroughness of his reporting, and in his thoughtful treatment of the many
issues the story touches, Wright has painted a perfect miniature of our time.…
Remembering Satan is an edge-of-your-seat tale.”
—Boston Globe
“Skillfully and spellbindingly recounted.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Brilliantly reported and compellingly written.… Wright persuasively
challenges the entire ‘recovered memory movement.’ ”
—Texas Monthly
“Wright is particularly good at giving a fair and succinct account of this
troubling controversy.”
—Chicago Tribune
“[A] gripping and brilliantly constructed book.”
—The New York Review of Books “Wright makes brilliant use of this mind-
boggling story to cast grave doubts on the whole notion of recovered-memory-
syndrome.… Admirably, Wright delivers a cool-headed, meticulous account of
the case.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Compelling reading, expertly written.… Wright tells an incredible true
story.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“A cautionary tale about the dangers of so-called recovered memories.…
Remembering Satan is stunning.”
—The New York Times Book Review
Lawrence Wright
REMEMBERING
SATAN
Lawrence Wright is the author of City Children, Country Summer; In
the New World; and Saints and Sinners. His articles have appeared in
Texas Monthly, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Magazine. He
is a staff writer for The New Yorker and lives in Austin, Texas, with
his wife and two children.
BOOKS BY LAWRENCE WRIGHT
Remembering Satan
Saints and Sinners
In the New World
City Children, Country Summer
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MAY 1995
Copyright © 1994 by Lawrence Wright
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage
Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,
Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1994.
Portions of this work were originally published in The New Yorker.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the Knopf edition as
follows:
Wright, Lawrence.
Remembering Satan/by Lawrence Wright.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. False memory syndrome—United States—Case Studies. 2.
Ritual abuse victims—United States—Case studies. 3. Adult child
sexual abuse victims—United States—Case Studies. 4. Ingram,
Paul R.—Family. I. Title.
RC569.5.R59W75 1994
364.I′536—dc20 93-23561
eISBN: 978-0-307-79067-5
Author photograph © David MacKenzie
v3.1
For Tina Brown
lucky star
Acknowledgments
This book first appeared, in large part, in The New Yorker magazine, and I
am grateful for the wise counsel of my editor, Kim Heron, and the tireless
assistance of fact checker Peter Wells. I also would like to thank the
investigators in Olympia—Joe Vukich, Brian Schoening, Neil McClanahan, and
Loreli Thompson—who were generous with their time and always helpful.
Prosecutor Gary Tabor was always accommodating, and I thank him for his
courtesy.
Elizabeth F. Loftus, at the University of Washington, has done much of the
groundbreaking work on memory, and she afforded me a considerable amount of
her valuable time and insight. Richard Ofshe, who has written about the Ingram
case himself, was extremely helpful and insightful.
I owe a particular debt to Ethan Watters, a fine journalist who wrote about
the Ingram case in Mother Jones. His research and perceptions about this case
are reflected throughout this book. Thanks also to Cheryl Smith, who helped me
decipher the workings of the polygraph, and Jan Mclnroy for combing through
the manuscript with her careful eye.
Ann Close, my editor, and Wendy Weil, my agent, have been my invaluable
companions and supporters for many happy years, and once again I acknowledge
my gratitude for their advice and friendship.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
A Note on Sources and a Few Words About Journalism
1
O
n the morning of Monday, November 28, 1988, the day that
Paul R. Ingram was to be arrested, he dressed for his job, at the Thurston County
Sheriff’s Office, where he had worked for nearly seventeen years, went
downstairs and ate breakfast, and then, to his surprise, suddenly vomited. He
thought at first it must be the flu; then he realized that it was simply fear.
Ingram, who was forty-three, was already a familiar figure to most citizens
of Olympia, Washington. Until that day, he had served as the chief civil deputy
of the sheriff’s department and the chairman of the local Republican party. He
had been active in the deputy sheriffs’ association and in the Church of Living
Water, a Protestant fundamentalist congregation. He was the father of five living
children. (A retarded daughter had recently died in a state institution.) As a
politician, he was seen as a bridge between moderate conservatives and the
Christian Right. As a police officer, he was more highly regarded by the public
than by other police officers. Tall and square-jawed, with oversized glasses and a
brown mustache, Ingram was known in his department for being a hard-ass type
who enjoyed traffic patrol. Although Ingram claimed that he gave as many as
five warnings for every ticket he issued, it is also true that he routinely made
more stops than most officers. He developed a reputation for handing out
speeding tickets for driving just five miles over the limit, and yet his personnel
file contained not a single complaint; instead it was filled with commendations
from citizens who wished to thank him for the courtesy he had shown while
issuing their citations.
At eight o’clock that Monday morning, Ingram drove into the parking lot of
the courthouse complex, which sits atop a hill beside Capitol Lake. Across the
way, the white marble capitol looms, ghostlike, above the low-lying town, and
beyond it one can see Budd Inlet, the farthest-reaching finger of Puget Sound.
The briny air is full of the calls of seagulls, and the northern light is thin, even on
a sunny day when the brooding Olympic Mountains are visible to the northwest
and Mount Rainier shows off its snow-capped splendor fifty miles to the east.
One can look at a map and imagine that the city is more vibrant than it actually
is. The main highway on the western side of the state, Interstate 5, strings
together Seattle and Tacoma, then reaches over to include Olympia before
heading to Portland on its way to California. Olympia was once the largest port
in the state, but with the decline of the timber industry the South Sound is
virtually empty of maritime commerce. Neither the ferries nor the hydrofoils
Description:In 1988 Ericka and Julie Ingram began making a series of accusations of sexual abuse against their father, Paul Ingram, who was a respected deputy sheriff in Olympia, Washington. At first the accusations were confined to molestations in their childhood, but they grew to include torture and rape as r
