14. Sacred Blood
Three hundred documents—that’s how many Doug Land had sent. I was skimming them on my laptop, and had got to about the fiftieth. This one was an affidavit—written testimony for use as evidence in court when the writer would not be present.
AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF A CRIMINAL COMPLAINT
I, Special Agent Esther Q. Katz, swear and affirm as follows:
INTRODUCTION AND AGENT BACKGROUND
1. I make this affidavit in support of a complaint charging Leonard MOSCONE of Boston, Massachusetts, with criminal trespass in the third degree, and with …
I did a double-take. It was the first affidavit I’d seen by Katz, probably the first she’d written in her brief career. And … I knew the man she was accusing.
Lenny Moscone—I’d met him years before. He was a small-time crook, a dealer in ‘magical’ antiquities, and a self-styled magician-detective. He fancied himself Boston’s Harry Dresden. But if one of Santa’s elves had got the boot for embezzlement, that’d be Lenny.
I skipped the boilerplate about the laws he’d broken and ‘probable cause’, then resumed where Katz described her background and the case.
5. I have been employed as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for three months, and am currently assigned to the Mass Radicalization Assessment program (MaRA) within the Criminal Investigative Division (CID). …
There followed a description of Katz’s qualifications and experience. Not much of that.
DETAILS OF THE INVESTIGATION
7. On 6 Feb. 2020, a MaRA communications monitoring application alerted me to a series of publicly visible messages (also known as posts or postings) in a social media forum dedicated to Luciferianism, a system of beliefs that includes veneration of Lucifer as a positive force.
The ‘MaRA application’ had to be Pythia. Evidently, the Bureau didn’t want its internal name for the system in a public document.
8. The alert suggested that one Joseph of unknown address was in danger of assault.
9. One author in the message exchange used the screen name ‘Luciferous.’ Federal records associated that alias with Lenny MOSCONE, who usually resides in Boston. The MaRA application could make the connection because MOSCONE has been the subject of prior criminal complaints, arrests, misdemeanor charges, and convictions. At least one of the complaint records is Federal (Interstate Commerce). Past convictions include petty larceny, forcible entry, misdemeanor burglary, and transporting stolen goods. None were felonies.
10. The messages apparently posted by MOSCONE, alias ‘Luciferous,’ spoke of ’three objects of power’ and ’three mighty relics’ that ‘when fused, will sweep away the gross corruption of our age like a bleach wipe over a bus station toilet seat.’
11. A complete example of one of MOSCONE’s messages is reproduced below:
[6 Feb 2020 6:56pm] Guys, I have two of the three! The third is an absolute MONSTER, the blood of the Great Fraud himself!!! You’ve all seen HIS last post, but do you understand it? Can you even guess its truth? I, Luciferous, do! I alone know where the third relic is. I alone have worked out from the Sethian Codex how to combine the three. Feb. 9 is blood extraction day! Then, EPIC FLUSH! Just look at the picture! Kaboom! I shall unleash the cleansing light! Stay tuned for more from Lucy.
12. I believe MOSCONE’s reference to ‘HIS last post’ is to an image posted by an anonymous party an hour before. That image depicted a horned angelic or demonic figure and an auxiliary figure emitting destructive radiance. The image is reproduced below. My reason for believing this connection is that MOSCONE had previously posted similarly hyperbolic messages following other anonymous postings depicting similar angelic figures. He had not posted such messages following dissimilar postings.
[Image]
13. I reviewed postings in other forums by the ‘Luciferous’ alias of MOSCONE. I found, on a message board dedicated to gnosticism, an anonymous text message posted three minutes before the angelic posting. The anonymous text message contained one word: ‘Here’, followed by a link to an online article in a research journal.
14. The research article concerned a collection of relics in the Sacred Blood Chapel in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York City. Among the relics stored in the chapel are claimed to be the skull of Joseph of Arimathea and a vial of the blood of Jesus Christ. According to the legend detailed in the article, both Joseph’s skull and the vial of blood were transported from a monastery in Britain to Bruges in present day Belgium, and thence to New Amsterdam (Dutch colonial name for New York City). There, they were enshrined in a small church built to resemble the Basilica of the Holy Blood in Bruges. The New Amsterdam church subsequently burned. The relics were then interred in a tomb within the Sacred Blood Chapel.
15. To the anonymous text message, MOSCONE replied,
[6 Feb 2020 6:32pm] I’m on it, sir! I shall complete the trinity! Watch out, Joe, Luciferous is coming for your head - it’s exsanguination time!
16. It is my belief that MOSCONE interpreted the image and the link to the research article as a suggestion or instruction to obtain the blood relic from the Sacred Blood Chapel in New York. The party or parties who posted the image and link are unknown to me.
17. It is my further belief that from the statement ‘Watch out, Joe, Luciferous is coming for your head—it’s exsanguination time!’ the MaRA application mistakenly concluded that MOSCONE planned to harm a living person named Joseph, when in truth MOSCONE planned to separate a blood relic from the purported skull of Joseph of Arimathea.
18. I tried to reach MOSCONE at his last known phone number in Boston, but did not succeed. I requested a visit to his last known address by the Boston PD. The patrol reported that nobody answered the door. I requested that the NYPD check the security of the relics at the Sacred Blood Chapel. I did not receive a report as to the outcome of that request.
19. It then being 8 Feb., the day before the date mentioned by MOSCONE, I received permission from the Supervisory Agent to visit the Sacred Blood Chapel in New York. I contacted the Reverend Father Stanley Chen of the Sacred Blood Church, who acknowledged responsibility for the chapel, and agreed to assist me. I arrived on the evening of 8 Feb.
20. I met Father Chen at 11:30pm. He informed me that the chapel was closed to the public for the winter. I observed that the front door handles were chained and padlocked, and the lock intact. At midnight, Father Chen admitted me to the chapel.
21. The chapel was dark and cold, its power having been turned off for the winter. Within the chapel, I observed recent footprints in dust leading from beneath the window of a toilet at the rear of the building. The window showed signs of forcing.
22. As I followed the footprints to the crypt, I heard groans. The door to the crypt was unlocked, though Father Chen recalled having locked it. The groaning came from within.
23. Inside the crypt, I saw a narrow doorway in a bricked wall that gave access to—as I was told—the tomb wherein the remains of Joseph of Arimathea were interred, along with the blood relic. MOSCONE, a portly man, was wedged in this narrow doorway, unable to extricate himself. His legs were in the tomb and his upper body protruded into the crypt, as though he had successfully entered the tomb, then been unable to fully exit. He said that he had been in that position for 24 hours.
24. With the assistance of two NYPD officers, we extricated him.
25. MOSCONE was given a Miranda warning. He was grateful and talkative, but he was not forthright. He claimed he had found the chapel window and crypt door unlocked. He claimed to have entered the chapel for sanctuary and the crypt for warmth (it was indeed warmer in the crypt, from the proximity to subterranean steam conduits). He claimed to have no knowledge of relics.
26. Father Chen examined the vial that had contained the purported blood of Christ. He stated that it appeared to have been opened, damaging a wax stopper of great antiquity, and that in place of its usual contents of blood residue was a foreign powder. A search of MOSCONE’s clothing produced several large multi-vitamin capsules. One capsule showed signs of having been twisted open. Inside I found a crumbly, rust-colored substance, presumably the blood residue. This and other physical evidence are in the custody of the NYPD.
27. I conducted a search of the crypt with the aid of Father Chen and the two officers. Within an urn containing the ashes of a bishop, we discovered a small jimmy and assorted lock picks.
28. In MOSCONE’s wallet, we found a bus ticket from Boston to New York dated 7 Feb. MOSCONE then stated that he had visited New York ‘on the orders of Lucifer.’
29. The NYPD officers present took MOSCONE into custody.
CONCLUSIONS
30. Based on the above observations, I submit that there is probable cause that Lenny MOSCONE did force entry into the chapel premises for the purpose of stealing a Church relic, and moreover that he crossed state lines to do so.
Apart from the signatures and magistrate’s stamp, that was it. I had to smile at the length of it. I’d seen shorter affidavits about drug lords and terrorists. But seasoned agents had written those. Katz was a rookie who had to prove herself.
This must be the ’nothing case’ she’d mentioned to Daffy. It was a lot more than nothing. It told me several things. Whoever was posting the angel pictures had interests as eclectic as his art was versatile. He was a diverse recruiter. His agents bumbled and failed, and there was no obvious point to their acts. He could keep track of their antics from their public postings, and, if things went south, from the judicial documents that would eventually enter the public record.
I’d also learned that Pythia wasn’t as useless as Daffy claimed. She’d saved Lenny’s fat ass from the crypt.