Linda Blood in response to Dr. Introvigne - Linda Blood

Dr Massimo Introvigne: In your article Strange Bedfellows or Future Enemies? published in the October 1993 issue of Update & Dialog, you attempt to discredit an article by me and Kevin Garvey, Interesting Times, which was written in response to the CSICOP publication Satanism in America. Your use of the epithet “bitter” to dismiss our extensive and well-documented criticism of CSICOP’s shoddy scholarship and unwarranted conclusions is an obvious ploy meant to consign us to your hypothetical “post-rationalist wing” of the counter-cult movement. Unfortunately, your remarks do little more than spotlight the inadequacy of your own research.

In the first place, you indicate that Interesting Times was “privately published” on an unspecified date, when in fact the article appeared in 1991 as Vol. 8, No. 2 of the Cultic Studies Journal, edited by Michael D. Langone. However, you made an even more significant error in connection with your cynical efforts to pass the article off as a personal vendetta. You were apparently informed by unknown sources that I am the former wife of Temple of Set founder Michael Aquino, and you included that information in a footnote in an apparent effort to characterize me as a vindictive ex-spouse. There is one small problem with this formula, Dr. Introvigne: I cannot be the “former wife of Michael Aquino” for the simple reason that I have never been married to Michael Aquino. You could have ascertained that fact by making the minimum effort to validate your information, instead of carelessly accepting a rumor as truth. As an attorney, I would think you would know better than to repeat unsubstantiated statements in print.

Unfortunately, my colleagues and I have become all too accustomed to encountering this sort of arrogance in academics who feel qualified to pontificate upon the subject of satanism-related crime, despite the fact that most, like yourself, know essentially nothing at all about it. As you may recall if you actually bothered to read Interesting Times, my co-author and I included several examples of carelessly researched ad hominem attacks similar to the one you tried to pull on me. Two of these attacks were aimed at Dale Griffis, who more recently found himself in the position of having to admonish an academic who had stated in print that Griffis is on an anti-satanism crusade because his son committed suicide in a satanic context. In point of fact, Griffis’ son is alive and well and presenting him with grandchildren, and has never been involved in satanism. The academic who made the statement had not considered it important enough to take the time and trouble to find out whether it was true.

Dr. Introvigne, you owe me a personal apology and a formal retraction of your libelous statement about me. I will be looking forward to receiving a copy of the apology and seeing the correction in a later edition of Update & Dialog. As for the facts about my former association with Michael Aquino, they can be found in the Introduction to my forthcoming book The New Satanism, to be published this coming August. I suggest you obtain a copy and read it. You might learn something. You have no objection to that, do you?

(Letter from Linda Osborne Blood, dated March 1994)