The Johnson County Werewolves

submitted by Edgar Loomis III

Johnson: While visiting the Special Collections Archive of the Johnson County Historical Society, I inadvertantly discovered a dust-covered cardboard box near a steam heat radiator. It contained a Sheriff's Department portfolio of crime scene documents dated from 1979 marked "Unsolved: Investigation Discontinued". Immediately intrigued, I took the file to the reading table.

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File photo of police and the body of Candy Cosbi, October 6, 1979.
     The official report described an investigation beginning with the murder of an Iowa City teenager named Candy Cosbi, honor student and cheerleader. The girl's body was found in the woods on her boyfriend's family farm on the morning of October 6, 1979. The boy, Max McFaddin, was turning 18 on October 7 and they had gone out to celebrate early. The crime scene photo showed a baddly mauled body, which one officer at the scene compared to the work of wolves. As there are no wolves in Iowa, an arrest warrant was issued for her boyfriend, but Max had disappeared.

     An Officer Steven Lassic was assigned to the McFaddin farm to wait with John McFaddin, the boy's father, in case Max came home. For some reason, which the report did not indicate, Officer Lassic and Mr. McFaddin went to an abandoned house deep in the woods near the farm on the morning of October 7.

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Medical Examiner's file photo of Candi Cosby.
     The next day found Officer Lassic, a woman in a wedding dress, and John McFaddin dead and horribly mutilated. The house looked like it had been in a war zone. Amid smashed furniture and smoldering wood, the grisly evidence of a bizarre multiple slaying was vividly documented by Sheriff's Deputies for filing in their official report. The very report I found at the Historical Society.

     Lassic's own left arm was torn from its socket and used to beat him to death by someone using it as a cudgel. There was no trace of Max, and the identity of the woman was not yet known. She had been pretty, and looked to be in her late teens. Her esophagus was ripped from her throat by what the coroner described as "fangs". She was then shot with a silver ball fired from a black powder pistol.

     John McFaddin had been struck by a sharp implement while he stood, the blow spliting him from crotch to sternum. Evidence showed he had staggered backwards several paces vainly attempting to hold his intestines inside himself before falling to the floor and bursting into flame. The coroner's report (included in the record) discounted the notion of Spontaneous Human Combustion but, was at a loss to explain the corpse's burned condition in the absence of any known fuel residues to account for the fire.

     A treasure trove of controlled substances and sado-masochism paraphernalia were found in the house, along with a roll of film still undeveloped in a camera. Once developed by police, the roll revealed pictures of three individuals posing with wolves and dismembered bodies in exotic locations across the US, in particular Las Vegas. The photo contained the young woman in the wedding dress, a buxom dominatrix, and a hippie who looked like he'd been kicked out of Paul Revere and the Raiders. The last photo on the roll showed the three posing with Max McFaddin.

     At this point in my reading, the custodian notified me the building would be closing in a few minutes. As the Archives are quite strict about materials not leaving the building, I managed to obtain copies of the papers for the requisite fee, and took these for further study (along with a few key photographs that fell into my rather large pockets).

     I learned the body of a young woman in her mid-twenties, was dressed in the punk rock clothing of the photos was discovered in a shallow grave near McFaddin's house. The report said she died from gunshot wounds to her abdomen. Once again, silver bullets were recovered by the coroner.

     In the county wide manhunt for Max, officers found a cave on the McFaddin property. Fashioned into a sort of hermitage, the cave held a collection of bibles on hand hewn bookshelves alongside tomes on lycanthropy and demonology. There were three crucifixes attached to the cave wall, two small and one large. The head of the man on the right side of Christ was in the shape of a sheep, the head on the left crucifix was carved to resemble a wolf. There was a fireplace and next to it a bellows. Along with the bellows was discovered a cache of black powder and several bullet molds...and a collection of silver coins. On the floor, officers discovered yet one more body. The man in his forties was filthy, wearing a 1960's style tuxedo covered with moss and grimed from two decades of constant wear. His beard and hair were very long and thoroughly matted with leaves and sticks. He, too, had been shot with a silver bullet. A discarded wallet lay near the corpse, but missing from it were all of the photos it had once contained. In a startling revelation, the 1960 drivers' license and Sears card bore the name John McFaddin!

     By cross referencing the bodies with dental records, it was discovered that the hermit was the real John McFaddin and that the impostor was his brother-in-law, Carl Frommelt. In 1961 Carl's sister, Mary, wedded John McFaddin. Not long after, Mrs. McFaddin became pregnant and after having the baby, she disappeared. John was questioned, but as no crime was reported the matter was dropped. He raised the boy alone. Or so everyone thought. Now it appears that John left the child to be raised by his uncle, who then adopted the identity of the boy's father.

     In yet another bizarre twist, the report revealed that the body of the 19 year old bride killed in the farm house slaughter was in fact Mary Frommelt McFaddin, John McFaddin's 37 year old wife and the mother of Max! The mystery deepens as the coroner's report unfolds. In addition to having not aged in over 17 years, Mary McFaddin had had sexual intercourse only hours before her murder. Genetic testing of semen recovered from her body suggests her sex partner was her own son!

     Perhaps the strangest piece of evidence in the entire collection is the handwritten notebook belonging to Carl. In it he describes himself as a master of the "Black Arts" who had regular discourse with devils and demons. I was not allowed to copy this text, but was able to read from it at my leisure over a series of afternoon visits.

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Left to Right: Lindsey Rea, Mary Frommelt McFaddin, Julian Ragnor, and Max McFaddin..
     According to Carl's own account, his sister had been very much in love with John McFaddin, but on their wedding night discovered that due to the impotency he had kept secret from her, she had saved herself for marriage only to be locked by wedlock into celibacy. Carl came to her and told her that she could take part in one of his rituals and be offered up to a demon lord of the plane of Dis, named Merodach. In graphic detail he describes the rite in which she entered into fornication with this demon, who had great spreading long horns, the tail of a serpent, and the body of a wolf. Merodach informed them that she would conceive unto him a man child and that when the boy reached his eighteenth birthday, the vessel would be prepared and the demon would possess the body of the boy and extend the greatness of Hell onto Earth, where he would rule as king with Mary Frommelt McFaddin as his bride and queen. As a sign of the truth of this pact, Mary took the shape of her lover, a wolf, with each cycle of the full moon. Her human husband, John, went mad over the sight of her swellng belly, and fled into the woods. To cover tracks, Carl assumed her husband's identity, caring for the child until 1979 when the bargain would be fulfilled.

     Apparently, she killed time by killing people and gathering strays. She found she could give the werewolf attribute to others by sharing blood. The hippie, who has been identified as Julian Ragnor a former member of Manson's family, joined her in California in 1969. Lindsey Rea, singer in the punk rock band Satan's Cock Ring, joined her in London in 1976. The trio may be responsible for thousands of serial killings. Whatever further plans they had laid must have gone terribly wrong as October of 1979 left nothing but bodies everywhere and the son of a demon freely roaming the earth.

     The investigation was shelved after two years when no further evidence was uncovered. The whereabouts of Max and Julian Ragner (the hippie in the photograph) remain unknown. They may still be at large, creating more werewolves and causing ever more mayhem. It will soon be the twentieth anniversary of the slayings. Max would be thirty-six years old today.

     If any of our readers has information on Max McFaddin, werewolves, or Julian Ragnor, please contact me via this magazine at once. Max should be considered far more dangerous than any of the beings which conspired to create him. DO NOT APPROACH!

        

    





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