First came the 18-year-old La Puente machinist who shot himself with a .22-caliber rifle in 1984 while a tape of Ozzy Osbourne's "Diary of a Madman" blasted heavy metal anthems from his stereo.
The next year, a partially burned voodoo doll with pins in its groin and heart was found nailed to the back door of a Baldwin Park dressmaking shop.
Then, in 1987, seven people were arrested for ransacking an El Monte warehouse, where they painted "Suicidal Death Tribe" in giant letters on the wall and jammed a dead rat through the plaster.
Just last month, a Covina teen-ager pleaded guilty to charges of animal cruelty after he and a friend were accused of mutilating several cats and using the blood to scrawl "666" on an elementary school wall.
Troubled Youths
Perhaps, they were all just troubled youths hoping to shock the rest of the world into paying them attention. But Randy Emon did not think so.
Emon, a Baldwin Park police sergeant with 18 years on the force, saw a darker side to those incidents, a suspicion that has launched him on a bizarre and spiritually turbulent journey into the world of occult-related crime.
In the process, Emon has become a leading authority among a small but growing number of occult specialists whose expertise in such practices as satanism, witchcraft and Santeria is increasingly in high demand.
Through his course at Rio Hondo College and consulting jobs, he estimates he has trained more than 600 California police officers in recognizing ritualistic crimes. Adding church and civic groups, he figures that at least 20,000 people have heard him lecture about animal mutilation, necrophilia and human sacrifice.
Yet Emon, a "born-again" Christian and father of three, has also been beset by personal conflict as he has immersed himself in a subject that is the antithesis of all he believes.
Unusual Events
Emon, 36, says his children have been possessed by demons just before he conducted seminars on the occult. He says his wife has broken out in rashes as she approached the boxes of demonic memorabilia that he stores in his garage.
And he says a pentagram, the five-pointed star often used as a symbol by satanists, once mysteriously appeared etched in his carpet, disappearing only after he dropped to his knees in prayer.
"You feel this stuff getting to you sometimes," Emon said. "I have seen firsthand the power that's there. I suppose, if I didn't feel a real calling to learn more about this, there would be a lot less pressure in my life."
