I stumbled across a number of online news articles about cases of Satanic worship coming to court in Britain.
The first is from 5th September 1980 when a preacher and his friend tried to “exorcise” a woman by kicking, punching and jumping on her. John Sherwood and Anthony Strover, of Wood Lane, Shepherds Bush, were seemingly surprised that they had murdered 31 year old Beatrix Rutherford in Edmonton, North London.
There is also the cases of the West Sussex sacrificial ceremonies involving much-loved pets stolen for such rituals from June 1997:
But none is more bizarre and cross-reaching than the case of Derry Mainwaring-Knight in 1986 who fleeced the church, bishops, peers & even the wife of an MP out of tens of thousands of pounds to fund a lavish lifestyle. Interesting names appear in articles and online including William Whitelaw, Enoch Powell and Bishop Peter Ball.
God’s 007
In the spring of 1983, an unassuming, middle-aged fellow by the lofty name of Derry Mainwaring Knight appeared in Newick, East Sussex, and began attending the local Anglican church, St. Mary’s. He became a regular at Bible studies and prayer meetings. He offered to hand out Christian tracts.
He told the late vicar, John Baker, that he had been born again in jail (he had just been released from Hull Prison after serving time for a rape conviction). His sincerity and eagerness to devote himself to his newfound faith must have touched Reverend Baker deeply, because he did everything in his power to help the ex-con. When Knight said he was homeless, Baker gave him a room in the rectory attic, rent-free. When Knight said he was desperately short of cash, Baker promptly raised over £6000 to put toward the newcomer’s debts.
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Jon Sherwood was a good friend of mine. through my husband, in the 70s and was an actor. We saw him on stage in the West End with Ian McKellan. He suddenly seemed to lose his mind after going abroad (USA I think) for a while, and he wrote us really strange scrawled and endlessly corrected and scribbled-over letters about Jahweh and the end of the world. He turned into the itinerant “preacher” he is described as here on return. Unkempt, smelly and wild-eyed. Unrecognisable from the good-looking young actor. He stayed with us for a few days but was obviously unhinged and we never saw him again once he’d left, though I had a phone call with him to tell him his sister had died. He said “I have no sister” – which was sad as they’d been a close family. Very sad. He was a lovely normal humourful young man. Mental illness is an awful thing.
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