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On
June 24, 1985, police responded to a drunken dispute in front of the 93
Stillman Street apartment of Clifford St. Joseph. One of the
men, a 21 year-old unemployed magician, later told authorities he had been
drugged, chained to a fireplace, gang raped, and forced to have sex with
a dog in the three days before police found the men fighting on Stillman
Street next to a freeway in SoMa. Two other men arrested in the confrontation
- one a prostitute, the other a career criminal - corroborated the magician's
story. Investigators said St. Joseph was a satanic killer who planned to
sacrifice the magician to the devil. St. Joseph was arrested for the murder
of a John Doe found on a street in the neighborhood two weeks prior to
the incident on Stillman Street. On March 17, 1988, St. Joseph was convicted
of murder and sodomy for the torture and ritual mutilation killing of the
John Doe, whose body had been almost completely drained of blood. St. Joseph,
a former waiter, carved a pentagram on the John Doe's chest, stabbed him
in the neck, sliced his lip, and beat the man. Sentencing St. Joseph, then
46, to 34 years on May 5, 1988, Judge Alfred G. Chiantelly said St. Joseph's
crimes would "astonish the imagination of Edgar Allen Poe or the Marquis
de Sade." The SFPD said St. Joseph was part of a satanic cult, but no other
cult members were arrested or exposed.
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