Charles Manson's Christmas Postcard to Kerry Thornley, "Front." Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Twenty years ago this holiday season in 1993, Kerry Thornley, the Discordian Co-Founder & Pope known as Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst or more simply Lord Omar, was corresponding with a friend who was an inmate at the time in Georgia’s prison system. This friend of Thornley’s, as it were, just so happened to be a pen pal with none other than notorious Tate-LaBianca murders mastermind, Charles Manson, then being housed at Corcoran State Prison in California.
As Thornley told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution at the time, “I have a friend in jail who was a tattoo artist. He got into drawing pastels, and he drew a picture of Manson and sent it to him. And Manson wrote him back, and then he asked Manson to write me.”
Charles Manson's Christmas Postcard to Kerry Thornley, "Back." Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Charles Manson responded by sending Thornley a Christmas postcard of sorts. The card was a folded-up piece of paper featuring a sketch by Manson of a dark-haired Santa Claus on the “front” with hand-written rants ranging from God to Buddha to Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys on the other “sides” of the postcard.
During this period, one of Thornley’s Little Five Points friends from Atlanta, a young lady known as Molly, who Thornley characterized as “little brown-haired Molly,” traveled to Los Angeles where she was brutally attacked and sexually assaulted.
According to Kerry’s friend, Chris Wilhoite, “Molly had a mental breakdown over that and ended up in a public asylum. She wrote Kerry, asking for help and we Xeroxed the Manson Xmas card and raffled off the original to free Molly.”
Kerry Thornley rounding up support in Little Five Points, Atlanta for Molly's safe return. Photo courtesy of Tim Cridland.Thornley made up flyers, as was his wheelhouse, and contacted local press to announce he had an authentic Christmas card from Charles Manson and would be raffling off tickets to win the Manson postcard for $5 a pop. As Thornley stated on some of the flyers, “So we Friends of Molly Moonie Rainstar, a slightly schizoid but very warm and wonderful young Discordian lady in her late teens, are raffling off my Manson letter. According to all I have been able to learn on short notice, any letter from Manson is worth at least $850.00 to collectors. Some have auctioned for tens of thousands.”
A Kerry Thornley Flyer: A Letter From Charles Manson. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Molly was soon released and brought back home to Atlanta due to Thornley’s fundraising efforts. Thornley thus declared, “Charles Manson, by the way, has been appointed Superintendent of Sunday Schools in the Discordian Society.”
As Wilhoite recalls of Molly, “She turned out to be a handful and I remember babysitting her during a dissociative episode. Kerry eventually managed to reconcile her with her mum in Maine, so we sent her home…”
Kerry Thornley sketch by Barbara Blackman. Courtesy of Barbara Blackman.Kerry Thornley was many things to many people. Discordian, anarchist, Zen Buddhist, JFK assassination conspirator, acid gobbling hippie, pornographer, paranoid schizophrenic and MK-ULTRA mind control victim—to name but a few of his many personas, or how he was perceived.
The old Kris Kristofferson song sums up Kerry quite succinctly:
“He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction, taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home.”
Or to quote Walt Whitman:
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Kerry Thornley sketch by Barbara Blackman. Courtesy of The Discordian Archives.One person who saw Kerry Thornley in a quite positive light was Barbara Blackman who was friends with both Kerry and Greg Hill during the 70s.
In the following passage, Barbara recalls how she first met Kerry:
“My friend was taking her children for the prerequisite visit to their father during summer vacation. He had kindly arranged for us to stay at Stone House, a Quaker Commune. I was trying to find my spiritual self I suppose & connected with Kerry on a very high level. I had never sat with someone & meditated in the purpose of the two beings focused together in meditation. For me he was very much the Indian Yogi walking a path of spiritual awareness. Sometimes he was a whirling dervish, others a Shakespearean bard, then Krishna with his lovers. He was asexual in that he made love with the world.”
Below: Letter from Kerry to Barbara Blackman dated January 1, 1971. Courtesy of Barbara Blackman.
Letter from Kerry to Barbara Blackman dated January 1, 1971, Page 00002. Courtesy of Barbara Blackman.Letter from Kerry to Barbara Blackman dated January 1, 1971, Page 00001. Courtesy of Barbara Blackman.
