Satanism
Religious Satanism
Some reactive Satanists are teenagers or mentally disturbed individuals who have engaged in criminal activities. During the 1980s and 1990s, several groups of teenagers were apprehended after sacrificing animals and vandalizing both churches and graveyards with Satanic imagery. Introvigne expressed the view that these incidents were "more a product of juvenile deviance and marginalization than Satanism". In a few cases the crimes of these reactive Satanists have included murder. In 1970, two separate groups of teenagers—one led by Stanley Baker in Big Sur and the other by Steven Hurd in Los Angeles—killed a total of three people and consumed parts of their corpses in what they later claimed were sacrifices devoted to Satan. In 1984, a U.S. group called the Knights of the Black Circle killed one of its own members, Gary Lauwers, over a disagreement regarding the group's illegal drug dealing; group members later related that Lauwers' death was a sacrifice to Satan.
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