November 20, 2023 • 32 mins
Samoan drug gangs, secret lovers, and the acid king. There’s a lot more to Peter’s story that’s left to uncover.
–
This episode features information and audio from the following sources:
In Heaven, Everything is Fine by Josh Frank
'An Einstein among Neanderthals': the tragic prince of LA counterculture
Over the edge: The incredible life and mysterious death of Peter Ivers
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Alan back with another content warning. I didn't
think this episode was so bad. Not sure what everybody
is worried about, but it may not be your cup
of tea, So listen to discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
AM on call for the city, So if anything major
significant arises, I'll have to excuse myself from the middle
of So I apologize in advance.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
I also really appreciate you coming down.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Here today and talking to us.
Speaker 5 (00:27):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's nice to have it be here.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Think so, So we're going to talk about you know
what you have, what's been on record, and you know
you have it. You finally have the book, which is
so I do.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
It was a little trek trying to locate it from
nineteen eighty three. This book has been through several hands already.
Speaker 6 (00:48):
This is Martin Moharo. He's a detective in the LAPD's
Homicide Division. He's sitting across from Alan Sachs in a
conference room back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I was just having a difficult time locating the actual files,
and simply because so many hands have touched it and
so many detectives have looked at it. Sometimes we lose
track of where they actually leave it.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
To me, this is it's pretty emotional because you know,
I know Peter, but I also, you know, know the story,
and the story is always it's a story. But when
I see this and it says Peter Iver's murder book,
(01:32):
that's that's real, man's that's that's freaking real.
Speaker 6 (01:38):
Alan's in shock. Since he became obsessed with Peter Iver's death,
one piece of the puzzle has been missing this case file.
The cops have labeled it the Peter Iver's Murder Book.
How depressing is that. It's incredible the detective Moharo even
has it. The book has been missing for decades until
(02:02):
somehow he found it.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So this contains the entire case, the entire investigation. Everything
is documented.
Speaker 6 (02:11):
Answers to all our questions about Peter's death could be
in that book. But don't get too excited because Detective
Moharo won't let Alan see it. Peter's murder is still
an open investigation. In fact, the LAPD reopened the case
in two thousand and eight thanks to author Josh Frank's
(02:33):
book about Peter in Heaven. Everything is fine anyway, Detective
Moharo has agreed to let Allan ask him some questions,
like did they find any prints at the crime scene?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
There was a fingerprint investigation conducted, and that's typical of
all homicides that that's one of the first things we
do is try and fingerprint anything that looks obvious. I
cannot say if we did or didn't, but we did
follow up on that.
Speaker 6 (03:02):
Oh, that's really helpful. Even though the case is an
old one, there's still reason to believe it could be solved.
A lot has changed in the years since Peter died.
In nineteen eighty three, DNA tests weren't widely available. They
wouldn't be used in court until nineteen eighty six, but
Detective Moharo confirms that the investigators did eventually test evidence
(03:27):
for DNA.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I could only say that we am part of revisiting
this case. That was part of the process that we
tested for DNA. I can't tell you that what the
results were either way.
Speaker 6 (03:40):
Then, before Allen can ask a follow up question, Detective
Moharro gets a call.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
I apologize. I'm just going to return one message. I
just got a call as we spoke. I'm just checking in, Okay,
I don't know, I do have to go, I apologize,
so I will have to go and I apologize. Okay,
I think it's a little bit short. There's an officer
involved shooting.
Speaker 7 (04:02):
Hey, Greg, I just got the message. I apologize for that. Uh,
you're hitting out there, Dreen Oraen's mouth. Wow, give me
the cross again, Victoria Owen's mouth. All right, I appreciate it,
All right, thanks.
Speaker 6 (04:23):
But I guess this is how it is when you're
a cop. One minute you're talking about a cold case.
The next year off on a hot one.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
It's gonna be all over than news.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
There's a stolen car, a little chase and the suspect
and the officers shouted out an officer was hit, but
I think he maybe that's why I got to run.
Speaker 6 (04:42):
Out, Yes, Dager, and he does, and unfortunately he takes
the case file with him, leaving Alan and us with
that same old question who killed Peter Ivers Without straight
answers from the cops. A lot of theories have sprung
(05:03):
up over the years about who might have killed Peter
and why.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Peter had friends and some enemies in the punk scene.
Thanks to New Ave Theater, he had Hollywood and comedy
friends and lots of women friends, some who were maybe
more than friends. He had recently moved from the safety
of Laurel Canyon to downtown Los Angeles. If the Peter died,
theories about what happened to him cropped up everywhere. The
(05:30):
cops who investigated Peter's murder seemed to have concluded that
Peter was just some poor, maybe queer, starving artist who
lived in the wrong place and paid the price for it.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
But there's more to the story. Money, drugs, robbery, love, heartbreak, jealousy, punks,
sleazy Hollywood types, and sam Owen drug gangs. Today we're
going to run down the theories of the case, some
wild and others that may hit closer to home. I'm
(06:04):
Penelope Spheris and this is Peter and the Acid King.
(06:26):
Peter was friends with a lot of Hollywood big shots,
but he never really made it himself. Towards the end
of his life, he struggled financially. One of the reasons
he moved downtown was because of the cheap rent. Peter's
money problems coincided with some other changes in his behavior.
To some of Peter's closest friends, he seemed different, a
(06:49):
little lost, and more into drugs. Here's John Leon, Peter's
Harvard buddy.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
He often came to my house. I mean often once
a love and you know, if you get high and
pass out, stuff like that. I was always worried about
here in the last couple of years of his life,
because he was too high and he was hanging out
(07:17):
with people that I didn't dressed.
Speaker 6 (07:19):
All of this leads to the first theory about why
Peter might have been killed. I'll let Alan explain.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
There was a rumor that Peter had gotten into dealing drugs,
so some people speculated that he was killed over a
drug debt. Allegedly, Peter's supplier was a gang from northern California,
and Peter's death was punishment for not paying up.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Among his other bad virtues was stiffing people on drug deals.
Speaker 6 (07:47):
That's Ed Oaks. He's one of the people who believes
the Samoan drug gang theory. Peter owed twenty five thousand
dollars on a drug deal that went bad to a
Samoan gang from Redwood City. Some other people agree like
Peter Rafelson, although his version of the story is a
bit different.
Speaker 8 (08:07):
There was a rumor in a theory that Peter had
been working with the sikhs and doing one of the
largest drug deals of the time with MDMA from up.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
North, and I can't remember.
Speaker 8 (08:22):
He may have shown me a massive bag of pills
at some point.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
I definitely never saw Peter dealing pills or doing any
hot drugs. Blow came out. I never saw Peter touch it.
I did also samoan drug gang, seek drug gang. It
doesn't make sense. Come on, take it all with a
grain of salt.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
Anyway, if you recall the day before Peter died, he
picked up a big check for a screenplay he wrote.
He was going to use that money to pay off
his debt, but then he left the money in Rafelson's
car and lost it. That's what Rafelson says.
Speaker 8 (09:01):
Anyway, I was not I didn't know the details, but
something was going on.
Speaker 9 (09:08):
And.
Speaker 8 (09:10):
Potentially there was pressure to pay people money, and that
money that he had he was feeling, probably very relieved
that it could have saved his situation and maybe his life.
And the day he gets it and then he loses it,
and then it's all goes downhill, and then the guide
(09:31):
winds up dead that night. Like these things, I don't
think these are all coincidences.
Speaker 6 (09:37):
Part of the reason the drugs theory seems possible is
because of where Peter was living when he died, essentially
a squat aloft downtown. Here's Gary Blaze, an expert of
that time in downtown LA's history.
Speaker 5 (09:52):
I would say, I'm in nineteen eighty two eighty three,
there was really a a real transition point what was happening,
particularly in Skidrow. So basically the number of people on
the streets really exploded in between eighty two and eighty four,
I mean triples, quadrupled something like that. On skid Row
(10:14):
was basically being populated from people who were driven out
of South Central by the sort of economic disasters that
had befallen manufacturing industry in South LA. This also overlapped
with the time that the cracked cocaine epidemic was spreading.
There were addicts on schedule and alcoholics, drug users of
(10:36):
various kinds.
Speaker 6 (10:42):
Either way, this is all speculation. Yeah, Peter liked to
smoke pot and maybe he was smoking too much, like
John Leon said, but he wasn't known to do hard drugs.
I never saw him do any and there's little evidence
that he was dealing, at least that we could find.
But the location of Peter's loft near skid Row leads
(11:03):
us to the second theory about why Peter was killed.
It's the theory the cops themselves eventually gravitated towards which
brings us back to detective Moharo. After he ran out
on the first interview, Alan eventually tracked him down again,
and Alan cuts right to the chase. After looking through
(11:25):
all the evidence, what does the detective really think happened there?
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Is The belief was and this is even part of
the investigation that was conducted by the original investigators back
in the eighties, that there may have been a connection
between serial burglar that was operating in that area and
did fall to his death short distance from where mister
(11:50):
Ivers was residing where this crime scene occurred. So that
was the belief.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
The original theory from police is that a burglar broken
to Peter's loft, Peter woke up and the burglar killed him.
They believe on the night of March second, nineteen eighty three,
Peter came home there with the fight with David Jove.
He made a few phone calls, including to Lucy Fisher.
At some point he fell asleep in bed with his
clothes on then, according to what Maharo told me, a
(12:19):
burglar broke in, killed Peter and stole his audio equipment.
Some people think this theory makes sense, like artist Stephen Cemeyer,
who also lived downtown at the time.
Speaker 10 (12:31):
I had her. Again, this is all secondhand, it's all
you know. It could all be bs, but from what
I heard that it was apparently there were some. There
was a building.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
There was a building that used to be next to
Peter's loft but had recently been torn down, and that
left Peter's building more opened and accessible.
Speaker 10 (12:53):
And there was some train tracks between the building and
that building had just been raised torn down, and the
construction company hadn't put up a new security cyclone security fence.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
So now there's this empty construction site. And then there's
the building where Peter's loft was with the lights on
late into the night. Maybe a good target for a
desperate person.
Speaker 6 (13:18):
For potential thieves, Peter's loft was a gold mine. Over
the years of making his own music, Peter had amassed
a fancy collection of studio recording equipment. Personally, when my
other musician friends were running out of money, they would
just sell their gear. But I guess Peter didn't do
that anyway. It's all there in his loft, which people
(13:39):
tended to randomly wander through.
Speaker 10 (13:42):
I had heard that Peter Iver's studio had had such
an encounter and that someone had come up into the
studio and they had opened the door to the studio
and there's a guy standing right there and they took off.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
This incident concerned one of Peter's roommates enough that he
stalled the home security system sort of.
Speaker 10 (14:03):
And from what I heard, someone I don't know if
it was Peter or Peter Taylor, who was a roommate
of Peter Ivers, decided that, oh, I've got a circus mallet.
Maybe we should keep it here and lean it up
in the kitchen here in the corners for defense.
Speaker 6 (14:22):
This is the mellet that most people suspect was the
murder weapon, and it was just sitting there in the
loft and a burglar could have easily picked it up.
Not a bad theory, right, But there's one problem. The
burglar the cops think, may have broken into Peter's place
and killed him. He died apparently he fell off a catwalk.
(14:43):
A week after Peter's.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Death, Detective Mahiro showed me a picture of the burglar
laying dead on the floor. He fell off the catwalk
and he's laying spread eagle in a pool of blood, dead,
And Mahiro said, we think this is the guy that
killed Peter. They thought he was the suspect because he
(15:05):
was supposedly committing a lot of burglaries in the area.
But you know, I don't know if I believe that.
I think they may have just wanted to wash their hands.
Case over. We don't have to deal with this bullshit anymore.
Speaker 6 (15:19):
Was he the same person who supposedly broke into Peter's loft?
No one can say for sure, but it's good enough
for the cops.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
So that was the belief then, is based on a
certain I can't get into the details, but based on
certain circumstances involving I mean, I tend to sort of
agree with the original investigators.
Speaker 6 (15:48):
Could it have possibly been a random burglary? Maybe, But
there's another theory. What if it was someone who had
a vendetta against Peter? Could it have possibly been someone
in the scene. Peter's annoying behavior on New Wave theater
did piss off a lot of people. There was one
dude in particular that some people have pointed to as
(16:11):
a possible suspect a bouncer at the Zero. His street
name was Earwig.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Earwig aka Earache, aka Eric or Quake, A lot of
names for one giant, scary guy. He had platinum blonde
hair shaved on the sides, had a completely neo naturally
vibe about him.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
Tequila Mockingbird didn't trust the guy either.
Speaker 11 (16:38):
That guy was a white supremacist and he didn't like Jews.
I avoided. I'm not going to hang out with white supremacists,
and I don't like drug addicts.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
Other people had a lot to say about this upstanding citizen.
Speaker 12 (16:53):
I know that he was a rapist because he definitely
tried to rape other girls that we were mutually dating.
I think he got away with that a lot, So
I know for a fact he was sexually abusive and violent.
When he got high.
Speaker 13 (17:09):
He looked like Frankenstein and Rucker Howard's baby.
Speaker 12 (17:12):
Did you seem like someone who could slit your throat
for the front? A bit?
Speaker 14 (17:15):
He had keep on sucking tattooed on his stomach.
Speaker 6 (17:18):
That last force you heard is Bob Forrest, a street
punk turned addiction counselor. He's talking to Alan Sachs about Earwig.
Speaker 14 (17:27):
I knew him very very well one time, like when
we were kids, Like we would buy speed from him.
He had this rehearsal studio on Hiland and Yuka or whatever,
Iland and Yucke.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
Bob and his friends would buy whatever they could get
their hands on from Earwig, speed, coke, heroin.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
You get the point.
Speaker 14 (17:47):
And then me and Anthony Flee lived at Hollywood Bulvard
and Whitley's right, so we had to take the drugs
across where there's cops everywhere and drugs are really illegal.
So we started asking him if we could do it there,
and I remember he very specifically said, yeah, you can
do it here, but if you go out, I'm not
resuscitating you. I don't give a fuck. I'm putting you
(18:08):
in a shopping cart and I'll push you up on
Hollywood Boulevard.
Speaker 11 (18:11):
The thing is, I had heard that the reason that
Earache killed Peter was because what he said was that
he was a crazy faggot and he was giving punk
rock a bad name, and nothing could be further from
the truth.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
A violent, homophobic, neo Nazi certainly sounds like an easy
murder suspect, but as it turns out this theory is
only about as credible as the burglar theory.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
It's a lot of conjecture fucking storytelling. Well, so I
don't want to get to gory, but I just want
to say that Peter was bludgeoned to death with a mallet,
and this is an intense way to kill someone. Think
about it. The killer would have to get really close
to the victim, which means that the victim either trusted
(19:03):
the person or was a surprise attack.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
This brings us to the next theory. Could it have
been a crime of passion. Peter was a charmer and
really good looking people were drawn to him, women in particular,
or as Tequila puts it, Peter was.
Speaker 11 (19:24):
Mister Kundalini yoga sex god. So he had all these
women losing their minds over him.
Speaker 8 (19:32):
And I don't know whether my mom had an affair
with Ivers or what their relationship was.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
That's Peter Rafelson again, Peter Ivers actually met him through
Rafaelson's mom.
Speaker 8 (19:44):
As I recall, we used to go to du Pars
at the Farmer's market on Sundays. I always wondered exactly
what the relationship to my mother was, And that leaves
some imagination, but Sir Urchin, he was a regular.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Peter was messing around with many, many women in the
Beverly Hills area, and their husbands might not have liked
what Peter was doing.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
So maybe Peter had lots of lovers, but one alleged
relationship stands out.
Speaker 15 (20:23):
For years, nobody ever asked me, and I never said
anything about the whole relationship that Peter with Anne Ramos.
Speaker 11 (20:32):
I was a little annoyed with Peter because he was
sleeping with a married woman. Oh my god, he was
sleeping with Harold Ramis's wife, And I was like, oh
my god, what if he finds out.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
Alan Sachs actually had the nerve to ask Anne about
this when he interviewed her a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
We involved romantically with.
Speaker 6 (20:54):
Peter, I don't.
Speaker 9 (21:00):
I mean, I don't know what to say about that.
I feel like our relationship was really our personal, you
know thing, and I think he was one, you know,
so wonderful and I had a great appreciation for him.
(21:20):
I don't really.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Want to answer that question, Okay, whether they were romantic
or not, Peter and Anne were certainly very close. According
to Rod Falconer, sometimes Peter felt guilty about his closeness
with Anne. He was Harold's friend, after all.
Speaker 15 (21:42):
Peter was not happy with it. He felt bad about
that he liked Harold. Harold Raymis was helping Peter. He
was giving him financing for vitamin pink. So that made
Peter feel that Peter was a very conscionable person and
he couldn't be you know, he felt very uncomfortable.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
Harold loved Peter too, and even supported him artistically and financially.
Rod said that Peter felt torn between his feelings for
Anne and his loyalty to her husband.
Speaker 15 (22:11):
He just didn't want to be having an affair, you know,
because this was a close friend of his and more
than just a friend, I mean, you know, someone who
believed in him and so.
Speaker 11 (22:19):
Forth, which it is hard to come.
Speaker 16 (22:21):
By this world.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
After Peter died, Rafelson was looking around in his car
and says he found Peter's day planner. It was under
the seat where Peter had allegedly tucked the money he lost.
Speaker 8 (22:35):
When I went and I found this binder, which I
think was in my car, the day planner. Somebody who
told me said, oh my god, do not, whatever you do,
do not give that to the police. Can't you can't,
you cannot let anybody see this.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
Why the planner tracked Peter's life, who spent his time
with and what he did every day. If Peter was
having an affair with someone, the evidence for that could
have been in his planner.
Speaker 8 (23:08):
Because it was maybe where all the dead bodies were buried,
so to speak, where all of the numbers, where all
of the information, where all of the fucking affairs and
secrets work out.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
It was part diary, part calendar, and part phone book.
Speaker 8 (23:25):
Somebody had told me, and may have been her.
Speaker 6 (23:27):
By her, he's referring to Anne Ramis, do.
Speaker 8 (23:31):
Not whatever you do, whatever they say, you don't know
anything like it. Were literally telling me to essentially hide
prevent as evidence of anything.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
But even if Frankfelson hid the planner, it was too late.
Peter's escapades were in plain sight. The cops thought Harold
was a crazed, jealous husband who killed his wife's lover
common motive. But the cops questioned Harold and then released
him soon after, and all they probably learned from the
interview is that Harold, like the rest of us, adored Peter.
(24:07):
I mean a couple of months after Peter died. Harold
used this song little Boy Sweet in the soundtrack for
National Lampoons Vacation.
Speaker 6 (24:17):
Whatever might have transpired between Peter and the women of Hollywood,
the crime of passion theory didn't hold the police's attention
for long. Of all the theories a drug deal gone wrong,
a pissed off punk, a botched robbery, or a jealous husband,
(24:41):
the cops felt robbery was the most plausible explanation, and
that was their explanation when they set the case aside.
But to all of us that theory felt very flimsy.
Speaker 8 (24:55):
I don't think that this was some random thing. I
think that there was probably some illicit business and it
went bad.
Speaker 13 (25:05):
I have to say that to this day, it really
really bothers me that this is an unsolved case. I
don't get it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I don't.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
I just it's.
Speaker 13 (25:23):
I mean, it kills me that somebody's out there or
was out there. Maybe they're gone now. I don't know
that took his life.
Speaker 6 (25:37):
Lucy Fisher, Peter's longtime girlfriend, felt the same way. It's
part of why she hired a PI to look into
his murder. Unfortunately, that PI has since passed away, so
we don't know what he learned about Peter's death. There is,
of course, one last theory that we haven't talked about,
(25:57):
one that, as far as we know, the cops never
fully explored. Could it be David Jove that killed Peter?
Speaker 3 (26:17):
What a play?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
What a trip?
Speaker 6 (26:19):
What a dip in the unknown?
Speaker 11 (26:21):
On behalf of our producer all World stage is your
all two human host harbor Boy Ivers, wishing you a
hostile honeymoon in the hermitage of Harpocrates.
Speaker 6 (26:33):
That's episode twenty five of New Wave Theater. It's Peter's
last monologue. After he recorded the episode, Peter quit New
Wave Theater and had that blowout fight with David Jove.
A few hours later, he was found dead, and David's
behavior after Peter's death was well, pretty fucking strange.
Speaker 11 (26:56):
Even after Peter died, every time I'd see him, he'd
be like.
Speaker 6 (27:01):
Here's Tequila Mockingbird talking with Alan Sachs.
Speaker 11 (27:05):
And I got a phone call saying you're next, and
I said, come on over, I'm waiting for you. He said, yes,
I did.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
When he said you're next, he was he implying that they.
Speaker 14 (27:14):
Were whooh, the New Wave Theater murders.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Everybody involved in the show was going to be murdered.
Speaker 11 (27:20):
That's what his little stick was, and we hated him.
Speaker 6 (27:24):
But that wasn't even the strangest thing David did in
the days after Peter's murder. Earlier we spoke about the
crime scene. It was a total madhouse. People were wandering
in and out, and some of his stuff went missing. Coincidentally,
after that awful day, visitors to David Jeb's cave saw
two new items amongst the Crowley books and pentagrams. First,
(27:48):
a pink sequin jacket, the one Peter wore on New
Wave Theater. David claimed Peter gave it to him tequila.
She calls bullshit.
Speaker 11 (27:58):
Peter would have never let him have that jack, never,
because that was his favorite jacket. So that was like
super sketchy to me because there is no way that
he would have ever given him that.
Speaker 6 (28:09):
And the other item that made its way to the
cave the blanket covering Peter's body. Ken Dow remember seeing it.
He was a regular at the cave and Jove took
a liking to him quickly because of Ken's curiosity about
you guessed it the occult.
Speaker 16 (28:27):
He was a chaos magician. He was in love with
Alisha Crowley and all of that kind of occult stuff.
What he liked to do with sort of blow people's minds,
to do something that seemed magical.
Speaker 6 (28:39):
Sometime after Peter died, Ken was hanging out there with Jove.
Speaker 16 (28:44):
We were talking about Peter, and he said, I need
to show you something.
Speaker 6 (28:49):
David's surprise for Ken is on the second floor. So
David pulls down the ladder into the upper level to retrieve.
Speaker 16 (28:58):
It anyway, and he went, you know, pulled the thing down.
It was always like you had to pull a ladder
down to get up in there. So he pulled it
down and he got up, went up in the and
and just like leaned out to the thing and poke
and poked the blanket down at me and said, this
is this is this is the blanket I got from
(29:21):
Peter's bed that day. And I could see blood dried
blood on its brown and was like weeping with tears
and this was this is this is the blanket. This
is the blanket I got from Peter. This is his blanket,
and nice sleep with it every night.
Speaker 6 (29:40):
Jove's daughter Lily Hayden corroborated Ken's story on a podcast
called Rarefied Air. Here's a clip.
Speaker 17 (29:48):
My dad slept with Peter's bloody blanket that he had
been legended on legend to death on. My dad slept
with that bloody blanket for the rest of his life.
Speaker 16 (30:00):
I don't remember anything that happened after that moment. I
don't why the thought never occurred to me. Oh my god,
that's evidence that the cops need. I could have gone
to the cops and said, hey, ah, this guy, I
don't know if he did it or what, but he's
got this blanket. It never even occurred to me to
(30:21):
go tell the cops this.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
Some might say the cops should have looked at the
guy who had just been professionally dumped by the victim,
who was obsessed with death and known for violent outbursts,
and who people say cozied up with Peter's bloody blanket.
How creepy is that? And some might say the person
who killed Peter Ivers could have been the guy with
(30:43):
the most to lose. So was it David Jove? Could
it have been the Acid King? That's coming up next time?
Until then, see you. Peter and the Acid King is
(31:07):
based on interviews recorded and researched by Alan Sachs. It's
produced by Imagine Audio, Alan Sachs Productions and Awfully Nice
for iHeartMedia, I'm Your Host Penelope Spears. The series is
written by Caitlin Fontana Peter and the Acid King is
produced by Amber von Shassen. The senior producer is Caitlin
(31:31):
Fontana and the supervising producer is John Assanti. Our project
manager is Katie Hodges. Our executive producers are Ron Howard,
Brian Grazer, Caarra Welker, Nathan Kloke, Alan Sachs, Jesse Burton
and Katie Hodges. The associate producers are Laura Schwartz, Dylan
(31:55):
Cainrich and Chris Statue. Co producer on behalf of Shout
Studios Bob Emmer. Sound design and mix by Evan Arnette,
fact checking by Katherine Barner. Original music composed by Alloy Tracks,
Music clearances by Barbara Hall, voiceover recording by Voicetracks. West
(32:20):
Show artwork by Michael Dare. Special thanks to Annette van Duren.
Thank you for listening.
Hey, it's Alan back with another content warning. I didn't
think this episode was so bad. Not sure what everybody
is worried about, but it may not be your cup
of tea, So listen to discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
AM on call for the city, So if anything major
significant arises, I'll have to excuse myself from the middle
of So I apologize in advance.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
I also really appreciate you coming down.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Here today and talking to us.
Speaker 5 (00:27):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's nice to have it be here.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Think so, So we're going to talk about you know
what you have, what's been on record, and you know
you have it. You finally have the book, which is
so I do.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
It was a little trek trying to locate it from
nineteen eighty three. This book has been through several hands already.
Speaker 6 (00:48):
This is Martin Moharo. He's a detective in the LAPD's
Homicide Division. He's sitting across from Alan Sachs in a
conference room back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I was just having a difficult time locating the actual files,
and simply because so many hands have touched it and
so many detectives have looked at it. Sometimes we lose
track of where they actually leave it.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
To me, this is it's pretty emotional because you know,
I know Peter, but I also, you know, know the story,
and the story is always it's a story. But when
I see this and it says Peter Iver's murder book,
(01:32):
that's that's real, man's that's that's freaking real.
Speaker 6 (01:38):
Alan's in shock. Since he became obsessed with Peter Iver's death,
one piece of the puzzle has been missing this case file.
The cops have labeled it the Peter Iver's Murder Book.
How depressing is that. It's incredible the detective Moharo even
has it. The book has been missing for decades until
(02:02):
somehow he found it.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So this contains the entire case, the entire investigation. Everything
is documented.
Speaker 6 (02:11):
Answers to all our questions about Peter's death could be
in that book. But don't get too excited because Detective
Moharo won't let Alan see it. Peter's murder is still
an open investigation. In fact, the LAPD reopened the case
in two thousand and eight thanks to author Josh Frank's
(02:33):
book about Peter in Heaven. Everything is fine anyway, Detective
Moharo has agreed to let Allan ask him some questions,
like did they find any prints at the crime scene?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
There was a fingerprint investigation conducted, and that's typical of
all homicides that that's one of the first things we
do is try and fingerprint anything that looks obvious. I
cannot say if we did or didn't, but we did
follow up on that.
Speaker 6 (03:02):
Oh, that's really helpful. Even though the case is an
old one, there's still reason to believe it could be solved.
A lot has changed in the years since Peter died.
In nineteen eighty three, DNA tests weren't widely available. They
wouldn't be used in court until nineteen eighty six, but
Detective Moharo confirms that the investigators did eventually test evidence
(03:27):
for DNA.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I could only say that we am part of revisiting
this case. That was part of the process that we
tested for DNA. I can't tell you that what the
results were either way.
Speaker 6 (03:40):
Then, before Allen can ask a follow up question, Detective
Moharro gets a call.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
I apologize. I'm just going to return one message. I
just got a call as we spoke. I'm just checking in, Okay,
I don't know, I do have to go, I apologize,
so I will have to go and I apologize. Okay,
I think it's a little bit short. There's an officer
involved shooting.
Speaker 7 (04:02):
Hey, Greg, I just got the message. I apologize for that. Uh,
you're hitting out there, Dreen Oraen's mouth. Wow, give me
the cross again, Victoria Owen's mouth. All right, I appreciate it,
All right, thanks.
Speaker 6 (04:23):
But I guess this is how it is when you're
a cop. One minute you're talking about a cold case.
The next year off on a hot one.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
It's gonna be all over than news.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
There's a stolen car, a little chase and the suspect
and the officers shouted out an officer was hit, but
I think he maybe that's why I got to run.
Speaker 6 (04:42):
Out, Yes, Dager, and he does, and unfortunately he takes
the case file with him, leaving Alan and us with
that same old question who killed Peter Ivers Without straight
answers from the cops. A lot of theories have sprung
(05:03):
up over the years about who might have killed Peter
and why.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Peter had friends and some enemies in the punk scene.
Thanks to New Ave Theater, he had Hollywood and comedy
friends and lots of women friends, some who were maybe
more than friends. He had recently moved from the safety
of Laurel Canyon to downtown Los Angeles. If the Peter died,
theories about what happened to him cropped up everywhere. The
(05:30):
cops who investigated Peter's murder seemed to have concluded that
Peter was just some poor, maybe queer, starving artist who
lived in the wrong place and paid the price for it.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
But there's more to the story. Money, drugs, robbery, love, heartbreak, jealousy, punks,
sleazy Hollywood types, and sam Owen drug gangs. Today we're
going to run down the theories of the case, some
wild and others that may hit closer to home. I'm
(06:04):
Penelope Spheris and this is Peter and the Acid King.
(06:26):
Peter was friends with a lot of Hollywood big shots,
but he never really made it himself. Towards the end
of his life, he struggled financially. One of the reasons
he moved downtown was because of the cheap rent. Peter's
money problems coincided with some other changes in his behavior.
To some of Peter's closest friends, he seemed different, a
(06:49):
little lost, and more into drugs. Here's John Leon, Peter's
Harvard buddy.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
He often came to my house. I mean often once
a love and you know, if you get high and
pass out, stuff like that. I was always worried about
here in the last couple of years of his life,
because he was too high and he was hanging out
(07:17):
with people that I didn't dressed.
Speaker 6 (07:19):
All of this leads to the first theory about why
Peter might have been killed. I'll let Alan explain.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
There was a rumor that Peter had gotten into dealing drugs,
so some people speculated that he was killed over a
drug debt. Allegedly, Peter's supplier was a gang from northern California,
and Peter's death was punishment for not paying up.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Among his other bad virtues was stiffing people on drug deals.
Speaker 6 (07:47):
That's Ed Oaks. He's one of the people who believes
the Samoan drug gang theory. Peter owed twenty five thousand
dollars on a drug deal that went bad to a
Samoan gang from Redwood City. Some other people agree like
Peter Rafelson, although his version of the story is a
bit different.
Speaker 8 (08:07):
There was a rumor in a theory that Peter had
been working with the sikhs and doing one of the
largest drug deals of the time with MDMA from up.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
North, and I can't remember.
Speaker 8 (08:22):
He may have shown me a massive bag of pills
at some point.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
I definitely never saw Peter dealing pills or doing any
hot drugs. Blow came out. I never saw Peter touch it.
I did also samoan drug gang, seek drug gang. It
doesn't make sense. Come on, take it all with a
grain of salt.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
Anyway, if you recall the day before Peter died, he
picked up a big check for a screenplay he wrote.
He was going to use that money to pay off
his debt, but then he left the money in Rafelson's
car and lost it. That's what Rafelson says.
Speaker 8 (09:01):
Anyway, I was not I didn't know the details, but
something was going on.
Speaker 9 (09:08):
And.
Speaker 8 (09:10):
Potentially there was pressure to pay people money, and that
money that he had he was feeling, probably very relieved
that it could have saved his situation and maybe his life.
And the day he gets it and then he loses it,
and then it's all goes downhill, and then the guide
(09:31):
winds up dead that night. Like these things, I don't
think these are all coincidences.
Speaker 6 (09:37):
Part of the reason the drugs theory seems possible is
because of where Peter was living when he died, essentially
a squat aloft downtown. Here's Gary Blaze, an expert of
that time in downtown LA's history.
Speaker 5 (09:52):
I would say, I'm in nineteen eighty two eighty three,
there was really a a real transition point what was happening,
particularly in Skidrow. So basically the number of people on
the streets really exploded in between eighty two and eighty four,
I mean triples, quadrupled something like that. On skid Row
(10:14):
was basically being populated from people who were driven out
of South Central by the sort of economic disasters that
had befallen manufacturing industry in South LA. This also overlapped
with the time that the cracked cocaine epidemic was spreading.
There were addicts on schedule and alcoholics, drug users of
(10:36):
various kinds.
Speaker 6 (10:42):
Either way, this is all speculation. Yeah, Peter liked to
smoke pot and maybe he was smoking too much, like
John Leon said, but he wasn't known to do hard drugs.
I never saw him do any and there's little evidence
that he was dealing, at least that we could find.
But the location of Peter's loft near skid Row leads
(11:03):
us to the second theory about why Peter was killed.
It's the theory the cops themselves eventually gravitated towards which
brings us back to detective Moharo. After he ran out
on the first interview, Alan eventually tracked him down again,
and Alan cuts right to the chase. After looking through
(11:25):
all the evidence, what does the detective really think happened there?
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Is The belief was and this is even part of
the investigation that was conducted by the original investigators back
in the eighties, that there may have been a connection
between serial burglar that was operating in that area and
did fall to his death short distance from where mister
(11:50):
Ivers was residing where this crime scene occurred. So that
was the belief.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
The original theory from police is that a burglar broken
to Peter's loft, Peter woke up and the burglar killed him.
They believe on the night of March second, nineteen eighty three,
Peter came home there with the fight with David Jove.
He made a few phone calls, including to Lucy Fisher.
At some point he fell asleep in bed with his
clothes on then, according to what Maharo told me, a
(12:19):
burglar broke in, killed Peter and stole his audio equipment.
Some people think this theory makes sense, like artist Stephen Cemeyer,
who also lived downtown at the time.
Speaker 10 (12:31):
I had her. Again, this is all secondhand, it's all
you know. It could all be bs, but from what
I heard that it was apparently there were some. There
was a building.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
There was a building that used to be next to
Peter's loft but had recently been torn down, and that
left Peter's building more opened and accessible.
Speaker 10 (12:53):
And there was some train tracks between the building and
that building had just been raised torn down, and the
construction company hadn't put up a new security cyclone security fence.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
So now there's this empty construction site. And then there's
the building where Peter's loft was with the lights on
late into the night. Maybe a good target for a
desperate person.
Speaker 6 (13:18):
For potential thieves, Peter's loft was a gold mine. Over
the years of making his own music, Peter had amassed
a fancy collection of studio recording equipment. Personally, when my
other musician friends were running out of money, they would
just sell their gear. But I guess Peter didn't do
that anyway. It's all there in his loft, which people
(13:39):
tended to randomly wander through.
Speaker 10 (13:42):
I had heard that Peter Iver's studio had had such
an encounter and that someone had come up into the
studio and they had opened the door to the studio
and there's a guy standing right there and they took off.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
This incident concerned one of Peter's roommates enough that he
stalled the home security system sort of.
Speaker 10 (14:03):
And from what I heard, someone I don't know if
it was Peter or Peter Taylor, who was a roommate
of Peter Ivers, decided that, oh, I've got a circus mallet.
Maybe we should keep it here and lean it up
in the kitchen here in the corners for defense.
Speaker 6 (14:22):
This is the mellet that most people suspect was the
murder weapon, and it was just sitting there in the
loft and a burglar could have easily picked it up.
Not a bad theory, right, But there's one problem. The
burglar the cops think, may have broken into Peter's place
and killed him. He died apparently he fell off a catwalk.
(14:43):
A week after Peter's.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Death, Detective Mahiro showed me a picture of the burglar
laying dead on the floor. He fell off the catwalk
and he's laying spread eagle in a pool of blood, dead,
And Mahiro said, we think this is the guy that
killed Peter. They thought he was the suspect because he
(15:05):
was supposedly committing a lot of burglaries in the area.
But you know, I don't know if I believe that.
I think they may have just wanted to wash their hands.
Case over. We don't have to deal with this bullshit anymore.
Speaker 6 (15:19):
Was he the same person who supposedly broke into Peter's loft?
No one can say for sure, but it's good enough
for the cops.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
So that was the belief then, is based on a
certain I can't get into the details, but based on
certain circumstances involving I mean, I tend to sort of
agree with the original investigators.
Speaker 6 (15:48):
Could it have possibly been a random burglary? Maybe, But
there's another theory. What if it was someone who had
a vendetta against Peter? Could it have possibly been someone
in the scene. Peter's annoying behavior on New Wave theater
did piss off a lot of people. There was one
dude in particular that some people have pointed to as
(16:11):
a possible suspect a bouncer at the Zero. His street
name was Earwig.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Earwig aka Earache, aka Eric or Quake, A lot of
names for one giant, scary guy. He had platinum blonde
hair shaved on the sides, had a completely neo naturally
vibe about him.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
Tequila Mockingbird didn't trust the guy either.
Speaker 11 (16:38):
That guy was a white supremacist and he didn't like Jews.
I avoided. I'm not going to hang out with white supremacists,
and I don't like drug addicts.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
Other people had a lot to say about this upstanding citizen.
Speaker 12 (16:53):
I know that he was a rapist because he definitely
tried to rape other girls that we were mutually dating.
I think he got away with that a lot, So
I know for a fact he was sexually abusive and violent.
When he got high.
Speaker 13 (17:09):
He looked like Frankenstein and Rucker Howard's baby.
Speaker 12 (17:12):
Did you seem like someone who could slit your throat
for the front? A bit?
Speaker 14 (17:15):
He had keep on sucking tattooed on his stomach.
Speaker 6 (17:18):
That last force you heard is Bob Forrest, a street
punk turned addiction counselor. He's talking to Alan Sachs about Earwig.
Speaker 14 (17:27):
I knew him very very well one time, like when
we were kids, Like we would buy speed from him.
He had this rehearsal studio on Hiland and Yuka or whatever,
Iland and Yucke.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
Bob and his friends would buy whatever they could get
their hands on from Earwig, speed, coke, heroin.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
You get the point.
Speaker 14 (17:47):
And then me and Anthony Flee lived at Hollywood Bulvard
and Whitley's right, so we had to take the drugs
across where there's cops everywhere and drugs are really illegal.
So we started asking him if we could do it there,
and I remember he very specifically said, yeah, you can
do it here, but if you go out, I'm not
resuscitating you. I don't give a fuck. I'm putting you
(18:08):
in a shopping cart and I'll push you up on
Hollywood Boulevard.
Speaker 11 (18:11):
The thing is, I had heard that the reason that
Earache killed Peter was because what he said was that
he was a crazy faggot and he was giving punk
rock a bad name, and nothing could be further from
the truth.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
A violent, homophobic, neo Nazi certainly sounds like an easy
murder suspect, but as it turns out this theory is
only about as credible as the burglar theory.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
It's a lot of conjecture fucking storytelling. Well, so I
don't want to get to gory, but I just want
to say that Peter was bludgeoned to death with a mallet,
and this is an intense way to kill someone. Think
about it. The killer would have to get really close
to the victim, which means that the victim either trusted
(19:03):
the person or was a surprise attack.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
This brings us to the next theory. Could it have
been a crime of passion. Peter was a charmer and
really good looking people were drawn to him, women in particular,
or as Tequila puts it, Peter was.
Speaker 11 (19:24):
Mister Kundalini yoga sex god. So he had all these
women losing their minds over him.
Speaker 8 (19:32):
And I don't know whether my mom had an affair
with Ivers or what their relationship was.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
That's Peter Rafelson again, Peter Ivers actually met him through
Rafaelson's mom.
Speaker 8 (19:44):
As I recall, we used to go to du Pars
at the Farmer's market on Sundays. I always wondered exactly
what the relationship to my mother was, And that leaves
some imagination, but Sir Urchin, he was a regular.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Peter was messing around with many, many women in the
Beverly Hills area, and their husbands might not have liked
what Peter was doing.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
So maybe Peter had lots of lovers, but one alleged
relationship stands out.
Speaker 15 (20:23):
For years, nobody ever asked me, and I never said
anything about the whole relationship that Peter with Anne Ramos.
Speaker 11 (20:32):
I was a little annoyed with Peter because he was
sleeping with a married woman. Oh my god, he was
sleeping with Harold Ramis's wife, And I was like, oh
my god, what if he finds out.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
Alan Sachs actually had the nerve to ask Anne about
this when he interviewed her a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
We involved romantically with.
Speaker 6 (20:54):
Peter, I don't.
Speaker 9 (21:00):
I mean, I don't know what to say about that.
I feel like our relationship was really our personal, you
know thing, and I think he was one, you know,
so wonderful and I had a great appreciation for him.
(21:20):
I don't really.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Want to answer that question, Okay, whether they were romantic
or not, Peter and Anne were certainly very close. According
to Rod Falconer, sometimes Peter felt guilty about his closeness
with Anne. He was Harold's friend, after all.
Speaker 15 (21:42):
Peter was not happy with it. He felt bad about
that he liked Harold. Harold Raymis was helping Peter. He
was giving him financing for vitamin pink. So that made
Peter feel that Peter was a very conscionable person and
he couldn't be you know, he felt very uncomfortable.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
Harold loved Peter too, and even supported him artistically and financially.
Rod said that Peter felt torn between his feelings for
Anne and his loyalty to her husband.
Speaker 15 (22:11):
He just didn't want to be having an affair, you know,
because this was a close friend of his and more
than just a friend, I mean, you know, someone who
believed in him and so.
Speaker 11 (22:19):
Forth, which it is hard to come.
Speaker 16 (22:21):
By this world.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
After Peter died, Rafelson was looking around in his car
and says he found Peter's day planner. It was under
the seat where Peter had allegedly tucked the money he lost.
Speaker 8 (22:35):
When I went and I found this binder, which I
think was in my car, the day planner. Somebody who
told me said, oh my god, do not, whatever you do,
do not give that to the police. Can't you can't,
you cannot let anybody see this.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
Why the planner tracked Peter's life, who spent his time
with and what he did every day. If Peter was
having an affair with someone, the evidence for that could
have been in his planner.
Speaker 8 (23:08):
Because it was maybe where all the dead bodies were buried,
so to speak, where all of the numbers, where all
of the information, where all of the fucking affairs and
secrets work out.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
It was part diary, part calendar, and part phone book.
Speaker 8 (23:25):
Somebody had told me, and may have been her.
Speaker 6 (23:27):
By her, he's referring to Anne Ramis, do.
Speaker 8 (23:31):
Not whatever you do, whatever they say, you don't know
anything like it. Were literally telling me to essentially hide
prevent as evidence of anything.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
But even if Frankfelson hid the planner, it was too late.
Peter's escapades were in plain sight. The cops thought Harold
was a crazed, jealous husband who killed his wife's lover
common motive. But the cops questioned Harold and then released
him soon after, and all they probably learned from the
interview is that Harold, like the rest of us, adored Peter.
(24:07):
I mean a couple of months after Peter died. Harold
used this song little Boy Sweet in the soundtrack for
National Lampoons Vacation.
Speaker 6 (24:17):
Whatever might have transpired between Peter and the women of Hollywood,
the crime of passion theory didn't hold the police's attention
for long. Of all the theories a drug deal gone wrong,
a pissed off punk, a botched robbery, or a jealous husband,
(24:41):
the cops felt robbery was the most plausible explanation, and
that was their explanation when they set the case aside.
But to all of us that theory felt very flimsy.
Speaker 8 (24:55):
I don't think that this was some random thing. I
think that there was probably some illicit business and it
went bad.
Speaker 13 (25:05):
I have to say that to this day, it really
really bothers me that this is an unsolved case. I
don't get it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I don't.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
I just it's.
Speaker 13 (25:23):
I mean, it kills me that somebody's out there or
was out there. Maybe they're gone now. I don't know
that took his life.
Speaker 6 (25:37):
Lucy Fisher, Peter's longtime girlfriend, felt the same way. It's
part of why she hired a PI to look into
his murder. Unfortunately, that PI has since passed away, so
we don't know what he learned about Peter's death. There is,
of course, one last theory that we haven't talked about,
(25:57):
one that, as far as we know, the cops never
fully explored. Could it be David Jove that killed Peter?
Speaker 3 (26:17):
What a play?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
What a trip?
Speaker 6 (26:19):
What a dip in the unknown?
Speaker 11 (26:21):
On behalf of our producer all World stage is your
all two human host harbor Boy Ivers, wishing you a
hostile honeymoon in the hermitage of Harpocrates.
Speaker 6 (26:33):
That's episode twenty five of New Wave Theater. It's Peter's
last monologue. After he recorded the episode, Peter quit New
Wave Theater and had that blowout fight with David Jove.
A few hours later, he was found dead, and David's
behavior after Peter's death was well, pretty fucking strange.
Speaker 11 (26:56):
Even after Peter died, every time I'd see him, he'd
be like.
Speaker 6 (27:01):
Here's Tequila Mockingbird talking with Alan Sachs.
Speaker 11 (27:05):
And I got a phone call saying you're next, and
I said, come on over, I'm waiting for you. He said, yes,
I did.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
When he said you're next, he was he implying that they.
Speaker 14 (27:14):
Were whooh, the New Wave Theater murders.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Everybody involved in the show was going to be murdered.
Speaker 11 (27:20):
That's what his little stick was, and we hated him.
Speaker 6 (27:24):
But that wasn't even the strangest thing David did in
the days after Peter's murder. Earlier we spoke about the
crime scene. It was a total madhouse. People were wandering
in and out, and some of his stuff went missing. Coincidentally,
after that awful day, visitors to David Jeb's cave saw
two new items amongst the Crowley books and pentagrams. First,
(27:48):
a pink sequin jacket, the one Peter wore on New
Wave Theater. David claimed Peter gave it to him tequila.
She calls bullshit.
Speaker 11 (27:58):
Peter would have never let him have that jack, never,
because that was his favorite jacket. So that was like
super sketchy to me because there is no way that
he would have ever given him that.
Speaker 6 (28:09):
And the other item that made its way to the
cave the blanket covering Peter's body. Ken Dow remember seeing it.
He was a regular at the cave and Jove took
a liking to him quickly because of Ken's curiosity about
you guessed it the occult.
Speaker 16 (28:27):
He was a chaos magician. He was in love with
Alisha Crowley and all of that kind of occult stuff.
What he liked to do with sort of blow people's minds,
to do something that seemed magical.
Speaker 6 (28:39):
Sometime after Peter died, Ken was hanging out there with Jove.
Speaker 16 (28:44):
We were talking about Peter, and he said, I need
to show you something.
Speaker 6 (28:49):
David's surprise for Ken is on the second floor. So
David pulls down the ladder into the upper level to retrieve.
Speaker 16 (28:58):
It anyway, and he went, you know, pulled the thing down.
It was always like you had to pull a ladder
down to get up in there. So he pulled it
down and he got up, went up in the and
and just like leaned out to the thing and poke
and poked the blanket down at me and said, this
is this is this is the blanket I got from
(29:21):
Peter's bed that day. And I could see blood dried
blood on its brown and was like weeping with tears
and this was this is this is the blanket. This
is the blanket I got from Peter. This is his blanket,
and nice sleep with it every night.
Speaker 6 (29:40):
Jove's daughter Lily Hayden corroborated Ken's story on a podcast
called Rarefied Air. Here's a clip.
Speaker 17 (29:48):
My dad slept with Peter's bloody blanket that he had
been legended on legend to death on. My dad slept
with that bloody blanket for the rest of his life.
Speaker 16 (30:00):
I don't remember anything that happened after that moment. I
don't why the thought never occurred to me. Oh my god,
that's evidence that the cops need. I could have gone
to the cops and said, hey, ah, this guy, I
don't know if he did it or what, but he's
got this blanket. It never even occurred to me to
(30:21):
go tell the cops this.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
Some might say the cops should have looked at the
guy who had just been professionally dumped by the victim,
who was obsessed with death and known for violent outbursts,
and who people say cozied up with Peter's bloody blanket.
How creepy is that? And some might say the person
who killed Peter Ivers could have been the guy with
(30:43):
the most to lose. So was it David Jove? Could
it have been the Acid King? That's coming up next time?
Until then, see you. Peter and the Acid King is
(31:07):
based on interviews recorded and researched by Alan Sachs. It's
produced by Imagine Audio, Alan Sachs Productions and Awfully Nice
for iHeartMedia, I'm Your Host Penelope Spears. The series is
written by Caitlin Fontana Peter and the Acid King is
produced by Amber von Shassen. The senior producer is Caitlin
(31:31):
Fontana and the supervising producer is John Assanti. Our project
manager is Katie Hodges. Our executive producers are Ron Howard,
Brian Grazer, Caarra Welker, Nathan Kloke, Alan Sachs, Jesse Burton
and Katie Hodges. The associate producers are Laura Schwartz, Dylan
(31:55):
Cainrich and Chris Statue. Co producer on behalf of Shout
Studios Bob Emmer. Sound design and mix by Evan Arnette,
fact checking by Katherine Barner. Original music composed by Alloy Tracks,
Music clearances by Barbara Hall, voiceover recording by Voicetracks. West
(32:20):
Show artwork by Michael Dare. Special thanks to Annette van Duren.
Thank you for listening.
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