Terrifying & True | The Acid King Murder: Ricky Kasso, Satanic Panic, and the Killing of Gary Lauwers - Weekly Spooky: Scary Stories for Halloween

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the summer of nineteen eighty four, a body was
found buried in the woods of Northport, Long Island, a
teenager stabbed dozens of times. His killer wasn't just any boy.
He was Ricky Casso, the self styled Acid King. Was

(00:20):
it murder for revenge or a Satanic sacrifice that set
off a nationwide panic?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
What you were about to be buried?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
To ben you?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Based on witness accounts, testamaties, and public record, this is
terrifying and treat.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
A quiet harbor town shaken to its core by a
gruesome discovery. On Independence Day nineteen eighty four, beneath the
trees of Aztakia Woods lay the body of Gary Lowers,
a teenager brutally stabbed to death. The prime suspect his friend,

(01:16):
Ricky Casso, a troubled youth known as the Acid King.
Almost overnight, whispers of Satanic rituals and cult activity spread
like wildfire, fueling the growing hysteria of the nineteen eighty
Satanic panic. Was this the work of a devil worshiping

(01:37):
cult or the tragic end of a young man lost
to drugs? We're telling that story tonight. On the morning
of July fourth, nineteen eighty four, a police dog strained

(02:02):
at its leash in a patch of trees behind Main
Street in Northport, Long Island. The canine's handler pushed deeper
into the brush until a sudden, stomach turning odour confirmed
the dog's alarm. Beneath a thin layer of leaves and
earth lay the remains of a teenage boy. What police

(02:28):
uncovered was ghastly, a partially decomposed skeleton, still clad in
a denim vest, track pants and Nike sneakers. The body's
face was unrecognizable. Animals and decay had done their work,

(02:48):
and one eye socket gaped empty in the skull. Dozens
of stab wounds were visible in the victim's chest and back.
Investigators at the scene knew immediately they had stumbled upon
evidence of a brutal murder. Word of the discovery traveled

(03:10):
fast through the quiet harbor town. The dead boy was
soon identified as seventeen year old Gary Lawyers, a local
youth who had been missing for two weeks. Within hours,
suspicion fell on two other teenagers peers of Gary's, who

(03:31):
had been heard boasting about a killing. Seventeen year old
Ricky Acid King Casso and his friend, eighteen year old
Jimmy Troyano. Acting on an anonymous tip, police fanned out
to locate the suspects. They found Ricky Casso and Jimmy

(03:53):
Troyano the very next day, passed out in a parked car,
dirty and hung over, as if nothing were amiss. The
two were arrested on July fifth, nineteen eighty four, charged
with second degree murder in Lower's death. The following night,

(04:16):
locked in a Suffolk County jail, cell Ricky Casso scrawled
a final note to his parents and then hanged himself
with a bedsheet, taking his secrets to the grave. For
the shocked residence of Northport, it was almost inconceivable that

(04:40):
local kids, kids they had seen around town, could be
responsible for such a depraved act. But in truth, the
seeds of this tragedy had been planted long before that
summer night. To understand how a long eye and teenager

(05:01):
came to be stabbed to death in the woods, one
has to know the strange journey of Ricky Casso, the
self styled acid King, and the troubled world he shared
with Gary Lowers. Richard Ricky Casso Junior grew up in

(05:22):
the affluent suburbs of Northport, where his father was a
popular high school history teacher and football coach. By all accounts,
Ricky's early childhood was unremarkable. He was even a little
league athlete and model child, according to his father. But

(05:43):
around junior high school, Ricky's personality began to change. He
discovered drugs, starting with marijuana and quickly graduating to the
potent hallucinogens that earned him his nick classmates recalled that
by eighth grade he was never sober. Ricky could drop

(06:07):
as many as forty hits of acid in a day,
chased with PCP and whatever else he could find. His
friends often saw him wild eyed and tripping, sometimes babbling
about satan or wandering local cemeteries at night in a

(06:28):
drug fueled haze. The once clean cut coach's son transformed
into a gaunt, long haired, dirt bag drifter, usually barefoot,
often homeless, and perpetually high. As Ricky's drug abuse escalated,

(06:50):
so did his erratic behaviour. He fixated on occult imagery
and heavy metal music, flaunting his interest in Satanism. As
a kind of rebellious persona, Ricky took to carrying Anton
LaVey's the Satanic Bible in his pocket, and would sometimes

(07:12):
interrupt conversations with a random hail Satan. Most local teens
thought it was an act, a provocative joke by a
burnout who wanted to shock the adults. In truth, Ricky's
occult antics were fairly superficial. He loved the dark esthetics

(07:35):
of bands like ac DC, Black Sabbath, and Judas Priest,
even scrawling pentagrams and six six six on walls, but
there was no evidence he was engaged in real rituals
or cult activities beyond getting high in graveyards and chanting

(07:56):
Satan's name to the trees. None of them actually worshiped
the devil. It was an affectation, an esthetic designed more
to piss off fundamental moralizers than anything, one observer noted
of the local metal head culture. Still, in Ricky's distorted,

(08:20):
drug addled mind, the line between posing and reality could blur.
Friends recalled him claiming that he did try to commune
with the Devil on his solitary drug binges, tripping in
the woods or the cemetery, sometimes digging into old graves

(08:42):
in search of human bones for supposed rituals. Ricky's increasingly
unhinged behavior alarmed his family. His parents tried multiple times
to get him help. They enrolled him in a drug
counseling pro He skipped the sessions and eventually had him

(09:04):
admitted to a psychiatric hospital, the former Amityville Asylum, after
he threatened suicide and proclaimed that death is the ultimate trip.
But Ricky refused to cooperate with doctors and that resistance
would prove deadly. In one instance, Ricky managed to convince

(09:35):
a psychiatric evaluator that he was neither violent nor truly delusional,
telling them what they wanted to hear, until the professionals
concluded he was antisocial but not psychotic enough to involuntarily commit.
Each time, as soon as he was released, Ricky went

(09:59):
straight back to his habits. Eventually, his frustrated parents kicked
the sixteen year old out of the house. Ricky took
to sleeping in friends garages, on park benches, or in
the dense tangle of the Aztakilla woods on the edge
of town. Homeless and aimless, Ricky survived by dealing small

(10:23):
quantities of drugs and relying on a loose click of
fellow teen runaways and dropouts among his closer companions were
two other Northport boys, James Jimmy Troiano, a streetwise eighteen
year old, and Albert Keones, seventeen, both shared Ricky's appetite

(10:47):
for drugs. Also orbiting this group was Gary Lowers, the
boy who would later become Ricky's victim. Gary was the
same age Ricky. Like Ricky, he had struggled with school
and family stability. He was known to run away from

(11:09):
home for days or weeks at a time. Gary dabbled
in drugs as well, though by many accounts he wasn't
as heavy a user as Casso. In fact, Gary and
Ricky had been friends. They'd hung out together, and at

(11:29):
one point Gary even participated when Ricky decided to dig
up a Colonial era grave in a local cemetery. Ricky
had convinced a couple of his pals, Gary included, to
help him unearth a grave, supposedly to obtain a skull
and bones, either for sale or for use in a

(11:54):
Satanic ritual at the infamous Amityville horror House on Walpurgis Knocked.
The grave robbing escapade ended with Ricky's arrest in November
nineteen eighty three, when the police caught him with a
stolen human skull and hand in his possession. It was

(12:15):
an ominous sign of how far off the rails Ricky
had drifted. Yet even that incident would pale in comparison
to what came next. Early in nineteen eighty four, a
betrayal sparked a feud between Ricky Casso and Gary Lowers.

(12:37):
The two were partying together one night when Ricky passed
out from too many drugs. Spotting an opportunity, Gary rummaged
through Ricky's jacket and stole ten bags of PCP, also
known as angel dust, that Ricky had stashed to sell.

(12:58):
It didn't take long for Ricky to realize his friend
had robbed him. Enraged, Casso confronted Gary, who admitted the
theft and returned as much of the PCP as he
hadn't already smoked or given away. Five bags were gone,
and Gary promised to pay Ricky fifty dollars to make

(13:22):
up for the loss. In the days that followed, Ricky
did not let the matter rest. He was seen berating
Gary and even physically beating him on several occasions to
remind him of the debt. Gary, who had no steady income,
scraped together what money he could and paid Ricky back

(13:45):
in small installments. By mid June nineteen eighty four, it
was said that Gary had finally squared the fifty dollars
debt in full. Friends later testified that the two boys
seemed to have reconciled and that Ricky was no longer
actively hostile to Gary. In hindsight, this calm was the

(14:10):
eye of the storm, a brief pause before Ricky's simmering
resentments and drug fueled delusions would explode into violence. On
June nineteenth, nineteen eighty four, Ricky Casso crossed paths with
Gary Lowers again. It was a warm Tuesday night at

(14:32):
the beginning of summer, and Ricky had plans to get
high out in the woods with his usual crew. He
invited Gary to join him, along with Jimmy Troyano and
Albert Quiones. At first, Gary was hesitant he and Ricky
weren't exactly best friends after the PCP incident, but Ricky

(14:56):
enticed him with a trivial gesture offered to buy jelly
doughnuts for everyone before they headed into the woods. Gary,
perhaps eager to belong and believing the beef was behind them,
agreed to come along for what sounded like a casual
night of partying under the stars. That night, the fourteens

(15:22):
and according to some later reports, a couple of other
hangers on who would depart early, trekked into the Aztachia Woods,
a small patch of forest near Northport's town Park. Carrying
drugs and a portable radio. They found a little clearing
beneath the trees and set about building a campfire. Recent

(15:46):
rain had soaked the brush, so the boys struggled to
keep a fire going. Gary even pulled off his own
socks and cut the denim sleeves from his jacket to
use as kindling, reficing pieces of his clothing to coax
the flames. The mood was initially light, just a group

(16:08):
of bored suburban teens getting high in their usual spot.
As the fire crackled fitfully, they passed around what they
believed were hits of mescaline in reality likely low grade LSD,
and smoked several bags of PCP. In total. By some estimates,

(16:32):
the four consumed dozens of doses of acid and an
astonishing quantity of angel dust over the course of the night.
Reality soon began to slip. Time lost meaning in the
darkness of the Astachia woods, the stage was set for horror.

(17:01):
As midnight passed, the drug cocktail took hold, the atmosphere
in the woods turned strange and volatile. Each survivor of
that night would later recall the sequence of events a
little differently, fragmented as their memories were by intoxication and trauma,

(17:23):
but the broad strokes can be pieced together from their accounts.
At some point, in the haze of hallucinations around the
dying campfire, an argument erupted between Ricky and Gary. One
account has it that Ricky bizarrely demanded Gary take off

(17:43):
his clothes and throw them into the fire as an offering,
which Gary refused. In any case, harsh words were exchanged,
and years of pent up anger in Ricky suddenly came
surging to the ser Ricky snapped. He pounced on Gary

(18:04):
without warning, knocking him to the ground. Gary's yelp of
surprise quickly turned to screams. What followed was a frenzy
of brutality that lasted anywhere from several minutes to several hours,
depending on who told the story. In the initial scuffle,

(18:27):
Ricky casso sank his teeth into Gary Lower's neck, literally
trying to bite him like an animal. Gary broke free momentarily,
but Ricky was in a violent rage. Jimmy Troyano either
froze in shock or actively joined the assault. Accounts conflicted

(18:50):
on this critical point. Kihones would later claim Troiano helped
hold Gary down, then recanted that claim. Garry tried to
fight back, but he stood little chance. Ricky pulled out
a long bladed knife. The blade flashed in the dim firelight,

(19:11):
and then it plunged into Gary's body. Gary cried out
as Ricky stabbed him again and again in a wild fury.
I love you, Satan, Ricky hissed at his former friend
as he pinned him to the ground. Gary, bleeding and terrified,

(19:35):
refused I love my mother. He managed to choke out instead.
His defiance only enraged Ricky further. In a scene almost
too gruesome to imagine, Ricky Casso continued to scab Gary
Lowers dozens of times in the back, in the chest,

(20:00):
even in the face. At some point, Gary did manage
to stagger to his feet in a desperate bid to escape,
but the woods were dark and his injuries severe. Ricky
tackled him before he could get away. The knife rose
and fell relentlessly as Gary begged for mercy. Finally, after

(20:26):
perhaps upward of thirty two stab wounds, Gary Lowers went limp.
In the eerie silence that followed, only the crackle of
the fire and the panting breaths of the attackers could
be heard. Jimmy Troyano later admitted that he helped Ricky drag

(20:49):
Gary's bloodied, twitching body out of the firelight and deeper
into the woods. There, they dropped him among the ferns
and undergrowth. Incredibly, as they turned to leave, Gary suddenly
stirred his body reflexively, sitting up in shock or final agony.

(21:13):
Ricky casso led out a curse, startled that his victim
was somehow still alive. With a manic gleam in his eye,
Ricky rushed back at Gary's prone form. He brought the
knife down again and again into Gary's face and head,
determined to finish the job. When he finally stepped back,

(21:38):
Gary Lowers was silent and still. One of the blows
had sliced into Gary's left eye socket, and now the
eye was destroyed. Blood pooled into the dirt. The teen's
lifeless body was a ruin of stab wounds and mutilation.

(22:00):
Standing over the corpse of his friend turned victim, Ricky
Casso began to laugh. Troyano would later recall the sight
of Ricky, shirtless, smeared in blood, chest heaving, throwing his
head back, and cackling as if the murder were some
great joke. The night had descended into a nightmare far

(22:26):
beyond any drug hallucination. Before leaving the scene, Ricky knelt
and performed a final macabre gesture. He started chanting to
Satan over Gary's body. No one present could recall the
exact words of the chant, only that Ricky's muttered invocations

(22:50):
to the devil echoed through the dark pines. In Ricky's
own later telling, he claimed that at that moment, a
black crow suddenly fluttered down and perched nearby, cawing loudly,
a sign Ricky believed of Satan's approval of the sacrifice.

(23:14):
Whether that eerie detail was real or just one more
drug fueled delusion, only Ricky would ever know. In the
immediate aftermath of the killing, Ricky Casso, Jimmy Troyano, and
Albert Keijones fled the woods, leaving Gary Lower's mutilated body

(23:37):
where it had fallen. The adrenaline high of violence quickly
gave way to panic. Back in town, the trio made
a pact they would never speak of what had happened
in Astachio Woods. Ricky tossed his bloody knife off a
bridge into the harbor, trying to eliminate evidence. The boys

(24:04):
swore each other to secrecy, and initially all three kept
that oath, but Ricky Casso was not one to stay
quiet for long. In the days following the murder, the
seventeen year old seemed almost proud of his gruesome deed.

(24:27):
He began bragging to his inner circle of friends about
how he had wasted Gary Lowers. Ricky recounted the horrific
details with a disturbing glee, even imitating how Gary had
begged for his life. At first, most of the teens

(24:48):
who heard Ricky's story refused to believe him. It was
just two grotesque too extreme. Northport was a sleepy, safe town.
Kids like them didn't really go around killing each other
in satanic rituals, did they. Some laughed it off or

(25:13):
thought Ricky was merely having a sick drug fantasy, but
Ricky was determined to prove he was telling the truth.
Over the next week or so, he led at least
a dozen different teams on treks into Astachia woods to
show off Gary's rotting corpse as a kind of trophy.

(25:38):
He'd guide curious peers to the shallow glen where Gary
lay among the ferns, point at the maggot ridden remains,
and boast, see I told you I killed him. Shockingly,
not one of those young onlookers immediately reported the crime

(25:59):
to the police or to their parents. Some were simply
too frightened of Ricky to dare to cross him. Others
assumed someone else would eventually speak up. The code of

(26:21):
silence held for two weeks. In the meantime, Ricky and
Jimmy even decided to bury the evidence of their crime literally.
As the summer heat began accelerating the decomposition of Gary's body,
the stench around the murder site grew overpowering. Acting on

(26:45):
a morbid suggestion from one of the kids he'd taken
to view the corpse, Ricky and Jimmy returned to the
site several days after the killing with shovels. They hastily
dug a shallow grave next to Gary's remains and rolled
his body into it, covering him loosely with dirt and leaves.

(27:10):
During this gruesome task, Gary's corpse was so decayed that
his skull separated from his body, a sight that reportedly
made Ricky chuckle in amusement. To any normal person, it
was a scene of absolute horror. To Ricky Casso, it

(27:32):
was just another crazy story to laugh about. By the
end of June nineteen eighty four, Ricky Casso and Jimmy
Troyano believed they had gotten away with murder. Gary Lower's
disappearance had not even been formally reported. His parents, sadly

(27:54):
accustomed to their son running away for days at a time,
hadn't imediately alerted police that Gary was missing. With Gary's
corpse now hidden under the dirt, he talked about leaving
town to get a fresh start elsewhere. He and Jimmy

(28:14):
made half baked plans to hitchhike across the country to California,
where they imagined they could live freely dealing drugs and
partying on the West Coast. In early July, they set
off to put this plan into motion, heading west out
of New York, but youthful impulsiveness got the better of them.

(28:40):
They only made it as far as Chicago before they
grew bored or homesick and turned back in a grim
twist of fate. By the time Ricky and Jimmy drove
back into Northport in a cheap used car bought with
the proceeds of selling drugs along the way, the dominoes

(29:02):
on their undoing had already begun to fall. It was
a teenage girl who finally broke the silence. Disturbed by
the rumors she'd overheard, this unnamed young woman called the
Suffolk County Police on July first, nineteen eighty four, and

(29:23):
reported that a boy had been murdered in Astachia Woods.
At first, the police were skeptical there was no missing
person report, no evidence beyond school yard whispers, but given
the specificity of the tip, officers decided to investigate the

(29:44):
wooded area. On July fourth, guided by cadaver dogs, they
found Gary Lower's shallow grave and exhumed his remains. The
crime could no longer be hidden. Later that night, as
Ricky and Jimmy partied obliviously with friends to celebrate the

(30:06):
Fourth of July, a neighbor noticed their parked car, and,
recalling the recent talk of a murder, phoned in a
tip about the vehicle. When police arrived and discovered the
two teens asleep inside, they moved swiftly to apprehend them.

(30:28):
Ricky Casso and Jimmy Troyano woke to find themselves surrounded
by eighteen officers with guns drawn. The game was up
at last. In custody, Ricky Casso at first denied everything.
It didn't last. Long, presented with evidence and facing the

(30:51):
reality of prison, Ricky confessed to the murder within hours
of his arrest. According to one police account, he admitted
he had been shouting quote satanic stuff while stabbing Gary,
an allusion to the now famous demand say he loves Satan.

(31:13):
Jimmy Troiano, on the other hand, maintained that while he
had been present, he hadn't participated in killing Gary. Albert Kehones,
the third teen from that night, had also been picked
up by police. Sensing an opportunity to save himself, Keihones

(31:35):
immediately agreed to cooperate in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
He gave a statement aligning with Ricky's basic confession. But
also initially claimed that Troiano had helped restrain Gary during
the murder. Based on Kehoni's testimony and Ricky's own part

(32:00):
Marshall confession, both Ricky Casso and Jimmy Troiano were charged
with second degree murder and held without bail. Just two
days later, on July seventh, nineteen eighty four, Ricky Casso

(32:24):
was found dead in his jail cell, an apparent suicide
by hanging. His short, turbulent life ended at age seventeen,
robbing the public of any fuller accounting for his actions.
But in a way, the legend of Ricky Casso was

(32:48):
only beginning. In the absence of the killer himself. A
sensational narrative rushed in to fill the void, one that
would cast the events in as Ten Woods as something
far more occult and elaborate than the ugly reality of

(33:08):
a drug fueled teen murder. Ricky Casso's arrest and shocking
death made headlines, but it was the manner of Gary
Lower's murder that truly seized the public's imagination. Almost overnight,
the Northport case morphed into a media frenzy about a

(33:31):
satanic sacrifice in the suburbs local authorities fanned the flames. Early.
A Suffolk County detective told reporters that Casso was a
member of a Satanic cult and that a whole throng
of chanting devil worshipers had participated or at least witnessed

(33:54):
the killing. This alarming claim of roving teen cultinetists spilling
blood for the devil brought journalists from far and wide
clamouring into Northport. The press dutifully repeated the most salacious details.
They reported that Casso had butchered his friend as part

(34:17):
of an occult ritual, that he had cut out Gary's eyes,
and that he had compelled the victim to profess love
for Satan as he died. These elements made for lurid
copy and struck a nerve with a nation already on
edge about deviant youth culture. By nineteen eighty four, the

(34:42):
United States was in the grip of the Early Satanic Panic,
a period of hysteria in which everyday citizens came to
believe Satanic cults were corrupting children from within schools, daycare, music,
and games. Now Here was a real life horror story

(35:04):
seemingly confirming those fears. A nice long Island town its
ordinary teenagers turned into devil worshiping murderers. It was a
moral crusader's nightmare come true. Television and newspapers eagerly amplified

(35:25):
the Satanic angle. The notorious line, say you love Satan
became the case's catchphrase, splashed in bold type across tabloids
and repeated on TV newscasts. Within weeks, Ricky Casso's scowling
mugshot taken at his arraignment, eyes wild beneath disheveled hair,

(35:50):
an ACDC concert T shirt hanging from his skinny frame,
became an iconic image of adolescent evil. Parents across the
country stared at that photo in horror and disbelief. How
could a seemingly average kid descend into such depravity? For some,

(36:14):
the answer was simple, rock music, drugs, and the devil.
The fact that Ricky had been wearing an ACDC T
shirt at the time of his arrest was seized upon
as evidence that heavy metal music was a gateway to Satanism.

(36:36):
Pundits pointed to Ricky's interest in the Satanic Bible and
occult symbols as proof that an underground Satanic movement was
ensnaring the youth. One television special after another gravely intoned
that the Northport murder was prima facie proof of Satan's

(36:57):
influence lurking in America suburbia. Even mainstream programs like ABC's
twenty twenty ran segments on the case, and in nineteen
eighty eight, HERALDA Rivera devoted a portion of his infamous
primetime expose a devil worship, exposing Satan's underground to the

(37:20):
lower's murder.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
Whether a Satan exists is a matter of belief, but
we are certain that Satanism exists. To summits a religion.
To others, it's the practice of evil in the devil's name.
It exists, and it's flourishing. Members of our studio audience
tonight will attest to that they are friends and foes
of Satanism, devil worshipers and law enforcers, experts and victims.

(37:46):
They'll help us understand this force that exults evil and darkness.
We'll be asking why, why does it exist and why
does it appeal to so many vulnerable people, especially the young. Now,
the very young and the impressionable should definitely not be
watching this program tonight. This is not a Halloween fable.

(38:06):
This is a real life horror story and it will
give small children bad dreams. As for teenagers and their parents,
we hope you are watching because it's teenagers who are
most likely to fall under the spell of this jumble
of dark, violent emotions called Satanism, and in some cases,
to be driven into committing terrible deeds.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
The narrative was clear, Ricky Casso was not just a
disturbed kid, but the tip of a demonic iceberg threatening
the country's children. Yet amid the media circus, the facts
told a far less sensational story. As investigators dug deeper,

(38:51):
the supposed cult aspect of the Northport murder quickly fell apart.
The rumored throat of robed Satanists in the woods proved
to be nonexistent, a phantom conjured from Casso's own boasts

(39:12):
and early police exaggeration. There was a local clique, grandiosely
calling themselves the Knights of the Black Circle, but they
were essentially a handful of stoner teens who sold pot
and occasionally talked tough about occultism. They bore no resemblance

(39:35):
to an organized Satanic cult, and in fact, Ricky Casso
was never even a core member of that group. The
lurid claim that Casso had carved out Gary's eyes as
part of a ritual was also unsupported. The autopsy indicated

(39:56):
Gary's eyes had been damaged by stab wound and decomposition,
not removed with any surgical precision, and while Ricky had
indeed invoked Satan during the crime, there was zero evidence
that the murder was premeditated as a sacrifice, or that

(40:18):
it was carried out according to any occult plan. The
truth appeared to be that Ricky Casso murdered Gary Lowers
in a haze of rage and narcotics for reasons as
banal as revenge over stolen drugs and the twisted thrill

(40:39):
it gave him. The devil did not make him do it,
if anything, the drugs did. Of course, these nuances did
little to stem the tide of panic. By late nineteen

(41:02):
eighty four, communities far from Long Island were reacting to
the Northport story and others like it with sweeping measures.
School districts banned heavy metal t shirts and albums, fearing
they were talismans of satanic influence. Church groups held record

(41:24):
burning rallies to destroy demonic music. Popular role playing games
like Dungeons and Dragons fell under suspicion. In the public consciousness,
Ricky Casso became the teen face of devil worship and
the dangers of rebellious youth culture. It was easier for

(41:46):
many to believe that supernatural evil had possessed Ricky than
to confront the mundane horror of how badly the adults
in his life had failed him. After all, facing the
Casso case as a drug fueled tragedy of parental neglect,

(42:07):
mental illness, and broken systems was uncomfortable. Far more convenient
was to label Ricky simply as a satanic monster and
view his crime as an isolated eruption of other worldly evil.

(42:28):
With Ricky Casso dead by his own hand, the job
of publicly reckoning with the Astachia Woods murder fell to
the trial of Jimmy Troyano. Troiano was the only one
of the trio still facing charges for Gary Lower's death.
His trial began in April of nineteen eighty five in

(42:52):
a courthouse in Riverhead, Long Island. It had been nearly
a year since the murder, and the initial media a
furr had cooled somewhat. Still, the specter of Satanism hung
over the proceedings. Troiano, now nineteen, stood accused of second

(43:12):
degree murder on the theory that he had actively assisted Casso.
The prosecution's case largely hinged on the testimony of Albert Keiones, who,
under his immunity deal, recounted the events of June nineteenth
and originally had implicated Troiano in helping to restrain the victim.

(43:36):
But Keones was a problematic witness. For one, he freely
admitted that he had been extremely high on LSD and
PCP that night, as had everyone present. Under oath. Keones
even conceded that his memory of the attack was hazy

(43:58):
and that he might have been mistaken about Troiano's role.
In fact, by the time of trial, Chones reversed his
earlier story and testified that Troiano had not physically assisted
Casso in the murder. After all, this flip flop severely

(44:20):
weakened the prosecution's case. Troiano's defense attorney capitalized on it,
arguing that the truth of what happened in the woods
was impossible to pin down given the hallucinogenic fog everyone
was under. Quote, it's hard to remember exactly what happened

(44:42):
when the trees are melting and the stars are rushing around.
Troiano had told his lawyer, referring to the profound drug
induced distortions of that night. With no physical evidence tying
Troiano to actual stabbing or restraining Gary, only Casso's fingerprints

(45:05):
were on the murder weapon, which was never recovered anyway,
and with keone's credibility in tatters, the jury was left
with ample reasonable doubt. After a three day deliberation, the
verdict came on April twenty fifth, nineteen eighty five, not guilty.

(45:27):
Jimmy Troyano was acquitted of all charges in the death
of Gary Lowers. In the end, the justice system officially
deemed Ricky Casso the sole party responsible for the murder,
a conclusion which sensationalism aside, aligns with the evidence that

(45:49):
Casso was the one who wielded the knife and orchestrated
the assault. Troiano, the court decided, had the misfortune of
being present, but was not proven to be an active
participant in the slaying. He walked free another life derailed,

(46:09):
but not legally guilty in the eyes of the law.
The trial's outcome received only modest coverage compared to the
initial hysteria. There were no bold headlines for Troyano's acquittal.
A teenager not guilty of being a satanic murderer was

(46:31):
far less newsworthy than a lurid ritual killing, but in
the courtroom at least a kind of truth had prevailed.
The verdict underscored what calmer reflection had suggested all along.
The Northport murder was not a grand conspiracy of devil worshipers,

(46:52):
but rather the tragic culmination of a troubled boy's downward spiral.
As one Suffolk County d detective later admitted, the case
was quote one hundred percent a drug debt murder between
kids who were high as hell, not some premeditated Satanic sacrifice.

(47:15):
The ritual trappings had been largely improvised and amplified by rumor.
When stripped of that sensational veneer, what remained was a
tale as old as any in the annals of crime,
a tale of youthful rage, substance abuse, and lost innocence.

(47:37):
In the wake of the trial, Northport tried to return
to normalcy, but the story of Ricky Casso left a
lingering scar on the community and an indelible mark On
nineteen eighty's pop culture. The so called Satanic panic would
rage on for years after nineteen eighty four, and the

(47:59):
Acid King would often be cited as a prime example
of where moral depravity could lead. The case inspired songs, books,
and films, mostly exploitative that took varying degrees of creative
license with the facts. One paperback true crime book published

(48:21):
in nineteen eighty seven was even titled Say You Love Satan.
Cashing in on the infamous line, It presented a highly
dramatized version of the story, so much so that the
author was accused of plagiarizing portions of a Rolling Stone
article and fabricating details for shock value. The media had

(48:45):
built up the Casso case in a modern myth of
devil worship, and that myth had legs. It tapped into
a vein of paranoia that was running deeply through American
society at the time. But with the benefit of hindsight,
the murder and astachia woods less like a satanic write

(49:09):
and more like a preventable tragedy of youth. Ricky Casso
was a severely drug addicted, mentally unstable teenager who fell
through the cracks. He was kicked out of a comfortable
home into a life of homelessness and constant narcotic use.
He repeatedly cried out for help in his own way,

(49:32):
through jokes about suicide, extreme behavior, grave robbing. Yet the
interventions never stuck. It is easier, perhaps to blame the
devil than to ask how a seventeen year old became
so lost in the first place. The moral panic of

(49:52):
the nineteen eighties fixated on Satan as an external invading force,
but in doing so it ignored the very real demons
of depression, addiction, and familial failure that plagued kids just
like Ricky. As one commentator noted, no one wants to

(50:14):
acknowledge that Ricky's seemingly normal parents kicked out their mentally
ill teenage son, leaving him to sleep in the woods.
No one wants to look at the fact that Casso
started doing serious drugs at such an early age a
red flag of abuse or trauma. Those uncomfortable truths got

(50:36):
buried beneath the lurid symbolism of satanic cults and heavy
metal scapegoating. Today, the name Ricky Casso still sends a
shiver through those who remember the case. The Oak and
scrub pine of Astachia Woods have long since grown over

(50:57):
any sign of blood or shallow graves, but the story endures.
A cautionary tale recounted on true crime shows and whispered
in local legend. It endures because it sits at the
crossroads of American anxieties, the vulnerability of youth, the destructiveness

(51:22):
of drugs, and the seductive fear of the occult. In
the end, the real devil that came to Northport was
not a horned beast in the woods, but the more
familiar combination of rage, drugs, and delusion inside a troubled boy.

(51:46):
Gary Lowers lost his life to that darkness, and an
entire generation of parents, politicians, and pastors nearly lost their
wits to the ensuing panic. The Night in Astakia Woods
will never be forgotten, but it is remembered most clearly,

(52:09):
not as a tale of Satanic ritual, but as a
sobering lesson in how easily fact can be overtaken by fear.
Terrifying and true. Is narrated by Enrique Kuto. It's executive
produced by Rob Fields and bobble Toopia dot Com and

(52:29):
produced by Dan Wilder, with original theme music by Ray Mattis.
If you have a story you think we should cover
on Terrifying and True, send us an email at Weekly
Spooky at gmail dot com. And if you want to
support us for as little as one dollar a month,
go to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join. Your support for
as little as one dollar a month keeps the show going.

(52:50):
And speaking of I want to say an extra special
thank you to our Patreon podcast boosters, folks who pay
a little bit more to hear their name at the
end of the show. And they are Johnny Nicks and Lulu,
Jessica Fuller, Mike Escuey, Jenny Green, Amber Hansburg, Karen we Met,
Jack Ker, and Craig Cohen. Thank you all so much
and thank you for listening. We'll see you all right

(53:11):
here next time on Terrifying and True.

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Terrifying & True | The Acid King Murder: Ricky Kasso, Satanic Panic, and the Killing of Gary Lauwers

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Terrifying & True | The Acid King Murder: Ricky Kasso, Satanic Panic, and the Killing of Gary Lauwers