http://peopleoftheblackcircle.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-four-pi-movement.html

In 1969, while gathering material for a book on the Charles Manson case, journalist Ed Sanders encountered reports of a sinister Satanic cult alleged to practice human sacrifice in several parts of California, luring youthful members from college campuses throughout the western half of the United States. Calling itself the "Four Pi" or "Four P" movement, the cult originally boasted 55 members, of whom fifteen were middle-aged, the rest consisting of young men and women in their early twenties. The group's leader -- dubbed the "Grand Chingon" or "Head Devil" -- was said to be a wealthy California businessman of middle years, who exercised his power by compelling younger members of the cult to act as slaves and murder random targets on command.

The central object of the cult was to promote "the total worship of evil." Organized in Northern California during 1967, the Four Pi movement held its secret gatherings in the Santa Cruz mountains, south of San Francisco. Rituals were conducted on the basis of a stellar timetable, including the sacrifice of Doberman and German shepherd dogs. ….

In early 1969, the cult reportedly moved southward, shifting operations to the O'Neil Park region of the Santa Ana Mountains, below Los Angeles. The move produced -- or was occasioned by -- a factional dispute within the group, one segment striving to de-emphasize Satanic ritual and concentrate wholeheartedly on kinky sex, while more traditional adherents clung to Lucifer and human sacrifice.

The group apparently survived its schism and expanded nationwide, with author Maury Terry citing evidence of a thousand or more members across the country by 1979. One hotbed of activity appears to be New York, where 85 German shepherds and Dobermans were found skinned in the year between October 1976 and October 1977.

Along the way, the "Four Pi" movement has apparently rubbed shoulders with a number of notorious killers, feeding -- or, perhaps, inspiring -- their sadistic fantasies. Serial slayer Stanley Baker, jailed in Montana for eating the heart of one victim, confessed to other murders perpetrated on orders from the "Grand Chingon."

Recruited from a college campus in Wyoming, Baker remained unrepentant in confinement, organizing fellow inmates into a Satanic coven of his own, but his testimony brought lawmen no closer to cracking the cult. Charles Manson and his "family" reportedly had contact with the Four Pi movement, prior to making headlines in Los Angeles. Ed Sanders reports that some of Manson's followers referred to him -- in Sanders' presence -- as the "Grand Chingon," distinguished from the original article by his age and the fact that Manson was jailed while the real "Chingon" remains at large. Likewise, "family" hacker Susan Atkins has described the sacrifice of dogs by Manson's group, and searchers digging for the last remains of Manson victim Shorty Shea reported finding large numbers of chicken and animal bones at the family's campsite -- a peculiar form of garbage for a group reputedly comprised of vegetarians.

Convicted killer David Berkowitz -- more famous as the "Son of Sam" who terrorized New York in 1976 and '77 -- has also professed membership in the Four Pi cult, revealing inside knowledge of a California homicide allegedly committed by the group. In 1979, Berkowitz smuggled a book on witchcraft out of his prison cell, with passages on Manson and the Four Pi movement underlined. One page bore a cryptic notation in the killer's own handwriting : "Arlis Perry. Hunted, stalked, and slain. Followed to California." As researched by Maury Terry, the Berkowitz note points directly to an unsolved murder committed at Stanford University in mid-October 1974.