Ahead of an appearance on Tuesday, Oct. 8 at 540 Rogues in San Francisco, Brod spoke with KQED by phone to discuss LaVey’s lasting impact, what his research uncovered, and where the Church of Satan stands today.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Anton Szandor LaVey, head of the First Satanic Church, is assisted by his partner, Diane, as they go through a satanic ceremony in 1970. (Bettmann/Getty)

Getting to the bottom of Anton LaVey’s life seems like a challenging task. Where did you start? Were the fact-checks previously published by journalist Lawrence Wright and LaVey’s daughters Zeena helpful?

One thing that was really essential for me was going into the archives of the San Francisco Chronicle and the Examiner, because he was in the papers constantly: on the front page, in columns, and as a news topic. He was also on local TV news programs. Contemporaneous stories are a little more trustworthy, and perhaps more reliable, then people hearing stuff secondhand 30 years later. Yes, that Lawrence Wright piece in Rolling Stone, where he was able to debunk some of LaVey’s more outlandish claims, was essential too. I interviewed Lawrence for the book. The “Legend vs. Reality” piece was co-written by Zeena LaVey [now Zeena Schreck], who became estranged from her father. There was a lot of negativity surrounding that estrangement, and this piece was one of the main sources of it. There was also a very interesting book written by one of his right-hand men, Michael Aquino, who was there pretty much from the start of the Church. He wrote a 500-page account of the Church of Satan that he self-published. There’s a lot of bizarre stuff in there, because Michael Aquino was a true occult believer, while the case can be made that Anton LaVey was not.

Anton LaVey on ‘The Joe Pyne Show’ in October 1967. LaVey remained unflappable against the combative interviewer. (Walter Fischer / Courtesy of Alf Wahlgren)

One thing that struck me about LaVey and the Church of Satan is how large they managed to appear, despite never having more than 300 members around the world at their peak. For how ingrained the Church of Satan is in today’s culture, were you surprised by how few people were involved with the organization?

LaVey just glommed on to a really interesting philosophy and he articulated it very, very well. People basically took from it what they wanted to take from it. Eventually, it got mixed in with the devil-worship brand of Satanism that was prevalent in the media in the ’80s, which led to the Satanic Panic, but he never really wanted that. LaVey’s thing was more of a philosophical approach to life that stressed the power of the individual and the power of people. It was very effective, and he was a very effective communicator. Even down to the way he looked, he is so associated with what we see as Satanism today, with his bald head and the Van Dyke beard and his pirate earring and arched eyebrows. There are questions about how big the organization actually was, and who knows if we’ll ever get the real numbers? I certainly couldn’t get the real numbers.

On a 1967 visit to magazine editor Forrest J. Ackerman’s ‘Ackermansion’ in Los Angeles, LaVey admired his friend’s vast collection of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy memorabilia. (Walter Fischer / Courtesy of Alf Wahlgren)

Anton LaVey died in 1997. It’s now 2024. Do you think people are aware that a lot of what he was doing was for show, or is there still a contingent of folks who believe he was truly evil?

During the writing of the book, everyone I mentioned it to, at least in my circle, found it really interesting but I never heard anything especially negative. My feeling is that people do know who he actually was, and what he was actually about. Even if they don’t see him as a benign figure, they at least see him as someone who wasn’t diabolical. As I write in the book, there are cases to be made that he was indeed a bad guy in many respects, but overall, I think it was only during the time of the Satanic Panic where he was really considered to be this evil, diabolical figure. Over time, I think that’s changed.

Anton LaVey, founder and self-proclaimed high priest of the Church of Satan, is photographed at home in San Francisco with his pet lion on June 26, 1964. (Art Frisch/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

But he did also have some garden-variety evil in him, in the form of domestic violence and animal abuse. Now that people have had a chance to reevaluate his spectacles — like choosing to keep a pet lion in his home — do you think we have the distance necessary to properly evaluate LaVey’s life and legacy?

That’s pretty much what I set out to do, but I have to say, I was helped along by an amazing discovery. While I was working on the book, I interviewed a man named Don Frew, who knew LaVey during the Satanic Panic era. He and his wife run a research center in Albany, California. They have thousands of books on the occult, and on esoteric topics like UFOs and Satanism and paganism — all this stuff. Not only did Don know LaVey, he was friends with him and was able to get his hands on boxes upon boxes of original Church of Satan administrative materials, as well as correspondence between LaVey and his friends.

Doug Brod. (Hachette Book Group)

What’s the status of the Church of Satan today?

As I write in the book, it’s no longer a clubhouse that’s centrally located in San Francisco. Now it’s more of an internet-based organization. There’s still a Church of Satan with its headquarters in Poughkeepsie, New York. It’s headed up by a married couple, Peter H. Gilmore and Peggy Nadramia, and there are still many followers. If you go on Facebook, you’ll see there are still people who really follow the LaVeyan form of Satanism, but it’s more dispersed now. It’s not so much an organized system. It’s more people doing their own thing.

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Excavating the Truth of Anton LaVey’s Devilish Life