Chapter 34: River Phoenix, MKULTRA Cults, Johnny Depp and Hellywood Sacrifices;
This is Chris Eptings story:
"When actor Johnny Depp launched The Viper Room in 1993, it automatically became one of the hottest places on the Sunset Strip. But few people realize just how historic its location at 8852 Sunset really is. Dating back to 1921, it’s one of the oldest buildings on The Strip—and it didn’t start out as a club.
For the first 20 or so years, it was actually a small grocery store that served the neighborhood residents working down the hill in a small industrial village called Sherman. By the 1940s, however, Sunset Boulevard had transformed from a dusty and unpaved commuter route into the “Sunset Strip” where celebrities enjoyed eating, drinking, and gambling. (Rumor has it that the Las Vegas Strip was originally named after the Sunset Strip.) And so the grocery store closed down and was replaced in the mid-1940s with a nightclub called the Cotton Club. Despite advertising itself as “Harlem in Hollywood,” it was not associated with the famous Cotton Club in Harlem. In the late 1940s, it became the Greenwich Village Inn, then the Rue Angel, then the strip club Last Call in 1950, perhaps forecasting the rock ’n’ roll debauchery that would ultimately find its way to the Viper Room.
From 1951 to 1969 the building served as a cabaret, the Melody Room, run by brothers Pete and Billy Snyder. For 18 years, the Melody Room was known for its diverse lineup of performers, along with the wide array of gangsters who hung out there.
The spot became rock club Filthy McNasty’s from 1973 to 1980 before becoming a different club known as Central. As Los Angeles magazine documented in 2014, “During the 1980s you could easily catch a set by Rickie Lee Jones or bump into John Belushi at The Central. In 1981, The Who’s John Entwistle participated in an open jam night there on Tuesdays. Mitch Mitchell (of the Jimi Hendrix Experience), Buddy Miles, Les Dudek, Carlos Castaneda, Jr., C.C. DeVille (before he was in Poison) Pearl (Janis Joplin’s back-up singer) and Ray Gange (the Clash’s roadie and star of “Rude Boy”) would sit in or be seen drinking at the bar. The Central had a stage that was four feet high, nice monitors, and a great PA system.”
Finally, in 1993, Depp and actor Sal Jenco opened The Viper Room (Depp would later sell his share of the club in 2004). At Depp’s request, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performed on the club’s opening night. The Viper Room became a magnet for both well-established artists and up-and-comers, including Johnny Cash, The Strokes, and The Pussycat Dolls– and it continues to host live rock bands today. Many production companies have used the Viper Room as a film and television location, and despite the high turnover rate of clubs and restaurants in Los Angeles, the Viper Room remains a must-visit venue for both tourists and locals alike.
In July, 2018, developers purchased the property between Larabee and San Vicente that is currently home to the Viper Room, raising questions about the venue’s future. Preliminary plans for the site’s redesign include a 15-story building that would include a hotel, restaurants, lounges, as well as a potential new space for the Viper Room. The City of West Hollywood has yet to weigh in on the planned redevelopment, but if you’re hoping to experience the Viper Room in its original state, start planning your trip."
Who was River Phoenix?
River Jude Phoenix was born River Jude Bottom, August 23, 1970 in Madres, Oregon, to John Lee Bottom and Arlen Duntz. River was the oldest of five children. His siblings were Rain, Joaquin, Liberty and Summer. Rain was born Nov 21, 1972 in Texas. Joaquin was born October 28, 1974 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Liberty was born July 5, 1976 in Caracas, Venezuela. Summer was born December 10, 1978 in Winter Park, Florida.
River was named for the river of life and his middle name was taken from the Beatles song “Hey Jude”. His mother Arlyn was born in New York and his father John was from Fontana, California. In 1968 his mother was hitchhiking in California where she met River’s father. On September 1969 Arlen married Johnny Lee Bottom.
John Lee Bottom
John Lee Bottom was born in 1947 to Robert Merrill Bottom (1917-1993) and Beulula Ernestine Ingram, in Stanislavsky County, California. He lived in Fontana. According to his Find A Grave Bio, John had an unhappy childhood and dropped out of high school. He became a nomadic gardener. After marrying Arlyn Duntz, they travelled throughout the West Coast, picking fruits and vegetables. When River was two years old his sister Rain was born and the Bottom joined the religious group Children of God, touring with them in Mexico, Puerto Rico and South America under the auspices of Christian missionaries. They took biblical names Jochebed and Amram.
In 1977 John and Arlyn separated from the cult and to the United States in late 1977 where they settled in Winter Park Florida. Their daughter Summer was born in Winter Park. In 1977 John Bottom legally changed the family name to Phoenix, stating that the Phoenix was a bird that rose from the ashes, and that the family was rising from the ashes and recreating itself.
Notable other associations of the Phoenix are The Phoenix Program. The Phoenix Program was a program which began in 1968, the same time Operation JESUS FREAK, began. The Phoenix Program was designed and coordinated by the CIA during the Vietnam war. It was designed to identify and destroy the Vietnamese “via infiltration, torture, capture, counter terrorism, interrogation and assassination.” It is the basic foundation of the precepts under which the CIA was create; its MKULTRA assassination program is still quite active and targeting the civilian populations both domestic and foreign.
The Phoenix program utilized the same techniques as MKULTRA and the cults of religion. The interrogation centers used rape, gang rape, electroshock, waterboarding, beatings, psyops, starvation. These interrogation centers were discussed in Congress when William Colby, who became the head of the CIA Richard Nixon, was brought before the US Congress to testify in a series of hearings about CIA black ops in Vietnam. Colby was a station chief in Saigon, when we installed the South Vietnamese President, who was killed after Colby left. Colby testified in the Church Committee and the Pike Committee.
Henry Kissinger advised President to replace Colby in 1975 with George H.W. Bush during the “so called Halloween Massacre in which Secretary of the Defense Schlesinger was also replaced by Donald Rumsfeld.”
In 1977 Colby founded a D.C. law firm, Colby Miller & Haynes and worked on public policy issues. He wrote two books. On April 27, 1996 Colby set out from his home on a solo canoe trip. His canoe was found the following day, April 28, 1996, on a sandbar about .25 miles from his home. A search was made but no body was found. May 6, 1996, Colby’s body was found, in a marshy riverbank not far from where his canoe had been discovered. Colby’s death was ruled accidental by the Chief ME of Maryland, John E. Smialek. The date his canoe was found was significant to me, as my brother David was murdered April 28, 2007, in broad daylight, on the sand, in Mission Beach, eleven years to the day Colby’s canoe was found.
My brother David was a writer and researcher. He wrote an unpublished book entitled “”The Whistleblower” in 1996, about Bush, The Vatican and my evil family, for which he was killed.
K. Barton Osborne described the Phoenix Program as a “sterile depersonalized murder program.” Former CIA analyst Samuel A. Adams, in a CBS News interview stated that the program was basically an assassination program.
The Phoenix is also the MKULTRA logo.
River’s parents were nomadic hippies, who according to River, lived in a chaotic and desperate situation. River had no discernible education. He never attended a formal school. He did learn to read and write, but it was suspected that he was dyslexic.
In 1997 John and Arlyn divorced after 27 years of marriage. Arlyn married producer Jeffrey Weisberg in 2001. John died of cancer at the age of 68 in 2015.
Enter the Cult of God
In 1972 River’s parents decided to follow David Berg who ran the Cult of God. River was two years old. River had said in interviews that he was raped at the age of four while his family was active in the Cult of God. The rape is MKULTRA sexual trauma to create the perfect mind controlled slave. The Cult of God branched which branched from the Family, was an MKULTRA cult. Johnny Lee Bottom was from Fontana, California.
The Family International (TFI) is a cult that was founded in Huntington Beach, California in 1968. It was originally named Teens for Christ and has undergone a myriad of name changes. It continues on today. It’s most notorious name was the Children of God, (“CoG”); it’s founder was David Berg.
In 1976 the cult developed an evangelistic method called “flirty fishing” using sex to show “god’s love and mercy” and to win converts. This was simply a new term, as they had always used children for sex trafficking and to entice pedophiles and Satanists. The children and were told to keep the secret, don’t tell the cops. They were sold on street corners where they were told to sing music and entertain to earn money to eat.
David Berg was called “Moses David” “Father David” by members, King, the “Last Endtime Prophet” amongst some of his many monikers. Berg started as an evangelical preacher of born again hippies in 1968 at a coffeehouse in Huntington Beach, in Orange County, California.
I lived in Huntington Beach, off of Garfield Avenue when I left Durrell in 1982. I moved my brother David from Torrance, CA and I rented a two bedroom condo with a fireplace, around the street from the Five Points shopping center and a few blocks from the beach. David lived upstairs. The living room and kitchen were off of his bedroom and I lived downstairs near the front door. I was still working in Durrell’s band Big Business at night and in the day I had gotten a job at South Coast Plaza. It was Easter time because I had secured work as the Easter bunny at South Coast plaza. I started as the bunny and then traded places with the girl who was pregnant who had been taking the photos. David wasn’t working at first, but when I stormed home and said “get a job David, I am working as the freaking Easter bunny to keep this apartment,” he eventually got a job at Maxwells by the Sea on the pier as a wine Steward.
Huntington Beach has recurring themes for me. I did my video for my band Stranger, with my first husband Steve Xenos, at Golden West Studios. I should have known something was up when I was with John in Stinger and we did our video at the very same studio. I did not know until 2017 that John was my brother, or that John and Steve even knew one another. That was a secret they kept between them for over 58 years.
The presence of the cult in Huntington Beach explains creepy Huntington Beach. Members of the cult of the CoG were referred to as “the chain.” Children of God founded communes, allied colonies in various cities. In 1972 Berg wrote a letter which was a prophesy that God was going to destroy the United States and the CoG had to leave the United States. Berg encouraged the movement to migrate to Europe, Latin America and Asia.
By 1978 he renamed the group the Family of Love. He reorganized the movement to call it the Re-organization Nationalization Revolution, or RNR. The group was accused of sexually abusing and raping minors within the organization, and these allegations of former members of this MKULTRA cult are still being revealed today, as are the allegations that leaders of the Southern California Churches established during this movement, are sex trafficking children, teens and adults, who are in their churches.
The hippie movement was a forerunner Children of God, beginning in 1965 in Southern California. In 1969 Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel was a springboard for the multitude of churches and cults which were created in the Jesus Movement by Smith’s daughter’s boyfriend John Higgins Jr., a former hippie who led the Jesus Freak movement.
John Higgins introduced Chuck Smith to Lonnie Frisbee, who was instrumental in the Jesus movement, Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard Movement. Lonnie was born in Costa Mesa. Lonnie moved into Chuck Smith’ house, and in the daytime he scoured the beaches to preach to hippies and the counter culture. He would bring his MKULTRA converts and conquests back to Chuck’s house for further indoctrination, sex trafficking and drugging.
In 1982 I picked up a hitchhiker, and took him to my apartment on Parsons Ave in Costa Mesa. In 2020, while researching the Satanic Pastors and the Jesus movement run by the deep state, I recognized Lonnie. That was the hitchhiker I had picked up on the beach and had a one night stand with, Lonnie Frisbee. Lonnie was bisexual with a proclivity towards homosexuality. Lonnie died of AIDS March 12, 1993, 11 years after my encounter with him. I thank God I never contracted AIDS from Lonnie, perhaps he didn’t have it in 1982. That was a very sexually active time for me as I had broken up with Durrell. I was a 22 and a singer and it was the era of “free love” in Southern California.
Lonnie Frisbee was raised in a single parent home and “exposed to sketchy, dangerous characters” as a child. Sounds like Lonnie and I had a lot in common. His brother claimed Lonnie was raped at the age of eight. Documentarian David Di Sabatino believed that this incident “fragmented” Lonnie. Lonnie was MKULTRA. Lonnie was many things. He was an Occultist who dropped LSD and smoked pot, talked about UFOs, practiced hypnotism and mysticism and had sex with men and women unilaterally. One thing he was not, was Christian.
Interesting to note that it is these SAME precepts which formed the foundations of the Southern California churches and Southern California “cults” that were created from this movement. The use of LSD and cocaine and other mind altering drugs, the use of marijuana, which is an MKULTRA tool used to engender a state of compliance, the use of rape and sexual trauma, hypnotism, black magic, satanic ritual abuse, are also the exact tools utilized in the CIA’s ONGOING MKULTRA Program. The churches and cults formed from these MKULTRA techniques in actuality were NOT any form of Christianity, but Thelmasim aka Luciferianism, “do what thou wilt”. The JESUS movement was another CIA strategized operation under the guise of Operation JESUS, in which the populace could be mind controlled through the Bible.
Philandering Lonnie Frisbee practiced homosexuality and satanism while married to his wife Connie. When he died he was interned at the Chrystal Cathedral and Chuck Smith, who I knew well because I attended his Costa Mesa Church, gave his eulogy. In the years following his demise, the same pastors who Lonnie helped start their churches shunned him, proclaiming he was not adhering to biblical principals due to his homosexuality. These are the same pastors who TODAY are still sex trafficking and mind controlling their parishioners. They have risen to fame through bilking their international flock, and have gained millions of dollars and political power in the evangelical community. These Pastors travel internationally and work through SAVE the CHILDREN foundations, to sex traffick and sell children. These Pastors work through a network and counsel Presidents, CEOs and Kings. He who uses the Bible to mind control and milks the public for money and sex, becomes higher in the demon kingdom and the Illuminati. The titles PASTOR, Priest, Bishop, Chaplain, are various titles in the hierarchy of the Illuminati and occultist practice.
Part of this evangelical MKULTRA Operation Jesus Freak cult movement was the cult of the Children of God, which River’s parents were members. By 1972 CoG had 130 communities around the world and colonies in 70 countries.
The Children of God MKULTRA cult began in the United States in the late 1968. The children received no formal education and were taught survival skills and how to keep secrets from those who lived within the confines of the system, like social workers and police.
These churches and cults all were used to drug children and sex traffick children to the pedophiles who ran the cults and churches. This infiltration has never changed. The churches and cults are still noted for widespread sexual abuse of children.
The churches were a little more covert as they became established to those who appeared to be conservative but were aimed at serving their pedophilic and satanic clientele. The cults were more overt and presented as unconventional communal families bonded through their artistic endeavors. The CoG cult isolated the children and put them out on the streets of California, Texas, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, which were several of their satellite communities, for predators to abuse them. The CoG were in every state. Their child MKULTRA victims were forced to play music, dance, draw, and sell wares and their bodies for money on street corners. They could not return back to their communities unless they had made money, thus they were used as prostitutes to procure finances for their families and told to never tell authorities what was going on. They were schooled in the performance of lies for survival, and told its “acting” training.
In 1978 River’s parents returned to the states and changed their last name from Bottom to Phoenix.
In 1980 River began his acting area in television commercials. He had been trained in acting as a member of the CoG; He was trained in sexpionage and was fragmented from isolation, trauma and sex trafficking and drugs.
In 1986 River had secured a part in Stand By Me that brought him to the attention of Hollywood. 1988 he was in Running on Empty and 1991 he starred in the Cult film “My Own Private Idaho” with Keanu Reeves. They played male prostitutes. Keanu Reeves and River were bisexual lovers.
By the 90s, River had a hard core drug problem. River had always had a drug problem, because the problem started with his cult family who MKLTRAed him, drugged, isolated and sex trafficked him as a child. He was then sold into the entertainment industry, just like all of his siblings.
River, Liza and John
My brother John knows Liza Minnelli who is pictured above with River Phoenix. John must have known Liza for some time, perhaps in Florida in the 70s. At one point John must have produced one or more of her shows because he has his picture with her on the internet.
Who is Liza? In my estimation she is an Illuminati witch, whose mother Judy Garland, was an Illuminati puppet used by Hollywood and murdered by it as well. Judy was the star of the Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz premiered August 25, 1939. The Wizard of Oz movie is used in MKULTRA Programming. I know now that I was programmed with Wizard of Oz Programming under MKULTRA, as I was instructed to watched the movie twice a year as a small child and teen.
I used to refer to Judy Garland as one of my mentors. I grew up watching all of her movies and I learned her songs. Judy was used by the deep state CIA entertainment industry in a time when the studio heads were your MKULTRA handlers. Guess what, nothing has changed in Hollywood. Your agents and managers, directors and producers look at you as a product. Your public life AND private life, now belongs to your handlers. The agents get the gigs, after you blow them, the studios heads have you blow them to get the gig, then they tell you when to get up, when to go to bed, what to eat, what to wear, what to invest in, who to marry, who to divorce.
Your foundational handlers are your parents, and then your financiers, your managers, and labels. These handlers are responsible for torturing you, sex trafficking you, drugging you, controlling your finances and every aspect of your life. If you get out of hand and are not obedient to their psychotic whims you are thrown into crazy houses, drug rehabs, alcohol rehabs, and are framed and thrown in jail, threatened with having your children taken away, threatened with utter financial ruin, and told that you can easily be replaced by a clone.
In 1976, when I was living in Ft. Lauderdale with Durrell, in his funky assed condo with red shag carpet off the intercoastal, we lived across the canal from a company called Lots of Yachts. One day, when Durrell was not at home a yacht came down the intercoastal named The Lucky Lady. The Lucky Lady was a 63 foot racing cutter yacht requiring a crew of eight to sail her. The vessel was originally named “Orient” and was built in Hong Kong. The yacht was used in a movie by the same name that Liza Minnelli, Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds stared in in 1975. Lucky Lady was about riding high during Prohibition and the overseers of a major underground liquor distributor. A love triangle ensues between the trio, manage-a-trois.
I was sitting on our balcony in our apartment when I watched the Lucky Lady sail down the outlet and park inside Lots of Yachts. There was a Rolls Royce parked inside the arena. I watched Liza Minnelli disembark from the Lucky Lady and speak with the Yacht master. Her driver opened the backseat of the Rolls Royce and Liza slid in the backseat and she disappeared into the Ft. Lauderdale sun.
Significance of Florida in the Grand Scheme of Things
Hollywood Florida was created for the Elite as a dream city. “Hollywood in the Hills” of New York was Joseph Smith’s real estate venture in New York. The City Hollywood by the Sea, now Hollywood Florida, was created by Joseph Smith to attract wealthy New York Snow birds and “Hollywood California” Elite. Joseph created Hollywood by the Sea in the early 1920s, just as Hollywood California had become the film Mecca in the United States, he envisioned Hollywood Florida to be part of that Mecca.
In 1926 Hollywood by the Sea became damaged due to a hurricane, and subsequent cities were created nearby as it recovered and rebuilt. By 1936 Meyer Lansky, the accountant for the five Mafia families in New York, was running his operations out of the Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida, covering Bahamas gambling and drug running as well as interests in New Orleans and Cuba.
Why was Florida a choice for the Hollywood CA Satanic crowd and theatrical crowds from New York? Florida is a peninsula with easy access to seaports and drug trafficking routes (DTR) which extend to the Bahamas, Freeport, and neighboring Cuba. Other DTR’s are Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and South America. In the 80s, Haitians were invited into America in via the 1980 Muriel Boat Lift of April 20 in which Castro announced that all Cubans wishing to go to the U.S. were free to board boats at the Port of Mariel. From April to October 1980, approximately 125,000 Cubands entered the US, traveling to Florida on boats organized by American supporters. What actually occurred was Castro released its prisons and mental institutions and sent drug traffickers and spies to the United States with the approval of Jimmy Carter. We permitted Murielitos and drug kingpins access to Miami Beach. Presidents and deposed dictators bought lavish mansions in Florida.
After the Muriel boat people influx, Florida became murder capital number one in the 80s. Florida was experiencing Wild West shoot outs in the street during the cocaine cowboys days.
First hand testimony
Agent M is a good friend of mine. A while back when I wrote a blog about Rose McGowen, which included Johnny Depp, Agent M told me that she was at the Viper, October 31, 1993, the night of the murder of River Phoenix. Agent M arrived in tow with a friend of hers, a prolific Coke dealer, we will call McGill.
Agent M stated that she is one of the people in the photo.
Was I there? Yes, you bet I was.
Everything happened extremely fast.
That was the first and last trip I ever made to the Viper Room. My best friend, who we will call McGill, sold drugs to Depp and to many of the elite and stars in Los Angeles.
Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder, Depp's girlfriend for five years and Kate Moss all arrived in Johnny Depp's limo. I arrived with McGill and followed McGill in through the back, entering with Moss and Ryder, oddly enough.
River Phoenix and Joaquin Phoenix, brothers, were already at the bar. I went to the bar and struck up a conversation with River. I had been in Hollywood in and amongst big name celebs for quite sometime, so pleasant conversation was not new to me with someone in the industry.
River was slightly younger than me, by 2 years. We connected for a few moments at the bar before he disappeared with Johnny Depp, the others and McGill who had the coke, which McGill cut himself.
I have to say River was a very lovely gentleman, handsome, shy and funny. It was cool to have a warm conversation with an actor. Yes, I was starstruck.
Johnny Depp, River Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix, Wynonna Ryder, Kate Moss and McGill disappeared into Johnny's office at the back of the Viper. The “office” is actually a whiskey bar.
When they returned, I saw a marked difference in all of them. Depp and Moss were rude and pretentious. Joaquin, was in outer space, with one eye on his brother. In the end, it was Joaquin, who made the call to 911.
Joaquin seemed not to care at all about any events transpiring around him, as all of that Hellywood crowd were narcissists who each needed to vie for the center of all attention.
In order to get into their inner circle you had to appease them. Drugs, sex, investments, movie deals, other things…that was all that was spoken about, in between the drugs and the sex.
This is what I saw.
To recant this story elicits extremely deep emotions for me. It was a night off horrific events that went down in history in the annals of Hellywood. It still makes me cry, thinking, maybe, could I have stopped it. The events will live in PowerPoint slides in my head. I was young and naive, and to tell you the truth, I did not care, honestly, as it was the 90s and I was living in Hollywood, whose mantra is sex drugs and rock and roll, and I was in the presence of Hollywood Royalty daily.
As I said, River and I had a sweet conversation at the bar for a minute or two, while my friend McGill was with Depp, sealing the coke deal. McGill was busy collecting money and flitting amongst the movie and recordings stars, CEOs and record industry staples, solidifying future contacts for future coke deals, which were contracted in the dark of that Halloween night at the infamous Viper Club in LA.
River then excused himself to go in the back room, as well. I was alone talking with the bartender. Rumors had it Depp and Ryder were at the end, at least that is what was said, by him, the bartender. Depp was seeing Moss on and off.
When it was done, Rivee and Joaquin and crew came to the bar, the whole lot of them and bought us a drink. They then proceeded to go back into that office/room, where they went with my McGill.
McGill was shady as was McGill's handler. I didn't do coke, I liked pot and pills and alcohol. I knew McGill well. McGill used to cut the coke with Ajax or borax or any number of dangerous fillers that could potentially kill a user. It would have been very easy to cut an individual bottle with sculpamine, ruffies or poison or whatever McGill wanted to put in the mix to give the client a lethal hotshot resulting in a heart attack, epileptic fit and death. McGill served big clients and did what the clients told McGill to do, and exited the scene quickly and quietly protected by the police, CIA and the elite McGill serviced.
After the exchange, McGill wanted to leave quickly, I did not understand and I had no idea what just transpired, I said ok.
As we were leaving, River came over to thank us, and he walked us out the door. He was acting strange. Not himself, he was extremely disoriented and hanging on to me.
McGill went to get my car, and that’s when it started. Paparazzi started coming in droves, I actually got a picture of us before he dropped to the ground. I asked the photographer to send me the shot, which you see above.
I was high myself, and I had no idea what to do. What do you do?
Everyone was gathering around a convulsing body. Joaquin came out and started pounding on his chest, crying, disoriented and a mess.
In the total confusion he left to, I am assuming, to call 911. He did.
I was frozen, I wanted to help, but Joaquin would not let me near River. I watched a beautiful young man, full of life, seize and convulse, his body moving uncontrollable. Then all the sudden, he stopped. I cried. I never saw that before. I think he was dead. Joaquin was looking for McGill. I did not know where McGill was. I turned away, looking for McGill in the mess. I finally found McGill walking aimlessly, waiting up the street, in the car, away from the chaos.
I have known McGill for 7 years, and I helped McGill with certain things.
I never thought McGill wouldn’t care, but McGill didn’t care and McGill told me if I wanted to make it, I shouldn’t care either. We drove to McGill's place, at the end of Sunset Plaza Drive. We went into McGill's place, and we never spoke about it ever again.
I will never forget that night. McGill in my opinion, was selfish for leaving, and I have no idea what transpired that night, in that back room. I know it was not good and we know now, from the outcome.
Rumors flew it was an overdose, and I will never know what made it happen. McGill and I never spoke about it. Until this day, I don’t know what truly happened, but I know McGill and the others were involved. A careless mistake or a purposeful act? You decide.
The Sunset Boulevard Viper was partially owned by Johnny Depp who was at the venue that evening. Johnny Depp has his own band, the Hollywood Vampires.
The 23 year old River had come on the promise of sitting in with the band. He had been filming the movie Dark Blood in Utah and New Mexico, but was permitted to return to California as he wasn’t needed for a night shoot by Director George Sluizer.
River returned to Los Angeles October 26, 1993 and according to his friend Bob Forrest, River went on a “massive drug bing with John Frusciante, the Guitarist from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The following is an excerpt from the book Running with Monsters, written by Bob Forrest, Thelonious Monster Frontman of his account of the evening and precipitating events:
When I walked into the Viper Room at about seven on the evening of October 30, the long fall shadows had turned to night, but it seemed like any other evening there. Sal was excited. “Frusciante and River are going to play tonight!” he said. River considered himself a musician. He had busked on the street as a kid and had continued to play guitar through his teens. He was proficient and he liked to jam. A few years earlier, when he had starred with Keanu Reeves—another aspiring musician—in Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, the grim tale of two hustling male prostitutes, River had carved out time for music despite the tight shooting schedule.
Flea, who had a cameo role in the movie, stayed with River and Keanu in the rental house they shared on location in Portland, Oregon. A couple of times a week, they’d hold late-night jam sessions, which provided River with his rock-and-roll fix. Back home in Los Angeles, he had formed a band called Aleka’s Attic that got attention mainly because he was River Phoenix, which must have frustrated him. Playing with Frusciante, I’m sure, validated him.
He was more than just a Hollywood actor who dabbled in alternative rock. Sal was giddy about it. I wasn’t so sure. I knew what those two had been up to over the last few days and could just imagine what kind of disaster they’d whip up onstage. “Dude, you can’t let them get up there,” I said, now taking on Sal’s part from the time I had booked Beck. “No, no. They recorded a song. They played it for me. It’s going to be great.
They’re just opening for P, anyway,” he explained. P was a band that had come together from everybody hanging out. Gibby, Johnny, and Sal formed the core, and a revolving lineup fleshed them out. That night, Al Jourgensen and Flea were joining in. It was fun to watch some of the biggest rock and movie stars of the time getting together to play original material and lots of covers. They even had a song that mentioned River.
It was called “Michael Stipe,” a name-check for R.E.M.’s front man. There was a line that went,
“I’m glad I met old Michael Stipe, I didn’t get to see his car. Him and River Phoenix were leaving on the road tomorrow.”
It promised to be an interesting night, so I left for my apartment on La Brea to arrange a few drug deals and keep myself supplied in the process. Once business was completed, I went back to the Viper Room at about nine. I walked in the door just as River and John finished their set. It was about what I expected. Maybe a little worse. I went back into the office where we usually hung out and needled Sal. “Hey, man, they’re so fucked up they can’t even get through a song. You can’t let ’em get back up there.”
River and John stumbled in. There was a crowd coming in and out. River’s brother Joaquin—who went by the name Leaf back then—and his sister Rain were both there. They seemed like kids. Joaquin was nineteen, not even old enough to drink, and his sister was twenty-one. Somebody broke out the coke and passed it around.
River was obviously wasted and was as unsteady as a boxer who had taken one too many head shots during a fifteen-round bout. His complete lack of motor skills made me suspect he was drunk. Heroin will make users lean when they stand still, but you almost never see them stumble and fall. Coke fiends may have hands that tremble, but the kind of stuporous shuffle River had made me think he was drunk. Sloppy drunk. He wobbled whenever he was on his feet.
Frusciante was completely out of his mind. I had seen him like this before, and even though he was a friend, when he was in that kind of state, he could be very unpleasant. It was as if he didn’t operate in this dimension at that point. I sat at the desk and wondered if maybe we all shouldn’t go into the secret “party” room that Johnny and Sal had built when the club was under construction. John and River stood up, unsteady, and went out to watch P do their set.
I went out with them. They sat on the stage near the front door and watched from there. I hung back and enjoyed the show. They were always a fun band to watch, and tonight, they played well. It was great fun until I felt a hand tap my shoulder and turned to see River. He was a whiter shade of pale.
“Bob, I don’t feel so good. I think I’m OD’ing.” “What? Are you sure?” That’s something no one had ever said to me. Usually you just OD and that’s it. “River, you can’t just come up to me and say you’re OD’ing.” He stood there and rocked tentatively off the balls of his feet in a vain attempt to counter gravity. This club was no place for him at the moment.
“C’mon, man. Let’s get you home, then,” I said, and tried to guide him toward the door. “I don’t know, Bob. I think I’m all right now.” Color returned to his face. I tried to reassure him. “I don’t think it’s an OD. You can stand and you can talk.”
He nodded and turned. I still have guilt that I dismissed his worries so casually. I watched him zigzag back to the stage, where Frusciante still sat. I was dumbstruck. What the fuck just happened? I thought. It was a horrible moment. What was I supposed to do? From where I was, I could see him, so I kept an eye on him for any signs of imminent collapse, but he seemed okay. I wasn’t a stranger to overdoses. It was something that happened given the dope-fiend lifestyle.
A few weeks earlier, at my place, one of the bodyguards for Ministry’s Al Jourgensen had collapsed after a night of heavy partying. I called 911 and an ambulance took him to the hospital. Later, after he had been revived and a Filipino orderly wheeled him through the emergency room lobby, where a few of us had waited for him, he said from his wheelchair, “If you guys stole my dope, I’m gonna kill you—and I’m looking at you, Bob Forrest.” He knew me too well.
Not long after I spoke to River, there was a sudden commotion in the club. Someone was shouting to call an ambulance. A current of panic shot through the Viper Room. I could feel it. There was a jam-up at the door, so I pushed my way through to the sidewalk.
Samantha Mathis, River’s actress girlfriend, was screaming. River was seizing on the sidewalk. Flea was on the ground next to him and tried to do what he could to help. When I saw the scene, I stopped in my tracks. “What the fuck is going on?” I thought. It was only about thirty minutes after River had played onstage. Now here he was crumpled on the sidewalk. He was alive, because his arms and legs shook like he was having an epileptic fit. An ambulance wailed to a stop and the EMTs bundled him onto a gurney and quickly got him inside.
Flea jumped in and rode with him to the nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, not too far west in the Fairfax District. I didn’t know the full extent of River’s condition, but I knew that whichever way things went, it would be trouble. And it would be the kind of trouble that made front-page news in a celebrity-obsessed town like Los Angeles.
I could picture one of the tabloid TV shows like A Current Affair blasting out a teaser: “River Phoenix overdoses at Johnny Depp’s Viper Room.… Is Young Hollywood out of control?” This would be bad, it would be terrible, and we were all right in the middle of it.
It never even crossed my mind that he could die. My emotions were tangled by all this. I felt awful that River had collapsed. I may have been a junkie, but I was human, and I had empathy and concern for my friend. But I was also fearful that the rest of us could be hauled in for questioning.
It took a while for everyone to get it together, and we each handled it differently. Al Jourgensen and his girlfriend Sean Yseult, the bass player for White Zombie and the daughter of an Ernest Hemingway scholar, went back to their hotel room and laid low.
Gibby and I decided to go to Cedars and check on River’s condition. It was three o’clock on Halloween morning. Hospitals are spooky places to begin with, but the day and the stillness of the hour only compounded the unease. We parked the car close to the entrance so we could make a quick escape if one was needed, and we walked into the sickly, greenish light of the ER. The admitting nurse must have guessed by our clothes and hair that we were somehow connected to River because she asked, “Are you family or friends?” I said, “Of River’s? We’re family.”
She looked stern and solemn and waved us past. I saw Samantha standing alone. She was crying. I knew just by looking at her that River was dead. I went numb. It was so unbelievable.
Gibby and I were in shock. River partied, for sure, but nothing at the level of the rest of us. How could he be dead? I wondered. I wanted to give my condolences to Samantha but realized there was nothing Gibby and I could do here. Our presence might only make things worse. To her we probably represented evil. The press didn’t know yet that one of Hollywood’s most promising young actors had just overdosed on drugs and died.
Gibby and I went back to the car and sat there for a while as we tried to wrap our minds around the situation. The reality of this tragedy hit me like a sudden punch to the gut and I sobbed, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” “This is going to be bad, man,” Gibby said. “What do we do?” “Where’s Frusciante?!?” we both asked.
It hit us like a bomb that John might be running loose. He was the weak link of our group. He was likely to say anything to anyone, even reporters—“We all love drugs! They’re great!” Gibby and I found a pay phone—those were still easy to locate in ’93—and called Depp.
“Have you seen John?” I asked. “He’s at home. How’s your friend?” he said.
Johnny didn’t know it was River who had been taken away in the ambulance. “Dude, River’s dead!” I told him. There was a long silence, followed by a quiet
“Oh, my God …” And then the phone went dead. Well, it was a bit of a relief to know John was back at his house, but of all us, he was the one who could do some real damage. He was the kind of person who would argue—and be serious—that heroin was good for you … with a cop.
There was no telling what he could say or do. Gibby and I realized just how vulnerable we were. We went back to my apartment and talked all night. The conversation went something like this: “Holy fuck!” We suspected the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department couldn’t wait to start arresting musicians and actors in connection with River’s death. As a jaundiced dawn started to break, Gibby wearily said, “I’m going back home to Texas. I’m booking a flight.” He picked up the phone, made a couple calls, and was gone.
All of Hellywood who attended this All Hallow’s Eve event, have their concocted stories as to the events of that fateful evening. Joaquin’s birthday was October 28, two days before the meeting at the Viper. Hellywood sacrifices its young to the system and hierarchy of Satanic Illuminatists. It is alleged that Depp strategized the murder of River, and a thousand points of light took place to ensure River died October 31, 1993, the highest day in the Satanic calendar.
Johnny Depp
John Christopher Depp II was born June 9, 1963, in Owensboro, Kentucky. His mother was a waitress, Betty Sue Depp, now Betty Sue Palmer (maiden name of Wells) and his father John Christopher Depp Senior, was a civil engineer.
Depp’s family moved frequently during his childhood, and eventually settled in Miramar, Florida in 1970.
In 1970 my family moved me to a school in another county. Broward County. I lived at 1255 NE 202 street, in North Miami Beach. I attended Madie Ives Elementary school which was for grades 1-6. My seventh and eighth grade I attended Henry D. Perry Middle School in Broward County. My mother Milli was gay. She had divorced my fake father Paul and taken in a lover by the name of Marilyn Menger. Marilyn’s mother lived in Miramar. Lyn's brother Richie lived in Miramar and had a daughter my age, who by a strange coincidence looked so much like me, that even her mother, on occasion, could not tell us apart.
I had all of my possessions taken from me in every relationship I ever had. I left with no photos. There were no baby photos of me in the family album. The only ones I saw were when I was older, around first or second grade. I asked my mother why there were no baby photos of me and she said I just got tired of taking pictures. It doesn’t make sense given her story that she wanted 10 children, and that after I was born she had a hysterectomy. You would have thought she would definitely have splurged on the Polaroid film.
When I was declared enemy of the state, and locked in a crazy house for a year in Rochelle, Illinois, I started searching for answers. I researched every day. I was given my phone, and my computer and my ipad. I started scouring the web for any photos I had uploaded and yearbooks. I went to classmates.com and found my 1976 yearbook, it was entitled Genesis. I knew then that was my project name.
My neighborhood and elementary school were German MKULTRA project communities. Eve is a cloning project. That explains how I looked like a twin to someone who was my fake aunt’s real niece. The Mengers, are the Mengeles. My “fake” Uncle Ritchie has a space between his teeth as his mother did. This is a trademark of Joseph Mengele. The Mengers lived in Miramar. They were a surrogate family, and my aunt Lyn raised me from my teen years until I left to live with Durrell. Durrell knew my mother and my father. I had no idea how well he knew them.
The school that I looked for to find photos of was Henry D. Perry Middle School. At first I didn’t find photos of myself on the web. What I DID find was that Johnny Depp, who is five years younger than me, went to my middle school. Johnny has an older sister and a younger sister. The older sister is two years older than me and the younger sister is two years younger than me. I believe his younger sister attended Henry D. Perry and went on to Miramar High School. His older sister attended Miramar High School, as did Johnny.
I attended Henry D. Perry in 1970-71- 1971-1972; My family did not send me to Miramar High, but they sent me back to Dade Country to Miami Beach Senior High School where I attended 1972-76. My cousins Lynn and Ricky went to Henry D. Perry and then to Miramar High.
I graduated from North Miami Beach Senior High School in 1976. Johnny dropped out of Miramar High School, at 16, in 1979, one year after his parents divorced. He tried to return to school two weeks later, but the principal told him he should follow his dream as a musician. Depp had begun playing guitar when he was 12 years old. In 1980 he began playing in a band called “The Kids” in Florida, experiencing with some local success. The Kids move to Los Angeles seeking a record deal. They changed their name to “The Six Gun Method”.
Depp worked various odd jobs in LA
He was married to Lori Allison 1983, divorce 1985; Sherilyn Feen was his next girlfriend 1985-1988; Winona Ryder was his next girlfriend 1989-1993; Kate Moss was his next girlfriend 1994-1998;Vanessa Paradis was his next girlfriend 1998-2012; Amber Heard was his wife 2015-2017.
It was said to me by Agent M, that Winona was dating River and Depp and was on the end of her run with Depp. Agent M stated that she saw Winona, Depp and Moss coming out of Depp’s limo the night of October 30, at the Viper.
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