About This Episode
What is this episode about?
The episode "The Devil's Audition - Part Two," subtitled "The Demons in North Beach," from The Devil Within returns to the disappearance of Valerie McDonald from San Francisco's Tower Apartments. It picks up seventeen days after her vanishing, when Michael Hennessey—the man who lured her away with a promised role in a Dustin Hoffman movie—was killed in a shootout with the RCMP in British Columbia after fleeing with fellow ex-convict John Gordon Abbott. Investigators reportedly recovered Valerie's voter-registration and unemployment-benefit cards among the pair's belongings.
The episode examines claims Valerie made to friends before she disappeared about large quantities of cocaine and "Satanistic" activity inside her apartment building, allegations that carried extra weight given San Francisco's connection to Anton LaVey's Church of Satan. No reliable evidence confirms an organized cult operated from the building, but the men around Valerie had serious criminal histories, including Phillip Arthur Thompson, later convicted of a 1971 murder. Investigators suspected Abbott, Hennessey and Thompson of running a broader criminal enterprise involving robbery, weapons and cocaine trafficking, and Valerie's parents came to believe she may have disappeared after learning something about it. The episode also recounts the 1991 discovery of partial human remains near the Kettle River in Washington State, unidentified for a decade before being linked to Valerie's case.
Hosts and release
Branden Morgan hosts The Devil Within, a weekly filmic true crime and supernatural podcast exploring unsolved mysteries and documented crimes. This installment, Part Two of "The Devil's Audition," runs 22 minutes and is available on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
