Remembering Satan: A Tragic Case of Recovered Memory

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes “the most powerful and disturbing true crime narrative to appear since Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood” ( TIME )—a case that destroyed a family, engulfed a small town, and captivated an America obsessed by rumors of a satanic underground. 

In 1988 Ericka and Julie Ingram began making a series of accusations of sexual abuse against their father, Paul Ingram, who was a respected deputy sheriff in Olympia, Washington. At first the accusations were confined to molestations in their childhood, but they grew to include torture and rape as recently as the month before. At a time when reported incidents of “recovered memories” had become widespread, these accusations were not unusual. What captured national attention in this case is that, under questioning, Ingram appeared to remember participating in bizarre satanic rites involving his whole family and other members of the sheriff’s department.

As Remembering Satan follows the increasingly bizarre accusations and confessions, the claims and counterclaims of police, FBI investigators, and mental health professionals, it gives us what is at once a psychological detective story and a domestic tragedy about what happens when modern science is subsumed by our most archaic fears.