SEATTLE -- Witches or a cult that ceremoniously beheads animals may be behind the mysterious death of his sister, says Robin Moore, best-selling author of 'The French Connection' and 'The Green Berets.'
A skull found in a swampy area of North Seattle has been identified as that of Moore's sister, Marcia, 51, who had been missing two years.
'I don't for one minute believe that my sister died a natural death,' Moore said Wednesday from his home in Westport, Conn. 'I think her demise was assisted perhaps by a cult we don't even know about. Marcia was targeted by these people on several occasions.
'She was a sort of high priestess. And the fact that her head was totally separated might possibly indicate that the head was severed. I don't know. But I do know that there are cults in which they behead animals as part of their ceremony.'
An heiress to the Boston blueblood fortune of Sheraton Hotel chain founder Robert L. Moore, Ms. Moore was a nationally known author in her own right on psychic phenomena.
She and her husband, Dr. Howard S. Alltounian, were experimenting with the hallucinogenic drug ketamine, an anesthetic, in the months prior to her disappearance.
Alltounian, an anesthesiologist who gave up his practice to devote time to his wife's writing and experiments in their Alderwood Manor duplex, reported her missing after coming home from a movie around midnight on Jan. 14, 1979.
Robin Moore, who this week announced his candidacy for a U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut, said his sister told him in 1977 that a 'witches' coven' was trying to kill her.
The bizarre disclosure came while he was traveling in Rhodesia in 1977, Moore said. He received a letter from a doctor offering his condolences about the death of his sister.
Moore, 55, said he immediately called his sister, who told him that an occult group was trying to rattle her by sending the letter to him. He said she provided no details of the plot.
Some time later, there was an anonymous telephone call: 'Too bad your sister is dead,' intoned an unidentified voice. Moore said that he had simply tried to forget about the call at the time.
Following discovery of the skull, he asked the Snohomish County coroner if the head had been 'neatly severed' from the body. He was told it was impossible to tell because only the upper portion of the skull was found.
Moore, who has written several less well-known books about witches and the occult, said the information would have helped him confirm or disprove his theory that his sister's body was hacked to pieces and dumped in different locations to prevent a search plane from using infrared devices from spotting her entire remains.
He said such a search was conducted three weeks after she vanished.
The skull was found Friday by a person clearing land just off Highway 527 in Bothell for a construction project. Sheriff's deputies said other bones, including a leg bone, were found, but they have not been positively identified them as belonging to Ms. Moore.
