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Testimony of Lucas Cook … July 2006 I suppose its best to start at the beginning.

Ive lived a life of extraordinary independence and have defied all odds. This was true
from the very moment I was born. When the nurse took me, fresh from the womb,
cleaned me up and placed me on the scale to be weighed I planted my hands firmly
beneath me, raised myself up and looked purposefully around the room, making eye
contact with each person in there. Of course, the doctor and the nurses were thoroughly
amazed. Their eyes widened and their jaws hit the floor. My father took it all in and he
thought to himself, This ones gonna be trouble! And I proved him quite right.

I was an extremely difficult child and as a result my life was marked by extreme
difficulty, most of which I brought on myself. It has been impossible to pinpoint when in
my early development I became such a problem. Rest assured, this is not from lack of
trying! Throughout my life Ive told my story to droves of psychologists and few
psychiatrists. It was a major topic with the people closest to me as I was growing up.
Weve discussed it in my family so much that weve come to the conclusion that I was
just born that way. This is by no means an excuse. As I was told many times in my life: to
whom much is given, much is required. I had an excellent family structure, filled with
love and support, and a strong emphasis on discipline. Yet I rebelled against everything
from the very start, despite the heroic effort of my parents.

I refused to obey nearly every rule I was ever taught. I was wild, outspoken, and violent.
On my first day of kindergarten I was sent home for fighting. Someone was picking on
the only kid in our class who was mentally disabled. When I tried to explain to the bully
that what he was doing was wrong, I was ridiculed. So I responded with violence. This
was to be a major pattern in my childhood. Someone would make fun of a kid who was
either different of defenseless, they would usually be too afraid to stand up for
themselves, and I would rush in and get bloody. Consequently, I had no friends outside
my family until I was about twelve years old. So I took refuge in books. I used to say that
I like books more than people. I held onto that attitude until about seven years ago, which
meant that although I was very advanced intellectually, I was an infant as far as social
skills were concerned.

Although I was definitely a bookworm, by no means did I fall into the category of your
stereotypical braniac. I didnt care how I dressed or how dirty I got while playing with
my brother or cousins. I was just as often to be found flying around town at insane speeds
on my bicycle or roller stakes as I was to be pouring of encyclopedias. I wasnt content to
just read about the weather either- I had to be up in the highest treetops during a gale-
force lighting storm, just begging to learn about electricity firsthand!

The majority of my life I was introspective, moody, and melancholy. I was a dreamer and
I was more comfortable in my own fantasy world than I was in reality. I refused to get
good grades but scored incredibly high on tests. I found school boring and unchallenging.

I was far too independent for my own good, running away from home for the first time at
age six. Now I bet youre thinking about the kid who wont cross the street when he runs
away because hes not allowed to? So he just keeps walking around the block, right?
Yeah, I never met that kid.

I grew up in Taft, California, which is a town just a few miles wide out in the middle of
the oilfields and desert. It was out into that desert that I went wandering when I wanted to
be alone.

The first time I ran away overnight was for three days straight, and I spent the whole time
tramping through tumbleweed and sagebrush. My father finally found me after much
frantic searching. That was when I was eight years old. I considered serpents and
scorpions to be better companions than people. I was a shadowalker, to be sure and so it
shouldnt come as a surprise that I didnt have to go looking for the occult it found me.

My parents were both believers and I was raised in church, but I rebelled against
everything, and God was no exception. In fact, I wasted an enormous amount of energy
being angry at God. I felt he had cursed me with an inability to be understood by others
and so I would return the favor with vigor. I thought it was a cruel joke that I should be
gifted with expression and yet be so difficult to relate to. I perverted that gift and not only
vocalized my disgust with life, but also wrote eloquently of it.

I surrounded myself with angry people who delighted in my intensity. I began doing
drugs at a young age and from the beginning I delved into every kind of mind-altering
substance I could get my hands on. I was an extraordinary junkie who amazed my peers
not only with my youth but also with my exuberance. My motto was, I fear no
overdose! and I meant it.

I fought all the time, preferring to take on people bigger and faster than me. I didnt feel
like I had to prove I could, I just never wanted to be considered a bully. In fact, I was a
bully-beater.

I started going to Juvenile Hall when I as sixteen. I went to Teen Challenge, where I
exasperated them beyond measure and was kicked out after thirty days of a one-year
program. I drank and got stoned the whole way home. I also went to Camp Owens, which
is a Juvenile Camp by Kernville. I escaped after less than three weeks, leading them on a
ten-mile chase though the mountains, which included nearly drowning and wild
swimming across the killer Kern River.

I went to the California Youth Authority, which is state prison for kids. There I was
rehabilitated by learning how to efficiently stab people. We had Group Therapy, which
meant riots. At one point I was slashed four times across my back with a razor blade
while getting jumped by three other inmates. This left me with forty-two staples and a
serious lust for vengeance. I spent much of my time in the Hole, which is solitary
confinement. There I was taught the fine art of gargling pepper spray and barricading my
cell in an all-out war against the guards.
This was also when I began to knowingly invite demonic influences into my life. I
welcomed the assistance of anything that could make me meaner, stronger, and more
savage in combat. I increased my threshold for pain and worked out every day.

I became a terrifying thing. And I paid the price.

This is a picture of me after being released in 1997 (on screen) that shows me still
dressed in my prison blues. Id spent seven month in the hole that time. I managed to stay
out of state facilities for over two years, popping in and out of county jail a few times and
narrowly dodging several life sentences. I got jumped by five guys on the street in Taft in
June of 98 and got my skull cracked open with a brick. I stabbed one of them in the aorta
of his heart with a hunting knife. I spent five days in jail until the D.A. determined it as a
justifiable homicide by reason of self-defense. I spent the next seven years with a stain on
my soul.

Yet I continued to walk in darkness. I was about as rough as they come. I had been
committing armed robberies and other acts of violence. Home invasion. I regularly beat
people down for owing my associates money or just for bothering my friends. I
oftentimes offered to put anybody in the hospital for only fifty bucks. I enjoyed it.
If you burned someone who knew me, they only had to say the word, and I became a
nightmare that you could never wake from. My anger was given full reign. I was the guy
that people called when they were in the scariest situations theyd ever been in. I would
come, day or night, across any distance or through fire and bullets. I laughed at the law
and delighted in chaos. I didnt think for one minute that I was invincible; I just didnt
have any regard for life, mine or others.

I was truly lost. I knew itand didnt care.

January 1, 2000, I took LSD for the last time and had the worst of a succession of bad
drug trips. I became indescribably paranoid, stabbing my girlfriends uncle in the lung
and then turning the butcher knife on myself in a frenzy of self-hatred. I punctured my
own lung, stabbed myself in the throat, belly-flopped twice onto the knife in an attempt to
drive it into my heart. The first time, the blade bent against my ribcage. The second time,
it broke.

This was not the first time I had tried to kill myself, although it was the last. I had been
suicidal several times, at one point having to be cut down from a hangmans noose and
rushed to the hospital.

There were times when I believed I was done with life, but God had decided he was not
done with me. And I cannot thank Him enough.

After that I went to prison for over two years for assault with a deadly weapon. When I
got out I had slowed down quite a bit, but was still doing methamphetamines and
smoking marijuana. After six months, I went back to prison for another assault and ended up doing two more years ending on June of 2004. I couldve gotten out in just under a
year, but I k