The State - News from Jan. 20, 1989

Four members of a satanic cult have pleaded innocent in Sacramento to murder charges in the death of a 22-year-old man who may have been “sacrificed” in an initiation ritual last fall. Municipal Judge John Stroud set bail at $300,000 for the defendants and scheduled a hearing March 6 to determine if there is enough evidence for a trial. The four suspects and a 15-year-old boy are accused of stabbing Joseph Bradsberry to death on a levee near a drainage ditch Oct. 18, 1988. Court records said the boy told investigators that Bradsberry went to the levee thinking he was going to be initiated into a satanic coven. Instead, he was handcuffed, and placed on the ground and his throat was cut in a sacrificial killing, the boy said. The four adult suspects are Sandra Capps, 23; Wallace Ervin, 23; Luther Mays III, 19, and Arthur Holley, 26. Possible evidence against them includes satanic graffiti scrawled on the beams and walls of the Sacramento County Jail where the defendants are being held.