The Four P Killer: Stanley Baker, Robert Salem and the Occult Shadows of the Zodiac
by M.P. Pellicer | Noir Notebook
In the sweltering summer of 1970, 22-year-old James Michael Schlosser, a compassionate social worker from Great Falls, Montana, paid the ultimate price for a simple act of kindness. While heading to Yellowstone National Park for a weekend getaway with friends, he picked up a hitchhiker—Stanley Dean Baker, a 22-year-old drifter who would soon reveal a monstrous side.
Baker, who styled himself as “Jesus,” later confessed a chilling problem: “I have this problem… I’m a cannibal.”
Using a ruse about needing a ride to a job, Baker lured Schlosser to a remote spot near the Yellowstone River, across from the eerie red clay formation known as Devil’s Slide. There, under the influence of LSD, amid a storm of thunder and lightning, Baker shot the sleeping Schlosser in the head with a .22 rifle. He then carved out the victim’s heart and devoured it raw, severed fingers, dismembered the body into six pieces, and scattered the remains. A blood-soaked 12-inch knife lay abandoned at the scene, the ground saturated with bone chips, flesh, and gore.
On July 11, a fisherman discovered the headless, limbless torso—heart missing—floating in the Yellowstone River about four miles north of Gardiner, Montana. Authorities dragged the swift, swollen river in vain; most of Schlosser’s remains were never recovered.
The killers’ trail unraveled far away in Salinas, California. Baker and his companion, 20-year-old Harry Allen Stroup from Wyoming, fled in Schlosser’s yellow Opel Kadett after a hit-and-run that injured three people. Matching descriptions of the fleeing “long-haired hippie types,” they were stopped. In their pockets, police found what they first mistook for chicken bones—human fingers. A copy of the Satanic Bible completed the grotesque picture.
Baker calmly confessed to the officer. He claimed the murder was his alone, but evidence and testimony implicated Stroup.
Both men were extradited to Montana. By November 1970, Stroup received 10 years at hard labor in the Montana State Prison. Baker pled guilty and drew a life sentence.
During Stroup’s trial, Baker—under oath—unleashed bizarre claims: LSD-fueled visions, “super-human mental powers” from studying the “bible of the satanic father,” communication with inter-celestial beings, and even a “direct contribution” to Jimi Hendrix’s death. He boasted of weather control and allegiance to the “Four P Movement” (or Four Pi), a shadowy satanic cult led by the “Grand Chingon.” He displayed cult tattoos and confessed to ordering the April 1970 murder of Robert Salem in San Francisco—a ritualistic stabbing where the victim’s ear was severed, blood used to scrawl “Zodiac” and “Satan Saves” on the wall, and fingerprints allegedly matching Baker’s.
California authorities, citing speedy trial violations, never prosecuted Baker for Salem’s death—despite the bloody evidence and his own admissions. Baker also invoked the Fifth when questioned about other potential victims, including a man named Bobby Salem.
Behind bars, Baker continued his dark path: recruiting inmates for the coven, howling like a wolf during full moons, threatening guards, and hoarding weapons until transferred to maximum security in Illinois. He later became a model prisoner but remained a self-identified Luciferian. The Church of Satan rejected his membership application in 1976—an ironic twist.
Stroup served only two years of his sentence before release in 1979. Baker walked free on parole in 1985. In 1991, true-crime investigator Maury Terry linked Baker’s occult circle to the Zodiac killings, pointing to eerie parallels—like the Zodiac’s claim of being an escaped convict from Deer Lodge (home of Montana State Prison) during the 1969 Cecilia Shepard stabbing at Lake Berryessa, where wounds formed a cross pattern.
Baker resurfaced briefly on TV’s A Current Affair in 1991, his past exposed, costing him a quiet life in Minnesota. He died of liver cancer in 1994.
Stroup’s later brushes with the law ended with his death before a 2019 Montana Supreme Court ruling dismissed his final appeal.
A kind stranger’s goodwill ended in unimaginable horror—cannibalism, satanism, and whispers of deeper cult connections that still haunt the edges of true-crime lore.
Sources – Raising Hell by Michael Newton, Great Falls Tribune, The Billings Gazette, The Montana Standard, The Missoulian