Cult-Busting Lawyer Reflects

A journalist turned lawyer who went toe-to-toe with a powerful and violent cult in the 1970s. After springing a mentally ill woman being held by the group Synanon in 1977, and securing a $300,000 for her family using a sly legal bait-and-switch, Paul Morantz was nearly killed when cult members hid a rattlesnake in his mailbox. Morantz represented himself in the civil trial against Synanon’s leader and took his deposition. “I don’t know how many people have deposed somebody who’ve ordered you murdered,” Morantz told a Gizmodo reporter. A profile of Morantz and the legal miscalculation that finally led to Synanon’s downfall.