Paul Morantz, 77

Paul Morantz, a lawyer and investigative journalist who in the 1970s was so successful at taking on cults, abusive psychotherapists and self-proclaimed gurus around California that one of his targets tried to assassinate him with a rattlesnake, died on Oct. 23 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 77.

His son, Chaz, confirmed the death, at a hospital. He did not provide a cause but said his father had been in declining health for several years.

Cults proliferated in the post-hippie weirdness that was California in the 1970s, often establishing alternative communities in rural parts of the state where authoritarian leaders, typically men, dictated every aspect of their followers’ lives, down to their clothing and choice of sexual partners.

Morantz made his name taking down one such movement, Synanon. It had begun as a last-chance drug rehabilitation program in the late 1950s but had, by the early ’70s, become an insular, oppressive organization under its founder, Charles Dederich.

One day in 1977 Morantz received a call from a man named Ed Winn. Winn recounted how his wife, Frances, had checked into a Synanon rehab facility in Santa Monica, only to be whisked away to one of the group’s communities in the Bay Area. They shaved her head and refused to let her leave.

Morantz negotiated Frances Winn’s release, then sued Synanon on the couple’s behalf. He won a $300,000 judgment.

Synanon and Dederich were known for using violence against their enemies, even in minor run-ins. In 1977, a group of Synanon thugs pistol-whipped a truck driver who had cut off their vehicle on a highway. Dederich even kept an elite squad of enforcers that he called the Imperial Marines. Morantz would become one of their targets.

On Oct. 10, 1978, he met with police officers to discuss next steps against Synanon, then hurried back to his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood to catch the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees play game one of the World Series.

As he walked in the door, he reached his left hand into his mailbox. As he did, he noticed a dark, lumpy shape. He didn’t have time to pull back before the object, a fourand-a-half-foot diamondback rattlesnake, bit him on his wrist.

He screamed for help. Neighbors came running. One applied a tourniquet. Another brought ice. A third called 911.

Morantz remained in the hospital for six days. Doctors said he was lucky to survive.

The police, working off tips from neighbors, soon arrested two of Dederich’s Imperial Marines: Joe Musico and Lance Kenton, the son of the band leader Stan Kenton. They were charged with attempted murder. Dederich was also arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

The charges were easy to prove: Dederich had a habit of recording everything he said, including his orders to Musico and Kenton. All three pleaded no contest.

The judge, calling the attack on Morantz an “aberration,” went easy on the two assailants, owing, he said, to the group’s history of helping addicts.

Each was sentenced to a year in prison, while Dederich received five years’ probation.