“In closed-circuit TV footage, a man covered in blood pounded on a stranger’s door and begged for help. A second man, also bloodied, appeared behind him and dragged him out of the camera’s view, ignoring his screams of ‘No, no, no!'” goes the in media res lede to “A healer and a life coach drank ayahuasca in a Boynton Airbnb. Then one tried to kill the other,” by the Palm Beach Daily News.
“Investigators say Stefan Leon, a 32 year-old artist and life coach who teaches meditation, breathwork and emotional intelligence, stabbed 68 year-old spiritual healer Julio Rivera five times with a chef’s knife during a three-day stay in an Airbnb in Boynton Beach,” the article continues about the October 5th stabbing incident before detailing how Leon then tried to stab one of the cops who responded while screaming he was “a demon, God himself and Hitler.”
Leon’s secret? He was high as fuck on an illegal brew called ayahuasca, a traditional shamanic ritual potion from the Amazon that the life coach previously had claimed imbued him with a “deep sense of love, compassion, and fervor for living” and as a way “out of despair and into a hopeful future.”
Except the October 5th incident. That night Leon tried to kill himself by swallowing a bottle cap, prompting Rivera, who markets himself as an “astral parasite extractor,” to force his fingers down Leon’s throat to pull the cap out. Leon then grabbed the knife and stabbed Rivera in the head, chest, and hands. Rivera’s pretty sure this was Leon’s demon fighting back in its death throes.
“I’m going to kill you motherfucker!!! You are going to die forever!” Leon – or the demon inside Leon using his body to exact revenge – screamed as he slashed at Rivera and chased him out of the Airbnb on the third night of their ayahuasca trip. Rivera survived and Leon remains out on bail ahead of his next pretrial hearing on January 30th. Judge Daliah Weiss allowed Leon to continue working at his studio as well as attend the “Art Basel” exhibition in Miami where “he participated in an art exhibition on the evils of human trafficking and posed for selfies with other artists” last month.