Steven Hayden Pollock

Pollock and Gary Lincoff found an entirely new species, and named it Psilocybe tampanensis, in Tampa, FL, September 3, 1977 while the Second International Mycological Congress was happening, Pollock was so excited he said they discovered the philosopher’s stone.

He wrote the Magic Mushroom Cultivation book in 1977, it contained his research on several ways to cultivate magic mushrooms, including the cultivation in brown rice that later demonstrated to produce mushrooms of high psilocybin content.

Pollock isolated a strain of P. tampanensis that produced sclerotia of a size much bigger than known before. This discover enabled a way to use psilocybin in places where magic mushrooms are illegal, such as after the magic mushroom ban in Amsterdam in December 1, 2008.

Pollock visioned to create the first legal medical mushroom research laboratory and he estimated he would need about 2 million dollars.

Together with another mushroom lover, Michael Forbes, they founded a company called Hidden Creek in 1979 to sell P. tampanensis sclerotium by mail, they advertised in the monthly magazine High Times, and became the largest magic mushroom vendor in the world within the same year.

He sold mushrooms, prescriptions, and planted an acre of cannabis to get the funds he needed to his research. He traveled to the Amazon and Mexico to study psychoactive mushrooms and discovered 3 species in 1979: Psilocybe armandii, Psilocybe wassoniorum, and Psilocybe schultesii.

In 1980, because of his high volume of illegal prescription writing, the state pharmacy board alerted employees about his practice. As a work-around Pollock bought his own pharmacy to supply his customers.

Pollock worked 7 days a week. On a Saturday at 7 PM he arranged with his girlfriend Mitzi by phone to meet for dinner, but he had a last patient that would come that night.

Mitzi called him several times through the night, he did not answer. Worried, at 11 PM, she ran to his office and found the house ransacked. Pollock was in the corner beside the front door, shot dead in the forehead.

The police found 1,753 jars of growing psychoactive mushrooms in his greenhouse, it was dumped and burned by San Antonio Narcotics Force.

Gary Davis, Pollock's friend, got a tape of two people talking about Pollock's murder, but he kept it in the fear someone would kill him.

In 1983, detective Anton Michalec found three suspects, Ernest Dietzmann and Jerry Baker that were drug dependents and patients of Pollock's, and Arthur Lenz, a methamphetamine dealer. Their intention were to rob Pollock of his money. The fingerprints matched those found at the crime scene. Michalec brought the case to the district attorney Terry McDonald, who refused tho prosecute for unknown reasons, and Michalec's work was forgotten. All three suspects died free men.

In 2013, journalist Hamilton Morris contacted McDonald, who explained he actually wasn't the district attorney at that time, Morris tried to investigate and was informed by the DEA that they had destroyed and lost the records and information about who was responsible for the case.