It's the taste police who should be after Marilyn Manson.
But until they get the call, it's keyboardist Stephen Gregory Bier Jr., aka Madonna Wayne Gacy, who's suing his former band mate for more than $20 million, alleging that Manson plundered his group's coffer over the years to pay for luxury items, drugs and just plain creepy stuff, such as his collection of Nazi artifacts.
According to the breach-of-contract lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Manson went against the partnership agreement the original band members entered into back in 1993, when they were still known as Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids, by systematically forcing the original members out and replacing them with newbies who weren't privy to the arrangement. (View the lawsuit.)
For instance, the suit states, Manson got drummer Fred Streithorst Jr. (band alias Sara Lee Lucas) to leave in 1995 after he doused his drum set with butane and lit it on fire—while Streithorst was still playing.
In 1993, the original Marilyn Manson mates agreed that each would get cut of album, touring and merchandise profits, with Manson getting the heftiest slice of the pie, according to the suit. Manson eventually went on to lead his partners into thinking that the platinum-selling group wasn't doing too well, financially.
"Because of Manson and others' fraudulent conduct, Bier has spent almost two decades working for one of the world's most popular rock bands, that has made millions of dollars in profit, and now had almost nothing to show for it," the lawsuit states.
Bier claims that the band has paid dearly over the years for Manson's antics and fetishes, with the Antichrist Superstar purveyor dipping into the till to finance his Vicodin and cocaine habits and then again later to pay for a $3,000-per-day stint in rehab, which he never completed.
According to the complaint, Manson used band money to settle assault and sexual misconduct lawsuits in 2000 and 2001, and "to pay a video production company [in 2000] to keep certain video footage out of an upcoming DVD about the band…this video footage showed Manson making racist statements and jokes about African-Americans while feeding his pet snake."
Manson is also using company cash to finance his directorial debut, Bier alleges, the sure-to-be-weird Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll, in which Manson plays the Alice in Wonderland writer.
The group's hard-earned dough also allegedly went toward its frontman's collection of Nazi memorabilia, including "SS typewriters, swastika wall tiles he had installed in his home library ceiling with custom rugs made to match and Nazi government coat hangers owned by Adolf Hitler," as well as a handbag that supposedly once belonged to Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun, that Manson gave to then-fiancée Dita Von Teese."
Other oddities that ended up on display in Manson's Chatsworth, California, mansion, courtesy of the band's cash, include taxidermy models of a grizzly bear and two baboons, African masks made of human skin, the skeleton of a four-year-old Chinese girl and "full skeleton of a 17th-century male in a wheelchair," the suite states.
And while marital unions obviously don't last forever, receipts sure do. The lawsuit states that Manson used his unfair cut of the profits to buy a $150,000 engagement ring for Von Teese and another $300,000 or so to up the glam factor at their 2005 wedding at a castle in Ireland.
Von Teese filed for divorce in January, citing irreconcilable differences. Manson, 38, is currently dating 19-year-old Evan Rachel Wood.
For his part, Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, said Thursday that, while he hasn't seen the lawsuit, the allegations are totally untrue.
"The fact that he's claiming that I've treated him unfairly, financially, is really ridiculous," the singer told MTV News. "And I would never spend my money on a Chinese girl skeleton. That would be crossing the line. It's a Chinese boy, for the record."
On a more serious note, "[Bier and his lawyers are] going for shock value, obviously, and I couldn't be less surprised by how unshocking these things would be to the public."
The alt-metal rocker said that he hasn't seen Bier in over a year.
"I wish there was some sort of legal angle to this whole thing, or some sort of common sense, or just even camaraderie after all the years that we knew each other," Manson said. "I don't have an explanation for it. It just seems like another ex-bandmember suing me and trying to assassinate my personality as a means to financial gain, and it just seems old. It's just not fair. If I spent my money on anything, it was my family, and paying his salary for a year when we weren't even touring."
Bier is seeking unspecified general, compensatory and punitive damages as well as lost salary, bonuses and attorneys' fees, which, per the suit, he "believes to be in excess of $20 million." He says that Manson froze his salary payments, cut off his access to the band's business managers and then refused to pay his work-related medical bills.
Manson's management, lawyers, accountants and film production company, the band's merchandise company and the corporation established to oversee the group's various tours have also been named as defendants.