On Thursday, a former member of Marilyn Manson’s band sued him, claiming that Manson (whose real name is the slightly more mundane "Brian Warner") misled him as to how much money the band was making, and instead went on a multi-million-dollar spending binge.  In the lawsuit, Stephen Bier (whose stage name was the much less mundane "Madonna Wayne Gacy") demands about $20 million in damages.

Bier apparently alleges that he became suspicious that he was not seeing all of the profits he was entitled to when he noticed some of the things that Manson was buying.  These allegedly included:

• A $2 million home;
• An art gallery (for his own work);
• A $450,000 engagement ring for his stripper girlfriend;
• African masks made of human skin;
• The skeleton of a "17th-century male" in a wheelchair;
• The skeleton of a 4-year-old Chinese girl; and
• Eva Braun’s handbag.

Well, these days a $2 million home is not that outrageous, at least in California, and who doesn’t have at least a couple of masks made out of human skin, but owning anything  that once belonged to Hitler’s girlfriend really is over the top.

Bier basically alleges that Marilyn Manson violated the fiduciary duty he owed the other band members under a partnership agreement they signed in 1993.  (I was hoping to take credit for the first use of the terms "Marilyn Manson" and "fiduciary duty" in the same sentence, but Google actually turned up a few prior examples.)  Manson denied the charges last week in an interview on MTV News (which seems strange — I assumed he would show up on "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer"), and said he would fight.

"The fact that [Madonna Wayne Gacy]’s claiming that I’ve treated him unfairly financially is really ridiculous," Manson said.  He also said he "would never spend [his] money on a Chinese girl skeleton.  That would be crossing the line."

"It’s a Chinese boy," he clarified.

Link: Yahoo! News