The boy whose case inspired the portrayal of a demon-possessed child in the 1973 classic horror movie The Exorcist has been named.
US magazine the Skeptical Inquirer identified the then-14-year-old, previously known as Roland Doe, who underwent exorcisms in Cottage City, Maryland, and St Louis, Missouri, in 1949, as Ronald Hunkeler, who died last year, a month before his 86th birthday, after suffering a stroke at home in Marriottsville, Maryland.
In adult life, Hunkeler was a NASA engineer whose work contributed to the Apollo space missions of the 1960s and who patented a technology that helped space shuttle panels withstand extreme heat.
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