The narrator is Johnny's childhood friend, Ginger.
Thank you, Ginger and Johnny!
Your Resource for the Tate-LaBianca (TLB) Murders
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Blogger Cybot asked, "did drug trade start by hippies and then go to the organized crime, or were drugs traded by o. c./mafia from the beginning?
- and when did the trade start?" Patty was thinking about his questions the other night while watching the Ken Burns documentary on prohibition. Was that when organized crime started in the US? Of course not.
From the very minute folks got off the Mayflower, they started forming alliances just like they do on Survivor. Even before that, the natives likely did the same. Those who are the most organized, have the most resources, make the best alliances, always win. Those who overstep the boundaries created by the dominant group are marginalized and punished. When one season is over, another rises to take its place. This is the way the world has worked since the very beginning.
Terry Melcher and Bruce Johnston formed the vocal duet Bruce & Terry in the early '60s. Later, Johnston joined The Beach Boys and Melcher went to work with the Byrds for Columbia Records. There, he produced "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" Melcher also performed on Pet Sounds as a background vocalist and was a producer of the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967.
Brian Wilson would be the most expeditious and direct choice for the "famous producer" in question. The Beach Boys were signed to Capitol Records in 1962. They released their groundbreaking single "Good Vibrations" and album Pet Sounds in 1966. According to many sources, brother Dennis was a hub around which many relevant relationships centered. The Neil Young connection is said to have been through Dennis. Bryan Lukashevsky knew Dennis, too. Strangely, Lukashevsky (who now lives in Honolulu) told Brian Davis in March, 2012 that one day soon, the time will be right for the real story to come out. He did not elaborate on why that is. 
In 1968, Hitchcock purchased land just north of one of his homes in Sausalito, then put Nick Sand and Tim Scully on retainer. Shortly thereafter, Hitchcock and Owsley hired a New York law firm called Rabinowitz, Boudin
and Standard to look into the possibility of legally producing LSD and
hash in the Bahamas. Soon thereafter, the IRS' "Operation Tradewinds" revealed that Castle Bank was involved in tax evasion. It was also covertly funneling funds for CIA military operations including the anti-Castro maneuvers at Andros Island.
Buster the wonder dog showed us where, specifically, the bus is supposed to be buried. Do you know the trash can south of Ballarat on Wingate Road that says "Barker Ranch, one mile?" Just beyond this, you come to the intersection of Wingate and Coyote Canyon Roads (the latter takes you all the way up the canyon to Barker Ranch). There's some dirt, rock and scrub brush moguls right there at a somewhat jumbled and undefined turnoff. The location of the well is described as "10 meters off the road."
Her attitude is likely influenced by the fact that Patty grew up in a Southern California town known for its abundance of meth: it was freaking EVERYWHERE, she remembers. In the early eighties, a lab down the street from her junior high blew up violently, and became the butt of many a schoolyard joke. A local bar called The Starlight purportedly distributed it via table service ("I'll have a beer and a bump!"), but Patty was too young back then to know if that is actually true. Patty cannot imagine anyone actually liking that messed up, tweeked out, way-too-much-coffee feeling. But, a lot of people apparently do. Or, they get started so they can work harder, thinking that they will kick after they make the big money. Um, BAD IDEA.
There was also a spaceship cult in Patty's town called Unarius (pictured at left) that had property out in Jamul (pronounced "huhMOOL"). Patty recently found out on facebook which of her high school friends' parents were involved: she never had a clue at the time, so it was a real shocker. Jamul is conveniently located on Highway 94, a desolate back road that leads to the US/Mexico border crossing at Tecate (see below). Yes, that is where they make the beer of the same name. Patty remembers going to the dulceria there as a child: it was her treat for waiting patiently while Mom and Dad Patty haggled over the price of terra cotta garden pottery with the locals.
As a teen, Patty was forbidden by Mom Patty from going to Jamul and beyond because of its bad reputation: it is not uncommon for hikers or sportsmen to find dead bodies in the surrounding areas. Sometimes, people die from exposure while trying to cross the border; other times, people have been shot for one reason or another. Supposedly, "Stephanie Schram's sister" (she has two: Susan Jane who was married three times between '69 and '76, and Sally Joanne who seems to have been a bit more stable) lived in Jamul, and this is where she and Charlie were going in early August, 1969. Oh. by the way, you know Charlie speaks pretty good Spanish, right? Si! Esta es la verdad! Whether or not there were also bikers in Jamul back then, Patty knows not. But she is beginning to think that Jamul may have been one of the 40 regional BEL distribution centers written about in Schou. At the very least, it would have been a convenient stop just north of a very sleepy, low-security border crossing well known to dealers on both sides.
Bob Ackerley states that an old friend from Anaheim, Elliot Miller (aka The Joker) was "another brother from Anaheim that nobody knows about, and he had a whole network." Whether or not Miller was a Gypsy Joker is unknown to Patty. She has learned however that The Gypsy Jokers were formed in San Francisco in the 1950's, and were forced out of the bay area by the Angels in 1967 (this is, coincidentally, around the same time that the Angels made their business arrangement with the BEL to sell STP). The Jokers later relocated to Oregon and Washington. They are still active up north selling meth, and they are still scary as hell. We will absolutely have to come back to speaking about Oregon at some point.
Anywhoo, in Southern California around the same time, there were Satan's Slaves and the Straight Satans. According to DebS' research here, the Slaves were legitimate 1%-ers. In the US, they eventually patched over to become Angels. They still exist abroad in the UK and elsewhere. While they are not much discussed in Helter Skelter, the Straight Satans are discussed therein quite a bit. Deb believes that they were not nearly as tight and as legitimate of an organization as the Slaves were.
At least one gentleman was murdered in 1971 for the offense of impersonating a Satan according to an article found by DebS. Another that was written by Sue Marshall infers that the impersonators were police informants who used confiscated Satans membership paraphernalia as credentials. It also infers that Satans were not big time dealers: rather they only traded in small quantities. Supposedly, Danny DeCarlo was a Satan. This idea fits with the material contained in the following interview blogger Cybot referenced with Bobby Beausoleil, that was conducted by Oui Magazine, circa 1981:
Q. How did you know that it was strychnine instead of mescaline in such a short time? If you didn't try the drug yourself, how could you be certain that it was bogus or poison?
Bobby, who knew Gary as far back as at least October of 1967 according to evidence found at the murder scene, has perfected the art of looking the part of the pathetic victim of circumstance. Here, he is talking about a relatively small deal conducted for a small, loose-knit biker club with a tiny little manufacturer of "synthetic mescaline." This was an independent deal, not a "syndicate" deal, as Shreck would call it, which may also explain why Bobby handled the whole situation so ineptly. Why would the bikers think that it was strychnine? It is not a product of the chemical processes in question if the synthetic mescaline was STP or PMA. However, Robert Hendrickson suggests that Gary may have been experimenting with extracting scopolamine from Atropa belladonna. Strychnine and belladonna have an established historical connection: they used to be packaged together in Victorian times to treat a host of internal ailments, and can still occasionally be found together in over the counter "homeopathic" preparations. Either way, the experience would still have been extremely unpleasant.
As for Gary, what was his motivation? As Leary suggested, was he trying to raise a little money for his trip to Japan: a one-off kind of thing? Was his intention to become more involved at some point, or at least, did someone believe that was his intention? Did his being a buddhist with ties to Santa Barbara have anything to do with the BEL and/or his death?