Thanks to Dooger for this pic!
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Home Movie Clips of Clyda Dulaney
The narrator is Johnny's childhood friend, Ginger.
Thank you, Ginger and Johnny!
Monday, January 6, 2014
The Missing Link, Part Penultimate
Parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series can be found here, here and here.
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.
We are interested in a very short capsule of time when studying the murders, which might be described as the proverbial "perfect storm." We know that up north, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (BEL) had deals with the Panthers, with the Gypsy Jokers and also with the Angels (see here). To the south, the mob had been in Hollywood for quite some time, but were not really involved in the trade of psychedelics. If anything, they were supplying cocaine, but not on the scale that they later would. In the summer of 69, there was a market for psychedelics, and there were many competing parties who wished to be the fulfillment arm of the BEL drug empire.
The BEL began as a group of high school students in Anaheim. You will remember that John Griggs, founder of the BEL, hadn't tried LSD until he and his friends
dropped acid near Palm Springs. Griggs relieved a "famous producer" of his cache of Sandoz LSD during a Hollywood Hills dinner party in 1966. That experience was the birth
of his organization, which he preferred to call a church rather than an
organized crime syndicate.
By all reports, Griggs was well intentioned about using LSD to the betterment of humanity. The BEL lobbied to become an official, tax-free religious organization: when it was accomplished, he named California Governor Ronald Reagan as an honorary member!
Anyway, Patty digresses. The point of all off this is that the identity of the producer who had a kick ass, laboratory grade connection and who did not prosecute Griggs may be relevant. Who and what the famous producer actually produced is unknown. Patty has compiled a short list of guesses, as follows:
Bob Evans was very close friends with Roman and Sharon and had produced Rosemary's Baby. He hosted a large, lavish funeral reception for Sharon. Bob was an infamous partier who, with his brother Charles, was convicted of cocaine trafficking in 1980.
Clive Davis was general manager of Columbia Records by 1965. He is responsible for signing Janis Joplin after the Monterrey Pop Festival of 1967, and for bringing the Grateful Dead to the Arista Label in the 70's. Bob Weir would occasionally change the lyrics of Jack Straw in concert from "we used to play for silver, now we play for life," to "we used to play for silver, now we play for Clive."
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.
Chuck Barris, of all people, is a weirdly compelling shortlister. Wait a sec, hear Patty out before you start L'ing YAO. Chuck Barris married Lyn Levy, whose father founded CBS, in 1957. He first became uber-successful during 1965 with his creation of The Dating Game on ABC. He also produced the Canadian-based Bobby Vinton variety show and infamously claims to have worked for the CIA.
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.
Is it safe to say now that everybody absolutely did know everybody else on the scene in 1969? How to the LaBiancas fit in to all of this?
According to police investigation reports, Leno was part-owner of nine thoroughbred horses. He liked to make large bets at the track, frequented Las Vegas as late as March, 1969 and had misappropriated about $200,000 from his Gateway Markets since 1964. When he met and married Rosemary, she was a waitress at the Los Feliz Inn. At the time of her death, she had two dress shops: one having just been opened on Figueroa Street in LA. This is not a nice area. In fact, it is within yards of noisy Interstate 5 which runs from Mexico, where Rosemary was born, all the way to Canada.
Leno was a board member at the Hollywood National Bank. It is long gone, but it used to sit a block south of Hollywood and Vine at Argyle. Today, this is next to the Pantages Theater and within view of the Capitol Records Building (see left). According to an article at TOTLB, Hollywood National opened to much applomb in 1964 with appearances by celebrities and government officials. Wouldn't you just love to know which ones? Patty sure would. She would also love to see Hollywood National's books, or at least a copy of the local and federal investigations into them. By 1967, Leno's colleagues were being investigated and convicted for laundering "hoodlum money." By 1971, the bank was bought out by United States National Bank of Portland; by 1973, it became a part of Wells Fargo.
The BEL's ability to produce Orange Sunshine was
financed by Billy Hitchcock, a richie rich from the East Coast who rented Millbrook in 1963 so that Tim Leary, et. al. could perform their "research" there in peace. He was a member of the Carnegie Mellon family on his mother's side: "old money" they call it, with ties to huge companies like Gulf Oil, Alcoa, New York Shipbuilding, Westinghouse, Newsweek, U.S. Steel and General Motors.
He had large deposits at The Castle Bank & Trust, an infamous Bahamanian bank founded in the 1960s by a former member of the US Office of Strategic Services and a tax lawyer friend. In 1967, the bank's clients were celebrities, organized crime figures and wealthy business owners like Hitchcock, Credence Clearwater Revival, Tony Curtis, Hugh Hefner, the Pritzker family (Hyatt Hotels), and Las Vegas gangster Moe Dalitz.The Mary Carter Paint Company, one of the the bank's shell companies, later became Resorts International which built a luxury hotel in the Bahamas called Paradise Island. President Richard Nixon stayed there on many occasions. Castle Bank contributed quite a bit of money to his re-election campaign, as discovered by the Ervin Committee in 1972.
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.
By this time many investors including Billy Hitchcock had moved their funds elsewhere. The IRS planned to initiate a new investigation called Project Haven into the affairs of individual Castle Bank clients like Billy's college chum, Sam Clapp.
However, according to the Wall Street Journal, the investigation was dropped because of "pressure from the CIA." Castle Bank collapsed in 1977 leaving poor John Fogerty and many others in the lurch. You can draw your own conclusions about that. In any case, Patty would love to find a connection between Hollywood National and The Castle Bank or any of its shell companies, and she is still looking into it.
Phew...that was a lot. Are you still with Patty? Let's sit on that for a while. She promises the next post will be the last in this series. Happy New Year, and PEACE.
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.
By all reports, Griggs was well intentioned about using LSD to the betterment of humanity. The BEL lobbied to become an official, tax-free religious organization: when it was accomplished, he named California Governor Ronald Reagan as an honorary member!
Anyway, Patty digresses. The point of all off this is that the identity of the producer who had a kick ass, laboratory grade connection and who did not prosecute Griggs may be relevant. Who and what the famous producer actually produced is unknown. Patty has compiled a short list of guesses, as follows:
Bob Evans was very close friends with Roman and Sharon and had produced Rosemary's Baby. He hosted a large, lavish funeral reception for Sharon. Bob was an infamous partier who, with his brother Charles, was convicted of cocaine trafficking in 1980.
Clive Davis was general manager of Columbia Records by 1965. He is responsible for signing Janis Joplin after the Monterrey Pop Festival of 1967, and for bringing the Grateful Dead to the Arista Label in the 70's. Bob Weir would occasionally change the lyrics of Jack Straw in concert from "we used to play for silver, now we play for life," to "we used to play for silver, now we play for Clive."
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.Chuck Barris, of all people, is a weirdly compelling shortlister. Wait a sec, hear Patty out before you start L'ing YAO. Chuck Barris married Lyn Levy, whose father founded CBS, in 1957. He first became uber-successful during 1965 with his creation of The Dating Game on ABC. He also produced the Canadian-based Bobby Vinton variety show and infamously claims to have worked for the CIA.
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. 
According to police investigation reports, Leno was part-owner of nine thoroughbred horses. He liked to make large bets at the track, frequented Las Vegas as late as March, 1969 and had misappropriated about $200,000 from his Gateway Markets since 1964. When he met and married Rosemary, she was a waitress at the Los Feliz Inn. At the time of her death, she had two dress shops: one having just been opened on Figueroa Street in LA. This is not a nice area. In fact, it is within yards of noisy Interstate 5 which runs from Mexico, where Rosemary was born, all the way to Canada.
The BEL's ability to produce Orange Sunshine was
financed by Billy Hitchcock, a richie rich from the East Coast who rented Millbrook in 1963 so that Tim Leary, et. al. could perform their "research" there in peace. He was a member of the Carnegie Mellon family on his mother's side: "old money" they call it, with ties to huge companies like Gulf Oil, Alcoa, New York Shipbuilding, Westinghouse, Newsweek, U.S. Steel and General Motors.He had large deposits at The Castle Bank & Trust, an infamous Bahamanian bank founded in the 1960s by a former member of the US Office of Strategic Services and a tax lawyer friend. In 1967, the bank's clients were celebrities, organized crime figures and wealthy business owners like Hitchcock, Credence Clearwater Revival, Tony Curtis, Hugh Hefner, the Pritzker family (Hyatt Hotels), and Las Vegas gangster Moe Dalitz.The Mary Carter Paint Company, one of the the bank's shell companies, later became Resorts International which built a luxury hotel in the Bahamas called Paradise Island. President Richard Nixon stayed there on many occasions. Castle Bank contributed quite a bit of money to his re-election campaign, as discovered by the Ervin Committee in 1972.
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. 
Phew...that was a lot. Are you still with Patty? Let's sit on that for a while. She promises the next post will be the last in this series. Happy New Year, and PEACE.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
A Happy Ending for Jeff K
Friend of the Blog Jeff K wrote to Patty on January 2 to let her know that he got his money back from Auction Doctors. They are the company that ran Susanna Lo's ebay auctions for walk-on roles in the ill-fated Manson Girls movie. See here for the rest of the story.
Thank you Auction Doctors! You get the Patty seal of approval. :)
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Manson Family Scabs
Imagine......you are in a dark, hot, cramped room with 20 or 25 other people, sweating, coughing, feeling down-right dusty, dirty, itchy, and feverish while trying to sleep after a night of passionate, but uncomfortable group love-making. Although you haven't had access to a shower, bathtub, or even a regular toilet in months, you stay, even if the discomfort is overwhelming. This group of people you call your brothers & sisters have shared everything, including food, clothing, bedding, sex partners & body fluids. The stench coming from the stained mattresses is enough to make a monkey puke, but you just can't think of any other place you would want to be. Of course, slowly the physical discomforts start to outweigh the camaraderie you have shared with your special family. You notice in the morning, after not sleeping a wink from the intense itching & burning coming from your buttocks that tiny, red pustule-like blisters have appeared in the webs of your fingers, and toes. You really start to feel ill now, especially after you try popping one of many hot, hard boils that have constantly been appearing & reappearing on your body throughout the last, few months. The group you have been with over the last year seems to have the same thing, and it has become common place to see pustules, blisters, scabs, bites, and lesions on the skin of just about everybody you are near, not to mention hearing all the complaints of frequent, burning sensations while urinating, and yellow/green discharge coming from the genitals of just about everyone. Your family seems to be grouchy, constantly hungry, itchy & dirty, and feeling like shit most of the time, but nobody seems to want to leave. The music, drugs, and oneness with each other is all that matters! And, of course, you couldn't ever abandon Charlie, could you?
The above narrative is probably an accurate description of a "day-in-the-life" of a typical Manson-Family member starting in the summer of 1969. Things really started turning ugly for this group of people, and their kinky, fairy-tale lifestyle started giving way to a more commando, militant life, that wasn't all flowers, music, good sex & fun. These people were living in cramped, dirty "shacks" with no running water at times. They also had a poor diet, eating food from dumpsters, and a lot of sugar. All of this could not have helped their health. In writing this piece, I really started to wonder about the different ailments some of them (or all of them) suffered from, so....I contacted Dr. David E. Smith of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, who was kind enough to answer some of the questions I had concerning this topic. As he remembers it, this group suffered from..... you guessed it, scabies, and staph infections due to poor hygiene, along with everyday, old-fashioned STD's. He said the skin ailments were treated with medications, soap & water, and pHisohex, which was a medicated cleaner used in the 1960's primarily to treat acne. He did say that these conditions appeared in a lot of communes at the time, and weren't unique to Manson's group. We would like to thank Dr. Smith for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer my questions!
Here are a few examples of where I read about skin problems, infection & personal hygiene:
1.) Sadie, during her grand jury testimony was asked if she was barefoot the night of the Tate murders. She answered "Yes, I was. I had quite a few sores on my feet from infection, and I couldn't wear shoes.
2.) During one of many police interviews, Stephanie Schram is asked by a Detective Gleason if she remembered seeing a girl out at Spahn's ranch that had infections on her legs that never healed, and left scars. Stephanie told the detective that she did, indeed remember who it was that had these. It was a girl by the name of Gypsy. She also told the detective that Gypsy was fat, and was staying out at Devil's canyon all the time. Was she banished, I wonder because of her weight? That seems a little bit egotistical. I thought they weren't supposed to have egos anymore?
3.) In Paul Watkins book "My Life With Charles Manson" he mentioned seeing boils all over Bruce Davis's neck while they were out in the desert.
4.) In Paul Watkins book he said that starting in the spring of 1969, the Family no longer had access to bathroom facilities, and were living in tents down by the creek at Spahn ranch. They did rinse off in the creek, but didn't have access to showers/bathtubs. Imagine the smell. Wouldn't have been pleasant. He did mention that they had, at one time been very clean, because Charlie demanded that everyone pay close attention to personal hygiene, and keep themselves, clothes, and the musical instruments spic & span. Things changed, though.
3.) In Paul Watkins book "My Life With Charles Manson" he mentioned seeing boils all over Bruce Davis's neck while they were out in the desert.
4.) In Paul Watkins book he said that starting in the spring of 1969, the Family no longer had access to bathroom facilities, and were living in tents down by the creek at Spahn ranch. They did rinse off in the creek, but didn't have access to showers/bathtubs. Imagine the smell. Wouldn't have been pleasant. He did mention that they had, at one time been very clean, because Charlie demanded that everyone pay close attention to personal hygiene, and keep themselves, clothes, and the musical instruments spic & span. Things changed, though.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Happy New Year!
A Happy, Healthy & Prosperous New Year One and All!
Trilby, that's the best I could do...
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Where's the Manson Bus?
Where is the blue Manson Bus that was photographed at Barker Ranch, today? Patty received permission this week to tell you the story that Paul Dostie told Matt, Liz and her in May, 2012.
The story goes like this:
Susan Atkins told an investigator that she left the Barker Ranch in October, 1969 to get baby Zezo. Two male bikers from Venice, CA accompanied her back to Barker. This story was corroborated by Linda Kasabian's lawyer because Linda picked up baby Tanya in LA at the same time. When Sadie and the bikers arrived at the Goler Wash, Manson and three male Family members asked her to continue up the wash on foot. Supposedly the bikers were "never heard from again."
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."
In the past, there have been rumors that this well was a "mine shaft," but it is not. It goes straight down into the silt, not horizontal into solid rock. It would be a good source of water because the dry lakebed there which often fills in winter is most always wet just a few yards down. The thing is, if you don't maintain your well after a hard rain, the water, dirt and rocks from the wash will fill it in right quick. This is what happened with the well in question. Supposedly after the bikers were dumped there, nature did the rest. There's even greenery growing on top now, so you really cannot see a darned thing from the top.
A friend of Sgt. Dostie's, "BG," told him that:
"around 1974, BG was visiting a friend ("TO"), who was the caretaker at the Barker Ranch. The caretaker decided to get rid of the Manson bus that was in the front yard because it was attracting too many tourists. The bus was cut up with a torch and they hauled the pieces down to the bottom of the Goler Wash in multiple trips on a flat bed truck.
At the bottom of the Goler Wash, there was an open pit well about 9 feet in diameter and 60 feet deep. There was a lot of junk and trash at the bottom of the well. They threw the pieces of the bus down the well and when they finished, it was 15 feet from the top. Subsequent flash flooding filled the well in and the location is indistinguishable from the surrounding desert...Investigative information indicates that there may be two or more victims at the bottom of the well."
Sgt. Dostie says that satellite tests could reveal a large amount of iron underground in the place that has been identified, but to date, nothing has happened because said tests are very expensive.
Now you know!
The story goes like this:
Susan Atkins told an investigator that she left the Barker Ranch in October, 1969 to get baby Zezo. Two male bikers from Venice, CA accompanied her back to Barker. This story was corroborated by Linda Kasabian's lawyer because Linda picked up baby Tanya in LA at the same time. When Sadie and the bikers arrived at the Goler Wash, Manson and three male Family members asked her to continue up the wash on foot. Supposedly the bikers were "never heard from again."
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."
In the past, there have been rumors that this well was a "mine shaft," but it is not. It goes straight down into the silt, not horizontal into solid rock. It would be a good source of water because the dry lakebed there which often fills in winter is most always wet just a few yards down. The thing is, if you don't maintain your well after a hard rain, the water, dirt and rocks from the wash will fill it in right quick. This is what happened with the well in question. Supposedly after the bikers were dumped there, nature did the rest. There's even greenery growing on top now, so you really cannot see a darned thing from the top.A friend of Sgt. Dostie's, "BG," told him that:
"around 1974, BG was visiting a friend ("TO"), who was the caretaker at the Barker Ranch. The caretaker decided to get rid of the Manson bus that was in the front yard because it was attracting too many tourists. The bus was cut up with a torch and they hauled the pieces down to the bottom of the Goler Wash in multiple trips on a flat bed truck.
At the bottom of the Goler Wash, there was an open pit well about 9 feet in diameter and 60 feet deep. There was a lot of junk and trash at the bottom of the well. They threw the pieces of the bus down the well and when they finished, it was 15 feet from the top. Subsequent flash flooding filled the well in and the location is indistinguishable from the surrounding desert...Investigative information indicates that there may be two or more victims at the bottom of the well."
Sgt. Dostie says that satellite tests could reveal a large amount of iron underground in the place that has been identified, but to date, nothing has happened because said tests are very expensive.
Now you know!
Monday, December 30, 2013
Did Tex Watson Sustain a Football Brain Injury?
Recently, there's been alot of buzz about football head injuries, especially with young boys, and the lasting effects. Then I was reading about TEX Watson and he really did play football. What IF he suffered a significant head injury in school - that may explain his absolute craziness at Cielo Drive, Waverly, and elsewhere. Just a thought that may deserve discussion.
YES, football players with past head injuries are violent and "killing" people. PBS did a whole show on the subject. IF TEX was actually affected, that could be huge news!!
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Helter Skelter, Charles Manson sign upsets some residents
According to the North Kitsap Herald Reporter, the Helter Skelter Lounge in the 19000 block of Viking Avenue has come under fire recently for its sign that shows the words “Helter Skelter” next to a large drawing of Charles Manson’s face. As many has 40 people have complained about the sign online, with most saying it shined a negative light on Viking Avenue and the small Kitsap community.
“Helter Skelter alone is fine,” area resident Amber McIntosh told the Herald. “With Manson’s image on it, it’s his (version of) ‘Helter Skelter.’ I think it’s racist and in bad taste.”
The owner of the lounge, Joe Boyle, said he was expecting some complaints when he put the sign up. Boyle is a music lover, and typically associates Helter Skelter with the Beatles’ song, he said.
Still, he decided to pair the name with a picture of Manson’s face because of the bizarre connection Manson had to the song. Manson allegedly believed the Beatles’ lyrics were secretly coded to encourage a race battle. He said he decided to put the face together with the words to tell the whole story, knowing the face would garner his bar some attention.
“I knew I would hear something when I put the sign up,” Boyle told the Herald.
Boyle told the Herald he has received calls of support about the sign, and an online discussion between sign detractors and proponents continues.
Charles Manson, who is recently married, is currently in prison.
Thanks to Chatsworth Charlie
Friday, December 27, 2013
More on the "Missing Link:" Bikers and Meth
Parts 1 and 2 of this series can be found here and here.
We cannot go much further with Patty's current line of inquiry without addressing methamphetamine (aka meth) and biker culture. Admittedly, Patty doesn't know shit about any of it firsthand. However, she once had biker neighbors who were probably cooking meth. She knows this because of the weird foot traffic, the weird hours, the weird smell, and the rather large, glass shattering explosion at 2am several years back. Patty became
peripherally friendly with them, and they protected Patty's property from harm on more than
one occasion. She felt that they were good people with bad habits and worse friends.
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.
Another place that a friend of the blog has suggested is involved in our story is Carbon Canyon, which is just east of Brea in Orange County. He says that "after getting LSD in Laguna, kids would go to Carbon Canyon and drop it." There was a bar there at the time called "La Vida" which was part of an old hot springs and soda pop factory. It became dilapidated by the 1960s: it was a hippie/biker hangout until the late 70's, at which point it became a notorious underground punk club. Patty is not sure if you can still get a beer there or not, but she thinks not. Patty's friend compares Carbon Canyon to Topanga and (like Patty, Mom Patty and Jamul) remembers that he was forbidden to go out there. He would anyway, but it was "wild," and you NEVER went alone. This may be because La Vida was purportedly a bar that served "many patches."
In Northern California, the Hell's Angels made a deal with Nick Sand to distribute his leftover cache of STP by selling it as "acid" on the street. In return, Sand would make methamphetamine for them. As you know, this is
what the Angels were messed up on at Altamont. As we discussed last time, meth is very similar to
MDA, as are the starting materials. Sand just put some of the batch aside to be processed in a slightly different way to give a slightly different product. In this way one could make a case for the California methamphetamine trade having risen from the earlier trade in psychedelics.
As a result of the deal made with Sand, the Angels got a bad reputation for their bad "biker acid" (Patty wonders aloud if the Woodstock catch phrase "don't eat the brown acid" was some of the same stuff?). As a result, by 1968 the BEL was shopping around for new distributorships or franchises to peddle their wares. This created a large part of the internal chaos within the BEL that culminated with the death of founder John Griggs who ingested a bad (or over-) dose of "synthetic psilocybin" that was making the rounds just days before Cielo.
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. Why did you go to Gary Hinman's home on July 25th, 1969?
A. I didn't go there with the intention of killing Gary. If I was going to kill him, I wouldn't have taken the girls. (Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins). I was going there for one purpose only, which was to collect $1,000 that I had already turned over to him, that didn't belong to me.
Q. When had you given him the $1,000?
A. The night before.
Q. You paid Hinman $1,000 for 1000 tabs of mescaline and then returned to the Spahn Ranch?
A. Right. The whole transaction with the Straight Satans motorcycle club took place at Spahn's Ranch. There were a few Satan Slavers hanging out there as well. The Straight Satans took the mescaline back to the motorcycle club at Venice where they were intending to party, they were really mad about it.
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?
A. I don't think that those guys would have lied to me. They wouldn't have been that mad.
Q. How long had you and Hinman been doing these transactions?
A. Very rarely. I just happened to know that he had something. I was trying to be a nice guy, trying to be in with the fellows, trying to impress somebody.
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.
It is also interesting to Patty to hear that there were also Satan's Slaves at Spahn, who had known ties to the BEL during a very unstable time in California's drug trade for all of the reasons mentioned above, and more. Were Satan's Slaves the source of the chaos that ensued when someone realized that established territory was being impinged upon? Was Bobby auditioning for a larger role in an already established organization, or maybe just filling in for someone else like one of the two Charleses, since the stakes were pretty low?
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?
That's enough to think about for now. Does Patty even need to say that THERE'S MORE?!
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.
Another place that a friend of the blog has suggested is involved in our story is Carbon Canyon, which is just east of Brea in Orange County. He says that "after getting LSD in Laguna, kids would go to Carbon Canyon and drop it." There was a bar there at the time called "La Vida" which was part of an old hot springs and soda pop factory. It became dilapidated by the 1960s: it was a hippie/biker hangout until the late 70's, at which point it became a notorious underground punk club. Patty is not sure if you can still get a beer there or not, but she thinks not. Patty's friend compares Carbon Canyon to Topanga and (like Patty, Mom Patty and Jamul) remembers that he was forbidden to go out there. He would anyway, but it was "wild," and you NEVER went alone. This may be because La Vida was purportedly a bar that served "many patches."
As a result of the deal made with Sand, the Angels got a bad reputation for their bad "biker acid" (Patty wonders aloud if the Woodstock catch phrase "don't eat the brown acid" was some of the same stuff?). As a result, by 1968 the BEL was shopping around for new distributorships or franchises to peddle their wares. This created a large part of the internal chaos within the BEL that culminated with the death of founder John Griggs who ingested a bad (or over-) dose of "synthetic psilocybin" that was making the rounds just days before Cielo.
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. Why did you go to Gary Hinman's home on July 25th, 1969?
A. I didn't go there with the intention of killing Gary. If I was going to kill him, I wouldn't have taken the girls. (Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins). I was going there for one purpose only, which was to collect $1,000 that I had already turned over to him, that didn't belong to me.
Q. When had you given him the $1,000?
A. The night before.
Q. You paid Hinman $1,000 for 1000 tabs of mescaline and then returned to the Spahn Ranch?
A. Right. The whole transaction with the Straight Satans motorcycle club took place at Spahn's Ranch. There were a few Satan Slavers hanging out there as well. The Straight Satans took the mescaline back to the motorcycle club at Venice where they were intending to party, they were really mad about it.
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?A. I don't think that those guys would have lied to me. They wouldn't have been that mad.
Q. How long had you and Hinman been doing these transactions?
A. Very rarely. I just happened to know that he had something. I was trying to be a nice guy, trying to be in with the fellows, trying to impress somebody.
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.It is also interesting to Patty to hear that there were also Satan's Slaves at Spahn, who had known ties to the BEL during a very unstable time in California's drug trade for all of the reasons mentioned above, and more. Were Satan's Slaves the source of the chaos that ensued when someone realized that established territory was being impinged upon? Was Bobby auditioning for a larger role in an already established organization, or maybe just filling in for someone else like one of the two Charleses, since the stakes were pretty low?
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?That's enough to think about for now. Does Patty even need to say that THERE'S MORE?!
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