"Fear stalks Berkeley's Rainbow Village"

In this post I will try to walk a thin line between skepticism and cynicism with regard to the veracity of Vivian Cercy’s testimony.  To some, cynicism may appear to be skepticism, so I will give a definition of skepticism, and then I’ll give a definition of cynicism to distinguish the two clearly.  Skepticism is merely maintaining an attitude of doubt with regard to the truth of a claim or set of claims.  Cynicism, on the other hand, is an inclination to believe that people are purely motivated by self-interest.

So there are many reasons to be skeptical regarding the veracity of Vivian Cercy’s testimony, and these go beyond her claim to have seen Mary and Greg with a tall, skinny, blond man around 0130.  These are reasons that prosecuting attorney Jim Anderson (a cynic, in my opinion) could have given a jury to get them to doubt the truth of her entire testimony.  They explain why Vivian Cercy may have told Vincent Johnson  that, “she actually had not seen anything on the night of the murders and that ‘everything she said, she said because Harry [Shorman] told her to say it.” (Thomas v. Chappell, p. 6)  Why would Harry ask Vivian to do this and why would she comply?

On Sunday, August 19, two local newspapers published very different stories that may help us to understand what could possibly have motivated Shorman and Cercy to concoct a story.  The first is a piece from The San Francisco Chronicle titled, “‘Deadheads’ Had Been Lovers-Hunt for Clues.”  The other is from The San Francisco Examiner titled “Fear Stalks Rainbow Village.” In the Chronicle one reads:

“At the village yesterday, neither residents nor other Deadhead visitors displayed grief or fear that the violence could be repeated."

"Six residents sat around a coffee table in the crowded corral of buses. One played guitar, a woman knitted and a young child named Harmony ran underfoot. Later, two men practiced fencing, and a group went to People's Park for a concert.”

Add to this the caption to an accompanying photo of “Dan Reynolds” (aka Dan Adams) "sunning himself" by what one assumes are the Dead On and the Blunder Bus, and you don't get the impression that these people are afraid of there being a  killer in their midst.

In contrast, the Examiner reported, “In this refuge for the poor, residents have been shaken by the weekend murders of two young East Coast drifters and Grateful Dead fans who were staying at Rainbow Village before they each were shot once in the temple last week.”  

“The homeless who fought long and hard to build the 6-month-old community say they now have two fears: for their safety and for their existence.” 

So two very different stories about the residents of Rainbow Village published two days after Mary and Greg were killed.  The second of the two could have bolstered the argument Jim Anderson wanted to  make to the jury to discredit Vivian Cercy’s testimony.  How?

The fears the Examiner describes could be understood to have been twofold:  People in the Village feared that the murders could be used as a "reason" to shut the place down.  And so (it could be argued) the story some residents told immediately after the murders tried to place the blame on an outsider; it couldn’t have been an insider.  And it’s easy to see why Harry Shorman, a staunch advocate for the residents of Rainbow Village, told Vivian Cercy to say everything she said.  He may not have done this out of self-interest, as Jim Anderson might have argued; that’s a cynical view.  Rather, Harry might have tried to draw attention away from the residents of Rainbow Village and the possibility that one of the homeless people living there could be responsible for the murders, just to save the Village.  Save it from what or from whom?  Politicians and developers. So this is a story that Jim Anderson may have told the jury to try to discredit Cercy's testimony.

Here’s a question:  Among the people who pointed to the thin, tall, blond man named “Bo” and said he might have committed the murders, how many were trying to achieve the same thing as Harry Shorman?  What were their motives?

And here’s another question that turns cynicism on the cynic:  What self-interests led Jim Anderson to prosecute Ralph Thomas the way he did?