Poking a Dung Pile

Deadhead - Someone who loves--and draws meaning from--the music of the Grateful Dead and the experience of Dead shows, and builds community with others who feel the same way. ( Skeleton Key:A Dictionary for Deadheads , p. 60) Tourhead - Heads who go out on tour regularly, driving from venue to venue--often all night--living in "tourbuses", inexpensive motels, or nearby dorm rooms or student co-ops for each run.  ( Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads , pp. 290-1) In the days following the murders, the Gioia family tried to counter the media's characterization of Mary as a drifter.  The San Francisco Examiner  described Mary and Greg  as "two East Coast Drifters and Grateful Dead fans." ( San Francisco Examiner , August 19, 1985).  The San Francisco Chronicle  referred to them as "two young drifters whose devotion to the Grateful Dead rock group kindled a romance just days before their deaths." ( San Francisco Chronicle , August 19, 1985)  A drifte

The truth still lies in the Deadhead community.  If there are still missing pieces of the puzzle, then there are people in the Deadhead community who have them. Among those gathered at Jim Prew's van on the night of the murders was a young man named Robin Van Heest.  This is a name that's not mentioned in the podcast.  In the court documents I have, his name only appears once, in a footnote: "At oral argument, Thomas also criticized Chaffee for failing to follow up with potential witnesses Robin van Heest, Chris Campbell, Jim Prew, Paul Harter, and John Chandler, whose names were contained in initial police investigation reports. Thomas has offered neither testimony nor declarations from these witnesses and thus has failed to make any showing concerning what impact the failure to interview them had. We need not consider them further." ( In Re Ralph International Thomas on Habeas Corpus ,   p. 23, note 6) The Berkeley Marina Murders  gives the reader some indications a

"The best years of my life.  Yeah, I learned so much.  It was better than college, for sure.  I learned so much.  I learned how to support myself.  I learned I could make a living off of my artwork and my creativity.  I learned finance by watching people sell drugs and watching the economics of drug sales is like the economics of selling anything that there is a demand for."  ("Anne" Dead and Gone , Episode 4) Testimony given during the evidentiary hearing held in 2002 suggests that drug dealers were present in Rainbow Village on the night of the murders and that Mary and Greg knew at least one of them.  These drug dealers spent a good amount of time in Santa Cruz, so it may be useful to consider the murders against the backdrop of the homicides that occurred in Santa Cruz County (where Mary Gioia herself may have been living just prior to her arrival in the Bay Area) during the months leading up to, and the months following, their killing.  Early in the morning on

"The truth lies in the Dead community, and the lawyer [Chaffee] never went there.  They knew Bo.  They knew Mary.  They knew Greg.  They were the sea in which they swam." (Alex Reisman,  Dead and Gone.  Episode 3 )  James Chaffee didn't take his investigation beyond questioning some of the "permanent" residents of Rainbow Village to include those in the Deadhead community who had been staying there around the time of the murders.  Several years later, James Barnes did what Chaffee failed to do, and sought out Deadheads for information.  By his own account, he exercised a reasonable amount of skepticism in conducting his investigation. To maintain an appropriate level of skepticism while thinking about this case, I've sought out accounts similar to the ones given by Carol Brightman in her Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead's American Adventure,  and  Carolyn Ruff's account of her time as a "Tourhead" back in