Poking a Dung Pile

Quick Update:  I've added more newspaper clippings, including over twenty related to Rainbow Village.  I'll be working on a timeline related to the establishment and closing of the Village in my next post . Now, let's return to the analogy between the case of the Berkeley Marina murders and a puzzle.  Given the court documents and the edited segments of the interviews Payne Lindsey conducted for the podcast, it seems to me that the puzzle looks like this: Assuming that there are pieces yet to be obtained, where would one look for them?  From whom might one expect to be given these pieces?  I think of the remaining puzzle pieces as being scattered among several concentric circles of people, all of which have Rainbow Village as their center.   Near the center of the first circle we find those who gathered at Jim Prew's van on the night of the murder.  They may have puzzle pieces.  Assuming they're still alive, this would include Jim Prew, Paul...

Candor matters. I came across Dead and Gone in February 2021, and I was hooked by the story, because I like listening to Grateful Dead music and the podcast focused on a crime committed in the mid 80's—around the time I was about Greg Kniffin's age, the same age of some interviewed for the podcast.  After I  finished listening to the ten episodes, I went to Reddit to see what others had thought about the podcast and to see if anyone else (e.g. amateur sleuths) had done work on the case.  I came across a thread with the heading, " Lies By Omission By The Duplicitous Payne Lindsey ."  Here I found a link to  People v. Thomas.  I read it and used it to check Lindsey's reporting.  This document led me to look for other court documents that I also used to check Lindsey's reporting.  I also used them to evaluate the postings in the Reddit thread.  While I think some contributors were not fair to Lindsey, nor were they being accurate in their assess...

So, at this point, I believe I've sifted through enough information in the court documents, newspaper clippings, and the podcast to reach some conclusions and plot where I need to go next. Fair-mindedness matters. Fair-mindedness matters when it comes to doing good police work.  It matters in prosecuting offenders, and it matters in defending the innocent.  And it matters when it comes to good reporting.  In this post I'll try to show how the investigations into the murders of Mary and Greg might show bias, confirmation bias, and thus a lack of fair-mindedness. It seems to me that, early in their investigation the police focused on a black man with prior felony convictions, who owned a gun, and they didn’t turn their attention from him.  Patricia Gioia's book gives an account of the investigation the day after Mary's body was found floating in the lagoon.  During a call with Mary's brother, Gerry, we're told that Dan Wolke "...surmised Mary and Greg came ba...

"What more do you need to hear? He thought for a minute.  It does however also validate what everyone said about Bo.  He's not your run-of-the-mill happy hippie.  He's got some whole other thing goin' on.  You got a little taste of it."  James Barnes ( Dead and Gone ,  Episode 9, "Long Black Veil") "You know, honestly, I've been pretty certain--as certain as you can be without being a witness--Bo did it and that Weston was with him there that night. So it's kind of reassuring, in a way, that we had it right." "It was very, very telling what you got from Weston.  And from Bo, honestly it doesn't surprise me.  We thought the evidence showed he did something terribly violent, very kind of anti-social. Violent and anti-social behavior, and that sort of encapsulates what his response to you was.  It was violent.  It was anti-social." Alex Reisman,  ( Dead and Gone ,  Episode 9, "Long Black Veil") In Episode 9 of Dead ...