Puzzling Out the Truth...

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 Harter, Chris Campbell, and Robbie Van Heest.  

In the next circle we find those in and around the Village on the night of the murders.  Again assuming they're still alive this would include Megan Barry, Weston Sudduth, James Bowen, Claus Von Wendel, Jong Cheol Cho, "Stagger" Lee Andersen, Berney Royster, Tracy Scarborough, Vincent Johnson, and Vivian Cercy.  

The next one would include people like Randy Turley, Gnome, Robert Herbert, and David Kohn, all of whom knew Bo and Weston, but weren't present in or around he Village on the night of the murders.

The last concentric circle would include artifacts and documentation such as the Vapour tape (on which an interview with Vivian Cercy is recorded) police reports, photographs, the autopsy reports, trial transcripts and other court documents, and, if they exist, the notes of the woman who interviewed Weston Sudduth.

Outside of these concentric circles I imagine there are people who could emerge to provide more puzzle pieces.  Examples of people like this might be the "male friend" with whom Mary drove out to California, or the person named "Mike" who Mary knew in San Francisco.  Or maybe someone with whom Mary stayed while in Santa Cruz.  Of course, one can't rationally expect that individuals will just "come out of the wood-work" offering valuable pieces of information without crowd-sourcing.  Interviews must be done and word spread within the Deadhead community. There may be individuals who may not know they have information until they recognize that they're connected to the case in some way, and this may not happen until they're questioned about what they might know.  They may have information but they may not know how valuable it is.

Of the four circles, the outer one containing reports, transcripts, etc., are likely to contain the most important pieces because they will amount to the more stable pieces of evidence and testimony that will allow for an evaluation of less stable pieces evidence and testimony.  Why would we want to do this?  Memories fade, thus they qualify as unstable pieces of testimony.  To illustrate what I mean here, let's assume that a woman did interview Weston Sudduth sometime in the 90's, and let's assume we could get the notes from the interview.  They would reflect Sudduth's recollections approximately a decade (more or less) after the murders.  We could use the notes to evaluate the claims Sudduth made (based on more faded memories) in his interviews with Lindsey in 2020.  We could find discrepancies and agreements  between them and the interviews.  To offer yet another illustration, let's say that someone gets ahold of Robbie Van Heest and interviews him today.  One could take this interview and compare it to the statements he made to the police a day or two after the murders.

A critical evaluation of all newly acquired pieces of the puzzle will either help to stabilize them by fitting them into two or more pieces already worked into the overall "picture," or lead to discarding them as irrelevant or flimsy.  A critical evaluation will help to minimize the chance of "forcing" pieces to fit together.  Questions will need to be asked, fair-mindedness rigorously maintained, and a respectful candor regarding the process and progress of the investigation extended to those who choose to participate.

This puzzle can be worked, but it can only be worked through a cooperative effort aimed at the truth being made known.