Poking a Dung Pile

Fennario If you read through the court documents and/or listened to the Dead and Gone podcast, you can't help but think to yourself, "After the murders, did Bo act like a brazen killer or he did merely act like a callous shithead?" Here I'm going to assume (as I have all along) that the following accounts are true.  I'm going to weigh statements attributed to Bo individually, and then weigh them together.   1. " Jong Cheol Cho: Cho was a traveling Deadhead. The referee found Chaffee knew of Cho, whose name and address were disclosed in a police report. Cho testified that he knew someone named Bo, but no one named James Bowen. Cho identified pictures of James Bowen as the man he knew as Bo. Cho was in Rainbow Village the night of the murders. The morning after, he had a conversation with Bo and another man he knew as Weston about the previous night. Bo said either, 'I' or 'we' 'went swimming into [sic] the bay last night.'  In response,...

I want to return to using the metaphor of a puzzle to help me (and perhaps you) to think about what happened on the night of August 15/16.  I can piece together three separate clusters but I still need pieces to put them together.  These are: 1. A cluster of pieces revealing what happened between 2200 on the night of August 15 and 0230 the morning of August 16.  The pieces here are statements or testimony given by David Bergman, Jim Prew, Robbie Van Heest, Ralph International Thomas, and Vincent Johnson. 2. Another cluster revealing what happened during the attacks. The pieces here are statements or testimony given by the police and the medical examiner that describe the crime scene and the injuries/wounds found on the corpses. 3. A third cluster describing the bizarre and/or suspicious behavior of James Bowen during the morning of August 16.  The pieces here are the statements and testimony given by Dan Adams, Claus von Wendel, and Jong Cheol Cho abou...

In this post, I want to zoom in on Johnson's testimonies during the preliminary hearing and the trial.  So I'll repeat the summary of his testimony regarding what he witnessed in the early morning hours of August 16, then  I'll look at the details critically. "In the very early hours of August 16, 1985 Vincent Johnson spent time visiting with a friend in his bus.  Because the friend was afraid to drive herself back to Berkeley, Johnson accompanied her out to University Ave., and then walked back to Rainbow Village.  As he was returning, he saw Mary, Greg, and International standing together near the dump office.  This was around 0230.  Johnson testified that he quickly walked by them (within 15-20 feet) without saying anything, and he had the impression that International looked 'angry.'" Around the time that Jim Prew, Mary, Greg, Paul Harter, and International returned to the Village after giving Chris Campbell a ride home, Johnson drove down to Unive...

Vincent Johnson may be (or may have been) one of the last people to have seen Mary and Greg alive, and he turned out to be a key witness for the prosecution.  So he deserves some attention. Writing for the  Oakland Tribune ,   Lonnie Isabel interviewed Johnson in January 1985.  Isabel describes Johnson as a wiry, 36 year-old native of Los Angeles with bushy brown hair who'd been living on the street for four years. ( Oakland Tribune , January 24,1985) At the time, he lived in a brightly colored bus that counted among some two dozen vehicles parked on 5th street in Berkeley. Johnson counted himself among those who lived on the street by choice, not among those living there by necessity.  "'Some people are here because they have to be here,' said Johnson inside the bus. 'It's hard to explain why I am here.  I'm here because of the chance to produce a community out of this.'" ( Oakland Tribune , January 24,1985) Those living in Rainbow Village describ...

Before I lay out this timeline, I want to note that it's important to distinguish the idea of Rainbow Village from the physical  site  where this idea was realized for a little over a year, beginning in January 1985 and ending in March of 1986.   01.30.85 - The City of Berkeley moves Rainbow Village from its location on 5th Street between Cedar and Virginia to the maintenance lot at the old city dump and composting site. 02.06.85 - Berkeley City Council sets April 5 as a deadline for the Village's stay at its new location. 02.15.85 - The city provides toilets to the Villagers.  The fire department bring alarm bells, buckets, and two large drums of water for fire fighting. 02.26.85 - The City Council is briefed on the possibility that Rainbow Village may have to return to the streets of Berkeley. 04.30.85 - The City Council extends the deadline for moving the Village to July 28. 06.05.1985 - Almeda County Superior Court signs an injunction in which the terms for ...