Timeline - Rainbow Village

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 continuing occupation of Rainbow Village at its site near the Berkeley Marina are set.

08.16.85 - Greg Kniffin and Mary Gioia are murdered.

11.01.1985 - Sometime in the days prior to this date, the Berkeley Parks and Recreation Commission voted to join the Waterfront Commission in recommending to the City Council that Rainbow Village should be evicted from its location by March 2,

11.04.1985 - Berkeley police begin issuing citations for vehicles parked illegally at Rainbow Village.

12.12.1985 - A fire breaks out in Rainbow village and a man dies in his burned out trailer.  The man is later identified as Jeremy Kehoe (35).

01.07.1986 - The Berkeley City Council decides that Rainbow Village cannot stay at its waterfront location and must move by March 3.

03.03.1986 - Residents of Rainbow Village are evicted.

03.26.1986 - Harry Shorman files suit against the City of Berkeley, demanding $6.3 million in compensation for violations of his civil rights.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Fear stalks Berkeley's Rainbow Village"

Image
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 .   T o some, cynicism may  appear to be s kepticism , 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
Read more

Brazen Killer or Just a Callous Shithead?

Image
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,
Read more

"But, still, you should be straight up with people. Let 'em know."*

Image
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 assessment of the report
Read more