What I've Learned about Mary

 

Recently, I've learned a little bit more about Mary Gioia, the Deadhead scene near Santa Cruz, and those who existed on the margins of that community.   A "tour rat" who'd arrived in California about a month and a half before the murders kindly shared this information.  This person remembers Mary as having visited Greyhound Rock/Davenport Beach a few times.  Mary was "full of life"--"incredibly vivacious and radiant."  Her "beauty and strong spirit" turned heads and attracted the guys' attention.

I'd formed my own impressions about Mary after reading her mother's book and the snippets of information that Mary communicated in her letters and phone calls.  I'd imagined that there were things about Mary that her mother didn't know about, and that her decision to go on tour was one of those things.  My source has challenged that image, explaining to me how Mary was "different," as not being involved "in the 'lifestyle' of it all", not "living for tour," and it was their impression that "she was going to school or looking for a chef job."  These memories definitely fit the image of Mary that her mother and her family gave the media in the days following the tragedy.

Regarding the Deadhead scene around Santa Cruz in the summer of '85, my source remembers there being "weird and scary non-deadhead hangers on" who they found "creepy even before Mary's murder."  Lastly, for this person, the murders led to a "loss of innocence" as a result of recognizing how "vulnerable and risky" living as a "moderately homeless" tour rat could be.

At the end of the letter to her mother, Mary wrote:  "At my friend Rusty's near the ocean in Santa Cruz, not too far away.  If I listen for it I can hear the waves crashing in..." (The Berkeley Marina Murders, p. 16)  I asked about Rusty.  My source remembered a Rusty who may have lived in Santa Cruz.  He was "a fixture around shows" but "this may have only been those on the west coast."

And I enquired about Gnome.  She's remembered as a fixture on tour who sold jewelry.

In an earlier post, I talked about who might have pieces of information without knowing it:  "There may be individuals who won't know they have information until they become aware of it and 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."  This has proven to be true.