Death Valley | 1969, July

07.01  Bernard “Lotsapoppa” Crowe is an on-the-scene dope dealer and pimp; he lives near Cass Elliot’s house, where the Manson group has spent time; one Family member will remember him as “the Negro member of the Family.”  Tex, who’s become a “burn artist,” has cleaned himself up to burn Lotsapoppa.  But Lotsapoppa doesn’t trust Tex, and holds Tex’s sometimes-girlfriend as a guarantee.  Tex gets ahold of the money and leaves her behind.  Lotsappopa makes a call to Spahn, asking for Charles, meaning Tex, but gets Charlie instead.  Charlie says Tex had left Spahn, but Lotsapoppa doesn’t believe him, and tells Charlie if he doesn’t get his money he’ll kill Tex’s girlfriend, and be out to Spahn with hoods and Black Power to murder the men and rape and murder the women.  Charlie can’t find anyone, not even bikers, to fill in the ranks, so Charlie goes to Lotsapoppa in Hollywood.  He takes T.J. the Terrible, a goonish Family member, and walks into the apartment, unties Tex’s girlfriend and has her go make coffee while he negotiates a truce.  Negotiations fail, and Charlie shoots Lotsapoppa, who plays dead (Lotsapoppa will survive).  Before leaving, Charlie takes a leather vest from one of Lotsapoppa’s men.  03  Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones drowns in his swimming pool at his home in Sussex, England.  04  At Blue Rock Springs in California, Michael Mageau is shot four times and Darlene Ferrin is shot five times with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol.  Mageau survives; Ferrin dies.  The crime is the second known attack of the Zodiac Killer.  04  In Los Angeles, Catherine Share visits a friend.  There, she meets 19-year-old Linda Kasabian, who, having left her husband on a search for God, is in the midst of a failed reconciliation attempt.  Share brings Kasabian back to Spahn.  After a two-day introduction to the Family—drugs, orgiastic sex, oneness—she fetches a bag of acid tabs and her daughter and moves in.  When she tells Tex about some money that’s back at the house where she’d been staying, he suggests she steal it for Manson.  The next day, she does—Leslie Van Houten takes the $5000 dollars to give to Manson.  Manson rewards Kasabian with sex.  05  Assassination of Tom Mboya, Kenyan Minister of Development.  14  Theatrical release of Easy Rider, directed by and starring Dennis Hopper, with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson.  15  The Black Panthers publish their ten point program, demanding: freedom, employment, an end to capitalism, housing, education, exemption from military service, an end to police brutality, release of jailed black men, fair trials, and national autonomy.  17  In L.A., Mark Walts, sixteen years old, disappears while hitchhiking.  His body, shot and mangled (run over by a car), is found the next day off Topanga Canyon Boulevard, in the proximity of the Canoga Park house where the Family sometimes stays.  Walts was a Family associate, visiting frequently.  He’d been shot with a .22, the same caliber as the gun that will be used in the Lotsapoppa Crowe shooting and Cielo Drive murders.  Walts’s brother, who may have also had interactions with the Family, issues a public statement, accusing the Family of the murder.  The police visit Spahn and ask questions, but no charges result.  At about the same time, another body is disposed of a few miles northeast of Spahn.  The victim wears clothing belonging to Susan Scott, a Family member and one of the original “Witches of Mendocino,” who had been living at Spahn until she disappeared.  State of decay precludes positive identification.  18  “Chappaquiddick Incident”: Edward M.  Kennedy drives off a bridge; Mary Jo Kopechne, campaign aide, drowns in the car.  18  LP release of The Soft Parade by The Doors.  19  Arlo Guthrie returns to the Newport Folk Festival.  In one month, the film version of his popular song, “Alice’s Restauraunt,” will hit theaters.  25  Stokely Carmichael meets Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers.  Cleaver says that his differences with other Black Power leaders remain unresolved.  25  Gary Hinman is a 34-year-old musician, Buddhist and hallucinogenic cook who lives near the Family’s digs in Canoga Park.  Hinman, an old friend of Bobby Beausoleil’s, and possibly his part-time lover (he may have also been Manson’s lover), sells Beausoleil a few thousand dollars worth of laboratory mescaline, his specialty.  Beausoleil sells the drugs to bikers, who later claim the wares were toxic.  Nobody believes the bikers, but Beausoleil goes to Hinman for a refund.  Hinman, who’s a gentle man, has been studying a rigid form of Buddhism that teaches him to say no; he says no.  Eventually, Bobby convinces Hinman to sign over his two cars, but the Manson women have already called Manson to the scene; Manson acts too soon—springing through the door and cutting Hinman’s face open with the “ceremonial sword” awarded to him by the Straight Satan motorcycle gang.  Manson is also after a recent inheritance that Hinman has received, but Hinman has spent all but 20 dollars on travel expenses for a trip to Japan (to study his self-assertive Buddhism).  Hinman isn’t convinced that the dental floss stitches of the Manson women will suffice to reattach his face, and he repeatedly requests medical attention.  Bobby doesn’t know what to do, and consults Manson, who has returned to Spahn, by telephone.  Bobby believes that Manson’s answer is to kill Hinman, which Bobby does, stabbing Hinman twice in the chest.  Hinman is active politically, and Beausoleil seeks to pin the crime on Black Power by writing on the wall and leaving a Black Panther symbol (all in Hinman’s blood).  28  On a night raid, police locate two stolen vehicles at Spahn.  They speak to Charles Manson, who identifies himself by the name Summers.  A search of the ranch yields rifles.  Police run license checks on numerous vehicles, including Hinman’s Fiat, which Beausoleil is driving.  30  LP release of In a Silent Way by Miles Davis.