The same night that Tex was doing his drug burn in Hollywood, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) Homicide Sergeant Paul Whiteley and his partner, Deputy Charles Guenther, were dispatched to Gary Hinman’s house in Topanga Canyon.
Arriving around 10:00 p.m., Whiteley shined the flashlight up ahead as he and his partner entered through the unlocked door to the tree room, off the patio. As flies buzzed around them in the hallway, he pushed aside a white sheet that hung across the doorway to the living room. Scanning the room with the light beam, he settled on a figure in the corner, covered with a green blanket.
Peeling it off, they found a man lying on his back, with his head against the north wall, under a Buddhist shrine. His white shirt had two tears down the front, the top button of his jeans was undone, and he was still wearing his wristwatch. A set of chanting beads lay on the floor, about six inches from his hand, where he’d let go of them as he took his last breaths.
Whiteley pulled out the wallet protruding from the victim’s pants pocket, and examined his driver’s license to confirm his identity: thirty-four-year-old Gary Hinman.
In what looked like the victim’s blood, his killer had written “POLITICAL PIGGY” on the wall above Hinman’s head. A simulated paw print was also drawn in blood to the left of the words.
In a green filing cabinet, Guenther found a pink slip to the Nash Rambler parked out front. With no carburetor, the car proved to be inoperable. The detective also found paperwork for two used cars, a Fiat and a Volkswagen minibus, which Hinman had purchased “as is” in March. Failing to locate either vehicle on or near the property, they put out an APB flagging them as stolen from a homicide victim, which, in those days, took a couple of days to distribute.
In the kitchen, they took note of the window, left ajar, above the table, whose legs were broken. A trumpet case, some Scottish plaid material, and a checkbook lay on the floor underneath.
Just below the sink, they found a bullet hole through a cabinet drawer. Although they couldn’t locate the bullet, a ballistics expert located a 9-millimeter slug in the exterior wall behind the sink a month or so later. Ballistics tests determined that it came from an Astra, Browning, Luger, Radom, Star, or Walther semi-automatic pistol.
The detectives also found a trail of blood on the north wall that flowed up from the table, to the cupboard, and onto the fridge. Inside the cupboard they found a homemade scale with some curious white powder on it. But the powder tested negative for narcotics, which conflicted with the stories circulated later by Bobby and other Manson Family members that Gary was a drug dealer.
The doorjamb leading into the tree room was fractured and dented as if someone had kicked in the door and forced his way through. The question was, who? And why fatally stab a simple-living music teacher, then leave his watch but steal his two beat-up used cars?
Gary Hinman’s colleagues and family were just as confused as the sheriff’s investigators about why anyone would kill the friendly Buddhist.
The phrase “pig” or “piggy” was typically used by hippies to ridicule cops or a member of the establishment. “POLITICAL PIGGY” seemed to be a variation on that, but Gary was neither kind of piggy, nor was he involved in politics.
“It didn’t make sense,” said his friend Darren Crabstreet.
Crabstreet had met Gary at the Buddhist Shakubuku in North Hollywood about eighteen months before his death, when he said Gary had been “in a bad way” with “drugs and other problems.”
Describing Gary as shy with a warm smile, Crabstreet recalled talking with him about his marijuana use. He told Gary that he could reach a higher level of consciousness without smoking pot, and as far as he knew, Gary had quit after that.
Although Gary came from a well-off family who lived in Fort Collins, Colorado, his cousin Kay Hinman Martley said he had no money of his own by the time he was murdered, because he’d spent it all to go on a pilgrimage with his Buddhist group to pay homage to the Dai-Gohonzon in Japan.
Gary’s mother was rocked to the core by the news of her favorite child’s murder. She died a year later of a brain aneurism or stroke.
“His death took her so hard,” said Martley, who was three years older than Gary and grew up playing with him. “The whole family has always said that’s what killed her, the trauma . . . It was like it took part of her body with her. She just idolized Gary . . . They’re buried next to each other, which, again, shows you.”
On August 6, ten days after the Hinman murder, Bobby was driving Gary’s Fiat on Highway 101 just past San Luis Obispo, when it broke down, unable to make it up the Cuesta Grade.
With no money, no options, and several days of little or no sleep, Bobby crawled into a sleeping bag in the back seat and fell asleep. He woke up at 10:50 a.m. to see a California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer at the window.
“What’s the problem?” the officer asked.
Bobby replied that his car had broken down. He was going to try to fix it and head on his way.
Asked for his driver’s license and registration, Bobby wasn’t able to produce any identification, but said his name was Jason Lee Daniels. As Bobby was flipping through his wallet, a Union Oil credit card in a woman’s name caught the officer’s eye. Bobby said it belonged to a friend.
When the patrolman also noted that the car’s pink slip was in someone else’s name—Gary Allan Hinman—Bobby claimed he’d bought the vehicle from a black man about two weeks earlier for two hundred dollars, another attempt to deflect blame onto the Black Panthers.
The final straw came when a check on the Fiat turned up the APB from the LASD. The officer promptly arrested Bobby on suspicion of auto theft and called the LASD.
At the jail, Bobby admitted to the booking deputy that his real name was Robert Kenneth Beausoleil. He also gave his address as Spahn Ranch in Chatsworth.
Deputy Guenther and Sergeant Whiteley hit the road for San Luis Obispo as soon as they got the call, arriving around eight o’clock that night. First thing, they headed to Jim’s Body Shop to search the Fiat, which had been towed and secured in the garage.
The detectives opened the rear door, lifted the rubber floor mat, and removed the wooden cover over the spare tire. Lifting out the tire, they found a knife in a leather sheath tucked underneath, with what they described as “Spanish hieroglyphics” on the blade.
At the jail, Guenther took note of Bobby’s real name and address, and collected the pink slip as evidence.
Under questioning, Bobby admitted to being at Hinman’s house with two women, but refused to identify them. He said they would come forward on their own volition to clear him, because he was innocent.
The detectives said they would be happy to find the women if that would absolve him, but Bobby wouldn’t budge.
“I would want to talk to an attorney before I give you the names of the girls,” he said, which promptly ended their conversation.
Arresting Bobby for the murder of Gary Hinman, the detectives brought him back to Los Angeles, where he was formally charged with murder with malice aforethought on August 7.
Bobby called the ranch collect from the LA County jail that night, saying he was being held without bail on suspicion of murdering Gary.
Charlie was on a road trip to Big Sur at the time, but Bobby’s call sent ripples through the Family. They discussed ways to free him, ranging from breaking him out of jail to casting blame for the murder on someone else, like the Black Panthers.
Sadie was already doing her part to deflect by telling alternative versions of the events at Gary’s house that gave her a larger role in the killing. In one story she was the one who stabbed Gary, because he was attacking her. In another, Bobby stabbed Gary, but so did she. Other versions had drug dealers at Gary’s house, whom he had burned by not paying them, or who had given him bad dope, or vice versa.
“She had stories, you know,” Mary testified later. “Sadie’s imagination runs sometimes.”
Sadie also claimed that she, not Bobby, had written the words in blood on the wall, and that Leslie had been there with them. Leslie, who had lived with Bobby for a while and was still very tight with him, was upset by the news of his arrest.
Mary tried to take Bobby some clothes to wear to his arraignment the next day, but the jail deputies wouldn’t let her see him.
The next morning, Friday, August 8, Charlie returned to the ranch in a white bakery van with Stephanie Schram, a seventeen-year-old he’d picked up hitchhiking near Big Sur a few days earlier. Stephanie, who had been living with her sister in San Diego, was on a road trip with a male friend whom she ditched immediately after meeting Charlie.
Mary talked briefly with Stephanie, then used the white van to drive to San Fernando, where she and Sandy Good were arrested for using stolen credit cards. They both ended up at the women’s county jail, the Sybil Brand Institute, charged with forgery.
Later that evening, Charlie took Tex aside to talk to him about his plan to start a killing spree that night, one that would send a tremor throughout the country.
Then he carefully selected three girls whom he knew would not challenge his directives to go along with Tex: Katie, Sadie, and a new girl named Linda Kasabian.
Linda had only been with the Family for about a month. Gypsy had brought the long-haired sandy blonde and her baby girl Tonya to the ranch on July 4 after suggesting that Linda join the “love, beauty and peace” at the commune.
Serving as a proud surrogate for Charlie, Tex had sex with Linda that first night, before she’d even met the group’s leader. Later describing himself as Charlie’s “right-hand man,” Tex said he helped to introduce Linda to the Family’s “truth” that night, even though he knew Charlie typically performed the new girls’ sexual initiations.
Linda, who had just turned twenty, had already been married twice, but said she’d never had such a “total experience” making love with anyone else. She felt “possessed” during their lovemaking, and couldn’t unclench her hands afterward. Twenty-three-year-old Tex was moved, too, feeling “a more complete sensation of oneness” with her than he’d felt with any other girl before.
Asked, as usual, if she had any money to contribute to the Family, Linda told Tex about a five-thousand-dollar inheritance that a friend had planned to use to send her and some others on a sailing trip to South America.
When Tex tried to convince her to steal the money, Linda initially resisted. “Hey, I can’t do that, he’s my brother,” she said.
But he kept on her about it until she gave in. “There is no wrong,” he said, explaining that it wasn’t her friend’s money; it was everybody’s money, there for them to take. So they did, and turned it over to the Family.
After that first “caper”—as some group members called such crimes— Tex and Linda grew very close. And after making such a sizable monetary contribution to the Family, she quickly became a trusted member.