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August 2021—Farnum, Massachusetts
Karen and Gil were sitting in a classroom at the Farnum Community School. Principal Donna Karpinsky and the admin assistant, Barb Bell, were rummaging through a box of files labeled “1971–1972.” Everybody was wearing COVID masks—some cloth, some disposable.
Karen closed yet another folder. “We aren’t sure she was even here, and we don’t know what name she would have been registered under. If she was here, she would have been in about sixth or seventh grade, maybe.”
Donna said, “We pulled the records from here, the middle school, and the commune school. We keep them in a warehouse downtown.”
There was a knock on the door, and a woman in her seventies came in. “Hi Carole!” said Barb. “Everybody, this is Carole Newly. She was a teacher here back in the early seventies, and I thought she might be able to help. Carole, please put your mask up over your nose. It doesn’t work unless you do that.” Carole gave a sheepish look and complied.
Donna motioned for Carole to sit. “This is exciting,” said Carole. “Like Law and Order! I’m not sure I’ll be much help, but I can tell you what it was like back then.” She lowered her mask, took a big gulp from her water bottle, smacked her lips, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then put her mask back up. “Back then, I was teaching ninth- and tenth-grade English. In the early seventies, the commune started up their own school. Since they weren’t accredited or anything, it was officially considered homeschooling, but they actually had some good, experienced schoolteachers create the curriculum and teach the students. The students got all the normal subjects, but they had a lot more music and art, and also the commune’s version of religious studies.”
“Religious studies?” Gil asked.
“Well, I think they considered what they had as a kind of spiritualism rather than a religion. It combined some aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism. Some mysticism too.
“After a few years, we started to get some of the hippie children. We ended up with quite a lot of them over the years. They were poor, dirty, and smelly, but some of them were wicked smart. Their parents seemed that way too. They could have been stockbrokers or lawyers, but most of them just chose to work on a farm for a while. Anyway, we weren’t ever confident that their identities were valid, but the superintendent convinced the school board that the kids needed to be schooled regardless of whoever they were.”
“Why didn’t you believe their identities?” asked Karen.
“Some of them had names that sounded made up, both the parents and the kids. The hippie movement hadn’t been around for very long, so it seemed like they invented those names just before showing up. You know, instead of Jane, you had Jasmine, and instead of Joe, you had Josiah.”
Gil asked, “What did you think about the last names they gave?”
“Some of them seemed fake too, but it didn’t matter. We used whatever names they gave us. Most of them were from other parts of the country. You could tell by their accents and their different worldviews. A lot of them were from New York City and New Jersey.”
“These boxes have the records from the commune’s homeschool program,” said Donna. “Here are the class pictures from the sixth and seventh grade.” She handed them to Karen and Gil.
Gil put his reading glasses on and looked them over. “Ha, I suppose this could be her!” He looked at the list of names at the bottom. “This says the girl’s name was Angel Forest. That definitely sounds made up.”
“Why do you think it’s a made-up name?” Karen asked.
“Back then, I never heard of any girl named Angel. Also, whenever I’ve seen that last name, it has two r’s but this has only one.”
Barb rummaged around and said, “Here’s her record. Her registration gives an address on Kingsbury Road, which was definitely the commune. It says she started on May 11, 1971.”
“Can I borrow this picture?” Karen asked. “I’ll send it back.” Donna nodded. “Also, could you fax me a copy of the record?”
As they were walking out, Gil smiled at Karen. “Angel Forest could have been the angel in my nightmares.”
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They had the windows down while they rode back to Greenfield, so they didn’t feel the need to wear their masks. Karen’s phone rang, and she answered it through the car’s audio system. A woman said, “Detective Tindall, this is Terry Billings. You questioned me and my husband a few weeks ago about a hippie family?”
“Hi, Terry. Of course, I remember you. I’m driving in a car with Gil Novak here too. What’s up?”
“Well, I talked about your investigation on the Astral Plane Facebook page a while back. There was a little back-and-forth about how interesting that was. A few people remembered a little bit about it. But just last night, somebody said that they saw the family on Poet’s Seat Mountain all those years ago, and there was a third child who was severely disabled. Was the child who died disabled in some way?”
Karen looked at Gil, whose face also showed excitement. “Well, I can’t talk about the specifics of the investigation, but I can tell you that I’m really interested in contacting this person.”
“So this could be a hot lead in a cold case! His name is Joel Friedman. I’ll text you his number.”
“Thank you so much, Terry. I really appreciate this.” They ended the call.
Gil was piecing together the details. “So maybe a Facebook post could have been how the person who tried to kill me knew about this investigation.”
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They returned to the police station and Karen set up a Webex call with Joel Friedman in the conference room. “Hi, Mr. Friedman. I’m Detective Tindall with the Greenfield Police Department. Thank you for talking with us.” Gil thought he looked like an executive.
“Please call me Joel.”
“Okay, Joel. This is Gil Novak, who is assisting me with this investigation. We understand that you remember meeting a family up on Poet’s Seat Mountain back in the seventies.”
“Yes, that’s correct.” He chuckled. “I was a real hippie back then. A handful of us were hitchhiking and walking through Massachusetts, headed toward Farnum to check out the commune. At some point, this guy caught up to our group and asked us where we were headed. He was interested in checking out the communes too, but he was camping out with his kids and couldn’t walk with us. As we were walking and talking, he offered to share some weed with us if we wanted to hike up a little mountain. Some girl and I took him up on his offer. You’re not going to arrest me if I admit to smoking pot back then, are you?” He smiled.
Karen smiled. “Pot’s legal in Massachusetts now, so you’re okay. What was the girl’s name?”
“Oh, I have no idea. I never really got to know her. Anyway, when we got to his campsite, I thought it was kind of cool because they were living in this cave. There were two girls there and one of them had a baby. We were passing around a joint, and all of a sudden, this deformed little kid showed up making an awful screeching noise. It couldn’t walk, but it was sort of crawling around. It freaked us out, so we left.”
“Did you ever see this family again?”
Joel thought for a minute and said, “I think I remember seeing the guy around the commune once or twice, but I never talked to him. I don’t know his name or anything.”
Gil moved closer to the webcam. “Where do you live, and what do you do for a living?”
“Oh, I retired a dozen years ago. I was a stockbroker for Ziegler in the city. Now I live in my beach house on Long Island and mostly on my sailboat in the winter. I usually sail down to the Virgin Islands. I’ll be heading out next month.”
“Nice!” Gil said. “One other thing, did you use your real name while at the commune?”
“Ha, no I didn’t! My name was Rowan, Rowan Solus.”