Poking a Dung Pile

Near the Site of Rainbow Village Reading through various documents yesterday I wanted to refresh my memory, and they reminded me of how imprecise the timeline I've given is. For example, to fit Jim Prew's account of when the party at his van ended (0200-0225) with Vincent Johnson's account of seeing Thomas with Mary and Greg, I've assumed that this encounter took place around 0230. I've assumed that it would have taken about 5-10 minutes for Johnson to ride with his friend down to University Avenue and that it would have taken him about 15-20 minutes to walk the distance between University Avenue and the entrance to the dump. I've assumed that Mary and Greg left the Village immediately after leaving the Prew’s van and that Thomas caught up with them before they walked by Cercy's car. Had they not stopped at the car, it would have probably taken them about 8-10 minutes to walk down to the dump entrance so I’m assuming it probably took them about 15 minutes to...

Two Gravel Roads I wanted to visit Cesar Chavez Park to get a sense of how long it would take someone to walk from the site of Rainbow Village to the approximate location of where Mary and Greg were shot. I also wanted to see if I could find some indication of where the entrance to the Berkeley dump might have been, because Vincent Johnson testified that he saw Ralph Thomas with Mary and Greg near the entrance.  When I arrived I assumed that the terrain of the Park is very different from the terrain of the dump, but I also assumed that a section of what's now the Dorothy Stegmann perimeter trail roughly follows what was once the access road to the dump and to Rainbow Village. To get an overview of the area of the park I'm talking about, you may want to go to Google Maps and take a look at the satellite image of Cesar Chavez Park. To me, the park looks like a rhombus, and the side I'm focusing on is the east side of that figure. If you follow the Stegmann trail from the sout...

My wife, Moonflower, and I flew out to San Francisco for the 60th anniversary shows this weekend, and today we took some time to go over to Berkeley and visit Cesar Chavez Park, where we picked some beautiful flowers to lay at the memorial to Mary and Greg... Some thoughts to follow in a separate post…

Here's my theory on what happened in the early morning of August 16, 1985. At around 2200, a small group of folks (including Dan Adams, Robbie Van Heest, Chris Campbell, Paul Harter, Mary, Greg, and Ralph Thomas) gathered at Jim Prew's van, where they hung out for a couple of hours. Prew testified that, some time between 0100 and 0130, he left Rainbow Village with Thomas, Mary, Harter, and Campbell to get some more beer and burritos and to drop off Chris.   Greg didn't go along. As they returned, they saw Greg on University Avenue and stopped to give him a ride back to the Village.  Shortly after they returned to the Village (approximately 0200), Greg and Mary left the group to take a walk, and Thomas followed them. It's likely that the three walked from the Village toward the dump entrance, and on the way, they had to pass Vivian Cercy's vehicle. As they walked, Thomas decided to scare Cercy, who was spending the night in the car with her two young daughters. Cercy...

I recently traveled to the Bay Area for a conference, but I did not to go Cesar Chavez Park, even though I'd intended to go. I had the time and the means to get there, but I chose not to go because I listened to two episodes of Season Four of  Up and Vanished (" In the Midnight Sun") and this left me dispirited. I wanted to see if Payne Lindsey had done as shoddy a job of 'investigating' a new story as he'd done during his 'investigation' of the murders of Greg and Mary. Sadly, dumbass continues. (Listen for yourself. Here's a link to an Episode 1 update .) Lindsey doesn't podcast to help others get closer to the truth. Nope. He podcasts to feed his ego. So I sat in a hotel room very early on a Saturday morning, listening to the nonsense while I tried to figure out how long it would take me to take the BART over to Berkeley and then to walk to the park. I thought about using ride-share to get there more quickly. And as I sat there listening to ...

How long can a rage last? In  People v. Thomas  Justice Mosk argued that, to him, the evidence suggested that the murders had resulted from "an explosion of violence" and "a brutal attack." In another post , I argued that Greg and Mary had been viciously attacked because a weapon was at hand before and during the attack and this indicated that the attack had been deliberate. I now think that Thomas more than likely committed the murders and that he had to return to Rainbow Village to get his rifle before he attacked Mary and Greg. I think that Vivian Cercy heard Greg say to Thomas, "Leave her alone; she's got two kids" before Thomas approached her vehicle, and that this sparked Thomas's anger and gradually sent him into a rage. Did Thomas attempt to scare Cercy before or after Vincent Johnson saw him with Greg and Mary near the dump gate? Johnson testified that Thomas looked angry when he saw them around 0230. What bugged me about this detail early...