July 27, 1969 - Hinman End

Mary shook the living room sleepers. "Bobby, Bobby, wake up. Breakfast. Wake up, Gary. Come to the kitchen."

Bobby flinched at the words, his nerves still on edge. He wondered why he was so jumpy, as last night he and Gary had come to an understanding. Everything, or rather everyone, was finally falling in line. Bobby nudged Gary, but Gary refused to budge. Bobby joined the girls, and they wolfed down bacon and eggs.

Once the pot and beers wore off, Gary's pain had returned with a vengeance. The wounds felt hot to the touch; the area swollen. New blood stains covered the throw pillow. Gary realized Sadie had lied about the wounds looking better. It was just another Family con to get him to agree to go to Spahn's. By now, Gary had lost a lot of blood, more than even he realized. The infection was seeping through his system, giving him a fever. For the first time since Manson's attack, Gary felt truly ill. Gary drifted back to sleep, his system too weak to remain conscious.

After breakfast, Bobby flopped into Gary's bed to get a few more winks. He didn't rise until the day was done.

Gary finally woke. He opened his eyes to see Sadie and Mary going through his things. Cabinets and drawers laid open, papers strewn on the floor.

Gary struggled to sit up. "What the hell are you doing? What are you looking for? You have no right to be going through my stuff! Get the hell out of here!"

Bobby's eyes popped open. He heard the ruckus. He got up and came face-to-face with a staggering Gary, yelling, cursing them all, and reneging on their agreement. Like a broken record, Gary again threatened to go to the hospital and call the cops.

Bobby looked around Gary and spied the girl's creepy crawl. He knew the girls had screwed up, but he was in no mood to apologize. He had enough of Gary's mood swings, and enough of the stress. Bobby shoved Gary onto the couch and dialed Spahn's.

The call was brief, and anything but sweet. Bobby said, " You better get back up here, Charlie. He ain't behaving. We ain't going to get nothing out of him. He ain't going to give up nothing. And we just can't leave. He's got his ear hacked off and he'll go to the police."

Charlie said he didn't want to have anything more to do with this and barked out his last order. "Well, you know what to do."

Bobby knew what Charlie meant.

One sentence. That was all it took to go from a bloody mess to murder.

Bobby slowly hung up the receiver and headed back to the living room in time to see Gary grab his jacket and the keys to the van, determined to leave at any cost.

Bobby ran for the door. The two struggled, one fighting to leave, the other blocking the door. Bobby reached for the black suede sheath that hung on his belt. He grabbed the Buck knife Charlie had given him when he joined the Family and stabbed his so-called friend.

Bobby stuck Gary twice in the chest. Gary's eyes bulged. Blood gushed out. He dropped the keys and his jacket and grabbed at his chest that was oozing a dark arterial flow. Gary gasped for air. Bobby must have hit a lung. Gary fought to reach the phone, blooding coating his fingers.

Mary screamed. Sadie looked on, wide-eyed, amazed at the grizzly sight.

Gary staggered forward a few feet, then crumpled to the floor. He landed to the right of the occasional chair and semi-diagonal to the exterior wall, mere feet from the kitchen phone. Bobby whispered in Gary's good ear. "Gary, you know what? You got no reason to be on earth no more. You're a pig and society don't need you, so this is the best way for you to go out. You should thank me for putting you out of your misery."

Gary looked up, wide-eyed at his friend. His breathing, spasmodic. It was doubtful Gary had registered what Bobby said. Yet, despite all the body trauma, Gary was still breathing. In Bobby's mind, that had to end.

"Sadie, get me a pillow, now!"

Sadie grabbed a bed pillow, handing it over to Bobby.

"No, you do it. I'll hold him."

Sadie laid the pillow over Gary's tortured face and pushed down with all her weight.

Gary violently thrashed, desperate to grab the pillow. He failed to do so in his weakened state. Gary gasped. Gurgling, blood filling his lungs his mouth. Within minutes, he lost his fight to live. At only 34, Gary Hinman was dead.

The three left him where he died, never bothering to close his eyelids.

Bobby and Sadie collapsed, their pulse racing, their eyes staring, unfocused. Mary slid down the wall, nearly catatonic from the shock.

"There was no way ‘round this. He reneged on our deal. He was going to squeal to the cops. I had no choice. He gave me no choice. We had everything figured out between us last night. Then you two go pull a creepy crawl. You set him off again, and this time for real. I had to stop him. He had to die."

"I'm so sorry, Bobby. We were just looking for his plane ticket to pawn. We never thought he'd hear us. He looked like he was out cold. We thought you'd be down first, or we'd be done before you guys woke up," mumbled Sadie.

After a time, still high on adrenaline, nervous energy, last night's pot, and sleep deprived, Bobby and Sadie giggled, then belly laughed, then howled. Mary's mind registered the uproar and joined in on the morbid glee. After the glee subsided, the trio stared at the ravaged corpse, not knowing what to do.

***

Many minutes passed. The bookcase clock chimed ten times.

The tolling bells twigged in Bobby's brain. He left his reverie state. "Charlie is always saying how we got to blame Blackie for all of society's woes. Why don't we blame this on the Panthers? It'll get the cops off our scent and get the Panthers off Charlie's back, too."

Sadie heard Bobby's words and raised her head, looking wide-eyed and hopeful. "Yeah, but how?"

"You and Mary go ‘round the place, make the beds, get rid of the pot, and the beer cans and the extra dishes. Wipe everything down that we've touched. I'll take care of the Panther angle."

And like the well-behaved female robots they were, trained to take orders from any Family man, the girls scampered off, erasing any evidence they had been at Gary's at all.

One of the three killers dipped a towel into the blood pooling on Gary's chest, reached over his body to the exterior wall and wrote, POLITIC AL PIGGY — the AL on a separate line. (Bobby later said he had no memory of blood writing. If you compare the G on the Hinman wall to the Tate front door, they are very similar. It's my contention Sadie wrote both.) Bobby capped off the hot-button phrase with a bloody paw print. (By the look, somebody else blood drew the cat's paw.) Once the artwork was done, Sadie and Bobby surely assessed the result. In their feeble minds, satisfied the ruse would stick. (Simpleton Bobby forgot palms have prints, too. The girls didn't wipe everything. Bobby's fingerprint was found in the kitchen.)

The girls finished the clean-up. All three were eager to split, the black night offering them cover to flee.

No one looked at Gary's body when they left. They didn't ponder the result when a corpse is left in the heat and to the flies. Bobby merely locked and closed the doors. After scanning the drive for oncoming cars, the trio jogged down the stairs. Bobby hot-wired both cars, and they returned to Spahn's.

Charlie had been anxiously awaiting their return. It had been three days of hell at Hinman's. But no one at the ranch knew, judging by Bobby's demeanor. Charlie, Clem, and Bruce were hanging out on the boardwalk when the trio pulled up. Bobby couldn't wait to brag to the men. Mary skipped into the kitchen, whispering details to Brenda, Sandy, and Gypsy. Sadie wandered into the gun room, all a-glow with her signature glassy-eyed stare. She asked Danny. "Can I be in charge of the knife sharpening from now on?"

Darkness cloaked Spahn Ranch, as it did every night as this late hour. But on this night, darkness came with the stench of death. A wholly new, vile, and evil wind blew over the Family. A wind that would grow stronger as the calendar pages flipped on.