CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 2015 OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 2015 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CONVICTS WHO DON'T DESERVE PAROLE HEARINGS”
Consider the criminal history of Bobby Beausoleil, 67, the latest follower of Charles Manson to come up for an automatic parole hearing.
Among the lesser-known members of the
murderous so-called Manson "Family,” Beausoleil was a Manson henchman who
fled Los Angeles after the 1969 murders of musician Gary Hinman and movie
stuntman Donald “Shorty” Shea. Caught near San Luis Obispo and jailed, he
could not participate in the group’s notorious slayings of actress Sharon Tate
and grocer Leno LaBianca a few days later.
Beausoleil was up for a routine,
periodic parole hearing late this winter, with Gov. Jerry Brown yet to decide
his fate. As it did with fellow Manson acolyte Bruce Davis last year, there was
every likelihood the state Parole Board would order him released on the basis
of advanced age and good behavior while in prison.
The Manson cases raise the question of
whether some crimes are sufficiently heinous to merit a special classification,
one amounting to locking them up and throwing away the key without ever holding
parole hearings like those given Davis, Beausoleil and Manson himself every few
years.
The question takes on urgency because
this will likely be the last time the fate of either Beausoleil or Davis will
be decided by Brown, who will likely be the last California governor with any
personal recall of the horror of their crimes and the wave of fear and panic
they spawned across wide parts of the state. The current front-runner to
succeed Brown, for example, is Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor and a
former San Francisco mayor who was two years old when Manson & Co. spread
the chopped body parts of Hinman and Shea across the Spahn Movie Ranch in
Chatsworth.
It’s
an open question whether an old crime story like this would have the same
impact on him that Brown’s memories do on his actions. Brown lived in Los
Angeles at the time.
The
Hinman and Shea murders marked the beginning of the Manson Family’s campaign of
killings. Years after he was convicted, Beausoleil said he went to Hinman’s residence
in the Santa Monica Mountains with two “Manson girls,” one of them Susan Denise
Atkins, who would die in prison after being convicted in the Tate-LaBianca
slayings.
His
alleged mission: To recover money previously paid to Hinman for mescaline which
had later been sold to the Straight Satans motorcycle gang, operating in
the Los Angeles area. The bikers demanded their money back when they discovered
the drug was flawed. Beausoleil said Manson ordered him to hold Hinman at
gunpoint until he arrived and began trying to extort money from Hinman by
cutting his ear off with a sword, among other tactics. Eventually, Beausoleil
told authorities, Manson told him to kill Hinman and he did, Davis
also being convicted in the murder. They scrawled “Political Piggy” on a
wall with Hinman’s blood, hoping to make police believe the slaying was done by
political radicals. The scene presaged what Atkins and others wrote on the
walls at the gruesome LaBianca murder scene.
Eventually, Hinman was chopped up
along with Shea, who Manson allegedly feared would turn him in to Los Angeles
police. Parts of their bodies were found on the Spahn Ranch, the scene of many
early Western movies.
Few relatives of the victims survive
today. A Hinman cousin living in Denver regularly opposes parole for anyone who
participated in his murder. The same for Tate’s sister Debra, her lone
surviving family member.
Few doubt that Beausoleil, Manson and
others in their grisly crew deserved the death sentences they first received,
later changed to life in prison.
In his message denying parole last
year to Davis, Gov. Brown clumsily but accurately opined that “In rare
circumstances, a murder is so heinous that it provides evidence of current
dangerousness by itself.” That is also true for Beausoleil, whose role in
Hinman’s death was larger than Davis’.
There are a few other killers who
could fit the same category, like Richard Ramirez, the recently deceased Night
Stalker whose crime spree terrorized both the Los Angeles and San Francisco
areas.
People like these, as Brown implied,
should never be freed. So it’s high time legislators create a new category of
convict beyond the reach of parole, taking their eventual fate away from
politicians who might not even remember them and their misdeeds.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough,
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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