LEARY is not considered dangerous and is not known to carry weapons or resist arrest. He often smiles at law enforcement personnel. Many consider it a taunt. He is married to a former fashion model named ROSEMARY and has a son, JACK. This is his third marriage. His first wife committed suicide.
Laguna Beach PD has LEARY under irregular surveillance. FBI has a dossier on LEARY, little of which has been shared with us (see Orange County FBI Resident Agency, Special Agent Hambly).
It is known to law enforcement that LEARY’S Laguna Beach parties and “happenings” encourage illegal drug use, permissive sexual behavior, and anti-American sentiments. LEARY was arrested for possession of marijuana in Laredo, Texas, last year. If convicted, he faces a thirty-year sentence.
Various Sheriff’s Department informers supply firsthand information on Leary’s activities. Of these, JANELLE VONN, through her personal relationship with LEARY, is our most productive. They met at a “be-in” (drug party) in Laguna Beach in the summer of 1968. JANELLE accompanied JESSE BLACK, a young musician, to this party. BLACK and LEARY are friends. LEARY is forthcoming with JANELLE about his opinions and activities. He has made no threatening or sexual advances toward her. JANELLE admits to using LSD. Although JANELLE is nineteen years old, we feel that she is not in danger in her capacity as a paid and voluntary Sheriff’s Department informant.
We also believe it possible that JANELLE has admitted her connection to us to LEARY and BLACK, and that any information she supplies is possibly misleading or false. Calls made to and from her phone and taped by JANELLE are likewise suspect.
EVERY EFFORT HAS BEEN MADE TO CORROBORATE JANELLE/LEARY INFORMATION WITH TWO (2) OTHER SOURCES.
Nick scanned the pages that followed.
There were encounters with Leary, as described by Janelle to del Gado and Gant. He had joints in his pocket but no acid. I’ve never seen him carry the acid around. He’s got a safe in his bedroom for it. He watches over it like it’s gold. Which to him and some of his friends it is.
Phone conversations-Hello, Janelle dear. How do you like the sunshine today?
Groov-y!
Remember, Janelle, we are all God’s flesh.
Descriptions of Leary’s home-and lots of books of poetry, Ginsberg and Corso and Olson and…
Be-ins. Happenings. Experiences. Parties and more parties.
Photographs, too, of Leary and Janelle and others on the beach in tai chi poses, Leary and Janelle smoking marijuana in a Laguna alleyway, Leary and two younger men outside a store called Mystic Arts World on Coast Highway.
Nick got another cup of coffee. Conjured up some of the hallucinogenic images from the day before. Most of them he couldn’t remember. And the ones that he could remember had lost their power to dazzle or delight or disturb.
The next file was shorter:
RONNIE JOE FOWLER, 28, is one of the later members of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.
The Brotherhood, as it is commonly called, encourages the use of LSD to induce mystical states. In the articles of incorporation of this alleged church, they say they’re going to “bring to the world a greater awareness of God through the teachings of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Ramakrishna, Babaji, Paramahansa Yogananda, Mahatma Gandhi,” etc. To support their “religion” they opened a drug-paraphernalia store on Coast Highway in Laguna Beach called the Mystic Arts World.
However, in order to purchase land for the church, the Brotherhood has established international networks for smuggling illicit drugs into this country for sale. They are especially expert in the smuggling of hashish from Afghanistan. It is far more powerful than marijuana and reaps greater profits in the illegal marketplace.
FOWLER’s role in the Brotherhood narcotics smuggling network is mainly in distribution of so-called Orange Sunshine lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). It is alleged to be stronger and “purer” than the laboratory-produced LSD made by Sandoz Laboratories of Switzerland. This dangerous hallucinogenic substance is believed to be manufactured in a secret Northern California drug lab. ANY IN FORMATION RELATING TO THE EXISTENCE AND POSSIBLE LOCATION OF THIS LAB IS A HIGH PRIORITY OF NARCOTICS LAW ENFORCEMENT NATIONWIDE.
FOWLER is neither a gullible hippie nor a mystical shaman. He is a hardened criminal with ties to the Hell’s Angels and Hessian motorcycle gangs. JANELLE VONN’s brothers LENNY and CASEY are known Hessian members and convicted drug offenders. FOWLER has priors for assault with a deadly weapon (a knife) and grand theft. He was acquitted on forcible and statutory rape charges last year in Eugene, Oregon. He is known to have an engaging and outwardly friendly personality. He preys on females.
The file photographs showed a bull-necked man with lank black hair and a thick mustache. Balding on the top. Long sideburns and a hard jaw.
Nick sat back and wondered again if Lenny and Casey might have murdered their sister. She’d humiliated them semipublicly three years ago, with the drugs and sex testimony. Helped convict them. But their alibis held unless you figured Karl to lie for them.
No. The Vonn brothers had survived all that. Gone back to their rat holes. It seemed a far stretch.
He read through the last two files. Price Herald was “a flamboyant Laguna Beach antique dealer known to be supplying drugs of all kinds to the homosexual underground in Laguna Beach and Hollywood.” Two years ago Herald had been convicted of “crimes against nature.” Not one of the public bathroom fairies, Nick saw, but a prosperous businessman who’d taken in a seventeen-year-old runaway. Later the boy had ratted out Herald in trade for a reduced marijuana charge. According to del Gado’s narcotics detail, Herald was using the runaways to peddle dope and collect money.
Janelle had met him through a photographer who had shot her for Orange County Illustrated magazine when she was Miss Tustin.
According to JANELLE, HERALD claimed he was “going to turn on every queer in Southern California and make some dough while I’m at it.” JANELLE has attended Herald’s lavish and bizarre parties thrown in his Bluebird Canyon home. We consider HERALD an important drug culture figure, due to his influence in the large homosexual population in Southern California.
In his photograph, Herald looked overweight and affronted. He wore his hair in a ponytail and a paisley satin smoking jacket over a ruffled shirt. The Pirate Queen look, thought Nick.
The last file was on Cory Bonnett. A sheet of paper stapled to the cover said that Bonnett had last been seen outside his home in Laguna Beach on October 3. The day after Janelle’s body had been discovered, thought Nick.
No outstanding warrants but approach with extreme caution.
He opened and read:
BONNETT is a 22-year-old former water polo star at Santa Ana High School, where he was voted all-conference in 1964. He has adult convictions for assault and drunk in public. Mexican authorities in Michoacán believe he is responsible for the murders of two marijuana growers in that state. They were both shot execution style and their throats were cut. BONNETT is rumored to be in collusion with corrupt law enforcement officials in Tijuana and Ensenada, Mexico. According to JANELLE, BONNETT has referred to these murders but not stated his part in them to her.
BONNETT’s juvenile record was sealed when he was eighteen, at the request of his parents. Offenses as a minor include arson, assault, receiving stolen property, and grand theft auto (see attached juvenile court transcripts). When sixteen, BONNETT beat his mother and father so badly that both were hospitalized.
BONNETT and his friends from Santa Ana High School have been trafficking marijuana and heroin across the border since 1965, according to witnesses, informants, and recordings. BONNETT is considered the source of up to one-quarter of the marijuana brought into the county from Mexico, and up to three-quarters of the heroin. BONNETT owns and flies a Cessna airplane between the United States and Mexico. The airplane is kept at Orange County Airport.