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Gary Hinman: The Forgotten Manson Family Victim
On July 25, 1969, Gary Allen Hinman was 34 years old, a UCLA student who was aiming to add a PhD in Sociology to his existing degree in chemistry. To support himself, he worked at a music shop teaching piano, drums, the trombone and the bagpipes. He also reportedly sold relatively small amounts of mescaline and/or marijuana for extra money.
A year earlier, he had become interested in Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism and by the summer of 1969, he was planning a religious pilgrimage to Japan with his parents, who were going to pay for the trip. A kind and gentle soul, Gary was known to open his Topanga Canyon house to friends and acquaintances in need. Unfortunately, this generosity would cost him his life.
He had met Bobby Beausoleil and other so-called Manson Family members through the commune scene and counterculture that enveloped Los Angeles in the late Sixties. An open-minded man who had once played at Carnegie Hall, Gary allowed Bobby (and others) to stay in the basement of his home in 1968.
Beausoleil was 20 years old when he met and moved in with Gary. He was a musician and an actor, having appeared in Mondo Hollywood and Kenneth Anger’s 1967 film Lucifer Rising, as well as contributing to the movie’s soundtrack, which was a condition in order for him to appear in the film. (He would eventually produce the…