This book would not have been possible without the cooperation of everyone who talked to mea list of people too numerous to name herebut I take full responsibility for any shortcomings in this manuscript. Id like to extend a special thanks to Dion Wright, who opened the door to many sources in this book, who helped me understand the true meaning of it all, and who was so generous with his time and resources. Id also like to thank Timothy Scully for sharing his insights about Orange Sunshine as well as his historical records and for putting his computer skills to work in organizing mine.
Noah Dewey provided invaluable assistance by poring through endless newspaper clippings at the Orange County Archive and finding subtle traces of the Brotherhood of Eternal Loves reign in Laguna Beach still hidden in dusty, ink-stained pages. Id like to thank William Kirkley and Peter Maguire for sharing their passion for this story as well as the fruits of their own investigative efforts. My friend Anthony Pignataro, a fine reporter and the former editor of Maui Time Weekly , was a great host during my stay in Maui and helped me find good sources there. So was Paul Wood, a brilliant writer who helped me appreciate the islands renegade soul.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to my wonderful agent, Jill Marsal, for her incalculable aid in crafting a book proposal and finding a publisher, and to my successive editors at OC Weekly , Will Swaim and Ted B. KissellWill, for steering me to this story in the first place, and Ted, for allowing me time to write it.
Finally, I wish to sing the praises of my beautiful wife, Claudia, who I had the fortune and sublime pleasure of marrying on a rooftop in Laguna Beach six years ago. More than anyone else, she kept me marching forward with unyielding love, support, and inspiration.
The Elvis Theory
A FEW DAYS AFTER Neil Purcell and Bob Romaine left Maui empty-handed, at 6:00 A.M. on the morning of August 5, 1972, the biggest drug bust in California history took place when the Brotherhood of Eternal Love Task Force raided dozens of houses in Laguna Beach, Hawaii, Northern California, and Oregon, arresting fifty-three people, including Brotherhood member Jim Crittenden, who was living on a horse ranch in Mariposa, Glenn Lynd, hiding out, or so he thought, in Grants Pass, Oregon, and Johnny Gale, who was staying in San Diego. When the cops busted into Gales house, they found him and two underage girls in the living room and a hash oil factory in the kitchen. By the end of the day cops up and down the coast had confiscated two and a half tons of hash, thirty gallons of hashish oil, and 1.5 million tablets of Orange Sunshine.
The Brotherhood of Eternal Loves dream of turning on the world had been decisively deferred. The secretive group, which for years had been known by name and reputation only by Laguna Beach hippies and a handful of cops, was now being splashed across television screens and newspapers throughout the country. Joint Force Raids Coast Drug Cult, blared a typical headline in The New York Times on August 6. Fifty-seven persons connected with Timothy Learys sex and drug sect, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, were arrested or indicted and large quantities of LSD, hashish, hashish oil, cocaine, mescaline and marijuana were seized in dawn raids in California, Oregon and Hawaii today. A cover story in Rolling Stone Magazine a few months later dubbed the group the Hippie Mafia. With the bulk of the Brotherhood still in hiding, the police circulated a wanted poster with the mug shots of twenty-six brothers and their accomplices who were still at large, including Fat Bobby, Robert Ackerly, Mark Stanton, Rick Bevan, Travis Ashbrook, Nick Sand, Lyle Lyncho German, Daniel Caserta, whod gone back into smuggling after being released from prison in England following his bust with Bevan, Russell Harrigan, Robert Stubby Tierney, David Hall, Jack Harrington, and Hayatullah and even Amanullah Tokhi, who had the misfortune of being indicted simply because hed visited Disneyland.
Nicknamed the Hippie Mafia by police, the Brotherhood was the most notorious group of outlaws during the 1960s. This August 1972 wanted poster includes photographs of some members who continued to evade capture for yearseven decades. (California Department of Justice)
For the next year, prosecutors continued to indict more Brotherhood members, and the Orange County grand jury heard from dozens of witnesses who testified to the groups global smuggling network and nationwide LSD distribution efforts. The grand jurys star witness was Glenn Lynd, who, immediately after being arrested in Oregon, agreed to cooperate with the cops. Over the course of several days, Lynd told jurors everything he knew about the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. He never spoke to anyone in the Brotherhood again and provided only vague personal reasons for his decision to betray the group. My children, for one; my wife, for one; just a lot of things that I had seen happen, a lot of circumstances, he said. I have dropped out of this thing with these people and I dont really believe in the philosophy.
One by one, the police caught up with everyone they werent able to arrest in August 1972. Bob Romaine busted Michael Randall andCarol Griggs, who had married a few months after John Griggs died, as they stood in line to get into a Grateful Dead concert in San Francisco on New Years Eve 1973. A few days later, the cops finally caught up with Timothy Leary. After his falling out with the Black Panthersin part caused by Learys continued use of hash, thanks to repeated visits by friends like Rick BevanLeary had flown to Switzerland, where he fell in love with Joanna Harcourt Smith, a French socialite. When Swiss authorities kicked him out of the country, Leary and Smith flew to Kabul, hoping to meet up with Robert Ackerly, who had promised to hide them in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, another passenger on the plane had a friend whose son had tried to fly off a building while high on LSD. He alerted the Afghan police that Leary, still a fugitive, was on board. The Afghan cops summoned Terry Burke, chief agent in Kabul of the newly formed Drug Enforcement Administration, who was skiing at a nearby resort.
As hed done with Bevan several months earlier, Burke convinced Leary that hed be happier behind bars in California than in Afghanistan. Leary would later claim that Burke confronted Leary on the airplane, saying, Burkes my name. Dopes my game, but Burke says that another agent named Michael Holm actually uttered those words and that he cringed when he heard them. Burke accompanied Leary and Smith on a jumbo jet to London, generously allowing them to sit in an unguarded upstairs cabin while he slumbered down below. I was suddenly shaken awake by the stewardess, he recalls. She told Burke that the pilot needed him to go upstairs, find Leary and Smith, and make them stop. Stop what? Burke asked, drowsily. Go see for yourself, she replied. As Burke ascended the spiral staircase and his head reached the upper floor he saw the bottoms of two pairs of feet facing him, the larger pair inverted over thefirst. Timothy, he said, the pilot orders that he will not allow this conduct on his aircraft, you have to stop. Given that you are going to jail tonight, Ill give you five minutes to do so.
