Bobby Beausoleil

Robert Kenneth Beausoleil
Mug shot taken in 1969
Born	November 6, 1947 (1947-11-06) Santa Barbara, California
Alias(es)	Cupid
Charge(s)	First-degree murder
Conviction(s)	First-degree murder
Penalty	Death, commuted to life Imprisonment
Status	Incarcerated

Robert Kenneth "Bobby" Beausoleil (born November 6, 1947, in Santa Barbara, California) is a convicted American murderer and associate of the Charles Manson "Family" who is serving a life sentence. He killed music teacher and fellow associate Gary Hinman on July 27, 1969, and has been imprisoned since his arrest for that crime. He was an aspiring musician and actor at the time that he murdered Hinman.

The Hinman murder

As described in the book Helter Skelter, Hinman was killed over money and property that Manson claimed Hinman owed the Family. It also served as the first of a series of murders committed by The Family to start Helter Skelter, a "war" that Manson had preached to his Family that would happen in the summer of 1969.

Accompanying Beausoleil that night were Susan Atkins and Mary Brunner, both later involved in other murders and crimes. Beausoleil claims that Hinman supplied him with a batch of bad mescaline that Beausoleil in turn sold to the Straight Satans motorcycle gang. When the bikers demanded their money back, Manson ordered Beausoleil to Hinman's residence to get the money. Hinman is said to have refused to pay saying, "I don't have any money to give you". Beausoleil called Manson back at Spahn Ranch to tell him that no money was forthcoming. Beausoleil, Atkins, and Brunner then held him captive in his own home in an attempt to convince him to refund the money.

Manson arrived and proceeded to slice off a part of Hinman's ear with a sword; Atkins and Brunner stitched it up with dental floss afterwords. Manson then ordered Beausoleil to kill Hinman and told him to make it look as if the crime had been commited by black revolutionaries, as he had been predicting to his Family that a race war was imminent. Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death as Hinman chanted a Buddhist chant. Afterwards, he wrote the words "Political piggy" on a wall in Hinman's blood in an attempt to lead police to believe the murder was done by a group of radicals. After he wrote the words, Beausoleil dipped his hand in Hinman's blood and left on the wall a paw print, which was the symbol of The Black Panthers, to indicate that the Panthers had murdered Hinman. On August 6, 1969, Beausoleil was arrested while stalled along side the highway in Hinman's Fiat.

At Beausoleil's two trials for the murder, the defense mentioned nothing about the murder being the result of a drug transaction gone wrong. His first revelation of this came in 1981, 12 years after the murders, in an interview published in Oui magazine. In that interview, he denied that Manson had come to the Hinman residence during the event that led to the murder, although he later reversed himself on this detail. This is the version that Beausoleil currently maintains as truth. Also, conspirator Susan Atkins had stated before her death that she never heard any mention by Beausoleil indicating that the reason they went to Hinman's residence had anything to do with a drug transaction. See Helter Skelter (Manson scenario) for more details on the murders perpetrated by Charles Manson and members of his Family.

Imprisonment

On April 18, 1970, a Superior Court jury in Los Angeles found Beausoleil, aged 22, guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when the California Supreme Court ruled the then-prevailing death penalty statutes unconstitutional in 1972. He is currently serving his sentence in Oregon State Penitentiary.

Beausoleil's 2010 parole bid was denied, with the next scheduled hearing in 2015.

Film roles

Beausoleil was to star in Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising, but little was shot before Beausoleil and Anger had a falling out and the project was abandoned. Some of the footage later appeared in Invocation of My Demon Brother (and again in the resurrected Lucifer Rising film). He also appeared in a softcore porn film titled The Ramrodder (a.k.a. Savage Passion), which also featured his friend Catherine Share — who went on to become a full-fledged member of the Manson Family. This film was shot, in part, at the infamous Spahn Ranch. Beausoleil had a brief appearance as Cupid in the 1967 film Mondo Hollywood, a documentary about the social, political and cultural climate of Los Angeles featuring a wide cast of Hollywood figures, including hair stylist Jay Sebring.

Music career

Poster for Beausoleil's official soundtrack for Lucifer Rising.

Circa 1965, Beausoleil was a member of Arthur Lee's band The Grass Roots, which later changed its name to Love. Lee claimed to have bestowed the nickname "Bummer Bob" on Beausoleil due to a drug burn. Beausoleil claims that Lee named his band Love in reference to another of his many nicknames — "Cupid." Circa 1966, Beausoleil joined a band called The Orkustra; bandmate David LaFlamme went on to greater success with It's a Beautiful Day. Following his stint in The Orkustra, Beausoleil put together the band he called The Magick Powerhouse of Oz.

In the late 1970s, with the permission of the prison, he composed and recorded the soundtrack for Kenneth Anger's movie Lucifer Rising after Anger's first choice, Jimmy Page, couldn't manage to deliver enough music for the film after three years of waiting, according to Anger.^{[citation needed]} The official Beausoleil soundtrack was released on CD (along with archival material from The Orkustra and The Magick Powerhouse of Oz) in 2004. He's also recorded and released two albums of instrumental material (Orb and Mantra).

In 2005, a selection of his artwork exhibited in Clair Obscur Gallery, Los Angeles. Just prior to the exhibition, the gallery exhibited photos of Sharon Tate. The parole board, in denying parole in 2005, stated that this display and marketing of Beausoleil's artwork was exploitative of the victims and showed a lapse of judgment by Beausoleil.

Bobby Beausoleil in literature

Truman Capote interviewed Bobby Beausoleil while the latter was imprisoned in San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, California. Capote then published the interview in the form of a short story "Then It All Came Down", included in Music for Chameleons.

Filmography

• 1967: Mondo Hollywood
• 1969: The Ramrodder
• 1969: Invocation of My Demon Brother
• 1972: Lucifer Rising (released 1980)

Discography

Studio albums

• 1981: Lucifer Rising (reissued in 2005)
• 2006: 7
• 2006: Orb
• 2006: Running with the White Wolf

Compilations

• 2005: Dreamways of the Mystic
• 2007: Dreamways of the Mystic, Vol. 1
• 2007: Dreamways of the Mystic, Vol. 2
• 2009: The Lucifer Rising Suite (4xLP Boxed Set)

External links

• Official homepage of Bobby and Barbara Beausoleil
• Arcanum Entertainment
• San Francisco Weekly article
• Sympathy for the Devil, article
• Gary Hinman at Find A Grave
• Bobby Beausoleil at the Internet Movie Database
• Bobby Beausoleil at AllRovi
• RD Records