Pink Slips on Hinman Cars Tied to Suspect
Thursday, April 9th, 1970
LOS ANGELES, Apr. 9 – Two pink slips reportedly signed by musician Gary Hinman shortly before his death were traced by the prosecution Wednesday to Robert K. Beausoleil, who is being retried in the Hinman slaying, and a former member of Charles M. Manson’s hippie “family.”
Dep. Dist. Atty. Burton Katz is attempting to prove that Hinman was tortured into signing the pink slips, which are motor vehicle titles of ownership.
One of the slips was title to a 1965 foreign-made station wagon in which Beausoleil was arrested late August.
The other was title to a 1958 microbus which a prosecution witness said was given to him by Manson a short time after Hinman was slain last July.
Marcus Arneson, who lived with the Manson family for four months in the summer of 1968, testified that Manson gave him the red and white bus in late July or early August, 1969, or about a week after Hinman was stabbed to death in his Malibu home.
Arneson told the seven-woman, five-man Superior Court jury that he also was offered the station wagon but it disappeared before he could take possession.
He said he got the bus at the Spahn movie ranch in Chatsworth and that it had to be “hotwired” because there were no ignition keys.
Before he left the ranch, Arneson said, he was instructed by Manson that if he was stopped by police he should tell them that “we got it from Gary Hinman, who is black,” and “we thought he might be a Black Panther because he was wearing a black leather jacket and beret.”
Manson, accused of masterminding the Tate and LaBianca murders but not charged in the Hinman case, attempted to make each of the seven slayings appear to be the work of Black Panthers by having the word “pig” left at the scene of each murder, according to investigators.
The words “Political Piggy” were scrawled in blood on a wall above Hinman’s body.
Upon further questioning, Arneson said he sold the bus for $350 several weeks after he received it.
Beausoleil was arrested Aug. 6 three miles north of San Luis Obispo after the second Hinman vehicle, the station wagon, broke down.
California Highway Patrol officer Forest Joe Humphrey testified Wednesday that when he asked Beausoleil where he got the car, Beausoleil said he had “just bought the vehicle two weeks ago from a colored man for $200.”
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