Copyright © 2024 Angie Moon

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ISBN 978 1805148 203

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Dedicated to my dad, James, who got me into true crime, and my husband, Eoin, who encouraged me to not just write a blog post about true crime and rock and roll, but to make it a whole book.

Contents

Why I wrote Crime of the Century

True Crime & Classic Rock

Section 1

Classic Rockers & Killers (and Attempted Murderers)

Section 2

Musicians Who Killed

References

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Why I wrote Crime of the Century

The best ideas always seem to come into your head in these places: the kitchen, the shower and the toilet. This book is no exception – it was born in my kitchen. I wasn’t even planning on making this a book originally, but because I tell my husband everything, he said classic rock and true crime shouldn’t just be a little blog post, it should be a whole book! He saw that I was sad and feeling hopeless during the nearly year-long – although feeling more like an eternity – lockdown. So, he gave me a challenge and a reason to keep living – become a published author. That was one of my dreams. There was nothing to do but write, so why not take the writing a step further and write a book? Time keeps ticking away. Let’s come out of this storm with a book!

In doing my research, I never saw a comprehensive blog post on true crime and classic rock, and I had so many topics to cover that a blog post wouldn’t do it justice. The popularity of true crime has exploded in recent years with many books, documentaries and podcasts on it. I couldn’t find a book specifically on the classic rock angle of true crime, so why not me? I love classic rock more than anything and I have an interest in true crime too. I’ve spent years of my life listening to classic rock and reading all I can about it to gain a better understanding and pass my knowledge on to other classic rock fans. I’ve written The Diversity of Classic Rock since 2015 and have paid my dues and learnt so much about classic rock, why not make this my first book?

While my family travelled a lot during my childhood, we did spend a lot of downtime when not travelling watching TV. My dad briefly worked as a cop in California in the ‘80s and had an interest in true crime and unsolved mysteries and so he’d watch true crime TV shows, before I even knew that was the genre’s name. He loves ‘based on a true story’ movies and documentaries, and I love watching them too. Growing up, I would spend weekends and evenings watching true crime shows with my dad. We were fascinated with the psychology. Why would someone commit a murder? My mum wasn’t a fan of that, because she felt like true crime programmes were not the best thing for a pre-teen to watch. Sometimes I’d watch true crime shows by myself, but whenever my mum would walk in the room, I’d change the channel straight away. I guess she’ll have a better understanding now that true crime is much more mainstream.

True Crime & Classic Rock

Every book needs an introduction. My approach on The Diversity of Classic Rock is to never take anything for granted and my mission is to make learning about classic rock accessible and fun. It’s always better to explain everything than to assume that people know everything. That approach applies to other topics I write about and have an interest in. You might be new to true crime or classic rock, so I’m writing an introduction on what these topics are. You can skip this if you already know what these topics are all about.

True Crime

True crime is self-explanatory. It’s a genre of books, movies, podcasts, any media about actual crimes that happened. No fictional murder mysteries here. This is real life. For the most part, true crime is about murder, but it’s not limited to that. The most popular true crime stories are about high-profile cases like the Manson Family, Ted Bundy, O.J. Simpson, Ted Kaczynski, Jeffrey Dahmer, Casey Anthony, etc. However, there are also many true crime aficionados who like to break up the routine and learn about more obscure true crime cases because there’s more mystery and that can make the story more interesting.

There’s some stigma and controversy around true crime and talking about violent criminals. One of the biggest criticisms is that some people see true crime as being disrespectful to the families of the victims. It can be if done the wrong way, which is why it’s important to write about true crime in a responsible and respectful way by not glorifying the criminals.

Many people stereotype people who have an interest in true crime as glorifying and glamourising criminals. Yes, some people who like true crime romanticise killers like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Richard Ramirez and Ted Bundy, but most of the true crime fandom are people with an interest in psychology and the legal and justice system and want to understand why people do evil things. They want to understand how criminal investigations work, they want to share their theories, solve mysteries and crack codes, and people just like dark and macabre stories to distract from a humdrum life.

Classic Rock

Classic rock is really a radio format that plays popular rock music from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and I guess the ’90s, because it is the 2020s now and that music is approaching thirty years old. Typically, this is thought of as music your grandparents or parents listened to in their youth, depending on how old you are. Classic rock on the radio ranges from mid-late ’60s stuff like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix. The ’70s on classic rock stations includes some glam rock by David Bowie and T. Rex, soft rock by Fleetwood Mac and Elton John, and hard rock by Led Zeppelin and Van Halen. The ’80s is usually represented by bands like U2, Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi, Journey, and Mötley Crüe.

On my blog, though, I have expanded the definition to mean anything rock or ‘rock adjacent’ released from the ’50s to the ’80s. What is ‘rock adjacent’ exactly? Any music that has similar roots to rock and roll and has crossover with rock music with rock stars covering songs from those genres and musicians from these genres covering rock songs. It includes genres like R&B, soul, ska, reggae and disco, but I don’t limit it to those genres. I also don’t limit it to music in English and I’ll sometimes talk about music in other languages. You’re missing out if you only listen to music in English. Parasite director Bong Joon-ho said it best at the Golden Globes, ‘Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.’ Always keep an open mind – that’s another one of my core values! Growing up with a Venezuelan mother who grew up listening to music in English but not knowing what it meant, she just liked the vibes of the music. Use your imagination and come up with meanings that are different. It’s art: for all to enjoy and to be creative with.

Classic rock stations don’t play the full range of music from those decades. The radio is now very commercial and homogenous thanks to concentrated media ownership. Once upon a time when there were limits on how many stations a corporation could own, music was much more regional and travelling across America you could hear a wider variety of music; well, those times are gone. Or are they? Thanks to the internet, we have more knowledge about classic rock than ever before. Some bands that didn’t get the airtime and appreciation at the time finally have found appreciation thanks to real life and online ‘crate diggers’ who find the underrated and overlooked gems. I’ll regularly have conversations with my dad and I’ll talk about British groups from the classic rock era that he doesn’t know about even though he’s a bit of an Anglophile himself: The Shadows (even if you don’t know them, you’ll know ‘Apache’ when you hear it), The Small Faces (pint-sized Cockney mods – Steve Marriott had a voice that other classic rockers envied), and The Jam (The Clash-like punk, but more British). Sure, I didn’t get to see these bands in their prime – I was born too late for that – but I think the younger, outsider perspective is a valuable one and with the internet, there are so many possibilities, and everything is at your fingertips.

What do these even have to do with

each other?

Why write this book? Is there even much overlap? Do true crime enthusiasts like classic rock? Do classic rock fans like true crime? Do you have to like classic rock to appreciate this book? As someone who is passionate about classic rock and tries to make everything in their life about classic rock, I find the connections between classic rock and literally everything I can. Makes my life more fun. That’s the point of my blog and why my tagline is ‘Classic Rock: more than meets the eye… and ear!’ It started off as talking about musicians from different ethnic backgrounds and walks of life and evolved from that to telling stories about classic rock. I’d run out of ideas pretty quickly if I just stopped at identity. At the end of the day, my blog isn’t about musicians’ identities, it’s telling stories about interesting, talented people. There’s way more to a person than identity labels that apply to them. Every person on this planet has an interesting story, yes you too, the one reading this book. It’s just up to you to ask the right questions and get to know your fellow human beings.

I think of myself as a classic rock storyteller and someone who tries to make connections and relate seemingly unrelated, random things to each other. Come, grab a cup of tea and your favourite snacks and enjoy the stories and learn a bit about the best music ever made (in my biased opinion that is). It’s all about connectedness and togetherness here.

While doing research, I found more connections than I expected between these two topics that I have an interest in and I thought this would be a unique and interesting read for anyone who loves classic rock and true crime, or who has an interest in one or the other.

In short, you don’t have to be obsessed with classic rock like I am to love this book, but you might end up loving it. This book tells stories about people. I don’t have much interest in sports, but I’ve found movies about athletes, like 42 or I, Tonya, interesting because they’re not really about sports, they’re about people. The fact that they play sports is often secondary to the movie. The narrative focuses on the human elements and who they are as a person: growing up, conflicts, challenges, struggles, overcoming adversity, successes. Similarly, you don’t have to be a physicist to enjoy movies like Oppenheimer or The Theory of Everything. These movies are about life! If you have an interest in other people, you’ll love this book and any media that’s based on a true story or about true events.

Why Crime of the Century?

If you know your classic rock, you’ll know the reference, but in case you haven’t figured it out, Crime of the Century is the title of an album by prog/soft rock band Supertramp. It’s a fitting title since I love to make classic rock references and incorporate them in everything I do. When writing this book and searching for ‘true crime’ and ‘classic rock’ on the internet, Supertramp’s Crime of the Century was one of the things that showed up first. Makes sense! Might as well give a little history since this is a book and you’re paying for this (or borrowing it from the library – fair play to you!) and I’m gonna ensure you’re well fed because I’m the mum friend. The goal here is learning all about classic rock so you can wow your friends at pub quizzes when classic rock is one of the topics and you ace it! A rare event, yes, but I’m sure it’s more common than Halley’s Comet.

Crime of the Century, as in the album, was Supertramp’s commercial breakthrough and a pretty well-loved art rock album. Their previous two albums, Supertramp and Indelibly Stamped were commercial flops. There were a few line-up changes between albums and some new faces were brought in for Crime of the Century: drummer Bob Siebenberg, saxophone/clarinet player John Helliwell, and bassist Dougie Thomson. The album cover is of a field of stars and the text of the band’s name is styled as a constellation. Floating in the stars are jail cell bars and two hands holding the bars, a prisoner wanting to get out, but they’re floating in the void. An appropriate sentence for a Crime of the Century. When you’re stuck in an institution, you feel like you’re in the void – disconnected from society – yet time keeps ticking by and you’re waiting for it all to be over.

The album appropriately opens with a harmonica; you know the film trope where the lonely prisoner is sitting in a cell bored out of his mind, playing the harmonica? The first track is called ‘School,’ and it’s about how conformist school is, five years before Pink Floyd sang ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2’. Boomers had a lot more reasons to hate school than us millennials do. Back then it was legal for teachers to beat students! The negative effects of traditional schooling to your mental health though? The same whether it’s the 1960s or 2020s.

The album moves onto other themes like mental health, which is very much linked to the capitalist system for sure, at least in my left libertarian, class-conscious view of the world. You spend a good portion of your life in school, then you go to work for a company that doesn’t care about you for around half a century, and then you retire when you’re old, grey, and not feeling well enough to enjoy life. With the rising cost of living and all these recessions, retirement is becoming a pipe dream for millennials and Gen Z. It’s no wonder a lot of young people feel depressed, undervalued, and like they have no purpose.

Crime of the Century isn’t a concept album, even though the songs have similar themes. ‘Bloody Well Right’ continues on that theme of rebelling against schools and the system and the man in general – that’s rock and roll! ‘Hide in Your Shell’ is a relatable therapy ‘sesh’ of a song all about anxiety and fear of the real world. Supertramp basically said ‘adulting is hard’ before the slang term ‘adulting’ was coined (apparently adulting isn’t just silly millennial slang since as I’m writing this, there’s no red squiggle underneath, props to Apple for being hip, and it’s in the Cambridge Dictionary). Continuing on that mental health theme, we have ‘Asylum’. The people around the narrator want to get him help and send him to an asylum where he’d lose his freedom; he’s trying to convince them he is fine, but in reality, he’s a wreck inside. ‘Dreamer’ is another relatable song; everyone has their dreams and wants them to come true, but for one reason or another, a lot of dreams never come true, no matter how hard you try. The negative self-talk in the song hit too close to home.

‘Rudy’ is the longest song on the album about the titular protagonist of the album and is sort of an autobiographical song about Rick Davies. This song about trains wouldn’t be complete without some sounds from the train station to add some realism and to take the listener to where Rudy is.

‘If Everyone Was Listening’ is a philosophical, even Shakespearean song that makes you think about life. Is it real? What’s the point? ‘All the world’s a stage’, as the monologue from Shakespeare’s As You Like It goes. This being my book, I see all the classic rock connections and I’ll talk about them. You might be doing the Leonardo DiCaprio meme thing from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, pointing at the book (or screen, if you’re reading this on a computer or tablet). That famous line, ‘All the world’s a stage’ was referenced by Rush a couple times. That’s the title of their 1976 live album and you might be Leonardo DiCaprio-ing when you hear that line in Rush’s 1981 song ‘Limelight’, from the album Moving Pictures – a classic.

The album closes with the title track, considered one of Supertramp’s best songs. In 1974, there was an economic recession and now in 2023, we’re in an economic depression and cost of living crisis. I think of these criminals referenced in the song as being the billionaire leeches who get rich off the backs of the common people. Bookending the album is the same harmonica.

Besides Crime of the Century being a great album by Supertramp, it’s a popular phrase that describes sensational criminal cases and isn’t true crime full of those? It’s a crime that only happens once or a few times a century and will go down in the history books and be talked about for many years to come, inspiring books, songs, poems, movies, plays, you name it.

A variation of the idiom ‘crime of the century’ is ‘trial of the century’. You’ve definitely heard this expression used to describe televised trials, or in the pre-broadcast television era, highly publicised trials. Some examples could include the Lizzie Borden trial, Lindbergh kidnapping trial, Nuremberg trials, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial, the Chicago Seven Trial, Charles Manson trial, Ted Bundy trial, O.J. Simpson trial, Yolanda Saldívar trial, Michael Jackson trial, Casey Anthony trial, and the Phil Spector trial. These trials were all discussed widely in the press with sensationalist headlines and in some cases, memorable video clips that were broadcast on television.

There are some pros and cons to televising court cases. Americans reading this book are familiar with trials being televised on CNN or Court TV, but readers from Europe may find this idea odd because there are a lot more privacy laws and there’s no tradition of broadcasting trials.

If you’re of the pro-transparency persuasion, you might say televised trials are good because the whole world is watching and having more eyeballs on court proceedings is a good thing. Everyone has the right to a fair trial and transparency is a big part of fairness. Because there’s public interest in the crime, people want to follow the case every step of the way from the police investigations to the arrest to the indictment to the trial to the sentencing and interviews with the convict in prison (and in the case of America, execution if they’re sentenced to the death penalty). Not only established journalists get to see it first-hand, but also bloggers and independent media too and you can hear more perspectives and opinions, and isn’t that what democracy is all about?

The broadcasting of trials has its faults though. The first one has to do with the legal principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. Being accused of a serious crime can ruin your life even if in the end you’re found to be not guilty; note that this doesn’t mean innocent. The accused has their face plastered all over the place and associated with a crime. With crimes and trials being covered all over the media, there’s a trial by media of sorts held in the court of public opinion. If you’re accused of a serious crime, your life is never going to be the same again even if you’re found not guilty or the charges are dropped, that’s for sure. There’s always going to be people who will think, ‘What if they did do it?’. Doesn’t someone who isn’t convicted yet deserve privacy since they haven’t been proven guilty?

Trial by media can also disrupt due process and lead to an unfair trial. In jury selection they ask potential jurors if they have been following the case. Those who have been avidly following it are going to have a bias going in. Juries need to be unbiased. In some high-profile cases, they’ll even move the court proceedings to a different city or county to ensure a fair trial because the case has been talked about so much on the local TV news, radio, and in newspapers. But nowadays word gets out a lot quicker, more easily and further, thanks to the internet.

It’s also important to remember that false accusations and wrongful convictions happen more than you would expect. Groups like The Innocence Project focus on getting wrongfully convicted people exonerated and freed from prison. According to their website, they have freed more than 200 people who have spent 3,555 total years incarcerated. On average, these prisoners have lost sixteen years of their life and often it’s their youth and best years of their lives: their twenties, thirties, and forties. Years they’ll never get back and now they’re dealing with psychological trauma from being incarcerated for so long. Many of these convictions were overturned thanks to the marvels of science and technology, like DNA evidence, finally properly being used.

Is seeing trials live necessary though? If you’ve ever taken a law class, you’ll know that law is often boring! Long words that you don’t know the meaning of. Lots of formalities and rituals that you don’t know the point of. If we take a step away from the sensationalism of the news, most criminal trials are boring. Most crimes aren’t true-crime-book-worthy material. Who wants to watch a televised shoplifting trial or a livestream of traffic court? No one. And that’s a good thing.

The format of this book

We’ll end this introduction with how this book is going to work so you’ll know what to expect. You’ve seen the table of contents, but I find those so dry anyway. Introductions have a lot more character.

I have divided this book into two sections. The first section is about murderers and attempted murderers and their connection to classic rockers and the second section is about musicians who have killed people.

Each chapter will focus on a different true crime–classic rock connection. They will each have sections giving background information on the various people involved so you have the context before going into the connection. They will be in chronological order for the most part since that makes the most sense. In the chapters about musicians who have committed murders, there will be background information about the musician before talking about the crime itself.

Section 1

Classic Rockers

& Killers

(and Attempted Murderers)

The first section will be looking at all the connections between classic rockers, convicted murderers, and a couple of attempted murderers and a couple who were acquitted. This is where my research on true crime and classic rock began. I noticed how many close calls and encounters classic rockers had with murderers, attempted murderers, and otherwise dangerous people and it’s scary to think about what could have happened had things gone differently. In this section you’ll be reading stories from a range of classic rock eras from the early 1960s to the 1980s that cover a range of classic rock subgenres from rockabilly to British Invasion to surf rock to hard rock to new wave.

Chapter 1

A Nightmare on Elm Street:

The Band & Jack Ruby (1963)

Our story of classic rock and true crime begins in the state of Texas just as the world was about to culturally move from the conformist ’50s to the swinging ’60s. Here’s the connection between a ’60s folk rock band from Canada and a mobster who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

The Band… or rather, The Hawks

Since this connection happened very early on in their career, before they were known as The Band, this will just be a summary of their early years. At the time, they were known as The Hawks, but for our purposes the title of the chapter refers to them as The Band because that’s what they are best known as. The Hawks were better known in Canada than in Ronnie Hawkins’ birthplace, the USA.

The band that would later become known as The Band were formed in Toronto, Canada in the late ’50s. They started off as The Hawks, a backing band for American-born rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins, AKA The Hawk, regarded by many as the ‘granddaddy of Canadian rock ’n’ roll’ because he was one of the local musicians who introduced rock and roll to Canada. Now what’s an American doing up there? Was he dodging the draft? No. While Ronnie Hawkins was playing shows with his band in Fayetteville, Arkansas, country singer Conway Twitty suggested he go to Canada because there were many Canadians who had an interest in country music. When Hawkins told his band they were going to move to Canada, everybody quit except for drummer Levon Helm. Ronnie Hawkins quickly won over the Canadian audiences, became quite successful there, and preferred playing there rather than in the south because of the much better working conditions. From there, they hired on Canadians Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson, making up the classic line-up of The Band. Most of these musicians were poached from other bands playing on the same bill as Ronnie Hawkins. Ronnie Hawkins served as a mentor to not only The Band, but also other musicians including David Clayton-Thomas, Domenic Troiano, David Foster, King Biscuit Boy, and John Till. The skills that The Hawks honed while on the road with Ronnie Hawkins helped them impress Bob Dylan, who is often said to have discovered The Band, hiring them as his backing band when he famously adopted that new electric sound, and helped launch their career. The Band’s most famous songs are ‘The Weight’ – which you might have heard in the 1960s road trip film Easy Rider, ‘Up On Cripple Creek’, and ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ – famously covered by Joan Baez in 1971. In short, The Band are essential listening for any fan of folk or country rock.

Ronnie Hawkins was born exactly two days after Elvis Presley, on 10 January 1935 in Huntsville, Arkansas to Jasper and Flora Hawkins. His cousin, Dale Hawkins, wrote the song ‘Susie Q’, popularised by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and was one of the first white singers to perform at historic black venues, the Apollo Theater in Harlem and the Regal Theater in Chicago. When he was nine, his family moved to Fayetteville. His father was a barber and his mother was a schoolteacher. Unlike a lot of rock musicians, he stayed in school and didn’t learn to play an instrument. During his childhood and teen years, he performed at fairs in his home state. One time, he ended up sharing the stage with Hank Williams. He was too drunk to perform and so the band asked for volunteers to sing and entertain the crowd; Ronnie Hawkins took his chance and sang some Burl Ives songs as well as the Stephen Foster compositions ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ and ‘Camptown Races’. Later on, he got into blues music thanks to Buddy Hayes, a blues musician who shined shoes at Jasper’s barbershop. Not only was Ronnie Hawkins a great singer, but he was also a great dancer. Decades before Michael Jackson blew everyone’s minds with the moonwalk, Ronnie Hawkins had a similar dance called the camel walk, which he learnt from a young black street performer called Half Pint. He studied physical education at the University of Arkansas, but he dropped out just shy of a few credits to graduate and enlisted in the Army. During his six-month stint in the Army, he heard a band play music that was a cross between blues and rockabilly. He was moved by the music and found his calling.

Drummer Levon Helm was born Mark Lavon Helm in 1940 in Elaine, Arkansas, near the Mississippi River, to Diamond and Nell Helm. His parents were cotton farmers. He grew up in a diverse community with black sharecroppers and Mexican migrant farm workers, and his family got along well with their multicultural neighbours. This region is also the birthplace of R&B music. Many black musicians from this region migrated up north and, in some cases, west for better opportunities, bringing with them the music that would lead to rock and roll. While there was (and still is) a lot of racism in the south, the music was something that both black and white people loved. Levon’s