End of the Dance

Not all of San Francisco's hippies live by flower power. Last week the city's psychedelic enclave, the Haight-Ashbury district, was shaken out of its roseate trance by the brutal murders of two hippie drug peddlers.

First to die was John Kent ("Shob") Carter, 25, whose body was found one night in his psychedelically painted apartment. He had been stabbed twelve times with a butcher knife, and his right arm was severed at the elbow. A few days later near Sausalito, a pair of hikers discovered the body of William

Thomas, 26, a Negro who billed himself in the Haight as "Superspade." He had been stabbed and shot to death, trussed in a sleeping bag and left to dangle from the top of an oceanside cliff.

Blue Suede. Shob Carter's murder was apparently solved when a police officer spotted the victim's battered black Volkswagen, bearing stolen license plates, 35 miles north of San Francisco. In the car were $2,657 in cash evidently stolen from the prosperous peddler, and the driver, a daredevil motorcycle racer named Eric Dahlstrom, 23. Beside him on the seat was a grisly piece of evidence: Carter's right forearm, neatly sutured at the severed end and wrapped in a blue suede bag.

Dahlstrom, who admitted that he used marijuana, LSD and amphetamines, was not shy about discussing the crime--though his tale was scarcely coherent. Even before talking to his lawyer, he spilled out his story in prison to the San Francisco Examiner's Mary Crawford. He spoke of a bad LSD trip brought on by a dose that Carter had sold him. Later Dahlstrom told a reporter about what he called "the struggle": "He was convulsing as he went down. That's why I stabbed him some more --maybe a little too much. I hadn't had life in my hands before like that."

Why had he severed the forearm? Said Dahlstrom: "The hand is a man's history." Then he had an astrological reflection: "I'm a Cancer. I'm not a hard person normally."

Police speculated that Dahlstrom may have been high on "speed" (amphetamines), which can cause distinct paranoia and hostility. Says Dr. David E. Smith, founder of a Haight-Ashbury medical clinic that ministers to bad-tripping hippies: "Amphetamines are the biggest drug problem now in the Haight."

No Mafia. While police doubt any connection between the murders of Car ter and Superspade Thomas, many hippies believe that Thomas was killed by Mafia mobsters who wanted to eliminate competition. Thomas had a highly successful drug dealership, was on his way to make a $40,000 pickup when he disappeared. Hippies also think that the syndicate is tipping the narcotics squad on small pushers in order to drive them out of the psychedelic market. However, Matthew O'Connor, head of the state's narcotics enforcement squad in San Francisco, says flatly: "Neither the Mafia nor any other syndicate is involved here. We've been look ing for it. We've traced the sources, and there is no syndicate involved."

With or without syndicate assistance, Haight-Ashbury was getting to be a very bad scene. Last week a hippie on a bad LSD trip killed himself by jumping from a Marin County dam. Another told friends in July that LSD rendered him "indestructible," then leaped to his death in front of a San Francisco commuter train. In an effort to restore peace and quiet, if not sanity, a hippie house organ called The Oracle editorialized: "Do not buy or sell dope any more. Let's detach ourselves from material value. Plant dope and give away all you can reap. For John Carter and William Edward Superspade Thomas--may their consciousness return to bodies that will not want for anything but the beauty and joy of their part in the great dance."

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