45 When the wagons leave the city Part 2

I really didn't make it clear. This was a mob related crime. I also didn't make it clear that the other man in the car was responsible. So of the two couples that lived in the house, one was victim... the other was the perpetrator.

Really similar

We knew they were missing and when I got the news I wasn't home. I got a phone call at my sister's house. My family had no idea I knew the people involved and they never did. My friend was a wreck, I just wanted to go see him. I didn't get home till the next day. Young. Still innocent in understanding how dreadful people could be to one another. That families' pain. Large Irish family. The siblings were scarred. I'll say for life. I wasn't welcome at the house then. Mostly because they were busy with priests and police. And a bunch of Irish people. This is something I can't prove, but there was talk of connections to guys that came to the US for funding the IRA. Irish guys visited for months at a time and stayed in the basement. I don't know for sure, but IRA did come to the US for financing. I heard it from a couple of the kids but they weren't sure either. The dad was from there. The only reason I mention this is to show it was a pretty intense scene over there. My mom knew the family through church. Thought the mom was nice, a long suffering mom with lots of kids and a craphead husband. She told me the Irish were a long suffering people.

We got together finally after a couple of weeks. I can hardly remember that. I was blocking out so much of the pain. The detectives were questioning my friend a lot because he was the only one who knew where they were living and visited. Well, I did too but he kept me out of it. Wow. I don't think I could have handled that. Don't think my family could either. Besides everything else that really drove him into dark places. Made him feel like they thought he was responsible. Eventually they got the real story. Actually a very detailed account because there was a witness. He was pressured into telling the story. I don't know if he got some type of protection. I heard every detail. Read every detail but have lost a lot of that memory. Because I needed to. In a way, I really helped my friend by taking his mind off of it a bit.

Not an actual photo. Much worse was in the newspaper.

It was then that I learned how brutal and wrong the media could be. My god. Whatever sensational bit they could throw in there. Sometimes wrong. (And they were better then than they are now.) Anything for a headline or to shock people. They printed every gruesome detail they could. Not just that they printed morgue photos. These were shots to the head. Can you understand what that did to the family? That's all I'm going to say about this.

After a few months of this, we couldn't take it anymore. Let's just get the hell out of here. What a hellhole. A pit of misery. Dark, dirty and cruel. How could we go on?

My entire life I hated where I was born. As little as could be when we'd take drives in the country, I'd ask my mom "Why do we live here?' I want to live with the cows. I'd get the answer about being near all the good stuff. I'd say it was bad.

So back then, California was the land of milk and honey. Sunshine, bright and clean. Free hippies livin' their lives. That was the plan. Let's skedaddle.