[www.more.com]

Bravo Gagi! It's very informative. (Seems that only we Serbs read this...)

Quote:Forty years later, she has “no feelings one way or another,” toward the Rolling Stones. “Nothing can resurrect him,” she says of her brother. “But I think he’d have grown to be a good man.”Unquote

Well, why was he waving with a gun in front of stage while the Stones were performing? Good men don't do that.

hmmm, let's see... the sister, who WASN'T at the concert and did not examine the gun says it wasn't loaded, but the police, who DID examine the gun say it was....

What's the logic behind this 'reasoning": "I think I'll bring an unloaded gun to a crowded event, just to scare anyone who might insult me with remarks about my race."

What if the person you want to 'scare' has a gun as well, only he came prepared to back up his insults with real bullets?

Who's fooling who with this twisted logic?

Quote

Well, why was he waving with a gun in front of stage while the Stones were performing? Good men don't do that.

Your right, they don't, but he wasn't a man yet. Despite being of legal age, he was still a stupid teenager who didn't know better. He should of, I certainly did at that age, but I also knew plenty of people who didn't. Did you even read your quote from her- she said she thinks he would have GROWN to be a good man, not that he was a good man. If the incident hadn't happened, or turned out like it did, whose to say he wouldn't have turned his life around as needed and become a good man. Plenty of people have done worse than he did that night and reformed themselves.

Quote
boogie1969

Quote

Well, why was he waving with a gun in front of stage while the Stones were performing? Good men don't do that.

Your right, they don't, but he wasn't a man yet. Despite being of legal age, he was still a stupid teenager who didn't know better. He should of, I certainly did at that age, but I also knew plenty of people who didn't. Did you even read your quote from her- she said she thinks he would have GROWN to be a good man, not that he was a good man. If the incident hadn't happened, or turned out like it did, whose to say he wouldn't have turned his life around as needed and become a good man. Plenty of people have done worse than he did that night and reformed themselves.

Threatening lives with a loaded firearm is way beyond "stupid teenager" stuff. The belief that he "would've grown to be a good man" is at best optimistic, and probably fanciful, he was already on the fast-track to oblivion. Human behavior is positively autocorrelated. The jails are full of former 18yo scum bags who didn't grow into good men.

From archives about murder:
The Sunday Times
March 27, 2005
The death of Meredith Hunter at Altamont
The murder of a teenage fan at a Rolling Stones concert signalled the end of the hippie dream. But what really happened at Altamont in 1969 — and why have the police reopened the case?
The song has barely finished, the last chord just faded. Mick Jagger, 26 years old, in his billowing half-black, half-red shirt, has ended his repeated ad-libs of the last line of Under My Thumb. "I pray that it's all right . . . I pray that it's all right . . . it's all right."
Now here comes Meredith Hunter, stumbling out of the darkness to the left, a few feet from the stage, arms flailing, legs askew. Something unseen has happened and he is moving from it in a hurry. He crashes into the arms of Patti, his girlfriend, and falls away. As his left arm goes down, the revolver in his hand is silhouetted against Patti's white crocheted top, which her mother knitted for her. His arm rises again. The ground around them clears. Patti screams.
Over on the right, towards centre stage, a Hell's Angel strains to see what is happening.. He alone seems to see the gun. You can see his hand go to his waist and this must be when he pulls the knife from its sheath. He rushes forward and is at Hunter's back, his left hand gripping Hunter's gun hand, forcing it down, while raising the knife in his right fist and plunging it into Hunter's neck. Hunter lurches forward, back towards the darkness from where he came. The Angel clings on, moving with him, again raising his right fist and bringing the knife down on Hunter's neck.
In these few feet of film, it is forever December 6, 1969, around 5.50pm. A black man is being killed by racist Hell's Angels. It will soon be claimed that the Stones had hired the Angels to provide security for the free concert at Altamont Raceway & Arena in California. The Stones will face the threat of being charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
Thus the film has preserved a controversy and highly sensitive issue for the band and those involved on that crowded stage at that chaotic show. A day so notorious it was said to have helped bring the "flower power" age to an end.
The Stones have been touchy about the case ever since, and have made almost no public comment on Hunter's death for 35 years. In recent weeks the police have been re-examining the killing, conducting a "cold case" review, trying to put Hunter's ghost to rest. And still the band refuse to comment. The true story of that afternoon, the story of Meredith Hunter, who he was, how he died, what happened after, has never been told. He was the young black man who got killed at Altamont. That was all. In most accounts his name didn't get mentioned. In 35 years nobody had called his family to try to find out more. Or establish what it was, if anything, the Stones (and Hell's Angels) were trying to hide.
Nobody, except perhaps the band themselves, seemed to know that their lawyers had tried to get a wrongful-death lawsuit against them thrown out of court on a technicality. Nobody knew that, when the attempt failed, the Stones' lawyers quickly made an out-of-court settlement with Meredith Hunter's mother. Mick Jagger was said to have made a court deposition denying any involvement with the Hell's Angels. But if the Stones hadn't hired them, what were the Angels doing there, standing sentry on stage beside Mick, Keith, Charlie, Bill and Mick Taylor? Who invited them? Who put them in a position where they could kill Hunter?
The footage of his murder was filmed for the documentary Gimme Shelter, which recorded the final stages of the Stones' North American tour in the last weeks of 1969.
………………………….
Now here comes Meredith Hunter, who is known to his family and friends as Murdock, who tells his girl, Patti, she can call him Murdock Supreme. Patti is enthralled by Murdock, who wears sharp, bright suits and sometimes matching nail polish. When he takes her in his arm and they walk in the park next to the Berkeley High School campus, it feels good, good that he chose her over all those other women, white and African-American, who admire him.
They are just teenagers, Meredith and Patti. He is 18, she is 17, and they've met outside the school as part of a bigger mixed group of young white and black kids who hang out together, this being liberal Berkeley, north of San Francisco, where the rules are different from the rest of North America, where white and black are not yet noticeably mixing.
Murdock is the third of four children born to Altha May Anderson. He and his younger sister, Gwen, share the same father, a Native American called Curley Hunter. Hence Murdock has been named Meredith Curley Hunter. The father left home soon after Gwen was born. Earlier in 1969, Murdock's other sister, Dixie, who is 10 years older, had lost her husband when he was electrocuted in a freak accident. Murdock has been playing a fatherly role with her children, helping out, showing signs of maturity, in Dixie's eyes.
Then there is Murdock's other life, away from his home, perhaps even away from his girlfriend. He is in a club called the East Bay Executors. Today it would be called a gang, and people would be shooting each other, but back then it was just fist fights, petty crime and drugs. Murdock and his friends smoke marijuana and take bennies (Benzedrine) and inject crystal meth (methamphetamine). Later, the pathologist will find old needle traces on Murdock's arms. Murdock has amphetamine in his blood and that revolver in his car boot. His cousin says he was always packing a gun, but his friend Stuart is not so sure. He only recalls one time, watching the Nixon motorcade go past, and his friend saying to Murdock, you got your gun? Give me your gun, let's shoot the president. They were just joking, of course.
Patti can see herself at the concert, even now. White blouse, suede wraparound miniskirt, the crocheted top her mum made. She is 52 and doesn't look the way she once did. She says she hasn't made much of her life, but she dated Murdock then, for just a few weeks. He took her to see the Temptations, the original line-up, at a San Francisco club. He then took her to Altamont. She and two friends got bored and sat in the car, which was parked on the verge of the freeway, the I580. Murdock came back. He said, come on, Patti, let's go see the Stones. He went to the boot and Patti saw him put the gun in his waistband. They had seen the fighting with the Angels by the stage earlier. The atmosphere had been tense, unpleasant. Murdock was packing now, just in case.
He stood by the stage and Patti saw him climb onto one of the boxes — monitor speakers — at the front. An Angel pushed him away. The Angel maybe punched him and jumped down and they began scuffling, then Murdock was trying to get away and Patti could see he had the gun in his hand. She was screaming now and other Angels jumped him — she never saw a knife, could not identify Passaro — then he was under the scaffolding on the ground and they were kicking and stomping him and she was sure he would be beaten to death. Nobody came to help, not at first. Then the Angels stepped back and others came forward. Other witnesses would say they tried to help but were kept back by the Angels. Let him die, they were told, he deserves to die, he wanted to shoot Mick Jagger, look, he had a gun.
No witness could testify to seeing a second stabber. One witness thought there were two, but couldn't be sure. He said he heard Murdock say: "I wasn't going to shoot you." But from what most people describe, Murdock was pretty quickly rendered incapable of saying anything. He must have died more or less straight away. Sam Cutler helped carry him and went home with Murdock's blood on his jacket. Patti remembers sitting in the ambulance looking at Murdock's ripped shirt and thinking how upset he would be when he woke up, that they had ruined his lovely shirt.
A few days later a runaway was picked up by police in southern California and told them she'd been at Altamont with two Angels — not Passaro — and one had stabbed Murdock and later had stopped the car to wash the nigger's blood off his knife. The sheriffs' investigators at the time had not relied on the girl's statement. As Sgt Dudek said, she obviously had issues. There was no evidence that anyone else was involved. Besides, as Dudek said, if he wasn't a Hell's Angel, Passaro might have been a hero, for stopping a man who was trying to shoot somebody. One girl said at Passaro's trial, she had heard a cry of, look out, he's going to kill Mick Jagger. But nobody else heard that. Dick Carter said there was no killing there, only a suicide, that when Murdock pulled his gun in front of those Hell's Angels he was as good as dead. While it was possible, even likely, that Passaro had delivered all six stab wounds, there could be no certainty about what had happened, before and after the moments captured on film. Hunter could already have been stabbed by another Angel when he stumbled into shot holding the gun. Someone else could have stabbed him after Passaro's assault. And surely the beating Hunter took must have contributed to his death.
The Stones stopped playing for a moment, then carried on to finish the show. They did not know someone had been killed. Besides, if they had stopped altogether, it was generally agreed, there would have been a riot and others might have died. The tour manager, Sam Cutler, was not the only one who thought they were lucky to escape with their lives in such a fraught situation. They left the scene in an overcrowded helicopter, people sitting on laps, lying across others on seats. Then, suddenly, they were back at the Huntington hotel in San Francisco. The financial manager, Ron Schneider, recalls he went to his room with two girls. He told them he was depressed. Cutler talked
to Jagger and said he would stay to straighten things out. Jagger said he would ensure Sam's expenses were paid, but they never were. The band left San Francisco the next day.
The district attorney threatened to indict the Stones, the managers, Altamont's owner, Carter, and anyone else who was involved on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder. But he relented when he retrieved the gun and saw the film. Sgt Dudek says the case against Passaro could have been presented better in court. Passaro already had a criminal record, was in jail by the time he was arrested, and went back in after his acquittal. He was later convicted of running a methamphetamine factory, the very drug used by Murdock.
Passaro died in 1985, not long after his most recent jail sentence. He left his home in a hurry after a shower — a wet towel was on the floor, the mirror still misted from the steam. His black Mercedes was found abandoned at a nearby lake, the door open, the keys still in the ignition. His body turned up a month later, floating in the lake, a bag strapped to his back containing several thousand dollars. It looked like drug money. The police could not determine a cause of death but seemed sure he had been murdered.
Murdock's sister, Dixie, would never forget being at home with a Christmas tree already erected in the corner of the room, hearing on the radio that a madman with a gun had been killed at Altamont. She knew Murdock was there but it never occurred to her that it was him. As Dixie says, he was at the age of "more to come". And he was just the kind of black man who got under white folks' skin back then. He personified threat, being overconfident, overdressed, with a white girl on his arm. Uppity was perhaps the word. You were meant to know your place and Murdock didn't.
His family never had any expectation of a conviction in the trial and had not bothered attending. That was white reality. There was, of course, no direct evidence that racism had played a part in Murdock's death. Patti said they certainly got a lot of looks in the crowds that day. There was no evidence, either, that the Angels had been the aggressors. But the pattern of the day suggested it was likely. Unlike their other victims, Murdock had a gun in his waistband.
His sister said Murdock never had the chance to get his life together. He had just got a job at the post office, but had yet to start. Maybe he would have turned his life around. It was certainly hard for his friends in the East Bay Executors. A few of them spent time later in jail and got into trouble with drugs. Blood, the friend who had gone with him to Altamont, was later shot and killed. Altha, Murdock's mother, had a nervous breakdown after his funeral and spent a month in hospital. When I met her, in January, she was still recovering from the death last year of Murdock's sister Gwen. Her son Donald too was gone. Only Dixie survived.
Altha had sued the Stones for $500,000 after Altamont and caused a flurry of activity among the band's lawyers. They had collected depositions from those involved, then attempted to get the case thrown out on the grounds that the papers had never been served. Altha's lawyer had to get a statement from the process-server who had pursued Jagger around the lobby of the Miyoko hotel in San Francisco, tapping him on the arm with the papers as Jagger ran out of the foyer, letting the papers fall to the floor. The Stones withdrew their attempt to get the case dismissed and got on the phone to Altha's lawyer.
According to Altha, she received $10,000. That might not sound like much for the loss of your son, $10,000, but Altha's lawyer said settlements were different then and not subject to the exponential rise in awards that has taken place since. Besides, he had been carrying a gun and did have a rap sheet and all this counted against him. Altha had not complained about the sum. The case never got to court, where one of the key issues would have been: who hired the Hell's Angels? The whole thing left a bad taste for some, including the tour manager, Sam Cutler, who recalled reading Jagger's deposition with the sinking feeling that he'd been hung out to dry by the band.
The Stones believed for some years that they were on a Hell's Angels hit list. It was certainly true that the Hell's Angels felt betrayed by the band. The Angels always believed they had been hired for Altamont and left to carry the blame for the chaos of the concert. Ron Schneider recalled a Stones gig in Paris sometime later, when they heard a rumour that there was an Angel with a gun in the crowd and were convinced that the death threat was about to be carried out. A search was made and, sure enough, there was an Angel with a gun, but it was just a starting pistol he said he wanted to fire at the ceiling for fun. It had been a hard case to review, with none of the usual scope for new scientific analysis. Now, for reasons he didn't fully understand, Dudek was unable to wrest the new-old footage, the rest of that reel, from Albert Maysles. Dudek had re-interviewed some of those involved, including Passaro's trial lawyer, George Walker, who said if there had been a second stabber he would have produced him at the time. All he could do in court was hint at the possibility. Dudek had felt sure he would end up proving there was a second stabber, but now began to feel there was nobody else. It had all been Passaro after all. Probably.
The Stones remain conspicuous by their silence. Of course, they are under no obligation to speak about it, but you might think, after all these years, they would feel a moral imperative to clear up the mysteries of Altamont and, as Dudek intended, lay the ghost of Meredith Hunter to rest. Altamont has clearly haunted the Stones too. If they do have something to hide, it can only be the fear of being found responsible for hiring the Hell's Angels — and so in turn sharing responsibility for Hunter's death.
Surely the Stones have little left to fear now. Like them, the Angels have grown old. When I met the former Frisco president Bob Roberts, he was in a wheelchair in hospital, in a dressing gown and slippers, after suffering his third stroke at the age of 66. He still remembered the "niggers", though. And still remembered how proud he was of Alan Passaro, for doing his duty and killing Meredith Hunter.