Charles Hinman

[size=14pt]Courtney found this but the principal, Charles Hinman is no relation to gary Hinman. We are leaving it here for the follow on discussions.[/size][size=12pt]Coroner[/size]

Shady Park's Solitude Belies a Tangled History
By Bob Pool
August 07, 2003

The LA Times Archives

Generations of dreamers have had grand plans for the place. So why is it that Lake Enchanto remains an enigma for nearly everyone who touches it?

For 16 years the oak- and sycamore-shaded glen next to Triunfo Creek in Agoura has been a 64-acre federal park called the Peter Strauss Ranch. But it is one of the National Park Service's least-used California treasures. And least understood.

Only one visitor was there last Saturday afternoon. Bird watcher Jim Hardesty, a retired math professor from Woodland Hills, had just spied a great blue heron and a black-headed grosbeak. He paused to ponder the park's name.

"I presume he's one of the early settlers in the area. Probably the 1800s or earlier," surmised Hardesty.

Actually, Strauss is an actor and producer. And how his name came to be placed on the land's front gate is just one of the intriguing tales of Lake Enchanto--like the property's unexpected ties to Watergate, the Manson Family and to the Indianapolis 500.

The property sprawls southward from the intersection of Mulholland Highway and Troutdale Drive. It was first developed in the early 1920s as a weekend getaway by Harry Miller, a wealthy Los Angeles automotive carburetor inventor whose "Miller Special" race cars won 11 early Indy 500 races.

Miller built the ranch's stone house and cottage and its concrete-and-rock root cellar. He constructed a house-size aviary and pens for animals such as deer, a mountain lion and a monkey for the amusement of his family. But he lost his shirt -- and his Agoura ranch -- when he tried unsuccessfully to manufacture airplane motors in the late 1930s.

For a brief time, the property was owned by cinematographer Arthur Edeson and lawyer Warren Shobert. They were residents of nearby Malibu Lake who had visions of turning the ranch into a commercial recreation center.

Along with a partner, Charles Hinman, they installed a terrazzo outdoor dance floor made of Italian marble. It was surrounded by white pergolas that trailed flowering honeysuckle vines and was illuminated by twinkling lights hung from overhead oak branches.

They dammed Triunfo Creek to create a quarter-mile-long lake for canoeing. Nearby, they built a 125-foot-wide, 650,000-gallon oval swimming pool. With a capacity of 3,000 swimmers, it was touted as the largest pool west of the Rockies. A platform-like island in the center was reached by boat and served as a stage for musicians who entertained crowds of up to 5,000 that watched from benches carved into a hillside above the pool.

Hinman, a lawyer, took over the place in the early 1940s and expanded on the recreation theme. He built a rock-walled "St. Bernadine's Fairy Tale Land" that depicted scenes from children's stories. He added amusement rides and booked big bands to play on the outdoor dance floor, sometimes for radio broadcasts into Los Angeles.

By the 1950s Hinman was hoping to expand. He proposed constructing a larger, 35-foot-high earthen dam across Triunfo Creek to form a mile-long lake. He sketched out plans to use 300 surrounding acres to create a fairyland park he called "Famous Places -- Cornell World." The name was taken from the tiny nearby community that at the time was called Cornell.

"I was planning something like Disneyland even before Walt Disney started," Hinman said.

By then, Lake Enchanto's popularity had waned. It was being used mostly for company picnics, attracting about 2,000 visitors a weekend during warm months. With miniature replicas of various wonders of the world, such as pyramids, a "Mt. Fujiyama," a steam-belching "Mt. Vesuvius," an Amazon jungle and a "Royal Gorge" canyon, "Cornell World" would be popular again, Hinman was certain.

Hinman's world came crashing down, however. He had married a teenager from Topanga Canyon and in the early 1960s he landed in divorce court. By that time, Hinman had purchased a weekly newspaper, the Topanga Journal, and was regularly writing about the increasingly nasty divorce fight. He was briefly jailed three times for violating court orders.

It was during one of those stints that Hinman tried to hire a cellmate to murder the lawyer representing his wife in the proceedings. But the would-be hit man wore a hidden microphone for one of the discussions, and Hinman was sent to prison for four years for seeking to kill attorney Murray Chotiner.

Hinman lost his newspaper and Lake Enchanto. Various pieces of the land were auctioned off for back taxes between 1967 and 1971. During Hinman's imprisonment, transients -- including some members of Charles Manson's infamous "family" -- lived at Lake Enchanto.

On July 31, 1969, a reported nephew of Hinman, Topanga Canyon musician Gary Hinman, was killed by Manson Family members -- the first of eight victims of a Los Angeles killing rampage that ended on Aug. 9 and 10 of that year.

Chotiner, in addition to being a Beverly Hills lawyer, was a key reelection campaign strategist for President Nixon. He died from injuries from what initially seemed to be a relatively minor car crash in front of Sen. Ted Kennedy's McLean, Va., home at the height of the Watergate scandal in 1974.

As for Hinman, he returned to Lake Enchanto after leaving prison to find that a 1969 flood had wiped out his dam and the lake. He was living there with a group of hippies he said were helping him repair 87 junked cars scattered around the grounds when authorities evicted him in 1976. Hinman died in 1988 at age 81.

Veteran tow truck driver Robert Sommers observed that the clean-up was the largest since "we went up to the Spahn Movie Ranch and hauled off the Manson Family's cars."

Strauss, who had become enchanted with the Agoura mountains while filming the "Rich Man, Poor Man" TV mini-series at Malibu Lake in 1976, purchased the dilapidated Lake Enchanto property a year later for $200,000. He spent six years restoring the place before deciding to move to Ojai.

He sold it to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state preservation group, in 1983 for $1.2 million. He had sought about $100,000 more, but the group had no more cash. Agoura-area real estate agent Glen Peterson, who represented Strauss, recalled Monday that conservancy head Joseph Edmiston broke the deadlock by offering to name the park after the actor to make up the difference.

These days the Peter Strauss Ranch is used for occasional concerts and is available for private events. It's open daily for hiking. Ruth Kilday, a preservationist who as a volunteer helped run the park for the conservancy until the National Park Service acquired it in 1987, said Hinman was rumored not to have trusted banks and to have buried vast sums of money at Lake Enchanto. "We never found it, though," she said.

There was gold of another sort found by the park's lone visitor on Saturday, however.

"Listen," bird watcher Hardesty said, pointing toward a eucalyptus tree next to the creek.

"That's a canyon wren. You can do a lot of looking before you see one of those. This is a very important place -- we're rapidly losing our flora and fauna."

Courtney
Is there any real evidence this is true??        The rest is useless unless this is true, you know.

Coroner, Very good point about a lot of things that we have on here.  i.e. newspaper clippings and magazine articles.

The veracity that applies in the world of publication (especially newspapers and magazines) can be quesionable.  They don't have room for MLA notes or citations, (they need the space for ads or they wouldn't be able to exist! LOL).  But  there are certain ethics  in the publishing industry that helps it police itself. 

However as we find in "Shattered Glass"  even a respected periodical like the  New Republic can fall prey to 'the wiles of a Wiley con artist' and quasi-fiction printed as fact.

Fabrication or mere fabrication is at the least a quick way to lose your job - or for the masthead to be libel.  There is a distinct difference in status in various mast heads and publishing houses.  A magazine like the National Enquirer is called a tabloid - the French word 'tableau' means 'recreation' and recreation has the liberty of subjective (or yellow) journalism.

But even the Enquirer is subject to that industrial scrutiny.  You don't find their publisher on 6Th Avenue in NYC on the same floor as Conde Nast.  LOL but they are not exempt from libel. However, the great masthead  Conde Nast can find itself libel.  Such is the case of our own  Roman Polanski who sued their "Vanity Fair" and wo.

Yet, the ethics of publishing houses rely on objective thinking and reporting.  The ethics of a tabloid is  subjective thus easier to print a lie  (unless a target of their paparazzi becomes fed up and decides take a public stand in court.)

Augusten Burroughs is my 'young' friend (hell everyone is young to me nowdays)  He's the author of (Running With Scissors) and a host of other witty sardonic works.  I am free to use his name because I have this conversation with him periodically. 

Because he specializes in subjective autobiographical 'nonfiction';  his assistant Stuart now checks dates and reviews.  Augusten was sued for taking the liberties of using  a composite of characters under a different name (and won). 

When even Oprah has been dupped by her 'book club selections' (James Frey and now the supposedly Holocaust survivor),  Still part fabrication is not good form in an industry that is driven by the upper class. Like Katherine Graham exemplified you have to be rich to begin with because it costs a trememdous amount of money to supply a paper like the Washington Post or The New York Times to a world wide audience DAILY. 

Because of the speed and necessity of suppling the public with news daily,  editors might now be able to check all -  but journalism is a competitive world and a lie  just might become someone else's Pulizer Prize. 

However cyber writing is so hard to determine.  A person needs to look at the mast-head and the URL because I'm a 'cut and paster' and while I don't have an agenda for falification, it would be easy to 'throw' an article on MS Word, re-edit and change the entire thing.  The same with photographs, our home software can crop, change, put a head of Abraham Lincoln on Hugh Hefner.  However, there is a fairly new occupation within the law world (says Augusten) that might help the veracity of anonynous cyber journalism.

Problem is there is so much on the internet.  Almost impossible to keep up with what is submitted to the 'grid in the sky' every hour of every day.

How can we determine what is more credible? The newpaper masts are greatly subjugated to scrutiny.  They have to be Coroner friend.  If not we would have anarchy. 

But,I read all those clippings from the past on this case and thank 'that's not true at all' and wonder how they were able to get away with presenting things as 'facts'.

Look at some of the books who are housed in nonfiction areas of the library like "The Family" which became Sanders' work of sensationalism on an already sensational case.  Whether we like it or not - personally I do - Helter Skelter has better factual references - most likely because the Bug is an attorney and he was still thanking about the law during the time he wrote it - however,  he's certainly been on a tangent lately with his "George Bush murderer rant" and even as a liberal - I would say this is 'hogwash' or 'pulp fiction' to paraphase Mark Twain.

The LA Times is a credible mast head in most respects.  An article like this one that comes from the LA times achieves is probably credible especially since it post dates the 'Shattered Glass' case that made editors reexamine veracity in the best of their journalists.

However in a case like Tate-LaBianca I'll end with this thought.

He handed us fiction after fiction, and we printed them all as fact. Just because we found him entertaining.

and

But there is one thing in this story that checks out.
What's that?
There does appear to be a state in the union named Nevada.

This is why we hired you Coroner - so we can reflect what seems to be objective and subjective in a world of crazy people who write about this case.  This is also why this is the best moderated forum on this case via internet.  Keep doing your job - making our discoveries accountable. ;D

If not we'll end up like the White Rabbit and this forum will be down the rabbit hole.

[quote author=courtney link=topic=1680.msg31496#msg31496 date=1238167913]

Problem is there is so much on the internet.  Almost impossible to keep up with what is submitted to the 'grid in the sky' every hour of every day. How can we determine what is more credible?
[/quote]

I sincerely believe that the Internet is not a great step in educational research. Perhaps, with guidance, the it does have something to offer, but it is far from solving traditional problems and may in act introduce many new ones.

When evaluating traditional printed material there are certain points one should bear in mind:

Accuracy: is the information reliable and has it been checked for errors of fact or substance ? Is there an editor who assumes authority for these ? Are there people entrusted with the specific duty of checking all the facts ?

Authority: is the author qualified to write on the subject ? Is he a recognised authority in the field ? Is the publisher a reputable publisher ? One tends to be more suspicious of self published books than those put out by University presses.

Objectivity: Probably no text is completely free of bias, but is this kept to a minimum ? Or is the information trying to influence the opinion of the audience ?

Currency: Is the content of the work up-to-date and is the date of publication clearly marked (and genuine) ?

Just a few thoughts

Jem

Coverage : Is the range of topics included in the work adequate and relevant and are they treated superficially or explored  in reasonable depth ?

Let us now apply these criteria to publishing on the World Wide Web.

Accuracy: Anyone with the right software who knows how to type and navigate can publish on the Web. Few Web resources are verified by editors and/or fact checkers and there are as yet no internationally accepted Web Standards to ensure accuracy of information posted. There is nothing to prevent the malicious posting of totally false (or, perhaps worse, partially false) information.

Authority: It is usually difficult and often impossible to determine real authorship of material posted on the Web. In cases where the authors name is listed, his/her qualifications are usually not and responsibility for accuracy or truthfulness of content is very rarely stated. But the fact that an article is attributed to, say, Noam Chomsky, is no guarantee that Chomsky wrote it or that it even reflects his views.

Objectivity: The aims of persons or groups who post material on the web are often unclear. The Web has a tendency to act as a virtual soapbox where anybody can get up and say what they want - indeed this is one of its strengths - but it certainly attracts a fair share of eccentrics along with the altruistically motivated. Which of these is which is not always clear.

Currency:  Any active Internet user  is aware of the number of dead pages littering the Web, e.g. sites saying last modified August 1995. There is no obligation to include dates on Web pages and in cases where a date is included it may variously be the date the information was first written, the date the information was posted or the date the information was last modified.

Coverage : It is hard to determine the extent of Web coverage because of the nature of hypertext links which join web pages and web sites together. In theory this allows infinite levels of depth according to the users requirements.  However, with a little skill it is possible in most cases to link any site with any other, thus implying an authoritative and authorised link, when in fact no such tacit connection was intended by the author of the original site or posting. For this reason any one web page should be evaluated independently of any other.

Whoops - that last post went off way before it was ready. Too late now, and hope it made some sort of sense.

Sorry for hitting the wrong button - webbed feet aren't the best thing for a keyboard.

Jem

[quote author=courtney link=topic=1680.msg31496#msg31496 date=1238167913]

Coroner, Very good point about a lot of things that we have on here.  i.e. newspaper clippings and magazine articles.

The veracity that applies in the world of publication (especially newspapers and magazines) can be quesionable.  They don't have room for MLA notes or citations, (they need the space for ads or they wouldn't be able to exist! LOL).  But  there are certain ethics  in the publishing industry that helps it police itself. 
SNIP>>>>>
[/quote]
I think the point about media can be extended much further but
about this article:
it makes points that DO NOT EXIST anywhere else
and
given that the record of the the LA metro area newspapers over the course of the these crimes and the trials was particularly poor on accuracy, objectivity, thoroughness and general journalism ethics what should we expect or accept?
There were reports so off the wall during the trial testimony that the defense and the prosecution wondered if they had been in the same courtroom as the reporters.

Coroner - I have no idea whether this is a useless bit of information or not - actually I didn't think it had any bearing until I remembered that Gary Hinman was supposed to have gotten an inheritance -

I don't know anyone out there that personally knows about this, do you?  I'm not even sure how the truth of an article could be checked except emailing the author -

Oh another thing - I was told the placement of an article in a newspaper has some bearing on whether it is hard facts or subjective news - in other words if it is printed for a Sunday human interest story it that makes a difference than section A which is Breaking News and section B which focuses on local news.

This to me looks like filer that was probably in an interest section - I did not see the actual clipping either, I saw it as you see it - so whatever -

I have a lack of familiarity with Topanga  - I don't know where this lake or this ranch is...I'm a bit lost -  Why does this seem important? How would the truth of this article have bearing on the case?

Can we zap it out then?  Somehow I can't get to modify or I would erase it - but to leave it up is confusing because I sort of took it at face value - didn't think it was important but considered it a small tidbit.  But something that is completely false is as you say 'of no use'.

Coroner, Cats can you get rid of it?  However, I did like the discussion on the ethics of journalism  and I have a question for Jem (who is currently teaching in a cyber world where students have instant access).  WHAT IS CREDIBLE TO AIDE RESEARCH!

Back in the dark ages my college research we were forced to go to the stacks and use the card catalogue, skim, annotate, record quotes and ideas for footnoting - those were not text book per se - just books we used to support whatever thesis we were promoting - (not hard when your major is theatre "Anything Goes")

So what's the difference with the internet - now I am not talking about stupid conspiracy websites which use other conspiracy websites as references and the 'writers' don't even have the wits to change the verbage, syntax or punctuation mistakes. I mean using this laptop as a real instrument of discovery.

How does one go about researching -  For example, I know there is a website called Case Law or Ancestry for instance - is something like that Worth investing the money to view? 

Let's leave it with a caveat at the beginning.

[quote author=courtney link=topic=1680.msg31516#msg31516 date=1238212753]
I have a question for Jem (who is currently teaching in a cyber world where students have instant access).  WHAT IS CREDIBLE TO AIDE RESEARCH!
[snip]
How does one go about researching -  For example, I know there is a website called Case Law or Ancestry for instance - is something like that Worth investing the money to view? 
[/quote]

Some suggestions:

Concentrate on primary sources in the TLB case these will be transcripts, public bmd data, contemporary media reports, etc., remembering that even these may be mistaken. Double check/corroborate everything and still be skeptical.

Forget almost everything freely available on the Internet with the exception of some sites (universities, some media companies like the BBC, some more respectable publishing houses, and some educational institutions).

Avoid Google and any similar search engine although you might try Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) which limits the search to academic pages and publications.

If you must use Google use filters to limit your search to certain sites or domains (or exclude them) see details at http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861.

Avoid Wikipedia and similar sites where unverified information is simply recirculated, often with embellishments

Treat newpaper and magazine sites with the respect they deserve The National Enquirer is not in the same league as the Scientific American.

Enlist the help of staff at a public library who are trained in this. They will be happy to give you research tips.

Better still, negotiate access to a university library deadwood publishing tends to be more reliable that random electronic surfing (although it dos depend what you read).

Think of the Accuracy/Authority/Objectivity/Currency/Coverage criteria I outlined in a recent (mangled) post.

Enrol in elearning sites that allow you access to electronic academic journals, although I ralise this may be hard if you are not in full time study or working in a college.

Most of this (and there is plenty more I could bore you with) is simply common sense.

[hr]

You asked about family history that is a whole new ball game and Id rather not go off topic here. But much of this applies.

Hope this helps

Jem

I've only occasionally used Photoshop, etc., but maybe there's an easy way to "watermark" the photo file with "retracted by author, see discussion" or something.

Re online research... When researching a topic online, I've often searched for "class notes" and "syllabus" etc. to get detailed information on exactly what is covered in college courses on the topic. There are often detailed lecture notes (which occasionally contain errors, so textbooks are better), info on outside materials...

.