Richard Mattingly Murder Case - Background

Background

Hitner, Comeau, and Truax had lived in a hippie "crash pad" in an old Brownstone at 18th and N in Washington, D.C., that was frequented by many radical and street youth. Hitner, a high school dropout from a working-class community in Pennsylvania, while AWOL had spent his time frequenting the hippie street culture of Georgetown and Dupont Circle, when he was not volunteering at the national offices of the anti-war movement located on Vermont Avenue. These organizations, the Vietnam Moratorium, the New Mobe and the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (SMC) had just organized the largest anti-war protests and political demonstrations in American history in October and November 1969. (See Opposition to the Vietnam War). Hitner, according to press accounts and stories he had told acquaintances previously, had had extensive combat experiences in Vietnam, and had been involved in certain atrocities.

On January 5, 1970, Hitner met Debra Mattingly, a chronic runaway who had served time in juvenile institutions, at Dupont Circle. They and their milieu began taking LSD on a continuous basis. Both Comeau and Hitner testified at trial that they had aspirations to set up a chapter of the Hells Angels in the Washington, D.C., area, while Mattingly bragged about her familiarity with the rival Pagans.