Richard Mattingly Murder Case - Legacy

Legacy

This case was covered in a series of articles written for The Washington Post at the time by Nancy Scannell, the Arlington bureau chief. The defunct Washington Star also covered this story extensively while a Newsweek article in January 1970 cited the case as an example of a 'copycat' Charles Manson gang, and caused some embarrassment to the anti-war organizations for whom Hitner had volunteered. A month later, the infamous Jeffrey MacDonald case emerged, in which MacDonald, who was ultimately convicted, claimed a group of "hippies" on LSD had been the perpetrators. Moreover, coming as it did in the wake of the Manson murders and the Hells Angels melee at the Altamont Free Concert, this episode was seen as further evidence of the decline of utopian hippie culture and the end of the age of innocence of the youth counterculture of those times.