This Day in History: The Groovy Murders happened on this day in 1967. A young Connecticut socialite, Linda Fitzgerald, left the life she knew to hang out in New York's East Village, a place that drew many artists, musicians, students and hippies. While there, she hooked up with one of the most well-known hippies in the area, James “Groovy” Hutchinson. On the morning of Oct. 8, 1967, a janitor who stumbled home to his hippie flophouse, found the room occupied by Groovy Hutchinson and Linda Fitzgerald. They were naked and dead, their heads bashed in with bricks. Fitzpatrick had also been sexually assaulted.
Newspapers all over the country carried an Associated Press story two days later that included this sensational tidbit: "Police said it was a wild interracial LSD party that climaxed in the bludgeon slayings of the two young people." Newsweek magazine ran a headline entitled: "Trouble In Hippieland." A national debate was sparked as to why good kids leave their homes and families to join the hippie and drug counter-culture.
Several years later two drifters were arrested for the murders. A motive was never discovered. For many it marked the end of the Summer of Love. For others, the hippie ideal ended with the Manson Family murders two years later.
The Groovy Murders shook New York and is still regarded as one of the most infamous moments in the city's history, alongside, the murders of Malcolm X, John Lennon and Catherine “Kitty” Genovese...and the Son of Sam killings.
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