The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 3

June 8. 1983 S.F. EXAMINER A3 Bill Mandel Why Huff man killed his comrade woman She knelt before him before he split her head with an ax in bizarre exorcism 7 Police storic V. bombings and attempted bombings, as well as extortion attempts and death threats, all under the banner of radical change. The couple also grew marijuana, 10-foot-tall plants on several nearby plots connected by tunnels cut in manzanita bushes.

The crop was irrigated by a system of hoses and small pools. According to testimony, Minton worked as a volunteer at Planned Parenthood and was studying nursing at Cabrillo College. Minton's gray-haired aunt, Grace Brun-hoffer. testified that Minton had come to the older woman's Mountain View home Just before the murder and complained that Huffman was irate over an abortion Minton had recently undergone. "He's so mad at me." Minton's aunt" quoted her niece as saying.

Later that day, Huffman called the aunt looking for his roommate, the aunt testified. Huffman, meanwhile, had been "preoccupied with death," a longtime friend testified. Dennis Morgan, a friend who also discovered Minton's body, said Huffman told him two days before the murder that he Oluffman) "would be getting rid of Mau-" reen and would get himself a new lady. One that would bear him children." The last person to see Huffman before the murder testified that there was no evidence of raging mental illness at that time. Minton was found with a draftsman's knife inside her mouth, an ax wound to the head, bruises and lacerations on her face, a broken nose and stab wounds on ber face and hands.

In the house, police found 50 pounds of harvested and treated marijuana. Huffman tried to commit suicide twice in Jail. He did not tell the psychiatrists who interviewed him for his trial anything about his alleged radical activities and made animal noises at his trial. A jury found him competent to stand trial and, last Friday, he was convicted of Minton's murder. Huffman has been acting as the Jail barber at the Santa Cruz County Jail.

By Phil Bronstein Examiner staff writer One theory about alleged revolutionary conspirator Ronald Huffman is that he was angry at his girlfriend of seven years because she let their German shepherd dog, Che, get ringworm. More importantly, the theory of the Monterey County prosecutor Madeleine Boriss goes, Maureen Minton had let Huff- man's $300,000 marijuana crop sicken by "overfertilizing it So he killed her, beat her, cut her up and split her head in two with an ax. Huffman's defense attorney, Tony Serra, disagrees, in part He told a Jury during Huffman's murder trial that his client was "stark raving mad." Serra said the couple "embraced the fervent view that their property was possessed by demon dogs that howled and beckoned to them." Packs of aggressive coyotes did roam the Santa Cruz bills near the couple's house, neighbors testified. On Sept 23, 1979, Serra said, the couple was ready to exorcise the demons. Minton willingly knelt before Huffman in their yard.

Huffman split her head with an axe and "after trying to beat the demons out of (her) body with a 2-by4," Huffman got a scalpel and cut out her brain tissue. He took the tissue (28 grams in a Jar that his lawyers said he believed imbued him with magical powers and warded off evil spirits), about $32,000 in cash and the book "The Greatest Story Ever Told," and left Minton's body was found by a neighbor. Hours later Huffman was arrested in a car in Pacifica after assaulting a hitchhiker and a police officer. "The Greatest Story 1 Ever Told" was tossed at one policeman. Huffman reportedly still had Minton's brain tissue with him in the car.

Huffman had grown up in Oregon, according to the testimony of his family, in less than domestic bliss. His mother said that his stepfather didnt treat the boy well His parents worked in a mental hospital "I could never read him from one minute to the next," his mother said at the murder trial "His moods changed." He got angry, testified one aunt when REMEMBER HOW WE used to think of the police? Back before nitty-gritty TV series took us into the squad room, back before the movies revealed the ilegal excesses of the Popeye Doyles and Dirty Harrys, back before hassles of the '60s dripped corrosive reality on our illusions, we thought of the police as paragons, embodiments of The Law itself. Now we know the truth. Unfortunately for our childish fantasies, police officers are human. Most of the time they are brave and dedicated.

Other times they can be venal, lazy or crueL Like most of us, the police in recent years have sagged under the constant barrage of violent and bizarre Some towns have even stopped sending police to take burglary statements. This upsetting crime has become so commonplace and so insoluble that police departments mail out report forms to be filled in. In recent weeks, readers have been sending me examples of police observing minor infractions traffic violations, mostly and doing nothing about them. One tale involoved a patrol car driving north on Franklin Street near Lombard while a taxi drove in the same direction on the wrong side of a two-way street. The officer in the patrol car did nothing about this dangerous behavior.

My pet peeve shared by reader Nancy Lewis of San Rafael, as expressed in Box Populi last week is the corner of 5th and Mission where there are four "no left-turn" signs. A few minutes spent at the busy corner reveal a veritable carnival of, people turning left. Because the intersection is so chock-full of traffic, the congestion caused by left-turners is dangerous as well as inconvenient Yet, there is never a policeman stationed there. Why? According to an officer who works the South of Market area, it's just not worth police time to deal with illegal turners. Unofficial police policy is not to enforce the law at some intersections, includ Associated Prns RONALD HUFFMAN, CALLED BY HIS LAWYER 'STARK RAVING MAD Couple believed 'their property was possessed by demon dogs' his grandfather was placed in a rest home.

There was a burglary arrest in 1956 at age 16 when he broke into federal post office. There were other small-time Juvenile problems. Then there was a 1963 Los Angeles arrest coming across the border from Mexico with balloons of heroin. An-. other dope arrest came a few years later.

Somewhere unexplained at the trial because the Judge ruled that Huffman's alleged political activities would prejudice the case Huffman became interested in revolutionary doctrine. He met Minton in 1972 in the San Jose area and they moved to the Santa Cruz area a year later. For the next five years, a federal indictment unsealed yesterday charges, Huffman and Minton executed 16 rWA 1 I If iitl 7i- A I If jr i If v. wjf 1 AlSjrw 1 "wJ II iff! JF7iJr 1 I i lift I 1U fT rfrthrr'! iff 'fl I I rJa.w:z-tr. i ii 'V iff I ing 5th and Mission.

Why not take the signs down? Because then everyone would turn left, he replied. THIS LOGIC REMINDED ME of another incident from a couple of weeks ago. To cut down on street congestion in Chinatown and North Beach, the police ordered all merchants to remove their goods from the sidewalks. Then, when the merchants complained, the police rescinded the order but didn't tell anyone. Official reasoning said the sidewalks would remain a little clearer if some merchants thought the sidewalk ban was still in effect In both cases, police behavior actually favored those who tend to violate the law.

At 5th and Mission, law-abiding people don't turn left because the signs forbid it. Scof flaws turn left anyway and are allowed to get away with it. Likewise, those merchants who ignored police instructions to clear their sidewalks got a better deal than those who cooperated. Once the police reversed their policy without telling anyone, the only people with goods on the sidewalk were the original violators. True, there's much demand on police time these days.

True, serious crime must take precedence over diddly stuff. But a wise police official will consider the psychological impact of his policies. If the public senses the triumph of frontier, every-man-for-himself behavior, the social fabric, starts to unwind. Perhaps unwittingly, our local police are endorsing that sort of behavior by having two codes of conduct one for the law-abiding citizen (who may see himself as a chump) and one for the selfish, uncaring boor who tests the limits of acceptable behavior and finds that there are none. CON MURPHY TO THE RESCUE! READER LYNN MAGNUSON was in Central Station filling out some police forms when two women, one very pregnant walked in.

The pregnant woman asked to use the bathroom. Perhaps because the women were black and the duty officer was white or perhaps because he wasn't in a good mood the duty officer refused permission. He told the woman to use any of four nearby bars. The pregnant woman said she didn't care for bars, but left when the officer was adamant ''t? Outraged, Magnuson called police chief Con Murphy's office, figuring it would do little good. To his surprise, Magnuson received a return call from Murphy's office within an hour.

Murphy's aide said that the duty officer was wrong, that the woman should have been allowed to use the bathroom. The aide said the officer in question was being "re-instructed" on the issue. Magnuson: had originally planned to call The Examiner with a complaint but he called instead with praise for Murphy. I 'Mr: lr'M 7 I hv i If fit i I I rr 111 JVf v' i Have you heard that preppies never buy anything on sale? Don't believe it. In some families it's traditional to wait for the I.

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