New York shooting blows apart hippie commune with kinky sex on the side

The Sunday Times, London/June 4, 2006
By Tony Allen

It was meant to promote peace and love, but ended in a hail of bullets. America’s counter- culture has come back under the spotlight after the founder of a New York commune was repeatedly shot by an unhinged former member last week.

As Jeff Gross was recovering from gunshot wounds to his chest and arm, the prime suspect for the attack, a 43-year-old woman, was still on the run this weekend.

For New Yorkers long used to gun violence, the most shocking aspect of the shooting was the realisation that the hippie lifestyle continues to exist within the confines of their energetic and affluent city.

The shooting on Staten Island, a sedate commuter borough, has exposed a tangled network of communal jealousies involving lurid tales of sex with dwarves and lesbian orgies.

It has also sent a shudder through the shrinking world of American hippiedom, which has never fully recovered from the Jonestown massacre of 1978, when “Reverend” Jim Jones orchestrated the mass suicide of more than 900 followers at a commune in Guyana.

Gross, 51, a co-founder of the Ganas housing co-operative, has identified his assailant as Rebekah Johnson, a former commune member who was expelled 10 years ago and who later returned to threaten Gross and other members.

“Most of us are normal people who just don’t want to live the rat race,” said one commune dweller from Missouri. “But things like this make all of us sound weird.”

The Ganas commune was established in 1979 as “an experiment in open dialogue,” according to the group’s website.

One of its founders was a wealthy Wall Street money manager who helped the group purchase 10 suburban houses, most of them linked together.

Up to 100 people live in the commune at any one time, sharing meals, cars and, in several cases, lovers. The group’s website portrays it as a domestic paradise, with “berry bushes, a small swimming pool, exercise room, laundries, good sound systems”.

There are only four rules, the first of which advocates “non-violence to people or things”.

Yet it has since become clear that paradise has its pitfalls. Several Ganas members are reported to have committed suicide, among them a man who hanged himself from a tree on the property and remained there for days because his corpse was mistaken for a Hallowe’en decoration.

Last week Johnson, a minister’s daughter from Virginia, was described as initially drawn to the commune’s peace-loving principles, but turned out to be mentally unstable.

She was eventually asked to leave. She subsequently sued the group for allegedly forcing her to have lesbian sex and for exposing her to sexually transmitted diseases.

She complained about several dwarves who were members of Ganas and at one point alleged that some female residents were ordered “to sleep with the midgets”.

The £1.6m lawsuit was later dropped. But two years ago Johnson, who had moved into new accommodation close to the commune, began stalking Gross, distributing posters that labelled him a “career rapist and a pimp”. Gross obtained a court restraining order.

Late last Monday he was returning to the commune from a trip to Manhattan when he claims he was confronted by Johnson holding an .380- calibre pistol.

“She didn’t say anything,” Gross said from his hospital bed last week. “I pleaded with her when she started shooting.

I yelled at her ‘Please stop’. But she didn’t.”

According to one survey, about 8,000 Americans were living in communes during the 1990s. But commune websites suggest they are a far cry from the flourishing communities of the 1960s. Sandhill Farm in rural Missouri is home to just five adults and one child and has “current openings for new members”. The shooting in Staten Island seems unlikely to encourage new recruits.