Head east from L.A., and soon the sprawling metropolis is swallowed by the vast emptiness of the Mojave Desert. It’s an otherworldly terrain boasting some of the most inhospitable conditions on this planet. Rugged mountains and precariously balanced stacks of boulders are the defining characteristics of the hot, dusty expanse. The only visible signs of life are gnarly Joshua trees that look like they were painted into the landscape by Dr. Seuss. It’s a harsh environment with a haunting beauty.
The mystique has a magnetic pull on some folks—they find solace in the desolate region with endless skies. Gram Parsons was one of them. He was drawn to the serenity of the desert and, while attending a friend’s funeral, turned to his manager Phil Kaufman and asked him, “Don’t let them put me in the ground. When I pass, I want to be cremated and my ashes spread in the high desert,” or something along those lines. They were fateful words, and Kaufman took them to heart.
When Parsons completed the recording of his Grievous Angels album he took a party of friends to a roadside motel in the desert, about forty-five minutes from Palm Springs. It was a place they frequently visited, the motel offered serenity, a swimming pool, and a view of the mountains that would later be designated as Joshua Tree National Park. Soon, things took a tragic turn. Late Tuesday night the party came pounding on the motel owners door screaming that Gram Parsons was unconscious in room eight and needed medical attention. They attempted to revive him with mouth to mouth resuscitation until the ambulance arrived, but to no avail. Twenty-six year old Gram Parsons was pronounced dead at Hi-Desert Memorial Hospital just after midnight on Wednesday, September 19th.
The tragedy sparked a bizarre series of events that started with a disagreement between Parsons’ friends and his family. The family was taking the body to New Orleans for burial, and the friends were not welcome at the ceremony. Words were spoken, whiskey was consumed, and by the end of the argument Phil Kaufman realized what he needed to do. He remembered the promise he made to Parsons, and he intended to fulfill that oath.
There wasn’t time to come up with a solid plan, but one of the girls from the motel had access to an old hearse, and that was enough for Kaufman to run with. He and an accomplice embarked on a drunken escapade to fulfill their friend’s wishes. The bumbling duo proved to be surprisingly adept criminals, staying one step ahead of the law with a series of schemes that could have been concocted by Wile E. Coyote.
Body snatching was a return to criminality for Kaufman. His first career was drug smuggler, and when that went wrong, he spent a spell in prison, where he became friends with a fellow inmate named Charles Manson. Upon release from prison, he went to live with Manson and his family of followers. Phil left the group before the killing started, but liked to brag that he had sex with more murderers than anyone else in Hollywood.
The brazen plan was to drive the dilapidated hearse across the tarmac and into the hangar at Los Angeles International Airport, where the body was awaiting transport to New Orleans. They would claim to work for a funeral home and say the family had arranged for a private charter from a suburban airport. They made it into the hangar without incident, but then the airport workers became suspicious that the intoxicated longhairs in cowboy hats might not be morticians.
Even in his impaired state, Phil was quick on his feet. He broke into a story that they were off the clock, and he didn’t want to be making this transport. You see, there was a girl, and he was just about to screw her when his asshole boss said he had to pick up a dead body and drive it to the other side of the city. As soon as he dropped the corpse off, he could get back to screwing. That was a language the night crew understood, and after that explanation, they accepted a forged signature from Jeremy Nobody and released the body to his custody.
Just when it looked like they were in the clear, a cop pulled into the hangar to see what the commotion was. Phil took charge again and authoritatively called the officer over to help load the coffin, and the bored patrolman complied. It was almost a clean getaway, but his nervous accomplice missed the airplane-sized exit and ran into the wall on the way out. That could have been the end of the adventure, but the cop barely registered the accident, and they slowly pulled away from the scene. At least, that’s how Phil claims it went down.
The rest of the drive was relatively uneventful, and they parked the hearse on the side of a narrow road in Joshua Tree National Monument. The plan was to carry the coffin to an ancient outcropping of boulders, but it was too heavy, and the men were too drunk, and they dropped it while removing it from the vehicle. After brief consideration, they determined this was a suitable spot for their ceremony. Phil opened the lid and emptied a five-gallon canister of gas over his friend’s body. With the strike of a match, a fireball erupted that engulfed Gram Parsons’ body and lit up the desert sky.
The spectacle led the duo to make a hasty retreat before anyone decided to investigate the strange incident. Impairment was a growing challenge for the duo as night was progressing to dawn. Navigating the narrow park road was difficult, and the local police received numerous reports of an old hearse swerving heavily that forced multiple vehicles off the roadway.
The open expanse of the Ventura Highway wasn’t any easier to navigate. The hearse was involved in a minor accident on the way back to the city, and the criminals found themselves in their second encounter with law enforcement. This time, Phil didn’t have any quick words to distract from the situation. So they ran. Surprisingly, it worked, and the two escaped the night without further incident.
The spectacular heist and subsequent funeral pyre ignited a manhunt that involved the FBI and three Southern California law enforcement agencies. The media fanned the flames with provocative headlines like: “Bearded Ghouls Steal Body of Gram Parsons.” There was a plethora of evidence leading back to the men, and it only took the FBI a few days to follow the obvious trail of clues. It didn’t even take their best minds. The suspects had managed to retrieve the hearse after the accident, and it was parked in the driveway when the police arrived.
Phil Kaufman had volunteered his home for the filming of a movie starring Gene Hackman and directed by Arthur Penn. He figured the signature from Jeremy Nobody would only disguise their identity for a few days, and with newspaper headlines bordering on hysteria, it was unclear how serious the charges would be. He considered going on the lam and living the rest of his life as a fugitive, but in the end, decided to quietly await his fate. The movie production paused when the police finally arrived, and cast and crew watched solemnly as he was led away in handcuffs.
They cheered triumphantly a few hours later when he came waltzing back in. During the furor of the hunt, the police overlooked the fact they didn’t know what crime to charge them with. There weren’t any laws against stealing a body, and a corpse doesn’t have any intrinsic value.* The best they were able to come up with was theft of the coffin—and Gram’s miserly stepfather had bought the cheapest one available, so even that only amounted to a misdemeanor.
What remained of the body eventually made its way to New Orleans for a traditional interment. Gram Parsons got his wish—some of the ashes remain in the desert landscape he loved, and if you squint hard enough, you can see burn marks where the coffin rested near Cap Rock. There is a makeshift memorial at the spot, but nothing official as the park has not determined how to deal with the macabre event.
The Joshua Tree Inn is still open on a desolate stretch of Twentynine Palms Highway near Yucca Valley. It hasn’t changed much since that fateful night in 1973—except now a shrine to Gram Parsons sits outside the door to room number eight. There are reports that his spirit remains in that spot, enjoying the tranquility of the desert much like the living man did. It’s become a mecca for fans, a place to pay respects to the artist we lost and, for the heartiest of them, an opportunity to rent the room he passed in, with hopes of carousing with his ghost.
