Dismembered; Remembered

by Bob McHugh

David George spent much of his life drawing, following the Grateful Dead and selling pot. The first two made him happy and sometimes, a living. The last got him killed.

George edited an underground college newspaper in Olympia, Wash. He followed the Dead literally all around the world until he and Jerry Garcia became friends. And, in 2004, he was stabbed repeatedly and hacked into pieces by two maniacs over a bad Marijuana deal.

What do you say about a friend who has been dismembered?

An odd and macabre question, agreed. But it happened to me. Rather, I should say, it happened to my college roommate who I’ve just learned was killed and, yes, dismembered in a horrific drug murder about seven years ago.

The victim, David George, was a gentle, if somewhatmischievous man. In college in Boston in the early 70s, he was a hippie who threw the I Ch’ing, followed the Grateful Dead and sold pot. And, though I had not seen him in some 35 years, those things apparently did not change much.

I found in newspaper accounts and talking to mutual friends that David moved to Evergreen, Oregon, after leaving Boston about 1973. He continued his main passions: drawing comics, going to Dead concerts and smoking weed. Dead serious about all three, David reportedly became friendly with legendary Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, and joined the band’s traveling carnival – including a show at the foot of the Pyramids of Egypt.

He stayed true to cartooning, too. In college, he created “Buzz Gang Comics,” depicting me and our other friends as a band of merry, if stoned men. I was Ray Morphus, private eye, who David drew with an angular jaw and a Marlboro hanging from his (my) mouth.

David became the on-again, off-again publisher of the Evergreen Free Press, an alternative paper at Evergreen College near Olympia. David also stayed true to his affection for “recreational” drugs marijuana and the buying and selling of them.

Over two years, I never knew my roommate to be in the league of dealers who order planeloads of pot from Central American bad guys. But, we often had strangers visit our Back Bay apartment with cash in hand.

Sadly, if not unsurprisingly, drugs were David’s undoing. He was murdered in 2003 by two men, who stabbed him repeatedly and threw him in the trunk of a Toyota. David bled to death in there and, after leaving him dead in the woods for a few days in panic, the men – boys, really, at 21 and 19 – returned to hack him up and bury most of his parts in shallow graves. David’s head has still not been found.

What was left of David George was stumbled upon by a hapless hiker. The killers, Mert Celebisoy and Felix D’Allesandro, were tried and convicted and are serving lengthy sentences in an Oregon prison.

According to an appeal document, both men blamed each other:

Celebisoy testified that D’Allesandro had asked him to drive to a meeting with George. D’Allesandro was not satisfied with a recent marijuana purchase and wanted to talk with George. They met George on the street and he got into the car and Celebisoy drove while George and D’Allesandro talked. D’Allesandro demanded his money back and George refused. D’Allesandro became irate, reached over the seat, and stabbed George several times. Celebisoy stopped the car and got out; then George got out of the car, stumbled, and fell near the trunk. Threatening with the bloody knife, D’Allesandro ordered Celebisoy to ‘Pop the trunk.’ Celebisoy complied and, at D’Allesandro’s request, helped lift George into the trunk. Celebisoy denied having any advance knowledge that D’Allesandro was planning to kill George. D’Allesandro testified that Celebisoy called him to arrange a meeting so he (Celebisoy) could purchase cocaine from George. D’Allesandro arranged the meeting and drove Celebisoy to meet George. George sat in the front passenger seat while Celebisoy sat in the back seat. As D’Allesandro drove around, Celebisoy and George conversed. They started to argue loudly, and Celebisoy said, ‘Here you go, motherf***er,’ and Celebisoy stabbed George multiple times in the back.

People can be unspeakably violent to each other. The Romans threw Christians to the lions. The English, who gave us our just laws, ripped people apart and cut out their entrails. Revered artists, from Caravaggio to Tarantino, have made gore an art form.

Celebisoy and D’Allesandro probably won’t win any appeal. Chopping somebody to pieces is over just about any legal line. Someday, I might just go to Washington to meet David’s killers. I’ll ask them what they knew about my old roommate and why, on top of everything else, they decided to dismember him.

They probably won’t know.