COAST TO COAST

-- Kari Lydersen

After 35 Years, Officer Closes Case of Stabbing at Altamont

It was supposed to be the West Coast's response to Woodstock, rock-and-roll outreach to the flower power crowd. Instead, the free concert at the Altamont Speedway near Livermore, Calif., on Dec. 6, 1969, devolved into a day of gang violence, bad drug trips -- and a killing. Now, 35 years later, police have finally closed the books on the crime that entered history as the symbolic end of the '60s.

Meredith Hunter, 18, was stabbed to death after flashing a gun just yards from the stage as the Rolling Stones performed "Under My Thumb." His assailant: one of the Hells Angels working concert security.

The attack was caught on film. But a jury acquitted Alan Passaro, then 21, whose lawyers claimed self-defense and questioned whether his blows were the fatal ones. Indeed, investigators long wondered if others were involved: Hunter had six wounds, but Passaro was filmed delivering only two. Some witnesses thought they saw a second assailant.

Two years ago, an Alameda County sheriff's deputy reviewing old cases realized the slaying had never been closed. Sgt. Scott Dudek told reporters recently he studied film clips and interviewed Passaro's former attorney, who confirmed there was no second stabber. (Passaro died in 1985.)

"Alan Passaro is the only person that stabbed Meredith Hunter," Dudek told the Contra Costa Times. The case, he said, is closed.

-- Amy Argetsinger