Daniel Baransky

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Daniel Baransky (1955 - 1984) was rumoured to be the youngest member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. In 1967, Danny, then a 12-year-old runaway, was befriended by John Griggs who found him "sitting barefoot, lonely and lost" outside the Mystic Arts Bookstore in Laguna Beach, California. The boy had made the cross country trip from Philadelphia to San Diego, but while hitchhiking to San Francisco, was robbed of his knapsack and shoes near Oceanside. Confused and dazed from the experience he would say he was "pulled by a chain of love" to the Laguna Canyon. Rescued by Griggs, a former Anaheim Gang leader who had been transformed by an LSD experience, Danny was nicknamed 'Boehm' and became part of a group that preached an epistle of Love and LSD.

Guided by Griggs and the defrocked Harvard professor Timothy Leary, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love became the largest distribution network for psychedelic drugs in the 60’s and 70’s. Baransky, one of the Brothers' preferred messengers, was among the first to participate in large scale cannabis and cannabis resin importation, currying money and communications to BEL associates. His young age, often useful in special situations, kept him, for the most part, in the group’s background. He lived at the house on Roosevelt Lane and once Timothy Leary arrived he was sent to attend school. Daniel moved with the brothers to the Garner Valley Ranch near Idyllwild, California in 1968.

His involvement with the group ended in 1969, shortly after John Griggs' death from a drug overdose. He returned to the East Coast where he was arrested as a runaway and returned home. He was quickly sent off to a New Jersey Military School.

In 1972, he was questioned by the FBI concerning the Leary Prison Escape, but according to records acquired through "Freedom of Information Act" was "uncooperative and unhelpful". Daniel shortly thereafter dropped from the radar. He attended Duquesne University and graduated from the Charles Morris Price School with a degree in Journalism from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975.

But he was apparently never far from his adolescent foundations or his mentors -- in 1981, he was implicated as point man in a smuggling operation involving US military personnel moving marijuana from southeast Asia to California. It was alleged that John Gale, another former Brother, and famed smuggler Howard Marks were also involved. The government's suspicions could not be substantiated, and Baransky’s refusal to aid DEA and NIS investigators collapsed the case.

Baransky died in an automobile accident in 1984 while on a surfing vacation in Cape Town, South Africa.

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