Loved their music! Knew all the words. Sang my heart out every time their songs were played.

Devil Inside was filmed in the Balboa section of Newport Beach, one of my favorite places in the world.

 

My wife and I saw INXS in Vegas, April of 1994.

I remember the TV show where they were picking a replacement front man for them. How did that turn out? I can't recall.

I remember the TV show where they were picking a replacement front man for them. How did that turn out? I can't recall.

 

J.D. Fortune - Wikipedia

 

Solid tune.....

 

Very interesting story. Read the article as well about the murder and the family. Widow with now 4 kids. The community rallied around her. Good stuff.

 

Wow...glad that you found this interesting, as all of this, and the article were quite a long read. It sorta blows my mind to have found this because from numerous past attempts of finding info on him, I had pretty much given up.

 

There's so many unanswered questions in my mind that I'll probably never find answers to. I met Rich through another guy Andy that I was hanging around years ago, and that guy died 5 years ago at the age of 46 (suicide is suspected). I wonder if Andy even knew that Rich was back in town. Andy was a real sad sack of a guy who was always lonely and depressed while also being HIV positive. He died merely a week after is big old dog Nash had died, which had people suspect that Andy had concluded that there was nothing left to live for. I basically only hung with Andy during my 20's, but because of his manic depression I just had to move on because he was such a downer to be around.

 

Rich never spoke much of his upbringing, so I'm not even sure what high school he went to (though I think that he was loosely raised Catholic), never knew that he had a sister, didn't really know much, and out of character for me I don't recall much being inquisitive of him to get a better idea of this dude that I was hanging with.

 

When he got wrapped up with Gatewood Galbraith is about the time that I drifted away from hanging around him. He became a one note song all about the legalization of marijuana and how if you wanted to use it you should become an activist for its legalization. I had a full time job, a house, and a clean record with no interest to blemish it. It's quite possible that Gatewood had something to do with Rich cleaning up his look if people were to ever take him seriously.

 

Rich had coined the phrase when still living here "compassionate cannabis" where he spoke of medical marijuana for patients with cancer and HIV, and with help from Gatewood he was hoping to get something started here locally regarding that. After being arrested in Covington, he immediately split to San Francisco and though he also got arrested out there, I found an article from '99 where he had been operating what was called "Patients and Caregivers Health Center" where he provided marijuana for 600 patients. His getting into "trouble" wasn't exactly your typical druggy criminal breaking the law, as Rich was willing to be arrested for his causes.

 

Ironically the friend of his that drowned in the Ohio while he and Rich had been "partying" there was a guy in his early 20's who already had a wife and 5 kids.

 

Rich naming his Cincinnati business "Cosmic Pizza" fits. I can only imagine that when he returned to Cincinnati that he felt a bit stifled regarding his marijuana freedoms that were maybe more loose where he had been, and the fact that he had ran that health center out in Frisco, where there'd be no chance of that here.

 

Though I can't really find much regarding a motive of why that guy shot him, I can't but help to wonder that acquiring marijuana in Cincy returned Rich back to the risks of getting it from the streets (assuming that he still used it, which I have a hunch that he did).

 

That photo of him and his wife in 2003 puzzles me because he would've been 40 and she would have been 25, but both of them it seems looks way younger than that. There's no doubt that it's him because the age fits, some of the back story regarding San Francisco, and the photo of him in the chef outfit that his son is holding is definitely him.

 

Not that it would matter exactly, but with his wife being at the mercy of Rich running the whole show of their marriage before he was killed, I have a hunch that she barely has a clue to his activist and/or criminal past. From what I knew of him, it's likely that if he ever presented these details to her it would be on a need-to-know basis, which I also have a hunch that he'd conclude that she didn't need to know.

 

Rich wasn't a violent guy as he was mostly a peaceful hippy type, yet there was a certain edge about him that wasn't exactly a choir boy either. He did like to laugh and act silly, and even had his own brand of bizarre goofiness that would have most scratching their heads about him. He made weird sounds and often pretended that he was creating his own made up language.

 

I had long ago concluded that it would be best that I didn't stay in touch with him because it all just seemed to spell out trouble if I had. He was very much a control freak, and was only content if everyone in his company focused their attentions on him, and to follow him and his causes. I had other eggs to fry and taking the chance of getting into trouble was not one of them.