William Mellon "Billy" Hitchcock

William “Billy” Mellon Hitchcock (1910-1989) was heir to the Gulf Oil fortune and nephew of Pittsburgh financier Andrew Mellon. Accordingly, he lived a “carefree” life and played key roles with other counterculture figues. Hitchcock turned over Millbrook — a 4,000-acre estate in Dutchess County, New York — to Timothy Leary’s International Federation for Internal Freedom. William was introduced to LSD and Leary through his sister, Peggy Hitchcock, who Leary introduced to LSD the year before and with whom he had a brief affair. Hitchcock went to Sausilito, Calif., and underwrote two chemists, Nick Sands and Tim Scully, to expanded the operation to manufacture millions of hits of Orange Sunshine LSD. In 1968, Billy Hitchcock financed Tim Scully’s LSD lab. The product from the lab was distributed by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which was also arranged by Hitchcock. The Brotherhood was dubbed the “Hippie Mafia” by the police. Their activities came to an end on Aug. 5, 1972, when a drug raid was executed on the group. Police arrested dozens of Brotherhood members in California, Oregon and Maui. Curiously, little jail time was served by anyone in the group. Billy Hitchcock was threatened with years in prison for tax evasion if he didn’t help the government convict the prime movers of the LSD (and hashish) cartel. He provided evidence and testified against Tim Scully and Nick Sand. They were both indicted in April 1973. Scully served a couple years in prison, and Hitchcock walked free. Scully and Sands were the subject of the 2015 British documentary “The Sunshine Makers.” Hitchcock has been placed in the middle of many conspiracy theories. He had ties to Ronald Stark, the U.S. intelligence asset who has been linked to Charles Manson. Hitchcock was also the largest investor in Resorts International - which had ties to Meyer Lansky. He had relationships with Bernie Cornfeld and Seymour “The Head” Lazare, directors of the Swiss-based Investors Overseas Services (IOS), a money laundry outfit who worked with Robert Vesco.