Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (82 page)

Q.
“Can you explain how it happened?”

 

A.
“I was talking to him and he walked into the next room. Little Patty was lying on the bed. He sat down on the bed next to her. He reached over, grabbed the gun, and shot himself.”

 

Q.
“Just like that?”

 

A.
“Yes.”

 

Q.
“Out of a clear blue sky?”

 

A.
“Right out of a clear blue sky.”

 

Three big questions remain: why was Zero playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun; why, if he took the gun out of the leather case, was the case clean of prints; and why, though Bruce Davis admitted picking up the gun, were neither his prints nor those of Zero on it?

About a week after the story of Manson’s involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders broke in the press, Los Angeles
Times
reporter Jerry Cohen was contacted by a man who claimed he had been present when Zero was shot. Only Zero hadn’t been playing Russian roulette; he had been murdered.

The man was about twenty-five, five feet eight, blond, of slight build. He refused to give Cohen his name. He was, he admitted, “scared to death.”

Six or eight persons had been in the Venice pad that night, smoking hash. “It was one of the chicks that killed Zero,” he told Cohen. But he wouldn’t say which one, only that recently, at another Manson Family gathering, she had sat staring at him for three hours, all the while fingering her knife.

In questioning him, Cohen established that he had become involved with the Family after the Tate-LaBianca murders. He had never met Manson, he said, but he had heard from other Family members that there had been “many more murders than the police know of” and that “the Family is a whole lot larger than you think.”

The youth wanted money to get to Marin County, in Northern California. Cohen gave him twenty-five dollars, implying there would be more if he returned to identify Zero’s murderer. He never saw him again.

O
n November 16, 1969, the body of a young girl was found dumped over an embankment at Mulholland and Bowmont Drive near Laurel Canyon, in almost the same spot where Marina Habe’s body was found. A brunette in her late teens, five feet nine, 115 pounds, she had been stabbed 157 times in the chest and throat. Ruby Pearl remembered seeing the girl with the Family at Spahn, and thought her name was “Sherry.” Though the Manson girls traded aliases often, LASO was able to identify only one Sherry, Sherry Ann Cooper, aka Simi Valley Sherri. She had fled Barker Ranch at the same time as Barbara Hoyt and was, fortunately, still alive. The victim, who had been dead less than a day, became Jane Doe 59 in police files. Her identity is still unknown.

The proximity in time of her death to that of Zero suggests the possibility that she may have been present at the murder, then killed so she wouldn’t talk. But this is strictly conjecture, and there is no evidence to support it. Her murder remains unsolved.

O
n November 21, 1969, the bodies of James Sharp, fifteen, and Doreen Gaul, nineteen, were found in an alley in downtown Los Angeles. The two teen-agers had been killed elsewhere, with a long-bladed knife or bayonet, then dumped there. Each had been stabbed over fifty times.

Ramparts Division Lieutenant Earl Deemer investigated the Sharp-Gaul murders, as did Los Angeles
Times
reporter Cohen. Although the two men felt there was a good possibility that a Family member was involved in the slayings, the murders remain unsolved.

Both James Sharp and Doreen Gaul were Scientologists, the latter a Scientology “clear” who had been residing in a Church of Scientology house. According to unconfirmed reports, Doreen Gaul was a former girl friend of Manson Family member Bruce Davis, himself an ex-Scientologist.

Davis’ whereabouts at the times of the murders of Sharp, Gaul, and Jane Doe 59 are not known. He disappeared shortly after being questioned in connection with the death of Zero.

O
n December 1, 1969, Joel Dean Pugh, husband of Family member Sandy Good, was found with his throat slit in a London hotel room. As noted, local police ruled the death a suicide. On learning of Pugh’s demise, Inyo County DA Frank Fowles made official inquiries, specifically asking Interpol to check visas to determine if one Bruce Davis was in England at the time.

Scotland Yard replied as follows: “It has been established that Davis is recorded as embarking at London airport for the United States of America on 25th April 1969 while holding United States passport 6122568. At this time he gave his address as Dormer Cottage, Felbridge, Surrey. This address is owned by the Scientology Movement and houses followers of this organization.

“The local police are unable to give any information concerning Davis but they understand that he has visited our country more recently than April 1969. However, this is not borne out by our official records.”

Davis did not reappear until February 1970, when he was picked up at Spahn Ranch, questioned briefly on the Inyo County grand theft auto charges, then released. After the grand jury indicted him for the Hinman murder, he vanished again, this time not surfacing until December 2, 1970, four days after the mysterious disappearance of Ronald Hughes. As mentioned, when he gave himself up he was accompanied by Family member Brenda McCann.

W
ith three exceptions, these are all the known murders which have been proven, or are suspected to be, linked to the Manson Family. Are there more? I’ve discussed this with officers from LAPD and LASO, and we tend to think that there probably are, because these people liked to kill. But there is no hard evidence.

As for those three other murders, two of them occurred as late as 1972.

O
n November 8, 1972, a hiker near the Russian River resort community of Guerneville, in Northern California, saw a hand protruding from the ground. When police exhumed the body, it was found to be that of a young man wearing the dark-blue tunic of a Marine dress uniform. He had been shotgunned and decapitated.

The victim was subsequently identified as James T. Willett, twenty-six, a former Marine from Los Angeles County. This information appeared on radio and TV newscasts on Friday, November 10.

On Saturday, November 11, Stockton, California, police spotted Willett’s station wagon parked in front of a house at 720 West Flora Street. When refused entry to the house, they broke in, arresting two men and two women and confiscating a number of pistols and shotguns.

Both women had Manson Family X’s on their foreheads. They were Priscilla Cooper, twenty-one, and Nancy Pitman, aka Brenda McCann, twenty. A few minutes after police entered the residence, a third female called, asking to be picked up and given a ride to the house. The police obliged, and also arrested Lynette Fromme, aka Squeaky, twenty-four, ex-officio leader of the Family in Manson’s absence.

The two men were Michael Monfort, twenty-four, and James Craig, thirty-three, both state prison escapees wanted for a number of armed robberies in various parts of California. Both had the letters “AB” tattooed on their left breasts. According to a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, the initials stood for the Aryan Brotherhood, described as “a cult of white prison inmates, dedicated largely to racism but also involved in hoodlum activities, including murder contracts…”

While in the house, the police noticed freshly turned earth in the basement. After obtaining a search warrant, they began digging, and early the following morning exhumed the body of Lauren Willett, nineteen. She had been shot once in the head, her death occurring either late Friday night or early Saturday morning, not long after the identity of her slain husband was revealed on news broadcasts.

Questioned by the police, Priscilla Cooper claimed that Lauren Willett had killed herself “playing Russian roulette.”

Although, like Zero, Mrs. Willett was not able to contradict this story, the Stockton police were far more skeptical than had been LASO. The three women and two men were charged with her murder.

They were scheduled to go on trial in May 1973. On April 2, however, four of the five surprised the Court by entering guilty pleas. Michael Monfort, who pleaded guilty to the murder of Lauren Willett, was sentenced to seven years to life in state prison. Superior Court Judge James Darrah also ordered consecutive terms of up to five years and two years for James Craig, who had pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder and to possessing an illegal weapon, i.e., a sawed-off shotgun. Both girls also pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact, and both Priscilla Cooper and Nancy Pitman, aka Brenda, who Manson once indicated to me was his chief candidate for Family assassin, were sent to state prison for up to five years.

Still another Family member, Maria Alonzo, aka Crystal, twenty-one, arrested while trying to smuggle a switchblade knife into the Stockton jail, was subsequently released.

As was Squeaky. There being insufficient evidence to link Lynette Fromme to Lauren Willett’s murder, the charges against her were dropped and she was freed, to again assume leadership of the Manson Family.

Monfort, and an accomplice, William Goucher, twenty-three, subsequently pleaded guilty to second degree murder in the death of James Willett, and were sent to state prison for five years to life. Craig, who pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to the murder, was given another prison term of up to five years.

The motive for the two murders is not known. It is known that the Willetts had been associated with the Manson Family for at least a year, and possibly longer. Police surmised that Lauren Willett was killed after learning of the murder of her husband, to keep her from going to the police. As for the murder of James Willett, the official police theory is that Willett himself may have been about to inform about the robberies the group had committed.

There is another possibility. It may be that both James and Lauren Willett were killed because they knew too much about still another murder.

J
ames and Lauren. Something about those first names seemed familiar. Then it connected. On November 27, 1970, a James Forsher and a Lauren Elder drove defense attorney Ronald Hughes to Sespe Hot Springs. After Hughes disappeared, the couple were questioned but not polygraphed, the police being satisfied that when they left the flooded area Hughes was still alive.

At first I thought “Elder” might be Lauren Willett’s maiden name, but it wasn’t. Nor, in checking the police reports and newspaper articles, was I able to find any description of Forsher and Elder. All I did find were their ages, both given as seventeen, and an address, from which I subsequently learned they had long since moved. All other efforts to track them down were unsuccessful.

It appears unlikely that James Forsher and James Willett were the same person: Willett would have been twenty-four in 1970, not seventeen. But Lauren is a decidedly uncommon name. And, nineteen in 1972, she would have been seventeen in 1970.

Coincidence? There had been far stranger ones in this case.

One thing is now known, however. If an admission by one of Manson’s most hard-core followers is correct, Ronald Hughes
was
murdered by the Manson Family.

I
t was some weeks after the conclusion of the Tate-LaBianca trial before I received the autopsy report I’d requested from Ventura County. The identification, made through dental X-rays, was positive. The body was that of Ronald Hughes. Yet the rest of the autopsy report added little to the newspaper accounts. It noted: “The decedent was observed face down in a pool of water with the head and shoulder wedged under a large rock.” One arm was almost completely severed at the shoulder, and there were large open areas in the chest and back. Other than this, “no outward evidence of violence was noted” while “no evidence of foul play [was] indicated by the X-rays.” All this was qualified more than a little by the fact that the body was badly decomposed. As for the report’s primary findings, there were none: “Nature of death: Undetermined. Cause of death: Undetermined.”

The report did note that the stomach contained some evidence of “medication residue.” But its exact composition—drugs, poison, whatever—was, like the nature and cause of death, left undetermined.

Completely dissatisfied with the report, I requested that our office conduct an investigation into the death of Hughes. The request was denied, it being decided that since there was no evidence of foul play, such an investigation was unnecessary.

There the matter remained, until very recently. While the Tate-LaBianca trial was still in progress, motion-picture director Laurence Merrick began work on a documentary on the Manson Family. The film, simply titled
Manson
, dealt only briefly with the murders and focused primarily on life at Spahn and Barker ranches. I narrated a few segments, and there were interviews with a number of Manson’s followers. The movie was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1972 and nominated for an Academy Award the following year. During its filming Merrick gained the confidence of the Manson girls. Sandra Good admitted, for example, on film, that when she and Mary Brunner learned of the Tate murders, while still in the Los Angeles County Jail, “Mary said, ‘Right on!’ and I said, ‘Wow, looks like we did it!’”