Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover (44 page)

The next morning, some of the other ranch hands asked Charlie if he’d seen Shorty Shea. Charlie said that he thought Shea had gone to San Francisco: “I told him about a job there.”

•  •  •

At the end of August, both the Tate and LaBianca investigation teams prepared progress reports for top administration of the LAPD. The Tate squad’s report listed five suspects, William Garretson and four individuals suggested by informants. It noted that all five had been cleared. The Tate team had no explanation yet for the word “PIG” written in blood on the front door at Cielo. The LaBianca team’s report included considerably more details, including speculation on the bloody words “Rise,” “Death to Pigs,” and “Healter Skelter” left at Waverly Drive. Younger and more attuned to rock music than the Tate detectives, the LaBianca investigators noted that the Beatles’ most recent album included the songs “Helter Skelter,” “Blackbird,” and “Piggies,” and lyrics from those songs might in some way be related to the gory words scrawled by the killers. This possible lead wasn’t emphasized in the report, and no further attention was paid to it.

Neither the Tate nor the LaBianca report mentioned that the two events had any possible connection.

By the end of August, stories about the Tate murders continued to appear in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, and widespread interest in them continued. But other violent events forced their way into headlines and news reports, too, particularly the first in a series of bombings of federal buildings and major businesses across the nation by radical protesters. Between August 31 and the end of May 1970,
these totaled almost 250, or an average of about one each day. Violence plagued America; the grisly murder of an actress was embedded in the public consciousness, but it was joined by fresher, equally deplorable events. Only in L.A. did the story continue to dominate local news reports. Somewhere
in the city particularly foul murderers skulked, perhaps preparing to strike again.

But by the first week in September that was no longer true. Though he was hampered by a shortage of dune buggies, Charlie decided he couldn’t wait any longer. The Family stole a few cars—a red four-wheel-drive Toyota was the prize among them—to partially replace the fleet lost in the county raid. Then Charlie loaded the Family into the vehicles and led his followers into the desert.

B
ecause it involved so many people and loads of supplies, the Family’s relocation to the desert took several trips spread out over the better part of a week. Charlie slightly hedged on his commitment to Death Valley by leaving a few of the women back at Spahn, both to provide him with an L.A. base of operations and to send word if cops showed up looking for him. But he and more than two dozen of his followers moved, too many to fit in the shacks on Barker Ranch. The overflow squatted on adjacent Myers Ranch; Cathy Gillies’s grandmother, who didn’t live on the property, was probably unaware that the temporary visitors she’d allowed to stay awhile in late 1968 were back.

Charlie didn’t allow them to readjust to their new, primitive living conditions. From the moment they arrived, everyone in the Family engaged in frantic efforts to prepare for the attack that Charlie swore to them was coming. He was sometimes vague about who, exactly, was about to descend—sometimes it was still militant blacks bent on wiping out every trace of the white population, but he also mentioned “the law.” The bottom line was that some form of violent assault was imminent, and the Family had to be ready to fight it off. So pits had to be dug to cache weapons and nonperishable food, and bunkers carved into hillsides. It was hot, sweaty work in the unrelenting desert summer heat, but those weren’t the only tasks Charlie assigned. At some point every day, squads of Family members had to trek out into the desert to look for the bottomless pit where Charlie prophesied they would hide until Helter Skelter was finally over and the blacks begged the Family to emerge and rule the world. Charlie kept describing the pit in detail, all about the upper tunnel
that led below to a great city, and how the magical city’s atmosphere would allow all of them to evolve into whatever sort of beings that they liked, and the wonderful news that they wouldn’t age while they were down there, so that when they did come back up into the surface world they’d still be young and strong and ready to rule under Charlie’s direction for a very long time.

Charlie’s true believers—Squeaky, Sandy, addled Clem—took him completely at his word. Others liked his descriptions of the pit so much that they didn’t allow themselves to question Charlie’s veracity;
Leslie in particular wanted to become an elf with wings.
Many, worn down by physical labor and sweltering temperatures, acquiesced because they were too exhausted to question Charlie’s orders. He remained in total command. At night he gathered everyone around campfires, doled out strong hits of acid, and described the world soon to come, a place where they enjoyed every luxury and this tough time in Death Valley was a distant memory. They should be grateful to him, Charlie stressed. He was putting himself at great risk to save them. Sometimes he’d describe in colorful detail how he shot Lotsapoppa; occasionally Charlie also mentioned the killing of Shorty Shea, emphasizing that Shorty had to die because he’d ratted on the Family. The underlying message was that Charlie would kill anyone who betrayed him, Family members included.

It was a hard way to live, but the men in the Family found more to enjoy in it than the women. The men served as armed lookouts, roosting in the shade and avoiding enervating movement in the unrelenting sun. They got the first and largest servings at meals and could relax afterward. The women had to chop wood for the stoves, cook the meals, eat whatever scraps were left by the men, and care for the children—for now there weren’t many, just Susan’s son, Ze Zo Ze (whom she stole back from county foster parents after the Spahn raid), and a baby boy named Ivan recently delivered by Sandy Good. Even if she was worn out to the point of collapse, every female was obligated to uncomplainingly have sex with any male Family member who demanded it. To many of the women, life in a bottomless pit sounded great by comparison.

Seventeen-year-old Ruth Ann Moorehouse was one of the few women remaining constantly upbeat and energetic. Most of the others
dreaded the anticipated attacks, but Ruth Ann looked forward to them—to her, it would be part of a great adventure, one she’d missed out on so far because she hadn’t had the chance to kill anyone for Charlie.
Ruth Ann confided to Danny DeCarlo that she could hardly wait to get her first pig. That was too much for DeCarlo, who suspected that eventually Charlie would decide to eliminate him the same way that he had Shorty Shea. DeCarlo fled Barker Ranch and holed up with some of his old Straight Satan pals in Venice; because of all the “murder talk” he’d heard at Spahn and in the desert, DeCarlo remained concerned that Charlie might yet send out some of the Family to murder him.

Though DeCarlo ran, another non-Family member stayed around. Hulking Spahn ranch hand
Juan Flynn accompanied the Family out into the desert, not to join but because he wanted to find out what had happened to his friend Shorty. It didn’t take Juan long—Charlie bragged about the Shea murder at the campfires. But Juan wasn’t sure what to do with the information; clearly, Charlie Manson was a dangerous man to anger, and if Juan went to the cops and Charlie didn’t get sent away for killing Shorty, then Charlie or his followers were bound to come after Juan. So Juan stayed at Barker, uncertain what to do next.

The murder talk—bits and pieces about Tate and LaBianca, Charlie’s open boasting about killing Lotsapoppa and Shorty Shea—unnerved some of the Family members, too.
Barbara Hoyt overheard Susan Atkins gossiping with Ruth Ann; she paid no attention until Susan mentioned the name “Tate.” Then she eavesdropped with a growing sense of horror as Susan went into great detail for Ruth Ann about Tate being the last to be slaughtered and how, as she died, Tate called for her mother. Despite his own bragging about Lotsapoppa and Shorty Shea, Charlie had cautioned the Tate and LaBianca killers to keep quiet about what they’d done. They only obeyed to a limited extent; even Charlie wasn’t able to resist crowing about those murders to Al Springer, and Tex blabbed to Clem and Danny DeCarlo. Susan could never resist bragging under any circumstances, inevitably exaggerating her own importance. Some of the younger girls like Barbara Hoyt, Stephanie Schram, and Kitty Lutesinger, routinely left out of matters involving Charlie’s inner circle, knew some violent things had happened but weren’t certain who or what they involved. Now, out in the
desert, they learned about Tate and LaBianca, and they were frightened enough to think about escape. But it was hard to know where to run—even reaching the nearest Inyo County settlements on foot would take hours, and Los Angeles seemed like a distant planet.
Besides, everyone knew that Charlie could find you anywhere.

On September 1, the same day the Family began its exodus to Death Valley, ten-year-old
Steven Weiss saw a gun lying by the sprinkler in the backyard of his family’s home in Beverly Glen. The Weisses’ lot abutted one of the streets connecting to Benedict Canyon Road and Cielo Drive. Steven picked the gun up carefully by the tip of the barrel—he was a fan of TV’s
Dragnet
and knew he shouldn’t smear any fingerprints on the weapon. He took the gun to his father, Bernard, who immediately called the LAPD. The patrol officer who responded noted that the weapon was a .22 caliber Hi Standard Longhorn with a missing right-hand grip. The barrel was bent, and there were seven empty shell casings and two live rounds in the nine-cartridge chamber. He thanked the Weisses and took the gun back to the LAPD’s Valley Services Division office in Van Nuys. The gun was placed in a manila envelope, booked into “Found Evidence,” and put in storage in the division’s Property Section.

Two days later, based on the broken pieces of handgrip found at the Cielo murder site, the Tate investigators sent out a series of flyers to law enforcement officials asking for information on any .22 Hi Standard Longhorn revolver that might have been recently discovered or turned in. In all they sent some three hundred, including to police officials as far away as Canada. But they failed to send a notice to the Valley Services Division in Van Nuys.

It irked Charlie that Paul Crockett had poached Brooks Poston and Little Paul Watkins. The three of them openly prospected in the Barker Ranch area—sometimes Charlie and the Family encountered them. So Charlie took a shot at making a convert of Paul Crockett. If the Scientology-spouting desert rat could be won over to the Family cause, Poston and Watkins would surely return to the fold, too. Charlie turned on his A game, lecturing Crockett on the imminence of Helter Skelter and the urgency of finding the pit to avoid annihilation. Crockett was impressed—not by Charlie’s prophecies, but the glibness with which he
spun his apocalyptic predictions. He made it clear that he didn’t buy into any of it. With Crockett able to resist, Poston and Watkins refused to be wooed back by Charlie, even when Charlie bragged to Watkins that, just as he’d promised back in the spring, he’d showed “Blackie” how to get Helter Skelter started. Charlie also suggested to Poston that a good way to rejoin the Family and save himself from the onrushing black hordes would be to kill a deputy from the desert settlement of Shoshone, the one who hassled Dianne Lake about being underage. Poston refused.

Rebuffed by Crockett, Charlie tried to eliminate him instead. He asked Juan Flynn to demonstrate allegiance by killing the veteran prospector. Instead, Juan bolted from Barker to join Crockett, Poston, and Watkins. To Charlie, this meant that a rival guru had set up shop to systematically lure away all of Charlie’s people. He hadn’t liked it back in the Haight and he wouldn’t stand for it out in Death Valley. Some of the Family were sent to creepy-crawl the Crockett cabin, getting ideas for how best to attack it. Crockett guessed that something was up. He and the others began contemplating flight. Crockett was reluctant to let Charlie scare him off, but it seemed as though the guy was capable of anything. Everybody in the desert was strange, but this guy set the record.

In the September 3 edition of the
Los Angeles Times
, LAPD Deputy Chief Robert A. Houghton admitted that despite interviewing more than three hundred people, the department still had no prime suspect for the Tate murders. Houghton said the LAPD suspected more than one perpetrator, but it wasn’t certain. The department had no idea where the killer or killers were “located at present,” and Houghton had no idea whether they would strike again: “Personally, I suspect not. Professionally, I couldn’t rule it out.”

The investigators weren’t being lazy or professionally slipshod. While the officers assigned to the Tate and LaBianca cases could have made considerably better progress by sharing information, they individually carried heavy caseloads that prevented them from focusing full-time on any single investigation. Nineteen sixty-nine was a violent year in Los Angeles. Among the 169,922 major crimes investigated by the LAPD, 388 were homicides, up 9 percent from the year before. It was not uncommon for each investigator to be working as many as twenty cases. As widely
publicized as the Tate murders had become, that still didn’t excuse the officers assigned to them from working on other investigations.

L.A. Chief of Police Ed Davis requested patience, particularly since his Tate investigators were combing such a heavily populated metropolitan area: “Unfortunately, the murderer or murderers did not leave calling cards, and in this kind of case you start with 200 million suspects.”

On September 4, Bobby Beausoleil learned that his trial for the murder of Gary Hinman would commence on November 12. Evidence against him was still being gathered by Los Angeles County officers Whiteley and Guenther. In particular they wanted to question Kitty Lutesinger, Beausoleil’s pregnant girlfriend, but she had dropped out of sight.

After only a few weeks in the desert, the Family’s supplies of drugs and food began to run out. Missing their evening opportunities for acid trips was one thing, but near-starvation was worse.
The Barker Ranch larder was reduced to a sack of brown rice, some dry milk powder, and a container of cinnamon. They did their best to stretch these meager rations while Charlie made an emergency trip back to L.A. in the Family school bus to scrounge food money. With his followers’ larder almost empty, Charlie didn’t have time to cultivate any potential new donors; even if they hadn’t parted under the friendliest circumstance, he hit up people he already knew. Dennis Wilson said he didn’t have $1,500 to hand over to Charlie, and gave him the few dollars he had in his pocket. Gregg Jakobson didn’t have money to spare, but he did advise wild-eyed, frantic Charlie to get back to the desert: “You don’t belong in the city anymore.” Somehow Charlie managed to raise enough money to fill the bus with provisions. He raced back to Death Valley, everyone enjoyed a good meal, and the crisis was averted, though only temporarily. When this fresh supply of food ran out, Charlie would once again have to find money to buy more, and the cycle would only have to be repeated. And how soon before his followers wondered how come there still wasn’t Helter Skelter, and why they hadn’t found the bottomless pit that Charlie assured them was somewhere near Goler Wash? The pressure on Charlie was constant and relentless. Then something happened to ratchet it up even higher.