http://www.metroactive.com/metro/06.03.09/alleys-0922.html
Silicon Alleys
Conspiracy Convention Raises Web of Theories in Santa Clara
By Gary Singh
06.03.09
WITH CELEBRATORY TALK about the 40th anniversary of Woodstock reverberating throughout the land, no one seems to be bringing up the darker side of that era, especially since August will also mark the 40th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders. There exist several local connections I could perhaps explore: Charles Manson spent time in San Jose on his way from the Haight-Ashbury to Los Angeles; Susan Atkins, a.k.a. Sadie, spent part of her childhood in Cambrian Park and, like me, went to Leigh High School; and local Homestead alumnus-turned–conspiracy theorist Jeffrey Deane Turner claims that factions of the Process Church of the Final Judgment, to which Manson may have had connections, eventually morphed into a more secret and sinister operation with tentacles still operating here in the South Bay. Whether or not there's any such thing as an accident — and since the Conspiracy Convention 2009 just happens to hit the Santa Clara Convention Center this weekend — I think I must probe a few seemingly connected spheres of influence. I originally met Turner in order to consider his claims that '60s sexpot Tuesday Weld is a descendant in a bloodline of druidic witches who indoctrinated her into the Illuminati, with whom she secretly unleashed nearly everything we currently know about the '60s counterculture. According to Turner, the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, the Who and many more were actually Weld's secret protégés, functioning as entertainment-industry fronts in her elaborately networked battle against the both the worldwide fascist network and another secret society, the All Nations Group, puppeteered by '80s pop star Tiffany.
I was introduced to Turner by his pal Douglas Hawes, a San Jose native who had appeared with Turner on Untamed Dimensions, an Internet radio show hosted by freelance investigative journalist Adam Gorightly. Originally writing for Steamshovel Press, Gorightly had been the first to break the story of Turner's paradigm-shattering claims. The essay, "Tiffany Overtakes Tuesday Weld," later appeared in Secret and Suppressed II: Banned Ideas and Hidden History Into the 21st Century (Feral House), as well as Gorightly's own compendium, The Beast of Adam Gorightly: Collected Rantings (1992–2004). Gorightly will infiltrate Silicon Valley this weekend to cover Conspiracy Con 2009 for Paranoia Magazine. He will also be hawking an updated version of his book The Shadow Over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control and the Manson Family Mythos, to be released Aug. 8 by Creation Books, just in time for the 40th anniversary. According to the hype, it takes "readers on a black magic carpet ride from the Hollywood 'Beautiful People' scene of the late '60s through to the vast desert landscapes of a Death Valley gone mad—;with all the love-ins and murderous creepy-crawls that happened along the way." The book contains all the time-tested free-form 666-degrees-of-separation-alia: Manson's connection to the Beach Boys, the Hollywood S&M scene in the '60s, UFOs, Sammy Davis Jr.'s involvement in the Church of Satan, the Beatles' White Album, the Second Coming of Christ, Yul Brynner, the CIA and good old-fashioned satanic hippie love. The updated version contains new information on the possible whereabouts of Steve Grogan, a.k.a. "Clem," the only Manson Family member who was actually released from prison.
And getting back to the Process Church, Feral House will soon release Love Sex Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment, written by former church member Timothy Wyllie. Judging by publisher Adam Parfrey's foreword, it looks to provide a more rational, thinking man's approach to the whole ball of wax, disproving the more hysterical fear-fueled sensationalism previously written on this cult.
How's that for a few meaningful coincidences? Seems like more sleuthing is in order, methinks. In the words of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path."
Showing posts with label Death Valley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death Valley. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Friday, March 21, 2008
The Summer of Love Breeds a Season of Hate
The Summer of Love Breeds a Season of Hate:
The Effects of the Manson Murders on Public Perceptions of the Hippie Lifestyle
by Curt Rowlett
At the time of this writing, interesting recent press coverage hearkens back to two of 1969s most notorious events.
The first story concerns the new search for possible Manson family murder victims long rumored to have been buried in the desert near Manson’s old hideout at Barker Ranch in California’s Death Valley. This theory of unknown murder victims stems from a statement attributed to Manson family member Susan Atkins, who allegedly told a fellow inmate she was incarcerated with that there were "three people out in the desert that they done in," referring to other possible victims during the Manson family’s spree of killings during the summer of 1969. As reported by the press, a team of forensic scientists have traveled recently to Barker Ranch and used cadaver dogs, ground penetrating radar and other equipment in an attempt to locate these possible victims. According to the report, the scientists located “three large areas of interest.”
The story second concerns a BBC News report that details the revelation from the FBI’s own files that the Hell’s Angels may have actually tried to assassinate Mick Jagger at his rented home in Long Island, New York in retaliation for Jagger’s comments following the disastrous concert at Altamont in late 1969. The murder attempt supposedly failed after the boat carrying the would-be assassins foundered during a storm, almost drowning them.
That these two stories continue to resonate in modern times in not such a surprise. The article below discusses the detrimental effects that the Manson murders, the ill-fated concert at Altamont, and numerous other crimes that the press of the day dubbed “hippie murders,” had on the hippie image.
--Curt Rowlett
Note: Curt Rowlett is a researcher and writer with a penchant for the mystical, mysterious, and macabre.He is also: a serious student of the paranormal and unexplained, a former merchant marine who has traveled all over the world, an ex-rock musician, and an old-fashioned, southern gentleman. His work has appeared in the books Popular Paranoia, Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy, and the magazines Fortean Times, Paranoia Magazine, Steamshovel Press and Strange Magazine. Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy is available at Lulu.com:
http://my.lulu.com/content/156897
And at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Labyrinth13-Tales-Occult-Crime-Conspiracy/dp/1411660838
Curt’s website can be reached at:
http://labyrinth13.com
“You play the game of money. As long as you can sell a newspaper, some sensationalism, and you can laugh at someone and joke at someone and look down at someone, you know. You just sell those newspapers for public opinion, just like you are all hung on public opinion, and none of you have any idea what you are doing. You are just doing what you are doing for the money, for a little bit of attention from someone.”
Statement made by Charles Manson, while testifying at the Tate-LaBianca murder trial
§
“This will be remembered as the first of the acid murders . . . we’re on the brink of a whole new concept of violence . . . perpetrated against society by people who have reached a different plateau of reality through LSD.”
Statement made by Manson family attorney Paul Fitzgerald, while discussing the Tate-LaBianca murders with the press
§
“Acid is groovy, kill the pigs.”
Words allegedly chanted by hippie thrill killers during the 1970 bludgeoning and stabbing murders of the Jeffrey MacDonald family
§
In much the same way as the “satanic panic” hit in the 1980’s, a wave of “hippie cult hysteria” flourished in the wake of the 1969 Manson murders. Subsequently, public perceptions of the hippies as a non-violent, peace-loving subculture began to shift dramatically.
Many hippies who were involved in the original “counterculture” during that time period had stories to tell about negative fallout from a public who had begun to associate the hippie lifestyle with a series of horrifyingly violent, drug-induced crimes that occurred across America toward the end of the 1960’s. As a result, the Manson murders, being only the first to be so publicized, later became linked to a greater cultural fear aided by numerous shocking and widely reported similar crimes. (Along with the Manson case, there were many other grisly and highly publicized murders and other crimes that had either been committed by or linked in the public mind to “hippie” elements or to so-called “drug crazed cultists” living in communal settings).
These events, played for full sensational effect in the media, would occur within such short time frames from each other that for awhile, the public was literally bombarded with a shocking portrait of the hippie community, one that shifted from the old view of hippies as the epitome of passive gentleness into a new, frighteningly savage image.
The fallout was swift and all-encompassing. And in much the same vein, this media-constructed image of the drug-crazed, murderous hippie was no different than the way veterans returning from the Vietnam War would also be stereotyped in the mid-1970’s, both by the press and Hollywood. That exploitation included fostering the image of Vietnam vets as war-traumatized, unstable individuals, likely to snap and go on a violent rampage at any given moment. (I can recall only too well how many television programs and B-movies of that era exploited not only the image of Vietnam vets, but also by catering to public fears about such things as roving bands of “psychopathic” biker gangs, angry black power “militants” with guns, and of course, exploitation films about sex-crazed, blood-thirsty hippies living in spaced-out drug communes)….
The rest of this article is available at steamshovelpress.com.
The Effects of the Manson Murders on Public Perceptions of the Hippie Lifestyle
by Curt Rowlett
At the time of this writing, interesting recent press coverage hearkens back to two of 1969s most notorious events.
The first story concerns the new search for possible Manson family murder victims long rumored to have been buried in the desert near Manson’s old hideout at Barker Ranch in California’s Death Valley. This theory of unknown murder victims stems from a statement attributed to Manson family member Susan Atkins, who allegedly told a fellow inmate she was incarcerated with that there were "three people out in the desert that they done in," referring to other possible victims during the Manson family’s spree of killings during the summer of 1969. As reported by the press, a team of forensic scientists have traveled recently to Barker Ranch and used cadaver dogs, ground penetrating radar and other equipment in an attempt to locate these possible victims. According to the report, the scientists located “three large areas of interest.”
The story second concerns a BBC News report that details the revelation from the FBI’s own files that the Hell’s Angels may have actually tried to assassinate Mick Jagger at his rented home in Long Island, New York in retaliation for Jagger’s comments following the disastrous concert at Altamont in late 1969. The murder attempt supposedly failed after the boat carrying the would-be assassins foundered during a storm, almost drowning them.
That these two stories continue to resonate in modern times in not such a surprise. The article below discusses the detrimental effects that the Manson murders, the ill-fated concert at Altamont, and numerous other crimes that the press of the day dubbed “hippie murders,” had on the hippie image.
--Curt Rowlett
Note: Curt Rowlett is a researcher and writer with a penchant for the mystical, mysterious, and macabre.He is also: a serious student of the paranormal and unexplained, a former merchant marine who has traveled all over the world, an ex-rock musician, and an old-fashioned, southern gentleman. His work has appeared in the books Popular Paranoia, Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy, and the magazines Fortean Times, Paranoia Magazine, Steamshovel Press and Strange Magazine. Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy is available at Lulu.com:
http://my.lulu.com/content/156897
And at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Labyrinth13-Tales-Occult-Crime-Conspiracy/dp/1411660838
Curt’s website can be reached at:
http://labyrinth13.com
“You play the game of money. As long as you can sell a newspaper, some sensationalism, and you can laugh at someone and joke at someone and look down at someone, you know. You just sell those newspapers for public opinion, just like you are all hung on public opinion, and none of you have any idea what you are doing. You are just doing what you are doing for the money, for a little bit of attention from someone.”
Statement made by Charles Manson, while testifying at the Tate-LaBianca murder trial
§
“This will be remembered as the first of the acid murders . . . we’re on the brink of a whole new concept of violence . . . perpetrated against society by people who have reached a different plateau of reality through LSD.”
Statement made by Manson family attorney Paul Fitzgerald, while discussing the Tate-LaBianca murders with the press
§
“Acid is groovy, kill the pigs.”
Words allegedly chanted by hippie thrill killers during the 1970 bludgeoning and stabbing murders of the Jeffrey MacDonald family
§
In much the same way as the “satanic panic” hit in the 1980’s, a wave of “hippie cult hysteria” flourished in the wake of the 1969 Manson murders. Subsequently, public perceptions of the hippies as a non-violent, peace-loving subculture began to shift dramatically.
Many hippies who were involved in the original “counterculture” during that time period had stories to tell about negative fallout from a public who had begun to associate the hippie lifestyle with a series of horrifyingly violent, drug-induced crimes that occurred across America toward the end of the 1960’s. As a result, the Manson murders, being only the first to be so publicized, later became linked to a greater cultural fear aided by numerous shocking and widely reported similar crimes. (Along with the Manson case, there were many other grisly and highly publicized murders and other crimes that had either been committed by or linked in the public mind to “hippie” elements or to so-called “drug crazed cultists” living in communal settings).
These events, played for full sensational effect in the media, would occur within such short time frames from each other that for awhile, the public was literally bombarded with a shocking portrait of the hippie community, one that shifted from the old view of hippies as the epitome of passive gentleness into a new, frighteningly savage image.
The fallout was swift and all-encompassing. And in much the same vein, this media-constructed image of the drug-crazed, murderous hippie was no different than the way veterans returning from the Vietnam War would also be stereotyped in the mid-1970’s, both by the press and Hollywood. That exploitation included fostering the image of Vietnam vets as war-traumatized, unstable individuals, likely to snap and go on a violent rampage at any given moment. (I can recall only too well how many television programs and B-movies of that era exploited not only the image of Vietnam vets, but also by catering to public fears about such things as roving bands of “psychopathic” biker gangs, angry black power “militants” with guns, and of course, exploitation films about sex-crazed, blood-thirsty hippies living in spaced-out drug communes)….
The rest of this article is available at steamshovelpress.com.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Possible graves at Manson compound
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/14/csi.manson.ap/index.html
Searchers find possible graves at Manson compound
3-14-8
Story Highlights
Ex-prosecutor: "Could another member of the family have killed someone? Sure"
Team uses cutting-edge forensic technology to search Manson compound for bodies
Prospector who dined with Manson family members leads expedition
Prosecutor says making new cases problematic, encourages team to keep looking
DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, California (AP) -- Bone-white stretches of salt, leached up from the lifeless soil, lay like a shroud over the high desert where a paranoid Charles Manson holed up after an orgy of murder nearly four decades ago.
Now, as then, few venture into this alkaline wilderness -- gold-diggers, outlaws, loners content to live and let live.
But a determined group of outsiders recently made the trek. They were leading forensic investigators searching for new evidence of death -- clues pointing to possible decades-old clandestine graves.
And the results of just-completed followup tests suggest bodies could indeed be lying beneath the parched ground. The test findings -- described in detail to The Associated Press, which had accompanied the site search -- conclude there are two likely clandestine grave sites at Barker Ranch, and one additional site that merits further investigation.
Next step, the ad hoc investigators urge: Dig.
For years, rumors have swirled about other possible Manson family victims -- hitchhikers who visited them at the ranch and were not seen again, runaways who drifted into the camp then fell out of favor.
The same jailhouse confessions that helped investigators initially connect the band of misfits living in the Panamint Mountains to the gruesome killings that terrorized Los Angeles hinted at other deaths. Manson follower Susan Atkins boasted to her cell mate on November 1, 1969, that there were "three people out in the desert that they done in." Other stories surfaced. In the absence of bodies, they were forgotten.
"We prosecuted Manson and the family for all the murders we could prove. But you know, could he have killed someone else? Possibly. Could another member of the family have killed someone? Sure," said Steve Kay, a former deputy district attorney.
Last month, equipped with cutting-edge forensic technology, the investigators assembled in the ghost town of Ballarat for a 20-mile ride in all-terrain vehicles to the ranch.
The team included two national lab researchers carrying instruments to detect chemical markers of human decomposition, a police investigator with a cadaver-seeking dog, and an anthropologist armed with a magnetic resonance reader.
Also in the group were a woman whose life was forever marked by the cult's brutal murder of her pregnant sister, and a gold prospector who was once Manson's closest neighbor and remains intimate with the sharp creases of the Panamints.
An old hand helps out
Prospector Emmett Harder guided the expedition.
He had a claim on Manley peak, one of the jagged points looming over Barker Ranch, while the Manson family camped out there in the late 1960s. He shared dinner with the band at times, and gave the men work.
During one of these visits he heard Manson say, "We're not hippies; we're here to get away from the troubles of the world."
Later, Harder would learn more about the cult leader's belief that the end of the world, which he called "Helter Skelter," was near -- and Manson's conviction that through murder, he had a role to play in accelerating that chaotic time.
For the last 5 miles of the rugged gravel road from Ballarat, the route tilts sharply upward as it enters narrow Goler Wash.
"The family's plan was to make this impassable -- you can see how you could do that here," said Sgt. Paul Dostie, a police detective and dog handler from the town of Mammoth Lakes, pointing to the boulders that protrude like bones from the canyon walls. Any of them could be rolled into the wash, blocking passage.
Barker Ranch was one of several hide-outs used by Manson and his followers.
The killings that launched the cult onto national newspapers had been orchestrated from Spahn Ranch, a former Western movie set that served as backdrop to episodes of "Bonanza" and "The Lone Ranger."
It was to Spahn that the killers initially retreated after the 1969 murders of Gary Hinman on July 31; Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent on August 9; Leno and Rosemary LaBianca on August 10.
This was to signal the start of the apocalyptic race war that Manson told his followers would pit blacks against whites. He preached that they would emerge from the desert at the end and rule over the survivors.
But a daybreak raid on Spahn Ranch on August 16 by Los Angeles sheriff's deputies looking for car thieves netted 26 arrests. All were released a few days later on a technicality -- a misdated warrant -- but Spahn was no longer safe.
Barker Ranch was where Manson withdrew in those last, frenzied days.
Tate's family never the same
Retracing his steps nearly four decades later, the search group stopped at the dilapidated house. From the porch, the view was clear for miles, broken only by the long twisted stems of creosote bushes and knee-high bunches of desert rabbitbrush.
"After the murder, my mom became a shell of herself," said Debra Tate, who was 17 when her sister, actress Sharon Tate, was killed. Her younger sister Patti was 11. "I filled in at home, as best I could."
Debra Tate's mother, Doris Tate, emerged from years of depression when she heard that a Manson family member was seeking parole.
She gathered 350,000 signatures, helping keep the murderer in prison. She also lobbied successfully to change state law to ensure the rights of victims' family members to make statements during sentencing and parole hearings.
Doris Tate died in 1992. Her youngest daughter Patti followed in 2000. Now Debra Tate, 10 years younger than the glamorous, doe-eyed Sharon, whom she grew up admiring, attends the parole hearings alone.
"My mother specifically asked me to carry on," she said, adding, "It's my life."
She has given herself two tasks, she said: making sure her sister's killers never go free, and helping other families find the peace that has eluded her.
"If there are bodies here," she said at the ranch, "we need to find them and send them home."
About 100 yards behind the house, Dostie readied his trained dog, Buster, for the search.
"Go find Fred!" Dostie said, releasing the dog on the command that sends him searching for human remains.
The dog bounded away, zigzagging over the terrain. Then he lay down in a depression in the ground, quivering, ears upright. Buster looked at his trainer and emitted a high-pitched whine.
"He's alerting," Dostie said, throwing the dog his reward and planting a flag on the site.
Searchers bring in equipment
Meanwhile, Arpad Vass and Marc Wise, senior researchers from Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, were readying the first of the instruments they'd brought, capable of chemically detecting evidence of decades-old human bodies. It was a hand-held device shaped like a gun.
"It's a crude sniffer," said Vass. "It gives us a quick indication of areas we want to come back to."
The machine detects fluorinated hydrocarbon compounds, one of the approximately 400 types of volatile organic compounds emitted by human bodies during decomposition. Focusing on these compounds is important because Vass believes they're formed as the fluoride added to urban drinking water is released after death.
Their presence helps differentiate a human bone from bones from wild animals, explained Vass, who has spent years developing a decomposition odor database using bodies donated to the Oak Ridge lab.
The instrument beeped at regular intervals. As it approached the ground, the beeping accelerated until it was a steady stream of sound.
"That's impressive," said Wise, a senior researcher at Oak Ridge specializing in environmental analytical chemistry. Vass agreed.
Using a thin, 3-foot long probe, Vass tested the soil in the area. It slid into the ground without much effort.
"Undisturbed soil isn't this easy to probe," he said.
"The loose soil area is roughly like this," he said, using the tip of the instrument to draw a long oval on the ground. "It's about three feet deep."
"We need to do an IR," he said, turning to Wise.
He was calling for the next piece of machinery -- larger and heavier, but more specific. It could be calibrated to detect different compounds, using technology known as infrared spectroscopy to "read" a particular molecule's profile.
"We're getting the highest hits here, where the ground is soft," said Wise. "There's definitely something down there," he said. "We just can't know yet exactly what until we dig."
"Or who," said Vass.
The men crouched close to the ground, gathering three samples of dirt from each area of interest for further analysis using more finely tuned lab equipment that could not be brought into the field.
The group broke for lunch. Dostie shared bread and cold cuts in front of the ranch house where Manson was finally arrested, in October 1969, after being found crammed in a bathroom cabinet.
Afterward, Daniel Larson took up his part of the investigation. The head of the archaeology department at California State University, Long Beach, Larson has used Ground Penetrating Radar and a magnetometer -- an instrument that can peer 12 feet into the ground -- in archaeological work and to help find mass graves.
At Barker Ranch, he took 2,025 readings of the ground at the suspect site, stopping every four inches within a 26-by-20-foot grid, looking for discrepancies that indicated earth had been moved.
"What I'm looking for is the pit, not the bones," he explained.
He'll have to return later to use the Ground Penetrating Radar. The soil still held some moisture from recent storms, and that could disturb the results.
Prospector recalls runaways
Watching the scientists do their work, Harder spoke of his memories of the Manson clan -- the churlish, armed young men, the pretty girls with blank, doll-like expressions.
"I didn't feel real easy around them," he said. "They picked up all kinds of people -- hitchhikers and stuff."
He particularly remembers two teenage runaways who escaped the ranch, then stopped at a nearby mining camp for food. They had enough fear in them to make it out of the rugged mountains barefoot, said Harder.
They turned themselves in to the California Highway Patrol at the mouth of Anvil Springs Canyon -- booked as Stephanie Jean Schram, 17, a runaway from Anaheim, and Kathryn Rene Lutesinger, 17, runaway from Los Angeles, on October 10, 1969.
"Both females stated that they were attempting to run away from 'Charlie' the leader of the 'family' and that they were afraid of their lives," read the CHP report.
Their fear was well-founded. Following the police raid on Spahn Ranch in August, Manson and the family killed ranch hand Donald "Shorty" Shea for "snitching" and buried him out there.
That body wasn't found until more than eight years later.
"I dug it up myself," about a quarter mile behind the ranch house, said Sgt. Bill Gleason, a now-retired homicide investigator with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
"There were rumors of other deaths, minors killed out in Death Valley," said Gleason, who took part in the original Spahn Ranch raid. "We just didn't have anything concrete to link to the Manson family."
The runaway girls didn't know how close they'd come to becoming another one of these rumors.
The day the runaways turned themselves in, CHP officers headed to Barker Ranch for the first of what would be two car theft raids.
On their way, they arrested two men -- booked as Gary Milton Tufts and Randy J. Mourglea -- whom they found asleep at the mouth of Goler Wash, a sawed-off shotgun between them. They were from Barker Ranch, CHP said.
When told of the arrests, both girls told officers they believed the armed men were sent "to stop them from walking away," according to CHP's report.
Were others less lucky when they tried to escape?
Searchers want to dig deeper
Vass said that, considering the quantity and the types of markers of human decomposition found, the cadaver dog's response, and the probing exercise, he found enough evidence to warrant further testing at a deeper level and a full scale excavation at Barker Ranch, according to the report he issued to law enforcement.
"I'd recommend a dig, excavate the sites," said Dostie, who reviewed the report.
But if a body is found on the Barker Ranch, then what?
The likelihood of a new prosecution appears slim. Locating remains would just be the first step, said Patrick Sequeira, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who has been in charge of the Manson family parole hearings since Kay's retirement.
"You have to tie them to someone who has disappeared, and there were a lot of people floating in and out of the family environment who were runaways, or hiding out," he said.
Then investigators would have to find out who killed them, where, and who could testify, he said.
The Manson family members currently in prison are already serving life sentences -- the maximum penalty allowed at the time the crimes were committed.
Still, Sequeira did not discourage the efforts of the crime scene re-investigators. "I'd love to see them put something together," he said.
Searchers find possible graves at Manson compound
3-14-8
Story Highlights
Ex-prosecutor: "Could another member of the family have killed someone? Sure"
Team uses cutting-edge forensic technology to search Manson compound for bodies
Prospector who dined with Manson family members leads expedition
Prosecutor says making new cases problematic, encourages team to keep looking
DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, California (AP) -- Bone-white stretches of salt, leached up from the lifeless soil, lay like a shroud over the high desert where a paranoid Charles Manson holed up after an orgy of murder nearly four decades ago.
Now, as then, few venture into this alkaline wilderness -- gold-diggers, outlaws, loners content to live and let live.
But a determined group of outsiders recently made the trek. They were leading forensic investigators searching for new evidence of death -- clues pointing to possible decades-old clandestine graves.
And the results of just-completed followup tests suggest bodies could indeed be lying beneath the parched ground. The test findings -- described in detail to The Associated Press, which had accompanied the site search -- conclude there are two likely clandestine grave sites at Barker Ranch, and one additional site that merits further investigation.
Next step, the ad hoc investigators urge: Dig.
For years, rumors have swirled about other possible Manson family victims -- hitchhikers who visited them at the ranch and were not seen again, runaways who drifted into the camp then fell out of favor.
The same jailhouse confessions that helped investigators initially connect the band of misfits living in the Panamint Mountains to the gruesome killings that terrorized Los Angeles hinted at other deaths. Manson follower Susan Atkins boasted to her cell mate on November 1, 1969, that there were "three people out in the desert that they done in." Other stories surfaced. In the absence of bodies, they were forgotten.
"We prosecuted Manson and the family for all the murders we could prove. But you know, could he have killed someone else? Possibly. Could another member of the family have killed someone? Sure," said Steve Kay, a former deputy district attorney.
Last month, equipped with cutting-edge forensic technology, the investigators assembled in the ghost town of Ballarat for a 20-mile ride in all-terrain vehicles to the ranch.
The team included two national lab researchers carrying instruments to detect chemical markers of human decomposition, a police investigator with a cadaver-seeking dog, and an anthropologist armed with a magnetic resonance reader.
Also in the group were a woman whose life was forever marked by the cult's brutal murder of her pregnant sister, and a gold prospector who was once Manson's closest neighbor and remains intimate with the sharp creases of the Panamints.
An old hand helps out
Prospector Emmett Harder guided the expedition.
He had a claim on Manley peak, one of the jagged points looming over Barker Ranch, while the Manson family camped out there in the late 1960s. He shared dinner with the band at times, and gave the men work.
During one of these visits he heard Manson say, "We're not hippies; we're here to get away from the troubles of the world."
Later, Harder would learn more about the cult leader's belief that the end of the world, which he called "Helter Skelter," was near -- and Manson's conviction that through murder, he had a role to play in accelerating that chaotic time.
For the last 5 miles of the rugged gravel road from Ballarat, the route tilts sharply upward as it enters narrow Goler Wash.
"The family's plan was to make this impassable -- you can see how you could do that here," said Sgt. Paul Dostie, a police detective and dog handler from the town of Mammoth Lakes, pointing to the boulders that protrude like bones from the canyon walls. Any of them could be rolled into the wash, blocking passage.
Barker Ranch was one of several hide-outs used by Manson and his followers.
The killings that launched the cult onto national newspapers had been orchestrated from Spahn Ranch, a former Western movie set that served as backdrop to episodes of "Bonanza" and "The Lone Ranger."
It was to Spahn that the killers initially retreated after the 1969 murders of Gary Hinman on July 31; Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent on August 9; Leno and Rosemary LaBianca on August 10.
This was to signal the start of the apocalyptic race war that Manson told his followers would pit blacks against whites. He preached that they would emerge from the desert at the end and rule over the survivors.
But a daybreak raid on Spahn Ranch on August 16 by Los Angeles sheriff's deputies looking for car thieves netted 26 arrests. All were released a few days later on a technicality -- a misdated warrant -- but Spahn was no longer safe.
Barker Ranch was where Manson withdrew in those last, frenzied days.
Tate's family never the same
Retracing his steps nearly four decades later, the search group stopped at the dilapidated house. From the porch, the view was clear for miles, broken only by the long twisted stems of creosote bushes and knee-high bunches of desert rabbitbrush.
"After the murder, my mom became a shell of herself," said Debra Tate, who was 17 when her sister, actress Sharon Tate, was killed. Her younger sister Patti was 11. "I filled in at home, as best I could."
Debra Tate's mother, Doris Tate, emerged from years of depression when she heard that a Manson family member was seeking parole.
She gathered 350,000 signatures, helping keep the murderer in prison. She also lobbied successfully to change state law to ensure the rights of victims' family members to make statements during sentencing and parole hearings.
Doris Tate died in 1992. Her youngest daughter Patti followed in 2000. Now Debra Tate, 10 years younger than the glamorous, doe-eyed Sharon, whom she grew up admiring, attends the parole hearings alone.
"My mother specifically asked me to carry on," she said, adding, "It's my life."
She has given herself two tasks, she said: making sure her sister's killers never go free, and helping other families find the peace that has eluded her.
"If there are bodies here," she said at the ranch, "we need to find them and send them home."
About 100 yards behind the house, Dostie readied his trained dog, Buster, for the search.
"Go find Fred!" Dostie said, releasing the dog on the command that sends him searching for human remains.
The dog bounded away, zigzagging over the terrain. Then he lay down in a depression in the ground, quivering, ears upright. Buster looked at his trainer and emitted a high-pitched whine.
"He's alerting," Dostie said, throwing the dog his reward and planting a flag on the site.
Searchers bring in equipment
Meanwhile, Arpad Vass and Marc Wise, senior researchers from Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, were readying the first of the instruments they'd brought, capable of chemically detecting evidence of decades-old human bodies. It was a hand-held device shaped like a gun.
"It's a crude sniffer," said Vass. "It gives us a quick indication of areas we want to come back to."
The machine detects fluorinated hydrocarbon compounds, one of the approximately 400 types of volatile organic compounds emitted by human bodies during decomposition. Focusing on these compounds is important because Vass believes they're formed as the fluoride added to urban drinking water is released after death.
Their presence helps differentiate a human bone from bones from wild animals, explained Vass, who has spent years developing a decomposition odor database using bodies donated to the Oak Ridge lab.
The instrument beeped at regular intervals. As it approached the ground, the beeping accelerated until it was a steady stream of sound.
"That's impressive," said Wise, a senior researcher at Oak Ridge specializing in environmental analytical chemistry. Vass agreed.
Using a thin, 3-foot long probe, Vass tested the soil in the area. It slid into the ground without much effort.
"Undisturbed soil isn't this easy to probe," he said.
"The loose soil area is roughly like this," he said, using the tip of the instrument to draw a long oval on the ground. "It's about three feet deep."
"We need to do an IR," he said, turning to Wise.
He was calling for the next piece of machinery -- larger and heavier, but more specific. It could be calibrated to detect different compounds, using technology known as infrared spectroscopy to "read" a particular molecule's profile.
"We're getting the highest hits here, where the ground is soft," said Wise. "There's definitely something down there," he said. "We just can't know yet exactly what until we dig."
"Or who," said Vass.
The men crouched close to the ground, gathering three samples of dirt from each area of interest for further analysis using more finely tuned lab equipment that could not be brought into the field.
The group broke for lunch. Dostie shared bread and cold cuts in front of the ranch house where Manson was finally arrested, in October 1969, after being found crammed in a bathroom cabinet.
Afterward, Daniel Larson took up his part of the investigation. The head of the archaeology department at California State University, Long Beach, Larson has used Ground Penetrating Radar and a magnetometer -- an instrument that can peer 12 feet into the ground -- in archaeological work and to help find mass graves.
At Barker Ranch, he took 2,025 readings of the ground at the suspect site, stopping every four inches within a 26-by-20-foot grid, looking for discrepancies that indicated earth had been moved.
"What I'm looking for is the pit, not the bones," he explained.
He'll have to return later to use the Ground Penetrating Radar. The soil still held some moisture from recent storms, and that could disturb the results.
Prospector recalls runaways
Watching the scientists do their work, Harder spoke of his memories of the Manson clan -- the churlish, armed young men, the pretty girls with blank, doll-like expressions.
"I didn't feel real easy around them," he said. "They picked up all kinds of people -- hitchhikers and stuff."
He particularly remembers two teenage runaways who escaped the ranch, then stopped at a nearby mining camp for food. They had enough fear in them to make it out of the rugged mountains barefoot, said Harder.
They turned themselves in to the California Highway Patrol at the mouth of Anvil Springs Canyon -- booked as Stephanie Jean Schram, 17, a runaway from Anaheim, and Kathryn Rene Lutesinger, 17, runaway from Los Angeles, on October 10, 1969.
"Both females stated that they were attempting to run away from 'Charlie' the leader of the 'family' and that they were afraid of their lives," read the CHP report.
Their fear was well-founded. Following the police raid on Spahn Ranch in August, Manson and the family killed ranch hand Donald "Shorty" Shea for "snitching" and buried him out there.
That body wasn't found until more than eight years later.
"I dug it up myself," about a quarter mile behind the ranch house, said Sgt. Bill Gleason, a now-retired homicide investigator with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
"There were rumors of other deaths, minors killed out in Death Valley," said Gleason, who took part in the original Spahn Ranch raid. "We just didn't have anything concrete to link to the Manson family."
The runaway girls didn't know how close they'd come to becoming another one of these rumors.
The day the runaways turned themselves in, CHP officers headed to Barker Ranch for the first of what would be two car theft raids.
On their way, they arrested two men -- booked as Gary Milton Tufts and Randy J. Mourglea -- whom they found asleep at the mouth of Goler Wash, a sawed-off shotgun between them. They were from Barker Ranch, CHP said.
When told of the arrests, both girls told officers they believed the armed men were sent "to stop them from walking away," according to CHP's report.
Were others less lucky when they tried to escape?
Searchers want to dig deeper
Vass said that, considering the quantity and the types of markers of human decomposition found, the cadaver dog's response, and the probing exercise, he found enough evidence to warrant further testing at a deeper level and a full scale excavation at Barker Ranch, according to the report he issued to law enforcement.
"I'd recommend a dig, excavate the sites," said Dostie, who reviewed the report.
But if a body is found on the Barker Ranch, then what?
The likelihood of a new prosecution appears slim. Locating remains would just be the first step, said Patrick Sequeira, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who has been in charge of the Manson family parole hearings since Kay's retirement.
"You have to tie them to someone who has disappeared, and there were a lot of people floating in and out of the family environment who were runaways, or hiding out," he said.
Then investigators would have to find out who killed them, where, and who could testify, he said.
The Manson family members currently in prison are already serving life sentences -- the maximum penalty allowed at the time the crimes were committed.
Still, Sequeira did not discourage the efforts of the crime scene re-investigators. "I'd love to see them put something together," he said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
