Monday, March 11, 2024

The Grogan File: Something is Missing.

 When I was a little kid my brother and I and our cousins used to walk about five blocks from my grandparent’s house to a little store on a main avenue in Detroit. We were not allowed to walk on the avenue, so we had to cut through a narrow alleyway to get there. 

In the back of the store the owner had some toys. More importantly he had this bin of boxes containing individual toy soldiers. These guys. 

 

The owner let us dig through the bin to our heart’s content as long as we bought something before, we left. If we didn’t find anything in the bin we would buy baseball cards. I always got crappy ones; you know, some unknown rookie or one of the Mets. But sometimes I found a pirate in the bin. 

 

The anticipation I had walking to that store back then returns every time I receive a notification from Cielodrive of a new document post. Sometimes it’s one of the Mets but sometimes it is a pirate. Thank you, Cielodrive. 

 

This one, I think, is a pirate. This is the file related to Grogan exposing himself to children. 

 

The_Grogan_FilePDF Document · 10.3 MB

 

What does the official narrative say about this incident? Well, that narrative would be the book, Helter Skelter and here is what Vincent Bugliosi had to say. 

______

 

Grogan had been observed exposing himself to several children, ages four to five years. “The kids wanted me to,” he explained to arresting officers, who had caught him in the act. “I violated the law, the thing fell out of my pants and the parents got excited,” he later told a court-appointed psychiatrist. After interviewing Grogan, the psychiatrist ruled against committing him to Camarillo State Hospital, because “the minor is much too aggressive to remain in a setting which does not provide containment facilities.”

 

The court decided otherwise, sending him to Camarillo for a ninety-day observation period. He remained a grand total of two days, then walked away, aided, I would later learn, by one of the girls from the Family. 

 

His escape had occurred on July 19, 1969. He was back at Spahn in time for the Hinman, Tate, and LaBianca murders. He was arrested in the August 16 Spahn raid, but was released two days later, in time to behead Shorty Shea.

 

******

So we had virtually nothing on Clem. 

 

In going through Grogan’s file, I noticed that one of his brothers had made application for the California Highway Patrol; I made note of this, thinking maybe his brother could influence Clem to cooperate with us. DeCarlo had described Grogan in two words: “He’s nuts.” In his police photograph—big, wide grin, chipped front tooth, moronic stare—he did look idiotic. I asked Fowles for copies of the recent psychiatric reports. 

 

Asked, “Why do you hate your father?” Grogan replied, “I’m my father and I don’t hate myself.” He denied the use of drugs. “I have my own bennies, adrenalin. It’s called fear.” He claimed that “love is everything,” but, according to one psychiatrist, “he also revealed that he could not accept the philosophy of interracial brotherhood. Quotes supposedly from the Bible with sexual correlation were given in defense of his attitude.” 

 

Other quotes from Clem: “I’m dying a little every day. My ego is dying and knows he’s dying and struggles hard. When you’re free of ego you’re free of everything…Whatever you say is right for yourself…Whoever you think I am, that’s who I am.” 

 

The philosophy of Clem? Or Charles Manson? I’d heard the same thoughts, in several instances even identical words, from the girls. If the psychiatrists had examined one of Manson’s followers and, on the basis of such responses, found him insane, what of his leader?

 

Bugliosi, Vincent; Curt Gentry. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (p. 173-175). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

 

______

 

The records confirm Helter Skelter. Grogan’s brother was indeed trying to get into the California Highway Patrol. The psychiatrists even confirm DeCarlo’s comment. Grogan was considered to be mentally unstable, receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia. 

 

Grogan, as you know, was never charged with the LaBianca murders even though he was as guilty as Susan Atkins and the exact evidence that convicted Atkins of conspiracy to commit murder and thus murder would have also convicted Grogan. Certainly, this diagnosis could have influenced any DA to hesitate to charge Grogan on LaBianca. Grogan had a defense of insanity or diminished capacity confirmed by state psychiatrists and that just might influence the jury as to all of the defendants and especially Charles Manson, as Bugliosi noted. 


There is also something missing in the records that also caught Bugliosi's eye. He noted it: "The philosophy of Clem? Or Charles Manson?". Where is the Charlie Says (to borrow a movie title)? No mention of Manson appears in these records or in Grogan's comments. That's not what Bugliosi wants, or needs.

 

But something else is missing. Its not that something is missing from he file. The file is complete. But there is definitely something missing from Bugliosi’s narrative.

______

 

When I was in law school long ago, I had a first-year law professor who had been in the real world as a litigator for many years before some health issue forced his retirement. Even though his class had nothing to do with litigation (it was Contract Law), practically every class he would give us a tidbit about being a trial lawyer. He once pointed out that someday many of us would ‘troop into court’ with our witness outlines eager to begin our ‘scintillating cross examination’ of a witness. He then said “Stop! Listen first. What a witness does not say is more important than what they do say. Once you find that ask them ‘why’. Any jackass can answer who, what, when or where but ‘why’ is the tough one to answer and sometimes the answer reveals motivation.”

 

So, what is missing? Bugliosi knew precisely who the family member was who helped Grogan escape. We know that because he quotes the same documents we now have more than once. That family member was revealed, right here.

 

It was Linda Kasabian. She signed as Linda Drouin (her family name). She used Dennis Wilson’s address and listed herself as Grogan’s girlfriend when she visited him on July 19, 1969 about two weeks after she joined the Family. 


This too may also have something to do with why Grogan wasn’t charged. In the hands of a competent defense attorney this page pokes a hole in one of Bugliosi’s main themes: that Kasabian only went along on two nights of murder because she had a valid driver’s license. You know, the innocent hippy chick theme.

 

This document suggests, instead, that Kasabian was much closer to the inner circle of the Family pretty quickly after she got to Spahn Ranch and was at least involved in planning and executing Grogan's escape.  This made me rethink that courtroom comment "when are you going to tell your part" just a little.

 

Now, one could try to argue that the only reason she went to see Grogan is, again, because she was the only one who had a valid driver’s license. I hope Cielodrive will put this issue to rest for me but until he does, I don't think she had one. 

 





This is from a New Hampshire newspaper from May 1969. I used it in a post a half dozen years ago. The cite is there. I don't have it anymore. She wasn’t charged with driving without a license: ‘Oh, I must have left it at home’. She was charged with driving without a valid license. She pled guilty. She didn’t say ‘wait, here it is” when she got to court. She paid the fine. 


Now maybe she fixed that before she cut out to California a few weeks later. But I don't think she did.  

 





Deb reminded me of this. Thanks Deb. Remember that detective named Deemers? Remember his list? 


Deb: "Regarding Kasabian's driver's license, look at Deemer's list. While it is true that not a lot of Family members have driver's licenses there were members with licenses. Kitty Lutesinger, Dianne Lake, Tex, Nancy Pitman, Mark Ross, Claudia Smith aka Linda Baldwin, Leslie Van Houten to name a few of the inter-circle members. 


But if you look at Linda Kasabian's entry on Deemer's list, no DL#. 
I figure Deemer's list was compiled in November or early December 1969. You will notice that Tex is listed under the name Charles Montgomery. They still hadn't quite gotten the names straight. There're a couple other people who are listed by their alias and not their true name."

Kitty Lutesinger from the list: 




 




Deemers listed her Missouri address and noted the Missouri driver's license. 


And Kasabian: 






Deemers got her New Hampshire address right but something else is missing. Where is the "DL#"? 


Even in the unlikely event that her license was valid, that fact might explain her driving or riding along to visit Grogan, while Manson drove and a member of the inner circle like Brunner went inside to talk to Grogan but it does not explain why she was the messenger. Someone told her the escape plan or she already knew it and she was the one to pass it on to Grogan and probably even waited for him to make his break. 


Her visit is the same day he skipped out: July 19th. The hospital noted their belief someone left Grogan a car. Tracing Linda Drouin would lead to Wilson's house and, of course she would not be there. But maybe they/she waited for him. How many cars did they have at the ranch? 


This page shows Kasabian as an active participant in the organization, planning and execution of Grogan’s escape (a crime by the way). I do not think Bugliosi wanted that to be part of the record, any record, including his own version when he did everything in his power to distance Kasabian from any such role including, specifically, disarming her at Cielo Drive.

 

I think Ms. Kasabian was a little more involved, a little closer to the throne so to speak, than we were led to believe by Mr. Bugliosi. I also think Bugliosi knew that and that is why he didn’t name the "one of the girls from the Family" who helped Grogan escape. “One of the girls from the Family” makes you think of someone other than Kasabian, doesn’t it? 

 

I tried to find where Bugliosi eventually identified this ‘girl’ in Helter Skelter. I searched the terms Grogan, Clem, escape, Camarillo, hospital and even Kasabian and Drouin and found nothing. If it is there somewhere I couldn’t find it. 

 

But even if I missed it and it is there, one could still ask ‘why didn’t you name her right there on page 173? I think the answer is obvious. 

 

Pax vobiscum

 

Dreath

Monday, March 4, 2024

The Road To Heaven

 Back when I was researching something related to all this, I stole this image from Cielodrive. 



The photograph immediately intrigued me. The intrigue had nothing to do with that guy on the ladder reaching for the phone wires and wearing a short sleaved white business shirt like my father used to wear in the sixties. It also wasn’t because of the wall where Atkins, Krenwinkel and probably Kasabian hid while Watson murdered Steven Parent. It is behind the uniformed officer. It wasn’t the really nice striped pants on the guy pointing at the camera or even the question why one guy showed up in a tee shirt. It wasn’t the cat, either. It was the wagon in the junk pile. Why was there a wagon at Cielo Drive? 





A Bit About JF Watkins

 

We all know Michele Morgan (Simone RenĂ©e Roussel) built the house. Well, it is actually more accurate to say she had it built and then bought it but that’s a technicality. She bought the house from “M.M. Landon”. That would be Minnie M. Landon. Minnie had been married to Arthur Landon who was a contractor. He bought the lot several years before. He passed away sometime in the 1930s. They had a daughter named Opal who married a guy named John F. Watkins. He’s the guy who built the house.


 



Far from being a small-time operator, the J. F. Wadkins Company appears repeatedly in real estate advertisements in the LA Times in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. Several have him advertising multi-home subdivisions. In fact, in 1942 he got in trouble for violating the regulations that limited production at the start of World War II by starting a 36-home subdivision without authorization. 






Wadkins passed away in 1943 after a horseback riding accident. Ed Sanders might add an oo-ee-oo, here: horses…Wadkins…Spahn Ranch. I was not able to find the location where Wadkins was injured. It obviously was not at Spahn Ranch.

 







 


The Michele Morgan Ghost Story


I don’t think Michele Morgan actually sold the home because of the creepy factor as she claimed in her autobiography. That story can be found, here. 

 

https://www.mansonblog.com/2013/08/jeepers-original-cielo-owner-was-scared.html

 

Later in her autobiography, she seems to contradict her own claim. She says that she sold 10050 Cielo Drive because her new husband, William Marshall, refused to live in a home owned by his wife. Obviously, Mr. Marshall was a modern, open minded and progressive male. Ok, he wasn't. However, apparently, he wasn’t above using the money from the sale of his wife's home to buy a home in his name. A home he was awarded in their divorce.

 

Bill Marshall never lived at Cielo Drive. However, Michele Morgan’s good friend, Madeleine LeBeau, was her roommate at Cielo for a time before Michele married. You might recognize her. She had a small role in the film, Casablanca. 

 


Morgan was supposed to get the role of Ilsa Lund in Casablanca, but RKO, her studio, wouldn't release her for the amount of money Warner Bros. was offering and Ingrid Bergman was cast instead. That is a bit of a shame because Morgan’s flight from occupied France is straight out of the movie. She escaped occupied France (Normandy) and first crossed Vichy France to Spain. She crossed Spain and left Europe from Lisbon, Portugal. 

 



Rudolfh Altobelli bought the house in 1963. There are several deeds changing ownership in the 1950's. But the various deeds all involve a guy named Louis Clyde Griffith (“LC”). Griffith was a theater tycoon in Oklahoma in the 1930’s and 1940’s and from what I could tell he was a pioneer of drive-in movie theaters. Everyone on the deeds from 1949 to 1963 (and there are several) are either business associates of Griffith, his attorney, or his stepson. I believe the transfers are related to a debilitating stroke he suffered in 1946 which led to him relocating to LA in 1949. Eventually the house landed with LC and LC Griffith sold it to Altobelli. The deed is dated October 17, 1963.

 

Despite the various deeds LC Griffith lived in the home throughout the 1950s. The available Los Angeles city directories consistently show LC Griffith as the occupant of Cielo Drive during this time period. The 1950 census places him at Cielo Drive with a nurse. 














______


The Tenants


Here, in order, is everyone I could confirm rented Cielo Drive or the guest house after Altobelli purchased the home until Terry Melcher and Mark Lindsay. 

 

Henry Fonda rented the guest house for a couple of months in 1964.

______

 

"One of the houses I sublet and lived in with Shirlee for a couple of months was on Benedict Canyon in Bel Air," Fonda says. "Does that street name ring a bell? Remember the place where Sharon Tate and her friends were massacred? Remember the guest house? That's where we stayed during the summer of sixty-four. It was a pleasant place. I did a lot of painting there. I had to drive in and park in the area where those violent people parked that night. I'd walk down the same path below the main house to the guest house. That's where the young guy was murdered when he made an exit at the wrong time.”

"My God, timing is everything, even outside the theater."

 

My Life by Henry Fonda and Howard Teichmann, Book Club Assoc., page 295, 1982.

______

 

For two years after Henry Fonda George Chakiris rented first the guest house and then the main house. 

 

"By now [1964]I was renting a charming guest house at the end of a pretty little tree-lined cul-de-sac off of Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills. The guest house and the main house, which I eventually moved into, were owned by a talent manager named Rudi Altobelli. One of his clients, Henry Fonda, had preceded me in the guest house. Henry Fonda was a talented artist, and a painting he’d been working on was still there on an easel.

******

 

I didn’t want to leave Paris. No one ever wants to leave Paris. But I had some packing and moving to take care of back in L.A. The lease was up on the Rudi Altobelli house I was renting off of Benedict Canyon. I’d lived in the two-thousand-square-foot guest house for a year, and then in the thirty-two-hundred-square-foot main house for another year. I’d loved it there. It was quiet and just secluded enough, very French Country, on three acres, with a pool, lots of pine and cherry trees, and a private driveway. I knew I’d miss it, but it was way more space than I needed, and I had too much traveling ahead to justify staying there anyway. Sadly, I’d see that house again, a few years later, on the news. So would the rest of the world.

******

 

Some time after the horror on Cielo Drive, I mustered up the courage to finally visit Rudi Altobelli, who’d cleaned up the house and the grounds and moved back in with a couple of guard dogs. It was eerie and uncomfortable. I didn’t stay long, and I never went back again. I’ve been told that Rudi finally sold the property, the structures there were demolished and replaced by a 12,000-square-foot mansion, and the street address has been changed to discourage the nonstop stream of trespassers, tour buses, and curiosity seekers. Some part of me likes knowing that nothing that was there in August of 1969 is there anymore, not even a single brick or stick of wood or blade of grass.

******

 

I also became socially acquainted with the extraordinary film actress Michèle Morgan. She has too many acting credentials to even try to list them here, including a Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, and she was utterly charming. One night Michèle told the story of how she moved to Hollywood during World War II. She designed a French Country-style home to be built there, fairly private and only a short distance away from the heart of Beverly Hills where most other movie stars were living. But in time she was frightened to live there because she kept hearing what she described as “sinister noises,” and she eventually sold the property. 

 

The house Michèle Morgan built, the house full of “sinister noises” that frightened her, was 10050 Cielo Drive, my former residence and, of course, the house where the murders occurred. What are the odds that I would just happen to become acquainted with her, through a chance encounter with a Greek singer at an Athens I?"

 

Chakiris, George. My West Side Story (p. 118, 133, 149 and 151). Lyons Press. Kindle Edition.

______

 

I believe Samantha Eggar was next. That’s her on the cover of the April 2, 1966, edition of Hola magazine near the pool.  Here’s a couple more blurry images from that magazine. 

 



By the way, that’s Samantha Eggar in the top right photo, not Candice Bergen as most online sources claim. 


This is Candice Bergen and the source claims that it was taken at Cielo Drive.




 










I left out Cary Grant. I don’t think he ever lived at Cielo Drive. The source of the ‘Cary Grant had a bad acid trip while renting Cielo Drive’ story, as far as I can tell, originates from this gossip column I pulled from the Miami Herald (September 1, 1969). It cites Dyan Cannon as the source. 


I have five Cary Grant biographies. I am kind of a fan. Now you listen to me, I’m an advertising man, not a red herring. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself “slightly” killed.


One of the biographies places Grant at Cielo Drive in 1940. That, of course, is not possible. The rest do not mention Cielo Drive. They mention the murders either in connection with Grant hiring a full time bodyguard for his daughter after the murders or to mention Grant being on Manson’s Hollywood Hit List.  

 

Dyan Cannon says this. Again, no mention of Cielo Drive.


"And so, Cary left for Tokyo, and I was left with the task of finding us a house to live in as fast as possible. I spent weeks looking at houses with Cary’s real estate agent. I airmailed photos to Tokyo for Cary to see. We wound up renting a home off Benedict Canyon recently vacated by the Beatles."

 

Cannon, Dyan. Dear Cary (pp. 225-226). It Books. Kindle Edition.

______

 

The Beatles House is located at 2850 Benedict Canyon. When it is listed for sale the Beatles and Grant are usually mentioned. The Beatles rented the house in August 1965. George Chakiris was renting Cielo Drive during that time-frame. 


The Newlywed Murder-Suicide 


The Melcher-Lindsay period gives us the murder-suicide myth. I am sure everyone has read this. 

______

 

"Rudy said that one of the first couples to occupy the house had been newlyweds, and on their wedding night the bride somehow learned that the groom had cheated on her in the recent past. Supposedly after the marriage was consummated and he was asleep, the new lady of the house took a large knife from the kitchen and stabbed him to death in bed. She then put a bullet in her brain using the small "lady's pistol" that he had given her for protection as one of her wedding gifts.

 

Rudy told us the whole affair had been hushed up and was never talked about because it would reflect negatively on the real estate value. He said that although the femme fatale's spirit still lingered, she probably wouldn't bother two guys -- although he warned that she didn't seem to tolerate beautiful women very well. "As long as you don't let your girlfriends stay over too long, you should be okay," he warned. And then he went back to his residence, leaving us to ponder."

 

https://www.mansonblog.com/2020/10/a-little-something-for-halloween.html

 

______

 

It never happened. No newlyweds ever lived in the home and there were only three owners prior to Altobelli. All three lived in the house and/or the guesthouse the whole time they owned the home. 


The Wagon


I am sure most of you know most of the above information. This post is about that wagon but if I had not added the other stuff the post would be really short which would be out of keeping with my post history. 


And that brings us back to Doctor Hartley Dewey and his wife, Louise. Hartley was this guy’s cousin. 

 



The Deweys bought the house from Michele Morgan in June 1943. They had three sons all of whom served in World War II. One, a bomber pilot over Europe, was missing in action for several months. 


The Deweys came to LA from Yosemite National Park. 


"Doctor Hartley G. Dewey opened the new W. B. Lewis Memorial Hospital during Christmas week 1929. The services to Yosemite rendered in this fine hospital were much needed as the increase in visitors, as well as permanent and seasonal employees, had doubled during the past decade. Dr. Dewey needed additional help so another doctor and more nurses were added to the staff. A permanent Dentist Office was also established for full time work, with Doctor Raleigh Davies in charge.


Doctor Avery Sturm joined Doctor Dewey at the Lewis Memorial Hospital in 1935. This team practiced until 1942 when Doctor Sturm entered Military Service during World War 2. Doctor Dewey’s contract was up in April 1943, so he, too, left the Park."


https://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/guardians_of_the_yosemite/hospital.html


After they purchased Cielo Drive, the Deweys converted the barbeque pavilion into the guest house. They added a dressing room for the pool off the back of the house and redecorated the home. 


Their friend, Walt Disney, hand rendered images of Mickey Mouse on the walls of the bar. I don’t know if the drawings were still there in 1969. I couldn't find anything about them after the Deweys. I find that sort of surreal if they were there in August 1969.

 

The Deweys make multiple appearances on the society pages of the LA Times in the 1940s. I believe Louise was good friends with Lucille Lambert who wrote the column Confidentially. Here is an example. 

 

Ms. Lambert even wrote an article about the remodel for the Times. 
 

Lillian Gish rented the main house from the Deweys in 1945. 

She later sued the Deweys for over $11,000 for violating the wartime rent restrictions. She won. 

 

The Deweys moved to Carmel in 1949 and sold the house to Henry Griffing. Griffing worked for LC Griffith at the time. Later he attempted to launch what we would now call cable (pay) TV. In theory you could drop coins in a box on the TV and watch movies that had recently been in the theater. It didn’t catch on. Griffing died in a plane crash in 1960. 


I periodically stop at antique malls looking to replace the vinyl I sold to fund one of my obsessions when I was in college. I later married her, but I digress. 



On one such trip I wandered into a stall filled, in part, with sixties memorabilia. They wanted too much money for the 1964 GI Joe and they didn’t have any Moby Grape albums. 

 

They had a whole section of magazines dating back to the 1920s including the Manson Life magazine. I already have that one. They had several Look and Life magazines from the sixties including the walk on the moon, the assassination of Robert Kennedy and even the Mets 1969 World Series win. 


My eye, however, was drawn to another magazine less prominently displayed and sort of tossed aside with some other obscure pre-sixties titles. 

 

Here was the August 1945 edition of American Home. There on the cover, in full color, stood Louise Dewey. She was standing in front of the garage at 10050 Cielo Drive and there in the background of that photo.... was the wagon. 

 

August 1945. Ed Sanders might add an oo-ee-oo here too. Here is the whole American Home article. The text on the last page is not about Cielo Drive. In fact, aside from the image captions, there is no text.  Louise took the photographs. I also included the LA Times article about the remodel which mentions the Disney characters and, oddly, a garage 'at the foot of the hill'.  

 

https://wvw.mansonblog.com/pdf/American_Home.pdf

______

 

One more thing. 


I think most people have seen this image. It originally appeared in the November 15, 1969, edition of Paris Match magazine. 

 



The photograph was likely taken in October 1969. The photographer was standing off the north end of the porch, to the right of the walk, just about in front of the window Watson entered that night. Kasabian would have been standing about five feet to his left that night according to the trial exhibit. This is as close as we will ever get to seeing what she saw that night. How many still think she saw the pool from here? 




______

 

Pax Vobiscum

 

Dreath

 

 

 

Monday, February 26, 2024

Tate Suspect List


 

Suspects Eliminated By Fingerprints

Today fingerprints are fed into a computer and finding a match or not isn't a laborious or time-consuming process like it was in 1969 when the Tate and LaBianca murders were investigated.

So, just how did they narrow down fingerprints to streamline the process in the TLB cases?

The Henry Classification System was used categorize the different types of fingerprint characteristics that are made by friction ridges and furrows.

There are three main types of fingerprints, loops, whorls and arches. Within those three groups loops, which recurve back onto themselves to form the loops, are divided into radial loops that point towards the radial bone (thumb) or the ulna bone (pinky finger).

Whorls form circular or spiral patterns and are divided into four groups. Plain whorls are concentric circles, central pocket loops are loops with a whorl at the end, double loops that create an S-like pattern and accidental loops are irregularly shaped.

Arches make a wave like pattern that are either plain or tented. Tented arches rise to a sharper point than plain arches.

The palms of the hand also have distinct ridges and furrows. Another type of print is the chop. The chop is the side of the hand from the tip of the pinky finger to the wrist. The best example of where you might find the chop is if you were to place the sides of your hand on a window to block out glare while peeping.

No two people have the same fingerprints, even identical twins and no one person has the same fingerprint on more than one finger or thumb.

Here are the lists of the suspects eliminated by fingerprints courtesy of Cielo Drive. The second page is a list of law enforcement personnel who were at the crime scene.










Monday, February 19, 2024

The Melba Kronkright Letter

 



Cielo Drive has been gathering more and more documents for his Patreon website. Some of the things he has been able to obtain are very enlightening. Below is a letter that Melba Kronkright wrote to someone in law enforcement or the district attorney's office regarding her dealings with Charles Manson and members of the Family. One thing is certain, Mrs. Kronkright was terrified that she would be killed by Manson or his followers.

Mrs. Kronkright jumps around a bit when retelling her dealings with Manson and the Family. While it is clear that she knew them over a period of a couple of years, it’s difficult to pin down the exact timeline of each incident that she recalls.

I am not sure who Diane Adams was but think it might have been Dianne Lake. If anyone has an idea please post what you know in the comments.

This time Cielo Drive typed out the contents of Melba's letter!

 

December 15, 1969

 

Dear Sirs:

 

I keep getting phone calls that are unanswered after I speak hellow into the receiver.

 

I have also written a letter to the attorney Mr. Paul Caruso.

 

I am a widow and live alone at the above address and about two years ago I found a group of young unemployed people through a Mr. Sweeney. A service station owner here in Malibu. The group were the Charles Manson people. I needed their services to clean the stables and help on my property and home of four and one half acres in Malibu. I am in fear for my life and will give all of the reasons I can think of.

 

About two years ago as I have said Charles Manson directed various ones in his group to work at least once a week on my property. They were paid at first then I explained that a good sum of money was owed to me and that until that time I didn’t have money to continue their service of once a week. They continued to come here for at least six months from time to time and say they just wanted to help and didn’t expect me to pay them. One of the girls had had a baby and they had all been arrested for camping out on private property in Ventura county. The baby was just five days old. Mary Brunner the mother was charged with child neglect and kept in jail. Others came here knowing that I was a social worker and told me that Mary had promised to take the baby and go back to Eu Clair Wis. to Mr. & Mrs. George Brunner her parents. She was released in my custody. Mary used my address as her new address but stayed only one night. She did not go home as promised.

 

Early part of last August I received a phone call from Mary saying that she was in Sybil Brand jail and it would take sixty four dollars to bail her out with a property owners signature. I told her that my daughter is a police sargent and that if I put my name on any thing it could be traced and I would then be thought of as helping them do what got them in jail and I could be in trouble. My daughter is Mrs. Roy Hovas, Sherl Rae Hovas or Sargent Hovas. Then Charles Manson came here in the middle of the night and said that he needed money to get Mary out of jail. I told him that I didn’t have any money but if I did that I would only get myself in trouble in helping them that my daughter was a police sargent etc. He left, but I’m sure that this was the same night the couple that owned the grocery store was killed.

 

I feel had I received the money that they had been expecting me to and not given them what they asked for that they would have killed me. He had asked had I received my money as yet.

 

When Mary was in jail I called her mother to come out and get custody of the child (Michael). I again called Marys’ mother and told her after the Tate murder case was disclosed that not to ever tell Mary that I was the one that told her that Mary was in jail and to come here to get the baby.

 

At the time Charles Manson was coming here and directing his group to work he would talk to me in the kitchen about his views on the Negro situation. I told him how as a social worker I was in the mist of the Negro situation in the Gettos. He tried to discourage my efforts. Therefore, this if nothing else would have been a reason to direct the blame on the negros to have killed me. He also told me that there were many people as his followers all over the United States that at his word could start a war.

 

In my letter to Mr. Paul Caruso I gave names of most of the group that I had met at one time or another. I also told Mr. Caruso that if he defended these people to let them out on society that my death was next.

 

I just reread my letter to you and you can tell I am more than a little upset. I have pictures of Charles Manson and a picture taken by Mary Brunners mother of Mary and the baby since Mary was released if she would return to her parents. The letter from Mrs. Brunner speaks of it’s self in gratitude.

 

I don’t feel that we have seen the last of this mess. As long as the many young women that Manson fathered their children are out and about - with loyalty and love for him - there is going to be effort put forth to help him. Such as Lynn Frome, Sandy Pugh, Ella Cinders, Mary Brunner, Diane Adams and many, many more that I met but can’t recall their names.

 

I talked to Diane Adams father at the time she escaped from Silmar (indistinguishable). I told him to get Charles Manson. I said that Manson was the one that told me that he helped her escape and got her over to Arizona. Mr. Adams seemed relieved that he didn’t have to worry about her coming into his home and bringing such people and taking his car in the middle of the night etc.

 

Mr. Adams called me just before the news came out the Tate case was solved. He said that his daughter was on a boat up the coast the last time her heard from her. I know of at least three girls that have babies that know that Manson is the father. Mr. Adams also told me I was lucky to not have been killed by the Manson group.

 

I hope that something in this letter will help and because I pay three hundred dollars a month taxes that I can expect some extra thought of safety.

 

Feel free to come out and talk. Please don’t get my name in the papers or get me anymore added problems.

 

Thank you sincerely,

 

Melba Kronkright

 





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