Your Resource for the Tate-LaBianca (TLB) Murders
Yesterday :: Today :: Tomorrow :: Where No Sense Makes Sense
Bernard Crowe wasn't exactly running from the spotlight.If anything, he seemed to be checking whether the spotlight had his good side.
This transcript reveals Crowe's immediate interest in whether people contacting him were working on a book. He wanted to know who was writing it, who was investigating, and who was behind the effort to turn the Manson saga into another published story.
And when you put that together with Ed Sanders' handwritten notes from the earlier material, an even more interesting picture emerges.
According to Sanders' notes, Crowe explained that “the biz” made him testify.
That little phrase—the biz—may be one of the most revealing pieces of the entire story.
Crowe and “The Biz”
Crowe wasn't simply dealing with the aftermath of being shot or with the pressure surrounding the Manson case.According to the Sanders notes, there was something else in the equation: the entertainment business.
Crowe was looking to sell his story.
He was looking to make Hollywood connections.
And in order to make those possibilities a reality, testifying could become part of the package.
In other words, the courtroom wasn't necessarily the end of Crowe's story.
It could have been the beginning of the Bernard Crowe media franchise.
There was a notorious case. There was Charlie Manson. There was a shooting. There was a threat. There was a potential first-person account.
And somewhere in the background was Hollywood. What could possibly go wrong?
The book was already on his mind
Crowe's attention turns toward the prospect of a book almost immediately. He wants to know whether the people talking to him are involved in one and who exactly is behind it.
He's not merely answering questions.
He's asking questions about the people who want his story.
Who is writing?
Who is investigating?
Who is involved?
When Sanders' notes are considered alongside the transcript, the picture becomes even more pointed: Crowe wasn't unaware of the commercial potential of his story.
He appears to have understood that his connection to the Manson case could have value.
Testify first, Hollywood later?
Crowe had reportedly been reluctant to testify against Manson. The Sanders material also records Crowe acknowledging that the threat was real, while indicating that he had feelings of sympathy toward Manson and didn't initially want to testify against him.
Yet there was another consideration.
The biz.
If testifying could help establish his story, attract attention, lead to a book, or create Hollywood contacts, suddenly the courtroom offered something beyond simply answering questions.
It offered exposure.
And exposure, in that world, could potentially be turned into money and opportunity.
Then came the awkward part: none of it happened
There is an almost perfect Hollywood punchline to the whole thing.
Crowe was looking to sell the story.
He was looking toward the entertainment business.
He wanted Hollywood connections.
He had a story involving one of the most notorious names in American criminal history.
He testified.
And then...
Apparently nobody ordered the sequel.The big media payoff never materialized.The Hollywood connections didn't turn into the career opportunity Crowe apparently hoped for.The story didn't become the lucrative entertainment-business launching pad that the plan seems to have envisioned.
All that anticipation, all that potential publicity—and ultimately, very little to show for it.
And suddenly the book questions make a lot more sense.
This is why Crowe's questioning about the book is so revealing.
When somebody approaches him connected to the Manson story, one of the first things on his mind is whether they're doing a book.
That doesn't look like an accidental concern.
It fits neatly with Sanders' handwritten notation about “the biz.”
Crowe knew there was an audience.
He knew there were authors.
He knew there were people interested in the story.
And apparently, he knew there might be a business opportunity attached to it.
The tragedy—or perhaps the irony—is that the opportunity seems never to have delivered.
That's a remarkably different motivation from the image of someone simply being dragged unwillingly into the public eye.But the grand payoff never came.
**The spotlight was there. Crowe just never got the starring role.**
You can read the transcript here
You can watch George and Buddy discuss it here
Former Charles Manson follower Patricia Krenwinkel was against recommended for parole Tuesday as she continues to serve a life prison term for her role in the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angeles.
Krenwinkel, 78, was preliminarily granted parole Tuesday at her 18th subsequent suitability hearing, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Grants of parole are proposed decisions that include a comprehensive review by the Board of Parole Hearings and the governor, who has reversed previous decisions involving Krenwinkel.
The most recent reversal came in October 2025. Newsom commended Krenwinkel's efforts to improve herself in prison, but said that growth was outweighed by a potential danger to the public.
Her recommendation for parole in May 2022 also was reversed by Newsom.
Krenwinkel was convicted of seven counts of first-degree murder in 1971 for participating with fellow Manson family members Charles "Tex" Watson and Leslie Van Houten in the Aug. 9, 1969, killings of actress Sharon Tate, Thomas Jay Sebring, Abigail Ann Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Earl Parent and the slayings of grocers Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the following day.
Tate was seven months pregnant.
Krenwinkel originally was sentenced to death. The penalty was reduced to life in prison under a California Supreme Court ruling that invalidated all death sentences before 1972.
Under California law, parole commissioners must determine whether an incarcerated person currently poses an unreasonable risk to public safety, according to CDCR. The review includes risk-assessment tools, evaluations by forensic psychologists, the inmate's prison record, parole plans and impact statements.
The preliminary decision in Krenwinkel's case is subject to a 120-day review by the Board of Parole Hearings. Because she was convicted of murder, the governor then has an additional 30 days to review the decision and may allow it to stand or reverse it.
If the governor reverses the parole decision, Krenwinkel would be scheduled for another hearing within 18 months of Tuesday's hearing, according to CDCR.
Manson died in November 2017 at a hospital in Kern County. He had been serving a life prison sentence in connection with the murders.
Nice job on the cleanup - particularly of Gary Hinman. So few photos of him are available publicly, and most are in poor condition.
The handwritten Sanders notes are an independent contemporaneous account concerning Crowe, while the trial transcript records what Crowe himself said under oath. They should not be treated as interchangeable sources—but together they illuminate some remarkable circumstances surrounding Crowe's role as a witness against Charles Manson.
At the center of it all is a threat.And, according to the Sanders notes, Crowe admitted that the threat was true.
That statement deserves careful attention.
Crowe and the Threat
The Sanders notes describe Crowe in connection with a threat against Manson and the "Manson family," including the threat that the entire family could be destroyed. Most importantly, the notes record that Crowe admitted the threat was true.
When questioned about the threatening words said over the telephone, Crowe acknowledged that he knew those words had been spoken. When asked whether he knew they had been uttered, his answer was unequivocal: “Oh, yes, certainly.”
Crowe testified that his own objective was to recover his money or the marijuana. When questioned about the discussion concerning wiping out the people at the ranch, he insisted that he did not approve of such a plan.
He said:
“I didn't approve of anything. I didn't say anything.”
He further explained that doing anything to anybody was not in his mind.
Elsewhere, when directly asked whether he approved of the threat, Crowe answered:
“Under no circumstances.”
And that is precisely what makes the record so interesting.
Crowe Didn't Want To Testify Against Manson.
According to the handwritten account, Crowe originally refused to testify against Manson.
The notes go further, stating that Crowe apparently felt guilty about testifying against Manson.
That is a striking detail.
The conventional image of a prosecution witness is someone eager to tell authorities what happened and help secure a conviction. The Sanders notes instead describe a man who apparently had serious reservations about becoming a witness against Manson.
That reluctance becomes even more significant when considered alongside Crowe's own testimony.
Crowe eventually took the witness stand—but the Sanders notes indicate that getting him there was not necessarily easy.
The Bullet In His Back
The Sanders notes also record an extraordinary detail concerning Crowe's physical condition.
Crowe had been shot, and the bullet remained in his back.
According to the notes, Aaron Stovitz offered Crowe the best medical attention available in an effort to have the bullet removed.
And even with that effort, the notes state that Crowe initially continued to refuse to testify.
Eventually, according to the Sanders account, Crowe was persuaded to testify.
The chronology is striking:
Crowe was shot.
A bullet remained in his back.
Efforts were made to obtain the best medical treatment to remove it.
Crowe initially refused to testify against Manson.
The Sanders notes say he felt guilty about testifying against Manson.
And ultimately, he became a witness.
Why did he become a witness? that will be coming in part 2. A hint is given in the documents above.
The $2,400 and the Marijuana
Crowe's courtroom testimony supplies the context for the confrontation.
The dispute involved $2,400 and marijuana. Crowe acknowledged that the $2,400 was his money, and his testimony repeatedly returned to the question of recovering either the money or the marijuana. It gives us Crowe's stated motive without having to speculate.
He wanted what he believed was owed to him.
Crowe Wanted to Protect His People
After the shooting, he explained that he did not want Rosina, Del and Steve unnecessarily dragged into the consequences. He testified that they had not committed the shooting and that he did not want them becoming entangled in the legal aftermath.
Whatever else may be said about Crowe, his testimony does not portray him as someone casually indifferent to what happened to those around him.
A Reluctant Witness With His Own Problems
There was another complication.
Crowe himself had legal problems.
During his testimony, questions were raised about his own criminal matters, and at one point he invoked his right against self-incrimination concerning a pending case.
Crowe was not entering the courtroom from a position of complete detachment.
Yet eventually he took the stand.
The Manson Identification
There is another important limitation.
Crowe's testimony does not provide an airtight basis for saying that he recognized Manson as the person with whom he spoke on the telephone.
The transcript indicates that Crowe did not know who the man on the telephone was at the time of the conversation. Manson was encountered afterward.
That means we should not turn Crowe's testimony into something it wasn't. Contrary to what Tex Watson said, We have no physical proof that T.J. know Crowe and that T.J. was in on the burn. Tex Watson is not the most reliable source of information.
The result is not a simple story.
It is a story about a drug burn, a threat, a shooting, a bullet, a reluctant witness, personal loyalties, legal complications and an admission that sits uneasily beside Crowe's courtroom denials of personal involvement.
Bobby Beausoleil’s 2026 Parole Hearing: The Questions of Insight, Credibility and Continued Risk
On July 14, 2026, Robert “Bobby” Beausoleil appeared before the California Board of Parole Hearings for his 22nd subsequent parole suitability hearing. After more than five decades in prison, the question before the panel was not whether he had been convicted of murdering Gary Hinman. The question was whether the man sitting before the panel in 2026 remained an unreasonable risk to public safety.
The answer from the two-member panel was yes.
Beausoleil was found unsuitable for parole and received a three-year denial. The panel acknowledged significant mitigating factors—including his age, lengthy incarceration, physical condition, institutional work history, educational development and a risk assessment finding him overall low-risk for violence—but concluded that unresolved concerns surrounding his insight, risk factors, programming and conduct outweighed those mitigating considerations.
The case history could not simply be ignored, but the ultimate question was whether Beausoleil had demonstrated enough growth, insight and behavioral change to establish that the circumstances associated with his past no longer represented a meaningful risk.
The Shadow of the 2025 Parole Grant—and Its Reversal
One of the first major issues addressed was the fact that Beausoleil had previously received a grant of parole at his January 7, 2025 hearing.
That grant was subsequently reviewed by the Board of Parole Hearings and the Governor’s office, and Governor Gavin Newsom reversed the grant.
Beausoleil was asked directly whether he understood why the Governor had reversed the decision.
He identified three concerns. Among them were concerns relating to statements in his Comprehensive Risk Assessment, his communications with the media, and a letter he had written to Cheryl Pickford, a relative of Gary Hinman.
The discussion about that letter became one of the clearest examples of the hearing’s central theme: insight versus self-perception.
Beausoleil acknowledged that including personal anecdotes and information about his relationship with Gary in an apology letter was inappropriate. He said that his participation in victim-impact-related programming had helped him understand why such a letter could be perceived as centering himself rather than the victim.
But there was an important qualification.
Beausoleil continued to defend the sincerity of the letter and said he still stood by its core message. He acknowledged that the Governor’s criticism concerning the way he presented himself in the letter demonstrated a lack of insight, while maintaining that the underlying apology was genuine.
That tension—acknowledging a problem while continuing to defend the underlying behavior—appeared repeatedly throughout the hearing.
The Question of “Adulation” and Narcissistic Traits
Another major issue involved the most recent Comprehensive Risk Assessment.
The assessment had discussed Beausoleil’s history of receiving attention or what the assessment characterized as “adulation” from people inside and outside prison. The concern was not simply popularity. The concern was whether positive attention had reinforced personality characteristics that made it difficult for him to recognize when his own attitudes or behaviors were problematic.
Initially, Beausoleil said he did not fully understand why that language had been used.
As questioning continued, however, he acknowledged that the assessment was referring not only to his distant past but also to behavior during his incarceration.
He ultimately agreed that recognition for his art, music and other work had historically provided gratification and acknowledged that this could become problematic.
Beausoleil told the panel that he had worked to stop making everything about himself and that he no longer needed the same level of attention or recognition.
The commissioners, however, were clearly interested in whether this represented a genuine and sustained change rather than simply an explanation developed for the hearing.
Empathy Became One of the Central Issues
Perhaps the most important psychological theme of the hearing was empathy.
Beausoleil described developing greater empathy as one of the major changes in his life. He said that he had learned to place himself in another person’s position and consider what that person might be experiencing rather than automatically viewing events through his own perspective.
When Deputy Commissioner Vijay Desai returned to the circumstances surrounding Gary Hinman’s treatment, Beausoleil acknowledged something particularly significant.
When asked whether he had been practicing empathy at the time of the offense, he answered that he had not.
He said he did not understand empathy in the way he does today.
The distinction mattered because the Board was not merely looking for a statement of remorse. It was examining whether Beausoleil could identify the psychological and behavioral mechanisms that contributed to his conduct and demonstrate that those mechanisms had changed.
The Continuing Dispute Over the Circumstances of Gary Hinman’s Death
The most controversial issue remained Beausoleil’s account of the circumstances surrounding the Hinman murder.
Throughout the years, Beausoleil has presented a version of events involving a drug transaction, the Straight Satans and money allegedly owed after a mescaline transaction.
During the 2026 hearing, that history again became an issue.
Beausoleil’s attorney acknowledged that there were discrepancies between Beausoleil’s account and the official record but emphasized that his client had maintained his version of events for decades.
The Art and Business Controversy
Another major portion of the hearing concerned Beausoleil’s art and music.
Beausoleil explained that people had purchased his artwork and that money had passed through an outside account. He disputed the characterization that he had been operating a business and maintained that some of his work had previously received institutional authorization.
The panel, however, questioned whether those prior authorizations applied to subsequent activity in California.
The commissioners specifically examined a 2020 disciplinary matter involving unauthorized business activity.
Beausoleil acknowledged the disciplinary finding but maintained that he had acted in good faith and believed he had previously obtained appropriate authorization.
He said that after the 2020 disciplinary action he stopped monetizing his work.
The issue nevertheless remained significant because prosecutors argued that the business activity raised questions about his willingness to follow institutional rules and his credibility concerning money.
The Money Question
The District Attorney’s office requested further investigation into Beausoleil’s financial accounts, particularly payments and transactions involving people outside the prison.
The board argued that the financial history raised unresolved questions about whether Beausoleil had continued engaging in unauthorized commercial activity.
The hearing included discussion of payments made by Beth Hall, whom Beausoleil described as a friend and assistant.
Beausoleil stated that she helped with typing, communications and financial matters.
When asked whether he would cooperate with an investigation into his accounts, Beausoleil ultimately said that he would answer questions concerning money that had been sent to him.
The financial issue became more than a question about money.
For the board, it became a credibility issue.
If Beausoleil’s explanations about his business activity were incomplete or inaccurate, the question was whether that demonstrated the same kind of thinking that had contributed to previous institutional violations.
Victims’ Representatives Presented a Strongly Opposing View
The victim representatives presented some of the most forceful opposition to parole.
Cheryl Pickford’s representatives argued that Beausoleil continued to minimize the seriousness of the offense and that his repeated public appearances, interviews and creative work kept him connected to the notoriety surrounding the murder.
The victim representatives also argued that Beausoleil’s continued presentation of himself through art, music and media attention was evidence of the very attention-seeking behavior identified in his risk assessment.
Kay Hinman Martley emphasized the continuing effect of Gary Hinman’s murder on his family and argued that Beausoleil had not fully accepted responsibility.
Deborah Tate also addressed what she described as continuing inaccuracies in the public discussion of the case and argued that Beausoleil continued to minimize his responsibility.
The hearing therefore became not only a debate about Beausoleil’s rehabilitation but also a confrontation between his interpretation of his personal transformation and the victims’ interpretation of the continuing consequences of his conduct.
The Panel Gave Victims a Broad Opportunity to Speak
There was considerable procedural debate about the scope of victim statements.
Beausoleil’s attorney argued that victim-impact statements should remain focused on Beausoleil, the commitment offense and matters legally relevant to parole suitability.
The District Attorney emphasized the victims’ statutory and constitutional rights to speak.
Commissioner Chappell ultimately ruled that victim statements would be allowed to proceed without continuous interruption, while the panel would determine how much weight to give the information presented.
This became an important procedural component of the hearing because the victim representatives presented extensive arguments concerning historical conduct, public notoriety, business dealings and perceived minimization.
Beausoleil’s Rehabilitation Was Not Ignored
Deputy Commissioner Desai stated that Beausoleil had not sufficiently developed programming addressing negative peer association and violence.
The panel also noted shortcomings in his relapse-prevention planning concerning critical risk factors.
These concerns were weighed against the mitigating evidence.
Instead, it concluded that neither was appropriate given Beausoleil’s age, the victims’ interests and the overall circumstances.
What the Board Wants to See Before the Next Hearing
The commissioners gave unusually clear recommendations for the next three years.
They instructed Beausoleil to:
Remain disciplinary-free.
Avoid new 115 or 128A violations.
Continue earning positive institutional chronos.
Continue self-help programming.
Participate in programming addressing criminal thinking.
Take denial-management programming if available.
Address his history of negative peer association.
Continue victim-awareness and victim-impact programming.
Continue substance-abuse programming.
Develop stronger strategies addressing the risk factors identified by the panel.
Commissioner Chappell stated that the panel had considered the legal standards, the central file, the Comprehensive Risk Assessment, the hearing testimony, the attorneys’ presentations and the victim statements.
The panel concluded that Beausoleil continued to pose an unreasonable risk to public safety.
Parole was denied for three years
I received a message from Colonel Scott that Bruce Davis has died in prison. It took a little searching but I was able to find a website that announced the death, barely. This website I believe belongs to Debra Tate or one of her supporters.
https://noparoleformansonfamily.com/I did check the California Inmate Locator website and Bruce is no longer listed as being incarcerated. Beyond that I have no other information.