Saturday, December 29, 2012

The Witches' Lair, Part 2

Deb found an article in the Anderson Valley Advertiser from June 26, 1968 that reads: "In the early hours of last Saturday, at the Alice Ostrom Price house 7 miles north of Philo, there occured incidents which have shocked all residents of the Anderson Valley community." The article is referring to the bust in which Mary Brunner, Susan Atkins, Ella Jo Bailey, Stephanie Rowe and others were picked up on drug and prostitution charges on June 22 of that year.

The name Alice Ostrom Price has always been a name that Patty has kept in the back of her head. She has been looking for references to the place for years to no avail.

Enter DebS, of the mad skills. She thought of looking into old deeds to see if we couldn't find The Witches Lair, off Boonville Road, between Navarro and Philo. She did a special trip to Ukiah last month and wrote Patty the following:

"I had a successful trip to Ukiah! There was only one property in the records that had Alice Ostrom Price's name. I looked on a map and it looks like it's the right property about 7 miles north of Philo.

Attached are a Grant Deed and Deed of Trust related to the property. The Grant Deed has the parcel number on it. It's the AP# 26-260-21 under the escrow number in the upper left corner box of the document. This document is from Alice selling the property in 1971 to Frances Granger. Granger sold the property in 1987 to someone named Brennen. In 2002 Brennen merged the parcel with another that they owned, AP# 26-260-30 and the two parcels together became AP# 20-260-32.

I went to the Assessors office to find out the physical address from the parcel number. I double checked the history of the parcel numbers with the lady that helped me and all that was correct. The present address of the property is, drum roll......."