Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Charles Manson Estate Battle Paused

Yesterday, a new judge in the Charles Manson probate case asked attorneys to file court papers detailing their recommendations by March 18th for a final status conference June 1st. 

Highlights: 

- Jason Freeman is representing himself this time around 

- Michael Channels' lawyer, Timothy Lyons, wants a ruling on a 2002 Charles Manson will that named Channels executor of Manson's estate

- Manson's half-sister Nancy Claassen asserts she is the "sole heir-at-law" 


16 comments:

Monica said...

Freeman holding the ashes really creeps me out. So weird. Really hope Michael Brunner and Michael Channels returned to the scene of the dopey ash casting ceremony and pocketed a handful to take to the Spahn or Barker sites. Not that I really care but it seems like the right thing to do.

G. Greene-Whyte said...

Don't his eyes look filled with love? Also his sweaty pits are gross.

Rock N. Roll said...

Team Channels.

shoegazer said...

Now, I'm going to ask something that may seem judgmental--or of an "OK, Boomer..." moment--but this is not my intent, and I want to make that clear. I'm enjoying the exchanges on this site and do not want to pollute or imperil them.

The site seems to have two distinct areas of interest, and while some of the posters here have a figurative foot in each area, for the most part posters seem much more attracted to one of the two areas.

One area is primary interest in the individuals involved--their personalities, their motivations, and hence their fates.

The other area is understanding all of the details--or as many as possibly--of the logistics, actions, and results of the crimes. There is also a small group who, like me, are here to sometimes reminisce, and this must be like what happens full-time in retirement communities, where old farts like me get together and simply rehash their lost youth.

Boy, is that a losing long-term proposition, if you dwell on it enough.

I'm mostly in the details camp, and the reason for this is the main question I have--the one that might seems awkward or judgmental: how is it possible to take a fairly deep personal interest in strangers, most of whom have been dead a number of years, and especially since these strangers' lives had little demonstrable effect on anyone here?

I'm thinking that maybe I'm a low-empathy type, by nature--my wife has told me that I lack the gene for spirituality--and all of the non-physical environment seems to me to be--ahem!--a social construct. So for me it's very easy to simply not think about anything other than the material aspects of most things. Conversely, I find it near impossible to make any attachment to the characters, at all, and I know them only thru their actions.

All this goes by the boards if I'm in someway associated with the persons, but in this case I'm not--nor would I choose to be, even if I could, so...

Hah! And last night I was reading from the list of trial volumes, as indexed by Peter (THANKS!), and this is clearing up a lot. I repeat: reading the trial testimony demystifies the entire event and process.

I had long felt that the two trunks in the LR, near the passage to the front door, had been signed for by the gardener (true), and put inside by the UPS delivery man (not true--they were left on the front porch, and it is as yet unclear how they came to be in the house).

Some of the testimony raises minor questions I had never before heard of and they tend to exist as confounding factors--e.g., the gardener (I believe) mentions that as he entered the bottom of the driveway at about 5PM or so on Fri 08 Aug, Folger drove down by herself in her yellow Firebird. Fine.

But the about a minute later Frykowski drive down in another, unidentified, car, by himself.

My question would be: what car was that? Not pivotally important, but it would be good to get a firm grip on this. Was he able to borrow Tate's Camaro, e.g., or had he borrowed a car and was returning it, either to a rental agency, or to its owner? With Folger's departure only a minute before, this would be consistent with giving him a ride back.

Peter said...

I'm a foot in both camps guy. I find all the Family members interesting because for the most part they started out middle class like me but somehow ended up on the fringe. But I also love the details. I'm an attorney by trade and, while my practice is antitrust class actions, I've always been fascinated by criminal trials. The case is like a puzzle, the pieces are the trial testimony and exhibits, the books, the taped interviews, the police reports. Some of the pieces are in the wrong place, but most of the pieces - thank you Cielo for your making all the transcripts and trial materials available, sincerely, that must have been such a monumental task - are on the table. And for the most part, there are no moving pieces, the materials are finite. You can pick a piece up, examine it, put it back down, and it basically stays where you put it and doesn't change. You can put the pieces together one way and reach one conclusion and you can put them together another way and reach the opposite conclusion. Perhaps most importantly, there is no answer, nobody gets to put the last piece in. We'll never really know the "why." Once in a while we might find another piece, one that fell off the table and was hiding in the carpet. And that piece may be the one that connects some other parts of the puzzle. But it's never going to be finished. The fun is that we do the puzzle together. We chat, we make fun of each other, we fight, all with people we probably would never had known but for one shared interest. I find some of the people here just as interesting as the puzzle.

G. Greene-Whyte said...

What Peter said. All of it.

Torque said...

Shoe, it has been traditionally held that the two cars that left Cielo on the afternoon of Aug. 8th were Abigail's Firebird, and Sharon's rental Camaro. The trunks could have easily been brought indoors by Jay, when he arrived at the house later.

I consider myself, first and foremost, intetested chiefly in the lives of the victims. That is to say, I'm intetested in these people during the time they were alive. When I first came to this extraordinary story, I was left with a profound depression over the loss of life. I learned that, even though these people were strangers to me, I found that I could care about them as fellow human beings. I could easily see the details of their deaths, but knew very little of their lives, and what they might have become.

As I think about that, due to Sharon's profession as an actress and model, I can know quite a lot about her, I suppose. People have written books on the life of Sharon. Moreover, Sharon's family have been very open and public about her life, and this includes Roman Polanski. In short, I feel we can know quite a lot about Sharon, but of course cannot know what her life may have become had she lived.

Contrast that with the others. It took 50 years for a film to appear about Jay Sebring. Abigail, Voytek, and Steve Parent are very underrepresented in the litetature. What we have is basically the Wikipedia version of their lives. The same can be said for Leno, Rosemary, Gary Hinman, and Shorty. It is thru the ongoing efforts of this and other blogs, books, and documentaries that elements of these people's lives are made known. Of course, included in this are all of the other details that make this story the fascinating discourse that it has been for over a half century.

The details also interest me greatly, if only to establish a background, and illuminate persons, places, and times. I am not in any way interested in the details as a means to creare conspiracy theories. Yet I do find it very interesting indeed, when the killers leave out certain of these details in their testimonies.

Monica said...

Torque,
I am with you on this one and I think our motivations for coming to this blog is an interesting topic. I am regularly asked by my friends if I am a Manson groupie and/or why I am fascinated with this case. For me it is not the motive. I am curious what the people (victims and family) were like then and now.
I LOVED David's three part post about Abigail Folger a few tears ago. I loved the Sebring doc, I loved that milleneals are curious about Sharon Tate after Once Upon a Time. I wish we could find out more about Frykowski. My perception is he was a young lazy dealer but NO ONE deserves his fate. I have no interest in CM himself but I would like to know:
What is Tex really like now from the POV of other secular inmates?
Why did Suzan LaBerge stop supporting him?
Why does Bobby still tell that dopey story about the mescaline deal gone bad?
Why doesn't Gypsy publish her book? She can do it for almost free on Amazon now.
And of course...what does Grogan think about all this attention this story ia getting now: Once Upon a Time, this Blog, etc.
And that just ia a beginning of why I keep coming back and why I follow this case.
Shoe, i am a GenX'er but my parents would reminisce about the 60s all the time. In a big way, my mom sparked my interest in this case.
I, like you, would like to read why others keep coming back to read more.
Now, back to lurking.

Mario George Nitrini 111 said...

Ms Monica.
You say
👇
"What is Tex really like now from the POV of other secular inmates?"
Please reference my comment pertaining to
Charles "Tex" Watson."
Hi-lite "Chino."
👇
https://www.mansonblog.com/2017/08/deconstructing-pete-porteous.html?m=1

2 of them said Watson was a
"Phoney Christian"

Mario George Nitrini 111
-----
The OJ Simpson Case

Monica said...

Thank you for this remindet MGN! You wrote:
"I was in State Prison (Chino) finishing my State time (1984) after doing my Federal time (concurrent sentences), and while at Chino, I worked in the
Intake Medical Unit. There were several inmates who had been incarcerated with Tex Watson, and they were in Chino on parole violations. These inmates had NOTHING good to say about
Charles "TEX" Watson. Absolutely Nothing at all....Watson is NOT the most likeable inmate."

What did they say? Why was he unlikeable, aside from the obvious.

Mario George Nitrini 111 said...

Ms Monica.
One of the items that was told to me about Tex Watson was, he would break the rules in the visiting room with his wife. It's best I don't go into detail about that, if you know what I mean.

They also said he would "parade" the prison around "Holier-than-Tho" preaching....blah, blah, blah

Mario George Nitrini 111
-----
The OJ Simpson Case

tobiasragg said...

I am into most all aspects of this matter, with only a few exceptions.

I do like all of the little details on both the offenders and the offended alike. The little things we've learned about Parent over the years. The notion of the rather unremarkable, now elderly, Van Houten fashioning some kind of life for herself over so many decades being incarcerated. The history of the home that used to lay above Cielo. The (lack of) details on poor Frank Struthers, Jr. The very strange tale that was Bill Garretson's time on earth.

Ordinary people made somewhat extraordinary in a public sense, all because of this one scruffy guy.

The scruffy guy himself holds little fascination for me. He was an angry, two-bit lifetime criminal who was desperate for attention, for importance in the eyes of others. I struggle to think of a single individual who was left a better person from having known him. He stole from, conned or struck most everyone he came into contact with. Ms. Good would likely disagree; perhaps Ms. Fromme would join her. Those seem to be the only two directly involved in this stuff who still cling to an idealized version of this period.

The one aspect of Manson I DO find to be of interest was his ability to charm some people. We became so used to seeing the middle aged & older, chained scruff playing "crazy Charlie" in interviews once or twice a decade that it is difficult to imagine the seductive, appealing man so many describe. I have seen glimpses of this in old footage here and there, but never anything more than that. I think it would be interesting to go back and time and observe him in action - from a distance, at least.

Helter Skelter also holds very little interest for me. As Bugs repeatedly pointed out, the state was under no obligation to prove motive in this (or any other) case. Given that, I am not sure what motivates some folks to "disprove" something that never really mattered much in the first place, at least not in a legal sense. I also grow bored with people trying to "prove" Manson's innocence, especially when he himself owned up to most everything but the conspiracy during his lifetime. These perps were so obviously robotic and obedient that his involvement became obvious to most everyone - an unanticipated result of his machinations during the original trial.

This blog space is great because it demonstrates just how much there is left to explore, re-explore and discuss, still, even if these events are largely ancient history at this point.

ColScott said...

If you undersatand me then You can underatand that I know more about OJ Manson than most people forget in a lifetime.

Please look at my posting here ratemypoo.com

As you can see my consistency and thickiness is unassailable

One time in bandcamp I met a Gaililean a most amazing man
Why is OJ Simpson not in the 5 tiers SNL club
I have a theory and it has something to do with Race
Speed Racer

Mario George Jetson Nitroglycerine IV
---------------
The Oj Simpson Case
That Robert Kardashian hid
Because it contained fetuses
That grow to keep up with his daughters

ColScott said...

Torque- The overwhelming majority of mankind are FUCKING BORING and do not need much more than a Wikipedia article to encapsulate their lives. Sharon has had multiple books but the most interesting thing about her is that she was brutally murdered. Unless you see her DOLLS co stars with a cottage industry of bios which you don't. I was the subject of a bestselling book in the late 90s but it was about an EVENT not really about me. The single most memorable thing about Voytek and Gibby was that they were killed by Tex Watson. That is not a slag just a fact. Jay had some footnotes in the hair styling history of the 60s.

But yeah, the idea of a Steven Parent book is laughable. Idiots in TLB land still dispute his sexuality and subscribe to the clock theory lol. But he didn't even get to live a life

G. Greene-Whyte said...

But he didn't even get to live a life...

You are so much better when you let your heart shine thru.

tobiasragg said...

One wonders what on earth these folks are really fighting over.

The remains have been, er - interred.

The possessions don't amount to much. A couple of beat-up guitars, a small amount of pocket change, a tattered pair of jeans.

There are the songs and, with them, the potential for future copyright-related earnings. But the victim families long ago won the right to collect on anything generated from this or other artistic endeavors. According to Forbes, there is some question whether that right still stands after fifty years, but the legal fees involved with getting a ruling on this would likely outweigh any potential profit that might be involved.

Channels doesn't seem to have much as a chance, as he has admitted that he was not even present when the will was signed by Manson (if it even did, in fact, come from Manson's own hand).

Freeman seems to have the best chance of winning this one. Unless Michael Brunner decides to toss his hat back into the ring. If that happens, this story becomes much more interesting, indeed.