Monday, October 31, 2022

Red and Blue letters and ruminations

Lynette and Sandy at the motel in Independence

 Ages ago we did a post on Millie McCormick who was the secretary for Inyo County District Attorney Frank Fowles. The final paragraph of the article that was posted says that a friend of Millie's, who worked at the motel where Lynette and Sandy were staying in Independence, found some letters left behind by the two.

One of the letters was to Sandy from her friend JoAnne about Joel Pugh. Simon Wells reproduced this letter on his webpage about the death of Joel Pugh with some interesting commentary.

That letter, a couple more letters, one from Sandy's father, and ruminations by Lynette were included in the cache found by Millie's friend. Of interest is Lynette's account of the October 10th Barker Ranch raid.


THE LETTERS

Monday, October 24, 2022

Barker Ranch 10-12-1969 Arrests

 

Getty Images


Unlike the information on the October 10th arrests there is no police report. The only documents I could find were the Arrest and Property Records. There is also a document that details the Complaints filed against those from both days of arrests included at the end of the pdf.

Though Bruce Davis was also arrested on the 12th there is no Arrest and Property Record for him. Not all of those arrested were charged with a crime, some were released without charges. 




Law enforcement went back to Barker Ranch in the following days to make sure that they arrested everyone connected to the "hippie car theft ring". They went so far as to hire a helicopter to fly over the area. No other arrests were made.

Some of the documents are difficult to read.  

Those arrested, in the order that they appear in the pdf-

Benson, Charles T/N Charles Manson
Hamic, David Lee T/N William VanSickle but best known as Bill Vance
Brown, Kenneth Richard 
Jesus, Christopher T/N John Philip Haught
Bailey, Lawrence Charles T/N Larry Giddings

Andrews, Sherry T/N Colleen Sinclair
Beth, Tracy T/N Claudia Leigh Smith
Bartell, Sue Phillis T/N Susan Phyllis Bartell
Jardin, Patti Sue T/N Catherine Gillies
Bluestein, Dianne Elizabeth T/N Dianne Lake





Saturday, October 22, 2022

TikTok'ers Love Manson's "Home Is Where You're Happy"!

 



A Charles Manson Song Is Appearing in Cozy Fall Videos on TikTok

By Alex Hudson

Published Oct 21, 2022

TikTok has a tendency to make old songs go viral: Mother Mother went stratospheric with some 13-year-old music, and we just spoke with Alex Turner about the sudden success of Arctic Monkeys deep cut "505." Now, another old song is trending, but here's the unfortunate twist: it's by Charles Manson.


The murderous cult leader was an aspiring musician in the '60s, and his 1968 song "Home Is Where You're Happy" has started spreading on TikTok. Most people posting it don't seem to know what the song is; rather, the ramshackle acoustic ditty is being used to soundtrack various #fallvibes videos and clips about domesticity and DIY crafts.


"I liked how it sounded a little bit older and I liked the lyrics," a TikTok user named Rose Adele told Rolling Stone. "It sounded like he was talking about home, and going into fall, we're at home more."


In other words: Charles Manson is considered hygge. The title of "Home Is Where You're Happy" undoubtedly evokes coziness, although some of the lines about retreating from society scan as a bit more sinister when considered within the context of a cult leader: "So burn your bridges / Leave your whole life behind."


Below, see some of the cozy videos using "Home Is Where You're Happy." Other TikTok users most definitely know who Charles Manson is — see this video about Manson's childhood home.


Original article with various video clips using the song.


Lyrics

Home Is Where You're Happy

Charles Manson


Your home is where you're happy

It's not where you're not free

Your home is where you can be what you are

'Cause you were just born free


Now they'll show you their castles

An' diamonds for all to see

But they'll never show you that peace of mind

'Cause they don't know how to be free


So burn all your bridges

Leave your whole life behind

You can do what you want to do

'Cause your strong in your mind


And anywhere you might wander

You could make that your home

And as long as you got love in your heart

You'll never be alone


Just as long as you got love in your heart

You'll never be alone no no no

You'll never be alone no no no no



Monday, October 17, 2022

Barker Ranch 10-10-69 Arrests

 


We know most of the details about the Barker Ranch Raids but there haven’t been any documents on the specifics of the raids. The recently acquired documents will tell you who was taken into custody in which raid and what name they were arrested under. They also say what evidence was found on that day. It took weeks and even months to gather all of the evidence.

There were two raids on Barker Ranch in October 1969. The first one was October 10th. There were 13 people arrested at Barker. Another person, Kitty Lutesinger, was also arrested that day though not at Barker.

Kitty Lutesinger and Stephanie Schram left Barker Ranch, walking out, to get away from all the craziness that was taking place. The two made as far as Butte Valley before they finally happened upon two CHP officers who were on patrol. Lutesinger and Schram asked the officers for a ride. They were taken to Lone Pine where checks were run on them, they were both found to be runaways.

In addition to being a runaway Lutesinger was wanted for questioning in a 187 PC, the murder of Gary Hinman. The next day Lutesinger was released to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office.

Schram was released to her parents and suffered no charges. Documents

The raid that took place October 10th at Barker Ranch included five CHP arresting officers, four CHP witnesses, one Department of Fish and Game witness, the Inyo District Attorney's Office sent an investigator and a deputy district attorney as witnesses and not to be left out the Death Valley National Monument Park Service also sent two witnesses.



Yes, you added that up correctly, nine witnesses and five arresting officers. The Inyo County Sheriff's Office did not participate in the raid.

Some of the evidence included the Ruger .22revolver that had been stolen the previous week. It was found in a US Mail bag in the possession of Sandy Good, Ruth Ann Morehouse and Dianne VonAhn. The VW belonging to Corinne Broskett with a VIN number of 2912188 was recovered that day. In Broskett’s VW was a Bausch and Lomb spotting scope, a pricey item in those days.

A list of those arrested


Williamson is Lynette Fromme

Tufts was Steve Grogan

Schwarm was Dianne VonAhn

Reeves was Patricia Krenwinkel

Perell was Nancy Pitman

Powell was Susan Atkins

Pugh was Sandy Good

Lutesinger

Lane was Scott Davis

Baldwin usually used the alias Madeline Cottage

Mourglea was Hugh Rocky Todd

Minette was Catherine Share

Morse was Ruth Ann Morehouse

Alexandria was Leslie Van Houten



All pictures are from Inyo County files and taken at or near the time of the raid.








Friday, October 14, 2022

Governor Newsom Reverses Krenwinkel Parole

 




Don Thompson

Published Oct. 14, 2022 6:15 p.m. PDT


SACRAMENTO, CALIF. - California's governor blocked the parole of Charles Manson follower Patricia Krenwinkel on Friday, more than five decades after she scrawled "Helter Skelter" on a wall using the blood of one of their victims.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Krenwinkel, now 74, is still too much of a public safety risk to be freed.


"Ms. Krenwinkel fully accepted Mr. Manson's racist, apocalyptical ideologies," Newsom said. "Ms. Krenwinkel was not only a victim of Mr. Manson's abuse. She was also a significant contributor to the violence and tragedy that became the Manson Family's legacy."


A two-member parole panel for the first time in May recommended that Krenwinkel be released, after she previously had been denied parole 14 times. Newsom has previously rejected parole recommendations for other followers of Manson, who died in prison in 2017.


Krenwinkel became the state's longest-serving female inmate when fellow Manson follower Susan Atkins died of cancer in prison in 2009. Her attorney, Keith Wattley, said he understands Krenwinkel is the longest-serving woman in the United States.


She and other followers of the cult leader terrorized the state in the late 1960s, committing crimes that Newsom said "were among the most fear-inducing in California's history."


She was convicted in the slayings of pregnant actor Sharon Tate and four other people in 1969. She helped kill grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary the next night in what prosecutors say was an attempt by Manson to start a race war.


Newsom agreed that she has been well-behaved in prison, has completed many rehabilitation and education programs and has "demonstrated effusive remorse." But he concluded that "her efforts have not sufficiently reduced her risk for future dangerousness."


She still doesn't have sufficient insight into what caused her to commit the crimes or her "triggers for antisocial thinking and conduct" during bad relationships, Newsom said.


"Beyond the brutal murders she committed, she played a leadership role in the cult, and an enforcer of Mr. Manson's tyranny. She forced the other women in the cult to obey Mr. Manson, and prevented them from escaping when they tried to leave," he said.


Wattley did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages seeking comment on Newsom's decision.


But Anthony DiMaria, nephew of Jay Sebring, one of Krenwinkel's victims, had urged Newsom to block her release "due to the rare, severe, egregious nature of her crimes." He said her actions incited "the entire Helter Skelter legacy that has caused permanent historical scars" and inspired at least two ritualized killings years later.


New laws since Krenwinkel was last denied parole in 2017 required the parole panel to consider that she committed the murders at a young age and is now elderly.


Also, for the first time, Los Angeles County prosecutors weren't at the parole hearing to object, under District Attorney George Gascon's policy that prosecutors should not be involved in deciding whether prisoners are ready for release.


She and other participants were initially sentenced to death. But they were resentenced to life with the possibility of parole after the death penalty in California was briefly ruled unconstitutional in 1972.


Krenwinkel was 19 and living with her older sister when she met Manson, then age 33, at a party during a time when she said she was feeling lost and alone.


"He seemed a bit bigger than life," she testified in May, and she started feeling "that somehow his take on the world was the right, was the right one."


She said she left with him for what she thought would be a relationship with "the new man in my life" who unlike others told her he loved her and that she was beautiful.


Manson "had answers that I wanted to hear ... that I might be loved, that I might have the kind of affection that I was looking forward to in my life," she said.


Instead, she said Manson abused her and others physically and emotionally while requiring that they trust him without question, testimony that led the parole panel to conclude that Krenwinkel was a victim of intimate partner battery at the time.


It took about two years of traveling and drug use until he began emerging as "the Christ-like figure who was leading the cult" who began talking about sparking a race war and asking his followers, "would you kill for me? And I said yes."


Krenwinkel talked about during her 2016 parole hearing how she repeatedly stabbed Abigail Folger, 26, heiress to a coffee fortune, at Tate's home on Aug. 9, 1969.


The next night, she said Manson and his right-hand man, Charles "Tex" Watson, told her to "do something witchy," so she stabbed La Bianca in the stomach with a fork, then took a rag and wrote "Helter Skelter," "Rise" and "Death to Pigs" on the walls with his blood.


The bone-handled fork "was part of a set that we used at holidays ... to carve our turkeys," the couple's nephew Louis Smaldino, told parole officials, calling Krenwinkel "a vicious and uncaring killer."


Sharon Tate's sister, Debra Tate, the last surviving member of her immediate family, was among victims who dismissed Krenwinkel's explanation that she was led to Manson by alcohol use and a non-supportive family while growing up.


"We all come from homes with problems and didn't decide to go out and brutally kill seven strangers," Tate told parole officials.


Original story


UP DATE:

Cielodrive has just shared Governor Newsom's six page reversal decision with us. Thanks Cielodrive.


Decision

Monday, October 10, 2022

Corinne Broskett and Her VW

 



Corinne Broskett is listed on Deemer's list as living on Franklin St. in Los Angeles. She was a neighbor of Rosina Kroner. In addition to the usual information on Deemer's list, it shows that she had an LAPD booking number. There was a mystery as to what she had been charged with, not a huge mystery but a mystery nonetheless. The booking number is high enough to have been relatively recent, to the time of fall 1969.





Broskett was another Hollywood wannabe, she achieved a smattering of success, as least enough to pay her bills for a time. Broskett studied with Lee Strasberg for seven years. She was in the cast of the play "Hair" that toured Mexico. 

Broskett is mentioned in an online article about a haunted home at 1508 N. Beverly Glen as living there in the 70's. The home was supposedly haunted by the murdered lover of the wife of a wealthy landowner.

"In the early 1970s, Corinne Broskett, an actress and the current executive director of the Venue Actors Studio in Pinellas Park, Florida, believed the spirit of the murdered lover lived with her at her apartment in the former Old Roadhouse. He was a comforting presence, even stroking her hair when she was in emotional pain.

Corinne stated that she was never afraid of the spirit. She felt warm and comforted by its presence. She was convinced it was the lover because “it would act like the lover in every way.” Sometimes, the spirit would hide her keys when she was preparing to go out. Once, it actually followed her into her car. She persuaded it to return to the inn by telling it that the city had changed considerably and it might get lost or confused. Once, she heard the entity sobbing in agony on the front porch outside her window.

A friend of Corinne’s, Jill Place, stayed with Corinne in her apartment for several months. She also felt the presence of the lover in yellow. She said he would climb into bed with her and curl up and cuddle close."


Okay...


Broskett's place in the Manson saga seems to be that one of the dune buggies confiscated by law enforcement during the Barker Ranch Raid was registered to her. When the VIN number on the car was run by the CHP it came back as being registered to Broskett but the license plates were from another vehicle. The police went to question her about her car, they noticed she was driving another similar VW and the license plates on it were the plates that should have been on the VW up at Barker Ranch. The VIN number of the VW that was in her possession was run through the system and it came back as a stolen car from Venice.

Manson was questioned about the car, now converted to a dune buggy, he said that it was Tex who "bought" the car and he didn't know where it came from.

Ah, it does sound like Tex and one of his little schemes to get in Charlie's good graces. I can't imagine that Broskett did not know she wasn't driving her own car but why not take the car stolen from Venice and chop it into a dune buggy? Apparently Broskett never reported her car as being stolen.











Monday, October 3, 2022

William Ray Cole and Dennis Willson Suspects

 

Goler Wash Road totalescape.com

On October 6, 1969 a report was made to the Redondo Beach Police Department that a gun was stolen from the vehicle of the reporting party while he and two friends were rock hunting in the Goler Wash area. The victim in the case, Ivan Bryant, told authorities while rock hunting he and his friends noticed some hippies walking near the area and assumed they were simply hiking. When he returned to his vehicle the gun that he had left on the front seat was missing. The car was not locked.

The three men immediately thought of the group of hippies that had passed by and took off after them. Once they caught up to the group the men questioned the hippies about the gun. The hippies feigned ignorance about the gun. The men however were able to get the names of the two adults in the group. They were William Ray Cole and Dennis Willson.

The men did not pursue the matter further with the hippies. Once Bryant returned home to Redondo Beach, he reported the stolen gun. Redondo Beach Police in turn handed the information over to Inyo County where the theft occurred.

In the report Cole is named as suspect #1, a physical description is given as well as a Canoga Park address. Suspect #2 is named Dennis Willson with a physical description: age 23, 5' 9", 170 pounds, black hair. The address given for Willson was 1400 Sunset Blvd. Pacific Palisades.

The age of Willson is about right but the real Dennis Wilson was six feet tall and had light brown hair. The address is a bit off and should have been given as 14400 Sunset Blvd. Also, Wilson is misspelled.

I think it was someone else, in the Family, that used Dennis's name, but who?

Here are the documents.




In addition to the documents there are also some of the detective's "scratch", informal notes they make when conducting an investigation. On the first one Cole and Willson are written down and there's a little note next to Willson that says "Doris Day's Son".  I'm not sure if the detective thought Dennis Wilson was Doris's son or if whoever he got the information from was trying to tell the detective that Terry Melcher was a friend of Wilson's.





The next bit of scratch says that Bill Vance robbed Jack Jones along with Zero and Vern






Bill Vance was arrested under the name David Lee Hamic during the Barker Ranch Raids. He was charged with 10851 which is a stolen vehicle charge, 496 PC receiving stolen property and 272 PC contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was not charged with stealing a firearm or burning the Michigan loader.




Saturday, October 1, 2022

Arlene Barker

 Arlene Barker

We all know that Arlene Barker was the owner of Barker Ranch, the location of Manson's last stand. Arlene was born Ima Arlene Kirklen September 27, 1921 in Oklahoma. She was the last of seven children. Arlene married James Henry Barker September 9, 1941 in Custer Oklahoma. The couple soon moved to Los Angeles California where Jim was employed by Lockheed as an engineer. They had a son and two daughters.

Jim Barker began his own business, Artcraft Plating and Finishing, in 1951 in answer to Lockheed's inability to find a company to plate a special part. According to census records Arlene worked at the company with her husband. When Jim died in 1967 their son took over the operation of the business. The company is still in business today and operated by Arlene's grandson.

The company has expanded and is thriving. Here's a quote from their website-

We’ve sent crucial parts into space that called for ultimate precision. We’ve figured out a way to plate Daft Punk’s helmets so they could still see out of them. And we’ve worked on objects that have become part of pop-culture history, like The Terminator’s endoskull.

Pretty cool, huh?

Jim and Arlene Barker bought the Death Valley ranch from Bluch and Helen Thomason in 1955. They mined gold and uranium until Jim died in 1967.

Arlene passed May 12, 1989.


This is a report on the interview conducted October 14, 1969 with Arlene Barker.