The Fountain of the World is For Sale

 

California property with dark ties to 2 cults, including the Manson Family, lists for $6.2M

 

A promotional video for this listed California property calls it Xanadu — the fabled city built by Kublai Khan — but it’s not what many may think.

 

The massive parcel of wild land in Box Canyon in Southern California’s Simi Valley, which asks $6.2 million for sale, has a dark history.

 

For starters, the Spahn Movie Ranch, a former cowboy movie set where many western films and TV favorites like “Bonanza” were shot, is a neighboring property. Spahn was infamously taken over by the Manson Family in the late 1960s.

 

It was from up there, about 25 miles northwest of Hollywood, that Charles Manson and his followers plotted two of the most brutal multiple slayings in American history. Collectively known as the Tate-LaBianca murders, the six victims included actress Sharon Tate and her unborn child, coffee heiress Abigail Folger and the LaBiancas, an elderly couple. Charles Manson and several Family members were eventually convicted of nine murders, including these, but they are suspected in at least 15 more.

 

That certainly put the dilapidated Spahn Movie Ranch, owned by George Spahn, in the headlines. But it wasn’t Manson’s first choice as a place to hang his hat. Before moving a few miles west over to Spahn, Manson initially wanted to live on this plot of land in Box Canyon.

 

Today, this property listed as 585 Box Canyon Road is a serene 17-acre spread within the hills around the well-to-do town of Chatsworth. The land has several rental homes built among shading old oak trees at its lower elevation.

 

“It is a very unique property — huge, probably the largest in the area,” listing representative Chris Johnson told The Post. Johnson and his partner Holly Hatch — of Holly & Chris Luxury Homes Group, Coldwell Banker Calabasas — are handling the sale.

 

“It’s beautiful and peaceful, unspoiled. It’s like the wild, wild west up there,” he added. “But you’re very close to Calabasas and you can be in LA in 45 minutes.”

 

Those are the comforts of today. Even before Manson came along, bizarre events were already happening in Box Canyon.

 

In 1948, a man calling himself Krishna Venta (real name Frank Pencovic) founded the Fountain of the World cult, aka the WKFL (Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith and Love), there. It’s not entirely clear who owned the land at that time or how Venta acquired it. But smoke and mirrors was Venta’s modus operandi as he spun his doctrine to blindly faithful followers — one that said he came to Earth half a billion years before on a spaceship (he was born in San Francisco), and that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ. Venta also predicted that the human race would be all but obliterated after a black vs. white race war, also involving the Russians — it was the Cold War era, after all. The eventual survivors would, of course, be the Fountain members, who would then rise victorious in an inheriting the Earth-type scenario.

 

Venta wielded absolute power with his charismatic sermons from his pulpit in the Box Canyon compound’s church. He would make grand declarations, then sometimes miraculously disappear from the pulpit.

 

“There’s a tunnel on the property, which leads from the pulpit,” said Johnson with a laugh. “Apparently, he’d disappear and pop up and surprise people and say, ‘See, it’s a miracle! I really am Jesus,’” he added. “There are so many stories about this place it’s hard to keep up.”

 

One of them is especially tragic. Venta had a feud with a couple of men in the cult, who accused him of sexual interactions with their wives. Those men loaded up with explosives and blew up Venta in a suicide bombing, which also killed nine Fountain members — including children.

 

Apparently, according to UCLA records, Venta’s right hand man, Bishop Asiaiah, became the cult’s new leader. Around 1968, the already much-troubled Manson and his followers moved in, and Manson tried to take over the cult.

 

The already-mentally unstable Manson is thought to have admired Venta and is said to have wanted to emulate the way he had absolute control over his followers. Also, Venta’s doctrine is eerily similar to Manson’s rantings about a race war destroying the US, and it is widely thought that the cult leader’s influence steered him onto his megalomaniacal path.

 

“Manson seems to have viewed Krisna Venta as a role model,” Hatch agreed. “The new leader tried to push Manson out of the way. That’s how Manson and his followers ended up at nearby Spahn Movie Ranch.”

 

Apparently, Bishop Asiaiah may have thought Manson a bit of a loser, and mocked him, saying Manson didn’t hold absolute power over his followers like he and Venta did. According to local lore, to show Bishop Asiaiah who was boss, Manson challenged one of his own followers to prove his loyalty by tying himself to a pole on a nearby rock formation, telling him to stay there for two weeks.

 

That cave-like rock, shaped like a wolf’s skull, is called Skull Rock.

 

“Yes, Skull Rock is right there on the Box Canyon property,” said Johnson, who had heard the story. “The land has so many caves. I grew up in the area and would hike the hills with my father. The locals called the caves up there the Manson Caves, because the Manson Family members would use them.

 

“After the murders,” he added, “the Manson girls are said to have fled to the caves to hide out. They would certainly have known about them, so that story is quite likely.”

 

Hatch agreed: “They knew where to hide up there because they had been there on the property so much.”

 

The property includes 11 parcels with several buildings, which date to the Fountain’s occupation, including the original main lodge.

 

“Nobody has done much with the buildings since then. They are lived in, but they need modernization,” said Hatch.

 

“The land has three artisan wells, and there are waterfalls and seasonal creeks,” added Johnson. “It’s really beautiful.”

 

Spahn Movie Ranch burned to the ground in 1970. A couple years after, the Fountain began petering out with members dispersing to found or join other cults — two members even died in Jim Jones’ Jonestown mass suicide in 1978 in Guyana.

 

Only one member of the Manson Family murderers has been freed from prison; Manson himself died in prison in California in 2017 at age 83.

 

After the Fountain folks moved on, the current family acquired the land and buildings, and it’s been happily inhabited ever since by many tenants.

 

Hatch and Johnson are wary of oddballs being attracted to this listing, but neither thinks the controversy surrounding Box Canyon will harm the property’s sale.

 

“There’s so much more to this intricate property than that controversial side,” Hatch said. “Most people know it for its incredible landscape. It’s magical; it’s very different. Nobody says anything negative about it. This would be perfect as a resort or wellness center with a focus on healing.”

 

“I don’t think it’s a big deal, the property speaks for itself,” agreed Johnson. “It’s very creative and … flowing. It would make a great resort or artist colony. It’s similar to Topanga Canyon, but Topanga has become so oversubscribed. Box Canyon is still undiscovered. It’s quiet, untouched and mountainous. It’s the last frontier of LA.”

Original Article

A detective magazine story on the bombing.

Fountain of the World and the Family

Here's a follow up to the previous post on the Fountain of the World.  The article was written soon after the arrests of Charles Manson and the others for the Tate LaBianca murders.

CULT FEARS MANSON
Retreat Provided Food, Sanctuary

By Bill Milton

San Fernando Valley Times

December 11 1969

The bizarre Tate-LaBianca-Hinman murder cases took another macabre twist when it was revealed today that members of the accused “Manson Family” frequented and sometimes took refuge in a religious cult retreat with a violence scarred past.

A frightened teen-aged girl, her mother and an aging “sister”, who all live at the Fountain of the World commune in Box Canyon, confirmed information that accused murderer Charles Miller (sic) Manson and members of his hippie hate cult “several times” visited at the retreat.

Mrs. Ann Todd, her daughter, Virginia, 17, and Sister Nekona, an elder of the commune, recalled how they met Manson and his followers.

In an exclusive interview with a team of reporters and photographers from this newspaper at the Fountain it was further learned that several of the girls from the “family,” including Susan Denise Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and possibly Linda Kasabian and another girl, had sought sanctuary in the retreat shortly after the Tate and LaBianca murders in August.

Det. Lt. Robert Helder, key figure in the LAPD murder probes, told Hollywood Citizen News- Valley Times that investigators knew of the Manson Clan’s visits to the Fountain.  He described an “inner circle” of followers who are alleged to be the perpetrators of the thefts, auto thefts and ultimately murder, but he said the group sometimes numbered as high as 60 persons while in the Chatsworth area.

The secluded Fountain community is tucked away in a tree-shrouded roadside deep in the rocky, boulder strewn Box Canyon about eight miles from the Spahn Ranch where the hippie marauders made their home for almost a year.  The area is pretty sparsely settled.

The Fountain, which now houses 15 men, women and children, was the scene of a dynamite explosion Dec. 10, 1958, which killed “Krishna Venta,” self-proclaimed Messiah and founder of the cult, and nine of his followers.  The two cult members who assertedly detonated 40 sticks of dynamite were among those killed in the blast and fire, according to Merle Hollis, chief criminal deputy for Ventura County, who headed the investigation of the grisly event.

“Sister Nekona” and Mrs. Ann Tod described Manson and several of his followers as “friendly and polite” during their many visits.  They said on several occasions they gave them food and sometimes shelter for the girls and that they ate with the Fountain members a few times in the communal dining hall and worship area.

Mrs. Todd reported that on “two or three” occasions Manson and some of the girls took part in the commune’s Saturday night skits and musical shows.

“Charlie would sing and play his guitar for us and the girls would sing and harmonize.  I complimented them one time because they did sing so beautifully together,” said Mrs. Todd.

Both women say they had no reason to fear them at that time but Mrs. Todd confided that she was “very leery of them” and that since the story of the murders have come to light, she is “afraid for herself and the lives of her children.”

Her fears are based on rumors that remnants of the clan are still in the area.  Deputies and police are again combing the community for additional suspects in the mass murders.

Seventeen-year-old Virginia Todd, who has lived at the Fountain with her mother and younger sister Cornelia, 9, for eight years, was more vocal in expressing her fears of the group.

“I didn’t like him (Charles Manson) the first time I saw him.  He was always staring at me and kept asking me to come with him into his bus and hear him play the guitar.  I was really scared of him,” said the girl.  She referred to the green and white school bus in which Manson and several of the girls arrived at the retreat and lived in for a time.

On several points Mrs. Todd and her daughter disagreed.  Mrs. Todd said the bus stayed near the retreat for only “a few days” but Virginia was sure the bus was there “for a couple of months.”

Neither she nor Sister Nekona could theorize why Manson had come to the Fountain, whose members they say abhor violence and seek to embrace all religious faiths as being equal.  However, it is known Manson studied mysticism in prison and referred to himself as “Jesus” and “Satan.”  Virginia Tod said that some of the group referred to him as “Charlie the Guru” and “Heavenly Father” on several occasions.

Mrs. Todd again affirmed her opinion that despite her fears she considered the group “friendly” but with Virginia’s help she was able to recall an incident in which “Katie” (an alias used by Miss Atkins) called her and two other women “pigs.”

(The words “pig” and “piggy” figured prominently in the murders of musician Gary Hinman, who befriended Manson, the Sharon Tate slayings and the death of Leno LaBianca and his wife.  Miss Atkins is charged with the murder of Hinman.  A girl now in custody also told police that Manson directed his followers to go to the Benedict Canyon home of Miss Tate and eradicate the “pigs.”)

“I think it was in September or maybe August when it happened.  ‘Sadie’ (Miss Atkins) and three other girls came to the main hall of the Fountain and said they were going to stay here,” said Mrs. Todd.

“Sister Muriel, Sister Barbara and myself told them that they could not stay here.  And Sadie said that had ‘been told to come here’ or that ‘they had been sent here’ and they refused to leave.  We told her again that she could not stay and would have to leave the private premises,” continued Mrs. Todd.

She explained that the Fountain is a humanitarian group and that when Manson and the others first arrived in October or November 1968, they had helped them.  “They were just dirty, nasty looking people.  They looked like they needed a bath and some clean clothes and we did not mind helping them,” she said.

But she related at the time of the return of the four girls they had read about the arrest of most of the Manson Family at Spahn Ranch on charges of auto theft.

“We will help people but we won’t harbor criminals.  It is against our rules and against the law and we had our children to consider,” said the worried mother.

After the second refusal of the girls to leave, Mrs. Todd said one of the Fountain members went across the road to the Ventura County Fire Department station and summoned a county sheriff to the retreat.  The group went up the hill and sat in their car, according to Mrs. Todd.

“It was when Sadie was sitting in the car that she said ‘Why you pigs’ and she began to sing a song about pigs,” said Mrs. Todd.

Virginia, who was also present at the incident and says that Miss Atkins “hated me,” said she told her mother and the other women, “You’re three pigs, you’re the worst pigs I have ever seen.”  She said that the deputy ordered them to leave and they departed.

The fears of Mrs. Todd go beyond concern for the members of the Fountain and her girls to her missing son.  Hugh “Rocky” Todd, 15, has been gone since Oct. 1 and his mother fears that he may have joined with the Manson Family before they left.  His sister, Virginia, said the boy seemed to be infatuated with Katie (Miss Krenwinkel) and talked with her for long periods of time about horses and motorcycles.

Missing along with the boy were two knives which she said her brother always carried with him.  The girl said they were given to him by a man “with a long beard” who lived off and on at the Box Canyon commune.

While Manson professed to be a religious leader, Sister Nekona and Mrs. Todd said that he did not discuss the topic very much with any of their group.  Mrs. Tod remembered one instance when Manson observed her correcting one of the younger children and he assertedly told her, “Why correct a child.  A child knows what it is doing. You should let them do whatever they want to do.”

Virginia said most of the time the Family’s conversations were very confused and she felt they “were usually up on something.”   She related hearing a conversation in which Miss Atkins reportedly told another girl that “she hated killing anything, even an animal.”

Manson also made this announcement about his “philosophy.”  “Why fear anything?  Let Man do anything he wants to do or has the nerve to do.”

Both the mother and daughter said that Manson exerted a very strong influence over the group which they said also included Charles D. Watson, currently fighting extradition from Texas to face murder charges, and Paul Watkins, arrested for auto theft in the raid on Barker Ranch in Death Valley, where the clan assertedly lived following their departure from Spahn Movie Ranch in late August or early September.

“He was the Lord and Master and anything he said they did.  They never questioned him or argued with him,” said Mrs. Todd of the frail penetrating-eyed Manson, who is said to have had a hypnotic control over his followers.

They said that during the year that the clan was in the area they saw several men and women come and go.

Mrs. Todd told of a “Mary” who first arrived with Manson in the school bus and reportedly gave birth to a child on the bus.

Virginia told of a girl named Beau, whom she described as small and petite with brown hair and brown eyes.  The girl called Beau told Virginia that when she did something the group did not like they would stick long pins in her.

She told of Mary, a blond-haired attractive girl with a college education, and Stephanie, a tall girl with kinky white hair and a very bad complexion.  And also, of a woman about 30 who Virginia said was either an entertainer or “a prostitute.”

None of them recalls anyone but Manson and Watkins using last names.

Both the Todds said that they never heard any of the group mention the names Tate, Polanski, LaBianca, or Hinman but Virginia recalled one of the girls mentioning a “big rich home in Benedict Canyon.”

The Todd girl, who at one time attended Valley College, said also that she thought she recognized Terry Melcher, the son of Doris Day, as being with Manson on one occasion but she could not be absolutely sure.

Manson assertedly blamed Melcher for the failure of his songwriting career for the singing group known as the Beach Boys.  Melcher, who was visited many times by Manson, lived in the Benedict Canyon home before it was rented by Miss Tate.

Even now as the case progresses in the courts the residents of the Fountain of the World would like to forget the name Charles Manson or that they ever saw him and his band.  Mrs. Todd and her children live in fear.

Ruby Pearl, Barbara Hoyt, and the Murder of Shorty Shea (Again)

Don't worry about this turning into the Donald Shea Blog. Yes, we have recently published this story and this one about the doomed would-be stuntman, but since we have just passed the 48th anniversary of Shea’s demise it would be appropriate to post just one more.

Two of the main witnesses against the defendants in the trials for the murder of Donald Jerome “Shorty” Shea (People v. Manson, People v. David, and People v. Grogan) were women, Ruby Pearl and Barbara Hoyt. Both women’s testimonies were of great assistance to the prosecution’s efforts to obtain murder convictions in a daunting case where no body of the victim had been found. Ruby Pearl’s testimony was important in buttressing the argument that Shea's unexpected and prolonged absence from Spahn's Ranch indicated that he had likely fallen victim to sinister circumstances. She also gave details about an ominous conversation she’d had with Shea on the night before he disappeared. Barbara Hoyt's testimony was also important, but it was much more precise: she claimed to have heard the actual death screams of Shea while he was being murdered.

The testimony that Ruby Pearl gave painted a vivid picture of some of the events of the night before Shea vanished. But much of Pearl’s background testimony was equally valuable in that it is a great help in gaining a more realistic perspective of life at Span's Movie Ranch in the summer of 1969.

Barbara Hoyt’s testimony was also very vivid. Her unequivocal recollections of having heard Shea being slain were quite impressive to the jury and were a considerable factor in convincing them that the absent Shea had indeed been murdered.

Ruby Pearl —

In1969 Ruby Pearl had worked for George Spahn for almost twenty years. As Spahn's "right hand woman" she was his immediate subordinate and oversaw all of the practical aspects of running the ranch, including renting out horses, arranging jobs with other business concerns, hiring and firing workers, taking care of the horses and other livestock, and maintaining whatever supplies and equipment were necessary for the successful running of a movie set and horseback riding business. By the summer of 1969 Pearl was working at the ranch every day, seven days a week, from about nine in the morning until ten or twelve in the evening. As such she was well positioned to give accurate accountings as to what went on there. And those accountings are not only accurate, but they are also very interesting.

Ruby Pearl

Of general interest is that Pearl deflated one of the many myths of the Manson saga with the revelation that the famous ”there were no calendars or clocks at Spahn's Ranch" scenario was not an insidious plan on the part of Charles Manson to keep his "followers" disoriented as to dates and time but was rather the way the situation always existed at the ranch, even before Manson and his friends got there. Repeatedly in her testimony Pearl recalled that the life at the ranch was one of timeless routine where the only chronological landmark she had that summer was the massive police raid that was carried out on August 16, 1969; she could only remember events as having occurred before or after that remarkable and highly memorable event.

At Bruce Davis’ trial for Shea’s murder L.A. Deputy District Attorney Anthony Manzella asked Pearl, “Miss Pearl, you said that you didn’t have anything to base your dates on. What did you mean by that?”

Pearl responded, “Until we got it in our heads about the time of the raid, we didn’t have anything to base our time on.”

Manzella: “To you — at the ranch, you worked almost every day at the ranch, didn’t you? Seven days a week?”

Pearl: “Yes.” ….

Manzella: “Did you pay much attention to particular dates?”

Pearl: “Not unless something particularly happened.”

Later, she said, “Well, time, a day or two, isn’t important in our memories. We never kept track of the days, of time. Every day was a working day.”

And yet again, "Well, we didn't center dates around any particular thing, until the raid. That determined a lot of conversation and dates. Before that time, we didn't [know]."

Despite this lack of any accurate time measuring system Pearl could, however, recall sequences of events as far as they related to each other. Thus, she remembered the time after which she didn't see Shea anymore, and she remembered the events that immediately preceded that time.

Although she couldn’t recall the exact date, Pearl clearly remembered the last time she saw Donald Shea. It was on a moonlit night near the end of August. Shea had recently been hired by Frank Retz to work as a sort of night watchman, with the added duty of keeping Charles Manson and his associates away from the “back ranch” area, which Retz claimed was on his property.

It was late at night, probably around midnight. Pearl was in her black Rambler pulling out of the parking lot at Spahn’s after a typical long day of work when she was approached by Donald Shea. Shea was fearful, and he was drunk. As Pearl later recalled in her testimony, Shea asked her, “Pearl, can I stay over at your house tonight? It’s kind of weird here.”

Pearl said, “I haven’t got any place but the shed,” referring to a small structure with a bed in it behind her house.

Shea said, “Well, it’s kind of cold in there.”

Pearl suggested, “Why don’t you go over the the Fountain of the World?"  The Fountain was a religious retreat located in Box Canyon a few miles west of Spahn’s Ranch that took in people who had no place to stay. Shea said that he didn't want to go there either and decided to spend the night in his car at the ranch.

Prosecutor Anthony Manzella asked Pearl about Shea’s demeanor during this conversation. She answered, “He was very serious and he kept looking around, and he said, ‘It gives me the creeps to stay here.’”

Manzella: “Had you ever seen him like that before?”

Pearl: “No.”

Pearl allowed that an additional reason for discouraging Shea from staying at her house was because he had been drinking that night.

Bruce Davis defense attorney George Denny asked Pearl,  “All right. Then, you had this conversation with Shorty? And Shorty had been drinking somewhat; is that right?”

Pearl:  “Yes, he had.”

“And in fact, that’s one of the reasons that you were not too keen to have him come to your house that night; is that right?”

“For that reason; and it was late.”

After this encounter with Shea, Pearl recalled:

“Well, he turned and walked away towards the boardwalk. And I started slowly to pull off. And I saw a car come in real fast, into the driveway and park over there by the side of the road, towards the Simi Valley Road…. just on the edge. And all of these boys got out real quick and started over towards the boardwalk.”

Asked to identify “these boys” Pearl replied, “The Manson boys.”

How many boys were there?

“Four…. Charles Manson, Bruce Davis, Steve Grogan, and Tex Watson.”

Question (by Mr. Manzella): "Now, when they pulled in, did they pull in near you?"

Pearl: “Yes, they had to go almost in front of me. [After they got out of the car], they rushed towards the boardwalk…. where Shorty had just went…. The last I could see them, they was just fanning out…. just spreading out around…. around the spot where Shorty went…. I was slowly pulling out anyway, so I just kept going.”

That was the last time Pearl saw Donald Shea.

How soon after that event did Manson and “the Family” leave the ranch?

“Within a day or so.”

Did they ever return to the ranch to live?

“No.”

Donald Shea, crouching, at left. The actor holding the gun on Shea is Bob Bickston. 

Shea was scheduled to do some movie work with Bickston at Spahn's Ranch 

starting on September 1, 1969, but by that date he had vanished.

Ruby Pearl's dramatic testimony was important because it set the stage for the prosecution's scenario of the crime, namely that Shea was murdered sometime later that night after Pearl saw "the Manson boys" surrounding him on the boardwalk. And to absolutely cement the certainty that Shea was murdered that night, the prosecution called Barbara Hoyt, a sometime inhabiter of Spahn's Ranch in the spring and summer of 1969. Hoyt's testimony was direct and damning: she claimed to have heard the death screams of Donald Shea as he was being murdered.

Barbara Hoyt --

Barbara Hoyt is often described as a "member of the Manson Family." ("Manson Family," I will say here, is a media-created term, a nebulous designation with no actual formal or legal criteria. No law enforcement agency has ever officially recognized any group as "The Manson Family" in the way that they have identified such criminally inclined groups as organized crime families or street gangs.) But is that true? What was Barbara Hoyt's real relationship to Charles Manson and the people around him?

According to various courtroom testimonies (Specific cites available on request!), Barbara Hoyt first became acquainted with Manson and some of his associates on April 1, 1969, when she met them at the house they were then staying in at 21019 Gresham Street in the Canoga Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The 17-year-old Hoyt had just run away from her parents' nearby home. Hoyt quickly became the girlfriend of another frequenter of the Gresham Street house, a fellow named David Baker, who sometimes surfaces in the TLB literature as "Karate Dave." Shortly after this meeting on April Fools Day, Hoyt says that the group went to stay at a house in the “Malibu mountains”  for a few days before going to Spahn's Ranch. She left the ranch in early May after being arrested for shoplifting a carton of cigarettes. As a result of this brush with the law she returned to her parents' house for a while before going back to the ranch in the last week in May. After the end of May she left California on a cross-country hitchhiking trip (she was chasing Karate Dave) and didn't return to the ranch until the middle of July (although she did call the ranch perhaps a half dozen times during this period, asking if anyone knew where the elusive Dave was). In mid-July, reunited with Dave at the ranch, she left with him (and with $100 given to the couple by Charles Manson) and drove in a bread truck to the ocean front at Belmont in Long Beach for, as Hoyt later recalled, "I guess it would be about a week and a half, two weeks." While the couple was on a pier in Long Beach they heard about the U.S. moon landing. After returning to Spahn's Ranch at the end of July or beginning of August, Dave Baker finally got away for good. Hoyt remained at Spahn's Ranch and stayed there through August and then went to the desert at the beginning of September when the rest of the people went there.

Between April and August Hoyt characterized her time with "the Family" as "not that much." Even when she was in their proximity she often did not eat dinner with them. And unlike Manson and his associates, Hoyt ate meat. Sometime Hoyt wasn't even sure who "the Family" were. "There were people there [Spahn's Ranch] who were living in the saloon, but I am not sure that that was them ["the Family"], you know," she testified. "I can't say for sure, because I didn't know who they were then." (Emphasis added. Author's questions: When did she find out? And did anybody help her?)

Question (by Steve Grogan defense attorney Charles Weedman): "Well, you saw a group there, then that were, perhaps, similar in appearance, generally, to the Manson Family, but you can't say if they were the Manson Family? Is that correct?"

"Yes."

Hoyt's conception of  what it meant to be in "the Family" is also somewhat tenuous. Although she says she "joined the Family" on the first day she met them, April 1, 1969, she recalled no initiation into the group and when asked how she became a member she replied, "I just felt I was in. And I felt accepted, I guess." Later, Hoyt was unable to accurately gauge the depth of her rapport with "the Family" because, "I was not with them."

"Well, then, it's your state of mind that makes you a member or not of the Manson Family; is that right?" asked Bruce Davis defense attorney George Denny.

"Partly," answered Hoyt.

Hoyt said she ceased being a member of "the Family" when she fled Goler Wash in mid-September 1969.

During her scattered presence at this frenzied time she recalled staying at many dispersed places around Spahn's ("I slept in the saloon, in the trailer, in the parachute room, in the wickiup, in the bath house, in the outlaw shacks, in the ca -- you know, where there's a camp; all over the place.") and even took an excursion of several days duration after the raid of August 16 to the desert town of Olancha about 180 miles north of Chatsworth. After a few days in Olancha (where she stayed at the Hannum Ranch with Charles Watson, Nancy Pittman, Ruth Moorehouse, Sherry Cooper, and Diane Lake) she returned yet again to the ranch and remained with the group until after they went to Goler Wash, where she became fearful and disturbed and left to return to her parents’ house in Los Angeles. (Ed Sanders puts the time of her desert departure as September 14 or 15.)

By her own admission on the witness stand, then, Barbara Hoyt was a peripheral character (she never got a "Family" nickname) who only spent several weeks with the Spahn's Ranch people during the late spring and mid-summer of 1969. For most of that time, from April first until the beginning of August, she was apparently focused on her relationship with Dave Baker. After Baker left, Hoyt hung on with the Spahn's Ranch crowd not because of any commonality with them, but because she had nowhere else to go. Her time at the ranch, however, was long and convenient enough for her to be a crucial prosecution witness in the trials against Donald Shea's alleged killers.

Vincent Bugliosi with Barbara Hoyt. Assistant prosecutor Stephen Kay is behind Hoyt. 

Like Ruby Pearl, Barbara Hoyt testified in numerous trials against the three defendants in the Shea murder cases. Her most important testimony described what she claimed she heard on a night at the end of August as she was settling down to sleep behind the main ranch buildings in a little travel trailer known as "the parachute room."

"I had just gotten into bed, and I heard a scream, and I sat up. And for a minute, there wasn't any sound, and so I thought, well, maybe I imagined it. And I laid back down again. And then the screaming started again, and it kept going and going and going for a long time."

"And did you know who it was that was screaming?" asked prosecutor Stephen Kay.

"It was Shorty…. [The screams] sounded pretty far away."

"All right. Did you have any idea of which direction they were coming from?"

"Down the creek, toward the outlaw shacks. Just in that direction…. [The screaming] seemed like a really long time, so I couldn't accurately tell you [how long]. It probably wasn't a real long time, though, but it seemed like it…. [The screams] were loud. And they were painful, and they were the same kind that -- you know, those horror movies when the lady is screaming, that kind of scream? Well, it was like that…."

"Now, is there any doubt at all in your mind that it was Shorty Shea that you heard screaming?"

"No."

Hoyt's testimony regarding hearing the death cries of Donald Shea was compelling, unshakable, and certain. In all of her days and days of testimony, it is the one thing in her mind that she did not budge on. She heard those screams, and they were Donald Shea's screams. Period. But there is something amiss with Hoyt's definitive memories: they are completely at odds with the known facts of Shea's murder.

One problem is the time. Hoyt was absolutely certain that she heard the screams late at night. But in fact, Shea was killed in the morning. This different time is confirmed by two of the convicted killers, Bruce Davis and Steve Grogan, both of whom recall participating in Shea's murder in the morning. At Davis' 1993 hearing he recalled, "And we were at the ranch early in the morning. And Manson came down [and] said, 'We're going to kill Shorty.'

"I said, 'What for?'

"'Well, he's a snitch….'

"And so, we got in the car. Steve [sic] drove; we got in the back…. We started down the hill of the ranch, down towards the [San Fernando] valley, and, somebody -- probably, probably Watson -- tells Shorty to pull over. And Shorty said, 'What for?' At this point, Watson stabbed Shorty Shea in his eye."

Steve Grogan, at his 1981 parole hearing provided more detail, including a very detailed account of the physicality of the crime:

"Well, that morning I was awakened by Charles Manson and still, you know, half asleep, [and he] told me to get to the car and handed me like a pipe wrench. Told me to hit Shorty in the head as soon as Tex gave me the go ahead or gave me the signal.

"We proceeded down Santa Susana Pass toward San Fernando Valley. And about a quarter mile down from the ranch there was like a turnoff where cars, you know, like a rest area. And Tex mentioned that he had some [auto] parts over there that he had to get….

"Then we pulled off the road.  Tex got out….

"I was supposed to hit this guy in the back of the head. And like I never, you know, hit anybody or hurt anybody like that before, and it was hard, you know. I kept on hesitating in my mind, you know, looking at the cars on the highway hoping maybe because of the traffic I wouldn't have to hit him because it was just ten feet off the lane."

There was also a contemporary bit of evidence that corroborated these later parole hearing recollections of Bruce Davis and Steve Grogan, specifically the trial testimony of Frank Retz, the German entrepreneur who was in the process of buying Spahn's Ranch when Shea disappeared and who had arranged for the stuntman to act as a night watchman and keep Manson and his people away from the back ranch house. Retz recalled setting up a meeting with Shea one morning to discuss the responsibilities of the job.

Testifying about a telephone conversation that he had with Shea, which he said had occurred on Tuesday or Wednesday of the last week of August, Retz said, "I was waiting for Shorty, and he said he is going to be in, in half an hour, to my place…. He was supposed to be right out…. in the morning; half an hour after the telephone conversation…. he said 'I just going to be leaving now and be in a half hour down."

Question (by Grogan defense attorney Charles Weedman): "You are certain that Shorty did call you on the telephone in the morning, is that so?"

"Yes."

"And that on the telephone he agreed to see you within the next half hour or so?"

"Correct."

"Did Mr. Shea show up?"

"No, sir."

"Was that the last time you ever heard Mr. Shea?"

"Last time."

So Barbara Hoyt's adamant claims that she heard the murder of Donald Shea occurring at about midnight conflicts with the testimony of Retz and the uncontested parole hearing statements of two of Shea's convicted killers that the murder occurred in the morning.

So far, though, you could say that it was just a case of she said/he, he, and he said.

But there is another big problem with Hoyt's testimony, and that is the place.  Hoyt is not only positive -- and unshakably so -- that Shea was murdered at night, she is equally unequivocal that the screams came from the direction of the "outlaw shacks" which were west of the main buildings at Spahn's Ranch. The problem with this claim is that the outlaw shacks were located in the totally opposite direction from the place where Shea was actually murdered eight or so hours later.

Above and below: Two views of the Shea murder scene today

Shea's murder scene is the only death site related to the case that can easily be visited by students of the crimes, and it is certain that his murder occurred there because his body was located in virtually the same spot. The scene is located at a pull-off on the Santa Susana Pass Road (now directly opposite Red Mesa Drive) about a third of a mile east of Spahn's Ranch. The "back house" direction insisted on by Hoyt during her testimony is located to the west, 180 degrees off of the actual direction of the murder. Further, not only is the murder site so far away from the ranch that it would be extremely unlikely (if not impossible) that screams there could be heard in the parachute room behind the western set buildings, but there is also an arm of the mountain behind the ranch that would have considerably blocked any sound coming from that direction.

Above The red arrow on the left indicates the location of the parachute room. The right red arrow shows the spot where Shea was killed. The pale blue arrow in the center points to the hill that would block sounds coming from the murder scene towards the ranch.

Below: United States Geological Survey map (Oat Mountain, 1962) of the ranch area with the same features highlighted.  

The "parachute room" at Spahn's Ranch was situated behind the western end of the ranch buildings under some trees and between two other trailers occupied by ranch cowboys Larry Craven and Randy Starr. It was also fairly close to George Spahn's house and to another trailer on the other side of Spahn's house that was used by ranch hand John Schwartz. None of these other individuals in Hoyt's immediate vicinity (Craven, Starr, Spahn, or Schwartz) heard the screams that Hoyt claimed to have heard. And this is a safe ass-umption, since prosecutors wanting to corroborate Hoyt's testimony would certainly have called these individuals as witnesses if they had heard screams. But since none of them were called it can be fairly safely ass-umed that none of them heard the same screams that Hoyt claims to have heard, despite being in practically the same location at the same time. (Randy Starr died before any of the Shea-related murder trials took place.)

Hoyt's surety that she heard the death screams of Donald Shea is puzzling. In page after page of "I don't remember"s and "I don't know"s she is positively steadfast that the person she heard screaming was Shea. In her mind there is no doubt whatsoever. It happened the way she described it. Full stop.

Also puzzling is that Hoyt was unshakable in her claim that the screams she heard were absolutely coming from Donald Shea, and Donald Shea alone, even though she also testified that she barely ever spoke to Shea and couldn't remember any distinctive characteristic about his voice. (The Massachusetts born and raised Shea had a noticeable Boston accent.)

"I heard him -- most -- I think most of the times I heard his voice was when he would be talking to somebody else."

"I see. What did Shorty sound like when he was talking to somebody else?" asked George Denny.

"I don't remember."

"Well, can you help this jury just a little bit and tell them, as best you can, describe Shorty's voice? That voice that -- that you heard. Describe it to the jury, would you?"

"At which time? When he was screaming, or when he was talking?"

"When he -- his talking voice."

"I don't really remember…. I remember what it sounded like when he was screaming, but -- "

"Well, how about just when he was talking?"

"No, I can't -- no I cannot….  [But] they were Shorty's screams. There's no doubt in my mind. I knew it then and I know it now."

Of course, none of this is to suggest that Donald Shea was not murdered at Spahn's Ranch during the last days of August, 1969 or that the persons eventually convicted of his murder were not involved with his death. Rather, it goes to the overall credibility of Barbara Hoyt in recalling her time with "the Family" in the spring and summer of 1969. If Hoyt can be so adamant -- and so adamantly wrong -- about hearing the death screams of Donald Shea, what does it say about the rest of her recollections?

After Shea was killed his body was rolled down the hill alongside the pull-out. Later on in the evening after the murder Steve Grogan came back and buried the body by putting it into a depression in the hillside and caving in the dirt over it. The body would famously not be found until Grogan told authorities where is was as part of his successful strategy for being released on parole. Grogan revealed the location of the grave in 1977 and was paroled in 1985.

A recovery crew unearths Donald Shea's body in 1977.

Looking down at the overgrown location of Donald Shea's grave today

Ruby Pearl is long gone, but Barbara Hoyt is still around, and you can expect to see quite a bit of her in the next couple of years until August, 2019. She is, after all, just what the murder media wants, a "Manson Family member" who can graphically testify to the evil that was around her. But Barbara Hoyt wasn't really a "Manson Family member." She was a peripheral character who happened to be at Spahn's Ranch for a few weeks when important things happened. And her perception of some of those things is unquestionably incorrect.

So, as you see her in any upcoming TLB specials or other media appearances you might do well to remember the words of two of the defense attorneys during the Shea trials. "Barbara Hoyt will testify to anything," said Bruce Davis defense attorney George Denny. "I frankly don't believe 99 percent of her testimony," concurred Grogan defense attorney Charles Weedman.

Defense attorney hyperbole? Perhaps. But a closer look at Hoyt's claims in the past should be enough to call any claims she makes in the present into serious question. In fact, it should put her entire credibility into question.

Barbara Hoyt (seated) and Debra Tate

As for Donald Jerome "Shorty" Shea, after his body was exhumed and examined by authorities it lay unclaimed in the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office. Despite being sent notices to collect the remains none of Shea's family members retrieved his skeletal corpse. It was finally cremated, and the ashes were buried in a community grave plot in the Angeles Abbey Memorial Park in Compton, California.

Unanswered L.A. Coroner's letter to Donald Shea's wife requesting that she claim her husband's  body (Thank you, Manson's Backporch Tapes!)

Donald Shea's grave marker

Fountain of the World Bombing

This was published in June 1967 in Police Detective magazine quite a few months before Charlie and Co. arrived at Spahn Ranch.   Some crazy shit was happening up in them thar hills!