The Snitches of Spahn

".. somebody was watching every move he(Manson) made..."
      --Preston Guillory, ex-LASO Deputy who participated in the Spahn Ranch raid


In the wake of the Aug 16, 1969 Spahn Ranch Raid, Charlie and Family thought that someone had ratted them out to the cops.  At the top of their list was ranch hand Shorty Shea, who got murdered because of it.  Frank Retz, a neighbor who allegedly wanted the Mansons gone, is also mentioned in this regard.

But there is evidence that the Family may have had an abundance of snitches:

 www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6001083595175224919&postID=1928290903518938341
sbuch113 said...
"I know a man who was a Jr. Fireman at the fire station near the Spahn Ranch during the Manson era. Years ago he told me of some of the strange goings on at the ranch.  He went into quite a bit of detail about how the ranch was being watched by law enforcement....... Including an on site informant and from strategic hilltop locations. He also talked about the frequent contact fireman had with Manson and others."


Who was it?  Some names:

Ruby Pearl Molinaro

Her obituary said, “She ran the Spahn Ranch where the Manson Gang was caught. She noticed lots of guns and knives in Charles Manson’s dune buggy and called the sheriff. He was then taken into custody.”
www.mailtribune.com/news/20170918/medford-mans-memoir-has-charles-manson-connection
 [Credit to DebS]

Kitty Lutesinger

On page 9 of the Spahn Ranch Raid Report/PDF file we read :

"On the date of August 10, 1969, at approximately 12:15 p.m., your affiant, William G. Gleason, received information from Informant No. 1"
 https://www.scribd.com/document/63876301/Spahn-Ranch-Raid-Report

Author Ed Sanders makes clear that 'Informant No. 1' is Lutesinger::

"On August 10, Sunday, Sergeant William Gleason of the Los Angeles sheriff's office visited Kitty Lutesinger at her parents' ranch where she had fled following Manson's kill-threats. Sergeant Gleason was compiling a file of disturbing information about the Spahn Ranch preparing for a huge police raid to come the following week. He had become aware of Miss Lutesinger when she had run away from the Spahn Ranch on July 30 and Frank Retz had driven her to the police station."
www.mansonblog.com/2017/08/get-shorty-tragic-tale-of-don-shea.html
[Credit to poster 'Jax' and  mansonblog contributor 'Brian G']

Bill Vance.

 It's possible he got pinched in one of those Family burglaries or auto thefts and the cops made a deal with him:  "You be an informant on the goings on at Spahn or you go back to prison!"   Then after all the arrests he just drops from sight.  I have never come across any interview with him, either by media, police, or prosecutors.

Gary Hinman

https://youtu.be/w5FvQFgA2H8
Charles Manson BBC Interview Part 4 8:30 mark
(re Hinman) "He was an informant for the government. He was playing all kinds of treacherous games that he shouldn't have been playing. See when you're in the underworld you got to be truthful. If you lie and you're faking and you're snitching and it catches up with you, it bites you... "

Danny DeCarlo

Bikers are notorious for their hatred of snitches, and everybody knows they operate under a strict 'no snitching' rule.  Though there are apparently exceptions, as this article from 1973 shows:

www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/angels-in-court-the-strange-tale-of-baby-huey-19730215   Feb, 1973

...(Sonny)Barger(of the Hells Angels) testified that over the past few years, he has frequently dealt with the Oakland police to turn over weapons or the locations of weapons to them in return for the release of jailed Angels. It was simple as that; the Angels paid off the police in guns they themselves had peddled to radicals or revolutionaries and in return the police let the Angels operate.

One of the more murkier aspects of the Manson case is where they got all the guns they collected in the spring of '69 and kept up at Spahns, until they were all seized by the Sheriff after the Aug 16 raid.  I think the conventional wisdom says Danny DeCarlo supplied most of them, and DeCarlo, of course, was a member of a biker gang.

So it is entirely possible, then, that the Straight Satans were playing the same game and had the same deal with the law as the Hells Angels did up in the Bay Area.  Supply the guns to the 'radicals' and then snitch them out to the Fuzz.

One could even take it a step further and say that it was 'suggested' to DeCarlo that he hang out with the Family and keep an eye on them, in return for certain favors to be granted to him or his club mates by the court system--like charges to be dropped in other matters.  Certainly it is true that DeCarlo never faced any charges for his activities at the ranch.

Karate Dave Lipsett

Covered in a previous thread:
 https://www.mansonblog.com/2018/09/was-this-family-member-also-undercover.html



 And from the "OO-ee-OO" file, we have

Field Marshall Cinque DeFreeze of the Symbionese Liberation Army

aadl.org/node/200649

Who Ran The SLA? by Dick Russell
Ann Arbor Sun, January 22, 1976
(Donald) DeFreeze, as an informer for a special Public Disorder Intelligence Unit(of the LAPD), did not want for "useful" tasks. During the fall of 1969, police sources recall DeFreeze informing on the Charles Manson family concerning a planned arms burglary. He next surfaces in Cleveland on October 11...

Now the big question is, if they had an informant within the Family's ranks, why weren't they able to finger the Mansonoids for TLB long before they did?  Or prevent TLB by arresting Charlie and his minions for the murder of Gary Hinman or the attempted murder of Bernard Crowe?


----------------------------

Post-Barker arrests snitches:

One thing is certain-- during the trials, the information received from one or more informants was absolutely reliable:

http://www.cielodrive.com/manson-family-activities-09-16-71.php

Captain A. R. Stoyanoff, Homicide Bureau, advises:

On 12-2-70, information was received that the Manson Family were attempting to purchase or obtain hand grenades.

On 12-9-70, the Intelligence Bureau advised that hand grenades had been stolen from Camp Pendleton and were in the possession of the Manson Family (not confirmed).

On 12-14-70, information was received from an informant that Charles Manson had pulled a string attached to a number of hacksaw blades up through the window from the outside of the Hall of Justice. Information was relayed to the jail and hacksaw blades were recovered on approximately 12-17-70.

On 7-9-71, information was received that Charles Manson had bragged of having the telephone numbers and addresses of investigators, District Attorneys and jail deputies. On that same date, Deputy Stevens, Hall of Justice Jail, received a phone call at his residence from a person he believes to be a female member of the Manson Family.

On 7-14-71, information was received that Kenneth Como, MC/31, a Folsom Prison inmate serving life for robbery, was to be returned to Los Angeles County as a witness for the defense in the Shea murder trial. Further, that Como had been visited by the Manson Family and was a high escape risk.

On 7-22-71, Kenneth Como escaped from the 8th floor of the Old Hall of Records.

[They were warned he could escape.  And then he escapes.  Twice.   Hmmmm...]

On 8-15-71, information was received that Kenneth Como and members of the Manson Family did obtain guns from an unknown location to help free Charles Manson.

On 8-21-71, Kenneth Como, along with members of the Manson Family, robbed the Western Surplus Store in Hawthorne of 67 guns and ammunition and were subsequently arrested in a shoot out.

On 8-24-71, information was received that Judge Raymond Choate, Department 106, would receive a package containing a watch without hands signifying his time was running out.

On 9-3-71, Judge Choate received the package containing the watch with missing hands.

Some names:

Kenneth Como

All you need to know about Kenny-boy Como is that he is transferred from Folsom prison into the LA jails to testify in Charlie's Hinman/Shea trial, despite the fact he had no knowledge of Charlie and Family, nor the victims,  nor the crimes committed.  This did not cause the prosecuting attorney nor judge nor various judicial and prison officials to object.  So the whole transfer was obviously arranged by those who wanted to use Como to act as informant and provocateur.

The acid test was that Como, doing 20 to life for armed robbery in Folsom before he was transferred, gets out in 1981, doing 10 years.  For the two jailbreaks, the armed robbery, the shootout with cops, and two more subsequent attempts to break out of state prison, he got no extra time.  From a convict's standpoint, it was a pretty sweet deal.

"Kevin"

This is the name of some guy who attaches himself to the Family during the TLB trial.  Some suspect he may have been an informant:

"beauders said...
   Hendrickson said that he believed "Kevin" was a police informant. "Kevin" started hanging with the Family due to the press coverage of Manson and the Family's commission of the murders and then up and disappears one day."
https://www.mansonblog.com/2018/09/was-this-family-member-also-undercover.html



-----------------------------------

"To whom shall I speak and give warning That they may hear? Behold, their ears are closed And they cannot listen."
    --  Jeremiah 6:10

Looking For The Back Ranch House And The Outlaw Shacks

Any visitor to the site of Spahn's Movie Ranch today can easily see where the old western movie set was located on the flat area south of Old Santa Susana Pass Road across the street from the Church at Rocky Peak. Less apparent, however, is the location of the old Back Ranch House and the Outlaw Shacks, both of which also played significant roles in the saga of Charles Manson, his "Family," and the murders of the summer of 1969. These two places were situated in close proximity to each other west of the main ranch area and were accessible by a dirt road that was known as "Lovers Lane."

 Aerial photograph of Spahn's Ranch. Lovers Lane is indicated by the arrow. 

Topographic map of the Spahn's Ranch area (Oat Mountain map, 1952). The arrow on the right indicates the flat area where the movie set buildings were. The arrow on the left indicates Lovers Lane branching off to the west.

In his book My Life With Charles Manson Paul Watkins described the Back Ranch House thusly: "Like the rest of the buildings at Spahn's, the ranch house was in a general state of disrepair. But it was warm, rustic, and smelled of wood, generating the feelings of a mountain cabin. It had a huge living room with a fireplace and plenty of windows facing the road. Two good-sized bedrooms in the back fronted on the creek, and beyond it, a sloping forest of scrub oak, eucalyptus, and poison oak. The girls went to work at once, scouring floors, cleaning cabinets, and washing windows. We moved the mattresses, furniture, and food supplies in from the saloon, and afterward decorated the walls and the ceiling of the living room with Moroccan tapestries. It felt good to be out of the dusty confines of the saloon into a more bucolic, picturesque setting away from all the tourists."  (MLWCM, pages 76-77)

In Will You Die For Me? Charles "Tex" Watson recalled the Back Ranch House as the site of "the Family's" fear exercises:  "Sometimes Charlie would gather us all together in the ranch house and imagine a rich piggie [sic] sitting in the middle of a circle we'd form. "Imagine we just yanked this pig out of his big car and stuck him here," Charlie would instruct us. Then we would project all our own fear on that piggie while we fantasized his own fear as he was surrounded by our silent staring power." (WYDFM?, page 116)

Susan Atkins' son was born in the Back Ranch House. (Child of Satan, Child of God, pages 106-110)

The Back Ranch House was also the site of the infamous "freak-out" acid trip which occurred soon before the group initially went to the Death Valley area at the end of October, 1968 (See MLWCM, pages 105-112).

Judging from this interior shot of the Back Ranch House from the December 19, 1969 issue of Life magazine, the cement slab base for the structure must have been pretty big.

The Outlaw Shacks, located near the Back Ranch House, also figured importantly in the saga of Charles Manson and the murders which surrounded him, for they were the site of the infamous bust of Manson and Stephanie Schram on August 22, 1969. That bust, set up by Frank Retz and Donald "Shorty" Shea, was the final straw in the escalating conflict between "the Family" and the people that wanted them off the ranch property -- a straw that led to the stabbing death of Shea a few days later.

Charles Manson's mug shot from his arrest in the Outlaw Shacks on August 22, 1969

So, the Back Ranch House and the Outlaw Shacks were both important locales in the story of that crazy summer of 1969. But where exactly were they? In September of this year I went to the ranch site with the area's unofficial caretaker to see if we could find out.

It's been forty-five years since the ranch burned down, and that's a lot of time for changes to have occurred to the landscape. But if anything survived of the Back Ranch House it would be the cement slab that the house, like many other California structures, was built on. Also, there could be some remains of the stone work around the house's fireplace. So what we would be looking for would be the remains of a cement slab which, based on a 1969 photograph of the interior of the house, would be fairly large. As for the Outlaw Shacks, period photographs show them to be made out of wood, so likely all traces of them would be long gone. But one picture showed the horizons of the mountains behind the shacks, and we knew that if we could line up those horizons in the same way today we would be in the same spot as the photographer who took the period photograph.

It was a hot September day when we went out there. Starting on the west end of the movie set site we walked further west along the north side of the creek bed running in the gully behind the former western set. As guide material we had several old photographs of the Outlaw Shacks and Charles "Tex" Watson's map of the ranch area from his book Will You Die For Me?

Below, the Outlaw Shacks

Charles "Tex" Watson's map of the Spahn's Ranch area

This photo shows the lineup of the horizons. The arrow points to a noticeable feature of the far mountain range. If you found an identical lineup today you would be standing in the same spot as the photographer who took the picture. Note the distinct formation of rocks on top of the mountain in the center.

The same mountain today, approached from the east

It was a longer walk than we thought, almost a half a mile.  As we proceeded west, the mountain in one of the photos of the Outlaw Shacks quickly came into view. It took a while to get oriented to the topography, and we did quite a bit of fruitless wandering up and down the hills before we got a sense of what we should be looking for. But finally we realized that the point we wanted was located close to the north side of a developed area about a half-mile west of the western set site and fairly close to Old Santa Susana Pass Road. We were just walking to that area to get the horizons of the mountains lined up when the guy drove up in the red pickup truck. My "Free Manson" T-shirt-clad fellow researcher disappeared into the brush, but he kept taking pictures.

Me pointing to the direction we would have to go to get the correct lineup of horizons. I'm already trespassing on private property.

"What are you doing here?" the man in the truck asked.

"Oh, hi. We're just trying to find the location of some old shacks," I told him.

"You know that this is private property?"

(Me, ignoring his question) "Oh, well we're just trying to line up these mountain horizons to find out where this location is. See, if you line up the mountains, then you're in the place. It should be just over there (gesturing north) someplace." (Presenting the 1969 photograph) "See, here's the same mountain with the same rocks on top."

When the guy saw the old pictures he suddenly became interested.

"Where did you get those pictures?"

"Off the Internet."

He saw my point about the mountain horizons and ventured that the reason they weren't lining up as in the 1969 photograph was because the far mountain's horizon had been altered during the construction of the Simi Valley Freeway in the late '60s and early '70s. I thought that such a geographical alteration was beyond even Caltrans' biggest earth-raping wet dream but I kept my disagreement to myself as the fellow was being fairly friendly and didn't seem inclined to call the cops. But neither did he seem inclined to let me venture further north to see if I could see the proper mountain alignment. 

I explain to the nice man that we're only trying to find the location of some old shacks.

After a few more minutes of conversation (including my heartfelt dissertation on my respect for private property rights) my research partner and I excused ourselves and retreated from the verboten territory.

As we walked back to our cars on Iverson Road, the mountains finally started to line up. The far range revealed itself from behind the near one, and it became apparent where the location of the Back Ranch House and Outlaw Shacks was, namely on the developed piece of private property owned by the Church at Rocky Peak.

Photo taken from Iverson Road shows the same rear mountain horizon that is noted in the 1969 photo above. The top arrow points to the same feature in the far mountain range. In order to line up the horizons precisely one would have to be standing about in the area indicated by the lower arrow. Fairly close to Old Santa Susana Pass Road, the location is now on private property.

Having found the location of the Back Ranch House and the Outlaw Shacks it was apparent that no trace of any of those structures would remain today. The shacks were wood and likely perished in the same wildfire that consumed the other buildings of Spahn's Ranch on September 26, 1970. A similar fate also probably befell the Back Ranch House, and any trace of a surviving slab it might have been built on has doubtlessly been obliterated by changes made on the property by the Church at Rocky Peak.

Thus, like so many locales related to this case -- the Spahn Movie Ranch proper, the Polanski residence, the house on Gresham Street, the Myers and Barker Ranches, to name a few -- the Back Ranch House and the Outlaw Shacks have passed on from the realm of reality and into the realm of legend and lore.

Google Maps satellite view of the ranch area today. The arrow on the right shows where the movie set was. The left arrow indicates the general location of the Back Ranch House and Outlaw Shacks -- now on developed private property. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The below documents were sent along by Ben Gurecki. For details check the comments.

"Here are the arrest documents that go with the arrest photo of cm. these are originals and clearly signed by Red, using Bruce's alias."

Frank Retz

One of the biggest recent stories in California has been about the wildfires that were greatly fueled by the fact that the state has experienced four straight years of drought. But, weatherpersons assure us, help in on the way in the form of an El Nino weather effect that will be the greatest since the winter of 1997-98. That would be good news, because the winter of 1997-98 was the second warmest and seventh wettest since 1895. Rainfall totals were the greatest in over a century and 53 California counties were declared to be disaster areas as the torrential rains inflicted over $550 million in damages on the state. There were also 17 storm related deaths, one of which is of particular interest to readers of the MF Blog: the death of Frank Retz, which occurred when his vehicle was engulfed by a bridge collapse at the site of the old Spahn Movie Ranch.

Frank Retz appears in the TLB literature as an agent for the Transcontinental Development Corporation (TDC), an outfit that wanted to buy the properties around Spahn's Ranch (and the ranch itself) in order to build a resort complex for German Americans. Since some people who wanted to develop this complex saw the presence of Charles Manson and his associates at Spahn's Ranch as an impediment towards acquisition of the ranch, efforts were made to have them removed from the property. One of these efforts involved calling the police in to harass the Manson people as often as possible, something that surely stirred up bad feelings. According to Danny DeCarlo, Spahn Ranch ranch hand Shorty Shea was hired by the corporation to keep an eye one the goings on at the back ranch house on the Spahn property. Shea did so, not only creating a lot of tension but also setting himself up to be murdered. Frank Retz started out as an agent for the corporation,and eventually acquired property adjacent to Spahn's Ranch where he established a residence for himself accessible over a bridge built over the creek running in the area behind and down the hill from the movie set structures. 

Retz had more than a passing involvement with the intrigues at Spahn's Ranch. He was familiar with the cast of characters, and they were familiar with him. According to Ed Sanders, Retz once gave a ride to Kittly Lutesinger when she was trying to flee the ranch. Retz was also involved with the encroachment of the German developers. He was the person who hired Shorty Shea in a security capacity to assist in efforts to have Manson and his associates thrown off the ranch. Retz's participation in these activities (he even personally set up the arrest of Manson and Stephanie Schram in one of the outlaw shacks on August 24, 1969) earned him such animus from "the Family" that Manson Prosecutor Stephen Kay later said that Retz was next (after Shea) on the list of those to be murdered in the summer of 1969. 

Frank Retz survived the summer of 1969. But he would not be so lucky in the winter of 1997-98.

From the February 9, 1998 Los Angeles Times:

Chatsworth Man Dies; 2 Escape Crash

Accident: Car plunges into a ravine. Authorities uncertain if bridge was washed away or if it collapsed under vehicle.

February 09, 1998  SCOTT GLOVER, TIMES STAFF WRITER

CHATSWORTH — A World War II German Army captain who emigrated to America after the war and found success as a businessman became a victim early Sunday of the recent series of powerful storms that slammed the Southland. Frank Retz, 84, was killed when the car he was in fell to the bottom of a 60-foot ravine near his secluded home.

Authorities were still investigating Sunday night whether rain waters washed away an earthen bridge that led to Retz's home off Santa Susana Pass Road, or if the weight of the car in which he and his friends were riding caused the bridge to collapse.

The car, which belonged to Andy and Helen Gattuso, plunged to the bottom of the ravine about 1:30 a.m., authorities said. The Gattusos, both in their 60s, managed to crawl out of the overturned vehicle and climb up the edge of the embankment.

But when the couple reached Retz's home, the power was out and the telephone was dead, said Capt. Michael McMaster of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Authorities were called six hours later when someone on their way to Sunday morning services at the nearby Church at Rocky Peak saw the couple waving their arms for help.

"I looked over and saw them standing there, and they definitely looked like they needed help," said Dan Oran, an usher at the church, who arrived minutes after the parishioner who called 911.

The Gattusos were taken to Granada Hills Community Hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries and released. They were recovering Sunday afternoon in their Northridge home and did not wish to speak with reporters.

Coroner's investigator Erik D. Arbuthnot said it was not immediately clear what caused Retz's death. Despite the fall, there was little obvious trauma to his body, he said.

"He might even have drowned. He might have had a heart attack. We don't know."

McMaster said there was a 3-foot-wide culvert that channeled water from a stream underneath the earthen bridge that led to Retz's home.

Tina Thompson, a neighbor, said the bridge had been "red tagged" as unsafe by city building inspectors because Retz installed the drain himself, then covered it with fill without the proper permits.

"He used to tell me he wasn't going to let the city bureaucracy tell him what he was going to do on his property," she said.

Thompson's account could not be confirmed Sunday.

Retz was remembered as a colorful character by his neighbors, who said he boasted of being the stuntman atop the horse in the TV series, "Zorro," and of once physically assaulting Charles Manson, whom he caught trespassing on his property.

By others, he was recalled alternatively as an affable partyer [sic] and an ill-tempered recluse. Retz apparently spent his last night alive just as he would have liked, said his attorney, John J. Altenburg.

The Gattusos had taken Retz to a dance at the Bavarian Haus club in North Hollywood, Altenburg said, where he often enjoyed spending time with fellow German expatriates.

"He was an 84-year-old man full of vim and vigor," Altenburg said. "He loved to dance and sing. He would sing, totally offbeat, but at the top of his lungs."

Retz was decorated during the war by the German army, Altenburg said. After the war he came to the U.S., where he was in several businesses, including import-export, retail food and discount airline charters.

Retz also had a passion for soccer and horses, and made many friends in the movie business over the years, said Bill Murdock, who knew Retz for 20 years. Retz sometimes rented his ranch--a 64-acre spread in picturesque hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley--to filmmakers.

Nikki Wright, who grew up near Retz's ranch and still lives nearby, said the man had charm.

"We care a lot about him," she said, as she watched firefighters pull Retz's body from the car.

Altenburg conceded that Retz was protective of his property, as indicated by several lawsuits stemming from dog bites, he said.

Thompson, who is Wright's mother, said that Retz told her several times about his role in the "Zorro" series. "Whenever you see Zorro on a horse, it's me," Thompson quoted Retz as saying.

He also told her of the time he attacked Charles Manson, ordering Manson and his followers to get off his land.

Retz's son, Phil, an architect in the Seattle area, didn't want to talk about his father's colorful past.

"He was a good, decent man," he said. "I don't think there's need to say much more."

(Staff writer Allison Cohen contributed to this report.)

One interesting thing about this article is that although there is mention of Charles Manson and his associates being on Retz's land there is no indication that the land was adjacent to Spahn's Movie Ranch. Indeed, there is no mention in the article about Spahn's Ranch at all. Readers would not even know that Retz's death basically occurred at the site of the ranch.

I had a brief encounter with Frank Retz in 1989. At the time I was in Los Angeles for the August 9, 1989 premiere of the Nikolas Schreck film Charles Manson Superstar. On that afternoon of the twentieth anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders I, along with several of the people involved in the production of Superstar (and the publication of the book The Manson File) went to the site of Spahn's Ranch and were met there by a Lederhosen and cowboy hat-clad Retz. I stayed pretty much in the background; most of Retz's conversation was with Nikolas Schreck and Nick Bougas. Retz still talked about turning the area into some sort of resort for Germans. He also claimed that he and his soccer team had "kicked Charlie Manson's ass," a contention that was met with smiles and rolled eyes all around. (Three years before our encounter Retz told an interviewer, "I told those druggie Manson people to get out, and when they saw me they would run away because I told them I would beat them up to death.'')

Nikolas Schreck, Frank Retz, and Nick Bougas at the site of Spahn's Movie Ranch in 1989

Left to right: Zeena LaVey, Stanton LaVey (behind Zeena), me, Nick Bougas, Nikolas Schreck, Frank Retz

After Retz's death his secluded residence was ransacked by souvenir hunters. Some of the items so looted eventually found their way to me. 

Business cards and a studio portrait looted from Retz's home after his death

The collapsed bridge was replaced by one that was built to code. The new bridge is the one that's there today.

Building materials on site for the replacement bridge at the former Spahn Ranch

Franks Retz's dream of turning the Spahn Ranch area into a resort aimed at German Americans never came to fruition. Today the area to the south and west of the ranch site is privately owned and maintained and is sometimes rented out for private functions such as weddings. The actual site of Spahn's Ranch itself is a part of the Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park. It will never be developed into anything other than what it naturally becomes.