The Spahn Family set the record straight regarding their name and history at Spahn Ranch (7/8/2017)

Stoner meets at Spahn Ranch with members of George Spahn's family to set history straight:

Tex Watson's Beard

"At the same time I interviewed Linda's husband, Robert Kasabian, I also talked to Charles Melton, the hippie philanthropist from whom Linda had stolen the $5,000. Melton said that in early April 1969 (before Linda ever met the Family) he had gone to Spahn Ranch to see Paul Watkins. While there, Melton had met Tex, who, admiring Melton's beard, commented, "Maybe Charlie will let me grow a beard someday."

"It would be difficult to find a better example of Manson's domination of Watson."

 --  Vincent Bugliosi in Helter Skelter,  page 392

That this is the best example Bugliosi could find of Charles Manson's domination of Charles Watson shows how negligible that supposed domination really was, for the only two photographs taken of Watson during the period he lived at Spahn's Ranch with Manson show him to be bearded.

Charles Watson after his arrest for being under the influence of 

Belladonna (Jimson Weed?) on April 23, 1969

Charles "Tex" Watson at the Spahn Movie Ranch in 1969

Oh, Charlie did tell him to shave, but there was really a more mundane reason for Manson's "demand" that Watson (and, indeed, all the males at Spahn Ranch) remain clean shaven beyond his alleged desire to take control over every aspect of their lives. While it might be hard to believe in a day and age where Grandma is tattooed and pierced and the guy checking your groceries has dinner plates in his ear lobes, in the late 1960s men wearing beards (not to mention long hair!) could actually be considered radical. George Spahn (the owner of Spahn Ranch) was running a business -- horse riding rentals -- that depended to some degree on drop-in customer traffic. Therefore, he wanted his ranch to be as welcoming and friendly -- and normal -- as possible to prospective riders. On top of this, Spahn was also somewhat "old school," and he equated "beards" with "bums." For these two reasons he didn't want a bunch of bearded bums lounging around when Mrs. San Fernando Valley came in to investigate the ranch as a possible place for Sally and her friends to go horseback riding. 

It was George Spahn who instituted the "no beards" rule at Spahn's Ranch, not Charles Manson. Manson's directive to Watson regarding his whiskers was merely a pass down of the orders of George Spahn; it was not part of any mind/ body/soul-control agenda of his own.

Based on my forty-plus years of beard wearing I would categorize Watson's efforts as pretty scraggly. Nevertheless, he looks more bearded than he does clean-shaven, and it's apparent that at some point Manson noticed Watson's facial hair and mentioned it to him. But Watson  was no more "dominated" by having to shave than are the hundreds of thousands of other males who have toned down their preferred appearances for the sake of dress code policies relative to employment opportunities. I did the same thing in 1980 when I cut my hair and shaved off my beard as a condition for working with the Fred Harvey concessionaire at Furnace Creek in Death Valley. (And as much as I enjoyed working there I would not have considered committing mass  murder on the company's behalf.)

Thus, Vincent Bugliosi's "no better example" of Charles Manson's supposed domination of Charles Watson turns out to be just like so much more of the District Attorney's case against the former: It turns out to be nothing. 

George Spahn & Ruby Pearl in True Crime book

From True Crime: An American Anthology 350 Years of Brilliant Writing About Dark Deeds which is a 770-page collection of crime stories going all the way back to the 1600's. Excellent read, by the way. Of course, thumbing through it, I found a Manson story entitled "Charlie Manson's Home on the Range" by Gay Talese, which was printed in Esquire Magazine in March, 1970. It also has Truman Capote's Bobby Beausoleil interview "Then It All Came Down." By the way, there isn't anything really new about Manson & friends in this book, but it does include a rather interesting description of how George Spahn came to own Spahn Movie Ranch, and how his friendship evolved with Ruby Pearl. Here is the "official" description of the book:

Americans have had an uneasy fascination with crime since the earliest European settlements in the New World, and right from the start true crime writing became a dominant genre in American writing. True Crime: An American Anthology offers the first comprehensive look at the many ways in which American writers have explored crime in a multitude of aspects: the dark motives that spur it, the shock of its impact on society, the effort to make sense of the violent extremes of human behavior. Here is the full spectrum of the true crime genre, including accounts of some of the most notorious criminal cases in American history: the Helen Jewett murder and the once-notorious Kentucky tragedy of the 1830's, the assassination of President Garfield, the Snyder-Gray murder that inspired "Double Indemnity," the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Black Dahlia, Leopold and Loeb, and the Manson Family. True Crime draws upon the writing of literary figures as diverse as Nathaniel Hawthorne (reporting on a visit to a waxworks exhibit of notorious crimes), Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser (offering his views of a 1934 murder that some saw as a copycat version of An American Tragedy), James Thurber, Joseph Mitchell, and Truman Capote and sources as varied as execution sermons, murder ballads, early broadsides and trial reports, and tabloid journalism of many different eras. It also features the influential true crime writing of best-selling contemporary practitioners like James Elroy, Gay Talese, Dominick Dunne, and Ann Rule. 

MOTIVES

Everyone has their opionions on the motive.  I used to have a motive, until I started talking to a lot of people about the case. Shorty I think was the bug in George's ear about all the illegal activities going on.  He was a snitch, he had to die.  I used  to think SA,BB, and MB went to Gary's to get some loot to finance the Family' needs to get out of the dessert, away from the police harrasment.  Gary said "no", then things got out of control and they HAD to kill him or he would snitch. Tate- was because Melcher fell through on his musical promises, didn't matter who was living at Terry's at the time.  A message needed to be sent. A few people have the "drug burn" theory for Voytek. As for Tate- why didn't TW, SA and PK search the house for money or drugs?  It was overkill.  A personal crime. 
Labianca- No clue.  Maybe Leno confronted Charlie when he was next door at Trues. 

He wouldn't give up his money or vehicles.  Selfish pig.



Snitches and other enemies will be taken care of.


was it HeAlter Skelter?




To maybe thin out the pigs? 



A drug burn?

Donald "Shorty" Shea

Shorty (crouching) performing as an extra in one of the few movies shot at Spahn Movie Ranch.

I think Shorty had to "come to now" because he was always in George Spahn's ear.  He didn't care for the drugs, runaways, car chop shop, or the heAlter skelter dance club.  He probably over heard things - I am sure.  They say Shorty had George finally convinced to get rid of The Family.  It is rumored that everyone in the hard core inner circle we're involved.
The men of the Family "participated" in the actual killing.
Charlie,Tex, Clem and Bruce.
A couple of the girls packed up his belongings into his foot locker. One or more drove Shorty's car to where it was found.  Supposedly some dug the grave.  Leslie I think, kicked his dead body down the hill. Clem alone, buried him.  I recall reading somewhere the police found Shorty's car parked in a residential neighborhood 
somewhere,quite awhile after he went missing.  Inside the car was Shorty's foot locker and his bloody cowboy boots.  Gypsy's fingerprints  and Bruce's palm print were found on the foot locker.  I think it was Bruce who pawned Shorty's matching guns. 

Old Man George Spahn