This picture was found in the Simi Valley Star and published May 17, 1968. Was it Randy Starr that clued Sherry Cooper in about Spahn Ranch?
A magnification of Randy and Sherry.
Showing posts with label Randy Starr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Randy Starr. Show all posts
Friday, April 26, 2024
Monday, March 16, 2020
Randy Starr's Grand Jury Testimony
Randy Starr was a ranch hand and stuntman who
worked and lived at Spahn Ranch. For a little background George
Stimson did a piece on the blog about Randy HERE .
Randy comes into play because he was said to have
owned and given to Charles Manson the gun used at the Tate house during the
murders. Randy did not testify at the
Tate LaBianca trial because he became ill with an ear infection which went
untreated and he developed meningitis and died August 4 1970.
Vincent Buliosi writes in his book Helter
Skelter (1994 page 376, in the chapter titled April 1970)-
Another find was Randy Starr, whom I interviewed
the same day as Ruby. A Sometime movie
stunt man who specialized in fake hangings, Starr said the Tate Sebring rope was “identical”
to a rope he’d once used to help Manson pull a vehicle out of the creek bed. Starr told me, “Manson always kept the rope
behind the seat in his dune buggy.”
Even more important was Randy Starr’s positive
identification of the .22 Longhorn revolver, for Starr had once owned the gun
and had given it to Manson.
There is a footnote at the bottom of the page
which reads-
The gun, serial number 1902708, had been among a
number of weapons taken from the Archery Headquarters in El Monte California,
during a burglary on the night of March 12, 1969. According to Starr, he obtained it in trade
with a man only known as “Ron.” Manson
was always borrowing the gun for target practice, and Randy finally gave it to
him in trade for a truck that belonged to Danny DeCarlo.
Randy Starr testified to a grand jury convened
for the death of Gary Hinman. Charles
Manson, Susan Atkins and Bruce Davis were the defendants and it was held on
April 9 and 12 1970 in Los Angeles. This is the only
known testimony given under oath by Starr.
While Randy’s testimony does mention the gun, it
is more focused on the knife used to stab Gary Hinman and found in Bobby
Beausoleil’s possession when he was arrested August 6 1969.
The testimony also focuses on a sword in
Manson’s possession. Starr says it was
usually kept in holder in Manson’s dune buggy.
There is nothing in the testimony about the rope
used at the Tate murders, nor should there have been because this was a grand
jury for the Hinman murder. Which makes
me wonder why the gun was mentioned.
There was a gun used at Hinman’s, not to shoot Gary but during a scuffle
it went off and struck the kitchen cabinets and wall. The bullets that were dug out matched the 9mm
Random automatic that Bruce Davis bought under a false name on July 14 1969. Randy mentions a long barreled 9-shot
revolver and a .45 but not a 9mm in his testimony.
All in all I went away a little confused by Randy’s
testimony. It seemed as if Randy was
trying to take credit for having provided Manson with many of the weapons used
in the Hinman and Tate murders. I was
unaware that the knife Bobby used had originally belonged to Starr.
I have to wonder how Randy would have stood up under cross examination at a trial.
Monday, February 12, 2018
Randy Starr and The Creeping Terror
The saga of the Tate-LaBianca murders is more massive and complex than any novel by James Michener. The story spans years, locations, and events, and the cast of characters is perfect for the tale. They are varied, individual, interesting, and often quirky (to say the least). Even their names are perfect. And certainly one person fitting into this murder-tinged mosaic would have been Randy Starr, the black-clad, one-armed cowboy/stunt man who worked at Spahn’s Movie Ranch when Charles Manson and his associates lived there in 1968 and 1969
Randy Starr was born as Joseph Vance Randall on December 13, 1931 in Illinois, USA. Not much is known about his early life, but upon reaching maturity he entered the United States Marine Corps and served as a Private First Class during the conflict in Korea from 1952 to 1954. Upon leaving the service he returned to the midwest. It was there, in Iowa, that Starr was involved in a farming accident wherein his left arm was run over by a tractor. The arm was rendered fairly useless as a result, and it dangled mangled at his side for the rest of his life.
Although hindered by the loss of one arm Randall didn’t shy away from physical activity, and he eventually made his way to Los Angeles, changed his name to Randy Starr, and pursued a career in the movie and television industries as a bit actor and stunt man. When not involved with some entertainment project Starr supported himself by working as a ranch hand at Spahn’s Movie Ranch. Starr was living in a trailer at the ranch when Charles Manson and his friends first appeared in the summer of 1968, and he would be present during their entire residency there, including when the murders of the summer of 1969 occurred.
Like everyone else at Spahn’s Ranch, Randy Starr was questioned by law enforcement officers investigating the Tate-LaBianca murders. And Starr made significant contributions to the case against Charles Manson. First, he said that the rope found at the Cielo Drive murder scene was “identical” to rope he had seen in the back of Manson’s dune buggy. More importantly, he identified the .22 caliber Buntline revolver used in the Tate murders as a gun he had once owned before giving it to Manson in exchange for a truck.
Starr testified at the Grand Jury that he saw Manson with a sword in late July of 1969, shortly after the Gary Hinman ear-slashing murder, and that Manson told him, “I cut a guy’s ear off with this.”
Starr also figured in the case during the famous visit to Spahn’s Ranch by Terry Melcher on May 18, 1969 when Melcher came to listen to Manson and his friends play music and sing with the possibility of arranging something professionally. Manson and the others played by the stream in the area behind and below the main ranch set. According to a later newspaper account, “When the group returned from the stream, [Melcher] said there was a strange encounter with a Hollywood stunt man who live at the ranch Randy Starr. He had a six-gun strapped to his waist.
“‘It was a little scary,’ [Melcher said]. ‘It looked like, you know, Dodge City and Marshall Dillon. Randy was going to draw on somebody and Charlie intervened. I think he hit Randy in the stomach and grabbed the gun. I’m glad he did.’”
While Randy star will likely be most remembered for the bit part he played in TLB, he also had a (very) minor show business career on his cosmic resume. A search of his name in the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) results in a list of three cinematic projects that Starr worked on, one of which, The Creeping Terror, was supposedly partially filmed at Spahn’s Movie Ranch. From IMBd: “The Creeping Terror (1964), on which [Starr] was assistant director, was shot in part at the Spahn Ranch outside of Los Angeles, which was home to the notorious Manson Family, headed by the infamous Charles Manson. Starr later joined the "family", and after the Tate-LaBianca murders it was shown that Starr provided Manson with the gun used in the killings.”
Given the inaccuracy of the blurb’s description of Starr’s relationship to “the notorious Manson Family” I wondered if the film was indeed shot at Spahn’s or whether this was just another Mansonian mirage. To find out, I took a look at the film myself. (You can too; it’s here. You can also read some detail about this ill-fated cinematic project in its Wikipedia entry here.)
The Creeping Terror is generally regarded as one of the worst movies ever made, and after viewing the film I would have to concur. Some movies are “good” bad, but this one is just bad bad. Pick any aspect of the production — writing, acting, directing, music, special effects — it’s all bad. (In fact, it’s bad enough that the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 had a go at it.) One particularly odd feature is that since the original soundtrack was apparently lost or destroyed a narrator explains much of the dialogue that is clearly going on but cannot be heard. The film’s only redeeming quality is that it is just over an hour long.
Al Lewis (the same name as the actor who played Grandpa on The Munsters television program) is listed in the credits. I didn’t see him when I viewed the film, but I will not watch it again to see if he’s there. Perhaps one of our readers can confirm Grandpa’s presence and add that factoid to the endless encyclopedia of TLB trivia. (Terror is not listed among Lewis' IMDb credits.)
(Since Manson was incarcerated at the McNeil Island federal penitentiary in 1964 when Terror was filmed it would have been impossible for him and Lewis to have connected at that time. But Lewis eventually did meet Manson, as he recalled in this 2010 article: "In California in [the late sixties] the estimate was that there were at least half a million runaways from the age of eight on, drifting to California. Every Friday I used to have about fifty [to] sixty kids who would wait for me on Sunset Boulevard and I'd take them all to dinner. All runaways. That's how I met Charlie Manson. He wanted to be in the music business. He babysat my three kids ... I met him in front of the Whiskey-A-Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard. He sat for four or five hours, he amused the kids, he brought the guitar and he played, no big deal, no sweat.”)
One interesting feature of Terror is a perhaps prescient “Hootenanny” scene of a young man with a guitar playing for a group of pretty young girls in a meadow. (Like their real-life 1968-69 counterparts, they are all devoured by a monster.)
Many scenes occur at a location described as “Lovers Lane,” which was the actual name of the road leading from the main western set to the back ranch house when Manson and his friends lived there. Is this a case of life imitating art?
Although there is no sign of the western set, many of the outdoor scenes in Terror look like they could have been filmed at Spahn’s, especially near the end. But then, just when you’re thinking, “Yeah, that looks like it could be the ranch,” at the 108.50 mark the characters unmistakably drive past the Outlaw Shacks. No question; case closed.
Randy Starr had two more films to his credit after The Creeping Terror. Both were released posthumously. The first was Machismo: 40 Graves for 40 Guns, released in 1971. Starr appears in this film as a bit player described in credits as a “roper.”
Starr’s last cinematic moment was in Hard On The Trail, which was released in 1972 and is described in IMBd as “a hardcore pornographic film.” I was not able to find this film, so I can't say whether it is actually “hardcore” or is more of a Ramrodder type of soft-core breast fest.
Randy Starr died unexpectedly on August 4, 1970, shortly after the trial of Charles Manson and his co-defendants began. Starr had been anticipated as an important witness for the prosecution because his testimony could have placed the murder weapon (gun) used at the Polanski residence in Manson’s hands. Although the sudden death appeared mysterious and suspicious initially, it was soon revealed that Starr died of “acute purulent meningitis due to or as a consequence of left otitis media and mastoiditis, acute.” (In other words, he died of an ear infection that spread to his brain.)
Upon his death Randy Starr reverted to his original identity and was buried at the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Lemay, Missouri (2900 Sheridan Street, St. Louis, MO) Section 1, Site 2262.
Randy Starr was born as Joseph Vance Randall on December 13, 1931 in Illinois, USA. Not much is known about his early life, but upon reaching maturity he entered the United States Marine Corps and served as a Private First Class during the conflict in Korea from 1952 to 1954. Upon leaving the service he returned to the midwest. It was there, in Iowa, that Starr was involved in a farming accident wherein his left arm was run over by a tractor. The arm was rendered fairly useless as a result, and it dangled mangled at his side for the rest of his life.
Book from the Randy Starr series of boys adventure books published in the 1930s. It is not known if Joseph Randall was exposed to these books as a child and subsequently adopted the protagonist’s name as his movie alias.
Although hindered by the loss of one arm Randall didn’t shy away from physical activity, and he eventually made his way to Los Angeles, changed his name to Randy Starr, and pursued a career in the movie and television industries as a bit actor and stunt man. When not involved with some entertainment project Starr supported himself by working as a ranch hand at Spahn’s Movie Ranch. Starr was living in a trailer at the ranch when Charles Manson and his friends first appeared in the summer of 1968, and he would be present during their entire residency there, including when the murders of the summer of 1969 occurred.
Randy Starr
Randy Starr with George Spahn
Randy Starr publicity propaganda. An associate later wrote, “Randy's stunt gimmick was being dragged or dropped somewhere from a rope around his neck. Being dragged on the ground by a galloping horse was his signature stunt.”
Like everyone else at Spahn’s Ranch, Randy Starr was questioned by law enforcement officers investigating the Tate-LaBianca murders. And Starr made significant contributions to the case against Charles Manson. First, he said that the rope found at the Cielo Drive murder scene was “identical” to rope he had seen in the back of Manson’s dune buggy. More importantly, he identified the .22 caliber Buntline revolver used in the Tate murders as a gun he had once owned before giving it to Manson in exchange for a truck.
Starr testified at the Grand Jury that he saw Manson with a sword in late July of 1969, shortly after the Gary Hinman ear-slashing murder, and that Manson told him, “I cut a guy’s ear off with this.”
Starr also figured in the case during the famous visit to Spahn’s Ranch by Terry Melcher on May 18, 1969 when Melcher came to listen to Manson and his friends play music and sing with the possibility of arranging something professionally. Manson and the others played by the stream in the area behind and below the main ranch set. According to a later newspaper account, “When the group returned from the stream, [Melcher] said there was a strange encounter with a Hollywood stunt man who live at the ranch Randy Starr. He had a six-gun strapped to his waist.
“‘It was a little scary,’ [Melcher said]. ‘It looked like, you know, Dodge City and Marshall Dillon. Randy was going to draw on somebody and Charlie intervened. I think he hit Randy in the stomach and grabbed the gun. I’m glad he did.’”
While Randy star will likely be most remembered for the bit part he played in TLB, he also had a (very) minor show business career on his cosmic resume. A search of his name in the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) results in a list of three cinematic projects that Starr worked on, one of which, The Creeping Terror, was supposedly partially filmed at Spahn’s Movie Ranch. From IMBd: “The Creeping Terror (1964), on which [Starr] was assistant director, was shot in part at the Spahn Ranch outside of Los Angeles, which was home to the notorious Manson Family, headed by the infamous Charles Manson. Starr later joined the "family", and after the Tate-LaBianca murders it was shown that Starr provided Manson with the gun used in the killings.”
Credit from The Creeping Terror listing Randy Starr as an Assistant Director
Given the inaccuracy of the blurb’s description of Starr’s relationship to “the notorious Manson Family” I wondered if the film was indeed shot at Spahn’s or whether this was just another Mansonian mirage. To find out, I took a look at the film myself. (You can too; it’s here. You can also read some detail about this ill-fated cinematic project in its Wikipedia entry here.)
The Creeping Terror is generally regarded as one of the worst movies ever made, and after viewing the film I would have to concur. Some movies are “good” bad, but this one is just bad bad. Pick any aspect of the production — writing, acting, directing, music, special effects — it’s all bad. (In fact, it’s bad enough that the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 had a go at it.) One particularly odd feature is that since the original soundtrack was apparently lost or destroyed a narrator explains much of the dialogue that is clearly going on but cannot be heard. The film’s only redeeming quality is that it is just over an hour long.
Al Lewis (the same name as the actor who played Grandpa on The Munsters television program) is listed in the credits. I didn’t see him when I viewed the film, but I will not watch it again to see if he’s there. Perhaps one of our readers can confirm Grandpa’s presence and add that factoid to the endless encyclopedia of TLB trivia. (Terror is not listed among Lewis' IMDb credits.)
Al Lewis as Grandpa Munster
(Since Manson was incarcerated at the McNeil Island federal penitentiary in 1964 when Terror was filmed it would have been impossible for him and Lewis to have connected at that time. But Lewis eventually did meet Manson, as he recalled in this 2010 article: "In California in [the late sixties] the estimate was that there were at least half a million runaways from the age of eight on, drifting to California. Every Friday I used to have about fifty [to] sixty kids who would wait for me on Sunset Boulevard and I'd take them all to dinner. All runaways. That's how I met Charlie Manson. He wanted to be in the music business. He babysat my three kids ... I met him in front of the Whiskey-A-Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard. He sat for four or five hours, he amused the kids, he brought the guitar and he played, no big deal, no sweat.”)
One interesting feature of Terror is a perhaps prescient “Hootenanny” scene of a young man with a guitar playing for a group of pretty young girls in a meadow. (Like their real-life 1968-69 counterparts, they are all devoured by a monster.)
Many scenes occur at a location described as “Lovers Lane,” which was the actual name of the road leading from the main western set to the back ranch house when Manson and his friends lived there. Is this a case of life imitating art?
Although there is no sign of the western set, many of the outdoor scenes in Terror look like they could have been filmed at Spahn’s, especially near the end. But then, just when you’re thinking, “Yeah, that looks like it could be the ranch,” at the 108.50 mark the characters unmistakably drive past the Outlaw Shacks. No question; case closed.
Above and below, the Outlaw Shacks in The Creeping Terror and Will You Die For Me?
Randy Starr had two more films to his credit after The Creeping Terror. Both were released posthumously. The first was Machismo: 40 Graves for 40 Guns, released in 1971. Starr appears in this film as a bit player described in credits as a “roper.”
Movie poster for Machismo: 40 Graves for 40 Guns
Starr’s last cinematic moment was in Hard On The Trail, which was released in 1972 and is described in IMBd as “a hardcore pornographic film.” I was not able to find this film, so I can't say whether it is actually “hardcore” or is more of a Ramrodder type of soft-core breast fest.
Above and below, movie poster for Hard On The Trail and Randy Starr’s billing
Randy Starr died unexpectedly on August 4, 1970, shortly after the trial of Charles Manson and his co-defendants began. Starr had been anticipated as an important witness for the prosecution because his testimony could have placed the murder weapon (gun) used at the Polanski residence in Manson’s hands. Although the sudden death appeared mysterious and suspicious initially, it was soon revealed that Starr died of “acute purulent meningitis due to or as a consequence of left otitis media and mastoiditis, acute.” (In other words, he died of an ear infection that spread to his brain.)
Randy Starr’s obituary in the Los Angeles Times
From the Van Nuys Valley News
Upon his death Randy Starr reverted to his original identity and was buried at the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Lemay, Missouri (2900 Sheridan Street, St. Louis, MO) Section 1, Site 2262.
Randy Starr’s military grave
(Thanks to Deb S. for the clarifying info on the arm!)
Monday, September 4, 2017
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Monday, March 4, 2013
An interview with Randy Starr's wife
Windy is not very good with dates, it is not in the Indian culture to keep constant tabs on time in general, for that reason she has been vague at times about when certain things took place. I have tried my best to organize her timetable by comparing it to when her children were born or some other well known event that could be looked up. Windy had worked for a woman named Gladys Cox who took in horses that were less than desirable and turned them around to be well mannered and saleable. Mrs. Cox was acquainted with George Spahn and his ranch having done business with him. When Mrs. Cox became ill she arranged for Windy to work and live at Spahn. This was in 1963 and Windy worked and lived there off and on until the ranch burned in 1970. She did not always work full time and at times she took other jobs elsewhere. Such was life on the ranch where people came and went with whatever opportunities seemed best in the moment. Windy did tell me that Ruby Pearl was a constant at Spahn although Ruby gave up spending the night at Spahn when things with Charles Manson and the Family became overwhelmingly tense.
Windy met Randy Starr at Spahn around 1964, they fell in love and had a wedding ceremony up on Indian Mesa at the ranch. Randy wore all black and rode a black stallion, Windy wore white buckskins and rode a white mare. Windy told me that it was an Indian ceremony and I'm not entirely certain that it was a legal marriage. Windy really did not have much use nor see the point in the white mans way and still doesn't. Randy and Windy had a daughter in March of 1965 and named her Starlina. Starlina was born, what Windy called a thyroid baby, and she lived only four months. After the baby died Randy was devastated and took off for his home state of Illinois for about 18 months leaving Windy behind in southern California. While in Illinois Randy was in an automobile accident and lost the use of one of his arms. Windy and Randy still had a bond and worked together at Spahn off and on but never lived together again.
Sometime in 1967 Windy had moved from Spahn to a house on Gresham St. a few houses away from Bill Vance. She knew Vance from working at Spahn, he had been a cowboy but wanted to try something else so he bought a semi truck, he had no trailer for it and was planning on getting jobs hauling other peoples trailers. Apparently the semi was always needing repairs and he rarely used it. At this time Windy was working for a company called New Art Publishing and Party Company full time and not working at the ranch. She became close friends with Vance and his roommate Little Harvey. Little Harvey was a midget who had a Bull named Elmer that he put in fairs, parades and sideshows. Elmer was a Swiss bull with three eyes and four horns. I kid you not! Windy was telling at that time that part of Gresham St. and the next block were parcels with a little bit of acreage. Kind of like ranchettes.
Windy first met Charlie Manson in late 1967 or early 1968 at Bill Vance's on Gresham St. She does not know how Bill and Charlie met, he just showed up there with a few of the girls and started living there along with Bill, Harvey and Elmer. Since Bill and Windy were close friends and Bill's only mode of transportation was the semi she gave Bill a second set of keys to her truck and allowed Bill to use it while she was at work. She never really knew when he was going to use the truck and she was fine with that as long as the truck was there when she left work.
One day while she and her daughter, from a marriage previous to Randy, were out in the truck she was pulled over by the police and questioned about where she was at certain times. She learned from the police that there had been a number of robberies and that the license plate number of her truck matched the plate number of a truck seen at one of the robberies. In total there had been eight robberies that they were investigating. She was able to prove that she had been at work at the time the robberies were committed and couldn't have done them. The police let her go but by this time she had put two and two together and knew who had done the crimes. She did not tell the police her suspicions. When she arrived home she went immediately to Bill Vance's madder than a wet hen, read him the riot act and demanded her truck keys back. A couple of hours later Charlie came over to her house and asked for the truck keys back and she refused. Charlie proceeded to beat the crap out of her breaking her jaw and causing other injuries. She had a gun in her house that her brother had left for her, she tried to shoot Charlie three times but because she was unfamiliar with the gun and she was pretty beat up she could not figure out how to get the safety off. Windy told me that Charlie ran when he saw she had the gun and she regrets not having shot him as she figured she could have saved a few lives down the road. Windy ended up in the hospital for a couple of days.
Next, I will tell you Shorty Shea's reaction to Windy's beating by Manson.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)