Show Me The Money

You got it, Ken. I found a few photos. Sorry I took so long to get back to you. You know how life goes sometimes. 

Ella Jo Bailey was born January 15, 1947. Like Ken said, she was from Holland, Michigan. It's crazy to think she stopped wearing her glasses in California. I wonder if she could see? 

I'm not a fan of true crime. General cowardice and an overall weak constitution are probably the reasons. I feel too strongly for the victims and also sometimes for the monsters who hurt them when it's obvious they were once victims themselves. Cream is supposed to rise, I get it, and cycles can be broken. But not everyone is cream, are they? Sometimes, nihilism is the only way to dull empathy. 

Regardless, every now and then, Charlie and his ephemera plop themselves down inside my mind loop and my questions start back up again. They really never fully go away. Big pieces of this puzzle are missing. It's obvious. Something dark and ominous is lurking beneath the surface that will make everything understandable once we rip it from the water and watch it die at our feet. 

And we all know it. 

Or do we? Maybe I simply want there to be more because Susan was weird and had a mustache and oozing sores on her feet and Sharon was pretty and seemed nice and was huge pregnant and they butchered her. People do crazy stuff on speed every day but when it comes to Sharon, I somehow need Garretson's van ride and multiple FBI surveillance guys cutting out early on a Friday night to party with Hollywood hunnies (I just made that part up) and Eugene Massaro spilling the beans about a drug deal on Cielo to be legit parts of August 8th. 

I doubt we'll ever understand the whole picture. People reading this who know the truth are probably laughing and pointing at their computer screens and phones right now. I feel it in my bones.  

Not really. Or probably. I don't know. 

To embrace any single theory, you know them all, a person has to ignore facts that appear to clearly validate one of the other theories. The answer is probably all of the theories are correct. That's what I tell myself anyway. 

Typically, when I reach that point, I look for side quests. The one I'm on now is how did they pay for their daily lives as they rumbled toward that tragic weekend in early August, 1969, and their subsequent downfall? 

We all think we know. Credit cards, auto theft, selling dope, whatever. But what can we prove? Who are the reliable witnesses? 

Writers and commenters on this blog have asserted countless times over the years that Charlie was pimping out his girls. While I've always wondered what the deal was with the young loves who had to run away into desert every time a pair of headlights bounced toward the group's digs at night, and I bet I don't want to know, Fromme or Good would have to tell me themselves that Charlie was their pimp for me to believe it. 

But I'm also no fool. I know it was happening. Dianne Lake says so but I don't know what to believe when it comes to Snake so I set her aside as a witness I don't trust. My bad if she's your homie. If you cited Lake in a paper and I was your professor, I'd write a brief note in one of your margins asking why you believe her, and would surely reduce your grade if you didn't support her claims with anything the rest of the world considers official. 

Such as court transcripts. Especially when the information is never overturned or proven wrong. They become history. Like it or not. 

Which brings us to the Witches of Mendocino. We've all heard for years (and probably repeated it once or twice along the way) that Manson's group was starting up a house of ill repute in Mendocino. And although the belief is commonly held in some circles, we see that after Sadie, barely twenty-one herself, forced free drugs into sweet, innocent, little, seventeen-year-old Allen Rosenthal and turned his legs to snakes (Can I get an amen!), the witches were busted only for drug possession and giving their drugs to minors. 

And they likely would've been charged with nothing if they were better at hiding tiny blue pills and a bag of weed in the freakin woods behind their house. 

I mean come on. The gang that couldn't shoot straight rides again. 

So then are we cool to move on and put to bed the idea of the girls selling their heynanner nanners to the local talent? Kinda. But not really. 

As willing as always to help dig her hole a little deeper, Susan Atkins opened her big mouth and revealed to a probation offer that she was somewhat tricked into the sex trade soon after turning sixteen. Today, we'd say Susan has PTSD from the way she grew up and she'd have resources available for help. Back then, bad kids chose to be bad kids. 

You can hop back into the above transcript and go to page 58 if you want to read what Susan told the probation officer about her life after arriving in San Francisco in 1963. Evidence exists to verify what she says, no one should be surprised. It's old news. We've all seen the photo of Dracula staring down longingly at her pale bosoms during one of those shows where he charged idiots to see him shill for the devil. 

Sorry, I meant Anton LaVey. 

And then later, when the shit hits the fan for real in late 1969, Sadie again puts herself in San Francisco several years earlier when she fills in her backstory to everyone's favorite pedantic psychopath, Vincent T. Bugliosi Jr.

If you listen closely and remain still as a statue, you can hear Bugliosi's pants tightening in the groin area while Sadie answers him. 

That's it for Bugliosi. Drive overload. His face colors when he hears Sadie say they all shared their "means of support," and his mind quickly pivots to where his animal instincts were already taking him. 

"Enough about did Charlie ever call himself Jesus for a moment, Vince," he advises himself. "These hippies were surely humpin. Let's get some of the juicy deets into the open air and make her repeat the part about Jesus Satan Charlie asking her did you ever imagine doing the deed with your dad." 

And so that happened. You can read it. 

Hold up, you say. Wasn't this post about Ella Jo Bailey? 

Yes. But it's also about theories. And the things you've written to one another over the years in the comments. And the posts. But mostly this is me wondering if I can verify any illegal streams of income flowing into the family that either did or did not call themselves a family. 

We're getting there. I promise. Let's see what else Ken619 had to say about Ella that you probably ignored and left unanswered while arguing with each other over which MB reader is a dick and who isn't one and etc etc. 

Hmmm. I wonder if Lynette Fromme mentioned anything in the best eyewitness account to date, Reflexion. Last we checked in where was she? Oh, right. Deciding the oldest profession in the world was not for her, and you can rest assured the same went for Mary and Patty. 

"...I jumped out of the car with my shoes in my hand. This was not the life for me. Mary and Patty were not thrilled with it either. Contrary to April's assurances about her clients, Patty had been roughly treated. April was unapologetic. She rebuked Charlie for allowing himself to be seen coming into the house. She was furious that we had jeopardized her business simply so we could have 'an experience.'

Moralizing about the way we were living, without structure or regard for money, she made a point that she was sending her five-year-old daughter to a conservative Catholic school" (Fromme, Kindle, 128). 

April, you might remember, is the top girl and operations manager for Pete the pimp, Charlie's friend and fellow winner of the Mann Act sweepstakes. Debutante fresh according to Fromme, April "earned her way up in this business, starting in migrant flophouses turning ten-dollar tricks at roughly ten per hour" (128). 

So gross. 

That doesn't sound like Charlie was exercising a strong pimp hand on his small band of travelers. But at the same time he took them to Pete's house, right? 

A lot of trash has been talked about Lynette Fromme on this blog over the years, but unlike all of us, she is not guilty of ignoring Ken619. Sure, her reply came seven years later, and Ken I hope you're still here, but Fromme answered him and filled in the picture a bit more for the rest of us. 

Before I show you what she wrote, I want to point out that what you're about to read is on the very next page after the whole Pete and April disaster. Imagine, all the stories Fromme probably has in her head and her notebooks and her book goes right from a whorehouse in Sacto to...

"Sexy Susan was a stripper in a San Francisco cabaret. Stretched on the Persian rug in a big Victorian house on Lyon Street, propped on one elbow, she was barefoot and dressed in an orange sweatshirt, and jeans, staring at Charlie, not saying a word. He was strumming his guitar, and appeared unconscious of the six or eight people who had gathered to listen" (128). 

This is incredibly similar to the Atkins grand jury testimony you just read above if you clicked the link. Since Fromme and Atkins basically tell the same story, let's see if Fromme has anything else to add to that folksy scene where everyone was barefoot and all strummy on acoustic guitars. 

"At least four people sublet rooms in the house. I spent some time talking with a thin blonde rolling her short wavy hair in curlers" (128).

"That was Ella, an experienced woman on break from college. She looked like a 1930s actress, with a bright smile as ready as her conversation" (128).

Sandra Good describes meeting Ella later in the book. "One girl right out of a 1930s Broadway musical, her huge blue eyes and wavy blonde hair beneath an old top hat, looked up from her bread board. Shaking flour from her hands, she smiled, saying, "Ella," and everyone in the room looked at me with cheery hellos" (166). 

I wanted you to get the picture of Ella wearing a top hat while preparing a healthy dinner into your mind because it's such a cool image, like something from a film, but I want to go back to Fromme's comment if we can. 

Ella was no older than than a college senior at the time. Two decades plus a year of life probably. Again, this is at the start of a new section in the book right after the previous section ended in unhappy prostitution experiences for the Three Musketeers. Fromme picks this place to introduce us to Sadie who we already know is a sex worker at the time. 

And then immediately after Fromme's description of Sadie, we meet Ella. Why would Fromme call Ella experienced? At what? She'd been in the Haight only a year or two. 

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ex-pe-ri-enced 

having knowledge or skill in a particular field, especially a profession or job, gained over a period of time

"an experienced social worker"

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Fromme is a wordy lady. She knows how to write. Her family was educated. I don't think she chooses words randomly and for no reason. Especially when introducing someone. 

"One night my father and I clashed over something silly--a word or a definition. Suddenly enraged, he pointed to the door and yelled, "You get out of this house and never come back!" I cried, stuffing a big purse full of books and make-up and miscellaneous junk" (3).  

Words matter. Experienced at what? Sharing her means of support with Susan Atkins? 

Maybe Ella made top hats. I'm not sure. But I do think this might be another example where we could say it doesn't look like Charlie is their pimp, but he damn straight knows where to find some hoes. 

I make jokes. But it does kinda seem like Sadie and Ella were already in the life when Charlie appeared. 

In conclusion, based on things Susan was unable to keep from telling authorities, court records and documents, and Fromme's book, I'm unable to provide evidence of anyone giving Charlie any of the money they made on their backs at this time. 

I'm definitely willing to consider your evidence, however. 

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For the two of you still reading this apparently endless post, thank you. I want to leave you with a couple of quick thoughts after briefly listing a few of Ella's highlights that most of you are familiar with:

- Ella is Sadie's roommate when Fromme and Charlie meet Sadie 

- Susan Sadie Glutz Atkins tells the grand jury that Ella is in the first group to leave SF in the bus 

- Fromme verifies Ella is with Patty when Dennis Vibrations picks them up hitchhiking in his Rolls 

- Ella rolls out to Mendocino with of the girls who'd already been involved in prostitution 

- She's the first to bring Steve in from the desert 

- Ella tells Charlie that Hinman is coming into an inheritance 

- But smartly refuses to go to Hinman's

- And then stupidly helps wipe down Hinman's vehicle 

- She teams up with Bill Vance, another Mansonverse enigma and probably best criminal in the group

And this from Sandra Good in Reflexion:

"The heavy door of the saloon creaked open, and, quickly, three people slid in. Their eyes were large and the sweat on their bodies dampened their leather vests. One dug a hand into a Levi pocket and tossed some clinking clattering silver onto the dusty hardwood floor. From another pocket came a wad of bills. 

'Wow!' How much didja get?'

'Oh, just a couple hundred. We had some trouble and had to split.'

Ella pulled a paper bag out of her purse, removed a Colt .45 from it, and began wiping it with one of the rags. 'Whew,' she said, 'That was something else. Someone stash this for me.' Sadie took the gun from Ella. It was the first time that they had robbed. Ella said, 'It was nothing. I was calm as a rock.' She took off her cowboy boots and with a big sigh, lay back against the bar" (334). 

Good doesn't tell us who the other two people are, but right before that charming story of youth, Fromme ends her piece by telling us that Bill Vance "liked the rock n' roll of robbing with no pesky ideological attachments" (333). 

Bill, Ella, and who else? 

"It was the first time they had robbed." 

What happened the second time they robbed? Or the third? 

I feel like I went looking for a hooker and maybe found a revolutionary when I dove into Ella Jo Bailey on my search for money trails. It's possible Fromme and Good gave us a little more about Ella because Ella turned rat to dodge a forgery charge. Probably, in fact. But man, Ella's profile seems to match Mary's and Share's much more closely than say Sadie's imo. 

Or maybe I'm totally wrong and something else happened to make the main Manson girls go rogue with a lifelong criminal. Charlie might've actually been controlling their minds like people say. 

In the case of Ella Jo Bailey, some of the girls' minds he apparently controlled before he even met them. 

But that's how evil works, right? 

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thanks to Cielo Drive for keeping the research materials alive year after year. 

I Wanna Be A Cowboy

"I was sitting on George's steps when Cowboy Bill approached so I saw him from the ground up: scuffed cowboy boots, long legs, short hair. He was rough around the edges and looked older than he probably was, smiling down on me paternally like he already knew me. I was suspicious. Resting a boot on the stoop, he paused before going inside. 'I haven't seen George in years,' he told me. '...and, by the way, how's Charlie?' That cinced (sic) it. I figured him for a cop, but he lit a cigarette, and continued, "Charlie and I go way back. We were in the joint together down south. You know what we used to do in the hole?'" (Fromme, Kindle, 255). 

Bill Vance/William Cole (photo via Manson Blog) making the acquaintance of George Spahn before Lynette Fromme did isn't exactly topical to the MB faithful. In her informative article from May, 2020, Deb showed us two California driver's licenses for Vance/Cole. One was issued Nov. 2, 1965, and the other on September 8, 1969. Both show Spahn Movie Ranch as Bill's address. 

https://www.mansonblog.com/search/label/Bill%20Vance. 

If you're new to the study and haven't seen that article, make sure you read through the comments at the end. Manson Blog readers do a good job of aggregating the commonly cited sources and their opinions on who first found Spahn and Gresham. 

There's always so much love here. 

We also learn from Deb's article that Vance/Cole added a third driver's license using the name Dwayne Ernest Schwarm just eleven days after becoming William Cole on September 8, 1969. Dude was preparing to run. 

But let's go back to Fromme's Reflexion for a moment. Vance told her he hadn't "seen George in years" (255). That's an odd way to phrase things when your current driver's license identifies Spahn's as your home address but whatever. Two and a half years is years I suppose. 

It's interesting that Fromme lets us know he's a bullshitter without saying it in the paragraph she introduces him to us. Throughout the book, she never calls him anything other than Cowboy Bill. Not a single surname. 

And did you notice who told Bill about Charlie and company staying at the ranch, according to Fromme? Ruby Pearl (255). 

Most important here is that Deb's information verifies the author's. Which is an amazing thing in the world of Manson.  

Vance also tells Fromme that he did time with Charlie "down south" (255). Charlie saying that Vance was heavyweight boxing champ at Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee nine years in a row immediately popped into my mind, probably yours as well, but as Deb pointed out, Charlie was never in prison in Tennessee. 

He was, however, incarcerated in Virginia. Petersburg, to be exact. Twenty-five miles southeast of the state capitol in Richmond. 

What was Charlie thinking? Just three months past his seventeenth birthday and so close to free. His aunt was trying to spring him and the Man was considering it. But Charlie being Charlie fixed all that for himself, sadly. 

One short month before a parole hearing that might've freed him from a minimum security honor camp, Charlie was caught raping a boy at knifepoint. 

I'll spare you the condemnation I feel for a society that puts little boys in cages with bigger boys who have become feral dogs, and move things along to the location of Charlie's punishment and possible meeting place of Bill Vance in an attempt to keep myself from raging while I weep. 

Here's a little Wiki background because we all know Wikipedia never lies. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Correctional_Complex,_Petersburg

Charlie arrives at the Federal Reformatory Petersburg, Virginia, in January, 1952. 

The prison made a nice little book so families could forever memorialize the time their loved ones spent in the guiding arms of Uncle Sam. 

And also just in case you owned a factory or something and had an interest in not paying your employees, several photos were included to give you an idea of some options. Like for example if you were a manufacturer of giant shoelace fences. 

Finally, the clean-living and vitality of your potential slaves, apologies, employees, is proactively demonstrated. 

I have it on good authority that the guy with the jump rope was jump rope champ nine years in a row btw. A paperback book told me. Mary mack mack mack dressed in black black black. 

Did Charlie and Bill Vance meet down in Dixie like Bill told Lynette Fromme? And if so, was Petersburg the place? D.C. is the only other option, and most people say, "D.C." when talking about the area. Not "down south" (255). 

So yeah maybe. 

Side note: Amateur and professional genealogists in the group will surely recognize the Scots-Irish, Irish, English, and Welsh mix going on there in ole Bill. I'd bet a dollar if I was a betting man that his peeps came in through Virginia, built shacks in WVA hollers, fought natives across the Ohio, and spread westward with the great hillbilly mass of which I am part. 

Lurk on. 

IL Mezzano Part 1

August 9, 1956. 

Exactly thirteen years to the day before Leno and Rosemary LaBianca tragically met their ends over a little black book (possibly), and weird, angry girls mutilated corpses (surely), the following article appeared in The Long Beach Independent in Long Beach, California. 

At first, I thought that was two separate pieces until Mr. Lopez showed up in both. Terse title, confusing writing, even more confusing asterisks breaks, and a completely scary story. Whatever was going on was enough for local legislators to want to close the US/Mexico border every night. I don't know what your definition of big time is but that fits mine. 

While he is probably the most gangster of all the folks in this charming, mid-century tale of human trafficking, let's part from Mr. Lopez and move on to today's subject, Peter J. Dileo.

As you saw above, our man Pete was slapped with the Mann Act in early August of 1956. Readers of this blog know the Mann Act inside and out, but just in case someone is new, the Mann Act basically says you can't drive women around for the purpose of pimping them out. Later, language was added forbidding adults from doing the same thing with children. Progress. 

I'm decently sure I know Pete's backstory. War hero if I have the right guy. A hero depending on which side you were on, of course. Regardless, Pete's not hard to find if you go looking. I've been wrong on genealogy before and I don't want to hurt anyone's descendants who may stumble upon this in the future if my research is bad so I'm leaving all that out. 

Our story might start on a ship from Sicily before the long trip to the San Joaquin Valley in central California. He might've had a beautiful sister. And been in clubs at school. But at some point, Pete did federal time for being a pimp. 

By 1963, a completely reformed Pete was back in the mix and bartending in Sacramento, California, at a place called the Achilles Heel. He was possibly on his second wife. Pete liked them much younger, but was, as far as I can tell, staying off the radar. Imagine soft, harmless elevator music playing in the background as we bob along our sun-drenched timeline to 1967 and the arrival of Charlie, Mary, Patty, and author Lynette Fromme at Pete's front door. 

*I'm using the Kindle version of Fromme's Reflexion for my simplified citations. The number after the author's name refers to the page number. 

"Pete lived in middleclass (sic) suburbia, but had a full bar in his living room, and a big, shiny, well-equipped kitchen. He had grapes growing in his back yard, and lots of business visitors." (Fromme, 89) 

"Straight up, Pete was a high-end bartender and a professional pimp, unlike anyone I had ever met and a lot like gangsters in old movies." (Fromme, 89)

I found it interesting that Fromme chose the scene where she introduces Pete the Pimp for his first of four scenes to also present the Mann Act to us. 

"I didn't know what the Mann Act was, but the charges were on his (Charlie's) rap sheet. He explained that in his early twenties, while on parole, he'd taken the first job he could get. It was at a hot dog stand. Among the conditions of parole, he was not to associate with ex-felons. He said he didn't know anyone but ex-felons, and that the hot dog job put him to sleep. When an old-school con offered an alternative, he'd accepted training and went on to manage three women in L.A. who worked hotels and bars." (Fromme, 89)

Was "the old-school con" none other than Pete Delio, himself eleven years Charlie's senior AND a fellow Mann Act indictment recipient who listed a Hollywood home and work address at the time of his arrest? Did Fromme lump that stuff together by chance? 

"Later, Charlie told me that Pete was old fashioned, but meant well and had done him right in the past." (Fromme, 89)

Moreover, rumors have circulated for more than half a century that the witches were selling more than LSD in Mendocino. And like I mentioned before, Pete shows up in no less than four scenes throughout Fromme's well-written memoire. Why? 

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Author's note: I know lots of people say lots of things in their books and etc but I wanted to keep it simple and only study this text for this topic. I don't see Lynette on CNN or FOX or anywhere else shilling for something or pretending to be an expert on any other topic of the day, and that leads me to believe what she says about her life. One thing that bothers me about Bible scholarship, for example, is someone will say, "Oh, look. This and that happens here and if you look back to here in the Old Testament you will see the one thing supports the other." 

Not so much when nothing is verified. 

To that, I didn't want to say, "And erm okay over here in Lake's book she says Charlie took her and Brenda to turn tricks in a motel in Vegas so clearly that shows he was their pimp." I don't trust her. You don't trust her. What are we supposed to do with her words? 

I originally started research on prostitution in the time of sexual liberation in California for this article. But Pete's name kept popping up and I wondered if the author was "dry snitching" or even possibly trying to tell us a bit more than the codes of her world allow? What do you think?

Long time lurker. First time poster.