Rosemary LaBianca's Mother

Rosemary LaBianca was born Ruth Kathryn Elliott December 15, 1925 in Bisbee AZ to William Oyston Elliot and Emmabelle Elliott nee Rolf. William and Emmabelle married March 18, 1918 in Tucson AZ.

 

Emmabelle and William went on to have five children. On the 1930 census they were named Betty 11, Dorothy 5, Ruth 4, William 1. The fifth child was Francis, a boy born in 1932.  Betty’s birth name was Emma Belle, she went by Betty perhaps to distinguish her from her mother Emmabelle. There is only a birth certificate for the youngest child, Francis, who apparently died as an infant.

 

We know that Ruth was adopted and her name was changed to Rosemary Harmon. Her brother William was also adopted and he became William White. It looks like the two older girls eventually went back to live with their father.

 

So, why were Rosemary and her brother William put up for adoption?

 

We were given some documents that go a long way to explain why it happened. 

Link to Documents

Many thanks to Daniel Hale for the documents.

Leno LaBianca's Safe

 
This is hungry work.

Apologies to Hozier. A Super Bowl feast is cooking behind me while I type and I want all of it now. Thanks for letting me hang out with you today and also for my continuing education. 

- Let's also take a second to recognize the Col apologizing to Grim last week and Grim being all okay thanks we're cool. Tears flooded my eyes and I don't mean fake Sadie Mae Glutz ones. This bitter Manson world needs more of that. 

*Begins trashing others. 

Not really. I bring just a single question, a handful of photos, and several screen caps into the Colosseum today. Before we get started, let's give a quick shoutout to the almighty cielodrive.com for providing us with with both LaBianca Homicide Investigative Reports for our discussion.

#1

#2

Last week, I gleefully dove into a new rabbit hole hoping to land on a police document verifying the claim that an office safe at a Gateway Market store was wide open the morning after the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Neil Sanders adds the safe at Rosemary's dress shop to the list of opened safes. 

My gut feeling is all roads lead to Bill Nelson and the safes are nothing more than an often repeated opinion, but I'm wrong a lot and want to ask you blog readers. Do any of you have a police report that details open safes at LaBianca businesses the morning after their deaths? I failed in my quest to find one.

Being a rube scoot, I also learned Leno ran a second family company during the same search. This is from the 2nd report linked above. I broke the word salad into readable segments and fixed a couple of typos. 

Peter DeSantis, Leno's other brother-in-law, was interviewed and polygraphed at Parker Center. The polygraph exam indicated he had no guilty knowledge of the crime. 

DeSantis has been a lifelong friend of Leno and described him as "family." They worked together at the market for Leno's father in the '40's. Leno later ran the operation of State Wholesale Grocers, a second company owned by Leno's father. Smaldino, another brother-in-law, ran the Gateway Market chain. When Leno's father died the two companies were then managed by Leno, although they remained separate. 

DeSantis believed Smaldino resented Leno's being the boss as he, Smaldino, knew more about the business. Smaldino kept a constant check on Leno's activities in the business and Leno resented Smaldino's 'supervision.' 

Leno once commented to Norwood, when discussing how he was taking money from the company by writing checks, that he couldn't have done it when Smaldino was around because Smaldino checked him too closely. Leno's mother was the first to tell DeSantis about Leno taking money from the company. DeSantis claimed he was shocked, as the two had discussed ways to cut expenses to help the company. 

Leno told DeSantis in June 1969 that he was going to leave the company. DeSantis discussed Leno's future plans with him. Leno told DeSantis ha had no definite plans for employment. He mentioned going into an investment situation with three other men. Each man was to put up $25,000. The only man in the group that Leno mentioned was Bill O'Brien. 

After Leno's death, DeSantis learned he was planning to buy a ranch for $127,000 in Vista, California. DeSantis couldn't understand where Leno was to get the money to purchase the property, pay back the money he had borrowed from the company and go into the investment business. 

DeSantis is the regional head of a fraternal organization, The Sons of Italy. The region extends from Colorado to Hawaii. DeSantis refused the idea that the Mafia could have been responsible for the crime. He commented that if they had, he would probably have heard about it.

"Are you trying to get me killed?" - DeSantis

My brain wheezed into action. DeSantis is high up in the company. Is he the number two guy behind Leno? Why didn't DeSantis say anything about empty safes to investigators? If not him, who found the safe open and at which store? Which executive handled the matter with the police? 

And where is the police report? 

Off I went. The First Homicide Investigation Report misidentifies Rosemary's dress as a peignoir. 

That's a cropped photo of Rosemary. She's on her stomach and her dress and nightgown are pulled up over her head. Leslie destroyed her. The photo alone seems like it's enough to doom you forever if someone repeatedly shoves it into parole board folders prior to hearings. 

That's Manson in Emmons. Same source for the following. 

          Two quick takes from the above. Charlie hands Rosemary her dress for the sake of modesty, and Charlie declines Leno's offer of a trip to his store for more money. "All you want."

Common arguments against Emmons include Charlie split with the author when Emmons revealed too much, or when Emmons was outright lying. If what Charlie told Emmons is correct, he never considered removing Rosemary from the home. 

Three decades later, Author Neil Sanders -- in a book many call a ripoff of Schreck -- concludes Rosemary left with her hit squad because of the dress and where the boat was found. 

[Note: When Schreck's book arrives, I'll be back to compare the two. But for now, all I have in my library is Neil Sanders.]

Anyone with a link or recording of Charlie saying they took the LaBiancas to their stores that night, please send it along. More from Neil Sanders:

 

Let's check the source on that. From Bugliosi: 

Rosemary LaBianca was lying face down on the bedroom floor, parallel to the bed and dresser, in a large pool of blood. She was wearing a short pink nightgown and, over it, an expensive dress, blue with white horizontal stripes, which Suzanne would later identify as one of her mother’s favorites. Both nightgown and dress were bunched up over her head, so her back, buttocks, and legs were bare. Cline didn’t even try to count the stab wounds, there were so many. Her hands were not tied but, like Leno, she had a pillowcase over her head and a lamp cord was wrapped around her neck. The cord was attached to one of a pair of bedroom lamps, both of which had overturned. The tautness of the cord, plus a second pool of blood about two feet from the body, indicated that perhaps she had tried to crawl, pulling the lamps over while doing so.

Okay, cool. Bugs is about to mention the ride to Gateway and the dress shop, right? Let's keep reading. 

A second pink DOA slip was filled out, for Mrs. Rosemary LaBianca. Joe Dorgan had to tell Suzanne and Frank.

There was writing, in what appeared to be blood, in three places in the residence. High up on the north wall in the living room, above several paintings, were printed the words DEATH TO PIGS. On the south wall, to the left of the front door, even higher up, was the single word RISE. There were two words on the refrigerator door in the kitchen, the first of which was misspelled. They read HEALTER SKELTER.

Nope. 

The guy with the biggest book in the study never mentions a trip to Gateway. Why would Sanders include that info in his argument? Bugs never mentions it. 

I'm not a Bugliosi fan in any way. In fact, I'm the opposite. But it's worth mentioning the safes were not a part of the main discussion back in the 70's like they are today. 

Without a police report, what other empirical evidence exists that Rosemary wearing a dress, and a boat in the street, equals the Manson gang took Rosemary to her and Leno's businesses and left the safes open? And how is the evidence verified? 

The safes are enduringly fascinating. Proving it either way might mean a change on the mountaintop if someone is hungry enough. In the background, the argument has raged for more than a decade across Internet sites and in true crime books. Here's our Matt arguing with Starship on LSB so long ago. 

Matt said...

Starship, it wasn't just an article, and I don't believe that it's "bullshit."

Leno, at the time he met Rosemary was relatively wealthy and stood to inherit a great deal when his mother passed away.

While married to Leno, Rosemary is still sleeping with Frank Struthers and Reba Gage. After the murders, Frank Sr. tells police that Frank Jr will be coming into a large inheritance from his mother. Later, Frank Sr. accuses Suzan LaBerge of ripping off Frank Jr in his inheritance.

It is alleged that at the time Suzan had emptied out the house and, before the police could get to it, a safe at Gateway Markets and then threatened any of Leno's family members that got in her way. Some members of her family believe that Suzan had a hand in the murders.

While married to Leno, Rosemary seems to try a lot of get rich quick routes. She gets her real estate license, her insurance license, opens a dress shop, and eventually begins getting into real estate, stocks, and securities.

People assume that Leno's financial troubles were due to gambling. Others believe that Rosemary bled him dry by spending lavishly, buying a house that was beyond their means (Working Way) and eventually having him invest in real estate, stocks, and securities and forming dummy corps to hide their funds and avoid taxes.

While Leno's getting poorer, Rosemary may be getting richer and hiding the money from Leno in secret accounts.

To avoid financial ruin, Leno sells the house on Working Way at a large profit and buys the family home on Waverly. With that money he continues to make bad real estate investments - Myca Corp and a Riverside Parcel investment scam. And begins skimming off money from Gateway.

Leno misappropriated $200,000 from Gateway. They had a combined debt of $30,000 "their properties were extensively mortgaged."

In the meantime, Rosemary is moving out of her truck boutique and into a real store front - and possibly opened at least 2 others and co-owned (good friend) Lucy Larsen's Pet Shop.

These are not suppositions, Sunset. They are all in the police reports (the second one in particular).

Suzan LaBerge enters the narrative at some point as a safe robber if you're unaware. Not sure how she'd have the safe codes at Gateway but whatever. Outside of that, I don't have a ton for you. The safes have been talked to death. 

But I'm stubborn, and I'm trying to put a single fact into place here in the place where no sense makes sense. 

Might anyone have a police report? 

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

Bonus. When John and Leslie first locked eyes. 

The Labianca Murder House

Another Greg video. This time, the Labianca house on Waverly:

Frank Lynn Struthers Jr.

Frank Struthers Jr. and father cielodrive.com

Recently the blog was able to confirm that Frank Struthers, son of Rosemary LaBianca, has died.  Frank along with his half-sister Suzan and her boyfriend Joe Dorgan found his mother and step-father dead, victims of a brutal murder.  Frank was 16 years-old at the time.

Mary Neiswender reporting for the Long Beach Independent August 27, 1970 on Frank’s testimony at the trial.

Wednesday, Mrs. LaBianca’s 16-year-old son, Frank Lynn Struthers, a 10th grader at Marshall High School in Los Angeles, took the witness stand to describe how he discovered the body of his stepfather.

 “I went to Lake Isabella with some friends of the family, and my mother and stepfather came up to drop off our ski boat,” the youth related calmly.

 “They came back to pick up the boat and take it back Saturday, Aug. 9, 1969, and I intended to return with them, but the family I was staying with wanted me to stay with them an extra day.”

 The last time he saw his parents alive, he said, was when they left the recreation area with his sister, Susan, about 9 p.m. the night of the murders.

 “I left for home the next day…They (the family friends) dropped me off about 8 p.m. I noticed that the boat was still hitched to the car, but I opened the garage and put some of my gear away.

 “I went to the back door — we never used the front door — and I knocked, but nobody answered. I noticed the lights were off and the shades drawn, so I knocked on the den window and called but nobody answered.”

 The boy said he went to a nearby hamburger stand and telephoned the house, but received no answer. He then got in touch with his sister, who was living in an apartment. She arrived about 20 minutes later with a friend, Joe Dorgan, and the three went back to the house.

 “We got the keys out out of mom’s Thunderbird and opened the back door. We walked into the kitchen and turned on the lights. My sister stayed in the kitchen, and Joe and I walked through the dining room. When we got to the living room we saw Leno — my stepfather.

 “He was in a crouched position. We could tell right away…” the boy didn’t finish the sentence.

 “We turned around right away and headed out. Joe picked up the phone, but dropped it. We got in the car and went to a neighbor’s house to call police.”

 The youth, fought for composure as he identified his mother’s wallet, which police say they found in a service station rest room. Star prosecution witness Linda Kasabian testified she had placed the wallet there on instructions from Manson, who had taken it from the La Bianca home.

 Young Struthers also identified his mother’s watch and a “graduation picture of me” found in his mother’s wallet.

What a heavy load for a young boy to carry. 

Back in 1969 there were no such things as grief counselors or support groups to help someone navigate through the loss of a loved one.  There was certainly no one to speak to about losing a loved one to a brutal murder and having had discovered that murder.   A person was expected to suck it up, bury the emotion and get on with life.  It was doubly so for males. Females were given some leeway to at least cry about their loss but boys were taught not to cry back in those days, it was a sign of weakness.  There really was little in the way of an emotional outlet for grieving.

Not much is known about Frank’s life after his mother was murdered but considering his cause of death and the few things I was able to find about the last years of his life, Frank never recovered from his mother’s death and its aftermath.

Murders never consider the effect their act will have on their victim’s survivors.  They ruin more lives than the one they took.  Survivors are haunted by the images of the death, they have nightmares, they feel they should have been able to protect the victim, they feel helpless and powerless over their surroundings, they become preoccupied about their own safety and distrustful of strangers.  But perhaps the biggest emotion that they have to deal with is guilt.

I imagine Frank played over in his mind thousands of times a scenario where he came home with his mother and Leno instead of staying at the lake for another day of water skiing and hanging out with his friends.  Maybe he could have prevented the murders or at least gotten help right away.  Maybe they wouldn’t have died if he had been there.  Or conversely, maybe he would have been killed, too, and he wouldn’t have had to deal with the emotions he was feeling.

For Frank, his mother’s murder was never ending.  He was reminded of it over and over again.  Not a year has gone by since the murders that there hasn’t been a movie or a book or a television program or a news report or a new website about it.   

Frank’s death certificate, which I’m not going to post, states that he died at 63 years of age on June 16 2017.  He was never married and he had worked in the restaurant business for 20 years.  He lived in Placentia CA for the last 10 years.

Frank died at Placentia Linda Hospital.  The cause of death was 1. Acute respiratory failure (days) 2. Sepsis (days) 3.  Alcohol related liver cirrhosis (years)

He was cremated and his ashes were scattered off the coast of Orange County.

The informant for personal information on the death certificate was given by a cousin who lives back east.  A family tree at Ancestry gave his date of death but it got the year wrong.  It also shows that Frank had another half-sister besides Suzan.  The other, much older, half-sister had the same father as Frank.  She passed in 2013.

Rest in peace, Frank.

Approaching 3301 Waverly Drive

Recently I was reading the First Homicide Investigation Progress Reports for both the Cielo and Waverly Drives homicides and I got interested in the layouts of the crime scenes and what those layouts can tell us. 

I would take any opportunity to visit a location associated with a crime I am interested in, and all the more so to the precise locations where the crimes actually happened. But except for the place where Donald “Shorty” Shea was killed near Spahn’s Ranch in late August of 1969 I’ve never been to any of the pinpoint murder locations associated with TLB. (Of course, I’ve been outside all of the places.)

I first went up to the gate at Cielo Drive in 1978. Back then it was the same gate setup as was there on the night of the murders. You could look onto the property and see the corner of the garage. Sometime in the mid-’80s that puny security arrangement was replaced with something more substantial. 

In the early ’90s I was there again with some friends. One of them decided to see if we could get in, so he rang the buzzer. After a minute or so the gate (the big, new one) slowly opened and an attractive younger woman asked what we wanted. When my friend explained that I was a crime writer and wanted to see the property she was polite and friendly but turned down our entry request. 

Of course now there’s nothing to see on that property, its fate being well known. 

Aerial view of 10051 Cielo Drive in 1969

Google Maps view of the current Cielo property (Note the house on the hill to the left in both pictures.)

(I think that somebody should build an exact full-scale replica of the 1969 Cielo Drive property with everything — house, guest house, garage, pool, wishing well, lights on the fence — everything — so that students of the crime can go there and study it. Maybe in a cornfield in Iowa? Build it and they will come.)

The former LaBianca residence, on the other hand, is a different matter. The LaBianca property on Waverly Drive has likewise had a lot of work done to it, but the house, garage, and driveway areas remain largely unchanged. 

The LaBianca residence the morning after the murders there. The LaBianca’s boat is still on the trailer behind their car parked on the street to the west of the property. 

Google Maps view of the LaBianca house today

But a glance at these two above images makes it clear that much work has been done to the front and east side yards of the lot. In front a carport and additional driveway and parking area have been added. And to the east a swimming pool fills the area that used to be the side yard between the house and the property next door that was at one time occupied by Harold True.

There is general agreement regarding what happened immediately after the car from Spahn’s Ranch arrived at Waverly Drive late in the night of August 9-10, 1969: Charles Manson got out of the car and went up the curved driveway to Harold True’s house before cutting over west to the LaBianca house.This scenario is courtesy of star prosecution witness Linda Kasabian and is corroborated by Charles Manson himself. 

At the murder trial Kasabian recalled that after their car parked in front of the LaBianca house she asked Manson, “Charlie, you’re not going into that house, are you?”

“He said, ‘No, I’m going next door.’ 

“He got out of the car. He disappeared up the walkway, the driveway, leading towards Harold’s house, and I couldn’t follow him any longer, he just disappeared.”  (From Linda Kasabian’s trial testimony as recounted in Witness to Evil by George Bishop, page 165)

Manson agreed to this version of events in a telephone call to me in 1998:

“And I went to see Harold [True]. Harold wasn’t there, and I looked over and I seen a light over on the other side, and I walked over there and there was a little dog there. So I patted the dog on the head and I opened the door and there was a dude sitting on the couch. 

“And when I walked in, I said, ‘Oh, hey. Hi.’

“He said, ‘Hi.’

“I said, ‘I didn’t know anybody lived here.’ 

“He said, ‘Oh yeah, we moved in here last week,’ or something like that. ‘Da da da….’

“Tex was — he come in behind me. And me and guy got into a conversation, ‘Wah-wah-wah, roo-roo-roo,’ and I said, ‘Well, you know, I gotta go.’ 

“And then Tex moved in and started talking to him. And I walked on out.

“It didn’t have a fucking thing to do with me.”

Further along in her testimony Kasabian indirectly corroborates Manson’s version of what he did at the two Waverly Drive properties (i.e., check out Harold True’s house and then briefly enter and exit the LaBianca house before coming back to the car) when she was asked, “How long after he left the car did he return to the car?”

Kasabian answered, “I remember we all lit up cigarettes, and we smoked about three-quarters of a Pall Mall cigarette, however long that takes.” (Witness To Evil, page 165.)

That would probably take about five minutes, tops, just enough time for Manson to do what he said he did, but certainly not enough time for him to have done all the things that Charles "Tex" Watson later said he did inside the LaBianca house (got the drop on Leno LaBianca, reassured him, had Watson tie him up, asked about other people in the house, disappeared “for a minute or two” before bringing Rosemary LaBianca into the living room, conversed with the couple, waited with the couple while Watson looked around the house for money, took Rosemary LaBianca back into the bedroom, returned to the living room to bind, gag, and pillowcase Leno LaBianca, went back into the bedroom and did the same to Rosemary, and then finally left the house — See Will You Die For Me?, pages 147-148).

So, by examining a crime scene, even after almost fifty years, one can still gain new insights into what might have happened there. In this case, combining the evident walking distances involved and the time frame established by Linda Kasabian’s Pall Mall, a fair and reasonable person might come to the conclusion that Charles Manson was telling the truth about what he did after he arrived at Waverly Drive on August 9-10, 1969.

The LaBianca house from Helter Skelter

Closeup of side yards of the LaBianca and True houses, showing the side entrance area of the latter directly across the side yard from the east side of the LaBianca residence.

View of the LaBianca house from the east (True house) side

Diagram of the LaBianca house (courtesy of Cielodrive.com) 

This present day Google Maps view of the LaBianca and True residences shows that a small building has been constructed in the area that was formerly the western entrance to the True house. 

The former Polanski residence on Cielo Drive is long gone, but the LaBianca house and grounds have survived mostly intact. An examination of this latter property would no doubt prove very enlightening to any student of TLB. The MF Blog tried to gain access to the house as part of their 2016 tour but they were unable to do so. Maybe one solution would be to buy the house. Unfortunately, however, it’s not currently on the market. And in any case, it would take almost two million dollars to close the deal. 

Zillow listing for Waverly Drive house (The address was changed in an effort 

to detract from the notoriety of the house.)

I wonder what would be a better deal — buying the house or building an exact replica in Iowa?

Losing Sight Of Victims' Families

From past postings I have done, you can probably come to the conclusion that I am not a "fan" of Manson, Tex, Susan, Pat and the others. I am also not one who thinks of conspiracies when analyzing this tragic, horrendous case either. It doesn't matter what I or anyone else thinks anyway. Nothing we write on here is going to bring back any of the victims or make anyone feel better. With that being said, I think, over the years, as people continue to discuss, analyze & debate different aspects of this case, we have lost sight of the fact that the Manson Family killers/helpers/perpetrators (whatever you want to call them) not only stole the lives of the victims, but they completely devastated & ruined the families that were left behind. How did the families function when they had to plan funerals, clean & sort through their loved ones belongings, deal with estate/inheritance issues, lawsuits, and financial losses, including IRS bullshit all the while knowing their murdered loved one suffered in the most brutal of ways? The LaBianca family, for example, went through so much unnecessary estate problems, because of all the debts & issues with Leno's financial problems. Not to mention the greed that came out of the woodwork too! What about the Tate family? They had been extremely excited about the upcoming birth of the new baby and had been planning accordingly,  but instead had to endure a VERY PUBLIC funeral in place of welcoming a new member of their family. These are just two examples of what some of the families went through. It would take a whole book to mention all the others. The heartbreak & loss was unimaginable, I am sure. On top of the severe depression & devastating loss, these people had no privacy to mourn in peace. Their loved ones were not only butchered, but then they were BLAMED for their own deaths. This is the stuff of nightmares. These people really, truly lived it and I, for one do not know how they survived. We've all probably seen this show, but watch how Patti Tate explained to Maury Povich how horrible it was the morning they found out about Sharon's murder:

Now that the 46 year anniversary of these horrible crimes has happened, I would like to just let our readers know that I hope we can continue respectful discussions over this case without losing sight of the victims and the victims' families that were left behind. We will not ever forget what this is about, which is the incredible, brutal loss of MANY lives......

Frank Struthers Jr-Rosemary LaBianca's son

 Suzan Struthers-Rosemary LaBianca's daughter

Jay Sebring's sister

Steven Parent's mother & father + sister

Abigail Folger's brother & sister

Wojiciech Frykowski family

Tate Family & Roman Polanski

Shorty Shea's wife

Kay Hinman Martley-Gary Hinman's cousin

The Sylmar Standard Station And Rosemary LaBianca's Wallet

"Charlie gave Linda Kasabian the woman's wallet and told her to put it in the bathroom in the gas station and leave it there, hoping that somebody would find it and use the credit cards and thus be identified with the murders…."  Helter Skelter, page 245 (1975 paperback edition)

"Charles Koenig, an attendant at the Standard service station at 12881 Ensenada Boulevard in Sylmar, was cleaning the women's rest room when he noticed that the toilet was running. Lifting the lid off the tank, he found, on top of the mechanism, damp but above the waterline, a woman's wallet. He'd checked the driver's license and credit cards, saw the name "Rosemary LaBianca," and immediately called LAPD."  Helter Skelter, page 255 

"After driving for a long time, [Manson] pulled off the freeway and stopped at a nearby service station. Apparently having changed his mind, Manson now told Linda to put the wallet in the women's rest room. Linda did, only she hid it too well, lifting the top off the toilet tank and placing it over the bulb, where it would remain undiscovered for four months.

"I asked Linda if she could remember anything distinctive about the station. She remembered there was a restaurant next door and that it "seemed to radiate the color orange."

"There was a Denny's Restaurant next to the Standard station in Sylmar, with a large orange sign.

"While LInda was in the rest room, Manson went to the restaurant, returning with four milk shakes.

"Probably at the same time the LaBiancas were being murdered, the man who had ordered their deaths was sipping a milk shake."  Helter Skelter, page 365

Visiting a location related to a crime serves more than just to satisfy morbid curiosity. It can also give the careful observer insights which lead to possible understandings of what really happened at that location. Such was the case recently when I made a visit to the Standard gas station in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Sylmar where Rosemary LaBianca's wallet was discovered in the tank of the toilet in the women's room on December 10, 1969.

I've often wondered about that Standard station, and if Manson really thought he was in a black neighborhood when the car stopped there, and whether he really had Linda Kasabian plant Rosemary's wallet so that a black person would find it, use the credit cards within, and thus be implicated in the LaBianca murders. I didn't know that there were any black neighborhoods that far out in the San Fernando Valley (farther north even than Spahn's Ranch).The prosecution later said that Manson thought they were in Pacoima, a neighborhood about four miles southeast of Sylmar off Interstate 5 that was a predominantly black neighborhood in 1969. I wondered if a person would reasonably mistake the two areas. 

But I ran into a bit of trouble when it came to tracking down the Standard gas station. In Helter Skelter Vincent Bugliosi gave its address as 12881 Ensenada Boulevard in Sylmar. But according to both Google Maps and my most recent (1990) Thomas Guide of Los Angeles County, no such street existed. 

Left dangling with the thought that the street had been obliterated by urban renewal since 1969 I was surprised to learn from Deb that she and Matt had visited the station on the 2013 Manson Blog Tour.  She referred to it as a "Chevron station."  A little research revealed that Standard Oil of California changed its name to Chevron in 2013. So I googled "Chevron Station Sylmar" and Voila! Up came the street view image of a gas station, but one located at 12881 Encinitas Boulevard, not Ensenada. (Is this an honest mistake in Helter Skelter, or is it an example of more intentional misinformation from the Bug? In The Family Ed Sanders calls the street Encinatus Boulevard.). And as I looked at the Google drive-by image and rotated the scene I saw, next door to the gas station, a Denny's Restaurant. 

Looking at the location on the map I was even more surprised to realize that I already had a personal history with this particular gas station since it is the one I walked to to use a pay phone and call a tow truck to pick up my VW bug after it had blown a generator pulley at the southbound Roxford Street exit during my move from Death Valley to L.A. in 1983. More intrigued than ever, I decided to check the location out the next time I went to the area. That happened in mid-July of this year. 

The first thing I wondered about was whether someone really would have thought they were in Pacoima as opposed to having some other reason for pulling over at that exit. I came to a conclusion on that point fairly quickly.

As I drove north on Interstate 5 in the direction from the LaBianca residence in Loz Feliz to Sylmar (it's a 20 mile drive that would probably take about 25 minutes during late night hours) it became apparent that there were no obvious places where someone would pull off the freeway if they were looking for something like a gas station. Even today accessible businesses like gas stations and restaurants are pretty sparse until you get all the way to Sylmar. The distance between Pacoima and the gas station exit in Sylmar is about four miles, with exits in between that you could pull off if you thought you had passed Pacoima. In this area of the freeway the exits spill out into areas with many buildings such as for small businesses or residences. In other words, they spill out into "neighborhoods."

I wondered if the Sylmar Standard station had the appearance of being in a black neighborhood, if someone would think they were in one if they were there. 

But although Sylmar is a neighborhood, the station isn't located in anything like a neighborhood at all. It is barely off the freeway, and there is nothing around it that even resembles a residential area. Today in the surrounding blocks there are some apartment buildings, but they are obviously of post-1969 vintage. Likewise, the McDonald's and Mobil gas station are clearly newcomers. I stayed in the area for a while, taking pictures and getting the feel of the layout. While my female assistant went into the women's room and took photos of the current toilet (amazingly still a tank model!) I went to Denny's to check out the interior. As a cover for my presence inside the restaurant I ordered a milk shake. The interior had likely been redone since 1969, but it was clearly an older building. The clerk didn't know how long it had been there. (The gas station building, although long since remodeled into a gas station/food mart-type enterprise, was of a basic style consistent with it being the same structure that was there in 1969.)

The whole area had no feel of any kind of "neighborhood." It had the feel of a remote service area right off the freeway.

Above: The Standard/Chevron station at the Sylmar exit off Interstate 5

Below: Another view of the station showing the close proximity of the freeway behind it

The current women's restroom toilet

Rosemary LaBianca's wallet (courtesy of Cielodrive.com)

Above and below: Two pictures showing the relationship of the gas station 

to the neighboring Denny's Restaurant

Above: Inside Denny's 

Below: The receipt for my milk shake

When I asked Charles Manson for his version of the gas station/wallet incident he told me that he knew the station wasn't in a black neighborhood and that he told Linda Kasabian to get rid of the wallet once he realized it was in the car not because he intended it as a false clue but because it was "hot."

Thus, as to the trajectory of Rosemary LaBianca's wallet on the night of August 9-10, 1969, here is what I think could have happened:

After Manson departed the LaBianca house he was joined at the car on Waverly Drive by Charles Watson, who had left the LaBiancas briefly alone and subdued in the house. (Both Manson and Leslie Van Houten have memories of Watson returning to the car.) At the car, Watson passed Rosemary LaBianca's wallet to his partner in love and crime, Linda Kasabian, who kept it concealed as she, Manson, Susan Atkins, and Steve Grogan drove off.

After a night of cruising around Greater Los Angeles (and with more to go), it was time to fuel up Johnny Swartz's 1959 Ford. In those days gas stations were not as prevalent as they are today, and the Standard/Denny's complex would have been remarkable. Because of Manson's awareness it's possible that he already knew about the station and predetermined it as a destination. 

At the station it's possible that Linda Kasabian produced the wallet when time came to make the gas purchase and Manson became aware of its presence and asked her where she got it. When she told him he told her to get rid of the "hot" wallet by placing it in the toilet tank in the women's restroom.

The gas station was picked because it was the only one for miles around, not because Charles Manson thought it was in a black neighborhood. Nobody would think that it was in any kind of neighborhood because the gas station/restaurant was (and to a great extent still is) a remote, standalone complex. The wallet was ditched in the ladies' room because it was "hot," not because it was intended as a false clue.

The Missing Link, Part Penultimate

Parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series can be found here, here and here.

Blogger Cybot asked, "did drug trade start by hippies and then go to the organized crime, or were drugs traded by o. c./mafia from the beginning? - and when did the trade start?" Patty was thinking about his questions the other night while watching the Ken Burns documentary on prohibition. Was that when organized crime started in the US? Of course not.

From the very minute folks got off the Mayflower, they started forming alliances just like they do on Survivor. Even before that, the natives likely did the same. Those who are the most organized, have the most resources, make the best alliances, always win. Those who overstep the boundaries created by the dominant group are marginalized and punished. When one season is over, another rises to take its place. This is the way the world has worked since the very beginning.

We are interested in a very short capsule of time when studying the murders, which might be described as the proverbial "perfect storm." We know that up north, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (BEL) had deals with the Panthers, with the Gypsy Jokers and also with the Angels (see here). To the south, the mob had been in Hollywood for quite some time, but were not really involved in the trade of psychedelics. If anything, they were supplying cocaine, but not on the scale that they later would. In the summer of 69, there was a market for psychedelics, and there were many competing parties who wished to be the fulfillment arm of the BEL drug empire.

The BEL began as a group of high school students in Anaheim. You will remember that John Griggs, founder of the BEL, hadn't tried LSD until he and his friends dropped acid near Palm Springs. Griggs relieved a "famous producer" of his cache of Sandoz LSD during a Hollywood Hills dinner party in 1966. That experience was the birth of his organization, which he preferred to call a church rather than an organized crime syndicate.

By all reports, Griggs was well intentioned about using LSD to the betterment of humanity. The BEL lobbied to become an official, tax-free religious organization: when it was accomplished, he named California Governor Ronald Reagan as an honorary member!

Anyway, Patty digresses. The point of all off this is that the identity of the producer who had a kick ass, laboratory grade connection and who did not prosecute Griggs may be relevant. Who and what the famous producer actually produced is unknown. Patty has compiled a short list of guesses, as follows:

Bob Evans was very close friends with Roman and Sharon and had produced Rosemary's Baby.  He hosted a large, lavish funeral reception for Sharon. Bob was an infamous partier who, with his brother Charles, was convicted of cocaine trafficking in 1980.

Clive Davis was general manager of Columbia Records by 1965. He is responsible for signing Janis Joplin after the Monterrey Pop Festival of 1967, and for bringing the Grateful Dead to the Arista Label in the 70's. Bob Weir would occasionally change the lyrics of Jack Straw in concert from "we used to play for silver, now we play for life," to "we used to play for silver, now we play for Clive."

Terry Melcher and Bruce Johnston formed the vocal duet Bruce & Terry in the early '60s. Later, Johnston joined The Beach Boys and Melcher went to work with the Byrds for Columbia Records. There, he produced  "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" Melcher also performed on Pet Sounds as a background vocalist and was a producer of the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967.

Chuck Barris, of all people, is a weirdly compelling shortlister. Wait a sec, hear Patty out before you start L'ing YAO. Chuck Barris married Lyn Levy, whose father founded CBS, in 1957. He first became uber-successful during 1965 with his creation of The Dating Game on ABC. He also produced the Canadian-based Bobby Vinton variety show and infamously claims to have worked for the CIA.
Brian Wilson would be the most expeditious and direct choice for the "famous producer" in question. The Beach Boys were signed to Capitol Records in 1962. They released their groundbreaking single "Good Vibrations" and album Pet Sounds in 1966. According to many sources, brother Dennis was a hub around which many relevant relationships centered. The Neil Young connection is said to have been through Dennis. Bryan Lukashevsky knew Dennis, too. Strangely, Lukashevsky (who now lives in Honolulu) told Brian Davis in March, 2012 that one day soon, the time will be right for the real story to come out. He did not elaborate on why that is. 

Is it safe to say now that everybody absolutely did know everybody else on the scene in 1969? How to the LaBiancas fit in to all of this?

According to police investigation reports, Leno was part-owner of nine thoroughbred horses. He liked to make large bets at the track, frequented Las Vegas as late as March, 1969 and had misappropriated about $200,000 from his Gateway Markets since 1964. When he met and married Rosemary, she was a waitress at the Los Feliz Inn. At the time of her death, she had two dress shops: one having just been opened on Figueroa Street in LA. This is not a nice area. In fact, it is within yards of noisy Interstate 5 which runs from Mexico, where Rosemary was born, all the way to Canada.

Leno was a board member at the Hollywood National Bank. It is long gone, but it used to sit a block south of Hollywood and Vine at Argyle. Today, this is next to the Pantages Theater and within view of the Capitol Records Building (see left). According to an article at TOTLB, Hollywood National opened to much applomb in 1964 with appearances by celebrities and government officials. Wouldn't you just love to know which ones? Patty sure would. She would also love to see Hollywood National's books, or at least a copy of the local and federal investigations into them. By 1967, Leno's colleagues were being investigated and convicted for laundering "hoodlum money." By 1971, the bank was bought out by United States National Bank of Portland; by 1973, it became a part of Wells Fargo.

The BEL's ability to produce Orange Sunshine was financed by Billy Hitchcock, a richie rich from the East Coast who rented Millbrook in 1963 so that Tim Leary, et. al. could perform their "research" there in peace. He was a member of the Carnegie Mellon family on his mother's side: "old money" they call it, with ties to huge companies like Gulf Oil, Alcoa, New York Shipbuilding, Westinghouse, Newsweek, U.S. Steel and General Motors.

He had large deposits at The Castle Bank & Trust, an infamous Bahamanian bank founded in the 1960s by a former member of the US Office of Strategic Services and a tax lawyer friend. In 1967, the bank's clients were celebrities, organized crime figures and wealthy business owners like Hitchcock, Credence Clearwater Revival, Tony Curtis, Hugh Hefner, the Pritzker family (Hyatt Hotels), and Las Vegas gangster Moe Dalitz.The Mary Carter Paint Company, one of the the bank's shell companies, later became Resorts International which built a luxury hotel in the Bahamas called Paradise Island. President Richard Nixon stayed there on many occasions. Castle Bank contributed quite a bit of money to his re-election campaign, as discovered by the Ervin Committee in 1972.

In 1968, Hitchcock purchased land just north of one of his homes in Sausalito, then put Nick Sand and Tim Scully on retainer. Shortly thereafter, Hitchcock and Owsley hired a New York law firm called Rabinowitz, Boudin and Standard to look into the possibility of legally producing LSD and hash in the Bahamas. Soon thereafter, the IRS' "Operation Tradewinds" revealed that Castle Bank was involved in tax evasion. It was also covertly funneling funds for CIA military operations including the anti-Castro maneuvers at Andros Island.

By this time many investors including Billy Hitchcock had moved their funds elsewhere. The IRS planned to initiate a new investigation called Project Haven into the affairs of individual Castle Bank clients like Billy's college chum, Sam Clapp. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, the investigation was dropped because of "pressure from the CIA." Castle Bank collapsed in 1977 leaving poor John Fogerty and many others in the lurch. You can draw your own conclusions about that. In any case, Patty would love to find a connection between Hollywood National and The Castle Bank or any of its shell companies, and she is still looking into it.

Phew...that was a lot. Are you still with Patty? Let's sit on that for a while. She promises the next post will be the last in this series.  Happy New Year, and PEACE.