My Interface With The Manson Family, by Sue Marshall: Part 2 of 3

The Yellow Submarine House

The following day, a group of us Freep staffers drove to the West Valley in two cars. Since I lived in East Hollywood, in the opposite direction, I drove alone in my battered yellow Ford Falcon.  Paul, Shirley, and Judie lived in Reseda, in the same general direction as the Family.  The rendezvous point was the one-story ranch-style house the Family called the Yellow Submarine.[1]

The vivid detail that sticks in my memory was an antique (or imitation antique) sign on the front porch reading:  Doctor Sigafoos, Diseases of the Colon and Rectum.[2]

We were greeted by two of the men.  I believe one was "Clem," Steve Grogan.  The other may have been Bruce Davis or Dennis Rice.  These guys reminded me of weasels or ferrets.  They were thin and dirty, with the wise-ass demeanor of jailbirds. The young women were summoned from the back of the house.  We all sat in the living room on regular chairs and sofas.  I do not recall the décor in detail, but it lacked the ornate arrangements of India prints, temple bells, candles, incense, and psychedelic posters that were the hallmark of good hippie housekeeping in that era.

I stared at the girls.  Squeaky Lyn was a redhead. Gypsy had very black hair.  Sandy Good was a blonde.  They all wore the same odd hair style:  cut short at  ear length, with a few strands left long at one side of their faces. Ed Sanders would learn later that Manson had ordered his female followers to submit to a ritual tonsure, with the harvested hair woven into a vest that was presented to Charlie. [3]

One of the men, again I think it was Clem, began to hold forth:

The police had it in for Charlie. Why, a cop could sit in a topless bar in Van Nuys all evening and still not succeed in getting laid.  Wouldn't it make him want to nail Charlie, who was surrounded by pretty girls who were happy to do his bidding?

As if on cue, the girls assumed insincere smiles. There was something creepy about the scene.

But here we were, in the West Valley, a district that would become the epicenter of the loathsome L.A. porn industry.  This was early in the progress of the women's liberation movement, but I was struck by the subservience and robot-like sexuality that the Manson girls were enacting.  I had observed this vibe before around the West Hollywood groupie scene, from the young women who gravitated to rock bands.  I had already come to the conclusion that all rock musicians were assholes. So what we were witnessing was, thus far, par for the course.

The Spahn Ranch

With this preliminary indoctrination accomplished, our caravan left for the Spahn Ranch.

The Santa Susana Hills look like the backdrop of every old Western movie you've seen.

When I was a child in L.A. in the 1950s, there was no Ronald Reagan Freeway to expedite the trip between the northwest San Fernando Valley and Ventura. High above Simi Valley, a road passed along the eventual freeway route and crossed Santa Susana Pass.  It is here I would feel a great excitement, for my family would only be here if we were headed for Corriganville.

Movie stuntman Crash Corrigan had developed a small theme park and tourist trap amid his movie set in Chatsworth.  There was a fake old-West town, with false-front buildings, raised plank sidewalks, hitching posts for horses, and a rustic one-room jail, complete with barred windows. Actors would simulate gunfights for the delight of the children.  We had been raised on Western movies and TV.

At Corriganville, the surrounding hills, dotted with massive granite boulders and yucca, set the stage for those Westerns. When I was in Corriganville I was in paradise.

When our party arrived at the Spahn Ranch, I had a moment of the same giddy excitement. By some measures, at age 18 I was still a kid. I looked around at the desert hillsides, at the movie-set Western town.  The Spahn Ranch movie set was smaller than Corriganville, but it looked very similar, and the two sites were not far away from each other.

I had come to the Spahn Ranch expecting a hippie commune, perhaps with noir overtones.  But what I saw was HORSES!

To my surprise, I saw that the young women of the extended Manson family were seriously engaged in the work of renting out horses for trail rides. They were running a business there[4].  I fought a strong impulse to run to the rental corral, mount up, and explore the desert hills on horseback.  Or at least go pet the horses.

But I was a professional.  I was there to do a job. I had come to interview subjects for a news article.  Would I get the by-line?[5]  I was new on the job and eager to prove my ability.

Glancing around the movie ranch, I saw Ruby Pearl, the old cowgirl who was George Spahn's sidekick.  She emerged onto the back porch of the main house. Her orange hair was pinned up in braids around her head. She looked bemused at the scene all around her.  She must have been seeing strangers  everywhere invading her home, hippies outnumbering the horse rental customers.  And now a new group had arrived from the Freep. We were not introduced to her. She must have perceived us merely as more hippies.  She held a pan of grain.  The chickens strutted, clucking, up to the back porch where she stood.  Ruby Pearl tossed out the feed.

In the yard we were greeted by Sandy Good, holding her infant son. She told us his name was Ivan, or Elf.  She smiled and said that his father was Bobby Beausoleil.

The wind blew. We followed the Mansonites into one of the fake-western buildings. I think it was the General Store. We found seats.  A fine layer of gritty dust covered everything, as you would expect at a desert horse ranch where not a lot of cleaning was done. One hanger-on was a teenage girl, from some suburban home, incongruously dressed in clean white pants.  And she still had all her long hair.  I concluded that she must be a very recent recruit.

Gypsy took up her guitar and soulfully sang Cease to Exist, the song Manson had almost succeeded in selling to the Beach Boys.[6]

I have no recollection of whatever desultory conversation we had that afternoon.  No food or drink was served and no joints were passed. It was like many a hippie commune, without any money to speak of, and with little attention paid to household cleanliness or personal hygiene.  Perhaps the Mansonites were trying to convince us of how normal they were.

The hour grew late, and we departed at dusk.

Footnotes:

[1] According to research by Ed Sanders, the address of this house was on Gresham Street in Canoga Park.  He says the Mansonites were evicted shortly after our visit and that the house has been demolished since the events recounted here.

[2] Although I don’t recall the exact name of the purported physician, it wasn’t really “Sigafoos”.

[3] Don’t you wonder where this artifact might be today?

[4] Manson had negotiated accommodations for his entourage from elderly George Spahn;  the deal was that the girls would manage the rent string and the horse rental business. Squeaky was assigned to provide oral sex to keep George contented. Her Family name was derived from the sounds she emitted when the old gentleman felt her up, according to Ed Sanders.

[5] As I recall, it was Paul, as managing editor, who got the by-line. He seemed taken in by Clem’s rationale for the LAPD aversion to Manson. In the weeks that followed, I did not care much that I was not assigned to write an article about the Family. Now, in my maturity, I am very relieved.  I would not have been able to publish any sentiments that the Family would have found satisfactory. Who knows what might have resulted?

[6] According to the story, the Beach Boys had insisted in making revisions to the lyrics, including changing the title to Cease to Resist. This move toward marketability was unacceptable to Manson.

My Interface With The Manson Family, by Sue Marshall: Part 1 of 3

This series comes exclusively to Eviliz.com from Sue Marshall, a writer who lives in California. Sue will be monitoring the blog for the next few days to field your questions.

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At the time the Manson Family perpetrated the Tate-LaBianca murders, I had just graduated from Santa Monica High School.  Shortly thereafter I began  writing on a freelance basis for the Los Angeles Free Press, a tabloid weekly that provided sensational coverage of the counterculture, to much acclaim.

In November 1969, I was hired by the Freep as a staff writer. I began to cover the antiwar movement. Later, I would be named "military editor." To my amazement, I was soon receiving a lot of mail from soldiers in Vietnam who would prefer to be anywhere else.  My journalistic focus inclined toward covering serious news about the peace movement, social justice, and women's liberation.

Around the same time, mid-October 1969, Manson and some of the Family members were arrested at the Barker Ranch in the Panamint Mountains, now within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park.  Charges filed included auto theft and arson. It took the police authorities a few weeks to figure out who to arrest for the Tate-LaBianca murders, as well as those of Gary Hinman and Shorty Shea.


Gary Hinman

Coincidentally, I was acquainted with Manson Family victim Gary Hinman.

In the spring of 1968, as a high school junior, I met a young man named Gabriel, a musician, who recruited me to come to a Buddhist meeting. Thus I discovered the Pacific Palisades chapter of the Nicherin Shoshu Sokagakki, the Buddhist cult that chants "Nam Myho Renge Kyo" and conducts a vigorous proselytization effort. Being curious, bored, and interested in meeting young men, I joined up.

In August 1968, the sect held a convention in Honolulu. Seizing this  opportunity to have a little adventure, I had saved my earnings from a summer job and flew to Hawaii with the group.  There I met Gary Hinman.

Hinman seemed much older and wiser than the rest of us. He must have been in his early 30's. He was not very tall, of thin build, with straight brown hair of medium length and a brown beard.  He smiled and did not talk much.  He wrote his address and phone number in my little red book.  I could have gone to visit him at his house in Topanga Canyon, later to be the scene of his demise.  But I never called him. Could Gary's open and welcoming nature have eased the way for Manson and his followers to have access to him?  I suspect so.


A Visit from Sandy Good, Squeaky Lyn, and Gypsy

By December 1969, the police had arrested most or all of the Manson Family members who had been involved in the string of murders.  I was still very new in my job as a reporter when the Freep office was visited by a trio who would later become infamous in their own right.

At that time, the Free Press office was located on the north side of Beverly Boulevard, one block east of La Brea, across from CBS Television City. Because of earlier bomb threats from anti-Castro Cubans, the door between the lobby and the offices was controlled with an electric latch.  Before anyone could enter, receptionist Dee would have to buzz them in.

It was in this dim lobby, with bright sunbeams filtering through the glass door, that Sandy Good, "Squeaky" Lynette Fromme, and "Gypsy" (Catherine Share) introduced themselves to me and my neighbor, Michael.  They were carrying a stack of vinyl records: Charlie Manson's original songs performed by the Family, with Gypsy playing acoustic guitar.  The appearance of the cover art made it obvious that this was not a product of the slick record companies.  It was a blurry black-and-white version of the Life magazine cover photo of Manson with his trademark stare. The only title, in block letters, was the word "LIE," in an attempt to mimic the magazine logo.

My neighbor Michael immediately produced the five dollars that the young women were asking for their record.  If I had bought one from them then, it would be probably worth ten thousand dollars today.  But I probably didn't have five dollars in my pocket, and the Manson Family trio were activating my weirdness radar.

Soon we were joined by managing editor Paul and advertising administrator Shirley. They were very intrigued by our visitors.


We listened to the spiel:

Charlie, they said, had been targeted by the LAPD because he was having a good time with his Family.  He never did anything criminal, they said.  Everyone was innocent.  It was Us versus the Man. The Pigs were scapegoating hippies because they needed to solve these murders.

All this sounded plausible.  We made an appointment to meet the Family at their stronghold.

Rare Mugs of Al Springer and Larry Bailey

Thanks, Ole JC!

Happy Easter

Claire Vaye Watkins Becomes "Story Prize" Winner

 

 YAY! for Claire!!!  It is so nice to see that Claire is getting recognition for her excellent book "Battleborn". 

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/story-prize-winner-2013-_n_2871693.html?utm_hp_ref=books

Answer on the Misty Hay Q&A

From Ole J.C.

Regarding the March 21 post about Misty Hay (this one), I believe we have the answer (or at least a picture):

Click on link for Misty

http://iam.bradleymanning.org/post/7504965623

Manson "Attorney" Jailed as a Fraud

Remember Giovanni di Stefano the attorney who was going to get Charles Manson cleared of all charges in the World Court?  Well, it seems that di Stefano himself was a conman too, just like Charlie, and not an attorney at all.  He has been convicted of fraud and money laundering in the UK and received a 14 year sentence.  Many thanks to a loyal Eviliz lurker for this story!



Read the story here- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21969624

Eviliz's previous post on di Stefano
http://www.eviliz.com/2011/05/giovanni-di-stefano-asks-governor-jerry.html

Manson's Home on the Range by Gay Talese Part 1

One of the perks of being Eviliz iz people shower me with love, praise and misc Manson paraphernalia. Don't get the wrong idea, I always have room for more.  ; )~

Quite some time ago I received a book titled True Crime An American Anthology -  350 Years of Brilliant Crime About Dark Deeds- Editor Harold Schechter.

I worked like a slave in the Blizzard of 2013 typing this up for you all.  Now show your appreciation and buy an Eviliz t-shirt.  Or else.

Public fascination with Manson and his "Family" was reflected in an outpouring of writing about every facet of the case, including this 1970 Esquire magazine piece Charles Manson's Home on the Range by Gay Talese.

Charles Manson's Home on the Range                                  

The horse wrangler, tall and ruggedly handsome, placed his hands on the hips of a pretty girl wearing white bell-bottomed trousers and casually lifted her onto a hitching post near the stable; then, voluntarily, almost automatically, she spread her legs and he stood between her, moving slowly from side to side and up and down, stroking her long blonde hair while her arms and fingers caressed his  back, not quick or eagerly but quite passively, indolently a mood harmonious with his own.  They continued their slow erotic slumber for several moments under the mid-morning sun, swaying silently and looking without expression into one another's eyes, seeming totally unaware of their own lack of privacy and the smell of horse manure near their feet (gag) and the thousands of flies buzzing around them and the automobile that had just come down the dusty road and is now parked, motor idling, with a man inside calling through an open window to where the wrangler stood between the girl.  He slowly turned his head toward the car but did not withdraw from the girl.  He was about six feet four and wore a bone like ornament around his neck, and he had a long angular face with sandy beard and pale sharply focused blue eyes.  He did not seem perturbed by the stranger in the automobile; he assumed he was probably a reporter or detective, both having come in great numbers recently to this ranch in Southern California to speak with the proprietor, an old man named George Spahn, about a group of violent hippies that had lived on the ranch for a year but were not believed to have all moved away.  Spahn was not reluctant to talk about them, the wrangler knew, even though Spahn had never seen them, the old man being blind; so when the man in the car asked for George Spahn, a little smile formed on the wranglers face, knowing but enigmatic, and he pointed toward a shack at the end of a row of dilapidated empty wooden buildings.  Then, as the car pulled away, he again began his slow movements with the girl delicately balanced on the hitching post.

Spahn's ranch is lost in desert brush and rocky hills, but it is not so much a ranch as it is the old Western movie set it once was. The row of empty buildings extending along the dirt road toward Spahn's shack – decaying structures with faded signs marking them as a saloon, a barber shop, a café, a jail, and a carriage house- all were constructed many years ago as Hollywood settings for cowboy brawls and Indian ambushes, and among the many actors who performed in them, or in front of them, were Tom Mix and Johnny Mack Brown, Hoot Gibson, Wallace Beery, and The Cisco Kid. In the carriage house is a coach that supposedly was used by Grace Kelly in High Noon, and scattered here and there, and slept in by the stray dogs and cats that run wild on this land, are old wagons and other props used in scenes in Duel in The Sun, The Lone Ranger television series and Bonanza. Around the street set, on the edge of the clearing near the trees, are smaller broken-down shacks lived in by wranglers or itinerants who drift to this place periodically and work briefly at some odd job and then disappear. There is an atmosphere of impermanence and neglect about the place, unwashed windows, the rotting wood, the hauling truck parts on inclines because there batteries are low and need the momentum of a downhill start; and yet there is much that is natural and appealing about the place, not the ranch area itself, but the land in back of where the old man lives, being thick with trees and berry bushes and dipping toward a small creek and rising again toward the rocky foothills of the Santa Susanna Mountains. There are a few caves in the mountains that have been used from time to time as shelters by shy vagrants, and in the last few years hippies have sometimes been seen along the rocky ridges strumming guitars and singing songs. Now the whole area is quiet and still, though it is only twenty miles North West of Beverly Hills, it is possible from certain heights to look for miles in any direction without seeing any sign of modern life.

Spahn came to this region in the Nineteen-Thirties (when men were men and sheep were nervous) in the first great migration of the automobile age, a time when it was said to be a dream of every Midwestern Model T salesman to move to sunny Southern California and live in a bungalow with a banana plant in the front yard.  Except George Spahn had no such dream, nor was he a Midwestern Model T salesman.  He was a fairly successful dairy farmer from Pennsylvania with a passion for horses, preferring them to cars and to most of the people he knew.  The fact that his father had been kicked to death by a horse, an accident that occurred in 1891 when the elder Spahn was delivering slaughter livestock in a horse drawn wagon near Philadelphia, did not install in the son any fear of that animal; in fact, Spahn quit school after the third grade to work behind a horse on a milk wagon, and his close association with horses was to continue through the rest of his life, bring interrupted by choice only once.  That was during his sixteenth year when, temporarily tired of rising at 3 a.m. for his daily milk route, he accepted a job as a carpenter's apprentice, living in the carpenter's home and becoming in time seduced by the carpenter's lusty nineteen-year-old daughter.  She would entice him into the woods beyond the house on afternoons when her father was away, or into her bedroom at night after her father had gone to sleep; and even, one day, observing through her window two dogs copulating in the yard, she was suddenly overcome with desire and pulled Spahn to the floor on top of her-all this happening when he was sixteen, in 1906, a first sexual relationship that he can remember vividly and wistfully, even now at the age of eighty-one.

Though never handsome, Spahn was a strong solidly built man in his youth with a plain yet personable manner.  He had a hot temper at times, but he was never lazy.  When he was in his middle twenties his milk business in Willow Grove Pennsylvania, was large enough for him to operate five wagons and seven horses; and one of the men who he employed, more out of kindness than anything else, was his stepfather Tom Reah, who he had once despised. Spahn could never understand what his strict German-Irish mother had even seen in Reah, a rawboned man with a large belly, who, when drunk, could be vicious.  When in this condition Reah would sometimes assault young Spahn, beating him badly; although later Spahn fought back, once swearing at Reah: "You son of a bitch, I'm gonna kill you some day!”  On another occasion he threw an ice ax at Reah's head, (damnnn, all I had to do was dodge a spatula every now and then) missing by inches.

Before Spahn was thirty he had obtained an eighty-six-acre farm near Lansdale Pennsylvania, on which he kept thirty-five cows, several horses and a lady housekeeper he had hired after placing an advertisement in a local newspaper.  She had previously been married to a racing-car driver, who had been killed leaving her with one child.  Spahn found her congenial and able, if not reminiscent of the carpenter's daughter; and at some later date that Spahn cannot remember. They were married.  While it would not be an entirely happy or lasting marriage, they would remain together long enough to have ten children, nearly all of whom would be named after Spahn's horses.  He named his first daughter, Alice, after a yellow-white pinto he had once owned; and his second daughter, Georgiana, was named in honor of a gelding called George.  His third daughter Mary was named after a big bay mare; and when Spahn had a son, he named him George after himself and the aforementioned gelding.  Next came Dolly, after a big sorrel mare; and Paul, after a freckled pinto; and so on down the line.

During the early Thirties, in the Depression, Spahn contemplated moving west.  Animal feed was scare in Pennsylvania, the milk was frequently spoiled by the inadequate refrigeration system on his farm, and he was becoming disenchanted with life in general.  In an advertisement circulated by the Union Pacific Railroad, he had read about the virtues of Southern California, its predictable mild climate, its lack of rain in the summertime, its abundant feed for animals, and he was tempted.  He first came along by train to see Southern California for himself; then, satisfied, he returned home.  He sold his farm and packed his family, his furniture, his horse collars in a Packard sedan and a truck, and he shipped his best horses separately by rail.  He began the long voyage across the continent.  He would not regret his decision.

¿Dónde está Juan?

This is a simple question: What the hell happened to Juan Flynn? He wasn't technically a "Manson Family" member, yet he lived with them, partied with them, screwed them, ate with them, smelled them, helped them with errands, etc., and was a pretty familiar face. Funny, but I haven't seen any recent photos of him surface on the net (which is good for him, but bad for us). Listen, I don't blame the guy for not wanting to be exposed. There are probably bucket-loads of freaks out there that would start harassing him, just because! I do hope he is doing well, and will close with a clip of him answering a few questions. Adios amigos!!!

Video credit to itnsource.com

Gray Wolf was arrested with Family members as far back as 1970

Correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't Gray Wolf (Craig Hammond) said that he has only been affiliated with Manson for about 12 years?

OK, here's the video that gave me that impression. Pay close attention starting at about 2:20