Michele Morgan

Michele Morgan, a French film actress, who was a leading lady for three decades, commissioned the house at 10050 Cielo Dr. We were introduced to Michele Morgan by AustinAnn in THIS POST.

During WWII. Upon the invasion of France in 1940 by the Germans, Morgan left for the United States and Hollywood where she was contracted to RKO Pictures. Her career there proved rather disappointing, apart from Joan of Paris opposite Paul Henreid in 1942, Higher and Higher opposite Frank Sinatra in 1943. She was tested and strongly considered for the female lead in Casablanca but RKO would not release her for the amount of money that Warner Bros. offered. Morgan did work for Warners in Passage to Marseille opposite Humphrey Bogart in 1944. Nothing major came her way.

Michele Morgan still lives and is 93 years of age. She has six grandchildren and ten great grand grandchildren.


George E. Smith's videos have been featured on this blog before. He has been a collector on Sharon Tate and Cielo Drive since 1972. He has  also taken many photos of the Cielo Drive property since 1975.

September 1975 President Ford Just Couldn't Catch A Break

We all know about the two well publicized assassination attempts on President Ford's life in September 1975.  Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore made national headlines for months, then and in the intervening years.  Did you know that there were two other assassination scares for Ford that month?  I am not certain what prompted all of these attempted attacks on Ford, the Vietnam war had been declared over in April 1975.

Squeaky's arrest on September 5, 1975 kicked off the public's knowledge of the attempts.  Fromme was duly tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.  She was granted parole July 2008 but had to serve a little extra time for her 1987 prison escape.  On August 14, 2009 she was released on parole.

Coincidently there had been another assassination planned on the very same day as Squeaky's attempt.  Gary Steven DeSure, 32, and Preston Michael Mayo, 24, were arrested Aug. 26, 1975 in Santa Barbara CA for stealing a television from a motel.  The day after that arrest DeSure told investigating officers about the assassination plot.  DeSure was an escaped patient from a Warm Springs MT mental hospital.  He had been committed there due to threats made against the President during a court appearance for forgery and credit card theft the previous year.

DeSure and Mayo's plans were to place a bomb in the sewer system near where the President was to speak.  When the bomb went off and every one was distracted Mayo would fire the kill shot at the President.  On March 1, 1976 DeSure and Mayo were sentenced in federal court.  DeSure was given a five year sentence and a recommendation of psychiatric help.  Mayo was given a six year sentence to be served at the federal prison in Lompoc CA.

On September 22, 1975 along came Sara Jane Moore, who in front of the St.Francis Hotel in San Francisco actually fired off a shot at President Ford.  She, too, was duly tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.  Like Squeaky, Sara also chalked up one prison escape.  Sara and another woman, Marlene Martino, escaped from Alderson Federal Prison the evening of February 5, 1979.  They were captured while hitchhiking a few hours after the escape.

On December 31, 2007 Sara Jane Moore was released from prison on parole.  She was 77 years old.

The assassination attempt of DeSure and Mayo did merit a couple of newspaper stories and it's probably not entirely foreign to the hard core Manson researchers.   This next story, however, did not generate any newspaper stories that I could find.  I was looking through declassified documents at the National Archives website when I found it. 

This document says that the release of Charles Manson from prison was the purpose for the assassination of not only Ford but also Emperor Hirohito who, along with his wife, was visiting in the United States and scheduled to attend a state dinner with President and Mrs. Ford on October 2, 1975.  The information was gathered by Canadian authorities on September 30, 1975 and disseminated to US authorities the next day.

A Slice of Charles Manson Cheese, Please!



Well, Charlie, that is something that just might happen, especially if that grilled cheese sammy was made with this cheese! 

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See? Head, hands and feet...

Haunting Charles Manson Trailer

Claire Watkins Wins Dylan Thomas Award

It has been a treat to follow Claire Vaye Watkins become a respected author who has been honored by her peers over the past year.  In March of this year Claire won the $10,000 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award and the $20,000 Story Prize Award.  Well, she has done it again!  On November 7 Claire bested six others, in the eyes of the judges, to win the prestigious Dylan Thomas Prize and $48,000.  Not bad for a girl from the desert whose father, Paul Watkins, was touted in the press as a major player in the "Manson Family".

Judges said she was an "exceptional" writer and described her collection Battleborn as "infectious".

The California-born 29-year-old was one of seven writers aged under 30 shortlisted for the prize.

The prize, based in Thomas's birthplace of Swansea, is one of the largest literary cash awards in the world.

Read the whole story-  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-24855534

Charles Manson Fan Club

In case you need a Manson T-shirt, Zippo Lighter or Hoodie.

charlesmansonfanclub.com

Hitler interviews Manson

Squeaky's Book

People wonder what happened to the book Squeaky wrote.  Here is an explanation given by Ed Sanders in an article that he wrote for Oui magazine March 1976.  Is it true?  Who knows, but it sounds plausible. 

" Squeaky kept busy completing a book about the Family that the Family had been writing for about three years.  The book wasn't just another paperback.  It included writings and illustrations by various Family members, and numerous photos.  Each page featured intricate drawings.  Squeaky wanted the whole thing printed in four colors.  About 600 pages long, the book would have been inordinately expensive to produce.  According to a lawyer who knows every aspect of the case, Squeaky sent the book to just about every published in America.  A number of editors apparently led Squeaky and Sandy on with promises, but always backed off in the end.  One problem was that the text was vague.  One Family man sent word to Squeaky to "make it more clear," but, like the Watergate White House, Squeaky knew full well the danger of clarity.  She remarked in a letter: "To make things clear is to lay them out for the Attorney General and his buddies."  And so another manuscript hit the closet."

The Charles Manson Juror Stare Down

This is an excerpt from an article written about the jury members after the Tate LaBianca trial was finished.  The juror mostly featured in the article is Jean Roseland.  The complete article was written by Robert Kistler for the Los Angeles Times and syndicated to other newspapers.  My copy of it is from the Saturday April 17, 1971 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle as is the picture.

It seems the Charlie amused himself during the trial by competing with individual jurors in a stare down.  This is Juror Roseland's description and feelings about that event.

"Well, today's my day with Charlie."  Jean Roseland laughed as she and the other jurors prepared to go to lunch.  During the past five months, it had become a standing joke among them, and this morning had been Mrs. Roseland's turn to try to stare down Manson.

"He has those eyes of his on me all morning," she said to a colleague.  "He just sat there staring at me."  The other juror smiled, then shrugged, and the group went to lunch.  In truth, this habit of Manson's wasn't that funny.  Frankly, Jean thought, it was unnerving and she wished he'd stop.

Later, after the trial was over, she would try to explain her uneasiness about Manson.  "I wasn't ever able to stare him down," she said.  "I always turned my eyes away first.  Some of the other jurors said they got him to look away once or twice, but I never managed it.  "I still don't know why I couldn't.  I certainly found no magnetism, or anything, in his eyes.  It was always the same blank expression, the same expression they all had in their eyes.  Maybe, it was the LSD and other drugs they had been taking for so long..."

Mrs. Roseland and the others never heard Manson speak, except for his periodic outbursts that usually got him removed from the courtroom.  She is convinced, however, that his apparent ability to manipulate others came not from within himself, but "from the voids within the minds and souls of his followers."

Preston Guillory's First Interview With the Freep

This is Preston Guillory's first interview with the Los Angeles Free Press. It was conducted shortly after he had been fired from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, Guillory had been assigned to the Malibu sub-station and participated in the August 1969 Spahn Ranch Raid.

Guillory's second interview with the Freep was included in the pdf that the newspaper put together with all of their Manson articles. I keep finding Manson related stuff that was omitted from that pdf and this article is one of those that had been omitted.