Was Charlie at Cielo the night before?

Terry Melcher

A number of sources do suggest that very thing:

 Death to Pigs, by Hendrickson pg501    Bugliosi interview by Merrick.

Bugliosi: "I'm the one that put Manson inside the gates of the Tate residence. I put him in there, not on the night of the murders, but a couple of nights earlier."

Manson's Right Hand Man Speaks Out by Charles "Tex" Watson, c.2001  pg43

It's believed that Manson was at the house looking for Terry the night before the murders and was  offended by the new occupants.

 LINK     Grimtraveller said:      "Back in 2005 on Col Scott's site, someone called GLH said that he'd spoken with Tex the month before and this is what Tex had told him "Manson had been to Cielo the night BEFORE the murders". I debated that with him, saying I'd heard that Manson had been there in March '69. He stood firm on his claim that Manson was there on August 7th (in the evening). ...and Manson was agitated the next day"

 

LINK     Jay Sebring’s business partner Jim Markham:

"I believe Manson had gone up to the house” — Polanski was away shooting a movie — “and Manson wanted to sell cocaine and marijuana,” he says. “He showed Jay and Wojciech the product. They were going to buy some of it, but the two of them beat him up at the gate. The next night, Manson sent the Family up [to kill them].”

 

Beausoleil: "He(Charlie) had been over near his [Melcher's] house and, as he said, he checked out the wires, telephone wires and the electric gates and exits from that property."

 

Wait...  wasn't Charlie down in San Diego County on that date, bringing Stephanie Schram down to her sister's house in Jamul and having dinner there, and then sleeping on the lawn of the residence of one of Stephanie's friends?  Well, that is what Bugliosi claimed.  But what was that based on? 

Not Charlie.  He admitted going down to Jamul but didn't put a date on it.  

Not Schram.  She couldn't remember the date:

Helter Skelter, pg368 

"Stephanie was a bit vague when it came to dates. She "thought" the day they returned to Spahn Ranch was Friday, August 8, but she wasn't sure."

 

Not that traffic ticket Charlie got from the Highway Patrol near Oceanside on the way down.  It's never been made public.

Not Stephanie Schram's sister, identified only as "Mrs. Hartman," who allegedly claimed that Charlie told her that "people were going to be slaughtered, they'll be lying on their lawns dead."    Her interview was never released.

Not Stephanie's 'friends' in San Diego on whose lawn Manson and Schram allegedly slept on, the night of Aug 7 to the morning of Aug 8.   There's no evidence they were ever identified.

Though of course Schram never said anything about Charlie stopping by Cielo Dr. in the time she was with him, from her meeting him near Esalen to when they allegedly returned to Spahn, "arriving there about two in the afternoon" on Aug 8, in Bugliosi's version.  

But Schram claimed it was Aug 5 when she first came to Spahn with Charlie.  They had dinner there, and then in the evening drove off the ranch, but only for a couple of blocks before Charlie pulled over and they slept in the bakery truck that night.  The next day, which would have been Aug 6 if Schram is right, they drove down to San Diego, spent the night, returning to Los Angeles on what would have been Aug 7.  Note that during his trial Tex claimed he saw Charlie at Spahn the next morning, on Aug 8.  There are now enough gaps in the timeline to make a trip to Cielo the night before very possible.

So why didn't Bugliosi use evidence of this alleged visit by Charlie up to Cielo the night before, at the trial?  It would have been very incriminating to Charlie, whether the visit was to do a drug deal with Voytek, as per Markham, or to do a reconnaissance, as per Beausoleil.   The only realistic scenario is that Bugliosi could not have entered this evidence without revealing the source, which might refer to the house being under surveillance before the murders, as Doris Tate claimed.

 

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Bugliosi apparently based his Jamul timeline solely on the traffic ticket issued by the CHP near Oceanside. From Helter Skelter, pg367-8:

"Manson... drove to San Diego... to pick up Stephanie's clothes.
Enroute, about ten miles south of Oceanside on Interstate 5, they were stopped by California Highway Patrol officer Richard C. Willis. .... The date was Thursday, August 7, 1969; the time 6:15P.M. The ticket, which (LAPD Sgt.)Patchett and (LAPD Sgt.)Gutierrez found, proved Manson was in Southern California the day before the Tate murders."


Bugliosi is quite explicit on the time and date of the ticket. Yet he only implies--but does not explicitly state--that this was on the way to San Diego(in the southbound lanes of I-5), but what if it was while on their way back from San Diego(in the northbound lanes of I-5)? That would allow Charlie to make it to LA in time for an evening trip to Cielo Dr. the day before the murders.

 

 

 

 Is this why CHP officer Willis became unavailable to be interviewed?

 

 

Charlie: "...ask him why the District Attorney moved the Highway Patrolman to the east coast, along with the traffic ticket...."

 

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 --The evening of the 7th of August, 1969, the four occupants of the Cielo house--Sharon, Jay, Gibby, and Voytek--are over at Sebring's house, located at 9810 Easton Dr. in Beverly Hills, watching a movie on cable TV and having dinner when the wires going into the house are allegedly cut, messing with the lights and interrupting the cable signal. Leading to the conclusion that this was an aborted murder attempt on the house's occupants, presumably by the same cast of characters that would finish the job the next night at Cielo Dr.

Listening to the recorded interview with the butler, the only time mentioned is 11pm, when the group finishes their dinner. Thus they probably would have arrived at the Sebring house that night between 9-10pm. This timeline is roughly consistent with Manson's alleged trip up to Cielo Dr., with a subsequent angry or even violent encounter with Jay and Voy as per the account of Markham, at around 8:30 to 9:30pm on Aug 7.

Jay Sebring's Cut Wires    Video                 


In Helter Skelter, Bugliosi implied the immediate precipitater to TLB was Charlie's anger for being snubbed by the audience at Esalen several days before. But the idea of Charlie being slapped around or disrespected at Cielo, just hours before a first murder attempt at Sebring's house, is a far more realistic proposition, IMO.



So what did Charlie do? Did he race back to Spahn, quickly gather up a kill posse, and then race over to Easton Dr. to do the dirty deed, somehow knowing Jay's location and address, only to be stymied by some complicated wiring?

Or did Charlie hang around Cielo, following them in their vehicle as they left the Cielo house, all the way to Easton Dr. a mile to the north? Did he then launch a plan to mess with their minds by cutting some of the wiring on their house? This would explain why none of the other family members ever mentioned this foray to Jay's house the night before. They didn't know about it. And if Schram was told to stay in the bread truck while Charlie walked up to the Sebring house, all she would know is that Charlie parked on some dark residential street somewhere and that Charlie walked off and didn't return for about half an hour.

Bugliosi claimed that Manson slapped Schram after being snubbed by the Esalen audience. Schram claims Charlie slapped her for messing up the chance to get a free meal, even before they went to Esalen. I speculate that was just a cover for Charlie slapping Schram after he was dissed by the Cielo residents, and before the wires were cut. Manson was so angry he couldn't control himself. IMO only!

 

 

 

 =====================

 

 

 To reiterate, there was plenty of hard evidence to establish an accurate timeline in the week before the murder:


--The credit card slips used at the four gas stations where Charlie got gas on the way to and from Esalen.

Aaron Stovitz to Rolling Stone
DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY AARON STOVITZ: You see, Manson has an alibi right up until August 7th, 'cause he met this girl, and he, uh, drove with her from Big Sur all the way down to Oceanside. And they made gas purchases on these stolen credit cards all the way down the line.

Helter Skelter, pg366-8
Aug 3 - "...sometime between seven and eight(am)(Manson) purchased gas at a station in Canoga Park, using a stolen credit card.
"On August 4, Manson, still using a stolen credit card, purchased gas at Lucia. ... he did it again the next day."
"...Manson left Big Sur on August 6, making gas purchases the same day at San Luis Obispo and Chatsworth..."

[And presumably any credit card slips on any gas purchases made on the way to and from San Diego.]


--The front desk register at Esalen, and any witnesses to Charlie's presence there.

--The people who encountered Charlie and Stephanie in San Diego. Meaning Schram's sister and the people at the house where they spent the night

--The CHP ticket given to Charlie near Oceanside.


Plenty of evidence, but all of it has been kept from the public eye! So there was definitely a cover-up going on. The only reason for this has to be that none of it is in accord with Bugliosi's own timeline.

Ruth Ann Moorehouse and Edward "Ted" Heuvelhorst

 

We were aware that in 1968 Ruth Ann Moorehouse married Edward Heuvelhorst so she could be an emancipated minor and not need to answer to her parents and she would no longer be a minor in the eyes of the law. Ruth Ann was 16 years old and Edward was 23 years old.

The story of their marriage as I understood it was that Ruth Ann married Edward and left him at the altar. It was a marriage of convenience for Ruth Ann but not necessarily for Edward. The two were married May 20th 1968 in Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz County, California. It has been said that she hitchhiked back down to Los Angeles and to the Family the same day she married, leaving Edward behind.

Who was Edward Heuvelhorst?

Searching through records I was surprised at the couple of things I found about Edward. Edward Lewis Heuvelhorst, Jr. went by the nickname of Ted, nobody called him Edward. He was born in Michigan and grew up in Holland Michigan according to his obituary. Holland Michigan is where Ella Jo Bailey was from, she was about a year and a half younger than Ted. However, I was not able to find Ted in any high school yearbooks for schools in Holland.

Ted’s mother, Mary Heuvelhorst, taught school in Holland MI beginning in the 1950’s but his father lived in Grand Rapids MI. I surmise that Ted’s parents were separated or divorced. BTW Ted’s mother’s maiden name was Good but I didn’t find a connection to Sandy Good.

Edward Lewis “Ted” Heuvelhorst Jr., is a distinctive and unusual name. The only other person with that name in the US according to Ancestry .com was his father with Sr. as a suffix. I found Ted in the 1962 and 1963 Ottawa Hills High School, Grand Rapids Michigan, yearbooks for his sophomore and junior years. Then I found Ted in a 1964 Menlo-Atherton High School yearbook. That high school is located in Atherton CA and today it is one of the wealthiest zip codes in the US. It was a very ritzy area back in the 1960’s too.

I was not able to learn why Ted came to California for his senior year of high school. Ted did stay in California after graduating from high school. I found a city directory listing for him living in Palo Alto and working for a construction company.

The next thing I found on Ted was a mention of his name in an April 26, 1968 article from the Ukiah Daily Journal in Mendocino County. The article was about some hippies putting on festival at the fairgrounds in Ukiah, naming it the 1^st Annual Calvin Coolidge Day Fair. I have no idea why that name, I couldn’t find that the April 27^th date had any connection to Coolidge. Ted was mentioned because he was shoved by someone standing in the fairgrounds office and he went to the police department to report it.

Hmmm, Mendocino County, Brooks Poston was mentioned in an ad taken out by one of the followers of Jim Jones extolling the reverend’s virtues that was published May 5, 1968. Rev. Jones made a deal with Brooks that if Brooks would get his hair cut, Jones would attend a non-violent peace march with Brooks.

 

Deane Moorehouse was in Mendocino during that time frame, too. And towards the end of May 1968 or early June 1968 five of the Manson Family girls rented a house in Philo, up the road from Boonville, just over the hill from Ukiah. It’s possible that Ruth Ann met Ted in Mendocino County.

It does not appear that Ted ever remarried or had any children.

Charlie and the Yogi

 In a Manson interview at Vacaville in 1985 with KALX-FM, affiliated with the University of California system,  Charlie said he was a student of yoga master Paramahansa Yogananda in the '40s and '50s

"I went to all the retreats. I've seen the light."

 

 

 

Some quotes from the yogi indicate his teachings may have been the source of some of Charlie's own beliefs:

"Remember that your children are not your own..."

"You are originally unlimited and perfect."

"The secret ... is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future... but to live in the present moment..."

"The delusion of egoism must be destroyed..."

"Death is really beautiful.."

If Manson was attending the retreats in Southern California, when could this have been? It would have been when Charlie was running free in SoCal, from about August of '55 to February of '56 (7 months), and again from Oct of '58 to about Dec of '59 (14 months).  The fact that Manson 'went to all the retreats' indicates he was an enthusiastic disciple--at least for a time.  In the same way he was an enthusiastic student of Scientology and an enthusiastic student of the guitar.

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

LVH was also a student of the yogi. From Helter Skelter, pg545: 

"[Leslie's boyfriend Bobby] Mackey, in the meantime, had become a novitiate priest in the Self Realization Fellowship[the Yogi's church]. In an attempt to continue their relationship, Leslie became a novitiate nun, giving up both drugs and sex. She lasted about eight months before breaking with both Mackey and the yoga group."

Did Leslie's previous studies at the ashram make her more vulnerable to Charlie's own programming?

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

But if Charlie was an adherent of the Yogi, why did none of the Family speak of it? Why didn't Charlie show up at any of the 3-4 retreats/dwellings/ashrams where the faithful gathered in SoCal, trying to secure housing for his brood in '68-'69?  The way he did at Hinman's house, the basement house, the hog farm, Dennis Wilson's house, the FOTW, Spahns, and Barker.

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What is it about Southern California, cults, and young loves?

When they call  California "the land of the fruits and the nuts," they are not always referring to the state's bounteous agricultural output.  Certain themes appear over and over.

Maharishi and Me

That every official in L.A. was not dazzled by the swami seems apparent from a series of articles that appeared in the Times in 1928. “Cult To Be Subject of New Inquiry,” announced one. It stated that although the district attorney’s office some months before had looked into the practices at the Mt. Washington center and had found “nothing criminal,” another investigation was being launched “to establish if any juvenile laws are being violated....” A few days later, a longer article alluded to “accusations that a love-cult is being conducted under the cloak of the Vedantic religion of India” and elaborated, “The interest of the District Attorney’s office in the asserted love-cult activity is said to be centered on whether young girls were included in the various classes in which love and sex theories are declared to be unfolded.”

Benedict Canyon - Walking up Cielo Drive August 8, 2024

 

Bobby Beausoleil Interview

Blog reader Andrew sent me a recent interview with Bobby Beausoleil. The interview was originally recorded back in January 2024 and aired on the Hamilton Morris Podcast Patreon website. It since has been distributed to the usual podcast outlets and to YouTube.

Hamilton Morris is known as a journalist and scientific researcher. He was the creator and director of Hamilton's Pharmapoceia where he explored various mind altering drugs. The programs were distributed by Vice TV. Morris is well educated.

In this interview Beausoleil discusses his part in the murder of Gary Hinman, his opinion of Charles Manson and he offers a motive for the TLB murders.

There is an overview at the beginning of the podcast that's interspursed with a number of commercials. The interview starts in earnest at the 14:28 mark.

Thanks Andrew! 

Cleaning up some missing pages from the Spahn Ranch raid reports

photo from Cielodrive.com

There is not a lot that is inspiring happening in the Manson-sphere these days. So, it might be a good time to post some pages that were missing from previous posts about the Spahn Ranch Raid and have been found. 

There was  post on a report from Sgt. Gleason dated August 4, 1969, though it's being sneaky and the original post can't be found. It was a three page report with the second page missing. The missing page has been located so, the report makes more sense now. 

There was also an August 11, 1969 report written to Chief John Knox with the first three of fifteen pages missing. That original post can be found here.

A new 54 page pdf with documents related to the raid has been created with the missing pages put in the appropriate places. Included in the pdf is the warrant. 

Spahn Ranch Raid and Warrant file.

Linda Kasabian July 1971 Interview

The July 24, 1971 edition of The Montreal Star, (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) carried an interview with Linda Kasabian. The reporter went through a lot of trouble to find Linda as noted by the editor of the Weekend Magazine, a once a week feature of the newspaper.

Vincent Bugliosi tended to keep a tight rein on Linda, Gypsy Share and Barbara Hoyt by controlling the narrative that they could discuss with reporters. The reporter, Bill Trent, somehow slipped by Bugliosi and Linda's efforts to ward off the press and their questions. To Linda's credit, at least in Bugliosi's eyes, she revealed very little of her time with the Family. She talks briefly about Manson. There is only one incidence of her vaguely alluding to her feelings about the Family. 

The "Old Man" now plots the course of her life

By Bill Trent Weekend Magazine

 "There is internal revolution ahead. Chaos in the world. Then final rebellion..."

Linda Kasabian, speed-freak turned Jesus-freak, is speaking and her words sound harsh in this old, low-beamed 19th century room that once was a chicken house.

But, she claims, Jesus is within her and The Old Man is up there somewhere, plotting the course of her life like an ethereal navigator.

The Old Man is God. Why Old Man? Because He's the oldest being in the universe. She doesn't use the term in a derogatory sense.

"Children will rise against their parents and parents will kill their children..."

It is a warm, sunny day and the windows are open, letting in the sound the birds and the smell of New Hampshire lilacs. She pauses to absorb the sounds and scents.

A "wonderful" woman who lives in the adjoining house has given her the refurbished apartment in the old chicken house. It's a place in the woods off a secondary highway, far, she hopes, from the glare of publicity.

It doesn't bother the woman that her tenant was once charged in connection with one of the most bizarre series of murders in the history of the United States.

On Aug. 9, 1969, movie actress Sharon Tate and Steven Parent, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring and Voicyk Frokowski were murdered in a weird ritual in the star's Hollywood home. The following night, Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife were murdered in the same way. In all cases, the victims were stabbed repeatedly and in both homes the word "PIG" was written on the walls in blood.

Six people were charged with the murders- and Linda was one of them. The others were a bearded wild-eyed cult leader named Charles Manson, and Charles "Tex" Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie van Houten.

Of the six, Linda was the lucky one. She gave state's evidence and her murder charge was finally dropped. Manson and the three other girls were tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. They are now on death row at San Quentin. Watson, first declared insane, awaits trial in Los Angeles.

"There is so much pain and sorrow in the world," Linda says. "How can anybody be happy seeing other people suffer?"

It's hard to believe the words coming from this very pretty girl with the long sandy hair. She sits curled up in an antique chair with the sun on her face. It accents the paleness of the face.

"This kingdom must be destroyed and peace must come..."

Linda is 22 but in her blue jeans and barefooted, she looks almost child-like. And when she talks of Jesus, there is kind of a childish excitement in her voice. Jesus, she says, has come to her and lives inside of her.

She once thought that Charles Manson was the Messiah. She and the other girls charged in the Sharon Tate and LaBianca murders lived with him as members of his commune family on an abandoned movie ranch in California's Death Valley.

Some of the things that Manson said out on the desert seemed to Linda to be "pure truth". He generated love and she returned his love. To Linda, it was the second coming of Christ.

She no longer considers Manson to be the Messiah. Christ, she says, will come to the world one day but he won't be a California cult leader. He will be someone beautiful.

"Maybe he will come in a great white cloud. He will be seen by all the people in the world. Then evil will be eliminated from the earth."

Her husband, Bob Kasabian, enters the room. He has black silky hair down to his shoulders. He wears overalls that don't cover the top of his underwear. He wears no shoes. He sits on a chair and strums gently on his guitar.

"Christ will come soon." Linda says. "Perhaps in my lifetime. Certainly in my children's."

She has two children, a three-year old girl names Tonya and a one-year old son, Nathan, whom according to her own evidence in court, may have been fathered by any one of five men, including Charles Manson. She later said she thought Nathan was actually Kasabian's boy. "I saw my husband in my child's face when he was born," she related at the time.

"The Old Man has been watching me all along," she says. "He charted my course. He put me on the drug route and let me make my own decisions about things. But it was all part of a divine plan."

She speaks with disturbing matter-of-factness. What happened and what is ahead is all a matter of pre-ordainment.

"Drugs, free love, the whole hippie bit... You see I had to make the entire hippie trip."

A condition of our interview is that I won't ask her to discuss her past, particularly where it concerns the trial.

But in the quiet of the room, she reminisces without any prodding from me.

"We lived in an old slum apartment in Biddeford, Maine. Our first house was on a hill near a grocery store. There was a Catholic parochial school there and I used to go through their garbage cans and pick out roses they had thrown out..."

Linda's father at the time was a construction worker named Rosaire Drouin, whose parents had gone to Maine from Quebec.

"My mother and father fought a lot. My first recollection of childhood was sitting on a couch crying... My father finally left the house for good after we had moved to New Hampshire. My mother insisted he buy me some shoes before he left and he refused. But as he went out he slipped some pennies into my hand..."

She remembers her father driving around to the house to see her later. He aways had another woman in the car and Linda instinctively hated her.

"My mother and I grew close... She'd fix my banana curls and dress me in a pinafore and take me around showing me off to everybody...

"My father used to beat her on the behind as she stooped over the washing machine... But my stepfather was worse. Hiis name was Byrd and he had children of his own and he was always telling my mother how much better his kids were...

"I screamed at my stepfather one day, I said, "You hate me don't you?' He said, "Yeah, I hate you all right.' And I flipped. I just flipped..."

Linda remembers getting shipped off, during family arguments, to grandparents who lived in the country and kept horses.

"I always loved animals but I grew to like them more than people. I still do. Animals accept you as you are. They don't care what you've done before... They take you at face value, as you are right now...

"I talked to my grandparents' horses and I still talk to horses... It's not really talking. Do you know what I mean? It's communicating. You can communicate a lot without using words...

"I had this thing about all animals. I wanted to free all the dogs I saw chained up. I wanted to open up the cages at the zoo...

I kiss dogs. Did you know that dogs have the cleanest, most antiseptic mouths of any animals?

"In a sense, I suppose, I made love to animals..."

Linda recalls her school days with mixed feelings. She completed her elementary education and took a year of high school in Milford, the quiet little New Hampshire town in which she grew up. She was cheer leader in sixth grade and became her school's best athlete.

"We used to go down to the river and strip. There were boys and girls and we'd all roll around in the sand and feed the ducks and have a ball...

"But there was this kid, Larry, with the big bug eyes... He liked me and I guessed I like him, too. But we wouldn't let him come down to the river with us and this made him mad and one day he went to our teacher and then there was trouble...

"Then one day a girl I knew called me a dirty little river girl... But the boys liked me. Maybe because they thought of me as a river girl... None of those boys ever made it with me, though, and that damaged their egos..."

She remembers her disenchantment with the church:

"They told me God was a king. They told me about hellfire and damnation. The nuns told me after communion the non-Catholics went to hell. And I rebelled..."

At 16, she left her Milford home and went to Miami where she took her first drug.

"I was with this boy and we ran out of cigarettes and he gave me some marijuana... I didn't know what it was. But I liked the sensation. It was like walking on air. I wanted more..."

Linda travelled a lot after that- Boston, New York, California, Arizona, New Mexico. And she tried most of the drugs.

"I took acid one night in Boston. It wasn't a good trip...But one day in New York I got some fantastic acid. It wasn't the ordinary stuff you get. This was some pure pharmaceutical stuff...

"We were in this small apartment. The Rolling Stones were blaring away on the turntable. All of a sudden everyone was quiet. No one talked. And there was this marvelous silent kind of communication. I could feel it there in the room. It was like when I talked to horses. It's hard to describe unless you've had the experience..."

In 1967, Linda married Bob Kasabian and went west looking for a farm. They didn't find the farm but they came across a guru who moved in with them. It was the beginning of an experience.

"Bob thinks he's the first hippie to come out of his home town, Lawrence, Massachusetts. I think I was the first person who turned on in Milford... Anyway, the guru taught us how to sit and meditate. I started to get into myself. I began thinking of God. It was the opening of the door to the kingdom for me..."

Then things went wrong between Linda and Bob and they separated. Later he suggested a reunion and a trip to South America. Linda met him in California only to find he had changed his mind. There was another argument and another split. Then Linda ran into a girl with a tremendous idea. She knew a ranch in the desert where people could really communicate. It was run by a man named Manson.

There are no reminders of California in the Kasabians’ New Hampshire house. She never wants to see California again. But on the wall, there is a picture of a woman with some sheep. She is a Navajo. Linda clipped the picture out of the National Geographic magazine when she was in jail and pinned it to the wall of her cell.

“I’m still up-tight,” she says. “I blow up sometimes…”

She has blown up a number of times with newspaper reporters. She dislikes the press because she thinks it gave her a bad time during the trial.

But I have asked her if she has a message for young people on drugs, or contemplating going on thm, and she thinks the request is a valid one.

“Drug are a death trip… Mentally, physically and spiritually, they are destructive. I know. I’ve done the trip.”

Bob interrupts. “Don’t take the drug route,” he says, “Be A Jesus-freak.”

Linda suddenly remembers something:

“There was this beautiful little filly named Amber. She used to come across that meadow and sit in my lap and that was better than any acid trip I ever took…”

“We talk a lot about freedom,” Bob says. “Well, if freedom means being able to smoke hash in front of a cop, it’s not worth too much.”

“Freedom is a union with that man,” Linda says. She points to a picture of Jesus above the mattress that serves as their bed.

“She was a speed-freak,” Bob says.

“If I had taken it much longer, I would have been destroyed,” Linda cuts in.

She quit speed (amphetamines) when she first became pregnant. She takes no drugs at all now, she says, and would like to quit ordinary cigarettes, too.

“She won’t take a contraceptive either,” Bob says.

“The Pill is a form of murder,” she says. She pauses. “Abortion is murder, too. We follow the rhythm system- but do you know why? We don’t use it to avoid procreating. We use it to have children…”

Linda’s dog, half-shepherd, half-husky, runs in and licks everyone. Her name is Hopi, after the Arizona Indians with whom the Kasabians once lived.

“You can’t fool a dog or a child,” she says. “They can always spot a phony.”

Hopi brings a new turn to the conversation.

“There has been so much hypocrisy,” Linda says. “You see, the kids listened to people like John Lennon and their followers. The kids believed so much, you see…”

Bob plays softly on the guitar. Linda doesn’t talk now about Lennon. She speaks of anonymous people behind the scenes, the promoters she calls them.

They talk of peace and love and flowers and it was hypocrisy… They spoke of love- and prepared for violence…”

Bob interrupts: “They wanted to revolt against the system. But they wanted to set up another political system that was as bad.”

Later we go down the dark stairs of the one-time chicken house and into the big garden. Linda motions for quiet. In the distance there is the sound of running water. There is a dam nearby. Suddenly, I realize how remote you can be in New Hampshire.

“They chased us out of Marlborough,” Bob says. “Not exactly chased. But they found our shack in the woods and condemned the place.”

“They may chase us out of here,” Linda says. “But we’re set for that if the time comes.”

She shows me the pickup truck she and her husband bought. He does handyman jobs in the area. That truck got Linda back in the news briefly. She failed to have the vehicle inspected and was hauled into court and fined $15. The newspapers, of course, picked up the item.

Linda collects lilacs in the garden and Bob gets water from the spring. He pours some into paper cups and it is ice cold.

“What we really want is a log cabin way off somewhere, away from everything,” she says as I prepare to leave. “One that we made ourselves. And we want a big meadow where the animals can run free. We’d have sheep and shear the wool. And chickens for eggs. And I’d have a spinning wheel and loom som I could make my own clothes…

“And someday, when the Old Man thinks I’m ready, He’ll call. And I’ll know a oneness with Him and the universe.”

Charles Manson Parole Documents

 These two pages are documents that Manson received when he was paroled March 21, 1967. The first document is a standard form made out for all paroled persons. It was signed by Manson.

The second document is a Permission to Travel form filled out by hand. Besides giving Manson permission to travel to San Francisco, Spokane and Seattle, Washington there is parole office contact information for each of the cities.

Next to the info for San Francisco there is a phone number and the name Roger Smith that looks like it was written by Manson. The telephone number is for the San Francisco office of the Federal Probation Officer.

So, Manson was given permission from the moment of his release to go to San Francisco, Spokane, and Seattle. He was also given Roger Smith's name as the person to contact in San Francisco.

 

Danny DeCarlo's Rap Sheet

 

Danny DeCarlo 1959

The latest document drop from Cielodrive was a group of rap sheets. We have seen a few of them already but one we haven't seen is Danny DeCarlo's rap sheet.

According to Danny's father's naturalization records Danny was born June 20, 1944 in Toronto Canada. The family came to the United States March 18, 1952.

Almost all of the rap sheets we have seen were issued by the California Department of Justice in Sacramento (even Charles Manson's rap sheet) but Danny's was issued by the United States Department of Justice in Washington DC so the form looks a bit different.

At sixteen years old Danny was arrested for the possession of a snap blade in Los Angeles County. Today a snap blade knife is a utility knife with short blades that can be snapped off when becoming too dull to cut. 

Back in 1961 a snap blade knife differed from a switch blade knife, which was opened by pushing a button, lever or switch so that the blade could extend by either coming straight out of the handle or pivoting from the handle. A snap blade knife could be opened by simply snapping the wrist so that the blade would pivot out from the handle. 

July 5, 1961 Danny joined the United States Coast Guard at 17 years old. He appears to have served his four year committment before getting in trouble with the law again. His service number is provided if anyone wants to try to get his service records though it may be impossible because unless you are the person named in the records you will need to show that the person has died.

Nov. 6, 1965 Danny was arrested for possession of a weapon in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Four months later he was arrested by the US Marshal's for smuggling marijuana. He must have crossed state lines or possibly country borders for the US Marshal's to be involved. There are three entries for that arrest but other than the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office being involved there is no indication where the smuggling took place. My guess is that he was smuggling across the Mexican border. There wasn't much homegrown back in 1965 and most of the pot in California came from Mexico.

Danny had a couple of traffic violations in 1966 and 1967.

On Dec. 5, 1967 Danny was arrested for rape by force but those charges seem to have gone nowhere since in the disposition column it is noted "rel" which I take to mean released. I do not believe that Danny had hooked up with Manson at this point in time.

But by the next arrest on Mar. 29, 1969 Danny had hooked up with Manson. Both were arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. The victim was Miriam (Romo) DeCarlo, Danny's wife. About ten days later the LA DA declined to charge the two because Miriam told the DA she wanted the matter dropped.

Danny was arrested using the name Richard Allen Smith during the Aug. 16,1969 Spahn Ranch Raid. Richard Allen Smith was the same name he used to illegally purchase a gun on July 14, 1969 in Los Angeles County. It appears that the illegally purchased gun caught up with him Sept. 12, 1969 as there was a Title 78 USC (United States Code) charge filed by the US Marshal's on that date.

Then on Oct. 15, 1969 there was a grand theft charge filed against him by the LA PD.

What is not included on the rap sheet which is dated Oct. 24, 1969 is the drug, grand theft and receiving stolen property charges. The grand theft and receiving stolen property crimes apparently took place in May 1969 and involved a motorcycle and engine owned by Edward Lee Shearer. But it looks like there was no arrest until mid Oct. 1969.

 A drug charge, possession of marijuana, was filed against Danny and a woman named June Ann Safranek. The paperwork is confusing because the drug charges are from an incident that occurred Dec. 11, 1968 but one of the pages say the drug charges are from Dec. 11, 1969 which was after the charges were filed and the two appeared in court. The first page of the documents is practically unreadable but the rest of the pages are fine.

Grand Theft Drugs pdf

To me, it looks like the drug charge was simple possession. There's no hint of a large quantity or sales. 

I was unable to learn much about the young woman, June Ann Safranek, who was arrested with Danny. She was from Simi Valley and 17 years old at the time of the offense. She was reported as a runaway by her mother in Nov. of 1967. June married young, age 15, in Dec. 1966 and had a child in March of 1967. The couple filed for a divorce in Feb. 1968.