Suzanne Scott

Thanks to Ole J.C. for this mugshot of Suzanne Scott.

The Stockton Murders - timeline of what took place

Photo by Patty of the approximate location of James Willett's murder

29 Oct - A group of seven (Pitman, Cooper, Lauren and Heidi (infant) Willett, Goucher, Monfort and Craig) arrive in Stockton driving James Willett’s car (1965 Ford wagon, white).  Pitman posing as ‘Karen Willett’ rents a Flora Ave home from Maria Kopes (friend of the owners) paying a $290 security deposit with cash from a large roll of money.

30 Oct - William Goucher and Michael Monfort (posing as James Willett) are arrested for the armed robbery of Eden Square Liquors (929 N Eldorado St), less than 12 blocks from the W Flora Ave home.

31 Oct - Monfort (using James Willett’s ID) posts bail of $10,000.  Goucher remains in jail.

(Warning: Pure guessing follows:  A bail bond had been issued by a private company for an amount which would pay for half a house in 1972.  They have a financial interest in securing this risk from presumably James T. Willett of Bardstown, KY who is a member of a family, which owns Kentucky Bourbon Distillers.  They likely checked with the DMV for a vehicle to use as an asset and may have verified with James’ family his identity and past residences.  They would be the most tuned to recapture ‘James’ should he jump bail as was to be the case.  Using James Willett’s ID, Address: 704 ¼ Coronado St, Los Angeles, CA, may have been the first domino to fall in this case which led police to the car parked in front of 720 W Flora Ave.)

8 Nov - The body of James Willett is discovered near Guerneville CA.  Willett’s body was initially reported as an unidentified man aged 20 to 40.  Also discovered in the county were three bodies linked to Hell’s Angel member, George ‘Baby Huey’ Wethern (Although ultimately not associated with the Hell’s Angels case, Willett’s body appears to have been a point of confusion for more than a day or two).

8/9 Nov - Lauren Willett is shot and killed (How could the Flora Ave gang have learned about the discovery of James’ body?).

 During this same time frame James Willett, aka Michael Monfort fails to appear in court triggering a skip trace for the return of $10,000, in 1972 value ($54,464.83 in 2012 Dollars).

10 Nov - According to Paul Fitzgerald (Krenwinkel defense attorney), Squeaky phoned him and said she had arrived in Stockton via bus, late Friday (10 Nov) then spent the night in the Flora Ave house before visiting Goucher in jail on Saturday (11 Nov).  Somehow Squeaky managed to locate Pitman at the W Flora Ave home, in spite of the fact that Pitman had lived there less than two weeks.

11 Nov (8 PM) - Police respond to a report that Willett’s car was seen parked in front of 720 W Flora Ave.  Entry is forced after a female occupant slams the door on a police officer.

(Is it mere coincidence that a co-defendant of Monfort (Goucher) is being visited in jail by Squeaky Fromme who had to sign into the jail, presumably with an address?  Did she unwittingly write 720 Flora?  Write a phone number which was searched in a reverse listing?)

Inside the Flora Ave house is an infant (7-8 months old) identified by Nancy Pitman (using alias of Lauren Olmstead) to be Heidi Willett, adding the mother having just left for Kentucky to be with the father, Jim Willett (Would Pitman admit this association knowing that James Willett’s body was discovered?).

Pitman (using second alias Karen McCartney), Cooper, Craig and Monfort (using second alias Gordon Foote) are arrested.

Fromme calls the Flora Ave house after visiting with Goucher in jail looking for a ride.  Police oblige and return Fromme to the same facility she was visiting.

Heidi Willett is placed in Mary Graham Hall.

12 Nov (5 AM) - Stockton police obtain search warrant then discover Lauren Willett’s body buried under the Flora Ave home.

13 Nov - Sonoma County District Attorney files charges against Craig, Monfort and Goucher for the murder of James Willett.

 (Monfort and Craig were escapees/parole violators from prison as well, making the testimony of James Willett about various robberies appear superfluous compared to simply being turned into police with an anonymous call.  Would James have been murdered to keep him from talking about other robberies?)

14 Nov - Priscilla Cooper states Michael Monfort accidentally shot Lauren Willett in the forehead while demonstrating the dangers of Russian roulette.

Research provided by Farf

NOT Pic Dawson

People have been asking about the photos that The Colonel has seen of Debra Tate with Pic Dawson. Though Patty has never seen those either, here's something interesting to ponder in the meantime. Deb is on the right, on the left is Nastassja Kinski. Bent over is Johnny Crawford who as a boy played Mark McCain on "The Rifleman". In the pool tickling Deb's foot is someone who may have had more tail than Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, and that's a lot!

Klaus is NOT amused, Ahnold.

Nah. Actually, Patty has read that Nastassja and her father were never close. Neither apparently were Deb and PJ. Were escapades like this the reason for that, or a symptom of it? Certainly nothing was ever the same for the Tate family after August 8, 1969. The more we learn, the more the questions come to mind...Mind if Patty keeps asking them?

Q&A

Orwhut asked-

"I've read that a least one of Dennis Rice's kids is active in his ministry but can't find any contemporary photos of them."

Joseph and Heather Rice

Biography-Pastor Joe Rice was saved in 1985 at The Door Christian Fellowship Church in Tempe, AZ. His decision was influenced by his father's conversion while serving a sentence in San Quentin State Prison. In 1991, he pastored his first church in Phoenix, AZ. In 1994, after establishing a church in Phoenix, he was sent to Auburn, WA to pioneer a new work. In 1996, he felt a calling to enter into missionary work and was given the opportunity to pioneer a church in George, South Africa. After 5 years of laboring in George, he handed over the church to a solid native disciple, Randal Van Staden. After serving in George, he pioneered again in Cape Town, South Africa for another 4 years and left a solid work that is today pastored by Alec McCann (No relation to Brenda McCann). In 2005, he along with his wife Heather and his four children moved to San Diego, CA where he assumed the pastorate of The Potter's House San Diego.

http://www.thepottershousesandiego.com/our-pastors.html

Samuel Rice-website not active yet.

http://pottershousecorvallis.com

Nicholas Rice-video left hand corner. I am not 100% sure this is the right Nicholas Rice.
http://www.ourlourdes.org/parish/parish-life.aspx

Nothing on Kathryn Rice. I am assuming she has married and uses that last name.

Q&A

2009

Dennis and his wife 2011

Another question from the Feb 24th "Babies" post.

Orwhut asked-

Has anyone heard how Dennis is doing in his battle with Cancer?

Dennis Rice's inactive site "Free Indeed Ministries" focused on Dennis' travels over the world preaching his Manson 2 Jesus teachings to convert prisoners to the straight and narrow through Christianity.

Eviliz was contacted last year from one of Dennis' flock who provided me this link.

http://www.thedoortempe.com/index.php?section_id=8

The link is to a church in Arizona where Dennis is active now. His "Free Indeed Ministry" was also out of AZ. Maybe his health is deteriorating since he gave up his traveling. The two photos above show his age progression over two years. According to his quote below he should of passed by now. Looks pretty good for liver cancer. There is a woman named Kathy at the church who might be his daughter.

"Rice asked if anyone had a parole date or knew they had only a short time left. He told them he was on his way out too, if his doctors were right. In May,(2010) Rice said he was diagnosed with liver cancer and his doctor gave him six to nine months, at most, a year to live."

Above quote from- http://itemonline.com/local/x622287253/Ex-Manson-family-member-speaks-about-his-ministry

Q&A

Also from the February 24th post titled "Babies" Candy and Nuts said.....

"I think the first Life magazine cover/article with Charlie on the cover has a picture of Mary Brunner holding baby Pooh Bear-I don't have it here to post-trying to find it."



The Grump from Pahrump has provided it for us. He also included this picture of Sexy Sadie from the same Life issue.

Cheers

Thank you to Jay for the photo.

A Dreaded Sunny Day

Just as Farf had described, the headstone we were looking for was very near the intersection of Ninth St. and Broadway. What may have once been a quiet final resting place is now a noisy 44 acres flanked by a freeway, a housing project and a Target retail location (formerly a semi professional baseball park). There is also this breathtakingly lovely view of the world-famous Sacramento skyline for the deceased to marvel at:


Also as Farf described, Mr. and Mrs. Heintz are interred with the Deweys in the plot marked B83 276:


So, everything is going as expected when Patty realizes that "Mother" and "Father" have been slabbed over from what is visible in the original photo of Red and Blue with which Farf started this whole thing:


Go ahead, zoom in. Don't be shy. You will also see that Mother and Father have switched places from left to right! Whoa. Talk about "rolling in their graves."


The only possible explanation Patty has is that because parts of the graveyard fell into a state of disrepair upon an ever eroding hill, Mom and Dad's headstones fell over and were replaced by volunteers who got it wrong before pouring the terrace meant to shore up the Heintz plot for the next hundred years or so.

What were Red and Blue pointing to? We may never know for sure...

Addressing some of the points

Let me note that this is not a return attack on Debbie Tate. Most hold the opinion that silence is an admission to guilt so I’d simply like to address some of the points posted on the site.

I’ll begin with the most egregious, digging up Sharon’s grave. Let me be clear, I did not have Sharon's casket opened, just the grave so that Patti could be buried with Sharon, Doris, and the baby. And, yes, I have the letter from Roman giving me permission to do so. Does anyone really believe that Holy Cross would allow me to not only open a grave but to bury Patti in Doris and Sharon's plot without written consent from Roman--or at the very minimum a court order? As we wrote in the book, the grave has been opened twice since Sharon's burial--once for Doris to be buried next to Sharon, once for Patti to be buried with both.

The second thing that I will state at this time is in reference to the Holy Cross paperwork for Patti's funeral because it is indeed true--yes, I stated that I was Patti's stepsister and power of attorney--2nd part true-- but I did not call myself a Tate. I did this because sadly the archdiocese would not recognize my relationship with Patti as family. Since Roman was signing over the right to bury Patti there, it had to be a family member that signed the forwarding documents and since I was the one paying for and arranging her funeral I lied--sue me. If you've ever had to make funeral arrangements for the one person you hold most dear to your heart you'll understand that you're not always thinking clearly and you do what you have to do to get the job done. I never thought a private purchase receipt for my partner's funeral would become public record. And, quite frankly it breaks my heart that Patti's funeral arrangements have been brought up on that site for public debate. On Patti's death certificate, which I knew was public record and an official document, I signed "Friend".

The numerous points made to prove Patti and Debbie were close? Yes, Patti was a kind and forgiving person so, year after year after year she continually tried to mend the relationship with Debbie only to have Debbie slap her in the face for trying—literally, well, more like a punch on the one occasion that she dislocated Patti’s jaw. In any case, yes, this did include making her part of the wedding party. But if we had to bring Patti’s real friends and children in as witnesses in a court of law, she’d lose this argument in a heartbeat.

Account of Paul Tate: At no point did Brie or I claim to write/copy verbatim from any one of the Tate family’s unpublished manuscripts. Never did we state that words were taken directly from PJ’s manuscript. I state very emphatically in the introduction: “I unearthed a treasure of the Tate family’s home movies, audio and video recordings, journals, and letters dating back to 1961, as well as a massive archive of police and court documents from Sharon’s murder case…. It took months to catalog it all,... By using what I’d found, as well as the personal knowledge shared over the years with me by P.J., Doris, Patti, and Brie, I decided to write it from each of their unique and extraordinary perspectives.”

What this means is that we COMBINED many sources—personal conversations, tape recordings, and yes, we referenced old unfinished manuscripts to form one cohesive narrative. The numerous attacks on Debbie’s site in comparing PJ’s manuscript, Five Down on Cielo, to what’s in Restless Souls is a useless endeavor because only a single paragraph was lifted from it. The rest came from conversations with PJ 20 years after it was written.

Patti Tate Account: I have the dated floppy disks to prove when Patti and I began writing her autobiography. The rest about Robin Olsen, I will leave to Col Scott’s Blog to expose—so far he’s doing a very fine job. I’ve protected myself very well on this issue and have signed documentation from Patti. Amongst other things, I have Patti’s signed contract with our agent in 1999. I also have a registered Writer’s Guild Copy of our collaboration at the time. Why would Patti, a decent, honest, and kind person, turn around and sign a contract with me if she’d promised Olsen that they would write a book together? Something’s very wrong here and it’s not me.

As for the rest of the trivial accusations like the cloudy day at Doris’ funeral? I don’t care if they have a documented weather report that there was a freak snowstorm in LA the day of Doris’ funeral, it was written from Patti’s perspective/memory and that’s how SHE remembered it.

Did I try to push through legislation that would allow non-family members to make impact statements at the parole hearings? No. This bill—AB 219—was a long time in the making at the time that Patti died. It was about to be passed through when PJ Tate made a written request to the state of California that I be his representative at the parole hearings for Sharon’s killers. When Debbie caught wind of this she immediately began protesting that I not be allowed to speak on PJ’s behalf and that she would be the sole representative for the Tate family at the parole hearings—which is why Brie too was denied her right to make an impact statement at Atkins 2005 hearing. The people in Sacramento that were trying to help, hoped that AB 219 would be passed by the time of Atkins next parole hearing so that Debbie's protests could be silenced. Did I want it passed? Absolutely, so I could carry out PJ’s wishes. Did I personally lobby for it? No. At the time, technology wasn’t very advanced. In order to keep PJ up to date, I printed my correspondence between the people in Sacramento and myself so he could read them. Those copies are still in my possession...As a side note, at Atkins hearing that year, the impact statement of Paul Tate's that Debbie began reading and Steve Kay finished reading, was the impact statement I had prepared and planned to read had I gone to the hearing.

Would I take a lie detector test over the final questions posed on the website? Absolutely—and I’d pass.