This Day in Manson History

On this day in 1933, Roman Polanski, the director of such films as Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist, is born Rajmund Roman Liebling in Paris, France. As a movie director, Polanski has received numerous honors, including an Academy Award; his personal life, however, has been marked by tragedy and controversy.

Polanski grew up in Poland during World War II, when both his Jewish parents were sent to concentration camps. His mother died at Auschwitz. As a young man, Polanski studied film in Poland; he made his feature-film directorial debut in 1962 with Knife in the Water, a psychological thriller that received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Polanski then made a series of films in England, including The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), which featured Sharon Tate, an American actress who became his wife in January 1968. Polanski's first Hollywood film, Rosemary's Baby, was released that same year. The horror film, which starred Mia Farrow as a woman impregnated by the devil, was a box-office hit and earned Polanski an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

On August 9, 1969, while Polanski was out of the country, Tate (then eight months pregnant with the couple's first child) was found murdered at the couple's Los Angeles home, along with four other people. Members of an infamous cult led by Charles Manson were later convicted of the brutal crime. Reportedly devastated by the tragedy, Polanski continued to work steadily in Europe and Hollywood during the 1970s, directing such films as Macbeth (1971), What? (1972) and Chinatown (1974), starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Chinatown, a dark story about land and water rights in Southern California in the early 20th century, was nominated for 11 Oscars and won for Best Original Screenplay.

In 1977, Polanski became embroiled in controversy when he pled guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. In February 1978, Polanski fled the United States before he could be sentenced. Thereafter, he continued to make films in France and Poland, where he couldn't be extradited to America. His 2002 movie The Pianist, starring Adrien Brody as a Polish-Jewish musician during World War II, earned Polanski an Oscar for Best Director. Fearing he'd be arrested if he returned to the United States, Polanski did not attend the awards ceremony.

Saladin Nader's Apartment

In going through old email looking for gems we may have missed, I found the pics from Saladin Nader's Venice apartment building. The old post was lost, but luckily the photos weren't. I'll keep looking for more and post as I find them.

Nader's apt 5th floor corner window just left of "Venice"

Door they entered is left of the guy on stilts. 

Other side of door they entered

Looking up the stairs they climbed

 The landing where the others hid

Room 403

Looking back at room 403 and where they hid

The landing where sadie dumped

Tex's Dog Artwork

 Reader "Trilby" Writes:

Check out Tex's website. The "art" section *rolls eyes*. Out of, what, five drawings of dogs and how many possible breeds, he's drawn a teacup yorkie (Prudence, Cielo), dalmation PUPPIES (Tom, Cielo), and a black lab (Shadow, Waverly). What are the chances?! That's a sick sociopathic s.o.b. I'd love to torture him until he tells what really happened...

http://www.aboundinglove.org/artwork/artwork.php

Gotta admit, she has a point...

Charles Manson Truth Project 2012 - Interview with Star

A Short Story by Farf

Hi Eviliz,

I call this: ‘The Juanita Story’ or ‘How the Wildebush Picked a Berry’

The number of variations to Manson Family tales appears to be directly proportional to the number of stories at any given time.  This assumes that one can pick a subject obscure enough to avoid any of the typically associated wrath and venom when the scripture dare be questioned.

So enter an obscure member known generally as Juanita who picked up one, three or four hitch-hikers around San Jose, California.  Traditional wisdom would not normally have a single woman picking up several men on a roadside but I’ve been told this was common practice.  I don’t have a similar recollection, but that answer appears to make people happy so I’ll go along with it.

Apparently Juanita was on some type of road trip in her year old van.  She picks up some family members which have included Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, TJ Walleman or just Paul Watkins if you choose to believe his version of the story.  I like more characters, so I’m going with a butt load of people in the van instead of one.  Even though Paul’s reluctant manwhoring himself to Juanita in order to pay the tax lien, and save the ranch is pretty salacious and funny.  I say that because by Paul’s own telling he felt worse about being with Juanita than performing public fellatio on Charlie.

Another article titled ‘The Dichotomy of Evil’ has Juanita Wildebush telling her story where she was travelling around the environs of San Jose on her way to Mexico to meet her fiancé.  That’s so sweet.  And while traveling south picks up Susan Atkins, TJ Walleman and Tex Watson with Little Paul being left out all together.  That’s kinda sad.  I actually took Tex Watson from Ed Sander’s version which had four hitch hikers including Clem and Ella.  Once again, no Paul.  So there is a mix and count of people to match everyone’s taste and tale.  That’s kinda nice too, inaccurate as hell, but nice.

Anyway, Juanita says she arrives with three hitchers at night and everyone got all Munchkinlandish and started chanting ‘Let’s get Charlie, Let’s wake up Charlie!’ Then Charlie appears, nude as he apparently experienced some coitus interruptus with Gypsy.  Then all the Munchkins began to say ‘Look what we found, look what we found!’

Weeee rep-re-sent; the Manson Family, the Manson Family, the Manson Family.

Weeee represent; the Manson Famleeeeeee, we’d like to welcome you to Man-son land.

Then everyone began to hug and bond and have ever so much fun.

Then according to Juanita, Charlie asked her if he could spend the night with her in the van and she said –NO!  So it looks like Charlie was rejected and sent Little Paul to take one for the team.  But Juanita was just about to leave and go meet her fiancé then someone brought her breakfast and said Spahn’s was a nice place.  Thus causing Juanita to alter her plans, ever so slightly, where instead of continuing on to Mexico, she dropped acid and had group sex with Charlie.
I really can’t imagine what these people are deflecting or minimizing with their various re-telling of this story.  I’m not some floozy who just showed up and bedded Charlie the first night I arrived,
it was the next day, and with three other strangers, one of whom was a woman; OK?
Then again, I suppose it is this very eccentric logic which compels one to do any of this stuff in the first place.

Juanita goes on to explain that when she saw Charlie playing with some kittens, that she felt it was the right time to sign over all her money.  Then there was a real bad night where everyone was on bad acid and mescaline trips where she vaguely recalls Paul Watkins hitting her (Donkey Punch anyone?) and how Charlie was lamenting how all the love was gone as he was getting his shoes.  After reading that, I hardly needed to be told this occurred during a bad acid trip. Juanita does manage to align with Paul’s story by saying that her money was used to pay back taxes on the ranch.  If this is true, it makes Spahn’s desired to evict them in less than a year, a bit of a non sequitur.  Oh well, back to the Wildbush.

So Juanita continues to buttress her judgment skills by describing Tex Watson as the most gentle, kind, sweet, cherub she had ever known.  She said she was surprised that sweet, loving Tex was involved in the murders.  Ummm (insert long, incredulous pause), yeah Juanita, he was involved and was among the most vicious, unrepentant, merciless and savage of the group, so good call again there Diogenes.

Next Juanita is heading for the desert where she will spend the rest of her Family association at Barker Ranch.  She is ultimately left behind with Poston to watch the place.  Now, I’ve only ventured as far as Ballarat in my life and can say with 100% certainty, that is as far into a god forsaken, washboard road filled, slice of heaven that I will ever explore.  What exactly needed to be taken care of at Barker’s Ranch is beyond me.  But she claims to have stayed there which is anachronistic to her claim of having heard about Helter Skelter and the Beatles at the time because the album wasn’t released till a month after her arrival and there wasn’t any electricity to run a phonograph.  It was as primitive as can be.

Now Juanita is all alone with Brooks and presumably some blotter acid, since there wasn’t any ‘cable’ in Death Valley.  So they while away the days being one with nature (code for: Juanita balled Brooks like a Raggedy Andy till there was nothing left but a dried lifeless husk) when a couple of prospectors arrived.  A couple men searching for gold named Crockett and Berry.  Juanita seemed intrigued by Berry who liked to explore dark holes in the middle of the desert.
But it was Crockett who broke the spell that Charlie had over them and finally in June of 1969, Juanita Wildbush grabbed Berry, the prospector and beat feet out of Death Valley.  

There you have it.  The terrible, strange and elastic saga of Juanita Wildebush and the hitch hiker(s) she gave a ride to Spahn’s where she signed over $10,000 to $16,000 worth of trust funds.  Oh well, I did some simple linear math about how this story should evolve by the year 2525, if woman can survive.  Assuming linear growth, the number of hitch hikers should be 57, with the trust fund swelling to $524,288,000.  Righteous bucks.

Three Years Ago Today

From MSNBC
August 14, 2009.  "She will be on supervised release for two years, where general conditions include reporting regularly to a parole officer, no associations with criminals or owning guns or leaving the area." said Tom Hutchison a U.S. Parole Commission spokeman.

 

President Ford and First Lady Betty Ford and sons Jack and Steve watch television news coverage on the attempt on the President's life.

pic from- http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/images/avproj/pop-ups/A6332-04.html

Eviliz wonders-Where is Lynn? Still in NY with her man? Why has she been keeping herself on the down low? Has she been to Walmart since? Does she FaceBook with Sandy? Do you think she is still loyal to Charlie at age 64? I don't.

September 2010

Sharon Tate for sale

By DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune November 17, 2010

Sharon Tate, starting as a young girl would write letters to her Grandmother, "Nannie."

"The family archivist, Nannie kept all sorts of memorabilia including numerous letters from Sharon and clippings and magazines she later sent about her rising screen career."

"It was something Nannie wanted to "leave me." Sharon's second cousin Kelly Denson who was not even born when her famous cousin was murdered, inherited the box. Fascinated by her inheritance, she immediately began pouring over Tate's correspondence which started when she was a young girl and continued into her acting career."

Denson spoke about Sharon saying, "Not a day goes by that I do not think about her. Sometimes she's like my guardian angel. I even dream about her", said Denson.

As her own fate and life led Denson here and yonder, she carried her treasure trove of love with her, a large box of items that reflected a side of Sharon Tate, that while she was well-liked, few people would have suspected or imagined."

"Four years ago she brought the box with her from Fort Payne to Arab after she married Eric Denson now serving in Iraq. While she may have maintained a spiritual type of closeness to Tate, her physical closeness to the documents and items she inherited drifted. The box containing the Tate trove found it's way into a storage unit until after Denson moved. Eric cleaned out the unit and stored the Tate box in his grandmothers vacant house. When Denson realized where the Tate trove was she became alarmed."

"I said, "Baby you have to go get it. There could be rats out there." Deneson decided it was probably time to sell it.' So she could share it with everybody. "It's been 40 years now...

What do you think? Was Denson greedy or does she really want to "share it" as she claims.
I would thing "sharing" in this situation means putting them some where so others can view them for free. Share does not mean "selling." But that's just me. I know we are in a recession, maybe cousin needs a couple of bucks, but damn.

from - http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/11/19/news/news6.txt

The above photo is a Christmas card from 1950 Sharon sent to her Nannie accompanied by a letter and a hand made trinket no doubt a Christmas present. For the small sum of $12,000.00 you can own them. Here is the link:

http://www.historyforsale.com/html/search.asp

For shits and giggles while I was there I put Charlie's name in the search button. I also found several signed letters for auction over priced like Sharon's items.

You can own the drawing below titled "Pink Side" for only $5,500

Charlie's Right Hand Man's Daughter

Great recent article found by Miss Tone.

My father: Charles Manson's right-hand man
To his daughter, Paul Watkins was simply her dad. Could it really be true he was also the notorious 60s cult leader's right-hand man?

Claire Watkins-  "I rip the CD on to my iPod and wheel to my father, who has appeared in the Ps between Paul Simon and the Pixies. Maybe he would have liked that, being a musician. Maybe that's where he would have been anyway, if he'd kept singing and playing music, if he hadn't had his vocal cords singed before he was slated to testify against Charlie, when the Volkswagen van he was sleeping in caught fire, was perhaps lit by Steven "Clem" Grogan, one of three Manson Family men who claimed to have undone Shorty Shea with a pipe wrench, a machete, a bayonet."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/10/manson-family-member-my-dad?newsfeed=true

The final anniversary tribute

No one walks in LA

It is a cliche'
 (and a song)
 that no one walks in L.A.,
             at least not very far.
If one has no car
             one can hitch a ride with strangers
             or new found friends.
A ride that is an adventure in itself
             a gateway to a new life,
             even new worlds
or even a bummer:
              an encounter with angels of death.

Submitted by-Jim

Thank you to everyone who contributed.

One Degree of Sharon Tate

Watch your feet, because I'm about to drop some names ... BIG names: Jenilee (I'm no Suzanne Sommers) Harrison, Tracey (Growing Pains/Oprah) Gold, Todd (What choo talkin' bout, Willis) Bridges and Henry (The Fonz) Winkler. All of these and many more celebs were at the Hollywood Show at the Marriott in lovely Burbank, CA last weekend. The reason I went was to meet and greet with Barbara (Valley of the Dolls/Sharon Tate's Bridesmaid) Parkins.  

These events feature your favorite celebrity with a slew of their 8x10's and memorabilia for sale.  Autographs $20.00, pictures with the stars, another $20.00 or more depending on if the celebrity's star is shining. Barbara Parkins had numerous photo stills from "Valley" to sign, and the iconic image of her on the bed with co-stars Sharon and Patty Duke were the most popular. I caught my breath as I realized I was one degree of separation from Sharon Tate...which is all anyone can ever be because of the events of August 8th, 1969.

As a teenager, I read Patty Duke's autobiography, "Call Me Anna"... with a Judy Garland as Dorothy bookmark, if you must know... and I saw Sharon Tate's photo for the first time. "Wow!  She's so beautiful, I wonder what ever became of her?" I figured it out a few movie reference books and "Geraldo" episodes later. I became more obsessed with Sharon and the film AND book of "Valley Of the Dolls" while most friends in my social circle were buzzing about some singer named Madonna. The layers and coincidence that connect the book to the movies to the murders is phenomenal.  How else does one get star billing unless it's with scandal and tragedy?  

While I have followed all of the books, movies and blogs on the murders, my opinion is that Sharon Tate's beauty and her unfulfilled potential was the fuel for the media fire that has been burning for forty three years. For the same reasons Marilyn Monroe's death is still selling books, Sharon's murder was like a perfect storm for the attention of the media.

Barbara Parkins was such a nice lady, who just happens to be a retired movie star. As we chitchatted and made the small talk that celebs make when meeting strangers, I wanted  to mention that just hours before meeting her, my partner and I had driven up Cielo Drive (after an amazing meal at Villa Blanca in Beverly Hills ... told you to look out for the name dropping.)

In the black of night, we drove up Benedict Canyon (pitch black) and turned onto Cielo (pitch blacker). I was in a nervous state, not wanting to be pulled over at 12:30 am, less than a week before the anniversary of the murders. My partner, Chris, the voice of reason, said it was a public street and we had every right to be on the road. We weren't the only ones out and about on a morbid curiosity tour ... we passed three cars coming the opposite way, and I imagined the guilty looks on the passengers in the other cars.  

We stopped the car to walk the rest of the way to 10066 Cielo, and I couldn't get out of the car. I was frozen with fear, my heart beating in my ears, and the complete darkness closing in on us. "Really, they can't put more street lamps up here?" Chris got irritated with me and finally after two or three minutes, we turned around and headed back down Cielo to Benedict Canyon and back to the hotel. It was a visceral experience that was impossible to put into words.

Needless to say, I didn't mention this to Barbara, but the next person to talk to her immediately asked about Sharon. Barbara got very quiet and with a practiced voice said, "She was so beautiful." One of the odd connections was that across the aisle of the ballroom from Barbara was Nancy (I'm no longer using Pearl Cream) Kwan, and directly behind her was Taryn (I'm too pretty to be Susan Atkins) Manning. The only person I spoke with about Sharon was Jeanne (I Just Wrote a Book!) Cooper. I asked her about the Cielo Drive residence, and she told me about how Sharon and Roman bought it before she could.  I didn't have the heart to tell her the home was a rental, but it made me realize everybody wants to be a part of something, even if it's an historical tragic event. Plus, Ms. Cooper is 83 years old and if that's how she remembers it, fine by me. At least she didn't tell me she was invited to a party there on 8/8/69.

I've now met both Barbara Parkins and Patty Duke. Both seem to have the same mantra when it comes to Sharon Tate; "She was so beautiful" "She was so sweet." But one degree of separation will not get me Sharon's signature of my vintage "Valley of the Dolls" album. It's a shame, because we'll never know if she would have been one of the stars to head out to the Hollywood Show in Burbank to sign a few autographs and meet the fans. Chris and I spent about half an hour talking to Jenilee Harrison about the secrets of Costco pricing, another twenty talking to Charlene Tilton about why she hates Belinda Carlisle ... and it made me wonder what I would have said to Sharon Tate.

Tonight I'll be toasting Sharon's beauty and what might have been ... Cheers!

Johnny Angel