And The Sea Will Tell

After Vincent Bugliosi left the LA DA's office he went into private practice.  One of his cases was the defense of Stephanie Stearns who along with her boyfriend, Buck Duane Walker, was accused of murdering Mac and Muff Graham on an atoll in the Pacific called Palmyra.  Originally the couple was arrested for stealing the Graham's boat not long after the Graham's had disappeared in 1974.   It was not until the remains of Muff Graham were found in 1981 did the two eventually face murder charges.

The two had separate trials with Walker having a public defender for his attorney.  He was tried first, found guilty of the two murders and sentenced to life in prison.   Stearns came from a more affluent background and her family hired Bugliosi to defend her.  Stearns was acquitted.

Bugliosi wrote the book And the Sea Will Tell after Stearns acquittal.  This book outraged me and I know from having read a few comments at this blog that others here feel the same way.  Any shred of respect I may have had for Bugliosi was completely gone.  His ego absolutely screamed in the book and he was ever so pleased with himself that he was able to win an acquittal for Stearns.

Recently I learned that the remains of Muff Graham were never claimed by her family and have never received a proper burial.  Instead the remains have been at the FBI office in Hawaii and become a quasi teaching tool with Muff's skull being passed around during lectures.  How sad is that?

A retired Los Angeles public defender, Tom Bucy, discovered this while doing research for a book he has written on the Palmyra Atoll murders.  He is now trying to locate Muff's family and return her remains to them.

You can read the story HERE.

Stephanie Stearns is currently living in Hawaii.  I found that Buck Duane Walker was granted parole in 2007.  He moved to the small town of Willets in Mendocino County CA.  He died in 2010.  The story of Walker's death and a pretty good summation of the crimes appeared in the Willets newspaper.

Manson Family Geriatrics

Over the last couple of years, or however long I have had the opportunity of writing for this wonderful blog, I have always been totally, 100% against any of the Hinman/Tate/LaBianca/Shea murderers getting released. I have always thought "lock them up, and throw away the key" until I read something that made me question my previous judgement. By the way, Tex Watson isn't included in my "compassion." I can't think of any solid reason to ever release that person incubus onto society.

Anyway, what I am talking about is a report that was done by the group "Legal Services for Prisoners with Children." The report is called "Dignity Denied: The Price of Imprisoning Older Women in California." Now, I know this report is about older WOMEN in California prisons, but I think a lot of the same factors could be applied to geriatric men as well, Charles Manson included. Guess who was a contributor to this report, amongst others? Leslie Van Houten, and Betty Broderick (of A Woman Scored: The Betty Broderick Story fame). Since this report was done in 2005, I was a little surprised that Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel didn't give any input, since, technically they are/were in the same boat. This report is a bit long, so whenever you have time, please read it, and let us know what you think. Compassionate release, or lock them up, and throw away the key? Other alternatives would be a nursing home-type facility, or home confinement. I guess I am one of those that thinks maybe a nursing-home type situation is better. Maybe not 100% freedom, but confinement in a safer, more humane environment. I know these women, especially PK and LVH did a terrible, horrible thing, but they are still elderly human beings. Here is the link:

http://www.reentry.net/library/attachment.77521

SHARON TATE

With Philipe Forquet

The Wedding

The First Anniversary

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

Pic added for Venus (see comments)

Where is Cats?

Truth on Tate La Bianca is showing the above message this week. Anyone?

Description of Manson's home at Corcoran

Have y'all ever wondered what Manson's home looks like? Home meaning cell block, that is. I found an interesting radio report from KALW in San Francisco (91.7 FM) on the PHU (Protective Housing Unit) area of Corcoran State Prison. The press having access to this area is usually off limits, until they let this reporter have (limited) access. Nancy Mullane, the author of Life After Murder: Five Men in Search of Redemption (see Austin Ann's Recommended Reading posting) takes the listener/reader deep inside this area of the prison. Her access, of course, was extremely controlled, and planned well in advance. The prison authorities even reviewed the photos she took to see which ones were acceptable to show. Charlie wasn't around for this particular story, but it still was interesting to hear the description of where he lives. When I heard this radio story, I was reminded of the recent Rolling Stone article that was written a while back which had a description of Manson's daily routine, which consists of waking up in the morning, leaving his cell to go to breakfast, grabbing a bag lunch, going back to his cell, napping, eating his bag lunch, napping again, then pacing back & forth a while, maybe playing a game of chess, going to dinner, then having to be back in his cell by 8:45 PM. Now, imagine doing that exact same thing every day for the rest of your miserable life. Ugh! By the way, the men in this unit have a bit more so-called privileges, and actually grow their own watermelons along the chain-link fence! Ha! You learn something new everyday, huh? Please click on the link:

http://kalw.org/post/go-inside-prison-houses-charles-manson

Charles Manson's ATWA - member kills man / ATWA now a Terrorist Organization

I did a little bit of follow-up on this and was able to find an article written when Broderick was killed.  It says more about Nowlin's co-defendant than it does about Nowlin but there is a bit of info on him.  ...Deb

George Spahn & Ruby Pearl in True Crime book

From True Crime: An American Anthology 350 Years of Brilliant Writing About Dark Deeds which is a 770-page collection of crime stories going all the way back to the 1600's. Excellent read, by the way. Of course, thumbing through it, I found a Manson story entitled "Charlie Manson's Home on the Range" by Gay Talese, which was printed in Esquire Magazine in March, 1970. It also has Truman Capote's Bobby Beausoleil interview "Then It All Came Down." By the way, there isn't anything really new about Manson & friends in this book, but it does include a rather interesting description of how George Spahn came to own Spahn Movie Ranch, and how his friendship evolved with Ruby Pearl. Here is the "official" description of the book:

Americans have had an uneasy fascination with crime since the earliest European settlements in the New World, and right from the start true crime writing became a dominant genre in American writing. True Crime: An American Anthology offers the first comprehensive look at the many ways in which American writers have explored crime in a multitude of aspects: the dark motives that spur it, the shock of its impact on society, the effort to make sense of the violent extremes of human behavior. Here is the full spectrum of the true crime genre, including accounts of some of the most notorious criminal cases in American history: the Helen Jewett murder and the once-notorious Kentucky tragedy of the 1830's, the assassination of President Garfield, the Snyder-Gray murder that inspired "Double Indemnity," the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Black Dahlia, Leopold and Loeb, and the Manson Family. True Crime draws upon the writing of literary figures as diverse as Nathaniel Hawthorne (reporting on a visit to a waxworks exhibit of notorious crimes), Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser (offering his views of a 1934 murder that some saw as a copycat version of An American Tragedy), James Thurber, Joseph Mitchell, and Truman Capote and sources as varied as execution sermons, murder ballads, early broadsides and trial reports, and tabloid journalism of many different eras. It also features the influential true crime writing of best-selling contemporary practitioners like James Elroy, Gay Talese, Dominick Dunne, and Ann Rule.