Vincent Bugliosi - Helter Skelter

No bodies have ever been found. But then the body of Donald “Shorty” Shea has never been found either.

On October 13, 1968, two women, Clida Delaney and Nancy Warren, were beaten, then strangled to death with leather thongs a few miles south of Ukiah, California. Several members of the Manson Family were in the area at the time. Two days later Manson suddenly moved the whole Family from Spahn to Barker Ranch. The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office believed there might be a link. But a belief is not evidence.

At about 3:30 A.M. on December 30, 1968, seventeen-year-old Marina Habe, daughter of writer Hans Habe, was abducted outside the West Hollywood home of her mother as she was returning home from a date. Her body was found on New Year’s Day, off Mulholland near Bowmont Drive. Cause of death: multiple stab wounds in the neck and chest.

It has been rumored, but never confirmed, that the victim was acquainted with one or more members of the Family. Though most of his followers were at Barker Ranch, Manson was apparently in Los Angeles on December 30, returning to Barker the following day. Though several persons, including KNXT newscaster Carl George, believed there was a connection, nothing definite has been established, and the murder remains unsolved.

On the night of May 27, 1969, Darwin Orell Scott was hacked to death in his Ashland, Kentucky, apartment. The killing was so savage that the victim, who was stabbed nineteen times, was pinned to the floor with a butcher knife.

Sixty-four-year-old Darwin Scott was the brother of Colonel Scott, the man alleged to be Charles Manson’s father.

In the spring of 1969 a motorcycle-riding guru from California who called himself “Preacher” appeared in the Ashland area with several female followers. Dispensing free LSD to local teen-agers, he attempted to set up a commune in an abandoned farmhouse near Huntington. He remained in the area until April, at which time vigilantes burned down the house and drove off the group, because, quoting the Ashland paper, “they didn’t like hippies and didn’t want any more around.” At least four local residents later told reporters that Manson and Preacher were one and the same person. Despite their positive IDs, Manson’s presence in California during at least part of this period is fairly well documented, and it would appear that he was in California on the day of Scott’s murder.

On May 22, 1969, Manson telephoned his parole officer, Samuel Barrett, requesting permission to travel to Texas with the Beach Boys. Permission was withheld pending verification of Manson’s employment with the group. In a letter dated May 27, the same day as Scott’s murder, Manson said that the group had left without him and that he had moved from Death Valley back to Spahn Ranch. To categorize Barrett’s control over Manson as minimal would be an exaggeration. Barrett did not again talk to Manson until June 18.

Barrett did not note the postmark on the letter. He did note that he didn’t receive it until June 3, seven days after it was supposedly written. It is possible that Manson was using the letter as an alibi; it is also possible that he sent one of his killers to murder Scott. But both possibilities are strictly conjecture. The murder of Darwin Scott also remains unsolved.

Early on the morning of July 17, 1969, sixteen-year-old Mark Walts left his parents’ home in Chatsworth and hitchhiked to the Santa Monica Pier to go fishing. His pole was later found on the pier. His body was found about 4 A.M. on July 18, off Topanga Canyon Boulevard a short distance from Mulholland. Young Walts’ face and head were badly bruised and he had been shot three times in the chest by a .22 caliber weapon.

Though neither a ranch hand nor a Family member, Walts occasionally hung around Spahn Ranch. Although LASO sent investigators to Spahn, they were unable to uncover any evidence linking the killing to anyone there.

Walts’ brother, however, called the ranch and told Manson, “I know you done my brother in, and I’m going to kill you.” Though he didn’t carry through, he obviously felt Manson was responsible.

When Danny DeCarlo had his marathon session with LAPD, he was asked: “What do you know about a sixteen-year-old boy that was shot?”

DeCarlo replied: “That had nothing to do with anybody up there. I’ll tell you why, because they were just as shocked about it [as I was]. If they had done it they would have told me.”

DeCarlo informed the officers about the brother’s call. One asked: “Why do you think he suspected Charlie?” DeCarlo replied: “Because there aren’t too many maniacs on the street that would just pull a gun on someone and blow their head off for no reason at all.”

LAPD didn’t pursue it further, since this was LASO’s case. The murder remains unsolved.

In a period of one month—between July 27 and August 26, 1969—Charles Manson and his murderous Family slaughtered nine people: Gary Hinman, Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski, Sharon Tate, Leno LaBianca, Rosemary LaBianca, and Donald Shea.

Though it is known that a number of female Family members were involved in the “cleanup” operation that followed Shea’s murder, none has ever been tried as an accessory after the fact. Some are still on the streets today.

Manson’s arrest on October 12, 1969, did not stop the murders.

As already mentioned, on November 5, 1969, John Philip Haught, aka Christopher Jesus, aka Zero, was shot to death in a beach house in Venice. The four Family members still present when the police arrived claimed he had killed himself while playing Russian roulette. Linda Baldwin, aka Little Patty, t/n Madaline Joan Cottage, said she had been lying on the bed next to him when it happened. The others—Bruce Davis; Susan Bartell, aka Country Sue; and Cathy Gillies—all told the officers they hadn’t witnessed the act but had heard the shot.

At least one, and possibly all, lied.

During the penalty phase of the Tate-LaBianca trial, I asked Cathy: “You said that Zero shot himself. Who told you that? Certainly not Zero.”

A.“Nobody had to tell me. I saw it happen.”

Q.“Oh, you were present?”

A.“Yes.”

Q.“Can you explain how it happened?”

A.“I was talking to him and he walked into the next room. Little Patty was lying on the bed. He sat down on the bed next to her. He reached over, grabbed the gun, and shot himself.”

Q.“Just like that?”

A.“Yes.”

Q.“Out of a clear blue sky?”

A.“Right out of a clear blue sky.”

Three big questions remain: why was Zero playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun; why, if he took the gun out of the leather case, was the case clean of prints; and why, though Bruce Davis admitted picking up the gun, were neither his prints nor those of Zero on it?

About a week after the story of Manson’s involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders broke in the press, Los Angeles Times reporter Jerry Cohen was contacted by a man who claimed he had been present when Zero was shot. Only Zero hadn’t been playing Russian roulette; he had been murdered.

The man was about twenty-five, five feet eight, blond, of slight build. He refused to give Cohen his name. He was, he admitted, “scared to death.”

Six or eight persons had been in the Venice pad that night, smoking hash. “It was one of the chicks that killed Zero,” he told Cohen. But he wouldn’t say which one, only that recently, at another Manson Family gathering, she had sat staring at him for three hours, all the while fingering her knife.

In questioning him, Cohen established that he had become involved with the Family after the Tate-LaBianca murders. He had never met Manson, he said, but he had heard from other Family members that there had been “many more murders than the police know of” and that “the Family is a whole lot larger than you think.”