Q. “That’s not my opinion.”
A. “I’m not an outstanding citizen—”
Q. “As I told you the other day, Danny, you level with us, all the way, right down the line, no bullshitting—I’m not going to bullshit you, you’re not going to bullshit me—we level with each other and I’ll go out for you a hundred percent. And I mean it. So that you don’t have to go to the joint.”
Q.
“Now tell us what you know about Shorty.”
Early that same evening, November 17, 1969, two LAPD homicide officers, Sergeants Mossman and Brown, appeared at Sybil Brand Institute and asked to see one Ronnie Howard.
The interview was brief. They heard enough, however, to realize they were on to something big. Enough, too, to decide it wasn’t the best idea to leave Ronnie Howard in the same dormitory with Susan Atkins. Before leaving Sybil Brand, they arranged to have Ronnie moved to an isolation unit. Then they drove back to Parker Center, anxious to tell the other detectives that they had “cracked the case.”
Nielsen, Gutierrez, and McGann were still questioning DeCarlo about the murder of Shorty. They already knew something about it, even before talking to Springer and DeCarlo, since Sergeants Whiteley and Guenther had begun their own investigation into the “possible homicide” after talking to Kitty Lutesinger.
They knew “Shorty” was Donald Jerome Shea, a thirty-six-year-old male Caucasian who had worked at Spahn Ranch on and off for some fifteen years as a horse wrangler. Like most of the other cowboys who drifted in and out of Spahn’s Movie Ranch, Shorty was just awaiting the day when some producer discovered he had all the potential of a new John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. Whenever the prospect of any acting job materialized, Shorty would quit work and go in search of that ever elusive stardom. Which explained why, when in late August he disappeared from Spahn, no one thought too much about it. At first.
Kitty had also told LASO that Manson, Clem, Bruce, and possibly Tex had been involved in the killing, and that some of the girls in the Family had helped obliterate all traces of the crime. One thing they didn’t know, and now asked Danny, was, “Why did they do it?”
A. “Because Shorty was going to old man Spahn and snitching. And
Charlie didn’t like snitches.”
Q. “Just about the petty bullshit at the ranch?”
A. “That’s right. Shorty was telling old man Spahn that he should put him in charge and he would clean everybody up.” He would, in short order, run off Manson and his Family. Shorty, however, made a fatal mistake: he forgot that little Squeaky was not only George’s eyes, she was also Charlie’s ears.
There were other reasons, which Danny enumerated. Shorty had married a black topless dancer; Charlie “had a thing” about interracial marriages, and blacks. (“Charlie had two enemies,” DeCarlo said, “the police and the niggers, in that order.”) Charlie also suspected that Shorty had helped set up the August 16 raid on Spahn—Shorty had been “offed” about ten days later.[24] And there was the possibility, though this was strictly conjecture on DeCarlo’s part, that Shorty had overheard something about some of the other murders.
Bruce Davis had told him about Shorty’s murder, DeCarlo said. Several of the girls had also mentioned it, as had both Clem and Manson. Danny was unclear as to some of the details—how they had managed to catch Shorty off guard, and where—but as for the mode of death, he was more than graphic. “Like they were going to do Caesar,” they went to the gunroom and picked up a sword and four German bayonets, the latter purchased from an Army surplus store for a buck each and honed to razor sharpness, then, getting Shorty off by himself, they “stuck him like carving up a Christmas turkey…Bruce said they cut him up in nine pieces. They cut his head off. Then they cut his arms off too, so there was no way they could possibly identify him. They were laughing about that.”
After killing him, they covered the body with leaves (DeCarlo guessed, but was not sure, that this had occurred in one of the canyons behind the ranch buildings); some of the girls had helped dispose of Shorty’s bloody clothing, his automobile, and other possessions; then “Clem came back the next day or that night and buried him good.”
Q.
Q. “Sure.”
Q. “I’m going to send Danny up to the eighth floor. I want him back down here in fifteen minutes.”
A. “I’ll wait right here.” Danny was not anxious to be seen wandering the halls of LAPD.
Q. “It won’t take more than fifteen minutes. We’ll close the door so nobody will know you’re in here.”
There had been no accident. Mossman and Brown had returned from Sybil Brand. As they related what they had heard, the fifteen minutes stretched to nearly forty-five. Although the Atkins-Howard conversations left many unanswered questions, the detectives were now convinced that the Tate and LaBianca cases had been “solved.”[25] Susan Atkins had told Ronnie Howard details—the unpublished words written at the LaBianca residence, the lost knife at Tate—which only one of the killers could know. Lieutenants Helder (Tate) and LePage (LaBianca) were notified.
When the detectives returned to the interrogation room, they were in a lighthearted mood.
Q. “Now, when we left Shorty, he was in nine pieces and his head and arms were off…”
DeCarlo was not told what they had learned. But he must have sensed a change in the questioning. The matter of Shorty was quickly wrapped up. Tate was now the topic. Exactly why did Danny think Manson was involved?
Well, there were two incidents. Or maybe it was the same incident, Danny was not sure. Anyway, “they went out on one caper and they came back with seventy-five bucks. Tex was in on that. And he fucked up his foot, fucking somebody out of it. I don’t know whether he put his lights out or not, but he got seventy-five bucks.”
There were no calendars at Spahn Ranch, DeCarlo had told them earlier; no one paid much attention to what day it was. The one date everyone at the ranch remembered, however, was August 16, the day of the raid. It was before this.
Q. “How much before?”
A. “Oh, two weeks.”
If DeCarlo’s estimate was correct, this would also be before Tate. What was the other incident?
A. “They went out one night, everybody went but Bruce.”
Q. “Who went?”
A. “Charlie, Tex, and Clem. Them three. O.K., the next morning—”
One of the detectives interrupted. Had he actually seen them leave? No, only the next morning—Another interruption: Did any of the girls go that night?
A. “No, I think—No, I am almost positive it was just them three that went.”
Q. “Well, do you remember, were the rest of the girls there that night?”
A. “See, the girls were scattered all over the place, and there is no possible way that I could have kept track of who was there and who wasn’t there…”
So it was possible the girls could have gone without DeCarlo’s knowing about it. Now, what about the date?
This one Danny remembered, more or less, because he was rebuilding the engine on his bike and had to go into town to get a bearing. It was “around the ninth, tenth, or eleventh” of August. “And they split that night and
