5:30, the temperature had dropped below zero. I slipped my clothes on over my pajamas and was still cold.
Before leaving Los Angeles, I had telephoned Frank Fowles, Inyo County DA, and we had arranged to meet at a nearby cafe at 6 A.M. Fowles, his deputy Buck Gibbens, and their investigator Jack Gardiner were already there. The three men were, I would soon learn, very conscientious; the help they would give us in the months ahead would be considerable. At the moment they were also very excited. Unexpectedly, they were in the middle of one of the most publicized murder cases in modern history, the Tate case. Then, with puzzled looks, they’d glance across the table at the big-city prosecutor, pajamas sticking out of his cuffs.
Fowles told me that although they had seized some of Manson’s belongings during the October raid on Barker Ranch, a number of things remained there, including an old school bus, which was littered with clothing and other items. I suggested that before leaving Independence we obtain a search warrant for the ranch that specifically mentioned the bus.
This caught Fowles by surprise. I explained that if we did find evidence, and wished to use it in a trial, we didn’t want it suppressed just because someone suddenly appeared with a pink slip saying, “I’m the real owner of the bus. I only loaned it to Charlie, and you didn’t get my permission.”
Fowles understood that. It was only, he explained cryptically, that they didn’t do things quite that way in Inyo County. We returned to his office and, after waiting for the typist to come to work, I dictated the warrant.
It was necessary to state exactly what we were looking for. Among the items I enumerated were: a .22 caliber revolver; knives and other weapons; rope; wire cutters; wallet, driver’s license, and credit cards belonging to Rosemary LaBianca; motor plates to any vehicle; any male and/or female clothing, including footwear.
It was also necessary that I cite the crime—187 PC, murder—and the suspected perpetrators—“tentatively believed to be CHARLES MANSON, CLEM TUFTS, CHARLES MONTGOMERY, SADIE GLUTZ, and one or more additional females.” The information was based on the testimony of two “untested informants,” whom I did not name but who were Ronnie Howard and Danny DeCarlo.
When typed, the warrant ran to sixteen pages. It was an impressive document, the evidence cited therein more than sufficient to obtain a search warrant. Only I was aware how weak our case actually was.
With McGann and me tagging along, Fowles took the warrant to the office of Judge John P. McMurray. The white-haired jurist was, I guessed, in his seventies; he told us he was near retirement.
A search warrant! Judge McMurray looked at it with amusement. This was the first one he had seen in eighteen years, he told us. In Inyo, he explained, men are men. If you knock on a door and the people inside don’t want to let you in, you assume they are hiding something, and bust the door in. A search warrant indeed! But he read and signed it.[27]
The trip to Barker Ranch would take three hours, leaving us little more than an hour to search before the sun set. En route Fowles told me some of the things he had learned about the Manson Family.[28] The first few members—in effect, a scouting party—had appeared in the area in the fall of 1968. Since you have to be somewhat different to want to live on the edge of Death Valley, residents of the area had developed a tolerance for people who elsewhere would have been considered odd types. The hippies were no stranger than others who passed through—prospectors, desert rats, chasers after legendary lost mines. There were only a few minor brushes with the authorities—the girls were advised to desist from panhandling in Shoshone, and one made the mistake of giving a marijuana cigarette to a fifteen-year-old girl, who just happened to be the sheriff’s niece—until September 9, 1969, when National Park Rangers discovered that someone had attempted to burn a Michigan loader, a piece of earth-moving equipment that was parked in the race-track area of Death Valley National Monument. It appeared a senseless act of vandalism. Automobile tracks leading away from the area were determined to belong to a Toyota. Several persons recalled seeing the hippies driving a red Toyota and a dune buggy. On September 21, Park Ranger Dick Powell spotted a 1969 red Toyota in the Hail and Hall area. The four females and one male who were riding in it were questioned but not detained. Powell later ran a license check, learning that the plates on the Toyota belonged to another vehicle. On September 24, Powell returned to look for the group, but they had gone. On September 29, Powell, accompanied by California Highway Patrolman James Pursell, decided to check out Barker Ranch. They found two young girls there, but no vehicles. As they had found standard in their contacts with this group, the girls gave vague, uncommunicative answers to their questions. As the officers were leaving the area, they encountered a truck driven by Paul Crockett, forty-six, a local miner. With him was Brooks Poston, eighteen, who had previously been a member of the hippie band but was now working for Crockett. On hearing that there were two girls at the ranch, Crockett and Poston appeared apprehensive and, when questioned, finally admitted that they feared for their lives.
Powell and Pursell decided to accompany them back to Barker. The two girls had vanished, but the officers presumed they were still nearby, probably watching them. They began questioning Crockett and Poston.
The officers had come looking for arson suspects, and a possible stolen vehicle. They found something totally unexpected. From Pursell’s report: “The interview resulted in some of the most unbelievable and fantastic information we had ever heard: tales of drug use, sex orgies, the actual attempt to re-create the days of Rommel and the Desert Corps by tearing over the countryside by night in numerous dune buggies, the stringing of field phones around the area for rapid communication, the opinion of the leader that he is Jesus Christ and seemed to be trying to form a cult of some sort…”
The surprises weren’t over. Before leaving Barker, Powell and Pursell decided to check out some draws back of the ranch. To quote Powell: “In doing so we stumbled into a group of seven females, all nude or partially so, hiding behind various clumps of sagebrush.” They saw one male, but he ran away when they approached. They questioned the girls but received no useful information. In searching the area, the officers found the red Toyota and a dune buggy, carefully camouflaged with tarps.
The officers had a problem. Because of the Panamint mountain range, they couldn’t use their police radio. They decided to leave and return later with more men. Before departing, they removed several parts from the engine of the Toyota, rendering it inoperative; the dune buggy had no engine, so they weren’t concerned with it.
They would later learn that “as soon as we left, the suspects pulled a complete Volkswagen engine from under a pile of brush, put it in the disabled dune buggy, and drove off within two hours.”
A check on the two vehicles revealed “wants” on both. The Toyota had been rented from a Hertz agency in Encino, a town near Los Angeles, on a credit card stolen in a residential burglary. The dune buggy had been stolen off a used-car lot only three days before Powell and Pursell saw it.
On the night of October 9, officers from the California Highway Patrol, the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office, and National Park rangers assembled near Barker for a massive raid on the ranch, to commence the following morning.
At about 4 A.M., as several of the officers were proceeding down one of the draws some distance from the ranch, they spotted two males asleep on the ground. Between them was a sawed-off shotgun. The two, Clem Tufts [t/n Steve Grogan] and Randy Morglea [t/n Hugh Rocky Todd], were placed under arrest. Though the officers were unaware of it, the pair had been stalking human game: Stephanie Schram and Kitty Lutesinger, two seventeen- year-old girls who had fled the ranch the previous day.
Another male, Robert Ivan Lane [aka Soupspoon], was apprehended on a hill overlooking the ranch. Lane had been acting as lookout but had fallen asleep. There was still another lookout post, this one a very well disguised dugout, its tin roof hidden by brush and dirt, on a hill south of the ranch. The officers had almost passed it when they saw a female emerge from the brush, squat, and urinate, then disappear back into the bushes. While two officers covered the entrance with their rifles, one climbed above the dugout and dropped a large rock on the tin roof. The occupants rushed out. Apprehended were: Louella Maxwell Alexandria [t/n Leslie Van Houten, aka Leslie Sankston]; Marnie Kay Reeves [t/n Patricia Krenwinkel]; and Manon Minette [t/n Catherine Share, aka Gypsy].
Those inside the ranch house were caught unawares, and offered no resistance. They were: Donna Kay Powell [t/n Susan Denise Atkins, aka Sadie Mae Glutz]; Elizabeth Elaine Williamson [t/n Lynette Fromme, aka Squeaky]; and Linda Baldwin [t/n Madaline Cottage, aka Little Patty].
Other members of the raiding party surrounded nearby Myers Ranch, where the group had also been staying, arresting: Sandra Collins Pugh [this was her married name; her maiden name was Sandra Good, aka Sandy]; Rachel Susan Morse [t/n Ruth Ann Moorehouse, aka Ouisch]; Mary Ann Schwarm [t/n Diane Von Ahn]; and Cydette Perell [t/n Nancy Pitman, aka Brenda McCann].
