It was. The washes were extremely narrow and rock-strewn. Going up them, we’d frequently gain one foot, then with an angry screech of rubber, slide back two. You could smell the tires burning. Finally, Fowles and I got out of the vehicle and walked in front of it, removing boulders as McGann drove forward, foot after foot. It took us two hours to travel five miles.
I asked Fowles to have photographs taken of the washes. I wanted to show the jury how isolated and remote an area the killers had chosen for their hiding place. Circumstantial evidence, a tiny speck, but of such specks, one after another, are strong cases made.
No one would have chosen to live at either Barker or Myers Ranch, which were about a quarter of a mile apart, except for one thing: there was water. There was even a swimming pool at Barker, though, like the stone ranch house and outlying shacks, it was in disrepair. The house was small—living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. I also wanted photos of the cabinet under the sink where Manson hid. It measured 3 by 1 ? by 1 ? feet. I could see why Pursell was so surprised.
When I saw the large school bus, I couldn’t believe Manson had brought it up one of the washes. He hadn’t, Fowles told me; he’d driven it in over the road on the Las Vegas side. Even that had been an ordeal, and the condition of the bus showed it. It was a battered green and white. On the side was an American flag decal with the slogan AMERICA—LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. While Sartuchi and the others searched the house, I went to work on the abandoned bus.
The placement of the warrant took some thought. It had to be left in sight. However, if it was, anyone could come along and remove it. I didn’t want a defense attorney contending we hadn’t fulfilled the requirements of the search. I put it on one of the racks just under the roof of the bus. You
At least a foot of clothing was piled on the floor. I later learned that wherever the Family stayed, they kept a community clothing pile. When an item was needed, they’d root through the pile until they found it. I got down on my hands and knees and began rooting too. I was looking for two things in particular: clothing with bloodstains, and boots. A bloody boot-heel print had been found on the front porch of the Tate residence. There was a small mark, a little indentation, in the heel that I was hoping we could match up. Although I found several boots, none had such a mark. And when Joe Granado applied the benzidine test to the clothing, the results were uniformly negative. I had all the clothing taken back to L.A. anyway, hoping SID might come up with something in the lab.
There were eight to ten magazines in the bus, half of which were
But that was about all we found. Our search appeared to have yielded little, if anything, of evidentiary value. However, I was anxious to go through the items picked up in the raids.
On the way back to Independence we stopped in Lone Pine. While I was nursing a beer with the officers, Sartuchi remarked that he and Patchett had interviewed Manson in Independence some weeks earlier, questioning him about the Tate as well as the LaBianca murders. The following day when I called Lieutenant Helder, I mentioned this, thinking he probably had a report on the interview. Helder was amazed; he had no idea anyone from LAPD had ever talked to Manson. This was my first indication that the Tate and LaBianca detectives hadn’t exactly been working hand in glove.
Helder did have some news. It wasn’t good. Sergeant Lee had run a ballistics comparison on the .22 caliber bullets we’d found at Spahn: all were negative to those recovered at 10050 Cielo Drive.
I wasn’t about to give up that easily. I still wanted a much more thorough search of Spahn Ranch.
We stayed at the Winnedumah again that night. Up early the next morning, I walked to the courthouse. I’d forgotten what fresh air smelled like. That trees, grass, have scents. In L.A. there are no smells, just smog. A couple of blocks from the courthouse I saw two young girls, one carrying a baby. It was a wild guess but I asked, “Are you Sandy and Squeaky?” They admitted they were. I identified myself and said that I would like to talk to them in the District Attorney’s office at 1 P.M. They said they would come if I would buy them some candy. I said I would.
In the DA’s office, Fowles opened his files and gave me everything he had on the Manson Family. Sartuchi set to work photocopying.
In going through the documents, I spotted a reference to Crockett and Poston: “Inyo County Deputy Sheriff Don Ward talked to the two miners in Shoshone and has their entire conversation recorded.” I wanted to interview the pair, but it would save time if I heard the tape first, so I asked McGann to contact Ward and get it for me.
There was also an October 2, 1969, California Highway Patrol report in which it was stated: “Deputy Dennis Cox has F.I.R. card on suspect Charles Montgomery, 23 years of age (dob 12-2-45).” Field Interrogation Reports are three-by-five cards that are made whenever a person is stopped and questioned. I wanted to see that card. We still knew very little about Tex, who hadn’t been arrested in either the Spahn or Barker raids.
After going through the large stack of documents, I started on the evidence seized in the October 10–12 raid. I had Granado test the knives for blood: negative. The wire cutters were large and heavy. It would have been difficult to shinny up a telephone pole with them; still, maybe they were the only pair available. I gave them to the officers so SID could make comparison cuts on the Tate telephone wires. Boots, but no discernible heel mark; I put them aside for SID. I checked the labels on all the clothing, noting that a number of the women’s garments, though now filthy, came from expensive shops. I had them taken to L.A. for analysis. I also wanted Winifred Chapman and Suzanne Struthers to look at them, to see if any of the items might have been the property of Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, or Rosemary LaBianca.
Squeaky and Sandy kept the appointment. I’d done a little checking before talking to them. Though the information was sketchy, I knew that both had been born in Southern California, and had come from fairly well-to-do families. Squeaky’s parents lived in Santa Monica; her father was an aeronautical engineer. Sandy’s parents had divorced and remarried; her father was a San Diego stockbroker. According to DeCarlo, when Sandy joined the Family, sometime early in 1968, she had some $6,000 in stocks, which she sold, giving the money to Manson. She and her baby were now on welfare. Both girls had started college, then dropped out, Squeaky attending El Camino Junior College in Torrance, Sandy the University of Oregon and San Francisco State. Squeaky had been one of the earliest members of the Family, I later learned, casting her lot with Manson just months after he got out of prison in 1967.
They were the first Family members I had talked to, other than DeCarlo, who was a fringe member at best, and I was immediately struck by their expressions. They seemed to radiate inner contentment. I’d seen others like this—true believers, religious fanatics—yet I was both shocked and impressed. Nothing seemed to faze them. They smiled almost continuously, no matter what was said. For them all the questions had been answered. There was no need to search any more, because they had found the truth. And their truth was “Charlie is love.”
Tell me about this love, I asked them. Do you mean this in the male-female sense? Yes, that too, they answered, but that was only a part. More all-encompassing? Yes, but “Love is love; you can’t define it.”
Did Charlie teach you this? I asked, genuinely curious. Charlie did not need to teach them, they said. Charlie only turned them around so they could look at themselves and see the love within. Did they believe that Charlie was Jesus Christ? They only smiled enigmatically, as if sharing a secret no one else could possibly understand.
Although Squeaky was twenty-one and Sandy twenty-five, there was a little-girl quality to them, as if they hadn’t aged but had been retarded at a certain stage in their childhood. Little girls, playing little-girl games. Including murder? I wondered.
Is your love for Charlie, say, different from your love for George Spahn? I asked Squeaky. No, love is love, Squeaky said; it’s all the same. But she’d hesitated just a moment before answering, giving the impression that though these were the words she was supposed to say, there was heresy in them, in denying that Charlie was special. Perhaps to overcome this, she told me about her relationship with George Spahn. She was in love with George, Squeaky said; if he asked her to marry him, she would. George was, she went on, a beautiful person inside. He was also, she added, in an obvious attempt to shock me, very good in bed. She was quite graphic.
“I’m not that interested in your sex life, Squeaky,” I told her. “But I am very, very interested in what you know about the Tate, LaBianca, Hinman, and other murders.”
Neither expression changed in the slightest. The smiles remained. They knew nothing about any crimes. All they knew about was love.
