DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, Calif., March 16, 2008
Did The Manson Family Have Other Victims?
Forensics Suggests Bodies May Still Be Buried In The High Desert Where Charles Manson Lived
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Charles Manson and his cult followers currently in prison are serving life sentences for murder, but there may be more victims hidden at the site of the "Family"'s ranch. (AP)
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Daniel O. Larson prepares to use a sensitive metal detector, Feb. 22, 2008, in the Panamint Mountains west of Death Valley National Park, Calif. Using cutting edge technology, forensic experts like Larson traveled to the site of Charles Manson's hideout for possible detection of clandestine gravesites. (AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian)
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The abandoned Barker Ranch house west of Death Valley National Park, Calif. Charles Manson and his followers retreated to the Barker Ranch after a killing spree during the summer of 1969. (AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian)
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"If there are bodies here," she said at the ranch, "we need to find them and send them home."
About 100 yards behind the house, Dostie readied his trained dog, Buster, for the search.
"Go find Fred!" Dostie said, releasing the dog on the command that sends him searching for human remains.
The dog bounded away, zigzagging over the terrain. Then he lay down in a depression in the ground, quivering, ears upright. Buster looked at his trainer and emitted a high-pitched whine.
"He's alerting," Dostie said, throwing the dog his reward and planting a flag on the site.
Meanwhile, Arpad Vass and Marc Wise, senior researchers from Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, were readying the first of the instruments they'd brought, capable of chemically detecting evidence of decades-old human bodies. It was a hand-held device shaped like a gun.
"It's a crude sniffer," said Vass. "It gives us a quick indication of areas we want to come back to."
The machine detects fluorinated hydrocarbon compounds, one of the approximately 400 types of volatile organic compounds emitted by human bodies during decomposition. Focusing on these compounds is important because Vass believes they're formed as the fluoride added to urban drinking water is released after death.
Their presence helps differentiate a human bone from bones from wild animals, explained Vass, who has spent years developing a decomposition odor database using bodies donated to the Oak Ridge lab.
The instrument beeped at regular intervals. As it approached the ground, the beeping accelerated until it was a steady stream of sound.
"That's impressive," said Wise, a senior researcher at Oak Ridge specializing in environmental analytical chemistry. Vass agreed.
Using a thin, 3-foot long probe, Vass tested the soil in the area. It slid into the ground without much effort.
"Undisturbed soil isn't this easy to probe," he said.
"The loose soil area is roughly like this," he said, using the tip of the instrument to draw a long oval on the ground. "It's about three feet deep."
"We need to do an IR," he said, turning to Wise.
He was calling for the next piece of machinery - larger and heavier, but more specific. It could be calibrated to detect different compounds, using technology known as infrared spectroscopy to "read" a particular molecule's profile.
"We're getting the highest hits here, where the ground is soft," said Wise. "There's definitely something down there," he said. "We just can't know yet exactly what until we dig."
"Or who," said Vass.
The men crouched close to the ground, gathering three samples of dirt from each area of interest for further analysis using more finely tuned lab equipment that could not be brought into the field.
The group broke for lunch. Dostie shared bread and cold cuts in front of the ranch house where Manson was finally arrested, in October 1969, after being found crammed in a bathroom cabinet.
Afterward, Daniel Larson took up his part of the investigation. The head of the archaeology department at California State University, Long Beach, Larson has used Ground Penetrating Radar and a magnetometer - an instrument that can peer 12 feet into the ground - in archaeological work and to help find mass graves.
At Barker Ranch, he took 2,025 readings of the ground at the suspect site, stopping every four inches within a 26-by-20-foot grid, looking for discrepancies that indicated earth had been moved.
"What I'm looking for is the pit, not the bones," he explained.
He'll have to return later to use the Ground Penetrating Radar. The soil still held some moisture from recent storms, and that could disturb the results.
Watching the scientists do their work, Harder spoke of his memories of the Manson clan - the churlish, armed young men, the pretty girls with blank, doll-like expressions.
"I didn't feel real easy around them," he said. "They picked up all kinds of people - hitchhikers and stuff."
He particularly remembers two teenage runaways who escaped the ranch, then stopped at a nearby mining camp for food. They had enough fear in them to make it out of the rugged mountains barefoot, said Harder.
They turned themselves in to the California Highway Patrol at the mouth of Anvil Springs Canyon - booked as Stephanie Jean Schram, 17, a runaway from Anaheim, and Kathryn Rene Lutesinger, 17, runaway from Los Angeles, on Oct. 10, 1969.
"Both females stated that they were attempting to run away from 'Charlie' the leader of the 'family' and that they were afraid of their lives," read the CHP report.
Their fear was well-founded. Following the police raid on Spahn Ranch in August, Manson and the family killed ranch hand Donald "Shorty" Shea for "snitching" and buried him out there.
That body wasn't found until more than eight years later.
"I dug it up myself," about a quarter mile behind the ranch house, said Sgt. Bill Gleason, a now-retired homicide investigator with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
"There were rumors of other deaths, minors killed out in Death Valley," said Gleason, who took part in the original Spahn Ranch raid. "We just didn't have anything concrete to link to the Manson family."
The runaway girls didn't know how close they'd come to becoming another one of these rumors.
The day they turned themselves in, CHP officers headed to Barker Ranch for the first of what would be two car theft raids.
On their way, they arrested two men - booked as Gary Milton Tufts and Randy J. Mourglea - whom they found asleep at the mouth of Goler Wash, a sawed-off shotgun between them. They were from Barker Ranch, CHP said.
When told of the arrests, both girls told officers they believed the armed men were sent "to stop them from walking away," according to CHP's report.
Were others less lucky when they tried to escape?
Vass said that, considering the quantity and the types of markers of human decomposition found, the cadaver dog's response, and the probing exercise, he found enough evidence to warrant further testing at a deeper level and a full scale excavation at Barker Ranch, according to the report he issued to law enforcement.
"I'd recommend a dig, excavate the sites," said Dostie, who reviewed the report.
But if a body is found on the Barker Ranch, then what?
The likelihood of a new prosecution appears slim. Locating remains would just be the first step, said Patrick Sequeira, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who has been in charge of the Manson family parole hearings since Kay's retirement.
"You have to tie them to someone who has disappeared, and there were a lot of people floating in and out of the family environment who were runaways, or hiding out," he said.
Then investigators would have to find out who killed them, where, and who could testify, he said.
The Manson family members currently in prison are already serving life sentences - the maximum penalty allowed at the time the crimes were committed.
Still, Sequeira did not discourage the efforts of the crime scene re-investigators. "I'd love to see them put something together," he said.
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Posted by oldpilot954 at 04:05 PM : Mar 17, 2008
Thanks...
1.You shall have no other gods but me!
2.You shall not make unto you any graven images!
3.You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain!
4.You shall remember the Sabbath and keep it holy!
5.Honor your mother and father!
6.You shall not murder!
7.You shall not commit adultery!
8.You shall not steal!
9.You shall not bear false witness!
10.Thou shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.
thats funny!!
We as a country are going through difficult times. They may get worse before they get better. It is our job to find the person to lead us out of these times. Do not vote for a president. Vote for a leader of men.
And when the ballots are cast, don''t point fingers, pick up a shovel and get to work. Together.
Oh yeah, and that Manson guy is one sick puppy...
Charles Manson "I was just doin'' what the government does every day."
Debra Tate''s mother, Doris Tate, emerged from years of depression when she heard that a Manson family member was seeking parole.
Parole? Let''s see, you blow up the World Trade Center full of people, plant a passport, and blame the Muslims.... sound familiar?
Posted by barbaraf4 at 04:34 PM : Mar 16, 2008
Even if they had not been revoked California has more death row inmates that have waited 25+ years to be executed ... Even victims have passed before these pieces of garbage have met there fate through a jury of peers ...
Surprised no posts about Bush being responsible?
They will come ....
- by barbaraf4 March 16, 2008 7:34 PM EDT
- "The Manson family members currently in prison are already serving life sentences - the maximum penalty allowed at the time the crimes were committed."
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Not true! They were sentenced to death and then the death penalty was revoked. Their sentences were switched to life with possibility of parole.