Beaudry’s rage stung Alex hard. It’s a total mess, he had to concede. “But that’s not really fair, Beaudry,” Alex said, defending himself now. “Manson is a complete psycho – something like this this could have happened any day. Think about everything he did before this! I just got tangled up in the spokes.” Alex knew it was weak defense, but it was all he could come up with.
There was a heavy silence as they both watched the fire department trying control the fire, trying to keep it from jumping the Pass road.
“Is there anyone left I can talk to here?” Beaudry asked Alex as he surveyed the area.
“Yeah,” Alex said, looking behind him. “George Spahn is over there with the medic – the old guy. He owns the ranch. Used to own it, I guess. But he’s blind, so …”
“Great. A blind man. Anything else I can use?” the detective asked, hands on his hips.
Alex thought a moment. “There is. That girl Sherrie. When Sandy called me tonight, she said that Manson had killed Sherrie. But that’s all she had time to say.” Alex looked at the burning canyon. “I didn’t have a chance to talk to her again.”
“All right,” said Beaudry, stiffening. He turned away from Swain. “Get out of my sight! I’m sick of you reporter types. I should hand you over to Lieutenant Seymour right now. He’s a legend in the force for his interrogation methods – always gets a confession.” Beaudry kicked at rock in the dirt, shaking his head. His best shot at cracking the Tate case was on the run behind a wall of fire.
“I gotta get you out of here. I’ll send you back with Fernandez to the hotel in the other car.” Beaudry glanced back at Alex. “And don’t leave town. This is now a criminal investigation.”
Downtown
1964 Tony Hatch
December 11, 1969
Marv Feld sat reading about the big ranch fire from a story on the front page of the L.A. Herald Examiner. He still could not really believe any of it had happened, and read the accounts of the fire and deaths again. Marv did not see his name or Alex Swain’s name anywhere in the newspaper story.
There was a harsh knock on the company’s bathroom door. “Marvin? Are you in there?”
Marv fumed. “Yeah, Dad. I’ll be out in a minute!” He sighed and folded the paper.
The commanding voice on the other side of the door said, “Goddammit, hurry up! Get back to your desk – you’re setting a terrible example for the other employees!”
• • •
Frank Beaudry’s team, along with L.A. County detectives, searched the ranch site for bodies and eventually found two. Both male, the first was determined by dental records to be Shorty – Shawn Danner. The coroner stated the cause of death was a fatal blow to the skull. The second body, a male found in the stable area, became a John Doe - never identified.
The Los Angeles City Attorney consulted with the Mayor, Chief of Police, Councilmen, and County Supervisors. It was decided that the DA could not bring a murder charge against Manson for Shorty’s death because of a lack of evidence or witnesses. They charged Manson with arson and additional counts because of the deaths resulting from the fire. But they wouldn’t even consider charging any of the Family with the Tate murders.
Alex had given a sworn deposition about his entire Manson experience, including the Tate murder conspiracy evidence. But Alex was still the only person to make any accusations, and his testimony was deemed all hearsay.
For the arson charge, the State had two witnesses: Alex, and George Spahn. Spahn, being blind, could only testify about what he had heard.
Beaudry and the DA hoped that if they could take Manson down for arson, further time and interrogation might get a break or confession. Funny things happened when a con was sent back inside. Old scores, new enemies – maybe something would crack. In the meantime, the search for Manson went nationwide, but they couldn’t seem to get any heat behind it. The arson case just didn’t seem as urgent or fascinating out in the rest of the country. If they only knew, Beaudry thought.
The Mayor and DA quelled the interest that popped up from the Los Angeles media, which was hearing rumors that the hippie group from the Spahn Ranch might have been involved in the Sharon Tate murders. The DA convinced the media powers that pursuing silly rumors like that would not be good for anybody. Hippies? Please! Let’s get back to being serious and finding those murderers!
Save the Last Dance for Me
1960 Doc Pomus, Mort Shulman
January 31, 1970
Alex wrote his version of the facts and events as he knew them, detailing the whole story. It was much more complete and tied together than what he had been able to tell Phil Crane and Frank Beaudry earlier. Phil Crane was still gun-shy about running the story but gave his blessing for Alex to take it to another magazine. Alex found no interest from the local media, learning as he tried that the big men downtown preferred that the public never have a chance to hear the strange, macabre fairy tale.
Rolling Stone was curious about it, but passed after a visit from Command Records. Alex decided to approach Ramparts magazine when they expressed interest. Alex knew Ramparts offered a more serious platform for the story than a music magazine. But after quite a bit of back-and-forth, that deal fell apart when Ramparts wanted Alex to turn the story more toward police corruption in Los Angeles.
Once Alex was finished with the Manson Family, LAPD, and music business maniacs, he began to appreciate California more and more. Maybe not Los Angeles so much, but the beauty and magic of the state were impossible to ignore. With his check for the Esalen story - and a little more added from Phil Crane - Alex bought a still sharp ‘67 Mustang, put down a first-and-last on an apartment in Venice, and paid the deductible on the repair costs for his rented station wagon. He was permanently banned from Rent-A-Wreck.
January brought the rains and shorter days to Los Angeles. It certainly beat the Michigan winter, and this was the first time Alex had not gone home for the holidays. He enjoyed hanging out at Venice beach on clear days. The weekend freak show on the Venice boardwalk sometimes reminded him of the scene at Spahn Ranch, and he always kept one eye open for Sandy. But the huge numbers of tourists, couples, families and kids at the beach far outnumbered the circus brigade of clowns, vendors, and teenaged panhandlers there. Most people came to the beach to enjoy a quiet, normal day in their lives.
After his experiences with Manson and his Family, Alex had a new appreciation for ‘normal.’ He had also developed a new respect for police – in general. Having to deal with a true sociopath like Manson gave Alex a different perspective about the police and what they are asked to handle.
As usual, Alex had no idea where his next assignment was coming from, or where it would send him. He pondered how he could make things happen instead of waiting for a phone call, but didn’t really feel like doing much of anything at the moment.
The winter rains in So Cal can come down hard, in sweeping gusts. It was usually later on those nights, when the rain pelted his window, that Alex had trouble sleeping. A long time would need to pass before he could drop off to sleep instead of lying awake imagining the difference one day might have made.
Big Rock Candy Mountain
1949 adapted by Burl Ives
December 11, 1969
Two weeks after the Spahn fire, Nevada Highway Patrol recovered the two dune buggies at a body shop in Hawthorne, Nevada. The owner of the shop said he traded an Army surplus truck that was sitting in the front lot for the two machines about a week earlier. Two women and a man – a hippy type who had smiled a lot – had simply driven in off the highway and made the deal. The owner ID’d Manson, Kat, and Squeaky. He testified that they never said anything about where they were going or where they had come from.
• • •
In the Panamint Mountains of Death Valley winter is usually dry, but reliably bitter. The massive storm fronts sweeping in from the Pacific are drained of most of their rain and snow crossing four mountain ranges before they reach Death Valley. It is still always
deathly cold and windy.
Charles Manson threw another piece of split oak into the mouth of the wood-burning stove. Their little abandoned ranch house - a cabin really - was a great hideout. It was up a mountain creek, Goler Wash, that was impassable to anything but the most rugged four-wheel drive vehicles.
Kat and Squeaky had gone down the mountain on a trip to Ballarat, the closest crossroad hamlet, for supplies and to rent their old rugged army truck out for small cash jobs. Manson warmed his hands in front of the stove. The stove was enough to keep them all from freezing but it was always very cold in the room. At night they needed to sleep together to survive.
The stove helped Manson’s frozen fingers, but his hands still trembled from speed. Manson had been on a speed trip ever since the trio felt secure in their mountain hut. He was playing guitar and writing constantly, spewing out an enormous volume of songs and riffs. At first Kat was pleased. The terror of the escape from Spahn Ranch was receding and their situation started to feel more like the old times. But as Charlie continued to feed his speed trip the lyrics and music started to make less and less sense to her. The few times Kat had asked him what a song meant Manson turned on her, mean and sarcastic, and told her how stupid and naïve she was. Even Squeaky was becoming afraid of him, and Sandy had bailed out near Las Vegas a long time ago. Now Kat was, for the first time, considering a life apart from Charles Manson.
Manson slept little, ate next to nothing, and drank gallons of melted snow and creek ice. His cheeks hollowed, and he lost so much weight his pants would fall down if unbelted. When Manson tired of playing the guitar, he sharpened his knives compulsively on a whetstone, never satisfied with the edge on any of them.
Charles Manson, Squeaky Fromme, and George Spahn are real persons. All other characters are fictional and any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental and unintentional.
• • •
Michael Beiriger was a rock music recording engineer in Los Angeles, working in the early Seventies. Events of 1969 were still very vivid in the memory of Angelenos, and were the driving force of pop culture and American lives that followed later. If you lived it, you would never forget those times.
© 2012, Michael Beiriger. All rights reserved.
Charles Manson song lyrics by permission of ESP-Disk, NYC.
Tonight! The Charlie Manson Band Page 25