Hi,
The following is a suggestion for a thread on the Tate-LaBianca Homicide Research Blog. It involves glasses that were found in the Tate home and did not belong to the victims or the killers. This indicates that at least one other person was in the house that night.
When Charles Manson announced to his followers at Spahn Ranch on August 8, 1969 "Now is the time for Helter Skelter,” he told Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Linda Kasabian to get knives and changes of clothes. Shortly after midnight, they entered the home of actress Sharon Tate at 10500 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon and brutally murdered her and four other people.
Originally, the police believed the slaughter at the Tate house was the work of one man. A clue to his identity was a pair of glasses found in the living room. A lieutenant for the Los Angeles Police Department, Robert Helder, showed them to the press on October 23 and said that the killer probably lost them during the struggle with the victims. He further said the owner was extremely near-sighted and could not operate a vehicle without them. An unusual feature was the plastic lenses. Unlike glass lenses, plastic resisted shattering and was the choice of very active people such as athletes. The amber-colored, horn-rimmed frames were of a specific type manufactured by the American Optical Corp. The customized bend of the temple shafts showed that the left ear was about one-fourth to one-half inch higher than the right. Police sent flyers to thousands of eye doctors, hoping that someone might provide information about the man who bought them.
Glasses found at the Tate house.
What the news media hailed as a major breakthrough in October quickly became an almost forgotten loose end in December after the arrest of Charles Manson, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian, none of whom wore glasses.
When the case came to trial, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi feared that defense attorneys might bring up the glasses and make the reasonable assertion that at least one killer was still at large. From that standpoint, they could argue that the wrong people were on trial. As it turned out, the glasses were never mentioned during the Manson trial nor the Tex Watson trial. (Helter Skelter, 1974, pp. 106, 109, 380).
The mystery of the glasses has never been solved. One thing is clear: at least one other person had participated in the slaughter at the Tate house on August 9, 1969.
The following is a suggestion for a thread on the Tate-LaBianca Homicide Research Blog. It involves glasses that were found in the Tate home and did not belong to the victims or the killers. This indicates that at least one other person was in the house that night.
When Charles Manson announced to his followers at Spahn Ranch on August 8, 1969 "Now is the time for Helter Skelter,” he told Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Linda Kasabian to get knives and changes of clothes. Shortly after midnight, they entered the home of actress Sharon Tate at 10500 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon and brutally murdered her and four other people.
Originally, the police believed the slaughter at the Tate house was the work of one man. A clue to his identity was a pair of glasses found in the living room. A lieutenant for the Los Angeles Police Department, Robert Helder, showed them to the press on October 23 and said that the killer probably lost them during the struggle with the victims. He further said the owner was extremely near-sighted and could not operate a vehicle without them. An unusual feature was the plastic lenses. Unlike glass lenses, plastic resisted shattering and was the choice of very active people such as athletes. The amber-colored, horn-rimmed frames were of a specific type manufactured by the American Optical Corp. The customized bend of the temple shafts showed that the left ear was about one-fourth to one-half inch higher than the right. Police sent flyers to thousands of eye doctors, hoping that someone might provide information about the man who bought them.
Glasses found at the Tate house.
What the news media hailed as a major breakthrough in October quickly became an almost forgotten loose end in December after the arrest of Charles Manson, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian, none of whom wore glasses.
When the case came to trial, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi feared that defense attorneys might bring up the glasses and make the reasonable assertion that at least one killer was still at large. From that standpoint, they could argue that the wrong people were on trial. As it turned out, the glasses were never mentioned during the Manson trial nor the Tex Watson trial. (Helter Skelter, 1974, pp. 106, 109, 380).
The mystery of the glasses has never been solved. One thing is clear: at least one other person had participated in the slaughter at the Tate house on August 9, 1969.
136 comments:
Here's 3 posts on the Cielodrive.com website regarding the same subject:
http://www.cielodrive.com/archive/glasses-may-be-clue-in-sharon-tate-case/
http://www.cielodrive.com/archive/pair-of-glasses-gives-police-solid-clue-in-tate-murders/
http://www.cielodrive.com/archive/eyeglasses-left-at-tate-murder-site/
Again, from the Cielodrive.com website (comments section):
CD writes:
I don’t recall ever hearing about who the glasses belonged to. Here is a mention of the glasses from “Manson In His Own Words.”
“Returning to the scene of any crime is risky business, so instead of turning up Cielo Drive, we drove past and looked up the hill to see if there was any activity that might indicate the police had arrived. Everything was quiet. Still not wanting to be too obvious, we parked the car a short distance away and walked to the premises. We entered the grounds by climbing over the fence, as the kids had done. As Sadie and Tex had said, the first victim’s car was off the driveway a short distance from the gate. Going by Tex’s description of how he had approached the car and how he had pushed it, I carefully wiped the car clean of possible finger prints without disturbing the body of the boy who lay dead inside.
“Approaching a house where you know there are dead bodies has a spine-chilling effect, and I think if I had been alone, I might have forgotten about continuing any farther. My partner probably felt the same way, but neither of us spoke and we did go on to see the whole gory mess. Tex and Sadie’s description had been accurate. What I was seeing was not a scene from a movie or some horrible acid fantasy, but real people who would never see the morning’s sun. I’d had thoughts of creating a scene more in keeping with a black-against-white retaliation, but in looking around, I lost the heart to carry out my plans. The two of us took towels and wiped every place a fingerprint could have been left. I then placed the towel I was using over the head of the man inside the room. My partner had an old pair of eyeglasses which we often used as a magnifying glass or as a device to start a fire when matches weren’t available. We carefully wiped the glasses free of prints and dropped them on the floor, so that, when discovered, they would be a misleading clue for the police. Within an hour and twenty minutes after leaving Spahn, we were back. The sun was already bringing the light of day as I crawled in bed with Stephanie.”
Starviego,
Please check your email.
Best Regards, LS
Who was Charlie's partner?
To the best of my knowledge, the owner of those glasses has never been identified to this day. I've never heard of any of the killers being connected to them in that they wore glasses or brought them with them.
There are many ways they may have gotten there, but my guess is they were somehow associated with the victims. Someone might have lost them there days or weeks before the murder. They might have fallen out of someone's pocket, apparently casual acquaintances of the Polanski's came and went through that house all the time.
Maybe one of the victims had them in their pocket for some reason, might have found them somewhere else.
I've worn glasses my whole life, including 1969. If I lose or drop my glasses I have to immediately find them, I can barely see without them. Apparently, the owner of those glasses had pretty bad eye problems as well as they are described as "thick". I'm surprised the owner has never been identified. I doubt those glasses had any connection to the crime.
Those glasses were just a prop.
Who wrote this? It sure wasn't Charlie:
“Approaching a house where you know there are dead bodies has a spine-chilling effect, and I think if I had been alone, I might have forgotten about continuing any farther. My partner probably felt the same way, but neither of us spoke and we did go on to see the whole gory mess. Tex and Sadie’s description had been accurate. What I was seeing was not a scene from a movie or some horrible acid fantasy, but real people who would never see the morning’s sun.
Sounds more like something Alyssa Statman would write.
Didn't Charles Manson tell his minions that death was good? Isn't that what Susan Atkins told Sharon Tate when she was begging for her life? When Susan told her "you're gonna die bitch, and there's nothing you can do about it."
This language doesn't sound like anything Charlie would espouse. And Susan sure changed her tune when death was looking her in the face in her last days, trying to use that as an excuse to get out of prison.
And the parole board didn't buy it.
Maybe Alyssa can tell us who Charlie's "partner" was. I've heard many stories.
The mystery of the glasses has never been solved. One thing is clear: at least one other person had participated in the slaughter at the Tate house on August 9, 1969
This sounds like one of Starviego's murder mysteries !
Update:
This thread was written by a gentleman named William Weston.
I didn't have his name initially, hence the credit to "Anonymous".
Thanks again William, for your contribution.
katie8753 said...
Those glasses were just a prop
Like many things associated with TLB, there's more than one story from more than one source and in this particular case, even two different stories from the same source ! In Emmons, "Charlie" says "My partner had an old pair of eyeglasses which we often used as a magnifying glass or as a device to start a fire when matches weren’t available." There's reason to doubt this however, because, as Pax Vobiscum has pointed out, the glasses were for someone with extreme nearsightedness and they are the glasses that don't start fires. It's the ones that correct far sightedness that people out in the wilds of nature can start fires with because such glasses bend the light to a focal point as opposed to disperse the light like the ones for nearsightedness. A tiny detail, but one which already begins to unravel Charlie's attempts to confuse {or to put it his way of 1970, to helter skelter !}
Charlie also told George Stimson that before the killers left Spahn for Cielo, he gave Tex a pair of glasses to drop as a false clue.
Susan Atkins however, told Roseanne Walker, a former prison buddy, that the glasses had nothing to do with the killers. I regard them in the same way I regard the numerous unidentified fingerprints found at both murder scenes ~ unimportant. They were important back in 1969. After the grand jury hearing, they ceased to be.
Who wrote this? It sure wasn't Charlie: "Approaching a house where you know there are dead bodies has a spine-chilling effect, and I think if I had been alone, I might have forgotten about continuing any farther. "
It was Nuel Emmons, author of the controversial "Charles Manson in his own words." When the book first came out, it was called "Without Conscience." Basically, because he wasn't allowed to tape his conversations over the 7 years that he visited and spoke with him, he would write up a précis in the prison car park as it was supposedly fresh in his mind. He did intimate a couple were taped but he never says which times or what they spoke about and as the whole book follows in the same style, we'd never be able to tell without some indication from him. Which isn't going to happen as he is no longer with us.
Most peoples' major complaint with the book is the same as Katie's here ~ nowhere does it sound like the Charles Manson we've come to know. Even Squeaky said so at the time and she'd not spoken to Charlie in well over a decade.
On the other hand, Emmons right at the start tells the reader that he put the book together in a form that people could understand because Charlie often spoke in riddles, code or gobbledegook. The Family generally understood him and in fact, interviews with many members at the time of the trials and in the trial itself show that they spoke the same language. When Richard Caballero was testifying as to how Susan Atkins came to replace him with Daye Shinn, he says that when they eventually met with Manson, he'd be talking straight and then suddenly he'd go into a language that Susan obviously got but which he couldn't fathom. He called it 'pig Latin.'
On the other hand, though he often spoke in gobbledegook, there are a number of interviews over the years where he's every bit as articulate and understandable as that quote from Emmons' book.
Katie, I'd like to know who Manson's "partner" was, too. I have read that it may have been Nancy Pitman/Brenda McCann.
Grim, I still think those glasses were a "prop" or a false clue left by someone, whether it was one of the killers or Manson himself, regardless of whether or not they started fires. And I'm not basing that on anything Manson said about them, I'm basing it on the fact that those glasses obviously didn't belong to the victims (unless they belonged to Steve Parent and I'm assuming they ruled that out), and if they belonged to some unknown killer that magically disappeared from existence after the murders, that person probably couldn't have seen anything without them. That's like a crippled person leaving a crutch or a wheelchair behind after savagely murdering people. Doesn't make any sense at all.
So...it makes more sense to me that they were dropped to throw the police off.
Carol, I've heard that Manson's "partner" was either Pitman, Clem or Bruce Davis. But none of these people have ever admitted that, as far as I know.
Mae Brussell has some interesting comments on the glasses on her program Dialogue Conspiracy 7-14-78 side two at 15 minutes into the side. Available at the Worldwatchers Archive website.
According to a letter she received from a woman in Woodland Hills, the glasses belonged to a man named Robert and that they were prescribed by Dr. Ohta (killed in his home with his family on October 19, 1970)
I mean 7-14-78 side one at 15 minutes into the side, not side two
Ohta was murdered by John Linley Frazier one of the Santa Cruz mass murderers, he has no connection to Manson as far as I know. Frazier was a kook who was trying to stop earthquakes through murdering people. His most brazen murder was a priest in his church. Frazier killed himself in prison a few years ago.
Thanks William! Can you post a link to that program? I'd like to listen to it.
Thanks Beauders! This case just gets weirder and weirder!
katie8753 said...
I still think those glasses were a "prop" or a false clue left by someone
Could be. But then, you have to ask one question ~ if the idea was to point towards Black people, why leave a pair of glasses that could belong to anyone or more specifically, possibly someone not Black. The reason I raise that point is that Susan's first lawyer, Richard Caballero, testified during the trial that Susan explained why she'd written 'PIG' on the door to him. He was actually a defence witness but calling him was a major error as he was goaded into admitting that Susan told him that the reason PIG was written was to throw suspicion on the Black Panthers and their ilk. Both TLB crimes had in common the notion that Black people were to be blamed.
The thing is, unlesss the killers did something stupid like leave fingerprints or start blabbing, there was no way it was coming back to them.
William Weston said...
Mae Brussell has some interesting comments on the glasses on her program Dialogue Conspiracy........According to a letter she received from a woman in Woodland Hills, the glasses belonged to a man named Robert
Given that once those glasses were found they never left the presence of the Police, how in the world would anyone know they were theirs and if they weren't involved in the crime, why didn't they come forward once the killers were in custody and say, oh yeah, they're mine ?
Mae Brussell thought some high powered lawyers put together the murders well in advance of them happening......so I can't say she's overflowing with credibility, for me.
Question, the glasses are said to be not able to be used to start fires. What if they were reversed ? Seems to me then they could be used for starting a fire.
Here is the link to the show
http://www.worldwatchers.info/shows/world-watchers-international-78-07-14/
Relevant information is from 6 minutes into the program to about 18 minutes. Weirder and weirder indeed!
Thanks William. I'll watch it when I get a chance.
Bobby! LOL!
Grim that's a good point, except I doubt that glasses had any racial meaning to anyone investigating a murder. I see what you're saying about blaming it on the panthers, but maybe they were just a last minute toss down to distract from the real killers???
Interesting point, Bob.
I'm not an optometrist, but it seems plausible to me...
Whenever this discussion came-up (in the past), I never gave the subject much credence.
I figured that Roman and Sharon probably had plenty of visitors in the house (on a regular basis), and some inconsequential guest probably just left their glasses behind on a book case or coffee table.
From there, I figured the glasses probably just sat unnoticed (in the house) for a long time, and simply got "involved" in the melee' of Tex's rampage that fateful night.
BUT...
Now that I factor the actual prescription of the glasses into the mix, the subject seems much harder to dismiss.
My point:
By all accounts, the individual who owned these glasses had very poor vision (beyond reading distance). And let's face it... "reading distance" is only about one foot from your nose... arm's-length tops.
It seems unlikely, that a casual visitor with such poor eyesight could gather their belongings, say their "good byes" to everyone, walk out to the driveway, and drive-off... WITHOUT ever noticing, that they couldn't see anything 2 feet in front of their face.
That's the bug-a-boo that complicates the "casual visitor" theory.
I wear glasses, and I've driven to work (a few times) before realizing that my glasses weren't on my face. But... my eyesight is not that bad, and my prescription is not that strong. I could survive an entire day without my glasses, without too much trouble.
But, according to the prescription of these glasses, the owner (of these coke bottles) was blind as the proverbial bat.
Moreover...
Folks who have trouble with reading small print ONLY, often keep several pairs of "readers" (or "cheaters", as we call them locally) here and there. They keep them in their pocket, purse, car, desk drawer, etc. This is because "readers" aren't worn 24/7. They're ONLY worn while reading, or while sitting at a computer (nowadays). So, it's convenient to have "extras" on-hand. Also, "readers" are typically dirt cheap... almost disposable.
Again... none of this applies to the individual in question.
The person in question, obviously wore his glasses 24/7 (unless we adhere to Manson's "fire-starting story, or a variation thereof...).
People who wear their glasses 24/7 usually have a back-up or "spare" pair of glasses AT HOME... but, they don't typically travel with extra pairs of glasses, because their glasses are always on their face.
This all makes my dismissive attitude towards the subject (in the past) a bit questionable.
This subject probably DOES deserve more attention than it's been given in the past, although (like everything else in the TLB world), I highly doubt that the "mystery of the glasses" will ever be solved.
My two cents...
Can glasses be used to start fires? Yes, I've started a few with mine. They are like a magnifying glass. Maybe not all glasses, but think ones work.
A few days ago "Whitey" Bulger was apparently beaten to death in a federal prison in Hazelton West Virginia. I rode to Moundsville prison on the cycle a few years ago and posted on this blog. On the way I stopped in the welcome center just across the MD line in WV. I could see that Hazelton prison behind the rest area. It's a large prison with guard towers, high wall and lights. It opened in 2004, I didn't know that place was that violent, usually federal prisons aren't, but prisons like many other things in WV are sometimes pretty rough.
Also, I ran across a video of the prison at Moundsville. That guy said Manson wanted to be transferred there because there were "satan worshipers" there. I didn't know that, I had always assumed Manson wanted to go back there because he spent time in the area when he was young and that's what he said in the letter. Also, I don't know if Manson would have known what was going in a WV prison when he was locked up in CA. Also, he was lucky we wasn't sent to Moundsville, he would have probably been killed in about a week, that place was one nasty son of a bitch. Moundsville Prison
Here are Sunset's 2 threads about "Moundsville Prison" (which he mentions in the post above):
http://www.lsb3.com/2013/08/sunse77t-shares-his-tour-of-west.html
http://www.lsb3.com/2013/08/sunset-77-shares-more-of-his-tour-of.html
As always, 2 great threads from Sunset. I always enjoy reading his posts.
Yowsah!!! Thanks Sunset!!!
LynyrdSkynyrdBand said...
Folks who have trouble with reading small print ONLY, often keep several pairs of "readers" (or "cheaters", as we call them locally) here and there. They keep them in their pocket, purse, car, desk drawer, etc. This is because "readers" aren't worn 24/7. They're ONLY worn while reading, or while sitting at a computer (nowadays). So, it's convenient to have "extras" on-hand. Also, "readers" are typically dirt cheap... almost disposable
Yeah, that's me ! I have a pair for work at school, a pair in the car, my good prescription pair for reading and computer stuff at home, I used to have a pair in my van in my delivery days and I have a pair for reading in the loo. Our local Asda sells 2 for £2.50 {$3.24}. My prescription pair cost me 10 times that ! I don't view them as disposable, but in the last 2 or so years, I've broken about 7 or 8 pairs, 3 when I hugged people !! Because they're so cheap, I use them whenever I'm out of the house because you just never know when something will happen in which they end up broken.
according to the prescription of these glasses, the owner (of these coke bottles) was blind as the proverbial bat
You'd be absolutely amazed at the number of children that can barely function without their glasses, but forget to bring them to school. But they manage to get through the day. Even Barbara Hoyt managed when she broke her glasses, though she'd keep bumping into things.
Bobby said...
the glasses are said to be not able to be used to start fires. What if they were reversed ? Seems to me then they could be used for starting a fire
It seems logical, doesn't it ? But if you wear glasses and turn them around it's almost the same strength of vision that you have. You could literally wear your glasses either way, which is why glasses for short sighted people don't start fires, even when reversed.
katie8753 said...
that's a good point, except I doubt that glasses had any racial meaning to anyone investigating a murder
That's the point. Dropping glasses as a false clue is universal. They could {from the point of view of the investigator} belong to anyone. Writing 'PIG' on the door was supposed to be the very opposite of that. It was supposed to say "Blacks were here."
but maybe they were just a last minute toss down to distract from the real killers
If one thinks about it, there would be no reason to try to distract from the real killers. There was absolutely nothing tying Tex, Pat, Susan or Linda to Cielo. If the prints of Pat and Tex had not been found and everyone had kept their mouths closed, it may well have gone down as an unsolved murder, like Reet Jurvetson.
sunset77 said...
A few days ago "Whitey" Bulger was apparently beaten to death in a federal prison in Hazelton West Virginia
I've been following this on the news. It's incredible that he was dead within 12 hours of being transfered. The reaction of some of his victims' family members has been understandably cold and in some instances, almost funny. One could almost feel sorry for him, being in a wheelchair and 89, but then, one starts to read about his victims and how some of them died.
The description of Bulger's remains as they were found makes me shiver whenever I think about it.
Grim said:
If one thinks about it, there would be no reason to try to distract from the real killers. There was absolutely nothing tying Tex, Pat, Susan or Linda to Cielo. If the prints of Pat and Tex had not been found and everyone had kept their mouths closed, it may well have gone down as an unsolved murder, like Reet Jurvetson.
Then why try and blame it on the Black Panthers? And why did Charlie go back and wipe off prints? And I do think Charlie went back. Tex & Pat's prints were found. The police eventually would have looked for them and found them.
Are you perhaps buying into the whole "Helter Skelter" theory that Charlie was trying to blame the blacks to start a race war? I thought the entire left wing internet debunked Bugliosi's claims!!
In the 10th grade I used to sit by the window and use my glasses to burn holes in my papers. The other kids thought that was impressive to see smoke coming up from my desk. I never thought about spare glasses. In 1969 I only had one pair of glasses and usually had to wear them when the frames were broken. Mine were often damaged from playing football and basketball, it would be a long time before I could get new ones. I used many safety pins and scotch tape to hold them together. I never thought about spare glasses, they were expensive. I have 4 or 5 pairs now, when I drove semi truck I was required by law to carry and extra pair of glasses. I don't think the Manson clan would have been "smart" enough to plant a pair of glasses to throw off the police. Plus, after all these years, I've never heard any of them mention taking a pair with them to use for that purpose. There were news reports about those glasses at the time, whoever owned them and dropped them might have seen them and thought, "I'm sure as hell not going to tell the police those are my glasses and get blamed for those murders".
I'm not that familiar with "Whitey" Bulger or that prison in Hazelton. I've seen the prison and I know where it is, but I haven't been up close to it. I can't even find a video of the place on YouTube. It was built in 2004, when I traveled that road in the 1980's to college at WVU it wasn't there. I've read that Bulger was a "snitch". It's possible people were sent to prison because of things Bugler told the cops. Some of those same people might have been in Hazelton.
If Bugliosi was worried that the defense lawyers could make the claim that the glasses belonged to someone other than the defendants and that someone else did the killings, then there must be some substance to the idea that the glasses belonged to an unknown person involved in the TLB killings. Bugliosi apparently had no way to counter this strategy of defense lawyers. If the false prop idea occurred to him, as it is now occurring to us on this blog, he must have had some compelling reason why he did not use it. I believe the compelling reason was that there were fingerprints on the glasses that belonged to none of those being tried. The presence of fingerprints other than Manson’s and the others would eliminate the false prop theory. The fact that the defense never introduced the glasses as evidence does not remove the significance of them. If the fingerprints were wiped off, then the police would not have thought twice about them. The fact that the police and the media thought it was a major breakthrough in the case could only happen if there were indeed fingerprints on the glasses and that those fingerprints could be traced to someone other than the known suspects or to the victims in the house.
katie8753 said...
Then why try and blame it on the Black Panthers?
That was the whole point ~ to get this 'prophetic' sequence of events under way. Charlie's vision necessitated Whites wiping each other out. What led to that ? Whites not liking other Whites killing Blacks in retaliation and feeling strongly enough to do something about it. Retaliation for what ? Blacks killing Whites in unprovoked murders. But Blacks didn't commit the TLB murders......enter Charles will is Man's son.
And why did Charlie go back and wipe off prints? And I do think Charlie went back
He told George Stimson he did not. He told Rolling Stone that he did not. Although the jury will always be out on that one, if he did, he did a flaming shitty job !
Tex & Pat's prints were found. The police eventually would have looked for them and found them
Earlier, I stated "unlesss the killers did something stupid like leave fingerprints or start blabbing, there was no way it was coming back to them" but the prints were found. Then again, lots of unidentified prints were found. The fact that both Pat and Tex had their prints in the house doesn't actually mean that they were guilty of murder, only that at some point that week, they had been at Cielo. Though they were in the system, their arrests prior to then had been for truly minor matters. Nothing approaching violence.
If William Garretson had told the Police on August 9th what he told that E channel documentary in 1999, about seeing two women running and hearing some screaming {he didn't know it wasn't a night party}, it wouldn't have guaranteed Pat being picked up because after the Spahn and Barker raids and the Mendocino incident in '68, her prints were in the system but in those computerless days, it could take a while for prints to get flagged up, especially on charges that had been minor. It would possibly have made a difference once Sergeants Whiteley and Guenther told Jess Buckles about the Gary Hinman murder, the hippy friends of Bobby and the fact that many of them were young girls/women that ran barefoot at times.
Grim said:
That was the whole point ~ to get this 'prophetic' sequence of events under way. Charlie's vision necessitated Whites wiping each other out. What led to that ? Whites not liking other Whites killing Blacks in retaliation and feeling strongly enough to do something about it. Retaliation for what ? Blacks killing Whites in unprovoked murders. But Blacks didn't commit the TLB murders......enter Charles will is Man's son.
So you believe in the Helter Skelter motive? Sounds like it. Just asking, because I believe that Charlie brainwashed his kids to believe in that motive, although I think he had another agenda in mind, aside from his minions. I think he just wanted money to get away to the desert to hide.
He used those kids relentlessly, even coaching them to take the murder rap so he could go free.
William, the fingerprints could have belonged to Charlie's "Partner".
And we don't know who that was. Because no one has admitted to it.
katie8753 said...
Are you perhaps buying into the whole "Helter Skelter" theory that Charlie was trying to blame the blacks to start a race war?
Yes. I think the prosecution had it right in basis and where they may have been less acurate is in the minutiae ~ minutiae that actually doesn't really matter in the long run.
It's important to remember that speaking with "Black Muslim" converts in jail over a number of years, Charlie was appraised of the notion that "Whitey's" day was coming and that the Black man was going to put right centuries of wrongs. When he saw the riots in places like Watts and the civil rights struggles and the anger unleashed in a number of US cities after the murder of Martin Luther King, he felt that "the shit was coming down." Like loads of other people did at the time. I genuinely believe that he thought an Armageddon of sorts was in the air but not hotting up sufficiently and gradually, began to believe that the Family could move it along. He wasn't worried they'd be caught up in the violent fallout as they would have escaped to the desert. Even Squeaky attests to that in her recent book. And what did Charlie say to the officers that had arrested him at Barker as the remnants of the Family were being driven away, about them being in serious danger from the Blacks as they were both cops and White ? A week before those arrests, both Brooks Poston and Paul Crockett told Sheriff Don Ward about HS and what some of it entailed, regarding the Black revolution. And they say this came from Charlie.
I don't think it was the only ingredient in the murders, but it was certainly one of them. And it's always going to be glaring in the face of objectors that in private conversations, designed to go no further, Susan {to Virginia Graham and/or Ronnie Howard} and Leslie {to Marvin Part} said so and Pat's contribution was left on the LaBianca fridge to tell us what she was thinking.
I thought the entire left wing internet debunked Bugliosi's claims!!
I'm neither left wing nor right wing. In my football days, I played centre forward or centre half !
Seriously though, I have yet to come across anyone that has been able to debunk Bugliosi's claims in an overall sense. Without a doubt, I'd say the overwhelming majority position is that "HS was not the motive" but that's an opinion, a belief, that, in my opinion, doesn't stand up well when placed alongside the evidence in HS's favour. HS was never presented as the motive, rather , as one of a few motives.
sunset77 said...
I don't think the Manson clan would have been "smart" enough to plant a pair of glasses to throw off the police
Even if they had, was it a smart move ? It did throw off the police, as did a few things at the crime scene. They checked it out, found it was a false dawn and hey presto, all the perps ended up in jail, are still there or died there.
Plus, after all these years, I've never heard any of them mention taking a pair with them to use for that purpose
Dennis LaCalandra/Manson Family archives/Pheonix Rising/Manson Mythos stated somewhere either on this blog or on another blog, that he had heard {or had} a piece of audio in which Pat had said something about planting the glasses. But he never provided any context to it so we don't know if it was Pat in her awoken phase or her Charlie phase or even if that's what she said. I think your point about none of the killers mentioning it over half a century is key. One would think that possibly by this point Tex would have said something and very close to the time when Susan did say something {to Roseanne Walker}, it was that the glasses weren't brought by the Cielo mob.
William Weston said...
If Bugliosi was worried that the defense lawyers could make the claim that the glasses belonged to someone other than the defendants and that someone else did the killings, then there must be some substance to the idea that the glasses belonged to an unknown person involved in the TLB killings
Well, there is substance to the idea. If specs are found at the scene, it is only logical that the possibility exists that they belong to someone that was there, kind of like the knife that was found hidden in the sofa. However, Bugliosi did run down the possibility that the defence would lean on this, hence him finding importance in the words of Roseanne Walker that she didn't even see the significance of.
An important point is that Linda was on the opposite side of the bank to Susan and Pat. Susan placed Leslie at the Hinman murder and Linda and herself inside the LaBianca house. So she was not averse to lying or presenting alternatives to the prosecution narratives. Yet, neither she, Pat nor Linda make any mention of someone else at Cielo. If there had been some spec wearing person there, all Susan & Pat had to do was say so and Linda's cred would have gone down like a lead zeppelin, not to mention her immunity. Of course, to do this, they would have had to name the person which they didn't do because the person does not exist.
I made a big mistake and no one caught it. Frazier killed the Ohta family because their house was built with redwood. Frazier didn't kill anyone else. It was Herbert Mullen who killed the priest and was trying to prevent earthquakes. Well there was three mass murderers in the tiny town of Santa Cruz California so I got them mixed up. I grew up about forty miles away and remember these murders well. Frazier did kill himself in prison though.
katie8753 said...
So you believe in the Helter Skelter motive? Sounds like it
From the very first post I ever posted on this site back in May of 2015, I've been saying that ! I think a series of motives went into the murders and the prosecutions outlined them all at the various trials. HS was simply one of them when it came to TLB. I also suspect that there are and have been many criminals that have wondered what it is like to kill or have someone killed. Most don't follow through on it but I think it runs through the mind of many. Heck, it runs through the mind of many people who never get involved in crime. But I do believe that in combination with an LSD fused Christ complex, being shat upon for much of life and the kind of acid fuelled apocalyptic visions and thinking that were commonplace in the 2nd half of the 60s, Charlie wondered what it was like to kill and having a group of young people around that seemed to accept most of what he said and were ready to crawl around and baaa like sheep when he told them they must erase their societal programming, the ingredients were there for what happened. But I definitely believe he believed in HS and that gave his pronouncements much of their strength.
I believe that Charlie brainwashed his kids to believe in that motive
I don't think he had to. People that do acid together a lot form the kind of bond that many people not of that ilk just don't get. People that live together and do so freely in the kind of living that needs to be done in a situation like the Family, gather strength and support and justification from one another. People that love the same music or have the same visions or goals start to see the same sorts of things. One suggestion leads to another.
I think he had another agenda in mind. I think he just wanted money to get away to the desert to hide
You know, when you combine the Hinman, Shea, Cielo and LaBianca financial haul, it comes to less than $100. Linda brought them 50 times that much when she arrived. And I don't include the Crowe incident because the idea was not to murder him when Tex set out for his cash. The cars they got from Gary netted them nothing {they gave the VW to Marcus Arneson for zilch ~ he made $350 when he sold it !}, the coins from the LaBiancas netted them nothing.
I understand the variety of reasons why most are reluctant to give HS any serious time of day but I come from a very different angle in which people from both the enlightened West and supposedly primitive countries and cultures claiming bona fide revelation/visions/instructions from God or spiritual beings or holy writ are not unusual to me. The first thing I ever said on this blog was that the acid enhanced/religious/spiritual/third world mind that has been impacted by those states of transcendence and belief in the unseen and otherworldliness would find much in HS that mirrors what they accept as real, normal and everyday. I stand by that.
I fully agree with Grim on the Helter Skelter motive.
I assume the following scenario in how the glasses came into the house.
Charlie’s “partner” was among those in the house that night, along with Tex, Pat, etc. He was extremely near-sighted and needed glasses. He lost his glasses during the struggle with the victims, just as the police said. After the slaughter ended, he could not find his glasses. Knowing that the fingerprints on the glasses could be traced to him, he went back with Charlie to try and find the glasses a second time but failed. Charlie’s story of going into the house with the “partner” is true up to the point of where he said they wiped off the fingerprints and left them as a false prop. The true motive was to help his partner recover his lost glasses.
Linda Kasabian turned states evidence and testified against the other murderers. If she had known about a part of the plan to plant a pair of glasses, she would have almost certainly mentioned it, and testified about it. "Tex" Watson described the murders in his book in fairly great detail, he makes no mention of a pair of glasses. Susan Atkins never mentioned a pair of glasses left at the crime scene that I know of. I have no idea where those glasses came from, but as best I can tell, they weren't associated with the murderers.
"Whitey" Bulger was apparently beaten to death with a lock in a sock. When I was in minimum security prison, we were allowed to buy large, heavy, steel "Master" combination locks to put on our lockers, they were very common. Many times I heard inmates threaten to use a lock in a sock on someone, (including me). Those padlocks were large and weighed maybe 2 or 3 pounds. If you put one or two of them in a sock it would be almost like a small sledge hammer. This apparent murder of Bulger is the first time I've heard of it actually happening though.
"The inmates who killed James (Whitey) Bulger, Boston’s notorious crime boss, deliberately moved out of view of surveillance cameras in a West Virginia prison before pummeling him with a padlock that was stuffed inside a sock,. . .Despite the attackers’ efforts to hide, officials said, cameras caught video images of at least two inmates rolling Mr. Bulger, 89, who was in a wheelchair, into a corner where the attack took place. . . A prison official identified one of the suspects as Fotios (Freddy) Geas, 51, a Mafia hit man from West Springfield, Mass."
Bulger was apparently beaten to death in his cell. If one or two large young prison inmates pounded on an almost 90 year old man in a wheelchair with lock/s in a sock, it's no wonder his remains were described as "unrecognizable".
William Weston said...
I assume the following scenario in how the glasses came into the house. Charlie’s “partner” was among those in the house that night, along with Tex, Pat, etc. He was extremely near-sighted and needed glasses
Three Family members were known to be wearers of glasses at the time of the Cielo murders ~ Mary Brunner {we know this as Danny DeCarlo stated Charlie had broken several pairs of her glasses}, Sandra Good {we know this because she is photographed in her glasses in a mugshot} and Barbara Hoyt {everybody knows this !}. Interestingly, all three have a connection to the murders; Mary and Sandy were arrested and held in custody on the day of the murder, Barbara went to get dark clothes at Susan's request but when she arrived with them, was informed by Charlie that the killers had already gone.
He lost his glasses during the struggle with the victims, just as the police said. After the slaughter ended, he could not find his glasses
The glasses were pretty much in plain sight. But even if they weren't, it's almost incomprehensible that someone involved in the slaughter would have left them there, having dropped them during a struggle. Moreover, if they were almost blind without them, how could they have continued to take part in a murder that required at the very least, a certain precision, if only to catch victims running for their lives ? On a dark night, how would they know where they were going ?
Knowing that the fingerprints on the glasses could be traced to him, he went back with Charlie to try and find the glasses a second time but failed
That's a major assumption, that the "partner" would have left readable prints on the glasses or be in the system so that their prints could be traced to them. Susan said that she was fearful because she'd left her knife but as it turned out, she had left no prints on it. She also said that she didn't take the cops that seriously because she'd left a palm print. The Police never matched any kind of print found to Susan Atkins and she was in the system for quite serious offences for which she was on probation.
The Family contained mainly young people, of whom a number were right blabbermouths. In the Emmons book, when describing the murder of Shorty, "Charlie" states that he was convicted on circumstantial evidence and that a series of people that took part escaped justice. He wouldn't name them and for a while it wasn't known, beyond Gypsy, who of the unconvicted ones took part. But we do now. We have parole testimony from both Clem and Bruce that Tex was involved as well as evidence from Bruce stating that Bill Vance and Larry Jones were involved.
My point ? This was a crowd, Manson included, that couldn't keep their mouths closed. All this baloney about no snitching really doesn't go anywhere. They were primarily young people first, not hardened criminals. Within 2 or 3 days Manson was telling Juan Flynn and Al Springer about the murders. We know who was involved in which murders. If there really had been another assailant at Cielo, especially one that was very short sighted, it almost goes against known laws of science to conclude that, after 49 years of blabbing, alternative explanations, lies and story changing, we would not know this by now.
sunset77 said...
Susan Atkins never mentioned a pair of glasses left at the crime scene that I know of. I have no idea where those glasses came from, but as best I can tell, they weren't associated with the murderers
Here is some testimony from a Roseanne Walker from the TLB trial. She was a dorm mate of Susan's.
WALKER: There was a newscast about a pair of glasses that was found at the scene….Well, I know they hadn‘t found anybody, you know. This was their first lead. That is what the newscasts said.
BUGLIOSI :The first lead was the glasses found at the scene?
A: Yes, uh~huh
Q: And did Sadie say anything when they said that ?
A: Well, we just had a debate whether or not the person that owned the glasses was connected with what happened, and I argued that, well, I know she says that the person that owned the glasses, just because their glasses were there didn't mean that they had anything to do with what went on there, the murders that they were talking about, and she said, "Suppose they found the person. Wouldn't it be too much if they found the person that owned the glasses. The only thing they were guilty of was dropping a pair of glasses there."
Q: Did she say "Wouldn't it be too much if they found the person..
A: And accused them.
Q: "And accused that person" ?
A: Yes. And they get in trouble when the only thing they did was drop a pair of sunglasses or a pair of glasses there.
2/2
Later on, she reiterates:
BUGLIOSI: You had some conversations with Susan regarding the killings at the Tate residence, is that right ?
WALKER: The only thing I can remember ever saying about them is what I testified just a little bit ago, about we had an argument about what came over on the radio, statements she made.
Q: You & Susan had an argument ?
A: Not an argument argument, just a debate.
Q: Alright, and what did you say and what did she say ?
A: Well, the newscast was on and there was something about a pair of glasses that was at the scene of the murder. And I remember stating, I said "Well, they'll catch whoever did it."
And she said "Why, just because they found a pair of glasses ?"
And I said "Yeah, they can find out all kinds of things from those glasses" I said. And I said "When they found that pair of glasses, they are going to find him."
She said "Suppose they found the person that owns those glasses there, supposing they find him and they blame him for it" she said, "wouldn't that be too much if they blamed him for the murders and the only thing he was guilty of was dropping a pair of sunglasses there."
She thought I meant the person that dropped the glasses was the people who caused the murders or whatever, you know, was the same person. All I was trying to get across to her was whoever dropped the glasses had to be on the scene of it or they would never have dropped their glasses.
Incidentally, note on both of Walker's statements, Susan refers to sunglasses being dropped. She obviously knew nothing about the glasses.
Initially, she had to testify out of the presence of the jury to avoid any prejudicial remarks against the defendants. When the Judge said that he was going to exclude some of her testimony there was some interesting to~ing and fro~ing.
JUDGE: She can testify to that statement.....But the glasses ?
BUGLIOSI: It has extreme importance to the prosecution.
J: Of course, that is a comment that anybody can make about anything. It doesn't have any particular relevance as far as I can see.
B: It has a lot of relevance to me and I can tell the Court right now what that relevance is.
J: I am interested.
B: The relevance is this; that the defense is going to argue that, undoubtedly, these glasses belong to the killer or killers, and yet the prosecution has not connected them with these defendants. Who do these glasses belong to ?
Susan, in so many words, is saying that these glasses do not belong to the killer. She is saying wouldn't it be something if they found the guy who owned those glasses and they blamed him for the murders and the only thing he did was drop them there.
Just because the glasses are at the scene doesn't mean that the party had anything to do with the murders. {He used the opposite argument when it came to the fingerprints, that their presence did mean they had something to do with it ~ but by then, he was working with foreknowledge}.
So with respect to these glasses your Honor, I deem it crucial to the prosecution because the defense argument of course, will be that these glasses belong to the killer, and we are claiming that these defendants are the killers, yet we haven't been able to connect the glasses up with them. It is extremely valuable.
The other statement is, of course, 'That ain't the way it went down', showing knowledge of these murders.
Later, Walker more or less testifies the same way in front of the jury.
Thanks, Grim, for posting those testimonies. Very interesting!
According to Mae Brussell’s informant, the glasses lost at the Tate house were prescribed by a Dr. Ohta in Santa Cruz. How convenient for the owner of those glasses that a person who could provide information on his identity would be wiped out along with his wife, two sons, and his secretary on October 19, three days before the glasses would emerge in Walker's courtroom testimony.
By the way, mild-mannered, short-stature John Linley Frazier did not invade the house, bind and blindfold five people, and shoot them in the head using two kinds of pistols all by himself. The first news reports indicated there were three others involved. I believe Frazier’s role that day was to serve as a lookout on the driveway, while a team of killers went inside the house. Afterwards, he became the patsy who took the rap.
So, That confirms when CM said he dropped those glass's used to start fires the fire starting part was a lie !
William Weston where did you get the information that Frazier was not acting on his own? I grew up in Half Moon Bay about forty miles north of Santa Cruz and know a lot about the three murderers and have never heard that.
A good source of information on John Frazier and the Ohta murders, or for lots of other subjects for that matter, is newspapers.com. I highly recommend it for doing research. There are over ten thousand newspapers on it. It also has an excellent search engine.
For example, I found out from the Santa Cruz Sentinel for November 17, 1971 that Calvin Penrod testified at the Frazier trial. He was a sales manager for a mobile home park. He saw Mrs. Ohta at 5 pm on the day she was killed driving her green station wagon on Highway 1 near the Soquel turn-off. Mrs. Ohta had three passengers, young people all with long hair. Behind Mrs. Ohta in the back seat was a man with a moustache; next to him was a woman with straight, long black hair; and a second man sat in the rear compartment behind the back seat. This conflicted with the prosecution’s contention that Frazier was holding her captive at the Ohta’s secluded mansion on a hilltop from 1:30 to 5:00 pm. Penrod’s testimony was corroborated by two other witnesses, who saw the same trio, two men and a woman, in Mrs. Ohta’s car sometime after the murders. (They had used the car to make their getaway.)
Santa Cruz Sentinel, October 21, 1970, said that three people were seen near Mrs. Ohta’s car at a campsite near Bonnie Doon. According to the same article, the following day, Mrs. Ohta’s car was driven into a railroad tunnel and an attempt was made to destroy it by setting it on fire. It was quickly discovered when a switch engine banged into it. The engineer of the switch engine extinguished the flames with a fire extinguisher. There were three sets of footprints leading from the car in the tunnel to a nearby river.
A UPI story, October 23, 1970, said that Peter Chang, district attorney for Santa Cruz, said that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of Frazier and that based on the evidence they were seeking only one person. When Chang was asked how one man could have bound five persons, blindfolded them and then shot them beside the swimming pool, Chang replied: “It sounds ridiculous, but it’s possible that it happened.”
According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, December 3, 1971, Frazier originally told a psychiatrist that he arrived in a van in the vicinity of the Ohta house at 10:30 in the morning and then met three other people later in the day. He stood at the driveway, while the three others went in the house. Not long afterwards, Frazier changed his story. He told the same psychiatrist that he killed the Ohtas singlehandedly, claiming some crazy environmentalist motive.
Based on the above information, I conclude that three people killed the Ohtas and that circumstances forced Frazier to become the patsy. The true motive for killing the Ohtas was to protect the identity of the man who lost his glasses at the Tate house.
Mr Weston,
I also agree with your conclusion:
"The true motive for killing the Ohtas was to protect the identity of the man who lost his glasses at the Tate house"
I have been trying to get George Christie again to respond to me on my Twitter account.
I have gathered more information regarding what was told to me pertaining to certain situations of what went on at Spahn Ranch when the Charles Manson Family were "residing" there. Recalling, I really didn't pay any attention to what may have been something to do with seeing "Glasses." You got my attention now.....
Mario George Nitrini 111
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The OJ Simpson Case & Saga
Susan seems to use the same term, someone dropped them there. She could have been told that by someone who did or was there when they were dropped.
Hi Mario, I don't think I ever thanked you for the kind words and link to the video of you and your band, Thanks and it was a cool vid. You are a great drummer. Bob
You're welcome Bobby, but...lol...I'm the Keyboard player. And how time passes so fast.
The OJ Simpson Case & Saga
Well you are a better keyboard player then drummer !
Thanks Bobby.
Yes, if you ever heard me play drums, most definitely:
I am a
"better keyboard player then drummer"
Lol......
Thanks again Bobby.
The OJ Simpson Case
Hi Mario,
Thank you for your comments.
Is there going to be Kindle version of your book "Charles Manson's Secret Construction Site and Me"?
No, sorry Mr. Weston, no Charles Manson Family book for me. But, perhaps in the future, a person just may discover that there was a "construction site" that Charles Manson took me to. We'll see.
The OJ Simpson Case & Saga
Bobby said...
Susan seems to use the same term, someone dropped them there
She also refers to them as sunglasses. They weren't.
She could have been told that by someone who did
Think on that for a moment. She implicated Charles Manson and Tex, both of whom, she said, had told her they would kill her if she blabbed.
She blabbed.
Now, if you're implying that she was told later by one of the 4 of the Cielo squad that they had dropped the glasses, well, show us something that suggests this. We've heard all kinds of after the event tales {"I stabbed an already dead body"/"I dragged Abigail Folger by her hair"/"Sharon was the last to die" etc} from the killers.
Conspiracies are all very well but their major flaw is that they tend to try to "connect the dots" as it were, rather than work with actual evidence.
If, on the other hand, you're implying that Charlie or his partner told her they dropped them, well, again, show us some evidence. No one in the Family has ever mentioned the glasses, there are contradictory stories from Charlie and Susan and a rumour supposedly that Pat said she placed them. That tends to suggest that those glasses did not emanate from the Family.
or was there when they were dropped
Given that she implicated Charlie and Tex as well as Linda, Pat and later Clem and Leslie {and was clear that neither Linda nor Clem killed anyone}, how in the world would
she not have implicated someone else there that was there ? She later implicated Leslie in a murder that she wasn't even at. Her words to Roseanne Walker show she didn't have a clue about any glasses. Her descriptions of what was left behind {her knife, her palm print} never include glasses.
So, That confirms when CM said he dropped those glass's used to start fires the fire starting part was a lie !
In a word, yes.
He was not beyond spinning yarns. Don't ask me why someone would tape their phone calls with Charlie, but a phone call with Sandy Good, 8 years after Emmons' book came out with Charlie supposedly saying him and his mate dropped the glasses at the scene provides the backdrop to this section from George Stimson's "Goodbye Helter Skelter":
Finally, Manson remembers giving the people in the car an old pair of glasses to leave wherever they went, in order to create confusion. "When they was leaving to do what they did, I told 'em, 'Here, take and drop these glasses.'"
William Weston said...
The true motive for killing the Ohtas was to protect the identity of the man who lost his glasses at the Tate house
That is, the guy whom you conclude took part in the Cielo murders, or was at least present, that could barely see without the glasses ?
Don't you think that if a short sighted individual at the scene of a murder had lost glasses that they could barely function without, that they would say to at least one of the other perps, "Oh, I've lost my glasses" ? Without being funny, how difficult would it have been to locate them ? Atkins losing a knife is one thing, but the wearer of glasses ?
Hi Mario!!! :)
Hello Ms Katie. Hope you're feeling well.
Mario George Nitrini 111
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The OJ Simpson Case
Mario how do we get your book?
Hello Ms. beauders.
I have not written a book. There will be no book for me, for several legal reasons.
I do know that you have said that you are writing a book pertaining to The Charles Manson Family. I wish you success with your endeavor with that project. I for sure will buy your book.
Hope you are well Ms. beauders.
Mario.
The OJ Simpson Case
Detective Helder said it was his opinion was that the glasses were “knocked off” while struggling with the victims. Even though he was extremely near-sighted, he could still help the others by controlling the victims or stabbing them while others held them down.
Perhaps Tex, Pat, etc. did try to help him find his glasses, but the knocked off glasses ended up in a place where they could not find them. They could not have been in plain sight. Furthermore, I suggest that his fellow perps probably did not want to linger around a messy, gory crime scene too long looking for them. Perhaps they told their friend he could come back with Charlie and make a more in-depth search.
According to Bugliosi, the glasses were near the trunks in the living room.
Grim Quoted me and added replies / rebuttals :
Bobby said...
Susan seems to use the same term, someone dropped them there
She also refers to them as sunglasses. They weren't.
She could have been told that by someone who did
Think on that for a moment. She implicated Charles Manson and Tex, both of whom, she said, had told her they would kill her if she blabbed.
She blabbed.
Now, if you're implying that she was told later by one of the 4 of the Cielo squad that they had dropped the glasses, well, show us something that suggests this. We've heard all kinds of after the event tales {"I stabbed an already dead body"/"I dragged Abigail Folger by her hair"/"Sharon was the last to die" etc} from the killers.
Conspiracies are all very well but their major flaw is that they tend to try to "connect the dots" as it were, rather than work with actual evidence.
If, on the other hand, you're implying that Charlie or his partner told her they dropped them, well, again, show us some evidence. No one in the Family has ever mentioned the glasses, there are contradictory stories from Charlie and Susan and a rumour supposedly that Pat said she placed them. That tends to suggest that those glasses did not emanate from the Family.
or was there when they were dropped
Given that she implicated Charlie and Tex as well as Linda, Pat and later Clem and Leslie {and was clear that neither Linda nor Clem killed anyone}, how in the world would
she not have implicated someone else there that was there ? She later implicated Leslie in a murder that she wasn't even at. Her words to Roseanne Walker show she didn't have a clue about any glasses. Her descriptions of what was left behind {her knife, her palm print} never include glasses.
So, That confirms when CM said he dropped those glass's used to start fires the fire starting part was a lie !
In a word, yes.
He was not beyond spinning yarns. Don't ask me why someone would tape their phone calls with Charlie, but a phone call with Sandy Good, 8 years after Emmons' book came out with Charlie supposedly saying him and his mate dropped the glasses at the scene provides the backdrop to this section from George Stimson's "Goodbye Helter Skelter":
Finally, Manson remembers giving the people in the car an old pair of glasses to leave wherever they went, in order to create confusion. "When they was leaving to do what they did, I told 'em, 'Here, take and drop these glasses.'"
William Weston said...
The true motive for killing the Ohtas was to protect the identity of the man who lost his glasses at the Tate house
That is, the guy whom you conclude took part in the Cielo murders, or was at least present, that could barely see without the glasses ?
Don't you think that if a short sighted individual at the scene of a murder had lost glasses that they could barely function without, that they would say to at least one of the other perps, "Oh, I've lost my glasses" ? Without being funny, how difficult would it have been to locate them ? Atkins losing a knife is one thing, but the wearer of glasses ?
Sorry Grim, I don't know how to reply, My comments were just observations that I had from the discussion that was going on. For instance You said:
Think on that for a moment. She implicated Charles Manson and Tex, both of whom, she said, had told her they would kill her if she blabbed.
She blabbed.
Now, if you're implying that she was told later by one of the 4 of the Cielo squad that they had dropped the glasses, well, show us something that suggests this.
What do you want me to show ? CM said it in his book with Emmons, Maybe she got it from there. Again I was just making observations, This is the first time you ever responded to anything Ive had to say. I'm flattered but I really did have any deep meaning or case breaking input.
did not have that is
Thanks Bobby! I'm going to have to go back and read. I've been distracted from this case for personal reasons. Your input is ALWAYS appreciated!!! Smooch!
I personally think that Manson went back to the crime scene at Cielo Drive and threw down those glasses. Whether that was just a jokey whim, or if he was trying to throw the police off, I don't know.
I think he had a "partner" with him. I think it's very possible and plausible that he & his "partner" moved Sharon & Jay to the porch for a time. Maybe trying to hang them I don't know. But the blood evidence on the porch shows that the blood type of Sharon & Jay is deeply embedded on the porch.
Then I guess it didn't work, and they moved them back.
I know, that doesn't make any sense. But...as Charlie says...no sense makes sense!!!
Good Friday Night y'all!!!
Hi Katie, I hope pray everything is okay with you and your family. Bob.
Thanks Bobby!! That means a lot to me! Sweet Goodnight!!
William Weston said...
Detective Helder said it was his opinion was that the glasses were “knocked off” while struggling with the victims
The Police had to have opinions, based on their experience, in the absence of someone there to tell them what happened. But as future events showed us, their observations and initial thoughts were anything but infallible. Sgt Buckles was given info two days later which, had he acted on it, could have solved the case before the Spahn raid. But, he ignored it because of the direction the Police had decided things were going in. Point being, the initial Police opinions were important but were continents away from what went on to be shown as what had gone down. Therefore, I'm wary of using what many thought in the early days to try to prove something or even throw doubt on something, now.
Even though he was extremely near-sighted, he could still help the others by controlling the victims or stabbing them while others held them down
People didn't wear glasses at the ranch. The stories of Barbara Hoyt blundering around when her glasses broke are quite funny, but they do serve a point, which was that the Family were determined to prove that society's ways {encapsulated in things like the wearing of glasses or having babies in hospital} were inferior to theirs. Silly, I know, but in a matter like this, pretty significant.
Perhaps Tex, Pat, etc. did try to help him find his glasses, but the knocked off glasses ended up in a place where they could not find them. They could not have been in plain sight
Glasses are a very difficult item to drop and lose. You could put them somewhere and forget where you put them and spend an hour looking for them, but in terms of dropping them, they are not like a coin or a pen or clasp knife, which can be dropped and easily lost straight away.
Furthermore, I suggest that his fellow perps probably did not want to linger around a messy, gory crime scene too long looking for them
Is it likely that needing your glasses, that they could be knocked off in a struggle and you would not know or be able to retrace your steps ?
Perhaps they told their friend he could come back with Charlie and make a more in-depth search
If Charlie went back, it wouldn't have been to look for glasses, it would have been to look for Susan's knife. Therein lies one of the contradictions at the heart of the matter ~ he apparently {if one believes he told Emmons the stuff that ended up in his book} told two different people two completely different things in relation to the glasses.
According to Bugliosi, the glasses were near the trunks in the living room
Yeah, in plain sight. Pictures of the inside of the house the day the bodies were found do not reveal a cluttered house.
If Bugliosi was worried that the defense lawyers could make the claim that the glasses belonged to someone other than the defendants and that someone else did the killings, then there must be some substance to the idea that the glasses belonged to an unknown person involved in the TLB killings
For all we know, there could be substance in the idea that Abigail or Wojiciech, both being wearers of glasses, liked the frames and had borrowed them some time previously because they wanted to get an identical pair made and never got around to it.
As I said earlier, of course the glasses could have belonged to an unknown person involved. But such an assertion has to be grounded in real world likelihoods and there are so many that bury such an assertion. Whereas, there are none that support it, other than a certain randomness and dot connecting {though logical}. So, i] murders + ii] found pair of glasses at scene of murders + iii] no one known to have partaken in murders being a wearer of glasses + iv] no owner of glasses ever having been identified = ∴ one of the killers never brought to justice, isn't as logical an equation as it seems on the face of it. Not in real world happenings.
Bobby said...
Sorry Grim, I don't know how to reply, My comments were just observations that I had from the discussion that was going on
And all valid.
In a previous thread, Carlos pointed out that some of what we think of as deep and mysterious in this case is often in reality, quite ordinary and mundane. It's certainly not beyond the realms of possibility that someone told Susan that they dropped the glasses at the scene. But I tend to balance that with a whole weight of other stuff and that helps keep the conversations flowing, even if I'm doubting what I'm replying to.
What do you want me to show ?
Whatever you choose. I guess the variety of opinions we hold come from and in the form of speculation, logic, evidence, the history etc. I do speculate on occasion, but I like even my speculations to be based on something back-uppable or something that shows some kind of pattern or previous example.
CM said it in his book with Emmons, Maybe she got it from there
Well, she was talking about the glasses 19 years before the book came out. It's actually by the merest fluke that we even know what she had to say about the glasses as she was reacting to something that came over the radio one day and her friend had an opinion on it that she evidently disagreed with. We don't have any direct words from her on the subject, just what her friend said she said. But in her jail house revelations to Virginia Graham, Ronnie Howard and Nancy Jordon, she never mentioned it. She didn't mention it in her private interviews with her lawyer or the grand jury. She doesn't mention it in her books.
katie8753 said...
But the blood evidence on the porch shows that the blood type of Sharon & Jay is deeply embedded on the porch
Yeah, that's one of the great mysteries of the universe ! No one has ever explained that, which makes one wonder whether the Police made a mistake there or whether Sharon {or Jay} was actually killed on the porch. The one thing that I've long wondered about though, is that if someone went back, it would have been quite a while after the death occured which makes it doubtful that, even on a hot night, bleeding would still be continuing a few hours after the stabbing.
I personally think that Manson went back to the crime scene at Cielo Drive and threw down those glasses
I wouldn't be surprised if he did and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't. What I would be surprised about is if what Ed Sanders attributes to him is true. Sanders says that he sent some questions to the defendants during the trial and one of the attorneys sent word back from Manson that he had been to Cielo after the killings. That's where the famous and much used quote about going to see "what my children had done" comes from.
I don't believe that in the midst of a trial in which Charlie was consistent about having nothing to do with the crime, that he'd pass word through his lawyer to a journalist, even a countercultural one, that actually, he had gone to the actual murder premises. Neither do I believe he'd tell any of the lawyers that he'd been there. He saw them all {prosecution, defence, judge, police, DA, Probation services etc} as being on the same side. And having gone to so much trouble to get Leslie to dump Marvin Part after she'd confessed all to him, Pat to waive extradition from Alabama and therefore a separate trial and Susan to recant her GJ testimony {not to mention trying to get Linda to rejoin the Family and trying to get to Tex when he was 'playing veg'}, it just seems ridiculous that he'd put out the word that he was involved, even in that way.
For what's worth, he denied to George Stimson, that he'd been after the murders.
For what's worth, he denied to George Stimson, that he'd been after the murders.
Talk about years after.CM said it in his book with Emmons, Maybe she got it from there
Well, she was talking about the glasses 19 years before the book came out. It's actually by the merest fluke that we even know what she had to say about the glasses as she was reacting to something that came over the radio one day and her friend had an opinion on it that she evidently disagreed with. We don't have any direct words from her on the subject, just what her friend said she said. But in her jail house revelations to Virginia Graham, Ronnie Howard and Nancy Jordon, she never mentioned it. She didn't mention it in her private interviews with her lawyer or the grand jury. She doesn't mention it in her books.
I have to beg out on this one, She either mentions it to soon or to late or to the wrong people. You know way more on this than I do and I should not have commented on it. My very simple thought was that if CM mention dropping Glasses maybe SA heard about. Who, When, why who she repeated it to is far beyond my ability to quantify so In hind sight I should not have joined in the post.
Happy blogging !
Grim, Charlie told Diane Sawyer that "he went back to see what his children had done". That's not from Sanders. It's on tape.
The blood evidence on the porch at Cielo Drive is a fact, although I'll agree that it seems more prevalent that Sharon & Jay were killed on the porch, and then moved, instead of the narrative given by Tex, et al, that they were killed in the house.
The human body stops bleeding after the heart stops pumping. That's just a fact. Sometimes we can try to figure this case out with facts! But most times, we have to go to myth and magic to figure it out.
That's what makes this case fascinating to newcomers, and loathsome to oldsters who have tried for years to figure it out.
Grim great point if Manson was truly trying to stay out of prison why would he return to the Tate scene?
Katie every time a song Melanie I think of you. I know you don't care for Sinead O'Connor but I think she must have influenced by her. If you listed to a song written by O'Connor you would hear the similarity. Hope you and your's are good.
Grim and why would Manson confess to anyone during the trial. Now that doesn't mean he didn't go back just why would he tell anyone except maybe someone like Emmons twenty years later. Maybe the glasses were just dropped there to muddy up the scene and the dropper somehow knew we would still be arguing about these glasses coming up on fifty years later.
Thanks Beauders! I love Melanie!! I also love this song by Sinead O'Connor. Nothing Compares to You! Reminds me of when my ex-husband left me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-EF60neguk
Maybe that's why I don't mention it again!
Beauders I hope you and your family are excellent! I love that word excellent. It's better than good! LOL. S.W.A.K. LOL.
That’s sad Katie I’m sorry.
Grim,
What is your take on Brussell’s information that a man named Robert “lost his glasses” at the Tate house with the killing of the Ohtas as the consequence. This would eliminate the idea that they were dropped there as a fake clue during Charlie's visit with the partner. I think what Brussell said on her program is highly pertinent to any discussion of how the glasses got in the house. It shows how important it was for Charlie and his partner to find the glasses to protect the identity of the owner.
William Weston do you know the name of the owner of the glasses?
According to Mae Brussell, on her programs of 9-21-80 and 9-28-80, the name of the owner of the glasses lost at the Tate house was Robert Linkletter, son of entertainer and Hollywood celebrity, Art Linkletter. Robert died in a car accident September 12, 1980. His sister Diane, who committed suicide on October 4, 1969, knew Ed Durston, who knew Frokowski. Diane's name was in Abigail Folger's address book.
So are you saying Robert Linkletter was present for the murders or did he participate? Or did Manson just have his glasses, like he spent time at Spahn? Linkletter's are a tragic family to lose two children. It is not surprising that Folger would have Diane's name in her address book, Hollywood is quite small. Same with Durston and Frykowski. Will listen to the Mae Brussell material, she sometimes gets out there but I like to research everything available myself.
katie8753 said...
Charlie told Diane Sawyer that "he went back to see what his children had done". That's not from Sanders. It's on tape
We went through all that back in 2015, in the last thread Mr Poirot ever took part in. You said you'd seen it in that 1994 Diane Sawyer interview and I remember watching the entire interview and the outtakes that never made it into the interview and even the uncut version and no such statement is there. He does definitely say that he told them to write something witchy and she talks to him about it and he says some interesting things but he does not say he went to the scene. It is as huge a statement as Manson could make and for it not to be in the main interview, let alone the outtakes, is, like a few other things, simply incomprehensible. If Charles Manson said he went to Cielo to see the results and this was on tape, I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no way it would not be in the final showing and at this point, all over the internet.
As for Sanders, in my copy of "The family" he writes, when describing blood on the steamer trunks:
It is Sebring's blood, yet the killers claim that he was shot and stabbed and killed in one spot and never moved.
The answer is that Manson and a companion returned to the scene of the crime. "I went back to see what my children did," he told a lawyer at his murder trial.
This is from the 1993 edition which has as its publication date, 01/02/1993. According to the sound man Kenny Kosar, the Sawyer interview was done in December '93 and we know it aired in 1994. So Sanders could not have gotten that from Sawyer as this particular edition was out almost a year before Manson was even interviewed.
The human body stops bleeding after the heart stops pumping. That's just a fact
Yes. It would take around 54 minutes to get back to Spahn without stops and 54 to return. But of course, there were stops and delays {not least for Tex's description of the events} so if someone did return to monkey about with the scene, they would have found Sharon Tate long dead. It's doubtful any of the victims were even alive when the killers were departing.
I love Melanie!!
Same here. I first heard her stuff when I was 16 and she just bowled me over. Funnily enough, I was listening to "Good book" and "Good guys" as I was swimming yesterday {I'm at the Gs on my ipod !}. She's far and away my favourite 60s and early 70s female writer and she was also a tremendous interpreter of other people's stuff. Not many people could get away with a great cover of "Ruby Tuesday" like she did.
beauders said...
So are you saying Robert Linkletter was present for the murders or did he participate?
He was a participant.
I’m glad you are checking out Mae Brussell. You may find her claims to be outrageous, but she was extremely judicious in the use of her source material. As far as I know, no one had successfully challenged her credibility during her seventeen years on the radio.
Grim has an Eidetic memory. LOL. But I do too, and I remember Charlie saying to Diane Sawyer "I went back to see what my children had done".
I don't care who deleted it off You Tube or other places, but he did say it. Because I heard it.
BTW I like Grim. He's kinda bossy, but he'll do.
Anywho, I remember back in 1989 I had a friend whose brother was living in LA, CA and he was studying the Sebring haircut. He came here to stay for a while and he cut my hair. It took about 2 hours from start to finish, but he spent a lot of time explaining what he was doing, and he measured my hair from crown to base, etc. He finally finished cutting my hair and it was the best haircut I've ever had. EVER!!!
Jay Sebring had a talent that would have made him millions if he had lived. Not only that, he had a talent that would have given millions of people throughout the world a new lease on life concerning their hair.
He was brilliant. It's a SHAME that he was stopped early on, because he was truly talented!
William Weston said...
What is your take on Brussell’s information that a man named Robert “lost his glasses” at the Tate house with the killing of the Ohtas as the consequence
In much American crime {and not only in America}, there was a period when this phenomenon existed whereby people would confess to murders that they had had nothing to do with but in the "Sharon Tate case" as it was thought of at the time, the confessors didn't come forward.....However, something equally curious has happened in the years since, namely, the people that have come forward with some kind of connection to the case, often to show "how close to death they came", either because they were creepy crawled by the Family, upset the Family in some way or were meant to be going to Cielo that night, even though it's well known that Sharon was going to be staying at Shelah Wells' place that night and cancelled almost at the last moment, or were driving their white sports car on Sunset Boulevard one night in August '69. Doesn't matter if it's a Polish "countess" or a Hollywood film star that was on the wane, so many people were "supposed to have been there that night" or had some kind of proximity to to the murders or murderers.
With all this in mind, what we have is a conspiracy theorist's dream scenario with bells on. The slightest mystery now no longer constitutes "something we'll never know."
One thing I've noticed for many a year now is a fascinatingly dogged persistence in pouring plenty of doubt one way or the other on the result of the convictions and that has taken a number of routes. If it isn't the Helter Skelter motive, it's the way the prosecution coached witnesses. If it isn't that, it's Charlie "not being able" to represent himself. If it's not that, it's the jury making off with evidence exhibits. If it's not that, it's Gary Hinman selling drugs. Or it's Bugliosi beating up his mistress or stalking some milkman he thought had knocked up his wife. Or it's Tex being a bigger drug baron than the small timer he actually was, committing drug robberies with Bruce Davis when Bruce wasn't even in the country. Or if it's not that it's Linda Kasabian getting immunity. Or it's the Mafia or Charlie was after a black book or that he was part of a CIA experiment. Or if it isn't that.......it's that all the perps weren't caught and each of the murders has its prime architecht that was untouched, in the LaBianca case it's Rosemary's daughter, Suzan LaBerge and in the Cielo crime, now it's Robert Linkletter. That is actually just a small sample.
So William, my take on Mae Brussel's information about Robert Linkletter and the Ohtas being murdered as a result of him losing his glasses at Cielo while taking part in murder is that the info is the kind of stuff one grows good vegetables in.
William Weston said...
This would eliminate the idea that they were dropped there as a fake clue during Charlie's visit with the partner
True, it would. But personally, I don't believe that fake clue business anyway. On the other hand, if we're going to give creedence to the idea that those glasses belonged to one of the perps, then logically, it makes no sense to conclude that some or all of those unidentified fingerprints found in the areas the victims were found or places they obviously were chased or perps could have gotten in from, didn't, as well.
Yet we don't.
The implications of Robert Linkletter being one of the Cielo murderers are too huge to go into right now but I think we all have some ideas what it would mean. But that's not the reason I don't believe it. If it was the case he was one of them, then it's the case and we'd all have to deal with it. It's not unheard of for a case to take on a sudden and unexpected twist and go a different way 3 or 4 decades later, but not this one ! Not when one takes into account everything {including Mae's info} that makes up the case and its almost as interesting aftermath.
Charlie admitted he told one of the girls to leave the glasses as a false clue so there is no secret person involved. As for the HS theory, Linda’s lawyer plainly stated last year on the Reelz doc that he didn’t know anything about Helter Skelter being a motive and that Linda didn’t either until Bug told it prior to the trial. He said he printed it up, gave it to Linda, and told her to get on the stand and say it and she would walk. He also said, “Whether or not it was true wasn’t my problem. That was Vince’s problem.”
katie8753 said...
Grim has an Eidetic memory. LOL. But I do too, and I remember Charlie saying to Diane Sawyer "I went back to see what my children had done"
I think you're conflating what you've read with what you recall from that interview about him saying he told the women to leve some kind of sign.
You know, in the same 2013 Rolling Stone interview that quotes Lynyrd and Marliese, is this:
Did you go over and try to clean up the mess they made, which some books say you did, but never with proof, and, if true, would put you at the scene of the crime?
“Well, yeah, I had to look out for my horses. I look out for what looks out for me,” he says, although later on he will say he misspoke, that he never went to the Tate house that night.
I don't see how you could remember it when it's not on the interview and the interview is the same one as was aired in 1994. It's not on the outtakes. The question everyone has wanted an answer to since 1969.
Sorry Katie ! I'll believe in the Loch Ness monster before I'll believe that Charles Manson admitting he went to the Tate house in the aftermath of the murders is on tape and that it is not on the broadcasts now.
Not only that, Ed Sanders does make the statement almost a year before Charlie is even interviewed by Sawyer. I have the book right here in front of me.
Incidentally, I simply have a good memory, nothing special. I think it's good manners to listen to what people say and the chances are, one will remember some of it.
I don't care who deleted it off You Tube or other places, but he did say it. Because I heard it
I don't know what you heard but I don't think you heard him say that.
However, produce the proof and I'll happily concede. I have no dog in this fight and it makes no difference to any outcome of the case if he did indeed make such a statement, even with him denying it to Rolling Stone and outright to George Stimson.
He's kinda bossy
I prefer "persistent" !
Smill said...
Charlie admitted he told one of the girls to leave the glasses as a false clue so there is no secret person involved
Well, "Charlie admitting" doesn't mean much does it. He "admitted" to Emmons he left the glasses there while he was there. He "admitted" to Sandy Good that he gave the glasses to Tex to leave.
This is one of those instances where I agree with the conclusion but not the argument used to reach it !
As for the HS theory, Linda’s lawyer plainly stated last year on the Reelz doc that he didn’t know anything about Helter Skelter being a motive and that Linda didn’t either until Bug told it prior to the trial
Linda never said that HS was the motive. Other than stating that Charlie said he had to show blackie how to do it as they drove away from the LaBianca house, HS plays no part in Linda's testimony. In fact, in the Watson trial, she actually stated that while she knew there would be violence and deaths during HS, she didn't know that the Family would be actively doing it.
beauders said...
"It is not surprising that Folger would have Diane's name in her address book, Hollywood is quite small. Same with Durston and Frykowski."
I believe there is a strong connection of Diane Linkletter to what happened at the Tate house, especially in regard to her live-in boyfriend
A UPI story by Vernon Scott on October 10, 1969 consisted of an interview with the lieutenant of detectives who said: “Yes, Diane Linkletter knew Abigail Folger, and was probably an acquaintance of Sharon Tate. He added that Ed Durston – the young man who was with Miss Linkletter when she jumped to her death this week – was a speaking acquaintance of Voityck Frokowski ….
http://www.cielodrive.com/archive/diane-abigail-sharon-linked-in-death/
Diane had a boyfriend who might have gone to the Cielo residence hours before the murders.
As seen on this blog under the thread Ed Durston: “Harvey F. Dareff (LA 978 313D) is the boy friend of Dianna LInkletter, and had lived with her for several months and was substantially supported by her. He is presently in New York as of approximately 9-25-69. He has not been eliminated as a suspect. . . . Investigators feel Dareff is a good suspect as some information has been received indicating he may have gone to the Cielo residence on the evening of 8-8-69 to possibly buy or sell some form of narcotics.”
Susan is that you??? Don't hide!
A lot of people bought and sold narcotics at Cielo that summer are you saying Durston was involved in the murders or at the least present when they occurred? Do you think Dianne Linkletter's death was related to Tate/LaBianca?
beauders said...
A lot of people bought and sold narcotics at Cielo that summer are you saying Durston was involved in the murders or at the least present when they occurred? Do you think Dianne Linkletter's death was related to Tate/LaBianca?
Based on the information I have seen I cannot say what Durston's role was, if any, the night of the Tate murders.
I believe Diane knew her brother was involved in the Tate murders, but was not involved herself. I base this opinion on the excerpts read by Mae Brussell from the letter by the Woodland Hills woman.
By the way, for those who have listened to the Mae Brussell programs, what do you think of her assertion that Robert Linkletter, the man who lost his glasses at the Tate house, was also the Zodiac killer?
Why William, I bet you know what I'm going to ask, would Watson, Manson, Krenwinkel, Kasabian, and probably many others cover-up for Linkletter?
According to Sandra Good, Manson family members killed 35 to 40 people and that Ronald Hughes was among them. I believe she is also referring to the Ohtas. These murders not only eliminated men and women threatening to expose the cover stories but also sent a message to others not to talk. These murders indicate a dangerous secret society that went far beyond the purview of the Manson family people.
William Weston said...
According to Sandra Good, Manson family members killed 35 to 40 people and that Ronald Hughes was among them. I believe she is also referring to the Ohtas. These murders not only eliminated men and women threatening to expose the cover stories but also sent a message to others not to talk
Although in "Helter Skelter" she is said to have made the statement about 35~40 murders and Hughes' death actually being the first of the retaliation murders, Sandra Good denied making that statement in 2014. As she put it, "I never said that, because it wasn't true. Retaliation for what ?" Now that is a direct quote and bear in mind that Good is on film or print having said all kinds of kooky things supporting the TLB murders. So it begs the question why she'd deny it if she said that. Not only that, if it was a murder, why was there no investigation ? The verdict was indeterminate when it came to Hughes' death.
Another question I'd ask is this; if she made the statement off camera to Lawrence Merrick and a witness, did Merrick ever publicly say anything before his death ? And what about this witness ? Did the witness ever verify it ? That's a pretty huge statement to stay quiet about !
Incidentally, during the trial, Charles Manson in his testimony let everyone know that Ronald Hughes had visited the Family at Spahn, or as he put it "Mr Hughes has been over to my house several times before these trials," which blew my socks off.
As I said earlier, conspiracy theorists tend to connect dots in a "6 degrees of separation" type of way which makes for very entertaining television, but which starts to fall apart when the bubbles of those dots start to be be popped.
Connecting the death of the Ohtas with TLB is very similar to the way in which after the info about the the Hinman murder and Steve Zabriske telling Oregon police that "a Charlie and a Clem" had committed the TLB murders were ignored, suddenly all kinds of deaths were connected to the Family as a murder ~ Joel Pugh's suicide, Randy Starr's death from an ear infection, Zero's mysterious "suicide", the murder in Kentucky of the brother of Charlie's Dad, Mark Walts' murder, Ronald Hughes' death and others.
beauders said...
would Watson, Manson, Krenwinkel, Kasabian, and probably many others cover-up for Linkletter?
Again the notion is beyond incredulous. We're expected to believe a group of young people would happily spend almost half a century in prison, knowing full well that if they came clean about "the one that got away", that would seriously aid their cause. And perhaps more saliently, that Linda Kasabian would jeopardize her freedom, knowing that by saying nothing, she had lied and that 4 other people, knowing this, would hold the sword of Damocles over her yet haven't, even though her testimony landed them the death sentence.
Well Grim I was trying to be nice to William
And you were !
katie8753 said...
Didn't Charles Manson tell his minions that death was good? Isn't that what Susan Atkins told Sharon Tate when she was begging for her life? Susan sure changed her tune when death was looking her in the face in her last days, trying to use that as an excuse to get out of prison
A couple of things stood out to me when I looked at this again. Firstly, Susan changed her tune about death being good about 36 years before she died. Ironically, the very thing that changed her tune about death being good was when the death penalty was commuted and she now had to face the rest of her life.
The second thing was the statement "when death was looking her in the face in her last days, trying to use that as an excuse to get out of prison." An excuse to get out of prison ? It was really her husband that made the running. If her cancer hadn't left her unable to move, barely able to speak and hardly able to control when she needed a piss or a crap, there might have been something in that but she was in pretty much a near to vegetative state. Her condition didn't lend itself to enjoying life whether in or out of prison. As Bugliosi put it, they should let her out ~ it's not as if she'll be visiting Disneyworld.
And she didn't tell Sharon that death was good. She told her she'd better be ready for it. There was nothing nice, thoughful or reasonable about the way she dealt with Sharon Tate, whether she actively wielded the knife or not. She made absolutely no attempt to placate or put her mind at ease. Not that it would have mattered.
William Weston said...
According to a letter she received from a woman in Woodland Hills...
Did this woman from Woodland Hills ever try to share her information with LAPD ?
grimtraveller said...
Did this woman from Woodland Hills ever try to share her information with LAPD ?
She told a staff writer of the Redwood City Tribune that she had given this information to police departments (plural). I do not know if the LAPD was among them. She wrote a letter to Judge Charles Franich, presiding judge in Redwood City of the Frazier trial and a letter to the defense lawyer of Frazier. Therefore, we can attribute to this woman a good faith effort to get the legal authorities to take note of her information.
I believe the only reason we know about her is that she notified the Redwood City Tribune. She surfaced in November 1971 in order to affect the outcome of the Frazier trial, whom she probably thought was innocent, or at least not the sole killer, with at least three others involved.
William Weston said...
Perhaps Tex, Pat, etc. did try to help him find his glasses, but the knocked off glasses ended up in a place where they could not find them. They could not have been in plain sight. Furthermore, I suggest that his fellow perps probably did not want to linger around a messy, gory crime scene too long looking for them
From the trial, Pat's lawyer questioning Officer Jerry DeRosa:
FITZGERALD: Did you remove the eyeglasses you have previously identified ?
DeROSA: No
Q: What, if anything, did you do in connection with those eyeglasses ?
A: The scene was protected by officer Burbridge until the detectives and fingerprint people arrived.
Q: And the eyeglasses were lying right next to one of the trunks, were they not ?
A: That is correct
Q: In plain view ?
A: Yes
Q: At the time you saw those eyeglasses, they were not under any piece of furniture were they ?
A: That is correct
Bugliosi apparently had no way to counter this strategy of defense lawyers. If the false prop idea occurred to him, as it is now occurring to us on this blog, he must have had some compelling reason why he did not use it
Why in the world would he ruin his own case by emphasizing something for which there was absolutely no evidence and which didn't help his case ? He got the convictions he sought. He didn't muddy waters like the modern day afficionado loves to do.
I believe the compelling reason was that there were fingerprints on the glasses that belonged to none of those being tried
There were no prints and no blood on the glasses.
The fact that the defense never introduced the glasses as evidence does not remove the significance of them
Bugliosi brought up the matter of the glasses. He brought them up to demonstrate that Atkins did not know about them, that they were not important and that whatever she said about them came up almost in unconscious conversation, rather than the deliberate Howard/Graham conversations.
The defence didn't actually bring up anything to help their clients, until they had already been found guilty.
Early on in the trial however, Bugliosi said to the Judge, in connection with having officer Whisenhunt {one of the first 3 officers on the scene} testify to the volume setting on Garrestson's stereo, "Our position is that that the defense is going to try to 'put the hat' on every breathing body they can find." He explained that he felt the defence would even try to pin things on Garretson.
The fact that the police and the media thought it was a major breakthrough in the case could only happen if there were indeed fingerprints on the glasses and that those fingerprints could be traced to someone other than the known suspects or to the victims in the house
Not necessarily so. Officer DeRosa saw the glasses within seconds of going into the living room, a few minutes after the 3 officers began their approach. It had no prints on it and no blood. The glasses were naturally thought to be important which is why officers scoured the country in connection with them. Once Atkins had blabbed, their importance vanished. The media thought every angle worthy of 'bigging up'. That's what much of the broadcast and print media does.
Grim said:
A couple of things stood out to me when I looked at this again. Firstly, Susan changed her tune about death being good about 36 years before she died.
Oh she suddenly "turned good"? That's a laugh. She laughed at death for years, and then suddenly death wasn't that funny. When was that? Who knows? I don't think there's a benchmark on when Susan thought death wasn't so funny.
Was it when she was chased by that DOFUS from Texas that was supposed to get her out? Was it when she was represented by all kinds of freak lawyers that she didn't like?
She's no different that Leslie Van Skankston. They both married losers that they thought would get them out. They're both HUCKSTERS, just like Manson. No different at all!
When was the absolute magic moment that she decided that maybe death wasn't so FAB?
But how do you know how she really felt?
An excuse to get out of prison ? It was really her husband that made the running.
That bitch wanted to get out of prison the minute it quit being so funny. Do you really think her husband was trying to get her out of prison if she really didn't care? You're underestimating Susan Atkins!
Do you play cello?
Oh, and BTW, Susan thought when she got the death penalty, that Charlie was going to "wave some magic wand" and get her out. Just like he "breathed on a dead bird and it came back to life". That's why the death penalty didn't bother her.
Every time Susan thought she was getting out of prison, she didn't give a flying fuck about what she had done. Just like Van Skankston.
Then when all their tricks ran out, they became "REMORSEFUL". HA HA.
They're just alike. They didn't care about human life when they took it, and they never did even after that.
If you fell for all that remorse crap from ANY OF THEM, then I have some land to sell you in the Louisiana swamp!
Grim,
You quote DeRosa saying that the glasses were “in plain view” and then ask how a killer could lose them if they were in plain sight.
DeRosa was the officer in charge of securing the crime scene until the investigators arrived. Yet he allowed the glasses to be moved six feet from near the trunks to the top of the desk. If he could not be trusted to keep the crime scene secure, how could he be trusted regarding the disposition of any particular item of evidence? His statement therefore that the glasses were “in plain view” loses credibility and cannot be used to refute Lt. Helder’s statement to the press that the glasses were lost by a killer at the house. If the glasses were not lost, as you contend, but just happened to be at the Tate house before the killings, then you need something else besides DeRosa’s testimony to support your argument.
Grim said
There were no prints and no blood on the glasses.
It is true there was no blood on the glasses, but they did have a fingerprint smudge.
katie8753 said...
If you fell for all that remorse crap from ANY OF THEM, then I have some land to sell you in the Louisiana swamp!
So if I didn't fall for it, does that mean that you don't have land to sell me ? Impressive business model.
Do you play cello?
I have been known to ! Not very well though. The instrument in the pic is actually a double bass. I don't play that well either but I just love its earthy, woody, hollow yet full bodily tone. I've not played since 2012 and prior to that, I hadn't played since 2003. So I'm trying to build up my hand strength. I did a 2 hour session the other day and it was like doing WWF. Such is the price one pays for being self taught and untrained.
William Weston said...
It is true there was no blood on the glasses, but they did have a fingerprint smudge
This was never actually confirmed. Here, Kanarek is trying to prove that someone from LAPD spilled benzedine on stuff and wrecked evidence. Like most of Irving's fishing trips, it ended up a blind alley but is very useful for our conversation:
KANAREK: Well now, directing your attention to these glasses.Do your records or notes indicate any fingerprints on these glasses ?
SGT DOLAN: No Sir
Q: No ?
A: No
Q: They indicate absolutely no fingerprints, is that correct ?
A: Yes sir
Q: Correct ?
A: Yes
Q: Will you show me Sergeant, how could a human being who is not wearing gloves handle these glasses and not put fingerprints on them ?
A: ....I could pick these glasses up like so, by both, I guess you would call them stems, like that, and the most you would leave there would be a ridge tracing or two, since the surface is not wide enough to support any more than that. So if I was to pick these glasses up and put them like so and take them off and lay them down in this same manner, on these two particular points of contact you would get that smudge that I was talking about earlier but you wouldn't get a readable fingerprint
Q: Now, directing your attention to these glasses. Do your notes indicate that any such ridges were obtained off of these glasses ?
A: No they do not sir
Q: They do not ?
A: No
Nothing came from those glasses. Now, to be fair and for balaces sake, Dolan later explains {because this is part of quite a lengthy Q&A between him and Irving} that if there are smudges or ridges, ie, not a readable print, they didn't make notes of them later on. They discarded them because there was no point or at least there wasn't back in 1969. If it was under todays detection methods with DNA as part of the equation, they would probably try to get a reading because the actual smudged print or tiny ridge itself wouldn't matter but you could pick up all kinds of details nonetheless.
William Weston said...
DeRosa was the officer in charge of securing the crime scene until the investigators arrived
Actually it was Burbridge that secured the crime scene. DeRosa and Whisenhunt took William Garretson to the Police station.
Yet he allowed the glasses to be moved six feet from near the trunks to the top of the desk. If he could not be trusted to keep the crime scene secure, how could he be trusted regarding the disposition of any particular item of evidence?
From the trial:
BUGLIOSI: Were you present when Officer DeRosa and Officer Whisenhunt took Mr Garretson off the premises and transported him to the Police station ?
BURBRIDGE: Yes sir
Q: Did you remain on the premises ?
A: Yes sir
Q: Why did you remain ?
A: To preserve the crime scene
Q: Did you alter anything at all at the crime scene ?
A: Did I alter anything ?
Q: Did you change anything, move anything around ?
A: Nothing
Where did you get that he allowed the glasses to be moved ? I'd like to see the context that such a statement appears in.
His statement therefore that the glasses were “in plain view” loses credibility and cannot be used to refute Lt. Helder’s statement to the press that the glasses were lost by a killer at the house
I think Lt Helder's statement stands as it stands. It is the first impression at a crime scene by an experienced officer that knows nothing about what has taken place at the scene other than there were 5 murders. I wouldn't mind betting that as soon as the perps were actually identified and rounded up, he thought no more of that initial statement. Why ? Because a plausible explanation with tons of corroboration had emerged and his impressions no longer held water.
But examined in the cold hard light of day, his original observation is full of holes. Those glasses were in plain sight. They were in such plain sight that DeRosa actually saw them almost as soon as he entered the house. He saw them before he saw Sharon and Jay. You can't get plainer than that. Only a total moron and utter idiot would drop and leave glasses at a murder scene that were in such plain sight, especially if they needed them. Susan's knife they had to leave because they did not know where it was and no one would have thought to look where it was eventually found. Tex, Pat and Susan couldn't have missed those glasses and if there was a perp there that had dropped them and needed them, they wouldn't have missed them. But of course, there wasn't.
If those glasses had actually been found on the table because one of the original 3 officers at the scene moved it, if anything, it's Helder's statement that would have no credibility. He'd be commenting from something he could not have seen himself and therefore known.
If the glasses were not lost, as you contend, but just happened to be at the Tate house before the killings, then you need something else besides DeRosa’s testimony to support your argument
That's what I've been giving you throughout this thread.
Manson may well have gone to Cielo and planted the glasses as a false clue but like the premise of this thread, there's so much against such a notion, not least the fact that his two statements used in support of the idea contradict each other. And that's before we even get to Atkins.
I've never pretended to have the answer to the glasses and have long called it one of those mysteries we'll never know the answer to. But one thing I am absolutely sure of is that if they did belong to Robert Linkletter, it wasn't because he was one of the Cielo murderers or was present during them. In fact, the issue of them belonging to Linkletter only becomes an issue if one tries to shoe horn him in as one of the perps and that's what I wholeheartedly dispute. Let's assume for a moment, that they were his glasses. So what ?
Grim said:
The instrument in the pic is actually a double bass. I don't play that well either but I just love its earthy, woody, hollow yet full bodily tone. I've not played since 2012 and prior to that, I hadn't played since 2003. So I'm trying to build up my hand strength. I did a 2 hour session the other day and it was like doing WWF. Such is the price one pays for being self taught and untrained.
Playing an instrument takes dedication and endurance, with participation and practice EVERY DAY, no matter what you play. It does make your hands ache and your back hurt, but eventually, you will get to the point where you actually like hearing yourself play.
Keep at it, and don't make it years apart that you venture into practicing, because the only way to master it is to approach it every day and just envision where you want to be with it!
Grim,
You quote Sgt. Dolan who said there were no fingerprints on the glasses. Yet according to a UPI story, at Helder's press conference he said there were fingerprint smudges but no identifiable ridges that investigators could use to trace the owner. This meant that they were not enough fingerprint details to do a search through fingerprint records to find the owner, but there were enough to determine if any one particular suspect had handled them. The testimony you quote actually confirms Kanarek's suspicion that the LAPD ruined a key piece of evidence to protect the identity of the owner..
I got the information regarding the glasses moved six feet to the top of the desk from Bugliosi p. 33.
In the same book, Bugliosi said DeRosa was in charge of securing the crime scene until the investigators got there, p. 35. This of course contradicts DeRosa, who from the testimony you quote said Burbridge was in charge. This does not let DeRosa off the hook as far as his credibility is concerned, for all you have done by quoting the Burbridge testimony is to widen the circle of guilt to include Burbridge..
You said, "let's assume for a moment that they were Linkletter's glasses. So what?"
You got me there on that one. I have to admit I cannot think of an appropriate answer to your question.
katie8753 said...
Playing an instrument takes dedication and endurance, with participation and practice EVERY DAY
That's true but I'm too old for that ! I remember reading about how young sitar players in India dedicate their lives to their instrument and how it takes them many years to master and live in obedience to their teacher and I thought "I just like the sound of instrument !" I don't want to master the double bass or sound like an expert jazzer, but I do know what I want and how to get there. I definitely need to practice for a few minutes most days, just to get the hands strong and the fingers flowing and the mind watered.
eventually, you will get to the point where you actually like hearing yourself play
I reached that point in the early 90s. I tend to approach instruments in a slightly unconventional way because recording is more an interest and focus for me. I have an idea in my head of what I want each instrument to sound like and it's never something I can't do {unless it's one of the instruments I can't play, that a friend can}.
don't make it years apart that you venture into practicing
It was mainly because of space. My wife's pregnancy with our 2nd child back in 2004 coincided with my discovery of sampled and virtual instruments and it was a way of killing two birds with one stone, have the instruments in the computer, get rid of the cello, tambura, sitar, double bass etc and create room for the new child and the growing one in our small house. However, I tried so many different avenues and just never found a good double bass sound so back in 2012 I bit the bullet and just bought an actual one. Now that I've cleared a lot of stuff, I can get back to it.
approach it every day and just envision where you want to be with it!
For me, musical instruments are a means to an end. I like to create pieces and the things I can play or that friends can play get me there. An instrument to me is like a computer ~ there's tons you can do with a computer and IT is growing and changing all the time, but I'm only interested in what I'm interested in. My scope is small, but enjoyable and shall we say, functional.
William Weston said...
The testimony you quote actually confirms Kanarek's suspicion that the LAPD ruined a key piece of evidence to protect the identity of the owner
Irving was the original conspiracy theorist !
"I just like the sound of instrument !"
That should read "I just like the sound of the instrument !"
William Weston said...
You quote Sgt. Dolan who said there were no fingerprints on the glasses. Yet according to a UPI story, at Helder's press conference he said there were fingerprint smudges but no identifiable ridges that investigators could use to trace the owner
Sgt Dolan was one of the fingerprint men. When called to the LaBianca scene the next day, he was able to ascertain that there were areas where prints had been wiped ~ a detail later confirmed by the killers. He was no novice. So yeah, I quoted him. Dolan examined the glasses. I'm less interested in what Helder or UPI had to say when put up against someone with direct involvement in a particular matter. Investigators say things in press conferences that are different to other things being said or not always altogether accurate. There's a really good example of this on Cielo's site with the Aaron Stovitz interview.
This meant that they were not enough fingerprint details to do a search through fingerprint records to find the owner, but there were enough to determine if any one particular suspect had handled them
We don't know that, but I did acknowledge that had it been today with DNA technology, it may have been a different story.
As an aside, in Bugliosi's book, on my page 28, he states, when talking about pieces of a puzzle, "The horn rimmed glasses - negative for both prints and blood - did they belong to a victim, a killer or someone totally unconnected with the crime ?"
Remember, finding 25 sets of prints doesn't necessarily mean 25 separate people.
The testimony you quote actually confirms Kanarek's suspicion that the LAPD ruined a key piece of evidence to protect the identity of the owner
No it doesn't. Kanarek chose to read into every single witnesses testimony supposition, intrigue and a "let's get Manson" conspiracy. The reason he pursued this line of reasoning regarding the glasses was to discredit Linda Kasabian's testimony. He tried to have her struck off as insane, a liar, a drug fiend and he said these things openly and continually. He was trying to sow doubt on her story and one of his ways of doing this was to try to put it across that because the wearer of the glasses hadn't been identified, that person was still at large which meant that Linda wasn't telling the truth.
William Weston said...
I got the information regarding the glasses moved six feet to the top of the desk from Bugliosi p. 33
My edition is the Penguin 1977 edition which is only 3 years after the book came out and nothing is mentioned there about the glasses being moved. I specifically quoted Burbridge because he was the officer that was actually in the house and he testified under oath that he didn't move anything.
In the same book, Bugliosi said DeRosa was in charge of securing the crime scene until the investigators got there, p. 35. This of course contradicts DeRosa, who from the testimony you quote said Burbridge was in charge
Well, DeRosa was charged with securing the scene until others arrived. That doesn't mean that he stayed there in person, which is what I thought you meant. He delegated the actual task to Burbridge. Mind you, he doesn't say Burbridge was in charge.
This does not let DeRosa off the hook as far as his credibility is concerned, for all you have done by quoting the Burbridge testimony is to widen the circle of guilt to include Burbridge
The circle of guilt ? Nothing was shown to have occured where those glasses were concerned. When all is said and done, the only reason I've been showing some of the testimonies is to provide answers to some of the points that were raised about blood, prints, struggles leading to dropped glasses and the position of the glasses. It's not particularly important ~ unless one believes the Robert Linkletter theory. And to believe it, you have to ignore the reality of not a single Family member in 49 years ever mentioning him, forget about being involved in murder, I mean just mentioning him at all as having been part of their number or even a friend.
How convenient for the owner of those glasses that a person who could provide information on his identity would be wiped out along with his wife, two sons, and his secretary on October 19, three days before the glasses would emerge in Walker's courtroom testimony
If true, yes. But there is no way that it was known who would be testifying when. All kinds of things happened that meant people testified at different times or were brought forward or delayed, things like not showing, bench warrants, chambers conferences, debating admissiblity, illness etc.
Grim,
My information on the glasses being moved came from Helter Skelter, 2001 edition, p. 35 (not p. 33) where it says,
"The horn-rimmed glasses, first observed by DeRosa, Whisenhut, and Burbridge near the trunks, had somehow moved six feet away, to the top of the desk."
Check out Google books and you should find it there
Excellent discussion about the mysterious glasses by all. It's been a difficult item of research for years to understand. But I have to especially point out the contributions here by Grim. In my opinion his analysis is on point and his logic rock solid. I feel I have a much more clear understanding of the glasses than I did previously.
If indeed not a plant, I've often thought the glasses to be an accident of the living room confrontation. For instance, perhaps they were laying under the sofa for a long time, and when the fighting began, they were kicked out and into the open. I say this because, when I look at the Life magazine photos of Roman in the living room a week later, the seat cushions of the sofa are pulled back, and there's all manner of stuff underneath them. Could be Mrs Chapman did not clean under there, and if so perhaps she did not clean under the sofa, thereby missing the glasses?
I've also entertained the possibility that the glasses were on top of the desk, and when Susan went to look for Voytek's wallet there, she inadvertently pushed the glasses onto the floor. But of course she did not attest to this.
Of greater significance to me, at this point, is the knife in the chair. If someone returned to Cielo, could they have missed it's presence?
Of greater significance yet, to me, are the following: the lights found on in the house the next morning by the police, when the killers said they had previously turned them off; the exact item employed to apply Sharon's blood to the front door(more likely the purple scarf found in the front yard, as opposed to the bath towels found in the living room); and of course the blood type analysis. If the analysis is not wrong, we have at least Sharon on the porch, and perhaps Jay, as well. Yet how can this be? (For an excellent discussion on this, I would direct the reader to David's analysis over at the Manson Blog. Sorry, I don't have a direct link).
Speaking of glasses, Susan said Abigail was reading with a pair of glasses on, when she looked into Abigail's bedroom. I have found no indication in the Cielo or Woodstock property reports that Abigail's glasses were taken into evidence. Moreover, the photos of that bedroom at CieloDrive.com don't show her glasses on the night stand or anywhere else in plain sight.
There is a website that has some information on Linkletter and the glasses lost at the Tate house. It is www.zodiackilleridentified.com
Thanks William I don't buy your theory but I'll look it up.
Grim said
"unless one believes the Robert Linkletter theory. And to believe it, you have to ignore the reality of not a single Family member in 49 years ever mentioning him, forget about being involved in murder, I mean just mentioning him at all as having been part of their number or even a friend."
I have been thinking about what you said, Grim, and you raise a valid point. I now agree with you that Linkletter was not with Tex, Pat, etc. when they did the killings.
Instead of the scenario I proposed earlier - that Manson and his partner went to the Cielo residence to retrieve glasses that were lost during the struggle - I have an alternate explanation.
Manson and his partner went to the house to check on the crime scene and make changes to enhance the Helter Skelter aspects such as the towel over Sebring's head. In the course of moving heavy objects (the steamer trunks?), Linkletter put his glasses down to keep them from slipping off his face and possibly getting stepped on. When he went to get his glasses he forgot where he put them. He could not do a thorough search because it was getting near dawn and they needed to get away. Perhaps he hoped that if the police found them they would not take them seriously as a clue. As it turned out, they publicized it as a major breakthrough.
This explanation fits better with Walkers testimony of what Atkins said "Wouldn't it be too much if they found the person that owned the glasses. The only thing they were guilty of was dropping a pair of glasses there."
William Weston said...
Instead of the scenario I proposed earlier - that Manson and his partner went to the Cielo residence to retrieve glasses that were lost during the struggle - I have an alternate explanation
You do seem inordinately keen to ascribe some meaning to the glasses that brings in a whole new, almost case-changing angle to proceedings.
Manson and his partner went to the house to check on the crime scene and make changes to enhance the Helter Skelter aspects such as the towel over Sebring's head
Firstly, were there any well known examples of Black Panther or Black Muslim murders that carried a recognizable M.O ? Towels over someone's head don't particularly scream "Black Uprising !"
Secondly, this brings us full circle to the anomalies of Manson's words about going to the crime scene. Emmons says he told him he went. Sanders says one of the defence lawyers told him he went. Stimson, his latest biographer, says catagorically, Manson did not go. Manson told Rolling Stone he did not go.
So we're back to square one.
In the course of moving heavy objects (the steamer trunks?), Linkletter put his glasses down to keep them from slipping off his face and possibly getting stepped on. When he went to get his glasses he forgot where he put them
I don't buy either of those. Especially the former. One must keep in mind that the wearer of these glasses needed them for clear sight. While it's true that glasses can slip off while one is lifting or doing something physical, equally true is that almost every wearer of glasses learns to adapt accordingly and rarely is it a problem.
One must also keep in sight that this was a murder scene.
He could not do a thorough search because it was getting near dawn and they needed to get away
Purely by chance earlier, I came across a photo of when Peter Hurkos the mystic or clairvoyant or whatever he was, is in the front room shortly after the murders, trying to pick up the vibes of what happened there. One look at that room and you can see that it would be almost impossible to lose a pair of glasses in there. It's the colour picture on the 4th row down. If you put your specs down, you'd know where and you'd locate them forthwith. And get the heck away from those corpses.
Manson in his own words knew every rat, every cockroach in every sewer in Los Angeles and no one from that ranch went back to that house.It was all rumors Damm the logic let's look at the effect
The 3 Stooges know how to change evidence of murder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2st-lA1p-pQ
Grim said,
It's the colour picture on the 4th row down. If you put your specs down, you'd know where and you'd locate them forthwith.
I see a color photo third row down. Is that the one? Can you tell me where the desk and the steamer trunks would be in relation to what we see in the photo?
As for my explanation, I admit there could be a difficulty in regard to the sparse furnishings of the room. In trying to understand the case, I am using abductive reasoning, or moving toward the simplest or best explanation, given a set of observations or facts. You said you cannot explain how the glasses got into the house, and from the others who tried to offer an explanation (such as leaving a false prop to deceive the police) I am not satisfied. If someone can propose a better explanation to account for the facts, I am willing to discard my own.
What are the facts?
They did not belong to any of the victims or to Tex, Pat, etc.
They belonged to a man.
He was short-sighted.
The lenses were shatter-resistant plastic. They had heavy, amber-colored, tortoise-shelled rims.
Scratches were observed on the lenses, indicating he was both an active man and a careless man.
Fingerprint smudges were on the glasses but no blood stains.
When the forensics people came in, the glasses were on the desk. DeRosa said they were originally on the floor near the trunks, six feet from the desk.
They were customized to fit his ears, the left side being higher than the right.
Despite an extensive search, involving sending flyers all around the country neither the owner nor the optometrist who had prescribed them had ever been officially identified.
Given these facts, I believe the police found out who the glasses belonged to and for whatever reason decided to protect his identity.
Unlike you, I am not content to leave the glasses as an unresolved mystery. The Woodland Hills woman (Marie Vigil) gave us not only the identity of the owner but also identity of the optometrist. If that fundamentally changes the angle of the case, so be it.
Vigil also said that Linkletter belonged to a white-supremacist group called the International White Guard. It was a white-supremacist group that killed Nicole Simpson and framed OJ. Same pattern in both cases: white woman gets killed with the blame put on the black man. Check out the book Blood Oath by Steven Worth and Carl Jaspers.
William Weston said...
I see a color photo third row down. Is that the one?
Maybe it's the way our respective pages are laid out. On mine, it's the 4th row and next to a B&W of Squeaky and Sandy.
Can you tell me where the desk and the steamer trunks would be in relation to what we see in the photo?
They would be in the view of the photographer but not in the photos themselves, if the photographer was taking the photo from the entryway of the living room.
You said you cannot explain how the glasses got into the house
I can't explain how anything got into the house, towels, glasses, rugs, cups etc. The point being that anything in that front room could have gotten there by any number of routes. Earlier, I said something like I wouldn't be surprised if one of the inhabitants of the house had seen the handles on the glasses somewhere, liked them and wanted to get a similar pair done so they borrowed them. I'm not at all suggesting that was the case, just that the glasses are being made to seem far more of a mystery than they actually are, given the outcome of the investigation and the fact that no one involved has ever mentioned a fifth assailant.
and from the others who tried to offer an explanation (such as leaving a false prop to deceive the police) I am not satisfied
The problem is quite straightforward. Significance has been attached to the glasses because in the absence of any new leads or news at the time, the Police announced them as a new lead and the press, a 'breakthrough', even though the cops had had them since the first moments they arrived in the house. One could take the same approach with the fingerprints collected. How do we know for an absolute certainty that the bearer[s] of some of the prints that couldn't be identified weren't part of the slaughter ? So because the glasses have been given this 'after hours' significance, unsatisfactory explanations become the order of the day. Manson did what he often did after the murders when he was challenged directly ~ he both said things directly and then at other times played word games {"I wanted to see what my children had done", "I had to watch out for my horses"}. Many may wonder what the significance of pointing out that the glasses found didn't do what he claimed they do, that is, start fires. It's simple. In trying to demonstrate that he left the glasses as a false clue, "he" {for this is from the Emmons book, which Manson decried much of the time}, he provides context by saying he and his buddy used to start fires with it. By being totally wrong about the former, it cancels out the latter. Charlie and the Family, if one looks at many of the things they said after the event, tended to try to take the sting out by providing their alternative explanations which, naturally, arose out of what already existed {eg, the drug theory, the copycat theory}. The glasses are one of them.
What are the facts?
All the facts you state are true. All the facts could point to a murderer. So in order to determine if there's any substance, one must look hard at what is known to be true, factual or verified. That's a big job. Well, it is for anyone trying to prove Robert Linkletter was one of the killers. I'd say it was nigh on impossible.
William Weston said...
Given these facts, I believe the police found out who the glasses belonged to and for whatever reason decided to protect his identity
Your article on the Zodiac killer makes certain claims, some of which you've not shared here. For example, Marie Vigil, the woman that wrote to Mae Brussell said that Robert Linkletter "probably" murdered his brother in law who {officially a "possible" suicide"}, along with Diane his sister, were witnesses to the murders at Cielo. Bit difficult given that he died on July 15th, some 3 weeks before. The explanation proferred is that it was meant that Diane and John the bro-in-law were witnesses to the planning of the Cielo murders.
Robert Linkletter is also said to have been involved in both the murders at Cielo and Waverly. You are in effect saying that the police let go free someone who should have been jailed and executed for at least 7 murders. Deliberately and knowingly.
In trying to explain one pair of glasses, suddnly we have a whole load of murders and suicides and drug sales "or" purchases" and that web gets larger and larger and larger ~ one of the hallmarks, really, of the conspiracy theory.
Unlike you, I am not content to leave the glasses as an unresolved mystery
In 1969/70, you'd have been right. However, once the supposed perps had been identified and their various stories listened to, if no significance was attached to the glasses, like no significance was attached to the towels found, and if one of the perps actually stated they knew nothing about the glasses and they had been making statements against their own interests, then unless something significant in the evidence showed up that indicated another perp, it would have to remain an unresolved mystery. Unresolved by no means equates to important.
The Woodland Hills woman (Marie Vigil) gave us not only the identity of the owner but also identity of the optometrist
Actually, she doesn't. She states "Dr. Ohta must have prescribed them" and later "Also I believe Dr. Ohta must have prescribed those glasses that were lost the night of the Tate murders" which is a whole other ball game, certainly not a sure fire "I know this for a certainty" statement.
If that fundamentally changes the angle of the case, so be it
If it did, I'd agree with you. Even 49 years later.
Vigil also said that Linkletter belonged to a white-supremacist group called the International White Guard
She also said his Dad, Art, did too. Did he ? Has that been verified ?
Grim said,
Vigil also said that Linkletter belonged to a white-supremacist group called the International White Guard
She also said his Dad, Art, did too. Did he ? Has that been verified ?
No, it has not been verified. Sometimes you have to rely on a single source for information. If it is credible, then we should accept it.
The strongest point in favor of Vigil's credibility is that David Toschi admitted to Mae Brussell that he had the name Robert Linkletter as the Zodiac as early as 1971. That he never cleared him as a suspect and refused to do so does not detract from Vigil's credibility, given police obfuscation in the Zodiac case.
Also we know that the staff of the Redwood City Tribune checked out her story with a telephone interview. So she must have passed some journalistic test for reliability, in order for them to have the confidence to go ahead and print the article on the front page of their newspaper.
Dave Toschi became discredited on the Zodiac case and was taken off the case when he wrote a Zodiac Letter and tried to pass it off as the real thing.
beauders said...
Dave Toschi became discredited on the Zodiac case and was taken off the case when he wrote a Zodiac Letter and tried to pass it off as the real thing
Wasn't it that he was suspected of writing Zodiac letters but never confirmed ? I thought it was just general letters he wrote pretending to be other people but saying how great Dave Toschi was.
William Weston said...
No, it has not been verified. Sometimes you have to rely on a single source for information. If it is credible, then we should accept it
Sometimes you do. But it seriously depends on the actual information. Someone saying that a particular person is a white supremacist or member of such a group is different to an actual member of that group making the claim.
The strongest point in favor of Vigil's credibility is that David Toschi admitted to Mae Brussell that he had the name Robert Linkletter as the Zodiac as early as 1971. That he never cleared him as a suspect and refused to do so does not detract from Vigil's credibility
Some Police suspected Roman Polanski was involved with the Cielo slayings. To this day some conspiracy theorists still think so. Are they credible ?
Police thought Bruce Davis was responsible for the murder of Joel Pugh in London in December 1969. Bugliosi thought so, Steven Kay thought so and English Police thought Davis was in London at the time, but couldn't verify it. Pugh's death was officially recognized as a suicide yet, people still think Davis did it, even though there is no record of him leaving the USA, entering the UK, leaving the UK and re~entering the USA. There were whispers from Family members about doing a hit in England. Are they credible ? Are the American LE that thought Davis did it ?
When push comes to shove, Marie Vigil seemed to have an awful lot of dynamite information for a humble bus driver and I do not think she is at all credible. Saying Robert L's brother in law's suicide was murder isn't so wild. Saying that he was a witness {along with Diane Linkletter} to the events at Cielo is. Of course, both John the bro-in-law and Diane were dead by the end of 1969 so they could never be questioned about whether or not Marie Vigil was talking out of her pants. That John died 3 weeks before Cielo scotches Marie Vigil's credibility at a stroke but the "explanation" that when Mae Brussell was reading out the letter that she conflated what she was reading leads to the obvious equation that if that was true, the slaughter was planned well in advance, before Sharon Tate was even back in the USA. And once again, brings out the that hallmark of the conspiracy theorist, of how one thing leads to another and before you know it half the perils of the western world are suddenly connected to one Robert Linkletter.
Also we know that the staff of the Redwood City Tribune checked out her story with a telephone interview. So she must have passed some journalistic test for reliability, in order for them to have the confidence to go ahead and print the article on the front page of their newspaper
Since the very first newspapers were put together, loads of them have been taken for a ride by someone that seemed utterly authentic. Papers want stories and yes, they may well do some checking up but bottom line is that they want stories. There were publications in the aftermath of Cielo that got away with saying Sharon Tate had had her breasts slashed off or that had her baby ripped from the womb. In the same way that just because someone is a politician, priest, teacher, police officer or lawyer doesn't automatically mean that they are beyond reproach, someone's stories being printed in a publication is no innate guarantee of its veracity.
I think Toschi confessed, but I could be wrong.
William Weston said...
I see a color photo third row down. Is that the one? Can you tell me where the desk and the steamer trunks would be in relation to what we see in the photo?
William, here's a photo taken at the scene on the day the bodies were found ~ evidently before the glasses found their way onto the table.
William Weston said...
My information on the glasses being moved came from Helter Skelter, 2001 edition, p. 35 (not p. 33) where it says,
"The horn-rimmed glasses, first observed by DeRosa, Whisenhut, and Burbridge near the trunks, had somehow moved six feet away, to the top of the desk."
Interestingly, this is commented on in the first Tate investigation report which says:
"Two trunks were observed in the same position as described in an earlier portion of this report by the first officers on the scene. No glasses were observed, however, as described by original officers." Elsewhere it states:
"A pair of horn-rimmed eye glasses were just east of the east edge of the lower trunk. The glasses were on the floor, glass down, ear frames up, top portion of the frame
to the west." The photo in the previous post shows the scene before whoever it was placed the glasses on the desk.
However one looks at it, the notion of Robert Linkletter as a participant in the Cielo Drive murders has no evidence to support it and the only thing in its favour is the statement of a bus driver who, let's face it, was hardly a paragon of credibility and who, in order to be right about that, left open numerous cans of worms that didn't ~and with deaths of Linkletter's bro-in-law and sister never could ~ check out.
Grim,
The photo and the quotes from the report are very interesting. Thanks.
In the Sanders book, he says that the ear frames were open and sticking up just as we see in the photo. I can think of no way that the glasses would end up in its upright position like this unless the owner took them off and put them down. For a very myopic person to do so meant that he was afraid they would slip off his nose and accidentally get stepped on.
Since you do not accept the idea that Linkletter lost them and declare it to be “nigh on impossible”, then the only alternative that I can see is that someone laid them down after the steamer trunks arrived. So according to your logic, some unknown very myopic person came to the house and put them down on the floor and absentmindedly left the house without ever thinking to ask Sharon, Abigail, etc. to help him find his glasses. I think the conclusion you are expecting us to accept is much more deserving of the declaration of “nigh on impossible.”
We cannot accuse the bus driver of fabricating the story of the glasses since we do not have the original letter. I think it is much more likely that Mae Brussell made a blunder when she read the letter. She did not want to read it the way it was because she feared bringing out personal details that she wanted to keep from reaching the public and possibly exposing certain individuals to retribution or loss of reputation - but obviously not Linkletter!
William Weston said...
then the only alternative that I can see
For you it's the only alternative. Not for me. There could be quite a few alternatives but the point is ~ we don't know.
I think the conclusion you are expecting us to accept is much more deserving of the declaration of “nigh on impossible.”
I'm not expecting you to accept that particular conclusion. It could have happened but I certainly don't believe it did. I would agree with you that it would be hugely unlikely, if not nigh on impossible.
We don't know how they got there or who they belonged to. We don't know if they were or weren't knocked off a surface during a struggle or by someone running by a surface trying to escape or giving chase.That we don't and never did at the very least suggests that the answer may have lain with those that died.
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