I've been told by a reliable source that Mark Ross aka "Aesop Aquarian" has died.
I don’t have any further information or details at this time, sorry…
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| Photo from Cielodrive.com |
As you probably recall, the above photograph (of Ross) was taken the day Judge Keene appointed a lawyer for Charles Manson. The judge described Manson as being "hopelessly inadequate" to defend himself. Keene appointed Charles Hollopeter for the task.
Manson protested, exclaiming that he wouldn't take an attorney. And of course, his minions followed suit by causing a commotion. In the end, Mark Ross, Catherine Share & Sandra Good were sentenced to 5 days in jail for contempt of court for their disruption.
My condolences to his family and friends.
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Ross' significance to the Manson story (written by Starviego):
-- The Family was staying at his Venice house where Zero allegedly shot himself, and was the owner of the revolver used.
-- It was his truck Watkins was sleeping in when someone decided to torch it.
-- Ross' house was fairly close to both the Straight Satans' Venice clubhouse and to the apartment of intended victim Saladin Nader.
-- Ross reportedly attended the acting school set up by Laurence Merrick, producer of the Hendrickson documentary. Sharon was also allegedly a student at this school.
-- Ross had a role as a biker in Merrick's "The Black Angels". Filmed in Agoura before TLB, the set was visited by members of the Family.
-- Ross helped Hendrickson film the Manson documentary, and probably introduced him to the Family.
-- Mark Ross had a guest appearance on the "Starsky & Hutch" tv show, playing a very Manson-like cult leader.
Thanx for the information, Rest in Peace.
ReplyDeleteI've seen the claim online that Ross/Rosen joined the Source Family cult and changed his name to Aesop Aquarian because he wanted to hide from the Manson Family. The Source Family has another connection to Tate-LaBianca in that Robin Popper, who married Source Family leader Father Yod, was a friend of Sharon Tate and claims she originally planned to visit Sharon's home on the night of the killings but instead decided to attend a yoga class at the Source Restaurant. Do people feel like the Source Family's relationship to the Manson Family is strictly tangential and inconsequential?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ranker.com/list/source-family-cult-facts/drew-grant
Thanks Rainer for your participation.
ReplyDeleteIt's always nice to have new people onboard.
ReplyDeleteRoss' significance to the Manson story:
-- The Family was staying at his Venice house where Zero allegedly shot himself, and was the owner of the revolver used.
-- It was his truck Watkins was sleeping in when someone decided to torch it.
-- Ross' house was fairly close to both the Straight Satans' Venice clubhouse and to the apartment of intended victim Saladin Nader.
-- Ross reportedly attended the acting school set up by Laurence Merrick, producer of the Hendrickson documentary. Sharon was also allegedly a student at this school.
-- Ross had a role as a biker in Merrick's "The Black Angels". Filmed in Agoura before TLB, the set was visited by members of the Family.
-- Ross helped Hendrickson film the Manson documentary, and probably introduced him to the Family.
-- Mark Ross had a guest appearance on the "Starsky & Hutch" tv show, playing a very Manson-like cult leader.
rainercvk said...
ReplyDeleteRoss/Rosen ... wanted to hide from the Manson Family.
Why would Ross be afaid of the Family? He was a supporter with badly needed resources. Though it's possible they had a falling out.
...Robin Popper, who married Source Family leader Father Yod, was a friend of Sharon Tate
That's going to require some confirmation.
Don't forget G. Greene-Whyte's post "The Freewheelin' Mark Ross". I think G-W may be onto something about Ross doing a shtick in his courthouse performance. He did five days in lock-up, but that's not much in the grand scheme of things. I understand that not everybody believes "Y. Lee Freeman", author of the Argosy article promoting the "Helter Skelter" narrative before the trial, is actually Ross, but when you factor in Ross's connection to the Sinatra family, that has the makings of a conflict of interest. A connection to Sinatra is at the very least an indirect connection to organized crime and (allegedly) the CIA.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm gonna sit this one out. I don't know anything about this guy or how he's connected to Frank Sinatra.
ReplyDeleteThanks Starviego.
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of moving your post onto the thread itself.
I'm not that familiar with "Mark Ross" other than what I saw in the Hendrickson film "Inside the Manson Gang". However, (if he has died, I can find no evidence of that) he apparently used many aliases over the years and had a long acting career although not really a "star".
ReplyDeleteVarious movie and TV "databases" list his credits under various names, he had many. The one that amazed me was a small part in the 1976 movie "A Star is Born" with Barbra Streisand. I ran that movie when I was a projectionist, I can still remember the poster.
Here is "possibly" some more information about "Mark Ross"--Aesop Aquarian
I'll try to look into this more when I have more time.
Thanks Sunset!
ReplyDeleteHe and his second wife, Patricia aka Holly, raised Ivan Pugh, Sandra Good's son with Beausoleil.
Is he saying that Beausoleil is Ivan's father? I thought Joel Pugh was Ivan's father.
Thanks Sunset.
ReplyDeleteSunset said:
"I'm not that familiar with "Mark Ross" other than what I saw in the Hendrickson film "Inside the Manson Gang". However, (if he has died, I can find no evidence of that) he apparently used many aliases over the years and had a long acting career although not really a "star".
I have seen unofficial evidence that Mark has passed. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to share such evidence. I'm told that something more concrete will be forthcoming. In the meantime, if you can find evidence that we can display publicly, that would be great.
Ross was quite the polyglot, if the resume displayed at Horan's site is accurate: "ARABIC, CANTONESE, CHINESE, FARSI, FRENCH, GERMAN, GREEK, HEBREW, HINDI, ITALIAN, JAPANESE, KOREAN, LATIN, MANDARIN, PERSIAN, RUSSIAN, SPANISH, TAIWANESE, URDU, YIDDISH". That, in combination with the background in the Marines, leaps out at me as very interesting. Are there enough Pakistanis or Iranians in Hollywood that he would have considered it worthwhile to learn Urdu and Farsi? Or did he spend a lot of his life abroad? It would be good to know more about his responsibilities in the military.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how people were involved in one way or another with the manson family, there's always new names popping up.
ReplyDeleteAquarian's resume mentions him performing at the Jockey Club in Thailand. I looked around and there's a book called When Big Blue Went to War: The History of the IBM Corporation's Mission in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War (1965-1975) by Dan E. Feltham. The author, who worked "close with the military in Vietnam", was one of the investors in the Jockey Club, he mentions on page 209, and the people involved with the bar "became part of the IBM family". The resume also lists an Aquarian engagement at Le Spot in Vientienne (or Vientiane), Laos, which according to this report was run by some French drug traffickers:
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.org/stream/DougValentineDrugWarDocuments/Habib%20memos%20in%20pdf.doc/Habib%20Rouzic%2015%20May%201971%20memo_djvu.txt
Vientiane was a center of operations for Air America, reputedly a CIA heroin-trafficking operation.
An interesting fact of Aquarian's IMDb credits is that the years 1971-1975 are a total blank, after which he makes an appearance on a 1976 episode of The Gong Show. This, I realize, sounds somewhat silly and out-there, but do you all remember the Chuck Barris book and movie Confessions of a Dangerous Mind? In the 1980s, Barris claimed to have led a double life as a CIA hitman. It's probable that this was fanciful, but what if there was some element of truth to his having a connection to the world of intelligence? Just throwing it out there.
Possibly, "Mark Ross" appeared in the movie "The Black Angels" He possibly had the role of "Singer". The entire film is posted on YouTube. I've watched about 2/3's but I haven't been able to identify Ross. There are a lot of long haired motorcycle hippies in that film that look similar to Ross. That movie brought back a LOT of memories for me on several levels. It is exactly the type of "garbage" movie we used to get at the drive in all the time. Poor acting, poor editing, poor continuity, low budget, etc. Nevertheless, watching it now is "kind of" fun for me. It was the type of movie that if you paid money to watch it, you were disappointed afterwards. Fortunately, at the drive in, there were other "activities". The food was incredibly good, plus there was often fornication. Black Bikers From Hell (1970) | aka The Black Angels
ReplyDeleteAll the motorcycles in the movie are Harley-Davidson, except at one point, a guy with a Confederate cap named "Johnny Reb" comes riding in on a "Limey". Most people might not even notice the reference but a "Limey" was a British made motorcycle, in this case a Triumph, (probably a Bonneville). I recognized the "pea shooter" exhaust pipes and 90 degree vertical twin cylinder engine instantly.
My dad used to ride Triumph Bonnevilles back in those days, "Evel Knievel started on Triumphs. There was a family around here named Hemmis that owned a bike shop, dad used to ride with them. I can remember dad talking about getting his bike "ported and relieved". Apparently, you removed some metal with a grinder from the intake and exhaust ports to make the bike run faster.
Dad also often talked about the time Joe Hemmis went to Michigan and won the hillclimb. Hemmis rode a Triumph he beat a guy on BSA (British Small Arms). Dad said if Hemmis would have went much further up over the hill, we would have went down a big cliff. That was back in the days of wonderful black and white, The New World Hill Climb Champion!!
The Black Angels (and Ross/Aquarian) was also one degree of separation from the Gary Stromberg/Corey Allen project that Stromberg/Allen pitched to Manson after they recorded his music. This project was called Black Jesus (later produced by an Italian company in 1968) and Manson's "family" was allowed to live briefly in Corey's small acting studio on Western Ave. After Corey's then-girlfriend expressed her concerns about Manson, he broke ties with him.
DeleteLots of connections coming from all directions...
ReplyDeleteRead a hilarious review of the movie here:
http://bleedingskull.com/black-angels-1970/
excerp:
"In the final shots of the movie, the cougar runs free, which I think is supposed to be a metaphor for how we must learn to coexist and be free from violence, though that might be giving the movie too much credit. Maybe it’s just a cougar running away from this movie."
LOL
ReplyDeleteI read that review of "The Black Angels" 1970, it's pretty spot on.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I forgot to mention about that movie is it was both directed and written by Laurence Merrick. The same Merrick that was apparently involved with "Mark Ross" on "Inside the Manson Gang". (I'll have to look Merrick up further when I have more time)
Nearly all the motorcycles in that movie were "choppers", (extended front forks). Every kid around here back in those days wanted a chopper. I don't know why, they were difficult to ride. Of course I had one, a bicycle with the front wheel stuck way out, it took about a mile to make a U turn. That's why I never wanted a chopper motorcycle.
That reminds me of one of the funniest things I ever saw in my life when I was a kid about 10 or 12. This one older boy, maybe 15 or 16 used a hack saw and cut up the frame of his dads hammock and turned his mini bike into a chopper. I was sitting on a wall at a buddies house and the hammock chopper came flying across the backyard. He hit a bump, the homemade front forks weren't bolted on, the forks and front wheel just kept on going, the mini bike forks stuck in the ground, and chopper boy went somersaulting over the handle bars. My buddy and I almost died laughing.
The best part was it happened far enough away the older boy couldn't run over and beat us up, (which he surely would have). We could have ran down in my buddies basement and locked the door. His basement had a thick door and a good lock. He didn't even come after us, he knew about that door from previous encounters.
I still see chopper boy sometimes, he rides a big old expensive Harley, and still rides like a lunatic, just like he always has.
katie8753 said:
ReplyDeleteIs he saying that Beausoleil is Ivan's father?
Bobby is Ivan's Dad. He actually had 3 women {Gail, Sandy and Kitty} pregnant at the same time. In point of fact, the day his first child {with Gail} was born is the day he killed Gary Hinman. And he was actually on his way to see Gail a week or so later when he was arrested and never saw the streets again.
I thought Joel Pugh was Ivan's father
Joel Pugh wasn't anyone's father. He wasn't involved with Sandy from the time she hooked up with Charlie. She used his surname for her child, but that was nothing to do with Joel.
Grim said:
ReplyDeleteBobby is Ivan's Dad. He actually had 3 women {Gail, Sandy and Kitty} pregnant at the same time.
How could you possibly know that???? These people were banging all sorts of people. Tell me how ANY of these women could possibly have known the paternity of their offspring!!
katie8753 said:
ReplyDeleteHow could you possibly know that????
It's called being informed and not rejecting every statement from Family members, just because one doesn't like them, which, no offence, you do have a tendency to engage in. 👍 😌
The parenthood of these kids has been verified countless times and is not even disputed. For example, there was hassle from Kitty's parents at the time over Bobby because Kitty was young and pregnant and it was known he was the dad. If you read any of Bobby's parole transcripts, he's asked these questions about his children and answers them.
And Sandy wanted Joel Pugh's surname for her child, and went ahead and gave the child the surname, even though Joel was having none of it. And because Sandy sometimes gave Pugh as her own surname, thus began the rumour, which in some circles, books and articles, still persists to this day, that she and Joel were married. Bugliosi even went so far as to call Joel a former Family member in his & Gentry's book.
These people were banging all sorts of people. Tell me how ANY of these women could possibly have known the paternity of their offspring!!
And yet, there has never been any mystery or dispute about the dads of the children of Mary, Susan, Sandy and Kitty. They knew who the dads were. When Squeaky was pregnant, she knew Charlie was the dad. Gypsy and Ouisch were about the only ones of whom it is not common knowledge who the dads are and their pregnancies occurred after the Barker arrests.
It is also something of a myth that Spahn Ranch was overrun with children. There weren't many kids about and in more instances than not, children came with their parents, like Dennis Rice's kids, Danny DeCarlo's son and Linda's daughter. Actual 'in house' pregnancies that resulted in births while the Family was active, ie, while Charlie was out of jail, amounts to 3.
Also, to get kind of naturist and crude about it, there is only a small window of opportunity in which a woman can get pregnant. If a woman had sex every day of the month with a different guy and then abstained for the next month, and found herself pregnant, it doesn't mean that any one of the 31 blokes could be the dad.
Grim said:
ReplyDeleteAlso, to get kind of naturist and crude about it, there is only a small window of opportunity in which a woman can get pregnant. If a woman had sex every day of the month with a different guy and then abstained for the next month, and found herself pregnant, it doesn't mean that any one of the 31 blokes could be the dad.
???? I'm not sure what that means. I do know that if a woman is fertile for 3 days out of the month, and she has sex with 3 different guys on each of those days, she would have no idea who the Dad of that baby is. It's not like there's a magical "vrrrriiiiinnngggg" sound like a harp when fertilization occurs.
As they say, "it only takes once".
HA HA!
Katie I believe Beausoleil had his DNA matched with these children. I am adopted but I have learned who my birth mother is through Ancestry DNA. Now I have to decided if I want to know her. Imagine what a horrible unthoughtful person Beausoleil was to have three women pregnant at the same time. Since abortions are becoming illegal maybe every man who gets a woman pregnant and won't support said child needs to be forced to have a vasectomy so he doesn't knock anyone else up. When he's stable and wants children he can have it reversed.
ReplyDeleteThanks Beauders. DNA tests are a different story. I hope he's been paying child support for all his brood. How many kids does he have?
ReplyDeleteI don't think abortions will be illegal. They'll just put restrictions on them.
Contacting your birth mother?? That's a tough one. It could turn out great or very unpleasant. Hard to say.
Hey how's your book coming? I'd definitely buy it if it was published!
They didn't call him Cupid for nothing...
ReplyDeleteKatie, there was a herd of Logans on B&B today, but at least Donna had clothes on. The actress is really beautiful, in a conventional, 'big boobed' way but the character is really dumb. The book is done it just needs updating as Manson Family members are dying off and the murderers are getting paroled. The problem now is that my brother was going to do the computer parts and he's not with us anymore. I'm probably going to put it online and ask for donations. I worked really hard on and I want it read.
ReplyDeleteBeauders I saw B&B today and was disgusted as usual. Donna def has "fake tits". The B&B is turning into a porno flick. I'm pretty much done with it.
ReplyDeleteLet me know what you do with the book. Delaying it because folks are dying is going to be a constant. These people are older than me! I'd like to read it. Online is fine!
Beauders, I would donate to download your book and I'm sure many people would. Your post are always thoughtfull accurate and well written so I would expect the same of the book.
ReplyDeleteHi Bob!
ReplyDeleteGreat to see you!
Bobby!!! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for the awesome welcome, Greatfull to be with you all.
ReplyDeleteI searched all over the site for comments on the mindhunter book and tv series. The FBI and Douglas have a unique take/theory on the murders that I haven't seen on the blogs.Any opinions
ReplyDeleteAbortion is basically going to be illegal in many states. What about poor women who cannot afford to go to another state to get an abortion because she's too late in her state. Do you want women who want abortions to raise the children they want to abort? A lot of women who want an abortion won't put their child, forced on them, up for adoption due to pride or not trusting another person to raise their child. If political things are going to the states like abortion why not gun rights then. If you want a gun then you have to live in certain states and not live in others? I'm never going to have an abortion due to my sexual orientation and age, so I'm not saying this for myself, I'm thinking of women who have no business for whatever reason having children.
ReplyDeleteI do respect respect you and your sincerity in your sympathy for the poor. Being the great researcher that you are look into the founder of planned parent hood and her goal of promoting abortion to poor minority woman. Your saying the same thing. Poor people should abort their children and there go only the rich upper class should be able to have children. It's a con job that has been played upon undesirables by making it sound like they care so much for the poor folks.
Delete"I'm thinking of women who have no business for whatever reason having children. " see that's an honest opinion. The problemi have with the pro choice crowd is they think the same way but hide behind choice and woman's rights .
DeleteBobby said...
ReplyDeleteThe FBI and Douglas have a unique take/theory
I have a lot of respect for the profiler, but not this time. Douglas' theory that Tex and Charlie were vying for dominance in the Family is nonsense. Charlie was the boss at all times.
Not so much that Tex and or the girls were vying for dominance. Just that if they had war, start war , ideas of their own and went out and did something, that it could explain the second night where Charlie was going to show them the correct way to do the job there by keeping himself in charge and in control of the group.
DeleteBeauders, abortion shouldn't be a form of birth control. If men have to get vasectomies, women have to get their tubes tied. i.e., no more "unwanted" births...
ReplyDeleteThe difference between guns and abortion comes down to this. Gun ownership is explicitly protected by the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. Abortion, as a result of a Supreme Court ruling, originated as a result of conflicts in various state courts. When separated from the emotional component of the argument, it rightfully belongs in states rights, not federal. Of course, we shall learn whether this is true or not, in a matter of weeks.
ReplyDeleteHello everyone Beauders great news on the book I'm currently reading The newest version of the Manson file
ReplyDeleteHi Jersey!
ReplyDeleteThis site lists a recent cremation for an Aesop Aquarian.
ReplyDeletehttp://obituaries.bestcremation.com/o/aquarian/43801/
Aquarian, Aesop
02/27/1945 - 05/27/2022
Aquarian Aesop.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a guy who liked underwater stuff and sat around saying "well what about this" and "what about that"?
Bobby my concern for poor women is they cannot afford to travel to a state that offers abortion, from a state that now doesn't. I'm not saying poor and/or minority women shouldn't have children I'm saying they should have the right to decide if they want to go forward with a pregnancy or not. I know the history of Planned Parenthood, it's pretty messed up. Eugenics was very popular at the time, as it was the U.S. that taught Germany all about eugenics and we know what that led to. This probably sounds strange coming from an adopted person. I have a ton of respect for my birthmother that she decided to give me life. I view my life as a gift, she could have made a different choice and I would not be here, but she should have had the choice.
ReplyDeleteWatson said in his book and in many parole hearings that he murdered the victims as brutally as he did because he wanted the women in the Family to look at him as they looked at Manson. Who knows if he was being honest as Tex lies, but it does sound like how he would justify what he did.
ReplyDeleteRight, so the profiler sees a competition and CM doesn't want to lose his position. To me it is the simplest explanation for night # 2 that I've ever heard. Of course it also fits the keep it simple stupid theory as well
DeleteFor what it's worth Watson's Texas girlfriend (after the murders) testified that Watson told her that he and another ran a commune in California.
ReplyDeleteKatie getting a woman's tubes tied is permanent, vasectomies can be reversed. I'm not into sterilizing people especially against their will, that is eugenics.
ReplyDeleterainercvk said...
Do people feel like the Source Family's relationship to the Manson Family is strictly tangential and inconsequential?
Here is what looks like another link between The Source and The Family, so maybe they were close:
Death to Pigs, by Robert Hendrickson, c.2011 pg16
"Soon, I would get a call from Mark(Ross). This time he needed the use of my pickup truck to move his refrigerator from his Venice pad to "some friend's place." .. Late that night, Mark and I loaded the fridge onto my truck and headed back to the San Fernando Valley. Our planned destination was to "the Chandler house" in North Hollywood. ...Mark had been here before and his friends were expecting him. .. ...it came as no surprise to me that soon a marijuana cigarette would appear. ... Without any careful thought, I simply grasped the joint and.. passed it on.
"Hey man, how can we trust you if you don't smoke with?" came the challenge from a young man to my right. ... Only later would I learn that the man to my right was named Bruce Davis and he would eventually be indicted for murder. ...the secluded house on Chandler Boulevard was the latest secret hideout for the soon to be infamous "Manson Gang." "
The Family never had a residence at the Chandler House(built by LA Times founder Otis Chandler), but Father Yod's The Source cult did, about the same time period. Certainly the Family was known to attempt to glam unto and take over other cults, like they did with the Hog Farm, The FOTW, the Mel Lyman cult, etc. As far as I know the Source people never admitted any links to the Mansons.
I found 2 other examples that Manson stole that song! One was recorded in 1958 by Ricky Nelson. The other Rex Allen in 1951.
ReplyDeleteManson was just a grifter & downright thief. But we all knew that. At least he didn't try to yodel. Or play the Accordion! That would have been even more pathetic! HA HA HA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1TuGTH3VKM
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/rex-allen-get-along-home-cindy--201747258283843846/
Mark Ross gave an interview to the Hollywood Reporter just before he died, available here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.hollywoodreporter.com/.../aesop-aquarian.../
Here's what he said about his time in the military, after he enlisted in the Marines in 1965:
"However... a self-proclaimed “trickster,” (he)never shipped out to Vietnam... while Aesop officially was based out of California’s El Toro air station in Orange County, the military helped support him while he lived with his girlfriend and her UCLA roommates in a Westwood apartment(45 miles away). ....in November 1965... she heard him playing folk music along the Sunset Strip at The Fifth Estate, a hub for the city’s emerging political New Left."
Of course this is absurd, the Marines would not just have cut him loose like that. So I strongly suspect Ross was playing some kind of undercover role, where his real job was to watch the New Left from his UCLA base. Which makes it more likely he was also undercover during his time with the Mansonoids.