In 1979, Ronnie Howard died in a Los Angeles hospital from injuries sustained in a beating by two unknown male assailants. Laurence Merrick, who produced the 1970 Academy Award-nominated documentary Manson, was shot to death in 1977 at his Hollywood studio. The police concluded that both murders were unrelated to Manson or his Family.
After she resolved her parole problems, Virginia Graham opened up a health spa at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel in Honolulu with the $12,000 she received as her share from the Polanski reward money. A survivor, Virginia today is the manager of a fine art gallery in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, and just completed a much expanded version of her 1974 book, The Joy of Hooking, titled Look Who Is Sleeping in My Bed: Madames, Mansions, Murder and Manson. I appreciated what she said about me in her 1974 book, especially in view of Manson’s familiar refrain that I railroaded him. She wrote: “I can’t remember how many times we went down to the District Attorney’s Office to go over my statement with Vincent Bugliosi. I have to say this about Bugliosi. Although I’ve never had much love for authority of any kind, he was absolutely fair, straight and honest. He never once even hinted that I might alter my testimony a little bit to help the state’s case. He was careful to the other extreme, in fact.”
Spahn Ranch was never rebuilt after it was burned to the ground by brush fires that swept the area from Newhall to the sea in September of 1970. The German company that bought the land from George Spahn never developed it into the dude ranch resort for German tourists they had planned. Today, there are no signs that the murderous Manson Family was ever there. All of the ramshackle structures on the ranch are gone and the property, which was eventually sold to the state of California, is deserted, weed-choked land.
The Tate residence went through several owners after Rudi Altobelli, the landlord at the time of the murders. The current owner tore the house down in January of 1994 because he didn’t like “the history of the place,” and is in the process of constructing an enormous $10 million home that will tower over all other homes in the area. The LaBianca home was owned for years by a Filipino couple, the wife reportedly being a friend of Imelda Marcos. They sold it recently to their daughter and son-in-law.
As for the Manson trial participants today, Irving Kanarek, Manson’s lawyer, was ordered to be inactive by the California State Bar on January 29, 1990. He resigned from the bar on October 26, 1990, “with charges pending.” I do not know the basis for the charges (being a privileged matter) nor Kanarek’s present whereabouts.
Paul Fitzgerald, Patricia Krenwinkel’s lawyer, practices law in Beverly Hills and is a prominent member of the criminal defense bar in the Los Angeles area. Fitzgerald, a fine trial lawyer who continues to win more than his share of cases, manages to do so without sacrificing grace and civility in the courtroom, a place inherently inhospitable to both qualities.
Daye Shinn, Susan Atkins’ lawyer, was disbarred by the California State Bar on October 16, 1992, for misappropriating a client’s money.
Maxwell Keith, the urbane lawyer who replaced Ronald Hughes as Leslie Van Houten’s lawyer, is still in the private practice of law in Los Angeles, and this year was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Bar Association.
The cause of Ronald Hughes’ death in the Sespe Hot Springs area of Ventura County remains a mystery to this day. In 1976, a former member of Manson’s Family, understandably wanting to remain anonymous, called me. Without furnishing any additional or supporting information, he stated categorically that Hughes had been murdered by the Manson Family. Lieutenant Greg Husband of the Ventura County Sheriff’s office reports that since it was never determined whether Hughes’ death was the result of an accident, homicide, or suicide, the Hughes case file is still open, though no investigators are presently assigned to the case. It should be remembered that there is no statute of limitations for the crime of murder.
I write almost full-time, trying cases on a very selective basis. My two most recent non-fiction books, both published in 1991, are And the Sea Will Tell and Drugs in America: The Case for Victory. I’m presently writing a book on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. My read on the case? Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone.
Curt Gentry, the co-author of this book, went on to write J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. Published in 1991, it is the definitive biography of Hoover, and in my opinion and that of many others, a literary tour de force.
My co-prosecutor, Aaron Stovitz, has always wanted (and, I feel, is still eminently qualified) to be a judge. In October of 1991, Aaron, who was retired from the DA’s office, became a part-time Los Angeles Municipal Court commissioner in San Fernando, a city in the northeast section of Los Angeles County. His sense of humor intact, Aaron says he is “the Judge Wapner of the San Fernando Valley,” and orders anyone who comes to his Small Claims court unprepared “to watch two reruns of People’s Court.”
Judge Charles Older is in retirement, having left the bench in 1987.
In a three-volume work by Jay Robert Nash called Bloodletters and Badmen, a who’s who of virtually every well-known criminal in American history, Jesse James is on the cover of Volume I, Al Capone on Volume II, and Manson on Volume III. In the elite pantheon of heinous criminals, Manson has made his mark, and he appears to relish this fame, as steeped in infamy as it is.
In the twenty-five years that have elapsed since the atrocities which Charles Manson ordered and masterminded occurred, mass murder, as never before, has almost become a staple in our society. Disgruntled or demented killers flip out, go into a former place of employment, fast-food establishment, law firm, etc., and murder five to ten people or more. Such carnage no longer shocks a desensitized public when reported on the evening news. But fortunately, as of this date, the singularity of Manson’s evil and the particular brand of demonic murders he authored have not again been inflicted upon our nation. We can only hope that the ensuing years will be the same.
V.B.
June 1994
Books by Curt Gentry
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders. Co-author, Vincent Bugliosi
Second in Command. Co-author, Edward R. Murphy, Jr., executive officer U.S.S. Pueblo
Operation Overflight. Co-author, U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers
The Last Days of the Late Great State of California
The Killer Mountains: A Search for the Legendary Lost Dutchman Mine
A Kind of Loving. Co-author, Toni Lee Scott
Frame-Up: The Incredible Case of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings
The Vulnerable Americans
John M. Browning, American Gunmaker. Co-author, J. Browning
The Madams of San Francisco