The request was granted. But not until December. And by then the whole world knew what Virginia Graham had wanted to tell Dr. Dreiser.
NOVEMBER 17, 1969
Danny DeCarlo was due at LAPD Homicide at 8:30 that Monday morning. He didn’t show. The detectives called his home first, getting no answer, then his mother’s number. No, she hadn’t seen Danny, and she was a little worried. Danny was supposed to leave his son with her, so she could baby-sit while he went down to LAPD, but hadn’t even called.
It was possible DeCarlo had skipped. He had been very frightened when the detectives talked to him the previous Thursday.
There was another possibility, one that they didn’t want to think about.
That same day Ronnie Howard had a court appearance in Santa Monica, on the forgery charge. When inmates of Sybil Brand are due in court, they are first transported to the men’s jail on Bouchet Street, where a bus picks them up and delivers them to the assigned departments. Before the arrival of the bus, there are usually a few minutes during which each girl is permitted to make one call from a pay phone.
Ronnie saw her chance and got in line. However, time began running out and there were still two girls ahead of her. She paid each fifty cents to let her call first.
Ronnie called the Beverly Hills Police Department and asked to speak to a homicide detective. When one came on the line, she gave him her name and booking number, and told him she knew who had committed the Tate and LaBianca murders. The officer said those cases were being handled by the Hollywood Division of LAPD, and suggested she call there.
Ronnie then called Hollywood PD, giving a second homicide officer the same information. He wanted to send someone over immediately, but she told him she would be in court the rest of the day.
She hung up, however, before the officer could ask which court she would be in.
All day in court Ronnie Howard had the feeling that she was being watched. She was sure that two men, sitting in the back of the courtroom, were homicide detectives, and expected at any minute they would arrange to speak to her. But they never did. When court adjourned, she was taken by bus back to Sybil Brand, Dormitory 8000, and Susan Atkins.
Shortly before 5 P.M., Danny DeCarlo arrived at LAPD Homicide. He had been on his way downtown earlier when he noticed he was low on gas and had pulled into a service station. On leaving, he had made an illegal turn, had been spotted by a black-and-white, and, after the officers checked and found he had some outstanding traffic tickets, had been hauled in. It had taken all day to secure his release.
Unlike Al Springer, Danny DeCarlo looked, talked, and acted like a biker. He was short, five feet four, weighed 130 pounds, had a handlebar mustache, tattoos on both arms, and burn scars on one arm and both legs from motorcycle pile-ups. Wary, frequently glancing back over his shoulder as if expecting to find someone there, he spoke in a colorful jargon that the interviewing officers—Nielsen, Gutierrez, and McGann—unconsciously adopted. Now twenty-five, he had been born in Toronto, then given U.S. citizenship after serving four years in the Coast Guard, his job: weapons expert. Currently he was in business with his father, selling firearms. When it came to the guns at Spahn Ranch, the detectives couldn’t have found a better source. When he wasn’t getting drunk and chasing girls—which he admitted occupied most of his time—he looked after the weapons. He not only cleaned and repaired them, he slept in the gunroom where they were kept. When a weapon was taken out, Danny knew about it.
He also knew a great deal about Spahn’s Movie Ranch, which was located in Chatsworth, not more than twenty miles from downtown Beverly Hills, yet, seemingly, a world away. Once William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Johnny Mack Brown, and Wallace Beery had made movies here; it was said that Howard Hughes had come to Spahn, to oversee personally the filming of portions of The Outlaw; and the rolling hills behind the main buildings provided settings for Duel in the Sun. Now, except for an occasional Marlboro commercial or a “Bonanza” episode, the main business was renting horses to weekend riders. The movies sets—Longhorn Saloon, Rock City Cafe, Undertaking Parlor, Jail—which fronted on Santa Susana Pass Road, were old now, run down, as was George Spahn, the eighty-one-year-old, near blind owner of the ranch. For years Ruby Pearl, a onetime circus bareback rider turned horse wrangler, had run the riding stable part of the business for George: getting hay, hiring and firing cowboys, making sure they looked after the horses and stable and kept their hands off the too young girls who came for riding lessons. Almost sightless, George depended on Ruby, but at the end of the day she went home to a husband and another life.
Over the years George had sired ten children, each of whom he had named after a favorite horse. He could recall in detail the namesakes but was less clear about the kids. All lived elsewhere, and only a few visited him with any regularity. When the Manson Family arrived, in August 1968, George was living alone in a filthy trailer, feeling old, lonely, and neglected.
This was long before Danny DeCarlo became involved with the Family, but he had often heard the tale from those who were there.
Manson, who originally asked Spahn’s permission to stay for a few days, but neglected to mention that there were twenty-five to thirty people with him, assigned Squeaky to look after George.
Squeaky—t/n Lynette Fromme—had been with Manson more than a year at that time, having been one of the first girls to join him. She was thin, red-headed, covered with freckles. Though nineteen, she looked much younger. DeCarlo told the detectives, “She had George in the palm of her hand. She cleaned for him, cooked for him, balanced his checkbook, made love with him.”
Q. (unbelievingly) “She did?! That old son of a gun!”
A. “Yeah…Charlie’s trip was to get George so he had so much faith in Squeaky that come time for George to go off into the happy hunting ground he’d turn the ranch over to Squeaky. That was their thing. Charlie’d always tell her what to tell George…and she’d report back to Charlie anything anyone else told him.”
Squeaky maintained that she was George’s eyes. According to DeCarlo, they saw only what Charlie Manson wanted them to see.
Possibly because he suspected, possibly because his own children on their occasional visits strongly resisted the idea, George never did get around to willing the property to Squeaky. Which, the detectives surmised, was probably why he was still alive out at Spahn Ranch.
George Spahn had frustrated one of Charlie’s plans. Danny DeCarlo had played along with, then failed to come through on another—Manson’s scheme to get the motorcycle gangs to join him in “terrorizing society,” as DeCarlo put it. Danny had met Manson in March 1969, just after separating from his wife. He had gone to Spahn to repair some bikes, and had stayed; “I had a ball,” he later admitted. Manson’s girls had been taught that having babies and caring for men were their sole purpose in life. DeCarlo liked being cared for, and the girls, at least at first, appeared very affectionate toward “Donkey Dan,”[20] a nickname they had bestowed upon him because of certain physical endowments.
There were problems. Charlie was against drinking; Danny liked nothing better than to swill beer and lie in the sun—later he testified that while at Spahn he was smashed “probably 90 percent of the time.” And, with the exception of a couple of “special sweeties,” DeCarlo eventually tired of most of the girls: “They would always try preaching to me. It was always the same shit Charlie preached to them.”
20
Manson told DeCarlo that because he, Manson, was less amply endowed, he needed DeCarlo to keep the girls from running away. This sounds like a Manson con, though DeCarlo maintains it was true.