August 25-26, 1969 - Shea End
Nights along Santa Susana Pass are unbelievably dark, coffin black really, often filled with whipping tunnel winds. But on this night, no wind, no sound. Even the chirping cicadas took the night off. The valley around Spahn Ranch was so still, sounds, good and evil, traveled too well.
Family member Barbara Hoyt (who sadly passed away from natural causes in 2017), who had been sleeping in Johnny Swartz's RV trailer since he left, noticed the deathly silence. It was welcomed. The doe-eyed beauty with the flowing brunette hair climbed into her sleeping bag, praying her nightmares would finally end. The guilt and shame she felt, knowing the Family was complicit in heinous crimes, had robbed her of sleep. Disturbing images flashed horrific in her dreams.
Maybe this is the calm after the storm?
Barbara rested her head on a blue lined, down pillow, void of any pillowcase. Suddenly, ear-piercing screams killed her rest. Screams, Barbara later said, never left her.
"Hey Clem, keep the headlights on, will ya?" Shorty called out.
Clem nodded.
"Where abouts did you see him?" Shorty asked.
Bruce, standing in the box, scanned the terrain with his flashlight, pointing the beam up the road. "He was walking along the road up a ways, just before that turnout."
Charlie and Clem got out, scanning with flashlights, too, faking a search for Thunder.
"Shorty, you start callin' him. Head down a ways. We'll walk the gully," Charlie said.
"Okay, Charlie. Holler if ya see him."
"You too, man."
But Charlie and Clem didn't head for the gully. Instead, they gathered around truck box, and Bruce.
"What's your poison, Charlie?" whispered Bruce as he dug into the potato sack.
Charlie whispered, "Gimme that machete, man. Bruce, you take the hatchet. Clem, you take that monkey wrench and the Buck. Let's knock him out first. It'll make it easier. Clem, you swing that mother-fuckin' wrench for all she's worth. We don't wanna have a fight with that big man we can't win."
"You got it, Charlie. That dude's goin' down!"
"Shh, man. He'll hear ya," Bruce hissed.
"Sorry." Clem lowered his head.
The trio, loaded for Shorty Shea bear, turned off their flashlights and quietly jogged up to ranch hand.
Shorty made a two-finger whistle. "Thunder, here, boy! Thunder!" Clem swung the monkey wrench, hitting Shorty in the lower left side of his neck, a blow which momentarily stunned Shorty, but didn't knock him out.
Strike one for Clem.
Shorty Shea was a big, burly man. One blow wouldn't be a TKO.
Shorty shrieked, put his hand to his neck, swung around, and yelled, "What the—"
Bruce hauled off and hacked at Shorty's clavicle three times with the razor-sharp hatchet. He had been aiming for Shorty's chest but missed, Shorty swerving to evade the blows.
Three hatchet strikes didn't take the big man down.
Charlie got in behind the ranch hand. He let the machete fly, slicing into Shorty's neck three times and stabbing him once with the blade point. Charlie had aimed for the jugular, but like Bruce, missed for Shorty's thrashing attempts to flee.
The blows, failing to knock out Shorty or bring death, brought lots of blood, spurting, gushing from Shorty's head and neck wounds. The flow ran down the man's back, soaking into his checkered shirt. Shorty undoubtedly saw stars, suffered vertigo, and may have been momentarily blinded by the blood flow, making it impossible to zero in on his attackers. Clem got in another blow, this time to the bridge of Shorty's nose, cracking his skull. That blow should have knocked Shorty to the ground, but only served more blinding pain. Shorty's screams grew louder, lasting longer.
To his attackers, Shorty looked like a big, blood-soaked, bellowing bear. One that refused to die. The Family victims never seemed to do. I'm sure Charlie found that odd. Bruce traded places with Charlie. Bruce hatchet chopped Shorty twice in the back of his skull. Charlie and Clem jumped back from the forward-lunging ranch hand, his arms outstretched, fingers reaching, to grab his attackers.
Charlie moved around to Shorty's left. Shorty and swung the machete again. He managed one deep stab wound to the lower left base of the skull, and three more slices to the left side of Shorty's head. One of the three hit with such force it created an elongated skull fracture. The pain from this blow, unimaginable.
In disgust, Clem dropped the wrench. He reached for the fixed-blade Buck stowed in his overalls and joined Charlie and Bruce in a stabbing frenzy. The men sliced, chopped, and stabbed Shorty's thighs, shins, arms, hands, and into the right middle of his back near the vertebrae. The three struck anywhere and everywhere to bring the big guy down.
Shorty fell and momentarily passed out. When he came to, he said, "Why, Charlie, why?"
Manson said, "Shorty, you know why."
It was Charlie or Clem who struck the coup de gras, stabbing Shea three times on the right side of Shorty's chest, slicing through the rib cage. These blows probably penetrated Shorty's lungs. With the pain, and an inability to draw breath, Shorty finally collapsed, his screams forever done.
Barbara heard all those wailing screams. How could she not? The RV was parked up near Santa Susana Pass Road, less than a mile away from the murderous mêlée. She sat bolt upright and scanned the room. Everyone else in the trailer was sound asleep. She couldn't believe no one woke up from these screams!
She left her sleeping bag, tip-toed over to the nearest window, and peered out into the inky night. She scanned the frontage road for any signs of movement. The area was vacant.
But the blood-curdling cries continued…
Her eyes popped. She recognized the voice. It was Shorty Shea!
"Oh, my God," she whispered to herself. "Not him, too, not Shorty."
Barbara slapped her hands against her ears desperately trying to muffle the sounds. She turned around to see if anyone stirred from the God-awful noise. Not a soul. Everyone was still sound asleep, some lightly snoring, others splayed out on their backs or curled up on their sides. The Family slept the sleep of the unknowing.
Barbara wished she were asleep. Instead, she was hearing the most horrendous sounds she would ever hear. The cries went on, and on, and on…
"Oh, Shorty, what are they doing to you? Oh, please God, make it stop."
As her prayer ended, so did the screams. The valley was again cloaked in silence. Now, the deathly kind.
Barbara strained her ears. No more screaming. No more crying. No yelling or talking. Silence. A skin-crawling calm. Her ears rang with the screaming void.
Had I just imagined this? Was I having a nightmare?
Barbara touched herself to see if she was awake. She knew she was awake. And what she heard was all too real.
Her life was now a horror story. Standing there, all alone, there could be no more excuses. She knew she belonged to a killing machine, the Family no longer about peace and love. The Family was death.
Tears streamed. Her body convulsed, gulping back sobs, fearful now of waking the others. Tears soaked her cheeks and the neckline of her top.
Barbara was too afraid to venture outside. Yet she had the urge to flee. Fearful of being seen, being caught, and being killed, too, kept her feet firmly planted on the trailer floor. She tip-toed back to her sleeping bag and crawled deep inside, curling up into the fetal position. She kept her hands over her mouth to muffle her cries, eventually falling into a fitful sleep, tossing and turning until the dawn of a new day rose.
The night wasn't over just yet.
The three killers looked down at Shorty's writhing body. They were watching the man die. Blood covered his face, arms, chest, and legs. Blood soaked his shirt and jeans. Blood filled his nose, throat and lungs, cutting off the air supply. Gurgling sounds replaced his cries.
Charlie chuckled. "Yeah, he was somethin' else!"
Charlie's shoulders drooped. The little man was puffing, too. The machete hung from his right hand, feeling like dead weight now. Its point dripped blood onto the sandy soil.
"The site I told ya about is just up here a ways," said Clem, also puffing. His overalls splattered with blood. His Buck knife bent and blood-stained.
"Okay, you and Bruce get his ass in the trailer and take him on down the road. I'll take a shovel to this bloody sand here. Come back and get me once you're done." Charlie walked back to the truck box and retrieved the shovel he had Clem put in the box for this purpose.
Charlie scooped up the blood-soaked sand and flung it far and wide off the road, into a gully of tall weeds and scrub bush.
Clem and Bruce dragged Shorty's corpse into the trailer. Clem drove the short distance to the site. It was a highway turn-out that over-looked railway tracks at the bottom of a ravine. The area was rarely trodden on by anything other than four-legged creatures. The pair dragged Shorty's body to the edge and booted him over the ravine.
Not until eight years later, at precisely 2:20p.m., December 15, 1977, did Steve Grogan, desperate to get out of prison, finally divulge the whereabouts of Shorty's body. Fifteen years after the murder, in 1985, Grogan was released.
Not So Fun Fact: Grogan received the Death penalty for murdering Shorty Shea. But Judge James Kolts stated, "Grogan was too stupid and too hopped-up on drugs to decide anything on his own," so on December 23, 1971, Grogan was given a life sentence, along with Manson and Davis on the crime.
Shea's remains were found in a shallow grave. It's unclear whether Clem returned to the site or years of hillside erosion had buried the body. When found, Shorty's skull was exposed to the elements. The skeleton was virtually intact, missing only the left hand and the left humerus, which were probably scavenged and carried off by wildlife.
The truck's headlights illuminated Charlie's slight frame. He was leaning on his shovel, his work done. He tossed the tool in the box and slid in beside Bruce. The trio returned to Spahn, less a man but with plenty of blood. The trio hosed out the horse trailer, washed the weapons, and returned them to their proper places before their bedrolls called.
Nobody at Spahn's heard the killers return.
Just like no one heard the never-ending screams of Shorty's last minutes on earth.
All but one very terrified Barbara Hoyt, whose sleeping brain was assailed by fitful dreams and thrashing nightmares. The kind which she said occasionally came to her in the wee hours, on quiet summer nights, decades on.
Yes, Charlie, that was ten. Ten very dead, innocent souls. Those we are aware. The lingering question: Were there more? The answer: Unknown.
Charlie later boasted of killing 35. Sadie told Ronnie that there were "three more out in the desert." During the first trial, Leslie van Houten's attorney, Ronald Hughes, was found face-down with a boulder over his head, a "supposed" victim of a flash flood while camping at Sespe Hot Springs in Ventura County.
And in 1972, Family Members Nancy Pitman (aka Brenda McCann), Priscilla Cooper (aka Tuffy), and Lynette "Squeaky" Lynette Fromme were charged as accessories after-the-fact in the murders of James and Lauren Willett.
Yes, there were ten, alright. Certainly more.
As of this writing, we have passed the 56th anniversary of the Manson Family murders. As the imprisoned killers grow older — Charlie and Sadie already dead, and Leslie van Houten now set free — one can't help but wonder if death-bed confessions will come, revealing more trade-mark Family horrors, spawning more murder anniversary stories yet to be penned.
I can only wait and wonder, and pray I am wrong.
Comments
1)Tex book clearly says only 3 knives. Why has he troubled to mention it.
2) Linda does not admit going in house, but Susan says she did
3) Susan says after losing her first knife (supposedly used by then on someones thigh in a struggle yet found with no blood on) Linda "apparently" (careful word choice) gave her her one. That makes 4 knives. Is it that this more active role would have made immunity and the pure image not wash for Linda, so the Prosecutor allowed perjury and Tex is expected to back it up. But Susan accidentally or knowingly put her foot in it, by trying to be truthful as possible in her book. Could Tex not have known Linda had a knife. Or did Susan not get a knife after losing the first one at all, but only say that as she needed to make out she somehow killed Sharon. From fear of the family getting to her or her son before the death penalty occurred or life sentence was up - or from a desire to appear more active to please Manson. Things aren't adding up. A friend knows Linda but says she's zip lipped.
This new site has good analysis.
www.freesusanatkins.net
CYA - off to sign the Parole Susan Atkins Petition.
I am truly sorry...:(
Somehow I was not informed of your Comment on this page, so have just discovered your post...will endeavour to answer your questions now regardless...
1) Don't put so much weight in semantics, Anon...Tex was probably referring to the THREE Buck knives, not including his bayonet...;
2) No, Linda does not admit entering the house but I do not see how that's possible because we know that Susan's original knife had NO blood on it whatsoever and we know Susan got into a struggle with Voytek and stabbed him...
Now, unless Tex or Katie handed over their knives to Susan, which is highly doubtful as both of those killers were busy doing in Voytek and Gibby respectively, as well, Susan had to have used another knife to stab Voytek in the chins four times, which, of course, only leaves Linda's knife.
Susan would NOT have had time to leave that living room to obtain Linda's knife outside of the house as she fell into that struggle with Voytek almost immediately after Tex ordered her to stab him...;
3) Four knives is what WAS taken to Cielo, yes, three Bucks and one bayonet, 4.
The admission or not by Linda that she entered that living room would NOT have made immunity void as she still did not do the killing and readily admits to handing over her knife to Sadie. Immunity can and has been given to confessed killers and remember, WAS going to be given to Sadie and the DA knew she had killed by her own confession.
For me, I think, Linda just could never bring herself to remember what she saw in that living room that night, or, to admit to anyone that she was that close to the killing and still didn't try to stop it.
And no, Susan would have had to obtain another knife as she most definitely was the one who stabbed Voytek in the chins, even if you prefer to disbelieve her admission of stabbing Sharon.
Susan most definitely embellished her story for TWO reasons...
1) She craved attention, had always done, and she knew the more she ampted up the story, the more attention she received from all and sundry;
2) She most definitely DID crave Manson's approval, before the killings most assuredly, but also after her confession, because she was so desperate to get back into the fold, not to protect her son, for she had no overt empathetic thoughts back then whatsoever (and only played at having empathy in later years, for sociopaths cannot genuinely empathize), but because she feared being an outcast after the trial, in The Family, having a definite belief that they would all be freed and live as One once more.
Things completely add up if you take what is known and then add what must be logical to the known...and have no political agenda either way...that last part, obviously, very difficult for some to abide by...