2nd Official Tate-LaBianca Murders Blog

“Old Man…”

2011-11-11T23:46:00.001-07:00

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.
Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things
that don't get lost.
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you.
Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.
Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.
I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.
Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

Hate and Horror, My Cheer…

2011-10-18T00:50:00.001-06:00

They left.

I saw them leave.

It took forever.

I wonder…

Do all well-healed Beautiful People take THAT long to go somewhere?

Well, you know, my take on Time is not as others but it seemed to take forever.

Mind you, there was a tense moment there, or what felt like ten minutes, when whoever was driving that Chevelle either was under the influence, nervous as Hell or just had a death wish desire to screw up the new paint job on that black-striped-ride-from-Heaven with a rather easily avoided collision with that hideous gate. I mean, who goes out of their way to scratch a cherry Chevelle with a metal gate. Not me, Man! Oh, Boy, not me!

Ah, well, kiddies will be kiddies…I think that scruffy little dude didn’t belong up here anyways…ragged jeans, a non-designer T-shirt looking like it had been clean…last Wednesday…

It’s amazing though, you meet someone you didn’t plan on meeting, not of your class, not from your “world”, and you end up just plain liking the guy…what ya gonna do? You keep him around for laughs, or to make you feel better about yourself, a science experiment, maybe…

Nah, you just end up loving everything about him…that’s all…it happens...

I think the scruffy little dude driving that Chevelle tonight thinks the same of “her”…

I like the rear lights on the Chevelle this year, weird-sided, piercing, how they glow, their ever-present beady little eyes pressed on you…an almost evil red at night…Don’t get me wrong, I’m not partial to Evil, per se, it’s just part of the job description sometimes.

Those tail lights tell me people are leaving…I like when people leave.

It’s so hard to be Me, listening to their banter, yeah, sure, you’re glad things are going their way but because you know you can’t join in, can’t have fun like they, a mere spectator, a mere aviator, an envy inevitably sets in and you just end up being glad they’re gone.

It’s The Dark Time now, The Time In-Between, the time when I shine.

I do my best work at night, when people are gone, when they don’t suspect I’m here, taking their place. Most people don’t think of Me, you know, they always think that while dusting, that ornament that accidentally fell off the coffee table, that didn’t break, Luck, they think…heck, T’wernt no Luck, T’was Me!

The Christmas lights are glowing nicely on the fence tonight…hey, one light bulb is out, it’s a blue one, I think, well, it looks blue, so dark out here high above it all…wish I had fingers to screw it back in.

It’s finally cooling down now too, what a Hell of a day it was today, the inner tube, it’s gone from the pool, the underwater lights are on now, would have floated in there myself, for a while, if I could have…I have no hands to open the gardener’s shed where I’m sure it’s at…ah, well, that’s okay, I don’t think I’m meant to be here to float anyhow…

I watched them all leave and nobody thought to lock the front door.

Strange.

Nobody locks doors, yet, I guess…they soon will…just you watch…all of them will soon.

Good fortune for me tonight though, since I can’t float in the pool, since I must hang out ‘til they’re back, at least I can go inside, maybe have a slurp or two of an unfinished cocktail, hope it’s whatever wine that one guy was drinking, looked French.

Black as night out there, warm as toast-on-fire in here.

Lights on, no one home but us chickens.

I like this time…it’s dead quiet here right now, French Doors I see ajar in the Master Bedroom…I hear the motor running on that pool filter unit just outside…it’s competing with the chirping cicadas, it is. Rather annoying, that motor hum, maybe the residents have become used to it. Hell, later, it won’t matter much, doubt anyone will pay attention to that noise when other noises will be so ever-present.

Ah, well, no sense in dwelling on the future when the present is so here.

It’s amazing how you can’t see a thing outside when the lights are on in this house…I feel like a goldfish in a goldfish bowl…if only I had fins.

If you want my opinion, I think it’s a cryin’ shame I was sent here tonight, not my place to say but it seems like such a pity to mess with such a good thing.

I smell the remnants of perfume, also French…Givenchy, maybe…it’s hard to tell, I have no nose…

I guess I'll just sit on the piano, don’t know why, seems as good a spot as any, I can view all the exits, cover all the angles, look up at the loft, I mean, does it really matter?

Clock on the wall, it ticks, ticking by all the seconds. Time, my buddy…wouldn’t be me without it. I’m hungry, these kiddies were talking on food so much here today, a conversational topic of choice, it seemed, for that scruffy little dude, Beautiful People on the other hand try their best not to eat…wish I had a mouth.

I’m impatient, go over, peek outside, I do, just to see if anyone is coming yet. Hey, this door, wow, it’s heavy, a barely audible squeak it has…it’d be better for everyone if it was louder.

After tonight, no further plans for Benedict, I’m off to Los Feliz…man, what a busy weekend schedule I’ve got, hope I get “paid” extra, I hate working weekends, the traffic is murder. Oh well, “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop”; “No rest for the wicked”; “Three knives in three hands are worth more than one look-out in the bush”…oh, no, wait a sec, that last one isn’t a Saying. Where did I come up with that? I slay me sometimes!

Yeah, I know I’ll be here for a while, if that scruffy little dude and his driving skills are any indication.

That’s okay.

I am Fate.
I lie in wait.
I’m here, I’m there, hell, I’m everywhere.
Where people forget, think all is so well,
Where days are a hit and nights are so swell,
I come.
I go.
Unnoticed I flow.
It’s all done by Me.
I am Fate.
I am here.
Hate and Horror, My Cheer.

Deja Vu–A Novella–Chapter Seven

2011-10-04T23:09:00.001-06:00

"...and when you ran to me, your cheeks flushed with the night,
We walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight.
I held your hand...."
Simon and Garfunkel
For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her

“You gonna make it?” I asked her. “You seem to be having one of those days where the slightest trigger sets you off. It’s not too late to beg off on Coyote. I could run down to Maxwell’s and get burgers for everyone. Jay will probably get over it….probably.”

“No, I’m fine.” Sharon replied. “The heat’s been too much today. All I wanted to do was sleep, but even that’s gets to be too uncomfortable. I’m at the point where everything is becoming a chore,…so goin’ out to dinner with friends becomes a chore,…but it’s a fun kinda chore.”

I paused, turned….and looked at her for a moment before I spoke.

“Geez, Louise, Polanski,” I responded, “You really were born in Texas, weren’t you? That sounds like an incredibly Texan thing to say….a fun kinda chore.”

“Geez, Louise?....Geez Louise!?” she asked, instantly becoming defensive.

“What the hell kinda talk is that? What does that mean, anyhow?....Geez Louise. What a stupid thing to say. Who the hell is Louise? That don’t say anything, no-how…and you’re makin’ fun of me? I don’t say Geez, Louise. I don’t even know what it means. You always say, Geez, Louise, Polanski. It’s the three words that you preface everything with, moron. You musta said it forty times since you got to the house today. I try and make a good impression sometimes and coining the term Geez, Louise is not part of what I would even begin to think would make a good,…uh,…impression,…because sometimes you have to suck it up and just put a lid on that kinda contrived down homey-style stuff,…because it don’t mean anything….jerk-face.”

She then added, “You’re from Cleveland. Is that the way they talk in Cleveland? Geez, Louise….is that a Cleveland saying?”

“No” I replied “That comes from havin’ an Irish-Catholic mother who was raised in an orphanage. They all talk like that in orphanages. She was born an orphan.”

“No, she wasn’t, idiot.” she said,

“People aren’t born into,…ummm,…”orphanry”. People aren’t born orphans. They have parents when they are born. People have at least a mother when they come into this world. You are made an orphan when they decide to give you up or get taken away. People are not ‘born orphans’. That’s an oxy-moron,…moron.”

“Tell that to my poor Irish, orphan mother then, Polanski,…Geez, Louise.”

She sneezed abruptly,…and then grabbed the back of a dining room chair in an effort to steady herself.

She changed the subject by cradling her stomach and saying,

“Owwww,…maaaan,…That kid’s just not happy today.”

Deep breath.

I just stood there with a knowingly dumb look on my face.

“Are you finished?” I asked.

She sneezed again and did one of those moves where her hand went instantly to her face while she turned around because she wasn’t sure if anything came out and stuck to her upper lip. I handed her a previously used napkin and she wiped her nose.

She turned back around and lifted her face up for me to give it the once over.

“Anything there?” she asked.

“No,…booger-free, babe.” I said, after a cursory inspection. “You about ready?”

She said nothing while she crinkled up the napkin and silently looked at me. She then threw it in my face and ran/waddled out of the dining room. It bounced off my face and hit the floor.

Beasley came by and, in a flash, picked up the napkin with her teeth and scampered out of the room. Lord knows where she was going with it, Lord knows what she’s gonna do with it and Lord knows how many pieces it was going to be in when we got home.

Jay came around the corner from the kitchen and asked if everyone was ready. Time was a-wastin’ and the Gouda sandwiches were wearin’ off.

“Yeah, let’s go.” I said. “All of a sudden, the Mexican is sounding good to me, man. What do they have there?”

Jay said he really didn’t know what they had there because he was kinda stuck on the “especiale de la casa huevos rancheros”. He said he hasn’t looked beyond that, but then thoughtfully opined that they probably had some burritos and some kind of finger-foods that had either hard or soft tortillas as the main ingredient. He added that the Mexicans were big on cheddar cheese and tomatoes,…and there was some impending cheesy, melted goodness afoot,….if we could just make it to the car and get our sorry asses on the road.

Agreed.

Car-up.

Abigail and Voytek emerged from their bedroom and Sharon was slingin’ her purse over her arm when Jay and I walked into the foyer. Abigail, it seems, had changed again into some white shorts and a different flowered top and headband. Basically the same look she had on before, just a different floral pattern.

Jay, Voytek and I simultaneously did that thing that all males tend to do when they are about to depart one scenery for the next. We all spot checked ourselves to make sure we had “wallet, keys, spectacles and testicles”. It is a common ritual that is practiced the world over….from Accra, Ghana to Queensland, Australia.

That task complete, Jay opened the door and motioned everyone out before him. He was the host, as it were, and this was a little courtesy that he provided as a service to his invitees. Never mind that he wasn’t cooking, he was holding the door for everyone and payin’ for dinner.

Sharon and Abigail giggled and were engaging in some mindless banter about the color yellow while Voytek looked almost dissipated. I got the feeling that whatever he was on was wearing off and that he was waiting for the next dose to take effect.

Before I left the threshold, I turned around to get a visual on Beas. She was on the back of the couch, perched on the stars and stripes, chewing madly at Sharon’s discarded booger-rag. Jay somewhat sensed that something was amiss with Beasley’s vigorous intensity,…although he was not privy to the catalyst of her veracity.

“Must have some food on it or somethin’.” he opined.

Little did he know.

~~~~~~~

The night was upon us,...

We walked out the front door and down the crescent shaped walkway to my car that was waiting patiently for us to occupy. The night was a welcome relief to the heat that transpired during the daylight hours. A certain element of peace will unfold when you are placed in a position to look out over the canyon at the city below.

I never realized before, what a magnificent property this truly was.

It was as if we were untouchable in this crook of a mountain. The lights shimmered and danced below and I paused on the walk to take it all in for a minute.

Jay, sensing my awe, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “That’s what it’s all about, man. Bein’ up here. Bein’ up here gives you a sense of power, don’t it?.…the fact of the matter is that looks can be deceiving, Danny. It’s a rental property, man. Like everything in Hollywood, it’s all just borrowed… for a little while, at least.”

There was no sense of arrogance in his tone. It was as if he was simply declaring the game being played and was making it clear that some people choose to play it and some opt not to. Either way, it’s a life choice and really has no bearing on whether or not you could be deemed worthy or unworthy for whichever stance you choose. Jay knew that I was a minimalist and I knew that he is materialistic. When one invades the other, it’s almost as if a certain element of explanation needs to be displayed to the stranger in a strange land.

That, believe it or not, was one of the things I was finding endearing of Jay, as we travelled through the course of this day. He wasn’t as arrogant as I originally conceived. It was an error of judgement that I was glad to be a witness to before he and I parted brass rags again,…until the next uncomfortable meeting in which Sharon was, once again, stirring the drink that would have the two of us starting from square one.

As Sharon, Gib and Voytek walked to the car, I stopped Jay, and in a brief moment of weakness, confessed that I was not smart enough to know how to run a business or an acting career,…and I told him that I tip my hat to those who do.

He smiled.

And responded by saying that those who do usually don’t have the smarts to run relationships and they tend to negate the emotional side of life. It seemed to me that this was his confession to me, in return.

He paused.

“Look at Sharon and Roman and Gib and Voytek. Are they happy? Or, for that matter, am I?” He was smiling when he said it, but it was the smile, combined with his statement, which ultimately gave him away.

He continued.

“We have different conceptions as to what it means to be successful. That’s the easy part. It comes down to money and security. Your security comes from the fact that you bought a cool car. Does either of these things ever mean anything in regards to eternity, Danny? I don’t slight you because your vision is different from mine, I think you think I do,…but I don’t. A man chooses his own path. That’s what it comes down to,….and woe to He who assumes his lot if Life is greater than others’. It doesn’t work that way. We’re supposed to act like it does,… but it remains a falsehood, my friend. I am not wholly un-happy. I’m just like everyone else in life.”

He paused and then added, “I don’t slight you because of who you are,…I slight you because you don’t comb or cut your hair. That rankles me to the core….but you are also a very decent person.”

My mind was having a hard time ingesting the instant depth that Jay’s personality just took on. One does not have deep conversations whilst walking to a car on a way to a cheap Mexican dinner. I could tell that my lack of absorption was showing when Jay looked at me and then let out a chuckle. I must have had a pretty stupid look on my face.

The girls were trying to get in the car and Jay mentioned that Sharon should ride in the front seat due to her girth.

Just then, out of nowhere, Voytek exclaimed, “SHOTGUN!”,…as if to put dibs on the front seat.

Jay then rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, like I had seen him do multiple times over the course of the day….as if his mind was viciously trying to compute the reasons as to why, aside from utter selfishness, Voytek would insist on being in the front seat with a cramped Sharon in the back. The patience with his Polish compadre was beginning to wear thin.

“Get your fat ass in the back, Voytek!” Jay yelled. “Can’t you see she’s pregnant?”

Jay then looked at me and rhetorically asked, “How many times am I gonna have to say that today?”

Voytek paused for a moment and then looked at Sharon’s bulbous stomach as she leaned against the car, patiently waiting to get in and get off her swollen and tired feet.

“Oh, yeah,” he yelled back “I do seem to remember something about Shah-Ron being with child.”

He then reached out and patted Sharon’s belly in a very ginger manner. He leaned down and cupped his hands around his mouth so as to get some volume that was to be, momentarily, directed at the child contained within Sharon’s womb.

“Hey, baby, baby, baby!” he yelled at her stomach, “come out, come out wherever you are,….here, baby, baby, ba-beeeeee.”

Sharon leaned against the car with a look of bemused resignation. She then very subtly and silently mouthed the words,

“What a fuckin’ asshole.”

The amazing part was that Jay and I could read her lips from twenty feet away. It didn’t take a whole lot of imagination to guess that would be the only thing she was capable of saying at that point in time.

Abigail was becoming increasingly impatient with the amount of time that was being devoted to the simple act of getting in a car. She fiddled with her purse and then took out some sunglasses and put them on the top of her head….in spite of the fact that the sun was now gone.

The day was dead and so was Lady F’s patience.

“Are we goin’ or are we gonna stand out here while you two lovers look out over the canyon?” She yelled.

Jay and I looked at each other.

“Yeah, let’s go, sweetheart.” I said to Jay.

We walked over to the car and Jay opened the door and hit the latch that caused the front seat to fold forward so Voytek could get in. I did the same on the driver’s side for Abigail. Jay then climbed in after Voytek and pulled the seat back into the upright position. I climbed into the driver’s seat after helping Sharon get situated in the passenger side. This entire act took about three minutes of precious life.

I was the last one in the car. I plopped down behind the wheel and said, “Ok, Sebring. Get me to the Mexican ranch.”

“Put it in drive, Dan. We have to get off the property to get on the road. Then I can navigate.” he said.

“Right-O, Cap!” I said. I then put the car in drive and very slowly tried to navigate the car to the proper place for the exit of the property. Since this was the first time my car has ever been on the property, I proceeded with extreme caution to the exit button that was situated just before the gate. I pulled up slowly,…and then put the car in park. This action caused a sally of guffaws to emanate from the back seat.

“C’mon, man.” Jay said. “Just pull up and hit the button. It’s not rocket science.”

“Jay” I answered. “You don’t know this,…but Sharon does. I have this thing about pressing buttons from my car. I just can’t do it. It’s this phobia that I have. It’s too much like multi-tasking. So help me, if they ever invent a phone that can go in a car, I’m gonna be in a world of hurt. How the hell am I gonna press buttons and drive at the same time, man?”

“You’re gonna be in a world of hurt if you don’t shut up and just press the Goddamned button, Danny.” Abigail chimed in.

“Gib,…trust me.” Sharon said. “Danny really can’t multi-task. He also can’t do that thing with his fingers that Mr. Spock does, either.”

She then held up her hand and effortlessly demonstrated the Vulcan sign from Star Trek.

Ignoring the tirades, I put the car in park and turned the engine off. I got out and pressed the button. The gate began to slowly creak and move into the open position. Knowing that the window of opportunity was a small one, I hopped back into the car,…and frantically fumbled with the keys in an effort to find the right one to start the ignition,….because I didn’t have the foresight to put the imperative key between my lips for faster access.

After what seemed like a mind-numbing eternity, I found the right key on my ring of about twenty. I started the engine and put the car in drive. As I slowly advanced to the gate, the time allotted for exit proper was diminished,…and the gate began to close before I could navigate through it. We sat there in silence, as we watched the gate close, trapping us inside the property,…proper.

The only word spoken came after about fifteen seconds of silent disbelief. It was from Abigail.

“Asshole.”

I then reversed and slowly backed back up to the post that held the exit button. It was then that I saw my salvation, as it were,…growing larger in my rear-view mirror. Bill, the caretaker, was walking down the drive towards the button. He stopped behind my car and waited for me to press the button so he, as well, could exit the property proper. I waved him up to the driver’s side door.

“Hey, Bill.” I said. “Do me a favor and hit that button when I pull up to the gate, OK?”

He nodded and said, “Sure. No problem.”

I pulled the Chevy up to the gate and yelled “Now!” over to Bill. He dutifully pressed the button. Jay sighed from the back seat and said, “Danny, you’re too close to the gate. It’s gonna hit your front end. You have to be back by the button for your car to clear it.”

The gate opened and we all came to the instant, sobering realization that Jay was correct in his analysis of the problem at hand. I was too close to the gate. The gate opened and stopped when it hit the front end of my car. It then automatically shut again and we were, once again, left stranded on the property,….proper. I glanced over at Sharon and she sat with her hand over her mouth while silently shaking her head in utter disbelief. Voytek began snoring,…because staying awake during this exit debacle was just too much for him. Abigail was steeped in an icy-blue silent rage.

The gate once again closed, I backed up and yelled for Bill to hit the button again. He did,…and the gate, for the third time in the span of five minutes, opened to allow us to get from “on” property to “off” property. I pulled the gear shifter down to drive and slammed the gas pedal to the floor….failing to consciously keep at the forefront of my mind that this was a ’69 Chevelle with a 396 in it. We sat still while the engine raced to top peak, spinning the back tires and creating a cloud of blue rubber smoke that was going to linger far and wide, long after we got off the property,…if we ever got off the property.

After what seemed like another eternity, the gate began to close and I let off the gas a bit as the car grabbed asphalt. We sped with a screech towards the closing gate and narrowly made it out.

As we flew like bandits down Cielo, Jay tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Nice work, Einstein. Try and keep in mind that there’s a pregnant chick in the car, OK?”

I slammed on the brakes, the car skidded to a halt and I turned around. Jay thought there was gonna be some kinda confrontation due to his comment. I turned and looked though the back window and past his comment. I forgot something.

In a brief moment, there it was. Bill…..walking down the road in his bare feet.

I waved him up to the driver’s side window. He began to jog up to the car to see what it was that I wanted. I asked him if he needed a ride. He stated that he was just going to go down to Turner’s Drugstore to get a TV dinner and some cigarettes. Sharon leaned over and said she could scoot over to give him some room in the front seat. This, of course, strangely appealed to me in an unexpected fashion….and in an alarming one.

I got the impression from Bill that he was not one to make up his mind in a hurry. He stood there and thought about it for a minute. He finally said, “Ok” and walked around to the passenger side to get into the car. Sharon scooted over to make room.

“Hey, Bill.” Sharon said to him when he got in next to her. “I know that you know Gib and Voytek, but you never met Jay. Bill, this is Jay Sebring. Jay....Bill.”

Jay cordially said hello and his hand reached up between Sharon and Bill. Bill shook it and said, “Glad to meet you….you’re the one with the Porsche, right?”

“Yeah.” Jay said. “That’d be me.”

A strange silence permeated the car now that there was someone else in it. I drove down the street and made a right off the cul-de-sac and onto Cielo proper. I could tell that Bill didn’t want to be in such close proximity with the tenant of the estate that he was supposed to be watching. It was in his body language. He just as soon be riding on the hood of the car rather than to be next to the beautiful Sharon. I, on the other hand, relished being this close to her,…even if I wasn’t sure as to why.

Odd.

I think the heat of the day was getting to me as well. Just somethin’ about her sweat….that was just so un-nerving.

I turned on the radio to break the monotony of the silence and to get my mind off of the fact that Sharon’s arm and leg were now touching my arm and leg, respectively.

For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her was playing.

“Yeah, Baby,…Simon and Garfunkel,…Good call, Dex” I mused aloud, to no one in particular.

“…and when I awoke,….and felt you warm and near,…I kissed your honey hair,…with my grateful tears,…oh, I love you, girl.....”

I reached over and shut the stereo off as quickly as I turned it on. Sharon, who was silently looking at her fingernails, stopped fudging, looked up at the road and then turned to me in silent disbelief. She said nothing, but instantly burst out laughing at the asinine display she just witnessed….never having a clue as to why.

“Lemme see if I got this right.” She said. “You turn on the radio,…say something to the effect that you are pleased that Simon and Garfunkel are on,…then you turn it off.” She paused and shook her head. “You’re a straaaange bird, Daniel”.

Luckily for me, the import of the lyrics fell upon deaf ears. No one picked up my discomfort at the lyrics being sung. As we travelled down Cielo, I was eternally grateful that this moment would forever remain my secret. The moment passed.

Then Bill broke the awkward silence.

“And when I awoke and felt you warm and near, I kissed your honey hair, with my grateful tears… I love you, girl….I like that. I like those words. They’re like poetry. Paul Simon is a good words writer. Those are good words.” He said,…to no one in particular.

In a panic, I struggled to put my words on top of his words.

“Simon ain’t nuthin’ without Garfunkel, Bill! They should never break up because Simon is just gonna go straight down the shitter without Garfunkel. Garfunkel is what makes those guys. Simon can’t sing like Garfunkel, Bill. I bet you a twenty dollar bill that, if they ever break up, Garfunkel is gonna be the one who shines in the solo forum.”

Bill, as usual, paused before answering.

“I think Paul Simon is a good words writer. Think about it,…and when I awoke and felt you warm and near, I kissed your honey hair with my grateful tears. I love you, girl….those are some spot on words, man. Just beautiful”.

I fidgeted in my seat.

“Shut up, Bill. Paul ain’t crap without Art and Art does not a Paul make. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. It’s not poetry. Clothed in crinoline,….of smoky burgundy?,…c’mon man. That’s not poetry,…that’s someone who’s tryin’ to sound like a poet but isn’t. It don't rhyme, either. That line says nothing at all. Smoky burgundy my ass.....what the fu...?”

Sharon, alarmed at my venom, turned to me and whispered, “C’mon, Danny. Knock it off. He’s just givin’ his opinion. Take it easy.”

She then turned to Bill and asked, almost as if she was talking to a ten-year-old, “Do you like music, Bill?”

Before he could answer, Voytek yelled from the backseat, “Lady F’s not 'shamed of her body!”

Warmer and more well-timed words such as those could not have been spoken at a more perfect moment in time. He has just released the fury of Lady F….with the awkward revelation of her point of view in regards to her own nakedness,…thus sparing me of having to explain why I turned the radio off in a moment of haste.

Jay chimed in.

“Speakin’ of which,…how’s the whole guesthouse thing workin’ out for you, Bill? Do you spend a lot of time in the yard at night?” he said, subtly steering the conversation over to the lack of drapes issue that we talked about earlier.

“I usually take the dogs out back of the guesthouse at night, Mr. Sebring.” He said. “If there is too much activity out front, they start to get rambunctified. I find it’s best to just take them to the backyard of the guesthouse.”

The car fell silent as each occupant of said, save for Bill, tried to comprehend the term, “rambunctified”.

After a moment,….

“Hey, Sebring?” I asked “What’s the quickest way to Turner’s?”

“Take a left at Benedict Canyon Boulevard and it’s right on Sunset.” Jay and Abigail answered in unison.

There was hardly any traffic out. Just an average drive though the canyon. I wished Beas was with us. She just loves the car and she just loves Sharon. It would have been aces had we took Beas and left Bill,…but alas, this was the way it was tonight. The thing about Beas, God bless her, is that she can’t hold utensils due to the fact that she is devoid of thumbs,…otherwise she’d be goin’ with us. The banter in the backseat began to pick up a bit between Jay and Voytek. I couldn’t hear what they were saying over the wind in my left ear and Sharon’s cursory musings to Bill in the front seat. They were talking about how nice it was that Terry’s girlfriend left the Christmas lights on the fence after they left,….which instantly reminded me,…I forgot to screw in the blue light bulb again when I left. I have never done that before. Go to Sharon’s, unscrew it when I arrive, screw it back in before I leave.

I couldn’t help but wonder if that was some strange omen as we tarried towards El Coyote via Turner’s Drugstore. Something left un-done that was going to be the catalyst of other things to become undone in a cataclysmic annihilation in regards to the world as we know it.

I like to give things that aspect of doom,…even if I don’t believe in it as a whole. Being a man of simple Christian beliefs, those kinds of instances only play out in my mind and not in reality. Yet, it makes for high drama in my finite world,…. when everyone in the car is talking to everyone else but me….it’s as if I allow my mind to run wild. When the mind runs wild, like a child, it doesn’t run safely and various scenarios tend to play out in one’s head when the so-called stars are not aligned just right,….due to my carelessness of not screwing the blue light bulb back in when I left the premises.

I came to the rapid conclusion that it was I,…who, indeed, had left the portal open for my friend’s enemies,…. I, single-headedly, left that gate open for demons to enter,…not in the physical sense of course, but in the ethereal sense.

There was no need to get alarmed because, once again, I am a man of simple Christian beliefs.

I dismissed my thoughts as I pulled into the parking lot of Turner’s Drugstore,…the light from the sign and the prospect of Bill exiting my car gave me a new lease on life.

Bill got out and thanked us for the ride. He told Sharon that he would be sure to water the lawn and bushes in the morning. Jay told him that it was nice meeting him and Abigail smiled and waved as he made his way in though the double glass doors that gained him entrance into the fluorescently lit drugstore.

“Which way to El Coyote from here, Jay?” I asked.

“Turn right.” was his only reply,….

To Be Continued…

Charles Denton “Tex” Watson…The Man Behind The Monster Part Four – The Interviews, Part F

2011-07-30T05:25:00.001-06:00

“The Crime”…

Yes, THE Crime.

It’s very interesting how Tex manages to sanitize the most gory, messy and fear-burgeoning set of murders 20th Century North America ever endured.

Tex claims in Chapter 5 (click the book pic to read the chapter) that he can now find it easier to talk on the Tate-Labianca murders because he has “learned to deal properly with the pain”, that he can now have compassion for the pain of others, inferring he had no previous ability.

Okay, is it just me or is this an admission NO human being with a in-bred conscience would EVER have to state?

People with a moral compass never have to decide if or when empathy builds for another human being, it is automatic, instinctual, passion-driven for the love of all mankind, for an empathetic person sees himself in all others.

I have observed the other killers, from time to time, consciously construct this mental process in their minds as well, a crafted behaviour trait they KNOW they should have in order to be thought of as “human” and rehabilitated, to feign and mimic remorse and pain for the suffering they have caused others…and internalizing this mimicked trait long enough, for as many years as they’ve had to, even they, in the end, believe they have mastered the “human touch”.

They have not.

It is simply a learned behaviour trait they know must be shown to society if society is to even consider unlocking their cell doors. To state such a behaviour is now present, where it simply was not before, and to excuse that absence solely on drug abuse washes NOT with me, and quite obviously, with the people in the know and authority to open those cell doors or likewise, to throw away the keys.

FYI: Layman’s Hint: If you hear a killer now claiming humanity where none was evident before, stamp “SOCIOPATH” on his forehead, wash your tree-hugger-inclined hands of him and walk away.

~~~

Tex claims that he “didn’t have a lot of feelings” during, in between nor after the murders and felt “pressure to go along the next night”, that Manson had taught all the Family to think and act as One as the only path to success, individual thought the path to ruin.

Maybe, just maybe, with a truck-load of Speed in the week preceding the murders and months and months of LSD abuse, I can half-heartedly buy those kinds of non-emotions and automaton instincts during one frenzied, impulsive act of murder. But, when you have over 24 hours in between premeditated killing en masse, that’s when this excuse starts to wane for me.

Yes, I’ve seen for myself, just in the many mug-shots taken of the killers, Tex in particular, from before the killings, to arrest and conviction to incarceration, that it indeed took many months to bring these young adults down from their warped mental state. You could see their eyes begin to bug-out less, the aura of the stone-cold robotic face ebb as those months of sobriety increased, but to my mind, no amount of drug abuse could over-power one’s instinctual need to abort the second night after such a time delay between the Tate and Labianca kills, to then be able to go out and kill en masse once more, without even questioning such a decision. The ability to mindlessly repeat such an act would be impossible without blood-lust alive and breathing in Tex, a lethal desire possessed deep within his psyche most probably from birth.

The killers remind me of my two Rottweiler dogs…great dogs, loving, with an easy-going nature, UNTIL you put a bone with blood-tainted meat in front of them…then, the blood-lust took over and it was all you could do as their owner to pry that bone away from their jaws without getting bitten yourself.

Tex, Katie, for sure had this blood-lust…beyond just obeying their Master Charlie, they just plain ENJOYED the kill. Simple as that.

It’s debatable whether or not Sadie, Bobby, Clem or Bruce possessed such blood-lust but to my mind, one who DID, but just was not chosen for both nights was Leslie…she was the ONLY one we know of who had a definite desire to volunteer, knowing full well what it was she was volunteering for. Linda, in my opinion, was only into a power-trip, into doing and saying anything to get closer to being Charlie’s main squeeze and to become the de facto Head of the Girls in that respect.

People feel sorry for Leslie, think that she, next to Linda, is the most “innocent” of the bunch, when if you dissect her behaviour and look at her actions, before, during and after Manson, they make her, for me, one of the most dangerous.

Beware a killer wolf in pretty sheep’s clothing.

~~~

When asked if he had any second thoughts on killing, Tex states he indeed did have, and I quote, “Yes, I did. From the moment Manson gave us the orders, I began to have second thoughts. How would I carry this out?”.

Notice how his second thoughts are not the more naturally inclined, “Holy crapola! I don’t wanna kill! Killing is wrong! I have nothing against these people! Are you kidding me?!” Nope. It’s merely, “Geez, this is a biggie project, how can I go about it in juuust the right way to achieve Charlie’s goal and gain favour with The Soul?”

Sigh…

Most people, when faced with that kind of order, ignore, run, don’t even give it a moment’s thought of ANY kind beyond it being humanly impossible to even comprehend much less commit.

Nope, not Tex. Tex is an achiever without a conscience. Great characteristics if you plan on being one of North America’s most feared mass murderer monsters, not so great if, say, you want to look at yourself in the mirror without going catatonic with disgust, know you can answer to your God come Judgement Day, and say, stay outta prison for the next umpteen decades until you croak yourself.

He mentions how he and the Girls, on heading up to Cielo “got lost for an hour”, yet, still, after all that delay, Tex NEVER utters one thought to cancel, to abort, to quit the plan from sheer fear alone, if not guilt. No, not one.

If I plan on doing something I shouldn’t and I have an hour beyond travel time to get to my proposed bad behaviour site, me thinks I have more than enough time to come to my senses and realize the folly of my plan and high-tail it outta there before I do harm to myself or others. The killers…not one thought to quit.

Oh, and in case you missed that wee juicy kernel, “From the moment Manson gave us the orders…As I drove to the crime scene, the girls and I were silent and almost frozen. Our thoughts were in turmoil…", Tex is stating unequivocally that the girls KNEW the plan well before arriving to Cielo. Yes, he could be lying, but on this, I highly doubt it. You can bet your bottom Buck knife that Tex and/or Manson informed them well in advance for if just to eliminate any possibility that one or more might outright panic and refuse to do the deed, leaving Tex holding the proverbial killing bag all by himself. Nope, they ALL knew in that Ford on the way up, they ALL had over a half hour’s drive and another hour of being lost to abort, to quit, to say, “No way, Jose!” …none of them did.

You want to excuse that solely on drug abuse and Charlie’s so-called talent at mind-bending, be my guest, but believe me, in real life, when a weapon is thrust into your hands and you are told that within the hour, you WILL massacre all you find, and you will continue to massacre, as many as it takes, down the street, until you glean your cohorts bail in the amount of 600 clams, high on drugs or not, if you have a conscience, you’re “outta there” as fast as bugs at an illegal poker game being busted by RAID!

~~~

I can buy that the Speed made Tex’s thoughts race ahead of his actions and gave more physical power in his ability to attack and kill but it was not the horror of the massacre at 10050 that prevented the killing gang to continue, it was that they were plum tuckered out!

Poor, poor, tired killers!

The Speed by then, had run it’s course, and after the victims finally succumbed, the killers’ adrenaline croaked as well, and no amount of desire to continue down the street would have been enough to make executing that plan possible after that kind of physical and mental crash. After 10050, there was just no more energy left.

This is WHY, when people continue to ask me, what did the killers do after they returned to Spahn, I KNOW what they did, hands down, they collapsed onto mattresses, hither and yon, and slept like they were dead themselves. You mix the loss of the effects of the Speed with the loss of adrenaline, the lack of nutrition at Spahn and the late hour, and you have four killers pooped like they’ve never been pooped before…oh, and of course, the lack of remorse wasn’t a sleep-killer either, so assassins are sleeping like babes in Spahn woods!

~~~

“In some ways, punishment escaped my mind since Helter Skelter was coming down and society, as we knew it, was coming to an end.”

Well, ain’t that grand!

Yeppers, we, The Manson Family killers, the feeling, empathetic conscience-over-flowing bunch that we are, don’t have to feel bad anymore about killing, cuz none of our fellow human beings are going to live long anyhoo…juuust peachy, that is, for a Get Out Of Being Moral Jail Free Card!

Hmm, correct me if I’m wrong but an empathetic mind does not work that way. On the Titanic, many of the Crew KNEW that ship was doomed, yet they didn’t go around offing the passengers in nifty ways, just for fun, and steal their jewels before The End was near, did they? Nope. Conversely, if Tex & Company knew HS was going to occur, me thinks that killing ahead was just an exercise in futility, even if $600 was needed. “Heck, HS is-a-comin’-down-fast, Man, lets rob a bank, buy lotsa crap, bail out the Girls and be done with it, high-tail it to the depths of the Panamint Range and wait out Armageddon like ol’ Charlie planned!”

A conscience, when one is had, is kept through the life of a person, whether that person’s world is collapsing around them or not. To hold to society’s morays, rules, just because you don’t want to get punished, and not because you don’t internally feel the guilt and remorse such wanton violence would create, is a classic hallmark of a sociopathic personality. The truly ironic thing, the part that amazes me, is that sociopaths NEVER see the dichotomy of what they are saying to what they have done, that it really IS okay to do as one wants, the only stop-gap is that bothersome aspect of being caught and punished. If those factors are eliminated then the sociopath has nothing left to stop him from his hedonistic impulses.

You put an electric fence between a predatory animal like a crocodile and a baby on the ground, the croc doesn’t try to eat the baby for fear of being punished in the form of pain when he tries to climb the electrified fence and finds himself well jolted. You take away that electronic fence, baby becomes lunch and croc sleeps like a baby, tummy all full, without any regretful feelings whatsoever.

Sociopaths - predatory animals in human form. That’s the gist of it.

~~~

I just LOVE this statement,

“Only by the grace of God have I been able to overcome the guilt.”

Wow, I am speechless………well…almost.

Katie, by all accounts, has never been able to overcome her guilt, yet has never become a born-again Bible Thumper like Tex, Sadie and Bruce either, and so, I gather, Tex is saying that to be free of the wrong you have committed, all you have to do is invite the Lord into your life and POOF, He magically wipes your mental slate clean and gives ya a Do-Over! Must be nice, ‘cause, you know, MY God, I hear Him chortle at this one.

Sorry, Tex, you got some kind of “convenient” Omni-Presence going on in that two-dimensional mind of yours, but I can assure you, when you meet The Real Dude at the Pearly Gates, me thinks the only Pass He’ll be giving you is a one-way ticket, “downstairs”, to the guy with the horns and a pitch-fork in hand…you know, the one you were doing the business for at Tate?

~~~

When asked what was going through Tex’s mind the four months after the murders but before he was arrested, he easily spouts,

“…I finally felt accepted into the family.”

Katie had that need, Leslie, Sadie and Linda too, Bruce, Clem and Bobby. ALL the killers, the penultimate achievement – acceptance at any cost. If this isn’t the reason why school kids should choose NOT to walk the halls at recess just because the “popular” kids are doing it, I don’t know what is.

You take a person with no conscience, high on drugs, low on sleep and proper food, possibly physically sick from one or more sexually transmitted diseases, who strives above all else to be one of the “In” crowd and who has easy access to lethal weapons, you have Tate-LaBianca as the result every time.

It is anyone’s guess, that if Charlie did indeed order Tex to shoot the Park Rangers out at Barker when they came looking for any of the Family, why Tex chose not to kill again. Yes, you can say that he was coming down off of the drugs at this point, merely because the drug availability was no more, but my guess is that Tex was the spoilt child he always was, and with no food, no “party favours” and just no more “fun”, the urge to do as Manson ordered was beginning to wane. The Manson Family Psychedelic Party Bus Tour From Hell seemed to be over so Tex did what Tex always did when things didn’t go his way – run to Mommy and Daddy for help, to escape from his dastardly deeds in the hopes that under his Mother’s freshly laundered linens he could hide his head like so much cowardly killing ostrich.

Tex claims he went into a deep depression and ended up lashing out at his parents for his failures as a man, “I blamed them for expectations of me that were too great, which I felt caused me to leave Texas in the first place.”

Okayyyyy…

I can get the, “I did drugs and screwed around like the Hippie Generation reject that I was” and blame it all, in the end, on your parents “strict” home-life, if you’re so inclined to be a narcissistic dolt. What I can’t swallow is that for the umpteen MILLIONS of kids in the 60s that did that very thing - run away from home to “find themselves” in pot, parties and porta-potty rock festivals and Love-Ins - very few ended up ay 10050 with a bayonet in their hands and a desire to do the Devil’s Business, then run back to Mommy and Daddy and Blame It All On Rio, as it were.

~~~

The only true words uttered by Tex in this Chapter so far seem to be thus,

“When I hear of crimes committed today and the offenders say they can’t remember it. I know they’re lying. No matter how many drugs they were on, or how many demons had hold of them, they can remember it.”

Yes, Tex, you are right.

Final Score: Tex Telling the Truth 1 – Tex Telling Lies 4, 236 but who’s counting?

~~~

Tex claims it didn’t take long to feel remorseful for the killings after the drugs wore off, and experts claim approximately 90 days for the hard effects of LSD to start to dissipate. I know he’s stretching the meaning of the word remorse, but I do agree that the reality of one’s deeds comes home to roost in this amount of time, the gravity and finality of the situation, the threat of looming capture and punishment, yes, all becomes clear by then. Remorse, no. Regret for being caught and punished? Surely. A sociopath can feign remorse but can never actually feel it, live it, and by that I mean true guttural disgust at oneself for the pain and suffering he or she has caused. To have such remorse is counter-intuitive to committing a premeditated act of murder and then multiple premeditated acts only a person without empathy could execute.

~~~

This next statement, well, for me, is a mind-bender…

“One thing became very clear: until I was able to deal with my own pain, I could never understand the pain of my many victims and their families.”

I translate that statement thusly,

Until Tex could find a mental loophole that could house his guilt and shame for being caught and punished, for being “outted" as the monster he always was on the inside, the All-American facade be damned, he daren't even attempt to deal with the victims’ surviving family members or the public at large until he got his society-acceptable excuses and reasoning into place.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on Tex but I saw the same game being played out with Sadie in those early years as well. She had to find a way to translate her actions into a palatable story that she felt would be accepted by all and sundry – her family and pre-Manson friends, her fellow prisoners, the Parole Board, and the outside world that had to include the surviving victim’s family members if she had any hope in hell of ever being freed.

For Tex, the shame and guilt centred around his Image, the one that was created in Texas of that clean-cut all-American boy that he knew he never was on the inside but that he yearned to promote, even after the murders, on the outside. He had to find a socially acceptable way to excuse his behaviour, and basically, all that was left to him was to “find God” and say I am cleansed of my evil past, POOF, allllll gonnnnne, so like me again already!

Sigh…

And sadly, so many have favoured Tex yet again, on the inside of those bars and out. His prison Pastors, various naive inmates, his wife of umpteen years (they are now divorced and the love-loss seemed to coincide with the end of Tex’s prison conjugal gig…awwwwww!), his parents, extended hometown family and friends, and finally but fantastically, the very daughter of his victim Rosemary LaBianca. If you talk the talk long enough, people who need to think you are not a monster, will, and whether right or wrong, you are “cleansed” for a time, on this earthly realm. That’s okay, let Tex be seen as a “Good Boy” in prison…as long as he stays there.

~~~

I will agree with Tex that the drugs did not help the situation. You have a group of peers already devoid of normal human emotions, mentally dysfunctional, following an anti-social leader because they themselves had anti-social tendencies, you add to that mal-nutrition, STDs, peer–pressure, the availability of weapons and the final coup-de-gras of mind altering drugs, it’s a recipe for bayonet-meets-Buck-meets-skin-and-bone.

~~~

No analysis needed but here’s a nice kernel to add to the mysterious cob of corn know as “The Return”…,

“I also believe Manson and another family member went to the [Tate] house afterward and disturbed the crime scene.”

I’m just sayin’…

~~~

I totally agree with Tex that ALL human beings are capable of killing but not all are capable of murder.

Humans are animals and for protection, survival, the instinct to kill to survive can and has reared is bestial head in many an instance. But I draw the line at cold-blooded murder. That falls under the guise of the “Predator”, the human born with only predatory instincts, that to achieve one’s needs and wants, any act is okay, the end-goal, self-satisfaction at any cost. That is the life of a sociopath, not of the average human being.

~~~

Tex, all the way through Chapter 5, harps on the use of “meth” – the cocaine mixed with methamphetamine “Speed” he and Sadie snorted for that week or so before the murders - as the possible impetus for the kills . I am no expert, but there is more to making a mass murderer than a week’s worth of snorting can create, and studies have shown that LSD alone has never harmed others but usually, and only in rare cases, harms the user, if his mind warp is so bad during a “hit” that he feels the need to jump off a building or put a gun to his head. LSD is not considered a mentally destructive drug, just a temporary mind-altering one. And because Manson forbid all but LSD and pot at Spahn, chances are that enough heavy long-term use of meth or the cocaine-meth “Speed” was just not a reality for Tex and the other killers, so you know by default other mental influences were at play here to create TLB.

~~~

In his final statement, when he is asked by the interviewer, how he feels about his crimes today, Tex admits,

“I feel horrible! If I’d just punched someone, I could have apologized to them, or if I’d stolen something, I could have returned it. But I took a life, many of them – lives I can’t give back. My victims are in their graves. It’s final. I can’t share my feelings with them.”

You could read that and almost feel for the guy…right up until his choice of pronoun – ME - “my feelings” over THEY and their feelings. In the end, for a sociopath, it’s never about anyone else.

Deja Vu–A Novella–Chapter Six

2011-07-18T11:21:00.001-06:00

"It's getting to the point where I'm no fun anymore. I am sorry.

Sometimes it hurts so badly, I must cry out loud. I am lonely.

I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are,..."

Crosby, Stills & Nash

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

The elephant had arrived.

Voytek took off his pirate hat and went to reconcile with Gib. As he walked through the living room, he threw this hat, tall wispy feather adorned and all, on the rocking chair and tossed his keys on the piano. This reckless action caused Sharon to noticeably flinch.

He knocked on Abigail’s door before entering. That demonstrated that he knew he was more than in dutch with Lady F.

Sharon, visibly irritated, turned to Jay and said,

“That’s a ten thousand dollar piano that he just threw those keys on. Couldn’t he have just as easily thrown the keys on the chair and that ridiculous hat on the piano?”

It was almost asked to Jay directly without being a blanket statement. The fact that it cost ten thousand dollars somewhat left me out of the empathetic trials of people with money. I wasn’t offended because neither of them had the brand new Chevelle that I did.

There was muffled, curt discussion emanating from behind closed doors of the boudoir.

Jay shrugged and walked behind the bar to pour himself another glass of Chardonnay.

“I think Dan was right about going to dinner without him, Shar. He seems pretty well out of it today.”

“He’s stoned”, I interjected. “The one I feel bad for is Abigail. She deserves better”.

“You feel like a glass of wine yet, Dan?”, Jay asked.

The funny thing is that I found myself beginning to like Jay rather than have the apathetic attitude that distinguished our relationship in days past.

This was somewhat alarming to me due to the fact that, regardless of how well we ever got along, I knew that the Sharon factor would be our remaining link in any course our friendship took. In other words, we would always just be friends through Sharon due to his station in life and the aspirations that he maintained.

“Yeah, I actually do think I could use a glass of wine about now, Jay. Thanks, man.”

He poured me a rather large glass, came over and handed it me.

Sharon continued to look straight ahead at the fireplace. I could tell she was fuming with Voytek. As Jay and I sat silently drinking our wine, Sharon, I could tell, was about to go apoplectic.

“This is what I’m talking about, Danny. This is what I’m fucking talkin’ about. Roman wants him to stay in this house until he gets home. I suppose the fact that they are both from Poland makes everything Ok in that regard”.

Her voice began to quiver with anger.

“Roman’s not here. Roman’s in London probably fucking some stewardess while his little shit compatriot spends his time fucking with his girlfriend. I’m sick of it”.

There was a long silence. It was as if Jay and I both instinctively knew better than to stick any two cents into the conversation in an attempt to assuage her fury. We both knew it was best to let this one ride. She needed it.

“I got a phone call the other day from Gene Gutowski’s wife. She said that she heard a rumor of things going on at the Eaton Place Mews. The fucking place where we lived, dammit.”

She paused.

“This is how life is supposed to be ain’t it, guys? I knew it but didn’t want to believe it.”

The Voytek issue was simply a symptom of bigger things. The Roman issue was at the core of her hurt. Voytek’s presence in the house,..her house,.. just aggravated the situation. There was nothing to do but listen.

The silence continued to be punctuated by the muffled conversation behind the bedroom door.

Beasley trotted into the room and looked around. Sharon continued to stare at the fireplace.

Beas, sensing something was amiss, hopped up onto the couch and put her head on Sharon’s lap. Sharon, probably not even realizing it, began to stroke Beas’s hair.

“Good girl, Beas.” I thought. “You know how to peg it, girl.”

“If I knew that this cheating of his was going to hurt so bad, I never woulda married him.”

She paused.

“Why is it that I think that I can con myself into pretending that it wouldn’t hurt? What kind of weirdo is able to do that?”, She said, finally turning to look at us, with tears in her eyes.

“You’re not the weirdo, Sharon….I love Roman.” Jay said. “He certainly has his failings, just like everyone else on the face of the planet. This is simply the way it is. I’m not the one to judge him though. This is something that,…I dunno,…”

He took a deep breath and his voice trailed off.

I could tell Jay was trying not to overstep his bounds by putting critical commentary of Roman in front of Sharon at this decidedly sensitive moment. He was choosing his words carefully.

Extra carefully, considering I was in the room. I decided to help him out.

“What you neeeeeed, Sharon,” I said, “….what you really need right now, since you don’t drink,…is some sobering reality. You need to take stock of the situation at hand, look around, and think to yourself about everything that you, dear Sharon, have been blessed with.”

I leaned over the back of the couch so I could see her face when I delivered the final line.

She turned and looked at me with her face about four inches from mine.

“You’re an asshole, Dan. Fuck off.”, was her only response….said through a smile.

The moment had passed.

Jay burst out laughing while she slapped me across the face, the same way she did when we met earlier in the day.

“Yeah, I am just so blessed with this philandering Pollack, man. Go fuck yourself, Dan.”

Beasley rolled to her back so she could continue to pleasure Sharon by allowing her to scratch her belly.

I walked around the couch and went and sat in the cream colored chair by the fireplace so we could be face to face. Jay sat down next to Sharon and reached over and took her hand. This action caused Sharon to stop scratching Beas’s belly.

Beas, sensing that the scratch was interrupted, simply looked up at Sharon with a look that said,

“What the hell, Sharon? I’m tryin’ to make you feel better here and you stop scratchin’?”

The door to the bedroom opened and Abigail came into the living room….dressed in a new outfit. She had on white capris, new sandals and a polyester floral print top,…with a new headband.

Voytek came out after her and walked silently to the kitchen.

Abigail went and sat down on the other side of Sharon. We looked at her silently because she looked like she wanted to say something.

She paused before she spoke, as if to make sure all eyes, and ears, would be on her.

“Voytek,” she said, “feels really bad about his tardiness….I made sure of that before I came out here.”

This caused me and Jay to chuckle at Voytek’s expense. That is a statement that two guys could truly appreciate.

“No shit, Gib. You do have that talent, don’t you?” Jay said.

Voytek came in and sat down in the chair opposite me.

“I’m sorry. To each of you, I offer my apologies”, he said in his broken English.

You could tell he was just defeated in the war of words, behind closed doors, with Abigail, and this confession was against his will.

He lit a cigarette and threw the lighter on the just polished and as yet unmolested-by-Voytek coffee table….with a little more force than Sharon was comfortable with.

Sharon looked at Jay and subtlety shook her head in disgust.

I decided to ignore his statement because something began to really bother me when I saw that Abigail changed clothes again.

I looked at Abigail and said,

“Hey, Gib?,..lemme ask you somethin’. I notice that you changed clothes for the second time today.”

“Yeah,..so?”, she replied. “I change more than this sometimes. Sometimes I change clothes three or four times a day. So what?”

“It’s not that. It’s not that at all.” I said. “You could change clothes a hundred times a day and I wouldn’t think anything of it. It’s just that,..I dunno,..there are absolutely no drapes in that bedroom of yours. That’s the vexing part. You go into that room and change,..with no drapes.”

The statement sat there for a minute as she fixed me with a gaze of hatred for trodding upon something so sacred.

“Lady F’s not ashamed of HER body!” Voytek forcefully chimed in.

“Well, I’m sure she’s not. She’s got a great body.” I said.

“A truly remarkable body. It’s just that people come and go to the guesthouse quite a bit and I was wondering,…I was wondering what you did about privacy when there are no drapes in that bedroom, that’s all.”

“I should really get some drapes in there for you guys,..but heck, you guys are going back to Woodstock next week.” Sharon interjected.

She then looked at Voytek and repeated the statement.

“You are going back to Woodstock, my friend.”

“Be that as it may, Shar,” I said, turning my query back to Abigail,

“What do you do at night when you change and you can’t see out the windows to know if anyone is looking at you?”

“I change in the bathroom that is in there, Dan” she responded.

“Do you have any more questions that I can answer?... any other questions that may concern you about when I’m naked?”

I thought about it for a minute. I then asked,

“Do you guys like to do it with the lights on?,…you may have to rethink that while you reside in that room. You got that kid in the back house.”

“Well, they’re not going to be residing there too much longer.” Sharon interjected…again.

“Wednesday at the very latest. No later than Wednesday.” Sharon said,….while making sure she had Voytek’s attention by addressing him directly.

“Who is that kid, Sharon?” Jay said. “I see him every time I come over, but he doesn’t say nothin’ to no one.”

“That’s Bill. He’s been back there for a few months.” She responded.

“He takes care of the place and keeps an eye on the tenants for Rudi….like we really need a teenage kid keepin’ an eye on a pregnant woman and her stray cats.” She said.

“It’s probably more he’s keeping an eye on things when you’re not here, Sharon.” Jay said, as a verbal acknowledgement of days past, directed at Voytek.

“He’s really very sweet. Did you ever try talkin’ to him, Jay?” Sharon asked.

Jay confessed that he hadn’t.

“I’ve talked to him a few times when I was floating in the pool.” Sharon said.

“He seems very soft spoken, but I get the idea that he just wants to get the hell out of here and go back home.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“Because he told me he wants to get the hell out of here and go back home.” she said. “He said that Rudi was going to buy him a plane ticket when he gets back from Europe. He comes from Ohio.”

Voytek kicked off his penny-loafers to reveal some very rough looking bare-feet. This action was followed closely by an objectionable stench.

Sharon, realizing that the smell was no good for babies and other living things, raised herself forward and spread her legs to gain ballast. Jay and Abigail helped her to her feet.

“I’m gonna go get ready for dinner,…that is, if we’re still going.” She said.

Jay answered in the affirmative and then asked who was going to drive because his Porsche has only seats two.

I said I would because the interior of my car was a bit roomier than the sports cars they all had.

Beasley plopped down on the floor now that her duties of pleasuring Sharon were complete. She scampered off to the bedrooms in pursuit of Sharon and Abigail. Voytek slipped his shoes back on and went outside.

I looked at Jay and he seemed to be relieved that the night was back on track. Both of us, considering what we were just witness to, realized the waiting for Voytek was a huge mistake due to Sharon’s feelings about him.

He looked at me and said,

“I had no idea it was this bad with him. I know the guy gets fucked up, but I didn’t realize that he was that out of control. Crazy, man.”

“Yeah,” was the only response that I could seem to muster.

There was a sad undercurrent with Abigail.

You got the sense that she had about had it with Voytek. One could hardly blame her. If nothing else, the supposed Polish charm wasn’t as endearing to Gib and Sharon as it once was once. At this point, it detracted from any remaining appeal that either one of them might still have for him.

Roman still had the world by the ass. He probably always would,… yet Voytek was careening towards a brick wall with no brakes.

The import of this was not lost on Abigail. She was far too smart and tough to let a man of Voytek’s calibre drag her down with him.

Voytek, for his part, could not do much better in the woman-finding realm if he fell ass backwards into a pile of gold.

I had heard all sorts of stories about his cheating when Abigail wasn’t around. I could never figure that out because the guy has about as much class as a Monterey Pop porta-potty.

I was relieved that the course of the day’s events - after Voytek’s arrival, of course – didn’t digress into some big shouting match. It sure seemed like it could have gone that way very easily.

I grabbed my keys and walked out the front door so as to pull in the Chevelle. I wanted to get some of the fodder out of the backseat before I had company in it.

As I headed down the walk, I noticed that another car was parked in the drive that I hadn’t seen before. I looked around to determine if there was a fresh face on the estate and I could see no one. I wondered if Bill had a guest or something of that nature,…in spite of the fact that he seems like he is a person who spends most of his time in solitude.

I trudged out to the driveway and down to the electric gate to move the car inside. The heat seemed to have abated some but it was still pretty brutal out. I really sympathized with Sharon and her pregnancy plight in this heat. She had to be miserable.

I hit the button and the chain-link fence automatically rolled into the open position.

The car was roasting when I got in it.

I pulled the car up and hit the outside button to allow the gate to give me access to the grounds again. I pulled the car around to the end of the walk so as to make it easier for Sharon to get into the passenger side door.

I left it in park and running while I sauntered around back to go in through the service entrance of the house. There was a bathroom in there and that was, by choice, my favourite one in the house due to the fact that it was not situated right inside the front door.

As I went in through the service entrance, I ran smack dab into Jay and Voytek and some strange man that I had never met before. It was awkward because they seemed like they didn’t want to take the trouble to introduce this person to me. I can only assume it was this Joel figure that was somehow in the employ of Jay.

We kinda stood there, in the laundry room, looking at each other for a few seconds.

Jay and Voytek seemed a bit edgier than before. The strange man summed up their conversation with the words,

“Ok, if I can get any more, I will be back at around 11. Sound Good?”

He then motioned towards the door and proceeded to exit through it without acknowledging my presence. Jay and Voytek simply walked back into the kitchen while I used the bathroom.

When I was done, I went back out to the kitchen to find Voytek actually rummaging through the fridge in search of something to eat. I was past the point of caring what Voytek did at this stage of the game so I just went back into the living room.

Sharon had changed into a polka-dotted mini-skirt and out her hair in a pony-tail. The new look, after seeing her in her underwear all day, was refreshing. I love seeing’ Sharon in her underwear but it gets old. I forgot about how striking her features were when she made even the most casual attempt at dolling herself up.

She was truly a beautiful woman. Forget all the movies where she looked great, this was something that a camera could never even begin to catch. It was something that celluloid could never do justice to.

“You look great, Sharon.” I said.

It seemed as she was waiting for a snide attempt at humor to follow my statement. That, however, was all I had to say because that was really all that needed to be said.

“Thank You.” She replied. “I feel better now that that the sun is going down and it’s going to get dark soon. The sun is too much today….”

”Yeah.” I said.

The finality of the day was upon us.

I Gave Up…

2011-01-28T02:33:00.001-07:00

“Life Without…”

2011-01-22T12:19:00.001-07:00

1972…

U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Death Penalty, citing “cruel and unusual punishment”…

ALL Death Row convicts’ sentences were immediately commuted to the next available sentence, which at that time was “Life, WITH the Possibility of Parole”, simply because in 1972 there was no Life WITHOUT…

And thereafter, the seeds were sewn for endless rounds of Parole Hearings for all concerned, 1st degree killers of all kinds, including the Manson Family killers.

Many affected by this new ruling, of course, eventually gained their release, with what was considered the proper amount of time served, their behaviour while incarcerated and their demonstration of remorse and rehabilitation while serving their time.

None of the Manson Family killers were given release dates, despite the fact that they began their Parole quest as early as 1978.

Thirty-nine years later, “Tex” Watson, Leslie van Houten, Bobby Beausoleil, Bruce Davis, Charles Manson and Patricia Krenwinkel all continue to exercise their right to Parole Hearings, whether they attend or not (Charlie is the only one with a brain who some time ago finally figured out to give up the fight, Susan Atkins gave up her fight when she died of cancer in 2009).

And at every Hearing, regardless of the remorse shown or rehabilitation efforts demonstrated, each and every one of these killers is denied, the Board often citing the viciousness, callousness and cold-blooded calculation of the crimes.

In years past, van Houten and Davis have tried to take legal issue with the constant denials, accusing the Board of Prison Terms and the California Justice system of having them suffer unduly as “political prisoners”, being kept incarcerated as purely a revenge tactic, their right to receive a fair parole hearing denied them.

As of two days ago, January 20th, Pat Krenwinkel received the longest denial meted out yet – seven years – before she would again be eligible for another Parole Hearing, and I venture to say that when the rest of the ‘69 killing gang come up for their “right” to a Parole Hearing, the maximum 15 year denial might be felt heavy and hard for each one of them as well.

The Manson Family killers fell through the legal juris prudence cracks, as it were, being damn lucky to not have had the pill dropped on them at San Quentin decades ago, and because of the lack of a Life Without the Possibility commutation, were give the only other lower sentence that could be given…Life With…

And let’s not forget that sentence just gave them the right to HAVE Parole Hearings, not the right to parole, although, to hear it from these killers, and see the indignation on each of their faces as their possibility is continually denied, you’d think they had the God-given right to the latter.

The Board of Prison Terms has come under severe scrutiny, being accused that in their constant meting out of release denials, they have in effect stone-walled these killers, denying the validity of their Remorse and Rehabilitation, and out of some political and/or moral will, have instead obsessed on the third “R” to the purpose of imprisonment – Retribution – that no matter what these convicts said or did while paying for their crimes, no amount of the first two “R”s would allow the third “R” to be paid in full.

But, just because they received the only commutation sentence available at that time, does that sentence fit the crime, and if Life Without had been available, would they not have received said?

Of course they would have!

And if done, you, nor I, nor any of the surviving family members, nor district attorneys nor for that matter the entire populous of California would be lying awake in our beds at night wondering if this time, one of these killers would get what was possibly, legally their right but morally, definitely not.

Does that make them political prisoners now? Possibly.

Is that legally right? Probably not.

Do I, the legal-Spiegel that I am, wrestle with this quandary? Hell no.

Some acts, some behaviour can and do go beyond the law, in my opinion.

Not only did they commit one of the first cult mass killings of our time, they committed in effect an act of domestic terrorism, to attack without provocation in a stranger’s home, to the point of unwarranted execution, where, if one cannot feel a level of safety and security in one’s home, where can that be felt? And beyond the acts themselves, when caught, they continued that fear and perpetrated more psychological damage by thumbing their noses at society during the trials, being and acting anything but contrite, nor not even human for that matter, stating by their very behaviour that if let out, acts of wanton murder could and would happen again, the desire then of remorse or rehabilitation not even on their radar.

The Manson Family killers, in effect, threw away the key at accepting society’s social morays, and in doing so, forced society’s hand to throw away the key on them, legal loopholes be damned.

Do any of us regret the executions/deaths of Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffery Dahmer, or Aileen Wuornos? Hardly.

And if the Manson Family killers had met their date with the gas chamber back in the 70s, would any of us have felt sympathy for them then? With the fear that pervaded North America at that time…are you kidding me?

Nope…as Tony Di Maria, the nephew of Tate-LaBianca victim Jay Sebring, said in this hearing, "If Patricia Krenwinkel has remorse, I don't see how she could walk into this room…”

In effect, if these narcissistic killers had a shred of true realization of the depth and depravity of their acts and felt real remorse thereof, they would have thanked God to have had their lives spared and quietly served their time behind bars, exercising their right to abstain from future parole hearings as a way to repay for the loss of life and to limit further psychological trauma to the surviving family members, their necessity to attend each and every one of these hearings exacting a definite physical and mental toll.

Parole Board Commissioner, Susan Melanson, in my opinion, finally addressed the issue of the possible stone-walling by simply stating the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders still “remain relevant”, and that, "This is a crime children grow up hearing about,". How I interpret these statements is that the Board has every right to keep these murderers paying for their crimes because the fear which was the most damaging by-product of these crimes is still being felt even today. That only when society’s feeling of fear for these killers ends will the crimes be paid for in full.

I am asked quite often by readers if I think any of these killers will eventually be set free and the legal-Spiegel that I am, I can do the math and see the possibility, yes, but not until each killer reaches their 70th birthday, and even then, depending on the cramped prison conditions, on the economic state of California and the long memories of it’s citizens who may wish to continue to exact political will against their release, freedom dates may still not be forthcoming.

When the fear that they have created finally comes to an end, so may their punishment for that fear.

And when we as law-abiding citizens are freed from that fear, we too will be free of our Life Without the Possibility of Peace.

Mannnnson! Here, Boy!

2011-01-03T15:56:00.001-07:00

Revolution…My Mom Was Right…Damn! :D

2010-12-24T06:39:00.001-07:00

She wouldn’t, you see, let me listen to the flip side of my “Hey Jude” 45…for fear I would get into trouble…BIG smile…

Did she know Manson personally, or was this just a Mother’s intuition???!!! snicker…

Helter Skelter…The Germination of Blood…

2010-12-23T21:29:00.001-07:00

The Hughes Mystery…High Sierra Intrigue…

2010-12-13T02:10:00.001-07:00

In modern-day PS3 and Xbox video games, there are “cheats”, aren’t there? Little keys, that if you know them, allow you to beat the game and come out a winner ahead of all other players that don’t know of those crafty little “helpers”, right?

Flash back 41 years and there were “cheats” available to figure out the Manson Family Murder Game too, you know…only in 1969, you had to pay closer attention and that attention to detail had to last for years before you could out-win the Family con-artists at their own game by getting them eventually incarcerated for their sloppy tongue-wagging and evidence trails they left from their own dirty deeds…

But, if you’re patient and a good listener/observer, there ARE Family “cheats” available to you in all the mysteries surrounding Manson and his cohorts, if you have the patience to look for them. I’ll give’em to ya one at a time, over time…don’t want you to win the game over me ya know!

Cheat No.#1

IF the Family keeps mum on an act of murder, one can be fairly certain that the murder was executed by the Family.

IF the Family shouted about a murder or murders from the rooftops, or in this case, from the corner of Temple & Broadway, there’s every indication that the deed was imagined, fantasized even propagandized for intimidation and fear-mongering, but never actually committed by them, ever.

Case in point: The death of Leslie van Houten’s lawyer,

Ronald Hughes.

You can start at the end to know the beginning, in this case, with just a one-word synoptic of the determination of the cause of death by the Ventura County coroner, Merle Peters:

“Undetermined”.

And that was simply because at the time of the discovery of the body, there just wasn’t enough of the body left to make a sound determination of “Accidental” or “Homicide”.

And there is where this case should have stayed.

But no, because any death that occurs, that has any link to the Family whatsoever, has to be considered suspicious in nature, or at least well did during those heady trial days. Players within the Family, principals close to this case and even the interested public alike have chalked up Hughes’ death as just another one on Charlie Manson’s slag heap of destruction.

And hey, why not? It’s not like Manson and the Girls didn’t sit on the right hand side of the Devil, ‘cause they did, but you can’t just heap murders on to the Pile of Vile just because you’d like to, when no real evidence to the validity of such a claim exists.

We, of course, will never be able to put a “Case Closed” stamp on the open case in the death of Ronald Hughes, but for the information we have now, all points lead NOT to Manson or any member of the Family, but to a very unfortunate set of circumstances within the framework of a very unfortunate set of crimes.

Here now is MY list that I go by to settle this mystery in my own mind, and yes, for me, it IS a mystery solved. Until someone comes clean on their deathbed stating the opposite, I rest easy at night knowing that at least ONE death which could have been easily attributable to Manson, was not.

You be the Judge…

1) The Manson Defence team had rested their case, despite the insistence of the Girls to testify, to undoubtedly place all blame on themselves in order to free Manson, and so on Friday, November 19, 1970, Judge Older recessed the court for ten days to give both sides time to prepare Jury instructions and any outstanding motions with regards to arguments concerning those instructions.

At this point in the trial proceedings, the Defence could NOT normally reopen their side regardless of whatever extenuating circumstances may occur after they have rested their case. After the lawyers’ final instructions and arguments, the case would be handed down to the Jury and and then, and only then, the fate of Manson and his Girls would be in the hands of twelve citizens of California, their peers.

What good would it have done to murder ANY of the Defence lawyers at this point?

And although a verdict of Not Guilty was never really expected by the end of this trial, the case was NOT yet at the deliberation stage, so do you really think that it would have been wise for Manson to “off” a lawyer at this point in the game, when the risk of being found involved in such a transparent act of revenge would be so great?

Yes, Hughes was the only “Hippie” lawyer of the bunch, but he WAS the first lawyer to come and talk to Manson. He was the first to offer his services to that little dude where none had done before. And he was the only one, I suspect, that could have understood where Manson was coming from in any kind of cultural way…seems odd to let go of the one man who had been there from Day One…Manson rarely, if ever, did that to anyone that had stood by him from the start, Family members or otherwise.

2) Hughes was a regular visitor to Sespe Hot Springs, 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and now that the Defence side had rested their case, Hughes probably needed a get-a-way, God wouldn’t we all, having spent that many fearful and frustrating months baby-sitting four childish, selfish, lazy no-good sociopaths as one’s clients!

Going up there for the weekend, especially once Judge Older had recessed the court until November 30th, really wasn’t something out of the ordinary for Hughes. After all, Hughes had taken with him the trial transcripts and Leslie’s secret psychiatric report to study, in the hopes of still severing her case from the others in a motion or two before the Judge handed over the case to the Jury.

Hughes knew Sespe well, knew it had started raining hard well before he had set up camp. Hughes was smart enough to camp on very high ground that Friday and was seen by visitors the next day, Saturday November 20, to be “neither ill nor in danger”. He stated to these folks that he was headed back to the mired VW to only retrieve transcripts to read in his car or bring back to his campsite. The rain was the heaviest that afternoon, culminating in “twelve inches in just eighteen hours”.

When eventually located, everything in and around the VW was normal, no signs of foul play, the only two things missing were a tent and Leslie’s shrink report, suggesting that Hughes had indeed come back down from his lofty campsite to retrieve the reading material, used the tent to protect his papers as he left the vehicle and then was most likely was caught up in a flash flood that overtook him in

Several views of Sespe Creek, wet and dry river bed

Sespe Creek, a highly unpredictable river that flowed in between the many high-walled mini-canyons that were all over Sespe, often the only way in and out of the high country. Hughes undoubtedly would have had to cross over that river to return to his campsite.

3) Hughes was NOT the only Defence attorney who balked at allowing their client to testify, or shall we say, sacrifice herself on the stand in order to exonerate Manson. They ALL thought this would be client suicide. Hughes went down on the record as stating “I refuse to take part in any proceeding where I am forced to push a client out the window.” but his opinion represented all of the defence lawyers’ opinion on this matter, not just his own.

Regardless, Manson got his time in the chair and vented all of his Slippie rhetoric to the point that even he was no longer vehement about the girls testifying so the argument of whether or not it was legally right to rest the Defence was eventually moot.

Manson was no longer miffed.
The Defence lawyers were no longer forced to see their clients lie under oath to protect Manson.
Judge Older no longer had to enforce the judgement that the right to testify must supersede any and all other rights.

Therefore, Manson no longer HAD a motive to murder any of the lawyers at this time.

4) ALL the Defence lawyers, at one time or another, had been fired, replaced, re-assigned and/or threatened by someone in the Family. Fitzgerald being so often threatened that a week didn’t go by that such utterances weren’t heard by him. Hughes was no different than the rest. Older had bodyguards, so did the Prosecutorial lawyers, heck, everybody who was anybody in the Hall of Justice in those months, who said or did anything the Family didn’t like, got insulted and/or threatened…it was par for the course. Fun! (sigh)

Hughes was no more threatened or had any more fear of Manson than the rest. You couldn’t be that close to this gang and not watch your back, which is why tongues wagged when Hughes disappeared, even Bugliosi thought the worse for a while, heck, who wouldn’t?!

Alas, and thankfully, ALL the threats were empty in those torturous trial days, allot of bark and gratefully no bite. What made Hughes’s death seem all the more sinister is that it occurred at the right time for the Family, obviously a boon to their ability to wrestle psychological power from law enforcement back to the Family, in a very public way, that if they say they will “retaliate” they will. Sandy Good uttering said to Lawrence Merrick as he filmed the now iconic docudrama, “Manson”, to seal this phony deal.

Just very bad timing lead to very bad conclusions to a very sad tale of the just burgeoning legal career of one Ronald Hughes.

5) The accompanying “friends” fiasco has never helped the situation either. It’s amazing what same names can do to the clarity of a case, but when it comes to the Manson Family, nothing has ever been too out of the ordinary, huh?

I start to itch every time I have to reference Ed Sanders BUT he did have entree into those trials better than any researcher of his time and at least got to know quite well all the principal players in this case. You can’t knock the guy for being a first rate budinski! And in his rather colourful, if not altogether corroborative book “The Family”, he states that all the attorneys for the Defence, at one time or another, would have volunteer investigators/assistants, to assist in their case development, that the mere public defender remuneration was never enough to cover the cost of professional help.

And Hughes was no different in this case.

There were kids who would vie to get into the courtroom as spectators and a couple such “fans” of the case finally got close enough to Hughes to get themselves in as his volunteer investigators/assistants. Their names were James Forsher and Lauren Elder, both of whom were seventeen at the time. These kids had NO involvement with Manson or the Family and were NOT the James (age 26) and Lauren (age19) of the Willett murders committed in Guerneville and Stockton in 1972.

Speculation from this name confusion further fuelled the idea that it was these kids who had killed Hughes and now needed to be permanently clammed up themselves, which lead to the possible motive for the Willetts’ to be murdered, which was anything but the truth.

Even The Bug confused the issue and because of it, had to fight a defamation lawsuit brought forth by James Forsher in 1980 for the wrongful accusation mentioned in “Helter Skelter” that it was he and Lauren who had killed Hughes (the lawsuit was thrown out for lack of evidence).

And you wonder why I think it’s SO important to stick to the facts in a case if even The Bug could get mired down in rumour and conjecture!

It was this James and Lauren who had driven Hughes out in their VW that Friday to Sespe and after the vehicle got stuck in the rain-soaked mud, they decided to hitchhike back to town, leaving Hughes to camp on his own, as he insisted that he wanted to do. They did not kill Hughes for Manson because if they had, they did an awful job of the deal leaving him alive and well, as evidenced by the sighting of him by other campers the following day, while James and Lauren hitched for a ride to save their own butts.

And these would-be Mansonite murder monsters even made a phone call to Fitzgerald’s answering service informing Paul that Ron was okay and to not worry. Geez…yep, scary Charlie killer-robots if I ever met some!

6) The autopsy on the decomposed body of Ronald Hughes, found some five months after that fateful storm, miles down from his campsite, in Sespe Creek, was of course, a difficult affair for Ventura County Coroner, Merle Peters.

Although when Fitzgerald was asked to come ID the body, and he stated he felt sure it was that of Hughes, it took dental x-rays to confirm the identification. The report contained the following;

“The decedent was observed faced down in a pool of water with the head and shoulder wedged under a large rock.” One arm was almost completely severed at the shoulder and there were large open areas in the chest and back, “no outward evidence of violence was noted” while “no evidence of foul play indicated by the X-rays”.

The above heavily qualified by the fact that the body was found in an advanced state of decomposition.

There was noted “medication residue” in the stomach contents but again was found to be of undetermined origin.

Because no obvious signs of foul play were evident, the case of Ronald Hughes was effectively dropped, yes, left open, but filed away as one of the many “unknown” deaths that swirled around the Manson Family.

But one must NOT dismiss what findings there were in that autopsy. The x-rays would have undoubtedly shown knife wounds in the bones or untoward skull fractures or bullet wounds if Ron was murdered by a weapon of some sort. No such evidence was found.

The fact that Hughes was a large man discounts to me strangulation, and like the Shorty Shea death, would have required a considerable amount of force in some respect, with multiple assailants and/or multiple weapons to bring down that man. No such weapons or confessions were ever revealed, unlike the Shea death that WAS a Manson murder and like the Family tongues that eventually wagged, was ripped wide open in court with all its dirty evidence revealed.

Until someone confesses to this being a murder, the evidence suggests quite otherwise, even if it is convenient and fits well with the gruesome vile behaviour of the Family, or it’s just plain exciting to consider as another Family “offing”. You can’t put mysterious deaths in the laps of the Charliemites just because you’d like to for revenge sake or because they happened to occur around the same general timeline or geography that encompassed the Family.

Stick to MsBurb’s “cheat” when dealing with the “unknowns” in this case. The Family was caught and was convicted of exactly the crimes they committed for the mere fact that they were just that stupid and just that strung-out when they committed them. The rest of the mysterious deaths surrounding Manson and his “kids” just make for colourful reading and little else at this point.

Until there is more, let Ron and the evidence rest in peace.

Evidence…As A Point Of Fact…

2010-12-06T22:40:00.001-07:00

I’m just sayin’…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes, I know…

Where the HECK have you been, MsBurb?!!!

I’ve been “here”, “there”, well, mostly “there” ‘cause “here” is SOOOO crowded this time of year…oh, and I’ve spent some time bein’ “around” too, I like to walk on the wild side of “around” once in a while!

Not that anyone cares, but I’ve also been “nowhere” at least twice in my life…long stories I won’t bore you with…

Yes…and while at all these locales, I have spent quite the time reading, you see, absorbing and digesting the books and transcripts and witness statements that were piling high and looming large on my bookshelves and in my Inbox, not that I made a huge dent, as this case seems to spawn information like bunnies make bunnies in Springtime…sigh…but I did give it the old college try…

And you know what?

One wonders why one reads on this case at all sometimes, especially given the many books printed over the years, publicized in the name of “enlightening” the reader on The Manson Family and murders…sigh…enlightening being one heck of an operative word in the world of the Manson “research” community!

Don’t get me wrong, I like sensational “news” just like the rest of the media-enslaved North American public, but I tend NOT to like it when it centres around murder mixed with third party hearsay, innuendo, supposition and irrational conclusion-jumping..but that’s just the old cop’s daughter in me I suppose.

I was asked by a viewer recently why Bugliosi, in his Manson tome “Helter Skelter”, didn’t extend the book, didn’t add in all the other parts to this story, of which, beyond the known killings, are legendary and legion, and I said I thought basically because he was a lawyer at the time and a lawyer by thought, a man who’s main responsibility was to bring criminals to justice by way of corroborative evidence that could be served up palatable to a Jury and legally admissible in a court of law.

There can be jawing on all sides, about all issues, in chambers, but when it comes to the court record, all admissions must adhere to the precedent laws of the land, for the benefit of the State and the protection of the Defendant(s)…anything less is well, just window-dressing for the “What If” Department Store of Life.

I believe that if you live that mindset long enough, to do anything less, to say anything more, to offer to the people unsubstantiated rumour and half-baked ideas is doing no one any good, and The Bug knew this and kept HS to a “just the facts, ma’am” kind of literary record.

Yes, by doing so, if you were as deeply involved in this case as I’ve always been, there were more questions than answers after reading The Bug’s take, but you knew, when you did read it, and referred to it at a later date, that what information he had given you COULD be corroborated and WOULD stand the test of time, ultimately stand head and shoulders above all the other so-called Charliemite “researchers” book attempts of that time.

Of late, when the snow was flying and I couldn’t write for various reasons, I began to read these Manson books by other authors, expecting, naively so, the same quality of delivery as The Bug had offered me so long ago, and boy, was I disappointed.

I could give you a list of the books I read, but, in the very near future, will do a critical assessment of all of them on TLB2 instead, no use mouthing off if I can’t defend my opinion, right?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I often get chided for being too much the Law & Order chick in the Manson research community, I think, because of the inherent nature of the players in this case and the times from which they spawn. Life was free and easy back then, supposedly, “hip” people thumbed their noses at The Establishment and to be arrested for anything back then or seen to be publicly sensational was a badge of honour to the Hippie Generation.

Whoopdeedoo!

How’d that work out for all of ya?!

You lost grey cells, yet, in your middle age, ended up investing in 401ks and buying Cadillac's and spacious houses with mortgages you couldn’t afford…hmmm…oh yeah, what a bunch of Establishment rebels you guys turned out to be! (snicker)

But in amongst all that un-hippie-like eventual conformity, you had ONE last vestige of riotous fight left in you and that was in discussing these criminals and assessing these crimes, that if to place the blame on outside forces, you were not only excusing the players but making your era seem better than it actually was.

I get that…after all, that was MY era too…but an offbeat approach to a simple act of murder does not an enlightened readership make.

If you don’t believe me, allow me to cite just one case of murder as the quintessential example - the JFK assassination.

Forty-seven years of book addled supposition, rumours and unsubstantiated bad science, and because most of the population balk at the idea of reading dry Warren Report or House Select Committee on Assassination exhibits over a pretty, colourful glossy new book expounding the newest tell-all aspect of this crime, most of the American population (2003 Gallup Poll put that figure at 75%) still believe that there was a conspiracy and that Oswald was indeed a patsy…

What the Manson case needs is what all murder cases need, clear heads, no political or monetary agenda and a rigid self-discipline and adherence to the established facts…to try and go elsewhere will lead you down roads with no answers at all. And some authors, who shall remain un-named for now by yours truly, gleaned a huge audience of whackos willing to believe anything left of centre while gleaning for themselves a less than stellar reputation of a tell-all Town Crier; hence, why The Bug’s book became the Bible to this case and all others fell by the wayside. It may not have been glitzy or glamorous but hell if it wasn’t factual…and in the end, factual is usually more sensational than sensation ever is.

Yes, I took a hiatus but now MsBurb is back. You may not receive a reporter’s delivery with me but I will endeavour to deliver what should be the last word, according to the available evidence, on all issues concerned with this case. TLB2 will never be sensational nor glitzy, nor, I doubt, will get tongues wagging from the posts, but if our entries stand the test of time for reliable information to the new reader on this subject, I believe our job has been done.

Don’t worry though, drunk-induced blather and frontal lobotomy humour will still invade from time to time…they’ll have to, I and my Guest Authors can’t possibly be stable if we’re spending our time on Buck knives and bayonets, Barker Ranch and ex-con bravado, now can we?

Crimson & Clover…

2010-11-20T22:37:00.001-07:00

Time & Stance…

2010-09-19T01:34:00.001-06:00

It’s not a matter of either really, is it?

Time…goes by….

Circumstances…never change….

Politics, methods, agendas might change….

For most of us, the day, that night, just stays the same….

Where was I?

I was securely tucked into a California bed that night, no doubt the window screen fully open, why not, there’s nothing to fear from window screens on August 9, 1969, is there?

Yes, the 60s were raging, if you pretended to take notice, Middle America didn’t much…I don’t think….

Knives, guns, sure, in the news, Vietnam, far off…not here, not of any real significance…anyways…..

Not to 10050 Cielo Drive anyways….

Not to any of us………..anyways….

Nancy Pitman COULD have been making sand castles on Malibu Beach…if she had chose to do so….

Malibu Barbie, after all, was patterned after Sharon Tate, who could have been her iconic idol, but wasn’t, in the end, Sharon became her enemy, a target she knew nothing about, but for the empty hatred she felt through The Soul…Charlie…and as we all know, Charlie then, nor now, just don’t surf…

How can so much go so wrong on just one summer night in one year…way back when….when we all thought nothing counted…when every little thing just did….

Sand castles, screened in windows…southern heat, ocean breezes, hot, humid oppressive coastal haze…it all seemed so natural that night, something we all could relate to, yet, the morning after, was anything but….

How many nights like that one have we all fell asleep, sound asleep…how many nights like that have we had a glass of wine with a close friend, talking on everything, and nothing…forgetting to lock the front door or shutting that dining room window…it happens, we happen…stuff happens….

Yet, we are not slashed and stabbed beyond repair, are we?

There is a time and stance for everything in Life, is there not?

But where, in all the photos of the beautiful Sharon Tate, am I supposed to fit a dirty, slimy image of a skeleton draped coffin? Where?

If beauty like that could exist and not exist now, then where am I?

Where am I?

Beauty as in innocence, beauty as in naiveté, beauty as in the face of God….

Only matched by the pure unadulterated evil in this world….

And the evil still breathes…while the dead innocent…don’t.

Maybe too maudlin tonight, maybe too much booze, maybe….

But the hurt is real.

The Living Hell…The In Between…

2010-08-10T10:58:00.000-06:00

Maybe LSD lessens the reality.

Maybe you can go from one laced sugar cube to the next, one blood-soaked knife-wielding sore hand to the next, one blood curdling scream to the next and have it all be okay…

But the little birdie inside my tummy wonders…

Tex and Katie seemed just to go from the next high to sleeping off the last high in those two days of murder.

Sadie, ahhh, shit, she could have done this crap completely SOBER, and we all know it!

Linda, well, Hell, who the Hell actually knows what’s REALLY the truth inside that “Little Hippie Girl” head of hers, doubtful it is as angelic as The Bug made it out to be though.

I DO think of any, Linda was the one who had the first pangs of some sort that following day when her eyes glommed onto George’s TV set. Charlie just happy, Tex and Katie too high and Sadie, well, just Sadie to feel anything close to human…

Barbara Hoyt, and I dare say, many others there not participants in the last evenings events, were undoubtedly sick to their stomachs. Some others, I'm sure, started making their plans to flee…couldn’t blame them, legally or morally…

The truly scary Family member reactions though, in my opinion, came NOT from the killers themselves but from two girls who, if they had been free to do so, may have made Cielo Drive even more horrific than it ended up to be… Red & Blue, Squeaky and Sandy, Charlie’s dual Queen Bees, as it were.

I feel that if they had been at Spahn’s that night and not in jail for credit card fraud, that much of what Charlie had ordered WOULD have taken place up there in Bel Air…eyes extracted and squished against walls, the baby cut out, corpses hung, the works. The ONLY reason they were free of all this legally was just because of fate, NOT because they weren’t THE most diabolical of Manson’s Girls.

Soooooo, the morning of the 9th dawns, and every TV in the Greater LA area, not to mention most of North America, is lit with those grainy images of Cielo Drive, those hauntingly white sheets on the front lawn, the mystery of what was found inside more paralyzing than the actually facts, at least, initially.

Everyone in the Inner Circle at Spahn’s knows now and unless I’m an idiot, I just cannot believe that any of those killers thought that after that yummy taste of blood and power that Charlie got that night, that it wouldn’t make him want more. You just cannot tell me that these kids weren’t holding their collective breath from dawn that day until dusk…and in so doing, made real what I am coining here as a Living Hell, the In Between, the Gray Before the Utter Black, the Waiting…for more.

What do you do in those gray hours, the time that your soul is already sentenced to Hell but before the next bloody onslaught in Hell is to begin?

Even in your drug-addled way, do you ever just think about any of it? What you saw? How the knife felt in your hands? The ringing in your ears from the now incessant cries and screams? The sheer TERROR in the eyes of your victims? Does ANY of that ever come as a vision over your glazed and vacant mind? Tex, Katie, Sadie, Linda????

Because it does over MINE, every goddamned time the calendar hits on these dates!

Oh…to be a blue-bottle or horse fly on the walls on the shacks at Spahn’s on the morning of the 9th…right?

Could we have cut the tension with a Buck knife, I wonder?

Hours tick by…not many left… Gun Room meeting still to come…

Did Charlie know even before dawn hit, that a second night was in order? I'd bet yes.

Did the kiddie killers?

Therein lies the crux…

The clock is till ticking, and people who are breathing today, reading the horror of last night, will in just hours to come, soon be dropped themselves into this witchy brew of blood and gore and mixed forever alongside the dead they have just read about in their morning paper and forever intertwined with these bestial killer animals for all eternity…

A Living Hell? Everyone concerned doesn’t know it yet…but yes.

There’s So Much…Isn’t There…?

2010-08-09T12:05:00.000-06:00

So much hurt.

So much damage.

So many people affected.

So, so many dead.

And the rest of us, alive, but scarred.

I am not one for stating the obvious, when it’s the obvious that is on everyone’s minds, just never have been a fashionista…I leave that to others with more objective insight than I…

12:15am…some eleven hours away…tick, tick, tick, tick, tick….

Are the players of this travesty about to live through Hell, or are we, who relive it every goddamned year, I wonder?

Tonight, as in all years…there just ain’t enough booze to be had…

So, to try and avoid the pain of the long since passed, I choose to embrace the fantastical here and now…and the Now is in my man, Dan, you know, that loveable artsy-fartsy guy who always manages to show us the beauty, even in the horror…of it all…

I’m just not that gifted, it seems…wish I were…just not.

Dan, if he could be here right now would say how wonderful that day had been, how the Hi-Fi in Sharon’s living room had worked just cherry, all day long, no skips, no lags, no nothing…a perfect California day as any other day in the hills of Bel Air…yeah, it was a sweltering one but the Canyon had a slight breeze and Sharon’s pool was always an option…

Fridays are almost always good, aren’t they?

Sharon was hot, yes, in more ways than one for my Danny..but what pregnant woman wouldn’t be sweltering on a sweltering day, right?

And anyways, no matter how she was, my guy Dan would have seen her as perfect…no matter…boy, did Sharon miss out on this one…!

Jay would have been jealous, of Dan, of course, even though it may have been Jay who would have been the more polished of the two…but Jay would have known to be wary of Dan’s killer roughness and his sensitivity…it was that combination that could have netted Sharon, after Roman, maybe…for there would have been an “after Roman”, we all know that…and as for Dan, well, we’ll just never know, will we?

Will we, Dan?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There’s always one in a crowd, you know, the avante-garde, arrogant self-absorbed cohort, always late for everything to do with his friends…

Voytek.

Right Dan?

Geez…

Betcha he’ll be late for his own funeral…oh, no, wait a sec…~~strike that~~.

That day, no different. Good thing Dan is the patient type…that, and free food as an incentive, of course, helps.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hours ticking by…seems to lag for those, then, seems to fly, for us, now.

Night wears on, heat still ever present, doesn’t matter how many showers you take, you just come out sticky like before…Sharon gave up, maybe, on this one, huh, Dan? No matter, Sharon is perfect, right? Stinky, but perfect…for Danny.

Voytek finally shows himself like the Divo he is…all now getting ready, smelling better, down to the valley below, dinner, drinks…home.

For the last time. Home.

One last call, maybe a few more night caps, especially for Jay…Danny getting on his nerves I’ll just bet. Sharon stoic but not amused.

The real world stops knowing what happens now…until the unreal world hops over a fence to fine out.

12:15am. Saturday August 9, 1969.

Even clocks have a way of stopping in cars that night.

Mr. Tambourine Man…

2010-08-04T23:55:00.003-06:00

Dedicated to every “manly” Clevelander…or, at least one that likes Pig Tails on Girls…smile…

Deja Vu-A Novella-Chapter Five

2010-07-23T18:48:00.001-06:00

"She found fame and made her name,
A Hollywood director came into town,
And said to her,
How'd you like to be a star?
You're a girl that could go far,
'specially dressed the way you are,
She smiled at him,
Gave her pretty head a shake,
That was Lady G's mistake,
A-hey-hey-hey,
Lady Godiva...."

Peter And Gordon
Lady Godiva

Sharon turned and ran away from me and, considering the present company, I determined it prudent to let her go,...as it would not behove me to give a pregnant woman a wedgie in the middle of her living room on a hot August day.

She was also a pregnant woman who had just declared that she had to urinate immediately and with great urgency, no less.

I am most decidedly not one of those types of guys who don't know when to quit. Not knowing when to quit will always make one tarry into the realm of buffoonery.

The entire group of us were now somewhat bored and growing impatient with the tardiness of Voytek.

Abigail decided to go on the porch and look at her new bike.

"Hey Dan and Jay,...do a think you could you move these steamer trunks so I can move my bike", she said.

Jay and I dutifully went onto the porch and dragged the steamer trunks inside the door. The appearance of said made Sharon remember her underwear that was so close and yet so far.

"Is there anyway we can get inside of those trunks, Danny?"

"I could break the locks open if you want,...but the trunks would be pretty much trashed after that".

She thought about it for a moment.

"Nah,..nevermind. Roman will be home Tuesday. I suppose I can wait until then,..but it's your guy's loss because this underwear is pretty hot".

I turned to Jay and said under my breath,

"Yeah,...what a shame. It's not like we don't see her in her panties all the time".

Jay just smiled and quipped,

"Like to see her change them once in a while. The same flower print gets kinda boring,...not to mention that coffee stain on her hip".

He paused and thought about it for a moment.

"At least, I HOPE that's just a coffee stain".

"What are you guys talkin' about?” Sharon said, "didn't your mama’s ever tell you that it's not polite to whisper"?

Abigail was having' hard time getting the bike to move and was getting' kind of aggravated with the fact that it wouldn't roll backward.

"What the hell?” she said. "Why won't this thing go?"

I looked behind me to see what the trouble was,... and then walked out onto the porch to see if I could be of some assistance to Lady F.

I took the bike and casually kicked the kick-stand into the up position.

"There", I said. "Now it will roll. You see that long arm down there, it’s called a kick-stand. You move it down with your toe when you want the bike to stand on it's own. You have to put it up when you want to ride it, Abigail".

"Oh", was all she said. She seemed tickled that she just learned something of a mechanical nature. Like it was an oddity to her.

I stepped back inside and whispered to Jay,

"Broad buys a bike and doesn't even know how to ride it?,...Geez, Louise, Sebring....people with money...."

He laughed and said that he never learned how to ride a bike,...then added that he doesn't own one either.

I just looked at him incredulously.

"You never learned how to ride a bike, Sebring"?

He just smirked and said he never got around to it.

I took him by the arm and led him out onto the porch.

"Abigail,...can I borrow your bike for a minute?", I said.

"Sure. Just don't scratch it."

She leaned the bike over to me and I asked her if she would be good enough to go check on Beasly. She just ran through the living room and was heading to her and Voytek's room as we spoke, I lied.

This somewhat put the alarm in her and she was gone in an instant.

I took the bike and said to Sebring, "Let's go".

We walked hurriedly down the crescent shaped walk and into the parking area.

I held the bike steady and slapped the seat as an indicator that he should get on. He laughed and did it. It was imperative that there were no women watching, as he knew, as well as I, that some moments were not meant for the prying eyes of the female gender. We made sure we were alone.

"It's easy. You already have the inbred sense of balance, my friend. Steer and balance. Don't worry about pedaling because there's a bit of an embankment towards the backyard. Steer and balance", I said.

He just nodded his head in agreement and with determination. He was focused.

It was my reasoning that he could get this wrapped up in a matter of minutes. He was, after all, thirty five years old and this shouldn't be a hard thing.

I let him get his feet on the pedals while I held the bike steady. He gripped the handle bars and I began to walk him towards the garage until he got enough speed to let the balance click in. I let him go.

At the very moment I let him go, the front tire began to swing back and forth as his speed increased. His legs jutted out in a futile attempt to gain the balance that he so desperately need in this moment of truth.

It wasn't lookin' so good.

For some unknown reason, he began to ring the bell that was located on the handle bars,...as if this would help him gain the balance he so dearly needed at this particular moment in life.

cha-ching,...cha-ching

I watched in silence and in horror as he careened out of control toward the steps on the side of the garage.

He hit the side of the garage, head on, and fell off the bike. I ran over to him, to see if he was alright, only to find him convulsing hysterically.

"Are you cryin' or are you laughin'?", I asked, as he lay on the small patch of grass,...with a newly acquired grass stain on his knee.

"Laughing", he said.

He got up and declared, "Ok,....enough of that for now. We're not gonna learn to ride a bike today,..."

I pulled him up and he shook off the fall.

I got the bike up and noticed that the handle bars were no longer aligned with the front tire and that there was a big scratch on the shiny fender. There was also a big patch of grass stuck in the gears.

"Let's just leave this here for now", I said, leaning the bike against the garage.

Jay couldn't stop laughing.

"You never said how to stop, Dan".

"Touche',...I didn't. Sorry....you pedal backwards to stop. I should have told you that. Sorry."

He was still laughing.

Just then the gate swung open and Abigail's red Firebird pulled in.

"'bout freakin time", Jay said.

"Hallelujah", I said.

I knew that, at this point, the chemistry of the house was going to change. There's just something' about the elephant in the living room that changes the feel of everything. We all would have to adapt to this new element for the rest of the evening.

At that moment, I wasn't sure what to expect. Was he going to be trashed? Was he going to be in a good mood or a bad mood? How was Abigail going to be with him?

Their relationship was already strained,...and this tardiness in the wake of our impending dinner arrangements might have added an extra strain onto the night's events.

The car parked and the door opened. Voytek climbed out. He was wearing a vest with purple shirt under it. Black pants with little purple flowers on them,...he leaned back into the car and pulled out a big, ol' buccaneer hat and put it on his head.

"Great" Jay sarcastically said,...knowing that this was the precursor to the pulse of the evening.

Voytek stood there for a moment. He seemed to be slightly swayin' back and forth. He looked over the horizon for a minute, casually surveying' his domain.

I finally yelled over to him.

"Hey Voytek!,...It's about freakin' time, man!"

He turned around and saw us. I waved at him and he waved back,...by moving his index finger up and down in a very flit manner.

"Geez" Jay said. "He's gone, man".

"No shit" was my only response.

"How do you like my new hat? It was six bucks at this costume store on Sunset," he offered.

Jay turned to me and said, "Gib is not gonna like this".

Just then Beasly came out to the front yard. She looked at Voytek and his newly acquired head gear,... and immediately made tracks to my side as it scared the bejesus out of her.

"Here, doggy, doggy, doggy", Voyteck said to Beas, in his Polish accent.

"Leave the dog alone, Voytek. She doesn't like to be startled by Pollacks wearin' pirate hats", I said.

He stood there for a moment,.... and then let out a slight burp while pattin' his stomach.

Jay and I walked over to him.

Voytek was always one of these people who truly made me uncomfortable. I don't know why. Maybe it was because he was so tall. Maybe it's because Abigail changes into another person when he is around. Maybe it was his apparent lack of control when it came to illicit substances. Maybe it was because he always has some kind of sinister undertone to the way he makes a living.

Maybe it was because he wears pants with little purple flowers on them.

Whatever the reason, it was good enough for me. I'm just glad that we were only friends by association. A direct friend like that would probably waste a lot of my time.

"You really have a poor sense of timing, Voytek," Jay said. "We've been waiting all day for you. Where you been?"

"I took Suzan to the house on Woodstock and then we went down to Witold's gallery for a while. What were you waitin' for? Am I late for somethin'"?

Jay reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb.

"We're goin' to dinner. I told you that this morning", Jay replied

"Oh,...yeah,...you did say something about that, my American friend. I forgot,...sorry".

I looked at Jay and he just subtly shook his head in disgust.

Voytek turned to me and asked what kind of mood Lady F was in,...as if we were compadres and my disclosing this aspect of Lady F's state of mind would somehow bring us closer together in the long run.

"She's fine, Voytek. Why don't you go say hello to her?” was my only response,..not wanting to take the bait.

"Why don't we all go inside and have a drink?", was his response to my suggestion that he go and say hello to his supposed significant other.

Jay turned and started walking towards the front door. I think he was disgusted with Voytek and was probably kicking himself for not leaving for El Coyote when he had the chance. Beasly and I followed him up the walk.

As we walked into the foyer, Sharon and Abigail were sittin' on the couch.

"Voytek's here", was the only lackluster declaration that Jay could seem to muster about this late arrival.

I walked into the living room and sat down at the desk and started nervously fidgeting with a plastic tape dispenser. The mood had definitely changed.

When Voytek appeared in the doorway, Abigail glared at him and rose from the couch. She silently walked to her bedroom and shut the door. Sharon stared at the fireplace.

"Don't say hello all at once", Voytek said.

I felt as if I had to chime in and give him my two cents.

"Kinda been waitin' on you, Voytek", I said.

He turned to Jay and asked of Joel had gotten there yet.

"No", Jay said. "I talked to him earlier and he said that he might be a few minutes late,...unlike you, who can't even make a phone call".

"Alright,...alright, already...I'm sorry. Sharon, I'm sorry. I forgot about the dinner tonight", he said. He turned and yelled down the hall to Abigail,

"I'm sorry, Gib. I didn't know I was runnin' that late,....forgive me?"

There's just something about that term that always blanched my hide. I think it's because it's always used as the cure-all for those moments when something goes awry and the blame can be diverted by saying' those two simple words. If he was any man at all, he would have walked down the hall and humbly talked to Abigail in the first person,.... instead of through a door at the end of the hall.

If there was a redeeming quality about Voytek, I was hard pressed to find it. I mean, he seems, at times, to be very engaging. It's just that the chemical use has all but stripped away any endearing charm he may have once had.

I felt I had to stick another two cents in.

“Voytek, the hat ain’t helpin’ your case much.”

Why Abigail puts up with him for as long as she does, indeed, remains a mystery....

The Most Asked Question of MsBurb…

2010-07-20T22:01:00.001-06:00

Yep, there’s tons…

Like, “Whatthehell, MsBurb?! ”; “Are you on dope?! ”; “Were you dropped on your head as a child, per chance? ”…

Yep, loads even…sigh…

But the most often sent my way is “Why?”…”Why write on a topic that just gets you upset, that is so close to home? Why put yourself thought it at all, all over again?”

Gooooooood question…

Have, in the past, avoided answering it properly altogether, or hover in silence as the asker waits…and waits…(and you KNOW, if you KNOW ME, that silence in any arena from MsBurb is a feat in and of itself!)…

I write on murder, or death allot in my career, in one way or another…real, imagined, historical narrative, forensic diatribe, the works.

North Irish descent…went to my first wake at age three!
Dad for a cop that came home with shop stories on which, I’m sure, I shouldn’t have eavesdropped!
Family much older than I, so relatives dropping like flies when I was young, funeral became a hobby, going to as many as three a week sometimes before I was 10!
The stain of the “Suffering Irish” POV on me, that to live is to suffer, we Irish never feeling quite alive until we feel pain…geez, huh?
The Writer in me…the over-imaginative, over-emotional, over-obsessive, over-passionate me, the one I believe my Father and Grandfather were at heart but couldn’t express for cultural and practical reasons…way back when.
And accidentally spending a week, and a specific day on a beach in Santa Barbara, at the age of six, from idyllic sand castle making to horrific news-hour telling, in a span of only hours…

Stuff.

A single, solitary moment in time.

Can really change a person, permanently, for the good, or the bad…can’t it?

When you’re too young to rationally digest what it is your ingesting, your fertile, undeveloped mind makes monsters out of mole hills, makes worse what is already horrific, even to grown minds, and it can sit there, unmolested, gelled into the very fabric of your being, for decades to come…and not it a good way, boys and girls!

So, you grow up, forget, repress, suppress, whatever, and then a spark, something little, can re-ignite that flame, the fear from days long since passed, only now, with an adult’s mind, the fleeting images and experiences come back a hundred fold and refuse to leave, maybe until the grown writer in you now has a chance to take that little girl’s hand and WALK her through every single ounce of those days and those scenes, to say, Hey, see, this is exactly how it was, and nothing MORE…you can go to bed now Little MsBurb, and leave that screen window WIDE OPEN if you want!

The Family were nothing then.

They are still nothing now.

And the dead rest as quietly today as they did when they were first buried…no need to be upset anymore, is there?

So, I’m walking, very slowly because Little MsBurb has shorter legs than me, and we’re going, inch-by-inch through those times and those crime scenes, and we’re seeing, for the very first time, people talking, walking, running, leaving blood, pooling blood, groups doing what they did in the Flower Power era, the innocence and the sudden loss of it, the second-by-second pulse of a benchmark in time, ticking by, slowly, to close, for good, because of one little, hairy dude and his rag-tag band of followers…

August 9, 1969 was really no different to many Americans than November 22, 1963.

I don’t know about you, that even despite the fact that I was only an expectant baby for the following ‘64, I can’t watch yet another re-run, black & white or in colour, of that famous White House limousine turning right on Houston, then left on Elm, without a birdie inside my head screaming,

“Wait! No, Mr. President! Tell them to stop the car! Take Jackie and run!”

Some people, oh, no, wait a sec, ME, just want bad things NOT to happen…again, or ever, so I re-watch, re-listen, re-hope, over and over again, that if I make short work of knowing something inside and out, I can arrogantly make Time stand still and stop an era from disappearing in an instant with the report of just one bullet or the thrashing of just one knife.

Yeah, I know, TIME TO GROW UP LITTLE MSBURB!!!

She’s 46 already…it just ain’t gonna happen…

So, I re-examine and re-evaluate and re-assess and re-calculate, and mix all that imperial, unfeeling data in with a good hunk of unfettered, irrational emotion and I write and write and write and write, and the result is me writing a blog on a subject that DOES keep making me upset…it can not do but anything else, can it?

But, maybe, it’s the thing that I and Little MsBurb just have to do…

Maybe not the best answer to this question but it’s the best I can offer.

Information IS power, right?

Power to see what something really is, versus what you thought it was. Power to put something low-life and seedy in its proper low-life and seedy place. Power, maybe, to ultimately put something that has bothered you for a lifetime, to its final rest.

And, the power to inform others along the way, maybe, IF you’re good enough, and lucky enough for that reward to come your way…

Soooo, if you’re still game to take this walk with me, don’t walk so fast, okay? Little MsBurb has stubby legs and is kinda shy of strangers…(tee hee)!

White Hot Heat…Dying Flicker…Dead Coal…

2010-07-18T03:10:00.001-06:00

Love.

Addiction.

Addicted to love.

Addicted to one woman, to HER love, ‘til death, in death.

That kind of love can actually spend time apart.

It can know others, know She is loved by others, made love to by others.

Yet It lessons not one iota, staying to its core…White Hot Heat.

Jay.

Sharon.

He had faults, maybe, I mean, tied up with scarves and lightly whipped…? Whoopdeedo…sigh…

If it had been a problem, He would have changed…for Her, He would.

He didn’t have a chance to change.

She didn’t have a chance to need to ask.

She would have needed to ask…eventually…Roman would NEVER have changed…not for anyone…not even for Her.

Jay would…and She knew it.

White…Hot…Heat…

POOF!

BLAST!

KABOOM!

Every woman He slept with, He saw and felt Her.

At breakfast, He looked to the chair across from Him and saw Her sitting in it, those big, itchy, scratchy 60s curlers in her hair, and She was utterly beautiful, every day She was…as He looked to that chair.

Women, starlets, he saw on sets as he did his “cut and glam” thing, were Sharon…every one of them.

And He would have NEVER admitted to the number of times He parked outside the gate at 10050, headlights off, sitting, waiting, watching, as He did have some pride left, but not much, not when it came to Her.

He was addicted.

He would wait.

He had time…all the time in the world…He thought.

He could have loved Paul Richard, after all, Paul would be a part of Her too.

It was okay. It all was okay. He thought.

She thought.

They thought wrong…

But in the end, Jay and Sharon and Paul Richard were together, so was anything really THAT wrong…after all?

White.

Hot.

Heat.

People have murdered for less…

Stuff You Too Can Do…If You Have No Life Like MsBurb!!!

2010-07-14T16:15:00.001-06:00

Yep…

Editors yelling at me.

Inbox over-flowing.

Rugs need a vacuuming…and I’m writing this half naked because the laundry room is awash in icky clothing…

But noooooooooooooooooo…sometimes I just have to screw around, you know, and do stuff people do if they have no life…so here is what I’ve been doing…

There is this cool, little site, you see...

Yeah, you COULD glean this info through the local law enforcement agencies and probably obtain more accurate data…but would it be just as FUN? Hardly!

The site is called myLocalcrime and it incorporates the Google mapping system with the crime stats of a certain address you insert, spanning over the last six months or so.

Soooooooooooooooooo, you just KNEW that as I sat slurping my coffee (this is cup number four, by the way!), MsBurb would HAVE to insert a certain Cielo and Waverly Drive addresses, juuuuuuuust to see what’s been going on!

I won’t list the exact locations of each crime but you CAN see where they have occurred in the Cielo Drive area

and in the Waverly Drive area

and the types of crimes committed.

As I scrolled down the timeframe of each reported crime, I was hit with the glaring fact that NONE, neither at Cielo nor at Waverly, ever occurred around the timeframe we know the Manson Family hit up these locations 41 years ago…”Hmmmmmmmm”, I hmmmmed to myself…

Yeah, I TOLD YA…I have no life…sigh…

It made me kinda chuckle though…almost like the 12:15 and 2:00am time slots are now sacred zones off limits to future criminals, they themselves paying homage to the “Great One” who came before!

It’s no wonder there is far more crime at Waverly than Cielo, just for the simple fact that the gates in Bel Air are far less impenetrable than in the old Los Feliz area…but you just have to wonder, don’t you?…

Well, anyhoo, enjoy looking at this, today’s waste-of-time effort especially chosen for YOU, my dear TLB2ers, by MsBurb, and visit the site yourself…

Maybe it’s just because Charlie is in jail that 12:15 and 2:00am have not been filled…again…

Anyone for coffee? …slurp.

Davis IN, Polanski OUT…MsBurb Wins One & Loses One…sigh…

2010-07-12T14:39:00.001-06:00

AP – FILE - IN this French-born film director Roman Polanski waves during a media presentation in Berlin. …

By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER and FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press Writers Bradley S. Klapper And Frank Jordans, Associated Press Writers – 25 mins ago

BERN, Switzerland – Roman Polanski was declared a free man on Monday after Switzerland rejected a U.S. request to extradite him to be sentenced for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.

The Swiss government blamed the decision on U.S. authorities, saying they had failed to address defense arguments that the 76-year-old filmmaker had actually served his sentence before fleeing Los Angeles three decades ago.

Nine months after arresting Polanski, the Swiss Justice Ministry said U.S. officials should have backed up their request by providing confidential testimony about Polanski's sentencing procedure in L.A.

"Mr. Polanski can now move freely," Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf declared. "He's a free man."

The stunning decision could end the United States' long pursuit of Polanski. France, where he has spent much of his time, does not extradite its own citizens and Polanski has had little trouble traveling throughout Europe — even if he's stayed away from Britain.

The U.S. cannot appeal the decision, but Polanski is still a fugitive in the United States.

"That warrant remains outstanding," Los Angeles Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini said, adding that Polanski could be arrested and sent back to the U.S. if he traveled to another country that has an extradition deal with the United States.

Lanny Breuer, head of the U.S. Justice Department's criminal division, expressed deep disappointment over the ruling. He said the U.S. request that Polanski be brought to the United States was completely supported by treaty, facts and the law. Breuer said Polanski's conduct was very serious and that the Justice Department will review its options.

The Swiss decision was praised by senior government officials in France and Poland, where Polanski holds dual citizenship. But there was criticism from groups representing victims of sexual abuse.

The Oscar-winning director of "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and "The Pianist" was accused of plying his victim with champagne and part of a Quaalude during a 1977 modeling shoot and raping her. He was initially indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molesting and sodomy, but pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse.

In exchange, the judge agreed to drop the remaining charges and sentence him to prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. However, he was released after 42 days by an evaluator who deemed him mentally sound and unlikely to offend again. The judge responded by saying he was going to send Polanski back to jail for the remainder of the 90 days and that afterward he would ask Polanski to agree to a "voluntary deportation." Polanski then fled the country on the eve of his Feb. 1, 1978, sentencing.

The Swiss government's main argument concerned confidential testimony given on Jan. 26 by Roger Gunson, the Los Angeles attorney in charge of the original prosecution against Polanski. The Swiss asked for the transcript, but Washington rejected the request.

Based on references to Gunson's testimony in U.S. courts, the Swiss said it "should prove" that Polanski served his sentence after undergoing the diagnostic study.

"If this were the case, Roman Polanski would actually have already served his sentence and therefore both the proceedings on which the U.S. extradition request is founded and the request itself would have no foundation," the ministry said.

The Justice Ministry said its decision reflected the spirit of the law, as U.S. authorities hadn't pursued Polanski in Switzerland previously, even though he's often visited the country and bought a house here in 2006. It also cited the wishes of the victim, Samantha Geimer, who long ago publicly identified herself and has joined in Polanski's bid for dismissal.

Polanski's electric monitoring bracelet was removed, the government said, but it was unclear if he had already left the confines of his house and garden for the first time since being placed under house arrest in December on $4.5 million bail.

A woman who answered the door said Polanski had left. The director's France-based lawyer, Herve Temime, told The Associated Press by telephone from his office in Paris that his client was still at his chalet but was now ready to enjoy his freedom.

Approving extradition had seemed the likeliest scenario after Polanski was arrested on Sept. 26 as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award from a film festival. Polanski had also suffered a series of legal setbacks this year in California courts, and Switzerland only rejects about 5 percent of the 200 extradition requests it handles annually.

"This decision was certainly not expected," Temime said, praising Swiss authorities for making the responsible decision.

Peter Cosandey, a former Zurich prosecutor, said complete evidence isn't normally required in extradition decisions. But this case might have been different because of Polanski's confused sentencing procedure, he said.

"We in Switzerland do not know, and that's why the government sought the transcript of Gunson," Cosandey said. "In extraditions, there are formalities that must be fulfilled. One is whether the person has already served his sentence."

Widmer-Schlumpf said this decision was not meant to excuse Polanski's crime, saying the issue was "not about deciding whether he is guilty or not guilty."

The government said extradition had to be rejected "considering the persisting doubts concerning the presentation of the facts of the case."

Beyond the legal confusion, Polanski's extradition was complicated and diplomatically sensitive because of Polanski's status as a cultural icon in France and Poland, and his history as a Holocaust survivor whose first wife was murdered by crazed followers of cult leader Charles Manson in California.

Widmer-Schlumpf said she hoped the decision wouldn't harm Swiss relations with Washington. The two countries have bickered in recent years over wealthy Americans hiding their money in the biggest Swiss bank, UBS AG, but have cooperated well on resettling prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"These were three completely different cases that have to be treated completely differently," Widmer-Schlump said.

___

Klapper reported from Geneva. AP correspondent Angela Charlton in from Paris and AP Entertainment Writer Anthony McCartney in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

“Camping At Big Sur”…Chapter Three…

2010-06-30T21:52:00.001-06:00

The chores taken care of in Monterey, and the campsite getting a wee bit old, Charlie and I decided to hit the road, south, in search of our past lives, however diverse they may have been.

He driving behind me and my Airstream, we headed south along 101 and didn’t stop until we hit…

Morro Bay.

Charlie had honked at me and blinked his headlights at the first intersection on Beach Street, so I pulled into a small strip mall to get off the beaten path.

Charlie’s VW van sidled along side my SUV , he rolled down his passenger side window and told me properly park my silver bullet behemoth, so I did.

“Hey Man, is there any extra dough for say, a CB or some two-way radio get-up?” Charlie asked.

“Why?” I asked.

“Just so I don’t have to play no charades with you, Man, to know where we’re headed and where we’re going.” he coyly said.

“Oh, yeah, I see what you’re saying. Hey, yeah, let’s find a hardware place or something. They usually have those kinda of walkie-talkies for sale.” I offered.

So, we left the vehicles and wandered around the frontage roads ‘til we found what we were looking for.

The day was crystal clear and despite the early hour, the California sun did not disappoint and we soon became searing spots on searing pavement…gotta love Cali-for-NY-A!

Once the shopping was done and a cold couple of Starbucks Iced Mochachinos in our sweaty hands, we wandered back to Beach Street.

Without even a pause, Charlie took off his sandals and headed for the sand, in the direction of that huge rock that signals you’ve arrived at Morro Bay.

I followed, but slowly, kind of too mesmerized by the actions of this diminutive man to concentrate on walking…

He ran like he weighed a feather while not really making a sound in the process. He ran and people on the beach didn’t even notice him at all, yet his straggly hair, that white button down shirt with the tail hanging out, his frayed jeans and that freaky coloured vest of his screamed “Flower Power” when no such style is normally viewed, nor palatable, today.

Charlie reached the edge of the beach and stopped. He let the quiet surf roll in over his baggy pants and as he squatted there like an Indian guru, silent, still, slurping his iced java, gazing out on that domed rock, his black beady eyes focused so intently I thought he was conjuring up the power to move it.

I eventually made my way to him and we both stood there, me looking down on the sparkly specks of beach sand and the odd sea shell and Charlie still trying to move that rock with his mind, I felt.

Breaking the silence, I said, “So where you think we should park for the night, Charlie?”

“I got people I know in Pismo Beach. How ‘bout we head there for the night?” he offered.

“Sure, Pismo Beach it is!” not really caring and not having a goal in the world, other than to tread all over where I had trod before.

We got back into our respective vehicles and unwrapped our new communication toys, tested them and headed south once more…

The highway was as surprisingly calm as the Pacific Ocean that day. Despite the “California Dreaming” I was doing, I did notice that my memories of the coast highway were a far cry from the reality of today. More touristy boutique-like places, more strip malls, just more population dotting and pushing its way on to what was really almost endless stretches of land and water when I had last visited.

I didn’t really approve of the effect but I guess nothing in Life is supposed to stay static…even that big blue rolling hunk of water to my right.

All I knew is that it felt right to be back on the 101 again, other than my disgust at myself for waiting this long to have it happen in the first place.

As the miles ticked by and the curves left and right swayed and undulated under my feet, I would pop into the CD tray one 60s tune after another, in a feeble attempt at denying 2010, and with my ethereal focus, I almost think I succeeded!

I would occasionally look in my driver’s side rear view mirror to check on Charlie. but as always, he was quietly behind me, two or so car lengths away, our walkie talkies in the On position but neither of us having the need or want to talk. Maybe he felt, as I did, that when cruising the 101, sounds beyond Mother Nature’s ocean breezes and rolling waves, were just meddlesome noise.

It wasn’t long before we slid into the outskirts of Pismo Beach and a crackling sound came over the walkie talkie with Charlie’s voice saying to pull over and have him lead the way. On the first patch of ground wide enough for my Airstream to fit, I pulled over and let Charlie pull ahead, his rusty old VW making a grating, chugging, spurting kind of sound as he lurched it up to cruising speed.

It was only minutes really when he barked at me over the walkie talkie once again where we were to pull over. We were parked in a rest stop that over-looked the Pismo Beach area to the south but that had these strange cliff/cave-like structures viewable from the beach.

Charlie got out, stretched his waif-like body and waved me on to follow.

He marched directly for one of these caves in the rock wall, took out what I figured was a joint and began to smoke it at the entrance of one of these caves as we sat looking out on to the ocean. He offered me his little cigarette but I told him I was from the Rat Pack Set so that kind of thing was not my thing. He shrugged his shoulders, not really caring one way or another, and he began to talk, which had you been with this little old man for the days I’d been, you’d know this wasn’t his natural posture.

“I used to come here on trips, Man, when things just got too tight down south.” was all he offered.

“Oh yeah, too tight from what?” I snuck in an inquisitive jibe.

“Ah, you know, shit, from little shits. The Man. Life.” he retorted…like that was supposed to make all the sense in the world to me.

“Well, yeah, Man, anyone could use a reason to come here. How did you know about these caves, Charlie?”

“Ah, shit, that ain’t nothin’. I’d park where I could and sleep where I could find some shelter, you know. These caves aren’t exactly hidden, Man.” Charlie offered.

“Yeah, you’re right.” and I left it at that, never wanting to push too far with this skittish hare, that he might feel the need to bolt before he should because I pushed too hard. He was kinda growing on me like some kind of anthropological science project…or a mean rash…whichever…but I wanted to see this through – our 101 adventure – it felt like it would be important to me…in the end…

“Hey, man, I know we’ve got a real pad tonight because I’ve got a connection here. Contacts I had back in the day I wanna rekindle, ya know.” he said.

“Sure, Charlie.”

“See that wharf over there, on a back street straight up from there, there’s a house that sits on those hills. My contact lived and ran his business outta there.” Charlie points out these locales to me, like some kind of psychedelic tour guide, with his tiny pinkie finger, the one that has this ungodly long finger nail.

“Ah okay, Man.” was all I could say, not even broaching the fact that his head seemed to be firmly mired in the 60s and this was 2010…and the odds of…oh, well…never mind…

With that, Charlie got up and headed back in the direction of our cars. I just followed. It seemed like my trip had become his and I was willing to go along for the ride. I think I was thinking that if he had a magic bullet to turn back time, even for me, I’d like the chance to have the chance…you know?

We left our vehicles where they were and took that walk. Pismo isn’t large and very laid back, with sun worshippers and tourist shops, still not fully what you would call an urbane locale, still representing a slice of Pacific Coast Americana… and I was glad for it.

Charlie had no more to say, intent on getting to his destination, his eyes focused yet again, his body language taut and agile, allowing me, for a moment, to see what he must have been like when he was just a young man, invincible, unwavering, a man, who in his eyes, could probably do no wrong.

We got to the street that he had decided was the right one and as we walked down it, I could see him hesitating and then eventually stopping between the gate to a small suburban park, the kind you will see interrupting a row of houses from time to time.

He just stared and stared at this piece of land, and eventually I figured it out that this MUST be where his friend’s house must have been back in the day. I didn’t dare say a word, for I had feared this outcome for him and I knew this realization must be hitting him hard.

After a time, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Come on, Man, let’s hit the road. I ain’t in no mood to meet people today anyway. Too damn hot to be walkin’ around…let’s split.”

And with that, we went. I did look at him looking back at that park a couple of times yet I dared not offer a penny for his thoughts.

A 1969 penny wouldn’t be worth much in 2010 anyways…

To Be Continued…

“Arny” Is My NEW Best Friend…Never Thought MsBurb Would Ever Say That!!!

2010-06-30T19:40:00.001-06:00

L.A. Times

Schwarzenegger denies parole for former Charles Manson family member

June 28, 2010 | 4:35 pm

A convicted killer described as a top assistant to mass murderer Charles Manson has had his parole recommendation denied by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Bruce Davis, 67, imprisoned for the 1969 killings of musician Gary Hinman and ranch hand Donald "Shorty" Shea, was recommended for parole in January by a two-member Board of Prison Terms panel.

But in a letter released Monday, Schwarzenegger reversed the decision. "I believe his release would pose an unreasonable risk of danger to society at this time," the governor wrote, pointing out the gruesome nature of the crimes. "The first-degree murders for which Davis was convicted were especially heinous because both victims were abused, tortured and mutilated."

Davis did not participate in the 1969 Manson family murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others. Nonetheless, he "occupied a major role in the Manson family hierarchy," Los Angeles District Atty. Steve Cooley said in May.

Cooley wrote Schwarzenegger in May asking that Davis not be paroled. Davis, according to Cooley, had continued to "minimize, rationalize and offer excuses" for his role in the murders.

Davis had been denied parole 25 times before the panel recommended he be released. While in prison, he became an ordained minister and earned master's degrees in philosophy and religion via a correspondence program.

-- Robert J. Lopez

Can We Ever Get Back…Really?

2010-06-25T22:49:00.001-06:00

Charles Denton “Tex” Watson…The Man Behind The Monster Part Four – The Interviews, Part E

2010-06-05T16:44:00.001-06:00

In another chapter from (Click Book Cover to Read), Tex Watson covers the topic of Music and his opinion on the effects of said on the young.

I must say, it must be nice to live in an all White or all Black kind of consciousness, having no grey area to create doubt and house guilt or own up to responsibility.

What boggles the mind is his fervent life-long adoption of extremes, albeit Christian-based fundamentalism now, and Manson-based ideology then, but extremes nevertheless, and he seems not to recognize the existence of this extreme psychic dysfunction even today, long after the drugs and Manson’s influence had died.

One wonders how Tex can now be so dogmatic when it comes to judging music – its Good or Evil expression of the human experience. But, mind you, southern American Bible-Thumping Baptist freaks broke Elvis Presley records in half in the 1950s, positive that that country bumpkin with the brooding looks and those flailing hips was going to wreck American youngsters by the millions. Elvis seems kind of hokey and anything but destructive compared to contemporary musicians. Yet, in my opinion, it’s never about the musician and his music; it’s about the psychological well-being of the listener and Tex could have listened to choir music in 1969 and still have had a creative way with knives and human flesh, if you ask me.

Tex does ask a profound question in this chapter, “Who is in control?”. Yet, according to him, everyone BUT himself seems, at one time or another, to be in control of his life. I don’t mean to preach a sermon on the mountain here, but I believe that God created Man to have self-control. Looking for someone to bear the responsibility Tex should have owned up to for himself, whether in Charles Manson or now in God, is a complete cop-out.

It seems as if Tex and Sadie, and possibly Bruce Davis, need a leader to survive in this world. That they were not born or not raised to have self-control, and if other leader-figures didn’t tell them what to do, they would be as wild predator animals and do/say/feel whatever satisfied their bestial needs at that moment. The tragic part is that in meeting a fellow bestial Wildman leader such as Manson, there was then NO excuse NOT to let all Hell reign over Los Angeles for these kids…

One also wonders how such lack of moral backbone was not noticed by Tex’s parents, relations, friends or others within the community of Copeville at an earlier age.

The fact that he likens secular music to “witchcraft” or “voodoo” is very disturbing. I have no idea where he has obtained these views but it makes one wonder how such extremist religious methodology has been able to gain such a foothold inside prisons, that this kind of dysfunctional ideation can take root in a man like Tex. He allows for only two kinds of music – the glorification of God or the work of Satan – and the reality of the existence of music to the average man has always been defined far more deeply than that.

I don’t believe we can place the blame on his naive point of view, solely on his sheltered childhood or country-life upbringing. There must be more to Tex than meets the eye, that he would so easily fall pray to any theology - “Mansonism” or Christianity/Theism – or, for that matter, that he would crave an extreme belief system in the first place, in order to develop his own moral compass.

With this in mind, one can speculate that Watson never really developed a moral centre. He may have always known that he lacked said and secretly spent his time prior to the murders mimicking what he saw in other people. This, for the experts, may be a clue as to the origins of sociopathy, that one can academically understand a human experience but that that same person cannot integrate or internalize it.

Tex may have been basically window-shopping for a moral centre, but why he rebelled against the examples his parents offered him is beyond me. I understand youth rebellion against authority figures but by the time Tex was 23, one would assume that maturity had gained enough of a foot-hold to bring his rebellion back under control and see the positive affects his parents, family and friends could have had on him had he accepted their efforts to guide him.

I do not have allot to say on his classifying the Harry Potter book series as “voodoo” other than it makes me gobsmacked to imagine J.K. Rolling more evil than a bayonet-wielding, seven time murderer…again, the world in which his mind lives must be a freaky one!

His less-than-scientific take on the correlation between youthful music listening and drug abuse makes me giggle like an 8th grade school girl!

In my youth, I listened to everything the music world had to offer produced from the ‘40s onwards, and damn if I didn’t still feel like a cocktail gown on my body and a cocktail glass in my hand wasn’t the cat’s meow over anything like a smoky fire in my mouth, a needle dangling from my arm or a bunch of swallowed pills!

Yep, I listened to music Tex and I have NEVER smoked, swallowed or shot up anything!!! POOF! There goes your ‘scientific study” out the window, Big Boy…(snicker)…

In his discussion of the issues surrounding music ratings, I just LOVE what he said;

“We must take charge of our own lives…”

Is he hearing his own voice, do ya think? Where the Hell was this statement of belief in him forty+ years ago??? Hmmmmm, Tex???

If you’re anything like me, TLB2ers, doncha just wanna shake this dude until a REAL human being pops out?!!!

And on the subject of raising children, he states;

“If we don't raise them, someone will be there to raise them for us.”

Soooo, if that’s the case, is he back to subliminally blaming in parents’ passive parentage of him as the cause to why he turned out to be a loser and a murderer?

This has NOT been the first time Tex has couched phrases to suggest said. He’ll always deny or disclaim but the subtle parental blaming always seems to be in the background of his mind. I actually think he blamed them for why he was a loser after high school, that it was their fault the dude couldn’t hold down a job or complete college courses, that it was because of them that he had to “flee” and “escape” to L.A. He has admitted to allot of pent-up rage in the years prior to the murders and in my opinion, all that rage stems from is him being pissed off he couldn’t continue to have Life served to him on a fully-paid-for silver platter, a life that his parents HAD given him up until he flew like a lazy-ass, spoiled little brat to sunny southern CA.

In his discussion on the part Manson’s music played on the overall behaviour of The Family and in the subsequent murders, he has no problem citing Manson’s music as one of the paramount culprits;

“Let me try to explain how his music was used as a chant to charm us. In a ritualistic Manson worship ceremony, our whole bodies vibrated with his sound. We'd sit in a circle, surrounded by his offbeat guitar strum, on drugs, swaying and sometimes even dancing to his tune -- being enticed into his web. His musical chants were repetitive lyrics and pitches that produced a hypnotic effect or a trance-like state. His words filled the air -- "Cease to exist, come say you love me…kill your ego, die" -- so once you ceased to be, you could be free to totally love, totally come together, and totally give yourself over to his demonic thoughts. Unbeknownst to us, a spell was cast and the demons were summoned and free to emotionally consume us.”

All I have to say on this is the following…

Was it the music and lyrics themselves that were the evil ingredient to make evil monsters out of them all OR was it their own warped perceptions of his music and lyrics? In other words, do we blame the words in Hitler’s speeches as the impetus for his twelve year reign of terror OR do we blame the German citizenry for approving his message???

People can tell ya to “Kill” but who’s the dolt? The one who says kill or the one who actually thinks it’s okay to carry out the message?

Manson, by anyone’s definition is a creepy little dude who has more than his fair share of destructive ideas, but in all the time at Spahn’s, how come nobody who stayed around, and especially nobody who ended up carrying out is fantastical ideations, ever bothered to ask themselves…WTF?!!!!!!!!!!!!

To me, Charlie’s “messages” are only as dangerous as you let them be. If a person listens to the lyrics of his songs, what normal individual would say in response to those lyrics, “Hey, Man, YEAH He said ‘cease to exist” so damn if I ain’t gonna get me some de-CEASED Bel Air bodies!!! (pant, pant, drool, drool)”…. Okay, inbred human bottom feeders with nary two grey cells to rub together may…and BLAMO! here we have JUST described every one Manson’s devout followers! Whodathunkit???

Charlie above all, is no dumbass. He well knew that with people other than described above, he could rant and rave and paint his lyrics all over their bodies, if he wished, all day long, but blood thirsty sycophants he would never get. Conversely, he knew his idiotic ideas would take idiotic, dysfunctional listeners for those ideas to come to life. Just remember, there were MANY people in 1933 Germany that said anything BUT “Heil Hitler” with glad hearts and open arms!!!

Tex claims that Manson should have taken “…responsibility for his delusional thinking or false beliefs.” Am I missing something here or was it not the bayonet, the buntline and the buck that killed nine people and not “delusional thoughts or false beliefs”? If Charlie had stated that the world was indeed flat, then according to Tex’s premise, these dolty kids should have been well excused for spending the rest of their lives looking for the cliff to jump off.

Life just does NOT work that way, Tex! This world is FULL of weird ideas that people don’t own up to every day, but it is our responsibility to recognize and reject the wackos from the wise…and to god damn well know the difference!

IF Tex and the girls did NOT agree to head up Bel Air that night, how many at 10050 Cielo Drive would have been killed by Charlie and his delusional thinking and false beliefs? Hmmmmm?

Zero, zilch, nada…none.

Tex later admits to adopting dysfunctional perceptions out of Manson’s music and then excuses his behaviour by saying that he was like “…children who haven’t formed sound belief and value systems, nor developed a strong conscience.” He had been offered sound beliefs and values systems from his parents, friends and community but the high school jock chose to drop’em like so much hot field potato sizzling in the Texas midday sun. If my Mother raises me to not swear, and then I grow up to swear like a drunken sailor (yes, I could be talking about myself here…but I doubt if I’ll admit it!), whose fault is it now that I swear?

Tex, in other statements, readily admitted to attending church services and knowing about the Commandment “Thou shall not commit murder”, so exactly whose fault is it that he did commit murder? If you know what is Right from Wrong and you decide to choose of your own free will the Wrong, who but yourself have you got to blame? The guy wasn’t raised by wolves, nor even by Manson, for that matter, and if he had been, then, yes, killing by Tex may have been expected. Instead, he was raised by loving, caring, humane parents, had loving siblings and a supportive community but, in the end, it was too damn irresistible to vent one’s rage at strangers for not receiving a lifetime’s worth of a Free Ride, paid for by people who had worked hard for what they had…people like the people who lived at 10050 Cielo Drive and 3301 Waverly Drive.

If you just examine the different vehicles his parents had bought him alone, in 1960s dollar valuation, Tex drove what only other teenagers could dream about or have as a poster on their bedroom wall. And when he tried to make that level of income for himself and failed, he was miffed that what he expected to be there for him, wasn’t, and in his spoiled, lazy, little mind, he had long decided someone had to pay!

Sigh…could he not have just asked Sharon to write out a cheque for the difference instead?

Bemused by Barker Bodies Statement…

2010-05-19T22:51:00.001-06:00

I thought I’d give you my worth regarding Tex’s 2008 statement on whether or not he feels there are bodies yet to be discovered at Barker Ranch.

“My Definitive Statement (Click Pic to read Tex’s entire Statement)

I have no knowledge of any murders committed by the Manson family, other than those which have already been prosecuted by the authorities.
I have never personally heard any Manson Family member speak of any bodies being buried at Barker Ranch.”

I must say, that he and Sadie just never seem to be able to keep their mouths shut.

The above statement definitely, legally, seems to take Tex off the hook for any possible knowledge of other than the nine conclusively known…but because he can only speak about what directly affected him, it does not completely exonerate all members of the Family.

I myself tend to believe that there are no bodies buried up at Barker and reserve judgement as to whether or not new born babies were buried at Spahn. The latter I can actually see as a possibility when babies were being birthed on the ranch and possible medical complications ensued. Charlie would never have allowed anyone to report said for fear of authoritative reprisals. But as it stands for me, I really don’t feel there were any other premeditated murders other than the ones known, at either Barker or Spahn.

This admission by Tex, of course, does NOT address whether or not Tex was present at Shorty’s murder, and we do have Bruce Davis admitting that Tex was present. When I began my investigation in earnest, I thought that Tex had left for Texas before Shea’s death, but now I’m not so sure.

What seems to be odd is that no one has definitively interviewed Tex on Shea’s death, or if they did, we have no documentation to said, other than a cursory question being asked in the initial TLB interrogations whereby Tex denied his involvement. I believe that when Tex received the Death Penalty for TLB, the DA dropped any further investigation, as they already had Manson, Grogan and Davis for that murder, and I’m sure after a record-breaking one million dollar price tag for the initial TLB trial, the DA had pressure to not double up on culpability which would necessitate extra, unnecessary trials.

This Barker statement however does have an opposite effect on whether to disbelieve Tex’s past statements that he was in Texas at the time of Shea’s death because he has never offered a definitive statement of innocence on that murder.

When people reference Sadie’s admission of further deaths as proof of said, I tend to want to chuckle and blow bubbles like a kid because that broad said and did everything she could to inflate her image, augment her infamy and gain attention where possible during the trials.

My feeling, albeit just a hunch, is that there were no hitch-hiker deaths at Barker just like there was no celebrity death wish-list. All these stories only existed in Sadie’s head, making an already horrid group of young people even more outrageously gruesome. I believe that quite possibly, Sadie’s exaggerations may have lead to the Death sentences over Life sentences, at least for the girls.

My remaining question is why did Tex feel obligated to offer a statement at all, regarding bodies at Barker? I do wonder if it’s not “me thinks I doth protest too much” or fear that if they do find further bodies that Tex wouldn’t be up for another Death Penalty conviction, that this time, would be legal and eventually binding.

Your thoughts are welcome and encouraged as I’m really at a loss at to the ultimate motive for Tex to state anything in this regard.

Is it just me, not being a sociopath (I think?!), that if I were convicted of seven premeditated murders, I would spend the rest of my natural life being as low to the ground and as silent as the grave to not attract further attention???

All I know is that when a murderer stands up and says, “It isn’t me!”…I instinctively think it’s him….sigh…

LA DA meets actress who claims Polanski sex abuse

2010-05-15T17:56:00.001-06:00

British actress Charlotte Lewis and her attorney Gloria Allred, rear left, are shown during a news conference in Los Angeles Friday, May 14, 2010. Lewis alleges that director Roman Polanski sexually victimized her in Paris when she was 16. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon) LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Los Angeles County prosecutors have met with a British actress who claims she was sexually abused by director Roman Polanski in his Paris apartment when she was 16 - years before she appeared in one of his movies. Charlotte Lewis, 42, said Friday that the filmmaker abused her "in the worst possible way" sometime in the 1980s. Lewis provided no evidence to support her claims, and her attorney, Gloria Allred, did not permit her to answer questions during a news conference in her office. However, Allred said the woman provided evidence to a police detective and officials from the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. She refused to provide specifics and also refused to answer questions about whether her client's allegations involved drugs or rape. "Our detectives did conduct the interview but the department has not begun an investigation," said police spokesman Richard French. He did not know when the interview was conducted. It was unclear what year the alleged assault took place. "He took advantage of me and I have lived with the effects of his behaviour ever since it occurred," said Lewis, reading from a prepared statement at a news conference in her lawyer's office. "All I want is justice."Allred said that, to her knowledge, no criminal complaint or lawsuit was made in France over the alleged assault. The duty officer for the French Justice Ministry said late Friday night that he was not aware whether the British actress had filed a complaint in France about her allegation. A statement released by Polanski 's U.S. legal team said his attorneys had no information about the allegations that were made at the press conference "but we do know that our district attorney continues to refuse to provide the Swiss government with accurate and complete information relevant to the extradition issue." Polanski, the Oscar-winning director of "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and "The Pianist," is under house arrest at his Swiss chateau in connection with a 33-year-old case. Polanski was accused of drugging a 13-year-old girl with champagne and part of Quaalude and raping her at Jack Nicholson's house in Los Angeles in 1977. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse but fled to France before sentencing and remained a fugitive until Swiss authorities arrested him on Sept. 26 on a U.S. warrant as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award from a film festival. Lewis said she came forward because she heard that Polanski was fighting extradition to the United States and "that his legal team is portraying his previous offense against a minor as an isolated instance." Allred said she doesn't plan any legal action right now, such as a lawsuit, but believes the allegations would be relevant when Polanski is sentenced.Her client is ready to testify if necessary, she said. "If the judge believes these claims, it could certainly have an impact on the court's decision," she said. Lewis played a role in Polanski 's 1986 movie, "Pirates." She's also credited with a role in the 1986 movie "The Golden Child" and small roles in other movies and TV shows.---Associated Press Writer Debbie Seward in Paris contributed to this report.

"Deja Vu"-A Novella-Chapter Four

2010-05-10T19:49:00.004-06:00

(video)

"All that summer we enjoyed it,

wind and rain and shine.
That umbrella we employed it,

by August she was mine...."

The Hollies
Bus Stop

We ambled silently into the kitchen, just two guys who had determined that an alliance was to be somewhat desirable in the wake of Lady F's storm of verbal abuse.

Jay began to dig in the fridge for the Gouda.

I don't suppose when a woman is pregnant that this is an uncommon occurrence.

The desire for cheese and the solidarity that comes from bein' two males in the midst of a tempestuous female hormone-fueled brouhaha must be a common event that transpires in the lives of men everywhere, everyday.

Ironically, the man who had put us there just happened to be about 10,000 miles away.

Jay pulled out the cheese and I went over to the bread box and pulled out the remnants of a French baguette. It was my reasoning that if we stayed out of sight, we stayed out of mind, therefore, out of trouble.

Bored with the silence, I asked Jay how business was.

He responded by sayin' that it was gettin' better and that investors were really starting to take notice of his salon.

"How did you ever get to the point in life where it was actually a bonafide thought to work in a place called a sal-onnn"?, I asked. "I mean, what ever made you want to be a hairdresser"?

He scratched his head and thought about it for a minute.

"I guess it's because I stumbled upon this talent I have and just decided to capitalize on it".

His answer was simple and to the point.

I responded by sayin',

"You do know that most people never get that far in life. Every person has some incredible talent but, a lot of times, it just never gets realized and tends to get kicked to the curb through no fault of their own.....I wish I knew what my talent was. You're one of the fortunate ones....maybe,....someday".

"Don't sell yourself short, Danny", he said. "You have an incredible talent for bad timing and creating uncomfortable situations".

He smiled as he walked back over to the fridge and pulled out a carton of milk.

I couldn't help be amused by his statement. It certainly was true,...because my mother used to tell me that exact same thing,...very frequently, I might add.

Jay pulled down a cup and poured himself a glass of milk.

"What's next for you"?, he asked.

"Umm,...Tommy Laughlin is makin' some movie about some ass-kickin' Indian. He wants to film in New Mexico, but I don't know. He's on a shoe-string budget and doesn't want to pay the standard rates. I might do it if everything's under the table", I answered.

He stared blankly for a moment.

"Who the hell is Tommy Laughlin"?, he asked.

Before I could answer, Beasly came trotting through the kitchen with the same green sock in her mouth that was layin' in the middle of Sharon's bedroom floor ten minutes prior. She stopped and looked at us. We stopped what we were doin' and looked back. She then scampered away out the back door.

I continued.

"Tommy's an idealist. He wants to make movies with a social message,...unfortunately, he gets caught up spewin' the same violence that he works so hard to denounce....comical, actually. I think that's why he never gets a budget".

Jay just raised his eyebrows in an attempt to convince me that he really cared about what I was tellin' him.

"Under the table is good", he said. "Take a little time off from the tax man".

"Yeah", I answered. "too much of that nowadays".

I walked over to the stereo and changed the record. Time for a little Four Seasons.

I came back into the kitchen and Jay just shook his head in agreement to my choice of music. As Frankie started singin', both Jay and I chimed in off-key. I mean, it's a pre-requisite for every guy to try and sing like Frankie when there are no women in the room.

"There ain't no good in our goodbyes,....true love taaaaakes a lot of tryin', oh, I'm cryin'"....

(video)

It was one of those moments where the music just gets the better of you and you just start dancin' and singin' with reckless abandon because there are no girls lookin' at you doin' it.

"Let's hang on, to what we got, don't let it go, girl, we got a lot, got a lot of love between us, hang on, hang on, hang on,...to what we got, (do-dooh, do-dooh, do-dooh)".

As if on cue, when the guitar started, Jay and I did our best Four Seasons impressions and began to shuffle through the middle of the kitchen while singin' in falsetto. Not in a serious way. Just in a way that two guys do when confronted with the challenge of Frankie.

"You say you're gonna go and call it quits, gonna chuck it all and break our love to bits,....(breakin' up),...I wish you never said it,..(breakin' up),....no, no, we'll both regret it,...that little chip a diamond on your hand, ain't a fortune, babe, but you know it stands, (for your love), a love to try and bind us, (such a love), we just can't leave behind us,....bay-bay, (don't you go), bay-bay, (no,no,no think it over and stay-yay)".

We tried to synchronize our dancin' but we failed miserably as it was never rehearsed beforehand,...and we all know how painful that could be,....so we just abandoned ourselves to the song and harmonized in an off-key falsetto with the hopes that there were no cameras nearby.

At that moment, Jay and I weren't friends, we were brothers,...eatin' cheese and dancin' while tryin' to sing like Frankie Valli.

"Let's hang on, to what we got, don't let it go, girl, we got a lot. Got a lot of love between us, hang on, hang on, hang on,...to what we got. (do-ooh, do-ooh, DOO-OOH)"

The Four Seasons are one of those common threads that tend to bind the social classes together.

Beasley came into the room and, sensing the mood of prandial jocundity, began to jump between us in an effort to be recognized and brought into the levity that permeated the moment.

I picked her up and began to dance with her.

"There isn't anything I wouldn't do, I'd pay any price to get in good with you, (patch it up), Give me a second turn in, (patch it up), don't cool off while I'm burnin'. You got me cryin', dyin',..."

As I spun us around with reckless abandon, I fell into the path of a still pissed off Abigail, who stood in the doorway of the kitchen.

Her arms were still crossed and she still had that same look on her face that she did the last time she spoke to us.

We were so busted.

I immediately dropped the dog. She scampered out of the room in an effort to put some distance between her and the stoic Lady F.

Jay saw her at the same time that I did and he immediately stopped dancin' and went back to cuttin' the cheese.

I tried to diffuse Jay's awkward,....extremely awkward,..moment by sayin',

"Hey, Abigail,...what's goin' on"?

....with the most sincerity I could muster.

She tried to keep a straight face,....but then burst out laughing.

She yelled over her shoulder to Sharon, who was walkin' towards the kitchen at that very moment.

"Shaaaaaron,....guess what I just caught your two boyfriends doin'"?

Jay pleaded with her with his eyes to keep this little episode between us three. She would have none of it.

She psyched him out.

"They were makin' the most divine,...(she paused),...cheese and bread sandwiches that I ever had the privilege to taste".

Jay's eyes met hers and silently said Thank You,....for not tellin' Sharon what we were really doin'. It woulda been another strike that chipped away at his most composed self.

Abigail winked at him and suggested that he make her a special cheese sandwich that only he could make.

Me?,...well, I really coulda cared less. Sharon and I have done that when there weren't people around to catch us. It kinda faded out as her pregnancy progressed, but the element of that kinda friendship has always remained.

When Sharon walked into the room, I asked the most logical question I could think of.

"Hey Sharon,...where's Voytek? I don't wanna be eatin' cheese sandwiches all night, Sharon. You said we were goin' to dinner when you called, Sharon. We're not at dinner, babe,...we're eatin' cheese sandwiches in your kitchen, Sharon. What the hell, Sharon? Why isn't Voytek here, Sharon"?

I found if you repeat her name in conversation, it tends to put the pressure on her....and we all know how fun that can be.

She picked up a blue plastic tumbler and threw it at me,...hard. It clipped me on the back of the head as I ducked. It deflected and crashed into the wall behind me.

"I don't know where he is, Danny,...you little shit,...and more over, I don't care".

She then glared at Abigail and said,

"Well, where is he, Gib? Why isn't he here, Gib? I don't wanna eat cheese sandwiches in my underwear in my kitchen all night, Gib. What the hell, Gib? Where is he, Gib"?

Jay started laughing. I was rubbin' the back of my head. Gib was glaring at me. Sharon was panting from the heat, even while standin' there in her underwear.

Beasley walked into the room and looked at everyone. Sharon turned to her and angrily pointed towards the living room without sayin' a word. Beasley slowly retreated backwards and kept goin' until she rounded the corner to the living room.

The house was silent,....except for the click of the arm on the stereo. It was on "repeat".

(video)

"There ain't no good in our goodbyes,...true love taaaaaakes a lot of tryin',..oh, I'm cryin,..."

The guitar started and I instinctively started groovin' again,....and started tryin' to sing like Frankie again.

Sharon just stood there. There was a genuine pain in her face. I pulled her head close and whispered in her ear.

"What"?

"Let's hang on, to what we got, don't let it go, girl, we got a lot. Got a lot of love between us, hang on, hang on, hang on,...to what we got. (Do-ooh, do-ooh, DO-OOH)"

"It just hurts sometimes, Danny", she whispered back.

She was cryin' through a smile.

It was an 'absent husband' moment. The realization that he was not there. The panic, the pain, the anger. It boils to the surface instantly and without warning. I have seen this before and it comes and goes almost without notice.

The trigger was, more than likely, her question to Gib.

It was always my habit to try and make her focus in moments like this. Make her see what is right before her eyes. Bring her to the here and now in an instant.

This was never a cure-all, but merely a band-aid. That is all it should ever be.

"You say you're gonna go and call it quits, gonna chuck it all and break our love to bits, ...(breakin' up).... I wish you never said it,.... (breakin' up).... no, no, we'll both regret it. That little chip a diamond on your hand, ain't fortune, babe, but you know it stands,.... (for your love),.... a love to try and bind us,... (such a love),.... we just can't leave behind us,...bay-bay (don't you go), Bay-bay, (oh, no, no, think it over and stay-yay)".

"I know....we're here. You'll be alright, Sharon", I whispered.

I looked into her eyes and said,

"I promise you".

I took her hand and brought it up to my mouth and kissed it. She smiled and wiped away her tears....almost like the little girl in her was spilling out. She looked out the window,...almost embarrassed to be seen.

The exchange happened in a matter of ignaseconds. I don't think Abigail or Jay even noticed it through the music.

The moment passed.

"Let's hang on, to what we got, don't let it go, girl, we got a lot. Got a lot of love between us, hang on, hang on, hang on,...to what we got, (do-ooh, do-ooh, do-ooh)"

I backed away from her and turned and grabbed Abigail and started spinnin' her around the room. She started laughin' and began dancin' with me.

Jay was sippin' from a glass of wine and was smiling as he watched us.

There was a knock at the front door.

Sharon leaned over the sill and tried to get a look at who it could be.

"Danny, do ya mind?,...I really am not in the position to be seen right now", Sharon said,...as she pointed out the fact that she was in her underwear.

I stopped dancin' with Lady F and gave her to Jay. Jay set down his drink and took up where I left off.

I opened the door to find some pimply-faced youth standin' there with a yellow bike.

"Yeah?", I said.

He said that the bike was for an,...(hold on),...Abigail Anne Folger.

"...and you are"?, I asked.

He responded by sayin' that his name was Dennis....Dennis Herst....of Herst's Bike Shoppe Emporium on North Fairfax,...

...."at your service!", he declared.

"Well, Dennis Herst of Herst's Bike Shoppe Emporium on North Fairfax,...today is your lucky day", I said. "You have just won a Gouda cheese sandwich on French baguette bread,...made by the one and only,....Mr. Oceanbring,.... from Batman...how do ya like 'dem apples?... He just got here from Gotham City."

His face lit up.

"Man, I remember that episode!,...Catwoman had her henchmen at Mr. Oceanbring's salon and Chad and Jeremy were in that episode. They had their voices stolen and had to sing that night,...I remember that, man! I remember Oceanbring".

(video)

I screamed into the kitchen.

"Jay!,....get your fat ass out here,...you gotta fan at the door", I yelled.

Jay walked into the foyer with his ever present wine glass.

"Tell Abigail to go get one of your cheese sandwiches", I said.

"ABBBIGAAAIL,....GET ONE OF MY CHEESE SANDWICHES OFF OF THE CUTTIN' BOARD, PLEASE", he yelled behind him.

Dennis Herst of Herst's Bike Shoppe Emporium on North Fairfax face lit up when he saw Jay.

"It is him,...wow,...no shit", he said.

Jay stood there kinda bewildered at the fact that this kid seemed so a-gog over him. I could tell that Jay was tryin' to place his pimply face,...but was havin' a helluva time doin' so.

"Man,..you did a great job on that. I loved you on that, man"....Dennis Herst of Herst's Bike Shoppe Emporium on North Fairfax said.

"I did,...I did do a good job on that", Jay said,...still having no clue as to what the hell the kid was talkin' about.

Dennis Herst of Herst's Bike Shoppe Emporium on North Fairfax responded by sayin',

"So,...what was she like to work with? Man, that woman is a fox,....it must be murder to try and get into that sparkly costume. I notice they always make the chicks hips bigger on that. It's like they squeeze 'em into those tights and then pull the whole thing as tight as they can get it, man."

Jay was befuddled.

"Yes, it is murder.",...he said. "They DO have big hips, don't they"?,....

He shook his head in agreement with Dennis Herst of Herst's Bike Shoppe Emporium on North Fairfax,....even if he had no idea as to what Dennis Herst of Herst's Bike Shoppe Emporium on North Fairfax was talkin' about.

Abigail came into the foyer with the aforementioned Gouda cheese sandwich.

I took it from her and interjected myself into the conversation at hand.

"Here's your Gouda cheese sandwich on French baguette bread, Dennis Herst of Herst's Bike Shoppe Emporium on North Fairfax", I said, while handing him the sandwich.

I then pulled a quarter out of my jeans and stuck it in his palm and said,

"Here you go, young man,...don't spend this all on drink. Leave the bike on the walk".

He nodded politely and stepped backwards out onto the porch.

I shut the door.

Sharon came into the room and asked who it was.

I told her it was Dennis Herst of Herst's Bike Shoppe Emporium on North Fairfax.

"Oh", was her only reply.

I then turned to Jay and said,

"Hey, Jay,...if Sharon had big hips squeezed into a sparkly costume, would it look somethin' like this"?

I walked over behind Sharon and grabbed the elastic waistband of her panties.

She immediately started laughing because she knew where I was goin' with this and, more than likely, it would culminate with her havin' to spend a considerable amount of time pickin' the crotch of her panties out from the crevice of her derriere.

She began to plead with me through her laughter.

"Please, Danny, don't,...please,..I gotta pee,...I really gotta pee, Danny".

I got a decent grip,.... but she started runnin' in an effort to get away from me,... laughing hysterically while doing so.

Thank you for inviting me

2010-05-09T06:56:00.006-06:00

Roman Polanski still hasn't paid for his crime

Dear Readers;

Hi.

I have been invited to be a contributor to this blog and I thank Ms. Burb for the opportunity. That being said I'd like to address the extradition issue of Mr. Polanski.

He pled guilty to the charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. He then fled the country before he could be sentenced. Why should he receive any consideration from anyone to avoid being extradited back to Los Angeles County to stand for the crime?

Just because he's a famous director or artiste? Is that why?

Do you want to live in a society where the rule of law can be perverted that way? Really?

Tell me why.

Man o' Law

Polanski Speaks Out on Extradition

2010-05-04T18:40:00.002-06:00

DA says Manson follower Davis not fit for parole

2010-05-01T18:29:00.001-06:00

By LINDA DEUTSCH AP Special Correspondent - Story Created: Apr 30, 2010 at 8:53 PM MDT

The LA County district attorney asked the California governor Friday to reverse a parole board decision recommending the release from prison of Bruce Davis, a former Charles Manson follower who participated in two killings.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The LA County district attorney asked the California governor Friday to reverse a parole board decision recommending the release from prison of Bruce Davis, a former Charles Manson follower who participated in two killings.

Davis, 67, has been in prison since 1972 after being convicted in the murders of musician Gary Hinman and stuntman Donald "Shorty" Shea. He was not involved in the Manson family's infamous murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others in 1969.

District Attorney Steve Cooley wrote to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying he believes Davis remains an unreasonable parole risk and a danger to the public. The governor can accept or reverse the panel's recommendation.

Davis' lawyer, Michael Beckman, said his client is totally rehabilitated and meets state requirements for parole.

He said that at his most recent parole hearing in January, he accepted responsibility for the murders of Hinman and Shea even though he didn't kill anyone himself.

"He said, 'I was as responsible as everyone there,"' Beckman said.
Cooley cited Davis' past efforts to minimize his part in the crimes as a reason to keep him behind bars.

"I strongly oppose the release of inmate Bruce Davis and believe that he is an unreasonable parole risk and a danger to the public," Cooley said in his letter.

Beckman said a petition has been submitted to the governor from those who know Davis and support his release.

"Mr. Cooley needs to read the law on suitability requirements," the attorney said. "He would see that Bruce Davis is a model prisoner who has accepted full responsibility for these acts. He is no longer remotely a threat to anyone."

Beckman said Cooley's office has a blanket policy of opposing parole for life-term prisoners even though the law provides for it.

He also said that given the state's budget crisis, "It would be a good move to save the state $100,000 a year and let him go home. He certainly is rehabilitated in every sense of the word."

Davis became a born-again Christian in prison and ministered to other inmates, married a woman he met through the prison ministry and has a grown daughter. Beckman said Davis earned a masters degree and a doctorate in philosophy of religion. He hopes to live with his wife and daughter in Grover Beach near San Luis Obispo, where he has the possibility of a landscaping job and wants to work with a church.

The only other Manson family member convicted of murder to be paroled was Steve Grogan. He was released in 1985 after leading authorities to the site where Shea's body was buried.

Manson follower Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was released from federal prison last year after serving time for the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford.

Manson and two of his followers, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel, remain in prison for life in the Tate killings. Their co-defendant, Susan Atkins, died in prison last year.

Sharon Tate…Her Raison d'être…

2010-04-30T04:58:00.001-06:00

If anything about anything about Life can be known to MsBurb, it must be that ALL of us born to this Earth have a reason for being.

We, of course, start out not knowing what that reason is, and yet, in our youth, with all its zeal and abounding idealism, we are so sure we’ve figured it all out.

But for most of us, what we thought was our purpose in Life turns out to be anything but.

And the difference between what it really is and what we thought it was is only made known to us moments before…or sometimes, sadly, moments after…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sharon Tate thought she knew what her future held on August 8, 1969. Motherhood. Marriage. Mounting fame.

Anything but Murder.

Yet it turned out that it was her Death that was truly the reason for her Life, her ending fuelling hope in all of us who remain. That her Life, as it was intended, had been fulfilled, even if not to her, or our, expectations. It was the Ending and not the continuation of her Being which would make us sit up and take notice that hers was an exemplary Life of how to Be and Treat others while Being.

Without Sharon’s death, we could no more see the Evil in The Manson Family than we could see the Good in her. Without the loss of her, we could no more possess an example of how to live and not to live.

Her Life was that Greek Tragedy we humans always seem to need to be reminded of every hundred years or so.

Sharon’s raison d’etre was to remind us all that, despite the horror which was unleashed in her undoing, the time that she spent with us on Earth was a shining example of the Beauty and Innocence and a “Joie de Vive” that did encompass all our lives in the 60s.

Yes, there was Vietnam and yes, we had lost an iconic President, but we were slowly learning how to live with those losses and still smile, evident by the music of that time – songs that could be full of darkness one moment and yet full of light the next.

We could have seen this event coming, if we had noticed this dichotomy, and our obsession then for extremes – the Good over the Bad, the Black over the White, the Right over the Wrong – but in our youth, we had no time to entertain the Unknown or the Grey, we shunned the possibility of that our own peers would be the cause of ending our own decade’s long Summer of Love.

In our refusal to see Life through anything but an LSD fuelled, rose-coloured kaleidoscope, we were made to bear witness to people who we thought were all Good being systematically eliminated by people who we decided must be all Bad, forgetting that the victims and the perpetrators were just a reflection of the good and evil in us all.

We needed to grow up and August 9, 1969 was our generation’s Wake-up Call.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today, the Youth of America in the 60s, are the Middle-Aged in 2010.

We’ve grown up, we’ve experienced Life, and we’ve matured. We know what can hold pure joy one moment can have lurking in its shadows pure horror in the next. We are now tempered steel that was once just un-worked ore and we are stronger for the pounding.

The moment Sharon died and took with her in her arms her unborn baby and left this world for another, she knew what her purpose in Life had been, and for her, in that moment, all the pain and the sorrow lifted from her soul like a coastal Californian haze cloud can as quickly lift from the hills of Bel Air.

As we, in Life, have felt her pain and sorrow for forty years, she, in Death, has rested at peace, knowing that her time on Earth was meant as a testament that Life does indeed possess Light and Beauty even amid much Darkness and Repulsion.

What she knew one minute after…on August 9, 1969.

It has taken MsBurb a lifetime to learn.

"Deja Vu"-A Novella-Chapter Three

2010-04-19T15:57:00.007-06:00

(video)

"Now, if you feel that you can't go on,
Because all of your hope is gone,
And your life is filled with much confusion,
Until happiness is just an illusion,
And your world around is crumblin' down,
Darlin', reach out,...reach out for me, girl...."

The Four Tops
Reach Out, I'll Be There

We stood the edge of the pool and watched the bushes. There was movement in the foliage. I couldn't help but wonder what it was that Sharon wanted me to see. It just seemed so dashed hot outside and, standin' still, it was starting to try my patience.

Just then I saw the black and white fur of some little animal.

"What the heck, Polanski?,...are you takin' care of a skunk or somethin'?", I said.

She just laughed and whispered, "Wait a minute...here she comes".

A little black and white kitten stumbled out of the shrubs and Sharon went over, ever so slowly, and bent down and started feedin' it with an eye dropper that she had in her hand.

I looked around to make sure Beasley and Prudence didn't get a visual on her.

"She can only be a few months old, tops", she said.

"How is it that you can always find every errant animal in this zip code, Sharon?", I asked.

It was a failing of both of ours,..these little creatures that seem to need to be loved,...somehow always beat a path to our doors.

Beasley came around the corner, stopped, looked at us, and then went trotting into the open door that led to Sharon's room. I assume that the Pekingese breeding didn't make her much of a hunting dog. She was never much on the whole "chase and destroy" factor that some dogs seem to have at the very heart of their being.

The kitten drank what she could and Sharon kept re-filling the the dropper, from a little saucer on the ground, to get her more.

There was somethin' really sweet about watchin' this. Here Sharon is pregnant and uncomfortable in this LA heat, but she kept goin' enough to make sure this little creature wasn't going to go without lunch for the day.

She always had a fondness for dumb, helpless creatures,....be it kittens or Teamsters.

I could hear that someone had changed the album on the Hi-Fi. I love the Monkees.

(video)

The heat was still unbearable. I could feel my face gettin' hot from too much sun over the past few days.

As Sharon leaned over to give the kitten another dropper full of milk, I saw that her panties had a sweat stain that rode the crack of her ass,...and sweat glistened up the middle of her back.

I let out a sigh.

"Talk to Roman today, Sharon"?

The question brought her back to the here and now.

"Yeah. The little turd ain't gonna be back until Tuesday. He said that he had to wait to get his visa and the consolate won't be open this weekend....I can't believe he's pullin' this shit. Now, of all times,..."

Her tone was irritated.

"Well, it might be a cogent argument, Sharon. If the place isn't gonna be open, there's really nothin' that can be done about it,...I don't suppose he could pull a visa outta his ass,.....which, by the way, yours happens to be sweatin' like a gorilla's".

I was tryin' to make her laugh but she didn't budge. She did, however, reach around and adjust her panties.

"He coulda got it all week but just wants to kill some more time so he doesn't have to see me like this", she said.

This thing with Roman, this repellant attitude towards his pregnant wife, was one of those things that was difficult to understand.

To me, Sharon was one of those women who was absolutely gorgeous bein' pregnant. It was in her eyes, in her awkward way of moving. It was the fact that she waddled when she walked. The way she would cup her arm around her stomach. The beauty of life complete.

Roman was going to live to regret that he hadn't been witness to it....and I told her so.

She finally smiled.

"Thanks, Danny....but it's just very hard to try and do this alone. I just really want Voytek out of this house and the day he leaves isn't comin' soon enough. The guy is bad news".

"How's Abigail been?", I asked.

"She's fine. I got no problems with Gib. I just can't take that arrogant son of a bitch much more,...it's too much to expect. They got that house on Woodstock just sittin' there, but Roman thought it would be a good idea..... ".

Her voice trailed off again. It was as if she really didn't want to speak ill of her houseguests,...least not to me and not with one sittin' in the house at that very moment.

As she stood up straight, a surprising gust of Santa Ana wind blew throught the trees. It caught a wisp of her hair and her eyes glazed over,...like the rushing relief of a narcotic coming to her aid.

"Summer'll be over soon, Shar....I can't wait. I also can't wait 'til you drop that kid and I'll get to see you runnin' around like a crazy woman", I said.

She smiled.

"I can't wait, either".

We walked around to the back of the house, her feeding duties complete, and sat at the edge of the retaining wall on the side of the hill.

We didn't say anything. I began to hum a Mama's and Papa's song to her,...

(video)

She leaned over and put her head on my shoulder. It wasn't in armourous way. Just the way that two chums who have no problem touchin' one another do.

She closed her eyes and said,

"I'm so tired. I'm always tired. I got no strength anymore and I got no husband here to help me. I just wanna sleep all the time".

Prudence and Beasley ran through the back yard in front of us. When Beasley stopped and looked at us, we both silently looked back. The day was takin' a lot out of us and sittin' in the sun wasn't helpin' matters much. It was just too stuffy inside of the house.

The hill was providin' us with some shade, however.

Jay came out of the side door, holding a wine glass, and looked around for us,...or should I say, Sharon. It was as if he was keepin' tabs on her like I was,...just in his own demented way.

"Sharon?", he said, not seeing us right away.

"Back here", was her reply.

He turned around and saw us and Sharon waved a lethargic wave. Slowly,...like,

"Here we are,...you caught us. We're just sittin' here talkin',....just tryin' to be left alone".

He set his wine glass down on the concrete and walked over to where we sat. It was almost awkward, but he felt that he couldn't just walk back into the house and go about his way.

I took up the conversation.

"Sebring,...lemme ask you somethin',...how can you wear all that stuff on a day like today?,...you got the boots,...the long pants,...the leather jacket,....what gives? Are you that cold-blooded"?

The final question was designed to raise a smile....but didn't.

He responded by sayin',

"I have to remain very professional most of the time. There are always potential clients and investors that have,...(he paused),....to be impressed upon. I run a business and this is just a way of life for me. I don't have the luxury of wearin' jeans with holes in the knees and bare-feet,...with a ratty t-shirt. I can't grow my hair long and not take care of it,...I have to shave and bathe on a daily basis".

Obviously, this barrage was directed at me.

Sharon, without lifting her head from my shoulder, simply muttered,

"Your serve, Danny".

"Yeah, and I don't have the luxury of actin' like a complete douchebag every minute of my life,...like you do", I said.

Sharon sat up, threw her hands above her head and proclaimed,

"Set, match,....and score"!

All three of us laughed.

Jay was one of these guys who so desperately wanted to be taken seriously,...but, in the final analysis, even he knew that he was way over the top sometimes. That, at his very core, he always knew that his persona was contrived and well-orchestrated,...to a fault.

Sometimes it would slip and the self-realization of it all would make him laugh about it.

"We live in Hollywood, Dan. This's just the way it is", he said.

I responded by sayin',

"I live in Hollywood. I don't walk around with a scarf around my neck in this heat. I don't wear leather boots,...unless I'm workin', of course,...somethin' that you would know nothin' about".

"You're a gaffer", was his only reply.

"True", I said.

There was a pause.

I didn't retaliate because his tone was not demeaning. It was a statement of fact,...and in this tone, I almost sensed a slight degree of envy. As if somethin' could be said about havin' a faceless career.

"You guys wanna go back inside?,...I'm gettin' really hot", I said.

Sharon straighted herself up, spread her legs apart and put her hands on her knees to gain some ballast.

Jay and I both took an arm and pulled her to her feet.

In spite of our good-natured, adversarial relationship, Jay and I both ran the same line when it came to Sharon's well-being. We both looked out for her best interest and, somehow, respected one another for it.

Whether or not it had the same genesis, that point could be argued....but we both wanted what was best for Sharon....and it was little actions such as this that made us look upon each other with a little less disdain, if only for a moment.

Sharon got to her feet and began to waddle in the direction of the house.

Beasley and Prudence came out of the door, heading in the direction of the front yard. Beasley stopped and looked at us. We all paused and looked back. She then scampered away after Prudence.

"Don't forget your drink, Jay", she said, as she passed by the wine glass sittin' on the concrete.

As Sharon waddled into the door that led to her room, Jay stopped me and whispered, "Thank You".

"For what?", I asked.

"For bein' a good friend. I know she is well taken care of and safe in your hands."

This statement took me by total surprise. All I could muster was,

"Same here, man".

It was gettin' late and there was still no sign of Voytek. I asked Jay if we should think about dinner without him.

Jay scratched his forehead and began to think about it.

"Nah,..he'll be here soon. I can't imagine what's takin' him so long. I don't know where he's at, 'else I'd call him....he'll be here soon. Let's just wait", he said.

I turned and walked around to the front of the house and saw some young man pushing some blue steamer trunks up the walkway on a dolly.

I jogged the length of the yard to go and help this guy because the trunks seemed like they were givin' him a bit of a hard time.

He got to the step and then turned the dolly around to pull it up to the front door.

"Here,...lemme help you", I said as I steadied the trunks.

He hoofed the dolly up the step and then set them back down into a restfull horizontal position.

"Heavy enough", he said, as he pulled the clipboard down from the top of the trunks.

"You need to sign for this".

I took his ballpoint pen and scratched my last name into the area designated by an "X".

"Roman Polanski lives here?", he asked.

"If that's what the name on the clipboard says", I responded.

He paused and looked at the front door.

I began to openly muse aloud.

"He might,...not at the present time, of course,...but he might live here and he might not. I suppose that he could live here,...'course Cary Grant might live here, too".

I paused,....and then continued.

"One thing's for sure, Candice Bergen sure don't live here. I think Mark Lindsey might live here,...but that would be just silly if Roman Polanski lived here,...I don't think Roman Polanski would be livin' in a house with Mark Lindsey.....not unless they were gay or somethin',...which Roman might very well be,...not that there's anything wrong with that,....they just don't strike me as room-mates...ever hear that song "Kicks"?,...Mark Lindsey sang that song.....I don't think he wrote it here because he don't live here,...not now, leastaways,...'course, Patty Duke might have wrote that song and gave it to Mark Lindsey,..she mighta wrote that song here,....but what would Patty Duke be doin' writin' a song for Mark Lindsey in Candy Bergen's house?,...it's all very confusing, ain't it?"

He just looked at me with a vacant stare.

I reached into my jeans and pulled out a quarter. I stuck it in his hand and said,

"Don't spend this all on drink, young man".

Beasley came tearin' around the corner and threw herself at the blue steamer trunks. Why she did this, I do not know.

She slammed into the trunks, fell backward and then looked at us. We both looked back at her.

She then scampered away.

The delivery man shook his head and muttered somethin' about, "....those freakin' Hollywood wierdos",.... as he turned and walked away.

I went in through the front door and yelled,

"Shaaaaaron!,...your shit is on the front porch, babe"!

She came out of the back bedroom, followed by Jay and his wine glass.

"Yaaaayyyy!!!", she exclaimed, sayin' that she was waitin' for them to get there.

She had that genuine smile on her face.

"I got a new bra and panties from Harrod's in there. Now you guys'll see some serious underwear on sexy lil' me".

"Really!?", Abigail chimed in from the sofa, "Oh, I can't wait!,....Harrod's underwear! I have some from them. I adore their underwear, Sharon,..you'll love them. You can't even feel the underwire in the bras,...lucky gal!"

I stood there with my hands in my pockets.

A deadpan,"whatever", was all I could seem to muster about the prospect of her new skivs.

Jay just raised his eyebrows and let out a slow, dramatic breath through puffed cheeks...as if to further underscore the excitment we both felt about the newly delivered undergarments.

Sharon stood expectantly in front of me. She was positively bubbling with excitment. She held out her hand and said,

"Ok,... gimme the keys".

"Keys?", I said.

"Yeah, gimme the freakin' keys, Danny", she laughed.

I was puzzled, perplexed,...and it gave me cause to pause.

"I ain't got no keys, Sharon....don't you have the keys?,...why would I have the keys?", I asked.

"The delivery guy didn't give you the keys?", she asked.

"Why would he have the keys, Sharon?,...keys are made to keep people like him out....to keep people like him from fondlin' your new, fancy-schmanzy underwear....why would he be walkin' around with your keys?", I said.

It began to dawn on her that her new underwear was so close,....yet so far. They might have well still been in England.

"You gotta be kiddin' me", she said. "That fucking Roman didn't send the keys?"

I added insult to injury by askin' why she didn't bring the keys back from England with her.

She looked at me disgustedly.

"....ya know,...this shit ain't funny", she said,....before stompin' off to her room and slammin' the door behind her.

I looked at Jay. We both knew better than to offer any further commentary on the matter.

Abigail walked over and doggedly pointed a finger at the both of us.

"This is no joke, you sons-a-bitches.....I gotta freakin' live here.", she angrily whispered through a clenched jaw .

"How can the both of you be so heartless? Can't you see that she's pregnant? Can't you see that this woman is expecting a child?,...Do either of you have any concept of what it means to be human?,....Does this matter to you,....or are you both that selfish and arrogant?", she demanded.

We stood mute,...not wanting to further fuel the fire of the flammable and furious Lady F.

"Pretty un-fuckin'believable" she said as she turned and walked down the hall in an effort to go comfort Sharon.

Beasley ran into the room and looked at us,.... Jay and I looked back.

She turned her back to us and rapidly kicked her hind legs out behind her, as if to shovel dirt on us.

She then trotted down the hall to Sharon's room to go and comfort her.

Jay and I stood silently by the opened front door.

Finally, after an eternity, he spoke.

"What kinda cheese was that you were eatin' when I got here?", he asked.

"Goooooda. It was Gouda, man", I replied. "Gooooooo-daaaaahhh".

"That looked like a pretty groovy lookin' piece of cheese, man. I'm diggin' it", he said,....as we both turned and walked towards the kitchen,...

“I Am a Refection of You”…Mundane Murders…

2010-04-15T22:05:00.001-06:00

While Dan is off writing furiously on Chapter Three of “Déjà Vu” , I thought I’d climb back out from under my rock, you know, the one that can be found in the cave in which I live, to give you a vague blow-by-blow on how each day begins for MsBurb.

Now, I could say I start my mornings…but who’s kidding who? I don’t have mornings, I have afternoons…which flow into wee hours of the next morning…my days begin when most of you civil people want to end yours.

And if you’ve been following MsBurb at all, each day is kinda divided into two chemicals – Hot Drugs (aka Coffee) and Cold Drugs (aka Booze) – and where one ends, the other begins. But at the start of my day, coffee reigns supreme, but somehow, when others add flavoured creamers to theirs for zest, mine just doesn’t go down smoothly without a daily pinch of MURDER.

Yeah, I’m not proud. My preference has always been autopsy reports but hey, crime scene photos or evidence documents will do in a pinch too.

And far before Manson had re-entered my consciousness, my daily routine involved assessing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. My personal goal: to read ALL 26 volumes of the Warren Commission and failing by my sudden demise, moving on to the Church, Rockefeller and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (better known as HSCA)commissions while I was at it.

Yeah, I know, MsBurb needs a life. Too late for that, it seems.

Two-thirds my way through that literary Mt. Everest, and, of course, assessing along the way, the dozens of conspiracy theories which have long since dogged this murder, I discovered a phenomenon which seems to plague high profile murder cases…the need to fit the motive and the perp to the level of his victim.

If the victim was bigger than Life, then so should be the crime and the criminal.

But sadly, Life doesn’t always fit the version of how we think it should be, and more often than not, the crime and the criminal are very baseline creatures, committed baseline acts that just happen to be on a well above-board human being.

To affix a more loftier reason why such a lofty person was assailed, the loss of that life becomes a wee bit more palatable to take.

And so, forty-seven years later, you can still find Conspiracy Theorists pounding virtual Forum tables, as if JFK were gunned down yesterday, ardently over-confident that a major killing complex was behind the destruction of this iconic President. When actually, if one one takes a page-by-page account of the facts in the case, barring, of course, the average American citizen’s ill-educated assumption that there was a conspiracy to kill, one finds that to the exclusion of all else, Lee Harvey Oswald really did in fact just get to a gun first and shoot the 35th President of the United States.

Why did I digress and force-feed you a condensed version of a Presidential Whodunit Story?

Because this same phenomenon is also at work with how Manson sympathizers view Charlie and the Hinman/TLB/She murders eight years after JFK.

The victims were sensational, some bigger than Life. The convicted perpetrators even more sensational and Charlie as big as one can get in life. So it must follow then, that what is considered the established reasoning behind the killings, and the killers themselves, has to be something other than what is known.

Terry Melcher knew more than what he said.
Charlie wasn’t in town on the nights of the murders.
Voytek’s drug dealing got the Tate victims all killed.
Leno’s gambling and financial dalliances with the Mob did them in.
The Family were paid Hit men guided by a bigger Force who was really pulling all the strings.

And the list of scenarios goes on and on, as long as there are bytes on blogs as yet un-used.

And let’s not forget the umpteen “Tell-All” books published over the decades, prevalent in both the JFK and Manson murders, that will swear this faction or that motive was really at the heart of the killings; yet, when you go in search at the back of these books for a corroborating end-note or bibliography reference, you always come up short, or the reference, if given, leads you nowhere.

I, personally, have no financial or ulterior motive in backing one scenario over another, either in the JFK case or TLB. If I have a Master, it is to the facts in both, and if someone could show me even one teeny, weenie piece of corroborative information that would conclusively lead me to think that either Oswald or Manson were innocent of their crimes, I would gladly want that piece, as I’d now be the most famous North American on the face of the planet!

But, to date, beyond partisan rumours, innuendo and empty accusations, I have nothing that leads me to change my view that both Oz and The Soul are exactly where they should be in all this inflated history – a spec of dysfunctional dust, that when fame wasn’t attainable in the normal sense, infamy was the next best recourse, as come Hell or High Water, Lee Harvey and Charles Milles were going down in History, one way or another.

Once I delved back into the Manson murders, I realized, just having completed my foray into Oswald, how similar these two men were, despite the separate worlds in which they lived;

Both had loveless, unattached Mothers.
Both has no family/domestic security.
Both had very bright IQs but were unable to stay in school and focus beyond a lower grade education.
Both lashed out at women, to vex their frustration on men of power in society.
Both were physically diminutive and suffered a fair amount of peer pressure and bullying because of said, which only fuelled their already firm grasp that the world was indeed out to “get” them.
Both had an inability to keep a steady job, always seeing themselves in loftier positions of power that their lack of formal education would have ever allowed.
Both were arrogant to a fault and challenged authority at every turn.
Both had allusions of grandeur and had to, all all costs, fulfill what they saw as their rightful place in history, even if others had to be sacrificed in achieving that goal.
Both destroyed the futures of prominent people and tangentially affected North American society at large, taking citizens one step further away from innocence and two steps closer to fearing the unknown.
Both men have ardent supporters, to this very day, that everything that is considered fact in these cases, just cannot be. Both CT (Conspiracy Theory) camps refusing to accept the bold face truth but unable in forty plus years to provide evidence to support the contrary.
Both men handled their captures with the coolness of a cucumber and the arrogance that no matter what they did or said, society was to blame and therefore could never really punish them for it.

As we outsiders sit and ponder what next move Manson sycophants will execute in their un-ending goal of freeing their Saviour, just remember Lee Harvey Oswald and the mountains of evidence that support his culpability. There is no difference in the Manson case, and murder, even murder of people larger than Life, is still just murder, a bestial, baseline reactionary attempt at usurping power from those who have it, over to those who do not, the end result – damage and destruction in Murder Most Mundane.

Kokomo…

2010-04-14T00:56:00.001-06:00

If I have to explain everything MsBurb posts on TLB2…what would be the point?…