2nd Official Tate-LaBianca Murders Blog

It gets light awfully early in the desert. Not a sound, usually, just the dawning of a new day, the sky as colourful as a Zombie cocktail, layers of mauve, neon pink, then pastel pink, bright yellow, then pastel yellow, and as the minutes tick by, those layers evaporate into a pale blue, then an electric blue, which stays as brilliant ‘til the day is done. But today, there were sounds coming with the dawn, only these sounds were not from Mother Nature, these were Man-made, un-natural, unsettling… Moans, groans, murmurings…rustling… Low and few and far between, then louder and stronger, filling the entire cabin, originating from all who had slept there last night. Well, almost all. And it was this sensory scene which awoke Sharon from her fitful sleep. She looked exhausted, dark circles lay under her eyes, a sight not usually seen with this beauty. As she quietly rose up from her cot, she looked to her left and saw that Charlie was still in bed, totally unchara...

Photo by Lara Hartley It had only been less than twenty-four hours since Bruce and I had left Barker for our supply run but Bruce was as fidgety as a cat on a hot tin roof to get back to The Family. Usually Bruce was a pretty non-chalant guy but not today. “Jesus, Man, will you hurry up with them sacks, the morning’s dragging on and I don’t want to get caught in the Wash at dusk”, Bruce barked. “Yeah, yeah, stop getting your shorts in a knot”, I barked back. As Bruce loaded the last of the supplies and got all the paper-work straightened out with that old codger who runs the General Store, he paid what was due, slipped the last of the small items into his gunny sack in the back of the Jeep and plunked himself in the driver’s seat, loaded for bear, the engine slowly turned over with an annoying fan-belt whine but got off the starting block real fine as Bruce floored the throttle. Photo by D.A. Wright I was going to bug him again about his impatience at getting started...

Things seemed to kind of fall into a routine. All the provisions were bought and stored in caves all over the desert near Barker. The field phone lines were laid, the look-out bunkers were dug (great chore to give Sadie!) and everyone’s defences started to lower after a time, that no fuzz had come up to question The Family of late, on any of their nefarious activities, much less the L.A .murders. But not everyone was as blissful as Charlie had thought. “Hey Charlie, are you plannin’ on sendin’ anyone to Ballarat for some perishables, as the girls are tellin’ me we’re getting low on dairy and such?” asked Bruce, as the two leaned on the chassis of another broken dune buggy engine. “Well Hell Bruce, Paul and them guys just went down! And we’re low already? Shit! Too many people to feed now. Too many, Man, and they keep wanderin’ in too. I swear George is sending us every walk-in weirdo he finds on his boardwalk down in town, up here!” yelled Charlie, as he threw a wrench...

Days flowed into nights, and nights into days, and soon Paul Richard was born and Sharon felt real joy for the first time since August 9th. Charlie, of course, wouldn’t accept Sharon’s chosen name for her baby boy and in a layman’s ceremony, in the old porcelain bathtub out by the pool, Charlie christened him Scorpio, a short form version of the venomous spiders which made Barker their home and with which Charlie was so enamoured. Sharon accepted the name – how could she refuse -  and all the girls fawned over this new little life that they were calling their own. In yet another yelling match that Charlie and I had, and on yet another banishment to Ballarat for rice, I overheard on a trucker’s radio an emergency APB for Sharon as the police knew her delivery date was near and was urging the public to come forward with her whereabouts. I never told Charlie nor Sharon of the news. Ignorance was closer to bliss in this regard, I felt. But then again, I shied away from an...

Tex returned from his buying spree for Charlie and for the pregnant Sharon and we all waited for the sun to set before heading out of Tinsel Town. Loaded and ready, Bob and I lit cigarettes and waited for the others to follow. Tex had given Sharon an old faded jean shirt and jeans to wear, to keep her warm in the cold desert air and to protect her from the searing sun when dawn broke. Goler Wash wasn't a Pass you did by moonlight but that rule had to be broken to lessen the risk of Sharon being spotted heading out of town and to avoid the midday desert heat that would surely make her ill. Those risks were greater than the lack of light we’d experience traversing the Pass. We did however have the advantage of a clear night and a full moon to guide us as I slowly pulled out of Tex's parking stall and headed north for the Panamint Range, silently praying that everything, and everyone, would go as planned. As I glanced in my rear-view mirror, I saw Sharon sitting ma...

Percolating coffee on the stove is mesmerizing, isn't it? And as I watched the bubbles pop through that glass carafe, the smell made me think of home. Charlie never let us think of our past lives but brewing coffee has a way of luring your thoughts back to simpler times, before Charlie and the Family, before all this pressure and confusion, before Sharon Tate... Tired and beaten, I leaned over the stove top like an old man and as I closed my eyes and let the aroma seep into my senses, a soft voice cut the stillness of my thoughts. "Hi. Can I have a cup?" "Sure", I stammered, my mouth incapable of working while my eyes were filled with the sight of her. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen and it was almost sacrilegious to have her standing Tex's galley kitchen. She was smaller and more frail than I remembered seeing on the silver screen; her honey-brown hair loose by her sides, with such an angelic face God himself could...

Sharing a joint and and a few beers, we three sat there in the living room literally stunned by the story Tex was telling. He had found a way to get money for Charlie but things didn't go as planned and now we were left to pick up the pieces. "It wasn't supposed to be this way." Tex insisted. "I was just going up to Melcher's old place, to scout out the house and grab some shit from the back rooms. Once, I saw Terry slip the backdoor key into the eaves trough outside; so, I thought I could creepy crawl in and just grab some shit to fence and be outta there before anyone knew. I mean, we'd done this kinda shit before, why not do it again, right?  So anyways, I took George's Ford up there and got into the property as easy as you please; I parked at the bottom of Cielo . The key was there and I went in and no one seemed to be around. I headed for the dining room to see if there was any silver and then I saw one light on, on a desk in the livi...

Our jeep’s headlights flashed on to the stucco building where Tex’s girlfriend’s place was. It was dark by the time we pulled into the car park. The complex was dead quiet except for the singsong of the cicadas in the bushes. And the night air was still but the heat was heavy, as if the night had no power to drive it underground. We slowly stepped out of our seats, our backs tight and stiff from the trip. We stretched, the both of us, tired and dusty, and trudged back to the hold to get our gear and all those guns. Why the guns? I thought to myself but I was too tired to seek the answer that night. We both headed down the complex sidewalk and hit the first outside staircase we could find. Tex told us he was in #207; and within a few minutes and a few feet we found his front door. Knocking quietly and waiting for a reply, only moments slid by until the door slid open to reveal the bugged-out eyes of Tex staring back at us. “Boy, am I glad you guys are here...

Chapter Seven 4 a.m. came ‘round pretty quick. I was jolted awake without ceremony by an already dressed Bob kickin’ at Paul and I with his boots. “Come on Sleeping Beauties, Rise and Shine. It’s 4 and we gotta get a start before the heat sets in. It’s gonna be a long one and I’d like to get to Tex’s place with enough time to score some tabs and some grass before we have to leave.” Said Bobby. “Yeah, yeah, we’re comin’” I mumbled. And out we crawled, threw on our clothes, packed some stuff in our gunnysacks and grabbed our shotguns off of the large brad nails hammered into the wall and headed for the door. The sun was already threatening to come over the Panamints and the sky was a groovy neon pink melting into a mild yellow, then a white until you knew that a brilliant blue and its heat was on the way. We loaded up the Jeep with water and a bit of jerky the Girls packed for us, grabbed two handguns from deCarlo in the outbuilding that he had made ready for us, we said...

Dedicated to A.C. - You know who you are... Chapter One It was 140F in the shade but that didn’t slow my progress. My head and shoulders seemed like they were on fire and I wished I had brought a hat with me. No time to think after Charlie yelled at me to get going. He could be such a hard-ass sometimes. Once he got a thought in his brain and told you to do something, you had to do it NOW, or else. We had been preparing stashes all week, of 5 gallon cans of gas, cooking oil and barrels of dried jerky in all the caverns and caves Charlie could find. We were all tired and some of the girls had rashes on their legs and arms from digging out these desert hide-a-ways. It was my turn to feel the heat, not just from the desert floor, but from Charlie’s wrath; and I couldn’t tell which was hotter. Chapter Two Everything seemed to be on track since Charlie left the Enslen Institute on the 11 th . I was just glad he had come into his own with new...