Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

All other family members convicted of Manson-related murders, with the exception of one, are also still behind bars. Bruce Davis, convicted of the murders of Donald “Shorty” Shea and Gary Hinman, is presently at the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo, California, and Robert Beausoleil, also convicted of the Hinman murder, is at the California Correctional Center at Susanville, California. Only Steven Grogan (“Clem Tufts” in the Family), convicted of Shea’s murder, has been released.

Grogan was by all accounts the most unhinged and spaced out (on psychedelic drugs) of all Manson Family members. Even in the Family he was considered crazy. Yet the transformation behind bars for Grogan, eighteen years old at the time he participated in Shea’s murder, was remarkable. Burt Katz, who prosecuted Grogan, and is now a retired Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, says he was “favorably impressed” by the change in the openly remorseful Grogan, and felt he had matured into “a thoughtful, sensitive young man.” Sergeant William Gleason of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a lead investigator in the Shea murder, was similarly impressed, calling the change in Grogan “amazing.” Grogan became very adept behind bars at painting watercolors and playing his guitar, and obtained an airplane engine mechanic’s license.

One of the enduring Manson Family mysteries was cleared up by Grogan. It had become part of Manson Family lore, possibly to frighten all members who had a mutinous thought, that Shea was decapitated by Grogan and had been cut up and buried in nine separate places at Spahn Ranch. However, extensive digging at the ranch by law enforcement had failed to uncover Shea or any part of him. In 1977, Grogan, while at the Deuel Vocational Institution at Tracy, California, asked to see Katz. Determined to prove he had not beheaded Shea, and that Shea had not been cut up into nine pieces, he drew a map for Katz, pinpointing the location of Shea’s body. Subsequently, Sergeant Gleason and his partner found Shea’s remains in one piece at the spot designated by Grogan—the bottom of a steep embankment about a quarter mile down the road from the ranch. On November 18, 1985, Grogan was released from prison, and was discharged from parole on April 13, 1988.

Although Manson, today, has far more supporters and sympathizers than ever were members of his Family, I know of no group at the present time, in or out of prison, calling themselves the Manson Family and trying to keep the flame alive. The nomadic band of minstrels, waifs, and latent killers he assembled around him in the late ’60s is no more, and no new group has emerged to take their place. With two exceptions, all of his former followers have severed their umbilical cord to him, starting new lives. Only Squeaky and Sandra (“Red” and “Blue,” Manson calls them), their faces still suffused with a missionary glow, have remained irrevocably wedded to him, and still fervently preach his gospel.

Squeaky has served most of her life sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution at Alderson, West Virginia. She is presently at the Federal Correctional Institution at Marianna, Florida, transferred there from Alderson on March 3, 1989. Some time back the Associated Press reported her saying that “the curtain is about to come down on all of us, and if we don’t turn everything over to Charlie immediately, it’s going to be too late.” In a 1977 unpublished manuscript about her life with Manson, Squeaky wrote: “People said that I was Manson’s main woman…[but Manson’s] main woman is the truth. She comes before anyone or anything, and he’s with her always in life or death.” When Squeaky learned, on December 23, 1987, that Manson had written to some friends in Ava, Missouri, that he had testicular cancer,[100] she escaped within hours from Alderson to come to him, but was apprehended a few days later only two miles away. In a letter to a friend earlier that month, she wrote: “I only live and feel alive when I think of him.”

Sandra Good served ten years (five of which, from 1980 to 1985, she spent with Squeaky at Alderson) of her fifteen-year sentence. She now lives in Hanford, California, a town near Manson’s prison at Corcoran. Though she does not have visiting privileges, she is content to be geographically close to Manson, and has become the main spokesperson and cheerleader for him on the outside, telling whoever will listen, including national television audiences, that Manson is innocent of the Tate-LaBianca murders, and would be a “fantastic” person for the country to follow, one who would “give the children back to themselves.” Good’s boyfriend, George Simpson, does have visiting privileges, and reportedly is an intermediary for Manson.