Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

As to some of those whose lives brought them into contact with Manson and his Family in a significant way, Doris Day’s son, record producer Terry Melcher, at whose former home the Tate murders took place and whom Manson unsuccessfully sought to have record him and his music, is now primarily in the hotel and real estate business on the West Coast. He continues, however, to be involved in the music world. Since 1985, he has been the producer of the Beach Boys’ recordings. Terry and his wife have become quite active in the civic affairs of the community in which they live.

Gregg Jakobson, who met Manson at Dennis Wilson’s home and was the one who introduced Melcher to Manson, whose philosophy on life he found intellectually stimulating, is, to quote him, “half retired and leading the good life” in the charming oceanside community of Laguna Beach, California. Gregg and his wife, comic Lou Costello’s daughter, divorced and he has not remarried. He is the part-owner of a Chinese restaurant in nearby Newport Beach, buys and sells antiques, and does a little music composition working with local musicians.

Dennis Wilson, the drummer for the Beach Boys at whose home on Sunset Boulevard Manson, without invitation, moved into with his Family in the late spring of 1968, and who told me, when I sought musical tapes he had made of Manson, that he had destroyed them because “the vibrations connected with them don’t belong to this earth,” drowned on December 27, 1983, at Marina del Rey, California, while diving off a dock near a friend’s boat. The coroner’s report provided a possible explanation for the drowning. The alcohol level in Wilson’s blood was .26 percent, nearly three times the legal limit for operating a motor vehicle in the state of California. Traces of cocaine and Valium were also found in his system.[101]

George Spahn didn’t much care for the rainy Oregon weather nor the ranch he bought there in 1971, and after a year returned to Los Angeles and moved back with his wife, from whom he had been legally separated. Spahn died in late 1974 at the age of eighty-five. One of Spahn’s daughters told me that Ruby Pearl, the one-time circus bareback rider and horse wrangler who helped Spahn run the ranch, had accompanied Spahn to Oregon. She bought a smaller ranch in Oregon after Spahn reunited with his wife, and is still living there.

In 1979, Ronnie Howard died in a Los Angeles hospital from injuries sustained in a beating by two unknown male assailants. Laurence Merrick, who produced the 1970 Academy Award-nominated documentary Manson, was shot to death in 1977 at his Hollywood studio. The police concluded that both murders were unrelated to Manson or his Family.

After she resolved her parole problems, Virginia Graham opened up a health spa at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel in Honolulu with the $12,000 she received as her share from the Polanski reward money. A survivor, Virginia today is the manager of a fine art gallery in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, and just completed a much expanded version of her 1974 book, The Joy of Hooking, titled Look Who Is Sleeping in My Bed: Madames, Mansions, Murder and Manson. I appreciated what she said about me in her 1974 book, especially in view of Manson’s familiar refrain that I railroaded him. She wrote: “I can’t remember how many times we went down to the District Attorney’s Office to go over my statement with Vincent Bugliosi. I have to say this about Bugliosi. Although I’ve never had much love for authority of any kind, he was absolutely fair, straight and honest. He never once even hinted that I might alter my testimony a little bit to help the state’s case. He was careful to the other extreme, in fact.”

Spahn Ranch was never rebuilt after it was burned to the ground by brush fires that swept the area from Newhall to the sea in September of 1970. The German company that bought the land from George Spahn never developed it into the dude ranch resort for German tourists they had planned. Today, there are no signs that the murderous Manson Family was ever there. All of the ramshackle structures on the ranch are gone and the property, which was eventually sold to the state of California, is deserted, weed-choked land.

The Tate residence went through several owners after Rudi Altobelli, the landlord at the time of the murders. The current owner tore the house down in January of 1994 because he didn’t like “the history of the place,” and is in the process of constructing an enormous $10 million home that will tower over all other homes in the area. The LaBianca home was owned for years by a Filipino couple, the wife reportedly being a friend of Imelda Marcos. They sold it recently to their daughter and son-in-law.