Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

If Abigail was along, they must have left the restaurant before ten, as it was about this time that Mrs. Folger called the Cielo number and talked to her, confirming that she planned to take the 10 A.M. United flight to San Francisco the next morning. Mrs. Folger told the police that “Abigail did not express any alarm or anxiety as to her personal safety or the situation at the Polanski house.”

A number of people reported seeing Sharon and/or Jay at the Candy Store, the Factory, the Daisy, or various other clubs that night. None of the reports checked out. Several persons claimed to have talked by phone with one or another of the victims between 10 P.M. and midnight. When questioned, they suddenly changed their stories, or told them in such a way that the police concluded they were either confused or lying.

About 11 P.M. Steve Parent stopped at Dales Market in El Monte and asked his friend John LeFebure if he wanted to go for a ride. Parent had been dating John’s younger sister Jean. John suggested they make it another night.

About forty-five minutes later Steve Parent arrived at the Cielo address, hoping to sell William Garretson a clock radio. Parent left the guest house about 12:15 A.M. He got as far as his Rambler.

The police also interviewed a number of other girls rumored to have been with Sebring on the evening of August 8.

“Ex-girl friend of Sebring, was supposed to have been with him on 8-8-69–not so—last slept with him 7-5-69. Cooperative, knew he used ‘C’—she does not…”

“…dated him steady for three months…knew nothing of his way-out bedroom activities…”

“…was to go to a party at Cielo that night, but went to a movie instead…”

It was no small assignment, considering the number of girls the stylist had dated, yet none of the detectives was heard to complain. It wasn’t every day they got the chance to talk to starlets, models, a Playboy centerfold, even a dancer in the Lido de Paris show at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas.

There was another barometer to the fear: the difficulty the police had in locating people. To have suddenly moved a few days after a crime would, in ordinary circumstances, be considered suspicious. But not in this case. From a not untypical report: “Asked why she had moved right after the murders, she replied that she wasn’t sure why, that like everyone else in Hollywood she was just afraid…”

AUGUST 16–30, 1969

Though the police told the press there had been “no new developments,” there were some that went unreported. After testing them for blood, Sergeant Joe Granado gave the three pieces of gun grip to Sergeant William Lee of the Firearms and Explosives Unit of SID. Lee didn’t even have to consult his manuals; one look and he knew the grip was from a Hi Standard gun. He called Ed Lomax, product manager for the firm that owns Hi Standard, and arranged to meet him at the Police Academy. Lomax also made a quick ID. “Only one gun has a grip like that,” he told Lee, “the Hi Standard .22 caliber Longhorn revolver.” Popularly known as the “Buntline Special”—patterned after a pair of revolvers Western author Ned Buntline had made for Marshal Wyatt Earp—the gun had the following specifications: capacity 9 shots, barrel 9½ inches, over-all length 15 inches, walnut grips, blue finish, weight 35 ounces, suggested retail price $69.95. It was, Lomax said, “rather a unique revolver”; introduced in April 1967, only 2,700 had been manufactured with this type grip.

Lee obtained from Lomax a list of stores where the gun had been sold, plus a photograph of the model, and LAPD began preparing a flyer which they planned to send to every police department in the United States and Canada.

A few days after the Lee-Lomax meeting, SID criminalist DeWayne Wolfer went to 10050 Cielo to conduct sound tests to see whether he could verify, or disprove, Garretson’s claim that he had heard neither screams nor gunshots.

Using a general level sound meter and a .22 caliber revolver, and duplicating as closely as possible the conditions that existed on the night of the murders, Wolfer and an assistant proved (1) that if Garretson was inside the guest house as he claimed, he couldn’t possibly have heard the shots that killed Steven Parent; and (2) that with the stereo on, with the volume at either 4 or 5, he couldn’t have heard either screams or gunshots coming from in front of or inside the main residence.[14] The tests supported Garretson’s story that he did not hear any shots that night.