"Ritualistic" Manson murders and aftermath recalled
"Ritualistic" Manson murders and aftermath recalled
As the anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders passes, a former official at the LA County Coroner pulls back a curtain on the era
1969 always seemed to me like Year Zero.
Broadway gave us the Age of Aquarius. Apollo 11 brought men to the moon. The military industrial complex in D.C. served up another year of unwinnable war in Southeast Asia.
College campuses were hotbeds of communism and radical politics.
LSD fueled weirdness at an epic scale, while heroin and hashish brought back from the jungles of Asia began to influence intercity politics and drive crime to then unimaginable levels.
Then, like the cherry on top, 1969 served up the Manson Family and the Tate-La Bianca murders. The gruesome Los Angeles killing spree (described as “ritualistic” by The Los Angeles Times) took place over two nights in August and the fueled nightmares of Baby Boomers for years.
Orchestrated by Charles Manson and carried out by his followers including Tex Watson, Susan Atkins and Leslie Ann VanHouten, the slayings of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski at a home on Cielo Drive in Laurel Canyon; and Rosemary and Leno LaBianca at their home in the Los Feliz neighborhood, were chronicled for better or worse by Vincent Bugliosi in “Helter Skelter.” It’s required reading for anyone interested in the true crime genre.
Among the investigators at Cielo Drive on the morning following the Tate killings was the Los Angeles county coroner. An unusual sight even then.
Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi, county coroner, went to the home Saturday afternoon. An hour later he emerged and told newsmen he couldn't elaborate beyond saying the dead were victims of "multiple wounds."
"This is an extraordinary case, a difficult case," he said, explaining why he came to the scene." If my presence is demanded by the people of Los Angeles County, I'll be there."
Making his appearance more noteworthy was the fact that Noguchi had returned to work as County Coroner just 10 days earlier. He’d been fired by the County Board of Supervisors, then subjected to a lengthy hearing and appeal to get the job back. That too was front page news.
The bodies were brought to the Hall of Justice for examination that hot August afternoon. Scott Carrier, recently hired as an embalmer and weeks away from becoming a full-fledged investigator, recalled this week some of what ensued 55 summers ago.
The Saturday morning breakfast crowd at Denny’s hadn’t arrived yet. We had our pick of booths and chose one in the back looking out into the parking lot and a Santa Ana Freeway that was not yet congested.
Scott sipped hot coffee from home a thermos cup he carried over in his car and began to share his unique firsthand experience with the Manson Family over breakfast.
He vividly recalled when Sharon Tate's body arrived at the back door of the Hall of Justice, which occupies the corner of Spring and Temple streets in downtown Los Angeles.
"I remember her being brought in," he said. "I didn't go to the crime scene, but I remember her being on the scale and pregnant, and they had, they had post mortem, post mortem wounds on her belly where she had been cut."
At that time the 13-floor Hall of Justice held the county’s main jail, offices of the county sheriff, the district attorney’s offices and courtrooms. Autopsies were done in the basement.
“I remember one investigator said, ‘Wow, that's pretty tough, very sad.’
“What's that?”
He goes, “‘Take a look at that lady out there.’”
“I don't know who Sharon Tate was. I mean, I'm not into celebrities all that much. Never was. So, I went out and I saw her, and I thought, wow, that's terrible.”
This new case silenced some of the office talk about Noguchi, “The Coroner to the Stars” beating the board of supes.
Quarters were cramped. Because it was a high profile case, windows in the examination room were covered with butcher paper to make it impossible to see inside. That was a practice instituted after another high profile celebrity death. In that case, Noguchi was the medical examiner.
“Marilyn Monroe in 1962 had died, and one of the one of the people that worked there allowed a photographer to come in and take a picture of Marilyn in the crypt area,” Scott recalled. “And after that happened, really, nobody was allowed. They'd taken a lot of cases in the back, but it was such a small area, you couldn't help but not see these bodies. I mean, it's not like having private rooms. There are only, like three areas, the autopsy room across the crypt area and the embalming room, and the rest was all a reception area. So it was very small.”
The Manson trial, which began in July 1970, brought the defendants, including Charles Manson himself, through a hallway near the coroner's office on their way to the courtroom.
Did Charlie give off an evil vibe? Was he scary?
Carrier remembers seeing Manson, shackled and chained, walk by with a "blank stare."
"Deputies used to bring him in a tunnel," he recounted. "He's manacled, had chains on his feet, right? Hands cuffed. And they'd yell out, 'He’s here! Here's Charlie.'"
Outside the Hall, other members of the Manson family had shaved their heads and carved Xs on their foreheads claiming they hade been crossed out of society.
Carrier recalled an encounter with Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, one of the more outspoken of the Manson girls who would later attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford.
“I had a Polaroid picture of me in my whites sitting on the stoop outside the Hall of Justice with Squeaky Fromme and she had a swastika in her forehead. I wish I still had that picture.”
Six months later, Carrier would be a full-fledged investigator.