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Hunt for bodies begins at Barker |
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Wednesday, 21 May 2008 |
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By Ken Koerner
Register Staff 5-20-2008
When world-class forensic science is unable to provide a definitive answer, when highly-trained cadaver dogs have certain inconsistencies as to where they “alert,” when rumors still linger though decades have passed, what’s left for an investigator to rely on when trying to learn – once and for all – if bodies have been buried in the desert? Careful digging down toward the truth.
That’s the scenario that has led the Inyo County Sheriff’s Department to where they will find themselves today – overseeing the excavation of possible gravesites at the storied Barker Ranch in Death Valley National Park.
As many will recall, or have recently learned thanks to massive media attention, this remote ranch site was the final hideout of Charles Manson and 23 of his followers – his “family” they called themselves.
Some 40 years after Manson – found hiding in the ranch house bathroom by now-retired CHP officer Jim Pursell – was arrested by the CHP here, his infamy has leached into the Barker Ranch soil just as surely as if it were raindrops disappearing into the parched, arid landscape.
Inyo County Sheriff Bill Lutze and key members of his department have listened attentively to the experts that have been increasingly active in their desire to find some inescapable bit of evidence that Manson victims lie undisturbed underground. As the mounting data accumulated, Lutze made the call to break out the shovels.
“There was no consistent response from the dogs that searched and no conclusive findings from the soil samplings tested by top experts in the field,” Lutze said in statement issued May 9. “Therefore, I believe the only way to determine once and for all whether there are bodies buried at Barker Ranch from the time of the Manson family is to proceed with limited excavation in a very few areas.”
This decision was certainly not an easy one to make, from the standpoint of a tight county budget perspective, which was no doubt part of the motivation to taking every step up to this point as carefully and methodically as possible. But as Lutze has said in the recent past, “That’s the nature of law enforcement; we truly are required to do what we believe must be done to determine whether a crime has been committed.”
The world’s news outlets have been humming about the possibility of buried victims at the ranch, particularly since an exploration that took place in late 2007 with Mammoth Lakes Police Department Sergeant Paul Dostie and his cadaver-historical grave-trained canine partner, Buster, at the forefront.
Buster led Dostie to a number of particular sites where the skilled K-9 officer let his human partner know, “I think there could be a body buried here.”
“It all started in the fall of 1998 when I was at our local fair and an Inyo County sheriff’s deputy told me about a dig for bodies at the Barker Ranch that summer,” Dostie previously told the Mammoth Times. “They had been contacted by an author named Bill Nelson. Nelson told them that he was talking to a former Manson Family member who claimed that there were murder victims buried behind the Barker Ranch. They went out to the Barker Ranch with Nelson and his witness. They dug and found nothing. The person who claimed that he was a former family member was Larry Melton, aka White Rabbit.”
Dostie believes that Nelson was duped by Melton and Melton was a fraud who had some brief contact with family members after the arrests.
But Dostie said he has good reason to find other reports of alleged Manson Family homicides at Barker Ranch more credible.
Following the media flood of attention that was stirred by Dostie’s late 2007 outing and its initial “findings,” others made the long trek to Death Valley in an attempt to “learn what they could learn.”
Scientists from the Oakridge National Laboratory in Tennessee came armed with their sensitive “sniffing” gear. That added a layer of confirmation to certain of the spots keyed on by Buster. Other search dogs with different handlers came to the ranch, with some inconsistent results but with enough in support that Inyo officials decided to fund their own “CSI forensics” exploration.
Though the techniques were “fascinating,” once again there could be no absolute evidence discovered as to the presence of long-buried bodies.
Today, earth will be turned and perhaps bodies will be found. – but if they are, just whose bodies are they? An indigenous ancestor of the region’s Native American population, which stretches back in the area for thousands of years? A miner from the early days of searching for wealth beneath the rock of the region? Only time, and probably some intensive DNA-testing, will tell.
Even after identifying any possible remains, investigators still likely wouldn’t have much to go on, according to Stephen Kay, now the city prosecutor for Redondo Beach, but formerly the assistant to then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi during the Manson trials.
“It would mean nothing if human remains were found out there,” Kay previously told the Mammoth Times. “Who would you connect a murder to? I don’t know of any evidence of anyone being killed up there.”
Which is true; all there are now are rumors of at least two possible young people who disappeared from the ranch. One was a girl who wasn’t really fitting in at the ranch, and was taken for a walk by Manson and Tex. According to the stories, she allegedly never came back. The second story is of a boy who was backpacking the length of Death Valley and stopped at the Barker Ranch for a few nights. The boy disappeared, but left all his gear behind. When one family member asked Clem Grogan, another family member, where the boy was, Clem is reported to have said, “He got homesick.”
As stated above, these stories are all rumor and hearsay at this point, but one source, who asked not to be named for fear Manson and his family members would not speak to them again in the future, interviewed Manson in prison several years ago. The source asked Manson about the Barker Ranch, but before Manson could answer, his jail house lawyer cut him off, saying that Manson would not talk about any crimes that do not have statute of limitations, and could result in further indictments of people. According to law enforcement and the source, in California there are only two crimes that do not have a statute of limitations: murder and embezzlement of public funds.
Whatever may be uncovered at Barker Ranch in the coming days, the world will be watching and waiting.
Deluged with calls from media sources wanting to be on the scene during the excavation, Sheriff Lutze set up some stringent parameters to control access to the remote site and to protect against any potential for disturbance of possible evidential sites.
Lutze has issued a statement announcing the limits on media access. It states that news access will be limited to one local newspaper (The Inyo Register), one local radio/television outlet (Sierra Wave/KSRW), and representatives of other major media “to be chosen among the interested media themselves.”
That media pool will consist of one television network (minimum crew) that will agree to share video, one radio broadcast representative, and one print representative who will post coverage on a major news wire service.
Reporting on the progress of the exploratory excavation will be included in The Inyo Register published on Thursday, May 22 and in our sister publication, the Mammoth Times, in its weekly edition that will also be available on May 22.
(Prior reporting by the Mammoth Times contributed to this article.)
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 25 June 2008 )
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