Bishop - Dig begins at Barker Ranch

Inyo County Sheriff’s Department Crime Scene Investigator Christian Ray marks the spot in the scorched desert earth where a shell casing was discovered Tuesday. Law enforcement and a team of scientists are pain-stakingly searching Barker Ranch for bodies that various tests have indicated (though inconclusively) may be buried there. Photo by Ken Koerner

5-22-2008

DEATH VALLEY – On a day when temperatures rose to 118 on the floor of Death Valley, the real heat was being generated over the hill in Goler Wash at the notorious Barker Ranch, where scientists and law enforcement officers were taking shovel to earth for the first time in an effort to learn whether bodies may lie buried beneath the scorched terrain at the site of the former Manson Family hide-out.

The mystery of possible Manson clan murders at the location where Charles Manson and 23 of his followers were arrested by local authorities back in 1969 has refused to die. During the past year, searches have been periodically conducted in an effort to seek clues to the potential of long-ago capital crimes. Despite employing the most advanced forensic technology ever used in the field during a crime scene investigation for undiscovered graves, despite the world-class scent detection of highly-trained cadaver dogs, and in spite of conflicting prison-based statements from incarcerated Manson family members known to have been present at the Barker Ranch during that era, authorities were given no ultimately dependable confirmation of buried bodies. As a result, Inyo County Sheriff Bill Lutze was left with a growing volume of data and a dwindling number of choices in answering that gnawing question once and for all.

High-tech equipment and cutting-edge techniques are being put to use at Death Valley’s Barker Ranch this week in the search for possible Manson Family victims who may be buried at the site. Photo by Ken Koerner

At just about high noon, the gathered participants started final preparations for probing the “number one site” at the ranch. The first dig site was selected because it had produced the greatest nexus of clues, based upon the search dogs, the soil samples, the ground-penetrating radar and the lasers that make buried bones glow blue in the dark, according to one of the scientists that had returned to Death Valley after an earlier search.
“This is going to be an interesting field test of the amalgam of indicators that bring us to this particular site first,” Oakridge National Laboratory analytic chemist Marc Wise said. “This is a site where the search dogs alerted, a site where the promising geophysical signatures were reflected in the soil testing and where the ground-penetrating radar was also registering something being buried there. A lot of things coincided at this particular locale that coincide with a clandestine grave being present … then again, it could turn out to be nothing more spectacular than some large rock and some plant decomposition that mirrors certain chemical signatures of human decomposition.”

Inyo County Sheriff’s Investigator Jeff Hollowell puts shovel to earth in the search for bodies and evidence of bodies at Barker Ranch on Tuesday. Photo by Ken Koerner

It’s the existence of that very “then again” aspect of all that has been found to date that created the determination to undertake what Lutze has described as “a limited excavation.”
The science and the dogs can only give indicators, they can’t give absolute confirmations. Hence, the old-fashioned shovels came into play under the watchful eyes of highly-trained professionals, working with yet another “CSI-ish” laser device that will “map every pixel” of a crime scene within its view with a total three-dimensional, real-time record of what was found and where. The experts spoke in glowing terms about this particular device.
“LIDAR, or Light Distance And Ranging technology, creates a 3-D laser view of a crime scene and it is all recorded in real-time,” Oakridge National Laboratory scientific researcher Arped Vass said. “We can label it, we can review it later in a lab, it can be reviewed by both prosecutors and defense attorneys at a later time as they prepare for trial. This device will allow us to scan at a distance of less than an inch in depth, at six inches, at a foot down. It will show the shape of the evidence uncovered. It will show precisely where on the earth such evidence was found, within one millimeter of precision.”
The one thing that LIDAR devices can’t do, of course, is excavate the ground upon which it is focused. Yet it was clear from the care and the attention given to the use of the computer-laser hybrid that what it can do is important, indeed.
The sole piece of “evidence” uncovered during the window in which media were allowed to be present at the dig site Tuesday was a shell casing, but apparently of a material that suggested it did not derive from the Manson clan era at Barker Ranch. Nonetheless, it was evidence and was handled carefully, photographed, cataloged, placed into an evidence envelope – and, of course, was LIDAR’ed, too.
Echoing a statement made last month by Sheriff Lutze, this process in Death Valley National Park is clearly at the cutting edge of investigative work, according to Utah Attorney General Forensic Consultant Charles Illsey.
“We’ve been working with well over a half-million-dollars worth of donated equipment at Barker Ranch and it’s given us a perspective of a crime scene that’s never been seen before,” Illsey said. “What we’re out here doing this week could well alter forensic investigation’s ability to help solve many crimes in the future.”
As with the other scientists gathered at Tuesday’s dig, Illsey seemed gracious toward and yet rather uninterested in the gaggle of media asking question after question – and yet it was just that ubiquitous international explosion of media coverage that enabled him to make his connection with this case. “I saw a story on the television about the Barker Ranch and the possible bodies buried here and thought, ‘Hey, that would be the perfect field test for what we are working with at the Utah Attorney General’s Office.’ So, I placed a call to Sheriff Lutze and here we are.”
And here the scientist and Inyo County Sheriff’s Department personnel will remain for the next few days. The current schedule of activities includes excavation each day through tomorrow, May 23. At that juncture, another decision will be facing Inyo’s top cop. A choice will be made at that point on whether to continue the operation into the future, or say all that can be reasonably done has been done.