AUTHORITIES TO DIG IN DEATH VALLEY – MORE MANSON ANYONE?

"Inyo County Sheriff Bill Lutze announced that soil testing at Barker Ranch was inconclusive and he will authorize exploratory excavation at the site necessary to either confirm or put to rest speculation that bodies may remain there from the Charles Manson era," according to a Sheriff's department news release.

Digging is planned from May 20th to the 23rd, with more days added if they find something.

The team included two national lab researchers carrying instruments to detect chemical markers of human decomposition, a police investigator with a cadaver-seeking dog, and an anthropologist armed with a magnetic resonance reader.

Also in the group were a woman whose life was forever marked by the cult's brutal murder of her pregnant sister, and a gold prospector who was once Manson's closest neighbor and remains intimate with the sharp creases of the Panamints.

Prospector Emmett Harder guided the expedition.

He had a claim on Manley peak, one of the jagged points looming over Barker Ranch, while the Manson family camped out there in the late 1960s. He shared dinner with the band at times, and gave the men work.

Their have always been rumors that the Manson family might have killed more people and buried them around the Barker Ranch were they hid after their two day killing spree, killing seven, including the pregnant Sharon Tate.

Manson follower Susan Atkins boasted to her cell mate on November 1, 1969, that there were "three people out in the desert that they done in."

Two teenage runaways who escaped the ranch, then stopped at a nearby mining camp for food. They had made it out of the rugged mountains barefoot.

They turned themselves in to the California Highway Patrol at the mouth of Anvil Springs Canyon -- booked as Stephanie Jean Schram, 17, a runaway from Anaheim, and Kathryn Rene Lutesinger, 17, runaway from Los Angeles, on Oct. 10, 1960's.

There is one story that Charles Manson and Tex Watson took a girl who wasn't fitting in with the group up to land behind the ranch and came back an hour later without her.

There were rumors of other deaths, minors killed out in Death Valley but they didn't have anything concrete to link to the Manson family.

Being a run away myself back in the 1960's it not a stretch to believe that runaways could find the Barker Ranch where the Manson family hid in Death Valley National Monument, now called Death Valley National Park.  It's not a stretch to think someone who had run away for whatever reason from their life would feel safe from being found in that area.  They wouldn't have had to walk there, the Manson Family was known for picking up strays.

If they do find bodies buried out there, there likely will not be another trial.  They will have to try to find out who killed them, where, and who could testify, what killed them, and try to find anyone who might've known them at the time, or witnesses

Spooky was a picture of an abandoned miner's truck that has Helter Skelter written on the back of it behind the Barker Ranch house.

Hikers are welcome to stay in the ranch house; some even say it's haunted.  What I would like to see is the guest book that someone provided for visitors to sign.  Below are some entries that I found:

Entries from polite Europeans with good handwriting complimenting us Americans on our magnificent scenery alternated with all-capital-letter scrawls from apparent fans of Manson: "HELTER SKELTER DUDE! WELL HERE'S TO ANOTHER YEAR OF KILLIN!" There were ballpoint sketches of Manson, and mystifying symbols, and obscure references to the date of his arrest; a ranger at Park Service headquarters said that members of the Manson family come back to the cabin sometimes.

December 30, 2001
What a creepy place. Sometimes I think I see shadows. Here I am, middle-class, middle-aged, eating lunch at a cult leader's house. Only in America.

March 20, 2002
I'm coming back to kill all the people in this cabin. I got all your names from this book. Prepare to die!