Bruce Davis was one of the men around Charles Manson in 1969. He was convicted in Los Angeles County in 1972 of the murders of Gary Hinman, a musician, and Donald "Shorty" Shea, a ranch hand who wanted to work in films. Both men were killed in the summer of 1969, about a month apart. Davis was not involved in the killings of the actress Sharon Tate and others at her home in August 1969, or in the LaBianca killings the following night, and he was never charged in those cases.
For most of the next five decades his name came up in public mainly when he went before California's parole board. Between 2010 and 2021 parole panels found seven times that he was suitable for release. Each time a governor reversed the decision: Arnold Schwarzenegger once, Jerry Brown four times and Gavin Newsom twice. In July 2022 a panel denied him parole itself. He died in state custody on September 11, 2026, at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. He was 83.
Little is known of Davis's childhood. Alta Journal, in a long account published in December 2023 and based on interviews with him and his parole transcripts, describes him as a native of Louisiana whose father, a heavy drinker, taught him welding. Davis told the writers that welding gave him the only good memories he had of growing up with his father. His relationship with his father came up repeatedly at his parole hearings. In a January 2013 letter opposing his release, the Los Angeles County district attorney, Jackie Lacey, wrote that he blamed his father and Manson for his crimes.
The University of Tennessee Libraries' Volopedia, an online encyclopedia of people connected with the university, records that he entered the University of Tennessee in the fall of 1961 and attended for six quarters, about a year and a half. It says he began taking LSD in 1965. Alta Journal says he left school and hitchhiked west in his early twenties and worked odd jobs. He later described the 1960s to the Alta writers in three words: "aimless, desperate, seeking."
In the spring of 1968 a mutual friend took Davis to a house in Topanga Canyon where Manson was living with a group of followers. Davis told Alta Journal that he found Manson charming and talented, a man with many friends in music. He spent the following months traveling and settled with the group in 1969, as it was moving toward more serious crime.
By the summer of 1969 Manson and his followers were living at Spahn Ranch, an old film ranch in Chatsworth in the northwest San Fernando Valley. Volopedia describes Davis as one of Manson's chief lieutenants and says he ran the ranch when Manson was away. News outlets later called him Manson's "right-hand man." Those labels come from secondary accounts; the court record shows what he did.
Gary Allan Hinman lived on Old Topanga Canyon Road, in the Malibu area of Los Angeles County; news reports describe the house as being in Topanga Canyon. He was 34 and a musician. Fox News described him as a friend of several members of Manson's group. The Court of Appeal, reviewing Manson's own conviction in 1977, called him a man known to only a small circle of friends, who owned his house and some stocks and bonds. That property is what drew the group's attention.
According to testimony summarized in the Court of Appeal's 1977 opinion in People v. Manson, Manson talked in July 1969 about getting money for dune buggies, and Hinman's name came up as a source of it. On July 26, Manson told two followers to go to Hinman and persuade him to join the group or sign over his property and cars; one of them refused. That evening a witness saw Manson talking with Bobby Beausoleil and Davis. Beausoleil had a knife. Davis had a 9 mm Radom pistol that, according to the testimony, he had bought under an assumed name.
Davis then drove Beausoleil and two women from the group to Hinman's house, arriving around midnight. According to earlier testimony by one of the women, read at Manson's trial, Beausoleil demanded money and a fight followed. She later said she had lied in parts of her testimony at Beausoleil's trial, so her account is disputed. Later Manson and Davis arrived at the house, and Manson had a sword. Davis has since said, at parole hearings, that he held a gun on Hinman while Manson cut Hinman's face with the sword. Manson and Davis then left in Hinman's Fiat station wagon. Hinman was held in his house for about two days; he was then stabbed in the chest and died. The Court of Appeal stated that Beausoleil struck the fatal blow, and held that everyone who took part in the robbery was guilty of first-degree murder whoever struck it.
Someone wrote the words "political piggy" on a wall of the house in Hinman's blood. A deputy sheriff found Hinman's body on July 31, 1969, after a telephone call to the authorities. Hinman's Fiat was seen at Spahn Ranch on July 28. On August 6, a California Highway Patrol officer found Beausoleil in the Fiat on Highway 101 near San Luis Obispo and arrested him. Beausoleil was later convicted of Hinman's murder.
The indictment alleged that Hinman was killed on July 27, 1969. CBS Los Angeles, in several reports, gave the date of the stabbing as July 25.
Donald Jerome Shea, known as Shorty, was 35. He took care of horses at Spahn Ranch and mostly lived there. He wanted to be an actor and a stuntman, and he owned a matched pair of Colt revolvers that he sometimes pawned for small sums. According to trial testimony, the ranch's owner wanted Manson's group off the property, and at the owner's suggestion a man had agreed to hire Shea as a guard.
Manson came to see Shea as an enemy. According to trial testimony, Manson blamed him for a police raid on the ranch on August 16, 1969, and called him an informer who was trying to get the group thrown off the ranch. About a week before the raid, Manson threw a knife that stuck in a door in front of Shea. Shea's wife last saw him on August 16, when the couple separated; he telephoned her that night and said he would stay at the ranch.
About two weeks later a woman named Ruby Pearl, whom Shea had asked about staying at her home, was driving away from the ranch when she saw Manson, Davis and two other men get out of a car and walk toward Shea. She never saw him again. A former member of the group testified that she heard screams she recognized as Shea's coming from the creek that night. CBS Los Angeles reported that he was last seen alive on August 27, 1969.
In the following weeks Manson told several followers that Shea had been killed. One witness testified that Davis was present at two desert ranches where the group stayed when Manson spoke about it. Investigators found Shea's car in Chatsworth on December 9, 1969, with his footlocker in the trunk, and Davis's fingerprint was on the footlocker. Shea's suitcase and briefcase turned up the next February under brush in Goler Wash. His body was not found before Manson's trial.
Davis's own accounts of Shea's death changed over the years. For a long time he said he made a "token cut" on Shea after Shea was already dead, under pressure from Manson, Governor Brown wrote in 2013. Later he said he cut Shea with a knife while others stabbed and beat him. Alta Journal's 2023 account, drawn from his own description, says that Manson sent Davis and three other men to lure Shea into a car on a pretext about car parts, that they attacked him in the brush at Santa Susana Pass, that another man struck the fatal blow, and that Davis walked away and went to sleep in a bunkhouse at the ranch. Brown also wrote that Davis later bragged about what had been done to Shea's body.
Steve Grogan, who was also convicted of Shea's murder, later led authorities to Shea's remains. CBS San Francisco gave the year as 1977; Alta Journal gave it as 1985. Grogan was paroled in 1985, and for decades he was described in news reports as the only member of the group convicted of murder to be released.
Davis stayed with the group at the ranch until Manson's arrest on October 12, 1969, Alta Journal reported. He then hid with a couple of young women in San Bernardino. One morning, he told the Alta writers, he decided to turn himself in. "That was my first good decision in a long time," he said. "I just knew that I couldn't live on the run."
He surrendered outside the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles on December 3, 1970. A photograph taken at the time showed him bearded and barefoot, with an X carved between his eyebrows, Alta Journal noted. An Associated Press photograph dated December 17, 1970, shows him being taken into a Los Angeles courtroom.
A Los Angeles County grand jury indictment charged Manson, Davis and another follower with Hinman's murder (count one) and with conspiracy to commit murder and robbery between about July 25 and July 28, 1969 (count two). Count three charged Manson, Davis and Grogan with Shea's murder between August 16 and September 1, 1969. Manson's trial was severed from the others.
Manson was tried first. The jury took 24 days to pick and the trial ran 43 court days. Deliberations began on October 21, 1971, and on November 2 the jury found Manson guilty on all three counts and fixed his penalty at life imprisonment. The Court of Appeal affirmed that judgment on June 23, 1977. Its opinion held that circumstantial evidence and Manson's own statements were enough to prove Shea's murder even though his body had not been found.
Davis was tried separately. Alta Journal reported that a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder on March 14, 1972, after 12 days of deliberation, about 15 months after he surrendered. He was sentenced to life in prison. The Associated Press, in several reports, said he was serving a life sentence for two counts of first-degree murder and for conspiracy to commit murder and robbery; UPI and KTLA said he received two life sentences. Alta Journal described the sentence as seven years to life.
A footnote in the Court of Appeal's 1977 opinion in Manson's case records that Davis was tried separately for Hinman's murder and that his conviction was affirmed in an unpublished opinion, People v. Davis, on March 31, 1976. No later court decision setting aside any of his convictions was reported.
Accounts differ on his age at sentencing. The Associated Press said in 2012 and 2013 that he was 30 when he was sentenced; Alta Journal said 28.
Davis entered state prison in 1972. In a 2010 decision, Governor Schwarzenegger noted that after Davis entered prison he had associated with the American Nazi Party, and cited it as a sign that Davis followed others too readily.
He told Alta Journal that he became sober at Folsom State Prison in 1974 and converted to Christianity the same year. He described a vision of the prison yard, and said: "When that light came on, it showed all my dirt." Around that time, he said, he saw another prisoner killed, and it made him understand that he deserved to be in prison.
He became eligible for parole in 1977, Alta Journal reported, and the board denied it at his first hearing in 1978 and at the hearings that followed through 2008. He had no disciplinary write-ups after 1980, according to Alta Journal and the 2010 parole board, which KTLA quoted as saying he had not been disciplined since 1980 and had taken part in all available education, vocational and self-help programs.
Davis spent most of his sentence at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, where he became part of the prison's Christian community and ministered to other prisoners. He earned a master's degree and a doctorate in the philosophy of religion; Alta Journal said the doctorate in theology came from Bethany Theological Seminary and that his dissertation was a 10-chapter course for Christians that he went on teaching. He completed drafting and welding programs and took courses through several colleges, and he worked as a printing plant operator, clerk, orderly, porter, teacher's aide and instructor.
He married a woman he met through the prison ministry, and the couple had a daughter. News reports in 2012 and 2013 said they had divorced.
In January 2010 a parole panel found Davis suitable for release for the first time. CBS News reported in 2012 that at that hearing he said, for the first time: "I was as responsible as everyone there." The board's chairman and a psychiatrist appointed by the board supported his release.
The Los Angeles County district attorney, Steve Cooley, then the Republican nominee for attorney general, urged Governor Schwarzenegger to reject it. Schwarzenegger reversed the grant in a decision signed June 22, 2010, and made public on June 28. He called the killings especially cruel and wrote: "I believe his release would pose an unreasonable risk of danger to society at this time." He said Davis had made "some credible gains" in prison but had repeatedly tried to minimize his part in the crimes. He questioned whether Davis still followed others too readily, citing the Nazi Party association and Davis's statements that he would defer to his wife's authority if released, and wrote that Davis "still exhibits conformist tendencies."
Davis's lawyer, Michael Beckman of Santa Monica, said he would sue in Los Angeles County Superior Court, arguing that the governor had no valid grounds to overrule the board's chairman and its psychiatrist. He called the decision "a political calculation rather than an individual consideration." No ruling on that challenge was reported.
Davis's 27th parole hearing was scheduled for June 13, 2012, at the California Men's Colony. The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Patrick Sequeira, told CBS News that Davis was "not fully rehabilitated" and had not shown true remorse. Beckman said Davis accepted responsibility for the group's other murders as well, that Davis thought that as one of the older members he should have led by example, and that if he had refused to take part in the Hinman killing, the Tate and LaBianca killings might not have happened. Volopedia records that the June hearing was postponed because Davis felt ill.
The panel heard the case on October 4, 2012, the eve of his 70th birthday, and recommended parole. A former member of the group who had testified at the trials and Sharon Tate's sister, Debra Tate, attended to oppose release. The board cited his good conduct, his lack of recent disciplinary problems and the education and self-help programs he had completed, UPI reported, citing KTLA. "We certainly disagree with the board's decision," said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office. If released, Davis was to live in transitional housing run by religious groups in Los Angeles County.
In January 2013 the new district attorney, Jackie Lacey, wrote to Governor Brown urging him to reverse the grant, saying Davis "still lacks insight and genuine remorse for his crimes." On March 1, 2013, after meeting Lacey, Brown announced at a Los Angeles courthouse that he had reversed it. In a six-page decision he wrote that Davis "continues to withhold information about these events," though he was beginning to reveal details, and that in rare cases a murder can be so grave that it shows current dangerousness by itself, and that this was such a case. He wrote that until Davis could acknowledge and explain why he had actively championed the group's interests, he was "not prepared to release him."
Beckman called the decision "horrible" and said Davis had told everything he knew. Of the more than 700 life prisoners he had represented, he said, Davis was "the most rehabilitated and qualified." He argued that a governor's paper review could not show who Davis was. If the case had not carried Manson's name, he told KTLA, Davis would already have been released.
On March 12, 2014, at his 28th suitability hearing, a panel again found Davis suitable for parole. He was 71. Debra Tate, who attended, told CBS Los Angeles that she felt sick about the decision and did not believe he had changed.
At that 2014 hearing Davis testified that he had stabbed Shea and held a gun on Hinman while Manson cut Hinman's face. "I wanted to be Charlie's favorite guy," he said. The Associated Press quoted that line in many later reports.
On August 8, 2014, Brown reversed the grant. He praised Davis's efforts to improve himself but wrote that the evidence showed Davis "currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison." A spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Davis would get another hearing within 12 to 18 months of the March hearing.
Davis challenged the 2014 reversal in Los Angeles County Superior Court. On April 22, 2015, Judge William C. Ryan upheld it. Ryan found "some evidence" in the record that Davis was still dangerous, gave broad deference to the governor's discretion, and held that the decision was not cruel or unusual punishment. He wrote that the treatment of both victims showed "the utmost callous disregard for human suffering." Ryan noted that Davis had not admitted his role until 2012, after years of calling himself an innocent bystander. Beckman said he was stunned, that "the judge is wrong," and that he would appeal. No appellate decision was reported.
On August 27, 2015, at his 30th hearing, a panel at the California Men's Colony found Davis suitable for release a fourth time. He was 72. Brown reversed that grant on January 22, 2016. He wrote that Davis remained a danger, that he had spent years downplaying his role, and that he had "fully bought into the depraved Manson Family beliefs." Davis had not explained, Brown wrote, what led him to accept Manson's "Helter Skelter" belief and commit to violence in its service. Of the killings, Brown wrote that "the fear they instilled in the public will never be forgotten." Los Angeles County prosecutors had opposed release, citing the nature of the crimes and Manson's hope of starting a race war.
On February 1, 2017, at his 31st hearing, a panel again found Davis suitable for release. He was 74. Late on a Friday in June 2017, a week before his deadline, Brown blocked it. "These cult murders have left an indelible mark on the public," he wrote, saying the group was still feared, and that this was the rare case where the gravity of the crime alone was enough to deny parole. He also wrote that Davis "continues to minimize his role in the violence of the Manson cult."
Davis moved to San Quentin State Prison in 2019, Alta Journal reported. Later in 2019 a panel led by Commissioner Arthur Anderson found him suitable for parole again, citing the law and his long record of rehabilitation. On November 15, 2019, Governor Newsom reversed it, the sixth time a governor had blocked his release. Newsom wrote that Davis had not shown a "comprehensive understanding of how he came to participate in such extreme violence" and lacked "the current insight and skills to abstain from violent situations in the future if released." He described the group as one of the most widely known criminal cults in California history, whose crimes left a legacy of terror and pain. Beckman said Davis could not afford to challenge the decision in court. "They're wrong," he said of the governors. "He is rehabilitated and has been for a long time."
On January 22, 2021, Commissioner Deborah San Juan and Deputy Commissioner Neal Chambers found Davis suitable for release, citing his age, his long confinement and his physical condition. It was the seventh such finding. At the time, former District Attorney Steve Cooley said that if deputy district attorneys stopped attending such hearings, victims and families would have no advocate there, and that a group of lawyers was being organized to appear for them. On June 18, 2021, Newsom reversed the grant, concluding that Davis "currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison at this time." Beckman said he was not surprised and accused California's leaders of playing politics with his client's life.
On July 8, 2022, a two-member panel, Commissioners Julie Garland and Rachel Stern, denied Davis parole and told him to try again in three years. "They said he lacks empathy," Beckman said afterward. Alta Journal, which drew on the hearing, said the commissioners cited his minimizing of his personal responsibility and a lack of "change, growth and maturity." Garland told him that his talk of redemption could not be separated from his part in the group, and raised concern about his willingness to speak to church groups about his redemption, saying it could hurt the victims' families and inspire others.
Anthony DiMaria, a nephew of Thomas Jay Sebring, a victim in the Manson case, spoke against parole on behalf of Hinman's family. "Bruce Davis remains in prison because his crimes were so severe and profound that they shook our country to its core with permanent repercussions," he said. Beckman said the 14 commissioners before these two had found Davis suitable, and the last nine experts to evaluate him had rated him a low risk of violence. "For these two commissioners to think they know better is appalling," he said.
Davis was not due back before the board until 2025, but in 2023 his application for an earlier administrative review was approved, Fox News reported. A hearing was set for January 18, 2024.
In February and April 2023 Davis had given two telephone interviews to Keith Rovere, a former prison chaplain who hosted a true-crime podcast. They talked about his faith, a book he was writing in prison, his first meeting with Manson and life at the ranch, but not, Rovere said, about the killings. According to California Department of Corrections records described by Fox News, the January 2024 hearing was postponed. Davis said the commissioners had raised concerns, and Rovere said the postponement followed directly from the commissioners learning about the interviews. Davis wrote to Fox News Digital that he had not heard the podcast and asked: "Does it sound as if I'm glorifying Manson or my crimes?" Records showed a new hearing date of August 8, 2024. The outcome of that hearing was not reported.
At San Quentin Davis led informal Bible studies in the yard, often sitting on an upturned bucket, until a hip replacement in September 2021, Alta Journal reported. He had emphysema, a second hip that needed surgery, and had survived COVID-19. The Alta writers described him in late 2023 as increasingly frail.
Davis died on September 11, 2026, at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, where he was serving his sentence, Fox News Digital and FOX 11 Los Angeles reported, citing TMZ for the time of death. A spokeswoman for the Solano County coroner's office confirmed the death to Fox News Digital and to ABC News but gave no further details. No cause of death had been released as of the reports of September 14, 2026. He was 83 and had been in prison for more than half a century.
Charles Manson was convicted of the murders of Hinman and Shea and of conspiracy, sentenced to life, and died in prison in 2017. Bobby Beausoleil was convicted of Hinman's murder; Newsom blocked his parole in 2019, and he remained in prison as of November 2019. Steve Grogan was convicted of Shea's murder and paroled in 1985.
Proven by final judgment: Davis's convictions for the murders of Gary Hinman and Donald Shea, with conspiracy to commit murder and robbery. The Hinman conviction was affirmed on appeal in 1976. No report records a death sentence for Davis; every account that gives his sentence calls it life.
His exact acts: the Court of Appeal found that Beausoleil struck the fatal blow on Hinman. Davis admitted at parole hearings that he held a gun on Hinman while Manson cut his face, and that he cut Shea with a knife. His earlier accounts, that he was a bystander or made a "token cut" after Shea was dead, were rejected by the governors as minimizing. Fox News wrote in 2024 and 2026 that he was not the direct killer of either man. Alta Journal's account has another man striking the fatal blow on Shea and Davis walking away.
Details that differ between accounts: the date Hinman was killed (July 27 in the indictment; July 25 in CBS Los Angeles reports); the year Grogan led authorities to Shea's remains (1977, CBS San Francisco; 1985, Alta Journal); Davis's age when sentenced (30, Associated Press; 28, Alta Journal); and how his sentence is described (life, two life terms, or seven years to life).
Davis has also been named in online discussion as a suspect in other unsolved killings, including the Zodiac case. No law enforcement agency or court has made such a finding, no reliable report supports the claim, and he was never charged with any killing other than those of Hinman and Shea.
1961: enters the University of Tennessee, attending about a year and a half (Volopedia).
Spring 1968: meets Charles Manson in Topanga Canyon.
1969: settles with Manson's group, which lives at Spahn Ranch in Chatsworth.
July 26, 1969: drives Bobby Beausoleil and two women to Gary Hinman's house; Manson and Davis arrive later.
July 27, 1969 (date alleged in the indictment): Hinman is killed.
July 31, 1969: Hinman's body is found.
August 6, 1969: Beausoleil is arrested in Hinman's car near San Luis Obispo.
August 16, 1969: police raid Spahn Ranch.
Late August 1969: Donald "Shorty" Shea is killed; last seen August 27, according to CBS Los Angeles.
October 12, 1969: Manson is arrested.
December 9, 1969: Shea's car is found in Chatsworth, with Davis's fingerprint on Shea's footlocker.
December 3, 1970: Davis surrenders outside the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles.
November 2, 1971: Manson is convicted of the Hinman and Shea murders.
March 14, 1972: a jury finds Davis guilty of first-degree murder; he is sentenced to life.
1974: becomes sober and converts to Christianity at Folsom State Prison.
March 31, 1976: the Court of Appeal affirms his conviction (People v. Davis, unpublished).
1977: eligible for parole; Grogan leads authorities to Shea's remains in 1977 or 1985 (accounts differ).
1978 to 2008: denied parole at his first hearing and later hearings.
1985: Grogan is paroled.
January 2010: first finding of suitability for parole.
June 22, 2010: Schwarzenegger reverses it (made public June 28).
October 4, 2012: second grant, at his 27th hearing.
March 1, 2013: Brown reverses it.
March 12, 2014: third grant; Davis testifies, "I wanted to be Charlie's favorite guy."
August 8, 2014: Brown reverses it.
April 22, 2015: Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan upholds the 2014 reversal.
August 27, 2015: fourth grant, at his 30th hearing.
January 22, 2016: Brown reverses it.
February 1, 2017: fifth grant, at his 31st hearing.
June 2017: Brown reverses it.
2017: Manson dies in prison.
2019: Davis moves to San Quentin; sixth grant.
November 15, 2019: Newsom reverses it.
January 22, 2021: seventh grant.
June 18, 2021: Newsom reverses it.
September 2021: hip replacement.
July 8, 2022: a board panel denies parole for three years.
February and April 2023: podcast interviews.
January 18, 2024: scheduled hearing is postponed; reset for August 8, 2024.
September 11, 2026: dies at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, aged 83.