Unanswered Questions about this case

[starviego]

Here are some of my unanswered questions regarding the murders.  What are yours?

-- After 1am on Aug 9nth, police received at least two phone calls reporting shots fired and/or a 'woman screaming' in the area of Cielo Drive. What happened to the police log reporting these calls? What was the official response(i.e. units dispatched)? Did the detectives ever bother to follow up on these leads?

-- From the crime scene at Cielo:
-Did Steven Parent's knocking down of the fence with his car really have nothing to do with him being murdered seconds later?
-Who left the glasses at the scene?
-How to account for the blood of Sebring and Tate outside the front door on the landing?
-Was Sharon being dragged around, accounting for the blood smears on her body?

-- Why did it take at least 45 minutes for the cops to show up at 10050 Cielo Dr after the first 911 calls reporting a homicide or homicides were made the morning after?

-- Were some or all of the murders(including Crowe(attempted) and Hinman) actually premeditated, targeted killings?

-- In a homicide case, it is SOP for the investigators to do a door-to-door survey of the neighbors to see if they saw or heard something, or had background info. Yet the results of these "neighborhood canvas" events were never disclosed. Why not?

--Who was occupying the two houses bracketing the LaBianca house the night of Aug 9nth, which were officially empty? Who pulled the security guard off duty from the Earl Anthony house?

-- Was Charlie ordered to move up to the Haight after his release from prison? How did he end up with the nation's most highly educated and overqualified parole officer, noted for his laxity in actually supervising Charlie, who then apparently left the parole officer profession once his time with Charlie came to an end?

-- Why did investigators show no curiosity in interviewing the "researchers"--run out of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic and funded by the Feds--who lived with the Family for a time out at Spahn and Barker Ranches? Why did investigators show no curiosity in interviewing most of the ex-cons and bikers that hung around Charlie?

-- How did Bill Vance manage to get three ID cards issued to him direct from the DMV in three different names?

-- Why did the LASO and various parole/probation officers have a 'hands off' policy on Charlie and the Family in the spring and summer of '69?

-- Did Charlie have contact with the Black Muslims after he was released from prison?

-- Did Folger and/or Tate go to Esalen in the beginning of August? Is that why Charlie also went there? Who invited Charlie to appear there?

-- Where was Bobby Beausoleil in the first week of August? Where was Bruce Davis in the first week of August?

-- Why did Charlie order Beausoleil to go back to the Hinman crime scene to wipe off what they had written on the wall in blood?

-- Why did Charlie send Bruce Davis to London for an extended stay in December of 1968?

-- Who was the 'black leader' that Van Houten claims the Family went to see to convince him of Helter Skelter? Who was the black man who got into an angry confrontation with Charlie at Spahn that summer, according to witnesses Watkins and Lake?

-- What's the real reason Winifred Chapman disappeared from her home for three weeks?

-- Was Abigail Folger threat-tripped by militants while down in Watts?

-- What was the result of Peter Folger's private investigation into the killings? Why did he allegedly threaten to sue anybody who wanted to publish a story on his daughter?

-- What were the results of any tox screen for THC/Cannabinoids or Cocaine in the urine/blood of the victims at the Cielo crime scene? If they were not tested for those drugs(found at the scene)--why not? And if they were tested for those drugs, why were the results not reported?

-- Why did film producer Merrick and defense attorney Shinn collude to introduce the defamatory newspaper headline "Manson guilty, Nixon declares" into the trial?

-- How is it that Merrick seemed to have special access to Manson from the Sheriff's Deputies at the jail and to the Family at Spahn? Is it just coincidental that someone in Merrick's crew was filming the Family before TLB?

-- Why didn't the Crowe homicide detectives quickly hone in on Charlie?

-- Did the Hinman homicide detectives ever go up to Spahn Ranch in the months after Gary's murder as part of their investigation? And if the answer is no, why not? Given that two clues at the scene--the words "Political Piggy" written in blood on the wall, and the pile of half burnt radical political tracts on the floor in the living room--explicitly pointed to a political motive, were Gary's political activities ever investigated?

--Why did the investigators never show much curiosity as to where the Family got their illegal guns, their illegal drugs, or how they obtained all those 'stolen' credit cards? You'll note a few of the Family girls got arrested for using stolen credit cards, but no one ever got arrested for stealing credit cards.

-- Why did the FBI not acknowledge their own active role in the investigation?

-- If Helter Skelter was the motive, why was Charlie not angry or frustrated that the cops and media didn't blame the Panthers, and there was no race war afterwards? And why did he not then order up more Helter Skelter to make the connection? Why did he kick off Helter Skelter before the underground cavern in the desert--critical to the Family's surviving the apocalyptic race war--had been located? Why didn't the Family try to deflect attention to the Panthers as responsible for TLB in their initial police interviews?

-- Why did the defense attorneys not introduce exculpatory evidence during the penalty phase of the the trial that the killers were strongly under the influence of amphetamines at the time of the murders?

-- Why did the Bureau of Prisons(BOP) refuse to release their full records of Charlie's imprisonment in Federal lock-ups before 1967 to the prosecutor Vince Bugliosi?

-- Why did Bugliosi, in his book Helter Skelter, ignore the influence of the philosophy of the Black Muslims and the Fountain of the World on Charlie's own Helter Skelter beliefs? Both of those philosophies were MUCH closer to Charlie's than anything that could be could be gleaned from Scientology or the Book of Revelation.

-- Why did Bugliosi ignore the obvious parallels between the saga of the Family and the plot of Robert Heinlein's book Stranger in a Strange Land?

-- What did Charlie do in Mexico that got him thrown into the Can down there in early 1960?

[KitKat]

IDK the answers to your questions but I have one of my own. Even after all the times I've read the book and followed this I just today got to wondering about DeRosa pressing the mechanism to open the gate to leave. Didn't the maid have to do the same thing right after she discovered the bodies and ran out to the neighbors? And wouldn't that have left a superimposed print prior to DeRosa doing so?

[starviego]

Now that's a good question!

[DaLa]

In Helter Skelter, Bugliosi does report the questioning of De Rosa in a 'guilty of smudging the bloody print' format. KitKat is 100% correct that he would of actually smudged the maid's print and presumably someone re evaluated their train of thought as I have never seen a follow up to this . Bugliosi describes it as thus...'Later De Rosa would be questioned on this'. The book doesn't state whether it was 5 minutes or 5 years later or by whom De Rosa was interviewed by. It appears from other publications that his name became mud for his 'misdeed'

Eventually it did not matter as Watson's print was found at the scene and Atkins revelled in the glory of her involvement; then Kasabian more or less sealed it for the prosecution.

Back to De Rosa, I believe he summed it up pretty well:

'I had to get out of there'

[edhaldeman]

I gotvthe Tate LaBianca police reports online. The police did survey neighbors around the Tate residence. They reported gunshots and screaming around 1:00....Which according to coroner would be Tate and Sebring. They also reported gun shot and screaming around 4:00 which according to the coroner would be Folger and Frykowski....Parent is a mystery....His gunshot wounds correspond to 1:00 but his body temperature corresponds to 4:00. Another of the myriad mysteries surrounding these horrific murders.