March 15: The abandoned Barker Ranch house in the Panamint Mountains west of Death Valley National Park, Calif. Charles Manson and his followers retreated to the Barker Ranch after a killing spree during the summer of 1969.
Charles Manson in 1949 at the age of 14.This photo was in an Indianapolis newspaperalong with the headline "Boy leaves'sinful home' for new life in Boys Town."He escaped three days later.
Experts Find Possible Evidence of More Manson Family Murders
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Associated Press
DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — Bone-white stretches of salt, leached up from the lifeless soil, lay like a shroud over the high desert where a paranoid Charles Manson holed up after an orgy of murder nearly four decades ago.
Now, as then, few venture into this alkaline wilderness — gold-diggers, outlaws, loners content to live and let live.
But a determined group of outsiders recently made the trek. They were leading forensic investigators searching for new evidence of death — clues pointing to possible decades-old clandestine graves.
And the results of just-completed followup tests suggest bodies could indeed be lying beneath the parched ground. The test findings — described in detail to The Associated Press, which had accompanied the site search — conclude there are two likely clandestine grave sites at Barker Ranch, and one additional site that merits further investigation.
Next step, the ad hoc investigators urge: Dig.
For years, rumors have swirled about other possible Manson family victims — hitchhikers who visited them at the ranch and were not seen again, runaways who drifted into the camp then fell out of favor.
(snip)
Last month, equipped with cutting-edge forensic technology, the investigators assembled in the ghost town of Ballarat for a 20-mile ride in all-terrain vehicles to the ranch.
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.
WHAT A "CRIME FIND"...
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