Charles Manson, Leslie Van Houten's Mentor
The "known" Manson family murders involved the violent killing of eight persons and an unborn baby. Leslie Van Houten was convicted of murder and assisting those murders.
But were there other murders committed by Manson's followers that were never solved or prosecuted? Here are a few possibilities. What does Leslie know about them?
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James Sharp and Doreen Gaul
James Sharp, age 15, and Doreen Gaul, 19, were found murdered in a Los Angeles alleyway in November 1969, not far from where the Tate-LaBianca murders were committed. And like those murders, Sharp and Gaul's involved "
extreme overkill," a similarity immediately noted by police investigators.
The strangest possible connection to the Mansons, though, is religious. Both Sharp and Gaul were involved with a splinter group of Scientology known as the Process Church of the Final Judgment, or "The Process" for short. Manson himself was
connected to The Process, borrowing some of their ideology for his own cult and maintaining contact with them after his conviction.
Whether Sharp and Gaul's murders were committed by the Mansons or had anything to do with their religious involvement is unknown, as the case remains unsolved and with no apparent motive.
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Reet Jurvetson (aka "Sherry Doe")
On November 16, 1969, the body of an unidentified young woman was discovered by a bird watcher, dumped on an embankment
off Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. She had been stabbed 157 times. Known simply as "Sherry Doe," she went unidentified for 46 years, until a mortuary sketch of the victim was recognized by family friends of
Reet Jurvetson in 2016.
The MO of her murderer was very similar to the "overkill" employed by the Manson Family, so even before she was identified, police suspected that she had been a Manson victim. After her identification, detectives questioned now-81-year-old Manson in prison, but the cult leader proved unhelpful.
There is another suspect in the case, an unidentified man whom Reet had left home to meet, but Manson's silence on the issue doesn't mean much. Throughout his incarceration, Manson liked to play mind games, so Reet's family and the police may never know who really killed her.
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Marina Habe
Marina Habe was
kidnapped from her mother's driveway shortly after Christmas Day in 1968 by at least two people driving a black sedan. Two days later, her body was discovered in the underbrush off Mulholland Drive; she had been murdered, the victim of multiple stabbings. The medical examiner ruled that she had been stabbed
by more than one person.
Strangely, one year later, Reet Jurvetson's body would be dumped on almost the exact same spot - as if someone who killed young women had come to like that particular stretch of Mulholland Drive.
Because of the very similar MOs of Habe's and Jurvetson's murders, their proximity to the Spahn Ranch, and their similarity in turn to the Manson family's infamous "overkill," it has always been suspected that Habe was a Manson victim along with Jurvetson. But there has been little evidence to go on, and her case has never been solved.
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Ronald Hughes
Each of the Manson Family members tried for the Tate-LaBianca murders had their own defense attorney. Ronald Hughes, the lawyer for Family member Leslie Van Houten, disappeared on a camping trip during a recess for the trial in November 1970.
Hughes had last been seen by hikers near the Sespe Hot Springs in Ventura County, CA, after his camping companions heeded an order to evacuate due to flash floods. They said he was alone and away from the area of the flooding. But when the court reconvened the Family's trial on Nov. 30, 1970, Hughes failed to appear. Police searched the camping area for Hughes after the flooding subsided, and the judge in the case eventually assigned Van Houten a new defense attorney.
Hughes's badly decomposed body
was discovered wedged between two boulders on March 29, 1971, the same day the jury returned the death penalty against all defendants in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial. He had to be identified by dental records, and no official cause of death was ever recorded due to the state of his body at the time of discovery.
While most people think Hughes's death was accidental, at least one Family member,
Sandra Good, claimed that he had been killed by Manson followers as retaliation for some slight he'd caused to Manson during the trial.
Van Houten received a life sentence for her crimes.
LINK:
10 Creepy Unsolved Mysteries Surrounding The Manson Family
No parole.
