HELTER SKELTER HORROR

8/9/1969 - Shortly after midnight, twenty-three-year-old Manson Family member Charles "Tex" Watson tells aspiring screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski, "I'm the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business!"  Executioner to his victim, it is as true a statement as true can be.

                                         
                                                            Watson

One of the bloodiest, and most blood chilling nights, to ever take place in Southern California, begins when thirty-four-year-old maniac Charles Milles Manson (a 5'2" half-pint career criminal who is caught stealing for the first time at the age of nine, before graduating to armed robbery by the time he turns thirteen), sends a group of young whack-jobs that follow his addled leadership, to an address he knows in Beverly Hills, 10050 Cielo Drive, hoping to get revenge for his failed music career and perhaps start a new civil war between the black and white citizens of the United States (a madness he calls Helter Skelter, taking the title for his insane idea from a Beatles' song from their White Album, he expects to be the leader of the new America that will spring from the chaos he creates).  

                                   
                                                            Manson
                              
                                                    Destination - Death

Watson, Susan Atkins (21), Linda Kasabian (20), and Patricia Krenwinkel (21) are given their marching orders ... destroy everyone they find at the home (the former residence of Terry Melcher, Doris Day's son, a music producer Mansion believes has betrayed him), and do it in as gruesome a manner as is possible (leave something "witchy" behind Manson tells his team).  To terrible effect, they will do as they are told!

                 
                                     Atkins                                               Kasabian
                                                
                                          Krenwinkel

Very wrong place at the wrong time, their first victim is Steven Parent (18), a student who has the misfortune of visiting a friend (William Garretson, caretaker for the estate) who is living in the property's guest house on the night of the rampage.  Attacking the teenager as he is in the process of leaving the property in his Rambler at the Main Gate, Watson attains his first kill of the evening, slashing the youth with knife, then shooting him four times in the chest and stomach with a .22-caliber revolver.  The group then creeps up to the main house, breaks in, and takes hostage the people they find sleeping inside.

                                               
                                                            Parent

Found inside the home are the wife of director Roman Polanski, eight and half months pregnant movie actress Sharon Tate (26), internationally known hairstylist Jay Sebring (35), Polanski friend Frykowski (32), and Frykowski's girlfriend, the heiress to a coffee fortune, Abigail Folger (25).

            
                            Tate                                            Sebring & Tate - 1966
             
                          Frykowski                                              Folger

In the butchery that ensues, Frykowski and Folger attempt to escape and go down fighting.  Frykowski is killed by Atkins and Watson on a porch outside the house, stabbed in the legs, hit over the head with Watson's pistol, shot twice, and then stabbed some more ... a grand total of fifty-one times.  Folger gets to the front lawn in her failed flight for life, murdered by Krenwinkel and Watson in another stabbing overkill, her's a death of twenty-eight knife wounds (Kasabian has been told to stand watch at the Main Gate).  Sebring and Tate never make it out of the house.  The first to go, Sebring is shot and stabbed by Watson seven times.  Tate, pleading for the life of her unborn baby, is killed by Watson and Atkins, stabbed to death a grisly sixteen times.  Murders complete, before leaving, the killers write "Pig" on the front door of the house ... in blood.

                 
                                                         Crime Scene
                                 

Eventually all the participants in the killings, including Manson, will be brought to justice, the case broken when Atkins runs her mouth about her part in the deaths to her bunkmates, Ronnie Howard and Virginia Graham, while under custody at the Sybil Brand Institute detention center in Los Angeles.  Found guilty and sentenced to death, the killers escape appointments in the California gas chamber when the Supreme Court of the state stupidly abolishes the death penalty in 1972 (having killed no one, Kasabian escapes by turning against her friends by becoming a witness for the prosecution).  Atkins will die of a brain tumor at the Cenral Women's Facility in Chowchilla, California, at the age of sixty-one.  The others, Watson, Manson, and Krenwinkel remain behind bars, still serving their life sentences while they await their coming eternities of damnation.

                
                                                Members of the Manson Family

MADNESS IN TEXAS

8/1/1966 - After weeks of hearing voices and having strange thoughts he doesn't understand, twenty-five-year-old Engineering student and former Marine, Charles Joseph Whitman, once the youngest Eagle Scout in America, puts the plan he has to end his many pains into effect ... climbing to the top of the Main Building Tower of the University of Texas at Austin with a footlocker filled with weapons and ammunition, he begins shooting anyone his guns can target.

                               
                                                          Whitman

Familiar with guns and knives since boyhood from hunting expeditions with his father around Lake Worth, Florida, Whitman's rampage begins shortly after midnight with a visit to his mother's apartment.  So she won't suffer and embarrassment from his coming actions, the madman renders the woman who gave him birth unconscious, then stabs her through the heart.  Murder #1, before he is done there will be 16 more.  Murder #2 is also a family member, this time his wife of four years, twenty-three-year-old Kathleen Francis Leissner, a teach at Lanier High School, stabbed four times in the heart as she is sleeping in the couple's bed.

                                  
                                             Tyke with toys
                               
                                                              Mom
             
                                                        Wife

Relatives taken care of, Whitman completes a suicide note and then starts gathering the supplies he will need for his mission of mayhem.  He first rents a dolly, then drives to a local hardware store and purchases a Universal M-1 carbine, two ammunition magazines, and eight boxes of ammo, explaining to the cashier that he is going "wild hog hunting."  Next stop is Chuck's Gun Shop where four more carbine magazines and six additional boxes of ammo are procured.  Then he is off to Sears to buy a Sears Model 60 12-gauge, semi-automatic shotgun.  Purchases complete, he returns to his home, saws down the barrel of the shotgun, and loads his supplies into the footlocker he acquired during his stint in the Marines ... a Remington 700 6mm bolt-action hunting rifle, the shotgun, a .35-caliber pump rifle, the carbine, a 9mm Luger pistol, a Galesi-Brescia .25-caliber pistol, a Smith & Wesson M19 .357 Magnum revolver, and over 700 rounds of ammunition go in, along with other items he might need for a long day on the campus, necessities like food, coffee, Dexedrine, Excedrin, ear plugs, water, binoculars, a machete, and toilet paper.  By 11:35 a.m. Whitman is at the University of Texas, using false identification to get a 40-minute parking permit to deliver equipment to the Main Building.


                                                                       The Tower

Making his way to the 27th floor by elevator, Whitman takes his first campus victim, 51-year-old receptionist Edna Townsley, rifle butt clubbed and then shot in the head.  Next his wrath is turned on a family trying to visit the observation deck on the 28th floor of the building ... hitting 16-year-old and 18-year-old brothers, Mark and Mike Gabour, their mother Mary Gabour, and their aunt, 56-year-old Marguerite Lamport with multiple rounds from the sawed-off shotgun.  Finally free of distractions, Whitman then barricades the stairway to the observation deck, readies his Remington, and looks through the rifle's scope.  He is 231 feet above the campus when he begins firing at 11:48 a.m.

                   
                                                                  Gunsmoke

A sharpshooter while with the Marines, Whitman spends the next hour circling the observation deck and sniping away at a multitude of lunchtime targets, hitting students, teachers, citizens, emergency personnel, and law enforcement officers ... anything that moves and doesn't keep out of sight, killing 15 people and seriously wounding another 32.  Whitman's campus dead are:

Edna Townsley, 51
Marguerite Lamport, 56
Mark Gabour, 16
Claire Wilson, 18 ... she survives, but the baby she is carrying is lost
Thomas Eckman, 18 ... struck trying to help his fiance, Wilson
Dr. Robert Boyer, 33
Thomas Ashton, 22
Karen Griffith, 17

                                            
                                                             Griffith

Thomas Karr, 24 ... returning home after completing an exam
Billy Speed, 22 ... one of the first police officers to arrive on the scene
Harry Walchuk, 38 ... a doctoral candidate and father of six
Paul Sonntag, 18 ... a student hit while hiding with his friend, Claudia Rutt, behind a construction barricade
Claudia Rutt, 18
Roy Schmidt, 29 ... an electrical repairman that unsuccessfully tries to hide behind a car
David Gunby, 58 ... hit in the back, he will die from the lingering effects of his wound in 2001

And there would have been more if not for the efforts of three police officers (Austin police officers Ramiro Martinez, Houston McCoy, and Jerry Day) and a civilian (40-year-old Allen Crum) that decide enough is enough and make their way up to the observation deck and to bring fatal retribution to the merciless sniper.
                                     
                            
                            Pinned down - note body beside the hedge
      
                                                            Victim Removal
                                  
                                         Crum, Martinez, McCoy, Day - L to R

Crum, armed with a borrowed rifle, and Day with his service pistol, circle north, while the pistol armed Martinez and shotgun toting McCoy, circle south in the opposite direction.  Intending to surprise Whitman from two directions at the same time, the plan falls about when Crum accidentally discharges his rifle, alerting the sniper, but also drawing his attention aware from the other team on the observation deck.  Jumping around a corner, from a distance of 50 feet away, Martinez empties his .38 at Whitman ... and not the sharpshooter the sniper is, misses with all six rounds.  Luckily though for the officer, his partner McCoy does not miss with the two 00-buckshot rounds he fires from his shotgun.  Down, twitching the last seconds of his life away as he bleeds out on the deck, Whitman is hit in the head, neck, and left side.  Just to be sure though, irate at the events of the day and his poor marksmanship, Martinez grabs the shotgun from McCoy, walks up to Whitman, and puts another round of buckshot into the killer's upper left arm, then ending the day of madness, he leaves the tower repeating over and over, "I got him."

                                             
                                                             Finis Charlie
                                               
                                                                8/1/1966

Seemingly an All-American Boy ... Eagle Scout, Marine, an intellect with an IQ of 138 ... people are shocked, stunned , and horrified by the carnage that takes place in Austin, and as is their want, the country demands answers.  And terrifyingly so, one is that maybe anyone could become a Whitman ... body turned over to the coroner, Whitman receives the autopsy his farewell note requested, during which it is discovered that he has a brain tumor in his head the size of a pecan.  The source of the madness?  No one can say for sure, but to this day it remains a topic of discussion and debate.

                          
                                                                      Charles

Considered the Crime-of-the-Century at the time, there will sadly be many more mass murders for America to endure in the decades that follow.

DEBACLE AT LITTLE BOHEMIA - #4

4/22/1934 - After engaging in an exchange of lead with Federal raiders, Baby Face Nelson, wearing a brown suede jacket, flees out of the back of his cabin and heads south, in the opposite direction his bank robbing confederates have taken.  For roughly ninety minutes, the outlaw flounders through the dense Wisconsin woods, finally emerging on Manitowish Lake, only a mile away from the Little Bohemia Lodge, at the lakeside home of Mr. and Mrs. Paul W. Lang.  Pausing only a few seconds to pet the couple's dog, with his .45 automatic as persuasion, Nelson commandeers the couple and their 1932 Chevrolet.  Creeping along a short distance at only 15 to 20 mph in a car with failed headlights, the bandit sees the lights of the Koerner family's white, two-story home on the left side of the highway ahead and decides that there he might be able to steal a better escape vehicle.  Stopping, the trio leaves the Chevy, cross over Highway 51, and make their way up to the brightly lit building.

Nelson

On the alert from the gunfire at the lodge earlier in the night, hoping to get in touch with the government agents in the region, Alvin Koerner, who runs the region's telephone exchange, calls the nearby Birchwood Lodge and speaks to Special Agent Jay C. Newman, reporting a suspicious car with its lights out that has just parked across the highway from his property.  Information given, seconds after a promise is made to check out the report as soon as possible and the call is ended, there is a knock on the front door which is answered by Koerner when he recognizes the voices of his neighbors, the Langs, pleading to be let in.  Door opened, a third guest then steps out of hiding from behind the couple and also demands admittance.  It is trigger happy Baby Face Nelson.  The tired and desperate outlaw is now in possession of seven hostages, the kidnapped Langs, Mr. and Mrs. Koerner, the Koerner's two children, and the Koerner's maid, but not a reliable vehicle ... moments later though, not only will an escape car be provided, but more hostages too.

Koerner

Waving his pistol about, Nelson demands that Koerner and his wife drive him thirty miles south to the town of Woodruff, but in a show of either bravery or foolishness, the couple refuses, stating they can't leave their sleeping children.  In the midst of arguing over the transportation issue, a car pulls up to the gate leading to the Koerners' front porch.  It is the Ford sedan of George LaPorte (the brother of Nan Wanatka), and along with LaPorte, contains CCC stationmaster C. J. Christianson, Little Bohemia Lodge owner Emil Wanatka, and Wanatka's two bartenders, George Bazo and Frank Traube.  Fresh from Little Bohemia, the men are intent on getting away from the stupidity being shown by the government agents back at Wanatka's lodge, and in search of warm clothing (not expecting to be outside in freezing temperatures when the bullets began flying at his establishment earlier in the night, Wanatka and his bartenders are hatless and dressed in short sleeve shirts). Instead of warmth though, they get a cold greeting from the lodge patron and excellent tipper named Jimmie they had enjoyed bantering with just hours before ... masquerade dropped, he is now Baby Face Nelson once more.

The Koerner Property on Spider Lake

Deciding he now wants LaPorte's car for his escape, Nelson gets his hostages situated for a journey out of the state ... Christianson and Mr. Koerner will occupy the back seat, Wanatka will drive, and Nelson will supervise with his automatic pistol from the front passenger seat.  Grand Central Station Wisconsin, the group is just about ready to leave when yet another vehicle shows up unexpectedly at the Koerner property.  Running errands for the raiding party and checking out outlaw sightings in the area using the commandeered Ford Deluxe of Izzy Tuchalsky, the car is there in answer to Koerner's call of only minutes before to the Birchwood Lodge and contains Special Agent Jay C. Newman, Special Agent W. Carter Baum, and local constable only a month into his duties, thirty-two-year-old Carl C. Christensen.  A young man of twenty-nine with a law degree from George Washington University and four years of service in the Department of Justice, Baum has been sent off by Melvin Purvis to get the distraught agent away from the mayhem at the Little Bohemia Lodge ... mayhem Baum helped create by being one of the men that mistakenly fired into a group of civilians leaving the lodge earlier in the evening, killing CCC worker Eugene Boiseneau.  All three men are armed, with Baum carrying the most firepower in a Thompson sub-machine gun.  It is about 11:00 in the evening and death is about to return to upper Wisconsin.

Baum

"We're Federal officers.  Where is Mr. Koerner?" Newman asks as he pulls up next to the Ford in Koerner's driveway; seconds later the night erupts with gunfire.  "I know you bastards are wearing bulletproof vests," Nelson screams as he comes around LaPorte's vehicle and sticks his machine gun pistol in Newman's face, "so I'll give it to you high and low."  And as the agent steps out of the car, that is exactly what Baby Face Nelson does.  Opening fire with a pistol converted into a machine gun by San Antonio gunsmith Hyman Lebman, Nelson's first bullet hits Newman in the head, a glancing blow over his right eye that travels along his temple and causes the stunned agent to fall face first into the gravel of the Koerner driveway.  Then Nelson pivots and fires into the Ford as Christensen and Baum attempt to flee out the passenger door ... Baum is struck three times in the neck and topples over a nearby waist-high white rail fence a few yards away, while Christensen is hit in the right elbow, takes another round in the back, and then is dropped into a ditch by strikes to his chest, left hip, arms, and legs. 

Machine Gun Pistol

Impossibly lucky to survive the encounter with the crazed Nelson, Christensen is hit nine bone shattering times, including by a bullet directly over the lawman's heart that is deflected by a shirt button, and has his liver and both lungs punctured ... it will take him a year to recover.  Baum is not as fortunate, one of the rounds that hits his neck spirals downward, skirting the agent's bulletproof vest, and buries itself in his heart.  Dead by the time help arrives, Special Agent W. Carter Baum is survived by his wife Mary, and his two daughters, Margaret, two, and Edith, eleven months.

Christensen Recovering

Federal Badge

Weapon finally empty after firing his last rounds at Emil Wanatka as the lodge owner flees back towards Koerner's home, Nelson takes command of the lawmen's Ford, a vehicle capable of speeds in excess of 100 mph, the perfect getaway car.  Jumping in and throwing the car into reverse, the outlaw puts his foot to the floor and speeds out of the driveway, spraying gravel in all directions, as a now conscious Newman empties his .45 in the killer's direction (missing the outlaw with all his shots, the government agent adds insult to injury and does manage to inflict one final wound in Christensen, blowing a hole in the already Swiss cheesed constable's foot).  Swerving just in time to avoid hitting the parked vehicle belonging to the Langs, Nelson turns south and disappears down Route 51.  The debacle known as the Battle of Little Bohemia is over and the scorecard is not pretty ... two civilians have been wounded, two lawmen have also been wounded, one special agent is dead, and not a single member of the Dillinger Gang has been captured or killed ... and across the country, special edition newspapers blare the news!

Baby Face Nelson

Recovered Weapons

Headlines

DEBACLE AT LITTLE BOHEMIA - #3

4/22/1934 - Alerted that lawmen are outside by the Federals mistaken shooting of Morris, Hoffman, and Boiseneau, the Dillinger Gang almost instantly springs into action ... Van Meter, Dillinger, and Hamilton follow the agreed to plan, firing their pistols and a machine gun at the movement and shadows at the front of the lodge from the second floor, then exiting the back of the lodge via an upstairs window, crawling along the roof, and jumping down into a three foot tall embankment of snow.  Once down, the men make their way to the lake, then turn right, following the lake shore away from the lodge.  Carroll, in the cabin he is sharing with Nelson, also makes his exit down to the lake and flees right.  

Dine, Dance, Swim ... and SHOOTING!

As usual, only Baby Face Nelson doesn't stick to the plan ... either from not paying attention when escape was discussed on Friday due to boredom, or anger with Dillinger's room assignment, or just because his blood is up and he enjoys a good fight, Nelson comes out of his cabin, and with his automatic pistol spewing bullets about in the darkness, engages in a shootout first with Purvis, and then with Inspector William Rorer ... in the melee no one is hit, but it isn't for want of trying.  Finally realizing he is alone and totally outgunned, the crazed gunman enters his cabin, grabs more ammo, and exits the back of the unit and makes his way down to the lake ... but turns left instead of right, a decision that will have fatal consequences.

Nelson

And of course, as the chaos is breaking out around the lodge, Reilly and Cherrington show up again to finally marry up with the gang, but are instead met by the two agents at the car blockade closing the road into and out of the property.  Ordered to step out of his vehicle and identify himself, the gopher goes gangster and foolishly does just the opposite; throwing the car into reverse, killing the headlights, hitting a tree and then backing down the road at high speed as his Ford is hit by a load of buckshot that shatters the front window and almost takes off Cherrington's head (she escapes with only a glass cut to the forehead ... and a fractured left shoulder when Reilly's violent maneuvering temporarily flings her out of the car), and by a rifle bullet that flatten's the right rear tire.  Shaking with nerves at the close call, Reilly drives on the rim of his flat tire all the way to the nearby town of Mercer where new rubber is acquired, along with a full tank of gas ... in an evening filled with mistakes, there is no pursuit by any of the Federals at the lodge. Off again after a thirty minute wait, the pair's driving adventure is not quite over though ... later in the night the Ford will become bogged down in a washed out road and have to be pulled out of the mud by a local farmer's tractor.  Finally back in St. Paul late the next night, scared straight, after dropping Cherrington off at her apartment, the twenty-seven-year-old bartender will return to his home and tell his anxious wife that he wants nothing further to do with the Dillinger Gang.

The Lodge

Not realizing their prey has flown the coop, thanks to the shooting out front and the Federals inability to completely encircle the lodge because of a ditch and a barbed-wire fence on the property, and the embankment behind the structure accessing the lake, Purvis and Clegg have their men pound Emil Wanatka's business off-and-on with machine gun blasts, shotgun pellets, rifle bullets, and tear-gas canisters into the early morning hours of the next day (despite repeatedly being told all the outlaws have fled), when the extent of the fiasco that has taken place begins to become evident.  At dawn, when the lodge is again attacked with bullets and chemical fumes, the building's occupants finally surrender to the Federal authorities and into custody go Helen Gillis (Nelson's wife), Marie Conforti (Van Meter's girl), Jean Delaney Crompton (the paramour of Carroll), and Conforti's puppy, Rex (the Feds also take possession of an assortment of clothes, a .45 automatic located in Nelson's cabin, a .351 Winchester rifle found under Dillinger's bed, and in Carroll's Buick and Hamilton's Ford, six sub-machine guns, four pistols, two shotguns, two revolvers, a rifle, five bulletproof vests, and lots and lots of ammo).  Not surprisingly, Hoover is livid when the news is received in Washington D.C. 

The Little Bohemia Lodge

The Captured Females

One more Houdini moment for Dillinger's criminal resume, after making his way to the Little Star Lake behind the lodge, and reuniting with Hamilton and Van Meter, the trio of outlaws make their way across U.S. 51 to the edge of Rest Lake and the home of seventy-year-old Mr. Edward J. Mitchell and his ill wife, a journey of about a mile.  "I'm Dillinger.  The government is after me and I need your car," Public Enemy #1 tells the couple as he forces his way into the house behind Hamilton's request for a glass of water, tears out the phone, and then to show he isn't all bad, drapes a blanket over the shoulders of the flu suffering Mrs. Mitchell, telling the old lady he just wants to be on his way and will do her no harm. Unfortunately for the outlaws though, the Mitchell's Model T has spent all winter on blocks and can't be used, and the vehicle of their German handyman (a former pilot of WWI), a Model A truck, won't start.  Desperate for a car to leave the region, the bandits run with their third choice of transportation, a small, dark green 1930 Model-A V4 Ford coupe parked in front of a cabin a hundred feet away, the property of a young carpenter named Robert Johnson. Rousted from his sleep, a still yawning Johnson, wearing bedroom slippers, is forced to slowly drive the bandits out of the area (odd man out, Hamilton has to shiver in the frosty rumble seat of the vehicle) ... a journey of fifty rough miles on dark country roads that includes a stop in the town of Springstead for ten dollars worth of gas.  Finally, at around midnight, the men give their reluctant guest seven dollars and leave Johnson about three miles from the Pixley power station (it will take him about an hour to reach a phone and notify authorities about the theft of his car), then with Hamilton now inside the warmth of the vehicle, and Van Meter driving, the group vanishes into the night, south down Wisconsin Route 13.  

Slow Escape

Only a few minutes behind his friends, Carroll never catches up with Dillinger and company.  Arriving at the Mitchell property, he does not like all the activity he sees, and keeping to the trees along the main road, the outlaw continues north to Manitowish Waters. There, at the Northern Lights Resort on the southwest tip of Rice Lake, he hot wires a Packard sedan belonging to Henry Kuhnert and heads out for the refuge of St. Paul, Minnesota (it will not be an uneventful journey though ... turning right at a fork on the road to Mercer, Carroll drives up a dead-end lumber road, has to abandon the sedan when it breaks down, and hoofing with his thumb out, eventually hitchhikes his way back home the next day).
 
Carroll

Carroll, Dillinger, Hamilton, and Van Meter are now all vacating the area in stolen automobiles, with only Baby Face Nelson still afoot.  It is a little after 10:00 in the evening and the maniacal gunman is not happy about his situation at all!   

Nelson