Sunday, March 16, 2008

Discovery of Possible Graves at Manson Site; Superdelegate Status Now in Doubt


Hasn't been a good couple of days for 1960's flashbacks.

In the midst of a racially divisive Democrat campaign, we have Barack Obama blaming the 1960s for the insane comments of Jeremiah Wright, promises of a 1968 reprisal in Denver and now we find out that there may well be more bodies unearthed that were murdered by counterculture icon Charles Manson and his band of zany followers.
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.

The same jailhouse confessions that helped investigators initially connect the band of misfits living in the Panamint Mountains to the gruesome killings that terrorized Los Angeles hinted at other deaths. Manson follower Susan Atkins boasted to her cell mate on November 1, 1969, that there were "three people out in the desert that they done in." Other stories surfaced. In the absence of bodies, they were forgotten.

"We prosecuted Manson and the family for all the murders we could prove. But you know, could he have killed someone else? Possibly. Could another member of the family have killed someone? Sure," said Steve Kay, a former deputy district attorney.

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.
Read the whole thing.

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