Forensic experts say of Manson site: Dig

updated 2:55 p.m. ET March 17, 2008

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 follow-up 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.

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.

Team deployed
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.

Also in the group were a woman whose life was forever marked by the cult's brutal murder of her pregnant sister, and a gold prospector who was once Manson's closest neighbor and remains intimate with the sharp creases of the Panamints.

Video   Helter skelter revisited March 17: NBC's George Lewis reports on what investigators say about the potential for finding more Manson victims. MSNBC

Prospector Emmett Harder guided the expedition.

He had a claim on Manley peak, one of the jagged points looming over Barker Ranch, while the Manson family camped out there in the late 1960s. He shared dinner with the band at times, and gave the men work.

During one of these visits he heard Manson say, "We're not hippies; we're here to get away from the troubles of the world."

Later, Harder would learn more about the cult leader's belief that the end of the world, which he called "Helter Skelter," was near — and Manson's conviction that through murder, he had a role to play in accelerating that chaotic time.

Gary Kazanjian / AP Daniel O. Larson prepares to use a sensitive metal detector to check for any sound behind the abandoned Barker Ranch house on Feb. 22, 2008 in the Panamint Mountains west of Death Valley National Park, Calif.

For the last 5 miles of the rugged gravel road from Ballarat, the route tilts sharply upward as it enters narrow Goler Wash.

"The family's plan was to make this impassable — you can see how you could do that here," said Sgt. Paul Dostie, a police detective and dog handler from the town of Mammoth Lakes, pointing to the boulders that protrude like bones from the canyon walls. Any of them could be rolled into the wash, blocking passage.

Manson's hideouts
Barker Ranch was one of several hideouts used by Manson and his followers.

The killings that launched the cult onto national newspapers had been orchestrated from Spahn Ranch, a former Western movie set that served as backdrop to episodes of "Bonanza" and "The Lone Ranger."

It was to Spahn that the killers initially retreated after the 1969 murders of Gary Hinman on July 31; Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent on Aug. 9; and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca on Aug. 10.

This was to signal the start of the apocalyptic race war that Manson told his followers would pit blacks against whites. He preached that they would emerge from the desert at the end and rule over the survivors.

But a daybreak raid on Spahn Ranch on Aug. 16 by Los Angeles sheriff's deputies looking for car thieves netted 26 arrests. All were released a few days later on a technicality — a misdated warrant — but Spahn was no longer safe.

Barker Ranch was where Manson withdrew in those last, frenzied days.

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