Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry
Authors: Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry
Tags: Fiction, General, Biography & Autobiography, True Crime, California, Murder, Criminals & Outlaws, Case studies, Serial Killers, Murder - California, Manson; Charles
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Rambler: ZLR 694. A reporter wrote it down, then ran his own check through the Department of Motor Vehicles, learning that the registered owner was “Wilfred E. or Juanita D. Parent, 11214 Bryant Drive, El Monte, California.”
By the time he arrived in El Monte, a Los Angeles suburb some twenty-five miles from Cielo Drive, he found no one at home. Questioning the neighbors, he learned that the family did have a boy in his late teens; he also learned the name of the family priest, Father Robert Byrne, of the Church of the Nativity, and called on him. Byrne knew the youth and his family well. Though the priest was sure Steve didn’t know any movie stars and that all this was some mistake, he agreed to accompany the reporter to the county morgue. On the way he talked about Steve. He was a stereo “bug,” Father Byrne said; if you ever wanted to know anything about phonographs or radios, Steve had the answers. Father Byrne held great hopes for his future.
I n the interim, LAPD discovered the identity of the youth through a print and license check. Shortly after the Parents returned home, an El Monte policeman appeared at the door and handed Wilfred Parent a card with a number on it and told him to call it. He left without saying anything else.
Parent dialed the number.
“County Coroner’s Office,” a man answered.
Confused, Parent identified himself and explained about the policeman and the card.
The call was transferred to a deputy coroner, who told him, “Your son has apparently been involved in a shooting.”
“Is he dead?” Parent asked, stunned. His wife, hearing the question, became hysterical.
“We have a body down here,” the deputy coroner replied, “and we believe it’s your son.” He then went on to describe physical characteristics. They matched.
Parent hung up the phone and began sobbing. Later, understandably bitter, he’d remark, “All I can say is that it was a hell of a way to tell somebody that their boy was dead.”
About this same time, Father Byrne viewed the body and made the identification. John Doe 85 became Steven Earl Parent, an eighteen-year-old hi-fi enthusiast from El Monte.
It was 5 A.M . before the Parents went to bed. “The wife and I finally just put the kids in bed with us and the five of us just held on to each other and cried until we went to sleep.”
A bout nine that same Saturday night, August 9, 1969, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca and Suzanne Struthers, Rosemary’s twenty-one-year-old daughter by a previous marriage, left Lake Isabella for the long drive back to Los Angeles. The lake, a popular resort area, was some 150 miles from L.A.
Suzanne’s brother, Frank Struthers, Jr., fifteen, had been vacationing at the lake with a friend, Jim Saffie, whose family had a cabin there. Rosemary and Leno had driven up the previous Tuesday, to leave their speedboat for the boys to use, then returned Saturday morning to pick up Frank and the boat. However, the boys were having such a good time the LaBiancas agreed to let Frank stay over another day, and they were returning now, without him, driving their 1968 green Thunderbird, towing the speedboat on a trailer behind.
Leno, the president of a chain of Los Angeles supermarkets, was forty-four, Italian, and, at 220 pounds, somewhat overweight. Rosemary, a trim, attractive brunette of thirty-eight, was a former carhop who, after a series of waitress jobs and a bad marriage, had opened her own dress shop, the Boutique Carriage, on North Figueroa in Los Angeles, and made a big success of it. She and Leno had been married since 1959.
Because of the boat, they couldn’t drive at the speed Leno preferred, and fell behind most of the Saturday night freeway traffic that was speeding toward Los Angeles and environs. Like many others that night, they had the radio on and heard the news of the Tate murders. According to Suzanne, it seemed particularly to disturb Rosemary, who, a few weeks earlier, had told a close
By the time he arrived in El Monte, a Los Angeles suburb some twenty-five miles from Cielo Drive, he found no one at home. Questioning the neighbors, he learned that the family did have a boy in his late teens; he also learned the name of the family priest, Father Robert Byrne, of the Church of the Nativity, and called on him. Byrne knew the youth and his family well. Though the priest was sure Steve didn’t know any movie stars and that all this was some mistake, he agreed to accompany the reporter to the county morgue. On the way he talked about Steve. He was a stereo “bug,” Father Byrne said; if you ever wanted to know anything about phonographs or radios, Steve had the answers. Father Byrne held great hopes for his future.
I n the interim, LAPD discovered the identity of the youth through a print and license check. Shortly after the Parents returned home, an El Monte policeman appeared at the door and handed Wilfred Parent a card with a number on it and told him to call it. He left without saying anything else.
Parent dialed the number.
“County Coroner’s Office,” a man answered.
Confused, Parent identified himself and explained about the policeman and the card.
The call was transferred to a deputy coroner, who told him, “Your son has apparently been involved in a shooting.”
“Is he dead?” Parent asked, stunned. His wife, hearing the question, became hysterical.
“We have a body down here,” the deputy coroner replied, “and we believe it’s your son.” He then went on to describe physical characteristics. They matched.
Parent hung up the phone and began sobbing. Later, understandably bitter, he’d remark, “All I can say is that it was a hell of a way to tell somebody that their boy was dead.”
About this same time, Father Byrne viewed the body and made the identification. John Doe 85 became Steven Earl Parent, an eighteen-year-old hi-fi enthusiast from El Monte.
It was 5 A.M . before the Parents went to bed. “The wife and I finally just put the kids in bed with us and the five of us just held on to each other and cried until we went to sleep.”
A bout nine that same Saturday night, August 9, 1969, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca and Suzanne Struthers, Rosemary’s twenty-one-year-old daughter by a previous marriage, left Lake Isabella for the long drive back to Los Angeles. The lake, a popular resort area, was some 150 miles from L.A.
Suzanne’s brother, Frank Struthers, Jr., fifteen, had been vacationing at the lake with a friend, Jim Saffie, whose family had a cabin there. Rosemary and Leno had driven up the previous Tuesday, to leave their speedboat for the boys to use, then returned Saturday morning to pick up Frank and the boat. However, the boys were having such a good time the LaBiancas agreed to let Frank stay over another day, and they were returning now, without him, driving their 1968 green Thunderbird, towing the speedboat on a trailer behind.
Leno, the president of a chain of Los Angeles supermarkets, was forty-four, Italian, and, at 220 pounds, somewhat overweight. Rosemary, a trim, attractive brunette of thirty-eight, was a former carhop who, after a series of waitress jobs and a bad marriage, had opened her own dress shop, the Boutique Carriage, on North Figueroa in Los Angeles, and made a big success of it. She and Leno had been married since 1959.
Because of the boat, they couldn’t drive at the speed Leno preferred, and fell behind most of the Saturday night freeway traffic that was speeding toward Los Angeles and environs. Like many others that night, they had the radio on and heard the news of the Tate murders. According to Suzanne, it seemed particularly to disturb Rosemary, who, a few weeks earlier, had told a close
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