New M anson family clues to unsolved murder cases could finally be in the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department. According to a report in The Los Angeles Times , the Robbery-Homicide Division is now carefully analyzing the eight hours of conversation recorded in 1969 between Manson family member Charles “Tex” Watson and his attorney Bill Boyd, who died in 2009.
66-year-old Watson, still in prison for seven 1969 murders committed by the notorious commune headed by Charles Manson , has fought the release of the tapes for years.
While conversations between the accused and his attorney are normally privileged, in 1976 Watson gave the tapes to his attorney as partial payment in legal fees — allowing them to be used in the writing of the book Will You Die For Me: The Man Who Killed For Charles Manson Tells His Own Story.
After Boyd died, the tapes became available in a bankruptcy action. After a years-long battle, US District Court Judge Richard Schell ruled that Watson had waived his rights to confidentiality for the $49,000 that Boyd received from the book’s co-author.
However, LAPD was forced to wait an additional 30 days to make sure that Watson or the state of Texas didn’t file another appeal.
The Manson family member has denied that the tapes contain new clues about the unsolved cases. “There is nothing new on the tapes that was excluded from my book,” Watson said in a letter to CNN.
However, Charles Manson himself has bragged that the family did get away with other murders.
The Los Angeles Times report noted rumors have swirled around a number of cases for years that could have been committed by Manson family followers:
“[Q]uestions have persisted about a man’s apparent suicide in England, the drowning of an attorney in Ventura County and whether bodies are buried at the California ranches the cult called home. There are also the killings of two Scientologists and separate slayings of two women in the Hollywood Hills.”
LAPD failed to find any new bodies in a 2008 search of the very large Barker ranch in Death Valley, the last hideout for the Manson family. The Tex Watson audiotapes may be their last chance for new clues in the Manson slayings.
[Charles Manson photo by California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation]
