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Bruce McGregor Davis was born on October 5, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana [3] and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. [4] Davis was editor of his high school yearbook and attended the University of Tennessee for three years, dropping out due to poor grades. [5] In 1962, he hitchhiked to California, where he worked for a time as a barback at Harrah's Lake ...
Jun 6, 2010 · Bruce Davis went from clean-cut youth in Roane County to murderer, member of Manson clan. Bruce Davis graduated from Roane Couty High School in Kingston in 1961. The schoolâ s yearbook shows Davis being honored as a top social science student. In this Jan. 27, 1970 file photo, members of Charles Manson's "family" are shown outside the ...
Dec 21, 2023 · The Never-Ending Story. Former Manson family member Bruce Davis is one of more than a hundred high-profile California lifers who face repeated parole denials and gubernatorial reversals. Joe Garcia and Kate McQueen Published: Dec 21, 2023. Editor’s note: This is a coauthored article. Incarcerated journalist Joe Garcia reported from inside San ...
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- Spahn Welcomed the Manson Family's Help and Company
- Ranch's Isolation Fostered Paranoia
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The former Western movie set provided shelter—and isolation—as Charles Manson and his followers plotted the 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and others.
Spahn Movie Ranch was once used as a Hollywood TV and movie set for family-friendly productions, including “Bonanza” and “The Lone Ranger,” but the isolated, run-down property may be best known for playing a role in one of America’s most notorious real-life crimes.
After being evicted from the cabin of Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys fame, convicted murderer and cult leader Charles Manson and his followers found their way onto the Los Angeles County ranch, where they made the acquaintance of owner George Spahn.
“Spahn had owned the ranch since 1948, but by the time the Manson Family arrived, he was 81 years old and blind,” says James Buddy Day, author of Hippie Cult Leader: The Last Words of Charles Manson. “George liked Charlie, and they came to an understanding that Manson and the women would work the ranch in exchange for being allowed to stay.”
According to Day, it was Susan “Sadie” Atkins, one of those convicted in the August 9, 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, who discovered Spahn Ranch sometime in 1967.
“The Manson Family moved onto the ranch gradually, first staying at a nearby church, then squatting in the empty shacks along the riding trails from time to time,” he says.
This is a typical abandoned cabin in Spahn Ranch, a former movie ranch north of Los Angeles, photographed in December 1969.
In a 1970 Esquire magazine article, author Gay Talese wrote that Spahn Ranch was not so much a ranch as it was “the old Western movie set it once was. The row of empty buildings extending along the dirt road toward Spahn’s shack—decaying structures with faded signs marking them as a saloon, a barbershop, a café, a jail, and a carriage house—all were constructed many years ago as Hollywood settings for cowboy brawls and Indian ambushes.”
Talese reported that Spahn liked Manson: “Manson would visit his shack on quiet afternoons and talk for hours about deep philosophical questions, subjects that bewildered the old man but interested him, relieving the loneliness.”
Claudia Verhoeven, an associate professor of history at Cornell University who teaches a course on the Manson murders, says the family helped out on the ranch, cleaning, cooking, making repairs and taking care of the horses, including renting them out to tourists.
1 / 10: AP Photo
Interior view of the kitchen at Spahn Ranch where the Manson Family lived, photographed in October 1969.
“The ranch really isolated the women,” Day adds. “There were no books, clocks or calendars. They became increasingly reliant on each other, which enabled their eventual feelings of paranoia and fear, all culminating in the murders.”
According to Verhoeven, in the beginning, the Manson Family’s stay at Spahn Ranch was akin to a fairly typical commune experience.
“The fact that Spahn Ranch was an old movie set did certainly accentuate certain aspects of family life, especially what they called ‘magical mystery’ touring,” she says. “Because Spahn Ranch was a film set, the setting supported the family in experimental, improvisational, make-believe living. They would play-act roles: cowboys one day, pirates the next.”
In fact, Day adds, the first few years of the commune were quite tranquil.
“All the people I’ve met have good memories of that time,” he says. “Things changed in the spring of 1969 when Manson and Tex Watson became involved in a bad drug deal involving a man they thought was a member of the Black Panthers political party. This began a spiral of paranoia, and the group became fearful of outsiders—especially the Black Panthers.”
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Jul 9, 2022 · A California panel on Friday denied parole for a follower of cult leader Charles Manson convicted of slayings more than a half-century ago. Bruce Davis was previously recommended for parole seven ...
Jun 21, 2021 · Charles Manson’s ‘right-hand man’ Bruce Davis denied parole for seventh time. Bruce Davis, shown in 2018, was convicted of two brutal murders carried out in 1969 with Manson “family ...
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Jun 22, 2021 · The next month, Manson told his followers that Shea was a police informant and was working with a neighbor to remove the group from the movie ranch where they were living. Manson and Davis, with fellow cult followers Steve Grogan and Charles “Tex” Watson, drove Shea to a secluded area, where he was stabbed to death.
