The Truth About the Manson Family Could Be On the Tex Watson Tapes

To the end of the book, there's a murder in there that I think the Manson family committed that was covered up by the law enforcement because it screwed up, it would have screwed up the prosecution. I want that looked into. There's also at the end of the book, there are these Tex Watson audio tapes that I found out about in 2008 when Watson turned himself in, when he found, he was alerted in Texas. He was at his parents' house. The police called the local sheriff who was Texas' cousin and his parents and said he's wanted for questioning in these unsolved tape murders. This was November 29th. Nobody had been identified publicly as suspects. The police were just starting to figure out that these people had killed their victims. So two LAPD flew down to Texas. Watson was brought into the station, questioned by the LAPD, put under arrest. They had to extradite him so that the sheriff there, Texas' cousin, put him in a cell. The family called up a lawyer, Bill Boyd, who had actually represented Tex on a college case when he stole a typewriter from a college in a prank. Bill Boyd told me in an interview in 2008 that that day he had Tex tell him the whole story, or Charles as he called him, about how he met Manson, why the murders were committed, how they happened. He said he spoke to me for 20 hours and he goes, I've got all those audio tapes in a safe in my office. He told me this in 2008. He said he also described other murders that the family had committed that hadn't been connected to them. So right away, when I'm in 2008, I'm working on it that long, I thought, other murders, that's important to me. But more important, did he tell his attorney why the murders really happened, why they picked those houses. This was the first account that was recorded. The next one was Susan Atkins. About a week later, after she had gotten her new attorney that the prosecution planted, they audio taped her telling her version, which became the official version. So Watson's would predate that by a week. When I found out that they were in that safe, and he's telling me this on the phone, I thought, well, he can't play that to me because that would violate Watson's attorney-client privilege. But I thought, I have to ask. So I said, is there any chance, Mr. Boyd, I could come down and listen to those tapes? And he said, that's when he realized he shouldn't have told me. He said, oh, well, I couldn't do that without Charles Watson. Charles' permission. I go, are you still in touch with me? So I write to him every now and then. He writes me. He didn't represent him at trial after he was extradited. And I said, would you please ask? So that began three or four months of me pestering him. He would never take the phone call. And then finally, after four months, I called up and his secretary said, oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Boyd's in China. I'm in business today. And I said, well, you have to tell him I'm not going to wait anymore. I'm going to write to Charles and tell him what he told me. I go, if there's other bodies out. I mean, I didn't let them know that I was more interested in the motive story. But I said, if there's I was interested in this, too, I go, if there's other bodies or victims out there who have never been connected or even we don't even know if the remains were uncovered because there's a lot of evidence that there might have been people killed out in the desert and buried there. I go, I need to know that. And she said, OK, I'll tell him. My phone rang like literally 30 seconds after I hung it up. And I had caller idea that was from his Texas office. He goes, this is Bill Boyd. You cannot call Charles and tell him I told you that. I said, Mr. Boyd, you haven't called me back for four months. He goes, well, I'm telling you now you can't do that. I go, well, are you going to get his permission? He goes, yeah, you just have to be patient. I go, I can't wait anymore. He says, if you do that and you tell him all the night ever telling you, I said, it's all on tape. I taped that call. He goes, you didn't have permission to tape that call. I go, yeah, you gave me permission at the beginning. And that's on tape, too. He goes, God damn it, you journalists. And he hung up on me. You journalists? Yeah. You lumped in with all of them. No, he said my wife's a journalist. His wife was a TV anchor. He goes, my wife's a journalist. I know how you people work. I go, you gave me permission. It's on the audio tape. So he died six months later on the treadmill. Oh, my God. Probably thinking about you. And his firm went bankrupt. And then it wasn't until two or three years later, and it's all in there, the back story. But I finally went to try to get the tapes again and found out he had died, found out that the tapes were in the possession of the trustee who was waiting for the bankruptcy to be resolved. And it took me three or four months of back and forth. And to try to get them to release the tapes to me, and I made an argument for why they weren't protected anymore. Again, long story short, I was sharing information with the deputy DA in Los Angeles who I thought was friendly. He was until he wasn't. He was handling all the parole hearings of the Manson Family guy named Pat Secura. The woman who was in charge of the tapes, the trustee said, if Secura calls me and tells me that it's OK for me to release them to you and explains how it's not a violation, I'll do it. I said, I'll ask him. So I asked him. He said, absolutely. I want to talk to her. And I said, great. A day later, I get a call from Secura. He goes, you're not going to believe it. She's releasing the tapes to us. I go, you? He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't worry. I'll let you hear them when we get them. She asked. I knew right then I had lost any kind of control. And sure enough, number one, the trustee had to notify Watson's new attorney. Watson put up a fight in court. And you can read about it in the LA Times. I reported on that for about a year. For about a year, it went from the local court to the state Supreme Court, where the judge finally ruled that the LAPD should have the tapes. They sent two officers down to get the tapes in 2013. They came back, and then nobody at the DA's office would talk to me anymore. The promise that had been made that I would be the first one to listen to them reneged. Those tapes, a million journalists have made Freedom of Information Act requests for them. They won't release them. They're locked up. Leslie Van Houten's attorney wants them. He thinks it'll help her at her parole hearings, because he thinks there's information on there to show that she's been telling the truth all these years. He's gone to the state Supreme Court through other courts. They've locked them down. It's 20 hours first account of how and why these murders occurred, and they're not releasing them. I think it's because the truth is on there.