New Salvo in Bid for Interview Tapes of Manson Acolyte Watson

Stepped in to help

The Los Angeles Police Department has violated the California Public Records Act in turning back a bid to obtain the tapes of Manson henchman Tex Watson.  The remedy is a letter from esteemed lawyer Dean Wallraff of the California Public Records Access Project. Read it here. 

From the letter: You have violated the Public Records Act by failing to respond in writing with the determination required by Pub. Res. Code § 6253(c). You continue to violate it by failing to provide the documents Mr. Miller requested. There is no reason it should take over four months for you to provide what can’t amount to more than a handful of responsive documents.

Dean stepped in to help someone from out of state, and he has little to gain from this. This should be an example to all of the other so-called First Amendment groups out there who do very very little for the public. Dean is the fourth stop for me as I searched for some help on this. 

The tapes have a tale of their own. They were partly used for Watson’s little-read book, Will You Die for Me?, published on a small press in 1978.  The tapes were recorded in 1969 after Watson was arrested in Texas in connection with the Sharon Tate-LaBianca murders in LA.

The LAPD obtained the tapes a couple of years ago and contends they are being used to investigate some unsolved crimes.

The LAPD refused a request for the tapes themselves last year.  The department then disregarded an appeal letter.

It takes a lot of work to fight operations like the LAPD who profess to care about the public but also care about protecting their pensions and maintaining a team of bureaucrats to keep the public at bay.

It’s a worthwhile battle. I hope it doesn’t end up in court, as it’s the public’s money the department would spend to wage a defense.

The Manson Family Story Via Tex Watson Exists - I Need a Copy of These Tapes

Tex Watson, 1970 Mug

I’d love to get my hands on these tapes.

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that tapes of conversations between a lawyer and Tex Watson, one of the key members of the Manson Family, will be released to the Los Angeles Police Department.  See original letter from LAPD seeking the tapes here. The LAPD hopes that some of the info in those tapes would help solve some cold cases. 

Watson, now 65, was arrested November 1969 in Collin County, Texas, a then-rural area 30 miles north of Dallas. Watson fled LA after the Manson Family murdered a batch of partiers at the mansion owned by filmmaker Roman Polanski and his wife, actress Sharon Tate, then killed Leno and Rosemary LaBianca at their home the next night.

After his arrest and before extradition, Watson’s family hired Bill Boyd, a defense attorney from McKinney.  Watson fought extradition, with the help of Boyd, but lost that battle and was returned to California in September 1970. During his time at the Collin County jail, some of the talks between Boyd and Watson were taped. Watson’s current lawyer, Kendrick Jan, claims that Watson never waived his right to attorney-client privilege, while the Boyd camp contends he did.  I have no idea why Watson would do that and I’m inclined to believe his current lawyer.

Boyd sold the tapes for $49,000 at some point. Sure would like to find out who paid that dough. What happened to the tapes in that original sale?

Watson was convicted of first-degree murder in 1971. He wrote a book, Will You Die For Me?, which was published in 1978. I call it suggested reading. 

I met Boyd on several occasions when I worked my first job as a reporter at the McKinney Courier-Gazette, which was then a pretty aggressive newspaper. He was well known in McKinney, which was at the time a farm town of 30,000. It’s now a traffic-clogged exhurb of over 130,000. Boyd died in 2009.

Of course I couldn’t stop when I found out that the decision to give the tapes to LAPD was made by a bankruptcy judge as part of a filing by Boyd’s firm, Boyd-Veigel. I looked up the filing to see if anyone connected to the Manson case was a creditor. No dice – the firm had racked up over $8 million in debt, but no Manson connection.