Day one: MansonBlog visited a few of the memorials that we have missed in our previous visits. First would be TLB's first victim, Steven Earl Parent. Parent dies first at Cielo Drive on August 9, 1969. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Parent is interred at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Rowland Heights, CA. It is a blue collar but well maintained memorial park.We immediately noticed that flowers are not allowed to be placed on Thursday prior to 3:00 PM. The reason being that the park is mowed on Thursdays. We arrived at noon. We paid our respects regardless.
Parent left home at early in the morning for his job at a plumbing supply shop: Valley City Supply. He returned home in the late afternoon to change his shirt and drive to LA to his second job at Jonas Miller Stereo not far from Jay Sebring's hair salon where he worked until about 9:00 p.m.. From there he drove back to El Monte to visit a friend who worked either at Dale's Gas Station or the nearby grocery store named Fry's and asked his friend who worked their if he wanted to go for a drive. His friend asked if he could come back when he got off work at about 11:30 p.m. Steven declined and proceeded to Cielo Drive.
We then travelled the 26 miles to Angeles Abbey Memorial Park in Compton. To set the scene, this is adjacent to Watts and Crenshaw. All are poor neighborhoods. The cemetery is what can best be described as a potters field. The lawns are non existent. Burned and parched at best. As we searched for the grave of Donald Jerome Shea, we saw memorials that were covered in sand from moles and other ground-born critters. Graves of young children long since forgotten. Some of which we brushed off debris with our hands as we paid our respects.
We surmised that these plots, which in Parent's well maintained memorial park differed from Angeles Abbey in that one plot equals six. In the same plot that at Queen of Heaven contains one soul, here contains the remains of six people. The city of Compton, in an effort to bury the indigent has interred six people into a single grave. Six cremated people are buried at the same time in one place. If your family could not afford the plate bolted to the grave marker then you are only recorded in the sexton's office - an entry in a book.
As we understand it, Scott Michaels of Dearly Departed Tours paid to have Shorty Shea's name and dates attached to the marker. Thank you, Scott. A noble gesture to a victim of a horrible crime. There are six people interred here, only two are acknowledged.
Last on our stops was Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor of the TLB killers. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale CA. It is an immaculately maintained, scenic resting place in what can best be described as a gated community for the dead. The lawns are green, manicured and attractive.
Bugliosi's plot is on a protected, celebrity list - meaning that the sexton's office will not tell you where it is. But, MansonBlog was able to locate it. Here is the marker:
Hi, Col!
