Karate Dave (from the collection of Family mugshots)
The principle Tate homicide detectives Sgt Calkins and Sgt McGann, posing with their bud, James Jarrett, in 1970
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Karate Dave hung around the Family for a couple of months from about April to July of '69, and got arrested with them in Inyo County, on the way to Barker. From Lt. Deemer's list:
murdersofaugust69.freeforums.net/search/results?captcha_id=captcha_search&what_all=Karate+Dave&who_only_made_by=0&display_as=0&search=Search
David Ralph Baker, dob 8-3-46 (possibly 2-9-50)
Dave
Karate Dave
David William Lipsett
Charley
Charles Ellis
David Lipsick
David Lipsett(aka Karate Dave) on Lt Deemer's list:
POB Vallejo, CA/Summerville So. Carolina
"Ident marks: numerous bullet wounds and scars"
murdersofaugust69.freeforums.net/thread/1035/life-charles-manson-chapter-13
PAUL WATKINS, My Life With Charles Manson Chapter 13
"Karate Dave was another “heavy-duty” recruit who joined us during that period(Gresham time span). He was twenty-six, a Vietnam vet, and tough as nails. He had a plastic elbow (a vestige of his battlefield experience) and carried himself with an air of cold and utter confidence. Dave wasn’t big (five-nine, 160 pounds) but was built like a gymnast. While he seemed to like Charlie, he never tried to ingratiate himself. He was in it strictly for the goodies—all the women he could handle and what promised to be some excitement." ....
"...Barbara Hoyt whom Charlie assigned to Karate Dave. ... She fell right in with the tempo of things at Gresham Street and eventually moved into a tree house in the backyard with Dave."
murdersofaugust69.freeforums.net/search/results?captcha_id=captcha_search&what_all=Karate+Dave&who_only_made_by=0&display_as=0&search=Search
PAUL WATKINS, My Life With Charles Manson Chapter 15
"When I got back to Spahn’s, the girls were there. So was Dave; he had climbed out the bathroom window in Mojave during a court recess and had escaped the same night. A week later, Dave left the Family, and I never saw him again." (about July of 1969)
How Karate Dave came to the Ranch is unknown, though it appears Charlie himself invited him in:
Manson: the life and times of Charles Manson, by Jeff Guinn c.2013
pg204
Charlie also said that he'd met someone who was a karate expert and would come out to Spahn to teach them how to fight hand-to-hand, but he never showed up.
Karate Dave was also the source of the Continental Bakery truck Manson drove around in:
Ed Sander, The Family, pg 190
Danny DeCarlo... bought the bread truck off of one Dave Lipsett, a friend of Manson. DeCarlo traded some stolen motorcycle parts, including an engine, for the Twinkie truck.
One wonders where Manson first met this guy.
In this December, 1969 interview with police, Leslie Van Houten might be talking about this same fellow, who seems to have made quite the impression:
www.cielodrive.com/updates/leslie-van-houten-1969-lapd-interviews/
MISS VAN HOUTEN: (Unintelligible) Dave.
SERGEANT McGANN: What’s his last name?
MISS VAN HOUTEN: I didn’t know their last names.
...MISS VAN HOUTEN: But as I recall, I think Dave had left —
SERGEANT McGANN: What?
MISS VAN HOUTEN: If I recall, I’m pretty sure Dave left a long time ago.
SERGEANT McGANN: Yeah.
MISS VAN HOUTEN: Well — But, of anybody, I’d suspect him. That guy — whooooo —
SERGEANT McGANN: (Unintelligible)
MISS VAN HOUTEN: That’s one person you wouldn’t mess with.. for.. a.. second.
catscradle77 on Karate Dave over at truthontatelabianca.com
"I think he taught the kill schools or whatever you want to call them."
Did your tax dollars pay for these lessons on how to slaughter the TLB victims?
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James Jarrett, 24 in 1969, was likewise a serious dude:
articles.latimes.com/1995-05-26/news/ls-6427_1_james-jarrett
In 1968 Green Beret Sgt. Jarrett(US Army) was honorably discharged* and became Officer Jarrett with the Los Angeles Police Department. At 24, with looks going on 19, he went undercover among Students for a Democratic Society(SDS) at ... Cal State Northridge(San Fernando State College). Then factions much more serious than war protesters--militant Weathermen and the Black Panthers. ... He wore a beard, tiger-striped jungle fatigues and his easy cover was that of a disenchanted Vietnam veteran. He sold weapons and fragmentation grenades and put people away. It lasted a year.
*[Or maybe he was just 'loaned out.' Jarret apparently went right back to the Special Forces after his stint with the LAPD was over. It should be noted that US Army intel people were being used to penetrate domestic political groups at this time:
Watergate by Fred Emery c.1994
"...the Johnson Administration.... had initiated a program of infiltrating protest groups with U.S. Army intelligence agents."]
jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/Security-CIA/CIA%200296.pdf
LA Free Press July 10 1970
Jarrett has been a 'hit' man—the leader of political assassination teams—in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. He had worked for the CIA in Latin America. He had come to the LA police to help train the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) squad, which was responsible for the raid on the Black Panther Party headquarters last December(of 1969).
www.snipercountry.com/Articles/Bullet.asp
During the Vietnam Conflict, Jarrett was assigned to the 5th, 7th, and 10th Special Forces Groups.
There were a couple of other possible connections between Jarrett and the Manson case:
--Before his TLB trial, Vince Bugliosi had successfully prosecuted a group of campus radicals who took hostages at San Fernando State College (now known as Cal State Northridge) on November 4, 1968. He may well have known of undercover officer Jarrett of the LAPD or interviewed him as part of his case.
Rumble at San Fernando State
--Officer Jarrett's cover as a political radical was blown by July of 1970 after he tried to plant a case of grenades, allegedly stolen from the Long Beach Naval Ordinance Depot, among a group of Black Panther sympathizers called "The Friends of the Black Panthers." Bugliosi tells a similar story of a Family member getting a case of grenades:
Helter Skelter, Bugliosi, pg557
(from about 1-25-71 (the day the jury came back with their verdict))
"From a source close to the Family, LASO had heard what they initially believed to be an incredible tale. While working at Camp Pendleton Marine Base, one of Manson's followers had stolen a case of hand grenades. These were to be smuggled into court on "Judgement Day" and used to free Manson. Again, we didn't know precisely what the Family meant by Judgement Day. But by this time that at least part of the story was true. A Family member had been working in the arms depot at Pendleton, and after he quit, a case of hand grenades was missing."
Needless to say, this Family member was never identified. Did the cops try to pull the ol' "case of grenades" gambit with the remnants of the Family back in '71 to provide an excuse to arrest anybody who was left, by resurrecting Karate Dave's connections to Charlie?
If Karate Dave and Jarrett are the same person, this then raises serious issues about the whole case.:
--Since Jarrett was targeting political radicals during his time with the LAPD, why would they assign him to penetrate the Family, who were totally non-political?
--Why would the Family be considered such an important target as to rate the attentions of this valuable undercover operative?
--How much did Jarrett learn about Charlie's plans for Helter Skelter? Why didn't police then act on what they knew of the Family?
--If Karate Dave's job was to teach the "kill schools" (and you can bet that he had to contribute something in order to enjoy the attentions of the girls), doesn't that mean that the LAPD is complicit in the murders? Yes, it does.
OO-ee-OO!
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"In the same day also will I punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit."
-- Zephaniah 1:9
============================ADDENDUM 9-18-18 ========================
Here is another mugshot of Karate Dave, supplied to us by CieloDrive:
Additional information re the real name of Karate Dave (thanks to DebS)
============================ADDENDUM 9-19-18 ========================
The 'eyes' have it!
Karate Dave
Jarrett in '84
Jarrett in 2017
============================ADDENDUM 9-20-18 ========================
David Ralph Baker? (thanks to DebS)
1963 high school photo, when he would have been about 17
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