Ages ago, in 2013, the blog tour visited with Michael Channels on his Back Porch. We were treated to view his collection of memorabilia. We took lots of pictures. One picture I took was of an arrest report that Michael had where Manson had been arrested for failure to pay a traffic ticket. On that arrest report Manson gave his address as 3924 Topanga Lane, Malibu.
Brass Tacks Press, a website that features all things Topanga, has an archive of photos that includes photos from the 1960's in Lower Topanga. Among those photos is a picture of a home that looks to be all boarded up and has a spiral staircase leading up to the second floor. There is a house number visible in the picture and it's the same house number that is on Manson's arrest report!
Photo Archive Scroll to the 1960's and the picture of the house is in that group about 3/4 of the way down the page.
At long last the house has finally been identified.
UPDATE
I've gotten a couple of emails that say the house number is photoshopped in the image of the house. I don't believe it is photoshopped.
The article states in the paragraph just below the rainbow trumpet:
He related a story about a house he’d sold to a friend in Topanga Canyon (Southern CA)… “…it was kind of a weird place, it was kind of off the main road into Topanga, the houses weren’t a big deal, I sold it to him for $5,000. He never moved in and kind of disappeared, so I went to check on the house, Charles Manson had moved in, so I kind of let it go.”
If you click on the link "Photo Archive" above and find the picture of the house, click on the picture and it will open in a new window. In the lower left corner of the picture it reads (pic:c/o Newman Family). The Newman family donated that picture to the archive. I have to believe that the picture is genuine.
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27 comments:
Wow! That's awesome Deb!
Oh, the staircase was outside!
I don't think anyone has mentioned that.
Great detective work, Deb!!
Thanks for this, Deb! Even after more than 50 years, we can still find documents and photos that help establish facts. Great work as always.
Poking around that website, its in the section called Snake Pit. Do you think the other photos there are of the same house?
Well done, Deb!
Well done, thanks! I appreciate researchers so much. I just returned from a week at the Library of Congress, doing manuscript research in my field.
Is the house still there? Hard to tell on Google Maps.
Jenn
@Jenn: No, the house was demolished LONG ago...IIRC, I believe that residence was gone by 1970, and very possibly earlier than that.
Jenn, as Sixties said, the house is long gone. I checked out Topanga Lane in Google Maps with satellite view. The street is there, but is a dead end with no houses on either side of it. There appears to be at least one foundation slab visible, though. The area seems to be overgrown and has no doubt flooded over the years from Topanga Creek.
Meanwhile, the Malibu Feed Bin is alive and well. To one side of it was the house known to the Family. It looks like it may have disappeared as well, and may only now exist as a concrete foundation slab.
The arrest report's date (2-19-67) must be wrong. Manson wasn't released from prison on his check forging sentence until late March of '67.
"The name came from the fact that the wooden house had a spiral staircase on the outside, which was the only way to access its upper floor. There was no first floor to speak of because years of neglect had left it filled with sand. It was nestled into an area people dubbed the snake pit...."
So wrote Snake in Member of the Family, p97
Since the area was called the snake pit, the other photos may be of a different house.
Calguy, you are correct, that date is wrong and likely a typo. If you look at the top of the report, there is a booking number and file number. The file number has the correct date.
Thank you for the photo of the Spiral staircase house. I don't think I ever saw a photo of it before. Always fascinated by this part of the story. So many of the base family members came to meet and stay with the family following a chance meeting at the spiral staircase house. Members like Paul Watkins and Dianne Lake.
Medium Patty said:
Oh, the staircase was outside!
I don't think anyone has mentioned that
It's interesting that you should say that. For some reason, I always imagined it to be on the outside. Years before pictures started appearing in book updates, YouTube videos or online, all of the places mentioned in the various books and/or articles had to be formed in my imagination and as I had nothing in particular to go on, my imagination went wherever it went.
But two houses with internal spiral staircases sprang to mind ~ one was in the Monkeees TV show and the other was in the house of my wife's cousin. I always thought internal spiral staircases looked weird and in one instance, positively annoyed me ! It got in the way of the TV and and being tall, not banging my head every time I went near it was a major feat.
Ive always pictured the staircase on the outside as well. I also envisioned it with lots of gritty sand on everything and smelling of tan lotion and B.O.
Grim and Matthew: I think I assumed the staircase was inside because of the photographs put forth over the years as possible Spiral Staircase locations - the Love photo shoot and other bands. Now that I'm going back over peoples' memories, they repeatedly wrote it was outside.
I lived in a house with a spiral staircase (indoors) which looked great but it was impossible to move furniture upstairs.
Can you imagine trying to get a piano up one ? 😅
Actually, I did help a friend get a piano up a twisty staircase. It wasn't spiral but it nearly was, at the top.
Then my friend discovered the piano was riddled with woodworm so a few weeks later, we had to take it down again.
I learned about 15 years later, that a long strip of carpet works wonders.
Good find Deb and David! I remember us walking all thru the snake pit on a recent Manson tour trying to visualize it!
Wow Deb, this is incredible Want to know something else REALLY trippy? Earl Newman, who must have just died in the last couple of years (I contacted him not that long ago -- within the last 4 years or so) was a really great artist who did a lot of screen printed posters in the 60s, particularly for Monterrey Jazz festival and so forth.
Here's the crazy association to Manson besides the house -- Not one but TWO of his original posters are on the wall of the Tate house on the night/morning of the murder and they both can be seen in the crime scene photos! One poster is a Calendar poster for the year 1968 and other one was a Renaissance Faire poster. Both Earl Newman posters. One last sidenote, there's a Manson fan on ebay who was selling reprints of one of the posters and I guess reached out to Earl Newman who had no idea his posters were in the Tate house when she was murdered. It kinda sucks that he had to find that out right before he presumably died. Anyway, great find!
Also, that address number is definitely NOT photoshopped. Whoever emailed you that really has no idea what they're talking about.
P.S. Slight correction to my above post, according to his daughter who was responding to a post on Reddit, Earl Newman was aware his posters were in the Tate house on the night of the murders.
TheLatch, I too made a request to Newman about five years ago to purchase several of his silk screened posters, but the deal never went thru, as he did not follow up with a confirmation of my order or a bill. He may have been ill at the time perhaps?
Additionally, I believe there was a third Newman poster at Cielo, and this would have been in the wet bar in the living room.
TheLatch, about that additional Newman poster at Cielo: it would have been a red star or starfish set against a green background in the wetbar, but I don't have a title for the print. Phoros of that poster can be seen with many of Newman's works at the Monterey Pop Festival, and it is likely Candice purchased at least three posters.
There's a pretty good Facebook group about Topanga. LOTS OF PHOTOS. Some interesting (some hugely exaggerated) comments on certain posts.
Topanga Beach - before the bulldozers
https://www.facebook.com/groups/172678689458477/?ref=share&mibextid=NSMWBT
TheLatch and all, following up on the Newman posters, I have this week been in touch with April Newman about the availability of prints of posters that were at Cielo. She told me those posters are no longer available unfortunately.
On a side note, I do not know whatever became of those posters in the living room at Cielo. Could they have remained in the posession of Rudi Altobelli or Terry Melcher? I have read that Altobelli kept the American flag that was draped over the couch.
Torque -- what you should probably be inquiring about are the possibility of more photos of the spiral staircase house from Newman's daughter, inside and outside. Frankly, those posters are not his best work and it's probably weird and unsettling to be asked about reprints from some Manson afficionados. Just my two cents. Also, I'm assuming Earl has died or did she not say?
TheLatch, I do not know if he has passed, but she did not volunteer that, and I did not ask. The prints here discussed were available on his website not many years ago, and I suppose they were probably available for purchase for a long time.
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