Ruth Ann Moorehouse and Edward "Ted" Heuvelhorst

 

We were aware that in 1968 Ruth Ann Moorehouse married Edward Heuvelhorst so she could be an emancipated minor and not need to answer to her parents and she would no longer be a minor in the eyes of the law. Ruth Ann was 16 years old and Edward was 23 years old.

The story of their marriage as I understood it was that Ruth Ann married Edward and left him at the altar. It was a marriage of convenience for Ruth Ann but not necessarily for Edward. The two were married May 20th 1968 in Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz County, California. It has been said that she hitchhiked back down to Los Angeles and to the Family the same day she married, leaving Edward behind.

Who was Edward Heuvelhorst?

Searching through records I was surprised at the couple of things I found about Edward. Edward Lewis Heuvelhorst, Jr. went by the nickname of Ted, nobody called him Edward. He was born in Michigan and grew up in Holland Michigan according to his obituary. Holland Michigan is where Ella Jo Bailey was from, she was about a year and a half younger than Ted. However, I was not able to find Ted in any high school yearbooks for schools in Holland.

Ted’s mother, Mary Heuvelhorst, taught school in Holland MI beginning in the 1950’s but his father lived in Grand Rapids MI. I surmise that Ted’s parents were separated or divorced. BTW Ted’s mother’s maiden name was Good but I didn’t find a connection to Sandy Good.

Edward Lewis “Ted” Heuvelhorst Jr., is a distinctive and unusual name. The only other person with that name in the US according to Ancestry .com was his father with Sr. as a suffix. I found Ted in the 1962 and 1963 Ottawa Hills High School, Grand Rapids Michigan, yearbooks for his sophomore and junior years. Then I found Ted in a 1964 Menlo-Atherton High School yearbook. That high school is located in Atherton CA and today it is one of the wealthiest zip codes in the US. It was a very ritzy area back in the 1960’s too.

I was not able to learn why Ted came to California for his senior year of high school. Ted did stay in California after graduating from high school. I found a city directory listing for him living in Palo Alto and working for a construction company.

The next thing I found on Ted was a mention of his name in an April 26, 1968 article from the Ukiah Daily Journal in Mendocino County. The article was about some hippies putting on festival at the fairgrounds in Ukiah, naming it the 1^st Annual Calvin Coolidge Day Fair. I have no idea why that name, I couldn’t find that the April 27^th date had any connection to Coolidge. Ted was mentioned because he was shoved by someone standing in the fairgrounds office and he went to the police department to report it.

Hmmm, Mendocino County, Brooks Poston was mentioned in an ad taken out by one of the followers of Jim Jones extolling the reverend’s virtues that was published May 5, 1968. Rev. Jones made a deal with Brooks that if Brooks would get his hair cut, Jones would attend a non-violent peace march with Brooks.

 

Deane Moorehouse was in Mendocino during that time frame, too. And towards the end of May 1968 or early June 1968 five of the Manson Family girls rented a house in Philo, up the road from Boonville, just over the hill from Ukiah. It’s possible that Ruth Ann met Ted in Mendocino County.

It does not appear that Ted ever remarried or had any children.

Charlie and the Yogi

 In a Manson interview at Vacaville in 1985 with KALX-FM, affiliated with the University of California system,  Charlie said he was a student of yoga master Paramahansa Yogananda in the '40s and '50s

"I went to all the retreats. I've seen the light."

 

 

 

Some quotes from the yogi indicate his teachings may have been the source of some of Charlie's own beliefs:

"Remember that your children are not your own..."

"You are originally unlimited and perfect."

"The secret ... is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future... but to live in the present moment..."

"The delusion of egoism must be destroyed..."

"Death is really beautiful.."

If Manson was attending the retreats in Southern California, when could this have been? It would have been when Charlie was running free in SoCal, from about August of '55 to February of '56 (7 months), and again from Oct of '58 to about Dec of '59 (14 months).  The fact that Manson 'went to all the retreats' indicates he was an enthusiastic disciple--at least for a time.  In the same way he was an enthusiastic student of Scientology and an enthusiastic student of the guitar.

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LVH was also a student of the yogi. From Helter Skelter, pg545: 

"[Leslie's boyfriend Bobby] Mackey, in the meantime, had become a novitiate priest in the Self Realization Fellowship[the Yogi's church]. In an attempt to continue their relationship, Leslie became a novitiate nun, giving up both drugs and sex. She lasted about eight months before breaking with both Mackey and the yoga group."

Did Leslie's previous studies at the ashram make her more vulnerable to Charlie's own programming?

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But if Charlie was an adherent of the Yogi, why did none of the Family speak of it? Why didn't Charlie show up at any of the 3-4 retreats/dwellings/ashrams where the faithful gathered in SoCal, trying to secure housing for his brood in '68-'69?  The way he did at Hinman's house, the basement house, the hog farm, Dennis Wilson's house, the FOTW, Spahns, and Barker.

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What is it about Southern California, cults, and young loves?

When they call  California "the land of the fruits and the nuts," they are not always referring to the state's bounteous agricultural output.  Certain themes appear over and over.

Maharishi and Me

That every official in L.A. was not dazzled by the swami seems apparent from a series of articles that appeared in the Times in 1928. “Cult To Be Subject of New Inquiry,” announced one. It stated that although the district attorney’s office some months before had looked into the practices at the Mt. Washington center and had found “nothing criminal,” another investigation was being launched “to establish if any juvenile laws are being violated....” A few days later, a longer article alluded to “accusations that a love-cult is being conducted under the cloak of the Vedantic religion of India” and elaborated, “The interest of the District Attorney’s office in the asserted love-cult activity is said to be centered on whether young girls were included in the various classes in which love and sex theories are declared to be unfolded.”

Benedict Canyon - Walking up Cielo Drive August 8, 2024

 

Bobby Beausoleil Interview

Blog reader Andrew sent me a recent interview with Bobby Beausoleil. The interview was originally recorded back in January 2024 and aired on the Hamilton Morris Podcast Patreon website. It since has been distributed to the usual podcast outlets and to YouTube.

Hamilton Morris is known as a journalist and scientific researcher. He was the creator and director of Hamilton's Pharmapoceia where he explored various mind altering drugs. The programs were distributed by Vice TV. Morris is well educated.

In this interview Beausoleil discusses his part in the murder of Gary Hinman, his opinion of Charles Manson and he offers a motive for the TLB murders.

There is an overview at the beginning of the podcast that's interspursed with a number of commercials. The interview starts in earnest at the 14:28 mark.

Thanks Andrew!