PANAMINT SPRINGS, CALIF. — Spooky rumors have persisted for decades that there are clandestine graves at a secluded ranch used as a hide-out by the Charles Manson clan after a 1969 killing rampage.
Today, Inyo County sheriff's investigators and scientists packing portable ground-penetrating radar, magnetometers and shovels will convoy to the Barker Ranch on a mission to confirm or put to rest such speculation.
The search at the property, which is at the southern end of Death Valley National Park in terrain so rough it can only be reached by four-wheel-drive vehicles, was expected to continue through Thursday in temperatures expected to exceed 100 degrees.
Wild-eyed career criminal Manson directed the gruesome forays that resulted in the massacre of Sharon Tate, three friends and a teenager at the pregnant actress' Benedict Canyon home, and the slaying of a couple in Los Feliz the next night.
A member of the so-called Manson family later suggested that bodies were buried at the Barker Ranch.
In February, cadaver-sniffing dogs led by a black Labrador named Buster displayed telltale agitation at two sites on the decrepit ranch, tucked in an arid canyon in the Panamint Range. Buster is owned by Mammoth Lakes Police Department Det. Paul Dostie, a small-town investigator with a penchant for recruiting anthropologists, geneticists and geophysicists for his cases.
"The dogs were trained to alert on the unique combination of odors that make up the smell of dead people," Dostie said in an interview. "They alerted on the same spots at Barker Ranch."
Intrigued by the dogs' enthusiasm, Dostie had soil samples analyzed by scientists who volunteered their services.
The analyses were inconsistent, as were subsequent searches. Facing mixed results, Inyo County Sheriff Bill Lutze authorized four days of exploratory excavation.
In a rare move, the National Park Service closed the ranch to the public pending completion of the investigation.
But on the eve of what has come to be known in these parts as the "Big Dig," some locals were criticizing the effort as a waste of time and money in a sparsely populated county that can ill afford it.
Rock Novak, proprietor of a country store in the isolated ghost town of Ballarat, said, "I've heard so many stories over the years about Barker Ranch. Some say there's 30 bodies out there; some say 24. Some say none at all. We won't know until they dig it up."
