Gimme back my bullet

Unless they are accurate and indicate what is speculated here. The liver temp. discepancies can be dismissed but not denied or explained.

Why wouldn't Watson, Atkins and Krenwinkel (and possibly Kasabian) check the house together, killing people right where they found them? Wouldn't it have been much easier to rush into Folger's bedroom and kill here there, instead of trying to herd her from one room to another and then chasing her out onto the lawn?

Mike, I just noticed this. I think it makes/made sense to have everyone in the same room at the same time because it would decrease the odds of someone escaping from the house while one of the others was being killed. Watson knew the layout of the house and he knew there was at least two escape routes - the door by the kitchen leading to back hill and the door in Sharon's bedroom - if they had killed Voytek on the couch or Abigail in the bedroom there is the remote possibility that Sharon and Jay could have heard the noise and ran out of the french doors to the guest house for help and or the phone to call for help and the same argument applies if they attacked Abigail in her bedroom. If they had attacked Sharon and Jay in the bedroom there is the chance that Voytek and/or Abigail could have run out of either the front door or the door from the kitchen leading to the back of the house.

It just dawned on me that Abigail was running out the french doors towards the guest house where she knew Garretson was residing for help. I always assumed she was running for the hill.

As for the liver temps I defer to everyone else's knowledge except to say that there were record temperatures on the Friday so it probably took a long time to cool down and then it probably got really hot again first thing in the morning and being in the sun probably didn't help for any of the liver temperature readings whether being in the house or on the front lawn. Does anyone know if the house had air conditioning? I assume not but I don't know for sure

Yeah, Voy's first liver temp, taken at the scene at around 2:00 in the afternoon can't be correct. Outside temp is 90, yet his liver temp is 80? What am I missing here? Like someone else said, it just doesn't add up.

Is there somewhere here that I can read about this? I mean, was he interviewed by the LAPD? Surely, he would remember as to about what time he confronted some people using his water hose? Especially if it were in the middle of the night.

If the killers did stop by and used his water, I can't see it being really late at night. By late, I am talking 4 or 5 in the morning. What would the chances be, that this couple would be awake at that late (early) hour? Again, to me anyway, this holds true that the killings took place closer to the times we have been told. Between 12 midnight and 1 in the morning.

Britt a person doesn't equal the outside temp, but eventually ends up colder (unless maybe in the Arctic) - the outside temp influences the rate of cooling, not the final result. There's no problem here with Voy being at that temp as per the recent studies which curiosity forced me to probe into. His result was what we'd expect from reported history - and it looks like the others were only skewed warmer by the heat which their smaller bodies would surely absorb some of faster.

A study published in Neurochem Research 2006 vol 31 p157-166 DOI 10.1007/s11064-005-9005-7
...shows an averaged drop off where ambient room temp is 24C in hospital room of death for the first 2 hours post mortem then maintained in the lab at 18C.
Subjects dropped from 37C/92F at time of death to 25C/approx 60F, 21 hours after, with a plateau of very little drop in the first 4-5 hours. At about 19 hours the liver temps rose again slightly. Body heat is retained a surprisingly long time unless you end in the chiller.

This study data was from 8 corpses who passed naturally in hospital who were tested for various temps in different body areas every few minutes. The study notes that old models require the core temperature upon death and the ambient temperature to be known before any predictions can be modeled re time of death, but this study furnishes an accurate model for predicting time of death based on brain temp and neurochemical changes.
http://khup.com/download/0_keyword-a-study-of-the-shape-of-the-post-mortem-cooling-curve-in-117-forensic-cases/continuous-monitoring-of-post-mortem-temperature-changes-in.pdf

The charts show Voys liver temp was actually typical for someone killed 10-12 hours prior (once quick conversions are done)and kept in mediocre temperature storage. The others I think had just been kept too warm for their actual time of death by the weather cooking them....

Very good questions. Yes his report is here and in Helter Skelter. He wasn't sure of the time. He wrote the lic. plate number down but didn't report it immediately to the police.

Cats pointed out (elsewhere) that Mr. Weber spoke with an accent, a thick one at that. None of the Family that drank and cleansed themselves that early morning reported an accent when Mr. Weber spoke. Mr. or Mrs. Weber didn't report any blood stains on the killers or in the yard. I think they just got a drink.....they were already clean. Atkins in her 1978 parole hearing transcripts(references are here as well) stated the killers/participants took two sets of clean clothes with them....not one.

Actually the interactions with Mr. Weber and his wife support the hypothesis that it was closer to 4 or 5 in the morning. They couldn't kill Weber or his wife
but gave them a story. This group was clever and no matter what they said, they feared being caught.

Many older folk and people getting ready for work are early risers. I think if the killers tried to do something, they feared detection, so they didn't engage in their torture and killing.

At one or two in the morning, the 3 or 4 minions of Manson could have easily overpowered the Webers and killed them. They were instructed by Manson to kill and these two could have been victimized as well had it been 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.

The Webers, fortunately, were given a story instead.

Thanks for the links and info. I have a quick overnight trip to take, so I will take a look at these when I return. Thanks again.

Points well-taken.

A longer night of 'terror' poses some problems for the DA but monumental problems for the defense team. I think Bugliosi went with what he had; including the verbal testimonies of Susan Atkins, Virginia Graham et al, Atkins' letters, and Kasabian's testimony. It was enough.

The Cielo Dr. killers/participants' testimonies (first reported 70 some days after the fact) provided them with excuses galore. Did anyone ever hear of retrospective falsification?

The statement that the differences in body mass explain the liver temp discrepancies doesn't add up. There were two bodies, VF and AF, lying in generally the same location having, according to the killers, died within a few moments of each other. There is no way that would account for that big of a difference in temperatures.

I don't think that is a safe bottom line assumption as the papers state there are many variables affecting cooling, and Frykowskis is the only temp that roughly fits the facts and gives him a death time of roughly 2am.
It's the others who appear to have died later, if we are to take liver temp taken EXTREMELY late in the piece as indicative, which it clearly isn't. Errors are made too and thats a possibility as Mike said. We need a forensic scientist to resolve this really and a Dr to guesstimate injury impacts ie how long to wane.
But just pretending the temp based timelining is foolproof even so long after the fact, well maybe it's just that the others did not die immediately from their injuries but lay awaiting help (perish the thought).

Weren't the bodies in full rigor when the police got there after Mrs. Chapman discovered them? I've read that full rigor suggests death for more than 6 hours, they might of been dead for 8 hours. Isn't that how they usually tell how long someone has been dead by the amount of rigor in the bodies? I might be wrong, but, that's what I've always read in the true crime books I've read and doing research on the world wide web.

Yeah but Cats Weber never saw them washing blood off themselves just that they were using the hose - if it was dark he couldn't have seen any blood - my point is if he saw some teenagers drinking from a hose why would he think anything was off enough to report it to the police until he saw the Atkins' story in the paper.

Cats, thanks for the link on body cooling temps. From what I read, those were done in controlled environments with room temps ranging from 53 to 74 degrees. I can't really compare that to Voy and Gibby, being outside on a hot summer night where the temp probably was in the 80's. Of course, I do not know what the temp was that night, but since the daytime temp was in the 90's, makes sense that it was in the 80's. I believe that everyone was killed within minutes of one another. So, I can't explain why Voy's liver temp was so much cooler than Gibby's. Unless, it was human error when filing the report.

I still believe, that the killers were there only a short period of time. I mean, 4 or 5 shots were fired immediately upon arriving (when Parent was leaving at around 12 am) and Kasabian reported hearing horrifying screams coming from inside the house. It was a loud crime scene and had I been one of the killers, I would have been scared to death, thinking that someone had heard all the noise and was calling the cops.

As for the Webers, I think Jean Harlow makes a good point, that Mr. Weber, saw some punk kids using his hose and he ran them off. Really no need to report that to the LAPD. A shame that he doesn't remember what time that happened. Did he ever guesstimate a time?

Joe25, I don't see how, the confrontation with the Webers, points to it being closer to 4 or 5 in the morning? However, I do agree with you, that the killers were fearful of being caught. Which is why I believe they were at the crime scene for a short time only. Too much noise was made.

Bottledbrunette asked a question about rigormortis. There is a pic of Jay at the scene where he had been rolled over and his hands and arms appeared to be in full rigormortis. To me, they looked as if clenched and locked. Rigor can be tricky. I work part time for a funeral home and back in October, I went to Duke University Hospital to pick up a person that had died of cancer. The person was 80 years old and had passed at about lunch time (12 noon) that day. I arrived at 6 in the evening (Duke is 2 1/2 hours from my city) to do the removal. She was in the morgue, in the cooler. I didn't ask how long she had been in the cooler. We took care of the paperwork and I drove her back to my city. Upon arriving at my funeral home, I unloaded her, did some more paperwork, and placed her in our holding area to be embalmed the following morning. I did not place her in a cooler.

At 9 am the following morning, I helped to undress her and prepare her for embalming. To my surprise, she did not show any signs of rigor at all. Her arms and legs were loose and easy to move. So, I don't know how reliable rigor is in estimating TOD. I do know, that heat (like on a hot summer night) will speed up the rigor process, while coolness will slow it down.

Rigor Mortis is actually a pretty poor way of estimating ToD, because so many factors can throw it off, not the least of which is temperature. Given the extreme heatwave they were experiencing, Rigor would have been severely retarded. Even without any contributing factors, the rate of Rigor varies widely from person to person, meaning that rigor provides only a ballpark figure that can be be hours off either way.