Beach Boy May Have Seen Unreported Manson Killing

Mike Love says Dennis Wilson was too scared to tell the police
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 31, 2016 6:18 PM CDT
Updated Sep 1, 2016 12:03 AM CDT
Beach Boy Claims Bandmate Saw Charles Manson Killing
Beach Boy Mike Love claims bandmate Dennis Wilson saw Charles Manson, seen here in 1970, murder a man in an unreported killing.   (AP Photo/George Brich, File)

Charles Manson committed a murder that no one knew about—except at least two of the Beach Boys. That's according to Good Vibrations, the new memoir from Mike Love. In the book, Love claims bandmate and cousin Dennis Wilson came to him at a recording studio in 1969 "visibly shaken," People reports. "I just saw Charlie take his M16 and blow this black cat [man] in half and stuff him down the well," Love recalls Wilson telling him. According to the New York Daily News, Wilson and Manson had befriended each other in the Los Angeles music scene, and Wilson had hung out a bit at Spahn Ranch, where Manson was setting up his commune. Love writes that Wilson was too scared to tell the police what he had seen.

But he believes the guilt from that decision stuck with Wilson, who had problems with drugs and alcohol, leading to his death in 1983 at the age of 39. Former Los Angeles County prosecutor Stephen Kay helped get Manson convicted and doesn't buy Love's story. "If it was true, I would have heard it before," he tells People, adding that he doesn't recall there being a well at Spahn Ranch. In his book, Love also claims Doris Day potentially saved her son from Manson when she convinced him to move out of a home he was renting with girlfriend Candice Bergen and into Day's Malibu beach house, the Mercury News reports. The two moved out in January 1969; Sharon Tate and four others were killed at that home on Aug. 9 of that year. (A teen slain 46 years ago near the Manson killings was IDed this year.)

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