The Men Who Captured Manson

I never met my Aunt Ardith's first husband (she had about 12 if you counted the ones she married twice), but my father admired the man and liked to talk about him. His name was Merrill Helm Curtis, he eventually became the sheriff of Inyo County, and, while still a deputy, he was in the little group that captured serial killer Charles Manson. In packing up our house to move to Santa Rosa, I came across a short article Sheriff Curtis wrote about the incident.

My father's side of the family had come to California from Kentucky to escape the Hatfield-McCoy feud. They were small time ranchers, horse traders and cowboys to start with and later loggers and then oil field workers. They excelled in fist fights. When Merrill Curtis married into the family, he was, according to my father, the niftiest fighter of the lot. My father sparred with him and learned a great deal, he told us. My father was big, fast and athletic--he turned down football scholarships to USC and Oregon State in order to go to work--but he claimed he could never land a punch on his brother-in-law. 

Merrill and Ardith had a child, my handsome older cousin called Sonny, who tormented my brother and me when given a chance. Merrill Curtis himself had departed the family by the time I came along.

When my father was about 60, he heard about a Merrill Curtis in Inyo County, by then sheriff, and looked him up. They had dinner, and here I am, 80 years old, packing up, and I find an article that Curtis wrote. In it he talked about the Barker Ranch, Manson's last hideout. Curtis and other deputies went after Manson because he was suspected of vandalizing property in the Death Valley National Monument. At the time they didn't know Manson was a killer. They found him hiding in the Barker house in a vanity. Later Manson managed to get out of his jail cell by snaking through a 12 inch pipe in the ceiling. He was recaptured in the crawl space. Manson lives on in prison to this day, if you can call that living.