Los Angeles -- The official record says that Charles Manson and his cult followers murdered eight people during their reign of terror across Los Angeles more than 40 years ago.
But for those involved in bringing members of the Manson family to justice, there has always been the lingering suspicion that their trail of death was longer. Over the years, questions have persisted about a man's apparent suicide in England, the drowning of an attorney and whether bodies are buried under the California ranches the cult called home.
Now, Los Angeles police hope that they have stumbled on a trove of new clues that could shed more light on the Manson murders.
A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Texas this week granted a request from the LAPD to review eight cassette tapes containing hours of conversations between one of Manson's most fervent followers and his late attorney. The lawyer made the recording while interviewing Charles "Tex" Watson after he and other Manson family members had been arrested in 1969.
No one knows what's on the tapes, but they possibly represent the first new clues concerning the Manson murders in years. That was enough for the LAPD to take another look at the case, and it has Manson scholars excited about the possibilities.
Detectives believe that Watson may have discussed "additional unsolved murders committed by followers of Charles Manson," according to a letter sent to the U.S. Justice Department by LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.
"Do we expect to find something in the recordings? We just don't know," said LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith. "But we're going to check just like any good investigator would."
Among Manson murder experts, there is much debate about what -- if any -- dramatic new revelations the Watson tapes will yield in the much-chronicled and much-investigated case.
One of Manson's prosecutors, Stephen Kay, said Manson had bragged about additional murders over the years but it was impossible to know if he was telling the truth.
"Manson told one of his cellmates his followers committed as many as 35 murders," Kay said. "He provided no particulars, no names and no dates. He just fueled the fear that he craved. Criminal defendants are known to lie to their attorneys. But maybe these tapes will reveal something."
Kay said he has always believed that the Manson family was responsible for one additional murder.
In 1969 -- just months after the murder rampage -- Joel Pugh, the 29-year-old boyfriend of Manson clan member Sandra Good, was found dead in a London hotel. The young American's death was listed as a suicide by British authorities, who said Pugh had been depressed.
But Kay and others think that he was killed by a Manson family member.
"Manson despised him," Kay said. "People who Manson hated ended up dead."
Paul Dostie, a retired Mammoth Lakes, Calif., police detective who has studied the murders, believes bodies of Manson family victims could be buried under the Barker Ranch in Death Valley, Calif.
It was there that Manson was arrested after the murder rampage. After much research, Dostie decided to check the property out. In February 2008, cadaver-sniffing dogs led by his black Labrador Buster became agitated at two sites on the decrepit ranch. For four days, Inyo County sheriff's investigators dug up the ranch and used ground-penetrating radar to search for bodies.
They found none, though Dostie thinks that searchers didn't delve deeply enough.
