Los Angeles Herald Examiner Charles Manson and his followers, who were charged with the 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others, "Herald Examiner" reporter William Farr reported in an article that Manson had planned to murder Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra. Farr was summoned by judge Charles Older to divulge his sources for the article. Farr refused. But at that time Farr had left the "Herald Examiner" to work for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and later for the "Los Angeles Times". Farr cited the California reporters shield law that protected him from revealing his sources, but Older ruled that
Manson Family Charles Watson soon joined the group at Spahn's ranch. Watson, a small-town Texan who had quit college and moved to California, met Manson at Dennis Wilson's house. Watson gave Wilson a ride while Wilson was hitchhiking after his car was wrecked. Spahn nicknamed Watson "Tex" because of his pronounced Texan drawl. In the first days of November 1968, Manson established the Family at alternative headquarters in Death Valley's environs, where they occupied two unused or little-used ranches, Myers and Barker. The former, to which the group had initially headed, was owned by the grandmother of a new woman (Catherine Gillies)