Public Nuisance (band) though ABC/Dunhill. At the end of 1968 and the beginning of 1969, they commuted back and forth to-and-from Los Angeles where they recorded an album's worth of songs, but like their previous outings none of the recordings saw release—in this case because producer Terry Melcher, who had sub-letted houses to director Roman Polanski and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, became emotionally distraught after Polanski's wife Sharon Tate was murdered by Charles Manson, and wished to cease recording commitments he had made with Wilson for Equinox (Wilson had previously socialized with the Manson family), so Melcher closed down the label.
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)