STOCKTON. Nov. 21, 1972 — Little Heidi Willett — orphaned at eight months by the double murder of her father and then her mother — Monday began her life anew some 3,000 miles away from the scenes of tragedy.
Some day she will perhaps learn that the better part of her first year on earth saw her parents become ensnarled in life-styles and philosophies of the “Charles Manson Family” and the “Aryan Brotherhood.”
Baby Heidi will grow up to learn the path James and Lauren Willett took led to shallow graves — his in a woods near Guerneville, and hers under a house in Stockton.
But all that is much in the future — for the immediate now, Heidi has been embraced into the home of her maternal grandmother. The blonde, blue-eyed girl was picked up here over the weekend by Mrs. George Olmstead of Camden, Conn., after arriving in Stockton Friday.
The process of proving relationship completed, Mrs. Olmstead left immediately for her New England home intent on putting as much distance as possible between the infant and the place where her mother was shot to death.
Mrs. Olmstead was visibly shaken by the shooting deaths of her daughter Mrs. Lauren Willett, 19, and her son-in-law James Willett, 26.
Heidi was found in a house at 720 W. Flora St. on Nov. 11 where police say her mother was shot in the head, then her body was buried in a shallow basement grave.
Mrs. Willett had been dead about 48 hours and police and public have pondered whether little Heidi had been witness to all or any part of the crime.
The body of her father was found Nov. 8 by a hiker. Sonoma County authorities estimate he had been slain, decapitated by shotgun blast, about a month before.
Two men and three women, who had been living at the Flora Street house with the young mother, have been charged with her murder. A fourth woman is in custody, but police have not disclosed a connection to the quintet or the crime.
Police say at least two of the women are members of the “Manson” cult whose leader was convicted of murders of actress Sharon Tate and eight others.
Officers further say the two men are members of a white racist brotherhood which has its roots inside the walls of the state’s prison system.
Authorities believe the Willets were killed because they knew too much about the activities of the accused.