Stockton — A Marine veteran and his teenage wife were killed by a gang of ex-convicts and “Manson girls” to keep him from talking about a series of Los Angeles area robberies and to prevent her from discussing her husband’s death, authorities charged yesterday.
The district attorneys in Sonoma and San Joaquin Counties, where ex-Marine James T. Willett, 26, and his wife, Lauren, 19, were killed exactly one month apart, revealed the apparent motives for the slayings.
Three ex-convicts with the tattoos of a white racist prison gang called the “Aryan brotherhood” on their chests and three young women with scars of the “Manson family” cross their foreheads were charged with the murders Monday.
Sonoma District Attorney John Hawkes said Willett was shot to death “on or about Oct. 10” by the three male suspects, with whom he had been sharing a two-bedroom resort cabin near Guerneville. The body of Willett, with the head and one arm missing, was found last week in a shallow grave on a redwood-covered ridge outside the town.
“He was killed because the others were afraid he’d tell about robberies the three men committed in the Los Angeles area,” Hawkes said. “Apparently Willett was not involved in the robberies and his relationship with the men is unclear.”
Willett’s wife was shot to death last weekend at a house in Stockton she had been sharing with two of the ex-convicts and three women who once belonged to the “Manson family” headed by mass murderer Charles manson. Mrs. Willett and the couple’s eight-month-old daughter, Heidi, had been traveling with the suspects “apparently of her own free will” since her husband’s slaying.
San Joaquin District Attorney Joseph Bakers said she apparently was killed to keep her from going to authorities about her husband’s death following the discovery of his body. The daughter, who was found in the Stockton home Sunday, along with her mother’s body in the basement, marijuana, two shotguns and three pistols, was in custody yesterday of county juvenile authorities.
Baker charged Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme, 24, Nancy Pitman, 24, Priscilla Cooper, 21, Michael Monfort, 24, and James T. Craig, 33, with the killing of Mrs. Willett. Hawkes charged Monfort, Craig and William M. Goucher, 23, with the slaying of of Willett.
Authorities were led to the woman’s body by Monfort, an ex-convict who used Willett’s name and identification papers to get free on bail after he and Goucher were arrested Oct. 30 for a Stockton liquor store robbery. Goucher was still in jail at the time Mrs. Willett was shot.