Expectant Mother to Testify
LOS ANGELES. Feb. 26, 1971 — An expectant mother who lived with Charles Manson’s family from the age of 15 says her baby is due “right now” but she was called to testify again today at the Sharon Tate murder trial.
Ruth Ann Moorehouse, now 18 and known as “Ouish,” was called by the defense late Thursday — the latest of Manson’s loyal followers to testify about life in his hippie-style commune.
The long-haired brunette said she met Manson through her father who had joined Manson’s family. “My father was living with Mr. Manson and so I came to be with my father and the other people.”
There, she said, she found a life of “magical mystery tours” in which people assumed fictitious personalities for each day. “One day we would be motorcycle people or cowgirls or downtown Hollywood ladies,” she said.
‘We aren’t angels. Or we are, or whatever.’
Her best friend at the communal Spahn Ranch was defendant Leslie Van Houten, she said, and they often got high on LSD together. “Once you’re high, you’re high all the time. You can be high forever.” She was asked if she ever saw Leslie become violent and replied: “I never judged her. We aren’t angels. Or we are, or whatever.”
Miss Moorehouse, who bore the Manson family symbol of X carved in her forehead, is jailed with other family members on a charge of trying to influence a witness in the Tate trial by luring her to Honolulu and slipping her an LSD-spiked hamburger.
EX-MANSON GIRL TELLS OF QUITTING ‘FAMILY’
Says She Didn’t Appear for Sentencing Because of Pregnancy
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 15, 1975 — Ruth Ann Moorehouse, still wearing a bandage over plastic surgery she underwent to remove the forehead X that had marked her as a member of the Manson family, Tuesday made a brief and tearful court appearance in Los Angeles.
“She has divorced herself from the Manson family for some time now,” her attorney, Paul Fitzgerald, told Superior Court Judge David Fitts.
Moorehouse was brought to court from Sacramento, where she was arrested a week ago on a four year old warrant issued while Charles Manson was on trial for the Sharon Tate-Leno La Bianca murders.
Known as “Ouish” to other members of Manson’s cult, she initially was charged with conspiracy to commit murder for her part in what came to be known as the “Honolulu hamburger caper.”
Four other members of the “family,” including Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme, who is now awaiting trial for allegedly attempting to assassinate President Ford, were co-defendants in the conspiracy case.
According to the county grand jury indictment against them, the group of Manson followers persuaded Barbara Hoyt to fly to Honolulu with Moorehouse in October, 1970.
Moorehouse reportedly spiked a hamburger with LSD before giving it to Hoyt for consumption. the whole plan purportedly was to keep Hoyt from testifying at the Manson trial. All five were allowed to plead no contest March 23, 1971, to the lesser charge of conspiracy to dissuade a witness, and the murder counts were dropped.
The other four received 90-day jail sentences April 16 of that year but Moorehouse did not show up for sentencing. With Moorehouse at his side, unsuccessfully trying to fight back her tears, Fitzgerald told Fitts that she did not appear for sentencing because she was nine months pregnant at the time.
“The ‘family’ told her she had to shave her head and that she had to have her baby in jail.” Fitzgerald explained , “And she wanted none of that.” Instead she left to live with her sister in Carson City, Nev. and four days after her arrival there had the baby, Fitzgerald said. In the interim between now and then, she married a Reno builder, had another child and recently was divorced.
Fourteen months ago, according to Fitzgerald, she moved to Sacramento but did not rejoin Manson followers Fromme and Sandra Good who also lived in the capitol city. Fromme and Good called Moorehouse’s sister several times in Nevada and insisted that Moorehouse had to come back with the ‘family’, Fitzgerald said.
The FBI found Moorehouse’s sister in Carson City and the sister informed the federal agents Moorehouse was in Sacramento. The FBI did not arrest her but did inform Sacramento authorities who subsequently picked her up on the long-standing warrant last Wednesday.
Fitts said he wanted and up-to-date probation report on Moorehouse and set her bail at $1000.00 pending a November probation and sentencing hearing. She was released later in the day after a member of her family posted the bond. On November 4, 1975 Ruth Ann again appeared in court to be sentenced.
Judge Fitts did not give Ruth Ann any jail time, instead he ruled that because she was abandoned by her father and “thrown willy-nilly into the Manson cult” she could go free with time served. She intended to go back to Minneapolis to live with her mother.
Sacramento Police Arrest Charles Manson Follower
Oct. 8, 1975 — Sacramento police yesterday arrested Charles Manson follower Ruth Ann Moorehouse, 22, on a number of charges including burglary and conspiracy to commit murder.
Miss Moorehouse, known to the Manson followers as “Ouisch,” was arrested at an apartment at 2453 Rio Linda Blvd. and served with the Los Angeles warrant. She offered no resistance.
The FBI said today that her Sacramento address was learned during investigations following Miss Fromme’s alleged attempt to assasinate President Ford.
In 1971, Miss Moorehouse was convicted of feeding an overdose of LSD in a hamburger to a prosecution witness in the Tate-La Bianca murder trial. The prosecution in that case said Miss Moorehouse, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, Catherine “Gypsy” Share, Steven Grogan and Dennis Rice lured Manson family member Barbara Hoyt to Honolulu and fed her the LSD to keep her from testifying against Manson.
Nine months pregnant, she disappeared before her four codefendants, including Miss Fromme, were sentenced to 90 days in jail.
The manager of the apartment complex where she was arrested said Miss Moorehouse had lived there since April 18. She had given the name Ruth Fowler and was living with two small children and a man who identified himself as Ray Bones.
Asked if he had ever seen Miss Fromme or her roommate Sandra Good at the apartment, the manager said, “They haven’t had any visitors like that.”
He said “They didn’t leave the apartment that much. I never saw anything unusual.”
Prior to coming to Sacramento, Miss Moorehouse had been living in the Carson City, Nev. area, authorities said. Investigators in the Tate-LaBianca case apparently had known of her whereabouts then but didn’t think it was worth trying to extradite her.
Miss Moorehouse joined the Manson Family when she was 15 years old. According to Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s book, Helter Skelter, her father, Dean Moorehouse, went to Spahn Ranch to kill Manson for stealing his daughter. “He ended up on his knees worshiping him.”
She is expected to be transferred to Los Angeles later Today or Tomorrow.
Manson Disciple Flown to L.B.
LONG BEACH, CALIF. Oct. 11, 1975 — Ruth Ann Moorehouse, a 22-year-old follower of convicted mass murderer Charles Manson, was flown to Long Beach Friday after being arrested in Sacramento on charges stemming from the 1970 Tate-LaBianca murder trial.
Moorehouse, whose Manson “family” name is Ouish, was flown to the Sheriff’s Department facility at Long Beach Airport and then transferred to the Sybil Brand Institute for Women in Los Angeles to await her arraignment Tuesday.
She has been charged with failing to appear for probation and sentencing after pleading “no contest” on a misdemeanor charge of lacing with LSD a hamburger which was eaten by prosecution witness Barbara Hoyt in Honolulu in 1970.
Moorehouse fled after pleading, but four others, including Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, appeared and were sentenced to 90 days in jail. Fromme is charged with attempting to assassinate President Ford in Sacramento Sept. 5.
Sacramento detectives said Moorehouse had been living there for the past two years. Investigators reportedly learned where she lived from clues found during a search of Fromme’s apartment, about two miles away.