helter, skelter...

The Manson Family Murders are still keeping people up at night.

Sheriffs' detectives in Inyo County, Calif., believe a one-time hideout of the notorious Charles Manson clan may be concealing the bodies of murder victims from nearly 40 years ago. The detectives are converging Tuesday on the Barker Ranch with shovels and high-tech ground-penetrating radar to search for graves.

The Manson family killed actress Sharon Tate and six other people in Los Angeles in 1969. Later, a member of the gang suggested that more victims had been buried at the ranch near Death Valley.

A police detective last year took Buster, a dog trained to find cadavers, to the site where Manson hid after a killing spree that left seven dead in the summer of 1969. Buster's agitated behavior indicated the presence of decaying human remains, Los Angeles Times reporter Louis Sahagun told Alex Chadwick.

Subsequent searches were inconclusive, as were soil tests, but Inyo County Sheriff Bill Lutze said he would allow a limited four-day excavation at Barker Ranch beginning Tuesday. The main targets of the dig were to be hot spots that Buster had flagged.

"There was no consistent response from the dogs that searched and no conclusive findings from the soil samplings tested by top experts in the field," Lutze said in a statement. "The only way to determine once and for all whether there are bodies buried at Barker Ranch from the time of the Manson family is to proceed with limited excavation."

NPR