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Medford man's memoir has Charles Manson connection Medford resident Edwin Colin, seated on horse, lived as a boy on a California ranch used for filming Westerns. He befriended ranch hands and actors such as Ray "Crash" Corrigan. Monday Sep 18, 2017 at 12:01 AM Vickie Aldous Mail Tribune @VickieAldous During a break from college in the summer of 1968, Edwin Colin went to visit his friend Donald Shea, a former stuntman, aspiring actor and ranch hand on the Spahn Ranch in California. Colin saw a small man in jeans and moccasins sitting on the porch steps, tuning a guitar.  The man was Charles Manson. Manson told Shea to bring Colin over for an introduction. Instead, Shea gripped Colin's shoulder and responded, "Nope. Don't think so, Charlie!" After steering Colin away, Shea related how Manson and his cult-like followers had taken over the ranch. Shea was obsessed with finding a way to get the group off the property. "He said, 'There's something weird about this guy. I don't like him,' " recalled Colin, who now lives in Medford. It was the last time he would see his friend. A year later, Manson's followers went on a killing spree. Their victims included pregnant actress Sharon Tate, writer Wojciech Frykowski, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hair stylist Jay Sebring and supermarket executive Leno LaBianca. Shea disappeared. His body was not discovered until 1977 — long after the Manson Family was imprisoned. Manson's followers had brutally stabbed and beaten him to death, then buried his body. Decades later while researching his newly published memoir, "My Life at Corriganville Movie Ranch: From Crash Corrigan to Charles Manson," Colin came across a document he believes sheds new light on the murder of his friend. Life on a movie set The two met while Colin was still a boy. Shea, then in his 20s, took care of horses on the Spahn Ranch. Transported back and forth in horse trailers, the animals were used for tourist trail rides at the better-known Corriganville Movie Ranch. Founded by actor Ray "Crash" Corrigan, the ranch had Old West-style buildings and wide open spaces used for television shows and movies. On weekdays, the ranch was bustling with film crews. On weekends, tourists rode horses and swarmed the sets. In a dream come true for a boy in the 1950s, Colin moved to the Corriganville Movie Ranch when his father got a job there. Seeing how the boy liked to help out with the horses, Shea, a towering cowboy nicknamed "Shorty," put him to work as a drag rider, following behind on the trail rides to sweep up any straggling tourists. "I made 25 cents a trail ride — and it was big money," Colin said. To a starry-eyed boy who only had sisters at home, Shea became like a big brother to Colin, even teaching him to drive a manual-transmission truck in a hay field. One weekend, Colin went with Shea for an overnight stay at the Spahn Ranch — the same place where he would later meet Manson. Spahn Ranch had itself been a movie ranch, but had deteriorated. Colin met the owner, George Spahn, and his girlfriend, former circus rider and horse trainer Ruby Pearl (Oliver) Molinaro. Although Molinaro filled the boy with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans and apple pie, he barely slept during his night on a pull-out sofa bed. "I usually had no fear of the dark," Colin wrote in his memoir. "But I can honestly say that that night trying to sleep in the living room of Spahn's house was the worst night of my life. I had stayed overnight at my friends' or relatives' houses many times without any difficulty or uneasiness. I don't know if it was a premonition of the events that would transpire there in the future, but all I know is that nothing ever came close to the eerie feeling I experienced spending that night at Spahn's Ranch." The next time Shea invited him to spend the night at the Spahn Ranch, Colin made up an excuse. He never stayed there again. Rationale for murder Years later, with the Manson Family murders making headlines, Colin heard they had been sent out on their killing sprees from the Spahn Ranch. He also learned Shea was missing. Colin knew in his heart his friend was dead. Acting on an informant's tip and their own information about guns and stolen vehicles at Spahn Ranch, law enforcement had raided the Spahn Ranch Aug. 16, 1969, and taken some of the Manson Family members into custody. It was later revealed that several cult members got into a car with Shea on the Spahn Ranch Aug. 26, 1969. They bludgeoned him with a pipe wrench and stabbed him to death before burying him. "It was pretty horrific how they did it," Colin said. A cult member said Manson ordered the murder because he believed Shea was a snitch who had talked to law enforcement, leading to the raid. That rationale for the murder is still reported in online sources, including Wikipedia. Colin said he never believed Shea was the one who called the police. Instead, Shea was the kind of person who would try to figure out a way to deal with the Manson Family directly. Colin recalled an incident from his childhood in which he described to Shea how he had told on a classmate who was acting up. Shea informed him in no uncertain terms that the worst thing ever was to be a snitch. While researching his memoir this year, Colin came upon an obituary in the Grants Pass Daily Courier for Molinaro, the horse trainer and girlfriend of the Spahn Ranch owner. She passed away in Grants Pass in 2010. The obituary said, "She ran the Spahn Ranch where the Manson Gang was caught. She noticed lots of guns and knives in Charles Manson's dune buggy and called the sheriff. He was then taken into custody." Colin believes the obituary confirms his theory that Shea was not the informant. "When I read that, it was like a light bulb came on. That makes more sense," Colin said. Lawyer Vincent Bugliosi, who chronicled his prosecution of the Manson Family in the book "Helter Skelter," described how Molinaro was an asset when he was gathering information for the trial. He called her a "fund of valuable information" about weapons, rope and a leather thong used in the murder spree. "Being an experienced horse wrangler — as well as a tough, gallant lady who showed not the slightest fear of the Family — her testimony would carry weight," Bugliosi wrote. According to Bugliosi, Molinaro visited Manson while he was in jail and demanded to know where Shea's body was buried. Manson, who had long dreamed of triggering a race war in America, tried to blame the Black Panthers, a revolutionary group founded in the 1960s. Thinking back on Shea's murder and his own brush with Manson, Colin said he can't help but wonder what could have happened if his friend had not grabbed his shoulder and stopped him from talking to the cult leader. "He relied on young runaways and people who were not stable in their lives," Colin said of Manson. "I don't think I would have fallen under his spell. But he couldn't have done what he did without being a mesmerizing figure. It does give you a little chill and a shiver." Colin's photo-filled book, "My Life at Corriganville Movie Ranch: From Crash Corrigan to Charles Manson," is available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, eBooks and Kindle, or by emailing him at [email protected]. — Reach staff reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-776-4486 or [email protected]. Follow her at www.twitter.com/VickieAldous.