• Minister Moorehouse

Minister Moorehouse

Saturday, August 17th, 2013

dean-moorehouse

Dean Allen Moorehouse in 1971

Aug. 17 – Dean Allen Moorehouse (born 2/13/20 in Minnesota, male Caucasian, 5-5, 157 lbs., gray hair and blue eyes) grew up in the Minneapolis area and had at least two older siblings – one brother, two sisters. In 1939, at the age of 19, Dean married Audrey Lucile Sirpless and during the course of the couple’s 28-year marriage, they produced four children; Kathleen Adair (1940), Deane Thomas (1941), Sharon Lee (1945) and Ruth Ann (sometimes 1951/1952/1953)

In 1967, the then 47-year-old Moorehouse reportedly was employed, or formerly employed as a protestant minister and was residing in San Jose, California with his family. Around this time, Dean befriended Charlie Manson after picking up the ex-con hitchhiking through the area. Manson had recently been paroled from federal prison after serving almost six years of a ten year sentence for forging a $37.50 check in May of 1959.

Moorehouse invited Manson to dinner at his home and Charlie ended up staying the night. Manson and Moorehouse discussed the Bible, sang religious songs and when Charlie admired an old piano at the house, Dean told him he was welcome to have it. Moorehouse told Charlie he was always welcome in his home and Manson became a frequent visitor, taking a special interest in Dean’s youngest daughter, Ruth Ann.

Sometime that summer, Manson found a Volkswagen Microbus for sale in Moorehouse’s neighborhood and negotiated a deal with the owner to trade it for Dean’s piano. Shortly after acquiring the Microbus, Charlie took Ruth Ann on a trip up the coast which prompted her parents to report her as a runaway. The pair were eventually apprehended by Sheriff’s deputies on Friday, July 28, 1967. Ruth Ann was returned home and Charlie was arrested for trying to interfere with the police. The following month, Dean and Audrey officially ended their marriage, filing for divorce in Sonoma County.

Dean was arrested on Thursday, March 21, 1968 and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, after he was found in a Redwood Valley home that Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies raided for marijuana. Sheriff’s deputies arrested 11 individuals on a range of charges and Dean was slapped with the delinquency charge because the majority of those in the home were not of age.

Dean was arrested again in May, after Roger Tholan and Gertrude Romanski told authorities that the $50 of LSD they were found in possession of, was sold to them by Moorehouse. Dean was charged with a violation of Section 11912 of the Health & Safety Code.

A few weeks later, Ruth Ann married 23-year-old Edward L. Heuvelhorst in Santa Cruz, California in an effort to become emancipated. According to Ruth Ann, the marriage only lasted one day, and she soon headed to the Los Angeles area where Charlie and the family had relocated months earlier. Soon to follow her was an angry Dean, reportedly hell bent on getting Ruth back. When Dean arrived in Los Angeles, he met up with Charlie at Dennis Wilson’s house where Manson immediately diffused the situation by kneeling down and kissing the preacher’s toes, welcoming him to the party.

Dean spent the rest of the summer at Dennis’ house living in the guesthouse in exchange for taking care of the landscaping duties. He reportedly became a devout follower of Charlie and championed his lifestyle and philosophies. In August, Dean headed back to Mendocino in order to face trial for the LSD arrest back in May. The trial resulted in a hung jury and was set to be re-tried in December. In the meantime, Dean returned to L.A. and reconnected briefly with the family at Spahn Ranch.

Dean’s second trial began on December 17, and this time he was found guilty. He returned for sentencing on January 2, 1969, when Judge Wayne Burke sentenced Dean to 6 months at the Vacaville Medical Facility. Records show he was received the following day and that he was transferred several times during his incarceration, serving his sentence in multiple facilities, including Folsom and San Quentin.

After the Tate-LaBianca murders were connected to the Manson family, LAPD sent detectives to visit Dean in prison. According to the officers that made the trip, Moorehouse offered little to help their case.

Dean was denied parole on May 7, 1969, March 3, 1970, and August 26, 1970, before he was finally granted parole on March 23, 1971.

Little has been documented about Moorehouse’s activities in the years that followed. Records indicate he lived for a long time in the Redding, California area. In May of 1991, Dean was convicted on charges of lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14 and given a 8-year term in state prison. He served 52 months of the 8-year term and was paroled on Saturday, September 2, 1995. He violated parole less than two years later and was returned to prison on May 29, 1997. Dean was re-released on parole on May 22, 1998 and discharged from parole supervision on Sept. 9, 1999.

Dean Allen Moorehouse passed away on Saturday, May 22, 2010 in Shasta Lake, California.

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8 Responses to Minister Moorehouse

  1. butch says:

    in 1971after Deane was released he went to a commune in northern calif where he met Marilyn nickokiris they were married. they soon started visiting former members of the Manson family they visited squeaky in Sacramento. at that time Marilyn helped her dye all her clothes red. very soon after that squeaky tried to shoot the president wearing all red. after that they kept on visiting former members of the family. he wanted to get the family back together with him as the leader taking the place of Charlie but most of the family did not like him much. he soon moved to redding where they decided to live deane and Marilyn were divorced after an 18 year marriage. she remarried and he just stayed in redding until he was arrested for molesting children he went back to prison for a few years then was released back in redding where he lived till he died at the age of 90. whenever Marilyn would see him walking the streets of redding she would want to run him down but I would calm her down please keep my name private because I have received treats from former members like Ruth moorehouse

  2. Jesse says:

    Is Ruth still wrapped up with the family?

  3. Mark says:

    What do you mean you are getting threats??

  4. Kren Winkelman says:

    “Treats” or threats? Lol

  5. Joseph Brown says:

    Well I must say that there are lots of errors in the above reports. I met Dean Moorehouse in Redding CA back in 1997 or 98 as he came to visit the coffee shop I then managed called Serendipity Coffee. We became friends and over the next several years he told me his life story though I admit that his method of story telling was anything but straight forward and linear in design. He had dropped A LOT of ACID from 1967 to the late 1980’s and had a very difficult time telling a tale in sequential order but tell tales he did anyway. He was fond of poetry and wrote more than 200 original works which he would photo copy at the library or elsewhere and hand out to strangers he met mostly on the bus. He would ride the local bus called RABA; Redding Area Bussing Authority everyday and meet new folks everywhere he went, there were literally hundreds of people around town who were friends of his and most knew he was an old friend of Manson… some probably doubted it but most loved him too much to care about Manson stories. In response to the above notes from “Butch” , Ruthanne is not in any way a threat to anyone, she is a very reformed person and completely not interested in even talking to anyone about Manson etc. I personally met her elder sister and spread Dean’s ashes in the forest after he died with sister Sharon, her son and a common friend named Susan. Everyone who knew Dean knew him as Baba, a nickname given to him by Charlie in the 1970’s just before the “attempted” shooting of then President Ford. Anyone who really knew the guy would only have called him Baba and I was his friend until about a month before he died due to him being in hospice and my work schedule. R.I.P. Baba.

  6. webmaster@charliemanson.com says:

    Interesting bit of info from Joseph Brown (in previous post). I once had a contact who had come into possession of a lot of items related to Manson. He sent me photos and one was a man and, as I recall, it had the name Baba written on it. I didn’t make the connection to Moorehouse and will certainly have to hunt for those files again.

  7. S green says:

    Really scary as he was a minister in the Congregational church in small town in North Dakota. I was a teen at that time and went to school with his,older kids. How lives pass and glad he left our town. Never knew why and at that time it didn’t interest me.

  8. Paul Hart says:

    Who was this mysterious Edward Lewis Heuvelhorst Jr?
    Other than a small marriage announcement to Ruth Ann in a local newspaper in May 1968, there’s no evidence this person ever left Michigan. I’ve checked all his records. Never lived in California. His family never lived in California. He died in 2012.

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