“I didn’t want to be hit. And I certainly didn’t want to be killed.”
Nov. 19 – For this installment of the Audio Archives, we listen in on an interview with Ella Jo Bailey regarding her knowledge of the Gary Hinman murder.
The interview, which covers Hinman and changes at Spahn Ranch, also reveals that Bailey was briefly thought to be Jane Doe #59.
The recording begins with a detective apologizing to Bailey for scaring her mother. The officer, trying to identify Jane Doe #59, had come to Bailey’s mother’s house after people at Spahn Ranch suggested the unknown murder victim resembled Ella Jo. Since Bailey’s whereabouts at the time were unknown, her mother was left to assume the worst.

Ella Jo Bailey
Ella Jo had been a roommate of Susan Atkins in San Francisco when the two met Charlie Manson in the fall of 1967.
Ella Jo is probably most famous for introducing the Manson family to Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, after he picked her up hitchhiking with Patricia Krenwinkel in 1968.
She was also one of the family girls dubbed the “Witches of Mendocino” after a local mother had the group arrested when one of them gave her son some LSD.
Bailey fled the family in the summer of 1969 after hearing about the murder of Gary Hinman. Her and Bill Vance’s plans to move to Florida were aborted after she was arrested in Cleveland, Ohio and her mother brought her straight from jail back to Michigan.
In August of 1971, Ella Jo returned to Los Angeles to testify for the people, regarding her knowledge of the Gary Hinman murder.
Bailey has maintained a low profile throughout the years, and is currently living in the southwest.