Bruce Davis, considered a “top lieutenant” in the murderous cult known as the Manson Family, has died, according to reports.
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He was 83.
A cause of death was not disclosed, though the Solano County Coroner’s Office and other sources did tell TMZ that Davis died Friday at 11:03 p.m. while incarcerated at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
The man who chillingly testified at a 2014 parole hearing that he “wanted to be Charlie’s favorite guy” was serving a life sentence on a 1972 conviction for two murders committed while a follower of Charles Manson.
Neither Davis nor Manson were directly involved with a two-day series of high-profile murders in 1969 in which actress Sharon Tate, who was 26 years old and eight-and-a-half months pregnant, was shot to death at the estate she shared with director Roman Polanski while entertaining friends. But the cultists were all held responsible.
The group also killed a Los Angeles supermarket chain owner and his wife. All were sentenced to death in 1971, though that was commuted to life in prison after the state supreme court in California outlawed capital punishment for a number of years.
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Davis had admitted to helping Manson kill aspiring musician Gary Hinman and stuntman Donald “Shorty” Shea. Hinman refused to help Manson and his followers relocate to the desert, according to records obtained by the Los Angeles Times, so Davis held him at gunpoint while Manson slashed him across the face with a sword.
Manson accused Shea of being a police informant who was trying to get them kicked off Spahn Ranch, where the group lived and worked. Davis, along with cult members Steve Grogan and Charles “Tex” Watson and Manson, himself stabbed him in a secluded area, the Los Angeles Times described.
Police believe there were many more than the nine known victims, and prosecutor Stephen Kay has told the Los Angeles Times that Davis, the most eager to kill out of all the cult members, was suspected in deaths in Santa Monica and England.
Davis had been denied parole numerous times over the years, most recently in 2021, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom deemed him without empathy. Manson died in 2017, also at age 83.
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