McFALL, MO., Mar. 12 — Life is quieter here now, less interesting. The hippies have fled from McFall.

In their wake they left this little northwest Missouri town with the shudders.

Not because of anything they did here the last year and a half. They were quite well behaved, in fact. Didn’t bathe much, but most worked hard at their farming commune.

The shudders spring from the imagination as it contemplates what might have happened — retroactive whim-whams, call them — caused by acquisition of new information here about two weeks ago, right after the commune’s two full-time members hurriedly split for Kansas City 80 miles away in their old yellow pickup truck.

The new information was that three of the hippies, including the two who had been here the full 18 months, were former members of the demonic Charles Manson “family” of California.

The Manson family has not been much in the news lately, but its members are hard to forget — blamed for the mass murder of five persons at the Sharon Tate home one bloody summer night in 1969, of the wealthy LaBianca couple one night later, of Gary Hinman, musician, of “Shorty” Shea, Hollywood stunt man, and of God knows who else; the Satanic cult of zombie-like creatures, some of them, who reveled in wild, drug-fuzzed sex orgies, drank blood and killed on order whenever their egomaniac, racist wizard-leader, pip-squeak Charlie Manson, said “Kill.”

Lord Almighty, the 200 citizens of McFall had reason to exclaim, we might have all been murdered in our beds!

No one was, of course. Sheriff Ben Rainey of Gentry County can’t even think of an unsolved misdemeanor that might be attributed to them now.

One reason for this, apparently, is that the Rev. William (Billy) Cole, Mrs. Linda Cole and “Little Patti,” as they were known here, were a cut above Manson and some of the other family members who have been convicted of various murders. Or that they have reformed. Or both.

Another factor is that they obviously did not wish to attract unnecessary attention. Cole especially. Not only are California law enforcement officials eager to find him, so are some of the Manson family members who are still free.

Cole, 37, known as Bill Vance when he was with the weird Manson cult, is believed to have vital information about several of the murders committed by Manson family members, Sgt. Paul Whiteley of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s office, said.

Cole is also believed to have in his possession long-sought tape recordings of Manson family members singing folk songs they composed about one or more of their savage killings, according to Sheriff Rainey.

This is the main reason Sergeant Whiteley and Bill Gleason, another Los Angeles officer, came here late last month expecting to take Cole into custody. Specifically they wanted him to testify at a murder trial in California, but they also wanted to question him about related matters. Warrants charging check forgery are outstanding against both Cole and Linda, so taking them into custody would have been no problem legally — just tactically.

Sheriff Rainey, who assisted the California lawmen when they were here, said that one of the officers told him he had talked with Manson in jail shortly before leaving for Missouri and that Manson had said: “If you see Vance, tell him I want that tape back.”

But Cole grew suspicious on the night of Feb. 25 that the security he had enjoyed here so long might be near an end. So he and 22-year-old Linda sped off for Kansas City with a 16-month-old baby named Dawn, believed to be Linda’s, leaving most of their personal belongings behind.

They are known to have visited a hippie pad in the 4000 block of Tracy in Kansas City over the weekend, and according to a young man who said his name is Joe Buffa, interviewed at the Tracy address, they left by bus for Texas two days later.

Buffa, 21, is one of numerous young men and women, several from Kansas City, who lived for a time at the commune. Its population changed in number regularly, townspeople report, averaging 8 or 10 at a time in the warm months. They lived in a 1-room and a 5-room shack (until the smaller one burned last summer) and inside an engineless white school bus when there was an overflow.

Buffa stayed a month. Some visited just for a weekend, others for longer periods. They worked the farm raising soybeans, corn, hay, tomatoes, cabbage, watermelon and other crops. In the winters, when visitors weren’t so frequent, Cole chopped a lot of wood and sold it as far away as Kansas City. He also hired out to other farmers for odd jobs at times.

Not all the townspeople welcomed them here. No parades were held to greet them at any rate. But no one reportedly opposed their presence openly and no untoward incidents between the townfolk and commune dwellers could be recalled by those interviewed here last week.

Buffa said the only trouble he could remember was caused by a few “town drunks” who liked to stagger over to the 5-room shack and try to lure the young women outside with such entreaties as, “We got beer.”

Cole rented the 5-room shack for $15 a month from Mr. and Mrs. Clair Clevenger, who live nearby. Clevenger, 57, is a farmer and rural mail carrier.

The Clevengers said they were under the impression that Cole and Linda were man and wife. But after the two left the Clevengers received a letter from them with Linda signing her name “Linda Baldwin.” California authorities report that her real name is Clair Smith and the “Linda Baldwin” is an alias both Clair and a girl known here and in the Manson family as “Little Patti” have used.

Little Patti is the third ex-Mansonite who lived here, but she disappeared last fall from McFall. Clevenger said Cole told him she later was in some sort of institution in Tennessee, but a letter found in the shack after Cole left indicated otherwise.

The letter was from another person in or close to the family and the writer referred to Little
Patti’s disappearance from McFall. He warned Cole that she could be dangerous to him if she “talked.” The nature of the danger was not mentioned.

Dawn, the 16-month-old child now presumably traveling with Cole and Linda, was assumed to be theirs by the Clevengers. They discovered two maternity ward wrist bands from Trinity Lutheran hospital in Kansas City in the shack after the couple’s departure and the bands bore the names “Linda Baldwin” and “Baby Dawn” on them. But since Little Patti and Linda (Clair) have both used that alias, it is not certain which young woman is actually the mother.

When Mrs. Clevenger asked Linda once, her reply was, “She belongs to all of us.”

While the Clevengers remember Cole and Linda with affection, they describe Little Patti as having seemed surly. Several times, Clevenger said, he noticed her going to the mailbox in such a dazed condition he thought she might be using drugs. Buffa describes Little Patti as being “spaced out.”

The Clevengers, a friendly pair, appeared actually to miss Cole and Linda last week, despite their surprise at the Manson tie-in. They had added a fresh dimension to their lives — especially Linda.

“We liked them,” Clevenger said. “They were nice people.”

Mrs. Clevenger told what a cheerful, outgoing young woman Linda was, always smiling or laughing.

“Yep,” added her husband with affection, not derision, “she was as happy as a pig in a mud puddle and just as dirty.”

They displayed a letter Cole and Linda had sent them after leaving. It began: “Dear Clare (sic) and Kathy: We suspected this for quite sometime. I’m sorry that we can not make personal amends…”

It ended: “… We appreciate and love you all for everything you’ve done for us.”

The letter also gave the Clevengers authority to dispose of their belongings as they saw fit and use them to help pay off their debts in town. They promised to repay them and three merchants what they owed them.

Such a letter is in no way consistent with the picture that has emerged of the typical Manson family member in California. Cole, Linda and Little Patti all appear sporadically in the pages of “The Family” (Dutton; 1971), by Ed Sanders, a book detailing the activities of the “Mansonoids,” as he called them, from their beginning to the imprisonment of many of them.

Sanders, an ex-Kansas Citian, described Cole (Vance) as a former jailmate of Manson who joined the family in 1969 as an accomplished thief. He did not link him or either of the young women to any of the murders.

In fact he wrote that when Manson asked Cole’s girl friend to kill Gary Hinman, the musician, she refused and Cole interceded in her behalf. The upshot was that Cole and the girl left for Texas and family members mumbled about killing them both if they ever returned, Sanders wrote.

They did return, however, and Sanders wrote that a tape recording of the family’s recreation of Hinman’s murder was among those Cole took into hiding with him.

Sanders also wrote that all three of the Mansonites who wound up in McFaII were among those inside a house in California when another member, known as “Zero,” died of a gunshot blast in the head. Little Patti, in fact, was alone in the bedroom with Zero at the time, he related, while the other two were in the next room. Zero’s death was ruled a suicide, the result of an especially risky game of Russian roulette, with only one of the six chambers of the gun empty.

Cole and Little Patti were among numerous family members arrested in Death Valley in October, 1969, at the time of the major roundup of the group, but they were later released for lack of evidence. The three went to Kansas City for a time, then appeared here in the summer of 1970.

Sheriff Rainey remembers that Cole visited him in nearby Albany when he first arrived to establish himself as a law-abid-ng citizen. He said he told Cole he was welcome “if you don’t throw any pot parties or rock festivals — if you do, I’ll run your — out of the country.

Clevenger recalled that Cole was a diligent farmer but that he reminded him of “the fellow who works hard all the time but never seems to get anything done.” He was particularly amused at the fact that Cole planted his crops in concentric squares instead of rows, making cultivation and harvesting difficult.

The publisher of the Stanberry (Mo.) Headlight visited the commune last summer and talked at length with Linda. He left impressed with their industry and observed: “They work too hard to be hippies.”

Linda apparently lectured the publisher at length on the virtues of organic farming, and with a twinkle in her eye, asked him, “What did you expect to find? Wild parties and nearly nude women?”

If anyone held pot parties at the commune, neither the sheriff, the Clevengers nor several others interviewed here seemed to know about it. Marijuana does grow in the area, but Clevenger said he does not think any was grown on the few acres Cole worked.

Cole gained access to the land through its owner, Stephen Hann, 9525 El Monte, Overland Park, who said he had allowed Cole to work the land in return for part of the crop but that Cole had not done well enough to share the crop with him.

Hann expressed surprise that Cole had been connected with Manson, and said he was under the impression that Linda was Cole’s daughter.

Most of their belongings have been removed from the shack by now, either by Clevenger, who is preparing it for a new tenant, or by a group of Kansas Citians who drove here early the morning of Feb. 29 in Cole’s yellow pickup and a car to recover what they said was their property.

That expedition from Kansas City created a few tense moments for the young folks as well as for Sheriff Rainey.

Clevenger noticed lights on inside the shack about 3 o’clock in the morning. He telephoned the sheriff, who hustled down from Albany with a deputy.

Not knowing who was inside and seeing Cole’s pickup, the lawmen understandably drew their revolvers before entering the shack. When they kicked in the door, they discovered five surprised young men and two startled young women preparing belongings to be put in the pickup.

“Put the guns away,” one of the young men pleaded earnestly. “We’re peaceful. We’re peaceful.”

Indeed, they were. They explained that they had bought the pickup from Cole over the weekend. The belongings they were loading into the truck were their own; they had loaned them to the couple, they said.

Their explanation satisfied Sheriff Rainey and Clevenger, and the youths were allowed to resume loading the truck.

“He’s one of the better sheriffs we’ve run into,” commented Buffa, one of the seven, back in his pad in Kansas City.

Buffa and two others on that trip said they were disappointed, however, that they had not been able to tow the white school bus back to Kansas City. They had planned to put an engine in it and use it for travel, they said. The bus is now in the possession of one of the businessmen in town to whom Cole is indebted.

Buffs and the others said they were surprised to learn that Cole had been connected with Manson. Asked whether Cole had tape recordings with him, Buffs said yes, he had, that he had shown one to some girls at the commune but had not said what was on the tape.

Why had he joined Cole and the others at the commune last summer, Buffa was asked.

“It was for people who wanted to get back to the land,” he said, “for people who didn’t like the city.”

Some fragmentary evidence of what life was like for Cole and Linda here was still inside the house last week. No running water, for instance, inside the house. A well pump was outside the back door, a 3-holer outhouse nearby. Surplus commodity food was in the pantry.

(A check at the surplus commodity food distribution office in nearby Albany revealed that once a month Cole or Linda or both of them checked in promptly for food for a family of three. The supervisor said they always took all they were entitled to – dry beans, butter, cheese, corn meal, egg mix, flour, fruit juice, shortening, macaroni, canned chopped meat, evaporated milk, instant milk, instant potatoes, prunes, rice, corn syrup, rolled oats, peanut butter and assorted vegetables.)

A Monopoly set, well-used, was in evidence. An old TV set lay on a mattress in the front room. A sun lamp light bulb was screwed into a ceiling fixture. A photograph of the 8 young men of “Chicago,” a rock group, hung over a double bed. Letters and post cards addressed to various persons “c-o Youth for Life, McFall, Mo.,” lay on a table. A notebook lay among them, doodles, figures and miscellaneous thoughts inside. One page contained song lyrics:

“There’s a new world coming. It’s just around the bend. There’s a new world coming. This one’s coming to an end. There’s a new voice calling …,” and that was all.

Dozens of empty Prince Albert tobacco cans were piled together in the kitchen, a cigarette roller nearby. Sheriff Rainey said he had sniffed the cans for marijuana but they only smelled of tobacco.

A certificate granting Cole, Linda Baldwin and “Patricia Baldwin” a charter for a “Youth for Life church” was found torn into eight pieces. It was signed by “Rev. Dr. Herman Keck, Jr., President of the Calvary Grace Christian Church of Faith, P.O. Bo’s 1674, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.” It was dated February 28, 1970.

Cole and his small transient following apparently did not classify as “Jesus freaks.” Linda summed up the “Youth for Life” religion for the Stanberry Headlight last year as: “Total acceptance of all churches and beliefs with no prejudice at all.”

Books found in the house did not dispute this impression. They ranged in subject matter from revolution to religion, but the bulk of them were conventional, not even controversial.

Outside the shack were two sheds, one for a goat and sheep Cole sold before leaving, the other for three chickens that were still inside. They had also kept rabbits. In the field near the burned-out., 1-room shack in which they had once lived lay a scarecrow wearing a blue sweat shirt that bore the peace symbol and the word “Love” beneath it. The sweat shirt had been placed on the scarecrow upside down.

The murder trial at which the state had wanted Cole to testify was a 4-month affair. The jury deliberated most of last week, and was finally recessed for the weekend without reaching a verdict. Bruce Davis, a Manson family stalwart, is charged as one of the killers of Hinman and Shea, the stunt man.

Sergeant Whiteley said the state did not learn of Cole’s whereabouts here until very late in the trial, but he would not say how this was learned. When officers did find out, they had to inform the court — and therefore the defense as well — where Cole was hiding before they could go get him, he said.

Sheriff Rainey said a defense attorney for Davis rushed here immediately, arriving even ahead of the Los Angeles County lawmen. It is uncertain whether this lawyer alerted Cole or whether one of Sheriff Rainey’s own deputies accidentally had aroused Cole’s suspicions the day before when he visited the Cole shack to double-check his appearance to compare it with what California authorities had supplied on the man they were seeking.

Whatever the case, Cole escaped. “It’s too bad,” Sergeant Whiteley said. “He could have seen a very valuable witness.” Sheriff Rainey added his regrets. One television network, he said, had offered a large sum of money for the tape recordings.

“I guess I could have put them in jail as soon as they cailed from Los Angeles,” he said. “We got a pretty nice jail sere. Feed good.”

By HARRY JONES JR