Mar. 24 – Sheriff’s deputies failed to find any trace of missing attorney Ronald Hughes after a four-hour search Tuesday of a Death Valley ranch once used as a hangout for the Charles Manson “family.”

Two Inyo County deputies and a deputy district attorney scoured the Barker ranch and dug into an area “behind the barn” where an anonymous caller told Los Angeles County officers Hughes, 35, had been buried.

But nothing was found, deputies said, and the search was discontinued.

Hughes, attorney for one of three women charged with Charles Manson in the Tate-LaBianca case, was last seen in Ventura County during the storm-lashed weekend of Thanksgiving, 1970. When he couldn’t be found, another attorney replaced him.

Los Angeles officers gave Inyo County officials details of what the caller had told them, and Dist. Atty. Frank Fowels, Dept. Dist. Atty. L. H. (Buck) Gibbons and two sheriff’s officers drove to the Barker ranch Tuesday to conduct a search.

The ranch is 90 miles southeast of Independence, the Inyo County seat, in country so rough that it can be reached only by four-wheel vehicles. Manson and a number of members of his group were arrested there in 1969 and accused of stealing dune buggies.

It was not until later that he was named as a suspect in the murders.