Who was Filippo Tenerelli?

 

Filippo Tenerelli was born on November 4^th, 1945 in Italy. I have been unable to find the name of his father, but his mother’s name was Caterina. Filippo lived with his parents in Italy until moving to the United States in 1959. He did not have any history or mental illness or arrests. There is not much known about Filippo in general, though significant points of interest are that he spoke with an Italian accent, and seemed to have an interest in motorcycles, having driven one at some point.

The Tenerelli’s settled in the Los Angeles area, with documentation showing that Filippo at least lived in Culver City in 1969.

In 1964, Filippo got into a motorcycle accident. He was sent to the Washington Hospital in Culver City and was operated on and had X-Rays. I am assuming that he was for the most part okay after this incident.

On September 29^th, 1969, Filippo left his parents’ house from Culver City, all the way to Father Crowley Point in Death Valley, which is in Inyo county. According to google maps, this would be about a 4 hour drive. 

Now as the story goes, Filippo was going to allegedly drive of the cliff and kill himself, though when this was supposed to have happened, the car got stuck. For some reason, Filippo had a pickax and shovel in his car, took them out, and used them to move the car. Infuriated, he pushed the car over the edge. Apparently, the car fell 400 feet and Filippo went down to the bottom of the canyon to retrieve some of his belongings, while doing so, he cut his hand and blood splattered on the ceiling.

Afterwards, it is unknown where he spent his time next, but apparently on the night of September 30^th, Filippo ended up in Bishop, which is 100 miles away, and an hour and a half drive. I am quite suspicious how he ended up there, unless he miraculously got picked up hitch hiking. Once Filippo got to Bishop, he checked into the Sportsman Lodge motel, paying 156 dollars in advance to stay until November 3^rd. Interestingly, that would be long enough to be before his birthday. 

 

On October 1^st, Filippo went to the sporting goods store and bought a 20 gauge shotgun, ammo, and cleaning kit. He also went to another store and bought two fifths of whiskey, 2 pairs of underwear, a safety razor, and an issue of Playboy. I am unsure what size the underwear was, and if it would have been the right size to fit him.

 

An old picture from the motel

The last person to have seen Filippo alive was the motel owner, Bee Greer. He had come out of his room because he had heard the sirens of fire engines. Bee told Filippo that the fire department were doing a controlled demolition of a building that was across from them to which he watched awhile then went back to his room.

The next morning, a maid tried to get into his room but was unable to. They found that it had been barricaded, and later on in the day, Bee Greer’s husband and son had to push it in. When they did, they found Filippo on the floor dead, a gunshot wound to the back of the head.

 

Apparently Filippo had blocked the door with a chair, and put the shotgun to his mouth, pulling the trigger with his toe. His head lay on two Turkish bath towels, which the police report postulated may have been to soak up the blood. A bed pillow was over his head to muffle the sound of the gunshot. Filippo’s body was found with his pubic hair shaved, and some of it between the pages of the Playboy magazine that he had bought. The two bottles of whiskey that he had bought were still in the room, one empty and the other only a third full. There was a slash on his wrist from an attempt at committing suicide that way.

In the end, his death was considered a suicide. 

 

A scan of the picture that the coroner drew

In the 51 years since, many people who have heard of this case do not consider it to be a suicide. The details of the case do not add up, and many believe it to be murder. I didn’t come across this case until I started reading Tom O’Neill’s book, ‘Chaos’ which delves more into Manson type things. O’Neill believes that Tenerelli was murdered by the Manson family. Admittedly, there are many things that are unexplained and off about Tenerelli’s case.

First is his blood alcohol level. At the time of death, Filippo’s BAC was only 0.03%. Barely even intoxicated. And yet, one of the bottles of alcohol was completely empty, and the other almost there. This definitely implies that someone had to have been there at some point visiting him, drinking together.

In O’Neill’s book, he stated that he had asked about the windows, and the mayor of the town stated that the motel’s windows were too small to fit anyone in or out of. The mayor also wrongly stated that the motel had been torn down years ago. In reality, a ranch bought the building, O’Neill saw it in person, and the windows were indeed big enough for someone to crawl in and out of, even two people. 

 

Now, when Tenerelli died, he was listed as a John Doe, despite having signed in at the front desk. The owner of the motel, Bee Greer, stated that should never have signed in anyone to stay if they didnt have either a drivers license or an ID, and she stated that Tenerelli had an ID. Interestingly, the person that signed in at the front desk looked just enough like Tenerelli to have apparently passed for him on the ID, though there has never been any confirmation of what Tenerelli looked like at the time, and what his ID looked like. Bee Greer stated that the person she signed in did not have an accent. The real Tenerelli had a distinct Italian accent. Either Bee’s story is incorrect, or someone signed in for Filippo.

Filippo’s family filed him as missing on October 3^rd of that year. On the 4^th, two hunters saw the Beetle that Filippo had pushed over the cliff, and notified police. When an officer came around, he saw the blood on the ceiling and suspected foul play. Filippo’s family learned of the car being in Death Valley at that time. It wasn’t until three weeks later that the police in Bishop identified Filippo as their John Doe. On October 30^th, 1969, the Inyo Register reported that the Doe was Tenerelli. Filippo had been identified by the x-rays from his 1964 hospital stay. Interestingly though, the Inyo county coroner had been notified of this within 24 hours, yet the chief of police did not tell the news until October 28^th. The Inyo County sheriff’s office, the ones that found Fillipo’s car, wanted to know who the person was that dumped it. Coroner Brune told them that they had identified the body two weeks earlier.

Apparently, the Manson Family was briefly considered as having been responsible for Filippo’s death. There was little information to the public that showed any links, but six months later Aaron Stovitz, who had worked with Bugliosi on the Tate case, suggested that the Tenerelli case may have been one of the unknown Mansion deaths.

In O’Neill’s book, once he started snooping around the town asking law enforcement about the Tenerelli case, people gave little, wrong, or no information at all. The Lieutenant Chris Carter stated that the records had been purged, with unsolved homicide cases being held indefinitely. Meanwhile, a cop told O’Neill that they had seen the records back in 1993. Interestingly, Debra Tate had pleaded for Tenerelli’s case to be reopened back in 2007. In 2019, an article on Fox News stated that the case had been re-opened more than 11 years ago (which would have been at least as far back as 2008), and was once again closed. If what Carter said was true, of holding onto unsolved homicide records...doesn’t that mean they consider his case an unsolved homicide?

As Tom O’Neill wrote about his experience, the reader is supposed to understand that the police in this situation are very corrupt. For some reason, newer police end up being curious about it, as Tom about what happened, and then they clam up about talking about it ever again. It conveys that there is information in there that we are not allowed to know, and in the book shows that the case is extremely suspicious. I can only take this at face value since these are Tom’s experiences. Among these is the narrative that the police are seemingly trying to cover something up, especially in the fight that Bee Greer had with the police in stating whether Tenerelli had an ID or not. Bee stated that police kept trying to talk her out of saying that he had an ID. Later on, O’Neill found a registration form that had Tenerelli’s name on it, but misspelled. Later on, Filippo’s sister saw the paper and confirmed that it wasn’t his handwriting.

The scene of Tenerelli’s death contained no forensic photographs, and had no evidence of forensic tests used, such as finger prints or ballistics. The surgeon that performed Filippo’s autopsy, Robert Denton, stated that he never believed that it was suicide. The only reason he did, was because of pressure from the coroner’s office. Denton noted that Tenerelli’s body had looked to have been in a fight or dragged before being shot.

When Filippo’s car had been found, the police report stated that it couldn’t have been there for than 2 days. The car was found on October 5^th, which if the two day note is true, then it couldn’t have been Filippo that dumped the car. Filippo passed away on October 1^st, and found on October 2^nd. In the car, they found items that implied there could have been another person, such as a Santa Monica bus schedule, and a meal and laundry sheet from Brentwood Hospital, where didn’t work or stay. Back when the two hunters first saw the car, they stated that they had seen someone come out of it, and blood all over the car. Apparently around the 1^st of October, a highway patrolman had stopped a beatle with hippie types, that were later identified with Danny DeCarlo as the driver of the car. At the time, DeCarlo was in the Death Valley area. Neither cop that investigated the abandoned car believed that Tenerelli committed suicide.

When the Manson Family had been arrested for their auto-theft ring, allegedly one of the girls told an officer that she’d been involved with Tenerelli, and he’d been with the Family in Death Valley before his death. It is unknown who said that.

The final important bit that O’Neill brings up about the case is shaven pubic hair found off Tenerelli’s corpse. O’Neill makes the claim that the pubic hair could have been used in a ‘Magic Vest’ that a rather not so well known member of the family, Bill Vance, had. In “Chaos”, there were just a few strand of the hair betwixt the magazine, with it being unknown what happened to the rest. Supposedly Vance’s vest was made of pubic hair, and one that he liked to wear. Interestingly, though, Vance was arrested for stealing a gun out of a car in Death Valley on October 5^th, 1969, The day the car was pulled from the ravine.

Unfortunately, despite Filippo’s mother Caterina living to be 99 years old (and believing that she lived that long to find out the truth about her son), she never got to know what happened to Filippo that fateful night.

Personally, I have a lot of questions about this situation, and it is of course very suspicious what happened to him. I personally do not believe that Filippo committed suicide, since the gunshot wound was to the back of the head, and not the front. Now if the exit wound was coming out the back, then that would be a different story. I have a list of questions so I guess I’ll just jot them out below.

1. What is the real proof that this is a suicide? What was the reason for a suicide? Did he not leave a note?

Now I know that not every person leaves a note behind when they committ suicide, but it is interesting, that if this is really what that was, he did not do so. I mean, if there was a note of some kind, it could have made this a whole lot easier, unless the person that was there decided to plant one.

2. Did any of his family members experience him acting different within the months prior to his alleged suicide?

Interstingly, Filippo had just received his naturalization papers in July of that same year (1969). If Filippo had a mental illness it could help explain feeling suicidal, but I’d imagine that someone gaining that milestone would be ecstatic. Was he not happy about becoming a naturalized citizen? Considering it had been done in July of that year, and just a few months later in september he disappeared and went missing, did he perhaps have some sort of mental illness we did not know about?

 

3. Not that this is any of my business, but where is he buried? There is no findagrave page, so I wonder if he had a catholic burial since suicide is a sin in that religion.

4. What were the type of people that he worked with? Where did he work at to begin with, if he worked at all? How much money did he make in order to buy a new Bug at the age of 23? What did his father do for work? Did filippo or his father buy the car that he drove at his death? Assuming that filippo lived with his parents as stated above that is.

5. Is it possible that he was running from someone? Or was he meeting someone there?

6. Is it possible that the first part of the story is true, where he pushed the car over, but then something changed? Perhaps he was picked up hitch hiking and the person acted like they were his friend, killing him at the end of the night or something? If so, who could this person have been, and if the person reportedly didn't seem to be tenerelli when signing into the motel, how didn't bee greer notice? On top of that, did Bee see Filippo's dead body? Could she determine that it was the same person that signed into the front desk?

7. Is it really possible that filippo was so considerate to have placed towels and shot himself in the head yet would barricade the door to essentially rot for a month?

8. what was the point of buying a gun cleaning kit if he was just going to shoot himself? Was it a formality at the store maybe? Maybe he had to buy it with the gun?

9. What happened to the rest of the alcohol if Filippo’s blood alcohol proved that he didn’t drink it?

10. Why isn’t there any report of any of the other tenants or employees hearing a gunshot? If Filippo supposedly committed suicide in his room, couldn’t there have been some sort of noise heard from the shotgun?

11. If the car was found AFTER Filippo’s death, where was it before the mysterious person pushed it off of the cliff?

My overall thoughts:

Personally, I do not think that the Manson family had anything to do with Filippo’s death. That may sound crazy, but the evidence that Tom O’Neill presented in his book is quite weak, and even wrong at times. For example, he stated that Bill Vance had a ‘magic vest’ with pubes from various people on it. That’s not true. It was actually a vest that Charlie had, which no-one else was supposed to wear (though you can see Sandra Good wearing it in the Manson 70’s documentary), comprised of the hair from various members of the Manson family. Besides, Death Valley is a big place, and the areas that Filippo were supposedly at during his last days are very far away from where the Manson gang were. 

 

What do I really think happened? Well, I do think that in some way Filippo was murdered. In two ways. The first being that once he died, his death was essentially covered up, and the second being that someone really had it against him. Honestly, O’Neill wrote all these things in his book about how it seems to add up that the Manson family had something to do with it, when in reality the picture couldn’t be any more obvious to me. He wrote about how the police would clam up about talking about anything new, about knowing the truth, and giving out any information. It seems to me that Filippo was probably killed by the police themselves.

Halfway through reading about him, I had the thought that perhaps Filippo was a victim of racism. Keep in mind, this was back in 1969. People were not as tolerant of others with different backgrounds like today. It’s possible that someone hated him because he was Italian. . Because he spoke with an accent. I do not know where he worked, but if he had any sun exposure, it’s possible he could have been quite tan even and mistaken for a darker race. Either way, the situation screams of racism and a police cover up to me.

The biggest indicator for me is that his gunshot wound is in the back of the head. Whoever didn’t like him shot him, took his body, and planted it there in the hotel room, coming in and out of the window. The method of murder is not even consistent with the Manson killings either. Everyone in the Tate-LaBianca murders were stabbed in some way. Even Gary Hinman. Even Shorty Shea.

[SOURCES]

https://www.foxnews.com/us/another-manson-murder-debra-tate-victims-family-advocate-for-a-re-investigation-of-the-1969-suicide-of-young-man-in-california

‘Chaos’ by Tom O’Neill, and the subsequent facebook page for it.