Little-known Thomas Merton Story

This is an odd story—and sad—and we don’t like sad but I’m sharing it because it’s obscure, and that’s what we do here.

Prompted to dig further by a few scattered entries of the spiritual writer-Trappist monk Thomas Merton in his 1960s journals, I made a surprising discovery.

To get right to it: Have you ever heard Thomas Merton mentioned in the same breath or sentence as mass murderer Charles Manson?  

You just did.

I know, it has a weird effect on the psyche.

Six degrees of separation is the notion that people have six or fewer social connections from each other.  As a result, a chain of “handshakes” can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps—it is, by definition, an indirect connection. Even so, this one seems a bit astonishing, and along the chain we find the infamous Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, attempted assassin of President Gerald Ford.

Weird, right?

The story begins happily in the 1960s with Merton’s friendship with the Bardstown, Kentucky family of Virginia and Thompson Willett.

The Abbey of Gethsemane is near Bardstown, and Willett’s home, it has been reported, was within walking distance of Merton’s hermitage.

Merton visited the Willett’s often, recording some of the visits in his 1966 and 1967 journals.  Jim Forester in Living with Wisdom writes that Merton formed a bond with Thompson and Virginia, “a couple with lots of children,” and “if Merton was not to marry at least he was able to experience a steady familial warmth.” 

Thompson Willett was a third-generation master-distiller and founder of a bourbon distillery. According to Merton, Willett had “a huge bar” in his home where they drank and talked.

One of the Thompson’s seven children was James Willett, born in 1946. He graduated from St. Joseph’s Prep School in Bardstown and attended the University of Kentucky before joining the Marine Corps.

In 1966, James was serving in Vietnam during one of Merton’s visits with Thompson. One subject of conversation was the war. Merton wrote “because he has a boy in Vietnam, he hopes it’s a holy war.  I didn’t have the heart to argue.”

This piqued my interest: I wondered what became of James. Here’s what I learned:

James served two tours and after his honorable discharge, married Lauren Olmstead, a Connecticut native, in 1971.

The couple moved to northern California where, in an encounter cloaked in mystery, they met disciples of Manson who was convicted in 1971 for the 1969 murder of Sharon Tate and six others.

Making their acquaintance proved fatal for both James and Lauren.

Author Vincent Bugliosi, in Helter Skelter, reported that on November 8, 1972, the body of James, 26, was discovered along a hiking trail near the Russian River community of Guerneville, California.  Three days later, a hundred miles away, police spotted James Willett’s car parked in front of a house in Stockton, California. Inside they discovered the body of Lauren, 19, buried in the basement of the home occupied by two men and three “Manson family” women.  The five held in the probe were Michael Montfort, James Craig, Nancy Pitman, Priscilla Cooper, and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, who, according to Bugliosi, was the ex-officio leader of the “family” in Manson’s absence.

The 18-month-old daughter of James and Lauren Willett was found in the home, unharmed.

In press reports, Thompson Willett opined that his son was killed because he was about to inform police that Montfort and Craig carried out several burglaries in the area.  He also recalled that his daughter-in-law had written her parents in Connecticut that “she and her husband were afraid of Manson.”

Montfort and an accomplice, William Goucher pled guilty to the murder of James Willett and Montfort pled guilty to the murder of Lauren.  Craig was convicted and sentenced as an accessory after the fact as were Priscilla Cooper and Nancy Pitman.  Fromme was released, as reported in Helter Skelter, “There being insufficient evidence to link (her) to Lauren Willett’s murder, the charges against her were dropped and she was freed, to again assume leadership of the Manson Family.”

Eighteen-month-old Heidi Willett was adopted by her maternal grandparents.

Lauren was buried in Connecticut and James Willett’s mortal remains were interred in Bardstown at St. Joseph Cemetery.

May they rest in peace.

The tragedy happened after Merton’s accidental death in 1968, thus he passed on unaware of the great sadness in the Willett home—a home where he had experienced “a steady familial warmth.”