Pete Frankel, 62; Police Officer Shot 3 Manson Family Members

Pete Frankel, 62, who was a member of the Hawthorne police force when he shot three Manson family members who were attempting a robbery in 1971, died Feb. 10 at Menifee Valley Medical Center in Sun City, Calif. He had suffered a heart attack several months ago.

On the night of Aug. 21, 1971, police responded to a silent alarm at the Western Surplus store on Hawthorne Boulevard, where robbers were holding three clerks and two customers at gunpoint as they raided the store.

After Lt. James Kobus pulled up near a van parked in the alley behind the store, the suspects opened fire from the van. Backup units responded to Kobus’ radio call, and eight Hawthorne officers were involved in the 10-minute shootout.

Frankel blocked the other side of the alley with his car and, he recalled in a 2004 interview, as he went down the alley saw the shooters run from the van and hide behind a metal shed.

“I returned fire with my sidearm and said, ‘This is not cutting it,’ so I got the shotgun,” he recalled.

Frankel wounded three of the five suspects who were captured; a sixth escaped. Only later did police discover that the robbers were members of the notorious Manson family and that the 140 firearms they had taken were to be used in a plot to free Manson. The cult leader had been convicted and sentenced to death in early 1971 for the seven Tate-La Bianca murders.

A native New Yorker, Frankel served in the Army and Navy and rose to the rank of lieutenant at the Hawthorne Police Department, where he served from 1968 to 1988.