Please help me find the main idea my teacher about to call on me and i am pi ss A week after the murders, police raided Spahn Ranch, but not because of those heinous crimes. Manson and most of the family were arrested instead for stealing cars. But they were released on a technicality and fled to Death Valley. There, they were arrested again in multiple waves of police raids between Oct. 10 and 12, 1969. In addition to a series of thefts and generally terrorizing the locals, Manson had set fire to some heavy equipment owned by Death Valley National Monument rangers, which was what really brought the cops down on the family [source: Sanders].