However, the following month the county judge ruled that she would not receive a prison sentence as he was satisfied that she had disassociated herself from the Manson Family.

Her parents divorced in August 1967 after her mother, Audrey, had grown uncomfortable with her husband Dean's friendship with Charles Manson, and went to live with her sister.

[9] This resulted in Dean and Audrey reporting Ruth Ann as a runaway, and the pair were apprehended by Sheriff's deputies on July 28, 1967.

[7] On May 20, 1968, Ruth Ann Moorehouse married 23-year-old bus driver Edward Lewis Heuvelhorst in Santa Cruz in an effort to become emancipated from her father, which Manson had advised her to do.

According to Moorehouse, the marriage only lasted one day, and she moved to the Los Angeles area where Manson and his followers had relocated months earlier.

Dean spent the rest of the summer at Wilson's house living in the guesthouse in exchange for taking care of the landscaping.

A week after the Tate–LaBianca murders, Moorehouse was arrested with the family in the August 16, 1969, Spahn Ranch raid as "suspects in a major auto theft ring" that had been stealing Volkswagen Beetles and converting them into dune buggies.

[12] Months later at the Myers Ranch in Death Valley, Susan Atkins told Moorehouse about the murders of coffee heiress Abigail Folger and pregnant actress Sharon Tate.

I decided that I did.”[15][16][17] On December 18, 1970, Moorehouse, Rice, Grogan, Fromme, and Catherine Share were charged with attempted murder of Hoyt.

On February 26, 1971, a heavily pregnant Moorehouse appeared on the witness stand during the Tate-LaBianca murder trial, where Vincent Bugliosi cross-examined her.

[18] On March 23, 1971, Moorehouse, Share, Fromme, Grogan, and Rice were allowed to plead no contest to the lesser charge of conspiracy to dissuade a witness, and the murder counts were dropped.

On April 10, 1971, Moorehouse gave birth to a daughter named LaDieh Fawn, and returned to her mother's home in Minnesota.

[9] On October 6, 1972, she married construction worker Harold Irving Fowler in Reno, and the following year their daughter was born.

On November 4, the judge ruled that because she was abandoned by her father and “thrown willy-nilly into the Manson cult” she could go free with no time served.

[citation needed] The character "Pussycat", portrayed by Margaret Qualley in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), is based on Moorehouse and Kathryn "Kitty" Lutesinger, another Manson Family member.