Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (49 page)

En route, about ten miles south of Oceanside on Interstate 5, they were stopped by California Highway Patrol officer Richard C. Willis. Though pulled over for a mechanical violation, Manson was cited only for having no valid driver’s license in his possession. Manson gave his correct name and the ranch address, and signed the ticket himself. Officer Willis noted on the ticket that Manson was driving a “1952 cream-colored Ford bakery van, license number K70683.” The date was Thursday, August 7, 1969; the time 6:15
P.M
.

The ticket, which Patchett and Gutierrez found, proved Manson was in Southern California the day before the Tate murders.

While Stephanie was getting her clothes together, Manson talked to her sister, who was also a Beatles fan. She had the White Album, and Manson told her the Beatles had laid out “the whole scene” in it. He warned her that the blacks were getting ready to overthrow the whites and that only those who fled to the desert and hid in the bottomless pit would be safe. As for those who remained in the cities, Manson said, “People are going to be slaughtered, they’ll be lying on their lawns dead.”

Just a little over twenty-four hours later, his prediction would be fulfilled, in all its gory detail, at 10050 Cielo Drive. With a little help from his friends.

That night, according to Stephanie, she and Charlie parked somewhere in San Diego and slept next to the van, returning to Spahn Ranch the following day, arriving there about two in the afternoon.

Stephanie was a bit vague when it came to dates. She “thought” the day they returned to Spahn Ranch was Friday, August 8, but she wasn’t sure. I anticipated that the defense would make the most of this, but I wasn’t concerned, because that second piece of evidence conclusively placed Manson back at the ranch on Friday, August 8, 1969.

According to Linda Kasabian, on the afternoon of August 8 Manson gave Mary Brunner and Sandra Good a credit card and told them to purchase some items for him. At four that afternoon the two girls were apprehended while driving away from a Sears store in San Fernando, after store employees checked and found the credit card was stolen. The San Fernando PD arrest report stated that they were driving a “van 1952 Ford license K70683.”

Because of the fine job of digging by the LaBianca detectives, we now had physical proof that Manson was back at Spahn Ranch on Friday, August 8, 1969.

Though both the traffic ticket and arrest report were in the discovery materials, so were hundreds of other documents. I was hoping that the defense would overlook their common denominator: that vehicle description with its telltale license number.

If Manson went with an alibi defense, and I proved that alibi was fabricated, this would be strong circumstantial evidence of his guilt.

T
here was, of course, other evidence placing Manson at Spahn Ranch that day. In addition to the testimony of Schram, DeCarlo, and others, Linda Kasabian said that when the Family got together that afternoon, Manson discussed his visit to Big Sur, saying that the people there were “really not together, they were just off on their little trips” and that “the people wouldn’t go on his trip.”

It was just after this that Manson told them: “Now is the time for Helter Skelter.”

B
its and pieces, often largely circumstantial. Yet patiently dug out and assembled, they became the People’s case. And with almost every interview it became a little stronger.

I spent many hours interviewing Stephanie Schram, who, together with Kitty Lutesinger, had fled Barker Ranch just hours before the October 1969 raid, shotgun-wielding Clem in close pursuit. I often wondered what would have happened to the two girls had the raid been timed just a day later or Clem been a little faster.

Unlike Kitty, Stephanie had severed all contact with the Family. Though we had kept her current address from the defense, Squeaky and Gypsy found her working at a dog-grooming school. “Charlie wants you to come back,” they told her. Stephanie replied, “No thanks.” Considering what she knew, her forthright refusal was a brave act.

From Stephanie I learned that while at Barker Manson had conducted a “murder school.” He had given a Buck knife to each of the girls, and had demonstrated how they should “slit the throats of pigs,” by yanking the head back by the hair and drawing the knife from ear to ear (using Stephanie as a very frightened model). He also said they should “stab them in either their ears or eyes and then wiggle the knife around to get as many vital organs as possible.” The details became even gorier: Manson said that if the police pigs came to the desert, they should kill them, cut them in little pieces, boil the heads, then put the skulls and uniforms on posts, to frighten off others.
*

Stephanie had told LAPD that Manson had spent the nights of Friday, August 8, and Saturday, August 9, with her. On questioning her, I learned that about an hour after dinner on August 8, Manson took her to the trailer at Spahn and told her to go to sleep, that he would join her soon. However, she didn’t see him again until shortly before dawn the next morning, at which time he awakened her and took her with him to Devil’s Canyon, the camp across the road from the ranch.

That night—August 9—Stephanie said, “when it got dark, he left and he came back either sometime during the night or early in the morning.”

If Manson was planning on using Stephanie Schram as an alternative alibi, we were now more than ready for him.

O
n March 19, Hollopeter, Manson’s court-appointed attorney, made two motions: that Charles Manson be given a psychiatric examination, and that his case be severed from that of the others.

Enraged, Manson tried to fire Hollopeter.

Asked whom he wished to represent him, Manson replied, “Myself.” When Judge Keene denied the change, Manson picked up a copy of the Constitution and, saying it meant nothing to the Court, tossed it in a wastebasket.

Manson eventually requested that Ronald Hughes be substituted for Hollopeter. Like Reiner and Shinn, Hughes had been one of the first attorneys to call on Manson. He had remained on the periphery of the case ever since, his chief function being to run errands for Manson, as indicated by a document Manson had signed on February 17, designating him one of his legal runners.

Keene granted the substitution. Hollopeter, whom the press called “one of L.A. county’s most successful defense attorneys,” was out, after thirteen days; Hughes, who had never before tried a case, was in.

Something of an intellectual, Hughes was a huge, balding man with a long, scraggly beard. His various items of apparel rarely matched and usually evidenced numerous food stains. As one reporter remarked, “You could usually tell what Ron had for breakfast, for the past several weeks.” Hughes, whom I would get to know well in the months ahead, and for whom I developed a growing respect, once admitted to me that he had bought his suits for a dollar apiece at MGM; they were from Walter Slezak’s old wardrobe. The press was quick to dub him “Manson’s hippie lawyer.”

Hughes’ first two acts were to withdraw the motions for the psychiatric examination and the severance. Granted. His third and fourth were requests that Manson be allowed to revert to pro per status and to deliver a speech to the Court. Denied.

Although Manson was displeased with Keene’s last two rulings, he couldn’t have been too unhappy with the defense team, which now consisted of four attorneys—Reiner (Van Houten), Shinn (Atkins), Fitzgerald (Krenwinkel), and Hughes (Manson)—each of whom had been associated with him since early in the case.

Unknown to us, there were still changes ahead. Among the casualties would be both Ira Reiner and Ronald Hughes, each of whom dared go against Manson’s wishes. Reiner would lose considerable time and money for having linked himself with the Manson defense. His loss would be small, however, compared to that of Hughes, who, just eight months later, would pay with his life.

O
n March 21, Aaron and I were walking down the corridor in the Hall of Justice when we spotted Irving Kanarek emerging from the elevator.

Although little known elsewhere, Kanarek was something of a legend in the Los Angeles courts. The attorney’s obstructionist tactics had caused a number of judges to openly censure him from the bench. Kanarek stories were so common, and usually incredible, as to seem fictional when they were actually fact. Prosecutor Burton Katz, for example, recalled that Kanarek once objected to a prosecution witness’s stating his own name because, having first heard his name from his mother, it was “hearsay.” Such frivolous objections were minor irritations compared with Kanarek’s dilatory tactics. As samples:

In the case of
People
vs.
Goodman
, Kanarek had stretched a simple theft case, which should have taken a few hours or a day at most, to three months. The amount stolen: $100. The cost to the taxpayers: $130,212.

In the case of
People
vs.
Smith and Powell
, Kanarek spent twelve and a half months on pre-trial motions. After an additional two months trying to pick a jury, Kanarek’s own client fired him in disgust.
A year and a half
after Irving Kanarek came onto the case, the jury still hadn’t been selected, nor a single witness called.

In the case of
People
vs.
Bronson
, Superior Court Judge Raymond Roberts told Kanarek: “I am doing my best to see that Mr. Bronson gets a fair trial in spite of you. I have never seen such obviously stupid, ill-advised questions of a witness. Are you paid by the word or by the hour that you can consume the Court’s time? You are the most obstructionist man I have ever met.”

Outside the presence of the jury, Judge Roberts defined Kanarek’s modus operandi as follows: “You take interminable lengths of time in cross-examining on the most minute, unimportant details; you ramble back and forth with no chronology of events, to just totally confuse everybody in the courtroom, to the utter frustration of the jury, the witnesses, and the judge.”

After examining the transcript, the Appellate Court found the judge’s remarks were not prejudicial but were substantiated by the trial record.

“All we need, Vince,” Aaron remarked jocularly to me, “is to have Irving Kanarek on this case. We’d be in court ten years.”

The next day Ronald Hughes told a reporter that “he may ask Van Nuys attorney I. A. Kanarek to enter the case as Manson’s lawyer. He mentioned that he and Manson conferred with Kanarek at the County Jail Monday night.”

T
hough no miracle was involved, the Black Panther whom Charles Manson had shot and killed in July 1969 had resurrected. Only he wasn’t a Panther, just a “former dope dealer,” and, contrary to what Manson and the Family had believed, after Manson shot him he hadn’t died, though his friends had told Manson that he had. His name was Bernard Crowe, but he was best known by the descriptive nickname Lotsapoppa. Our long search for Crowe ended when an old acquaintance of mine, Ed Tolmas, who was Crowe’s attorney, called me. He told me he had learned we were looking for his client and arranged for me to interview Crowe.

After Manson and T. J. had left the Hollywood apartment where the shooting took place, Crowe, who had been playing dead, told his friends to call an ambulance. They did, then split. When questioned by the police at the hospital, Crowe said he didn’t know who had shot him or why. He nearly didn’t make it; he was on the critical list for eighteen days. The bullet was still lodged next to his spine.

I was interested in Crowe for two reasons. One, the incident proved that Charles Manson was quite capable of killing someone on his own. Though I knew I couldn’t get this into evidence during the guilt phase of the trial, I was hopeful of introducing it during the penalty phase, when other crimes can be considered. Two, from the description it appeared that the gun Manson had shot Crowe with was the same .22 caliber Longhorn revolver which, just a little over a month later, Tex Watson would use in the Tate homicides. If we could remove the bullet from Crowe’s body and match it up with the bullets test-fired from the .22 caliber revolver, we’d have placed the Tate murder weapon in Manson’s own hand.

Sergeant Bill Lee of SID wasn’t optimistic about the bullet. He told me that since it had been embedded in the body for over nine months, it was likely that acids had obliterated the stria to an extent where a positive identification would be difficult. Still, it might be possible. I then talked to several surgeons: they could take out the bullet, they told me, but the operation was risky.

I laid it out for Crowe. We’d like to have the bullet, and would arrange to have it removed at the Los Angeles County Hospital. But there were serious risks involved, and I didn’t minimize them.

Crowe declined the operation. He was sort of proud of the bullet, he said. It made quite a conversation piece.

E
ventually Manson would have learned, through discovery, of the resurrection of Bernard Crowe. Before this, however, Crowe was jailed on a marijuana charge. As he was being escorted down the hall, he passed Manson and his guard, who were on their way back from the attorney room. Charlie did a quick about-face, then told Crowe, according to the deputies who were present, “Sorry I had to do it, but you know how it is.”

Crowe’s response, if there was one, went unreported.

T
oward the end of March the prosecution nearly lost one of its key witnesses.

Paul Watkins, once Manson’s chief lieutenant, was pulled out of a flaming Volkswagen camper and rushed to Los Angeles County General Hospital with second-degree burns on 25 percent of his face, arms, and back. When sufficiently recovered to talk to the police, Watkins told them he had fallen asleep while reading by candlelight, and either that, or a marijuana cigarette he had been smoking, could have caused the fire.