Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (65 page)

Q.
“Sylmar is not a black ghetto, is it?”

 

A.
“No.”

 

According to Linda, Manson had wanted a black to find the wallet and use the credit cards, so blacks would be blamed for the murders. My whole theory of the motive was based on this premise. Why, then, had Manson left the wallet in a white area?

In point of fact, the freeway exit Manson had taken was immediately north of Pacoima, the black ghetto of the San Fernando Valley. I tried to get this in through Koenig, but defense objections kept it out, and I later had to call Sergeant Patchett to so testify.

With a single witness, a service-station attendant, the defense—specifically Kanarek and Hughes—had almost knocked two huge holes in the prosecution’s case.

By now I had narrowed down my opponents. Fitzgerald made a good appearance but rarely scored. Shinn was likable. For his first trial Hughes was doing damn well. But it was Irving Kanarek, whom most members of the press considered the trial’s buffoon, who was scoring nearly all the points. Time and again Kanarek succeeded in keeping out important evidence.

For example, when Stephanie Schram took the stand, Kanarek objected to her testimony regarding the “murder school” Manson had conducted at Barker Ranch, and Older sustained Kanarek’s objection. Though I disagreed with Older’s ruling, there was no way I could get around it.

On direct Stephanie had testified that she and Manson returned to Spahn Ranch from San Diego in a cream-colored van on the afternoon of Friday, August 8. On cross-examination Fitzgerald asked her: “Could you be mistaken one day?” This indicated to me that Manson might still be planning to go alibi, so on redirect I brought in the traffic ticket they had been given the previous day. With the August 8 arrest report on Brunner and Good, which contained the license number of the same van, I was now ready to demolish Charlie if the defense claimed he wasn’t even in Southern California at the time of the murders.

Yet I had no way of knowing whether Manson might have his own surprise bombshell, which he was waiting to explode.

As it happened, he had.

S
ergeant Gutierrez, on the “
HELTER SKELTER
” door. DeWayne Wolfer, on the sound tests he’d conducted at the Tate residence. Jerrold Friedman, on the last telephone call Steven Parent made. Roseanne Walker, on Atkins’ remarks about the eyeglasses. Harold True, on Manson’s visits to the house next to the LaBianca residence. Sergeant McKellar, on Krenwinkel’s attempts to avoid recognition just prior to her arrest in Mobile, Alabama. Bits and pieces, but cumulative. And eventually, I hoped, convincing.

Only a few prosecution witnesses remained. And I still didn’t know what the defense would be. Although the prosecution had to give the defense a list of all our witnesses, the defense had no such obligation. Earlier Fitzgerald had told the press that he intended to call thirty witnesses, among them such celebrities as Mama Cass, John Phillips, and Beatle John Lennon, the latter to testify as to how he interpreted his own song lyrics. But that, and the rumors that Manson himself planned to testify, were the only clues to the defense. And even Manson’s testifying was an iffy thing. In my talks with Charlie, he seemed to vacillate. Maybe I’ll testify. Maybe I won’t. I continued to goad him, but was worried that perhaps I’d overplayed my hand.

The defendants hadn’t been in court since Manson’s attack on the judge. The day Terry Melcher was to testify, however, Older permitted their return. Not wanting to face Manson, Terry asked me, “Can’t I go back in the lockup and testify through the speaker?”

Of all the prosecution witnesses, Melcher was the most frightened of Manson. His fear was so great, he told me, that he had been under psychiatric treatment and had employed a full-time bodyguard since December 1969.

“Terry, they weren’t after you that night,” I tried to reassure him. “Manson knew you were no longer living there.”

Melcher was so nervous, however, that he had to be given a tranquilizer before taking the stand. Though he came over somewhat weaker than in our interviews, when he finished his testimony, he told me, with evident relief, that Manson had smiled at him, therefore he couldn’t be too unhappy with what he’d said.

Kanarek, probably at Manson’s request, did not question Melcher. Hughes brought out that when Wilson and Manson drove Terry to the gate of 10050 Cielo Drive that night, they probably saw him push the button. The defense could now argue that if Manson was familiar with the gate-operating device, it would be unlikely he’d have the killers climb over the fence, as Linda claimed they had.

By this time I had proof that
both
Watson and Manson had been to 10050 Cielo Drive on a
number
of occasions before the murders. But the jury would never hear it.

Some months earlier I’d learned that after Terry Melcher had moved out of the residence, but before the Polanskis had moved in, Gregg Jakobson had arranged for Dean Moorehouse, Ruth Ann Moorehouse’s father, to stay there for a brief period. During this time Tex Watson had visited Moorehouse at least three, and possibly as many as six, times. In a private conversation with Fitzgerald, I informed him of this (which I had a legal obligation to do) and he replied that he already knew it. Though I intended to introduce this evidence during the Watson trial, I didn’t want to bring it in during the current proceedings, and I was hoping that Fitzgerald wouldn’t either, since it emphasized the Watson rather than the Manson link. Although I suspected that Manson had visited there also during the same period, I had no proof of this until the trial was well under way, when I learned from the best possible source that Manson had been to 10050 Cielo Drive “on five or six occasions.” My source was Manson himself, who admitted this to me during one of our rap sessions. Manson denied, however, having been in the house itself. He and Tex went up there, he said, to race dune buggies up and down the hills.

But I couldn’t use this information against Manson, because, as he well knew, all of my conversations with him were at his insistence and he was never advised of his constitutional rights.

I
t was a decidedly curious situation. Although Manson had vowed to kill me, he still asked to see me periodically—to rap.

Equally curious were our conversations. Manson told me, for example, that he personally believed in law and order. There should be “rigid control” by the authorities, he said. It didn’t matter what the law was—right and wrong being relative—but it should be strictly enforced by whoever had the power. And public opinion should be suppressed, because part of the people wanted one thing, part another.

“In other words, your solution would be a dictatorship,” I remarked.

“Yes.”

He had a simple solution to the crime problem, Manson told me. Empty the prisons and banish all the criminals to the desert. But first brand their foreheads with X’s, so if they ever appeared in the cities they could be identified and shot on sight.

“Do I need two guesses as to who’s going to be in charge of them in the desert, Charlie?”

“No.” He grinned.

On another occasion, Manson told me that he had just written to President Nixon, asking him to turn over the reins of power to him. If I was interested, I could be his vice-president. I was a brilliant prosecutor, he said, a master with words, and, “You’re right on about a lot of things.”

“What things, Charlie? Helter Skelter, the way the murders came down, your philosophy on life and death?”

Manson smiled and declined to answer.

“We both know you ordered these murders,” I told him.

“Bugliosi, it’s the Beatles, the music they’re putting out. They’re talking about war. These kids listen to this music and pick up the message, it’s subliminal.”

“You were along on the night of the LaBianca murders.”

“I went out a lot of nights.”

Never a direct denial. I couldn’t wait to get him on the stand.

Manson told me that he liked prison, though he liked the desert, the sun, and women better. I told him he’d never been inside the green room at San Quentin before.

He wasn’t afraid of death, Manson responded. Death was only a thought. He’d faced death before, many times, in both this and past lives.

I asked him if, when he shot Crowe, he’d intended to kill him.

“Sure,” he replied, adding, “I could kill everyone without blinking an eye.” When I asked why, he said,” Because you’ve been killing me for years.” Pressed as to whether all this killing bothered him, Manson replied that he had no conscience, that everything was only a thought. Only he, and he alone, was on top of his thought, in complete control, unprogrammed by anyone or anything.

“When it comes down around your ears, you’d better believe I’ll be on top of my thought,” Manson said. “I will know what I am doing. I will know
exactly
what I am doing.”

M
anson frequently interrupted the testimony of Brooks Poston and Paul Watkins with asides. Kanarek’s interruptions were so continuous that Older, calling him to the bench, angrily told him: “You are trying to disrupt the testimony with frivolous, lengthy, involved, silly objections. You have done it time and again during this trial…I have studied you very carefully, Mr. Kanarek. I know exactly what you are doing. I have had to find you in contempt twice before for doing the same thing. I won’t hesitate to do it again.”

It was all too obvious, to both Kanarek and Manson, that Poston and Watkins were impressively strong witnesses. Step by step they traced the evolution of Helter Skelter, not intellectually, as Jakobson understood it, but as onetime true believers, members of the Family who had watched a vague concept slowly materialize into terrifying reality.

The cross-examination didn’t shake their testimony in the slightest; rather, it elicited more details. When Kanarek questioned Poston, for example, he accidentally brought out a good domination example: “When Charlie would be around, things would be like when a schoolteacher comes back to class.”

Hughes asked Poston: “Did you feel you were under Mr. Manson’s hypnotic spell?”

A.
“No, I did not think that Charlie had a hypnotic spell.”

 

Q.
“Did you feel he had some power?”

 

A.
“I felt he was Jesus Christ. That is power enough for me.”

 

Looking back on his time with Manson, Poston said: “I learned a lot from Charlie, but it doesn’t seem that he was making all those people free.” Watkins observed: “Charlie was always preaching love. Charlie had no idea what love was. Charlie was so far from love it wasn’t even funny.
Death is Charlie’s trip.
It really is.”

S
ince his extradition to California, Charles “Tex” Watson had been behaving peculiarly. At first he spoke little, then stopped speaking entirely. The prisoners in his cell block signed a petition complaining of the unsanitary condition of his cell. For hours he’d stare off into space, then inexplicably hurl himself against his cell wall. Placed in restraints, he stopped eating and, even though force-fed, his weight dropped to 110 pounds.

Though there was evidence that he was faking at least part of his symptoms, his attorney, Sam Bubrick, asked the Court to appoint three psychiatrists to examine him. Their conclusions differed but they agreed on one point: Watson was rapidly reverting to a fetal state, which, unless immediately treated, could be fatal. Acting on the basis of their examination, on October 29 Judge Dell ruled Watson was at present incompetent to stand trial and ordered him committed to Atascadero State Hospital.

Manson asked to see me during the recess.

“Vince,” Manson pleaded through the lockup door, “give me just half an hour with Tex. I’m positive I can cure him.”

“I’m sorry, Charlie,” I told him. “I can’t afford to take that chance. If you cured him, then everyone
would
believe you were Jesus Christ.”

The day before Watson was committed to Atascadero, two court-appointed psychiatrists found seventeen-year-old Dianne Lake competent to testify.

Following her release from Patton, Dianne had received some good news: Inyo County investigator Jack Gardiner and his wife, who had befriended Dianne after her arrest in the Barker raid, had been appointed her foster parents. She would live with them and their children until she finished high school.

Because of
Aranda
, there were some things the jury never heard—for example, that Tex had told Leslie to stab Rosemary LaBianca and, later, to wipe fingerprints off everything they had touched—since Katie had related these things to Dianne, and any reference by Katie to her co-defendants had to be excised.

Dianne could testify to what Leslie had told her she had done; however, the problem here was that Leslie never told Dianne
whom
she had stabbed. She said she had stabbed someone who was already dead; that this occurred near Griffith Park; and that there was a boat outside. From these facts I hoped the jury would conclude that she was talking about the LaBiancas. Dianne also testified that one morning in August Leslie had come into the back house at Spahn and proceeded to burn a purse, a credit card, and her own clothing, keeping only a sack of coins, which the girls divided and spent on food. Dianne, however, was unable to pinpoint the exact date, and though I hoped the jury would surmise this had occurred the morning after the LaBiancas were killed, there was no proof that this was so.

Since this was the only evidence, independent of Linda Kasabian’s testimony, which I had linking Leslie Van Houten to the LaBianca homicides, it hurt, and badly, when Hughes on cross brought out that Dianne wasn’t sure whether Leslie had told her about the boat or whether she had about it in the newspapers.

Hughes also focused on a number of minor discrepancies in her previous statements (she’d told Sartuchi the coins were in the purse, while she’d told me they were in a plastic bag), and what could have been one very big bombshell. On direct Dianne had said that she, Little Patty, and Sandra Good, “I believe,” had divided the money.

If Sandy was present, this couldn’t have been August 10, the morning after the LaBianca murders, since Sandra Good, along with Mary Brunner, was still in custody. However, questioned further, Dianne said Sandy “might not have been there.”

In his cross-examination Kanarek brought out that Sergeant Gutierrez had threatened Dianne with the gas chamber. Fitzgerald also came up with a prior inconsistent statement: Dianne had told the grand jury that she was in Inyo County, rather than at Spahn Ranch, on August 8 and 9.

On redirect I asked Dianne: “Why did you lie to the grand jury?”

A.
“Because I was afraid that I would be killed by members of the Family if I told the truth. And Charlie asked me not to—he told me not to say anything to anybody who had the power of authority.”

 

O
n November 4, Sergeant Gutierrez, in search of a cup of coffee, had wandered into the jury room where the female defendants stayed during recesses.

He found a yellow legal pad with the name Patricia Krenwinkel on it. Among the notes and doodlings, Katie had written the words “healter skelter” three times—misspelling that first word exactly the same way it had been misspelled on the LaBianca refrigerator door.

Older would not permit me to introduce it in evidence, however. I felt he was 100 percent wrong about this: it was unquestionably circumstantial evidence; it had relevance; and it was admissible. But Older ruled otherwise.

Older also gave me a scare when I attempted to introduce Krenwinkel’s refusal to make a printing exemplar. Older agreed it was admissible, but he felt Krenwinkel should be given another chance to comply, and ordered her to do so.

The problem here was that this time Krenwinkel just might, on the advice of counsel, make the exemplar, and if she did, I knew there would be real problems.

Katie refused—on the instructions of Paul Fitzgerald!

What Fitzgerald apparently did not realize was that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for LAPD to match the two printing samples. And had LAPD failed to do so, by law Patricia Krenwinkel would have to be acquitted of the LaBianca murders. Her refusal to give an exemplar was the only speck of independent evidence I had supporting Kasabian’s testimony regarding Krenwinkel’s involvement in these crimes.

Krenwinkel had been given an excellent chance to “beat the rap.” To this day I still don’t understand why her attorney instructed her as he did and so lost her that chance.

T
he People’s last two witnesses, Drs. Blake Skrdla and Harold Deering, were the psychiatrists who had examined Dianne. On both direct and redirect examination, I elicited testimony from them to the effect that, although a powerful drug, LSD does not impair memory, nor is there any demonstrable medical evidence that it causes brain damage. This was important, since the defense attorneys had contended that the minds of various prosecution witnesses, in particular Linda and Dianne, had been so “blown” by LSD that they could not distinguish fantasy from reality.

Skrdla testified that people on LSD
can
tell the difference between the real and the unreal; in fact, they often have a heightened awareness. Skrdla further stated that LSD causes illusions rather than hallucinations—in other words, that which is seen is actually there, only the perception of it is changed. This surprised a lot of people, since LSD is called a hallucinogenic drug.

When Watkins was on the stand, I personally brought out that although he was only twenty, Paul had taken LSD between 150 and 200 times. Yet, as the jury undoubtedly observed, he was one of the brightest and most articulate of the prosecution witnesses. Skrdla also testified: “I have seen individuals who have taken it several hundred times and show no outward sign of any emotional disturbance while they are not on the drug.”

Fitzgerald asked Skrdla: “Would LSD in large doses over a period of time make someone sort of a zombie, or would it destroy rational thought processes?”

If, as I suspected, Fitzgerald was trying to lay the foundation for a defense based on this premise, that foundation collapsed when Skrdla replied: “I have not seen this, counsel.”

Dr. Deering was the People’s last witness. He finished testifying on Friday, November 13. Most of Monday, the sixteenth, was spent introducing the People’s exhibits into evidence. There were 320 of these, and Kanarek objected to every one, from the gun to the scale map of the Tate premises. His strongest objections were to the color death photos. Responding, I argued: “I grant the Court that these photographs are gruesome, there is no question about it, but if in fact the defendants are the ones who committed these murders, which the prosecution of course is alleging, they are the ones who are responsible for the gruesomeness and the ghastliness. It is their handiwork. The jury is entitled to look at that handiwork.”

Judge Older agreed, and they were admitted into evidence.

O
ne exhibit never made it into evidence. As mentioned earlier, a number of white dog hairs had been found on the discarded clothing the killers wore the night of the Tate murders. Shown them, Winifred Chapman told me they looked like the hair of Sharon’s dog. When I requested that they be brought over from LAPD, however, I got only excuses. Finally, I learned that while walking across the street to the Hall of Justice, one of the Tate detectives had dropped and broken the vial containing the hairs. He had been able to recover only one. Realizing that the expression “grasping at hairs” would be all too appropriate in this case, I decided against introducing that single hair into evidence.

A
t 4:27
P.M
. that Monday—exactly twenty-two weeks after the start of the trial, and two days short of a year after my assignment to the case—I told the Court: “Your Honor, the People of the State of California rest.”

Court was recessed until Thursday, November 19, at which time each of the defense attorneys argued the standard motions to dismiss.

Back in December 1969 a great many attorneys predicted that when we reached this point Manson would have to be acquitted because of insufficiency of evidence.

I doubted if any lawyer in the country felt that way now, including the attorneys for the defense.

Older denied all the motions.

T
HE
C
OURT
“Are you ready to proceed with the defense?”

F
ITZGERALD
“Yes, Your Honor.”

T
HE
C
OURT
“You may call your first witness, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

F
ITZGERALD
“Thank you, Your Honor. The defendants rest.”

Nearly everyone in the courtroom was caught completely off guard. For several seconds even Judge Older seemed too stunned to speak. The ultimate legal issue at a criminal trial is not the defendant’s guilt or innocence, as most people believe. The issue is whether or not the prosecution has met its legal burden of proving the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.
*
The defense obviously, but unexpectedly, had decided to avoid cross-examination and to rely on the argument that we hadn’t proved the guilt of Manson and his co-defendants beyond a reasonable doubt and, hence, they were entitled to not-guilty verdicts.

The biggest surprise, however, was still to come.