Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (67 page)

“
What about your children?
” Manson asked angrily, rising slightly in the witness chair as if he were about to spring forward and attack everyone in the courtroom. “
You say there are just a few?

“
There are many, many more, coming in the same direction.

“
They are running in the streets—and they are coming right at you!
”

I
had only a few questions for Manson, none of which came from the notebooks I’d kept.

Q.
“You say you are already dead, is that right, Charlie?”

 

A.
“Dead in your mind or dead in my mind?”

 

Q.
“Define it any way you want to.”

 

A.
“As any child will tell you, dead is when you are no more. It is just when you are not there. If you weren’t there, you would be dead.”

 

Q.
“How long have you been dead?” Manson evaded a direct reply.

 

Q.
“To be precise about it, you think you have been dead for close to 2,000 years, don’t you?”

 

A.
“Mr. Bugliosi, 2,000 years is relative to the second we live in.”

 

Q.
“Suffice it to say, Department 104 is a long way from Calvary, isn’t that true?”

 

Manson had testified that all he wanted was to take his children and return to the desert. After I reminded him that “the only people who can set you free so that you can go back to the desert are the twelve jurors in this case,” and noting that, though he had testified for over an hour, “the jury in this case never heard a single, solitary word you said,” I posed one final question: “Mr. Manson, are you willing to testify in front of the jury and tell them the same things that you have testified to here in open court today?”

Kanarek objected. Older sustained the objection, and I concluded my cross.

To my surprise, Older later asked me why I hadn’t seriously cross-examined Manson. I’d thought the reason was obvious. I had nothing to gain, since the jury wasn’t present. I had lots and lots of questions for Charlie, several notebooks full,
if
he took the stand in the presence of the jury, but in the meantime I had no intention of giving him a dry run.

However, when Older asked Manson if he now wished to testify before the jury, Charlie replied, “I have already relieved all the pressure I had.”

As Manson left the stand and passed the counsel table, I overheard him tell the three girls: “You don’t have to testify now.”

The big question: what did he mean by “now”? I strongly suspected that Manson hadn’t given up but was only biding his time.

After the defense had introduced their exhibits, Judge Older recessed court for ten days to give the attorneys time to prepare their jury instructions and arguments.

This being his first trial, Ron Hughes had never argued before a jury before, or participated in drawing up the instructions which the judge would give the jury just before they began their deliberations. He was obviously looking forward to it, however. He confided to TV newscaster Stan Atkinson that he was convinced he could win an acquittal for Leslie Van Houten.

He wouldn’t even get the chance to try.

W
hen court resumed on Monday, November 30, Ronald Hughes was absent.

Quizzed by Older, none of the other defense attorneys knew where he was. Fitzgerald said that he had last talked to Ron on Thursday or Friday, and that he sounded O.K. at that time. Hughes often spent his weekends camping at Sespe Hot Springs, a rugged terrain some 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles. There had been floods in the area the past weekend. It was possible that Hughes had been stranded there.

The next day we learned that Hughes had gone to Sespe on Friday with two teen-agers, James Forsher and Lauren Elder, in Miss Elder’s Volkswagen. The pair—who were questioned but not held—said that when it began raining, they had decided to return to L.A., but Hughes had decided to stay over until Sunday. When the two tried to leave, however, their auto became mired down, and they were forced to abandon it and hike out.

Three other youths had seen Hughes on the morning of the following day, Saturday the twenty-eighth. He was alone at the time and on high ground, well away from the flood area. Chatting with them briefly, he appeared neither ill nor in any danger. Polygraphed, the three were found to have no additional knowledge and they were not held. Since Forsher and Elder had last seen Hughes a day earlier, they apparently were not polygraphed and their story was taken at face value.

Owing to the continued bad weather, it was two days before the Ventura Sheriff’s Office could get up a helicopter to search the area. In the meantime, rumors abounded. One was to the effect that Hughes had deliberately skipped, either to avoid argument or to sabotage the trial. Knowing Ron, I seriously doubted if this was true. I became convinced it wasn’t when reporters visited the place where Hughes lived.

He slept on a mattress in a garage behind the home of a friend. According to reporters, the place was a mess—one remarked that he wouldn’t even let his dog sleep there. But on the wall of the garage, neatly framed and carefully hung, was Ronald Hughes’ bar certificate.

A
lthough there were numerous reports that a man fitting Hughes’ description had been seen in various places—boarding a bus in Reno, driving on the San Bernardino freeway, drinking at a bar in Baja—none checked out. On December 2, Judge Older told Leslie Van Houten that he felt a co-counsel should be brought in to represent her during Hughes’ absence. Leslie said she would refuse any other attorney.

On December 3, after consulting with Paul Fitzgerald, Older appointed Maxwell Keith co-counsel for Leslie.

A quiet, somewhat shy man in his mid-forties, whose conservative clothing and courtroom manner were in sharp contrast to those of Hughes, Keith had an excellent reputation in the legal community. Those who knew him well described him as conscientious, totally ethical, and completely professional, and it was clear from the start that he would be representing his client and not Manson.

Sensing this, Manson asked to have all the defense attorneys dismissed (“They aren’t our lawyers; they won’t listen to us”) so he and the girls could represent themselves. He also demanded that the case be reopened so they could put on a defense. They had twenty-one witnesses waiting to testify, he said. Both requests were denied.

Keith had his work laid out for him. Before he could prepare his argument, he had to familiarize himself with 152 volumes of transcript, over 18,000 pages.

Though Older granted a delay until he could do so, he told all counsel: “We will continue to meet every day at 9
A.M
. until further notice.”

Older obviously wanted to count heads.

Several days earlier Steve Kay had overheard Manson tell the girls, “Watch Paul; I think he’s up to something.” I made sure Fitzgerald learned of the conversation. One missing attorney was one more than enough.

N
either the air search nor a subsequent ground search of the Sespe area yielded any trace of Hughes. The abandoned Volkswagen was found, with a batch of court transcripts inside, but other papers Hughes was known to have had, including a secret psychiatric report on Leslie Van Houten, were missing.

On December 6, Paul Fitzgerald told reporters, “I think Ron is dead.” On December 7, an all-points bulletin was issued for Hughes, LASO admitting, “This is something you do when you have no other leads.” On December 8, Judge Older went to the Ambassador Hotel to inform the jury of the reason for the delay. He also told them: “It appears fairly certain that you will be sequestered over the Christmas holidays.” They took it much better than expected. On December 12, the search for Ronald Hughes was suspended.

T
he most persistent rumor was that Hughes had been murdered by the Family. There was, at this time, no evidence of this. But there was more than ample cause for speculation.

Though once little more than an errand boy for Manson, during the course of the trial Hughes had grown increasingly independent, until the two had finally split over whether there should be a defense—Hughes strongly opposing his client’s taking the stand to absolve Charlie. I also heard from several sources, including Paul Fitzgerald, that Hughes was afraid of Manson. It was possible that he showed this fear, which, in Manson’s case, was like waving a red flag before a bull. Fear turned Charlie on.

There could have been several reasons for his murder, if it was that. It may have been done to intimidate the other defense attorneys into letting Manson put on a defense during the penalty trial (one was so shaken by Hughes’ disappearance that he went on a bender which ended in his arrest for drunken driving). Equally likely, it could have been a tactic to delay the trial—with the hope that it would result in a mistrial, or set the stage for a reversal on appeal.

Speculation, nothing more. Except for one odd, perhaps unrelated, incident. On December 2, four days after Hughes was last seen alive, fugitives Bruce Davis and Nancy Pitman, aka Brenda McCann, voluntarily surrendered to the police. Two of the Family’s most hard-core members, Pitman had been missing for several weeks after failing to appear for sentencing on a forgery charge, while Davis—who had been involved in both the Hinman and Shea murders, who had picked up the gun with which Zero had “committed suicide” but had somehow left no prints, and who was the chief suspect in the slaying of two young Scientology students
*
—had evaded capture for over seven months.

Maybe it was just the proximity in time that linked the two events in my mind: Hughes’ disappearance; Davis’ and Pitman’s surprise surrender. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that in some way the two incidents might be related.

O
n December 18—three days before the Tate-LaBianca trial reconvened—the Los Angeles County grand jury indicted Steve Grogan, aka Clem; Lynette Fromme, aka Squeaky; Ruth Ann Moorehouse, aka Ouisch; Catherine Share, aka Gypsy; and Dennis Rice on charges of conspiracy to prevent and dissuade a witness (Barbara Hoyt) from attending a trial. Three other charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, were dismissed by Judge Choate on a 995 motion by the defense.

Although we had presumed—as I suspected the involved Family members had also—that an overdose of LSD could be fatal, we learned from medical experts that there was no known case of anyone’s dying from this cause. There were many cases, however, where LSD had resulted in death from misperception of surroundings: for example, a person, convinced he could fly, stepping out the window of a tall building. I thought of Barbara, running through the traffic in downtown Honolulu. That she hadn’t been killed was no fault of the Family. The result, however, was that, despite the best efforts of the LaBianca detectives, the DA’s Office had a very weak case.

Pending trial, four of the five were released on bail. They immediately returned to the corner outside the Hall of Justice, where they would remain, on and off, during most of the remainder of the trial. Since Ouisch, who had given Barbara the LSD-laden hamburger, was nearly nine months pregnant, Judge Choate released her on her own recognizance. She promptly fled the state.

Nancy Pitman, who had been arrested with Davis, was freed on the forgery charge. She was rearrested a few weeks later while trying to pass Manson a tab of LSD in the visitors’ room at the County Jail. After serving thirty days, she was again freed, to rejoin the group on the corner and, subsequently, to become involved in still another murder.

When court reconvened, the four defendants created a disturbance—Manson throwing a paper clip at the judge, the girls accusing him of “doing away with Hughes”—all obviously planned actions to garner the day’s headlines.

Older ordered the four removed. As Sadie was being escorted out, she passed behind me. Though I didn’t see what happened, I felt it: she knocked over an exhibit board, hitting me on the back of the head. Those who witnessed the incident said it appeared she was lunging for the Buck knife, which was on a nearby table. Thereafter the knife was kept well out of the reach of the defendants.

Maxwell Keith then told the Court that though he now felt himself familiar with the evidence, from having read the transcripts and other documents, he was not at all sure he could effectively represent his client, since he had not been present when the witnesses testified and therefore could not judge their demeanor or credibility. On this basis, he requested a mistrial.

Though Keith argued persuasively, Judge Older denied the motion, observing that every day attorneys argue cases in appellate courts without having been present during the actual trials.

O
nce this and several other motions were out of the way, it was time for the People’s opening argument.
*

During the guilt phase of a trial in California, the prosecution delivers an opening argument, which is followed by the opening argument of the defense (or rebuttal), and, last, a closing argument (or final summation) by the prosecution. Thus the People have the last word during the guilt trial.

During the penalty trial, if there is one, each side gives two arguments, with the defense being allowed to argue last.

I had spent several hundred hours preparing my opening argument for the guilt trial, starting even before the beginning of the trial itself. The result was contained in some 400 handwritten pages. But by this time I knew their contents so well I didn’t even need to read them, but only glanced at them periodically.

I began by discussing in depth, with charts and other aids, the points of law the jury would have to consider: murder, conspiracy, and so on. The instructions which the judge would give the jury are printed, formal statements of law that use nebulous, abstract terms that often even lawyers don’t understand. Moreover, the judge does not tell the jury how these rules of law apply to the facts of the case. Thus, in the jury’s mind, the rules are floating lazily in the air with no thread connecting them to anything tangible. In each case I try, I make it a point to supply that link, by the liberal use of common-sense examples, by translating legalese into words and thoughts the jury will understand, and by literally tying those rules to the evidence.

After I had done this, I got into the principal part of my opening argument, summarizing the testimony of each witness, often quoting verbatim the words he had used on the stand, interrelating this testimony with the other evidence, and drawing inferences from it. Though the presentation took three days, it was a tight, cohesive package, and by the time I had finished I felt confident that I had established, beyond all doubt, Manson’s control, his motives, his involvement, and the involvement of Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten.

Apparently it got to Charlie. At the end of my opening statement, he had tried to bribe deputy Maupin to free him. The night after I completed the first day of my opening argument, he tried to break out of jail.

T
hough the incident was officially denied by LASO, one of the deputies told me the details. Despite daily searches of both his person and his cell, Manson had managed to obtain an incredibly long piece of string, at the end of which he had attached a small weight. By some unknown means or manner—for the area was supposedly under constant surveillance—he had got the string across the walkway in front of his cell and out a window, where it reached a full ten stories to the ground. One or more confederates then attached the contraband. However, something must have happened which prevented Manson from pulling it up, for when a deputy came around the corner of the Hall of Justice the next morning, he spotted the string and its cargo: a lid of marijuana and a hacksaw blade.

A
ccepting a promise that they would behave, Judge Older permitted the three female defendants to return to court the next afternoon. Manson, who said he had no desire to return, remained in the lockup, listening to the proceedings from there.

I had just resumed my argument when Leslie created a disturbance. Sadie and Katie followed suit, and each of the three was again ordered removed. This time Sadie was led in front of the lecturn where I was standing. Suddenly, without warning, she kicked one of the female deputies in the leg, then grabbed some of my notes, tearing them in half. Grabbing them back, I involuntarily muttered, beneath my breath, “You little bitch!”

Though provoked, I regretted losing my cool.

The next day the Long Beach
Independent
bore the following front-page headline:

MANSON PROSECUTOR TAKES SWING AT SUSAN

According to reporter Mary Neiswender: “The chaos was capped by the chief prosecutor swearing at and attempting to slug one of the defendants…Bugliosi slapped the girl’s hand, grabbed his notes and then swung at her shouting, ‘You little bitch!’”

In common with everyone else in the courtroom, Judge Older saw the incident somewhat differently. Describing it for the record, he branded the charge that I was struggling with Susan “absolutely false. There was no struggle between Mr. Bugliosi and anybody. What happened was [she] walked by the rostrum and grabbed the notes off the rostrum.”

While I’d like to say this was the only inaccurate press coverage during the trial, unfortunately the accounts of several reporters—including a representative of one of the wire services, whose reports appeared in papers all over the country—were often so error-filled that reading them gave one the feeling that the reporters had been attending another trial. On the other hand, such reporters as John Kendall of the Los Angeles
Times
and Bill Farr of the Los Angeles
Herald Examiner
did an excellent job, often catching little nuances even the attorneys missed.

After Krenwinkel had been removed, Judge Older called counsel to the bench and said that he had had it. “It is perfectly obvious to the Court that after lo, these many months, the defendants are operating in concert with each other…I don’t think any American court is required to subject itself to this kind of nonsense day after day when it is perfectly obvious that the defendants are using it as a stage for some kind of performance…” Older then stated that the defendants would not be permitted to return to court during the remainder of the guilt trial.

I
had hoped to finish my argument before court recessed for the Christmas holiday, but Kanarek’s multitudinous objections prevented my doing so.

The feelings of the jurors at being sequestered over Christmas were exemplified by one who hung up the hotel menu and wrote “
BAH, HUMBUG
” across it. Though they were permitted family visits, and special parties had been arranged at the Ambassador, it was for most a miserable time. None had anticipated being away from home this long. Many were worried whether they would still have their jobs when the trial ended. And no one, including the judge, would even venture a guess when that might be.

On weekends both jurors and alternates—always accompanied by two male and two female deputies—had taken trips to such places as Disneyland, the movie studios, the San Diego Zoo, many probably seeing more of Southern California than they had in the whole of their lives. They had dinner at restaurants all over Los Angeles. They went bowling, swimming, even nightclubbing. But this was only partial compensation for their long ordeal.

To keep up morale, the bailiffs exhibited considerable ingenuity. For example, though the trial was perhaps the most widely publicized in history, there were days when most of the action took place in chambers and newsmen could find little to report. At such times bailiff Bill Murray often cut huge sections out of the newspapers, just to make the jurors think they were still in the headlines.

But the strain was getting to them. Older people for the most part, they were set in their ways. Inevitably, arguments broke out, factions developed. One temperamental male juror slapped bailiff Ann Orr one night when, against his wishes, she changed channels on the communal TV. Often Murray and Orr sat up to 4 or 5
A.M
., listening to a juror’s complaints. As we neared the end of the guilt trial, I began worrying not about the evidence but about the personal disagreements the jurors might be carrying into the jury room with them when they began their deliberations.

It only takes one person to hang up a jury.

I
concluded my opening argument on Monday, December 28, by telling the jury what I thought the defense’s case would be, thereby lessening the psychological impact of the defense attorney’s arguments.

“The defense will probably argue that there is no conspiracy…They will tell you that the Helter Skelter motive is absurd, ridiculous, unbelievable…They will tell you that the interpretation of the Beatles’ songs by Manson was normal…They will tell you that Linda is insane with LSD; that she made up her story to be granted immunity; that Linda’s testimony as an accomplice has not been corroborated…Probably they will tell you the reason why they never put on a defense is because the prosecution never proved their case…They will tell you that Charles Manson is not a killer; he wouldn’t harm a flea.

“They will tell you that Charlie was not the leader of the Family; he never ordered these murders…They will tell you that this has been a case of circumstantial evidence—as if there is something wrong with circumstantial evidence—completely disregarding the direct evidence by the way of Linda’s testimony.

“Out of 18,000 pages of transcript, they will come up here and there with a slight discrepancy between the testimony of one witness and another witness, which of course has to be expected, but they will tell you this means that the People’s witnesses are liars.”

I then asked the jury as intelligent men and women to conscientiously evaluate the evidence in this case, applying common sense and reason, and thereby reach a just and fair verdict.

“Under the law of this state and nation these defendants are entitled to have their day in court. They got that.

“They are also entitled to have a fair trial by an impartial jury. They also got that.

“That is all that they are entitled to!

“Since they committed these seven senseless murders, the People of the State of California are entitled to a guilty verdict.”

T
oward the opening of his argument for Patricia Krenwinkel, Paul Fitzgerald said, “If we set out to rebut every witness the prosecution put on that stand we would be here until 1974,” unthinkingly emphasizing the strength of the People’s case, as well as the defense’s inability to answer it.

Fitzgerald’s argument was very disappointing. Not only were there many things he could have argued but didn’t, he repeatedly misstated the evidence. He said that Sebring was hanged; that all the victims had been stabbed to death; and Tim Ireland heard Parent scream. He referred to Sharon as “Mary Polanski”; he had the killers entering the Tate residence through a bedroom window; he confused how many times Frykowski had been stabbed and struck. He said Linda testified to five knives rather than three; he had Linda driving on the second night when Manson was, and vice versa; he had a deputy who wasn’t even present arresting Manson during the Spahn raid; and so on.

The prosecution stressed “murder, murder, murder,” Fitzgerald said. “Actually, you have to decide whether it is a murder.” The first thing the jury should decide, he continued, is “what crimes, if any, were committed.”

“Now, a .22 caliber pistol, it strikes me, is a classically inefficient way to kill somebody…”

“It obviously does not make sense to hang anybody…”

“If you were a mastermind criminal, if you had absolute power over the minds and bodies of bootlicking slaves, as they were referred to, would you send women out to do a man’s job?…Women, ladies and gentleman, are life-givers. They make love, they get pregnant, they deliver babies. They are life-givers, not takers away. Women are adverse to violence…”

Only a small portion of Fitzgerald’s argument was devoted to the evidence against his client. And rebuttal it was not.

He said that “there is doubt as to whether or not that fingerprint [found at the Tate residence] belongs to Patricia Krenwinkel.” Even presuming it did, he said, “It is entirely conceivable, possible, and reasonable that Patricia Krenwinkel was at that house as an invited guest or a friend.”

Some friend!

As for Krenwinkel’s so-called confession to Dianne Lake, that she dragged Abigail Folger from the bedroom to the living room, that wasn’t a confession at all, Fitzgerald said. She didn’t say when this occurred or where. Maybe it took place in San Francisco in 1967.

Fitzgerald did spend a great deal of time trying to destroy the credibility of Linda Kasabian. In my argument I had remarked: “Linda Kasabian was on that witness stand, ladies and gentleman, for eighteen days—an extraordinarily long period of time for any witness to testify in any case. I think you will agree with me that during those eighteen days Linda Kasabian and the truth were companions.” Fitzgerald challenged this. But he was unable to cite a single discrepancy in her account.