Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (68 page)

However, the greater portion of his argument dealt with the case against Charles Manson. All the testimony regarding Manson’s philosophy proved, Fitzgerald said, was “that he is some sort of right-wing hippie.” Manson, Manson, Manson.

Fitzgerald ended his argument with a long, impassionated plea—not for his client, Patricia Krenwinkel, but for Charles Manson. There was, he concluded, insufficient evidence against Manson.

Not once did he say that there was insufficient evidence against Patricia Krenwinkel.

Nor did he even ask the jury to come back with a not guilty verdict for his client!

D
aye Shinn had prepared a chart listing all the witnesses who testified against his client, Susan Atkins. He said he would rebut each.

“The first one on the list is Linda Kasabian, and I believe Mr. Fitzgerald has adequately covered Miss Kasabian’s testimony.”

He then skimmed over the criminal records of DeCarlo, Howard, Graham, and Walker.

On Danny DeCarlo: “How would you like to have him for your son-in-law? How would you like to have him meet your daughters?”

On Virginia Graham: “How would you like to invite her to your house for Christmas? You would have to hide the silverware.

“Mr. Bugliosi is laughing. At least I did not put him to sleep.”

Shinn’s entire argument took only 38 pages of transcript.

Irving Kanarek, who followed Shinn, consumed 1,182.

F
or the most part, Kanarek ignored my argument against Manson. Remaining on the offense rather than taking the defense, he pounded home two names—Tex, Linda. Who was it Linda Kasabian first slept with at Spahn Ranch? Stole the $5,000 for? Accompanied to the Tate residence? Charles “Tex” Watson. The most logical explanation for these murders was the simplest, Kanarek said. “Love of a girl for a boy.”

As for his client, Kanarek portrayed him as a peaceful man whose only sin, if he had one, was that he preached and practiced love. “Now the people who brought these charges, they want to get Charles Manson, for some ungodly reason, which I think is related to Manson’s life style.”

Though many of his statements seemed to me to be too ridiculous for comment, I took many notes during Kanarek’s argument. For he also planted little doubts, which, unless rebutted, could grow into bigger ones when the jury began its deliberations.

If the purpose was to start a black-white war, why did it stop the second night? Why wasn’t there a third night, and a fourth?…Why didn’t the prosecution bring in Nader, and the policemen on the beach, and the man whose life Linda
claimed
to have saved?…Are we to believe that by means of a wallet found in a toilet tank Mr. Manson intended to start a race war?…If Tex pushed Parent’s car up the driveway, why weren’t his prints found on it?

Several times Kanarek referred to the trial as a “circus,” a remark to which Judge Older reacted very strongly. He also reacted, this time without my prompting, to Kanarek’s charge that the prosecution had suppressed evidence. “There is no evidence in this case that anyone has suppressed anything,” Older said.

At the end of Kanarek’s second day of argument, Judge Older told him that he was putting the jury to sleep. “Now, I am not going to tell you how to make an argument,” Older said at the bench, “but I would suggest to you that you may not be doing your client the utmost amount of good by prolonging it unduly…”

He went on for a third day, and a fourth.

On the fifth day the jury sent a note to the bailiff, requesting NoDoz for themselves and sleeping pills for Mr. Kanarek.

On the sixth day Older warned Kanarek, “You are abusing your right to argue just as you have abused practically every other right you have in this case…There is a point, Mr. Kanarek, at which argument is no longer argument but a filibuster…Yours is reaching that point.”

Kanarek went on another full day before bringing his argument to an end with the statement: “Charles Manson is not guilty of
any
crime.”

S
everal times during Kanarek’s argument Manson had interrupted with remarks from the lockup. Once he shouted, loud enough for the jury to hear, “Why don’t you sit down? You’re just making things worse.”

During one of the noon recesses Manson asked to see me. I’d turned down several earlier requests, with the comment that I’d talk to him when he took the stand, but this time I decided to see what he wanted.

I was glad I did, as it was one of the most informative conversations we had—Manson telling me exactly how he felt about his three female co-defendants.

Manson wanted to clear up a couple of wrong impressions. One was Fitzgerald’s reference to him as a “right-wing hippie.” Though I personally thought the description had some validity, Manson felt otherwise. He’d never thought of himself as a hippie, he said. “Hippies don’t like the establishment so they back off and form their own establishment. They’re no better than the others.”

He also didn’t want me to think that Sadie, Katie, and Leslie were the best he could do. “I’ve screwed girls that would make these three look like boys,” he said.

For some reason it was important to Manson that I believe this, and he re-emphasized it, adding, “I’m a very selfish guy. I don’t give a fuck for these girls. I’m only out for myself.”

“Have you ever told them that, Charlie?” I asked.

“Sure. Ask them.”

“Then why would they do what they’re doing for you? Why would they be willing to follow you anywhere—even to the gas chamber at San Quentin?”

“Because I tell them the truth,” Manson replied. “Other guys bullshit them and say ‘I love you and only you’ and all that baloney. I’m honest with them. I tell them I’m the most selfish guy in the world. And I am.”

Yet he was always saying that he would die for his brother, I reminded him. Wasn’t that a contradiction?

“No, because that’s selfish too,” he responded. “He’s not going to die for me unless I’m willing to die for him.”

I had the strong feeling that Manson was leveling with me. Sadie, Katie, and Leslie were willing to murder, even give their own lives, for Charlie. And Charlie personally couldn’t have cared less about them.

T
hough he wasn’t even present when the witnesses testified, Maxwell Keith, arguing for Leslie Van Houten, delivered the best of the four defense arguments. He also did what no other defense attorney had dared do during the entire trial. He put the hat on Charles Manson—albeit with a ten-foot pole.

“The record discloses over and over again that all of these girls at the ranch believed Manson was God, really believed it.

“The record discloses that the girls obeyed his commands without any conscious questioning at all.

“If you believe the prosecution theory that these female defendants and Mr. Watson were extensions of Mr. Manson—his additional arms and legs as it were—if you believe that they were mindless robots, they cannot be guilty of premeditated murder.” To commit first degree murder, Keith argued, you must have malice aforethought and you must think and plan. “And these people did not have minds to make up…Each of the minds of these girls and Mr. Watson were totally controlled by someone else.”

As for Leslie herself, Keith argued that even if she did all the things the prosecution contended, she still had committed no crime.

“At best, if you want to believe Dianne Lake, the evidence shows that she was there.

“At best, it shows that she did something after the commission of these homicides that wasn’t very nice.

“And at best, it showed that she wiped some fingerprints off after the commission of these homicides, which does not make her an aider and abetter.

“As repugnant as you may feel this is, nobody in the world can be guilty of murder or conspiracy to commit murder who stabs somebody after they are already dead. I’m sure that desecrating somebody that is dead is a crime in this state, but she is not charged with that.”

This case, Keith concluded, must be decided on the basis of the evidence, and “on the basis of the evidence, ladies and gentlemen, I say to you: You must acquit Leslie Van Houten.”

I
began my final summation (closing argument) on January 13.

In my opinion, final summation is very often the most important part of the trial, since it’s the final word to the jury. Again, several hundred hours had gone into the preparation. I began by meeting head on each of the defense contentions. In this way I hoped to dispose of any questions or lingering doubts that otherwise might distract the jury during the last phase of my argument during which I summarize, as affirmatively as I can, the highlights and strengths of my case.

Taking on each of the defense attorneys in turn, I cited twenty-four misstatements of either the law or the testimony in Fitzgerald’s presentation. As for his suggestion that if Manson ordered these murders he would have sent men rather than women, I asked, “Is Mr. Fitzgerald suggesting that Katie, Sadie, and Leslie were inadequate to do the job? Isn’t Mr. Fitzgerald satisfied with their handiwork?” Fitzgerald had also contended that perhaps Linda planted the bloody clothing a few days before it was found. I reminded the jury that Linda was returned to California on December 2, in custody, and that the clothing was found on December 15. “Apparently Mr. Fitzgerald wants you to believe that one night between these dates Linda snuck out of her room at Sybil Brand, rounded up some clothing, put some blood on them, hitchhiked out to Benedict Canyon Road, threw the clothing over the side of the hill, then hitchhiked back to the jail and snuck back into her room.”

Fitzgerald had likened the circumstantial evidence in this case to a chain, saying that if one link were missing the chain was broken. I, instead, likened it to a rope, each strand of which is a fact, and “as we add strands we add strength to that rope, until it is strong enough to bind these defendants to justice.”

Shinn had raised very few points that needed rebutting. Kanarek had raised a great many, and I took them on one by one. A few samples:

Kanarek had asked why the prosecution didn’t have the defendants try on the seven articles of clothing to see if they fitted. I reversed this, asking why, if they didn’t fit, the defense didn’t illustrate this to the jury.

As for the absence of Watson’s prints on Parent’s vehicle, I reminded them of Dolan’s testimony that 70 percent of the times LAPD goes to a crime scene no readable prints are found. I also noted that in moving his hand, it was very likely Watson had created an unreadable smudge.

When I lacked the answer to a question, I frankly admitted it. But usually I offered at least one and often several possibilities. Whom did the glasses belong to? Frankly, we didn’t know. But we did know, from Sadie’s statement to Roseanne Walker, that they did not belong to the killers. Why was there no blood on the Buck knife found in the chair? Kanarek had raised this point. It was a good one. We had no answer. We could speculate, however, that Sadie had lost the knife before she stabbed Voytek and Sharon, possibly while she was in the process of tying up Voytek, and that at some later point she borrowed another knife from Katie or Tex. “Much more important than what knife she used was the fact that she confessed stabbing both of the victims to Virginia Graham and Ronnie Howard.”

The whole thrust of Irving Kanarek’s seven-day argument, I told the jury, was that the prosecution had framed its case against his client, Charles Manson.

“In other words, ladies and gentlemen,” I observed, “there are seven brutal murders, so the police and the District Attorney got together and said, ‘Let’s prosecute some hippie for these murders, someone whose life style we don’t like. Just about any hippie will do,’ and we just arbitrarily picked on poor Charles Manson.

“Charles Manson is not a defendant in this trial because he is some long-haired vagabond who made love to young girls and was a virulent dissenter.

“He is on trial because he is a vicious, diabolical murderer who gave the order that caused seven human beings to end up in the cold earth. That is why he is on trial.”

I also hit, and hard, Kanarek’s claim that the prosecution was responsible for the excessive length of the trial. The jury had missed both Christmas and New Year’s at home, and I didn’t want them entering the jury chambers resenting the prosecution for this.

“Irving Kanarek, the Toscanini of tedium, is accusing the prosecution of tying up this court for over six months. You folks are the best witnesses. Every single, solitary witness that the prosecution called to the stand was asked brief questions, directly to the point. The witnesses were on that stand day after day after day on cross-examination, not on direct examination.”

As for Maxwell Keith, he did “everything possible for his client, Leslie Van Houten,” I observed. “He gave his best. Unfortunately for Mr. Keith, he had no facts and no law to support him. Mr. Keith, if you look at his argument very closely, never really disputed that Linda Kasabian and Dianne Lake told the truth. Basically, his position was that even if Leslie did the things Linda and Dianne said she did, she is still not guilty of anything.

“I wonder if Max would concede that she is at least guilty of trespassing?”

K
EITH
“I will.”

Max’s response surprised me. He was in effect admitting that Leslie had been in the LaBianca residence.

Even if Rosemary LaBianca was dead when Leslie stabbed her, I told the jury, she was guilty of first degree murder as both a co-conspirator and an aider and abetter. If a person is present at the scene of a crime, offering moral support, that constitutes aiding and abetting. But Leslie went far beyond this, stabbing, wiping prints, and so forth.