Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (75 page)

On cross-examination I brought out that Dr. Tweed had only talked to Patricia Krenwinkel for two hours. He had not read the trial transcripts or interviewed any of her friends or relatives. He had never done any controlled research in the field of LSD, had only lectured once on the subject, and had written no papers on it. When I asked him why he considered himself an expert, he rather loftily replied: “What is an expert but what the beholder thinks he is from his experience? Many people consider me an expert, so I have accustomed myself to assuming that I am.”

Q.
“Do you consider Dr. Thomas Ungerleider of UCLA an expert in

 

LSD?”

A.
“Yes, I do.”

 

Q.
“More than yourself?”

 

A.
“I am not in a position to judge that. I will leave that to others.”

 

Q.
“Do you consider Dr. Duke Fisher of UCLA an expert in the field of LSD?”

 

A.
“Yes.”

 

I then brought out that the two men had written a paper entitled “The Problems of LSD in Emotional Disorders,” in which they concluded that “there is no scientific demonstrable evidence of organic brain damage caused by LSD.”

Tweed now had to admit that was correct, as far as present evidence went.

On December 24, 1969, Patricia Krenwinkel had been examined by a Mobile, Alabama, psychiatrist, a Dr. Claude Brown. Since Tweed had based his conclusions in part on Brown’s report, I was given a copy of it just prior to my cross-examination.

It was a bombshell, as my next question to Dr. Tweed indicated:

Q.
“In forming your opinions with respect to Patricia Krenwinkel, did you take into consideration that she told Dr. Brown that on the night of the Tate murders Charles Manson told her to go along with Tex

 

Watson?”

After numerous objections and lengthy conferences at the bench, Dr. Tweed admitted that he had considered this. Still later, Patricia Krenwinkel was recalled to the stand, where, though she denied the truth of the statement, she admitted that she had told Dr. Brown that this was so.

We now had a perfect score. Manson had called Sadie, Katie, and Leslie to the stand in an attempt to exonerate him. Instead, I had now proven that each of the three had previously told others that Manson was behind these murders.

T
here were other surprises in the Brown report. Krenwinkel also told the doctor that she had fled to Mobile “because she was afraid of Manson finding her and killing her”;
*
that on the day of the Tate murders she was coming
off
an acid trip and wasn’t on any drugs that night; and that following the murders “she was always fearful that they would be arrested for what they had done, but ‘Charlie said nobody could touch us.’”

This latter statement proved that Katie was well aware of the consequences of her acts.

This was important, since it was obvious from their questions that the defense attorneys were trying to imply that the three female defendants were insane at the time they committed these murders.

Under California law an insanity plea must be entered
before
the start of the trial. A separate sanity phase is then held, after the guilt trial. The defense, however, had not entered such a plea at the proper time. Therefore, in one sense, the question of whether the defendants were sane or insane was irrelevant, since this was not an issue which the jury would have to decide. In another sense, however, it was crucial. If the defense could cause the jury to doubt the sanity of the defendants, this could strongly influence their vote on the penalty they were to pay.

Suddenly I was not only having to prove Manson’s guilt all over again, I was also having to prove that the girls were legally sane.

In most states, including California, the legal test of insanity is the M’Naghten Rule. Among other things, M’Naghten provides that if a defendant, as a result of mental disease or defect, does not realize that what he did was wrong, then he is legally insane. It is not enough, however, that he personally believe his acts were not wrong. Were this so, every man would be a law unto himself. For instance, a man could rape a dozen women, say, “I don’t think it’s wrong to rape,” and therefore evade criminal punishment. The clincher is whether he knows that society thinks his actions are wrong. If he does, then he cannot be legally insane. And deliberate acts to avoid detection—such as cutting telephone wires, eradicating prints, changing identities, disposing of incriminating evidence—constitute circumstantial evidence that the defendant knows society views his acts as wrong.

Earlier Dr. Tweed had testified that Patricia Krenwinkel didn’t believe these murders were wrong. I now asked him on cross: “In your opinion, when Patricia Krenwinkel was committing these murders, did she believe that society thought it was wrong to do what she was doing?”

A.
“I believe so.”

 

B
UGLIOSI
“No further questions.”

O
n March 4, Manson trimmed his beard to a neat fork and completely shaved his head, because, he told newsmen, “I am the Devil and the Devil always has a bald head.”

Interestingly enough, this time the three female defendants did not follow Manson’s example. Nor, when he occasionally acted up in court, did they parrot him, as they had in the guilt trial. Obviously it had got across to them, albeit belatedly, that such antics only proved Manson’s domination.

W
hile denying that LSD can cause brain damage, the next witness, psychiatrist Keith Ditman, testified that the drug can have a detrimental effect on a person’s personality. He also stated that a person using LSD is more susceptible to the influence of a second party, and that Leslie’s use of the drug,
plus
Manson’s influence over her, could have been significant factors in causing her to participate in a homicide.

V
AN
H
OUTEN
“This is all such a big lie. I was influenced by the war in Vietnam and TV.”

On cross-examination I got Ditman to concede that not all people react the same to LSD, that it depends upon the personality structure of the person ingesting the drug. I then brought out that Ditman had never examined Leslie; therefore, not knowing what her personality structure was, he couldn’t say what effect, if any, LSD had on her mental state.

Nor, turning this around, not having examined her, could he say for certain whether she did or did not have inherent homicidal tendencies.

Keith, on redirect, asked Ditman: “What is meant by inherent homicidal tendencies?”

A.
“That a person has, let’s say, more than the average human being, a killer instinct…”

 

Q.
“Psychiatrically speaking, do some people have greater killer instincts than others, in your opinion?”

 

A.
“Well, some people have a more covert and overt hostility and aggression. In that sense, they are
more capable
of committing crimes of violence, such as murder.”

 

Dr. Ditman had just articulated one of the chief points of the final argument I was preparing to give at the close of the penalty phase.

D
r. Joel Fort, the almost legendary “hippie doctor of the Haight,” didn’t look the part. The founder of the National Center for Solving Social and Health Problems was fortyish, dressed conservatively, talked quietly, didn’t have long hair (in fact he was bald). Angered by his testimony, Manson shouted, “If he ever seen a hippie, it was in the street while he was driving by in his car.”

Manson’s anger had good cause. Even on direct, Dr. Fort was more helpful to the prosecution than the defense. The author of one book on drugs and co-author of eleven others, Dr. Fort stated that “a drug by itself does not perform a magical transformation—there are many other factors.”

On cross-examination I brought out one. Fort said: “It was my feeling [after examining Leslie Van Houten] that Mr. Manson’s influence played a very significant role in the commission of the murders.”

Another very crucial point came out on cross. To negate the defense’s new argument that the girls were on LSD during the murders, and therefore less responsible for their acts, I asked Fort: “Isn’t it true, Doctor, that people under the influence of LSD do not tend to be violent?”

A.
“That is true.”

 

Still attacking the prosecution’s theory of Manson’s domination, Kanarek asked Fort: “Now, do you know of any cases where someone has—I mean, other than in the Frankenstein type of picture—do you know where someone has sat down and programmed people to go out, let’s say, and commit armed robberies, burglaries, assaults? Do you know of any such instances?”

A.
“Yes. In one sense, that is what we do when we program soldiers in a war…The Army uses a peer group technique and the patriotic ideals that are instilled in citizens of a particular country to bring about this pattern of behavior.”

 

Dr. Fort was typical of many persons who, though opposed to capital punishment in principle, felt that these murders were so savage and senseless, so totally lacking in mitigating circumstances, that justice demanded that these persons be sentenced to death. I learned this in a conversation with him in the hall outside court, in which he stated that he was extremely unhappy that he had been called to testify for the defense in this case. Greatly concerned about the stain the Manson Family had cast on all young people, Dr. Fort offered to testify for the prosecution when I brought Charles “Tex” Watson to trial, an offer which I later accepted.

I
t was in just such a hallway interview that I discovered how potentially damaging to the defense their next witness could be. Learning that Keith intended to call Dr. Joel Simon Hochman during the afternoon session, I cut my lunch hour short so I could spend a half hour interviewing the psychiatrist.

To my amazement, I learned that Maxwell Keith hadn’t even interviewed his own witness. He was calling him to the stand “cold.” Had he talked to him for just five minutes, Keith would never have called Hochman. For the doctor, who
had
interviewed Leslie, felt that the use of LSD wasn’t an important influence on her; rather, he felt there was something very seriously wrong with Leslie Van Houten.

In his testimony and the psychiatric report he wrote following the examination, Dr. Hochman called Leslie Van Houten “a spoiled little princess” who was unable “to suffer frustration and delay of gratification.” From childhood on, she’d had extreme difficulties with impulse control. When she didn’t get her way, she went into rages, for example beating her adopted sister with a shoe.

“From a position of over-all perspective,” Hochman noted, “it is quite clear that Leslie Van Houten was a psychologically loaded gun which went off as a consequence of the complex intermeshing of highly unlikely and bizarre circumstances.”

Hochman confirmed something I had long suspected. Of the three female defendants, Leslie Van Houten was the least committed to Charles Manson. “She listened to [Manson’s] talk of philosophy, but it wasn’t her trip.” Nor could she “get that in to Charlie sexually, and that bothered her a lot. ‘I couldn’t get it on with Charlie like I could with Bobby,’ she said…” According to Hochman, Leslie was obsessed with beauty. “Bobby was beautiful, Charles was not, physically. Charles was short. That is something that always turned me off.”

Yet she killed at his command.

Keith asked Hochman: “Doctor, did you ask her whether or not Mr. Manson, during her association with him, had any influence over her in her thought process and in her conduct and activity?”

A.
“She denies it. But I don’t buy that.”

 

Q.
“Why don’t you buy that?”

 

A.
“Well, I don’t understand why she would stay on the scene that long if there was nothing there for her, on some unconscious basis.”

 

As I’d observe in my final argument, many came to Spahn Ranch but only a few stayed; those who did, did so because they found the black-hearted medicine Manson was peddling very palatable.