Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

JANUARY 26–MARCH 17, 1971

During the penalty trial the sole issue for the jury to decide was whether the defendants should receive life imprisonment or the death penalty. Considerations like mitigating circumstances, background, remorse, and the possibility of rehabilitation were therefore now relevant.

To avoid prolonging the trial and risk alienating the jury, I called only two witnesses: officer Thomas Drynan and Bernard “Lotsapoppa” Crowe.

Drynan testified that when he arrested Susan Atkins outside Stayton, Oregon, in 1966, she was carrying a .25 caliber pistol. “I asked Miss Atkins what she intended to do with the gun,” Drynan recalled, “and she told me that if she had the opportunity she would have shot and killed me.”

Drynan’s testimony proved that even before Susan Atkins met Charles Manson she had murder in her heart.

On cross-examination Shinn asked Drynan about the .25 caliber pistol.

Q. “The size is very small—it looks like a toy gun—is that correct?”

A. “Well, not to me.”

Crowe described how, on the night of July 1, 1969, Manson had shot him in the stomach and left him for dead. The importance of Crowe’s testimony was that it proved that Manson was quite capable of committing murder on his own.

On February 1, I rested the People’s case. That afternoon the defense called their first witnesses: Katie’s parents, Joseph and Dorothy Krenwinkel.

Joseph Krenwinkel described his daughter as an “exceedingly normal child, very obedient.” She was a Bluebird, Camp Fire Girl, and Job’s daughter, and belonged to the Audubon Society.

FITZGERALD “Was she gentle with animals?”

MR. KRENWINKEL “Very much so.”

Patricia had sung in the church choir, Mr. Krenwinkel testified. Though she was not an exceptional student, she received good grades in the classes she liked. She had attended one semester of college, at Spring Hill College, a Jesuit school in Mobile, Alabama, before returning to Los Angeles, where she shared an apartment with her half sister.

The Krenwinkels had divorced when Patricia was seventeen. According to Joseph Krenwinkel, there was no bitterness; he and his wife had parted, and remained, friends.

Yet just a year later, when Patricia was eighteen, she had abandoned her family and job to join Manson.

Dorothy Krenwinkel said of her daughter, “She would rather hurt herself than harm any living thing.”

FITZGERALD “Did you love your daughter?”

A. “I did love my daughter; I will always love my daughter; and no one will ever convince me she did anything terrible or horrible.”

FITZGERALD “Thank you.”

BUGLIOSI “No questions, Your Honor.”

Fitzgerald wanted to introduce into evidence a number of letters Patricia Krenwinkel had written to various persons, including her father and a favorite priest at Spring Hill.

All were hearsay and clearly inadmissible. All I would have needed to do was object. But I didn’t. Though aware that they would appeal to the sympathies of the jury, I felt that justice should prevail over technicalities. The issue now was whether this girl should be sentenced to death. And this was an issue for the jury to decide, not me. I felt that in reaching that extremely serious decision, they should have any information even remotely relevant.

Fitzgerald was both relieved and very grateful when I let them come in.

Keith handled the direct examination of Jane Van Houten, Leslie’s mother. Keith later told me that although Leslie’s father didn’t want to testify, he was behind Leslie 100 percent. Although, like the Krenwinkels, the Van Houtens were divorced, they too had stuck by their daughter.

According to Mrs. Van Houten, “Leslie was what you would call a feisty little child, fun to be with. She had a wonderful sense of humor.” Born in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena, she had an older brother and a younger brother and sister, the latter Korean orphans whom the Van Houtens had adopted.

When Leslie was fourteen, her parents separated and divorced. “I think it hurt her very much,” Mrs. Van Houten testified. That same year Leslie fell in love with an older youth, Bobby Mackey; became pregnant; had an abortion; and took LSD for the first time. After that she dropped acid at least once and often two or three times a week.[81]

During her freshman and sophomore years at Monrovia High School, Leslie was one of the homecoming princesses. She tried out again her junior year, but this time she didn’t make it. Bitter over the rejection, she ran away with Mackey to Haight-Ashbury. The scene there frightened her, however, and she returned home to finish high school and to complete a year of secretarial training. Mackey, in the meantime, had become a novitiate priest in the Self Realization Fellowship. In an attempt to continue their relationship, Leslie became a novitiate nun, giving up both drugs and sex. She lasted about eight months before breaking with both Mackey and the yoga group.

Mrs. Van Houten did not testify to the period which followed; possibly she knew little if anything about it. From interviews I’d learned that Leslie went full spectrum. The former nun was now anxious to “try anything,” be it drugs or answering sex-partner ads in the Los Angeles Free Press. A long-time friend stopped dating her because she had become “too kinky.”

For a few months Leslie lived in a commune in Northern California. During this period she met Bobby Beausoleil, who had his own wandering “family,” consisting of Gypsy and a girl named Gail. Leslie became a part of the ménage à quatre. Gail, however, was jealous, and the arguments became near constant. First Gypsy split, moving to Spahn Ranch. Then, shortly after, Leslie followed, also joining Manson. She was nineteen.

About this time Leslie called her mother and told her that she had decided to drop out and that she wouldn’t be hearing from her again. She didn’t, until Leslie’s arrest.

Keith asked Mrs. Van Houten: “How do you feel about your daughter now?”

A. “I love Leslie very much.”

Q. “As much as you always have?”

A. “More.”

As the parents testified, one realized that they too were victims, just as were the relatives of the deceased.

Calling the defendants’ parents first was a bad tactical error on the part of the defense. Their testimony and plight evoked sympathy from everyone in the courtroom. They should have been called at the very end of the defense’s case, just before the jury went out to deliberate. As it was, by the time the other witnesses had testified, they were almost forgotten.

Shinn called no witnesses on behalf of Susan Atkins. Her father, Shinn told me, had refused to have anything more to do with her. All he wanted, he said, was to get his hands on Manson.

A reporter from the Los Angeles Times had located Charles Manson’s mother in a city in the Pacific Northwest. Remarried and living under another name, she claimed Charles’ tales of childhood deprivation were fictions, adding, “He was a spoiled, pampered child.”

Kanarek did not use her as a witness. Instead, he called Samuel Barrett, Manson’s parole officer.

Barrett was a most unimpressive witness. He thought he first met Manson “about 1956, around that”; he couldn’t remember whether Manson was on probation or parole; he stated that since he was responsible for 150 persons, he couldn’t be expected to recall everything about each one.

Repeatedly, Barrett minimized the seriousness of the various charges against Manson prior to the murders. The reason he did this was obvious: otherwise, one might wonder why he hadn’t revoked Manson’s parole. One still did wonder. Manson associated with ex-cons, known narcotics users, and minor girls. He failed to report his whereabouts, made few attempts to obtain employment, repeatedly lied regarding his activities. During the first six months of 1969 alone, he had been charged, among other things, with grand theft auto, narcotics possession, rape, contributing to the delinquency of a minor. There was more than ample reason for parole revocation.

During a recess one of the reporters approached me in the hall. “God, Vince,” he exclaimed, “did it ever occur to you that if Barrett had revoked Manson’s parole in, say, April of 1969, Sharon and the others would probably still be alive today?”

I declined comment, citing the gag order as an excuse. But it had occurred to me. I had thought about it a great deal.

On direct, Barrett had testified that there was nothing in Manson’s prison records to indicate that he was a behavioral risk. Over Kanarek’s objections, on cross-examination I had him examine the folder on Manson’s attempted escape from federal custody in 1957.

The parade of perjurers began with little Squeaky.

Lynette Alice Fromme, twenty-two, testified that she was from an upper-middle-class background, her father an aeronautical engineer. When she was seventeen, she said, her father kicked her out of the house. “And I was in Venice, sitting down on a curb crying, when a man walked up and said, ‘Your father kicked you out of the house, did he?’

“And that was Charlie.”

Squeaky placed great importance on the fact that she had met Manson before any of the other girls, excepting only Mary Brunner.

In questioning her about the Family, Fitzgerald asked: “Did you have a leader?”

A. “No, we were riding on the wind.”

No leader, but—

“Charlie is our father in that he would—he would point out things to us.”

Charlie was just like everyone else, but—

“I would crawl off in a corner and be reading a book, and he would pass me and tell me what it said in the book…And also he knew our thoughts…He was always happy, always…He would go into the bathroom sometimes to comb his hair, and there would be a whole crowd of people in there watching him because he had so much fun.”

Squeaky had trouble denying the teachings of her lord and master. When Fitzgerald tried to minimize the importance of the Beatles’ White Album, she replied, “There is a lot in that album, there is a lot.” Although she claimed, “I never heard Charlie utter the words ‘helter skelter,’” she went on to say that “it is a matter of evolution and balance” and “the black people are coming to the top, as it should be.”

Obviously these were not the answers Fitzgerald wanted, and apparently he betrayed his reaction.

FROMME “How come you’re making those faces?”

FITZGERALD “I’m sorry, continue.”

Calling counsel to the bench, Judge Older said, “She can only harm the defendants doing what she is doing.”

I explained to Older, “If the Court is wondering why I am not objecting, it is because I feel that her testimony is helpful to the prosecution.”

So helpful, in fact, that there was little need for cross-examination. Among the questions I had intended to ask her, for example, was one Kanarek now asked: “Did you think that Charles Manson was Jesus Christ?”

Squeaky hesitated a moment before answering. Would she be the apostle who denied Jesus? Apparently she decided she would not, for she replied: “I think that the Christians in the caves and in the woods were a lot of kids just living and being without guilt, without shame, being able to take off their clothes and lay in the sun…And I see Jesus Christ as a man who came from a woman who did not know who the father of her baby was.”

Squeaky was the least untruthful of the Family members who testified. Yet she was so damaging to the defense that thereafter Fitzgerald let the other defense attorneys call the witnesses.

Keith called Brenda McCann, t/n Nancy Laura Pitman, nineteen. Though not unattractive, Brenda came across as a tough, vicious little girl, filled with hostility that was just waiting to erupt.

Her father “designed the guidance controls of missiles over in the Pentagon,” she said. He also kicked her out of the house when she was sixteen, she claimed. The dropout from Hollywood High School asserted there was no such thing as a Family, and Charlie “was not a leader at all. It was more like Charlie followed us around and took care of us.”

But, as with Squeaky and the girls who would follow her, it was obvious that Brenda’s world revolved around a single axis. He was nobody special but “Charlie would sit down and all the animals would gather round him, donkeys and coyotes and things…And one time he reached down and petted a rattlesnake.”

Questioned by Kanarek, Brenda testified that Linda “would take LSD every day…took speed…Linda loved Tex very much…Linda followed Tex everywhere…”

On cross-examination I asked Brenda: “Would you give up your life for Charles Manson if he asked you to?”

A. “Many times he has given you his life.”

Q. “Just answer the question, Brenda.”

A. “Yes, I would.”

Q. “Would you lie on the stand for Charles Manson?”

A. “No, I would tell the truth on the stand.”

Q. “So you would die for him, but not lie for him?”

A. “That’s right.”

Q. “Do you feel that lying under oath is a more serious matter than dying, Brenda?”

A. “I don’t take dying all that seriously myself.”

All these witnesses were extremely antagonistic toward their real families. Sandra Good, for example, claimed that her father, a San Diego stockbroker, had disowned her, neglecting to mention that this was only after he had sent her thousands of dollars and was threatened by Manson if he didn’t give her more.

Manson had severed their umbilical cords while fastening one of his own. And throughout their testimony it showed. Even more than Squeaky and Brenda, Sandy rhapsodized on Manson’s “magical powers.” She told the story of how Charlie had breathed on a dead bird and brought it back to life. “I believe his voice could shatter this building if he so desired…Once he yelled and a window broke.”

It was not until the penalty trial that the jury learned of the vigil of the Family members on the corner of Temple and Broadway. Rather movingly, Sandy testified to life there. “You can hardly see the sky most of the time for the smog. They are always digging; every day there is a new project going; something is always under construction. They are always ripping out something and putting something in, usually of a concrete nature. It is insane out there. It’s madness, and the more I am out there the more I feel this X. I am X’d out of it.”

After I’d declined to cross-examine Sandy, she very angrily asked, “Why didn’t you ask me any questions?”

“Because you said nothing which hurt the People’s case, Sandy,” I replied. “In fact, you helped it.”

I had anticipated that Sandy would testify that Manson wasn’t even at Spahn Ranch at the time the murders had occurred. When she didn’t, I knew the defense had decided to abandon the idea of using an alibi defense. Which meant they had something else in mind. But what?

Manson and the three female defendants had been allowed to return to court during the penalty phase. They were much quieter now, far more subdued, as if it had finally got through to them that this “play,” as Krenwinkel had characterized it, might cost them their lives. While Squeaky and the other Manson girls testified, their mentor looked thoughtful and pulled on his goatee, as if to say: They’re telling it like it is.

The female witnesses wore their best clothes for the occasion. It was obvious that they were both proud and happy to be up there helping Charlie.

The jurors shared a common expression—incredulity. Few even bothered to take notes. I suspected that all of them were mulling over the astonishing contrast. On the stand the girls talked of love, music, and babies. Yet while the love and the music and the babies were going on, this same group was going out and butchering human beings. And to them, amazingly enough, there was no inconsistency, no conflict between love and murder!

By February 4, I was fairly sure, from the questions Kanarek had been asking the witnesses, that Manson was not going to take the stand. This was my biggest disappointment during the entire trial, that I wouldn’t have the chance to break Charlie on cross-examination.

That same day our office learned that Charles “Tex” Watson had been returned to Los Angeles and ruled competent to stand trial.

Only three days after his transfer to Atascadero, Watson had begun eating regular meals. Within a month, one of the psychiatrists who examined him wrote: “There is no evidence of abnormal behavior at the present time except his silence, which is purposeful and with reason.” Another later noted: “Psychological testing gave a scatter pattern of responses inconsistent with any recognized form of mental illness…” In short, Tex was faking it. All this information would be useful, I knew, if Tex tried to plead insanity during his trial, which was now scheduled to follow the current proceedings.

Catherine Share, aka Gypsy, was the defense’s most effective liar. She was also, at twenty-eight, the oldest female member of the Family. And, of all its members, she had the most unusual background.

She was born in Paris in 1942, her father a Hungarian violinist, her mother a German-Jewish refugee. Both parents, members of the French underground, committed suicide during the war. At eight, she was adopted and brought to the United States by an American family. Her adoptive mother, who was suffering from cancer, committed suicide when Catherine was sixteen. Her adoptive father, a psychologist, was blind. She cared for him until he remarried, at which time she left home.

A graduate of Hollywood High School, she had attended college for three years; married; divorced a year later. A violin virtuoso since childhood, with an unusually beautiful singing voice, she had obtained work in a number of movies. It was on the set of one, in Topanga Canyon, that she became involved with Bobby Beausoleil, who had a minor role. About two months later Beausoleil introduced her to Charles Manson. Though it was, on her part, love at first sight, she continued traveling with the Beausoleil menage for another six months, before splitting for Spahn Ranch. Although she was an avowed Communist when she joined the Family, Manson soon convinced her that his dogma was ordained. “Of all the girls,” Paul Watkins had told me, “Gypsy was most in love with Charlie.”

She was also the most eloquent in his defense. But, though brighter and more articulate than most of the others, she too occasionally slipped up.

“We are all facing the same sentence,” she told the jury. “We are all in a gas chamber right here in L.A., a slow-acting one. The air is going away from us in every city. There is going to be no more air, and no more water, and the food is dying. They are poisoning you. The food you are eating is poisoning you. There is going to be no more earth, no more trees. Man, especially white man, is killing this earth.

“But those aren’t Charles Manson’s thoughts, those are my thoughts,” she quickly added.

During her first day on the stand Gypsy dropped no bombshells. She did try to rebut various parts of the trial testimony. She said that Leslie often went out and stole things, to explain away the back-house incident. She claimed that it was Linda who suggested stealing the $5,000. She also said that Linda didn’t want Tanya, and had dumped her on the Family.

It was not until her second day on the stand, on redirect by Kanarek, and immediately after Kanarek had asked to approach the witness and speak to her privately, that Gypsy suddenly came up with an alternative motive—one that was designed to clear Manson of any involvement in the murders.

Gypsy claimed that it was Linda Kasabian, not Charles Manson, who had masterminded the Tate-LaBianca murders! Linda was in love with Bobby Beausoleil, Gypsy said. When Bobby was arrested for the Hinman murder, Linda proposed that the girls commit other murders which were similar to the Hinman slaying, in the belief that the police would connect the crimes and, realizing that Beausoleil was in custody when these other murders occurred, set him free.

The “copycat” motive was in itself not a surprise. In fact, Aaron Stovitz had suggested it as one of several possible motives in his interview with the reporters from Rolling Stone. There was only one thing wrong with it. It wasn’t true. But in an attempt to clear Manson and to cast doubt on the Helter Skelter motive, the defense witnesses, starting with Gypsy, now began manufacturing their own bogus evidence.

The scenario they had so belatedly fashioned was as transparent as it was self-serving.

Gypsy claimed that on the afternoon of August 8, 1969, Linda explained the plan to her and asked her if she wanted to go along. Horrified, Gypsy instead fled to the mountains. When she returned, the murders had already occurred and Linda was gone.

Gypsy further testified that Bobby Beausoleil was innocent of the Hinman murder; all he had done was drive a car belonging to Hinman. And Manson wasn’t involved either. The Hinman murder had been committed by Linda, Sadie, and Leslie!

Maxwell Keith quickly objected. At the bench he told Judge Older: “It sounds to me like this girl is leading up to testimony of an admission by my client to her participation in the Hinman, Tate, and LaBianca murders. This is outrageous!”

THE COURT “I don’t know if Mr. Kanarek has the faintest idea of what he wants to do.”

FITZGERALD “I am afraid so.”

KANAREK “I know exactly.”

Keith observed: “I talked to this witness yesterday at the County Jail about her testimony. It was sort of innocuous testimony regarding Leslie. And all of a sudden, boom, we are being bombed out of the courtroom.”

On cross-examination I asked: “Isn’t it true, Gypsy, that what you are trying to do is clear Charles Manson at the expense of Leslie and Sadie?”

A. “I wouldn’t say that. No, it isn’t true.”

To destroy her credibility, I then impeached Gypsy with a number of inconsistent statements she had previously made. Only then did I return to the bogus motive.

Gypsy had testified that immediately after hearing of the Tate-LaBianca murders, she was sure that Linda, Leslie, and Sadie were involved.

I asked her: “If in your mind Linda, Sadie, and Leslie were somehow involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders, and Mr. Manson was innocent and had nothing to do with it, why haven’t you come forward before today to tell the authorities about this conversation you had with Linda?”

A. “I didn’t want anything to do with it. I don’t believe in coming to you at all.”

Earlier on cross-examination Gypsy had admitted that she loved Manson, that she would willingly die for him. After reminding her of these statements, I said: “All right, and you believe he had nothing to do with these murders, right?”

A. “Right.”

Q. “And yet you let him stay in jail all these months without coming forward with this valuable information?” Gypsy evaded a straight reply.

Q. “When was the first time that you told anyone about this infamous conversation that you had with Linda when she asked you to go out and murder someone?”

A. “Right here.”

Q. “Today?”

A. “Uh-huh.”

Q. “So today on the witness stand was the first time that you decided to release all this valuable information, is that right?”

A. “That’s right.”

I had her. I could now argue to the jury that here’s Manson, being tried for seven counts of murder, and there’s Gypsy, out on the corner of Temple and Broadway twenty-four hours a day since the start of the trial, a girl who loves Manson and would give her life for him, but who waits until well into the penalty trial, and on redirect at that, before she decides to tell anyone what she knows.

At 6:01 A.M. on February 9, 1971, a monster earthquake shook most of Southern California. Measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale, it claimed sixty-five lives and caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage.

I awoke thinking the Family was trying to break into our house.

The jurors awoke to find water cascading on them from broken pipes above their rooms.

The girls on the corner told reporters Charlie had caused the quake.

Despite the disaster, court resumed at the usual time that morning, with Susan Atkins taking the stand to trigger an earthquake of her own.

Daye Shinn’s first question of his client was: “Susan, were you personally involved in the Tate and LaBianca homicides?”

Susan, who was wearing a dark jumper and a white blouse, and looking very little-girlish, calmly replied, “Yes.”

Although by this time all counsel knew that the three girls intended to take the stand and “confess,” Fitzgerald having mentioned it in chambers nearly a week before, the jury and spectators were stunned. They looked at each other as if disbelieving what they had heard.

Shinn then took Susan through her background: her early religious years (“I sang in the church choir”); the death of her mother from cancer (“I couldn’t understand why she died, and it hurt me”); her loss of faith; her problems with her father (“My father kept telling me, ‘You’re going downhill,’ so I just went downhill”); her experiences as a topless dancer in San Francisco; her explanation for why she was carrying a gun when arrested in Oregon (“I was afraid of snakes”); and her introduction to drugs, Haight-Ashbury, and her first fateful meeting with Charles Manson.

Returning to the crimes, she testified: “This whole thing started when I killed Gary Hinman, because he was going to hurt my love…”

Judge Older called the noon recess. Before leaving the stand, Susan turned toward me and said, “Look at it, Mr. Bugliosi. Your whole thing, man, is just gone, your whole motive. It is so silly. So dumb.”

That afternoon, Sadie recited the newly revised version of how the Hinman murder went down. According to Susan, when Manson arrived at the Hinman residence, to persuade Gary to sign over the pink slip on a car they had already purchased, Gary drew a gun on him. As Manson fled, Gary tried to shoot him in the back. “I had no choice. He was going to hurt my love. I had my knife on me and I ran at him and I killed him…Bobby was taken to jail for something that I did.”

The holes in her story were a mile wide. I noted them for my cross-examination.

After the arrest of Beausoleil, Susan testified, Linda proposed committing copycat murders. “…and she told me to get a knife and a change of clothes…she said these people in Beverly Hills had burned her for $1,000 for some new drug, MDA…”

Before leaving Spahn Ranch, Susan said, “Linda gave me some LSD, and she gave Tex some STP…Linda issued all the directions that night…No one told Charlie where we were going or what we were going to do…Linda had been there before, so she knew where to go…Tex went crazy, shot Parent…Linda went inside the house…Linda gave me her knife.” At this point in her narrative, Daye Shinn opened the blade of the Buck knife and started to hand the knife to Susan.

THE COURT “Put that knife back the way it was!”

SHINN “I only wanted to get the dimensions, Your Honor.”

Susan skipped ahead in her narrative. She was holding Sharon Tate and “Tex came back and he looked at her and he said, ‘Kill her.’ And I killed her…And I just stabbed her and she fell, and I stabbed her again. I don’t know how many times I stabbed her…” Sharon begged for the life of her baby, and “I told her, ‘Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.’”

Though Susan’s words were horrifyingly chilling, her expression for the most part remained simple, even childlike.

There was only one way to describe the contrast: it was incredibly obscene.

In discussing the Hinman murder, Susan had placed Leslie Van Houten at the murder scene. There had never been any evidence whatsoever that Leslie was involved in the Hinman murder.

In discussing the night the LaBiancas were killed, Susan made some additional changes in the cast of characters. Manson didn’t go along, she said. Linda drove; Tex creepy-crawled the LaBianca residence; Linda instructed Tex, Katie, and Leslie what to do; Linda suggested killing the actor in Venice. And when they returned to Spahn Ranch, “Charlie was there sleeping.”

Just as improbable was another of her fictional embellishments. She had implicated Manson in her conversation with me and in her testimony before the grand jury, she claimed, because I had promised her that if she did so I would personally see that none of the defendants, including Manson, would receive the death penalty.

The best refutation of this was that she had implicated Manson on the tape she made with Caballero, days before our first meeting.

Describing that meeting, Sadie said, “Bugliosi walked in. I think he was dressed similar to the way he is dressed now, gray suit, vest.”

Q. “This was way back in 1969, right?”

A. “Right. He looked a lot younger then.”

We’d all gone through a lot in the last fourteen months.

Shinn then began questioning Susan about Shorty! I asked to approach the bench.

BUGLIOSI “Your Honor, I can’t believe what is going on here. He is talking about Shorty Shea now!” Turning to Daye, I said, “You are hurting yourself if you bring in other murders, and you are hurting the co-defendants.” Older agreed and cautioned Shinn to be extremely careful.

I was worried that if Shinn continued, the case might be reversed on appeal. What conceivable rationale could there be for having your client take the stand and confess to a murder with which she isn’t even charged?

Fitzgerald took over the direct. He asked Susan why the Tate victims were killed.

A. “Because I believed it was right to get my brother out of jail. And I still believe it was right.”

Q. “Miss Atkins, were any of these people killed as a result of any personal hate or animosity that you had toward them?”

A. “No.”

Q. “Did you have any feeling toward them at all, any emotional feeling toward any of these people—Sharon Tate, Voytek Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent?”

A. “I didn’t know any of them. How could I have felt any emotion without knowing them?”

Fitzgerald asked Susan if she considered these mercy killings.

A. “No. As a matter of fact, I believe I told Sharon Tate I didn’t have any mercy for her.”

Susan went on to explain that she knew what she was doing “was right when I was doing it.” She knew this because, when you do the right thing, “it feels good.”

Q. “How could it be right to kill somebody?”

A. “How could it not be right when it is done with love?”

Q. “Did you ever feel any remorse?”

A. “Remorse? For doing what was right to me?”

Q. “Did you ever feel sorry?”

A. “Sorry for doing what was right to me? I have no guilt in me.”

Fitzgerald looked beaten. By bringing out her total lack of remorse, he had made it impossible for the defense to persuasively argue that she was capable of rehabilitation.

We had reached a strange situation. Suddenly, in the penalty phase, long after the jury had found the four defendants guilty, I was in a sense having to prove Manson’s guilt all over again.

If I cross-examined too strenuously, it would appear that I did not feel that we had proven our case. If I eschewed cross-examination, there was the possibility of leaving a lingering doubt as to guilt, which, when it came time for their deliberations, could influence the jury’s vote on penalty. Therefore I had to proceed very carefully, as if trying to walk between raindrops.

The defense, and specifically Irving Kanarek, had tried to plant such a doubt by providing an alternative to Helter Skelter—the copycat motive. Though I felt the testimony on this was thoroughly unconvincing, this didn’t mean I could sit back and presume the jury would feel as I did.

As an explanation for why she was lying to save him, it was important that I conclusively prove to the jury Susan Atkins’ total commitment to Manson. At the start of my cross-examination I asked her: “Sadie, do you believe Charles Manson is the second coming of Christ?”

A. “Vince, I have seen Christ in so many people in the last four or five years, it is hard for me to say which one exactly is the second coming of Christ.”

I repeated the question.

A. “I have thought about it. I have thought about it quite a bit…I have entertained the thought that he was Christ, yes…I don’t know. Could be. If he is, wow, my goodness!”

After confronting her with her letter to Ronnie Howard, in which she stated, “If you can believe in the second coming of Christ, M is he who has come to save,” I asked her: “Even now on the witness stand, Sadie, you think that maybe Charles Manson, the man over there who is playing with his hair, might be Jesus Christ?”

A. “Maybe. I will leave it at that. Maybe yes. Maybe no.”

I persisted until Susan admitted: “He represented a God to me that was so beautiful that I’d do anything for him.”

Q. “Even commit murder?” I asked instantly.

A. “I’d do anything for God.”

Q. “Including murder?” I pressed.

A. “That’s right. If I believed it was right.”

Q. “And you murdered the five people at the Tate residence for your God, Manson, didn’t you?”

Susan paused, then said: “I murdered them for my God Bobby Beausoleil.”

Q. “Oh, so you have two Gods?”

Evasively she replied: “There is only one God and God is in all.”

Since Susan had now testified to these matters, the prosecution was able to use her prior inconsistent statements—including her grand jury testimony—for impeachment purposes.

On cross-examination I had Susan repeat the alleged reasons why they went to the Tate residence. Once she’d restated the copycat nonsense, I hit her with her statements regarding Helter Skelter’s being the motive—made to me, to the grand jury, and in the Howard letter.

I also brought out that she had told me, and the grand jury, that Manson had ordered the seven Tate-LaBianca murders; that Charlie had directed all their activities the second night; and that none of them had been on drugs either night.

I then led her back through her scenario of the Hinman, Tate, and LaBianca murders, step by step, knowing she would slip up, which she did, repeatedly.

For example, I asked: “Where was Charles Manson when you stabbed Gary Hinman to death?”

A. “He left. He left right after he cut Gary’s ear.” Having inadvertently admitted this, she quickly added that she had tried to sew up Hinman’s ear.

I then took her back again: Hinman drew a gun on Manson; Manson ran; Hinman started to shoot Manson; to protect her love, she stabbed Hinman to death. Just when, I asked, did she have time to play Florence Nightingale?

Susan further claimed that she didn’t tell Manson that she had killed Hinman until after their arrest in the Barker raid. In other words, though she had lived with Manson from July to October 1969, she hadn’t got around to mentioning this? “That’s right.” Why? “Because he never asked.”

She hadn’t even told him she committed the Tate and LaBianca murders, she claimed. Nor, until two days ago, had she told anyone that Linda Kasabian masterminded the murders.

Q. “Between August 9, 1969, and February 9, 1971, how come you never told anyone that Linda was behind these murders?”

A. “Because I didn’t. It’s that simple.”

Q. “Did you tell anyone in the Family that you committed all these murders?”

A. “No.”

Q. “If you told outsiders like Ronnie Howard and Virginia Graham, how come you didn’t tell members of your own Family, Sadie?”

A. “Nothing needed to be said. What I did was what I did with those people, and that is what I did.”

Q. “Just one of those things, seven dead bodies?”

A. “No big thing.”

I paused to let this incredible statement sink in before asking: “So killing seven people is just business as usual, no big deal, is that right, Sadie?”

A. “It wasn’t at the time. It was just there to do.”

I asked her how she felt about the victims. She reponded, “They didn’t even look like people…I didn’t relate to Sharon Tate as being anything but a store mannequin.”

Q. “You have never heard a store mannequin talk, have you, Sadie?”

A. “No, sir. But she just sounded like an IBM machine…She kept begging and pleading and pleading and begging, and I got sick of listening to her, so I stabbed her.”

Q. “And the more she screamed, the more you stabbed, Sadie?”

A. “Yes. So?”

Q. “And you looked at her and you said, ‘Look, bitch, I have no mercy for you.’ Is that right, Sadie?”

A. “That’s right. That’s what I said then.”

BUGLIOSI “No further questions.”

On Tuesday, February 16, after lengthy discussions in chambers, Judge Older told the jury that he had decided to end the sequestration.

Their surprise and elation were obvious. They had been locked up for over eight months, the longest sequestration of any jury in American history.

Though I remained worried about possible harassment from the Family, most of the other reasons for the sequestration—such as mention of the Hinman murder, Susan Atkins’ confession in the Los Angeles Times, her grand jury testimony, and so on—no longer existed, since the jury heard this evidence when Sadie and the others took the stand.

It was almost as if we had a new jury. When the twelve entered the box the next day, there were smiles on all their faces. I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen them smiling.

The smiles would not remain there long. Patricia Krenwinkel now took the stand, to confess her part in the Tate and LaBianca homicides.

An even more improbable witness than Susan Atkins, her testimony regarding the copycat motive was vague, nebulous, and almost devoid of supporting detail. The point in her taking the stand was to take the focus off Manson. Instead, like the other Family members who had preceded her, she repeatedly highlighted his importance. For example, describing life at Spahn Ranch, she said: “We were just like wood nymphs and wood creatures. We would run through the woods with flowers in our hair, and Charlie would have a small flute…”

On the murder of Abigail Folger: “And I had a knife in my hands, and she took off running, and she ran—she ran out through the back door, one I never even touched, I mean, nobody got fingerprints because I never touched that door…and I stabbed her and I kept stabbing her.”

Q. “What did you feel after you stabbed her?”

A. “Nothing—I mean, like what is there to describe? It was just there, and it’s like it was right.”

On the murder of Rosemary LaBianca: According to Katie, she and Leslie took Rosemary LaBianca into the bedroom and were looking through the dresses in her closet when, hearing Leno scream, Rosemary grabbed a lamp and swung at them.

On the mutilation of Leno LaBianca: After murdering Rosemary, Katie remembered seeing Leno lying on the floor in the living room. She flashed, “You won’t be sending your son off to war,” and “I guess I put WAR on the man’s chest. And then I guess I had a fork in my hands, and I put it in his stomach…and I went and wrote on the walls…”

On cross-examination I asked her: “When you were on top of Abigail Folger, plunging your knife into her body, was she screaming?”

A. “Yes.”

Q. “And the more she screamed, the more you stabbed?”

A. “I guess.”

Q. “Did it bother you when she screamed for her life?”

A. “No.”

Katie testified that when she stabbed Abigail she was really stabbing herself. My next question was rhetorical. “But you didn’t bleed at all, did you, Katie; just Abigail did, isn’t that right?”

The defense was contending, through these witnesses, that the words POLITICAL PIGGY (Hinman), PIG (Tate), and DEATH TO PIGS (LaBianca) were the clue which the killers felt would cause the police to link the three crimes. But when I’d asked Sadie why she’d written POLITICAL PIGGY on the wall of the Hinman residence in the first place, she had no satisfactory answer. Nor could she tell me why, if these were to be copycat murders, she’d only written PIG and not POLITICAL PIGGY at Tate. Nor was Katie now able to give a convincing explanation as to why she’d written HEALTER SKELTER on the LaBiancas’ refrigerator door.

It was obvious that Maxwell Keith wasn’t buying the copycat motive either. On redirect he asked Katie: “The homicides at the Tate residence and the LaBianca residence had nothing to do, did they, with trying to get Bobby Beausoleil out of jail?”

A. “Well, it’s hard to explain. It was just a thought, and the thought came to be.”

Judge Older was becoming increasingly irritated with Kanarek. Repeatedly, he warned him that if he persisted in asking inadmissible questions, he would find him in contempt for the fifth time. Nor was he very happy with Daye Shinn. Shinn had been observed passing a note from a spectator to Susan Atkins. The week before, the girls on the corner had been seen reading court transcripts which had Shinn’s name on them. Confronted with this by Older, Shinn explained: “They borrowed them to look at them.”

THE COURT “I beg your pardon? Are you familiar with the publicity order in this case?”

Shinn admitted that he was.

THE COURT “It appears to me, Mr. Shinn, that you are not paying the slightest attention to the publicity order, and you haven’t been for some time. I have felt, in my own mind, for a long, long time, that the leak—and there is a leak—is you.”

Maxwell Keith very reluctantly called his client, Leslie Van Houten, to the stand. After taking her through her background, Keith asked to approach the bench. He told Older that his client was going to involve herself in the Hinman murder. He had discussed this with her for “hours and hours” but to no avail.

Once she began reciting her tale, the transparency of her fictions became obvious. According to Leslie, Mary Brunner was never at the Hinman residence, while both Charles Manson and Bobby Beausoleil left before the actual killing took place. It was Sadie, she said, who killed Gary.

Though implicating herself in the Hinman murder, at least by her presence, Leslie did try to provide some mitigating circumstances for her involvement in the LaBianca murders. She claimed she knew nothing about the Tate murders and that when she went along the next night she had no idea where they were going or what they were going to do. The murder of Rosemary LaBianca was made to seem almost like self-defense. Only after Rosemary swung at her with the lamp did she “take one of the knives and Patricia had a knife, and we started stabbing and cutting up the lady.”

Q. “Up to that time, did you have any intention of hurting anybody?”

A. “No.”

Q. “Did you stab her after she appeared to be dead, Les?”

A. “I don’t know if it was before or after she was dead, but I stabbed her…I don’t know if she was dead. She was lying there on the floor.”

Q. “Had you stabbed her at all before you saw her lying on the floor?”

A. “I don’t remember.”

Leslie’s forgetting such things was almost as improbable as her claim that she hadn’t mentioned the murders to Manson until they were in the desert.

Very carefully, Keith tried to establish that Leslie had remorse for her acts.

Q. “Leslie, do you feel sorrow or shame or a sense of guilt for having participated in the death of Mrs. LaBianca?”

A. [Pause]

Q. “Let me go one by one. Do you feel sorrowful about it; sorry; unhappy?”

You could almost feel the chill in the courtroom when Leslie answered: “Sorry is only a five-letter word. It can’t bring back anything.”

Q. “I am trying, Leslie, to discover how you feel about it.”

A. “What can I feel? It has happened. She is gone.”

Q. “Do you wish that it hadn’t happened?”

A. “I never wish anything to be done over another way. That is a foolish thought. It never will happen that way. You can’t undo something that is done.”

Q. “Do you feel as if you wanted to cry for what happened?”

A. “Cry? For her death? If I cry for death, it is for death itself. She is not the only person who has died.”

Q. “Do you think about it from time to time?”

A. “Only when I am in the courtroom.”

Through most of the trial Leslie Van Houten had maintained her innocent-little-girl act. She’d dropped it now, the jury seeing for the first time how cold and unfeeling she really was.

Another aspect of her real nature surfaced when Kanarek examined her. Angry and impatient at some of his questions, she snapped back hostile, sarcastic replies. With each spurt of venom, you could see the jurors drawing back, looking at her as if anew. Whatever sympathy she may have generated earlier was gone now. Even McBride no longer met her eyes.

Leslie Van Houten had been found guilty of two homicides. I felt she deserved the death penalty for her very willing participation in those acts. But I didn’t want the jury to vote death on the basis of a crime she didn’t even commit. I told her attorney, Maxwell Keith, that I was willing to stipulate that Leslie was not at the Hinman residence. “I mean, the jury is apt to think she was, and hold it against your client, and I don’t think that is right.”

Also, during cross-examination I asked: “Did you tell anyone—prior to your testimony on the witness stand—that it was you who was along with Sadie and Bobby Beausoleil at Gary Hinman’s house?”

A. “I told Patricia about it.”

Q. “Actually it was Mary Brunner who was inside the residence, not you, isn’t that correct?”

A. “That is what you say.”

Although I was attempting to exonerate Leslie of any complicity in the Gary Hinman murder, I did the opposite when it came to the murder of Rosemary LaBianca. By the time I’d finished my cross-examination on this, Leslie had admitted that Rosemary might still have been alive when she stabbed her; and that she not only stabbed her in the buttocks and possibly the neck, but “I could have done a couple on the back.” (As I’d later remind the jury, many of the back wounds were not post-mortem, while one, which severed Rosemary LaBianca’s spine, would have been in and of itself fatal.)

As with Sadie and Katie, I emphasized the improbabilities in her copycat tale. For example, though she had testified that she was “hopelessly in love” with Bobby Beausoleil, and became aware that these murders had been committed in an attempt to free him, I brought out that she hadn’t even offered to testify in either of his trials, when her story, had it been true, could have resulted in his release.

At this point I decided to go on a fishing expedition. Though I had no definite knowledge that this was so, I strongly suspected that Leslie had told her first attorney, Marvin Part, the true story of these murders. I did know that Part had recorded her story and, though I never heard the tape, I recalled Part almost begging the judge to listen to it.

BUGLIOSI “Isn’t it true, Leslie, that before the trial started you told someone that Charles Manson ordered these murders?”

A. “I had a court-appointed attorney, Marvin Part, who was insistent on the fact that I was—”

Keith interrupted her, objecting that we were getting into the area of privileged communications. I noted to Judge Older that Leslie herself had mentioned Part by name and that she had the right to waive the privilege. Kanarek also objected, well aware of what I was hoping to bring out.

VAN HOUTEN “Mr. Kanarek, will you shut up so I can answer his question?…I had a court-appointed attorney by the name of Marvin Part. He had a lot of different thoughts, which were all his own, on how to get me off. He said he was going to make some tape recordings, and he told me the gist of what he wanted me to say. And I said it.”

Q. “What did you tell Mr. Part?”

A. “I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

I asked her if she told Part that Manson had ordered these murders.

A. “Sure I told him that.”

Did she tell Part that Manson was along the second night, and that when they stopped on Waverly Drive, Manson got out and entered the LaBianca house?

After a number of evasive replies, Leslie angrily answered: “Sure I told him that!”

THE COURT “We will take our recess at this time—”

VAN HOUTEN “Mr. Bugliosi, you are an evil man!”

Each of the Family witnesses denied that Manson hated blacks. But in the light of what I’d recently learned, several put it in a very curious way. When Fitzgerald asked Squeaky: “Did he love the black man or did he hate him?” she had replied: “He loved them. He is his father—the black man is Charlie’s father.” Gypsy had testified: “First of all, Charlie spent nearly all of his life in jail. So he got to know the black people very, very well. In fact, I mean, they were like his father, you know.” Leslie had said something very similar, adding: “If Charlie hated black people he would hate himself.”

During a recess I asked Manson, “Charlie, was your father black?”

“What?” He seemed startled by the question, yet whether because it was such a crazy idea or because I’d found out something he didn’t want known I couldn’t tell. There was nothing evasive about his eventual response, however; he emphatically denied it.

He seemed to be telling the truth. Yet I wondered. I still do.

The next witness was no stranger to the stand. Brought back from New Hampshire at the request of Irving Kanarek, Linda Kasabian was again sworn. Fitzgerald, Keith, and Shinn had opposed calling her; Kanarek should have listened to their advice, as Linda again came over so well that I didn’t even cross-examine her. None of her previous testimony was shaken in the slightest.

Linda, her husband, and their two children were living together on a small farm in New Hampshire. The footloose Bob Kasabian had turned out to be a pillar of strength, and I was pleased to hear that their marriage now seemed to be working.

Ruth Ann Moorehouse, aka Ouisch, age twenty, who’d once told Danny DeCarlo she couldn’t wait to get her first pig, repeated the now familiar refrain: “Charlie was no leader.” But “the rattlesnakes liked him, he could play with them” and “he could change old men into young men.”

Adding a few more fictional touches to the copycat motive, Ouisch claimed that Bobby Beausoleil was the father of Linda Kasabian’s second child.

I asked her: “You would do anything to help Charles Manson and these three female defendants, wouldn’t you, Ouisch?”

When she evaded a direct reply, I asked: “You would even murder for them, wouldn’t you?”

A. “I could not take a life.”

Q. “All right, let’s talk about that, Ouisch. Do you know a girl by the name of Barbara Hoyt?”

On the advice of her attorney, Ouisch refused to answer any questions about the Hoyt murder attempt. By law, when a witness refuses to be cross-examined, that witness’s entire testimony can be stricken. This was done in Ouisch’s case.

Easily the weirdest of all the witnesses was Steve Grogan, aka Clem, age nineteen. He spoke of the “engrams” on his brain; answered questions about his father by talking about his mother; and claimed that the real leader of the Family was not Manson but Pooh Bear, Mary Brunner’s child by Manson.

Kanarek complained, at the bench, that Older was smiling at Grogan’s replies. Older responded: “I find nothing whatsoever funny about this witness, I can assure you…Why you would want to call him is beyond my comprehension, but that is up to you…No jury will ever believe this witness, I promise you that.”

The youth who beheaded Shorty Shea appeared to be a complete idiot. He grinned incessantly, made funny faces, and played with his beard even more than Manson. Yet it was more than partly role playing, as several of his very careful replies indicated.

Clem recalled accompanying Linda, Leslie, Sadie, Tex, and Katie one night in a car; he claimed that Linda had given them all LSD first; and he insisted that Manson was not along. But he was very careful not to say that this was the night of the LaBianca murders, to avoid implicating himself.

Many of his responses were almost exact quotations from Manson. For example, when I asked him, “When did you join the Family, Clem?” he replied, “When I was born of white skin.”

I also asked him, since it had been brought out on the direct examination, about his arrest in the Barker raid. What had he been charged with? I inquired.

A. “I was arrested on a breach of promise.”

Q “Breach of promise? Some girl you made a promise to, Clem, or what?”

A. “It was a promise to return a truck on a certain date.”

Q. “Oh, I get it. Sometimes that is called ‘grand theft auto,’ too, isn’t it, Clem?”

The defense called their next witness: Vincent T. Bugliosi. At the bench Fitzgerald admitted that this was an unusual situation: “On the other hand, in this case Mr. Bugliosi has been an investigator as well as a prosecutor.”

Daye Shinn questioned me about my interview with Susan Atkins and her testimony before the grand jury. Why did I feel Susan hadn’t told the grand jury the whole truth? he asked. I enumerated the reasons, noting, among other things, my belief that she had stabbed Sharon Tate.

Q. “How did you come to that conclusion?”

A. “She admitted it on the witness stand, Mr. Shinn, for one thing.

Also, she told Ronnie Howard and Virginia Graham that she stabbed Sharon Tate.”

Shinn was trying to reinstate the “deal” in which the DA’s Office agreed not to seek the death penalty against Susan if she testified truthfully. As Older told him at the bench: “Susan Atkins took the stand in this case under oath and testified that she was lying at the grand jury. If there’d been any agreement, that in itself would have been enough to negate it.”

Keith asked me if I had either heard the tape Leslie made with Part or discussed its contents with him. I replied that I had not. Kanarek’s cross-examination went so far afield that Judge Older finally terminated it.

Others who took the stand in succeeding days included Aaron Stovitz; Evelle Younger, former Los Angeles District Attorney and now California State Attorney General; attorneys Paul Caruso and Richard Caballero; and promoter Lawrence Schiller. Every aspect of the December 4, 1969, agreement; the taping of Atkins’ account; the selling of her story; her grand jury testimony; and her firing of Caballero the day after her meeting with Manson was discussed. Shinn’s most strenuous cross-examination of the entire trial took place when he had Schiller on the stand: Shinn wanted to know exactly how much Susan’s story had earned and in which bank accounts every penny was. Shinn was to receive Susan’s share for representing her.

During my cross-examination of these witnesses, I scored a number of significant points. I brought out through Caruso, for example, that during the December 4, 1969, meeting he had stated that Susan Atkins probably wouldn’t testify at the trial “because of her fear of Manson.”

Kanarek, however, scored one of the biggest points—for the prosecution. In questioning Caballero, Atkins’ former attorney, he asked: “What did [Susan Atkins] tell you about the language written in blood at these three homes?”

CABALLERO “I told you not to ask me that question, Irving.”

Apparently convinced that Caballero was hiding something favorable to his client, Kanarek repeated the question.

Caballero sighed and said: “She told me that Charles Manson had wanted to bring on Helter Skelter and it wasn’t happening fast enough, and the use of the word ‘pig’ was for the purpose of making them think that Negroes were committing these crimes, because the Panthers and people like that are the ones that used the name ‘pig’ to mean the establishment, and that was the whole purpose of it, that Helter Skelter wasn’t happening fast enough, and Charlie was going to bring on the ruination of the world, and this is why all the murders were committed.

“I asked you not to ask me these questions, Mr. Kanarek.”

Having failed abysmally in their attempt to sell the copycat motive, the defense now switched to a new tactic. They called a number of psychiatrists to the stand, hoping to establish that LSD had affected the minds of the three female defendants to the extent that they were not responsible for their acts.

It was not a real defense, but it could be made to seem a mitigating circumstance which, unless thoroughly rebutted, might tip the scales in favor of life imprisonment.

Their first witness, Dr. Andre Tweed, professed to be an expert on LSD, but almost all of his testimony was contrary to that of acknowledged experts in the field.

Tweed claimed he knew of one case where a youth while under LSD heard voices which told him to kill his mother and his grandmother, and he did just that. On the basis of this single, unidentified case, Tweed concluded that “people may perform homicidal acts while under the influence of LSD.” It was also his opinion, he said, that LSD probably caused brain damage.

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.

There 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”;[82] 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.”

BUGLIOSI “No further questions.”

On 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.

While 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.

VAN HOUTEN “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.

Dr. 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.

It 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.

According to Hochman, in talking to him Leslie professed “a kind of primitive Christianity, love for the world, acceptance of all things. And I asked her, ‘Well, professing that, how can it be you would murder someone?’ She said, ‘Well that was something inside of me too.’”

Maxwell Keith should have stopped right there. Instead, he asked Hochman: “How do you interpret that?”

A. “I think it’s rather realistic. I think that in reality it was something inside of her, despite her chronic denial of the emotional aspects of herself, that a rage was there.”

Nor did Keith leave it at that. He now asked: “When you say a rage was there, what do you mean by that?”

A. “In my opinion it would take a rage, an emotional reaction to kill someone. I think it is unquestionable that that feeling was inside of her.”

Q. “Bearing in mind that she had never seen or heard of Mrs. LaBianca, in your opinion there was some hate in her when this occurred?”

A. “Well, I think it would make it easier for her not to know Mrs. LaBianca…It is hard to kill someone that you have good feelings towards. I don’t think there was anything specific about Mrs. LaBianca.

“Let me make myself clear: Mrs. LaBianca was an object, a blank screen upon which Leslie projected her feelings, much as a patient projects his feeling on an analyst whom he doesn’t know…feelings towards her mother, her father, toward the establishment…

“I think she was a very angry girl for a long time, a very alienated girl for a long time, and the anger and rage was associated with that.”

Hochman was articulating one of the main points of my final summation: namely, that Leslie, Sadie, Katie, and Tex had a hostility and rage within them that pre-existed Charles Manson. They were different from Linda Kasabian, Paul Watkins, Brooks Poston, Juan Flynn, and T. J. When Manson asked them to kill for him, each said no.

Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten said yes.

So there had to be something special about these people that caused them to kill. Some kind of inner flaw. Apart from Charlie.

Though he had badly damaged his own case, Keith had tried to put the hat on Manson. Fitzgerald, in his examination of Hochman, did just the opposite. He sought to minimize the importance of Manson’s influence over Leslie. Asking Hochman what Manson’s influence actually was, he received this reply: “His ideas, his presence, the role he played in his relationship to her, served to reinforce a lot of her feelings and attitudes. It served to reinforce and give her a way of continuing her general social alienation, her alienation from the establishment.”

Q. “So, really, all you are saying is that (A) Manson could possibly have had some influence, and (B), if he did have some influence, it would only contribute to the lowering of her restraints on her impulsiveness, is that correct?”

A. “Yes.”

Q. “So any influence Manson had on Leslie Van Houten, in terms of your professional opinion, is tenuous at best, is that correct?”[83]

A. “Let me give you another example that may make it clearer… Suppose someone comes in and says, ‘Let’s eat the whole apple pie.’ Obviously your temptation is stimulated by the suggestion, but your final decision on whether or not to eat the whole pie or just one piece comes out of you. So the other person is influential, but is not a final arbiter or decider of that situation…

“Someone can tell you to shoot someone, but your decision to do that comes from inside you.”

Kanarek, when his turn came, picked up the scent. “And so you are telling us then, in layman’s language, that when someone takes a knife and stabs, the decision to do that is a personal decision?”

A. “In the ultimate analysis it is.”

Q. “It is a personal decision of the person who does the stabbing?”

A. “Yes.”

Ironically, Kanarek and I were now on the same side. Both of us were seeking to prove that, even independent of Manson, these girls had murder within them.

Manson was very impressed by Hochman and at first wanted to be interviewed by him. I was relieved, however, when he later abandoned the idea. I wasn’t greatly worried about Manson conning Hochman. But even if Hochman didn’t buy Manson’s story, Kanarek would make sure he repeated it on the stand. Thus, using Hochman as a conduit, Manson could get almost everything he wanted before the jury, without being subject to my cross-examination.

Hochman found in all three girls “much evidence in their history of early alienation, of early antisocial or deviant behavior.” Even before joining the Family, Leslie had more emotional problems than the average person. Sadie actively sought to be everything her father warned her not to be. “She thinks now, in retrospect,” Hochman noted, “that even without Charles Manson she would have ended up in jail for manslaughter or assault with a deadly weapon.” Katie first had sex at fifteen. She never saw the boy again, and she suffered tremendous guilt because of the experience. Manson eradicated that guilt. He also, in letting her join the Family, gave her the acceptance she desperately craved.

Of the three, Hochman felt Sadie had a little more remorse than the other two—she often talked of wishing her life were over. Yet he also noted, “One is struck by the absence of a conventional sense of morality or conscience in this girl.” And he testified, “She does not seem to manifest any evidence of discomfort or anxiety about her present circumstances, or her conviction and possible death sentence. On the contrary, she seemed to manifest a remarkable peacefulness and self-acceptance in her present state.”

According to Hochman, all three girls denied “any sense of guilt whatever about anything.” And he felt that intellectually they actually believed there is no right or wrong, that morality is a relative thing. “However, I, as a psychiatrist, know that you cannot rationally do away with the feelings that exist on the irrational, unconscious level. You cannot tell yourself that killing is O.K. intellectually when you have grown up all your life feeling that killing is wrong.”

In short, Hochman believed that as human beings the girls felt some guilt deep down inside, even though they consciously suppressed it.

Keith asked Hochman: “In your opinion, Doctor, would Leslie be susceptible or respond to intensive therapy?”

A. “Possibly.”

Q. “In other words, you don’t feel that she is such a lost soul that she could never be rehabilitated?”

A. “No, I don’t think she is that lost a soul, no.”

To a psychiatrist, no one is beyond redemption. This is essential, standard testimony. Yet only one of the defense attorneys, Maxwell Keith, asked the question, and then only on redirect.

Earlier I’d brought out that Hochman had only the word of the girls that they were on LSD either night. I now asked him: “Have you ever read a reported case in the literature of LSD of any individual who committed murder while under the influence of LSD?”

A. “No. Suicide, but not murder.”

As I’d later ask the jury, could Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten, all four, be exceptions?

A large portion of Hochman’s testimony had dealt with the mental states of the three girls. Susan Atkins was suffering from a diagnosable condition, he said: an early childhood deprivation syndrome which had resulted in a hysterical personality type.

This was not legal insanity as defined by M’Naghten.

Leslie Van Houten was an immature, unusually impulsive person, who tended to act spontaneously without reflection.

Nor was this legal insanity as defined by M’Naghten.

In his report on Krenwinkel, Dr. Claude Brown, the Mobile psychiatrist, had stated that “at the time I saw Miss Krenwinkel, she showed a schizophrenic reaction.” He added, however, that “I do not state with any certainty that this psychosis existed at the time of the alleged murders.”

Schizophrenia may be legal insanity as defined by M’Naghten. But Dr. Brown’s opinion was qualified, and when Fitzgerald asked Dr. Hochman if, on the basis of his examination of Krenwinkel, he agreed that she was, or had been, schizophrenic, Hochman replied, “I would say no.”

It remained to bring these points across to the jury, in terms they could easily understand.

On recross-examination I had Hochman define the word “psychotic.” He replied that it meant “a loss of contact with reality.”

I then asked him: “At the present time, Doctor, do you feel any of these three female defendants are psychotic?”

A. “No.”

Q. “In your opinion, do you feel that any of these three female defendants have ever been psychotic?”

A. “No.”

BUGLIOSI “May I approach the witness, Your Honor? I want to ask the witness a question privately.”

THE COURT “Yes, you may.”

I had already questioned Dr. Hochman once about this. But I wanted to be absolutely certain of his reply. Once I had received it, I returned to the counsel table and asked him a number of unrelated questions, so the jury wouldn’t know what we had been talking about. I then gradually worked up to the big one.

Q. “The term ‘insanity,’ Doctor, you are familiar with that term, of course?”

A. “Yes.”

Q. “Basically, you define the word ‘insanity’ to be the layman’s synonym for ‘psychotic’?”

A. “I would say that the word ‘insanity’ is used generally to mean ‘psychotic.’”

Q. “Then, from a psychiatric standpoint, I take it that in your opinion none of these three female defendants are presently insane nor have they ever been insane, is that correct?”

A. “That is correct.”

As far as the psychiatric testimony was concerned, with Hochman’s reply the ball game was over.

The defense called only three more witnesses during the penalty trial, all hard-core Family members. Each was on the stand only a short time, but their testimony, particularly that of the first witness, was as shocking as anything that had gone before.

Catherine Gillies, whose grandmother owned Myers Ranch, parroted the Family line: Charlie never led anyone; there was never any talk of a race war; these murders were committed to free Bobby Beausoleil.

Coldly, matter-of-factly, the twenty-one-year-old girl testified that on the night of the LaBianca murders, “I followed Katie to the car, and I asked if I could go with her. Linda, Leslie, and Sadie were all in the car. And they said that they had plenty of people to do what they were going to do, and that I didn’t need to go.”

On direct examination by Kanarek, Cathy stated: “You know, I am willing to kill for a brother, we all are.”

Q. “What do you mean by that?”

A. “In other words, to get a brother out of jail, I would kill. I would have killed that night except I did not go…”

Q. “What prevented you from going with them, if anything?”

A. “Just the fact that they didn’t need me.”

Apparently Fitzgerald hoped to soften the harshness of her reply when he asked her: “Have you killed anybody to get someone out of jail?”

With a strange little smile, Cathy turned her head and, looking directly at the jury, replied: “Not yet.”

Cathy had testified on direct examination that Katie had told her about the Tate-LaBianca murders. On cross-examination I asked her: “When Katie told you that they had murdered these people, did this disturb you at all?”

A. “Actually it had very little effect on me because I knew why they had done it.”

Q. “So it didn’t upset you?”

A. “No, it definitely didn’t upset me.”

Q. “You didn’t decide that you would rather not continue living with murderers?”

A. “Obviously not.”

Q. “Were you upset that you didn’t get to go along with them?”

A. “I wanted to go.”

Mary Brunner, first member of the Manson Family, claimed that the police had told her that she would be charged with murder if she did not implicate Manson in the Hinman slaying. She now repudiated this testimony and further denied even being at the Hinman residence.

Keith brought out that Mary Brunner had testified both in the second trial of Bobby Beausoleil and before the Hinman grand jury, and neither time did she say anything about Leslie Van Houten being present when Hinman was killed.

I had no questions for her. The point was made.

Brenda McCann was recalled to the stand, to testify that on the nights of the Tate and LaBianca murders she had seen Manson sleeping with Stephanie Schram in Devil’s Canyon.

The groundwork for my cross-examination of Brenda had been laid fifteen months before. I impeached her with her testimony before the grand jury, when she stated that she couldn’t remember where she, or Manson, was on either night.

Brenda was the last witness. She completed her testimony on Tuesday, March 16, 1971. That afternoon, after a number of delays—Kanarek, for example, refused to stipulate that Gary Hinman was dead—the defense rested. Wednesday we worked on the jury instructions, and on Thursday the trial entered its final stage. All that now remained were the arguments, the deliberations, and the verdict.

MARCH 18–29, 1971

My opening argument in the penalty trial was brief, lasting less than ten minutes. As with all my arguments during the trial, Manson decided to sit this one out, in the lockup. The psychology behind this was obvious: he didn’t want the jury focusing on him when I discussed him.

I began by saying: “I am not going to address myself to the frantic effort by the three female defendants and the defense witnesses to make it look like Charles Manson wasn’t involved in these murders. I am sure all of you clearly saw that they were lying on that witness stand to do what they could for their God, Charles Manson.

“Well, Charles Manson has already been convicted. He has already been convicted of seven counts of first degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder.

“The difficulty in your decision, as I see it, is not whether these defendants deserve the death penalty, ladies and gentlemen. In view of the incredibly savage, barbaric, and inhuman murders they committed, the death penalty is the only proper verdict.” I then stated the very heart of my argument: “If this case were not a proper case for the imposition of the death penalty, no case ever would be. In view of what they did, life imprisonment would be the greatest gift, the greatest charity, the greatest handout, as it were, ever given.

“The difficulty in your decision, as I see it, is whether you will have the fortitude to return verdicts of death against all four defendants.”

The defense attorneys, I anticipated, would beg for their clients’ lives. This was not only commendable, I told the jury, it was also understandable, just as it was understandable that they “argued during the guilt phase that their clients were not involved in these murders, even though during the penalty phase the three female defendants took the stand and said: ‘Yes, we were involved.’”

There was absolutely no reason for these defendants to viciously and inhumanly snuff out the lives of these seven human beings, I noted. There were no mitigating circumstances.

“These defendants are not human beings, ladies and gentlemen. Human beings have a heart and a soul. No one with a heart and a soul could have done what these defendants did to these seven victims.

“These defendants are human monsters, human mutations.

“There is only one proper ending to the Tate-LaBianca murder trial,” I concluded, “verdicts of death for all four defendants.”

Kanarek stipulated, at the start of his argument, that “Mr. Manson is not all good.” However, he continued, “Mr. Manson is innocent of these matters that are before us.”

Why was he on trial then? Kanarek returned to his two favorite themes: “Mr. Manson has had quite a share of troubles because of the fact that he likes girls.” And he was only brought to trial “so someone in the District Attorney’s Office can have a gold star and say, ‘I got Charles Manson.’”

Kanarek’s argument stretched over three days. It was occasionally ridiculous, as when he said, “We can perform a public service for the United States of America by giving these people life, because if there is a revolution, this is the kind of thing that could spark it.” It was sometimes unintentionally funny, as when he stated that, unlike Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, “Charles Manson has no family to come here to testify.” But mostly he tried to plant little seeds of doubt.

Why, if Susan Atkins lied on the stand to absolve Manson, would she have implicated him in the Hinman murder? Wasn’t the fact that Manson himself shot Crowe, to protect the people at Spahn Ranch, evidence that he didn’t need to order others to act for him? If these girls were lying about Manson’s non-involvement in the murders, wouldn’t they have also lied and said they had sorrow and remorse?

Kanarek only briefly mentioned the copycat motive; he didn’t even try to argue it. Instead, he suggested still another alternative motive. “But for the fact that at least some of these people [supposedly referring to the Tate victims] were engaged in a narcotic episode of some type, these events would not have taken place.”

Daye Shinn, who argued next, fastened on Dr. Hochman’s statement that he believed these girls had subconscious if not conscious remorse.

As for Susan, “She is still young,” Shinn argued. “She is only twenty-two years old. I believe there is still a hope of rehabilitating her…Maybe someday she may be rehabilitated to the extent that she may finally realize what she has done was not right. I believe that she deserves the chance, an opportunity, so that maybe someday she may be released and live the rest of her life out of prison.”

This was very bad strategy on Shinn’s part, implying that if Susan Atkins was given life imprisonment she might someday be released on parole. By law, the prosecution can’t argue this, it is so prejudicial to the defendant.

Of the four defense attorneys, Maxwell Keith gave the best opening argument. He was also the only one who really attempted to rebut my contentions.

“Mr. Bugliosi tells you that if the death penalty is not appropriate in this case, it would never be appropriate. Well, I wonder if it ever is appropriate?

“Mr. Bugliosi read to you at the close of his argument on the guilt phase the roll call of the dead. Let me read to you now, ladies and gentlemen, the roll call of the living dead: Leslie, Sadie, Katie, Squeaky, Brenda, Ouisch, Sandy, Cathy, Gypsy, Tex, Clem, Mary, Snake, and no doubt many more. These lives, and the lives of these three young girls in particular, have been so damaged that it is possible, in some cases, their destruction is beyond repair. I hope not, but it is possible.”

Leslie Van Houten, he strongly argued, was capable of rehabilitation. She should be studied, not killed. “I am not asking you to forgive her, although to forgive is divine. I am asking you to give her the chance to redeem herself. She deserves to live. What she did was not done by the real Leslie. Let the Leslie of today die—she will, slowly and maybe painfully. And let the Leslie as she once was live again.”

Nowhere in Paul Fitzgerald’s argument, which followed, did he state, or even imply, that Manson was responsible for what had happened to Patricia Krenwinkel.

“Patricia Krenwinkel is twenty-three years old,” Fitzgerald observed. “With 365 days in the year, there are approximately 8,400 days in 23 years, and approximately 200,000 hours in her lifetime.

“The perpetration of these offenses took at best approximately three hours.

“Is she to be judged solely on what occurred during three of 200,000 hours?”

Just before court commenced on March 23, I walked over to the water cooler. Manson, in the nearby lockup, called out to me, rather loudly, “If I get the death penalty, there is going to be a lot of bloodletting. Because I am not going to take it.”

Both the court clerk and Steve Kay overheard the remark. Kay intemperately rushed out of the courtroom and repeated it to the press. Learning of this, I asked the reporters not to print it. The Herald Examiner wouldn’t agree, and it broke the story with a banner headline:

Before this, however, Judge Older, made aware of what had happened, decided that rather than wait to the close of arguments, he would sequester the jury immediately.

In my final argument I rebutted point by point the earlier defense contentions. For example, the defense had claimed that Linda got her story from listening to the Susan Atkins tapes. Why would Linda need to listen to the tapes, I asked, when she was present both nights?

Kanarek had told the jury that if they returned death penalty verdicts, they would be killers. This was a very heavy argument. As support, he cited the Fifth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.”

In answer, I told the jury that most biblical scholars and theologians interpret the original language to mean: “Thou shalt not commit murder,” which is exactly how it appears in the New English Bible, dated 1970.

The Ten Commandments appear in Exodus, chapter 20, I noted. What Kanarek did not mention, I observed, is that the very next chapter authorizes the death penalty. Exodus 21, verse 12, reads: “Whoever strikes a man a mortal blow must be put to death,” while verse 14 of the same chapter reads: “When a man kills another, after maliciously scheming to do so, you must take him even from my altar and put him to death.”

Kanarek argued that there was no domination. In addition to all the evidence during the guilt trial, I observed, during the penalty trial, “When Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten played the part of the sacrificial lamb and admitted their participation in these murders, and then lied on that witness stand and said that Manson wasn’t involved, the fact that they were willing to lie on that witness stand just proves, all the more, Manson’s domination over them…” As for the other Family witnesses, Squeaky, Sandy, and the others, “All of them sounded like a broken record on that witness stand. They all have the same thought; they use the same language; each one was a carbon copy of the other. They are all still totally subservient and subject to Charles Manson. They are his X’d-out slaves.”

I came now to the copycat motive. My objective was to completely demolish it, yet not dwell on it so long that it would seem that I was giving it credence.

“It is really laughable, ladies and gentlemen,” I began, “the way the three female defendants and the defense witnesses sought to take the hat off Charles Manson.

“They had to come up with a motive for these murders other than Helter Skelter. Why? Because no less than ten witnesses during the guilt trial had irrevocably connected Manson with Helter Skelter, so they certainly could not say from that witness stand that the motive for these murders was Helter Skelter. If they said that, they would be saying, ‘Yes, Charles Manson masterminded these murders.’ So they came up with the copycat motive.

“I could give you between twenty and thirty reasons why it’s obvious that this nonsensical story of the defense was fabricated out of whole cloth, but I won’t take up your time with it, and I am not going to insult your intelligence.” I did point out a few:

Linda Kasabian testified during the penalty trial that she had never heard anyone discuss committing these murders to free Bobby Beausoleil.

Gary Hinman was stabbed not more than four times. Voytek Frykowski was stabbed fifty-one times, Rosemary LaBianca forty-one times, Leno LaBianca twenty-six times. Rather a great difference, if these were copycat slayings.

And, if these murders were to be carbon copies, why weren’t the words “political piggy” used at the Tate and LaBianca residences? And why no bloody paw print at the latter two houses?

The most powerful evidence demolishing this ridiculous motive, I noted, was that as early as February 1969, “long before there was any Hinman murder to copy, long before there were any words ‘political piggy’ to copy, Manson told Brooks Poston and other Family members—including all of his co-defendants—that, quoting Poston: ‘He said a group of real blacks would come out of the ghettos and do an atrocious crime in the richer sections of Los Angeles and other cities. They would do an atrocious murder with stabbing, killing, cutting bodies to pieces, smearing blood on the walls, writing “pigs” on the walls.’

“Writing ‘pig’ on the walls,” I repeated.

“So writing ‘pig’ at the Tate and LaBianca residences was simply a part of Manson’s blueprint for starting Helter Skelter, not an effort to copy the Hinman murder.

“Incidentally,” I observed, “Mr. Kanarek never did try to explain to you why the words ‘helter skelter’ were printed in blood on the refrigerator door at the LaBianca residence. What does Helter Skelter have to do with freeing Bobby Beausoleil or an alleged $1,000 MDA burn at the Tate residence? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. The words ‘helter skelter’ were found printed in blood on the LaBianca refrigerator door because all of the evidence at this trial shows beyond all doubt that Helter Skelter was the principal reason for these savage murders.

“Yes,” I admitted, “there is a connection between the Hinman murder and the Tate-LaBianca murders. But it was not this silly Bobby Beausoleil nonsense. Here is the connection. Mr. Manson not only ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders, he also ordered the Hinman murder. That is the connection.”

As for Susan Atkins’ claim that Linda Kasabian masterminded these murders, I noted that not until the penalty phase did she say anything about this, and then “all of a sudden Linda Kasabian is Charles Manson.”

I noted some of the reasons why this was preposterous, among them the ridiculousness of the docile, subservient Linda taking over the leadership of the Family in just one month. “Only one person ordered these murders, ladies and gentlemen, and his initials are CM. He also has an aka: JC. And he is in that lockup right now listening to me…”

The most preposterous thing about all this was that supposedly for one and a half years both Sadie and Gypsy kept this secret in their perjurous bosoms. They not only didn’t tell the other members of the Family, they didn’t even tell Manson’s attorney, though both testified they loved and would willingly die for Charlie.

“And why didn’t they tell him about this motive? Because it didn’t exist. It was recently fabricated.”

As for Manson’s alibi, that he was with Stephanie Schram in Devil’s Canyon on both of these nights, “Isn’t it strange that all of Mr. Manson’s X’d-out slaves have testified to this during the penalty trial, and the very person, Stephanie Schram, whom they claim Manson was with, testified that Manson was not with her?”

I then addressed myself to the issue of whether the four defendants should receive the death penalty.

The strongest argument that can be made in support of capital punishment is, I feel, deterrence—that it may save additional lives. Unfortunately, under California law the prosecution could not argue deterrence, only retribution.

“These weren’t typical murders, ladies and gentlemen. This was a one-sided war where unspeakable atrocities were committed. If all of these defendants don’t receive the death penalty, the typical first-degree murderer only deserves ten days in the County Jail.”

As for Fitzgerald’s contention that killing these defendants would not bring the seven victims back to life, “If we were to accept that line of reasoning, no one would ever be punished for any crime, since punishing a person does not remove the fact that the crime was committed.” For example, “Don’t punish a man for arson because the punishment is not going to rebuild the building.”

In California, if a defendant is seventeen years of age or younger, he or she cannot be sentenced to death. Though Fitzgerald repeatedly called the three female defendants “children,” I reminded the jury that Leslie was twenty-one, Susan twenty-two, Katie twenty-three. “They are adults by any standard, and completely responsible for their acts.”

In regard to the defense contention that the three female defendants were insane, I reminded the jury that Dr. Hochman, the only psychiatrist to examine all three, said they are not and have never been insane.

Dr. Hochman testified that we are all capable of killing, I noted. “He did not say that we are all capable of murder. There is a vast difference between killing—as in justifiable homicide, self-defense, or defense of others—and murder. And no one can convince me, ladies and gentlemen, that all of us are capable of murdering strangers for no reason whatsoever like these three female defendants did.

“It takes a special type of person to do what they did. It takes a person who places no value on the life of a fellow human being.

“True, Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten committed these murders because Charles Manson told them to, but they would never have committed these murders in a million years if they did not already have murder in their guts, in their system. Manson merely told them to do what they were already capable of doing.”

Moreover, there was no evidence that Manson forced Watson and the girls to murder for him. “In fact, the inference is that they wanted to go along. That seemed to be the general feeling in the Family. Witness the statement of Cathy Gillies. Witness Susan Atkins’ telling Juan Flynn, ‘We’re going to get some fucking pigs.’ Does that sound like someone who is being forced to go out?”

Manson ordered the murders, but Watson and the three girls personally committed them “because they wanted to. Make no mistake about that. If they did not want to murder these victims, all they had to do was not do it.”

I examined now the backgrounds of the three girls. Like the other female members of the Family, they had “one common denominator among them. It was obvious that each of them had a revulsion, an antipathy, a seething feeling of disgust for society, for their own parents.” Each of the three girls had dropped out of society before even meeting Charles Manson; each had taken LSD and other drugs before meeting Manson; and each had rejected her real family before meeting Manson.

Looking right at juror Jean Roseland, who had two teenage daughters, I said, “Don’t confuse them with the girl-next-door type. These three female defendants had repudiated and renounced their very families and society before they ever met Charles Manson.

“In fact, it was precisely because they had contemptuously disavowed and rejected their families and society that they ended up with Charles Manson. That is the very reason.

“Manson was simply the catalyst, the moving force that translated their pre-existing disgust and hatred for society and human beings into violence.”

I anticipated an argument that I felt Maxwell Keith might give. “The thought certainly may enter your mind that as wicked and as vicious as these three female defendants are, by comparison to Charles Manson they are nowhere as wicked and vicious as he is; therefore, let’s give Manson the death penalty and these three female defendants life imprisonment.

“The only problem with that type of approach is that these female defendants are given credit, as it were, because of Manson’s extreme wickedness and viciousness. Under that type of reasoning, if Adolf Hitler were Charles Manson’s co-defendant, Manson should receive life imprisonment because of the indescribably evil Adolf Hitler.” Rather than compare the three female defendants with Manson, I told the jury, they should evaluate the conduct of each of the defendants and determine whether it warranted the imposition of the death penalty. I then went into the acts of each, starting with Manson, enumerating one by one the reasons they deserved death rather than life.

One question the jury would surely ask, I noted, was: Why no remorse? The answer was simple: “Manson and his co-defendants like to kill human beings. That is why they have no remorse. As Paul Watkins testified, ‘Death is Charlie’s trip.’”

I came to the end of my argument.

“Now the defense attorneys want you to give these defendants a break. Did these defendants give the seven victims in this case a break?

“Now the defense attorneys want you to give their clients another chance. Did these defendants give the seven victims in this case any chance at all?

“Now the defense attorneys want you to have mercy on their clients. Did these defendants have any mercy at all on the seven victims in this case when they begged and pleaded for their lives?”

I then reminded the jurors that nine months earlier, during voir dire, each had told me he would be willing to vote death if he felt this was a proper case. I reiterated: “If the death penalty is to mean anything in the State of California, other than two empty words, this is a proper case.”

I concluded: “On behalf of the People of the State of California, I can’t thank you enough for the enormous public service you have rendered as jurors in this very long, historic trial.”

That night after dinner I said to Gail, “There must be something I have to do tonight.” But there wasn’t. For a year and a half, seven days a week, I had been totally immersed in the case. Now all I could do was listen to the closing arguments of the defense attorneys and wait until the jury reached its verdict.

Kanarek began by implying that perhaps I had poisoned the glass of water on the lectern and ended, more than a day later, by reading chapter after chapter from the New Testament.

“Now, this being the Easter season, there is an analogy here between Mr. Manson—this may sound at first blush to be ridiculous, and we are not suggesting that Mr. Manson is the deity or Christlike or anything like that—but how can we know?”

Judge Older, who had several times warned Kanarek that he had exhausted all relevant rebuttal, finally brought his sermon to an end at the point of resurrection.

Shinn spent his time attacking the DA’s Office and in particular me: “Miss Atkins was drowning without friends…and she saw Mr. Bugliosi with an oar. She said: Oh, here comes help now. Miss Atkins reached out for that oar. And what do you think Mr. Bugliosi did? He hit her over the head with the oar.”

Keith delivered a strong argument against the death penalty itself. Before this, however, he said: “Now strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, I accepted wholeheartedly certain areas of Mr. Bugliosi’s argument.

“I accept his exposition to you that Mr. Manson dominated these girls and ordered the homicides.

“I accept that the ‘free Bobby Beausoleil’ motive is nonsense.

“I accept his telling you that you shouldn’t hold the Hinman murder against Leslie.

“I accept his argument that Leslie’s testimony and the testimony of the other girls in this case shows Mr. Manson’s domination and influence still persists and is all-pervasive.”

To deny these things, Keith said, would be to deny the evidence. Thus Keith became the first, and only, defense attorney to accuse Manson of these murders.

Keith, however, said that he did not agree that any of the defendants should receive the death penalty, not even Charles Manson. For in his opinion, Keith said, “Mr. Manson is insane,” and in instilling his thoughts into the minds of the three female defendants he had also infected them with his madness.

Keith concluded: “Give Leslie the chance for redemption, to which she is entitled. Remember, Linda Kasabian cut the umbilical cord, in Mr. Bugliosi’s words, that tied her to Manson and his Family. Give Leslie the chance to do the same. Give her life. I thank you.”

Fitzgerald read a short argument, at the end of which he began describing in detail how the three female defendants would be executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison if the jury returned verdicts of death. This was improper argument, and I objected. When we approached the bench, Paul literally begged Judge Older to let him proceed. “This is extremely important! I can’t impress on the Court how important it is!” Because he was so desperate, I decided to back off, agreeing not to object if he would describe this as a hypothetical situation—“Imagine that this is happening”—and not as fact. He did so, after which Judge Older instructed the jury. They left the courtroom at 5:25 P.M. on Friday, March 26, 1971.

While I felt confident that the jury would return a death penalty verdict against Charles Manson, I was less sure when it came to the girls. Only four females had been executed in California history, none of them as young as the defendants.

I had anticipated that the jury would be out at least four days. When I received the call Monday afternoon, after only two days, I knew there could be only one verdict. It was too fast for anything else. Their actual deliberations, I later learned, had taken only ten hours.

Again under extraordinary security precautions, the jury was brought back into the courtroom, at 4:24 P.M. on Monday, March 29, with their verdicts.

Manson and the girls had been brought into the courtroom earlier—the three female defendants now, when it was too late to influence the jury, having shaved their heads also—but before the clerk could read the first verdict, Manson yelled, “I don’t see how you can get by with this without letting me put on some kind of defense…You people have no authority over me…Half of you in here ain’t as good as I am…” and Older ordered him removed.

Manson’s no-defense claim was nonsense. It was obvious that the defense he intended to put on during the guilt phase had been delivered in toto during the penalty phase. The jury’s reaction to it was now being delivered, in a courtroom jammed with spectators and press.

The clerk read the first verdict: “We, the jury in the above-entitled action, having found the defendant Charles Manson guilty of murder in the first degree as charged in Count I of the Indictment, do now fix the penalty as death.”

KRENWINKEL “You have just judged yourselves.”

ATKINS “Better lock your doors and watch your own kids.”

VAN HOUTEN “Your whole system is a game. You blind, stupid people. Your children will turn against you.”

Judge Older had the three girls removed. They too listened over the loudspeaker as the clerk fixed the penalty for all four defendants as death on all counts.

Judge Older left the bench to shake hands with each juror. “If it were within the power of a trial judge to award a medal of honor to jurors,” he told them, “believe me, I would bestow an award on each of you.”

For the first time the jurors could speak to the press about their ordeal.

Jury foreman Herman Tubick told reporters that the jury was convinced “the motive was Helter Skelter.” Mrs. Thelma McKenzie said the jury had “certainly tried” to find points upon which they could sentence the female defendants to a verdict less severe, “but we couldn’t.” William McBride remarked: “I felt sympathy for the women but sympathy can’t interfere with justice. What they did deserves the death penalty.” Marie Mesmer said she felt more pity for Susan Atkins than for the other two girls, because of her background, but that she was shocked when all three showed no signs of remorse. As for Manson, she said: “I wanted to protect society. I think Manson is a very dangerous influence.” Jean Roseland, mother of three teen-agers, two of them girls, said the most terrible part of the whole trial was Leslie Van Houten “looking at me with those big brown eyes.” Mrs. Roseland was convinced Manson’s power to manipulate others came not from within himself but “from the voids within the minds and souls of his followers.”

Later Life ran an article entitled “The Manson Jury: End of a Long Ordeal.”

Ironically, there appeared in the same issue an article entitled “Paul McCartney on the Beatles Breakup.”

That there had been irreconcilable troubles within the group became apparent, McCartney said, while they were making the White Album.

Colonel Paul Tate was reported to have said, regarding the death sentence verdicts: “That’s what we wanted. That’s what we expected. But there’s no jubilation in something like this, no sense of satisfaction. It’s more a feeling that justice has been done. Naturally I wanted the death penalty. They took my daughter and my grandchild.”

Mrs. Tate told reporters that she didn’t believe any human being should have the power to take a life, that that was up to God.

Roman Polanski declined comment, as did the other relatives of the victims whom the media contacted.

Sandy, Cathy, and the other girls on the corner had threatened to burn themselves to death with gasoline if any of the four were given death sentences. They didn’t carry out their threat, though all did later shave their heads.

On learning of the decision, Sandy looked into the TV cameras and screamed: “Death? That’s what you’re all going to get!”

With the exception of the sentencing, the trial was over. It had been the longest murder trial in American history, lasting nine and a half months; the most expensive, costing approximately $1 million; and the most highly publicized; while the jury had been sequestered 225 days, longer than any jury before it. The trial transcript alone ran to 209 volumes, 31,716 pages, approximately eight million words, a mini-library.

For almost everyone, the ordeal was not only long but expensive. A number of the jurors, anticipating that they would be paid by their employers, now found themselves either unpaid or without jobs. Mrs. Roseland, for example, claimed that TWA did not honor a verbal agreement to keep her on salary until the end of the trial, and estimated she lost about $2,700 in back pay. TWA denied there was any such agreement. There were several such denials.

The financial sacrifice on the part of the defense attorneys was enormous. Fitzgerald said: “It’s just really wiped me out.” He told a reporter that he had lost about $30,000 in income and incurred $10,000 in trial expenses. He had been forced to sell his stereo and other possessions, and had spent $5,000 which he didn’t have. Six-times-married Daye Shinn said: “I’m behind in my house payments and child support and my alimonies.” Shinn had received $19,000 in royalties from the Atkins book, he said, but he claimed that about $16,000 of it went back to the Manson Family. Kanarek refused to discuss his financial situation. Another of the defense attorneys did tell me, however, that at one point during the trial Manson had ordered Shinn to give Kanarek $5,000 from the Atkins account, to help defray his expenses, but how much more he received, if any, is unknown. Keith, who received a fee from the county, since he was court-appointed, admitted his private practice had gone downhill and that he didn’t expect to gain any new clients as a result of the publicity.

The trial cost another attorney his life.

In the avalanche of stories on the Manson verdict, one small item which appeared that same day went almost unnoticed.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office reported that they had found a body believed to be that of the missing defense attorney, Ronald Hughes. The badly decomposed corpse had been found face down, wedged between two boulders, in Sespe Creek, miles from where Hughes had last been seen alive.

Two fishermen had discovered the body early Saturday but didn’t report it until Sunday night, because “we didn’t want to spoil our fishing trip.”

The cause of death was at this time unknown. Through our office, I ordered an immediate autopsy.

APRIL 19, 1971

Judge Older had set Monday, April 19, 1971, as the date of sentencing.

There was speculation that Older might decide on his own to reduce at least some of the verdicts from death to life. In a previous case Older had done this for a defendant who had poured gasoline on two beds where four children were sleeping, killing one of them. However, I personally felt that since Older had complimented the jurors, he wouldn’t turn right around and set aside their verdict.

On the nineteenth the Court heard, and rejected, a number of defense motions, including those for a new trial. Judge Older then asked the defendants if they had anything to say. Only Manson did.

Charlie’s left hand was trembling and he seemed near tears. Very meekly, with a quivering voice, he said: “I accept this court as my father. I have always done my best in my life to uphold the laws of my father, and I accept my father’s judgment.”

THE COURT “After nine and a half months of trial, all of the superlatives had been used, all of the hyperbole has been indulged in, and all that remains are the bare, stark facts of seven senseless murders, seven people whose lives were snuffed out by total strangers…

“I have carefully looked, in considering this action, for mitigating circumstances, and I have been unable to find any…

“It is my considered judgment that not only is the death penalty appropriate, but it is almost compelled by the circumstances. I must agree with the prosecutor that if this is not a proper case for the death penalty, what would be?”

Speaking to Manson, Judge Older said: “The Department of Corrections is ordered to deliver you to the custody of the Warden of the State Prison of the State of California at San Quentin to be by him put to death in the manner prescribed by law of the State of California.”

There was at this time no Death Row for women. A special isolation wing was being constructed at the California Institute for Women at Frontera, and Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten were sent there to await execution.

It was anticipated that the appeals would take at least two and possibly as long as five years.

In actuality, their fate would be decided in less than one.

After the sentencing, I didn’t anticipate ever seeing Charles Manson again. But I’d see him twice more, the last time under very peculiar circumstances.