Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

JANUARY 1970

Confidential Memo. From: Deputy DA Vincent Bugliosi. To: District Attorney Evelle Younger. Subject: Status of Tate & LaBianca cases.

The memo ran to thirteen pages, but the heart of it consisted of a single paragraph:

“Without Susan Atkins’ testimony on the Tate case, the evidence against two out of the five defendants [Manson and Kasabian] is rather anemic. Without her testimony on the LaBianca case, the evidence against five out of the six defendants [everyone except Van Houten] is non-existent.”

That was it. Without Sadie, we still didn’t have a case.

On January 2, I called a meeting of the Tate and LaBianca detectives, giving them a list of forty-two things that had to be done.

Many were repeat requests: Go to the areas where the clothing and the gun were found and search for knives. Has Granado been able to “make” the boots we picked up in November with the bloody boot-heel print on the Tate walkway? SID must have something by now on the wire cutters, also the clothing the TV crew found. Where is the tape Inyo County Deputy Sheriff Ward made with the two miners, Crockett and Poston? Where are the reports on the Tate, LaBianca, and Spahn Ranch toll calls? Telephone company destroys its records after six months; hurry on this.

Many of the requests were elementary follow-up steps that I felt the detectives should have already done on their own, without our prompting: Get Atkins printing exemplar and compare it with PIG on the front door at Tate. Get same on defendants Van Houten, Krenwinkel, and Watson and compare with printing at the LaBianca residence. Submit a complete report on the stolen credit cards involved in this case (we were hoping to find a sales slip on the rope or the Buck knives). DeCarlo said he was along when Manson purchased the three-strand nylon rope at the Jack Frost store in Santa Monica in June 1969: ask Frost employees if they sold such a rope; also show them the “Family album” to see if they can recall Manson and/or DeCarlo. Also show photos of Manson, Atkins, Kasabian, and the others to employees of the Standard station in Sylmar where Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet was found.

After giving the detectives the list, I asked, “I presume that, above and beyond what I’ve given you, you guys are also conducting your own independent investigations?” The long silence that followed was in itself the answer. Then Calkins complained, “How are we supposed to know to do these things? We’re policemen, not lawyers.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “These forty-two things have nothing to do with the law. Each and every one pertains to securing evidence and strengthening our case against these people.”

“But that isn’t our job,” Calkins continued to protest.

His remark was so astonishing I came close to losing my temper. “Investigating a case, gathering evidence, connecting defendants with the corpus delicti of the crime—that isn’t a police job? Come on, Bob. You’re the detectives. Aaron and I are the lawyers. Each of us has his own job to do. And if either of us falls down on the job, Manson is going to walk. Think about that.”

I could understand if the detectives had other duties, but they were assigned full time to the case.

Unlike Calkins, Mike McGann rarely complained, but he rarely came through either. To a man, the LaBianca detectives were far more conscientious. In the weeks ahead I began giving them assignments that related specifically to the Tate, as well as the LaBianca, murders, knowing they’d do their best. I did this only after checking with Lieutenant Helder, who candidly agreed that Calkins and McGann simply weren’t getting the job done.

If it was any consolation to the police—and I’m sure it wasn’t—my own list was much longer than theirs. It ranged from such simple items as a reminder to get the Beatles’ album that contained the song “Helter Skelter” to more than fifty names of potential witnesses I needed to interview. It also included such detailed specifics as: Obtain exact measurements of all LaBianca wounds—original officers failed to ask Deputy Medical Examiner Katsuyama for this—in order to determine dimensions of knives used.

The measurements of the LaBianca wounds were extremely important. If the wound patterns were consistent with those made by the LaBianca kitchen knives, then the logical inference was that the defendants had entered the residence unarmed, then killed the LaBiancas with their own knives. If Manson had intended to kill these people, the defense would surely ask, would he have sent in unarmed people to do the job?

Of even greater importance was another item which appeared on all the assignment lists: Get incidents—and witnesses who can testify to same—where Manson ordered or instructed anyone to do anything.

Put yourself in the jury box. Would you believe the prosecutor if he told you that a little runt out at Spahn Ranch sent some half dozen people, the majority of them young girls, out to murder for him, their victims not persons they knew and had a grudge against but complete strangers, including a pregnant woman, and that without argument they did it?

To convince a jury of this, I would have first to convince them of Manson’s domination over the Family, and particularly over his co-defendants. A domination so total, so complete, that they would do anything he told them to do. Including murder.

Each time I interviewed anyone connected with the Family, I would ask for an example of Manson’s control. Often the witness would be unable to recall specific examples, and I’d have to dig to bring them out: Why did Manson beat Dianne Lake; was it because she failed to do something he told her to do? Who assigned the chores at the ranch? Who put out the guards and lookouts? Can you recall a single instance where Tex ever talked back to Charlie?

Getting this evidence was especially difficult because Manson rarely gave direct orders. Usually he’d suggest, rather than command, though his suggestions had the force of commands.

Domination. Unless we could prove this, beyond all reasonable doubt, we’d never obtain a conviction against Manson.

As the defense attorneys requested discovery, I’d take them to my office and let them go through our files on the case. Since Manson was now acting as his own attorney, the files were also made available to him, the only difference being that they were carted over to the County Jail and he examined them there. Eventually, by a court order, secretaries in our office photostated everything in our files, with a copy for each defense counsel.

Only two things were held back. I argued to the court, “We would vehemently resist furnishing Mr. Manson with addresses, and particularly telephone numbers, of prospective witnesses, Your Honor.” I also strongly opposed providing the defense with copies of the death photos. We had heard that a German magazine had a standing offer of $100,000 for them. I did not want the families of the victims to open a magazine and see the terrible butchery inflicted on their loved ones.

With only these two exceptions—the court ruling in our favor on both—the prosecution, by law, gave the defense anything they wanted and, discovery being a one-way street, they in turn gave us nothing. We couldn’t even get a list of the witnesses they intended to call. I was still reading newspaper and magazine articles to pick up leads.

Even this wasn’t as simple as it sounds. Many former associates of the Family were in fear of their lives. Several, including Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, had received death threats. Since few sources wished to be quoted by name, pseudonyms were often used in the articles. In several instances, I tracked down someone only to find a person I’d already interviewed. And, in more than a few cases, I found fiction posing as fact.

One article claimed that Manson and various other Family members had been present at a party Roman and Sharon gave at 10050 Cielo in early 1969. Once located, the writer told me his source was Alan Warnecke, a close friend of Terry Melcher’s. When I talked to Warnecke, he denied saying any such thing. Eventually I assembled a list of persons who had attended the party, and as many as could be located were interviewed. None had seen Manson or the others at 10050 Cielo Drive, either on the night in question or any other time.

Peter Maas, author of The Valachi Papers, wrote an article entitled “The Sharon Tate Murders,” which appeared in the Ladies’ Home Journal. In it was the following paragraph:

“‘How are you going to get the establishment? You can’t sing to them. I tried that. I tried to save them, but they wouldn’t listen. Now we got to destroy them.’—Charlie Manson to a friend in the summer of 1969.”

This was powerful evidence, if true, and I was anxious to learn the source of Maas’ quotation.

After easily a dozen calls, I located Maas in New York City. Asked the source of several other statements, he quickly supplied them. But when it came to the key quote mentioned above, which the Journal had seen fit to highlight with italics on the first page of the article, Maas said he couldn’t remember who had told him that.

Cross off another seemingly promising lead.

On August 9, 1968—exactly a year before the Tate murders—Gregg Jakobson had arranged a recording session for Manson at a studio in Van Nuys. I went there to listen to the tapes, which were now in the possession of Herb Weiser, a Hollywood attorney representing the studio.

My own admittedly unprofessional appraisal was that Manson was no worse than many performers in current vogue.[45] However, Charlie’s musical ability was not my major concern. Both Atkins and DeCarlo had said that the words “helter skelter” appeared in at least one of Manson’s own songs. I’d asked both, “Are you sure he wasn’t just playing the Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter”? No, each had replied; this was Charlie’s own composition. If anywhere in his lyrics I could find “helter skelter,” “pig,” “death to pigs,” or “rise,” it would be strong circumstantial evidence.

No luck.

It looked, for a time, as if we’d have better luck with the Watson extradition. On January 5, following a hearing in Austin, Texas Secretary of State Martin Dies, Jr., ordered Watson returned to California. Boyd returned to McKinney and filed a writ of habeas corpus, asking that Dies’ order be vacated. The writ was filed with Judge Brown. On January 16, Brown granted a thirty-day continuance on Boyd’s request. Tex remained in Texas.

In Los Angeles, Linda Kasabian was arraigned on the sixth and pleaded “not guilty.” That same day attorney Marvin Part requested that a court-appointed psychiatrist examine his client, Leslie Van Houten. Judge Keene appointed Dr. Blake Skrdla, who was to make a confidential report to Part. Earlier Part had requested and received permission to interview Leslie on tape. Though the prosecution would neither hear the tape nor see the report, it was a fairly safe assumption that Part, like his predecessor Barnett, was considering an insanity plea.

We didn’t have to wait very long for Manson’s reaction.

On the nineteenth Leslie requested that Part be relieved as her attorney and Ira Reiner appointed instead.

Owing to the possibly sensitive nature of the testimony, Judge George M. Dell decided to hear the matter in chambers, outside the presence of the public and press.[46]

Part opposed the substitution, arguing that Leslie Van Houten was mentally incapable of making a rational decision. “This girl will do anything that Charles Manson or any member of this so-called Manson Family says…This girl has no will of her own left…Because of this hold that Charles Manson and the Family has over her, she doesn’t care whether she is tried together and gets the gas chamber, she just wants to be with the Family.”

The appointment of Reiner, Part claimed, would constitute a conflict of interest, one that would definitely hurt Miss Van Houten.

Part told the court how the switch had come about. A week or so ago Squeaky had visited Leslie. Although Part was also present, Squeaky had told her, “We think you ought to have another lawyer,” and had shown her Reiner’s card. Leslie had replied, “I’ll do anything that Charlie wants me to do.” A few days later Leslie (1) refused to be examined by the psychiatrist, and (2) informed Part that he was no longer her attorney and that Reiner was.

Part wanted Judge Dell to listen to the tape he had made with Leslie. He was sure that, having heard it, the Court would realize that Leslie Van Houten was incapable of acting in her own best interests.

It was now obvious that Part felt a joint trial and an “umbrella” defense would hurt his client. The other defendants were charged with seven murders, Leslie with only two. And the evidence against her was slight. “To the best of my knowledge,” Part said, referring to the Dianne Lake statement which he had received through discovery, “all she did was perhaps stab somebody who was already dead.”

Judge Dell then questioned Ira Reiner, who admitted that he had talked to Manson “roughly a dozen times.” He also admitted that Manson was one of several people who had suggested he represent Leslie. He had never actually represented Manson, however, and he had only gone to see Miss Van Houten after receiving a written request from her.

Judge Dell questioned Leslie outside the presence of the two attorneys. She remained firm in her resolve: she wanted Reiner.

Part, literally, begged Judge Dell to listen to the tape he had made with Leslie. Part said, “That girl is insane in a way that is almost science fiction.”

Judge Dell said he would rather not hear the tape. He was concerned with one issue only: whether Miss Van Houten’s mental state was such that she could intelligently make a substitution of counsel. To determine this, he appointed three psychiatrists to listen to the tape and examine Leslie, their confidential report, on that single issue, to be made directly to him.

Manson himself appeared before Judge Dell on the seventeenth.

MANSON “I have a motion here—it’s a strange motion—probably never been a motion like this ever before—”

THE COURT “Try me.”

After examining it, the judge had to agree: “It certainly is an interesting document.”

“Charles Manson, also known as Jesus Christ, Prisoner,” assisted by six other pro pers, who called themselves “The Family of Infinite Soul, Inc.,” had filed a habeas corpus motion on behalf of Manson-Christ, charging that the sheriff was depriving him of his spiritual, mental, and physical liberty, in an unconstitutional manner not in harmony with man’s or God’s law, and asking that he be released forthwith.

Judge Dell denied the motion.

MANSON “Your Honor, behind the big words and all the confusion and the robes you hide the truth.”

THE COURT “Not intentionally.”

MANSON “Like sometimes I wonder if you know what is going on.”

THE COURT “Sometimes I do too, Mr. Manson. I admit there is some self-doubt…Yet we in the black robes do our thing, too.”

Manson requested a number of items—a tape recorder, unlimited telephone privileges, and so on—which he claimed both the Sheriff’s Office and the DA’s Office were denying him. Dell corrected him.

THE COURT “The prosecutor is willing to go further than the sheriff has, as a matter of fact.”

MANSON “Well, I was going to ask him if he would call the whole thing off. It would save a lot of trouble.”

THE COURT “Disappoint all these people? Never, Mr. Manson.”

When Manson again appeared before Judge Dell, on the twenty-eighth, he was still complaining about the limitations of his pro per privileges. For example, he wanted to interview Robert Beausoleil, Linda Kasabian, and Sadie Mae Glutz, but their attorneys had denied permission. Judge Dell informed him they had that right.

MANSON “I got a message from Sadie. She told me that the District Attorney had made her say what she had said.”

Manson was playing to the press, certain that they would pick up the charge, and they did. It was the next best thing to calling Susan on the phone and telling her how to recant.

Aaron played out our bluff, stating that the People were prepared to go to trial.

Manson, to our relief, wanted more time.

Judge Dell assigned the case to Judge William Keene, and granted a continuance to February 9, at which time the trial date would be set.

Our relief was real. Not only was our case still weak, Aaron and I couldn’t even agree on the motive.

The prosecution does not have the legal burden of proving motive. But motive is extremely important evidence. A jury wants to know why. Just as showing that a defendant has a motive for committing a crime is circumstantial evidence of guilt, so is the absence of motive circumstantial evidence of innocence.

In this case, even more than in most others, proving motive was important, since these murders appeared completely senseless. It was doubly important in Manson’s case, since he was not present when the murders took place. If we could prove to the jury that Manson, and Manson alone, had a motive for these murders, then this would be very powerful circumstantial evidence that he also ordered them.

Aaron and I had been friends for a long time. We had developed a mutual respect that allowed us to say exactly what we felt, and quite often our discussions were heated. This one was no exception. Aaron thought that we should argue that the motive was robbery. I told him quite frankly that I felt his theory was ridiculous. What had they stolen? Seventy-some dollars from Abigail Folger, Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet (which they ditched, money intact), possibly a sack of coins, and a carton of chocolate milk. That was it. As far as we knew, nothing else had been taken from either residence. There was, the police reports reiterated, no evidence of ransacking or theft. Items worth thousands of dollars, though in plain view, were left behind.

As an alternative motive, Aaron suggested that maybe Manson was trying to get enough money to bail out Mary Brunner, the mother of his child, who had been arrested on the afternoon of August 8 for using a stolen credit card. Again I played the Devil’s advocate. Seven murders, five one night, two the next; 169 separate stab wounds; words written in the victims’ own blood; a knife stuck in the throat of one victim, a fork in his stomach, the word WAR carved on his stomach—all this to raise $625 bail?

It wasn’t that we lacked a motive. Though Aaron and LAPD disagreed with me, I felt we had one. It was just that it was almost unbelievably bizarre.

When I interviewed Susan Atkins on December 4, she told me, “The whole thing was done to instill fear in the establishment and cause paranoia. Also to show the black man how to take over the white man.” This, she said, would be the start of “Helter Skelter,” which, when I questioned her before the grand jury the next day, she defined as “the last war on the face of the earth. It would be all the wars that have ever been fought built one on top of the other…”

“There was a so called motive behind all this,” Susan wrote Ronnie Howard. “It was to instill fear into the pigs and to bring on judgment day which is here now for all.”

Judgment Day, Armageddon, Helter Skelter—to Manson they were one and the same, a racial holocaust which would see the black man emerge triumphant. “The karma is turning, it’s blackie’s turn to be on top.” Danny DeCarlo said Manson preached this incessantly. Even a near stranger such as biker Al Springer, who visited Spahn Ranch only a few times, told me he thought “helter skelter” must be Charlie’s “pet words,” he used them so often.

That Manson foresaw a war between the blacks and the whites was not fantastic. Many people believe that such a war may someday occur. What was fantastic was that he was convinced he could personally start that war himself—that by making it look as if blacks had murdered the seven Caucasian victims he could turn the white community against the black community.

We knew there was at least one secondary motive for the Tate murders. As Susan Atkins put it in the Caballero tape, “The reason Charlie picked that house was to instill fear into Terry Melcher because Terry had given us his word on a few things and never came through with them.” But this was obviously not the primary motive, since, according to Gregg Jakobson, Manson knew that Melcher was no longer living at 10050 Cielo Drive.

All the evidence we’d assembled thus far, I felt, pointed to one primary motive: Helter Skelter. It was far out, but then so were the murders themselves. It was admittedly bizarre, but from the first moment I was assigned to the case, I’d felt that for murders as bizarre as these the motive itself would have to be almost equally strange, not something you’d find within the pages of a textbook on police science.

The jury would never buy Helter Skelter, Aaron said, suggesting that we offer something they would understand. I told him it wouldn’t take me two seconds to dump the whole Helter Skelter theory if he could find another motive in the evidence.

Aaron, however, was right. The jury would never accept Helter Skelter, as is. We were missing far too many bits and pieces, and one all-important link.

Presuming that Manson actually believed that he could start a race war with these acts, what would he, Charlie Manson, personally gain by it?

To this I had no answer. And without it the motive made no sense.

“Always think of the Now…No time to look back…No time to say how.” This rhyme was repeated in almost every letter Sandy, Squeaky, Gypsy, or Brenda sent to the defendants. Its meaning was obvious: Don’t tell them anything.

Through a barrage of letters, telegrams, and attempted visits, the Manson girls tried to get Beausoleil, Atkins, and Kasabian to dump their present attorneys, repudiate any incriminating statements they may have made, and engage in a united defense.

Though Beausoleil agreed that “the whole thing balances on whether the Family stays together in their heads & doesn’t break up & start testifying against itself,” he decided, “I’m going to keep my present lawyer.”

Bobby Beausoleil had always been somewhat independent. Less handsome than “pretty” (the girls had nicknamed him “Cupid”), Beausoleil had had bit parts in several movies, written music, formed a rock group, and had his own harem, all before meeting Manson. Leslie, Gypsy, and Kitty had all lived with Bobby before joining Charlie.

Beausoleil requested that Squeaky and the others not visit him so often. They were taking up all his visiting time, when the person he really wanted to see was Kitty, who was expecting his child in less than a month.

Beausoleil wasn’t the only one being pressured. Without Susan Atkins, the prosecution had no case against Manson, and Manson knew it. Family members called Richard Caballero at all hours of the day and night. When cajoling didn’t work, they tried threats. Less because of their pressure than that of his own client, Caballero finally gave in and let some of the Manson girls—though not Manson himself—visit Susan.

It was, at best, a holding action. At any moment Susan could insist on seeing Charlie, and Caballero would be unable to prevent it. After Susan’s story had appeared in the Los Angeles Times, little signs had appeared on the walls at Sybil Brand reading, “SADIE GLUTZ IS A SNITCH.” This greatly upset Susan. And each time something like this happened, the scales seemed to tip a little more in Manson’s favor.

Manson was also aware that if Susan Atkins refused to testify at the trial, our only hope lay with Linda Kasabian. After a time Linda’s attorney, Gary Fleischman, refused to see Gypsy, so persistent had her visits become. If Linda didn’t testify, Gypsy told him on numerous occasions, everyone would get off. Fleischman did take her along one time when he went to see his client. Gypsy told Linda—in the presence of several persons—that she should lie and say that on the nights of the Tate-LaBianca murders she had never left Spahn Ranch but remained with her at the waterfall. Gypsy promised to back up her story.

Given a choice between Susan and Linda as the star witness for the prosecution, I much preferred Linda: she hadn’t killed anyone. But in the rush to get the case to the grand jury, we’d made the deal with Susan and, like it or not, we were stuck with it. Unless Susan bolted.

Yet this posed its own problems. If Susan didn’t testify, we’d need Linda, but without Susan’s testimony we had no evidence against Linda, so what could we offer her? Fleischman wanted immunity for his client, yet from Linda’s standpoint it would be better to be tried and acquitted than get immunity, testify against Manson and the others, and risk retribution by the Family.

We were very worried at this point. Exactly how worried is evidenced by a telephone call I made. After Manson had been indicted for the Tate-LaBianca murders, the Inyo County authorities had dropped the arson charges against him, though they had a strong case. I called Frank Fowles and asked him to refile the charges, which he did, on February 6. We were that afraid that Manson would be set free.

FEBRUARY 1970

That an accused mass murderer could emerge a counterculture hero seemed inconceivable. But to some Charles Manson had become a cause.

Just before she went underground, Bernardine Dohrn told a Students for a Democratic Society convention: “Offing those rich pigs with their own forks and knives, and then eating a meal in the same room, far out! The Weathermen dig Charles Manson.”

The underground paper Tuesday’s Child, which called itself the Voice of the Yippies, blasted its competitor the Los Angeles Free Press for giving too much publicity to Manson—then spread his picture across the entire front page with a banner naming him MAN OF THE YEAR.

The cover of the next issue had Manson on a cross.

Manson posters and sweat shirts appeared in psychedelic shops, along with FREE MANSON buttons.

Gypsy and other spokesmen for the Family took to the late-night radio talk shows to play Charlie’s songs and denounce the prosecution for “framing an innocent man.”

Stretching his pro per privileges to their utmost limits, Manson himself granted a number of interviews to the underground press. He was also interviewed, by phone from the County Jail, by several radio stations. And his visitor’s list now included, among the “material witnesses,” some familiar names.

“I fell in love with Charlie Manson the first time I saw his cherub face and sparkling eyes on TV,” exclaimed Jerry Rubin. On a speaking tour during a recess in the Chicago Seven trial, Rubin visited Manson in jail, giving rise to the possibility that Manson might be considering the use of disruptive tactics during his own trial. According to Rubin, Charlie rapped for three hours, telling him, among other things, “Rubin, I am not of your world. I’ve spent all my life in prison. When I was a child I was an orphan and too ugly to be adopted. Now I am too beautiful to be set free.”

“His words and courage inspired us,” Rubin later wrote. “Manson’s soul is easy to touch because it lays quite bare on the surface.”[47]

Yet Charles Manson—revolutionary martyr—was a difficult image to maintain. Rubin admitted being angered by Manson’s “incredible male chauvinism.” A reporter for the Free Press was startled to find Manson both anti-Jewish and anti-black. And when one interviewer tried to suggest that Manson was as much a political prisoner as Huey Newton, Charlie, obviously perplexed, asked, “Who’s he?”

As yet the pro-Mansonites appeared to be a small, though vocal minority. If the press and TV reports were correct, a majority of the young people whom the media had lumped together under the label “hippies” disavowed Manson. Many stated that the things he espoused—such as violence—were directly contrary to their beliefs. And more than a few were bitter about the guilt by association. It was almost impossible to hitchhike any more, one youth told a New York Times reporter. “If you’re young, have a beard, or even long hair, motorists look at you as if you’re a ‘kill crazy cultist,’ and jam the gas.”

The irony was that Manson never considered himself a hippie, equating their pacifism with weakness. If the Family members had to have a label, he told his followers, he much preferred calling them “slippies,” a term which, in the context of their creepy-crawly missions, was not inappropriate.

What was most frightening was that the Family itself was growing. The group at Spahn had increased significantly. Each time Manson made a courtroom appearance, I spotted new faces among the known Family members.

It could be presumed that many of the new “converts” were sensation seekers, drawn like moths to the glare of publicity.

What we didn’t know, however, was how far they would go to gain attention or acceptance.

Leslie Van Houten was legally sane, Judge Dell ruled on February 6, basing his decision on the confidential reports of the three psychiatrists, and granting her motion for a substitution of attorneys.

In court the same day, Manson unexpectedly called our bluff: “Let’s have an early trial setting. Let’s go tomorrow or Monday. That’s a good day for a trial.” Keene set a trial date of March 30, the date already assigned Susan Atkins. That gave us a little more time, but not nearly enough.

On February 16, Keene heard Manson’s motion for a change of venue. “You know, there has been more publicity on this, even more, than the guy who killed the President of the United States,” Manson said. “You know, it is getting so far out of proportion that to me it is a joke, but actually the joke might cost me my life.”

Though the other defense attorneys would later submit similar motions, arguing that it would be impossible for their clients to obtain fair trials in Los Angeles because of the extensive pre-trial publicity, Manson didn’t argue this too strongly. The motion was really “trivial,” he said, because “it doesn’t seem it could be done anywheres.”

Though Keene disagreed with Manson’s contention that he couldn’t obtain a fair trial, he did observe, in denying the motion, that “a change of venue, even if warranted, would be ineffectual.”

This was also the view of the prosecution. It was doubtful if there was any place in California, or the rest of the United States, where the publicity had not reached.

Each time the defense made a motion—and there would be hundreds before the end of the trial—the prosecution had to be prepared to answer. Though Aaron and I shared the verbal arguments, I prepared the written briefs, many of which required considerable legal research. All this was in addition to the heavy investigative responsibilities I had taken on.

Yet the latter job had its special satisfactions. At the start of February there were still huge holes in our case, big areas where we had almost no information whatsoever. For example, I still had very little insight into what made Charles Manson tick.

By the end of the month I had that, and a great deal more. For by then I understood, for the first time, Manson’s motive—the reason why he’d ordered these murders.

I rarely interview a witness just once. Often the fourth or fifth interview will bring out something previously forgotten or deemed insignificant, which, in proper context, may prove vital to my case.

When I had questioned Gregg Jakobson before the grand jury, my primary concern had been to establish the link between Manson and Melcher.

Reinterviewing the talent scout, I was surprised to discover that since meeting Manson at Dennis Wilson’s home in the early summer of 1968, Jakobson had had over a hundred long talks with Charlie, mostly about Manson’s philosophy. An intelligent young man, who flirted off and on with the hippie life style, Gregg had never joined the Family, though he’d often visited Manson at Spahn Ranch. Besides seeing in Manson certain commercial possibilities, Jakobson had found him “intellectually stimulating.” He was so impressed that he often touted him to others, such as Rudi Altobelli, the owner of 10050 Cielo Drive, who had been both Terry Melcher’s and Sharon Tate’s landlord.

I was surprised at the wide variety of people Manson knew. Charlie was a chameleon, Gregg said; he often professed that “he had a thousand faces and that he used them all—he told me that he had a mask for everyone.”

Including the jury? I wondered, realizing that if Manson put on the mask of the peace-loving hippie at the trial, I’d be able to use Gregg’s remark to unmask him.

I asked Gregg why Manson felt it necessary to don masks.

A. “So he could deal with everyone on their own level, from the ranch hand at Spahn, to the girls on the Sunset Strip, to me.”

I was curious as to whether Manson had a “real” face. Gregg thought he had. Underneath it all he had very firm beliefs. “It was rare to find a man who believed in his convictions as strongly as Charlie did—who couldn’t be swayed.”

What were the sources of Manson’s beliefs? I asked.

Charlie rarely, if ever, gave anyone else credit for his philosophy, Gregg replied. But it was obvious that Charlie was not above borrowing.

Had Manson ever mentioned Scientology or The Process?

The Process, also known as the Church of the Final Judgement, was a very strange cult. Led by one Robert DeGrimston, t/n Robert Moore—who, like Manson, was an ex-Scientologist—its members worshiped both Satan and Christ. I’d only begun to look into the group, acting on the basis of a newspaper story which indicated Manson might have been influenced by them.

However, Jakobson said Manson had never mentioned either Scientology or The Process. Gregg himself had never heard of the latter group.

Did Charlie ever quote anyone? I asked Gregg.

Yes, he replied, “the Beatles and the Bible.” Manson would quote, verbatim, whole lyrics from the Beatles’ songs, finding in them a multitude of hidden meanings. As for the Bible, he most often quoted Revelation 9. But in both cases he usually used the quotations as support for his own views.

Though I was very interested in this odd coupling, and would later question Gregg in depth about it, I wanted to know more about Manson’s personal beliefs and attitudes.

Q. “What did Manson say, if anything, about right and wrong?”

A. “He believed you could do no wrong, no bad. Everything was good.

Whatever you do is what you are supposed to do; you are following your own karma.”

The philosophical mosaic began taking shape. The man I was seeking to convict had no moral boundaries. It was not that he was immoral, but totally amoral. And such a person is always dangerous.

Q. “Did he say it was wrong to kill a human being?”

A. “He said it was not.”

Q. “What was Manson’s philosophy re death?”

A. “There was no death, to Charlie’s way of thinking. Death was only a change. The soul or spirit can’t die…That’s what we used to argue all the time, the objective and the subjective and the marriage of the two. He believed it was all in the head, all subjective. He said that death was fear that was born in man’s head and can be taken out of man’s head, and then it would no longer exist…

“Death to Charlie,” Gregg added, “was no more important than eating an ice cream cone.”

Yet once, in the desert, Jakobson had run over a tarantula, and Manson had angrily berated him for it. He had denounced others for killing rattlesnakes, picking flowers, even stepping on a blade of grass. To Manson it was not wrong to kill a human being, but it was wrong to kill an animal or plant. Yet he also said that nothing was wrong, everything that happened was right.

That Manson’s philosophy was riddled with such contradiction apparently bothered his followers little if at all. Manson said that each person should be independent, but the whole Family was dependent on him. He said that he couldn’t tell anyone else what to do, that they should “do what your love tells you,” but he also told them, “I am your love,” and his wants became theirs.

I asked Gregg about Manson’s attitude toward women. I was especially interested in this because of the female defendants.

Women had only two purposes in life, Charlie would say: to serve men and to give birth to children. But he didn’t permit the girls in the Family to raise their own children. If they did, Charlie claimed, they would give them their own hangups. Charlie believed that if he could eliminate the bonds created by parents, schools, churches, society, he could develop “a strong white race.” Like Nietzsche, whom Manson claimed to have read, Charlie “believed in a master race.”

“According to Charlie,” Gregg continued, “women were only as good as their men. They were only a reflection of their men, all the way back to daddy. A woman was an accumulation of all the men she had been close to.”

Then why were there so many women in the Family? I asked; there were at least five girls to every man.

It was only through the women, Gregg said, that Charlie could attract the men. Men represented power, strength. But he needed the women to lure the men into the Family.

As with others I interviewed, I asked Gregg for examples of Manson’s domination. Gregg gave me one of the best I’d yet found: he said he had had dinner with the Family on three occasions; each time Manson sat alone on the top of a large rock, the other members of the Family sitting on the ground in a circle around him.

Q. “Did Tex Watson ever get up on the rock?”

A. “No, of course not.”

Q. “Did anyone else in the Family get up there?”

A. “Only Charlie.”

I needed many, many more examples like this, so that when I offered all of them at the trial, the jury would be led to the irresistible conclusion that Manson had such a hold over his followers, and specifically his co-defendants, that never in a million years would they have committed these murders without his guidance, directions, and orders.

I asked Gregg about Charlie’s ambitions. “Charlie wanted to be a successful recording artist,” Gregg said. “Not so much as a means to making money as to get his word out to the public. He needed people to live with him, to make love, to liberate the white race.”

What was Manson’s attitude toward blacks?

Gregg replied that Charlie “believed there were different levels when it came to race, and the white man occupied a higher level than the black.” This was why Charlie was so strongly opposed to black-white sex; “you would be interfering with the path of evolution, you would be mixing up nervous systems, less evolved with more evolved.”

According to Jakobson, “Charlie believed that the black man’s sole purpose on earth was to serve the white man. He was to serve the white man’s needs.” But blackie had been on the bottom too long, Charlie said. It was now his turn to take over the reins of power. This was what Helter Skelter, the black-white revolution, was all about.

Gregg and I would talk about this on more than a half dozen separate occasions. What before had been only fragments, bits and pieces, now began slipping into place.

The picture that eventually emerged, however, was so incredibly bizarre as to be almost beyond belief.

There is a special feeling you develop over years of interviewing people. When someone is lying or not telling everything he knows, you can often sense it.

On reinterviewing Terry Melcher, I became convinced that he was withholding something. There wasn’t time for pussyfooting. I told Terry I wanted to talk to him again, only this time he should have his attorney, Chet Lappen, present. When we met in Lappen’s office on the seventeenth, I put it to him bluntly: “You’re not leveling with me, Terry. You’re keeping something back. Whatever it is, eventually it will come out. It would be far better if you told me about it now rather than have the defense surprise us with it on cross-examination.”

Terry wavered for a few minutes, then decided to tell me.

The day after news of Manson’s involvement in the Tate murders broke, Terry had received a telephone call from London. The caller was Rudi Altobelli, the owner of 10050 Cielo Drive. Rudi had told him, in confidence, that one day in March 1969, while he was taking a shower in the guest house, Manson had knocked on the door. Manson claimed to be looking for Terry, who had moved out some months before, but Altobelli, who was a successful business manager for a number of theatrical stars, suspected that Manson had actually come looking for him, as Manson had worked the conversation around to his own music and songs. In a rather subtle fashion, Altobelli had made it clear that he wasn’t interested, and Manson had left.

The guest house! “Terry,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I wasn’t sure it was relevant.”

“Christ, Terry, this places Manson inside the gate of the Tate residence. As you well know, to reach the guest house he’d have to first pass the main house. This means Manson was familiar with the layout of the house and grounds. I don’t know what could be any more relevant. Where’s Altobelli now?”

“Cape Town, South Africa,” Melcher reluctantly replied. Checking his address book, he gave me the number of the hotel where he was staying.

I called Cape Town. Mr. Altobelli had just checked out of the hotel, leaving no forwarding address. However, Terry told me that Rudi was planning to return to Los Angeles for a few days sometime soon.

“The minute he hits L.A. I want to know it,” I told him. As a safeguard I put out a few feelers of my own, asking others who knew Altobelli to contact me if they saw or heard from him.

The same day I talked to Melcher, half our extradition problems were solved: Patricia “Katie” Krenwinkel waived further proceedings and asked to be returned to California immediately. When she made her first courtroom appearance on the twenty-fourth, she requested Paul Fitzgerald of the Public Defender’s Office as her attorney. Fitzgerald told the judge that, barring a possible conflict of interest, his office would be willing to represent her.

Actually there were two possible conflicts of interest: the Public Defender’s Office was already representing Beausoleil on the Hinman murder, and Fitzgerald had earlier represented Manson, albeit briefly, before he went in pro per.

A month later Paul Fitzgerald resigned from the Public Defender’s Office, after that office decided there was indeed a conflict of interest involved. Whether Fitzgerald’s motive was purely idealistic, or he hoped to make a name for himself in private practice by winning an acquittal for his client, or both, the fact remained that he gave up a $25,000 a year salary and a promising career as a public defender to represent Patricia Krenwinkel with virtually no pay.

Terry Melcher didn’t call. But another of my contacts did, reporting that Rudi Altobelli had returned to Los Angeles the previous day. I called Altobelli’s attorney, Barry Hirsch, and arranged a meeting. Before leaving the office, I prepared a subpoena and stuck it in my pocket.

Rather than ask Altobelli whether the guest house incident really occurred, and risk a possible denial, I simply laid out: “Rudi, the reason I’m here is because I want to ask you about the time Manson came to the guest house. Terry told me about it.” Fait accompli.

Yes, Manson had been there, Rudi said. But did this mean he would have to testify?

Rudi Altobelli was a bright, urbane, and, as I’d later discover, at times quite witty man. The roster of entertainment figures he’d represented included such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda (who for a time had rented the guest house at 10050 Cielo Drive), Samantha Eggar, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Christopher Jones, and Sally Kellerman, to name only a few. However, in common with almost all the other witnesses in this case, he was scared.

On his return from Europe following the murders, he’d found that 10050 Cielo Drive had been sealed by the police. Needing a place to stay, and unsure whether he might have been one of the intended victims—and still might be—he picked the safest place he could think of. He moved in with Terry Melcher and Candice Bergen, who were occupying a beach house in Malibu owned by Terry’s mother, Doris Day. Though Terry and Rudi had spent many hours discussing the murders, and possible suspects, Manson’s name was never mentioned, Rudi said. When the news broke that Manson had been accused of the murders, a possible motive being his grudge against Melcher, Altobelli decided that he had probably chosen the least safe place in Southern California. He still shivered when recalling it.

He had another reason for fear. In a sense, he too had rejected Manson.

“Tell me about it, Rudi,” I suggested. “Then we’ll discuss whether you have to testify or not. But first, how do you know it was Manson?”

Because he’d met Manson once before, Altobelli said, during the summer of 1968, at Dennis Wilson’s house. Manson was living there at the time, and Rudi had dropped in while Dennis was playing a tape of Manson’s music. He’d listened politely, commented that it was “nice,” the minimal courtesy possible, then left.

At various times Dennis and Gregg had tried to interest him in Manson and his philosophy. Having worked hard for what money he had, Altobelli said, he was not sympathetic to Manson’s sponging, and had told them exactly that.

The incident had occurred about eight or nine on the evening of Sunday, March 23, 1969—Rudi remembered the date because he and Sharon had flown to Rome together the next day, Rudi on business, Sharon to rejoin her husband and to make a movie there. Rudi was alone in the guest house, taking a shower, when Christopher started barking. Grabbing a robe, he went to the door and saw Manson on the porch. While it was possible that Manson had knocked and the shower had muffled the sound, Rudi was irritated that he had opened the outside door and walked onto the porch uninvited.

Manson started to introduce himself but Rudi, somewhat brusquely, without opening the screen door that separated the porch from the living room, said, “I know who you are, Charlie, what do you want?”

Manson said he was looking for Terry Melcher. Altobelli said Terry had moved to Malibu. When Manson asked for his address, Altobelli said he didn’t know it. Which was not true.

Prolonging the conversation, Manson asked him what business he was in. Though Altobelli felt sure Manson already knew the answer, he replied, “The entertainment business.” He added, “I’d like to talk to you longer, Charlie, but I’m leaving the country tomorrow and have to pack.”

Manson said he would like to talk to him when he returned. Rudi told him that he wouldn’t be back for over a year. Another untruth, but he had no desire to talk further with Manson.

Before Manson left, Rudi asked him why he had come back to the guest house. Manson replied that the people at the main house had sent him back. Altobelli said that he didn’t like to have his tenants disturbed, and he would appreciate it if he wouldn’t do so in the future. With that Manson left.

Though one question was uppermost in my mind, before asking it I had Altobelli describe Manson, the lighting on the porch, exactly where each was standing. Since he had met Manson on a prior occasion, there was no question that this was a positive identification, but I wanted to be absolutely sure.

Then I asked it, and held my breath until he answered. “Rudi, who was up front that night?”

“Sharon, Gibby, Voytek, and Jay.”

Four of the five Tate victims! This meant that Manson could have seen any or all of them. Prior to my talking to Rudi, we had assumed that Manson had never seen the people he had ordered killed.

“Rudi, all those people are dead. Was there anyone else up front who could testify to this?”

Rudi thought a moment. He had been up at the main house earlier in the evening, actually returning to the guest house only a few minutes before Manson arrived. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but I’m almost positive Hatami was there.”

Shahrokh Hatami, a native of Iran, was Sharon’s personal photographer, and a good friend of both Polanskis. Hatami had been at the house that afternoon, Rudi knew, photographing Sharon while she was packing for her trip.

“I don’t want to testify, Mr. Bugliosi,” Rudi suddenly said.

“I can understand that. If there is any way I can avoid it, I won’t call you to the stand. But realistically, considering the importance of what you’ve told me, the odds are that I will have to call you.” We discussed the subject at some length before I gave him the subpoena.

I then said, “Tell me about Sharon.”

In the short time he had known her, Rudi said, he had grown very fond of her. She was a beautiful person. Of course she was physically beautiful, but by this he meant something else. She had a kind of warmth, a niceness, which you sensed immediately on meeting her, but which, thus far in her career, no director had ever managed to bring out on the screen. They’d had many long talks. She’d called 10050 Cielo Drive her “love house.”

Rudi then told me something he said he had never told anyone else. I knew there was no way I could use it in the trial: it was hearsay, and though there are many exceptions to the hearsay rule, this couldn’t come in under any of them.

On the flight to Rome, Sharon had asked him: “Did that creepy-looking guy come back there yesterday?”

So Sharon had seen Manson, the creepy-looking little guy who four and a half months later would mastermind her murder!

Something must have happened to have caused such a strong reaction. A confrontation of some sort. Could it be that Voytek, who had an unpredictable temper, had got into an argument with Manson? Or that Manson had said something offensive to Sharon, and Jay had come to her defense?

I called LAPD and told them to find Shahrokh Hatami.

Lieutenant Helder contacted a friend of Colonel Tate’s, who in turn located Hatami. I interviewed him in my office. Very emotionally, the Iranian photographer told me how much he had loved Sharon. “Not romantic, but”—he apologized for his broken English—“one human being loving qualities other human being has.”

I told him I doubted if it could be better expressed.

Yes, he’d once sent someone to the back house. One time. He didn’t know the date, but it was the day before Sharon left for Europe. It was in the afternoon. He’d looked out the window and noticed a man walking into the yard, hesitant, as if he didn’t know where he was going, yet cocky, as if he thought he owned the place. His manner irritated Hatami, and he went out on the porch and asked him what he wanted.

I asked Hatami to describe the man. He said he was short, like Roman Polanski (Polanski was five feet five, Manson five feet two), late twenties, thin, with long hair. What color hair? Dark brown. He didn’t have a beard but looked as if he needed a shave. How could he tell that? He’d walked off the porch onto the stone walk to confront him; they were at most three or four feet apart.

With the exception of the age—Manson was thirty-four, but could easily have been mistaken for younger—the description fitted.

The man said he was looking for someone, mentioning a name Hatami did not recognize.

Could it have been Melcher? I asked. Possible, Hatami said, but he really couldn’t remember. It had meant nothing to him at the time.

“This is the Polanski residence,” Hatami told him. “This is not the place. Maybe the people you want is back there,” pointing. “Take the back alley.”

By “back alley” Hatami meant the dirt pathway in front of the residence which led to the guest house. But, as I’d later argue to the jury, to an American “back alley” meant a place where there were garbage cans, refuse. Manson must have felt he was being treated like an alley cat.

I asked Hatami, “What tone of voice did you use?” He illustrated, speaking loudly and angrily. Roman was away, Hatami said, and he felt protective of Sharon. “I wasn’t happy that he was coming on the property, and looking at people he doesn’t know.”

How did the man react? He appeared upset, Hatami said; he turned and walked away without saying “excuse me” or anything.

Just before this, however, Sharon came to the door and said, “Who is it, Hatami?” Hatami told her that a man was looking for someone.

Showing Hatami a diagram of the house and grounds, I had him point to the spots where each was standing. Sharon was on the porch, the man on the walk not more than six to eight feet away, with no obstruction between them. There could be no question that Charles Manson saw Sharon Tate, and she him. Sharon had undoubtedly looked right into the eyes of the man who would order her death. We now had, for the first time, evidence that prior to the murders Manson had seen one of his victims.

Hatami had remained on the walk, Sharon on the porch, while the man went down the path toward the guest house. According to Hatami, he came back up the path in “a minute or two, no more,” and left the premises without saying anything.

It was not as abrasive an incident as I was looking for, but, together with Melcher’s rejection and Altobelli’s subtle putdown, Hatami’s “take the back alley” was more than sufficient cause for Manson to have strong feelings against 10050 Cielo Drive. Too, not only were these people obviously establishment, they were establishment in the very fields—entertainment, recording, motion pictures—in which Manson had tried to make it and failed.

There was one discrepancy: the time. Hatami was positive the incident had occurred during the afternoon. Altobelli, however, was equally insistent that it was between eight and nine in the evening when Manson appeared on the guest house porch. While it was possible one or the other was confused, the most logical explanation was that Manson had gone to the guest house that afternoon, found no one there (Altobelli was out most of the afternoon, making arrangements for his trip), then returned that evening. This was supported by Hatami’s statement that Manson had come back up the path after “a minute or two, no more,” which hardly left time for his conversation with Altobelli.

I had Hatami look at photographs of a dozen or so men. He picked out one, saying it looked like the man, though he couldn’t be absolutely sure. It was a photograph of Charles Manson.

In interviewing Hatami, I hadn’t mentioned Manson’s name. Not until the interview was almost over did Hatami realize that the man he had spoken to that day might have been the man accused of plotting Sharon’s murder.

Melcher to Altobelli to Hatami. If I hadn’t suspected that Melcher was withholding something, it was possible that we might never have placed Manson inside the gate of 10050 Cielo Drive.

A similar chain, which had begun with my discovery of a short notation in the Inyo County files, led me to the missing piece in the motive for both the Tate and LaBianca murders.

Finally, nearly three months after first requesting it, I obtained the tape Inyo County Deputy Sheriff Don Ward had made with the two miners, Paul Crockett and Brooks Poston.

Ward had interviewed the pair on October 3, 1969, at Independence. This was a week before the Barker raid, and nearly a month and a half before LAPD learned of the Manson Family’s possible involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders. Ward’s interview had nothing to do with those murders, only the activities of the “hippie types” who were now living in Golar Wash.

Crockett, a weather-worn miner in his mid-forties, had been prospecting in the Death Valley area in the spring of 1969 when he came across Manson’s advance party at Barker Ranch. At this time it consisted of only two persons, a young runaway named Juanita Wildebush and Brooks Poston, a slender, rather docile eighteen-year-old who had been with the Family since June 1968. Nights, Crockett would visit the pair, and the talk would invariably turn to one subject, Charlie. “And I couldn’t believe what they were saying,” Crockett observed. “I mean, it was so utterly ridiculous.” It became obvious to Crockett that these people believed this Charlie to be the second coming of Christ. It was just as obvious that they feared him. And so Crockett, who was no stranger to mysticism, did something perhaps a little odd but at least psychologically effective. He told them that, just like Charlie, he too had powers. And “I planted them with the idea that I had the power to keep Charlie from coming back up there.”

Other Family members—including Paul Watkins, Tex Watson, Brenda McCann, and Bruce Davis—would occasionally show up at Barker with messages and supplies, and it didn’t take long for the word to get back to Manson.

Initially he scoffed at the idea. But each time he tried to go to Barker something happened: the truck broke down, Spahn Ranch was raided, and so on. Meanwhile Juanita eloped with Bob Berry, Crockett’s partner, and Crockett succeeded in “unconverting” several of Manson’s most important male followers: Poston; Paul Watkins, who often acted as Manson’s second in command; and, somewhat later, Juan Flynn, a tall, strapping Panamanian cowboy who had worked at Spahn.

When Crockett first met young Poston, he was “a zombie.” The phrase was Poston’s own. He said that he had wanted to leave the Family many times, but “Manson had a vise grip on my mind, and I couldn’t break the grip. I didn’t know how to leave…”

Crockett discovered that Manson had “programmed all his people to the extent that they’re just like him. He has put all kinds of things in their heads. I didn’t believe it could be done, but he has done it and I seen it working.” Crockett began “deprogramming” Poston. He put him to work in his various mining ventures, built up his body, got him to thinking of other things than Manson.

When Manson finally reached Barker, in September 1969, Crockett, meeting him for the first time, found him “a very clever man—he borders on genius.” Then Manson told him “some of the weirdest stories. I thought it was all make-believe, to start with.” Before long, Crockett was not only convinced that Manson was insane, he was sure “he would think no more of killing one of us than he would of stepping on a flower; in fact, he’d rather do that than step on a flower.”

Deciding that his own life expectancy was directly proportionate to his usefulness to Manson, Crockett made himself very useful, volunteering his truck to haul in supplies, and so forth. He and the former Mansonites now living with him in a small cabin near Barker also began taking precautions.

Among the weird tales Manson had told Crockett: That the black man “was getting ready to blow the whole thing open…Charlie has set up the whole thing, it’s kind of like a storybook…He says Helter Skelter is coming down.”

“Helter Skelter is what he calls the Negro revolt,” Poston explained. “He says the Negroes are going to revolt and kill all the white men except the ones that are hiding in the desert…” Long before this Manson had told Poston, “When Helter Skelter comes down, the cities are going to be mass hysteria and the cops—the piggies, he calls them—won’t know what to do, and the beast will fall and the black man will take over…that the battle of Armageddon will be at hand.”

Poston told Deputy Ward, “One of Charlie’s basic creeds is that all that girls are for is to fuck. And that’s all they’re for. And there is no crime, there is no sin, everything is all right, that it’s all just a game, like the game of a little kid, only it’s a grown-up game, and that God’s getting ready to pull down the curtain on this game and start it over again with his chosen people…”

His chosen people were the Family, Charlie said. He would lead them to the desert, where they would multiply until they numbered 144,000. He got this, Poston said, “from reading things into the Bible, from Revelations.”[48]

Also in Revelation, as well as in Hopi Indian legends, there was mention of a “bottomless pit,” Poston said. The entrance to this pit, according to Charlie, was “a cave that he says is underneath Death Valley that leads down to a sea of gold that the Indians know about.” Charlie claimed that “every tuned-in tribe of people that’s ever lived have escaped the destruction of their race by going underground, literally, and they’re all living in a golden city where there’s a river that runs through it of milk and honey, and a tree that bears twelve kinds of fruit, a different fruit each month, or something like that, and you don’t need to bring candles nor any flashlights down there. He says it will be all lit up because…the walls will glow and it won’t be cold and it won’t be too hot. There will be warm springs and fresh water, and people are already down there waiting for him.”

Both Atkins and Jakobson had already told me about Charlie’s “bottomless pit.” The Family loved to hear Charlie sermonize about this hidden “land of milk and honey.” They not only believed, they were so convinced that such a place existed that they spent days searching for the hole in the ground which would lead them to the underground paradise.

There was also a kind of desperation in the search, because it was here, underground in the bottomless pit, that they intended to hide and wait out Helter Skelter.

It was obvious to both Crockett and Poston that Manson believed Helter Skelter was imminent. And there were the preparations. Manson had arrived at Barker Ranch in September 1969 with about eight others, all heavily armed. More Family members arrived the following week, driving stolen dune buggies and other vehicles. They began setting up lookout posts and fortifications, hiding caches of guns, gasoline, and supplies.

(It did not occur to Crockett and Poston—since neither was aware of the Family’s involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders—that Manson might be fearful of something other than blacks.)

Manson hadn’t given up on Poston, but Crockett’s “deprogramming” had been very effective. Manson was even more upset about Paul Watkins’ leaving him, since Watkins, a good-looking youth with a way with women, had been Manson’s chief procurer of young girls.

Crockett, Poston, and Watkins had begun sleeping with their shotguns within reach. On at least three occasions Charlie, Clem, and/or the girls tried to creepy-crawl the cabin. Each time the trio had been lucky and had heard something, aborting the plan. Then one night Juan Flynn arrived “to shoot some bull,” and admitted Manson had suggested he kill Crockett. Crockett persuaded Juan—who was far too independent to ever join the Family—that he should leave the area.

Crockett, accustomed to living as free and unencumbered as a mountain goat, was a mite stubborn. He felt he had as much right to be in Death Valley as Manson did. But he was also a realist. With Flynn gone and Watkins in town getting supplies, he and Poston were vastly outnumbered. Figuring “my usefulness to Charlie had already vanished and that he would, if he considered it necessary, liquidate me immediately, if not sooner,” Crockett had Poston fill the canteens and pack some grub. Under cover of night they fled the area on foot, walking over twenty rugged miles to Warmsprings, then catching a ride to Independence, where they told Deputy Sheriff Ward about Charles Manson and his Family.

After hearing the tape, I arranged through Frank Fowles for Crockett and Poston to come to Los Angeles.

Though it was Crockett who had broken Manson’s hold over Poston, the latter was by far the most articulate. Incidents, dates, places—snap, snap, snap. Crockett, by contrast, was evasive. “I can feel their vibrations. I can’t talk freely to you because they might know what I am saying.”

Crockett doubted if we could ever convict Manson, because “he does nothing himself. His people do it all for him. He doesn’t do anything anybody could pin on him.” He added that “all the women have been programmed to do exactly as he says, and they all have knives. He’s got those girls so programmed that they don’t even exist. They are a copy of him.”

Though I was interested in Crockett’s contacts with Manson and the Family, I was hopeful that he could give me something more important.

Crockett had helped Poston, Watkins, and Flynn break away from Manson. To do this he must have gained some insight into how Manson had gained control over them in the first place. Others had also said that Manson “programmed” his followers. Did he understand how he accomplished this?

Crockett said he did, but when he tried to articulate it, he became bogged down in a morass of words and definitions, finally saying, “I can’t explain it. It’s all part of the occult.”

I decided I wouldn’t be able to use Crockett as a witness.

It was otherwise with Brooks Poston. The tall, gangly youth, with the air of the hayseed about him, was a fund of information about Manson and the Family.

A highly impressionable seventeen-year-old, Brooks Poston had met Manson at Dennis Wilson’s house, and from that moment until he finally broke with Manson more than a year later to follow Crockett, “I believed Charlie was JC.”

Q. “JC?”

A. “Yeah, that’s how Charlie always used to refer to Jesus Christ.”

Q. “Did Manson ever tell you that he was JC, or Jesus Christ?”

It wasn’t so much stated as implied, Brooks said. Charlie claimed that he had lived before, nearly two thousand years ago, and that he had once died on the cross. (Manson had also told Gregg Jakobson that he had already died once, and that “death is beautiful.”)

Charlie had a favorite story which he was fond of telling the Family, complete with dramatic gestures and moans of pain. Brooks had heard it often. According to Charlie, while he was living in Haight-Ashbury, he had taken a “magic mushroom” (psilocybin) trip. He was lying on a bed, but it became a cross, and he could feel the nails in his feet and hands and the sword in his side, and when he looked down at the foot of the cross he saw Mary Magdalene (Mary Brunner), and she was crying, and he said, “I’m all right, Mary.” He had been fighting it, but now he gave up, surrendered himself to death, and when he did, he could suddenly see through the eyes of everyone at the same time, and at that moment he became the whole world.

With such clues, his followers had little trouble guessing his true identity.

I was curious about something. Up until his arrest in Mendocino County on July 28, 1967,[49] Charlie had always used his real name, Charles Milles Manson. On that occasion, however, and thereafter, he called himself Charles Willis Manson. Had Manson ever said anything about his name? I asked. Crockett and Poston both told me that they had heard Manson say, very slowly, that his name was “Charles’ Will Is Man’s Son,” meaning that his will was that of the Son of Man.

Although Susan Atkins had emphasized Charlie’s surname in talking to Virginia Graham, I hadn’t really thought, until now, how powerful that name was. Man Son. It was tailor-made for the Infinite Being role he was now seeking to portray.

But Charlie carried all this yet a step further, Poston said. Manson claimed that the members of the Family were the original Christians, reincarnated, and that the Romans had returned as the establishment.

It was now time, Manson told his closest followers, for the Romans to have their turn on the cross.

Exactly how did Manson “program” someone? I asked Brooks.

He had various techniques, Poston said. With a girl, it would usually start with sex. Charlie might convince a plain girl that she was beautiful. Or, if she had a father fixation, have her imagine that he was her father. (He’d used both techniques with Susan Atkins.) Or, if he felt she was looking for a leader, he might imply that he was Christ. Manson had a talent for sensing, and capitalizing on, a person’s hangups and/or desires. When a man first joined the group, Charlie would usually take him on an LSD trip, ostensibly “to open his mind.” Then, while he was in a highly suggestible state, he would talk about love, how you had to surrender yourself to it, how only by ceasing to exist as an individual ego could you become one with all things.

As with Jakobson, I queried Poston as to the sources of Manson’s philosophy. Scientology, the Bible, and the Beatles. These three were the only ones he knew.

A peculiar triumvirate. Yet by now I was beginning to suspect the existence of at least a fourth influence. The old magazines I’d found at Barker, Gregg’s mention that Charlie claimed to have read Nietzsche and that he believed in a master race, plus the emergence of a startling number of disturbing parallels between Manson and the leader of the Third Reich, led me to ask Poston: “Did Manson ever say anything about Hitler?”

Poston’s reply was short and incredibly chilling.

A. “He said that Hitler was a tuned-in guy who had leveled the karma of the Jews.”

I spent most of two days interviewing Crockett and Poston, obtaining much new information, some of it very incriminating. For example, Manson had once suggested Poston take a knife, go into Shoshone, and kill the sheriff. In the first real test of his newly found independence, Poston had refused to even consider the idea.

Before Crockett and Poston returned to Shoshone, I told them I wanted to talk to Juan Flynn and Paul Watkins. They weren’t sure if Juan would talk to me—that big Panamanian cowboy was an independent cuss—but they thought Paul might. Since he was no longer procuring girls for Charlie, he had some free time on his hands.

Watkins agreed to the interview, and I arranged for Watkins, Poston, and Crockett to stay in a motel in downtown L.A.

“Paul, I need a new love.”

Paul Watkins was describing for me how Manson would send him out to recruit young girls. Watkins admitted that he liked his special role in the Family. The only problem was, after he’d located a likely candidate, Charlie would insist on sleeping with her first.

Why didn’t Manson pick up the girls himself? I asked.

“He was too old for most of the girls,” the nineteen-year-old Watkins replied. “He frightened them. Also, I had a good line.” It was also obvious that Watkins was better-looking than Charlie.

I asked Paul where he found the girls. He might go down to the Sunset Strip, where the teenyboppers hung out. Or drive the highways watching for girls who were hitchhiking. Once Charlie, through the connivance of an older woman who posed as Watkins’ mother, even had him arrange a phony registration at a Los Angeles high school so he could be closer to the action.

Watkins also described the orgies that took place at the Gresham Street house and at Spahn. For a while there was one about every week. They would always start with drugs—grass, peyote, LSD, whatever was available—Manson rationing them out, deciding how much each person needed. “Everything was done at Charlie’s direction,” Paul said. Charlie might dance around, everyone else following, like a train. As he’d take off his clothes, all the rest would take off their clothes. Then, when everyone was naked, they’d lie on the floor, “and they’d play the game of taking twelve deep breaths and releasing them and close eyes and then rub against each other” until “eventually all were touching.” Charlie would direct the orgy, arranging bodies, combinations, positions. “He’d set it all up in a beautiful way like he was creating a masterpiece in sculpture,” Watkins said, “but instead of clay he was using warm bodies.” Paul said that the usual objective during the orgies was for all the Family members to achieve a simultaneous orgasm, but they were never successful.

Manson often staged these events to impress outsiders. If there were guests who he felt could be of some use to him, he’d say to the Family, “Let’s get together and show these people how to make love.” Whatever the reaction, the impression was a lasting one. “It was like the Devil buying your soul,” Watkins said.

Manson also used these occasions to “eradicate hangups.” If a person indicated reluctance to engage in a certain act, Manson would force that person to commit it. Male-female, female-female, male-male, intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, sodomy—there could be no inhibitions of any kind. One thirteen-year-old girl’s initiation into the Family consisted of her being sodomized by Manson while the others watched. Manson also “went down on” a young boy to show the others he had rid himself of all inhibitions.

Charlie used sex, Paul said. For example, when it became obvious that DeCarlo was making no effort to persuade his motorcycle gang to join the Family, Manson told the girls to withhold their favors from Danny.

The fact that Manson directed even the sex lives of his followers was powerful evidence of his domination. I asked Watkins for other examples specifically involving co-defendants. He recalled that once at Spahn Ranch, Charlie told Sadie: “I’d like half a coconut, even if you have to go to Rio de Janeiro to get it.” Sadie got right up and was on her way out the door when Charlie said, “Never mind.”

It was a test. It was also, by inference, evidence that Susan Atkins would do anything Charles Manson asked her to do.

As with the others, I questioned Watkins about Manson’s programming techniques. He told me something very interesting, which apparently the other Family members didn’t know. He said that when Manson passed out the LSD, he always took a smaller dose than the others. Though Manson never told him why he did so, Paul presumed that during the “trip” Manson wanted to retain control over his own mental faculties. It is said that LSD is a mind-altering drug which tends to make the person ingesting it a little more vulnerable and susceptible to the influence of third parties. Manson used LSD “trips,” Paul said, to instill his philosophies, exploit weaknesses and fears, and extract promises and agreements from his followers.

As Manson’s second in command, Watkins had enjoyed Charlie’s confidence more than most of the others. I asked him if Manson had ever mentioned Scientology or The Process. Watkins had never heard of The Process, but Manson had told him that while he was in prison he had studied Scientology, becoming a “theta,” which Manson defined as being “clear.” Watkins said that in the summer of 1968 he and Charlie had dropped into a Church of Scientology in downtown Los Angeles, and Manson asked the receptionist, “What do you do after ‘clear’?” When she was unable to tell him anything he hadn’t already done, Manson walked out.

One aspect of Manson’s philosophy especially puzzled me: his strange attitude toward fear. He not only preached that fear was beautiful, he often told the Family that they should live in a constant state of fear. What did he mean by that? I asked Paul.

To Charlie fear was the same thing as awareness, Watkins said. The more fear you have, the more awareness, hence the more love. When you’re really afraid, you come to “Now.” And when you are at Now, you are totally conscious.

Manson claimed that children were more aware than adults, because they were naturally afraid. But animals were even more aware than people, he said, because they always lived at Now. The coyote was the most aware creature there was, Manson maintained, because he was completely paranoid. Being frightened of everything, he missed nothing.

Charlie was always “selling fear,” Watkins continued. He wanted people to be afraid, and the more afraid the better. Using this same logic, “Charlie said that death was beautiful, because people feared death.”

I would learn, from talking to other Family members, that Manson would seek out each individual’s greatest fear—not so the person could confront and eliminate it, but so he could re-emphasize it. It was like a magic button, which he could push at will to control that person.

“Whatever you do,” Watkins advised me, as had both Crockett and Poston, “don’t ever let Charlie know you are afraid of him.” One day at Spahn, without warning or provocation, Manson had jumped on Watkins and started strangling him. At first Paul resisted, but then, gasping for breath, he suddenly gave up, stopped resisting. “It was really weird,” Watkins said. “The instant I stopped fearing him, his hands flew off my throat and he jumped back as if he’d been attacked by an unseen force.”

“Then it’s like the barking dog,” I commented. “If you show fear, it will attack; if you don’t it won’t?”

“Exactly. Fear turns Charlie on.”

Paul Watkins was inherently more independent than Brooks Poston, much less the follower type. Yet he too had remained with the Family for a long period. Other than the girls, was there some reason why he stayed?

“I thought Charlie was Christ,” he told me, not blinking an eye.

Both Watkins and Poston had severed the umbilical linking them to Manson. But both admitted to me that they still weren’t completely free of him, that even now they would sometimes lapse back into a state where they could feel Manson’s vibrations.

It was Paul Watkins who finally supplied the missing link in Manson’s motive for the murders. Yet, if I hadn’t talked to Jakobson and Poston, I might have missed its importance, for it was from all three, Gregg, Brooks, and Paul, that I obtained the keys to understanding (1) Charles Manson’s unique interpretation of the Book of Revelation, and (2) his decidedly curious and complex attitude toward the English musical group the Beatles.

Several persons had told me Manson was fond of quoting from the Bible, particularly the ninth chapter of Revelation. Once Charlie had handed Jakobson a Bible, already open to the chapter, and, while he read it, supplied his own interpretation of the verses. With only one exception, which will be noted, what Gregg told me tallied with what I later heard from Poston and Watkins.

The “four angels” were the Beatles, whom Manson considered “leaders, spokesmen, prophets,” according to Gregg. The line “And he opened the bottomless pit…And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth; and unto them was given power…” was still another reference to the English group, Gregg said. Locusts—Beatles—one and the same. “Their faces were as the faces of men,” yet “they had hair as the hair of women.” An obvious reference to the long-haired musicians. Out of the mouths of the four angels “issued fire and brimstone.” Gregg: “This referred to the spoken words, the lyrics of the Beatles’ songs, the power that came out of their mouths.”

Their “breastplates of fire,” Poston added, were their electric guitars. Their shapes “like unto horses prepared unto battle” were the dune buggies. The “horsemen who numbered two hundred thousand thousand,” and who would roam the earth spreading destruction, were the motorcyclists.

“And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.” I wondered about that seal on the forehead. How did Manson interpret that? I asked Jakobson.

“It was all subjective,” Gregg replied. “He said there would be a mark on people.” Charlie had never told him exactly what the mark would be, only that he, Charlie, “would be able to tell, he would know,” and that “the mark would designate whether they were with him or against him.” With Charlie, it was either one or the other, Gregg said; “there was no middle road.”

One verse spoke of worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze. Manson said that referred to the material worship of the establishment: of automobiles, houses, money.

Q. “Directing your attention to Verse 15, which reads: ‘And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.’ Did he say what that meant?”

A. “He said that those were the people who would die in Helter Skelter…one third of mankind…the white race.”

I now knew I was on the right track.

Only on one point did Jakobson’s recollection of Manson’s interpretation differ from that of the others. The first verse of Revelation 9 refers to a fifth angel; the chapter ends, however, referring to only four. Originally there were five Beatles, Gregg explained, one of whom, Stuart Sutcliffe, had died in Germany in 1962.

Poston and Watkins—who, unlike Jakobson, were members of the Family—interpreted this much differently. Verse I reads: “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.”

To members of the Family the identity of that fifth angel, the ruler of the bottomless pit, was never in doubt. It was Charlie.

Verse II reads: “And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.”

The king also had a Latin name, which, though it appears in the Catholic Douay Version, was inadvertently omitted by the translators of the King James version. It was Exterminans.

Exterminans, t/n Charles Manson.

As far as Jakobson, Watkins, and Poston knew, Manson placed no special meaning on the last verse of Revelation 9. But I found myself thinking of it often in the months ahead:

“Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.”

“The important thing to remember about Revelation 9,” Gregg told me, “is that Charlie believed this was happening now, not in the future. It’s going to begin now and it’s time to choose sides…either that or flee with him to the desert.”

According to Jakobson, Manson believed “the Beatles were spokesmen. They were speaking to Charlie, through their songs, letting him know from across the ocean that this is what was going to go down. He believed this firmly…He considered their songs prophecy, especially the songs in the so-called White Album…He told me that many, many times.”

Watkins and Poston also said that Manson and the Family were convinced that the Beatles were speaking to Charlie through their music. For example, in the song “I Will” are the lines: “And when at last I find you/Your song will fill the air/Sing it loud so I can hear you/Make it easy to be near you…” Charlie interpreted this to mean the Beatles wanted him to make an album, Poston and Watkins said. Charlie told them that the Beatles were looking for JC and he was the JC they were looking for. He also told them that the Beatles knew that Christ had returned to earth again and that he was living somewhere in Los Angeles.

“How in the world did he come up with that?” I asked them.

In the White Album is a song called “Honey Pie,” a lyric of which reads: “Oh honey pie my position is tragic/Come and show me the magic/Of your Hollywood song.” A later lyric goes: “Oh honey pie you are driving me frantic/Sail across the Atlantic/To be where you belong.”

Charlie, of course, wanted them to sail across the Atlantic, to join him in Death Valley. While residing in the Gresham Street house (in January and February of 1969, just after the White Album was released), Manson and the girls sent several telegrams, wrote a number of letters, and made at least three telephone calls to England, attempting to reach the Beatles. No luck.

The line “I’m in love but I’m lazy” from “Honey Pie” meant to Charlie that the Beatles loved JC but were too lazy to go looking for him; also, they’d just gone all the way to India, following a man who they’d finally decided was a false prophet, the Maharishi. They were also calling for JC/Charlie in the first eight lines of the song “Don’t Pass Me By,” in “Yer Blues,” and, in the earlier Magical Mystery Tour album, in “Blue Jay Way.”

Much of this I would never use at the trial; it was simply too absurd.

The Beatles’ White Album, Manson told Watkins, Poston, and others, “set up things for the revolution.” His album, which was to follow, would, in Charlie’s words, “blow the cork off the bottle. That would start it.”

Much of the time at the Gresham Street house, according to Poston, Watkins, and others, was spent composing songs for Charlie’s album. Each was to be a message song, directed to a particular group of people, such as the bikers, outlining the part they’d play in Helter Skelter. Charlie worked hard on these songs; they had to be very subtle, he said, like the Beatles’ own songs, their true meaning hidden beneath the awareness of all but the tuned-in people.

Manson was counting on Terry Melcher to produce this album. According to numerous Family members (both Melcher and Jakobson denied this), Terry had promised to come and listen to the songs one evening. The girls cleaned the house, baked cookies, rolled joints. Melcher didn’t show. Manson, according to Poston and Watkins, never forgave Terry for this. Melcher’s word was no good, he said angrily on a number of occasions.

Though the Beatles had made many records, it was the double-disk White Album, which Capitol issued in December 1968, that Manson considered most important. Even the fact that the cover was white—with no other design except the embossed name of the group—held significance for him.

It was, and remains, a startling album, containing some of the Beatles’ finest music, and some of their strangest. Its thirty songs range from tender love ballads to pop parodies to cacophonies of noise made by taking loops of very diverse tapes and splicing them together. To Charles Manson, however, it was prophecy. At least this is what he convinced his followers.

That Charlie had renamed Susan Atkins “Sadie Mae Glutz” long before the White Album appeared containing the song “Sexy Sadie” was additional proof to the Family that Manson and the Beatles were mentally attuned.

Almost every song in the album had a hidden meaning, which Manson interpreted for his followers. To Charlie “Rocky Raccoon” meant “coon” or the black man. While to everyone except Manson and the Family it was obvious that the lyrics of “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” had sexual connotations, Charlie interpreted the song to mean that the Beatles were telling blackie to get guns and fight whitey.

According to Poston and Watkins, the Family played five songs in the White Album more than all the others. They were: “Blackbird,” “Piggies,” “Revolution 1,” “Revolution 9,” and “Helter Skelter.”

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night/Take these broken wings and learn to fly/All your life/You were only waiting for this moment to arise,” went the lyrics of “Blackbird.” According to Jakobson, “Charlie believed that the moment was now and that the black man was going to arise, overthrow the white man, and take his turn.” According to Watkins, in this song Charlie “figured the Beatles were programming the black people to get it up, get it on, start doing it.”

On first hearing the song, I’d thought that the LaBianca killers had made a mistake, writing “rise” instead of “arise.” However, Jakobson told me that Charlie said the black man was going to “rise” up against the white man. “‘Rise’ was one of Charlie’s big words,” Gregg said, providing me with the origin of still another of the key words.

Both the Tate and LaBianca murders had occurred in “the dead of night.” However, if the parallel had special significance to Manson, he never admitted it to anyone I interviewed, nor, if he knew it, did he admit the dictionary meaning of the phrase “helter skelter.” The song “Helter Skelter” begins: “When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide/Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride…” According to Poston, Manson said this was a reference to the Family emerging from the bottomless pit.

There was a simpler explanation. In England, home of the Beatles, “helter skelter” is another name for a slide in an amusement park.

If you listen closely, you can hear grunts and oinks in the background of the song “Piggies.”[50] By “piggies,” Gregg and the others told me, Manson meant anyone who belonged to the establishment.

Like Manson himself, the song was openly critical of the piggies, noting that what they really needed was a damned good whacking.

“By that he meant the black man was going to give the piggies, the establishment, a damned good whacking,” Jakobson explained. Charlie really loved that line, both Watkins and Poston said; he was always quoting it.

I couldn’t listen to the final stanza without visualizing what had happened at 3301 Waverly Drive. It describes piggy couples dining out, in all their starched finery, eating bacon with their forks and knives.

Rosemary LaBianca: forty-one knife wounds. Leno LaBianca: twelve knife wounds, punctured with a fork seven times, a knife in his throat, a fork in his stomach, and, on the wall, in his own blood, DEATH TO PIGS.

“There’s a chord at the end of the song ‘Piggies,’” Watkins said. “It goes down and it’s a really weird chord. After the sound of piggies snorting. And in the ‘Revolution 9’ song, there’s that same chord, and after it they have a little pause and snort, snort, snort. But in the pause, there is machine-gun fire.

“And it’s the same thing with the ‘Helter Skelter’ song,” Paul continued. “They had this really weird chord. And in the ‘Revolution 9’ song there’s the same chord again, with machine guns firing and people dying and screaming and stuff.”

The White Album contains two songs with the word “revolution” in their titles.

The printed lyrics of “Revolution 1,” as given on the jacket insert, read: “You say you want a revolution/Well you know/We all want to change the world…/But when you talk about destruction/Don’t you know that you can count me out.”

When you listen to the record itself, however, immediately after “out” you hear the word “in.”

Manson took this to mean the Beatles, once undecided, now favored the revolution.

Manson made much of these “hidden lyrics,” which can be found in a number of the Beatles’ songs but are especially prevalent in the White Album. They were, he told his followers, direct communications to him, Charlie/JC.

Later on the lyrics go: “You say you got a real solution/Well you know/We’d all love to see the plan.”

The meaning of this was obvious to Manson: Sing out, Charlie, and tell us how we can escape the holocaust.

Of all the Beatles’ songs, “Revolution 9” is easily the weirdest. Reviewers couldn’t decide whether it was an exciting new direction for rock or an elaborate put-on. One critic said it reminded him of “a bad acid trip.”

There are no lyrics as such, nor is it music in any conventional sense; rather, it is a montage of noises—whispers, shouts, snatches of dialogue from the BBC, bits of classical music, mortars exploding, babies crying, church hymns, car horns, and football yells—which, together with the oft reiterated refrain “Number 9, Number 9, Number 9,” build to a climax of machine-gun fire and screams, to be followed by the soft and obviously symbolic lullaby “Good Night.”

Of all the songs in the White Album, Jakobson said, Charlie “spoke mostly of ‘Revolution 9.’” He said “it was the Beatles’ way of telling people what was going to happen; it was their way of making prophecy; it directly paralleled the Bible’s Revelation 9.”

It was also the battle of Armageddon, the coming black-white revolution portrayed in sound, Manson claimed, and after having listened to it myself, I could easily believe that if ever there were such a conflict, this was probably very much what it would sound like.

According to Poston: “When Charlie was listening to it, he heard in the background noise, in and around the machine-gun fire and the oinking of pigs, a man’s voice saying ‘Rise.’” Listening to the recording again, I also heard it, twice repeated: the first time almost a whisper, the second a long-drawn out scream.[51] This was potent evidence. Through both Jakobson and Poston, I’d now linked Manson, irrevocably, with the word “rise” printed in blood at the LaBianca residence.

In “Revolution 1” the Beatles had finally decided to commit themselves to the revolution. In “Revolution 9” they were telling the black man that now was the time to rise and start it all. According to Charlie.

Manson found many other messages in this song (including the words “Block that Nixon”), but as far as his philosophy of Helter Skelter was concerned, these were the most important.

Charles Manson was already talking about an imminent black-white war when Gregg Jakobson first met him, in the spring of 1968. There was an underground expression current at the time, “the shit is coming down,” variously interpreted as meaning the day of judgment was at hand or all hell was breaking loose, and Charlie often used it in reference to the coming racial conflict. But he wasn’t rabid about it, Gregg said; it was just one of many subjects they discussed.

“When I first met Charlie [in June 1968], he really didn’t have any of this Helter Skelter stuff going,” Paul Watkins told me. “He talked a little bit about the ‘shit coming down,’ but just barely…He said when the shit comes down the black man will be on one side and the white will be on the other, and that’s all he said about it.”

Then, that December, Capitol issued the Beatles’ White Album, one of the songs of which was “Helter Skelter.” The final stanza went: “Look out helter skelter helter skelter helter skelter/Look out [background scream] helter skelter/She’s coming down fast/Yes she is/Yes she is.”

Manson apparently first heard the White Album in Los Angeles, while on a trip there from Barker Ranch, where most of the Family remained. When Manson returned to Death Valley on December 31, 1968, he told the group, according to Poston, “Are you hep to what the Beatles are saying? Helter Skelter is coming down. The Beatles are telling it like it is.”

It was the same expression, except that in place of the word for defecation Manson now substituted “Helter Skelter.”

Another link had been made, this time to the bloody words on the refrigerator door at the LaBianca residence.

Though this was the first time Manson used the phrase, it was not to be the last.

Watkins: “And he started rapping about this Beatle album and Helter Skelter and all these meanings that I didn’t get out of it…and he builds this picture up and he called it Helter Skelter, and what it meant was the Negroes were going to come down and rip the cities all apart.”

After this, Watkins said, “We started listening to the Beatles’ album constantly…”

Death Valley is very cold in the winter, so Manson found a two-story house at 20910 Gresham Street in Canoga Park, in the San Fernando Valley, not too far from Spahn Ranch. In January 1969, Watkins said, “we all moved into the Gresham Street house to get ready for Helter Skelter. So we could watch it coming down and see all of the things going on in the city. He [Charlie] called the Gresham Street house ‘The Yellow Submarine’ from the Beatles’ movie. It was like a submarine in that when you were in it you weren’t allowed to go out. You could only peek out of the windows. We started designing dune buggies and motorcycles and we were going to buy twenty-five Harley sportsters…and we mapped escape routes to the desert…supply caches…we had all these different things going.

“I watched him building this big picture up,” Paul noted. “He would do it very slowly, very carefully. I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

“Before Helter Skelter came along,” Watkins said with a sigh of wistful nostalgia, “all Charlie cared about was orgies.”

Before Jakobson and I had ever discussed the Beatles, I asked him: “Did Charlie ever talk to you about a black-white revolution?”

A. “Yeah, that was Helter Skelter, and he believed it was going to happen in the near future, almost immediately.”

Q. “What did he say about this black-white revolution? How would it come about and what would it accomplish?”

A. “It would begin with the black man going into white people’s homes and ripping off the white people, physically destroying them, until there was open revolution in the streets, until they finally won and took over. Then black man would assume white man’s karma. He would then be the establishment.”

Watkins: “He used to explain how it would be so simple to start out. A couple of black people—some of the spades from Watts—would come up into the Bel Air and Beverly Hills district…up in the rich piggy district…and just really wipe some people out, just cutting bodies up and smearing blood and writing things on the wall in blood…all kinds of super-atrocious crimes that would really make the white man mad…”

Poston said very much the same thing before I ever talked to Watkins, but with the addition of one very important detail: “He [Manson] 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…in the victims’ own blood.”

This was tremendously powerful evidence—linking Manson not only with the Tate murders, where PIG had been printed in Sharon Tate’s blood on the front door of the residence, but also with the LaBianca murders, where DEATH TO PIGS had been printed in Leno LaBianca’s blood on the living-room wall—and I questioned Poston in depth as to Manson’s exact words, where the conversation had occurred, when, and who else was present. I then questioned everyone Poston mentioned who was willing to cooperate.

Ordinarily, I try to avoid repetitious testimony in a trial, knowing it can antagonize the jury. However, Manson’s Helter Skelter motive was so bizarre that I knew if it was expounded by only one witness no juror would ever believe it.

The conversation had occurred in February 1969, at the Gresham Street house, Poston said.

We now had evidence that six months before the Tate-LaBianca murders Charles Manson was telling the Family exactly how the murders would occur, complete even to writing “pigs” in the victims’ own blood.

We now had also linked Manson with every one of the bloody words found at both the Tate and LaBianca residences.

But this would only be the beginning, Manson told Watkins. These murders would cause mass paranoia among the whites: “Out of their fear they would go into the ghetto and just start shooting black people like crazy.” But all they would kill would be “the ones that were with whitey in the first place.”

The “true black race”—whom Manson identified at various times as the Black Muslims and the Black Panthers—“wouldn’t even be affected by it.” They would be in hiding, waiting, he said.

After the slaughter, the Black Muslims would “come out and appeal to the whites, saying, ‘Look what you have done to my people.’ And this would split whitey down the middle,” Watkins said, “between the hippie-liberals and all the uptight conservatives…” And it would be like the War between the States, brother against brother, white killing white. Then, after the whites had mostly killed off each other, “the Black Muslims would come out of hiding and wipe them all out.”

All except Charlie and the Family, who would have taken refuge in the bottomless pit in Death Valley.

The karma would then have turned. “Blackie would be on top.” And he would begin to “clean up the mess, just like he always has done…He will clean up the mess that the white man made, and build the world back up a little bit, build the cities back up. But then he wouldn’t know what to do with it. He couldn’t handle it.”

According to Manson, Watkins said, the black man had a problem. He could only do what the white man had taught him to do. He wouldn’t be able to run the world without whitey showing him how.

Watkins: “Blackie then would come to Charlie and say, you know, ‘I did my thing. I killed them all and, you know, I am tired of killing now. It is all over.’

“And then Charlie would scratch blackie’s fuzzy head and kick him in the butt and tell him to go pick cotton and go be a good nigger, and we would live happily ever after…” The Family, now grown to 144,000, as predicted in the Bible—a pure, white master race—would emerge from the bottomless pit. And “It would be our world then. There would be no one else, except for us and the black servants.”

And, according to the gospel of Charlie—as he related it to his disciple Paul Watkins—he, Charles Willis Manson, the fifth angel, JC, would then rule that world.

Paul Watkins, Brooks Poston, and Gregg Jakobson had not only defined Manson’s motive, Helter Skelter, Watkins had supplied that missing link. In his sick, twisted, disordered mind, Charles Manson believed that he would be the ultimate beneficiary of the black-white war and the murders which triggered it.

One day at the Gresham Street house, while they were on an acid trip, Manson had reiterated to Watkins and the others that blackie had no smarts, “that the only thing blackie knows is what whitey has told him or shown him” and “so someone is going to have to show him how to do it.”

I asked Watkins: “How to do what?”

A. “How to bring down Helter Skelter. How to do all these things.”

Watkins: “Charlie said the only reason it hadn’t come down already was because whitey was feeding his young daughters to the black man in Haight-Ashbury, and he said that if his music came out, and all of the beautiful people—‘love’ he called it—left Haight-Ashbury, blackie would turn to Bel Air to get his rocks off.”

Blackie had been temporarily “pacified” by the young white girls, Manson claimed. But when he took away the pacifier—when his album came out and all the young loves followed Pied Piper Charlie to the desert—blackie would need another means of getting his frustrations out and he would then turn to the establishment.

But Terry Melcher didn’t come through. The album wasn’t made. Sometime in late February of 1969 Manson sent Brooks and Juanita to Barker Ranch. The rest of the Family moved back to Spahn and began preparing for Helter Skelter. “Now there was an actual physical effort to get things together, so they could move to the desert,” Gregg said. Jakobson, who visited the ranch during this period, was startled at the change in Manson. Previously he had preached oneness of the Family, complete in itself, self-sufficient; now he was cultivating outsiders, the motorcycle gangs. Before this he had been anti-materialistic; now he was accumulating vehicles, guns, money. “It struck me that all this contradicted what Charlie had done and talked to me about before,” Gregg said, explaining that this was the beginning of his disenchantment and eventual break with Manson.

The newly materialistic Manson came up with some wild moneymaking schemes. For example, someone suggested that the girls in the Family could earn $300 to $500 a week apiece working as topless dancers. Manson liked the idea—with ten broads pulling in $3,000 a week and upward he could buy jeeps, dune buggies, even machine guns—and he sent Bobby Beausoleil and Bill Vance to the Girard Agency on the Sunset Strip to negotiate the deal.

There was only one problem. With all his powers, Manson was unable to transform molehills into mountains. With the exception of Sadie and a few others, Charlie’s girls simply did not have impressive busts. For some reason Manson seemed to attract mostly flat-chested girls.

While at the Gresham Street house, Manson had told Watkins that the atrocious murders would occur that summer. It was almost summer now and the blacks were showing no signs of rising up to fulfill their karma. One day in late May or early June of 1969, Manson took Watkins aside, down near the old trailer at Spahn, and confided: “The only thing blackie knows is what whitey has told him.” He then added, “I’m going to have to show him how to do it.”

According to Watkins: “I got some weird pictures from that.” A few days later Watkins took off for Barker, fearful that if he stuck around he would see those weird pictures materialize into nihilistic reality.

It was September of 1969 before Manson himself returned to Barker Ranch, to find that Watkins and Poston had defected. Though Manson told Watkins about “cutting Shorty into nine pieces,” he made no mention whatsoever of the Tate-LaBianca murders. In discussing Helter Skelter with Watkins, however, Manson said, without explanation, “I had to show blackie how to do it.”

LAPD had interviewed Gregg Jakobson in late November of 1969. When he attempted to tell them about Manson’s far-out philosophy, one of the detectives replied, “Ah, Charlie’s a madman; we’re not interested in all that.” The following month two detectives went to Shoshone and talked to Crockett and Poston; LAPD also contacted Watkins. All three were asked what they knew about the Tate-LaBianca murders. And all three said they didn’t know anything, which, in their minds, was true, none having previously made the connection between Manson and these murders. After the interview with Poston and Crockett, one of the detectives remarked, “Looks like we made a trip for nothing.”

Initially, I found it difficult to believe that none of the four even suspected that Manson might be behind the Tate-LaBianca murders. There were, I discovered, several probable reasons for this. When Manson had told Jakobson how Helter Skelter would start, he had said nothing about writing words in blood. He had told this to both Watkins and Poston, even telling Poston about the word “pigs,” but there were no newspapers at Barker Ranch, and its location was such that there was no radio reception. Though they had heard about the murders on their infrequent supply trips into Independence and Shoshone, both stated they hadn’t picked up many details.

The main reason, however, was simply a fluke. Though the press did report that there was bloody writing at the LaBianca residence, LAPD had succeeded in keeping one fact secret: that two of the words were HEALTER SKELTER.

Had this been publicized, undoubtedly Jakobson, Watkins, Poston, and numerous others would have connected the LaBianca murders—and probably the Tate murders also, because of their proximity in time—with Manson’s insane plan. And it seems a safe assumption that at least one would have communicated his suspicions to the police.

It was one of those odd happenstances, for which no one was at fault, the repercussions of which no one could foresee, but it appears possible that had this happened, the killers might have been apprehended days, rather than months, after the murders, and Donald “Shorty” Shea, and possibly others, might still be alive.

Though I was now convinced we had the motive, other leads failed to pan out.

None of the employees of the Standard station in Sylmar or the Jack Frost store in Santa Monica could identify anyone in our “Family album.” As for the LaBianca credit cards, all appeared to be accounted for, while Suzanne Struthers was unable to determine if a brown purse was missing from her mother’s personal effects. The problem was that Rosemary had several brown purses.

By the time LAPD requested the Spahn Ranch phone records, most of the billings for May and July 1969 had been “lost or destroyed.” All the numbers for the other months—April to October 1969—were identified and, though we obtained some minor background information on the activities of the Family, we were unable to find any link between the killers and the victims. Nor did any appear in the phone records of the Tate and LaBianca residences.

Exposure to rain and sunlight over a prolonged period of time breaks down human blood components. Many of the spots on the clothing the TV crew had found gave a positive benzidine reaction, indicating blood, but Granado was unable to determine whether it was animal or human. However, Granado did find human blood, type B, on the white T-shirt (Parent, Folger, and Frykowski were type B), and human blood, “possible type O,” on the dark velour turtleneck (Tate and Sebring were type O). He did not test for subtypes.

He also removed some human hair from the clothing, which he determined had belonged to a woman, and which did not match that of the two female victims.

I called Captain Carpenter at Sybil Brand and requested a sample of Susan Atkins’ hair. On February 17, Deputy Sheriff Helen Tabbe took Susan to the jail beauty shop for a wash and set. Afterwards she removed the hair from Susan’s brush and comb. Later a sample of Patricia Krenwinkel’s hair was similarly obtained. Granado eliminated the Krenwinkel sample but, although he wasn’t able to state positively that they were the same, he found the Atkins sample “very, very similar” to that taken from the clothing, concluding it was “very likely” the hair belonged to Susan Atkins.[52]

Some white animal hairs were also found on the clothing. Winifred Chapman said they looked like the hair from Sharon’s dog. Since the dog had died shortly after Sharon’s death, no comparison could be made. I intended to introduce the hair into evidence anyway, and let Mrs. Chapman state what she had told me.

On February 11, Kitty Lutesinger had given birth to Bobby Beausoleil’s child. Even before this, she was an unwilling witness, and the little information I got from her came hard. Later she would return to the Family, leave it, go back. Unsure of what she might say on the stand, I eventually decided against calling her as a witness.

I made the same decision in relation to biker Al Springer, though for different reasons. Most of his testimony would be repetitive of DeCarlo’s. Also, his most damning testimony—Manson’s statement, “We got five of them the other night”—was inadmissible because of Aranda. I did interview Springer, several times, and one remark Manson made to him, re the murders, gave me a glimpse into Manson’s possible defense strategy. In discussing the many criminal activities of the Family, Manson had told Springer: “No matter what happens, the girls will take the rap for it.”

I interviewed Danny numerous times, one session lasting nine hours, obtaining considerable information that hadn’t come out in previous interviews. Each time I picked up a few more examples of Manson’s domination: Manson would tell the Family when it was time to eat; he wouldn’t permit anyone to be served until he was seated; during dinner he would lecture on his philosophy.

I asked Danny if anyone ever interrupted Manson while he was talking. He recalled that one time “a couple of broads” started talking.

Q. “What happened?”

A. “He threw a bowl of rice at them.”

Although DeCarlo was extremely reluctant to testify, Sergeant Gutierrez and I eventually persuaded him that it was in his own best interests to do so.

I had less success with Dennis Wilson, singer and drummer for the Beach Boys. Though Wilson initially claimed to know nothing of importance, he finally agreed to “level” with me, but he refused to testify.

It was obvious that Wilson was scared, and not without good reason. On December 4, 1969, three days after LAPD announced they had broken the case, Wilson had received an anonymous death threat. It was, I learned, not the only such threat, and the others were not anonymous.

Though denying any knowledge of the Family’s criminal activities, Wilson did supply some interesting background information. In the late spring of 1968, Wilson had twice picked up the same pair of female hitchhikers while driving through Malibu. The second time he took the girls home with him. For Dennis, home was 14400 Sunset Boulevard, a palatial residence formerly owned by humorist Will Rogers. The girls—Ella Jo Bailey and Patricia Krenwinkel—stayed a couple of hours, Dennis said, mostly talking about this guy named Charlie.

Wilson had a recording session that night and didn’t get home until 3 A.M. When he pulled into the driveway, a strange man stepped out of his back door. Wilson, frightened, asked, “Are you going to hurt me?” The man said, “Do I look like I’m going to hurt you, brother?” He then dropped to his knees and kissed Wilson’s feet—obviously one of Charlie’s favorite routines. When Manson ushered Wilson into his own home, he discovered he had about a dozen uninvited house guests, nearly all of them girls.

They stayed for several months, during which time the group more than doubled in number. (It was during Manson’s “Sunset Boulevard period” that Charles “Tex” Watson, Brooks Poston, and Paul Watkins became associated with the Family.) The experience, Dennis later estimated, cost him about $100,000. Besides Manson’s constantly hitting him for money, Clem demolished Wilson’s uninsured $21,000 Mercedes-Benz by plowing it into a mountain on the approach to Spahn Ranch; the Family appropriated Wilson’s wardrobe, and just about everything else in sight; and several times Wilson found it necessary to take the whole Family to his Beverly Hills doctor for penicillin shots. “It was probably the largest gonorrhea bill in history,” Dennis admitted. Wilson even gave Manson nine or ten of the Beach Boys’ gold records and paid to have Sadie’s teeth fixed.

The newly divorced Wilson obviously found something attractive about Manson’s life style. “Except for the expense,” Dennis told me, “I got along very well with Charlie and the girls.” He and Charlie would sing and talk, Dennis said, while the girls cleaned house, cooked, and catered to their needs. Wilson said he liked the “spontaneity” of Charlie’s music, but added that “Charlie never had a musical bone in his body.” Despite this, Dennis tried hard to “sell” Manson to others. He rented a recording studio in Santa Monica and had Manson recorded. (Though I was very interested in hearing the tapes, Wilson claimed that he had destroyed them, because “the vibrations connected with them don’t belong on this earth.”) Wilson also introduced Manson to a number of people in or on the fringes of the entertainment industry, including Melcher, Jakobson, and Altobelli. At one party, Charlie gave Dean Martin’s daughter, Deana, a ring and asked her to join the Family. Deana told me she kept the ring, which she later gave to her husband, but declined Manson’s invitation. As did the other Beach Boys, none of whom shared Dennis’ fondness for the “scruffy little guru,” as one described him.

Wilson denied having any conflicts with Manson during this period. However, in August 1968, three weeks before his lease was to expire, Dennis moved in with Gregg, leaving to his manager the task of evicting Charlie and the girls.

From Sunset Boulevard the Family moved to Spahn Ranch. Although Wilson apparently avoided the group for a time, he did see Manson occasionally. Dennis told me that he didn’t have any trouble with Charlie until August 1969—Dennis could not recall the exact date, but he did know it was after the Tate murders—when Manson visited him, demanding $1,500 so he could go to the desert. When Wilson refused, Charlie told him, “Don’t be surprised if you never see your kid again.” Dennis had a seven-year-old son, and obviously this was one reason for his reluctance to testify.

Manson also threatened Wilson himself, but Dennis did not learn of this until an interview I conducted with both Wilson and Jakobson. According to Jakobson, not long after Dennis refused Manson’s request, Charlie handed Gregg a .44 caliber bullet and told him, “Tell Dennis there are more where this came from.” Knowing how the other threat had upset Dennis, Gregg hadn’t mentioned it to him.

This incident had occurred in late August or early September of 1969. Jakobson was startled by the change in Manson. “The electricity was almost pouring out of him. His hair was on end. His eyes were wild. The only thing I can compare it to…is that he was just like an animal in a cage.”

It was possible there was still another threat, but this is strictly conjecture. In going through the Spahn Ranch phone bills, I found that on September 22, 1969, someone called Dennis Wilson’s private number from the pay phone at Spahn and that the following day Wilson had the phone disconnected.

Looking back on his involvement with the Family, Dennis told me: “I’m the luckiest guy in the world, because I got off only losing my money.”

From rock star to motorcycle rider to ex–call girl, the witnesses in this case all had one thing in common: they were afraid for their lives. They needed only to pick up a newspaper or turn on TV to see that many of the Family members were still roaming the streets; that Steve Grogan, aka Clem, was out on bail, while the Inyo County grand theft charges against Bruce Davis had been dismissed for lack of evidence. Neither Grogan, Davis, nor any of the others suspected of beheading Shorty Shea had been charged with that murder, there being as yet no physical proof that Shea was dead.

Perhaps in her cell at Sybil Brand, Susan Atkins recalled the lyrics of the Beatles’ song “Sexy Sadie”:

Or perhaps it was simply that the numerous messages Manson was sending, by other Family members, were getting to her.

Susan called in Caballero and told him that under no circumstances would she testify at the trial. And she demanded to see Charlie.

Caballero told Aaron and me that it looked as if we’d lost our star witness.

We contacted Gary Fleischman, Linda Kasabian’s attorney, and told him we were ready to talk.

From the start Fleischman, dedicated to the welfare of his client, had wanted nothing less than complete immunity for Linda Kasabian. Not until after I had talked to Linda myself did I learn that she had been willing to talk to us immunity or not, and that only Fleischman had kept her from doing so. I also learned that she had decided to return to California voluntarily, against the advice of Fleischman, who had wanted her to fight extradition.

After a number of discussions, our office agreed to petition the Superior Court for immunity, after she had testified. In return it was agreed: (1) that Linda Kasabian would give us a full and complete statement of her involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders; (2) that Linda Kasabian would testify truthfully at all trial proceedings against all defendants; and (3) that in the event Linda Kasabian did not testify truthfully, or that she refused to testify, for whatever reason, she would be prosecuted fully, but that any statement that she gave the prosecution would not be used against her.

The agreement was signed by Younger, Leavy, Busch, Stovitz, and myself on February 26, 1970.

Two days later I interviewed Linda Kasabian. It was the first time she had discussed the Tate-LaBianca murders with anyone connected with law enforcement.

As noted, given a choice between Susan and Linda, I’d preferred Linda, sight unseen: she hadn’t killed anyone and therefore would be far more acceptable to a jury than the bloodthirsty Susan. Now, talking to her in Captain Carpenter’s office at Sybil Brand, I was especially pleased that things had turned out as they had.

Small, with long light-brown hair, Linda bore a distinct resemblance to the actress Mia Farrow. As I got to know her, I found Linda a quiet girl, docile, easily led, yet she communicated an inner sureness, almost a fatalism, that made her seem much older than her twenty years. The product of a broken home, she herself had had two unsuccessful marriages, the last of which, to a young hippie, Robert Kasabian, had broken up just before she went to Spahn Ranch. She had one child, a girl named Tanya, age two, and was now eight months pregnant with another, conceived, she thought, the last time she and her husband were together. She had remained with the Family less than a month and a half—“I was like a little blind girl in the forest, and I took the first path that came to me.” Only now, talking about what had happened, did she feel she was emerging from the darkness, she said.

On her own since sixteen, Linda had wandered from the east coast to the west, “looking for God.” In her quest she had lived in communes and crash pads, taken drugs, had sex with almost anyone who showed an interest. She described all this with a candor that at times shocked me, yet which, I knew, would be a plus on the witness stand.

From the first interview I believed her story, and I felt that a jury would also. There were no pauses in her answers, no evasions, no attempts to make herself appear something she was not. She was brutally frank. When a witness takes the stand and tells the truth, even though it is injurious to his own image, you know he can’t be impeached. I knew that if Linda testified truthfully about those two nights of murder, it would be immaterial whether she had been promiscuous, taken dope, stolen. The question was, could the defense attack her credibility regarding the events of those two nights? And I knew the answer from our very first interview: they wouldn’t be able to do so, because she was so obviously telling the truth.

I talked to her from 1 to 4:30 P.M. on the twenty-eighth. It was the first of many long interviews, a half dozen of them lasting six to nine hours, all of which took place at Sybil Brand, her attorney usually the only other person present. At the end of each interview I’d tell her that if, back in her cell, anything occurred to her which we hadn’t discussed, to “jot it down.” A number of these notes became letters to me, running to a dozen or more pages. All of which, together with my interview notes, became available to the defense under discovery.

The more times a witness tells his story, the more opportunities there are for discrepancies and contradictions, which the opposing side can then use for impeachment purposes. While some attorneys try to hold interviews and pre-trial statements to a minimum so as to avoid such problems, my attitude is the exact opposite. If a witness is lying, I want to know it before he ever takes the stand. In the more than fifty hours I spent interviewing Linda Kasabian, I found her, like any witness, unsure in some details, confused about others, but never once did I catch her even attempting to lie. Moreover, when she was unsure, she admitted it.

Though she added many details, Linda Kasabian’s story of those two nights was basically the same as Susan Atkins’. There were only a few surprises. But they were big ones.

Prior to my talking to Linda, we had assumed that she had probably witnessed only one murder, the shooting of Steven Parent. We now learned that she had also seen Katie chasing Abigail Folger across the lawn with an upraised knife and Tex stabbing Voytek Frykowski to death.

She also told me that on the night the LaBiancas were killed, Manson had attempted to commit three other murders.