PART 5 “Don’t You Know Who You’re Crucifying?”

“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect…Wherefore, if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth…”

MATTHEW 24:24, 26

“Just before we got busted in the desert, there was twelve of us apostles and Charlie.”

Family member

RUTH ANN MOOREHOUSE

“I may have implied on several occasions to several different people that I may have been Jesus Christ, but I haven’t decided yet what I am or who I am.”

CHARLES MANSON

MARCH 1970

On March 3, accompanied by attorney Gary Fleischman and some dozen LAPD and LASO officers, I took Linda Kasabian out of Sybil Brand. For Linda it was a trip back in time, to an almost unbelievable night nearly seven months ago.

Our first stop was 10050 Cielo Drive.


In late June of 1969, Bob Kasabian had called Linda at her mother’s home in New Hampshire, suggesting a reconciliation. Kasabian was living in a trailer in Topanga Canyon with a friend, Charles Melton. Melton, who had recently inherited $20,000, and had already given away more than half, planned to drive to the tip of South America, buy a boat, and sail around the world. He’d invited Linda and Bob, as well as another couple, to come along.

Linda, together with her daughter, Tanya, flew to Los Angeles, but the reconciliation was unsuccessful.

On July 4, 1969, Catherine Share, aka Gypsy, visited Melton, whom she had met through Paul Watkins. Gypsy told Linda about “this beautiful man named Charlie,” the Family, and how life at Spahn was all love, beauty, and peace. To Linda it was “as if the answer to an unspoken prayer.”[53] That same day Linda and Tanya moved to Spahn. Though she didn’t meet Manson that day, she did meet most of the other members of the Family, and they talked of little else. It was obvious to her that “they worshiped him.”

That night Tex took her into a small room and told her “far-out things—nothing was wrong, all was right—things I couldn’t comprehend.” Then “He made love to me, and a strange experience took place—it was like being possessed.” When it was over, Linda’s fingers were clenched so tightly they hurt. Gypsy later told her that what she had experienced was the death of the ego.

After making love, Linda and Tex talked, Linda mentioning Melton’s inheritance. Tex told her that she should steal the money. According to Linda, she told him she couldn’t do that—Melton was a friend, a brother. Tex told her that she could do no wrong and that everything should be shared. The next day Linda went back to the trailer and stole $5,000, which she gave to either Leslie or Tex. She had already turned over all her possessions to the Family, the girls having told her, “What’s yours is ours and what’s ours is yours.”

Linda met Charles Manson for the first time that night. After all she had heard about him, she felt as if she were on trial. He asked why she had come to the ranch. She replied that her husband had rejected her. Manson reached out and felt her legs. “He seemed pleased with them,” Linda recalled. Then he told her she could stay. Before making love to her, he told her that she had a father hangup. Linda was startled by his perception, because she disliked her stepfather. She felt that Manson could see inside her.

Linda Kasabian became a part of the Family—went on garbage runs, had sex with the men, creepy-crawled a house, and listened as Manson lectured about the Beatles, Helter Skelter, and the bottomless pit. Charlie told her that the black man was together but the white man was not. However, he knew a way to unite the white man, he said. It was the only way. But he didn’t tell her what it was.

Nor did she ask. From the first time they met, Manson had stressed, “Never ask why.” When something he said or did puzzled her, she was reminded of this. Also of another of his favorite axioms, “No sense makes sense.”

The whole Family, Linda said, was “paranoid of blackie.” On weekends George Spahn did a brisk business renting horses. Occasionally among the riders there would be blacks. Manson maintained they were Panthers, spying on the Family. He always hid the young girls when they were around. At night everyone was required to wear dark clothing, so as to be less conspicuous, and eventually Manson posted armed guards, who roamed the ranch until dawn.

Gradually Linda became convinced that Charles Manson was Jesus Christ. He never told her this directly, but one day he asked her, “Don’t you know who I am?”

She replied, “No, am I supposed to know something?”

He didn’t answer, just smiled, and playfully twirled her around.

Yet she had doubts. The mothers were not allowed to care for their own children. They separated her and Tanya, Linda explained, because they wanted “to kill the ego that I put in her” and “at first I agreed to it, I thought that it was a good idea that she should become her own person.” Also, several times she saw Manson strike Dianne Lake. Linda had been in many communes—from the American Psychedelic Circus in Boston to Sons of the Earth Mother near Taos—but she’d never seen anything like this, and, forgetting Charlie’s commandment, she did ask Gypsy why. Gypsy told her that Dianne really wanted to be beaten, and Charlie was only obliging her.

Overriding all doubts was one fact: she had fallen in love with Charles Manson.

Linda had been at Spahn Ranch a little over a month when, on the afternoon of Friday, August 8, 1969, Manson told the Family: “Now is the time for Helter Skelter.

Had Linda stopped there, supplying that single piece of testimony and nothing else, she would have been a valuable witness. But Linda had a great deal more to tell.


That Friday evening, about an hour after dinner, seven or eight members of the Family were standing on the boardwalk in front of the saloon when Manson came out and, calling Tex, Sadie, Katie, and Linda aside, told each to get a change of clothing and a knife. He also told Linda to get her driver’s license. Linda, I later learned, was the only Family member with a valid license, excepting Mary Brunner, who had been arrested that afternoon. This was, I concluded, probably one of the reasons why Manson had picked Linda to accompany the others, each of whom, unlike her, had been with him a year or more.

Linda couldn’t find her own knife (Sadie had it), but she obtained one from Larry Jones. The handle was broken and had been replaced with tape. Brenda found Linda’s license and gave it to her just about the time Manson told Linda, “Go with Tex and do whatever Tex tells you to do.”


According to Linda, in addition to Tex, Katie, and herself, Brenda McCann and Larry Jones were present when Manson gave this order.

Brenda remained hard core and refused to cooperate with law enforcement. Larry Jones, t/n Lawrence Bailey, was a scrawny little ranch hand who was always trying to ingratiate himself with the Family. However, Jones had what Manson considered negroid features and, according to Linda, Charlie was always putting him down, referring to him as “the drippings from a white man’s dick.” Since Jones had been present when Manson instructed the Tate killers, he could be a very important witness—providing independent corroboration of Linda Kasabian’s testimony—and I asked LAPD to bring him in. They were unable to find him. I then gave the assignment to the DA’s Bureau of Investigation, who located Jones, but he wouldn’t give us the time of day.


Linda said that after Manson instructed her to go with Tex, the group piled into ranch hand Johnny Swartz’ old Ford.

I asked Linda what each was wearing. She wasn’t absolutely sure, but she thought Sadie had on a dark-blue T-shirt and dungarees, that Katie’s attire was similar, and that Tex was wearing a black velour turtleneck and dark dungarees.

When shown the clothing the TV crew had found, Linda identified six of the seven items, failing to recall only the white T-shirt. The logical assumption was that she hadn’t seen it because it had been worn under one of the other shirts.

What about footwear? I asked. The girls, she believed, were all barefoot. She thought, but couldn’t be sure, that Tex had on cowboy boots.

A number of bloody footprints had been found at the Tate murder scene. After eliminating those belonging to LAPD personnel, two remained unidentified: a boot-heel print and the print of a bare foot—thus supporting Linda’s recollections. Again, as with Susan Atkins, I badly needed independent corroboration of Linda’s testimony.

I then asked Linda the same question I’d asked Susan—had any of them been on drugs that night?—and received the same reply: no.

As Tex started to drive off, Manson said, “Hold it,” or “Wait.” He then leaned in the window on the passenger side and said, “Leave a sign. You girls know what to write. Something witchy.”

Tex handed Linda three knives and a gun, telling her to wrap them in a rag and put them on the floor. If stopped by the police, Tex said, she was to throw them out.

Linda positively identified the .22 caliber Longhorn revolver. Only at this time, she said, the grip had been intact and the barrel unbent.

According to Linda, Tex did not tell them their destination, or what they were going to do; however, she presumed they were going on another creepy-crawly mission. Tex did say that he had been to the house and knew the layout.


As we drove up Cielo Drive in the sheriff’s van, Linda showed me where Tex had turned, in front of the gate at 10050, then parked, next to the telephone pole. He had then taken a pair of large, red-handled wire cutters from the back seat and shinnied up the pole. From where she was sitting, Linda couldn’t see Tex cutting the wires, but she saw and heard the wires fall.

When shown the wire cutters found at Barker Ranch, Linda said they “looked like” the pair used that night. Since the wire cutters had been found in Manson’s personal dune buggy, her identification linked them not just to the Family but to Manson himself. I was especially pleased at this evidence, unaware that link would soon be severed, literally.

When Tex returned to the car, they drove to a spot near the bottom of the hill and parked. The four then took the weapons and extra clothing and stealthily walked back up to the gate. Tex also had some white rope, which was draped over his shoulder.

As Linda and I got out of the sheriff’s van and approached the gate at 10050 Cielo Drive, two large dogs belonging to Rudi Altobelli began barking furiously at us. Linda suddenly began sobbing. “What are you crying about, Linda?” I asked.

Pointing to the dogs, she said, “Why couldn’t they have been here that night?”


Linda pointed to the spot, to the right of the gate, where they had climbed the embankment and scaled the fence. As they were descending the other side, a pair of headlights suddenly appeared in the driveway. “Lay down and be quiet,” Tex ordered. He then jumped up and ran to the automobile, which had stopped near the gate-control mechanism. Linda heard a man’s voice saying, “Please don’t hurt me! I won’t say anything!” She then saw Tex put the gun in the open window on the driver’s side and heard four shots. She also saw the man slump over in the seat.

(Something here puzzled me, and still does. In addition to the gunshot wounds, Steven Parent had a defensive stab wound that ran from the palm across the wrist of his left hand. It severed the tendons as well as the band of his wristwatch. Obviously, Parent had raised his left hand, the hand closest to the open window, in an effort to protect himself, the force of the blow being sufficient to hurl his watch into the back seat. It therefore appeared that Tex must have approached the car with a knife in one hand, a gun in the other, and that he first slashed at Parent, then shot him. Yet neither Susan nor Linda saw Tex with a knife at this point, nor did either recall the stabbing.)

Linda saw Tex reach in the car and turn off the lights and ignition. He then pushed the car some distance up the driveway, telling the others to follow him.

The shooting put her in a state of shock, Linda said. “My mind went blank. I was aware of my body, walking toward the house.”

As we went up the driveway, I asked Linda which lights had been on that night. She pointed to the bug light on the side of the garage, also the Christmas-tree lights along the fence. Little details, yet important if the defense contended Linda was fabricating her story from what she had read in the papers, since neither these, nor numerous other details I collected, had appeared in the press.

As we approached the residence, I noticed that Linda was shivering and her arms were covered with goose bumps. Though it wasn’t cold that day, Linda was now nine months pregnant, and I slipped off my coat and put it over her shoulders. The shivering continued, however, all the time we were on the premises, and often, in pointing out something, she would begin crying. There was no question in my mind that the tears were real and that she was deeply affected by what had happened in this place. I couldn’t help contrasting Linda with Susan.

When they reached the house, Linda said, Tex sent her around the back to look for an unlocked window or door. She reported that everything was locked, though she hadn’t actually checked. (This explained why they ignored the open nursery window.) Tex then slit a screen on one of the front windows with a knife. Though the actual screen had since been replaced, Linda pointed to the correct window. She also said the slash was horizontal, as it had been. Tex then told her to go back and wait by the car in the driveway.

Linda did as she was told. Perhaps a minute or two later Katie came back and asked Linda for her knife (this was the knife with the taped handle) and told her, “Listen for sounds.”

A few minutes later Linda heard “horrifying sounds” coming from the house. A man moaned, “No, no, no,” then screamed very loudly. The scream, which seemed continuous, was punctuated with other voices, male and female, begging and pleading for their lives.

Wanting “to stop what was happening,” Linda said, “I started running toward the house.” As she reached the walk, “there was a man, a tall man, just coming out of the door, staggering, and he had blood all over his face, and he was standing by a post, and we looked into each other’s eyes for a minute, I don’t know however long, and I said, ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry.’ And then he just fell into the bushes.

“And then Sadie came running out of the house, and I said, ‘Sadie, please make it stop! People are coming!’ Which wasn’t true, but I wanted to make it stop. And she said, ‘It’s too late.’”

Complaining that she had lost her knife, Susan ran back into the house. Linda remained outside. (Susan had earlier told me, and the grand jury, that Linda had never entered the residence.) Turning, Linda saw a dark-haired woman in a white gown running across the lawn; Katie was pursuing her, an upraised knife in her hand. Somehow, the tall man managed to stagger from the bushes next to the porch onto the lawn, where he had again fallen. Linda saw Tex hit him over the head with something—it could have been a gun but she wasn’t sure—then stab him repeatedly in the back as he lay on the ground.

(Shown a number of photographs, Linda identified the tall man as Voytek Frykowski, the dark-haired woman as Abigail Folger. Examining the autopsy report on Frykowski, I found that five of his fifty-one stab wounds were to the back.)

Linda turned and ran down the driveway. For what seemed like maybe five minutes, she hid in the bushes near the gate, then climbed the fence again and ran down Cielo to where they had parked the Ford.

Q. “Why didn’t you run to one of the houses and call the police?” I asked Linda.

A. “My first thought was ‘Get help!’ Then my little girl entered my mind—she was back [at the ranch] with Charlie. I didn’t know where I was or how to get out of there.”

She got in the car and had started the engine when “all of a sudden they were there. They were covered with blood. They looked like zombies. Tex yelled at me to turn off the car and get over. He had a terrible look in his eyes.” Linda slid over to the passenger side. “Then he started in on Sadie and yelled at her for losing her knife.”

Tex had put the .22 revolver on the seat between them. Linda noticed that the grip was broken, and Tex told her it had smashed when he hit the man over the head. Sadie and Katie complained that their heads hurt because the people had pulled their hair while they were fighting with them. Sadie also said the big man had hit her over the head and that “the girl”—it was unclear whether she meant Sharon or Abigail—had cried for her mother. Katie also complained that her hand hurt, explaining that when she stabbed, she kept hitting bones, and since the knife didn’t have a regular handle, it bruised her hand.

Q. “How did you feel, Linda?”

A. “In a state of shock.”

Q. “What about the others, how did they act?”

A. “As if it was all a game.”

Tex, Sadie, and Katie changed their clothing while the car was in motion, Linda holding the wheel for Tex. Linda herself didn’t change, since there was no blood on her. Tex told them he wanted to find a place to hose the blood off, and he turned off Benedict Canyon onto a short street not too far from the Tate residence.

Linda’s account of the hosing incident paralleled Susan Atkins’ and Rudolf Weber’s. Weber’s house was located 1.8 miles from the Tate premises.

From there Tex turned onto Benedict Canyon again and drove along through a dark, hilly country area. He stopped the car on a dirt shoulder off the road, and Tex, Sadie, and Katie gave Linda their bloody clothing, which, on Tex’s instructions, she rolled up in one bundle and threw down the slope. Since it was dark, she couldn’t see where it landed.

After driving off, Tex told Linda to wipe the knives clean of fingerprints, then throw them out the window. She did, the first knife hitting a bush at the side of the road, the second, which she tossed out a few seconds later, striking the curb and bouncing back into the road. Looking back, she saw it lying there. Linda believed she threw the gun out a few minutes later but she wasn’t sure; it was possible that Tex did it.

After driving for a time, they stopped at a gas station—Linda was unable to recall the street—where Katie and Sadie took turns going into the rest room to wash the rest of the blood off their bodies. Then they drove back to Spahn Ranch.

Linda did not have a watch but guessed it must have been about 2 A.M. Charles Manson was standing on the boardwalk in the same spot where he had been when they drove off.

Sadie said she saw some blood on the outside of the car, and Manson had the girls get rags and sponges and wash the car inside and out.

He then told them to go to the bunkhouse. Brenda and Clem were already there. Manson asked Tex how it had gone. Tex told him that there was a lot of panic, that it was real messy, and that there were bodies lying all over the place, but that everyone was dead.

Manson asked the four, “Do you have any remorse?” All shook their heads and said, “No.”

Linda did feel remorse, she told me, but she didn’t admit it to Charlie because “I was afraid for my life. I could see in his eyes he knew how I felt. And it was against his way.”

Manson told them, “Go to bed and say nothing to the others.”

Linda slept most of the day. It was almost sundown when Sadie told her to go into the trailer, that the TV news was coming on. Although Linda could not recall seeing Tex, she remembered Sadie, Katie, Barbara Hoyt, and Clem being there.

It was the big news. For the first time Linda heard the names of the victims. She also learned that one, Sharon Tate, had been pregnant. Only a few days earlier Linda had learned that she herself was pregnant.

“As we were watching the news,” Linda said, “in my head I kept saying, ‘Why would they do such a thing?’”


After Linda and I left the Tate residence, I asked her to show us the route they had taken. She found the dirt shoulder where they had pulled off to dispose of the clothing, but was unable to find the street where Tex had turned off Benedict Canyon, so I had the sheriff’s deputy who was driving take us directly to Portola. Once on the street, Linda immediately identified 9870, pointing to the hose in front. Number 9870 was Rudolf Weber’s house. She also pointed to the spot where they had parked the car. It was the same spot Weber had indicated. Neither his address, nor even the fact that he had been located, had appeared in the press.

We were back on Benedict looking for the area where Linda had thrown out the knives when one of the deputies said, “We’ve got company.”

Looking out the window, we saw we were being followed by a Channel 2 TV unit. Its presence in the area may have been a coincidence, but I doubted it. More likely, someone at the jail or in the courts had alerted the press that we were taking Linda out. At this time only a few people knew that Linda Kasabian would be a witness for the prosecution. I’d hoped to keep this secret as long as possible. I’d also hoped to take Linda to the LaBianca residence and several other sites, but now that would have to wait. Telling Linda to turn her head away so she wouldn’t be recognized, I asked the driver to hightail it back to Sybil Brand.

Once on the freeway, we tried to outrun the TV unit, but without success. They filmed us all the way. It was like a Mack Sennett comedy, only with the press in pursuit of the fuzz.


After Linda was back in jail, I asked Sergeant McGann to get some cadets from the Police Academy, or a troop of Boy Scouts, and conduct a search for the knives. From Linda’s testimony, we knew that they had probably been thrown out of the car somewhere between the clothing site and the hill where young Steven Weiss had found the gun, an area of less than two miles. We also knew that since Linda had looked back and seen one of the knives lying in the road, there must have been some illumination nearby, which could be another clue.


The following day, March 4, Gypsy made another visit to Fleischman’s office. She told him, in the presence of his law partner Ronald Goldman, “If Linda testifies, thirty people are going to do something about it.”

I’d already checked out the security at Sybil Brand. Until her baby was born, Linda was being kept in an isolation cell off the infirmary. She had no contact with the other inmates; deputies brought her meals. After the baby was born, however, she would be reassigned to one of the open dormitories, where she might be threatened, even killed, by Sadie, Katie, or Leslie. I made a note to talk to Captain Carpenter to see if other arrangements could be made.


Attorney Richard Caballero had been able to postpone the inevitable, but he couldn’t prevent it. The meeting between Susan Atkins and Charles Manson took place in the Los Angeles County Jail on March 5. Caballero, who was present, would later testify: “One of the first things they wanted to know was whether either one had gotten to see Linda Kasabian yet.” Neither having done so, it was decided both should keep trying.

Manson asked Susan, “Are you afraid of the gas chamber?”

Susan grinned and replied that she wasn’t.

With that, Caballero must have realized that he had lost her.

Susan and Charlie talked for an hour or so more, but Caballero hadn’t the foggiest idea of what they said. “At some point in the conversation they began to talk in sort of a double talk or pig Latin,” and “when they reached that point they lost me.”

However, the looks they exchanged said it all. It was like a “joyous homecoming.” Sadie Mae Glutz had returned to the irresistible Charles Manson.

She fired Caballero the next day.


On March 6, Manson appeared in court and argued a number of novel motions. One asked that the “Deputy District Attorneys in charge of the trial be incarcerated for a period of time under the same circumstances that I have been subject to…” Another requested that he “be free to travel to any place I should deem fit in preparing my defense…”

There were more, and Judge Keene declared himself “appalled” at Manson’s “outlandish” requests. Keene then said he had reviewed the entire file on the case, from his “nonsensical” motions to his numerous violations of the gag order. He had also discussed Manson’s conduct with Judges Lucas and Dell, before whom Manson had also appeared, concluding that it had become “abundantly clear to me that you are incapable of acting as your own attorney.”

Infuriated, Manson shouted, “It’s not me that’s on trial here as much as this court is on trial!” He also told judge, “Go wash your hands. They’re dirty.”

THE COURT “Mr. Manson, your status, at this time, of acting as your own attorney is now vacated.”

Against Manson’s strong objections, Keene appointed Charles Hollopeter, a former president of the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Bar, as Manson’s attorney of record.

“You can kill me,” Manson said, “but you can’t give me an attorney. I won’t take one.”

Keene told Manson that if he found an attorney of his own choosing, he would consider a motion to substitute him for Hollopeter. I knew Hollopeter by reputation. Since he’d never be Charlie’s bootlicker, I guessed he’d last about a month; I was too generous.

Toward the end of the proceedings, Manson shouted, “There is no God in this courtroom!” As if on cue, a number of Family members jumped up and yelled at Keene, “You are a mockery of justice! You are a joke!” The judge found three of them—Gypsy, Sandy, and Mark Ross—in contempt, and sentenced each to five days in the County Jail.

When Sandy was searched prior to being booked, among the items found in her purse was a Buck knife.

After this, the sheriff’s deputies, who are in charge of maintaining security in the Los Angeles criminal courts, began searching all spectators before they entered the courtroom.


On March 7, Linda Kasabian was taken to the hospital. Two days later she gave birth to a boy, whom she named Angel. On the thirteenth she was returned to the jail, without the child, Linda’s mother having taken him back to New Hampshire.

In the interim I had talked to Captain Carpenter, and he had agreed to let Linda remain in her former cell just off the infirmary. I checked it out myself. It was a small room, its furnishings consisting of a bed, toilet bowl, washbasin, and a small desk and chair. It was clean but bleak. Far more important, it was safe.


Every few days I called McGann. No, he hadn’t got around to looking for the knives yet.


On March 11, Susan Atkins, after formally requesting that Richard Caballero be relieved as her attorney, asked for Daye Shinn in Caballero’s place.

Inasmuch as Shinn, one of the first attorneys to call on Manson after he was brought down from Independence, had represented Manson on several matters and had visited him more than forty times, Judge Keene felt there might be a possible conflict of interest involved.

Shinn denied this. Keene then warned Susan of the possible dangers of being represented by an attorney who had been so closely involved with one of her co-defendants. Susan said she didn’t care; she wanted Shinn. Keene granted the substitution.

I hadn’t come up against Shinn before. He was about forty, Korean born; according to the press, his main practice, before allying himself with the Manson defense, had been obtaining Mexican domestics for Southern California families.

On leaving the courtroom, Shinn told waiting reporters that Susan Atkins “definitely will deny everything she told the grand jury.”


On March 15 we took Linda Kasabian out again. Only this time we used not a conspicuous sheriff’s van but unmarked police cars.

I wanted Linda to trace the route the killers had taken the night the LaBiancas were killed.


After dinner that night—Saturday, August 9, 1969—Linda and several other Family members were standing outside the kitchen at Spahn. Manson called Linda, Katie, and Leslie aside and told them to get a change of clothing and meet him in the bunkhouse.

This time he mentioned nothing to Linda about knives, but he did tell her again to get her driver’s license.

“I just looked at him and, you know, just sort of pleaded with my eyes, please don’t make me go, because,” Linda said, “I just knew we were going out again, and I knew it would be the same thing, but I was afraid to say anything.”

“Last night was too messy,” Manson told the group when they assembled in the bunkhouse. “This time I’m going to show you how to do it.”

Tex complained that the weapons they had used the previous night weren’t effective enough!

Linda saw two swords in the bunkhouse, one of which was the Straight Satans’ sword. She did not see anyone pick them up, but later she noticed the Satans’ sword and two smaller knives under the front seat of the car. In questioning DeCarlo, I’d learned that one night about this time he’d noticed that the sword had been taken out.

Again the group piled into Swartz’ Ford. This time Manson himself slipped into the driver’s seat, with Linda next to him, Clem on the passenger side, Tex, Sadie, Katie, and Leslie crowded in back. All wore dark clothing, Linda said, except for Clem, who had on an olive-drab field jacket. As he often did, Manson wore a leather thong around his neck, the two ends extending down to his breastbone, where they were looped together. I asked Linda if anyone else was wearing such a thong; she said no.

Before they left, Manson asked Bruce Davis for some money. Just as DeCarlo took care of the Family guns, Davis acted as comptroller for the group, taking care of the stolen credit cards, fake IDs, and so forth.

As they drove off, Manson told them that tonight they would divide into two groups: each would take a separate house. He said he’d drop off one group, then take the second group with him.

When they stopped to buy gas (using cash, not a credit card), Manson told Linda to take over the driving. Questioning Linda, I established that Manson—and Manson alone—gave all the instructions as to where they were to go and what they were to do. At no time, she said, did Tex Watson instruct anyone to do anything. Charlie was in complete command.

Following Manson’s directions, Linda took the freeway to Pasadena. Once off it, he gave her so many directions she was unsure where they were. Eventually he told her to stop in front of a house, which Linda described as a modern, one-story, middle-class-type home. This was the place where, as described by Susan Atkins, Manson got out, had them drive around the block, then got back in, telling them that, having looked in the window and seen photographs of children, he didn’t want to “do” that particular house, though, he added, in the future it might be necessary to kill children also. Linda’s account was essentially the same as Susan’s.

After riding around Pasadena for some time, Manson again took over the driving. Linda: “I remember we started driving up a hill with lots of houses, nice houses, rich houses, and trees. We got to the top of the hill and turned around and stopped in front of a certain house.” Linda couldn’t remember if it was one story or two, only that it was big. Manson, however, said the houses were too close together here, so they drove off.

Shortly after this, Manson spotted a church. Pulling into the parking lot next to it, he again got out. Linda believed, but wasn’t absolutely sure, that he told them he was going to “get” the minister or priest.

However, he returned a few minutes later, saying the church door was locked.

Susan Atkins had neglected to mention the church in her account. I learned of it for the first time from Linda Kasabian.

Manson again told Linda to drive, but the route he gave her was so confusing that she soon became lost. Later, driving up Sunset from the ocean, there occurred another incident which Susan Atkins had neglected to mention.

Observing a white sports car ahead of them, Manson told Linda, “At the next red light, pull up beside it. I’m going to kill the driver.”

Linda pulled up next to the car, but just as Manson jumped out, the light changed to green and the sports car zoomed away.

Another potential victim, unaware to this day how close to death he had come.

Thus far, their wanderings appeared totally at random, Manson seemingly having no particular victims in mind. As I’d later argue to the jury, up to this time no one in the vast, sprawling metropolis of seven million people, whether in a home, a church, or even a car, was safe from Manson’s insatiable lust for death, blood, and murder.

But after the sports-car incident, Manson’s directions became very specific. He directed Linda to the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles, not far from Griffith Park, having her stop on the street in front of a home in a residential area.

Linda recognized the house. In June of 1968 she and her husband had been driving from Seattle to Taos when they stopped off in Los Angeles. A friend had taken them to the house—3267 Waverly Drive—for a peyote party. One of the men who were living there, she recalled, was named Harold. In another of the many coincidences which abounded in this case, Linda had also been to the Harold True residence, though at a time none of the Family members were there.

Linda asked, “Charlie, you’re not going to do that house, are you?”

Manson replied, “No, the one next door.”

Telling the others to stay in the car, Manson got out. Linda noticed him shove something into his belt, but she couldn’t see what it was. She watched him walking up the driveway until it curved and he disappeared from sight.

I presumed, although I couldn’t be sure of this, that Manson had a gun.

For Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, the horror that would end in their deaths had begun.


Linda guessed the time was about 2 A.M. Some ten minutes later, she said, Manson returned to the car.

I asked Linda if he was still wearing the leather thong around his neck. She said she hadn’t noticed, though she did notice, later that night, that he no longer had it. I showed her the leather thong used to bind the wrists of Leno LaBianca, and she said it was “the same kind” Manson had been wearing.

Manson told Tex, Katie, and Leslie to get out of the car and bring their clothing bundles with them. Obviously they were to be the first team. Linda heard some, though not all, of the conversation. Manson told the trio that there were two people inside the house, that he had tied them up and told them that everything was going to be all right, and that they shouldn’t be afraid. He also instructed Tex, Katie, and Leslie that they were not to cause fear and panic in the people as had happened the night before.

The LaBiancas had been creepy-crawled, pacified with Charles Manson’s unctuous assurances, then set up to be slaughtered.

Linda heard only bits and pieces of the rest of the conversation. She did not hear Manson specifically order the three to kill the two persons. Nor did she see them carrying any weapons. She believed she heard Manson say, “Don’t let them know you are going to kill them.” And she definitely heard him instruct them that when they were done they were to hitchhike back to the ranch.

As the trio started toward the house, Manson got back in the car and handed Linda a woman’s wallet, telling her to wipe off the prints and remove the change. In opening it, she noticed the driver’s license, which had a photo of a woman with dark hair. She recalled the woman’s first name was “Rosemary,” while the last name “was either Mexican or Italian.” She also remembered seeing a number of credit cards and a wrist watch.

When I asked Linda the color of the wallet, she said it was red. Actually it was brown. She also claimed to have removed all the change, but when the wallet was found there were still some coins in one of the inner compartments. Both were understandable errors, I felt, particularly overlooking the extra change compartment.

Manson again took over the driving. Linda was now on the passenger side, Susan and Clem in back. Manson told Linda that when they reached a predominantly colored area he wanted her to toss the wallet out onto a sidewalk, so a black person would find it, use the credit cards, and be arrested. This would make people think the Panthers had committed the murders, he explained.

Manson drove onto the freeway not far from where they had dropped off Tex, Katie, and Leslie. After driving for a long time, he pulled off the freeway and stopped at a nearby service station. Apparently having changed his plans, Manson now told Linda to put the wallet in the women’s rest room. Linda did, only she hid it too well, lifting the top of the toilet tank and placing it over the bulb, where it would remain undiscovered for four months.

I asked Linda if she could remember anything distinctive about the station. She remembered there was a restaurant next door and that it seemed “to radiate the color orange.”

There was a Denny’s Restaurant next to the Standard station in Sylmar, with a large orange sign.

While Linda was in the rest room, Manson went to the restaurant, returning with four milk shakes.

Probably at the same time the LaBiancas were being murdered, the man who had ordered their deaths was sipping a milk shake.

Again Manson had Linda drive. After a long time, perhaps an hour, they reached the beach somewhere south of Venice. Linda recalled seeing some oil storage tanks. All four got out of the car, Sadie and Clem, at Charlie’s instructions, dropping behind while he and Linda walked ahead in the sand.

Suddenly Manson was again all love. It was as if the events of the last forty-eight hours had never happened. Linda told Charlie that she was pregnant. Manson took Linda’s hand and, as she described it, “it was sort of nice, you know, we were just talking, I gave him some peanuts, and he just sort of made me forget about everything, made me feel good.”

Would the jury understand this? I thought so, once they understood Manson’s charismatic personality and Linda’s love for him.

Just as they reached a side street, a police car pulled up and two officers got out. They asked the pair what they were doing.

Charlie replied, “We were just going for a walk.” Then, as if they should recognize him, he asked, “Don’t you know who I am?” or “Don’t you remember my name?” They said, “No,” then returned to the patrol car and drove off, without asking either for identification. It was, Linda said, “a friendly conversation,” lasting only a minute.

Finding the two officers on duty in the area that night should be fairly easy, I thought, unaware how wrong I could be.

Clem and Sadie were already back in the car when they returned. Manson then told Linda to drive to Venice. En route he asked the three if they knew anyone there. None did. Manson then asked Linda, “What about the man you and Sandy met in Venice? Wasn’t he a piggy?” Linda replied, “Yes, he’s an actor.” Manson told her to drive to his apartment.

I asked Linda about the actor.

One afternoon in early August, Linda said, she and Sandy had been hitchhiking near the pier when this man picked them up. He told them he was Israeli or Arab—Linda couldn’t recall which—and that he had appeared in a movie about Kahlil Gibran. The two girls were hungry, and he drove them to his apartment and fixed them lunch. Afterward, Sandy napped and Linda and the man made love. Before the girls left, he gave them some food and spare clothing. Linda couldn’t remember the man’s name, only that it was foreign. However, she felt sure she could find the apartment house, as she had located it when Manson asked her to drive there that night.

When they pulled up in front, Manson asked Linda if the man would let her in. “I think so,” she replied. What about Sadie and Clem? Linda said she guessed so. Manson then handed her a pocketknife and demonstrated how he wanted her to slit the actor’s throat.

Linda said she couldn’t do it. “I’m not you, Charlie,” Linda told Manson. “I can’t kill anybody.”

Manson asked her to take him to the man’s apartment. Linda led Charlie up the stairs, but deliberately pointed to the wrong door.

On returning to the car, Manson gave the trio explicit instructions. They were to go to the actor’s apartment. Linda was to knock. When the man let her in, Sadie and Clem were to go in also. Once they were inside, Linda was to slit the man’s throat and Clem was to shoot him. When finished, they were to hitchhike back to the ranch.

Linda saw Manson hand Clem a gun, but was unable to describe it. Nor did she know if Sadie also had a knife.

“If anything goes wrong,” Manson told them, “just hang it up, don’t do it.” He then slid into the driver’s seat and drove off.

Like the church and sports-car incidents, Susan Atkins had not mentioned the Venice incident to me, nor had she said anything about it when testifying before the grand jury. While I felt that she might have forgotten the two earlier incidents, I suspected the third was omitted intentionally, since it directly involved her as a willing partner in still another attempted murder. It was possible, however, that had I had more time to interview Susan, this too might have come out.

The actor’s apartment was on the top, or fifth, floor, but Linda did not tell Clem or Sadie this. Instead, on reaching the fourth floor, she knocked on the first door she saw. Eventually a man sleepily asked, “Who is it?” She replied, “Linda.” When the man opened the door a crack, Linda said, “Oh, excuse me, I have the wrong apartment.”

The door was open only a second or two and Linda caught just a glimpse of the man. She had the impression, though she was unsure of this, that he was middle-aged.

The three then left the building, but not before Sadie, ever the animal, defecated on the landing.


It was obvious that Linda Kasabian had prevented still another Manson-ordered murder. As independent evidence corroborating her story, it was important that we locate not only the actor but the man who answered the door. Perhaps he’d remember being awakened at 4 or 5 A.M. by a pretty young girl.

From the apartment house Clem, Sadie, and Linda walked to the beach, a short distance away. Clem wanted to ditch the gun. He disappeared from sight behind a sandpile, near a fence. Linda presumed that he had either buried the gun or tossed it over the fence.

Walking back to the Pacific Coast Highway, they hitched a ride to the entrance of Topanga Canyon. There was a hippie crash pad nearby, next door to the Malibu Feedbin, and Sadie said she knew a girl who was staying there. Linda recalled there was also an older man there, and a big dog. The three stayed about an hour, smoking some weed, then left.

They then hitched two rides, the last taking them all the way to the entrance of Santa Susana Pass Road, where Clem and Linda got out. Sadie, Linda learned the next day, remained in the car until it reached the waterfall area.

When Linda and Clem arrived at the ranch, Tex and Leslie were already there, asleep in one of the rooms. She didn’t see Katie, though she learned the next day that, like Sadie, she had gone on to the camp by the waterfall. Linda went to bed in the saloon.

Two days later Linda Kasabian fled Spahn Ranch. The manner of her departure, however, would cause the prosecution a great deal of concern.


Rather than taking Linda directly to the LaBianca residence, I had the sheriff’s deputy drive to the Los Feliz area, to see if Linda could find the house itself. She did, pointing out both the LaBianca and True houses, the place where they had parked, the driveway up which Manson had walked, and so on.

I also wanted to find the two houses in Pasadena where Manson had stopped earlier that night, but, though we spent hours looking for them, we were, at this time, unsuccessful. Linda did find the apartment house where the actor had lived, 1101 Ocean Front Walk, and pointed out both his apartment, 501, and the door on which she had knocked, 403. I asked Patchett and Gutierrez to locate and interview both the actor and the man who had been living in 403.

Linda also showed us the sandpile near the fence where she believed Clem had disposed of the gun, but though we got out shovels and dug up the area, we were unable to locate the weapon. It was possible that someone had already found it, or that Clem or one of the other Family members had reclaimed it later. We never did learn what type of gun it was.

Having been out since early in the morning, we stopped at a Chinese restaurant for lunch. That afternoon we returned to Pasadena and must have driven past forty churches before Linda found the one where Manson had stopped. I asked LAPD to photograph it and the adjoining parking lot as a trial exhibit.

Linda also identified the Standard station in Sylmar where she’d left the wallet, as well as the Denny’s Restaurant next door.

Despite all our security precautions, we were spotted. The next day the Herald Examiner reported: “In addition to winning immunity, Mrs. Kasabian was given a ‘bonus’ in the form of a Chinese dinner at Madam Wu’s Garden Restaurant in Santa Monica. Restaurant employees confirmed Mrs. Kasabian, defense attorney Fleischman and prosecutor Bugliosi ate there Sunday.”

The paper neglected to mention that our party included a half dozen LAPD officers and two LASO deputies.

We took Linda out twice more, trying to find the two houses in Pasadena. On both occasions we were accompanied by South Pasadena PD officers who directed us to neighborhoods similar to those Linda had described. We finally found the large house atop the hill. Though I had it and the adjoining houses photographed—they were close together, as Manson had said—I decided against talking to the owners, sure they would sleep better not knowing how close to death they had come. We were never able to locate the first house—which both Susan and Linda had described—where Manson looked in the window and saw the photographs of the children.

We did grant Linda one special privilege, which might have been called a “bonus.” On the three occasions we took her out of Sybil Brand, we let her call her mother in New Hampshire and talk to her two children. Her attorney paid for the calls. Though Angel was only a month old and much too young to understand, just speaking to them obviously meant a great deal to Linda.

Yet she never asked to do this. She never asked for anything. She told me not once but several times that although she was pleased to be getting immunity, because it meant that eventually she could be with her children, it didn’t matter that much if she didn’t get it. There was a sort of sad fatalism about her. She said she knew she had to tell the truth about what had happened, and that she had known she would be the one to tell the story ever since the murders occurred. Unlike the other defendants, she seemed burdened with guilt, though, again unlike them, she hadn’t physically harmed anyone. She was a strange girl, marked by her time with Manson, yet not molded by him in the same way the others were. Because she was compliant, easily led, Manson apparently had had little trouble controlling her. Up to a point. But she had refused to cross that point. “I’m not you, Charlie. I can’t kill anybody.”

Once I asked her what she thought about Manson now. She was still in love with him, Linda said. “Some things he said were the truth,” she observed thoughtfully. “Only now I realize he could take a truth and make a lie of it.”


Shortly after the story broke that Linda Kasabian would testify for the prosecution, Al Wiman, the reporter with the Channel 7 crew which had found the clothing, showed up in my office. If Kasabian was cooperating with us, then she must have indicated where she threw the knives, Wiman surmised. He begged me to pinpoint the area; his station, he promised, would supply a search crew, metal detectors, everything.

“Look, Al,” I told him, “you guys have already found the clothing. How is it going to look at the trial if you find the knives too? Tell you what. I’m trying to get someone out. If they won’t go, then I’ll tell you.”

After Wiman left, I called McGann. Two weeks had passed since I’d asked him to look for the knives; he still hadn’t done it. My patience at an end, I called Lieutenant Helder and told him about Wiman’s offer. “Think how LAPD is going to look if it comes out during the trial that a ten-year-old boy found the gun and Channel 7 found both the clothing and the knives.”

Bob had a crew out the next day. No luck. But at least during the trial we’d be prepared to prove that they had looked. Otherwise, the defense could contend that LAPD was so skeptical of Linda Kasabian’s story that they hadn’t even bothered to mount a search.

That they’d failed to find the knives was a disappointment, but not too much of a surprise. Over seven months had passed since the night Linda tossed the knives out of the car. According to her testimony, one had bounced back into the road, while the other had landed in the bushes nearby. The street, though in the country, was much traveled. It was quite possible they had been picked up by a motorist or passing cyclist.


I had no idea how often the police had interviewed Winifred Chapman, the Polanskis’ maid. I’d talked to her a number of times myself before I realized there was one question so obvious we’d all overlooked it.

Mrs. Chapman had stated that she washed the front door of the Tate residence just after noon on Friday, August 8. This meant Charles Watson had to have left his print there sometime after this.

However, there was a second print found at the Tate residence, Patricia Krenwinkel’s, located inside the door that led from Sharon Tate’s bedroom to the pool.

I asked Mrs. Chapman: “Did you ever wash that door?” Yes. How often? A couple of times a week. She had to, she explained, because the guests usually used that door to get to the pool.

The big question: “Did you wash it the week of the murders, and, if so, when?”

A. “Tuesday was the last time. I washed it down, inside and out, with vinegar and water.”

Under discovery, I was only required to make a note of the conversation and put it in our tubs. However, in fairness to both Fitzgerald and his client, I called Paul and told him, “If you’re planning on having Krenwinkel testify that she went swimming at the Tate residence a couple of weeks before the murders and left her print at that time, better forget it. Mrs. Chapman is going to testify she washed that door on Tuesday, August 5.”

Paul was grateful for the information. Had he based his defense on this premise, Mrs. Chapman’s testimony could have been devastating.

There was, in such conversations, something assumed though unstated. Whatever his public posture, I was sure that Fitzgerald knew that his client was guilty, and he knew that I knew it. Though only on rare occasions does a defense attorney slip up and admit this in court, when it comes to in-chambers discussions and private conversations, it’s often something else.


There were two items of evidence in our files which I did not point out to the defense. I was sure they had already seen them—both were among the items photocopied for them—but I was hoping they wouldn’t realize their importance.

One was a traffic ticket, the other an arrest report. Separately each seemed unimportant. Together they made a bomb that would demolish Manson’s alibi defense.

On first learning from Fowles that Manson might claim that he was not in the Los Angeles area at the time of the murders, I had asked LaBianca detectives Patchett and Gutierrez to see if they could obtain evidence proving his actual whereabouts on the subject dates. They did an excellent job. Together with information obtained from credit card transactions and interviews, they were able to piece together a timetable of Manson’s activities during the week preceding the start of Helter Skelter.

On about August 1, 1969, Manson told several Family members that he was going to Big Sur to seek out new recruits.

He apparently left on the morning of Sunday, August 3, as sometime between seven and eight he purchased gas at a station in Canoga Park, using a stolen credit card. From Canoga Park, he headed north toward Big Sur. At about four the next morning, he picked up a young girl, Stephanie Schram, outside a service station some distance south of Big Sur, probably at Gorda. An attractive seventeen-year-old, Stephanie was hitchhiking from San Francisco to San Diego, where she was living with her married sister. Manson and Stephanie camped in a nearby canyon that night—probably Salmon or Limekiln Creek, both hippie hangouts—Manson telling her his views on life, love, and death. Manson talked a lot about death, Stephanie would recall, and it frightened her. They took LSD and had sex. Manson was apparently unusually smitten with Stephanie. Usually he’d have sex with a new girl a few times, then move on to a new “young love.” Not so with Stephanie. He later told Paul Watkins that Stephanie, who was of German extraction, was the result of two thousand years of perfect breeding.

On August 4, Manson, still using the stolen credit card, purchased gas at Lucia. Ripping off the place, which bore a large sign reading “Hippies Not Allowed,” must have given him a special satisfaction, as he did it again the next day.

On the night of the fifth Manson and Stephanie drove north to a place whose name Stephanie couldn’t recall but which Manson described as a “sensitivity camp.” It was, he told her, a place where rich people went on weekends to play at being enlightened. He was obviously describing Esalen Institute.

Esalen was, at this time, just coming into vogue as a “growth center,” its seminars including such diverse figures as yogis and psychiatrists, salvationists and satanists. Obviously Manson felt Esalen a prime place to espouse his philosophies. It is unknown whether he had been there on prior occasions, those involved in the Institute refusing to even acknowledge his visits there.[54]

Manson took his guitar and left Stephanie in the van. After a time she fell asleep. When she awakened the next morning, Manson had already returned. He was in less than a good mood, as, later that day, he unexpectedly struck her. Still later, at Barker Ranch, Manson would tell Paul Watkins—to quote Watkins—that while at Big Sur he had gone “to Esalen and played his guitar for a bunch of people who were supposed to be the top people there, and they rejected his music. Some people pretended that they were asleep, and other people were saying, ‘This is too heavy for me,’ and ‘I’m not ready for that,’ and others were saying, ‘Well, I don’t understand it,’ and some just got up and walked out.”

Still another rejection by what Manson considered the establishment—this occurring just three days before the Tate murders.

With his single recruit, Manson left Big Sur on August 6, making gas purchases that same day at San Luis Obispo and Chatsworth, a few miles from Spahn Ranch. According to Stephanie, they had dinner at the ranch that night and she met the Family for the first time. She felt uncomfortable with them, and, learning that Manson shared his favors with the other girls, told him she would stay only if he would promise to remain with her, and her alone, for two weeks. Surprisingly, Manson agreed. They spent that night in the van, parked not far from the ranch, then drove to San Diego the next day to pick up Stephanie’s clothes.

En route, about ten miles south of Oceanside on Interstate 5, they were stopped by California Highway Patrol officer Richard C. Willis. Though pulled over for a mechanical violation, Manson was cited only for having no valid driver’s license in his possession. Manson gave his correct name and the ranch address, and signed the ticket himself. Officer Willis noted on the ticket that Manson was driving a “1952 cream-colored Ford bakery van, license number K70683.” The date was Thursday, August 7, 1969; the time 6:15 P.M.

The ticket, which Patchett and Gutierrez found, proved Manson was in Southern California the day before the Tate murders.

While Stephanie was getting her clothes together, Manson talked to her sister, who was also a Beatles fan. She had the White Album, and Manson told her the Beatles had laid out “the whole scene” in it. He warned her that the blacks were getting ready to overthrow the whites and that only those who fled to the desert and hid in the bottomless pit would be safe. As for those who remained in the cities, Manson said, “People are going to be slaughtered, they’ll be lying on their lawns dead.”

Just a little over twenty-four hours later, his prediction would be fulfilled, in all its gory detail, at 10050 Cielo Drive. With a little help from his friends.

That night, according to Stephanie, she and Charlie parked somewhere in San Diego and slept next to the van, returning to Spahn Ranch the following day, arriving there about two in the afternoon.

Stephanie was a bit vague when it came to dates. She “thought” the day they returned to Spahn Ranch was Friday, August 8, but she wasn’t sure. I anticipated that the defense would make the most of this, but I wasn’t concerned, because that second piece of evidence conclusively placed Manson back at the ranch on Friday, August 8, 1969.

According to Linda Kasabian, on the afternoon of August 8 Manson gave Mary Brunner and Sandra Good a credit card and told them to purchase some items for him. At four that afternoon the two girls were apprehended while driving away from a Sears store in San Fernando, after store employees checked and found the credit card was stolen. The San Fernando PD arrest report stated that they were driving a “van 1952 Ford license K70683.”

Because of the fine job of digging by the LaBianca detectives, we now had physical proof that Manson was back at Spahn Ranch on Friday, August 8, 1969.

Though both the traffic ticket and arrest report were in the discovery materials, so were hundreds of other documents. I was hoping that the defense would overlook their common denominator: that vehicle description with its telltale license number.

If Manson went with an alibi defense, and I proved that alibi was fabricated, this would be strong circumstantial evidence of his guilt.


There was, of course, other evidence placing Manson at Spahn Ranch that day. In addition to the testimony of Schram, DeCarlo, and others, Linda Kasabian said that when the Family got together that afternoon, Manson discussed his visit to Big Sur, saying that the people there were “really not together, they were just off on their little trips” and that “the people wouldn’t go on his trip.”

It was just after this that Manson told them: “Now is the time for Helter Skelter.”


Bits and pieces, often largely circumstantial. Yet patiently dug out and assembled, they became the People’s case. And with almost every interview it became a little stronger.

I spent many hours interviewing Stephanie Schram, who, together with Kitty Lutesinger, had fled Barker Ranch just hours before the October 1969 raid, shotgun-wielding Clem in close pursuit. I often wondered what would have happened to the two girls had the raid been timed just a day later or Clem been a little faster.

Unlike Kitty, Stephanie had severed all contact with the Family. Though we had kept her current address from the defense, Squeaky and Gypsy found her working at a dog-grooming school. “Charlie wants you to come back,” they told her. Stephanie replied, “No thanks.” Considering what she knew, her forthright refusal was a brave act.

From Stephanie I learned that while at Barker Manson had conducted a “murder school.” He had given a Buck knife to each of the girls, and had demonstrated how they should “slit the throats of pigs,” by yanking the head back by the hair and drawing the knife from ear to ear (using Stephanie as a very frightened model). He also said they should “stab them in either their ears or eyes and then wiggle the knife around to get as many vital organs as possible.” The details became even gorier: Manson said that if the police pigs came to the desert, they should kill them, cut them in little pieces, boil the heads, then put the skulls and uniforms on posts, to frighten off others.[55]

Stephanie had told LAPD that Manson had spent the nights of Friday, August 8, and Saturday, August 9, with her. On questioning her, I learned that about an hour after dinner on August 8, Manson took her to the trailer at Spahn and told her to go to sleep, that he would join her soon. However, she didn’t see him again until shortly before dawn the next morning, at which time he awakened her and took her with him to Devil’s Canyon, the camp across the road from the ranch.

That night—August 9—Stephanie said, “when it got dark, he left and he came back either sometime during the night or early in the morning.”

If Manson was planning on using Stephanie Schram as an alternative alibi, we were now more than ready for him.


On March 19, Hollopeter, Manson’s court-appointed attorney, made two motions: that Charles Manson be given a psychiatric examination, and that his case be severed from that of the others.

Enraged, Manson tried to fire Hollopeter.

Asked whom he wished to represent him, Manson replied, “Myself.” When Judge Keene denied the change, Manson picked up a copy of the Constitution and, saying it meant nothing to the Court, tossed it in a wastebasket.

Manson eventually requested that Ronald Hughes be substituted for Hollopeter. Like Reiner and Shinn, Hughes had been one of the first attorneys to call on Manson. He had remained on the periphery of the case ever since, his chief function being to run errands for Manson, as indicated by a document Manson had signed on February 17, designating him one of his legal runners.

Keene granted the substitution. Hollopeter, whom the press called “one of L.A. county’s most successful defense attorneys,” was out, after thirteen days; Hughes, who had never before tried a case, was in.

Something of an intellectual, Hughes was a huge, balding man with a long, scraggly beard. His various items of apparel rarely matched and usually evidenced numerous food stains. As one reporter remarked, “You could usually tell what Ron had for breakfast, for the past several weeks.” Hughes, whom I would get to know well in the months ahead, and for whom I developed a growing respect, once admitted to me that he had bought his suits for a dollar apiece at MGM; they were from Walter Slezak’s old wardrobe. The press was quick to dub him “Manson’s hippie lawyer.”

Hughes’ first two acts were to withdraw the motions for the psychiatric examination and the severance. Granted. His third and fourth were requests that Manson be allowed to revert to pro per status and to deliver a speech to the Court. Denied.

Although Manson was displeased with Keene’s last two rulings, he couldn’t have been too unhappy with the defense team, which now consisted of four attorneys—Reiner (Van Houten), Shinn (Atkins), Fitzgerald (Krenwinkel), and Hughes (Manson)—each of whom had been associated with him since early in the case.

Unknown to us, there were still changes ahead. Among the casualties would be both Ira Reiner and Ronald Hughes, each of whom dared go against Manson’s wishes. Reiner would lose considerable time and money for having linked himself with the Manson defense. His loss would be small, however, compared to that of Hughes, who, just eight months later, would pay with his life.


On March 21, Aaron and I were walking down the corridor in the Hall of Justice when we spotted Irving Kanarek emerging from the elevator.

Although little known elsewhere, Kanarek was something of a legend in the Los Angeles courts. The attorney’s obstructionist tactics had caused a number of judges to openly censure him from the bench. Kanarek stories were so common, and usually incredible, as to seem fictional when they were actually fact. Prosecutor Burton Katz, for example, recalled that Kanarek once objected to a prosecution witness’s stating his own name because, having first heard his name from his mother, it was “hearsay.” Such frivolous objections were minor irritations compared with Kanarek’s dilatory tactics. As samples:

In the case of People vs. Goodman, Kanarek had stretched a simple theft case, which should have taken a few hours or a day at most, to three months. The amount stolen: $100. The cost to the taxpayers: $130,212.

In the case of People vs. Smith and Powell, Kanarek spent twelve and a half months on pre-trial motions. After an additional two months trying to pick a jury, Kanarek’s own client fired him in disgust. A year and a half after Irving Kanarek came onto the case, the jury still hadn’t been selected, nor a single witness called.

In the case of People vs. Bronson, Superior Court Judge Raymond Roberts told Kanarek: “I am doing my best to see that Mr. Bronson gets a fair trial in spite of you. I have never seen such obviously stupid, ill-advised questions of a witness. Are you paid by the word or by the hour that you can consume the Court’s time? You are the most obstructionist man I have ever met.”

Outside the presence of the jury, Judge Roberts defined Kanarek’s modus operandi as follows: “You take interminable lengths of time in cross-examining on the most minute, unimportant details; you ramble back and forth with no chronology of events, to just totally confuse everybody in the courtroom, to the utter frustration of the jury, the witnesses, and the judge.”

After examining the transcript, the Appellate Court found the judge’s remarks were not prejudicial but were substantiated by the trial record.

“All we need, Vince,” Aaron remarked jocularly to me, “is to have Irving Kanarek on this case. We’d be in court ten years.”

The next day Ronald Hughes told a reporter that “he may ask Van Nuys attorney I. A. Kanarek to enter the case as Manson’s lawyer. He mentioned that he and Manson conferred with Kanarek at the County Jail Monday night.”


Though no miracle was involved, the Black Panther whom Charles Manson had shot and killed in July 1969 had resurrected. Only he wasn’t a Panther, just a “former dope dealer,” and, contrary to what Manson and the Family had believed, after Manson shot him he hadn’t died, though his friends had told Manson that he had. His name was Bernard Crowe, but he was best known by the descriptive nickname Lotsapoppa. Our long search for Crowe ended when an old acquaintance of mine, Ed Tolmas, who was Crowe’s attorney, called me. He told me he had learned we were looking for his client and arranged for me to interview Crowe.

After Manson and T. J. had left the Hollywood apartment where the shooting took place, Crowe, who had been playing dead, told his friends to call an ambulance. They did, then split. When questioned by the police at the hospital, Crowe said he didn’t know who had shot him or why. He nearly didn’t make it; he was on the critical list for eighteen days. The bullet was still lodged next to his spine.

I was interested in Crowe for two reasons. One, the incident proved that Charles Manson was quite capable of killing someone on his own. Though I knew I couldn’t get this into evidence during the guilt phase of the trial, I was hopeful of introducing it during the penalty phase, when other crimes can be considered. Two, from the description it appeared that the gun Manson had shot Crowe with was the same .22 caliber Longhorn revolver which, just a little over a month later, Tex Watson would use in the Tate homicides. If we could remove the bullet from Crowe’s body and match it up with the bullets test-fired from the .22 caliber revolver, we’d have placed the Tate murder weapon in Manson’s own hand.

Sergeant Bill Lee of SID wasn’t optimistic about the bullet. He told me that since it had been embedded in the body for over nine months, it was likely that acids had obliterated the stria to an extent where a positive identification would be difficult. Still, it might be possible. I then talked to several surgeons: they could take out the bullet, they told me, but the operation was risky.

I laid it out for Crowe. We’d like to have the bullet, and would arrange to have it removed at the Los Angeles County Hospital. But there were serious risks involved, and I didn’t minimize them.

Crowe declined the operation. He was sort of proud of the bullet, he said. It made quite a conversation piece.


Eventually Manson would have learned, through discovery, of the resurrection of Bernard Crowe. Before this, however, Crowe was jailed on a marijuana charge. As he was being escorted down the hall, he passed Manson and his guard, who were on their way back from the attorney room. Charlie did a quick about-face, then told Crowe, according to the deputies who were present, “Sorry I had to do it, but you know how it is.”

Crowe’s response, if there was one, went unreported.


Toward the end of March the prosecution nearly lost one of its key witnesses.

Paul Watkins, once Manson’s chief lieutenant, was pulled out of a flaming Volkswagen camper and rushed to Los Angeles County General Hospital with second-degree burns on 25 percent of his face, arms, and back. When sufficiently recovered to talk to the police, Watkins told them he had fallen asleep while reading by candlelight, and either that, or a marijuana cigarette he had been smoking, could have caused the fire.

These were only guesses, Watkins told them, as he was “unsure of the origin of the blaze.”

Three days before the fire, Inyo County authorities had heard a rumor that Watkins was going to be killed by the Family.

As far back as November 1969, I’d asked LAPD to infiltrate the Family. I not only wanted to know what they were planning as far as defense strategy was concerned; I told the officers, “It would be tragic if there was another murder which we could have prevented.”

I made this request at least ten times, LAPD finally contending that if they did plant an undercover agent in the Family, he would have to commit crimes, for example, smoke marijuana. For there to be a crime, I noted, there had to be criminal intent; if he was doing it as part of his job, to catch a criminal, it wouldn’t be a crime. When they balked at this, I said he didn’t even have to be a police officer. If they had paid informers in narcotics, bookmaking, even prostitution cases, surely they could manage to come up with one in one of the biggest murder cases of our time. No dice.

Finally I turned to the DA’s Bureau of Investigation, and they found a young man willing to accept the assignment. I admired his determination, but he was clean-cut, with short hair, and looked as straight as they come. As desperate as we were for information, I couldn’t send him into that den of killers; once they stopped laughing, they’d chop him to pieces. Eventually I had to abandon the idea. We remained in the dark as to what the Family was planning to do next.

APRIL 1970

The words PIG, DEATH TO PIGS, RISE, and HEALTER SKELTER contain only thirteen different letters. Handwriting experts told me it would be extremely difficult—if not impossible—to match the bloody words found at the Tate and LaBianca residences with printing exemplars obtained from the defendants.

It wasn’t only the small number of letters involved. The words were printed, not written; the letters were oversize; in both cases unusual writing implements had been used, a towel at the Tate residence, probably a rolled-up piece of paper at the LaBiancas; and all but the two words found on the refrigerator door at the latter residence had been printed high up on the walls, the person responsible having to stretch unnaturally high to make them.

As evidence, they appeared worthless.

However, thinking about the problem, I came up with an idea which, if successful, could convert them into very meaningful evidence. It was a gamble. But if it worked, it would be worth it.

We knew who had printed the words. Susan Atkins had testified before the grand jury that she had printed the word PIG on the front door of the Tate house, while Susan had told me, when I interviewed her, that Patricia Krenwinkel had admitted printing the words at the LaBiancas. Though Susan’s grand jury testimony and her statements to me were inadmissible because of the deal we had made with her, she had confessed the printing at Tate to Ronnie Howard, so we had her on that. But we had nothing admissible on Krenwinkel.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this is limited to verbal utterances, and that a defendant cannot refuse to give physical evidence of himself, like appearing in a lineup, submitting to a breath-analysis test for drunken driving, giving fingerprint and handwriting exemplars, hair samples, and so on. After researching the law, I drew up very explicit instructions for Captain Carpenter at Sybil Brand, stating exactly how to request the printing exemplars of Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten.

Each was to be informed: “(1) You have no constitutional right to refuse; (2) you have no constitutional right to have your attorney present;(3) your constitutional right to remain silent does not include the right to withhold printing exemplars; and (4) if you submit to this process, this can be used as evidence by the prosecution in your case.”

Captain Carpenter assigned Senior Deputy H. L. Mauss to obtain the exemplars. According to my instructions, she informed Susan Atkins of the above, then told her: “The word PIG was printed in blood at the Tate residence. We want you to print the word PIG.” Susan, without complaint, printed the exemplar as requested.

Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel were brought in individually and given similar instructions concerning their rights. However, each was told, orally: “The words HELTER SKELTER, DEATH TO PIGS, and RISE were printed in blood at the LaBianca residence. We want you to print those words.”

In my memo to Captain Carpenter there was one additional instruction for the deputy: “Do not write any of this for them.” I wanted to see if Krenwinkel misspelled “helter” as “healter” as she had on the refrigerator door.

Leslie Van Houten printed the exemplar.

Patricia Krenwinkel refused.

We’d won the gamble. We could now use her refusal in the trial as circumstantial evidence of her guilt.

As evidence, this was doubly important, since, before this, I’d had absolutely no independent evidence corroborating Linda Kasabian’s testimony regarding Patricia Krenwinkel’s involvement in the LaBianca murders. And without corroborating evidence, as a matter of law, Krenwinkel would have been entitled to an acquittal on those charges.


Though we’d won that gamble, Krenwinkel herself could just as easily have emerged the winner. Leslie could have refused to make an exemplar also, which would have diluted the force of Katie’s refusal. Or Katie could have made the exemplar, the handwriting experts then failing to match her printing with that found at the LaBiancas.

We were less lucky when it came to putting the Tate-Sebring rope and the wire cutters in Manson’s possession before the murders, evidence I was counting on to provide the necessary corroboration of Linda Kasabian’s testimony as to Manson.

We knew from DeCarlo, who had been present, that Manson had purchased about 200 feet of the white, three-strand nylon rope at the Jack Frost surplus store in Santa Monica in June 1969. However, when Tate detectives finally interviewed Frost—three and a half months after my initial request—he was unable to find a purchase order for the rope. Nor could he definitely state that this was the same rope he had stocked.[56] An attempt to identify the manufacturer, then trace it back to Frost, also failed. Frost usually picked up his stock in odd lots from jobbers or through auctions, rather than directly from the manufacturer.

Just as these were blind alleys, so was one other—literally. According to DeCarlo, Manson had given part of the rope to George Spahn, for use on the ranch. Spahn’s near blindness, however, eliminated him as a witness.

It was then I thought of Ruby Pearl.

For some reason, though the police had visited Spahn Ranch numerous times, none of the officers had interviewed Ruby, George’s ranch manager. I found her a fund of valuable information. Examining the Tate-Sebring rope, she not only said it looked like the rope Manson had, she also supplied numerous examples of Manson’s domination; recalled seeing the .22 Longhorn at the ranch many times; identified the leather thong found at the LaBiancas’ as similar to the ones Manson often wore; and told me that, prior to the arrival of the Family at Spahn, she had never seen any Buck knives there, but that in the summer of 1969 “suddenly it seemed everyone had one.”

While disappointed that we couldn’t obtain documented proof of the rope sale, I was pleased with Ruby. Being an experienced horse wrangler—as well as a tough, gallant lady who showed not the slightest fear of the Family[57]—her testimony would carry weight. There was a fine streak of stubborn authority about her.

Another find was Randy Starr, whom I interviewed the same day as Ruby. A sometime movie stunt man who specialized in fake hangings, Starr said the Tate-Sebring rope was “identical” to a rope he’d once used to help Manson pull a vehicle out of the creek bed. Starr told me, “Manson always kept the rope behind the seat in his dune buggy.”

Even more important was Randy Starr’s positive identification of the .22 Longhorn revolver, for Starr had once owned the gun and had given it to Manson.[58]

One question remained unanswered. Why, on the night of the Tate murders, did the killers bring along 43 feet 8 inches of rope? To tie up the victims? Manson accomplished this the next night with a single leather thong. I obtained a glimpse of a possible answer during one of my interviews with DeCarlo. According to Danny, in late July of 1969, Manson had told him that the establishment pigs “ought to have their throats cut and be hung up by their feet.” This would really throw the fear into people, Manson said.

The logical inference, I felt, was that the killers brought along the rope intending to hang their victims. It was only a guess, but I suspected it was correct.

The wire cutters presented their own problems. Linda Kasabian said the pair found in Manson’s dune buggy looked like the pair that had been in the car that night. Fine. Joe Granado of SID used them to test-cut a section of the Tate telephone wire and concluded that the two cuts were the same. Great. But then officer DeWayne Wolfer, considered LAPD’s foremost expert on physical evidence, made some test cuts also, and he concluded that these wire cutters couldn’t have been the ones used.

Not about to give up, I asked Wolfer if the tautness of the wire could have been a factor. Possibly, he said. I then asked Wolfer to accompany telephone company representatives to 10050 Cielo Drive and make another cut, only this time I wanted him to sever the wire while it was strung up and tight, the way it was the night of the murders. Wolfer eventually made the test, but his opinion remained unchanged: the actual cut made on the night of the murders and the test cut did not match.

While it was possible that the cutting edge of the wire cutters could have been damaged subsequent to the Tate murders, Wolfer’s tests literally severed this important link between Manson and the Tate evidence.


When I’d accompanied LAPD to Spahn Ranch on November 19, 1969, we’d found a number of .22 caliber bullets and shell casings. Because of the terrific windstorm, and the necessity of following up other leads, our search had been cursory, however, and I’d asked Sergeant Lee to return and conduct a more thorough search. The much repeated request became even more important when, on December 16, 1969, LAPD obtained the .22 caliber Longhorn revolver. Yet it was not until April 15, 1970, that Lee returned to Spahn. Again concentrating on the gully area some two hundred feet behind George Spahn’s residence, Lee found twenty-three more .22 caliber shell casings. Since twenty-two had been found during the first search, this brought the total to forty-five.[59]

It was not until after the latter search that Lee ran comparison tests on any of the Spahn shell casings. When he finally did, he concluded that fifteen of the forty-five had been fired from the Tate murder gun.[60]

Belatedly, but fortunately in time for the trial, we now had scientific evidence linking the gun to Spahn Ranch.

Only one thing would have made me happier: if Lee had returned and found the rest of the shell casings before the gun was discovered. As it was, the defense could contend that during the four and a half months between the two searches the police and/or prosecution had “planted” this evidence.

For months one item of physical evidence had especially worried me: the pair of eyeglasses found near the trunks in the living room at the Tate murder scene. The natural conclusion was that if they didn’t belong to any of the victims, they must belong to one of the killers. Yet neither Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, nor Kasabian wore glasses.

I anticipated that the defense would lean heavily on this, arguing that since they didn’t belong to any of the defendants, at least one of the killers was still at large. From there it was only a short step to the conclusion that maybe the wrong people were on trial.

This posed an extremely serious problem for the prosecution. That problem, though not the mystery itself, vanished when I talked to Roseanne Walker.

Since Susan Atkins had confessed the murders to both Virginia Graham and Ronnie Howard, it occurred to me that she might have made incriminating statements to others, so I asked LAPD to locate any girls Atkins had been particularly close to at Sybil Brand.

One former inmate who agreed to talk to me, though she wasn’t very happy about it, was Roseanne Walker. A pathetic, heavyset black girl who had been sent to Sybil Brand on five drug-related charges, Roseanne had been a sort of walking commissary, selling candy, cigarettes, and makeup to the other inmates. Not until the fifth or sixth time I interviewed her did Roseanne recall a conversation which, though it seemed unimportant to her, I found very significant.

Susan and Roseanne were listening to the radio one day, when the newscaster began talking about a pair of eyeglasses LAPD had found at the Tate murder scene. Amused, Susan remarked, “Wouldn’t it be too much if they arrested the person the glasses belonged to, when the only thing he was guilty of was losing his glasses?”

Roseanne replied that maybe the glasses did belong to the killer.

Susan said, “That ain’t the way it went down.”

Susan’s remark clearly indicated that the glasses did not belong to the killers.


Other problems remained. One of the biggest concerned Linda Kasabian’s escape from Spahn Ranch.

Linda told me that she decided to flee after the night of the LaBianca murders; however, Manson sent her to the waterfall area later that day (August 11) and she was afraid to leave that night because of the armed guards he had posted.

Early the next morning (August 12) Manson sought her out. She was to put on a “straight” dress, then take a message to Mary Brunner and Sandra Good at Sybil Brand, as well as Bobby Beausoleil at the County Jail. The message: “Say nothing; everything’s all right.” After borrowing a car from Dave Hannum, a new ranch hand at Spahn, Linda went to Sybil Brand, but learned that Brunner and Good were in court; at the County Jail her identification was rejected and she wasn’t allowed to see Beausoleil. When she returned to the ranch and told Manson she had been unsuccessful, he told her to try again the next day.

Linda saw her chance. That night she packed a shoulder bag with some clothing and Tanya’s diapers and pins, and hid it in the parachute room. Early the next morning (August 13) she again borrowed Hannum’s car. On going to get the bag, however, she found Manson and Stephanie Schram sleeping in the room. Deciding to forget the bag, she went to get Tanya, but discovered that the children had been moved to the waterfall area. There was no way she could go there to get Tanya, she said, without having to explain her actions. So she left the ranch without her.

Instead of going to Los Angeles as instructed, Linda began driving to Taos, New Mexico, where her husband was now living. Hannum’s car broke down outside Albuquerque. When she tried to have it repaired, using a credit card Bruce Davis had earlier given her for gas, the gas station owner checked and learned the card was no longer valid. Linda then wrote a letter to Hannum, enclosing the keys, telling him where he could find the car, and apologizing. She then hitchhiked the rest of the way.

(Susan Atkins apparently intercepted the letter, as she gave Hannum the information and keys, but didn’t show him the rest of the letter. Understandably unhappy, Hannum took a bus to Albuquerque to reclaim the vehicle.)

Linda found her husband living with another girl in a commune at Lorien, outside Taos. She told him about the Tate murders, the events of the second night, and leaving Tanya at Spahn. Bob Kasabian suggested they return to Spahn together and get Tanya, but Linda was afraid Manson would kill them all. Kasabian said he wanted to think about it for a few days. Unwilling to wait, Linda hitchhiked into Taos and went to see Joe Sage. Sage, who had a reputation for helping people, was a rather colorful character. When the fifty-one-year-old Zen monk wasn’t busy running his Macrobiotic Church, he was campaigning for president of the United States on an anti-pollution ticket. Linda asked Sage for enough money to return to Los Angeles to get her little girl. Sage, however, began questioning Linda, and eventually she told him and a youth named Jeffrey Jacobs about the murders.

Not believing Linda’s tale, Sage placed a call to Spahn Ranch, talking first to an unidentified girl, then to Manson himself. Sage asked Manson—whose reaction can only be imagined—if Linda’s story was true. Manson told him Linda had flipped out; that her ego was not ready to die, and so she had run away.

Linda did not talk to Charlie, but she did talk to one of the other girls—she believed, but was not sure, it was Squeaky—who told her about the August 16 raid. The authorities had kept Tanya, she learned; she was now in a foster home. Linda also spoke to Patricia Krenwinkel, Katie saying something to the effect, “You just couldn’t wait to open your big mouth, could you?”

Linda subsequently called the Malibu police station and learned the name of the social worker who was handling Tanya’s case.[61] Sage gave Linda enough money for round-trip air fare, as well as the name of a Los Angeles attorney, Gary Fleischman, who he felt might be able to help her reclaim Tanya. When Linda saw Fleischman, she did not tell him about the murders, only that she had left the ranch to look for her husband. Eventually, after a court hearing, the mother and daughter were reunited and flew back to Taos. Bob was still involved with the other girl, however, and Linda took Tanya and hitchhiked first to Miami, Florida, where her father was living, then to her mother’s home in Concord, New Hampshire. It was here, on December 2, 1969, when the news broke that she was being sought in connection with the Tate murders, that Linda turned herself into the local police. Waiving extradition, she was returned to Los Angeles the next day.

I asked Linda, “Why, between the time you reclaimed Tanya and the date of your arrest in December, didn’t you contact the police and tell them what you knew about the murders?”

She was afraid of Manson, Linda said, afraid that he might find and kill both her and Tanya. Also, she was pregnant, and didn’t want to go through this ordeal until after the baby was born.

There were, of course, other reasons, the most important being her distrust of the police. In the drug-oriented world she inhabited, police were considered neither friends nor allies. I felt that this explanation, if properly argued, would satisfy the jury.

An even bigger question remained: “How could you leave your daughter in that den of killers?”

I was concerned not only with the jury’s reaction to this, but also with the use to which the defense could put it. That Linda had left Tanya with Manson and the others at Spahn Ranch could be circumstantial evidence that she did not really believe them to be killers, clearly contradicting the main thrust of her testimony. Therefore both the question and her answer became extremely important.

Linda replied that she felt Tanya would be safe there, just so long as she did not go to the police. “Something within me told me that Tanya would be all right,” Linda said, “that nothing would happen to her, and that now was the time to leave. I knew I would come back and get her. I was just confident that she would be all right.”

Would the jury accept this? I didn’t know. This was among my many concerns as the trial date drew ever closer.


When contacted by Lieutenant Helder and Sergeant Gutierrez, both Sage and Jacobs verified Linda’s story. I was unable to use either as a witness, however, most of their testimony being inadmissible hearsay. Ranch hand David Hannum said he had begun work at Spahn on August 12, and that Linda had borrowed his car that same day, as well as the next. And a check of the jail records verified that Brunner and Good had been in court on August 12.

The various interviews yielded unexpected bonuses. Hannum said that once when he killed a rattlesnake, Manson had angrily castigated him, yelling, “How would you like it if I chopped your head off?” He then added, “I’d rather kill people than animals.” At the same time I interviewed Linda’s husband, Robert Kasabian, I also talked to Charles Melton, the hippie philanthropist from whom Linda had stolen the $5,000. Melton said that in April 1969 (before Linda ever met the Family) he had gone to Spahn Ranch to see Paul Watkins. While there, Melton had met Tex, who, admiring Melton’s beard, commented, “Maybe Charlie will let me grow a beard someday.”

It would be difficult to find a better example of Manson’s domination of Watson.


These were pluses. There were minuses. And they were big ones.

To prove to the jury that Linda’s account of these two nights of murder wasn’t fabricated out of whole cloth, I desperately needed some third person to corroborate any part of her story. Rudolf Weber provided that corroboration for the first night. But for the second night I had no one. I gave LAPD this all-important priority assignment: Find the two officers who spoke to Manson and Linda on the beach, the man whose door Linda knocked on that night, the man and woman at the house next to the Malibu Feedbin, or any of the drivers who gave them rides. I’d like to have had all these people, but if they could turn up even one, I’d be happy.

Linda had located the spot where the two police officers stopped and questioned them. It was near Manhattan Beach. But, Los Angeles being the megalopolis that it is, it turned out to be an area where there were overlapping jurisdictions, not one but three separate law-enforcement agencies patrolling it. And a check of all three failed to turn up anyone who could recall such an incident.

We had better luck when it came to locating the actor Linda had mentioned. LaBianca detectives Sartuchi and Nielsen found him still living in Apartment 501, 1101 Ocean Front Walk, Venice. Not Israeli but Lebanese, his name was Saladin Nader, age thirty-nine. Unemployed since starring in Broken Wings, the movie about the poet Kahlil Gibran, he remembered picking up the two hitchhiking girls in early August 1969. He described both Sandy and Linda accurately, including the fact that Sandy was noticeably pregnant; picked out photos of each; and related essentially the same story Linda had told me, neglecting to mention only that he and Linda had gone to bed.

After questioning Nader, the investigating officers, according to their report, “explained to subject the purpose of the interview, and he displayed amazement that such sweet and sociable young ladies would attempt to inflict any harm upon his body after he assisted them to the best of his ability.”

Though their stories jibed, Nader was only partial support for Linda’s testimony, as (fortunately for him, and thanks to Linda) he did not encounter the group that night.

One floor down was the apartment of the man on whose door Linda had knocked. Linda had pointed out the door, 403, for us, and I’d asked Gutierrez and Patchett to try to locate the man, hopeful he’d recall the incident. When I got their report, it was on the tenant of 404. Returning, they learned from the landlady that 403 had been vacant during August 1969. It was possible some transient may have been staying there, she said—it wouldn’t have been the first time—but beyond that we drew a blank.

According to the rental manager of 3921 Topanga Canyon Boulevard—the house next to the Malibu Feedbin where Linda said she, Sadie, and Clem had stopped just before dawn—a group of hippies had moved into the unrented building about nine months ago. There had been, he said, as many as fifty different persons living there, but he didn’t know any of them. Sartuchi and Nielsen, however, did manage to locate two young girls who had lived there from about February to October 1969. Both were friends of Susan Atkins, and both recalled meeting Linda Kasabian. One recalled that once Susan, another girl, and a male had visited them. She remembered the incident—though not the date, the time, or the other persons present—because she was “on acid” and the trio “appeared evil.” Both girls admitted that during this period they were “stoned” so much of the time their recollections were hazy. As witnesses, they would be next to useless.

Nor was LAPD able to locate any of the drivers who had picked up the hitchhikers that night.

The LaBianca detectives handled all these investigations. Going over their reports, I was convinced they had done everything possible to run down the leads. But we were left with the fact that of the six to eight persons who could have corroborated Linda Kasabian’s story of the events of that second night, we hadn’t found even one. I anticipated that the defense would lean heavily on this.


Any defendant may file at least one affidavit of prejudice against a judge and have him removed from the case. It isn’t even necessary to give a reason for such a challenge. On April 13, Manson filed such an affidavit against Judge William Keene. Judge Keene accepted Manson’s challenge, and the case was reassigned to Judge Charles H. Older. Though more affidavits were expected—each defendant was allowed one—the defense attorneys, after a brief huddle, decided to accept Older.

I’d never tried a case before him. By reputation, the fifty-two-year-old jurist was a “no nonsense” judge. A World War II fighter pilot who had served with the Flying Tigers, he had been appointed to the bench by Governor Ronald Reagan in 1967. This would be his biggest case to date.

The trial date was set for June 15. Because of the delay, we were again hopeful that Watson might be tried with the others, but that hope was quickly dashed when Watson’s attorney requested, and received, still another postponement in the extradition proceedings.


The retrial of Beausoleil for the Hinman murder had begun in late March. Chief witness for the prosecution was Mary Brunner, first member of the Manson Family, who testified that she had witnessed Beausoleil stab Hinman to death. Brunner was given complete immunity in exchange for her testimony. Claiming that he had only been a reluctant witness, Beausoleil himself took the stand and fingered Manson as Hinman’s murderer. The jury believed Brunner. In Beausoleil’s first trial the case against him had been so weak that our office hadn’t asked for the death penalty. This time prosecutor Burton Katz did, and got it.

Two things concerned me about the trial. One was that Mary Brunner did everything she could to absolve Manson—making me wonder just how far Sadie, Katie, and Leslie would be willing to go to save Charlie—and the other that Danny DeCarlo hedged on many of his previous statements to LAPD. I was worried that Danny might be getting ready to split, all too aware that he had little reason to stick around. Though the motorcycle engine theft charge had been dropped in return for his testimony in the Hinman case, we had made no deal with him on Tate-LaBianca. Moreover, although he had a good chance of sharing the $25,000 reward, it was not necessary that he testify to obtain it.

DeCarlo and Brunner did testify that same month before the grand jury, which brought additional indictments against Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, and Bruce Davis on the Hinman murder. But testifying before a grand jury in secret and having to face Manson himself in court were two different things.

Nor could I blame Danny for being apprehensive. As soon as the grand jury indictments were made public, Davis, who had been living with the Family at Spahn, vanished.

MAY 1970

In early May, Crockett, Poston, and Watkins encountered Clem, Gypsy, and a youth named Kevin, one of the newer Family members, in Shoshone. Clem told Watkins: “Charlie says that when he gets out you all had better not be around the desert.”

From a source at Spahn Ranch we learned that Family members there appeared to be “preparing for some activity.”

The Manson girls were interviewed so often that they were on a first-name basis with many of the reporters. Inadvertently, several times they implied that Charlie would be out soon. Perhaps significantly, the girls said nothing about his being “acquitted” or “released.”

It was obvious that something was being planned.


On May 11, Susan Atkins filed a declaration repudiating her grand jury testimony. Both Manson and Atkins used the declaration as basis for habeas corpus motions, which were subsequently denied.

Aaron and I conferred with District Attorney Younger. Sadie couldn’t have it both ways. Either she had told the complete truth before the grand jury and, according to our agreement, we would not seek a first degree murder conviction against her, or, according to her recent declaration, she recanted her testimony, in which case the agreement was breached.

My personal opinion was that Susan Atkins had testified “substantially truthfully” before the grand jury, with these exceptions: her omission of the three other murder attempts the second night; her hedging on whether she had stabbed Voytek Frykowski (which she had admitted to me when I interviewed her); and my instinctive, but strong, feeling (corroborated by her confessions to Virginia Graham and Ronnie Howard) that she had lied when she testified that she had not stabbed Sharon Tate. Under Atkins’ agreement with our office, “substantially” wasn’t good enough—she had to tell the complete truth.

With her declaration, however, the issue was closed. On the basis of her repudiation, Aaron and I asked Younger’s permission to seek the death penalty against Susan Atkins as well as the other defendants. He granted it.

Sadie’s about-face was not unexpected. Another change, however, caught almost everyone off guard. In court to petition for a new trial, Bobby Beausoleil produced an affidavit, signed by Mary Brunner, stating that her testimony in his trial “was not true,” and that she had lied when she said Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death.

Although obviously stunned, prosecutor Burt Katz argued that the other evidence in the trial was sufficient to convict Beausoleil.

Investigating further, Burt learned that a few days before she was due to testify, Mary Brunner had been visited by Squeaky and Brenda at her parents’ home in Wisconsin. She was again visited by Squeaky, this time accompanied by Sandy, two days before she signed the affidavit. Burt charged that the girls, representing Manson, had coerced Mary Brunner into repudiating her testimony.

Called to the stand, Mary Brunner first denied this, then, after conferring with counsel, did another about-face, and repudiated her repudiation. Her testimony in the trial was true, she said. Still later she again reversed herself.

Eventually, Beausoleil’s motion for a new trial was denied, and he was sent to San Quentin’s Death Row to wait out his appeal. The District Attorney’s Office was left with a perplexing legal dilemma, however. After her testimony in the Beausoleil trial, the Court had granted Mary Brunner complete immunity for her part in the Hinman murder.

Except for the possibility that she might be tried for perjury, it looked as if Mary Brunner had managed to beat the rap.


Indicted on the Hinman murder, Manson appeared before Judge Dell to request that he be allowed to represent himself. When Dell denied the motion, Manson requested that Irving Kanarek and Daye Shinn be made his attorneys. Judge Dell ruled there would be “a clear conflict of interest” if Shinn represented both Manson and Susan Atkins. This left Kanarek.

Commenting, “I think we are well aware of Mr. Kanarek and his record,” Manson told Judge Dell, “I do not wish to hire this man as my attorney, but you leave me no alternative. I understand what I am doing. Believe me, I understand what I am doing. This is the worst man in town I could pick, and you are pushing him on me.” If Dell would permit him to represent himself, Manson said, then he would forget about having Kanarek.

“I am not going to be blackmailed,” Dell told Manson.

MANSON “Then I will take it up to the bigger father.”

Judge Dell said that Manson could, of course, appeal his decision. However, since Manson was already appealing the revocation of his pro per status in the Tate-LaBianca proceedings, Dell was willing to postpone a final decision until that writ was either accepted or rejected.


Aaron and I discussed the possible Kanarek substitution with District Attorney Younger. In view of his record, with Kanarek on the case the prospect that the trial might last two or more years was very real. Younger asked us if there was any legal basis for removing an attorney from a case. We told him we knew of none; however, I’d research the law. Younger asked me to prepare an argument for the Court, and suggested that it stress Kanarek’s incompetency. From what I had learned of Kanarek, I did not feel that he was incompetent. His obstructionism, I felt, was the major issue.

I had no trouble obtaining evidence of this. From judges, deputy DAs, even jurors, I heard examples of his dilatory, obstructionist tactics. One deputy DA, on learning that he had to oppose Kanarek a second time, quit the office; life was too short for that, he said.

Anticipating that Manson would ask to substitute Kanarek on Tate-LaBianca as well as Hinman, I began preparing my argument. At the same time I had another idea which just might make that argument unnecessary.

Maybe, with the right bait, I could persuade Manson to dump Kanarek himself.


On May 25, I was going through LAPD’s tubs on the LaBianca case when I noticed, standing against the wall, a wooden door. On it was a multicolored mural; the lines from a nursery rhyme, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7—All Good Children Go to Heaven”; and, in large letters, the words “HELTER SKELTER IS COMING DOWN FAST.”

Stunned, I asked Gutierrez, “Where in the hell did you get that?”

“Spahn Ranch.”

“When?”

He checked the yellow property envelope affixed to the door.

“November 25, 1969.”

“You mean for five months, while I’ve been desperately trying to link the killers with Helter Skelter, you’ve had this door, with those very words on it, the same bloody words that were found at the LaBianca residence?”

Gutierrez admitted they had. The door, it turned out, had been found on a cabinet in Juan Flynn’s trailer. It had been considered so unimportant that to date no one had even bothered to book it into evidence.

Gutierrez did so the next day.

Again, as I had on numerous other occasions, I told the detectives that I wanted to interview Juan Flynn.

I had no idea how much Flynn actually knew. Along with Brooks Poston and Paul Watkins, the Panamanian cowboy had been interviewed by the authors of a quickie paperback that appeared even before the trial, but he obviously held back a great deal, since many of the incidents I’d learned about from Brooks and Paul were not included.

JUNE 1–14, 1970

Two weeks before the start of the Tate-LaBianca trial, Manson requested, and obtained, the substitution of Irving Kanarek for Ronald Hughes.

I asked for a conference in chambers. Once there, I pointed out that the legal issues in this case were tremendously complex. Even with attorneys known to handle matters expeditiously, the trial could last four or more months. “But,” I added, “it is my frank opinion that if Mr. Kanarek is permitted to represent Mr. Manson, the case could last several years.” I noted, “It is common knowledge among the legal profession that Mr. Kanarek is a professional obstructionist. I believe the man is conscientious. I believe he is sincere.” However, I continued, “there is no way for the Court to stop Mr. Kanarek. Even holding him in contempt will not stop this man, because he will gladly spend the night in jail.”

Rather than have the trial become “a burlesque on justice,” I had an alternative suggestion, I told the Court. It was one I had considered for a long time and, though I had discussed it with Aaron, I knew it would come as a surprise to everyone else.

“As a possible solution, the prosecution has no objection to permitting Mr. Manson to represent himself, as he has desired throughout, and let him have an attorney of his choice to assist him…”

Manson looked at me with a startled expression. This was probably the last thing he had expected to hear from the prosecution.

Although I was hoping that, given this opportunity, Manson would dump Kanarek, I was sincere in making the suggestion. From the start Manson had maintained that only he could speak for himself. He’d strongly implied that, failing in this, he’d make trouble. And there was no question in my mind that this was his reason for choosing Kanarek.

Too, even though lacking formal education, Manson was bright. Having dominated them in the past, he could cross-examine such prosecution witnesses as Linda Kasabian, Brooks Poston, and other ex–Family members with probably more effectiveness than many “straight” attorneys. And, to assist him in legal matters, he would have not only his own lawyer but three other experienced attorneys alongside him at the counsel table. Also, looking far ahead, I was concerned that the denial of Manson’s request to defend himself might be an issue on appeal.

Aaron then quoted Manson’s own statement, made in Judge Dell’s court, that Kanarek was the worst man he could pick.

Kanarek objected so strongly to the proceedings that Judge Older remarked, “Now the things that Mr. Stovitz and Mr. Bugliosi said about you, Mr. Kanarek, while they might appear to be unfair, there certainly is, as a matter of common knowledge among the judges in this court, a good deal of truth in what they say. I am not impugning your personal motives, but you do have a reputation for taking an inordinately long time to do what someone else can do in a much shorter period…”

However, Older said, the only reason he was considering the matter was that he wanted to be absolutely sure Manson wanted Kanarek as his attorney. His remarks before Judge Dell had injected some doubt on that point.

In one respect, Manson replied, Kanarek would be the best attorney in town; “in a lot of respects, he would be the worst attorney that I could take.” But, Manson continued, “I don’t think there is any attorney that can represent me as well as I can myself. I am smart enough to realize that I am not an attorney, and I will sit behind these men and I won’t make a scene. I am not here to make trouble…

“There is a lot involved here that does not meet the eye. A person is born, he goes to school, he learns what he is told in a book, and he lives his life by what he knows. The only thing he knows is what someone has told him. He is educated; he does what an educated person does.

“But go out of this realm, you go into a generation gap, a free-love society, you get into insane drugs or smoking marijuana.” And in this other world the reality differs, Manson noted. Here experience alone is the teacher; here you discover “there is no way that you can know the taste of water unless you drink it or unless it has rained on you or unless you jump in the river.”

THE COURT “All I want to do, Mr. Manson, is find out if you are happy with Mr. Kanarek or if you have second thoughts.”

MANSON “I thought I explained that. I would not be happy with anyone but myself. No man can represent me.”

I asked the Court’s permission to question Manson. Though Kanarek objected, Charlie was agreeable. I asked him if he had consulted the other defense attorneys as to whether he should be represented by Kanarek. I had heard that two of them, Fitzgerald and Reiner, were very unhappy about Kanarek’s entry into the case.

MANSON “I don’t ask other men’s opinions. I have my own.”

BUGLIOSI “Do you feel Mr. Kanarek can give you a fair trial?”

MANSON “I do. I feel you can give me a fair trial. You showed me your fairness already.”

BUGLIOSI “I will give you a fair trial, Charlie, but I am out to convict you.”

MANSON “What’s a fair trial?”

BUGLIOSI “That’s when the truth comes out.”

Declaring, “It would be a miscarriage of justice to permit you to represent yourself in a case having the complications this case has,” Older again asked Manson, “Are you affirming Mr. Kanarek as your attorney?”

“I am forced into a situation,” Manson replied. “My second alternative is to cause you as much trouble as possible.”

A little over a week later we’d get our first sample of what he had in mind.


On being taken to Patton State Hospital in January, sixteen-year-old Dianne Lake had been labeled “schizophrenic” by a staff psychologist. Though I knew the defense would probably try to use this to discredit her testimony, I wasn’t too worried, since psychologists are not doctors and are not qualified to make medical diagnoses. The staff psychiatrists, who were doctors, said her problems were emotional, not mental: behavioral disorders of adolescence plus possible drug dependence. They also felt she had made excellent progress and were now sure she would be able to testify at the trial.

With Sergeant Patchett, I visited Patton in early June. The little ragamuffin I’d first seen in the jail in Independence now looked like any teenager. She was getting straight A’s in school, Dianne told me proudly; not until getting away from the Family, she said, had she realized how good life was. Now, looking back, she felt she had been in a “pit of death.”

In interviewing Dianne, I learned a number of things which hadn’t come out in her earlier interviews. While they were in the desert together, at Willow Springs, Patricia Krenwinkel had told her that she had dragged Abigail Folger from the bedroom into the living room of the Tate residence. And Leslie Van Houten, after admitting to her that she had stabbed someone, had commented that at first she had been reluctant to do so, but then she’d discovered the more you stabbed, the more fun it was.

Dianne also said that on numerous occasions, in June, July, and August of 1969, Manson had told the Family, “We have to be willing to kill pigs in order to help the black man start Helter Skelter.”

And several times—she believed it was in July, about a month before the Tate-LaBianca murders—Manson had also told them, “I’m going to have to start the revolution.”

The interview lasted several hours. One thing Dianne said struck me as very sad. Squeaky, Sandy, and the other girls in the Family could never love anyone else, not even their parents, she told me. “Why not?” I asked. “Because,” she replied, “they’ve given all their love to Charlie.”

I left Patton with the very strong feeling that Dianne Lake had now escaped that fate.


In court on June 9, Manson suddenly turned in his chair so his back was to the judge. “The Court has shown me no respect,” Manson said, “so I am going to show the Court the same thing.” When Manson refused to face the Court, Judge Older, after several warnings, had the bailiffs remove him from the courtroom. He was taken to the lockup adjoining the court, which was equipped with a speaker system so he could hear, though not participate in, the proceedings.

Although Older gave him several opportunities to return, on the understanding that he would agree to conduct himself properly, Manson rejected them.


We had not given up in our attempt to have Irving Kanarek taken off the case. On June 10, I filed a motion requesting an evidentiary hearing on the Kanarek-Hughes substitution. The thrust of my motion: Manson did not have the constitutional right to have Kanarek as his lawyer.

The right of counsel of one’s choice, I argued, was not an unlimited, unqualified, absolute right. This right was given to defendants seeking a favorable verdict for themselves. It was obvious from Manson’s statements that he wasn’t picking Kanarek for this reason, but rather to subvert, thwart, and paralyze the due and proper administration of justice. “And we submit that he cannot use the right to counsel of his choice in such an ignoble fashion.”

Kanarek responded that he would be glad to let the Court read the transcripts of his cases, to see if he used dilatory tactics. I thought I saw Judge Older wince at this, but I wasn’t sure. Older’s somber expression rarely changed. It was very difficult to guess what he was thinking.

In researching Kanarek’s record, I had learned something which was not part of my hour-long argument. For all his filibustering, disconnected ramblings, senseless motions, and wild, irresponsible charges, Irving Kanarek frequently scored points. He noted, for example, that our office hadn’t tried to challenge Ronald Hughes, who had never tried a case before, on the grounds that his representation might hurt Manson. And, in conclusion, Kanarek, very much to the point, asked that the prosecution’s motion be struck “on the basis there is no basis for it in law.”

I’d frankly admitted this in my argument, but had noted that this was “a situation so aggravated that it literally cries out to the Court to take a pioneer stand.”

Judge Older disagreed. My motion for an evidentiary hearing was denied.

Although District Attorney Younger had Older’s ruling appealed to the California Supreme Court, it was let stand. Though we had tried to save the taxpayers perhaps several million dollars and everyone involved a great deal of time and unnecessary effort, Irving Kanarek would remain on the Tate-LaBianca cases just as long as Charles Manson wanted him.


If Your Honor does not respect Mr. Manson’s rights, you need not respect mine,” Susan Atkins said, rising and turning her back to the Court. Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel followed suit. When Older suggested that the defense attorneys confer with their clients, Fitzgerald admitted that would do little good, “because there is a minimum of client control in this case.” After several warnings, Older had the girls removed to one of the vacant jury rooms upstairs, and a speaker was placed there also.

I had mixed feelings about all this. If the girls parroted Manson’s actions during the trial, it would be additional evidence of his domination. However, their removal from the courtroom might also be considered reversible error on appeal, and the last thing we wanted was to have to try the whole case over again.

Under the current law, Allen vs. Illinois, defendants can be removed from a courtroom if they engage in disruptive conduct. Another case, however, People vs. Zamora, raised a subtler point. In that case, in which there were twenty-two defendants, the counsel tables were so situated that it was extremely difficult for the attorneys to communicate with their clients while court was in session. This led to a reversal by the Appellate Court, which ruled that the right of counsel implies the right of consultation between a defendant and his lawyer during the trial.

I mentioned this to Older, suggesting that some type of telephonic communication be set up. Older felt it unnecessary.

After the noon recess the girls professed a willingness to return. Speaking for all three, Patricia Krenwinkel told Older, “We should be able to be present at this play here.”

To Krenwinkel it was just that—a play. Remaining standing, she turned her back to the bench. Atkins and Van Houten immediately mimicked her. Older again ordered all three removed.


Bringing all the defendants back into court the next day, Judge Older warned them that if they persisted in their conduct before a jury, they could badly jeopardize their cases. “So I would ask you to seriously reconsider what you are doing, because I think you are hurting yourselves.” After again attempting to revert to pro per status, Manson said, “O.K., then you leave me nothing. You can kill me now.”

Still standing, Manson bowed his head and stretched out his arms in a crucifixion pose. The girls quickly emulated him. When the deputies attempted to seat them, all resisted, Manson ending up scuffling with a deputy on the floor. Two deputies bodily carried him to the lockup, while the matrons took the girls out.

KANAREK “I would ask medical assistance for Mr. Manson, Your Honor.”

THE COURT “I will ask the bailiff to check and see if he needs any. If he does, he will get it.”

He didn’t. Once in the lockup, out of sight of the press and spectators, Manson became an entirely different person. He donned another mask, that of the complaisant prisoner. Having spent more than half his life in reformatories and prisons, he knew the role all too well. Thoroughly “institutionalized,” he played by the rules, rarely causing trouble in the jail itself.


After the noon recess we had several examples of Kanarek in action. Arguing a search-and-seizure motion, he said that Manson’s arrest was illegal because “Mr. Caballero and Mr. Bugliosi conspired to have Miss Atkins make certain statements” and that “the District Attorney’s Office suborned the perjury.”

As ridiculous as this was, subornation of perjury is an extremely serious charge, and since Kanarek was making it in open court, in front of the press, I reacted accordingly.

BUGLIOSI “Your Honor, if Mr. Kanarek is going to have diarrhea of the mouth, I think he should make an offer of proof back in chambers. This man is totally irresponsible. I urgently request the Court we go back in chambers. God knows what this man is going to say next.”

THE COURT “Confine yourself to the argument, Mr. Kanarek.”

The argument, when Kanarek did eventually get around to making it, left even the other defense attorneys looking stunned. Kanarek stated that since “the warrant of arrest for the defendant Manson was based on illegally obtained and perjured testimony, therefore the seizure of the person of Mr. Manson was illegal. The person of Mr. Manson must, therefore, be suppressed from evidence.”

While I was wondering how you could suppress a person, Kanarek provided an answer: he asked that “that piece of physical evidence which is Mr. Manson’s physical body” not “be before the Court conceptually to be used in evidence.” Presumably, by Kanarek’s convoluted logic, witnesses shouldn’t even be allowed to identify Manson.

Older denied the motion.

Another aspect of Irving Kanarek was exhibited that day: a suspicious distrust that at times bordered on paranoia. The prosecution had told the Court that we would not introduce Susan Atkins’ grand jury testimony in the trial. One would think the introduction of this testimony—in which Susan stated that Charles Manson ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders—would have been the last thing Manson’s attorney would want in evidence. But Kanarek, suddenly wary, charged that if we weren’t using those statements, “they must be tainted in some way.”

Older recessed court for the weekend. The preliminaries were over. The trial would begin the following Monday—June 15, 1970.

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