Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

NOVEMBER 19–DECEMBER 20, 1970

Fitzgerald said the defense had rested. But the three female defendants now shouted that they wanted to testify.

Calling counsel into chambers, Judge Older demanded to know exactly what was going on.

There had been a split between the defense attorneys and their clients, Fitzgerald said. The girls wanted to testify; their attorneys opposed this, and wanted to rest their case.

Only after an hour of intense discussion did the real reason for the split come out, in an off-record admission by Fitzgerald:

Sadie, Katie, and Leslie wanted to take the stand and testify that they had planned and committed the murders—and that Manson was not involved!

Charlie had tried to explode his bombshell, but the attorneys for the girls had managed to defuse it, at least temporarily. Standing up against Manson for the first time, Ronald Hughes observed: “I refuse to take part in any proceeding where I am forced to push a client out the window.”

The legal problems thus created were immense, but basically they came down to the question of which took precedence: the right to effective counsel or the right to testify. Worried that whichever course Older took might be reversible error on appeal, I suggested he take the matter to the State Supreme Court for a decision. Older, however, decided that even though the attorneys had rested, and had advised their clients not to take the stand, the right to testify “supersedes any and all other rights.” The girls would be permitted to take the stand.

Older asked Manson if he also wished to testify. “No,” he replied, then, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “That is, not at this time anyway.”

On returning to open court, Kanarek made a motion to sever Manson so he could be tried separately.

Charlie was now attempting to abandon ship, while letting the girls sink. After denying the motion, Older had the jury brought in and Susan Atkins took the stand and was sworn. Daye Shinn, however, refused to question her, stating that if he asked the questions she’d prepared, they would incriminate her.[77]

This created a whole new problem. Returning to chambers, Older remarked: “It is becoming perfectly clear that this entire maneuver by the defense is simply one…to wreck the trial…I do not intend to permit this to happen.”

Still in chambers, and outside the presence of the jury, Susan Atkins told Judge Older that she wanted to testify to “the way it happened. The way I saw it happen.”

THE COURT “You are subjecting yourself to the extreme risk of convicting yourself out of your own mouth, do you understand that?”

ATKINS “I understand that.” She added that if she was convicted, “let them convict me on the truth. I do not wish to be convicted on a pack of lies taken out of context and just scattered every which way. Because, Mr. Bugliosi, your foundation is just crumbling. I have watched it crumble. You have been a sly, sneaky fox.”

BUGLIOSI “Why do you want to put it back together for me, Sadie, if it is crumbling? You should be happy. You can go back to Barker Ranch if it is crumbling. Why do you want to take the stand to help me?”

Shinn said he would ask to be relieved as counsel if Older ordered him to question his client. Fitzgerald replied similarly, adding, “As far as I am concerned, it would be sort of aiding and abetting a suicide.”

The matter was unresolved when court recessed for the day.

The following day Manson surprised everyone by saying that he too wanted to testify. In fact, he wanted to go on the stand before the others. Because of possible Aranda problems, however, it was decided that Manson should first testify outside the presence of the jury.

Manson was sworn. Rather than have Kanarek question him, he requested and received permission to make a statement.

He spoke for over an hour. He began almost apologetically, at first speaking so low that the spectators in the crowded courtroom had to lean forward to hear. But after a few minutes the voice changed, grew stronger, more animated, and, as I’d already discovered in my conversations with him, when this happened his face seemed to change too. Manson the nobody. Manson the martyr. Manson the teacher. Manson the prophet. He became all these, and more, the metamorphosis often occurring in midsentence, his face a light show of shifting emotions until it was not one face but a kaleidoscope of different faces, each real, but only for the moment.

He rambled, he digressed, he repeated himself, but there was something hypnotic about the whole performance. In his own strange way he was trying to weave a spell, not unlike the ones he had cast over his impressionable followers.

MANSON “There has been a lot of charges and a lot of things said about me and brought against the co-defendants in this case, of which a lot could be cleared up and clarified…

“I never went to school, so I never growed up to read and write too good, so I have stayed in jail and I have stayed stupid, and I have stayed a child while I have watched your world grow up, and then I look at the things that you do and I don’t understand…

“You eat meat and you kill things that are better than you are, and then you say how bad, and even killers, your children are. You made your children what they are…

“These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn’t teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.

“Most of the people at the ranch that you call the Family were just people that you did not want, people that were alongside the road, that their parents had kicked out, that did not want to go to Juvenile Hall. So I did the best I could and I took them up on my garbage dump and I told them this: that in love there is no wrong…

“I told them that anything they do for their brothers and sisters is good if they do it with a good thought…

“I was working at cleaning up my house, something that Nixon should have been doing. He should have been on the side of the road, picking up his children, but he wasn’t. He was in the White House, sending them off to war…

“I don’t understand you, but I don’t try. I don’t try to judge nobody. I know that the only person I can judge is me…But I know this: that in your hearts and your own souls, you are as much responsible for the Vietnam war as I am for killing these people…

“I can’t judge any of you. I have no malice against you and no ribbons for you. But I think that it is high time that you all start looking at yourselves, and judging the lie that you live in.

“I can’t dislike you, but I will say this to you: you haven’t got long before you are all going to kill yourselves, because you are all crazy. And you can project it back at me…but I am only what lives inside each and every one of you.

“My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system…I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you.

“I have ate out of your garbage cans to stay out of jail. I have wore your second-hand clothes…I have done my best to get along in your world and now you want to kill me, and I look at you, and then I say to myself, You want to kill me? Ha! I’m already dead, have been all my life. I’ve spent twenty-three years in tombs that you built.

“Sometimes I think about giving it back to you; sometimes I think about just jumping on you and letting you shoot me…If I could, I would jerk this microphone off and beat your brains out with it, because that is what you deserve, that is what you deserve…

“If I could get angry at you, I would try to kill every one of you. If that’s guilt, I accept it…

“These children, everything they done, they done for the love of their brother…

“If I showed them that I would do anything for my brother—including giving my life for my brother on the battlefield—and then they pick up their banner, and they go off and do what they do, that is not my responsibility. I don’t tell people what to do…

“These children [indicating the female defendants] were finding themselves. What they did, if they did whatever they did, is up to them. They will have to explain that to you…

“It’s all your fear. You look for something to project it on, and you pick out a little old scroungy nobody that eats out of a garbage can, and that nobody wants, that was kicked out of the penitentiary, that has been dragged through every hellhole that you can think of, and you drag him and put him in a courtroom.

“You expect to break me? Impossible! You broke me years ago. You killed me years ago…”

Older asked Manson if he had anything further to say.

MANSON “I have killed no one and I have ordered no one to be killed.

“I may have implied on several different 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.”

Some called him Christ, Manson said. In prison his name was a number. Some now want a sadistic fiend, and so they see him as that. So be it. Guilty. Not guilty. They are only words. “You can do anything you want with me, but you cannot touch me because I am only my love…If you put me in the penitentiary, that means nothing because you kicked me out of the last one. I didn’t ask to get released. I liked it in there because I like myself.”

Telling Manson, “You seem to be getting far afield,” Older asked him to stick to the issues.

MANSON “The issues?…Mr. Bugliosi is a hard-driving prosecutor, polished education, a master of words, semantics. He is a genius. He has got everything that every lawyer would want to have except one thing: a case. He doesn’t have a case. Were I allowed to defend myself, I could have proven this to you…

“The evidence in this case is a gun. There was a gun that laid around the ranch. It belonged to everybody. Anybody could have picked that gun up and done anything they wanted to do with it. I don’t deny having that gun. That gun has been in my possession many times.

“Like the rope was there.” Sure he’d bought the rope, Manson admitted, 150 feet of it, “because you need rope on a ranch.”

The clothes? “It is really convenient that Mr. Baggot found those clothes. I imagine he got a little taste of money for that.”

The bloodstains? “Well, they are not exactly bloodstains. They are benzidine reaction.”

The leather thong? “How many people have ever worn moccasins with leather thongs?”

The photos of the seven bodies, 169 stab wounds? “They put the hideous bodies on display and they imply: If he gets out, see what will happen to you.”

Helter Skelter? “It means confusion, literally. It doesn’t mean any war with anyone. It doesn’t mean that some people are going to kill other people…Helter Skelter is confusion. Confusion is coming down around you fast. If you can’t see the confusion coming down around you fast, you can call it what you wish.”

Conspiracy? “Is it a conspiracy that the music is telling the youth to rise up against the establishment because the establishment is rapidly destroying things? Is that a conspiracy?

“The music speaks to you every day, but you are too deaf, dumb, and blind to even listen to the music…

“It is not my conspiracy. It is not my music. I hear what it relates. It says ‘Rise,’ it says ‘Kill.’

“Why blame it on me? I didn’t write the music.”

About the witnesses. “For example, Danny DeCarlo. He said that I hate black men, and he said that we thought alike…But actually all I ever did with Danny DeCarlo or any other human being was reflect him back at himself. If he said he did not like the black man, I would say ‘O.K.’ So consequently he would drink another beer and walk off and say ‘Charlie thinks like I do.’

“But actually he does not know how Charlie thinks because Charlie has never projected himself.

“I don’t think like you people. You people put importance on your lives. Well, my life has never been important to anyone…”

Linda Kasabian. She only testified against him because she saw him as her father and she never liked her father. “So she gets on the stand and she says when she looked in that man’s eyes that was dying, she knew that it was my fault. She knew it was my fault because she couldn’t face death. And if she can’t face death, that is not my fault. I can face death. I have all the time. In the penitentiary you live with it, with constant fear of death, because it is a violent world in there, and you have to be on your toes constantly.”

Dianne Lake. She wanted attention. She would make trouble, cause accidents to get it. She wanted a father to punish her. “So as any father would do, I conditioned her mind with pain to keep her from burning the ranch down.”

Yes, he was a father to the young girls and boys in the Family. But a father only in the sense that he taught them “not to be weak and not to lean on me.” Paul Watkins wanted a father. “I told him: ‘To be a man, boy, you have to stand up and be your own father.’ So he goes off to the desert and finds a father image in Paul Crockett.”

Yes, he put a knife to Juan Flynn’s throat. Yes, he told him he felt responsible for all of these killings. “I do feel some responsibility. I feel a responsibility for the pollution. I feel a responsibility for the whole thing.”

He didn’t deny that he had told Brooks Poston to get a knife and go kill the sheriff of Shoshone. “I don’t know the sheriff of Shoshone. I am not saying that I didn’t say it, but if I said it, at the time I may have thought it was a good idea.

“To be honest with you, I don’t recall ever saying ‘Get a knife and a change of clothes and go do what Tex says.’ Or I don’t recall saying ‘Get a knife and go kill the sheriff.’

“In fact, it makes me mad when someone kills snakes or dogs or cats or horses. I don’t even like to eat meat—that is how much I am against killing…

“I haven’t got any guilt about anything because I have never been able to see any wrong…I have always said: Do what your love tells you, and I do what my love tells me…Is it my fault that your children do what you do?

“What about your children?” Manson asked angrily, rising slightly in the witness chair as if he were about to spring forward and attack everyone in the courtroom. “You say there are just a few?

“There are many, many more, coming in the same direction.

“They are running in the streets—and they are coming right at you!”

I had only a few questions for Manson, none of which came from the notebooks I’d kept.

Q. “You say you are already dead, is that right, Charlie?”

A. “Dead in your mind or dead in my mind?”

Q. “Define it any way you want to.”

A. “As any child will tell you, dead is when you are no more. It is just when you are not there. If you weren’t there, you would be dead.”

Q. “How long have you been dead?” Manson evaded a direct reply.

Q. “To be precise about it, you think you have been dead for close to 2,000 years, don’t you?”

A. “Mr. Bugliosi, 2,000 years is relative to the second we live in.”

Q. “Suffice it to say, Department 104 is a long way from Calvary, isn’t that true?”

Manson had testified that all he wanted was to take his children and return to the desert. After I reminded him that “the only people who can set you free so that you can go back to the desert are the twelve jurors in this case,” and noting that, though he had testified for over an hour, “the jury in this case never heard a single, solitary word you said,” I posed one final question: “Mr. Manson, are you willing to testify in front of the jury and tell them the same things that you have testified to here in open court today?”

Kanarek objected. Older sustained the objection, and I concluded my cross.

To my surprise, Older later asked me why I hadn’t seriously cross-examined Manson. I’d thought the reason was obvious. I had nothing to gain, since the jury wasn’t present. I had lots and lots of questions for Charlie, several notebooks full, if he took the stand in the presence of the jury, but in the meantime I had no intention of giving him a dry run.

However, when Older asked Manson if he now wished to testify before the jury, Charlie replied, “I have already relieved all the pressure I had.”

As Manson left the stand and passed the counsel table, I overheard him tell the three girls: “You don’t have to testify now.”

The big question: what did he mean by “now”? I strongly suspected that Manson hadn’t given up but was only biding his time.

After the defense had introduced their exhibits, Judge Older recessed court for ten days to give the attorneys time to prepare their jury instructions and arguments.

This being his first trial, Ron Hughes had never argued before a jury before, or participated in drawing up the instructions which the judge would give the jury just before they began their deliberations. He was obviously looking forward to it, however. He confided to TV newscaster Stan Atkinson that he was convinced he could win an acquittal for Leslie Van Houten.

He wouldn’t even get the chance to try.

When court resumed on Monday, November 30, Ronald Hughes was absent.

Quizzed by Older, none of the other defense attorneys knew where he was. Fitzgerald said that he had last talked to Ron on Thursday or Friday, and that he sounded O.K. at that time. Hughes often spent his weekends camping at Sespe Hot Springs, a rugged terrain some 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles. There had been floods in the area the past weekend. It was possible that Hughes had been stranded there.

The next day we learned that Hughes had gone to Sespe on Friday with two teen-agers, James Forsher and Lauren Elder, in Miss Elder’s Volkswagen. The pair—who were questioned but not held—said that when it began raining, they had decided to return to L.A., but Hughes had decided to stay over until Sunday. When the two tried to leave, however, their auto became mired down, and they were forced to abandon it and hike out.

Three other youths had seen Hughes on the morning of the following day, Saturday the twenty-eighth. He was alone at the time and on high ground, well away from the flood area. Chatting with them briefly, he appeared neither ill nor in any danger. Polygraphed, the three were found to have no additional knowledge and they were not held. Since Forsher and Elder had last seen Hughes a day earlier, they apparently were not polygraphed and their story was taken at face value.

Owing to the continued bad weather, it was two days before the Ventura Sheriff’s Office could get up a helicopter to search the area. In the meantime, rumors abounded. One was to the effect that Hughes had deliberately skipped, either to avoid argument or to sabotage the trial. Knowing Ron, I seriously doubted if this was true. I became convinced it wasn’t when reporters visited the place where Hughes lived.

He slept on a mattress in a garage behind the home of a friend. According to reporters, the place was a mess—one remarked that he wouldn’t even let his dog sleep there. But on the wall of the garage, neatly framed and carefully hung, was Ronald Hughes’ bar certificate.

Although there were numerous reports that a man fitting Hughes’ description had been seen in various places—boarding a bus in Reno, driving on the San Bernardino freeway, drinking at a bar in Baja—none checked out. On December 2, Judge Older told Leslie Van Houten that he felt a co-counsel should be brought in to represent her during Hughes’ absence. Leslie said she would refuse any other attorney.

On December 3, after consulting with Paul Fitzgerald, Older appointed Maxwell Keith co-counsel for Leslie.

A quiet, somewhat shy man in his mid-forties, whose conservative clothing and courtroom manner were in sharp contrast to those of Hughes, Keith had an excellent reputation in the legal community. Those who knew him well described him as conscientious, totally ethical, and completely professional, and it was clear from the start that he would be representing his client and not Manson.

Sensing this, Manson asked to have all the defense attorneys dismissed (“They aren’t our lawyers; they won’t listen to us”) so he and the girls could represent themselves. He also demanded that the case be reopened so they could put on a defense. They had twenty-one witnesses waiting to testify, he said. Both requests were denied.

Keith had his work laid out for him. Before he could prepare his argument, he had to familiarize himself with 152 volumes of transcript, over 18,000 pages.

Though Older granted a delay until he could do so, he told all counsel: “We will continue to meet every day at 9 A.M. until further notice.”

Older obviously wanted to count heads.

Several days earlier Steve Kay had overheard Manson tell the girls, “Watch Paul; I think he’s up to something.” I made sure Fitzgerald learned of the conversation. One missing attorney was one more than enough.

Neither the air search nor a subsequent ground search of the Sespe area yielded any trace of Hughes. The abandoned Volkswagen was found, with a batch of court transcripts inside, but other papers Hughes was known to have had, including a secret psychiatric report on Leslie Van Houten, were missing.

On December 6, Paul Fitzgerald told reporters, “I think Ron is dead.” On December 7, an all-points bulletin was issued for Hughes, LASO admitting, “This is something you do when you have no other leads.” On December 8, Judge Older went to the Ambassador Hotel to inform the jury of the reason for the delay. He also told them: “It appears fairly certain that you will be sequestered over the Christmas holidays.” They took it much better than expected. On December 12, the search for Ronald Hughes was suspended.

The most persistent rumor was that Hughes had been murdered by the Family. There was, at this time, no evidence of this. But there was more than ample cause for speculation.

Though once little more than an errand boy for Manson, during the course of the trial Hughes had grown increasingly independent, until the two had finally split over whether there should be a defense—Hughes strongly opposing his client’s taking the stand to absolve Charlie. I also heard from several sources, including Paul Fitzgerald, that Hughes was afraid of Manson. It was possible that he showed this fear, which, in Manson’s case, was like waving a red flag before a bull. Fear turned Charlie on.

There could have been several reasons for his murder, if it was that. It may have been done to intimidate the other defense attorneys into letting Manson put on a defense during the penalty trial (one was so shaken by Hughes’ disappearance that he went on a bender which ended in his arrest for drunken driving). Equally likely, it could have been a tactic to delay the trial—with the hope that it would result in a mistrial, or set the stage for a reversal on appeal.

Speculation, nothing more. Except for one odd, perhaps unrelated, incident. On December 2, four days after Hughes was last seen alive, fugitives Bruce Davis and Nancy Pitman, aka Brenda McCann, voluntarily surrendered to the police. Two of the Family’s most hard-core members, Pitman had been missing for several weeks after failing to appear for sentencing on a forgery charge, while Davis—who had been involved in both the Hinman and Shea murders, who had picked up the gun with which Zero had “committed suicide” but had somehow left no prints, and who was the chief suspect in the slaying of two young Scientology students[78]—had evaded capture for over seven months.

Maybe it was just the proximity in time that linked the two events in my mind: Hughes’ disappearance; Davis’ and Pitman’s surprise surrender. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that in some way the two incidents might be related.

On December 18—three days before the Tate-LaBianca trial reconvened—the Los Angeles County grand jury indicted Steve Grogan, aka Clem; Lynette Fromme, aka Squeaky; Ruth Ann Moorehouse, aka Ouisch; Catherine Share, aka Gypsy; and Dennis Rice on charges of conspiracy to prevent and dissuade a witness (Barbara Hoyt) from attending a trial. Three other charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, were dismissed by Judge Choate on a 995 motion by the defense.

Although we had presumed—as I suspected the involved Family members had also—that an overdose of LSD could be fatal, we learned from medical experts that there was no known case of anyone’s dying from this cause. There were many cases, however, where LSD had resulted in death from misperception of surroundings: for example, a person, convinced he could fly, stepping out the window of a tall building. I thought of Barbara, running through the traffic in downtown Honolulu. That she hadn’t been killed was no fault of the Family. The result, however, was that, despite the best efforts of the LaBianca detectives, the DA’s Office had a very weak case.

Pending trial, four of the five were released on bail. They immediately returned to the corner outside the Hall of Justice, where they would remain, on and off, during most of the remainder of the trial. Since Ouisch, who had given Barbara the LSD-laden hamburger, was nearly nine months pregnant, Judge Choate released her on her own recognizance. She promptly fled the state.

Nancy Pitman, who had been arrested with Davis, was freed on the forgery charge. She was rearrested a few weeks later while trying to pass Manson a tab of LSD in the visitors’ room at the County Jail. After serving thirty days, she was again freed, to rejoin the group on the corner and, subsequently, to become involved in still another murder.

DECEMBER 21, 1970–JANUARY 25, 1971

When court reconvened, the four defendants created a disturbance—Manson throwing a paper clip at the judge, the girls accusing him of “doing away with Hughes”—all obviously planned actions to garner the day’s headlines.

Older ordered the four removed. As Sadie was being escorted out, she passed behind me. Though I didn’t see what happened, I felt it: she knocked over an exhibit board, hitting me on the back of the head. Those who witnessed the incident said it appeared she was lunging for the Buck knife, which was on a nearby table. Thereafter the knife was kept well out of the reach of the defendants.

Maxwell Keith then told the Court that though he now felt himself familiar with the evidence, from having read the transcripts and other documents, he was not at all sure he could effectively represent his client, since he had not been present when the witnesses testified and therefore could not judge their demeanor or credibility. On this basis, he requested a mistrial.

Though Keith argued persuasively, Judge Older denied the motion, observing that every day attorneys argue cases in appellate courts without having been present during the actual trials.

Once this and several other motions were out of the way, it was time for the People’s opening argument.[79]

During the guilt phase of a trial in California, the prosecution delivers an opening argument, which is followed by the opening argument of the defense (or rebuttal), and, last, a closing argument (or final summation) by the prosecution. Thus the People have the last word during the guilt trial.

During the penalty trial, if there is one, each side gives two arguments, with the defense being allowed to argue last.

I had spent several hundred hours preparing my opening argument for the guilt trial, starting even before the beginning of the trial itself. The result was contained in some 400 handwritten pages. But by this time I knew their contents so well I didn’t even need to read them, but only glanced at them periodically.

I began by discussing in depth, with charts and other aids, the points of law the jury would have to consider: murder, conspiracy, and so on. The instructions which the judge would give the jury are printed, formal statements of law that use nebulous, abstract terms that often even lawyers don’t understand. Moreover, the judge does not tell the jury how these rules of law apply to the facts of the case. Thus, in the jury’s mind, the rules are floating lazily in the air with no thread connecting them to anything tangible. In each case I try, I make it a point to supply that link, by the liberal use of common-sense examples, by translating legalese into words and thoughts the jury will understand, and by literally tying those rules to the evidence.

After I had done this, I got into the principal part of my opening argument, summarizing the testimony of each witness, often quoting verbatim the words he had used on the stand, interrelating this testimony with the other evidence, and drawing inferences from it. Though the presentation took three days, it was a tight, cohesive package, and by the time I had finished I felt confident that I had established, beyond all doubt, Manson’s control, his motives, his involvement, and the involvement of Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten.

Apparently it got to Charlie. At the end of my opening statement, he had tried to bribe deputy Maupin to free him. The night after I completed the first day of my opening argument, he tried to break out of jail.

Though the incident was officially denied by LASO, one of the deputies told me the details. Despite daily searches of both his person and his cell, Manson had managed to obtain an incredibly long piece of string, at the end of which he had attached a small weight. By some unknown means or manner—for the area was supposedly under constant surveillance—he had got the string across the walkway in front of his cell and out a window, where it reached a full ten stories to the ground. One or more confederates then attached the contraband. However, something must have happened which prevented Manson from pulling it up, for when a deputy came around the corner of the Hall of Justice the next morning, he spotted the string and its cargo: a lid of marijuana and a hacksaw blade.

Accepting a promise that they would behave, Judge Older permitted the three female defendants to return to court the next afternoon. Manson, who said he had no desire to return, remained in the lockup, listening to the proceedings from there.

I had just resumed my argument when Leslie created a disturbance. Sadie and Katie followed suit, and each of the three was again ordered removed. This time Sadie was led in front of the lecturn where I was standing. Suddenly, without warning, she kicked one of the female deputies in the leg, then grabbed some of my notes, tearing them in half. Grabbing them back, I involuntarily muttered, beneath my breath, “You little bitch!”

Though provoked, I regretted losing my cool.

The next day the Long Beach Independent bore the following front-page headline:

According to reporter Mary Neiswender: “The chaos was capped by the chief prosecutor swearing at and attempting to slug one of the defendants…Bugliosi slapped the girl’s hand, grabbed his notes and then swung at her shouting, ‘You little bitch!’”

In common with everyone else in the courtroom, Judge Older saw the incident somewhat differently. Describing it for the record, he branded the charge that I was struggling with Susan “absolutely false. There was no struggle between Mr. Bugliosi and anybody. What happened was [she] walked by the rostrum and grabbed the notes off the rostrum.”

While I’d like to say this was the only inaccurate press coverage during the trial, unfortunately the accounts of several reporters—including a representative of one of the wire services, whose reports appeared in papers all over the country—were often so error-filled that reading them gave one the feeling that the reporters had been attending another trial. On the other hand, such reporters as John Kendall of the Los Angeles Times and Bill Farr of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner did an excellent job, often catching little nuances even the attorneys missed.

After Krenwinkel had been removed, Judge Older called counsel to the bench and said that he had had it. “It is perfectly obvious to the Court that after lo, these many months, the defendants are operating in concert with each other…I don’t think any American court is required to subject itself to this kind of nonsense day after day when it is perfectly obvious that the defendants are using it as a stage for some kind of performance…” Older then stated that the defendants would not be permitted to return to court during the remainder of the guilt trial.

I had hoped to finish my argument before court recessed for the Christmas holiday, but Kanarek’s multitudinous objections prevented my doing so.

The feelings of the jurors at being sequestered over Christmas were exemplified by one who hung up the hotel menu and wrote “BAH, HUMBUG” across it. Though they were permitted family visits, and special parties had been arranged at the Ambassador, it was for most a miserable time. None had anticipated being away from home this long. Many were worried whether they would still have their jobs when the trial ended. And no one, including the judge, would even venture a guess when that might be.

On weekends both jurors and alternates—always accompanied by two male and two female deputies—had taken trips to such places as Disneyland, the movie studios, the San Diego Zoo, many probably seeing more of Southern California than they had in the whole of their lives. They had dinner at restaurants all over Los Angeles. They went bowling, swimming, even nightclubbing. But this was only partial compensation for their long ordeal.

To keep up morale, the bailiffs exhibited considerable ingenuity. For example, though the trial was perhaps the most widely publicized in history, there were days when most of the action took place in chambers and newsmen could find little to report. At such times bailiff Bill Murray often cut huge sections out of the newspapers, just to make the jurors think they were still in the headlines.

But the strain was getting to them. Older people for the most part, they were set in their ways. Inevitably, arguments broke out, factions developed. One temperamental male juror slapped bailiff Ann Orr one night when, against his wishes, she changed channels on the communal TV. Often Murray and Orr sat up to 4 or 5 A.M., listening to a juror’s complaints. As we neared the end of the guilt trial, I began worrying not about the evidence but about the personal disagreements the jurors might be carrying into the jury room with them when they began their deliberations.

It only takes one person to hang up a jury.

I concluded my opening argument on Monday, December 28, by telling the jury what I thought the defense’s case would be, thereby lessening the psychological impact of the defense attorney’s arguments.

“The defense will probably argue that there is no conspiracy…They will tell you that the Helter Skelter motive is absurd, ridiculous, unbelievable…They will tell you that the interpretation of the Beatles’ songs by Manson was normal…They will tell you that Linda is insane with LSD; that she made up her story to be granted immunity; that Linda’s testimony as an accomplice has not been corroborated…Probably they will tell you the reason why they never put on a defense is because the prosecution never proved their case…They will tell you that Charles Manson is not a killer; he wouldn’t harm a flea.

“They will tell you that Charlie was not the leader of the Family; he never ordered these murders…They will tell you that this has been a case of circumstantial evidence—as if there is something wrong with circumstantial evidence—completely disregarding the direct evidence by the way of Linda’s testimony.

“Out of 18,000 pages of transcript, they will come up here and there with a slight discrepancy between the testimony of one witness and another witness, which of course has to be expected, but they will tell you this means that the People’s witnesses are liars.”

I then asked the jury as intelligent men and women to conscientiously evaluate the evidence in this case, applying common sense and reason, and thereby reach a just and fair verdict.

“Under the law of this state and nation these defendants are entitled to have their day in court. They got that.

“They are also entitled to have a fair trial by an impartial jury. They also got that.

“That is all that they are entitled to!

“Since they committed these seven senseless murders, the People of the State of California are entitled to a guilty verdict.”

Toward the opening of his argument for Patricia Krenwinkel, Paul Fitzgerald said, “If we set out to rebut every witness the prosecution put on that stand we would be here until 1974,” unthinkingly emphasizing the strength of the People’s case, as well as the defense’s inability to answer it.

Fitzgerald’s argument was very disappointing. Not only were there many things he could have argued but didn’t, he repeatedly misstated the evidence. He said that Sebring was hanged; that all the victims had been stabbed to death; and Tim Ireland heard Parent scream. He referred to Sharon as “Mary Polanski”; he had the killers entering the Tate residence through a bedroom window; he confused how many times Frykowski had been stabbed and struck. He said Linda testified to five knives rather than three; he had Linda driving on the second night when Manson was, and vice versa; he had a deputy who wasn’t even present arresting Manson during the Spahn raid; and so on.

The prosecution stressed “murder, murder, murder,” Fitzgerald said. “Actually, you have to decide whether it is a murder.” The first thing the jury should decide, he continued, is “what crimes, if any, were committed.”

“Now, a .22 caliber pistol, it strikes me, is a classically inefficient way to kill somebody…”

“It obviously does not make sense to hang anybody…”

“If you were a mastermind criminal, if you had absolute power over the minds and bodies of bootlicking slaves, as they were referred to, would you send women out to do a man’s job?…Women, ladies and gentleman, are life-givers. They make love, they get pregnant, they deliver babies. They are life-givers, not takers away. Women are adverse to violence…”

Only a small portion of Fitzgerald’s argument was devoted to the evidence against his client. And rebuttal it was not.

He said that “there is doubt as to whether or not that fingerprint [found at the Tate residence] belongs to Patricia Krenwinkel.” Even presuming it did, he said, “It is entirely conceivable, possible, and reasonable that Patricia Krenwinkel was at that house as an invited guest or a friend.”

Some friend!

As for Krenwinkel’s so-called confession to Dianne Lake, that she dragged Abigail Folger from the bedroom to the living room, that wasn’t a confession at all, Fitzgerald said. She didn’t say when this occurred or where. Maybe it took place in San Francisco in 1967.

Fitzgerald did spend a great deal of time trying to destroy the credibility of Linda Kasabian. In my argument I had remarked: “Linda Kasabian was on that witness stand, ladies and gentleman, for eighteen days—an extraordinarily long period of time for any witness to testify in any case. I think you will agree with me that during those eighteen days Linda Kasabian and the truth were companions.” Fitzgerald challenged this. But he was unable to cite a single discrepancy in her account.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sure. Ask them.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KEITH “I will.”

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

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

Also, we had only Leslie’s word for it that Rosemary was dead when she stabbed her. “Only thirteen of Rosemary’s forty-one stab wounds were post-mortem. What about the other twenty-eight?”

Yes, Tex, Sadie, Katie, and Leslie were robots, zombies, automatons. No question about it. But only in the sense that they were totally subservient and obsequious and servile to Charles Manson. Only in that sense. “This does not mean that they did not want to do what Charles Manson told them to do and weren’t very willing participants in these murders. To the contrary, all the evidence goes the other way. There is no evidence that any of these defendants objected to Charles Manson about these two horrendous nights of murder.

“Only Linda Kasabian, down in Venice, said: ‘Charlie, I am not you. I can’t kill.’”

The others not only didn’t complain, I noted, they laughed when the Tate murders were described on TV; Leslie told Dianne that stabbing was fun, that the more she stabbed the more she enjoyed it; while Sadie told Virginia and Ronnie that it was better than a sexual climax.

“The fact that these three female defendants obeyed Charles Manson and did whatever he told them to do does not immunize them from a conviction of first degree murder. It offers no insulation, no protection whatsoever. If it did, then hired killers or trigger men for the Mafia would have a built-in defense for murder. All they would have to say is: ‘Well, I did what my boss told me to do.’”

Mr. Keith also “suggested that Watson and the three girls had some type of mental disability which prevented them from deliberating and premeditating, even prevented them from having malice aforethought.” The problem with this, I told the jury, was that the defense never introduced any evidence of insanity or diminished capacity; on the contrary, I reminded the jury, Fitzgerald described the girls as “bright, intuitive, perceptive, well educated,” while the evidence itself showed “these defendants were thinking very, very clearly on these two nights of murder.”

Cutting telephone wires, instructing Linda to listen for sounds, hosing blood off their bodies, disposing of their clothing and weapons, wiping prints—“their conduct clearly and unequivocally shows that on both nights they knew exactly what they were doing, that they intended to kill, they did kill, and they did everything possible to avoid detection.

“They were not suffering, ladies and gentlemen, from any diminished mental capacity. They were suffering from a diminished heart, a diminished soul.”

Still up to his old tricks, Kanarek had constantly interrupted my argument with frivolous objections. Even after another contempt citation and a $100 fine, Kanarek persisted. Calling counsel to the bench, Judge Older stated: “I have come to the regretful conclusion during the course of the trial that Mr. Kanarek appears to be totally without scruples, ethics, and professional responsibility so far as the trial of this lawsuit is concerned, and I want the record to clearly reflect that.”

KANAREK “May I be sworn?”

THE COURT “Mr. Kanarek, I wouldn’t believe you if you were.”

With the defense arguments out of the way, I spent an entire afternoon reviewing the eyewitness testimony of Linda Kasabian. Among the instructions Judge Older was going to give the jury was one regarding the testimony of an accomplice. Both Fitzgerald and Kanarek had read the start of it: “The testimony of an accomplice ought to be viewed with distrust.” They stopped there, however. I read the jury the rest: “This does not mean that you may arbitrarily disregard such testimony, but you should give it the weight to which you find it to be entitled after examining it with care and caution in the light of all the evidence in this case.”

I then took the evidence of other witnesses, totally independent of Linda Kasabian, and showed how it confirmed or supported her testimony. Linda testified that Watson shot Parent four times. Dr. Noguchi testified that Parent was shot four times. Linda testified that Parent slumped over toward the passenger side. The police photographs show Parent slumped over toward the passenger side. Linda testified that Watson slit the screen horizontally. Officer Whisenhunt testified that the screen was slit horizontally. For the night of the Tate murders alone, I noted forty-five instances where other evidence confirmed Linda’s account.

I concluded: “Ladies and gentlemen, the fingerprint evidence, the firearms evidence, the confessions, and all of the other evidence would convince the world’s leading skeptic that Linda Kasabian was telling the truth.”

I then cited every single piece of evidence against each of the defendants, starting with the girls and ending with Manson himself. I also noted that there were 238 references in the transcript to Manson’s domination over the daily lives of his Family and his co-defendants. The inference that he must have also been dominating and directing them on the two nights of murder was unmistakable, I pointed out.

Thinking back over those many months, I remembered how difficult it had been to come up with even a few examples of his domination.

Helter Skelter. During the trial the evidence of this had come in piece by piece, from the mouths of many witnesses. I assembled those pieces now, in one devastating package. Very forcefully, and I felt convincingly, I proved that Helter Skelter was the motive for these murders, and that that motive belonged to Charles Manson and Charles Manson alone. I argued that when the words “Helter Skelter” were found printed in blood, it was like finding Manson’s fingerprints at the scene.

We were nearly finished now. Within a few hours the jury would begin its deliberations. I ended my summation on a very powerful note.

“Charles Manson, ladies and gentlemen, said that he had the power to give life. On the nights of the Tate-LaBianca murders, he thought he had the concomitant right to take human life.

“He never had the right, but he did it anyway.

“On the hot summer night of August the eighth, 1969, Charles Manson, the Mephistophelean guru who raped and bastardized the minds of all those who gave themselves so totally to him, sent out from the fires of hell at Spahn Ranch three heartless, bloodthirsty robots and—unfortunately for him—one human being, the little hippie girl Linda Kasabian.

“The photographs of the victims show how very well Watson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel carried out their master Charles Manson’s mission of murder…

“What resulted was perhaps the most inhuman, nightmarish, horror-filled hour of savage murder and human slaughter in the recorded annals of crime. As the helpless, defenseless victims begged and screamed out into the night for their lives, their lifeblood gushed out of their bodies, forming rivers of gore.

“If they could have, I am sure that Watson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel would gladly have swum in that river of blood, and with orgasmic ecstasy on their faces. Susan Atkins, the vampira, actually tasted Sharon Tate’s blood…

“The very next night, Leslie Van Houten joined the group of murderers, and it was poor Leno and Rosemary LaBianca who were brutally butchered to death to satisfy Charles Manson’s homicidal madness…

“The prosecution put on a monumental amount of evidence against these defendants, much of it scientific, all of it conclusively proving that these defendants committed these murders.

“Based on the evidence that came from that witness stand, not only isn’t there any reasonable doubt of their guilt, which is our only burden, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever of their guilt…

“Ladies and gentlemen, the prosecution did its job in gathering and presenting the evidence. The witnesses did their job by taking that witness stand and testifying under oath. Now you are the last link in the chain of justice.

“I respectfully ask that after your deliberations you come back into this courtroom with the following verdict.” I then read in full the verdict the People wished.

I came now to the end of my argument, what the newspapers would call the “roll call of the dead.” After each name I paused, so the jurors could recall the person.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I quietly began, “Sharon Tate…Abigail Folger…Voytek Frykowski…Jay Sebring…Steven Parent…Leno LaBianca…Rosemary LaBianca…are not here with us now in this courtroom, but from their graves they cry out for justice. Justice can only be served by coming back to this courtroom with a verdict of guilty.”

Gathering up my notes, I thanked the jury for the patience and attention they had shown throughout the proceedings. It had been a very, very long trial, I noted, and an immense imposition on their personal and private lives. “You have been an exemplary jury. The plaintiff at this trial is the People of the State of California. I have all the confidence in the world that you will not let them down.”

After the noon recess, Judge Older instructed the jury. At 3:20 P.M., on Friday, January 15, 1971—exactly seven months after the start of the trial—the jury filed out to begin their deliberations.

The jury deliberated all day Saturday, then took Sunday off. On Monday they sent out two requests: that they be given a phonograph so they could play the Beatles’ White Album, which, though introduced in evidence and much discussed, had never been played in court; and that they be permitted to visit the Tate and LaBianca residences.

After lengthy conferences with counsel, Older granted the first request but denied the second. Though admitting that, not having been to either of the death scenes, he too was naturally curious, the judge decided such visits would be tantamount to reopening the case, complete to the recalling of witnesses, cross-examination, and so on.

On Tuesday the jury asked to have Susan Atkins’ letters to her former cellmates reread to them. This was done. Probably unprecedented in a case of this magnitude and complexity, at no time did the jury request that any of the actual testimony be reread. I could only surmise they were relying on the extensive notes each had taken throughout the trial.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—no further messages were received from the jury. Long before the end of the week the New York Times was reporting that the jury had been out too long, that it appeared they were deadlocked.

I wasn’t bothered by this. I’d already told the press that I didn’t expect them to come back for four or five days at the very minimum, and I wouldn’t have been surprised had they stayed out a week and a half.

Nor did I worry about our having proven our case.

What did worry me was human nature.

Twelve individuals, from completely different backgrounds, had been locked up together longer than any jury in history. I thought a great deal about those twelve persons. One juror had let it be known that he intended to write a book about his experiences, and some of the other jurors were apprehensive about how they might be portrayed. The same juror also wanted to be elected foreman, and when he wasn’t even in the running, was so piqued that for a day or two he wouldn’t eat with the others.[80] Would he—or any of the other eleven—hang up the jury because of some personal animosity or slight? I didn’t know.

Both Tubick and Roseland had daughters about the same age as Sadie, Katie, and Leslie. Would this affect their decision, and if so, how? Again I didn’t know.

It was rumored, largely on the basis of glances they had exchanged in court, that the youngest member of the jury, William McBride II, had become slightly enamored of defendant Leslie Van Houten. It was unsubstantiated gossip, yet in the long hours the press waited for some word from the jury room, reporters made bets on whether McBride would vote second degree for Leslie, or perhaps even acquittal.

Immediately after my assignment to the case, I’d requested as much information as was available on the background of Charles Manson. Like much of the evidence, it came in piecemeal. Not until after the People had rested their case did I finally receive the records covering the seven months Manson spent at the National Training School for Boys in Washington, D.C. I found most of the information already familiar, with one startling exception. If true, it could very well be the seed which—nurtured with hate, fear, and love—flowered into Manson’s monstrous, grotesque obsession with the black-white revolution.

Manson had been sent to the institution in March 1951, when he was sixteen years old. In his admission summary, which was drawn up after he had been interviewed, there was a section on family background. The first two sentences read: “Father: unknown. He is alleged to have been a colored cook by the name of Scott, with whom the boy’s mother had been promiscuous at the time of pregnancy.”

Was Manson’s father black? Reading through the rest of the records, I found two similar statements, though no additional details.

There were several possible explanations for the inclusion of this statement in Manson’s records. The first was that it was totally erroneous: some bureaucratic snafu of which Manson himself may even have been unaware. Another possibility was that Manson had lied about this in his interviews, though I couldn’t imagine any conceivable benefit he would derive, particularly in a reform school located in the South. It was also possible that it was true.

There was one further possibility, and in a sense it was even more important than whether the information was true or false. Did young Charles Manson believe it to be true? If so, this would go a long way toward explaining the genesis of his bizarre philosophy, in which the blacks finally triumph over the whites but eventually have to hand over the reins of power to Manson himself.

I knew only one thing for sure. Even had I received this information earlier, I wouldn’t have used it. It was much too inflammatory. I did decide, however, to ask Manson himself about it, if I got the chance.

I was in bed with the flu when, at 10:15 A.M. on Monday, January 25, court clerk Gene Darrow telephoned and said, “Just got the word. The jury has reached a verdict. Judge Older wants to see all the attorneys in his chambers as soon as they can get here.”

The Hall of Justice resembled a fortress, as it had since the jury went out. A secret court order had been issued that same day, which began: “Due to intelligence reports indicating a possible attempt to disrupt proceedings on what has been described as ‘Judgment Day’ additional security measures will be implemented…” There followed twenty-seven pages of detailed instructions. The entire Hall of Justice had been sealed, anyone entering the building for whatever reason being given a personal effects and body search. I now had three bodyguards, the judge a like number.

The reason for this intensive security was never made public. From a source close to the Family, LASO had heard what they initially believed to be an incredible tale. While working at Camp Pendleton Marine Base, one of Manson’s followers had stolen a case of hand grenades. These were to be smuggled into court on “Judgment Day” and used to free Manson.

Again, we didn’t know precisely what the Family meant by Judgment Day. But by this time we did know that at least a part of the story was true. A Family member had been working in the arms depot at Pendleton, and after he quit, a case of hand grenades was missing.

By 11:15 all counsel were in chambers. Before bringing the jury in, Judge Older said he wanted to discuss the penalty trial.

California has a bifurcated trial system. The first phase, which we had just completed, was the guilt trial. If any of the defendants were convicted, a penalty trial would follow, in which the same jury would determine the penalty for the offense. In this case we had requested first degree murder verdicts against all the defendants. If the jury returned such verdicts, there were only two possible penalties: life imprisonment or death.

The penalty trial is, in most cases, very short.

After conferring with counsel, Judge Older decided that if there was a penalty phase, it would commence in three days. Older also said he had decided to seal the courtroom until after the verdicts were read and all the jurors polled. Once the jurors and the defendants had been removed, the press would be allowed out, and then the spectators.

The three girls were brought in first. Though they had usually worn fairly colorful clothing during the trial, apparently there hadn’t been time for them to change, as all were wearing drab jail dresses. They seemed in good spirits, however, and were giggling and whispering. On being brought in, Manson winked at them and they winked back. Charlie was wearing a white shirt and blue scarf, and sporting a new, neatly trimmed goatee. Another face, for judgment day.

Single file, the jurors entered the jury box, taking their assigned seats, just as they had hundreds of times before. Only this time was different, and the spectators searched the twelve faces for clues. Perhaps the most common of all courtroom myths is that a jury won’t look at the accused if they have reached a guilty verdict. This is rarely true. None held Manson’s gaze when he stared at them, but then neither did they quickly look away. All you could really read in their faces was a tired tenseness.

THE COURT “All jurors and alternates are present. All counsel but Mr. Hughes are present. The defendants are present. Mr. Tubick, has the jury reached a verdict?”

TUBICK “Yes, Your Honor, we have.”

THE COURT “Will you hand the verdict forms to the bailiff.”

Foreman Tubick handed them to Bill Murray, who in turn gave them to Judge Older. As he scanned them, saying nothing, Sadie, Leslie, and Katie fell silent and Manson nervously fingered his goatee.

THE COURT “The clerk will read the verdicts.”

CLERK “In the Superior Court of the State of California, in and for the County of Los Angeles, the People of the State of California vs. Charles Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Leslie Van Houten, Case No. A–253,156. Department 104.”

Darrow paused before reading the first of the twenty-seven separate verdicts. It seemed minutes but was probably only seconds. Everyone sat as if frozen, waiting.

“We, the jury in the above-entitled action, find the defendant, Charles Manson, guilty of the crime of murder of Abigail Folger in violation of Section 187, Penal Code of California, a felony, as charged in Count I of the Indictment, and we further find it to be murder of the first degree.”

Glancing at Manson, I noticed that, though his face was impassive, his hands were shaking. The girls displayed no emotion whatsoever.

The jury had deliberated for forty-two hours and forty minutes, over a nine-day period, a remarkably short time for such a long and complicated trial. The reading of the verdicts took thirty-eight minutes.

The People had obtained the verdicts they had requested against Charles Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Susan Atkins: each had been found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit murder and seven counts of murder in the first degree.

The People had also obtained the verdicts requested against Leslie Van Houten: she had been found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of murder in the first degree.

I later learned that although McBride had suggested the possibility of a lesser finding against Leslie Van Houten, when it came time to vote there was only one ballot and it was unanimous.

While the individual jurors were being polled, Leslie turned to Katie and said, “Look at the jury; don’t they look sad?” She was right, they did. Obviously it had been a very rough ordeal.

As the jury was being taken out, Manson suddenly yelled at Older: “We are still not allowed to put on a defense? You won’t outlive that, old man!”

Kanarek seemed strangely unmoved by the verdict. Though Fitzgerald told the press, “We expected the worst from the start,” he appeared thoroughly shaken. Outside court, he told reporters, “We felt we lost the case when we lost our change of venue motion. We had a hostile and antagonistic jury. The defendants had the same chance Sam Sheppard had in Cleveland—none.” Fitzgerald further stated that had the trial been held anywhere but in Los Angeles, he was sure they would have won acquittals for all the defendants.

“I don’t believe that for one minute,” I told the press. “It is just weeping on the part of the defense. The jury was not only fair, they based their verdict solely and exclusively on the evidence that came from that witness stand.”

“Yes,” I responded to the most frequently asked question, “we will seek the death penalty against all four defendants.”

The Manson girls on the corner outside the Hall of Justice first heard the news over the radio. They too were strangely calm. Though Brenda told newsmen, “There’s a revolution coming, very soon,” and Sandy said, “You are next, all of you,” these were Manson’s words, delivered in court months before, which they had been mouthing ever since. There were no tears, no outward display of emotion. It was as if they really didn’t care. Yet I knew this wasn’t true.

Watching the interview later on TV, I surmised that perhaps they had conditioned themselves to expect the worst.

In retrospect, another possibility emerges. Once the lowest of the low in the Manson hierarchy, good only for sex, procreation, and serving men, the girls had now become his chief apostles, the keepers of the faith. Now Charlie was dependent on them. It appears quite likely that they were undisturbed by the verdict because they were already formulating a plan which, if all went well, could set not only Manson but all the other Family members free.