No Journey's End: My Tragic Romance with Ex-Manson Girl, Leslie Van Houten

by Peter Chiaramonte

  This is a true story based on actual persons and real events. The names of some secondary characters have been changed, several of whom are, in fact, composites.

  Copyright © 2015. Peter Chiaramonte.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0986420204

  ISBN 13: 9780986420207

  Cover and interior by Publish Pros (www.publishpros.com)

  Acknowledgments

  Primary source material comes from personal diaries, letters, and original tape recordings. Newspaper accounts were taken from the Los Angeles Times and Toronto Star archives and databases. For additional background information and confirmation, I am indebted to: Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (W.W. Norton, 1974); Karlene Faith, The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten: Life Beyond the Cult (Northeastern U. Press, 2001); John Gilmore and Ron Kenner, The Garbage People (Omega, 1971); Jonathan Gould, Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America (Three Rivers Press, 2007); Jeff Guinn, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson (Simon and Schuster, 2013); Roman Polanski, Roman by Polanski (Ballantine, 1985); Ed Sanders, The Family (Da Capo, 2002); Christopher Sandford, Polanski (Arrow, 2009); Alisa Statman and Brie Tate, Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice (HarperCollins, 2012); and John Waters, Role Models (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2010.)

  As my friend and co-conspirator, Don Levin, often reminds me, authorship is far more a team sport than is often imagined. Sincerest thanks to Mia Anna, Albert J. Mills, George Root, Andy Higgins, Mike Flynn, Marco Adria, Evelina Talevi, Brian Edwards, Brian Skleryk, David Grierson, Rylee and Harland Doige, John Grant, Paul Barreca, Todd Chapman, Nadine Segal, Vera Dolan, Karri Verno, Rick Nason, Bob Timko, Cathy Vassallo, M.J. Jones, Mark Federman, Heather Smith, Maher Khanafer, Rich Carnahan, Mackenzie Barrett, Tim Sampson, Susan and David Caruana-Dingli, and John Birr.

  I would like to also thank Leslie Van Houten, her family, and friends for accepting me into their homes—though I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book may be different than my own records. I have relayed these events to the best of my knowledge.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue vii

  1 A Certain World 1

  2 Lovers and Lesser Men 13

  3 The Diablos Café 27

  4 Cupid Introduces Leslie to Manson 39

  5 Leslie in the Sky With Diamonds 51

  6 Waiting for the Siren’s Call 65

  7 “Please tell me you’ve missed me” 85

  8 Los Angeles Times 113

  9 Cul-de-Sac 141

  10 Just Ask Roman Polanski 171

  11 No Verdict in Double Murder 191

  12 Death of a Ladies’ Man 203

  13 Au Pays de Cocaine 211

  14 Prose and Cons 227

  15 Scar Tissue 243

  16 An Academic Prepares 265

  17 O Desdemon! 289

  18 Jurors Debate Fate 307

  19 Heaven Can Wait 319

  20 Aftermath 327

  21 La Grande Illusion 345

  Epilogue 363

  Prologue

  Monrovia, California, Independence Day, 1978. We had been celebrating a revolutionary declaration of freedom and other noble causes. Complete with a modest, but earnest, fireworks display put on by friends and neighbors of her brother David Van Houten. Les and I spent all day and half the night at a family picnic. We had a busy week planned, so we didn’t stay late. And since Leslie’s mother Jane was staying overnight at a neighbor’s, we had her place in Monterey Park to ourselves for the evening.

  In front of 429 Sefton Avenue, Leslie got out of our old MGB and asked me, “Will we have time to stop by Judy’s and pick up more of my things tomorrow?”

  “We can get some of that on the way back from Glendale,” I said. “Or we can grab it on Sunday. You and David can take Milo’s van, and I’ll break in the bike on my own.”

  “So you’ve made up your mind?”

  “That’s what we’re doing first thing tomorrow. You keep the car, and I buy the motorcycle—unless you and one of your beaus have made other plans for what to do with the money?”

  “Don’t be smart,” Leslie said. “Just as long as it’s something we need, not just something you want to play with. We have to be prudent, mister.”

  Placing a gentle kiss over her heart, I said, “How prudent is that?”

  * * *

  The sun was already up when I opened my eyes. The air was warm and dry and the skies were clear and unclouded, except for the smog and the smudge. Morning birds were making a racket. I could hear shower taps running, and Leslie was humming some old R&B song. I thought, what were the odds she might consent to another shakedown in the shower if I hurried to put my request in? It only seemed right to take chances.

  After we climbed out from the tub and dried off, Leslie put on a bright summer print dress. I put on jeans and a sweatshirt. I laced up my old leather Pumas, no socks, and said, “If we do bring a bike home today honey, you’ll have to change into something rougher and tougher. Leather and spurs ought to do it.”

  “Most of my things are still at Judy’s or in suitcases I left at Linda’s…What spurs?”

  “We’ll gather the rest of your gear on the way up to Isla Vista. We can stop by Judy’s later today on the way back from Glendale.”

  I zipped up the back of her dress, wrapped both arms around her, sieged the nape of her neck and shoulders with kisses, and instructed, “This is how I want you to hold on to me when you’re on the back of the bike, okay?”

  “Whatever you say, fella. I’ll make tea while you shave. Just look how chafed my chin is, you monster.” She covered her face with her hands, made a face and asked no one in particular, “Where does my mom keep the cold cream?”

  When I was done washing up, I came outside to the patio where Leslie was reading about herself in an old Los Angeles Times and casually smoking a cigarette. I rolled a joint and smoked it alone while she tidied the kitchen. I could tell she had other things on her mind besides café racers. I knew it was selfish of me to impose reckless habits on her.

  “Time to get this show on the road,” I said, once again hungry for substance.

  Leslie locked up the house, and we drove straight through the heart of LA to Glendale. It took us nearly an hour in freeway traffic. Once we arrived at the motorcycle shop, Leslie put her hand on my forearm and tried one last time to appeal to my conscience.

  “We don’t need a lot of things Peter, you know that.”

  “Bikes are much cheaper to run,” I said, sensing my bluff might be working.

  Then, pointing over her shoulder at two rows of Italian motorcycles lined up in the showroom, I pleaded, “Come on, darlin’, let’s straddle that awful beast and go for a skate on the highway.”

  “Not in this dress, I’m not!” Leslie said.

  At least now she was smiling.

  They had one Ducati 900 Super Sport on the floor—but it was way out of our price range. There were, however, four or five new and used Benellis and Moto Guzzis all spiffed up and polished. Two or three were brand-spanking new Le Mans I thought we might afford with a loan. One was fire engine red and had custom gold trim on the fuel tank and fairing.

  Leslie
asked the salesman if she could use the telephone. She needed to check in every few hours during the jury’s deliberations. Meanwhile, I climbed on the Moto Guzzi 850 V2. It wasn’t like any bike I was used to. I couldn’t wait to turn her on and twist open the throttle. I was anxious to hear how she sounded and feel how she handled.

  “Get off the phone Leslie, will ya?” I said, showing off. “I want you to see this.”

  She was still out of reach, checking in on the phone with Dante, her bondsman.

  The salesman kept smiling. He could see I was a serious buyer. He was eager to help push the bike out to the curb for a test ride. I was just about to switch on the engine when—looking ashen and pale—Leslie swiftly came walking towards us.

  “We gotta go,” was all she needed to say.

  The verdict was finally decided.

  1

  A Certain World

  The day things began, I woke up guilty and sore. No doubt from the residual effects of some far-reaching intemperance gone wrong the night before. The human body has no reason to lie to itself. So whatever flesh of the devils I’d taken, it only seemed just that I suffer. Whether through the looking glass or straight down the rabbit hole—call it the price of tuition. Some drugs I took to escape, others I took to explore.

  Winter was just getting started, and I was also slightly depressed by the cold weather and so few hours of daylight. It was Christmas break 1976 at the University of Toronto where I worked while still going to school. I’d already graduated from St. Michael’s College with a BA in philosophy, but they didn’t dare let you teach that in high schools. Prior to attending teacher’s college, I spent a year in the school of physical and health education. To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything better to do. Work on the family farm was no longer an option.

  I was enrolled in the Faculty of Education at the U of T, where I was working toward secondary school teaching certificates in physical education and English lit. Everyone said I had to do something useful to earn a living. All this was a step in the right direction, I hoped. I figured if all else failed, I could always go kicking and screaming into teaching school as a backup. A bad faith default strategy if ever there was one. The truth is, my dream ever since I was fifteen was to have the letters “PhD” printed after my name. More than anything else I wanted to become a full-fledged academic. Dream on, dream on, Herr Doktor Professor. I wanted to be one of the gladiators who teaches the gladiators to be gladiators. Or was I destined to be just another twenty-something “hippie with a pipedream”? I didn’t know. I’d heard that phrase so often I thought that’s what everyone said as a way of daunting my guileless desires.

  In the meantime, while I waited to hear the sirens’ call and for my fate to unfold, I got by on a family allowance. Plus what I scraped together as grad assistant to head track and field Coach Andy Higgins and school of physical education Professor Bruce Kidd. Call it an honorarium with special treatments. Andy and Bruce were grooming a few former jocks like me with a view to some of us coaching athletics as a profession. I for one was pretty sure of who, where, and what I wanted to be—only which road to take wasn’t so obvious.

  One subsidy of having a job in athletics was that it kept me in pretty good shape for the most part. Being strong and resilient was an asset to me when this whole thing got started. Otherwise I may have quit early on.

  The university was partly closed down for the holiday. But I had obligations later that day to work with Andy and some of the athletes. He said to meet him at his office in Hart House around 8:30 a.m. to discuss plans for the upcoming spring training camp. Afterwards, I had a timed interval workout session to conduct with a group of sprinters at the indoor track inside the Princes’ Gates down by the lakeshore.

  My apartment in the annex at 175 Madison Avenue was a mile from the campus. I drank a mug of hot Ovaltine, downed three or four aspirin, and jogged to the back campus in less than six minutes—all without breaking a sweat. My body may have been sharp as a razor’s edge, but my mind was as blunt as my heart.

  Hart House is at the heart of the downtown University of Toronto campus. It’s the student activity center for music, theater arts, and athletics. The building itself is a Gothic-collegiate structure built around an interior quadrangle where some of us hippies played fantasy football in all weathers and at odd hours. Inside its stone vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows there’s even a stunning art deco swimming pool, and a suspended indoor running track with banking as steep as the Autodromo Monza once was.

  The varsity coaches’ offices were all on the second floor overlooking the back campus and Morrison Hall. My poor start made me a few minutes late. I could hear laughter and chatter coming from inside as I stepped out of the stairwell, stomping the slush off my Adidas. There were three men talking and drinking coffee out of beige Tim Horton’s cups. I saluted my comrades and sat down at a lone cluttered desk in the corner.

  Andy pointed to which cup was mine and I helped myself to half the remaining croissant. Everyone else in the room was an Olympian, with the exception of yours truly. We’d all known one another for a very long time. My other two friends were pole-vaulter Bruce Simpson and sprinter Jim ‘Buck’ Buchanan. Thankfully, given the hung-over state I was in, they seemed to be talking about something familiar.

  The Canadian Olympic track and field training camp the previous spring had been held in Long Beach, California. That was just two months prior to Bruce and Buck competing at the Games of the XXI Olympiad in Montreal. We were headquartered at the Cal State Long Beach athletic center for the whole month of May. Andy was one of our national coaches and I tagged along to assist him. Mostly I ran back the discus for decathlete Gordie Stewart, and put the bar back up on the standards for high jumper Louise Walker whenever she knocked it down. Ostensibly, I was there to learn all I could about high performance coaching at the Olympic level. Not a bad gig if you could get a spot on the ladder. But I wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted.

  The place where we stayed in Long Beach was called the Golden Sails Hotel. On the surface this sounded majestic.

  “They named the place ‘Palm Beach,’ right?” Buck was saying. “I remember our balcony held a spectacular view of the highways and parking lots.”

  “Right beside an endless landscape of oil pumps and refineries,” Andy added. Turning to me he said, “We’ve been discussing where we might camp in the spring.”

  “Just so long as it’s somewhere with competitive meets,” said Bruce.

  “Just so long as it’s somewhere sunny and warm,” Buck responded. “How ’bout Hawaii?”

  Fading in and out (but trying my best to keep the others’ words and expressions in focus), I said, “I wouldn’t mind if we went back to LA. There were plenty of good meets and interesting stuff to do all the time...”

  “And the weather’s great,” said Buck.

  “LA...maybe,” said Andy. “But I don’t think we want to go back to Long Beach. I’d prefer Malibu or Santa Barbara.”

  “That’s a long way to go to find the right competition,” Bruce reminded everyone. I grew ever more bored with this conversation, so I wandered off.

  I drifted off into daydreams of Long Beach again. Even the words “Long Beach” recalled to mind a severe ankle sprain I suffered the first week we were there. Thinking of that made me cringe. No one noticed. But that extrasensory event brought to mind my old girlfriend Tricia, who came down from Santa Monica to care for me while I mended. Thinking of Trish just then made me smile. Feeling self-conscious, I pretended to be paying attention to whatever else these guys were still talking about.

  Tricia Woodbridge was a beautiful twenty-year-old girl when I met her. She had one green eye and one speckled brown. Her hair was strawberry blonde, and her legs were interminably long. That wasn’t all I liked about her, but it sure helped a lot. After I’d torn every blood vessel I
had left in my ankle, Trish (who was a registered nurse) helped me recover in more ways than one. She fed me fresh fruit and salads, bathed me in hot tubs of Epsom salts, and brought me lots of good books to read while I tanned by the poolside.

  In the evenings we got high on pot and sparkling wine, listened to music, and cuddled up under blankets while we purred like a couple of panthers. There had been a kind of a yagé tableau-déjà vu taking place in my mind’s eye—when all of a sudden everyone’s laughter brought my free-floating consciousness back to the office.

  “I’d been going to UCLA for four months already,” Bruce began. “Before I looked up one day and actually saw the San Gabriel Mountains for the very first time. I didn’t know they were there. Then one morning a storm came through the basin and blew all the smog out over the ocean. Suddenly there were mountains!” Everyone laughed, knowing exactly what he was getting at. Paradise smudged. Soon after that Bruce and Andy switched subjects. I don’t remember what that was about.

  What I do recall is Buck leaning in and asking, “Hey Pete, whatever happened to that girlfriend of yours? The tall redhead in California.”

  “What a coincidence,” I said. “You must be clairvoyant. No kidding…I was just thinking about Trish myself…you mean Tricia Woodbridge.”

  “That’s the one. The pretty nurse with the freckles,” Buck smiled. “Heard from her lately?”

  “It’s strange you’re asking that now—that’s what I was just thinking about. Don’t you love it when this sort of thing happens?”

  “When what sort of thing happens?” Buck grinned. “It’s not really so strange. We were talking about memories of the Golden Sails after all. You lucky dog.”