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

by Peter Chiaramonte

  The terrified woman demanded to know, “What are you doing to my husband?”

  Despite Leslie and Pat’s attempts to restrain her, Mrs. LaBianca broke free and began swinging the table lamp at her assailants. Pat had her knife out. During this scuffle, Krenwinkel tried repeatedly to stab at the woman, only the knife struck a bone in her shoulder and the handle broke off in her hand. Pat shouted for Tex to come help. Leslie let go of Mrs. LaBianca and fled from the room, standing frozen in shock on the threshold staring into an empty hall.

  Still frenzied and soaked with amphetamines, Watson’s attack on Mrs. LaBianca was so ferocious that each of seven wounds he inflicted penetrated deep enough to have ended her life on their own. Leslie has no memory of watching Mrs. LaBianca dying. All she remembers when she finally looked into the LaBiancas’ bedroom again was that she was dead and no longer moving. The ultimate shock.

  Tex could see that Leslie had been hesitant to take part in the carnage. Pat said she was afraid that what Tex had done to the others he might do to them also. He was still high and deranged and focused on only one thing: Manson’s directive not to leave any witnesses. And remembering that Charlie told him to “Make sure everyone gets their hands dirty,” Watson grabbed hold of Leslie by the arm, spun her around, put his knife in her hand and screamed at the top of his lungs for her to “Do something!”

  Leslie recalled seeing Mrs. LaBianca’s dead body lying face down on the floor. With Tex standing over her, Leslie took the knife and began stabbing the woman’s lifeless body more than a dozen times in the buttocks. Tex later said he didn’t believe Leslie showed enough craze and fury. It was estimated from the autopsy examination of Rosemary LaBianca that, of the total of forty-one gashes inflicted, approximately sixteen were shallow post mortem wounds to her lower back and buttocks.

  When it was obvious that Mrs. LaBianca was dead, Patricia Krenwinkel had already returned to the living room where she discovered that Mr. LaBianca was still alive, if only just barely. Once again, she alerted Tex Watson.

  Leno LaBianca would have undoubtedly bled out in a matter of minutes. But, just to be certain, Watson stabbed his body some more, after which he or Pat carved the word “WAR” on his abdomen. Krenwinkel testified to sticking the long-tined fork into Mr. LaBianca’s stomach and just leaving it there, watching it wobble. LaBianca was found with a small kitchen knife left lodged in his throat.

  Still upstairs and stricken with shock, Leslie wiped everything down, including the insides of drawers and things none of them had come close to touching. Although there was plenty of loot in the way of expensive cameras, gold, diamond rings and pricey guns to be had, the gang took nothing more than a bag full of coins and the wallets Manson took with him when he split for the projects—brave soul that he was. Clearly, robbery was not their motive.

  Patricia Krenwinkel misspelled the phrase “HEALTER SKELTER” when she wrote it in Leno LaBianca’s blood on the refrigerator door. Katie had heard The Beatles sing “Helter Skelter” on a record over and over but had never actually seen the words written out. They also wrote “Death To Pigs” and “RISE” in blood on the living room wall alongside the framed family photos.

  Covered in his victims’ blood after the massacre, Tex Watson took a shower before changing into the clean shirt he was told to bring with him. Leslie had no blood on her whatsoever, so Tex told her to give him the clean jeans she had on. Leslie took off her pants and gave them to Watson. She found a pair of Mrs. LaBianca’s shorts to change into.

  Before leaving the house, this trio of Manson cult zombies looted the refrigerator for snacks and left watermelon rinds in the sink. After feeding the LaBianca’s dogs, the intruders left the house, throwing their bloody clothes in distant neighborhood trash bins as they made their way to the Golden State Freeway. From there, they hitched a few rides back to Spahn Ranch and got there ahead of Manson. The last guy to give them a lift came back to the ranch a few times after that asking for Leslie. She always hid when she saw him coming.

  * * *

  Tricia knew the most basic facts if not many details. But she listened as I did my best to fill in the blanks. She had an intuitive sense of what counted for fairness and social justice. Trish reminded me of how some of the things concerning Leslie Van Houten we’d talked about many times before now—particularly the drugs, sex and mind control.

  “Look, Peter. No one likes to be the least preferred choice. I’m not blind or stupid, and I think I can see what’s going on here. I can see Van Houten’s become important to you, so you do what you have to. Don’t worry ’bout me. Maybe once you meet her in person, she might not match up to your infatuations.”

  “That sounds like some country-western hurtin’ music to me,” I said. “Still what you say is fair.”

  Tricia smiled, gave me a kiss on the cheek then offered to drop me off at the Century Wilshire and pick me up later. She had errands of her own to rush off to.

  I could see Linda Grippi’s BMW parked beside the hotel when we got there, so I reached for the handle just as Trish pulled the car over.

  “Catch you later,” Tricia said, holding me back an instant longer.

  I gave her one last kiss on the lips and got out of the car.

  Outside the bright summer sunlight was shining again, but my interior barometer was in free fall. Suddenly, I felt strangely nervous like a schoolboy—an odd allusion to occur right at that moment, I thought.

  Linda drove the same route as before. Heading east on the Santa Monica Freeway, she mentioned having recently spoken to Leslie over the phone.

  “She’s excited to see you,” Linda said.

  “What a coincidence,” I kidded. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be smug.”

  I was nervous, excited, undone.

  Linda handled our getting through all the county jail rigmarole like an old pro. She knew the ropes, and I skipped along right behind her. There were rules posted every which way you looked—lists of “Visiting Instructions” printed on black, blue and red plastic panels drilled to the walls and wired to fences. Armed guards sat in glass and steel cages where we had to “Wait Behind the Green Line” for our passes.

  Once inside, I could hear distant bells going off like they do in most high schools. The place smelled like a rare combination of disinfectant and industrial-strength vomit. I could see visitors in the queue ahead of us perched on hard wooden-top stools. Inmates and their guests had to talk through bulletproof glass over institutionally monitored phone sets, and there was this constant, ghostly din of intercom voices echoing down the halls. The atmosphere wasn’t inviting.

  Then, I saw Leslie.

  I remember the exact moment in time. What figured most was her great big miraculous smile, which I could see at fifty paces. She was lining up like a kid at the head of the class waiting for recess. She had on a tattered-knit navy blue sweater that hung at odds on her mighty thin shoulders. Underneath that, she wore a dreary gray dress made of sack linen cloth. Yet, even in such a cheerless outfit, she stood alone looking sunny and willowy among all the apes and orangutans that surrounded her.

  Leslie gave a wave and another smile before she sat down and began talking to Linda. Watching me taking irregular glances at what she had on, she pinched the fabric of her dress and mouthed the words, “Don’t you like it? It isn’t Parisian, but it’s the best that we’ve got.”

  I beamed at her natural beauty. I distinctly remember thinking Leslie didn’t look like any of the pictures of her that I’d seen or imagined. Well...whoever does? She was far prettier and pleasingly brighter in person. Even if her skin looked a bit pasty—gods only know what they fed her—her hair was a sleek mocha brown. I liked the way she looked through those warm, unabashed hazelnut eyes of hers. I thought she was sexy and funny right from the start.

  As Leslie and Linda continued to talk, I leaned back and tried not
to stare. They both seemed to be having a laugh on me every once in a while. After a few minutes more, Leslie unfolded her arms and motioned for me to come closer.

  I scooted onto the edge of the stool next to Linda and asked them both, “What is so funny, you two?”

  That’s when Linda passed me the handset.

  Leslie said, “My mother is going to be so surprised. My sister Betsy too. They were sure the pictures you sent were of somebody else. Bets thought you probably got a friend to pose and sent those instead of yourself.”

  “Instead of—instead of myself? How is that done? No such luck, I’m afraid. I yam what I yam…”

  Dumb joke I supposed. I could feel that weatherglass rising again. Why was I acting so nervous? At the same time something noteworthy kicked in. We found ourselves involuntarily starting to talk at once. This happened more than a few times. It’s not something one would normally find so enticing, yet there it was. I imagined gathering her up in my arms and carrying her off somewhere alone until she begged for mercy twice. Isn’t that awful? Still, that’s how I felt.

  Twenty minutes was too short a time. It seemed we had so much more we needed to cover. But just that short interval of intersubjective, secondary reflection on this first occasion was enough to change the way we wrote our letters from then on. As both of us would write each other later, we knew we’d stumbled into some new phase or dimension together right from the start. One look was all it took.

  “Linda can bring you along to the courthouse right away if you want,” Leslie said, “I’d like you to catch a glimpse of that scene. How long will you stay in California?”

  “A month if my friends let me sleep on their couch. I have to get back to Toronto for graduate school.”

  “Tor-ron-toe. Like at the end of your foot. Is that how you say it?”

  “Some people who live there make it sound more like Ta-ronna,” I said.

  “Got someone back home in Toronto to water your houseplants?”

  “I put them outside and left their fate...like my own...to the gods for the rest of the summer. They know what they’re doing, I don’t.”

  “Know what, Peter? Before I forget...just want to say...I just got the letter where you copied the poems by Mark Strand. Really neat poems. I liked ‘The Room’ a lot. You knew that I would, which is why you sent them, right? I love that poem.”

  “I told you I met him once...at Ohio U in Athens, when I was a freshman. He came to read from his latest book at the time, Darker. I’ve kept the copy he signed on the page of his ‘New Poetry Handbook,’ where he advises against overpraising the poem of another. So he might ‘have a beautiful mistress’...”

  “Oh, so you’re looking for a beautiful mistress, huh? I guess that rules me out.”

  “That’s funny, Leslie,” I said, smiling so deeply I caught my own reflection under the surface of both of her eyes.

  Much brighter, I thought, than when just tossing my hair in a mirror. So much so, that I forgot to finish the line about the poet driving his mistress away.

  “I’ll talk to Max about you coming in with him one of these evenings,” she said. “That way, we can talk in a conference room instead of through this weird, smudgy window.”

  “Maybe get to hold hands?” I suggested, planting thoughts in both our minds. Leslie drew a big smile and maybe her face slightly flushed. Just as I’d started to hand the phone back to Linda, Leslie signaled me back on the line.

  “Will you come visit again?”

  I said that I would.

  And she said, “How ’bout tomorrow?”

  9

  Cul-de-Sac

  The next day, Linda Grippi picked me up, and we went downtown in the afternoon. From the outside, the LA County Superior Court on West Temple Street looked to me like the establishing shot for a popular TV show at the time, “Quincy, M.E.” Inside, the courtroom looked the same as you see in the movies, with high ceilings and wood paneled walls. Banks of filing cabinets flanked the bailiffs. Judge Hinz’s executive perch was just below the great seal of the state of California, and the rest of us were resigned to a lower tier of hard wooden benches. The overriding feeling it gave me was of a most profound wasteland.

  In contrast to all the chatter going on inside my head at that moment, suddenly the room went deathly quiet. The court bailiff told us to rise and remain standing until the man in the black robes had sat down. I tried not to stare at Leslie the whole time but couldn’t help it. Whenever she turned to look my way, I couldn’t help but give myself away smiling. Other than Leslie, the most interesting person in the room wasn’t the judge or the deputy DA. It was her attorney.

  Maxwell Stanley Keith interrupted his education to serve in World War II as a bombardier. After graduation from Princeton, he returned home to California to attend the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Now in his mid-forties, Max had mostly wispy white hair. His eyes were set wide apart, and he had sizeable ears that always seemed primed on alert like a kitten’s. That day in court, Max wore a dark navy Brooks Brothers suit with his tie knotted loosely. He looked a lot taller than I was—over six feet. And, even though he would frequently glance at his notes as he stood at the podium, I thought he did this mostly for effect. He argued in such an extemporaneous way it seemed to me he was composing off the cuff. I hoped and imagined the jury liked him as much as I did.

  Linda Grippi told me how, only a few days before—the day I flew in from Toronto in fact—Maxwell Keith argued that Leslie Van Houten was suffering from a severe and debilitating mental impairment at the time of the LaBianca murders. This was called folie a famille, family madness. Harvard psychiatrist, Lester Grinspoon was just one of several psychiatrists Keith planned to call to the stand in defense of these claims. Dr. Grinspoon testified that, in his opinion, Leslie was incapable of “meaningfully premeditating” murder at the time the couple was killed. This line of defense was consistent with what Max had argued during the first trial.

  * * *

  Back in 1971, when he had to sub for Leslie’s lawyer, Ron Hughes, Keith asked the court to declare a mistrial. This motion was based on the fact of his not having been present to hear each of the previous witnesses testify. Therefore, he could not properly assess their credibility. Plus, he hadn’t been granted adequate time to absorb the more than 18,000 pages of court documents he had to review.

  The judge at the first trial, Charles H. Older, denied Keith’s request. In fact, Leslie herself was against Max making the appeal—even though it was in her own best interest. That’s how completely she was under a spell. Regardless, Max carried on to present a defense that eventually parted Leslie’s welfare from Mr. Manson’s. His contention was that Leslie and other young women in the cult had been effectively brainwashed by a professionally certified con man. The girls were therefore incapable of thinking or acting on their own volition.

  In his closing argument in the previous trial, Keith pointed out how even Vincent Bugliosi repeatedly referred to Leslie and other members as “robots.” Then, other times when it suited the prosecutor, they were “free-willed individuals”—a bald-headed flaw that he should have been called on severely.

  Keith further argued, “If you believe the prosecution theory that these female defendants were extensions of Mr. Manson and you believe that they were mindless robots, then they cannot be guilty of premeditated murder.”

  Afterwards, Bugliosi admitted that Maxwell Keith “delivered the best of the four defense arguments.” But to no avail with that judge and jury. Leslie, along with all the other defendants, was given the maximum penalty: death in the San Quentin gas chamber. But when the state legislature temporarily abolished capital punishment a year later in 1972, their sentences were reduced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after seven years. The average incarceration in the state for first-degree murder was then ten and a half to
eleven years. Certainly more if the sufferers were strangers and in cases where there was deliberate mutilation of victims’ bodies.

  * * *

  I spent every day that week in court and heard University of Wisconsin Professor and Psychiatrist, Leigh Roberts, use the term “folie a ménage” to describe the state of cult paranoia of those indoctrinated into the Manson cult.

  Max Keith asked Dr. Roberts whether or not Leslie was able to “premeditate or deliberate the murder of another human being?”

  The witness answered that, due to her mental illness at the time of the murders, Leslie did not have that capacity.

  Roberts went on to say, “She was in a paranoid state...as opposed to being a paranoid person...during the time of the LaBianca slayings.”

  “Folie a ménage,” or “household madness” is another term used to describe this temporary state of group madness where fanatics impart the same delusions to one another, therefore fueling each other’s beliefs even further. Because staunchly held convictions such as, “Charlie is really Jesus Christ” were so doggedly held, the cult’s delusions were impossible to reason away. Even someone as smart as Leslie Van Houten (and lots of other ordinary people) was at risk to these episodic, paranoid states of being. The drugs helped Manson to mimic and intensify these conditions through various means of practiced mind control.

  Former Manson Family recruiter, Paul Watkins, once told documentary filmmaker Robert Hendrickson that after living with Manson for a couple of years he “became Charlie…there was nothing left of me anymore. And the people in the Family, there’s nothing left of them anymore. They’re all Charlie too.”

  Watkins testified as to how Manson intimated that he was the second coming of Christ—an infinitely perfect person. Charlie preached there was no such thing as right or wrong wherever he was concerned. For backup, he quoted no less authority than the Bible’s book of Revelations and The Beatles “Revolution.” His disciples were thoroughly brainwashed into believing they could do no wrong—so long as they followed Charlie’s misshapen tenets of love and death as if they were according to scripture.