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

by Peter Chiaramonte

  All four psychiatrists who had taken the stand in Leslie’s defense so far in this second trial—Keith Ditman, Lester Grinspoon, Leigh Roberts and Joel Hochman—told the court the same thing. Leslie Van Houten was incapable of premeditation or of willfully taking the life of another human being with malice. Whatever crime she might have been guilty of, it could not be first-degree murder.

  Leslie and Max both told me they thought they were getting somewhere with more than half of the six man - six woman jury. Max still had a long list of experts to call. However, sensing the defense’s momentum, Prosecutor Stephen Kay objected to any more psychiatric testimony. Mr. Kay asked the judge to cut the defense’s psychiatric witness testimony short, arguing that it could have the effect of “brainwashing the jury.” Mr. Keith naturally opposed the request, begging Judge Hinz not to grant the prosecution’s motion. Leslie remained calm, but Linda and I were beginning to shiver.

  Judge Hinz wasted no time in granting the prosecution’s motion, and, to make matters worse, he ruled against the defense presenting Charles Manson’s psychiatric records as evidence of his malevolent mind control tactics. The judge ruled that however Charles Manson acquired these methods and used them to abolish the self-control of his followers, would not be heard in this context. There were a few gasps in the courtroom. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t believe it. It seemed as though someone had put the fix in. Whatever Leslie Van Houten had going for her it certainly wasn’t good luck and party-political connections.

  That evening Linda drove me out to Sybil Brand. That’s when I got to meet Maxwell Keith for the first time at the end of a handshake. After too short a visit with Les, Max took Linda and me out to a steakhouse near Fair Oaks and Hope Street in Pasadena. We didn’t stay late. Max said he had work to prepare before court in the morning. Leslie was scheduled to take the stand. The main purpose of this little get-together at the restaurant that evening was to give Max Keith and me the opportunity to size each other up—at least that’s what Linda thought when I asked her.

  The next morning, Tricia gave me a ride downtown to the Security Pacific Plaza on South Hope Street and dropped me off. As I stepped into his office on the 28th floor, Max’s receptionist informed me he’d already left for superior court. There was also a message for me from Leslie: “Can you come this evening with Max? Can’t wait to see you!”

  Right after court, Max drove us out to Sybil Brand in his black Scirocco. I thought the bombardier handled the car okay for an old guy. It turned out to be a simple drill for getting me in with him when we got there.

  Max said, “We’ll tell them you’re a ‘legal runner’ for my firm.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. It means you have a right to be in there. You carry my briefcase.”

  That evening, while Max read over transcripts and took notes, Les and I got to hold hands under the table in such a way that the deputies couldn’t see us.

  “Does this feel like falling in love to you?” she whispered so no one could hear us.

  “If love is like a beautiful girl that smiles the way you do, then the answer is ‘Yes, I believe it does.’

  “Les, do you know the fifties film, The Bad and the Beautiful?” She shook her head ‘no.’ “Kirk Douglas’ character tells Lana Turner, ‘Love is for the very young’.”

  Leslie frowned, then smiled again right away.

  “That can’t be all there is to it,” she said, in a tone of mock protest.

  “No,” I said, “it gets better. Later on in the film, a cynical but fatally attractive Lila, played by a sultry Elaine Stewart…who reminds me of you by the way...”

  “Me! I’m not sul-try, am I?”

  “Very,” said I. “Lila reminds everyone, ‘Love is for the birds’.”

  Leslie laughed, but said nothing more for the moment. She turned in her chair so no one could hear us.

  “You remember the second time you came to see me?” she asked. “You came alone.”

  “The day your high school friends came to show off their newborn baby boy? Yeah I remember,” I said. “I kept him with me while they went through the whole photo and fingerprint business.”

  “That’s them. I didn’t tell you they’ve been sweethearts ever since they were frosh in high school. I think that’s kind of wonderful. That sort of thing can last, don’t you think?”

  “Can or can’t last? Is that what you’re asking? Depends on many things and a few you can’t control. That’s really the basis of love stories, isn’t it? ‘Love conquers all.’ Do I believe that? I don’t know if I do. They look younger than we are. My guess is the odds are against it.”

  Leslie twisted her expression as if to say, ‘Why’d you say that?’

  I said, “Okay. For example, when you saw me holding that chubby baby, the first thing you did was put your fists on your hips, tilt your head to one side, shook your finger and mouthed the words ‘You didn’t tell me you had a baby.’”

  Even Max, who overheard, looked up and laughed.

  “So what’s your point, mister?”

  “My point is these kids are in a romantic mood at the moment and that’s good. It’s lovely. But one of them will be sure to put the other on too high a pedestal and feel destroyed when they stagger. It’s inevitable. And if one of them should ever have their head turned by another admirer…they’ll end up despising each other.

  “The point is…jealousy makes even the loveliest features turn ugly.”

  “For some people, maybe. But I’m not the jealous type…or maybe I am…” Leslie started, but stopped.

  Towards the end of our visit, Les and I went back to discussing plans for me to meet some of her family and more of her friends. Next on the list was a young woman named Judith Frutig, western bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor. An old Van Houten family friend who worked for the Los Angeles Times had introduced her.

  “I’ll give you the number to call,” Max, who wasn’t listening, said.

  A couple of days later, Tricia took me on a tour of Venice Beach before dropping me off in Westwood to meet Judith Frutig. Judy picked me up at the corner of Le Conte and Westwood Boulevard near the south entrance leading in and out of the UCLA campus. She was driving a dark brown Datsun 240-Z with out-of-state plates and a 2.4 liter engine. Judy was about the same age as Leslie and me but seemed a bit older somehow. She wore her brown hair cut short in a ‘Scout’ Finch-type of pageboy.

  Very bright and verbally active, I thought Judy a suitably attractive young woman in a tidy, courteous, mid-western way. (I say this after having spent two years in Athens, Ohio, which I loved.) She told me she’d studied journalism at Wayne State University in Detroit. And, on our way out to the jail for a visit, Judy told me about a recent series of stories she’d been running on Leslie and Max since before the retrial began. As it turned out, there was nothing in there I didn’t already know.

  After a quick twenty-minute visit with Leslie, Judy dropped me back in Santa Monica and promised to take me for oyster shooters the next day on a tour of Marina del Rey. She let me drive her car the whole time we were together. I liked that a lot.

  “How long are you planning to stay in Los Angeles?” she asked.

  “I start grad school this summer. In the meantime, I’m here living out of a gym bag and sleeping on my friend Trish’s couch.”

  “You could stay with me and my sister, if you like?” Judy said. “We have a spare bedroom in our condo in Silver Lake, just a few blocks above Sunset Boulevard. There’s a really big comfy bed and a desk with plenty of bookshelves.”

  “Any books on them?”

  “Lots,” she smiled. “It’s a fairly large living space. Our balcony faces southwest toward Culver City. I’ll show you.”

  “Sounds great.” And it was.

  Judy c
alled me at Tricia’s the next day and said, “You and I are invited to dinner in Monrovia to meet Leslie’s mother, Jane. Glen and Doris Peters, friends of Jane’s and mine, want to meet you, so they’re having us over on Friday night.”

  Tricia was cool with me moving to 1707 Micheltorena Street. Also, I hadn’t paid much attention or been very good company lately. As self-justification, I supposed she had another beau waiting in the wings. I tried to make believe I was clearing a space for him when really I was making room of my own for Leslie to take over. Trish came with me to the trial and after court drove my bags and me over to Judy’s that same afternoon.

  I caught a ride with Max after that and went out to the jail to ask Les what she thought of my move.

  I told her, “This brings me closer to you, kind of.”

  That’s when she asked me, “What do you call it when you can’t wait to see someone or ever stop dreaming about being together alone?”

  “The prelude,” I said. “Lasts a week or two maybe.”

  Leslie’s eyes glistened a bit and so did mine, along with a smile.

  “Then it doesn’t last?” A short pause. “Always, it doesn’t?”

  “Don’t ask me, hon. I’d rather be in love than become an expert on it. It would depend…”

  A long pause while we each stopped to consider the facts.

  “Linda said you told her you’ve taken a lot of LSD,” Leslie said by way of changing the subject.

  “Yeah, so have you. It did me some good and it did me some harm, just like it says in the song. But I thought I’d written you about that months ago.”

  “So you know what was up with my life at the ranch…I wasn’t sure. You’ve been polite not to ask too many uneasy questions.”

  “Look Les. We’ve discussed this before. I’ve had more than my fair share of most things.”

  Which was a lie of course.

  “I’m in no position to judge,” I added—which I wasn’t.

  “That’s one way Manson controlled things, you know? Sex and drugs, I mean. Boy this is embarrassing,” she said. “You’ve read all that. He’d dole it out and start preachin’ and dancin’ and singing his songs. He was a trip if he got dancing. I can’t believe it now how I ever… How did I ever believe it? I still don’t know.

  “I know what I did then was wrong. But I believed it wasn’t wrong when it was happening. I honestly didn’t. But how could that be? I was convinced it was the right thing because that’s what Charlie said was coming to pass. Does that make any sense? Not much, huh?”

  “Yes,” I said, “in a way, it sounds just like a nightmare.”

  “I’ve had more than a few bum trips before, but this was a doozy!”

  Right near the end of that visit, Les did her best to give me a preview of a recent letter she’d sent c/o 1707 Micheltorena Street that I hadn’t received yet. She said this might be the right time to put me in the picture as far as her romantic status in prison. She wanted to tell me about what things were like for her at Frontera, where she’d had a steady girlfriend.

  For my part, I told her I never understood why women weren’t strictly attracted to other women in the first place.

  “Personally, I’ve never seen what women find so appealing in men. Or men with each other either. But love and sex with a steady, desirable woman is something even I can comprehend.”

  “I’ll be glad we can talk on Sunday. It sure is fine having you to help me weigh these things out. I need you, and you know that now. And I can see how we really have gotten into talking about things…sharing opinions. I miss you so much when we’re apart, and it’s even worse the more time we’re together.”

  I asked her, “Les, how do you think life will be different once you get out?”

  “A lot like it is for you now,” she said. “Only with me popped into the picture.”

  Here I was living in a swell condominium just up in the foothills between Griffith and Echo parks in Los Angeles. My new digs were only a few blocks from Sunset Boulevard. I got up early to lift and run a couple of laps around the Silver Lake Reservoir. Afterwards, I relaxed beside the pool in the hot tub. Compared to the hellhole Leslie had to put up with, I was livin’ the life of Riley.

  Whenever Judy was home, she and I’d talk non-stop for hours drinking hot mugs of tea out on the balcony. There was always a great sunset horizon and after dark we used to stay up late to watch the city lights in place of the planets and stars. Respectful of her staunch religious bearing, I was astonished to find myself politely discussing Edward R. Murrow and Mary Baker Eddy without stimulants. Christian Science seemed to me more like the Koran than the Bible. Other than that, Judith and I got along very well, especially with regard to our mutual feelings for Leslie. In addition, besides the condo, the Datsun 240-Z and one third of the groceries, Judy shared all the files, clippings and photos she had been keeping on Les. Some of these were articles she authored herself, which I’d read before. The best of the new stuff I found came out of the court transcripts Max Keith had recently lent her.

  One day that week after court, Judy and I were invited to dinner at the home of a couple old friends of hers, Gil and Terri. They lived a mile or so south of Mount Lee, within view of the famous Hollywood sign. Gil was an architect and Terri a lawyer. They had a quaint little bungalow with a single garage and a fair-sized concrete patio covered with wisteria and dotted with cactus and potted flowers.

  After dinner, Terri and Judy squeezed into the jump seat of Gil’s green Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce—a space equivalent in size and comfort to a couple of side-by-side toilet seats without any room on the floor for your feet. To my surprise, Gil buckled himself in on the passenger side and invited me to take the keys and controls. I wasted no time starting the two-liter and let her warm up, while I pulled the top down and adjusted my seat to make room for the girls. Once we were strapped in, I tore off for a quick spin up the Golden State Freeway around Griffith Park and west on to the Ventura Highway—just to warm up the tires. Then, I really started to show off, weaving in and out of slower traffic the whole way back down the Hollywood Freeway.

  We got off somewhere near the strip and found a place to park in a lot on Franklin Avenue. From there, we walked along Hollywood Boulevard toward Grauman’s Chinese Theater. The lineup for Star Wars looked as though it stretched for half a mile in every direction, and I had no idea what the hubbub over Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader was about. I think I must have been expecting Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey—a film worthy of a two-hour lineup for tickets.

  The four of us threw an impromptu picnic of French fries and banana bread on the sidewalk where we sat on the Hollywood stars of Dick Powell and Daryl Zanuck. During one phase of our interminable wait, Gil gave a young street entertainer two quarters to sing us a cover of the Everly Brothers’ “When Will I Be Loved?” This fine-looking young man with a winsome smile started to dance and sway to the rhythm of that sad song that began, “I’ve been made blue, I’ve been lied to…”

  That, for me, was the highlight of the evening’s entertainment. I must be absolutely alone in this assessment, but I thought the movie Star Wars a bore. All those comic book costumes and the bad aim of faceless storm troopers left me profoundly disenchanted. I should have kept the car to myself and offered to pick up the trio of fantasy enthusiasts later. I was no fun afterwards either. The truth is, I was anxious to get back to Micheltorena Street, certain at some point that Leslie would ring me. And later that night when she did, I gave her my critique of “the worst movie ever.” Trix are for kids.

  The next day, I was poolside at Judy’s, reading Lester Grinspoon’s Marihuana Reconsidered—a signed copy he’d presented to Leslie with the inscription, “To Leslie, with best wishes and the hope that win or lose you will continue to grow. Lester.”

  I’d just finished chapter six of his book wh
en I heard that unmistakable echo-sounding exhaust note of a lonely herd of one hundred Pomigliano d’Arco horses. When I looked over the fence to see for sure what it was, there was Gil parking his Alfa Romeo on Effie Street right beside the pool. I walked out to the street and right as I did as Judy pulled up in her Datsun with Terri. To my amazement, Gil said he was leaving me use of the Spider for the next couple of days if I wanted, while he went away to San Francisco on business. We jumped in the Z and all went to the beach to have lunch.

  Having the use of Gil’s Alfa Spider for a few days was a dream. I changed the seat position, adjusted the mirrors and let some air out of the rear Pirelli P3s. I drove her as if she were mine to hold on to, even for such a short time. I must have gone through two tanks of gas a day. My arms and face were sunburned. Nice as sunny-summer-southern California days can be, there’s not a lot of shelter from the glaring sunlight if you don’t put the top up. When moving at speed in a lightweight two-door convertible, the burnt-orange soot of LA smog can sandblast the paint off the hood of your car. Regardless, I was happy to get a few miles away from the city on Friday night with Judy. It was a special night for me, especially since it was the first time I met Jane Van Houten, Leslie’s mother.

  Monrovia is about seven miles east of Pasadena. Glen and Doris Peters’ house was on South Fairgreen Avenue. Right away, as we shook hands, I could sense their trepidation. Glen looked to me like another Fred Foot, only this time with a brush cut. Whereas I wore my hair ardently tussled and meant something by it, Mr. Peters’ haircut signaled something different in those days. It wasn’t only a matter of fashion that stood between us. It was a great divide between generations, culture and politics—and probably a whole lot more I wasn’t aware of.