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

by Peter Chiaramonte

  Tex put the open barrel of the gun to his face and told him, “Don’t move, or you’re dead.”

  Startled and groggy, Voytek asked him, “Well...who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  “I’m the Devil,” growled Watson. “I’m here to do the Devil’s business. Give me all of your money.”

  “My money is in the wallet on the desk.”

  Susan Atkins said she couldn’t find it. That made Tex very angry. Watson started to beat Frykowski with the Buntline revolver until he gave way to his blows. Then, he ordered Susan to tie the man up before dispatching her and Pat to scout the rest of the house for others.

  Abigail Folger was sitting up in her bedroom reading. There were hashish and ten capsules of MDA in a bag on the nightstand. Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring were in the master bedroom sitting up on the bed talking. (A gram of cocaine and less than an ounce of marijuana was left undiscovered in Jay Sebring’s Porsche.) Armed with buck knives, Susan and Pat herded everyone into the living room where they were tied up together.

  Then, when Watson ordered everyone to lie face down on the floor—including a very expectant Sharon Tate—Jay Sebring protested, “Let her sit down, can’t you see she’s pregnant?”

  Watson shot him in the armpit with the revolver and told the screaming women once more to shut the fuck up.

  Sharon and Abigail were hysterical. Watson strung them up with nooses around their necks, so they had to stand straight and be quiet or else strangle to death. While Jay lay on the floor unconscious and bleeding—in full view of the others—Tex proceeded to viciously stab him in the back several times. The women were crying and began pleading for their lives.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Abigail cried.

  Tex said, “You’re all going to die.”

  Then, he ordered Susan to kill Voytek.

  “Oh, God...no...don’t...don’t...don’t,” the man pleaded.

  Then, in a panic, he suddenly jumped up, broke free and began fighting with Susan, swinging her around by her hair. Before she lost her knife in the fracas, Atkins managed to stab Voytek several times in the legs and once in the back of the lung, simply by stabbing blindly behind her.

  Screaming for his life, Frykowski bolted for the front door. Tex, meanwhile, was distracted with stabbing Jay Sebring until he stopped moving. Pat was fighting with the two tied-up women while Tex chased after Frykowski. When he caught up with the wounded man, he began clobbering him over the head with the butt of his gun. Beaten and bloodied, Frykowski fell through the doorway and into the bushes out front on the threshold. Linda Kasabian saw him stand again for a moment before Tex tackled him onto the front lawn, hitting and stabbing him senseless.

  Standing over the fallen man like Ali over Liston, Watson shot him once in the back before the gun misfired the second time. Then, Tex proceeded to club Voytek with the butt of Manson’s Buntline revolver so ferociously that the grip handle broke off. Tex shot him once more for good measure. All this time, Kasabian said she just stood in shock and watched as Watson repeatedly stabbed Mr. Frykowski’s fractured body until all his tremors stopped.

  Tell me, tell me, tell me the answer…

  Frantic with terror, Abigail Folger managed to twist free of her restraints and made a break for the bedroom door at the back of the house. Patricia Krenwinkel gave chase and set upon her with her buck knife out by the pool. The victim continued to struggle until Watson, who had just finished his annihilation of Frykowski, took over and slashed Abigail’s throat with his knife.

  Susan Atkins testified that the instant before Tex cut her off at the neck, the woman looked up at him and whispered, “I give up. I’m dead. Take me.”

  Pat told Leslie that when she stabbed the woman she heard her whisper, “I’m already dead.”

  When Tex shuffled back inside, he saw that Sharon had slipped free and ordered Susan and Pat to finish her off.

  When she begged and pleaded for her life and the life of her unborn baby, Susan looked her straight in the eye and said, “Look bitch, I don’t care about you. I don’t care if you’re going to have a baby. You had better be ready. You’re going to die, and I don’t feel anything about it.”

  Meanwhile, Watson made certain everyone else was either dead or dying, before he finally strode over to where Susan was holding Sharon’s arms behind her back. Then, the meth-crazed fanatic viciously thrust his bayonet through the woman’s lung and heart until it stopped beating. Tex had effectively destroyed five human souls in a matter of minutes.

  In the aftermath, Tex told the girls to take turns mutilating their victims’ lifeless bodies. Susan Atkins painted the word ‘PIG’ in Sharon Tate’s blood on the front door. The whole assault lasted approximately half an hour. Then, everything returned to the same quiet as before. When the assassins returned to their car, Watson still had a terrible look in his eyes. In fact, Kasabian later testified they all looked like zombies covered with blood. Tex was yelling at Susan for losing her knife. The crew stopped a few miles away from this site and used someone’s garden hose to wash off all the gore. They changed into clean clothes and tossed their bloody clothing down a washed-out ravine. After which, they drove back to Spahn Ranch around two in the morning. Charles Manson was standing in the same spot he had been when they drove off only hours before.

  Manson had been awaiting news as to how things had gone. Watson told him how most of it went according to plan. For instance, there were butchered bodies lying around all over the lawn. He had the audacity to complain about the inadequacy of the weapons, which he blamed for the screaming panic, fighting and overall bloody messiness.

  Manson asked all four of them, Tex, Susan, Pat and Linda, “Do you have any remorse?”

  All shook their heads and said, “No.” Then, Manson told them to go to bed and be sure not to say anything to the others—not yet anyway.

  Once everyone else was asleep, Manson drove to the scene of the crime. He wanted to see for himself what the others had done, as well as clean up any prints they may have missed in the frenzy. The walls were splashed with gore, and there were large pools of dark blood beginning to jell beneath each of the ripped and ravished corpses. He draped an American flag upside down over the sofa next to where Sharon Tate’s body lay in the last of her blood. Then, he wiped the house clean of fingerprints and tossed the bloody towel over what there was left of Jay Sebring’s skull.

  10

  Just Ask Roman Polanski

  Which fallen angels haunted my sleep I didn’t know. They found me trudging knee-deep in a desert of snowdrifts, shivering with cold. In this dreamscape of unmemorable colors, I wondered how nice it would be if it were warmer. In a flash, I recognized that this was my dream after all. Therefore, it could be summer if I wanted it so. The trespass of ice suddenly vanished and in its place I willed a landscape of summer greens, yellows, pinks and blues into view. Things came alive but only for a moment. An instant later, winter returned.

  I decided to stay on my trek through the snow and ice to see where it led me. There came into sight an old wooden shed that looked like a derelict barn from a distance. Inside the shed, there was a dusty, long silver beast of a classic E-type Jaguar—only the top was ragged and torn and the tires were deflated. There was a pretty girl asleep on the passenger side wearing nothing but a necklace of beads interwoven with flowers. She sat on my lap, as we drove off in the car. She steered, while I worked the pedals. A blizzard had started when, out of nowhere, a cop on a motorcycle came alongside us, shouting, “Do you know Jim Buchanan? He’s dead.”

  I wondered what the girl thought we should do about the weather, but the radio woke me with a forecast of sunshine and warmth.

  Martin Bijaux rang and said he had a next-morning flight out of LAX and asked if I could meet him for breakfast then drop him off at the airport. He picked a spot close to his gi
rlfriend’s flat in West Hollywood. Canter’s Bakery and Delicatessen was on North Fairfax between Melrose and Beverly. There was a familiar Neil Young song playing as I walked in at ten past eight in the morning.

  Canter’s was a lot like a typical Montreal-style deli or Yitz’s on Eglinton West in Toronto. Martin was already there having coffee. We both ordered rugelach to have with our second cups.

  “For some reason ‘Like a Hurricane’ always reminds me of Leslie,” I said.

  “It reminds me of a bar in Ottawa,” Martin responded.

  “Speaking of Ottawa, I want to thank you again for getting the message about Jim to me when you did.”

  “Did you know Buchanan well?”

  “I knew Buck for a couple of years on account of track and field at Toronto. He was probably the most popular guy on the team. Great sense of humor. Plus, he was an outstanding overall athlete which would have been scary if he hadn’t sucked so bad at hockey.”

  “Have you spoken with anyone close to the family?” he asked.

  “I spoke with Bruce Kidd on the phone, and to Andy and Carl Georgevski. That’s it so far.” Then, I paused. “You know, Martin. Everything disappears with death, doesn’t it? It’s nothing deep or profound, just how it feels to me personally. A year ago, training here in LA, Buck had a personal best in the long jump...somewhere in the 7.82 meter range. That’s as alive as it gets. And, now, that spirit’s gone. It’s just gone.”

  Not so inclined to think about spirit and death nonsense as I was, Martin asked, “How good a jump is that?”

  “In the world? Look at it this way...all the men who jumped over 7.80 in Montreal advanced to the final. That’s a rare talent, wouldn’t you say? There are fewer than twenty who can accomplish this feat.”

  We talked about other things too, like about where Martin was flying to later that morning (Detroit) and what kind of story he hoped to write (on the history of Motown Records). Listening to this only as background, I was still thinking about Jim’s life and death at that time. Conscious of nothing at all really—only his absence—as well as the ever-present threat of my own. I hadn’t really thought about death all that much until that summer. That’s how young I was.

  After breakfast, we tossed his bags in the back of Judy’s car, turned the key, dropped the clutch and put the spurs to the Datsun. We went barreling down Highway 405 mostly in third and hard on the throttle. When we hit traffic, I shifted up a gear to relax the engine as well as Martin. That’s when he started talking again.

  “Where the fuck did you get hold of this car?” he asked with excitement.

  I explained about Judy Frutig and the connection to Leslie by way of family friends intent on Christian Science and journalism.

  “That’s quite a combo… Hey, have you been keeping up with the news about Roman Polanski?” Martin shouted over the engine whining. “He’s been back to court, you know. The judge, Rittenband, thinks Polanski’s a pervert, so he denied a petition to have the rape charges dropped. Doping and raping a drunk, precocious thirteen year old girl, if convicted, can get him fifty-years in the big house.”

  “I don’t think he deserves that,” I said. “Nobody does. Polanski may be a slightly-warped swinger, but he’s probably not the worst of the lot...”

  “Nor the last, I imagine.” Martin added. “He’s an artist. Maybe that gives him the right to be twisted. His films are on the edge, so why wouldn’t he be?”

  “What about the young girl out on the ledge with him?” I asked.

  “She was there with her mother’s permission, having her picture taken for Vogue. Maybe Roman needed a way to put the right pout on her face that he wanted?

  “Do you know how old Sharon Tate was when Polanski seduced her?” Martin asked, and then answered his own question. “Twenty-two. I heard they were both tripping on acid the first time.”

  “Everyone wants something wicked sometime. No one’s immune to human nature,” I guessed.

  We were just pulling in to the airport. Inside the LAX World Way terminal loop, I dropped Martin and his two pieces of luggage off by the curb outside the United Airways departures desk. From there, he was headed to Detroit via Chicago. I wished him a good story and a safe journey home.

  He surprised me when he said, “Wish Leslie good luck for me, will you?”

  I nodded and said that I would. “And say ‘hi’ to Jean when you see him back in Toronto. I’m sorry about your friend, Jim.”

  Back in court the next morning, I heard Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay keep harping on testimony Leslie had given six years before. Kay insisted on reminding this jury what Leslie said in 1971, when she was asked if she felt any remorse for the part she played in the killing.

  Leslie famously answered, “Sorry is only a five-letter word.”

  In 1977, what she said was, “I feel very ashamed…I don’t feel the same way today.”

  Stephen Kay implied she was lying.

  When I asked her about it later that evening, Leslie told me, “When I said what I said about ‘sorry’ being only a word, that wasn’t meant to sound unremorseful, you know? I really felt these murders had to be done. That’s what Charlie led us to believe. Therefore, what reason was there to feel sorry? That’s how messed up I was. I know that sounds cruel, and it was. But that’s honestly how I was thinking.”

  * * *

  Facing the death penalty in 1971, Maxwell Keith vehemently argued that Leslie Van Houten deserved to live.

  In his closing, he said, “Mr. Bugliosi tells you that if the death penalty is not appropriate in this case, it would never be appropriate. Well, I wonder if it ever is appropriate. I am not asking you to forgive her, although to forgive is divine. I am asking you to give her the chance to redeem herself. She deserves to live. What she did was not done by the real Leslie. Let the Leslie of today die...she will, slowly and maybe painfully. And let the Leslie as she once was live again.”

  The first trial lasted nine and a half months. Up until then, it was the longest murder trial in American history and also the most expensive. It cost over one million dollars. The jurors had been sequestered for two hundred and twenty-five days. That’s longer than any jury before it. And the transcripts ran to two hundred and nine volumes.

  In his conclusion, Judge Older said, “After all of the hyperbole has been indulged in, all that remains are the bare, stark facts of seven senseless murders...seven people whose lives were snuffed out by total strangers. I have carefully looked, in considering this action, for mitigating circumstances and have been unable to find any. It is my considered judgment that not only is the death penalty appropriate, but it is almost compelled by the circumstances. I must agree with the prosecutor that if this is not a proper case for the death penalty, what would be?”

  Then, speaking directly to the defendants, the judge added, “The Department of Corrections is ordered to deliver you to the custody of the warden of the state prison of the state of California at San Quentin to be by him put to death in the manner prescribed by law of the state of California.”

  A tooth for a tooth after all.

  Here’s something I hope never to see the inside of—I’m told the San Quentin gas chamber contains a couple side-by-side perforated seats like you would expect to find on some old farmer’s tractor. Two guards strap each of the prisoners into the chairs and attach belts across their legs, arms and chest. Beneath the chairs are bowls filled with sulphuric acid, and there’s a pound of sodium cyanide pellets suspended in a gauze bag just above that. After the door to the death chamber is sealed, the warden gives a signal for the executioner to pull the lever that drops the cyanide into the acid pool under the seat. The chemical reaction immediately causes hydrogen cyanide gas to be released into the chamber.

  In medical terms, victims die from “hypoxia,” which means the supply of o
xygen to all vital organs, including the brain, has been cut off. At first, this results in muscle spasms and seizures due to increasing suffocation, but, because of the straps, involuntary body movements are minimized. The prisoner doesn’t lose consciousness right away either. It can take one to three minutes to completely pass out, during which time the pain is akin to a respiratory/cardiac arrest. The horror, they say, continues to intensify until the eyes bug right out of their sockets. Skin turns a bruised purple and blue as a stew of blood and froth flows from the nose and mouth. It can take between nine and twelve minutes before the heart muscle finally grinds to a halt. Exhaust fans suck the gas out of the compartment and the bodies are robotically sprayed with ammonia. After half an hour, staff enter the chamber wearing gas masks and rubber gloves. Their training manual advises them to be sure and ruffle the victims’ hair before taking their corpses away on a tray in a body bag. Poison that strong tends to linger.

  In 1972, the California State Supreme Court rescinded the death penalty, noting that execution by means of containment in a cyanide gas chamber met the criteria defined as “cruel and unusual punishment.” Although the state reinstated the death penalty four years later, it did not affect Leslie or any of her co-defendants, becasue the new statutes were not retroactive. And since legislation handing out life imprisonment without the possibility of parole wasn’t in place yet, this meant that, according to state law, the “Manson murderers” were entitled to the possibility of ensuing freedom. The law would have to decide on a case-by-case basis exactly when each individual no longer poses a threat to society. That sounded fair to both Leslie and Maxwell S. Keith.