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

by Peter Chiaramonte

  I had also begun a letter to Leslie regarding Capote’s account of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, two savage young men who, in 1959, broke into a stranger’s home in Holcomb, Kansas, and senselessly shot-gunned all four members of the Herb Clutter family without any obvious motive. There was nothing to rob. A false tip by a prison inmate led them to think there would be a safe filled with money. There wasn’t. They could have just left without harming anyone.

  The murders, wrote Truman Capote, were “a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act. The victims might as well have been killed by lightning, except for one thing. They [each of the victims] had experienced prolonged terror, they had suffered.”

  That meant retribution. Towards the end of the book, the author reported on expert testimony suggesting this crime would never have happened except for a certain “frictional interplay between the perpetrators.” In other words, folie a deux. Referencing expert psychiatry on the subject, Capote claimed that neither Perry Smith nor Dick Hickock would have, or could have, committed such barbarism all on his own. Not without the complex interplay of each other’s personal madness. Maybe that’s why Glen Peters was opposed to Leslie and me as a tag team beyond his control? Together, we might steer clear of his influence or moral duty, which is how I suspected he saw things.

  Before going to bed that first night back in Toronto, I went for a walk in the dark and mailed my letter to Leslie. It included a full page of my handwriting the names “Leslie” and “Chiaramonte” to see how they looked and hear how they sounded. I told her that I wished I could honestly say it was good to be home, only it wasn’t. It wasn’t as though something was missing exactly. It just felt more as if I no longer belonged where I was. Time to move on—not here, not there, not anywhere that I’d been already. It was time to go about finding my terra nova once and for all.

  11

  No Verdict in

  Double Murder

  The end of June was a good time to be in Toronto. The ground was green and the cool air in the mornings was perfect for running. I spent my first week back home hanging around the track and Andy’s office in Hart House. Like everyone else who knew Buck, I couldn’t help thinking about how much I missed him. Carl Georgevski said he kept expecting him to show up for practice.

  “I keep calling, but he doesn’t answer.”

  On Monday, July 4th, I registered for two three-week summer courses at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)—“Program Planning” on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and “Facilitating Adult Learning” in the afternoons. That was the best of the lot, so what could I do? Welcome to graduate school at Toronto. This one sucked. After I got back from the campus bookstore, there was a letter from UC Berkeley waiting for me, along with the one I’d been expecting from Leslie. As I requested, the regents in residence matters, University Hall, Berkeley forwarded catalogs and application forms for two graduate schools of education: Berkeley and Santa Barbara. After reading my mail and looking over the various program offerings at UC—I made a phone call to my landlady, giving her a month’s notice.

  Professor Bruce Kidd had been a prof of mine in the school of physical and health education the year before, and I’d worked for him on the Olympic Artists-Athletes Coalition. He and I used to run around Queen’s Park once in a while in those days. Bruce had several regular running routes all over the city. Although we preferred High Park or the Beaches boardwalk to running ’round in circles, Queen’s Park had the virtue of being close by the campus. I could only stay with him for a very few laps, if he lightened his pace. After that, I would peel off to lift weights with Andy Higgins or Carl Georgevski. Some days, Bruce would be after a much longer run—in which case I might keep pace with him as far as the east end of Rosedale Valley Road. Then, I’d have to turn back while he carried on for another ten miles more of Crothers Wood parklands.

  After our cool-down around the park, we went for lunch in the Great Hall at Hart House. Andy Higgins and Carl Georgevski were already there. I waved ‘Hello’ to my old Prof. Thomas Langdon, who was having lunch with Francis Sparshott and Marshall McLuhan.

  When we sat down, Carl asked me, “What are you taking at OISE this summer?”

  “Two of the most boring courses imaginable,” I said. “We’re reading Malcolm Knowles’s theory of andragogy, and it’s putting my feet to sleep. Same with Saul Alinsky. Rules for Radicals read better five years ago than it does today.”

  “It’s called growing up,” Higgins said. Kidd smiled in a way to suggest he agreed with Andy.

  Bruce qualified this by saying, “If you weren’t a socialist when you were twenty, you’d have no heart. If you aren’t a capitalist by thirty, you...”

  “You haven’t any brains...yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” Andy laughed.

  “I’m not sure I’ll go on with OISE this fall,” I announced out of nowhere. “I’ve applied to Cal Berkeley and UCSB instead.”

  No comments right away—just strange looks of surprise. First at me and then at each other.

  “And what will you do in the meantime?” Andy asked.

  “First of all, I’m heading back to LA in a couple of weeks. I should get back in time for the end of the Van Houten trial.”

  Carl asked, “You don’t honestly think she’ll get off, do you?”

  I wish I had nickel...

  “She’ll plea to a lesser charge when one is offered,” I said. “Probably manslaughter or second-degree. She could be out in a year, maybe less.”

  I paused to chew my grilled cheese.

  “You must be dreaming,” Andy said.

  I pointed out “She’s already served nearly eight years in prison. Ain’t that enough?”

  Bruce said, “Some people think none of them will ever be let out of prison.”

  “Some people think differently,” I responded.

  “Hear him out,” Andy said.

  Bruce continued, “You’ve told me before that Van Houten took part in a fight with this woman, Rosemary LaBianca, who ended up brutally murdered. Whatever her defense, you know the justice system’s penchant for punishing those who assist in a robbery-murder. The system’s designed to exact retribution if they can stick her for that.”

  On that point, Bruce had agreement.

  “But when is enough, enough?” I found myself often repeating.

  * * *

  In January 1970, at the urging of Leslie’s then-attorney Marvin Part, Judge Older appointed psychiatrist Dr. Blake Skrdla to make a confidential report on the psychotic state of mind of his client. When Manson caught wind of this action, he ordered Leslie to immediately fire her lawyer, thereby thwarting further inquiry into this matter. Once again, Charlie had regained full control.

  Leslie dutifully requested that Marvin Part be relieved as her attorney. The court appointed Ira Reiner as her new counsel in his place. Only, this time, Mr. Part opposed the substitution, arguing that Leslie Van Houten was mentally incapable of making a rational decision.

  “This girl will do anything that Charles Manson or any member of this so-called Manson Family says,” Part explained to the judge. “This girl has no will of her own left. Because of this hold that Charles Manson and the Family has over her, she doesn’t care whether she is tried together and gets the gas chamber, she just wants to be with the Family.”

  Since the evidence against her was slight, Part begged the judge to hear the tape he made of an interview with Leslie.

  “That girl,” he said, “is insane in a way that is almost science fiction.”

  Justice Older responded he’d rather not hear the tape, so he never did. Max Keith told me he’d heard the tape and that it was “creepy” to listen to.

  * * *

  Saturday evening, Gabrielle called. She and Jean invited themselves over to my place. They brought high-potency
“Columbian gold” marijuana like we hadn’t seen much of before. Mostly, all we had was homegrown or Mexican pot, loaded with seeds and stems, but costing us next to nothing. Oh, to be in Oleanna. This shit was expensive. Fifty an ounce! As I recall, we got pretty hammered on Henkell Trocken sparkling wine also, after which Gabe decided she’d cut my hair. Twice. Once she messed up the first time, she tried again and messed it up worse. I accused her of doing this on purpose, but she denied it, of course.

  Jean put on side one of David Bowie’s album Diamond Dogs.

  Exhaling blue-gray smoke from the bong he brought with him, Jean asked, “How will this lawyer of Leslie’s…how will he get around the question of premeditation? You know…her decision to join this cult in the first place.”

  “Things were very different back then. At first, with the girls at least, Manson wasn’t preaching violence and aggression. Mind control and Helter Skelter delusions take time to cultivate. Things have to emerge out of necessity. He used what he needed to keep them in line. It takes time to get rid of free will and break down the ego.”

  “Oh...come on, Peter,” Gabe broke in. “How about just her willingness to get in the car in the first place, when she knew it would mean taking part in a murder? She knew what happened to Sharon Tate and the others.”

  I asked her, “Are we going to judge that now? This should be about how much more time she must serve, not what she was thinking when she was a teenager. Free will…what is that really? She’s served her time in a prison when she should have been in a mental clinic instead.”

  Gabe shook her head.

  I asked, “Did you read Bugliosi’s account of the case? Even he promoted the ‘robot’ appraisal throughout his book, although it could be he didn’t write it himself or never bothered to read it too carefully.”

  “We like to think free will is a cornerstone of society,” Jean said. “We like to think we act by conscious choice at all times, but that may be an illusion.”

  “That’s right,” I said, turning to Gabrielle again. “And that’s what Manson sought to destroy...conscious choice. So what I’m saying is that Leslie did not choose to murder those people. She was carrying out orders. As for what happened at the home of Sharon Tate...it seems to me Charlie Manson hoped, that by chopping up whoever was in the house where Terry Melcher once lived, he’d be sending his friends a message. Either sign Charlie to a major record deal quick or be found in the same condition as Voytek Frykowski.

  “Manson thought Melcher would make him a rock ’n roll star as big as The Byrds or The Beatles,” I said.

  Gabe turned to Jean and pronounced that they had to get going.

  As my guests were leaving, Jean passed me an eighth of an ounce of his Columbian stash as a gift. I rolled some of it into a joint right away and started another dispatch to Leslie. In the background, the Diamond Dogs were howling, “making bullet-proof faces, Charlie Manson, Cassius Clay…”

  The next night at 11:30 p.m., the telephone rang, and it was Leslie. She started by saying she was calling to tell me how much she missed me. I told her I felt the same way about her, and it was all true. I also told her about Jean and Gabrielle’s visit. I was undoubtedly stoned when she called, feeling groovy.

  “What did you talk about?” Leslie asked.

  “We talked about shoring up one’s ego instead of getting rid of it…living for the moment and all that jazz…But how was your day?” I asked. “What happened in court?”

  “The usual. Typical Stevie Kay day. He’s still tryin’ to rile up the jury to hate me. Showing ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures. Sharon Tate happy. Sharon Tate dead.”

  “You weren’t even there.”

  “He did the same with pictures of the LaBiancas. Max objected, of course, but Kay kept bringing up all the stupid things I said at the first trial. Just crazy. Now he’s acting like it was yesterday or something.

  “Hey, how long will it take you to get here in your car?” she asked. “I liked the pictures of you and your ‘darlin’ MGB.’ Looks like a lot of fun. Are you going to miss all of your friends? Will they hate me?”

  “I’m missing you a lot more than anyone here will ever miss me. I have plenty of friends, but there’s only one Lou-Lou. That’s you!”

  “You lie. I bet you have lots of girls,” she teased.

  “I’ve hung my skates up,” I stated with certainty.

  “I got a call from Judith on Sunday. One of the things we discussed was your living arrangements when you return. She said you could go on staying with her and Jennifer for as long as you need. She said for you to give her a call.”

  I called Judy right away, after Les and I had to hang up.

  I told Judy, “Until things are settled with Leslie, it might take a few months before I find out if I’ve been accepted into graduate school. I hope that’s all right with you?”

  “Glen says he’s disappointed you haven’t applied to a school here in Los Angeles. Maybe Cal State LA? He knows people in the Cal State system. Why not let him help you out? He has a friend with good connections at Dominguez Hills. You have a better chance of getting in there than you do the University of California.

  “Besides,” Judy added, “don’t you want Leslie to stay close to her family?”

  “I’ll send Glen my C.V. Thanks, Jude. That’s a good idea.”

  “Glen said to include descriptions of the courses you’ve taken. He’ll carry things forward from here. You can trust him.”

  Hmm.

  Eventually, we got back to the subject of Leslie. Judy caught me up on what was happening in court.

  “Same old courtroom rhetoric from Stephen Kay, of course,” she said. “He’s such a flake. On Thursday he said something like, ‘Even Houdini or Clarence Darrow couldn’t get Leslie off the hook for first-degree murder.”

  “Sounds like he’s mixing his metaphors. Has Max gotten to his closing argument, or aren’t we there yet?” I asked.

  “Just beginning that now,” Judy said. “You know Max. He’s being his usual sensible, fatherly self. He told the jurors he doesn’t expect them to acquit her of any wrongdoing. He’s simply asked the jury not to punish her for any more serious crime than she’s guilty of.”

  “What does he expect them to come back with?” I asked.

  “Max conceded a lesser verdict of manslaughter would be in line with the doctrine of diminished capacity.”

  “How well was that received, do you think?”

  “Nnnn…not sure if the jury can get the distinctions between murder and manslaughter, or premeditation without malice.”

  “Whoa. You’re beginning to sound like a lawyer,” I said.

  “But it’s their job to get it. We’ll get Max to explain it to them,” Judy said. “Things are wrapping up now. Max seems to think the jury will decide sometime this week or next. When are you coming back?”

  On the 19th of July, a week before I set out for Los Angeles, a large envelope arrived from Judy. The letter was on Glen Peters’ Los Angeles Times letterhead. It included a copy (dateline July 12, 1977) of an article by Times’ staff writer, Kathleen Hendrix. The headline read: “Van Houten Jurors Reach No Verdict in Double Murder.”

  The piece opened with an overview of the sixties counterculture in terms: Flower children. Hippies. Pot. LSD. Tuning in. Turning on. Dropping out. The Beatles. The Beach Boys. Guitars. Vans. Communes. Gurus. Mysticism. The breakup of the family. The sexual revolution. The turn against organized religion. Against the establishment. Race riots. The war in Vietnam. Alienation. Runaways. And beyond that, the Manson family looking for people to kill…

  “It was all here in the courtroom of the 70s,” Hendrix wrote, “A ‘concatenation of events,’ one defense witness, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, called it a linked chain of ‘people, places and drugs which conspired to take this vulner
able girl and left her enmeshed in a system of delusional beliefs.”

  General details of Leslie Van Houten’s life were catalogued: daddy’s girl; twice homecoming princess in high school; an IQ in the top five percent of the nation; achievements in school government and so on. After her parents divorced, Leslie experimented with drugs, sex and counterculture. Who didn’t? She and her boyfriend tripped out. Leslie lost interest in school. She got pregnant, and her mother arranged for an abortion. She briefly turned to Eastern religion for solace. She temporarily quit sex and drugs. She studied meditation. She even tried to become a Buddhist nun. But, after the breakup with her boyfriend, Leslie met Bobby Beausoleil, and he introduced her to Manson.

  Hendrix described Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay as “bandbox neat” with a “wearing nasal voice” and an expression that seldom changes. “He wears away at a witness with phrases like ‘by the way…isn’t it true’ again and again. Kay is often sarcastic, and it does not seem natural to him. He describes Leslie Van Houten as coming to the courtroom ‘all dolled up’ and tells the jury that if they believe her testimony, ‘I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge after the trial.”

  What a card.

  According to the Times, Kay’s most dramatic moment was when he passed the jury “before” and “after” photographs of all seven Tate-LaBianca victims—first presenting a live picture and then one of each of them dead.

  “If psychiatrists made decisions in criminal cases,” Kay added, “I’d be out of a job.’”