Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Hughes asked Poston: “Did you feel you were under Mr. Manson’s hypnotic spell?”

  A. “No, I did not think that Charlie had a hypnotic spell.”

  Q. “Did you feel he had some power?”

  A. “I felt he was Jesus Christ. That is power enough for me.”

  Looking back on his time with Manson, Poston said: “I learned a lot from Charlie, but it doesn’t seem that he was making all those people free.” Watkins observed: “Charlie was always preaching love. Charlie had no idea what love was. Charlie was so far from love it wasn’t even funny. Death is Charlie’s trip. It really is.”

  Since his extradition to California, Charles “Tex” Watson had been behaving peculiarly. At first he spoke little, then stopped speaking entirely. The prisoners in his cell block signed a petition complaining of the unsanitary condition of his cell. For hours he’d stare off into space, then inexplicably hurl himself against his cell wall. Placed in restraints, he stopped eating and, even though force-fed, his weight dropped to 110 pounds.

  Though there was evidence that he was faking at least part of his symptoms, his attorney, Sam Bubrick, asked the Court to appoint three psychiatrists to examine him. Their conclusions differed but they agreed on one point: Watson was rapidly reverting to a fetal state, which, unless immediately treated, could be fatal. Acting on the basis of their examination, on October 29 Judge Dell ruled Watson was at present incompetent to stand trial and ordered him committed to Atascadero State Hospital.

  Manson asked to see me during the recess.

  “Vince,” Manson pleaded through the lockup door, “give me just half an hour with Tex. I’m positive I can cure him.”

  “I’m sorry, Charlie,” I told him. “I can’t afford to take that chance. If you cured him, then everyone would believe you were Jesus Christ.”

  NOVEMBER 1–19, 1970

  The day before Watson was committed to Atascadero, two court-appointed psychiatrists found seventeen-year-old Dianne Lake competent to testify.

  Following her release from Patton, Dianne had received some good news: Inyo County investigator Jack Gardiner and his wife, who had befriended Dianne after her arrest in the Barker raid, had been appointed her foster parents. She would live with them and their children until she finished high school.

  Because of Aranda, there were some things the jury never heard—for example, that Tex had told Leslie to stab Rosemary LaBianca and, later, to wipe fingerprints off everything they had touched—since Katie had related these things to Dianne, and any reference by Katie to her co-defendants had to be excised.

  Dianne could testify to what Leslie had told her she had done; however, the problem here was that Leslie never told Dianne whom she had stabbed. She said she had stabbed someone who was already dead; that this occurred near Griffith Park; and that there was a boat outside. From these facts I hoped the jury would conclude that she was talking about the LaBiancas. Dianne also testified that one morning in August Leslie had come into the back house at Spahn and proceeded to burn a purse, a credit card, and her own clothing, keeping only a sack of coins, which the girls divided and spent on food. Dianne, however, was unable to pinpoint the exact date, and though I hoped the jury would surmise this had occurred the morning after the LaBiancas were killed, there was no proof that this was so.

  Since this was the only evidence, independent of Linda Kasabian’s testimony, which I had linking Leslie Van Houten to the LaBianca homicides, it hurt, and badly, when Hughes on cross brought out that Dianne wasn’t sure whether Leslie had told her about the boat or whether she had about it in the newspapers.

  Hughes also focused on a number of minor discrepancies in her previous statements (she’d told Sartuchi the coins were in the purse, while she’d told me they were in a plastic bag), and what could have been one very big bombshell. On direct Dianne had said that she, Little Patty, and Sandra Good, “I believe,” had divided the money.

  If Sandy was present, this couldn’t have been August 10, the morning after the LaBianca murders, since Sandra Good, along with Mary Brunner, was still in custody. However, questioned further, Dianne said Sandy “might not have been there.”

  In his cross-examination Kanarek brought out that Sergeant Gutierrez had threatened Dianne with the gas chamber. Fitzgerald also came up with a prior inconsistent statement: Dianne had told the grand jury that she was in Inyo County, rather than at Spahn Ranch, on August 8 and 9.

  On redirect I asked Dianne: “Why did you lie to the grand jury?”

  A. “Because I was afraid that I would be killed by members of the Family if I told the truth. And Charlie asked me not to—he told me not to say anything to anybody who had the power of authority.”

  On November 4, Sergeant Gutierrez, in search of a cup of coffee, had wandered into the jury room where the female defendants stayed during recesses.

  He found a yellow legal pad with the name Patricia Krenwinkel on it. Among the notes and doodlings, Katie had written the words “healter skelter” three times—misspelling that first word exactly the same way it had been misspelled on the LaBianca refrigerator door.

  Older would not permit me to introduce it in evidence, however. I felt he was 100 percent wrong about this: it was unquestionably circumstantial evidence; it had relevance; and it was admissible. But Older ruled otherwise.

  Older also gave me a scare when I attempted to introduce Krenwinkel’s refusal to make a printing exemplar. Older agreed it was admissible, but he felt Krenwinkel should be given another chance to comply, and ordered her to do so.

  The problem here was that this time Krenwinkel just might, on the advice of counsel, make the exemplar, and if she did, I knew there would be real problems.

  Katie refused—on the instructions of Paul Fitzgerald!

  What Fitzgerald apparently did not realize was that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for LAPD to match the two printing samples. And had LAPD failed to do so, by law Patricia Krenwinkel would have to be acquitted of the LaBianca murders. Her refusal to give an exemplar was the only speck of independent evidence I had supporting Kasabian’s testimony regarding Krenwinkel’s involvement in these crimes.

  Krenwinkel had been given an excellent chance to “beat the rap.” To this day I still don’t understand why her attorney instructed her as he did and so lost her that chance.

  The People’s last two witnesses, Drs. Blake Skrdla and Harold Deering, were the psychiatrists who had examined Dianne. On both direct and redirect examination, I elicited testimony from them to the effect that, although a powerful drug, LSD does not impair memory, nor is there any demonstrable medical evidence that it causes brain damage. This was important, since the defense attorneys had contended that the minds of various prosecution witnesses, in particular Linda and Dianne, had been so “blown” by LSD that they could not distinguish fantasy from reality.

  Skrdla testified that people on LSD can tell the difference between the real and the unreal; in fact, they often have a heightened awareness. Skrdla further stated that LSD causes illusions rather than hallucinations—in other words, that which is seen is actually there, only the perception of it is changed. This surprised a lot of people, since LSD is called a hallucinogenic drug.

  When Watkins was on the stand, I personally brought out that although he was only twenty, Paul had taken LSD between 150 and 200 times. Yet, as the jury undoubtedly observed, he was one of the brightest and most articulate of the prosecution witnesses. Skrdla also testified: “I have seen individuals who have taken it several hundred times and show no outward sign of any emotional disturbance while they are not on the drug.”

  Fitzgerald asked Skrdla: “Would LSD in large doses over a period of time make someone sort of a zombie, or would it destroy rational thought processes?”

  If, as I suspected, Fitzgerald was trying to lay the foundation for a defense based on this premise, that foundation collapsed when Skrdla replied: “I have not seen this, counsel.”

  Dr. Deering was t
he People’s last witness. He finished testifying on Friday, November 13. Most of Monday, the sixteenth, was spent introducing the People’s exhibits into evidence. There were 320 of these, and Kanarek objected to every one, from the gun to the scale map of the Tate premises. His strongest objections were to the color death photos. Responding, I argued: “I grant the Court that these photographs are gruesome, there is no question about it, but if in fact the defendants are the ones who committed these murders, which the prosecution of course is alleging, they are the ones who are responsible for the gruesomeness and the ghastliness. It is their handiwork. The jury is entitled to look at that handiwork.”

  Judge Older agreed, and they were admitted into evidence.

  One exhibit never made it into evidence. As mentioned earlier, a number of white dog hairs had been found on the discarded clothing the killers wore the night of the Tate murders. Shown them, Winifred Chapman told me they looked like the hair of Sharon’s dog. When I requested that they be brought over from LAPD, however, I got only excuses. Finally, I learned that while walking across the street to the Hall of Justice, one of the Tate detectives had dropped and broken the vial containing the hairs. He had been able to recover only one. Realizing that the expression “grasping at hairs” would be all too appropriate in this case, I decided against introducing that single hair into evidence.

  At 4:27 P.M. that Monday—exactly twenty-two weeks after the start of the trial, and two days short of a year after my assignment to the case—I told the Court: “Your Honor, the People of the State of California rest.”

  Court was recessed until Thursday, November 19, at which time each of the defense attorneys argued the standard motions to dismiss.

  Back in December 1969 a great many attorneys predicted that when we reached this point Manson would have to be acquitted because of insufficiency of evidence.

  I doubted if any lawyer in the country felt that way now, including the attorneys for the defense.

  Older denied all the motions.

  THE COURT “Are you ready to proceed with the defense?”

  FITZGERALD “Yes, Your Honor.”

  THE COURT “You may call your first witness, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

  FITZGERALD “Thank you, Your Honor. The defendants rest.”

  Nearly everyone in the courtroom was caught completely off guard. For several seconds even Judge Older seemed too stunned to speak. The ultimate legal issue at a criminal trial is not the defendant’s guilt or innocence, as most people believe. The issue is whether or not the prosecution has met its legal burden of proving the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.* The defense obviously, but unexpectedly, had decided to avoid cross-examination and to rely on the argument that we hadn’t proved the guilt of Manson and his co-defendants beyond a reasonable doubt and, hence, they were entitled to not-guilty verdicts.

  The biggest surprise, however, was still to come.

  PART 7

  Murder in the Wind

  “You could feel something in the air, you know.

  You could feel something in the air.”

  JUAN FLYNN

  “Snitches, and other enemies, will be taken care of.”

  SANDRA GOOD

  “Before his disappearance, Ronald Hughes,

  the missing defense attorney in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial,

  confided to close friends that he was in fear of Manson.”

  LOS ANGELES TIMES

  NOVEMBER 19–DECEMBER 20, 1970

  Fitzgerald said the defense had rested. But the three female defendants now shouted that they wanted to testify.

  Calling counsel into chambers, Judge Older demanded to know exactly what was going on.

  There had been a split between the defense attorneys and their clients, Fitzgerald said. The girls wanted to testify; their attorneys opposed this, and wanted to rest their case.

  Only after an hour of intense discussion did the real reason for the split come out, in an off-record admission by Fitzgerald:

  Sadie, Katie, and Leslie wanted to take the stand and testify that they had planned and committed the murders—and that Manson was not involved!

  Charlie had tried to explode his bombshell, but the attorneys for the girls had managed to defuse it, at least temporarily. Standing up against Manson for the first time, Ronald Hughes observed: “I refuse to take part in any proceeding where I am forced to push a client out the window.”

  The legal problems thus created were immense, but basically they came down to the question of which took precedence: the right to effective counsel or the right to testify. Worried that whichever course Older took might be reversible error on appeal, I suggested he take the matter to the State Supreme Court for a decision. Older, however, decided that even though the attorneys had rested, and had advised their clients not to take the stand, the right to testify “supersedes any and all other rights.” The girls would be permitted to take the stand.

  Older asked Manson if he also wished to testify. “No,” he replied, then, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “That is, not at this time anyway.”

  On returning to open court, Kanarek made a motion to sever Manson so he could be tried separately.

  Charlie was now attempting to abandon ship, while letting the girls sink. After denying the motion, Older had the jury brought in and Susan Atkins took the stand and was sworn. Daye Shinn, however, refused to question her, stating that if he asked the questions she’d prepared, they would incriminate her.*

  This created a whole new problem. Returning to chambers, Older remarked: “It is becoming perfectly clear that this entire maneuver by the defense is simply one…to wreck the trial…I do not intend to permit this to happen.”

  Still in chambers, and outside the presence of the jury, Susan Atkins told Judge Older that she wanted to testify to “the way it happened. The way I saw it happen.”

  THE COURT “You are subjecting yourself to the extreme risk of convicting yourself out of your own mouth, do you understand that?”

  ATKINS “I understand that.” She added that if she was convicted, “let them convict me on the truth. I do not wish to be convicted on a pack of lies taken out of context and just scattered every which way. Because, Mr. Bugliosi, your foundation is just crumbling. I have watched it crumble. You have been a sly, sneaky fox.”

  BUGLIOSI “Why do you want to put it back together for me, Sadie, if it is crumbling? You should be happy. You can go back to Barker Ranch if it is crumbling. Why do you want to take the stand to help me?”

  Shinn said he would ask to be relieved as counsel if Older ordered him to question his client. Fitzgerald replied similarly, adding, “As far as I am concerned, it would be sort of aiding and abetting a suicide.”

  The matter was unresolved when court recessed for the day.

  The following day Manson surprised everyone by saying that he too wanted to testify. In fact, he wanted to go on the stand before the others. Because of possible Aranda problems, however, it was decided that Manson should first testify outside the presence of the jury.

  Manson was sworn. Rather than have Kanarek question him, he requested and received permission to make a statement.

  He spoke for over an hour. He began almost apologetically, at first speaking so low that the spectators in the crowded courtroom had to lean forward to hear. But after a few minutes the voice changed, grew stronger, more animated, and, as I’d already discovered in my conversations with him, when this happened his face seemed to change too. Manson the nobody. Manson the martyr. Manson the teacher. Manson the prophet. He became all these, and more, the metamorphosis often occurring in midsentence, his face a light show of shifting emotions until it was not one face but a kaleidoscope of different faces, each real, but only for the moment.

  He rambled, he digressed, he repeated himself, but there was something hypnotic about the whole performance. In his own strange way he was trying to weave a spell, not unlike the ones he had cast over his impress
ionable followers.

  MANSON “There has been a lot of charges and a lot of things said about me and brought against the co-defendants in this case, of which a lot could be cleared up and clarified…

  “I never went to school, so I never growed up to read and write too good, so I have stayed in jail and I have stayed stupid, and I have stayed a child while I have watched your world grow up, and then I look at the things that you do and I don’t understand…

  “You eat meat and you kill things that are better than you are, and then you say how bad, and even killers, your children are. You made your children what they are…

  “These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn’t teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.

  “Most of the people at the ranch that you call the Family were just people that you did not want, people that were alongside the road, that their parents had kicked out, that did not want to go to Juvenile Hall. So I did the best I could and I took them up on my garbage dump and I told them this: that in love there is no wrong…

  “I told them that anything they do for their brothers and sisters is good if they do it with a good thought…

  “I was working at cleaning up my house, something that Nixon should have been doing. He should have been on the side of the road, picking up his children, but he wasn’t. He was in the White House, sending them off to war…

  “I don’t understand you, but I don’t try. I don’t try to judge nobody. I know that the only person I can judge is me…But I know this: that in your hearts and your own souls, you are as much responsible for the Vietnam war as I am for killing these people…

  “I can’t judge any of you. I have no malice against you and no ribbons for you. But I think that it is high time that you all start looking at yourselves, and judging the lie that you live in.