by Ed Sanders
The loquacious murderer was then taken to the Sybil Brand jail in Los Angeles, where she began splashing her secrets.
Chapter 16
The Breaking of the Case
A Nighttime Talk About Murder
After the crazy young murder defendant named Susan Atkins was flown by Detective Guenther and Sergeant Whiteley of the LA County sheriff’s homicide to Los Angeles, where she was charged with Gary Hinman’s murder, she settled into the gossip-drenched milieu of the women’s jail.
On November 6, she held an afternoon confessional conversation with fellow inmate Virginia Graham, jailed for parole violation, followed by breathless nighttime talk with another inmate in the LA County jail, Ronni Howard, aka Shelly Nadell. Howard and Graham were longtime acquaintances.
Virginia Graham and Sadie/Susan Atkins had daytime chores involving running messages here and there in the jail until 3:30 p.m., then they went to dinner, returning to the 8000 dormitory about 4:35 p.m. Virginia was all set to go take a shower when Sadie came over to Virginia’s bed and asked if she could sit and talk for a minute. Virginia said okay. They talked. Somehow the subject centered at first on LSD, which the thirty-nine-year-old Virginia had taken for the first time on October 1, a few days before her arrest. Sadie had taken hundreds of trips, so it was something in common to talk about.
Then Sadie began to talk about the Hinman matter, confessing freely to participating in it. Miss Graham reproached Sadie for her loose talk.
“I told her that I didn’t care particularly what she had done, but I didn’t think it was advisable for her to talk so much,” Virginia remembered later. Graham told Sadie she had heard of cases where people in jail were victims of entrapment after confessing to crimes to cellmates who later snitched.
Sadie replied that she wasn’t worried because looking into Virginia’s eyes, she just knew she could trust Virginia.
Sadie then began to talk about Death Valley and the people arrested up there and the Underground City for the chosen. And she began to talk about Manson. Then Sadie became visibly excited and began to talk quickly. What triggered it off? Evidently a general discussion of crime and murder.
“We were talking about crime and, you know, various murders, and all that,” remembered Miss Graham.
And Sadie said, in the course of the conversation, according to Graham, “Well, you know, there’s a case right now. They are so far off the track they don’t even know what’s happening.”
There was a pause.
“What are you talking about?”
“That one on Benedict Canyon.”
“Benedict Canyon?”
“Benedict Canyon, yes.”
“You don’t mean Sharon Tate?”
“Yeah,” Sadie said. Then she grew even more excited and the baleful words of murd-mania were spewn out. “You’re looking at the one that did it.”
Several times Sadie raised her voice, and Graham had to tell her to lower it. Out came the horror, the deathly details, the scenarios. And Miss Graham began to ask questions to determine if Sadie was really telling the truth, querying Sadie about the rope, what the victims were wearing, and so on, in order to trip her up. But the story seemed to hold, except that Sadie claimed to have left a palm print on the living room desk and to have lost her knife in the fray, events unmentioned in the media. (And any palm print would already certainly have led to Sadie’s arrest.)
For just over an hour they talked. At 6 p.m. there was a jail prisoner count, so their conversation had to stop, but not before Miss Graham’s mind was filled with an unforgettable mixture of shocking data. Right away, Miss Graham rushed over to her ten-year-friend Ronni Howard and told her what Sadie had related. They weren’t totally convinced, but they planned to try to find out more from Sadie.
“We’ll ask her certain questions that only a person would know who had been in on it,” Graham said to Ronni. “Try and ask her what color the bedroom was, or what the people had on or anything.”
Because Sadie had moved into the bed right next to Ronni, Ronni was able to begin to talk to Sadie, by night, in privacy. Since the prison matrons counted the sleeping inmates each half hour, it was possible by means of a system of lookouts to visit each other intimately for half-hour periods in between head counts.
That same day, November 6, a team of three detectives associated with the LaBianca investigation visited the Inyo County Jail in Independence, near Death Valley, to interview Manson Family members being held after the October raids on their desert hideout. They were Sergeant Frank Patchett, Sergeant Philip Sartuche, and Lieutenant Burdick, all with the LAPD.
Charles Manson answered with a gruff “No!” when asked by Sergeant Sartuche if he’d been involved with either the LaBianca or the Tate homicides. At 1:30 p.m. Lieutenant A. H. Burdick of the scientific investigation division of the LAPD, the gentleman who ninety days previous had administered a lie detector test to William Garretson, interviewed Leslie Van Houten. He outlined, in a report to the LAPD robbery-homicide division, that Miss Van Houten indicated to him that there were “some things” that caused her to believe that someone from her group was involved in the Tate homicide but that she denied knowledge of the LaBianca homicide. At that time she declined to indicate what she meant and stated that she wanted to think about it overnight, and that she was perplexed and didn’t know what to do. The next day, Miss Van Houten had gained her composure and refused to speak any more about the matter.
November 8 or 9
Virginia Graham didn’t want to rouse Sadie’s suspicions, so she waited to bring up the subject of murder. Approximately two or three days after the bedside conversation, she told Sadie this: “Hey, you know . . . ” revealing to Sadie that she and her former husband years before, around 1962, had been to the residence at 10050 Cielo Drive to see about renting it. “Is it still done in gold and white?” Taking a shot in the dark, because she had never actually seen the interior.
“Uh huh,” Sadie replied.
On November 8 or 9, Sadie came to Virginia’s bed carrying a movie fan magazine. The magazine was opened to a picture of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Sadie seemed jolly as she disclosed to Virginia a list of future victims, including Richard Burton, whose groin was to be trimmed of appendage, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, who was singing over the jail radio at that moment, and Steve McQueen—although Sadie said that she hated to have to do in Tom Jones because he turned her on. She also expressed enmity for Frank Sinatra Jr. Sadie told Virginia she planned the most hideous and butcherous of deaths for those on her list.
On November 12, Virginia Graham had a parole hearing, where it would be decided to send her back to Corona State Prison for Women. Just before she left, following Sadie’s return from her own court appearance, Virginia had a brief discussion with Ronni Howard about what to do about Sadie’s confession.
Ronni said that she had been talking every night to Sadie, adding, “Boy is she weird.” Ronni came up with an idea how to tell if Sadie’s allegations were true. Ronni said she knew what it was like to stab someone, since she had once stabbed her former husband. Ronni said she’d ask Sadie what it was like, physically, to stab someone, and make a judgement by her response.
Virginia said that one way might be to start out by talking about LSD trips, since that seemed to get Sadie going. As Virginia Graham left to go to Corona, she suggested to Ronni that if she found out more, she could then go to her parole agent.
Ronni replied that there were always homicide detectives arriving at the jail, and that since she worked in receiving, she’d just tell one of them. Virginia added that, if Ronni decided to tell anybody in authority about the matter, Virginia could be contacted at Corona State Prison.
Lights-out in dorm 8000 at Sybil Brand Institute was 9:30 p.m., and that very night Sadie and Ronni Howard were talking face to face. Later Howard described her method of getting Sadie to talk: “Oh, how I got her to tell me about it; I told you we were talking about an acid trip. You
know, because not too many of the girls take acid in there and I guess I was one that she could talk to.”
Ronni had taken acid twelve times. Sadie told her that there was nothing that could shock her, nothing that she hadn’t done. Then upon the urging of Howard, the subject shifted to bloodletting, and Miss Atkins started to confess, whispering in the dark dormitory. Ronni scoffed at Sadie’s contentions and asked enough questions to cajole Sadie to reveal all the details.
For five or six straight nights, from November 12 through November 15 or 16, Ronni Howard lay down with Sadie Glutz in the gloom, gathering information. Sadie disturbed Ronni the most when she told her that the deaths were going to continue, and that they were going to occur at random!
Susan Atkins, October 1969, just after she was brought to Los Angeles and charged with murder
Around November 14, Virginia Graham, already transferred to Corona State Prison, decided to talk about what Sadie/Susan Atkins had said. She filled out a “blue slip” or request to speak with a staff member and sent it to the prison psychologist, Dr. Vera Dreiser, along with a note: “Dr. Dreiser, it is very important that I speak with you.”
Dreiser sent a “blue slip” back indicating that Miss Graham was to talk with Dreiser’s supervisor. Finally about twelve days later she told her jail counselor, Miss Mary Ann Domn, about the Manson Family and Atkins’s blurt-outs.
November 17, a Hearing in Santa Monica
Ronni Howard had a number of pseudonyms—among them were Shelley Joyce Nadell, Veronica Hughes, Veronica Williams, Connie Johnson, Connie Schampeau, Sharon Warren, Marjie Carter, and Jean Marie Conley. She had an appearance in Santa Monica Superior Court regarding a false prescription charge.
In California a defendant is allowed a phone call for each separate court appearance, so Ronni called the Hollywood division of the LAPD, because she believed that the Hollywood division was handling the Tate investigation. She told them about Sadie’s confession.
After court, Miss Howard returned to Sybil Brand jail, and LAPD Special Investigators Brown and Mossman came to Sybil Brand and talked to Ronni in a private room for about an hour and a half. She supplied them with most of the information that Sadie/Susan had given her, except she left out some of the names involved. What really impressed the officers was that Sadie had told Ronni things only the killer could have known, such as the Buck knife that she said she lost in the house.
By November 17, apparently only one lieutenant and five detectives were still assigned to the Polanski residence case. Right away after Ronni Howard snitched, the full investigation involving two lieutenants and sixteen men was reactivated. With the evidence supplied by Howard/Nadell, the biker Dan DeCarlo, Kitty Lutesinger, Gregg Jakobson, and others, it was all over.
November 23
In the evening, LAPD detectives, Sergeants Patchett and McGann, interviewed Ronni Howard aka Shelley Nadell at the Sybil Brand jail in Los Angeles. The next day, Howard was removed from the dormitory where she was sleeping alongside Sadie Glutz/Susan Atkins, for she could not continue to stay in the same dormitory lest it appear to the court that she had attempted to entrap Atkins to confess.
November 26
There was a hearing for Sadie Glutz/Susan Atkins in Santa Monica on the Hinman case. Richard Caballero, a former assistant district attorney, was appointed to represent Miss Atkins, at county expense. Mr. Caballero conducted a lengthy discussion with Atkins, where she was confronted with the considerable evidence against her from her cellmates. Her attorney convinced her that the evidence against her was overwhelming. She was told by her attorney that only if she made a full confession to all the murders and cooperated with the police could she hope to avoid the gas chamber. She agreed to tell all, and thus the case was truly broken.
On the same day, Sadie’s former cellmate Virginia Graham related to her counselor at the Corona State Prison for Women what Miss Atkins had told her about the homicides. The same afternoon, Sergeant Mike Nielsen of the LAPD taped an interview with Graham at the Corona State Prison.
November 28
Colonel Tate filed Sharon Tate’s will for probate. The papers listed the value of Sharon Tate’s estate: $37,200 in cash, no stock, no bonds, an auto worth $5,700, for a total of $45,400.
That same day, Sergeant Mike Nielsen, of LAPD robbery-homicide division, telephoned Joseph Krenwinkel and asked where his daughter Patricia was. Joseph replied that she was to be found in Mobile, Alabama (where she had hastened after the arrests at the Barker Ranch and being asked about the LaBianca murders in the Inyo County Jail). She would be picked up several days later in Mobile, where she was staying with an aunt.
On November 30, Charles Denton Watson was picked up in Copeville, Texas for murder.
December 1
At 2 p.m. on December 1, LA Police Chief Edward Davis held a press conference in an auditorium at Parker Center, the LA police headquarters.
Paul Whiteley and Charles Guenther of sheriff’s homicide, who had been key in bringing the Manson group to justice, were on hand but not allowed to attend the news conference where Chief Edward Davis announced the solution of the Tate-LaBianca-Sebring-Folger-Frykowski-Parent homicides.
Facing about fifteen microphones and a knot of jousting cameramen, Chief Davis said that 8,750 hours of police work had brought down the house of Manson. Followed by worldwide headlines, the case was broken.
Paul Tate wanted to watch Manson being brought in. Lieutenant Robert Helder of LAPD allowed it. One account states that a friend drove Tate to where Manson would be walked, but couldn’t find a parking space, so the colonel went by himself. The friend apparently insisted that Sharon’s father leave his pistol in the car.
Ten deputies guarded Manson—two on each side, three in front, three behind. Paul Tate thought Manson would recognize him, so he pulled down his sunglasses, and then locked eyes with M. As he later wrote, “Three feet beyond me, Manson twisted around, walking backward in order to continue the staring match.”
Something was over, but not the horror and mourning of memory. And nothing could bring back the fresh young mother-to-be in her house of fresh-painted nursery, fresh-purchased baby clothes, and well-used rocking chair freshly brought by her mother in which her daughter intended to nurse the soon-to-be-born baby.
Coda
O Sharon
Your son’d be
what
well into his 40s by now
& you’d be
if still acting
playing comedic grandmother roles
which wd be Just—
What’s not
is the unthinkable calamity
that befell you
and its loose threads
like an unraveling shawl
of antique lace
that puzzles us
all these decades later
—Ed Sanders
Sharon in the Sky
Afterword
Loose Threads in the Weave
One of the greatest lingering mysteries is why the Manson group went to Cielo Drive that hot, baleful night. Sharon Tate’s own mother, when I visited with her in 1989, over twenty years after the murders, was perplexed. She believed that the Manson group had advance word that Sharon Tate was not going to be at the house that night. She felt, she told me, that someone might have tipped the Family off. Doris Tate wondered if someone saw that Sharon’s red Ferrari was gone (it was in the repair shop) and called Manson, and then the attack began. And where was the caretaker of the property during the murder? These are mysteries she longed to have cleared up.
In the over forty years since I first became involved in writing and researching this case, some things have never made sense. I am ever reminded of a quote from Graham Greene’s novel, The Third Man, wherein an intelligence agent comments, “One’s file, you know, is never quite complete; a case is never really closed, even after a century, when all the participants are dead.”
One loose thread in the story’s weave is the role of th
e mysterious English satanic cult that was active in Los Angeles in 1967 and 1968.
Ace Manson follower Bruce Davis was sent, apparently by Manson, on a strange trip to England in 1968 and 1969. He was associated over in England with the head honcho of the satanic cult, an Englishman who cofounded the cult. This fact was given to me by retired LA County sheriff’s homicide detective Paul Whiteley, who, as much as any other officer, was responsible for bringing down the house of Manson.
When I interviewed Robert Beausoleil at San Quentin following his conviction for the murder of Gary Hinman, he stated that the Manson group met the English satanic organization at the Spiral Staircase in Topanga Canyon. Patricia Krenwinkel later confirmed that. (The Spiral Staircase was a secluded house at the mouth of Topanga Canyon near the Pacific Coast Highway. It was located behind the Raft Restaurant on Topanga Canyon Lane. This place acquired its name from the spiral staircase at the entrance. It has since been torn down.)
The female defendants charged with the Tate-LaBianca murders used to embroider the symbol of this English satanic cult in jail during their trial for murder.
Dianne Lake, in the fall of 1967, was an emancipated child of fourteen who lived with her parents at the commune called the Hog Farm outside Los Angeles. She met the Manson Family in Topanga Canyon at the Spiral Staircase and joined up. She was with them all the way to the mass arrests in the fall of 1969—although she was still just seventeen years old.
She became a star witness at the Tate-LaBianca trial, and during the trial was a ward, because she was underage, of Inyo County district attorney investigator Jack Gardiner and his wife. She had memories of the English satanic group which she imparted to Mr. Gardiner. The Family, she told Gardiner, received money from the cult, and the cult wanted the Family to join. Unusual sex acts came from the English cult, according to Dianne, and use of drugs as part of the “program,” according to her, came from the cult.
