Helter Skelter

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Q. “How was Charles Manson acting when you arrived back at Spahn Ranch?”

  A. “Charles Manson changes from second to second. He can be anybody he wants to be. He can put on any face he wants to put on at any given moment.”

  Patricia “was very silent.” Tex was “nervous like he had just been through a traumatic experience.”

  Q. “How did you feel about what you had just done?”

  A. “I almost passed out. I felt as though I had killed myself. I felt dead. I feel dead now.”

  After she’d finished cleaning the car, Susan and the others had gone to bed. She thought she had made love to someone, maybe Clem, but then again maybe she had imagined it.

  The noon recess was called.

  Throughout her testimony Susan had referred to the victims by name. After the recess I established that she hadn’t known their names that night, nor had she ever seen any of them before. “…when I first saw them, my reaction was, ‘Wow, they sure are beautiful people.’”

  Susan first learned their identities the day after the murders, while watching the news on TV in the trailer next to George Spahn’s house. Tex, Katie, and Clem were also there, and maybe Linda, though Susan wasn’t sure.

  Q. “As you were watching the television news coverage, did anyone say anything?”

  Someone—Susan thought the words came from her own mouth, but she wasn’t positive—said either, “The Soul sure did pick a lulu,” or “The Soul sure did a good job.” She did remember saying that what had happened had “served its purpose.” Which was? I asked.

  A. “To instill fear into the establishment.”

  I asked Susan if any other members of the Family knew they had committed the Tate murders.

  A. “The Family was so much together that nothing ever had to be said. We all just knew what each other would do or had done.”

  We came now to the second night, the evening of August 9 and the early-morning hours of August 10.

  That evening Manson again told Susan to get an extra set of clothing. “I looked at him and I knew what he wanted me to do, and I gave a sort of sigh and went and did what he asked me to do.”

  Q. “Did he say what you were going to go out and do that night?” I asked.

  A. “He said we were going to go out and do the same thing we did the last night…only two different houses…”

  It was the same car and the same cast—Susan, Katie, Linda, and Tex—with three additions: Charlie, Clem, and Leslie. Susan didn’t notice any knives, only a gun, which Charlie had.

  They stopped in front of a house, “somewhere in Pasadena, I believe,” Charlie got out, and the others drove around the block, then came back and picked him up. “He said he saw pictures of children through the window and he didn’t want to do that house.” In the future, however, Manson explained, they might have to kill the children also.

  They stopped in front of another house, but saw some people nearby so remained in the car and after a few minutes drove off. At some point Susan fell asleep, she said. When she awakened, they were in a familiar neighborhood, near a house where, about a year before, she, Charlie, and about fifteen others had gone to an LSD party. The house had been occupied by a “Harold.” She couldn’t recall his last name.

  Charlie got out, only he didn’t walk up the driveway of this particular house but the one next door. Susan went back to sleep. She woke up when Charlie returned. “He said, ‘Tex, Katie, Leslie, go into the house. I have the people tied up. They are very calm.’

  “He said something to the effect that last night Tex let the people know they were going to be killed, which caused panic, and Charlie said that he reassured the people with smiles in a very quiet manner that they were not to be harmed…And so Tex, Leslie, and Katie got out of the car.”

  Susan ID’d photographs of Tex, Leslie, and Katie. Also of the LaBianca residence, the long driveway, and the house next door.

  I asked Susan what else Charlie told the trio. She replied that she “thought,” but it may be “my imagination that tells me this,” that “Charlie instructed them to go in and kill them.” She did recall him saying that they were “to paint a picture more gruesome than anybody had ever seen.” He’d also told them that after they were done they were to hitchhike back to the ranch.

  When Charlie returned to the car, he had a woman’s wallet with him. Then they drove around “in a predominantly colored area.”

  Q. “What happened next?”

  Susan said they stopped at a gas station. Then “Charlie gave Linda Kasabian the woman’s wallet and told her to put it in the bathroom in the gas station and leave it there, hoping that somebody would find it and use the credit cards and thus be identified with the murder…”

  I wondered about that wallet. To date, none of Rosemary LaBianca’s credit cards had been used.

  After leaving the station, Susan said, she went back to sleep. “It was like I was drugged” though “I was not on drugs at the time.” When she woke up, they were back at the ranch.

  (At this time we were unaware that Susan Atkins had made some significant omissions in her grand jury testimony—including three other attempts at murder that night. Had we known of them, we probably would have asked for an indictment of Clem. As it was, however, all we had against him was Susan’s statement that he had been in the car. And we still had a slim hope that his brother, whom we’d contacted at the Highway Patrol Academy, might persuade him to cooperate with us.)

  Susan had not entered the LaBianca residence. However, the next morning Katie told her what had happened inside.

  A. “She told me that when they got in the house they took the woman in the bedroom and put her on the bed and left Tex in the living room with the man…And then Katie said the woman heard her husband being killed and started to scream, ‘What are you doing to my husband?’ And Katie said that she then proceeded to stab the woman…”

  Q. “Did she say what Leslie was doing while—”

  A. “Leslie was helping Katie hold the woman down because the woman was fighting all the way up until she died…” Later Katie told Susan that the last words the woman spoke—“What are you doing to my husband?”—would be the thought she would carry with her into infinity.

  Afterwards, Katie told Susan, they wrote “‘Death to all pigs’ on the refrigerator door or on the front door, and I think she said they wrote ‘helter skelter’ and ‘arise.’”

  Then Katie walked into the living room from the kitchen with a fork in her hand, and “she looked at the man’s stomach and she had the fork in her hand and she put the fork in the man’s stomach and watched it wobble back and forth. She said she was fascinated by it.”

  Susan also said that it was “Katie, I believe,” who carved the word “war” on the man’s stomach.

  The three then took a shower and, since they were hungry, they went to the kitchen and fixed themselves something to eat.

  According to Susan, Katie also told her that they presumed the couple had children and that they would probably find the bodies when they came over for Sunday dinner later that day.

  After leaving the residence, “they dumped the old clothing in a garbage can a few blocks, maybe a mile, away from the house.” Then they hitchhiked back to Spahn Ranch, arriving about dawn.

  I had only a few more questions for Susan Atkins.

  Q. “Susan, did Charlie oftentimes use the word ‘pig’ or ‘pigs’?”

  A. “Yes.”

  Q. “How about ‘helter skelter’?”

  A. “Yes.”

  Q. “Did he use the words ‘pigs’ and ‘helter skelter’ very, very frequently?”

  A. “Well, Charlie talks a lot…In some of the songs he wrote, ‘helter skelter’ was in them and he’d talk about helter skelter. We all talked about helter skelter.”

  Q. “You say ‘we’; are you speaking of the Family?”

  A. “Yes.”

  Q. “What did the word ‘pig’ or ‘pigs’ mean to you and your Family?”
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  A. “‘Pig’ was a word used to describe the establishment. But you must understand that all words had no meanings to us and that ‘helter skelter’ was explained to me.”

  Q. “By whom?”

  A. “Charlie. I don’t even like to say Charlie—I’d like to say the words came from his mouth—that helter skelter was to be the last war on the face of the earth. It would be all the wars that have ever been fought built one on top of the other, something that no man could conceive of in his imagination. You can’t conceive of what it would be like to see every man judge himself and then take it out on every other man all over the face of the earth.”

  After a few more questions, I brought Susan Atkins’ testimony to an end. As she nonchalantly stepped down from the witness stand, the jurors stared at her in disbelief. Not once had she shown a trace of remorse, sorrow, or guilt.

  There were only four more witnesses that day. After Susan Atkins was taken from the room, Wilfred Parent was brought in to identify his son in a high-school prom picture. After identifying photos of the other Tate victims, Winifred Chapman testified that she had washed the front door of the Tate residence shortly before noon on Friday, August 8. This was important, since it meant that in order to leave a print Charles “Tex” Watson had to have been on the premises sometime after Mrs. Chapman left at four that afternoon.

  Aaron questioned Terry Melcher. He described meeting Manson; told of how Manson had been along when Dennis Wilson drove him home to 10050 Cielo Drive one night; and described, very briefly, his two visits to Spahn Ranch, the first to audition Manson, the second to introduce him to Michael Deasy, who had a mobile recording unit and who he felt might be more interested in recording Manson than he was.[39]

  According to various Family members, Melcher had made numerous promises to Manson, and hadn’t come through on them. Melcher denied this: the first time he went to Spahn, he had given Manson fifty dollars, all the money he had in his pocket, because “I felt sorry for these people”; but it was for food, not an advance on a recording contract; and he’d made no promises. As for Manson’s talent, he “wasn’t impressed enough to allot the time necessary” to prepare and record him.

  I wanted to interview Melcher in depth—I had a feeling that he was withholding something—but, like most of the other grand jury witnesses, he was here for a very limited purpose, and any real digging would have to wait.

  Los Angeles Coroner Thomas Noguchi testified to the autopsy findings on the five Tate victims. When he had concluded, the session was adjourned until Monday.

  That the proceedings were secret encouraged speculation, which, in some cases, appeared not as conjecture but fact. The headline on the Los Angeles Herald Examiner that afternoon read:

  TATE KILLERS WILD ON LSD, GRAND JURORS TOLD

  It wasn’t true; Susan Atkins had stated the very opposite, that the killers were not on drugs either night. But the myth was born, and it persisted, perhaps because it was the easiest explanation for what had happened.

  Though, as I’d soon learn, drugs were one of several methods Manson used to obtain control over his followers, they had no part in these crimes, for a very simple reason: on these two nights of savage slaughter, Charles Manson wanted his assassins in complete control of their faculties.

  The reality, and its implications, were far more frightening than the myth.

  DECEMBER 6–8, 1969

  On Saturday, Joe Granado went to the impound garage in Canoga Park to examine John Swartz’ 1959 Ford, which had been held there since the August 16 Spahn raid. This was the car Susan Atkins said the killers had used on both nights.

  Granado got a positive benzidine reaction on a spot in the upper right-hand corner of the glove compartment, indicating blood, but there wasn’t enough to determine whether it was animal or human.

  When I finally got Joe’s written report, I noticed the blood wasn’t mentioned. Asked about this, Joe said the amount was so small he hadn’t bothered to note it. I had Joe prepare a new report, this time including reference to the blood. Our case thus far was basically circumstantial, and in such a case each speck of evidence counts.

  “I just had a talk with Gary Fleischman, Vince,” Aaron said. “He wants a deal for his client Linda Kasabian. Complete immunity in exchange for her testimony at the trial. I told him maybe we could go along with her pleading to voluntary manslaughter, but we couldn’t give her—”

  “Christ, Aaron,” I interrupted. “It’s bad enough that we had to give Susan Atkins something! Look at it this way—Krenwinkel’s in Alabama, Watson’s in Texas; for all we know, we may not be able to extradite them before the others go on trial; and Van Houten wasn’t along on the night of the Tate murders. If we give deals to Atkins and Kasabian, who are we going to prosecute for the five Tate killings? Just Charlie? The people of this city won’t tolerate that. They’re shocked and outraged by these crimes. Drive through Bel Air sometime; the fear is still so real you can feel it.”

  According to Fleischman, Linda was anxious to testify. He had urged her to fight extradition; she’d gone against his advice and come back to California because she wanted to tell the whole story.

  “O.K., what can she testify to? According to Susan, Linda never entered either the Tate or LaBianca residences. As far as we know, she wasn’t an eyewitness to any of the murders, with the possible exception of Steven Parent. More important, as long as we have Susan, Linda’s testimony would be valueless to us, since Susan and Linda are both accomplices. As you well know, the law is clear on this: the testimony of one accomplice can’t be used to corroborate the testimony of another accomplice. What we really need, more than anything else, is corroboration.”

  This was one of our biggest problems. In a sense it didn’t matter who ended up as our star witness; without corroboration our case would be lost as a matter of law. We not only had to find corroboration against each of the defendants, that corroborating evidence had to be completely independent of the accomplice’s testimony.

  Aaron had seen Linda briefly, when she was booked into Sybil Brand. I’d never seen her. For all I knew, she was probably just as freaky as Sadie Mae Glutz.

  “Now if Susan bolts back to Charlie,” I told Aaron, “and we’re left without a major witness for the trial—as well we might be—then we can talk about a deal for Linda. In fact, if that happens, Linda may be our only hope.”

  When the grand jury reconvened on Monday, we moved quickly through the remaining testimony. Sergeant Michael McGann described what he had found at 10050 Cielo Drive on the morning of August 9, 1969. Sergeant Frank Escalante testified to having rolled Charles Watson’s prints on April 23, 1969, when he was arrested on a drug charge; Jerrome Boen of SID described how he lifted the latent from the front door of the Tate residence; and Harold Dolan, also of SID, testified to having compared it to the Watson exemplar, finding eighteen points of identity, eight more than LAPD requires for a positive identification. Sergeant William Lee testified regarding the pieces of gun grip and the .22 caliber bullets. Edward Lomax of Hi Standard matched the grips with his firm’s .22 caliber Longhorn revolver, and gave statistics indicating that the gun itself, because of its low production figures, was “rather unique.” Gregg Jakobson told of touting Manson to Melcher. Granado testified regarding the rope, the blood on the gun grips, and his discovery of the Buck knife.

  It was for the most part highly technical testimony, and the appearance of Daniel DeCarlo provided a respite, as well as more than a little local color.

  Aaron asked Danny: “Did you have any particular reason for staying at the ranch?”

  A. “Lots of pretty girls up there.”

  How did he get along with particular girls—for example, Katie?

  A. “We talked, that is about it, but I never did nothing. You know, I never snatched her up or anything.”

  Q. “And is your motorcycle club the kind that goes into a town and scares everybody?”

  A. “No, that only happens in the movies.”


  DeCarlo’s appearance, however, was intended for more than comic relief. He testified that Manson, Watson, and others, including himself, target-practiced with a .22 caliber Buntline revolver at Spahn. He said that he had last seen the gun “maybe a week, week and a half” before the sixteenth of August, and never after that. The drawing of the revolver which he had made for LAPD before he knew it was the Tate murder weapon was introduced into evidence. DeCarlo also recalled how he and Charlie had bought the three-strand nylon rope (which, being an ex–Coast Guardsman, he called “line”) at the Jack Frost store in Santa Monica in June 1969, and, shown the rope found at Cielo, said it was “identical.”

  After Susan Atkins, the outlaw motorcyclist looked almost like a model citizen.

  Deputy Medical Examiner David Katsuyama followed DeCarlo. Katsuyama had conducted the LaBianca autopsies. I’d have many, many problems with this witness. The grand jury provided only a sample. Aaron was to show Katsuyama a photo of Leno LaBianca’s hands, which were bound with a leather thong. DeCarlo was then to retake the stand and describe how Charlie always wore leather thongs around his neck. Sergeant Patchett was to follow and introduce the thongs he had found in Independence among Manson’s personal effects. He was also prepared to testify that they were “similar.”

  Aaron showed Katsuyama the photo, asking what material had been used to tie Leno LaBianca’s hands. “Electrical cord,” he replied. I managed to suppress a groan: the electrical cord had been around the necks of the LaBianca victims. Would he look at the photo a little more closely? It still looked like electrical cord to him. I finally had to show Katsuyama his own autopsy notes, where he’d written: “The hands are tied together with a rather thin leather thong.”

  Roxie Lucarelli, an officer with LAPD and a lifelong friend of Leno’s, identified photos of the LaBiancas, both Suzanne and Frank Struthers being still too shaken by the deaths to testify. Sergeant Danny Galindo told what he had found at 3301 Waverly Drive the night of August 10–11, 1969, and stated that a search of the residence revealed no trace of Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet.