Helter Skelter

by Vincent Bugliosi

  When the jurors were brought into court Monday morning, the X’s were the first thing they saw—graphic evidence that when Manson led, the girls followed.

  A day or so later Sandy, Squeaky, Gypsy, and most of the other Family members did the same thing. As new disciples joined the group, this became one of the Family rituals, complete to tasting the blood as it ran down their faces.

  JULY 27–AUGUST 3, 1970

  Eight sheriff’s deputies escorted Linda Kasabian from Sybil Brand to the Hall of Justice, through an entrance that circumvented those patrolled by the Family. When they reached the ninth floor, however, Sandra Good suddenly appeared in the corridor and screamed, “You’ll kill us all; you’ll kill us all!” Linda, according to those who witnessed the encounter, seemed less shaken than sad.

  I saw Linda just after she arrived. Though her attorney, Gary Fleischman, had purchased a new dress for her, it had been misplaced, and she was wearing the same maternity dress she’d worn when pregnant. The baggy tent made her look more hippie-like than the defendants. After I’d explained the problem to Judge Older, he heard other matters in chambers until the dress was located and brought over. Later a similar courtesy would be extended to the defense when Susan Atkins lost her bra.

  BUGLIOSI “The People call Linda Kasabian.”

  The sad, resigned look she gave Manson and the girls contrasted sharply with their obviously hostile glares.

  CLERK “Would you raise your right hand, please?”

  KANAREK “Object, Your Honor, on the grounds this witness is not competent and she is insane!”

  BUGLIOSI “Wait a minute! Your Honor, I move to strike that, and I ask the Court to find him in contempt for gross misconduct. This is unbelievable on his part!”

  Unfortunately, it was all too believable—exactly the sort of thing we had feared since Kanarek came on the case. Ordering the jury to disregard Kanarek’s remarks, Older called counsel to the bench. “There is no question about it,” Older told Kanarek, “your conduct is outrageous…”

  BUGLIOSI “I know the Court cannot prevent him from speaking up, but God knows what he is going to say in the future. If I were to say something like this in open court, I would probably be thrown off the case by my office and disbarred…”

  Defending Kanarek, Fitzgerald told the Court that the defense intended to call witnesses who would testify that Linda Kasabian had taken LSD at least three hundred times. The defense would contend, he said, that such drug use had rendered her mentally incapable of testifying.

  Whatever their offer of proof, Older said, matters of law were to be discussed either at the bench or in chambers, not in front of the jury. As for Kanarek’s outburst, Older warned him that if he did that once more, “I am going to take some action against you.”

  Linda was sworn. I asked her: “Linda, you realize that you are presently charged with seven counts of murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder?”

  A. “Yes.”

  Kanarek objected, moving for a mistrial. Denied. It was some ten minutes later before I was able to get in the second question.

  Q. “Linda, are you aware of the agreement between the District

  Attorney’s Office and your attorneys that if you testify to everything you know about the Tate-LaBianca murders, the District Attorney’s Office will petition the Court to grant you immunity from prosecution and dismiss all charges against you?”

  A. “Yes, I am aware.”

  Kanarek objected on four different grounds. Denied. By bringing this in first, we defused one of the defense’s biggest cannons.

  Q. “Besides the benefits which will accrue to you under the agreement, is there any other reason why you have decided to tell everything you know about these seven murders?”

  Another torrent of objections from Kanarek before Linda was able to answer: “I strongly believe in the truth, and I feel the truth should be spoken.”

  Kanarek even objected to my asking Linda the number of children she had. Often he used a shotgun approach—“Leading and suggestive; no foundation; conclusion and hearsay”—in hope that at least some of the buckshot would hit. Many of his grounds were totally inapplicable. He would object to a “conclusion,” for example, when no conclusion was called for, or yell “Hearsay” when I was simply asking her what she did next.

  Since I’d anticipated this, it didn’t bother me. However, it took over an hour to get Linda up to her first meeting with Manson, her description of life at Spahn Ranch, and, over Kanarek’s very heated objections, her definition of what she meant by the term “Family.”

  A. “Well, we lived together as one family, as a family lives together, as a mother and father and children, but we were all just one, and Charlie was the head.”

  I was questioning Linda about the various orders Manson had given the girls when, unexpectedly, Judge Older began sustaining Kanarek’s hearsay objections. I asked to approach the bench.

  Lay people believe hearsay is inadmissible. Actually there are so many exceptions to the hearsay rule that many lawyers feel the law should read, “Hearsay is admissible except in these few instances.”[66] I told Older: “I had anticipated many legal problems in this case, and I have done research on them—because I kind of play the Devil’s advocate—but I never anticipated I’d have any trouble showing Manson’s directions to members of the Family.”

  Older said he sustained the objections because he couldn’t think of any exception to the hearsay rule that would permit the introduction of such statements.

  This was crucial. If Older ruled such conversations inadmissible, there went the domination framework, and our case against Manson.

  Shortly after this, court recessed for the day. Aaron, J. Miller Leavy, and I were up late that night, looking for citations of authority. Fortunately, we found two cases—People vs. Fratiano and People vs. Stevens—in which the Court ruled you can show the existence of a conspiracy by showing the relationship between the parties, including statements made to each other. Shown the cases the next morning, Judge Older reversed himself and overruled Kanarek’s objections.

  Opposition now came from a totally unexpected direction: Aaron.

  Linda had already testified that Manson ordered the girls to make love to male visitors to induce them to join the Family, when I asked her: “Linda, do you know what a sexual orgy is?”

  Kanarek immediately objected, as did Hughes, who remarked, in a somewhat revealing choice of words: “We are not trying the sex lives of these people. We are trying the murder lives of these people.”

  Not only were the defense attorneys shouting objections, many of which Older sustained; Aaron leaned over to me and said, “Can’t we skip this stuff? We’re just wasting time. Let’s get into the two nights of murder.”

  “Look, Aaron,” I told him sotto voce, “I’m fighting the judge, I’m fighting Kanarek, I’m not going to fight you. I’ve got enough problems. This is important and I’m going to get it in.”

  As Linda finally testified, in between Kanarek’s objections, Manson decided when an orgy would take place; Manson decided who would, and who would not, participate; and Manson then assigned the roles each would play. From start to finish he was the maestro, as it were, orchestrating the whole scene.

  That Manson controlled even this most intimate and personal aspect of the lives of his followers was extremely powerful evidence of his domination.

  Moreover, among the twenty-some persons involved in the particular orgy Linda testified to were Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel.

  The sexual acts were not detailed, nor did I question Linda about other such “group encounters.” Once the point was made, I moved on to other testimony—Helter Skelter, the black-white war, Manson’s belief that the Beatles were communicating with him through the lyrics of their songs, his announcement, late on the afternoon of August 8, 1969, that “Now is the time for Helter Skelter.”

  Describing her appearance on the sta
nd, the Los Angeles Times noted that even in discussing the group’s sex life, Linda Kasabian was surprisingly “serene, soft-spoken, even demure.”

  Her testimony was also at times very moving. Telling how Manson separated the mothers and their children, and relating her own feelings on being parted from Tanya, Linda said, “Sometimes, you know, when there wasn’t anybody around, especially Charlie, I would give her my love and feed her.”

  Linda was describing Manson’s directions to the group just before they left Spahn Ranch that first night when Charlie, seated at the counsel table, put his hand up to his neck and, with one finger extended, made a slitting motion across his throat. Although I was looking the other way and didn’t see the gesture, others, including Linda, did.

  Yet there was no pause in her reply. She went on to relate how Tex had stopped the car in front of the big gate; the cutting of the telephone wires; driving back down the hill and parking, then walking back up. As she described how they had climbed the fence to the right of the gate, you could feel the tension building in the courtroom. Then the sudden headlights.

  A. “And a car pulled up in front of us and Tex leaped forward with a gun in his hand…And the man said, ‘Please don’t hurt me, I won’t say anything!’ And Tex shot him four times.”

  As she described the murder of Steven Parent, Linda began sobbing, as she had each time she had related the story to me. I could tell the jury was moved, both by the mounting horror and her reaction.

  Sadie giggled. Leslie sketched. Katie looked bored.

  By the end of the day I had brought Linda to the point where Katie was chasing the woman in the white gown (Folger) with a knife and Tex was stabbing the big man (Frykowski): “He just kept doing it and doing it and doing it.”

  Q. “When the man was screaming, do you know what he was screaming?”

  A. “There were no words, it was beyond words, it was just screams.”

  Reporters keeping track of Kanarek’s objections gave up on the third day, when the count passed two hundred. Older warned Kanarek that if he interrupted either the witness or the prosecution again, he would find him in contempt. Often a dozen transcript pages separated my question and Linda’s answer.

  BUGLIOSI “We are going to have to go back, Linda. There has been a blizzard of objections.”

  KANAREK “I object to that statement.”

  When Kanarek again interrupted Linda in mid-sentence, Older called us to the bench.

  THE COURT “Mr. Kanarek, you have directly violated my order not to repeatedly interrupt. I find you in contempt of Court and I sentence you to one night in the County Jail starting immediately after this court adjourns this afternoon until 7 A.M. tomorrow morning.”

  Kanarek protested that “rather than my interrupting the witness, the witness interrupted me”!

  By day’s end Kanarek would have company. Among the items I wished to submit for identification purposes was a photograph which showed the Straight Satans’ sword in a scabbard next to the steering wheel of Manson’s own dune buggy. Since the photograph had been introduced in evidence in the Beausoleil trial, I didn’t get it until it was brought over from the other court. “The District Attorney is withholding great quantities of evidence from us,” Hughes charged.

  BUGLIOSI “For the record, I just saw it for the first time a few minutes ago myself.”

  HUGHES “That is a lot of shit, Mr. Bugliosi.”

  THE COURT “I hold you in direct contempt of Court for that statement.”

  Though in complete agreement with Older’s earlier citing of Kanarek, I disagreed with his finding against Hughes, feeling if he was in contempt of anyone, it was me, not the Court. Too, it was based on a simple misunderstanding, one which, when explained to him, Hughes quickly accepted. Older was less understanding.

  Given a choice between paying a seventy-five-dollar fine or spending the night in jail, Hughes told the Court: “I am a pauper, Your Honor.” With no sympathy whatsoever, Older ordered him remanded into custody.

  Kanarek learned nothing from his night in jail. The next morning he was right back interrupting both my questions and Linda’s replies. Admonishments from the bench accomplished nothing; he’d apologize, then immediately do the same thing again. All this concerned me much less than the fact that he occasionally succeeded in keeping out testimony. Usually when Older sustained an objection, I could work my way around it, introducing the testimony in a different way. For example, when Older foreclosed me from questioning Linda about the defendants watching the news of the Tate murders on TV the day after those murders occurred, because he couldn’t see the relevance of this, I asked Linda if, on the night of the murders, she was aware of the identities of the victims.

  A. “No.”

  Q. “When was the first time you learned the names of these five people?”

  A. “The following day on the news.”

  Q. “On television?

  A. “Yes.”

  Q. “In Mr. Spahn’s trailer?”

  A. “Yes.”

  Q. “Did you see Tex, Sadie, and Katie during the day following these killings, other than when you were watching television with them?”

  A. “Well, I saw Sadie and Katie in the trailer. I cannot remember seeing Tex on that day.”

  The relevance of this would become obvious when Barbara Hoyt took the stand and testified (1) that Sadie came in and told her to switch channels to the news; (2) that before this particular day Sadie and the others never watched the news; and (3) that immediately after the newscaster finished with Tate and moved on to the Vietnam war, the group got up and left.

  In my questioning of Linda regarding the second night, there was one reiterated theme: Who told you to turn off the freeway? Charlie. Was anyone else in the car giving directions other than Mr. Manson? No. Did anyone question any of Mr. Manson’s commands? No.

  In her testimony regarding both nights, there were also literally a multitude of details which only someone who had been present on those nights of horrendous slaughter could have known.

  Realizing very early how damaging this was, Manson had remarked, loud enough for both Linda and the jury to hear, “You’ve already told three lies.”

  Linda, looking directly at him, had replied, “Oh, no, Charlie, I’ve spoken the truth, and you know it.”

  By the time I had finished my direct examination of Linda Kasabian on the afternoon of July 30, I had the feeling the jury knew it too.

  When I know the defense has something which might prove harmful to the prosecution’s case, as a trial tactic I usually put on that evidence myself first. This not only converts a damaging left hook into a mere left jab, it also indicates to the jury that the prosecution isn’t trying to hide anything. Therefore, I’d brought out, on direct, Linda’s sexual permissiveness and her use of LSD and other drugs.[67] Prepared to destroy her credibility with these revelations, the defense found itself going over familiar ground. In doing so, they sometimes even strengthened our case.

  It was Fitzgerald, Krenwinkel’s defense attorney, not the prosecution, who brought out that during the period Linda was at Spahn, “I was not really together in myself…I was extremely impressionistic…I let others put ideas in me”; and—even more important—that she feared Manson.

  Q. “What were you afraid of?” Fitzgerald asked.

  A. “I was just afraid. He was a heavy dude.”

  Asked to explain what she meant by this, Linda replied, “He just had something, you know, that could hold you. He was a heavyweight. He was just heavy, period.”

  Fitzgerald also elicited from Linda that she loved Manson; that “I felt he was the Messiah come again.”

  Linda then added one statement which went a long way toward explaining not only why she but also many of the others had so readily accepted Manson. When she first saw him, she said, “I thought…‘This is what I have been looking for,’ and this is what I saw in him.”

  Manson—a mirror which reflected the desires of others.


  Q. “Was it also your impression that other people at the ranch loved Charlie?”

  A. “Oh, yes. It seemed that the girls worshiped him, just would die to do anything for him.”

  Helter Skelter, Manson’s attitude toward blacks, his domination of his co-defendants: in each of these areas Fitzgerald’s queries brought out additional information which bolstered Linda’s previous testimony.

  Often his questions backfired, as when he asked Linda: “Do you remember who you slept with on August 8?”

  A. “No.”

  Q. “On the tenth?”

  A. “No, but eventually I slept with all the men.”

  Time and again Linda volunteered information which could have been considered damaging, yet, coming from her, somehow seemed only honest and sincere. She was so open that it caught Fitzgerald off guard.

  Avoiding the word “orgy,” he asked her, regarding the “love scene that took place in the back house…did you enjoy it?”

  Linda frankly answered: “Yeah, I guess I did. I will have to say I did.”

  If possible, at the end of Fitzgerald’s cross-examination Linda Kasabian looked even better than she had at the end of the direct.

  It was Monday, August 3, 1970. I was on my way back to court from lunch, a few minutes before 2 P.M., when I was abruptly surrounded by newsmen. They were all talking at once, and it was a couple of seconds before I made out the words: “Vince, have you heard the news? President Nixon just said that Manson’s guilty!”

  AUGUST 3–19, 1970

  Fitzgerald had a copy of the AP wire. In Denver for a conference of law-enforcement officials, the President, himself an attorney, was quoted as complaining that the press tended “to glorify and make heroes out of those engaged in criminal activities.”

  He continued: “I noted, for example, the coverage of the Charles Manson case…Front page every day in the papers. It usually got a couple of minutes in the evening news. Here is a man who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders. Yet here is a man who, as far as the coverage is concerned, appeared to be a glamorous figure.”