by Jeff Guinn
• • •
Some one hundred miles south, Charlie was also being braced by the law. On their way to pick up Stephanie Schram’s clothes from her sister’s house in San Diego, she and Charlie were pulled over by a highway patrolman for an unspecified “mechanical violation.” The officer asked to see Charlie’s driver’s license, and Charlie had to admit he didn’t have one. He was issued a ticket at 6:15 P.M. on August 7 for operating a vehicle without a license, and signed the carbon with his real name rather than an alias.
Charlie and Schram drove on to San Diego. While she gathered her things, Charlie chatted with Schram’s sister. They talked about the White Album, and Charlie explained that the Beatles were notifying the world of what was about to happen—a terrible race war where blacks slaughtered most whites, and the only survivors would take refuge in a bottomless desert pit. Very soon, Charlie promised, “People are going to be slaughtered, they’ll be lying on their lawns dead.” It took some time for Schram to pack, so that night she and Charlie stopped alongside the road on the way back to Spahn and slept in the delivery van.
Beausoleil called Spahn Ranch from the L.A. County jail. Charlie hadn’t returned yet from San Diego with Stephanie Schram, so Linda Kasabian took the call. Beausoleil explained that he’d been arrested for murder—he stressed that Charlie should know that everything was okay and he was keeping quiet.
Charlie was due back anytime, and he would have to make the decision about what, if anything, to do for Beausoleil. Linda and some of the other women talked about possible responses. Even though he had never officially joined the Family, Beausoleil was still one of them. Everyone knew something about the Hinman murder though only Susan and Mary Brunner, who had been there, knew what had happened. Death was the same as life, no action was wrong, and so there was little concern for Hinman. Instead, the focus was how to free their friend. Someone remembered seeing a movie about copycat murders and a killer subsequently being freed from jail—maybe they could do something like that. This was only one suggestion in a meandering group discussion. Charlie would know what to do.
Housekeeper Winifred Chapman arrived at the Cielo house at 8 A.M. on Friday. She had a lot to do. Tate, Frykowski, and Folger didn’t do much cleaning up after themselves. About 8:30, handyman Frank Guerrero began painting a room intended to serve as a nursery. He took the screens off the windows to keep them spatter-free.
Around 11 A.M., Polanski called Tate from London. She was concerned that he wouldn’t be back in time to celebrate his birthday on the 18th, but Polanski promised he’d be home well before then. Tate told her husband that she had enrolled him in a class for new fathers. Two of Tate’s friends came by to join her for lunch, and afterward she told another friend on the phone that there wouldn’t be any gathering at Cielo that night.
Guerrero left about 1:30, stopping for the day so that the paint on the nursery walls had time to dry. Chapman noticed that there were smears on the front door, so she vigorously scrubbed it down with a mixture of water and vinegar.
Sometime during the late morning or early afternoon, Charlie and Schram arrived back at Spahn. He was immediately told about Beausoleil’s arrest. Charlie knew he faced a serious problem. Beausoleil’s call to the ranch was meant to reassure Charlie that he was keeping quiet, but the unspoken implication was that if Charlie didn’t get him out, then Beausoleil might start talking. Charlie would then be implicated in the Hinman murder, and Beausoleil also knew about the shooting of Lotsapoppa. The Family was desperate to see Beausoleil freed, but no one wanted that more than Charlie. He had to act quickly. Bobby Beausoleil was not a patient man.
That afternoon, Sharon Tate took a nap in her bedroom at Cielo. Abigail Folger went out to buy a bicycle, and arranged for it to be delivered to the house before the end of the day. Jay Sebring called to say he’d be coming over. Even though she had decided not to wear herself out playing hostess that night, Tate didn’t consider Sebring to be company. He was part of her family. Just as Tate got off the phone with Sebring, Chapman informed her boss that she was leaving for the day. Tate, always solicitous, suggested that she spend the night at Cielo to avoid riding a city bus in the summer heat, but Chapman politely refused.
Joe Vargas, a gardener tending the lawn at Cielo, told caretaker William Garretson to do some watering over the weekend. The hot weather was burning the grass.
About 4:30 two steamer trunks belonging to Roman Polanski were delivered. Tate was napping again, so Vargas signed for them and pushed them into a corner.
Folger had her regular appointment with a psychiatrist late in the afternoon. Frykowski went out to visit friends for a while. They both returned soon, and Sebring arrived around 6 P.M., joining Tate, Frykowski, and Folger in the main house. Garretson closed himself up in the guesthouse with Rudi Altobelli’s Weimaraner dog. He still didn’t feel well.
Charlie’s instinct was to run. If Beausoleil sold him out to the county lawmen, Charlie needed to be underground somewhere far away, maybe the Northwest or Chicago or Indianapolis—he’d spent time in all of those places before. With no chance for a record deal there was no reason for Charlie to stick around L.A. anyway. He’d have to leave the Family behind—he would move faster without them. Wherever he ended up, after lying low for a while Charlie could recruit new followers. If anything was certain, it was that there would always be people looking for someone to tell them what to believe in and what to do. But Charlie had devoted more than two years to putting together the Family, screening recruits and winnowing out anyone with minds of their own or with nothing to contribute. There had been some defections but he still had a solid core group who, for the moment at least, would do what he told them. They thought he was Jesus, and they believed in him. Perhaps there was a way out of this situation that wouldn’t require Charlie to go on the run and start all over.
So he mingled with his followers at Spahn, suggesting that he might leave them. He heard the response that he wanted—he couldn’t go, they loved him, they were together as one and ready to do whatever was necessary. Everyone gathered around Charlie and he encouraged them to talk about what they could do for Beausoleil. One suggestion was launching an assault on the L.A. County Jail and breaking him out. The idea of copycat murders was also mentioned, and, though he didn’t immediately say so, that gave Charlie the basis of a plan.
He’d hoped that police would think that the paw print and words “POLITICAL PIGGY” scrawled on Gary Hinman’s walls with Hinman’s own blood were proof that the Black Panthers committed the murder. If the cops and the media had made enough out of it, that might have initiated white reprisals, black retaliation, and then Helter Skelter—if not an apocalyptic race war, then at least local violence between the races, sufficient bloodshed to impress upon the Family that Charlie had the power to bring about cataclysmic events. But it didn’t happen that way, perhaps because Hinman wasn’t important enough. The concept was still valid. The victim or victims just had to be more prominent. And if apparent copycat murders could free Bobby Beausoleil, so much the better.
Charlie ordered Squeaky to give Mary Brunner and Sandy Good some of the stolen Family credit cards. He told the two women to go into town to Sears to pick up a few things—there were conflicting recollections about what they were supposed to bring back to the ranch. Charlie herded everyone else together and announced gravely that “Now is the time for Helter Skelter.” He didn’t add any details. The Family was instructed to leave him alone. Charlie had some planning to do.
Nobody at Cielo felt like cooking, so even though Tate was tired she went with Sebring, Frykowski, and Folger to a restaurant on Beverly Boulevard for a late dinner. A waitress remembered them leaving around 9:45. They were home by 10 or shortly after, when Folger’s mother called and talked to her.
Around 11 P.M. Squeaky took a call from Sandy Good and had to give Charlie more bad news. Sandy and Mary had been arrested for using stolen credit cards. They’d had several with them, including three issued to a man w
ho had died in a traffic accident. The cops had plenty of questions about where and how they had gotten them. Sandy said that she and Mary were locked up in the Sybil Brand Institute, L.A.’s jail for women. Each was being held on $600 bail, far more cash than the Family had on hand at Spahn.
The last thing Charlie needed was for Mary or Sandy to admit something to the cops and give them another reason to come sniffing around the ranch. The event he was about to orchestrate now involved getting bail money in addition to copycat murders intended to free Bobby and precipitate some form of Helter Skelter. Events were spiraling out of control, and Charlie was determined to take control back. There was no time to lose; it would happen tonight.
Charlie went to find Tex Watson. Besides Charlie, Tex was the only one who’d previously been to the house on Cielo.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tate
Charlie Manson imbued two core beliefs in his followers—that he must be obeyed and that, with the exception of Charlie, the members of the Family were the most special people on earth. They took these teachings to heart. Like Charlie, they developed senses of entitlement, bolstered by Charlie’s constant reminders that all things were the same—love and hate, sanctity and sin, life and death. The Family was meant to rule the earth after Helter Skelter. It was ordained by the Beatles and the Bible through Charlie. They would reign benevolently, and the world would become a far better place. So they should, and would, do whatever was necessary to bring about that glorious era, and if that meant copycat killings to save Beausoleil, one of their own, then a few deaths—not murders, because the spirit was what counted and you didn’t kill anyone’s spirit, you just sent it on to a different place—were acceptable sacrifices to the eventual greater good.
As Charlie prepared to talk to Tex around 11:30 on Friday night, August 8, the Family’s discussion of copycat killings to save Bobby Beausoleil lent itself to Charlie’s own larger vision. It was good that they weren’t shrinking from slaughter, though of course it was much easier to talk about than to actually carry out. But if it did happen, and if this time the victims were famous, then some form of racial clash might be sparked and Charlie would have the Helter Skelter he’d promised his followers. Maybe it would be confined to parts of L.A. instead of spreading across the nation, but he could always think of some explanation to justify that. Plus—this was the part that had to remain unspoken, since it was critical that the Family believed that all of Charlie’s statements and acts were selfless—if Beausoleil was out of jail he wouldn’t implicate Charlie in the murder of Gary Hinman or the shooting of Lotsapoppa. And if the copycat killings didn’t free Beausoleil but did precipitate racial violence, the cops would be too busy putting down riots to investigate the deaths of a couple of nobodies.
Charlie had to point his followers to the right victims to serve his own purposes, and do it in a way that left them apparently responsible for all of it. If something went wrong, Charlie could say that it was completely their doing, not his. He had to make rapid-fire decisions, each part of a complex overall planning process, and on this night Charlie demonstrated dazzling mastery of individual psychology and group dynamics. It began with Tex Watson.
Because within the Family women served men, if murder was to be done, a man had to be in charge. Charlie didn’t have many candidates. Only Tex had all the necessary attributes. He was big and tough, a raw-boned former high school athlete who was still in decent physical shape despite his nonstop use of drugs. Tex yearned to be important; in the past weeks he’d acted bumpier and more aggressive, ordering other Family members around and giving the impression that he was Charlie’s unofficial second-in-command. Above all, he owed Charlie, and now Charlie began their conversation by reminding Tex of that. Not too long ago, Charlie said, Tex screwed up a drug deal and put the whole Family in jeopardy. Lotsapoppa was about to round up his Black Panther brothers, come out to Spahn and kill everybody, all because of Tex Watson. Charlie had to step in. Bobby Beausoleil had to knock off Gary Hinman because Hinman was going to call the cops on the Family. Bobby made that sacrifice for his friends, including Tex. Now the Family had decided that some of them should go out tonight and commit copycat killings to rescue Bobby. On tonight’s mission somebody had to be the leader, the one who told the others what to do and how to do it. Was Tex that leader? Did he have it in him? Would he assume this responsibility? Charlie and Bobby had both selflessly killed for Tex. Wasn’t he obligated to reciprocate for Bobby?
Tex had taken acid during the day, and also sniffed some Methedrine that he and Susan Atkins had secretly stashed. The chemicals in his system combined with his ambition to lead within the Family as Charlie’s chief lieutenant. Tex agreed that he would lead the copycat killers—it was his right. That left the question of who would die, and Charlie had some helpful thoughts on that. Of course, these killings were the Family’s decision, not his, but if they were determined to go out and commit them, then of course they had certain people in mind, important people, celebrities whose deaths would command headlines and get maximum publicity. That way the police couldn’t help but believe Hinman’s killers were still out there committing murders while Beausoleil was in custody. If Tex targeted the right victims, Bobby would be sprung almost immediately.
Falling back on Dale Carnegie (“Let the other fellow feel that the idea is his”), Charlie guided Tex to the destination. He wondered if Tex might be thinking of that place where Terry Melcher used to live. Melcher didn’t live there anymore, but whoever did had to be rich and famous, too; those were the only kind of people who could afford that place. Tex knew how to get there from Spahn. So Tex and a few of the women could go to Cielo and kill everybody there, then mark the place up with words written on the walls in blood just as Beausoleil did at Gary Hinman’s. Tex said that he didn’t think he could remember what words to write. Charlie told him not to worry—one of the women going with him would know. Then they talked about what to bring: rope to tie people with and of course knives, dark clothes to wear on the way and clean ones to put on afterward. Charlie gave Tex the .22 Buntline, cautioning that it would be best just to use the knives if possible and save shooting as a last resort. And Tex would need bolt cutters for the phone lines. There was an electronic gate at the entrance to the property—Tex remembered it, didn’t he?—and maybe when you pushed the button to open it an alarm went off in the house, so Tex and the others should climb the fence instead. Charlie could not have been more supportive. He manipulated Tex so neatly that later on, when Tex claimed that Charlie ordered him to commit the murders and Charlie swore that they were Tex’s and the Family’s idea, not his, both of them were telling a version of the truth.
• • •
William Garretson felt hungry, but there was no food in the Cielo guesthouse. He walked down the steep hill and hitched a ride to Sunset Strip, where he purchased cigarettes and a TV dinner. Then he hitched back to Cielo, arriving sometime after 10 P.M. The lights were on in the main house as usual, but there were only three cars parked outside—a Porsche belonging to Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger’s Firebird, and a rented Camaro that Sharon Tate was driving. That meant it wasn’t one of the tenants’ big party nights. Garretson didn’t really know much about them. He just wanted to do his assigned job of keeping an eye on the property and caring for Altobelli’s dogs. Garretson went back inside the guest cottage. He heated his TV dinner and settled in for a quiet night.
• • •
With Tex primed, it was time for Charlie to pick the women who would go with him. Ruth Ann Moorehouse would later speculate that Charlie “sent out the expendables,” but each of the three was selected because she had something specific to contribute. Charlie took them aside one by one—Susan, who had been with Beausoleil at Hinman’s house and knew what had been written on the walls there; Pat, whose shyness and lack of social skills led most people to believe she was cold and unfeeling; and Linda Kasabian, who had a valid driver’s license. Charlie knew that Susan was capable of anything, th
at Pat believed she had no option other than to obey him in all things, and that Linda wanted to impress the rest of the Family. Charlie’s instructions to each of the women were the same: Dress in dark clothes, get a change of clothes and your knife, then go with Tex and do exactly what he tells you. They scurried off to obey.
• • •
Eighteen-year-old Steve Parent had recently graduated from high school and wanted to attend junior college in the fall. To earn tuition money he juggled two jobs, full-time work as a plumbing company delivery boy and occasional evening shifts as a salesman at a stereo shop. A few weeks earlier Parent had picked up William Garretson hitchhiking and driven him to Cielo. Garretson appreciated the ride and told Parent to drop by anytime and visit—he lived in the back in a guesthouse. That gave Parent the impression that Garretson probably had a lot of money.
On Friday the 8th, Parent decided to sell his AM/FM clock radio to raise a few more dollars for school. He remembered the guy he’d given a ride to a while back. Parent, out for the evening in his parents’ white Rambler, decided to drive to Cielo and see if his passenger wanted to buy the clock radio. If the guy was loaded, he might be prone to making impulse purchases. Parent knew all about those from his sales stints at the stereo shop. It was worth a try—even if he didn’t make a sale at Cielo, Parent could drive away and have a nice rest of the night hanging out with friends.
• • •
Tex and Susan got ready in an additional way that hadn’t been suggested by Charlie. They sneaked off to their Meth stash and snorted some. As always, the drug made them edgier and more aggressive—exactly the effect they wanted.
