by Jeff Guinn
On the morning of August 12, Charlie refused to leave his cell for the courtroom and had to be carried there by the bailiffs. Dragged in front of Older in the judge’s chambers, Charlie said that he refused to walk in protest of his treatment in the Hall of Justice jail. People lined up to peer in his cell, Charlie complained: “They even bring their sons in on the weekends to take a look at the freak.” He griped about the frequency of body searches, and how he was no longer allowed to make outside calls. Older wasn’t sympathetic, and Charlie remained uncooperative in court for the next several days. The bailiffs had to regularly remove him to the mouse house. Each time, one bailiff had to remain in there with him. The moment that the door locked behind him, Charlie always calmed down. He’d cadge a smoke and often would practice his next “spontaneous” outburst. Sometimes he’d brag about how well Susan, Leslie, and Pat were minding him. Charlie never seemed concerned about the prospect of the death penalty, though he told the bailiffs he was being railroaded. He even joked with them about it. When Skupen asked, “Charlie, when they send you to the gas chamber, will you invite me?” Charlie grinned and replied, “Sure, I’ll invite you.”
On August 13, Judge Older formally granted Linda immunity in return for her testimony. Charlie marked the occasion by passing her a letter. He wrote, “Love can never stop if it’s love. . . . If you were not saying what your saying there would be no tryle. Don’t lose your love it’s only there for you.” He cautioned her, “Don’t let anyone have this or they will find a way to use it against me.”
Linda gave the letter to Bugliosi. Kanarek claimed that she stole it from Charlie.
Linda’s testimony was convincing but not perfect. Before she was finally allowed to step down on August 19, she admitted stealing $5,000 for the Family from Charles Melton, and revealed to the jury how she’d left her toddler daughter behind at Spahn Ranch when she fled to save her own life. But Stovitz and Bugliosi were pleased that during her time on the witness stand, she never made a statement inconsistent with what she’d told the prosecution prior to the trial. Since she was free to go wherever she liked, Linda left L.A. to join her mother and two children in New Hampshire. Kanarek warned that he might recall her to the stand at any time.
• • •
The prosecution lost four witnesses. Randy Starr, the movie stuntman Charlie beat up in front of Terry Melcher, died. Bugliosi was suspicious and ordered an autopsy, which indicated Starr died of natural causes. Linda Kasabian’s estranged husband, Robert, and Charles Melton, his hippie philanthropist friend, got tired of waiting to be called to the stand and left for Hawaii. Their attorney informed Bugliosi that they had taken refuge on a small uncharted island and there was no way to contact them. Lebanese actor Saladin Nader dropped out of sight, and the LAPD couldn’t find him. But Stovitz and Bugliosi felt these losses were more than offset by Juan Flynn’s decision to take the stand. The testy Spahn ranch hand initially refused to cooperate with prosecutors. But when Family members began threatening him to make certain he wouldn’t change his mind and testify, Flynn decided to defy them. Stovitz and Bugliosi had Flynn initially questioned on August 18 by Sgt. Philip Sartuchi of the LaBianca investigation team. Sartuchi greeted the prosecutors with great news as they left court for the day. Flynn said Charlie personally told him that “I’m the one” who committed the Tate-LaBianca murders, and that prior to that, sometime in June or July 1969, Charlie said, “Well, I have to come down to it. The only way to get Helter Skelter going is for me to go down there and show the black man how to do it, by killing a whole bunch of those fucking pigs.” Further, Flynn remembered Susan Atkins telling him one night in August, “We’re going to get some fucking pigs.” Flynn thought it was the night when the LaBiancas were murdered.
After speaking to Sartuchi, Flynn went into hiding. He periodically called Bugliosi to assure him that he was still willing to testify. In the meantime, he didn’t want Charlie or anyone in the Family to know where to find him.
• • •
Despite the antics of the defendants, the trial was going well for the prosecution. Stovitz and Bugliosi followed Linda with a series of witnesses—John Swartz, various residents of the Cielo neighborhood, Rudolf Weber—who collectively supported Linda’s testimony. Detective Michael McGann testified about the large amount of drugs investigators found at Cielo; Stovitz and Bugliosi wanted that on the record before the defense could introduce it as evidence that the killings might have been drug-related. When the defense had no questions for Deputy Medical Examiner David Katsuyama, whose vagueness on the witness stand frustrated the prosecutors and, they feared, provided exceptional cross-examination opportunities for their opponents, Stovitz and Bugliosi believed that they were on their way to victory. Even Charlie seemed dejected. During one break when the jury was out of the courtroom, he confided to Judge Older, “We did pretty good at the first of it . . . we kind of lost control when the testimony started.”
Then Susan Atkins claimed that she had a stomachache.
Susan began fidgeting at the defense table while Katsuyama testified about the depth of the wounds suffered by the LaBiancas. She complained of stomach pains, and her histrionic moaning distracted everyone. At the judge’s order, Susan was examined and diagnosed with an impacted colon. After being treated with laxatives and enemas, she was cleared to return to court, where she pleaded with Older to let her leave again because she was still in so much pain. The doctor who treated Susan told the judge that she was fine; either she was now experiencing “sympathy pains” or else faking. Older dismissed Susan’s complaints and the trial resumed. Afterward, a reporter asked Stovitz his opinion of Susan’s alleged illness. Stovitz, hurrying away, snapped, “It was a performance worthy of Sarah Bernhardt.” The next day District Attorney Younger, Stovitz’s boss, removed him from the case for violating instructions not to make statements to the media. Stovitz and Bugliosi protested—it was a passing remark, not an interview, and, besides, they were working well together. Younger wouldn’t budge: Stovitz was off the case. Bugliosi was now in charge, and he would be assisted by Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay. Unlike Stovitz-Bugliosi, Bugliosi-Kay was not an equal partnership. They were in mid-trial and there was no time for Kay to study transcripts and get up to speed. Bugliosi told him that “Helter Skelter is the theory, period,” and coached his new trial colleague on courtroom behavior. For instance, Kay must never refer to notes when the jurors were present, because that meant breaking off eye contact with them. Kay didn’t warm to Bugliosi personally—the guy was so unabashedly ambitious—but he was awed by his work ethic. During the time he prosecuted the Tate-LaBianca murders with Bugliosi, Kay never knew him to sleep more than three or four hours a night.
Kay also formed strong immediate impressions of the four defendants. Charlie was a mastermind, always waiting for any opportunity to disrupt trial proceedings and thinking three or four steps ahead. Susan Atkins was scary; clearly, she was eager to do whatever Charlie wanted. Kay thought Pat Krenwinkel was cold and unfeeling. Leslie Van Houten troubled the young prosecutor. She was so smart, and yet she’d fallen in with the Family. The prosecution and defense sat side by side, and Kay was next to Leslie. They talked during breaks, and had an extended debate about the death penalty. Kay thought it was a deterrent and Leslie didn’t. Though they disagreed, he was impressed with her arguments. Kay couldn’t get over it: He and a Manson girl were having a rational conversation.
• • •
In the months since she’d returned to live with her mother, Barbara Hoyt was inundated with phone calls from Squeaky and Sandy. They pleaded with her to be loyal to Charlie and the Family and not cooperate with the prosecutors. Barbara was torn. On September 5, her former friends offered a deal. If Barbara wouldn’t testify, they’d treat her to a trip to Hawaii. She accepted, and the next day Barbara and Ruth Ann flew to Honolulu. They mostly stayed in their hotel room and had long talks. After a few days Ruth Ann said that she had to go back to L.A., but Barbara could stay on
in Hawaii a while longer. They went to the airport, where, just before her flight was called, Ruth Ann bought Barbara a hamburger. As Barbara was swallowing the last few bites, Ruth Ann said, “Just imagine if there were ten tabs of acid in that,” an amount far beyond any normal dose. Ruth Ann boarded her plane; soon afterward Barbara collapsed. Just before she lost consciousness, she begged a man standing over her to call “Mr. Bugliosi.” After emergency treatment for drug overdose, Barbara was able to return to the mainland. Now she was determined to testify against Charlie. Bugliosi, furious, told the LAPD that he wanted any Family members involved to be charged with attempted murder. Ruth Ann, Squeaky, Gypsy, Clem, and Dennis Rice (whose credit card had funded the plane tickets) were all arraigned but not indicted until December 18. Until then, they remained free and at Charlie’s command. Rice visited Charlie regularly, carrying his latest orders back to the rest of the Family.
On September 11, Tex Watson was finally extradited to California. During his extended time at the Collin County jail in Texas, he’d received dozens of letters from Squeaky and Gypsy urging him to stay strong and loyal to Charlie. When Tex made a brief appearance in Judge Older’s court (Paul Fitzgerald wanted him to be formally identified to the jury), he wore a blue blazer, gray slacks, and had close-cropped hair. Bugliosi thought he looked like “a typical clean-cut college kid.” If the defense hoped to convince the jury that Tex rather than Charlie masterminded the Tate-LaBianca slayings, Bugliosi believed that Tex’s conservative appearance would make it much harder.
The Los Angeles Times noted that Tex “exchanged smiles” with Susan, Pat, and Leslie. He made no statements in court or to the media. Irving Kanarek objected to Tex’s presence in the courtroom and demanded a mistrial. After his brief appearance, Tex was jailed until his September 28 arraignment.
The Weathermen broke Timothy Leary out of federal prison in San Luis Obispo, where he was serving a ten-year sentence for drug possession. It was a plot involving considerable daring and risk—the fifty-year-old acid guru had to climb the prison wall, clamber hand-over-hand along a two-hundred-foot live electrical wire, and then make a steep drop down to the ground. After releasing a defiant declaration that “at this time let us have no more talk of peace. . . . Listen, Americans, your government is an instrument of total, lethal evil,” Leary fled to Algeria, appearing at a press conference there with former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, himself on the run from U.S. law. (Leary would be recaptured three years later in Afghanistan, by which time he was glad to identify everyone who helped engineer his San Luis Obispo escape, and to serve out a reduced three-year sentence.)
The Family didn’t care about Timothy Leary—Charlie was their only hero—but the details of his breakout were inspirational. Clearly, prisons weren’t impregnable. It was something for them to think about if Charlie was convicted.
Beginning on Wednesday, September 16, pedestrians on the sidewalk outside the downtown L.A. Hall of Justice had to step around people sitting there. The corner of Spring and Temple became unofficial Family headquarters. Four or five members would arrive every morning before Older convened court on the eighth floor and stay until proceedings ended for the day. Then they’d either get rides back to Spahn or else huddle for the night in an old van parked nearby. Though Clem and a few other males occasionally joined them, the sidewalk sitters were mostly women, Squeaky and Sandy every day and usually Ruth Ann, though she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Other than being in the way, they didn’t bother passersby. They smiled and chatted with anyone who stopped to speak to them, emphasizing that Charlie was all about love. Besides the Xs permanently cut into their foreheads, the women didn’t seem menacing. Sometimes they amused themselves with games of patty-cake, and when they stood up to stretch their legs they waved at cars. People brought them cookies and other treats, and they gladly posed for pictures.
But Bugliosi and Kay didn’t find them goofily charming. One evening when Bugliosi left the Hall of Justice, Sandy stood up and followed him, fingering a knife. Bugliosi called her a “God damn bitch” and she backed away. Another time, Sandy and Squeaky approached Kay and his wife in a parking lot and hissed that they would do at the Kay house what had been done at Sharon Tate’s. Then they smiled and walked away. Kay had a brief history with Sandy. When he was fifteen and she fourteen, they were set up on a blind date. They had lunch with their mothers at a pancake house in Burbank. Stephen left before the meal was finished because he thought Sandy was “a little stuck-up snob.”
During a courtroom break, Charlie told Bugliosi not to take Sandy and her knife seriously: “If I had all the power and control that you say I have, I could simply [tell a Family member] ‘Go get Bugliosi,’ and that would be it.”
Charlie and the Family were right to dread Barbara Hoyt on the witness stand. Recovered from her LSD overdose in Hawaii, Barbara testified about all she’d seen and heard, particularly Susan’s bragging concerning the Tate murders. Bugliosi also took the opportunity to use Barbara’s behavior as a Family member to exemplify Charlie’s dominance of his followers. In particular, the prosecutor asked about the way in which Charlie ordered Barbara to gratify Juan Flynn. Barbara’s sexual vocabulary failed her. She finally stammered that Charlie made her give Flynn “that oral whatchamacallit.” During cross-examination, Kanarek demanded to know why she had obeyed. This time, Barbara found the exact words: “I was afraid not to.”
On Saturday, September 26, a brush fire roared through the Simi Hills and burned much of Spahn Ranch. Three horses died in the blaze, and the western movie set was destroyed. As the flames rose as high as sixty feet, the Family women danced and sang, “Helter Skelter is coming down.”
Juan Flynn followed Barbara Hoyt to the witness stand. He glared at Charlie as he offered damaging testimony about Charlie admitting the Tate murders to him, Susan bragging about getting “some fucking pigs,” and seeing Charlie, Susan, Tex, Linda, Leslie, Pat, and Clem drive off in Johnny Swartz’s Ford on the night of the LaBianca murders. On cross-examination, Kanarek accused Flynn of making everything up in hopes that media coverage would help him get bit parts in western movies. “You recognize,” Kanarek said, “that there is lots of publicity in this case against Mr. Manson, right?” Flynn replied, “It is the type of publicity that I wouldn’t want, you big catfish.” Instead of admonishing the witness for calling Kanarek names, Judge Older grinned and adjourned the morning session.
Evidence was mounting against the defendants and Charlie knew it. He couldn’t prevent Flynn from testifying, but he could at least interrupt. For that day and several more that followed, as Flynn testified, all four defendants periodically chanted and gestured. At one point, Charlie stood and sang, “The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be, she is a judge now,” and the girls chorused, “You are just a woman, that is all.” On Friday, October 2, Charlie turned to the court spectators and said, “Look at yourselves. You’re going to destruction. . . . It’s your judgment day, not mine.” The three women chorused, “It’s your judgment day,” and Older had them all taken out of the courtroom. After they were gone, Older permitted the prosecution to play a tape of Flynn being interviewed by an Inyo County officer. The jury heard the Spahn ranch hand say, “[Charlie] grabbed me by the hair like that, and he put a knife by my throat, and then he says, ‘Don’t you know I’m the one who is doing all the killings?’ ”
On Monday, October 5, Detective Paul Whiteley of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office took the stand. His testimony was brief, and the defense attorneys declined cross-examination. But before Whiteley could step down, Charlie asked Older, “May I examine him?” When Older refused, Charlie said, “You are going to use this courtroom to kill me. I’m going to fight for my life one way or another. You should let me do it with words.” Older threatened to have Charlie removed. Charlie snarled, “I will have you removed,” and then added, “I have a little system of my own.” Older ignored him and instructed Bugliosi to call his next witness. Manson screamed, “Do you think I�
��m kidding?” He grabbed a sharpened pencil and leaped over the counsel table in the direction of Older. The bailiffs were on him before he could go any further. As they dragged Charlie off to the adjacent isolation room, Charlie yelled to Older, “In the name of Christian justice, someone should cut your head off!” Susan, Pat, and Leslie stood and chanted; Older had them removed, too.
Older banned the defendants from court for several days. Charlie listened while locked in the mouse house. The three women were confined to a jury room with speakers so that they, too, could listen to testimony. Virginia Graham and Ronnie Howard testified about what Susan had told and written to them. Gregg Jakobson took the stand and recounted Charlie’s interpretations of Beatles songs and Revelation. Shahrokh Hatami and Rudi Altobelli placed Charlie at Cielo on March 23, 1969.
Older allowed Charlie and the women to return to the courtroom on the day that Terry Melcher testified. When Melcher saw Charlie, he begged Bugliosi to let him testify in some other room. Melcher was able to take the stand and withstand Charlie’s steady glare only after taking a tranquilizer. When he finished testifying, Charlie smiled at him.
Guided by Bugliosi’s questions, Brooks Poston and Little Paul Watkins explained to the jury just how seriously the Family prepared for Helter Skelter out in Death Valley. Watkins emphasized the Family’s belief that Charlie was the Second Coming of Christ. Poston admitted that, for a long time, he thought that Charlie was Jesus. Then he testified that Charlie once asked him to kill the sheriff of Shoshone.
