Manson's music and financial hopes had taken him nowhere, and the more desperate he became the more he began to scheme - using the family to execute his plans.
Foster says, "Charlie got whatever he wanted. He got it out of everyone, a kind of suicidal loyalty ..." He indicated that cars would be stolen and brought to the ranch. Often a car would appear and then disappear. "If they were stolen," one girl said, "I think they were taken out to the desert, and stashed there. Charlie said we'd all move there later on."
Reportedly there was talk at the ranch about a Volkswagen and a Fiat that belonged to Gary Hinman, and Charlie had told one young man that Hinman was planning to turn over the pink slips to those cars.
While in jail, Joe thought about Charlie's music. Charlie believed he and his music could not be separated, and "that was his whole strength ... But Charlie is wrong," Joe says. "I had always hoped that something would've happened, that something would've worked. But it didn't. I don't know why, except that Charlie's real talents were not in music as much as in a sort of magic at getting people to do exactly what he wouldn't go out and do himself."
Bobby claims he was at the ranch because of the music - "the chance that something might come of it." He says, "Charlie first talked to me about the ranch - living there and taking care of the music part of it. We'd talked about forming this group - actually had it together, though our ideas were quite different. He had this idea about the unity of everyone at the ranch - everyone joining in and he had the primitive side of it, like a lot of Indians or natives chanting. But Charlie had a good voice and he played well, and he could bring everyone together and get a real session of it - even if it was singing around a big campfire ...
"He had this idea of coming out to the desert. He said it was a new world - one that he'd found for us and for himself. He wanted to record this music about the desert so the rest of the world would do the same thing - `Come out to the desert' sort of thing. That's how he thought it out. I tried to set up a recording for us, for that part of it and for the ranch songs. We had motorcycles and the choppers, and Charlie had it in his head that we'd do motorcycle songs, too.
"I went down to Hollywood to set up a recording for the sessions. Kitty was into it and so was Gypsy, and we had these tapes. Charlie had the idea that we'd be able to get the money out of that Buddhist guy - Gary Hinman, that Hinman had told Charlie he'd loan him the money against a percentage of the sales. So he'd get Hinman's money ..."
Bobby ambled back and forth between the ranch and recording studio in L.A., but claims that every time he'd try to get Charlie to make some commitment as to a date so Bobby could set it up, "Charlie'd seem to drift off," Bobby says, "more concerned about building up a weapons supply - stealing guns, getting dune buggies together. All this in preparation for the Death Valley life we were all going to have - setting up a community out there ..."
While living in the bunkhouse at the ranch, DeCarlo of the Straight Satans got "very friendly" with Bobby. DeCarlo says, "Manson didn't live in no particular place. There were two little shacks that he mostly stayed at; but nobody had one particular place to stay except for me, because I do a lot of drinking, you know. I sit and drink and play the radio and Charlie didn't like nobody to drink, and I also got the girls to cash in Coke bottles to buy beer and he didn't like that so he kept away from me."
Bobby, he recalls, "left the ranch for about three days in the middle of July. He returned, and one night while I was drinking beer and listening to the radio, Bobby began to brag ... He became very talkative," DeCarlo says.
Manson had been trying to gain title to the two cars owned by Hinman, because Hinman no longer wanted to finance a recording session. Also, Charlie was after the money, but Hinman was planning a "pilgrimage" to Japan. Bobby knew that Hinman was going to make the trip and believed he had the money stashed in his house.
What Bobby "bragged" about, according to DeCarlo, was that he and two girls had gone to Hinman's thinking Hinman had the money there, and it had been Bobby's intention to rob him. Marie O'Brien, mother of a child fathered and delivered by Manson on the black bus in 1967, also says she and Susan went with Bobby to Hinman's house to force him to turn over the money, and to get the pink slips.
Bobby and the girls met Hinman outside his house with a 9mm pistol and a large knife with a thunderbird handle. Hinman said he didn't have the money, but they forced their way into the house, and then, after talking with him at length, they decided he didn't have any big money, though he offered to contribute $100 or $150. Then they called Manson. Later, Manson and Family member Bruce Davis arrived at Hinman's. Manson, Bobby says, was carrying a sword and told Hinman he wanted "to talk about that money" and looked "very fierce." According to Bobby, Charlie feared Hinman would go to the police, and promised that if he joined the Family there'd be "lots of girls to take care of him, and that he'd be able to live like a king." And Manson asked Hinman, "If we gave our world to you, would you leave?" But Hinman told Manson he couldn't give up his own way of life or belief in Buddhism. Charlie said, "That's about what I figured." Hinman told everyone to leave and Charlie threatened him with the sword, and they struggled over it. Manson slashed Hinman across the face, almost cutting off his left ear and wounding him deep in the jaw. Along with Davis, Charlie then left in Hinman's Fiat, after forcing Hinman to give him the ignition keys. Bobby says Charlie then ordered the girls to clean up Hinman's wounds. When this was done, they slept, except Marie who held the gun and kept watch over Hinman.
DeCarlo says Bobby told him they tortured Hinman for six or seven hours and then called Charlie up and said, "`Gary isn't cooperating' - so Charlie told me, `You know what to do. Kill him - he's no good to us."'
Marie was in the kitchen, she recalls, "and Sadie was in the bedroom. We heard a noise - a commotion - and ran into the living room. Gary had been stabbed and Bobby was standing behind him ... Hinman was bleeding badly," she says, and "Bobby was holding the knife ... Gary was bleeding from the chest ... He walked to the bathroom, he looked like he might be in shock." Then, she says, Hinman "began chanting" and came back into the living room and collapsed in "sort of a coma."
DeCarlo says Bobby told him the first time he'd stabbed Hinman, it didn't kill him right off. So I hit him again and again ...
Marie says while stabbing Hinman in the chest, Bobby shouted, "Society doesn't need you - you're a pig! It's better this way. I'm your brother!" Then, she says, Hinman fell near a makeshift Buddhist shrine. He had been stabbed five times in all, twice in the chest and head, once on the left side of his face, but the blow that was to kill him had entered his chest and directly pierced the heart. For moments, Marie recalls, they listened to Hinman breathing "real loud," and "someone put a pillow over Gary's face," to silence the noises he was making. Bobby then instructed the women to clean up the "bloody mess."
DeCarlo says, "After Hinman was dead, they took the blood and put a panther paw on the wall with the words `POLITICAL PIGGY,' to divert suspicion toward the Black Panthers." Then, after attempting to clean up the fingerprints and other evidence, the three "hot-wired" Hinman's other car, the Volkswagen, and drove to the ranch. Bobby later returned to Hinman's house to remove more fingerprints, and "check it out." When he came back he told the others that the body was still there. A few days later, Bobby left Spahn ranch.
On July 31, three friends of Hinman went to his house as "no one had seen him for several days." The mailbox was jammed with mail. The house was surrounded with flies. "They were thick," a friend said, "And there was this buzzing of them in the air."
Inside the house, which was splattered with blood, Hinman's decomposing body was found.
A homicide officer later recalled "there were flies and maggots all over the face, neck, ears, and eyes, in the nose and apertures of Mr. Hinman's body."
Bobby was arrested in San Luis Obispo on August 4. He was driving Hinman's car which had been reported stolen, and the police found a thunderbird knife in the tire well of the car. He w
as taken into custody and charged with the murder.
During the early part of 1969, Terry Melcher moved out of the house on Cielo Drive after arranging to sublease it. The new tenant was movie actress Sharon Tate and her director husband Roman Polanski. They took occupancy of the house in March. Coincidentally, astrologer Robert Aiken had visited the house on Cielo Drive the year before. He says, "I knew some people who were friendly with the persons that had leased it, and I drew up a horoscope on the house. It was very badly aspected in a certain area - friends, or a group, or a gathering, could run into bad situations there. It was like an airplane, a group of people on it, and there is an accident ..."
Polanski had a film commitment in Europe and Sharon Tate joined him in London that summer. When she returned to the States in mid-July, she was eight months pregnant. She planned to remain at home to await the arrival of her first baby, with close friends nearby such as Abigail Folger, daughter of the president of Folger Coffee Co. Another friend, Voityck Frykowski, a Polish writer, was working on a project for Polanski, and remained at the Cielo Drive house.
The estate forms the dead end of Cielo Drive. A fence stretches across the secluded road, and beyond it several clustered buildings sprawl along the graded property. It was once the home of Cary Grant, and had since been rented often on short-term leases to celebrities of the movie colony.
A gate is opened electrically by pressing a silver button on a waisthigh length of pipe extending up from the shrubbery. Though the estate has been valued at more than $200,000, there are signs of neglect: a wood fence along the drive has been shattered by bumpers, paint on the main building is cracked and flaking away in patches. An old buckboard, once a movie prop, that serves as a decoration near the gate, has been chipped and splintered by motorists maneuvering around on the asphalt parking area.
At the opposite end of the property is a smaller guest house, and during the summer it was occupied by nineteen-year-old William Garretson. He had been hired as a caretaker by the landowner of the estate.
On August 8, 1969, Mrs. Winifred Chapman, housekeeper for the Polanskis, washed the front door of the house "because of the finger marks and the paw prints from the dogs, and I also washed the windows," she recalled. "I had cleaned the door with soap and water ...
"There had been a carpenter working on Friday morning, and there had been men in and out all week. The room was being done over ... making a nursery out of it. There had been a lot of work in there."
The housekeeper finished her work and left for the day between four and four-thirty. "It was still daylight," she said. "I left with two of the gardeners who drove me down to the bus stop."
About 8 o'clock that evening, Garretson left his guest house and walked across the property to the gate. By the time he had hitched a ride down to Sunset Boulevard to buy some groceries it was shortly after nine. He talked to a couple of friends on the Strip, then headed back to Benedict Canyon.
He saw Sharon Tate's car in the garage when he returned, and Abigail Folger's Pontiac near the old buckboard.
Everything was quiet inside the house. Well-known hair stylist Jay Sebring, an old friend, was visiting.
Garretson didn't remember what time it was when his friend, Steve Parent, came to visit him. The boy parked his Rambler on the property and carried a new clock radio to Garretson's guest house.
After visiting Garretson, Steve made a telephone call to another friend he wanted to see that night. Garretson walked him to the door and said "goodnight."
Outside, Parent got into his car and released the brake.
About an hour earlier, at Spahn ranch, Susan gathered up her "creepy-crawl" clothes and a knife. She says Charlie "told me the type of clothing I should wear should be dark clothing that I would take along with me - didn't matter, just a change of clothing. Wear dark clothes." She does not recall getting any actual instructions from Charlie, "other than getting the clothes and knife," and was told to "do exactly what Tex told me to do."
Susan got into a car at the ranch with Tex, Katie and Linda. The car belonged to the hired ranch foreman. "It was a four-door Ford, yellow and white," Susan says. "Johnny frequently let us use his car. He had no knowledge of what we ever used the car for ... It was an older car and it didn't have a back seat, just the floorboard ... I just remember sitting in the back of the car and waving goodbye as we left the ranch - to Charlie and there were other people out there ... There was a rope in the back of the car when I got in there. There was a set of bolt cutters ... Tex had a gun. I had a knife. Linda had a knife. Katie had a knife, and to the best of my knowledge, I believe Tex had a knife ...
"I couldn't wear shoes. I had a few sores on my feet from infection."
Tex drove the car, Susan said. "He told us that we were going to a house up on the hill that used to belong to Terry Melcher, and the only reason we were going to that house was because Tex knew the outline of the house. He told us about it as we were traveling." According to Susan, Tex described the house and said "He and Charlie had been there once talking to Terry and I think he said, with [Wilson]." She said Tex mentioned that Melcher no longer lived in the house.
There were movie stars there - Charlie had visited the house after Melcher had moved out. He'd said they'd treated him like a piece of garbage. Charlie'd told Tex, "They looked at me not like I was a human being, but like I was a piece of scum to be sucked into a toilet ..."
"We sort of got lost on the way," Susan says. "I think we took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere in Mulholland and we went directly there ... Tex did most of the talking in the car. In fact, to my recall, he did all of the talking. He told us we were going there to get all of their money and to kill whoever was there ... it didn't make any difference who was there, we were told to kill them. It was late at night and it was kind of like we were all confused.
For Katie the auto ride was "like you're driving into a monstrous, like it was a monstrous stomach, and you watched like veins and arteries ..."
Susan says, "There was a lot of confusion at that time because I didn't know what was going on, but I know that Tex got out of the car ... got the bolt cutter, went to the power pole. He climbed back down, told all of us to get into the car, put the bolt cutter back in the car, and drove back down the hill and parked on a side street. Then he told us to get our changes of clothes, and we all walked back up the hill and walked to this fence ... We walked up to the gate but didn't want to touch it or go over it because we thought there may be an alarm system or electricity running through it. We looked for a way to get over the gate and we noticed that - we walked over this way - there is a hill that goes up like this next to the fence. We walked up the side of the hill and could see that we could get over the fence easier there than getting over the fence where the gate is. I was told to go over first. So I threw my change of clothes over the fence and held the knife between my teeth, and climbed over and got my pants caught on part of the fence and had to kind of boost myself up and lift from where I was caught, off of the fence and fell into the bushes on the other side. I was followed by the three others, Katie, Linda, and Tex. Then we were going to move forward toward the residence, and saw lights coming from, apparently a car ... I didn't actually see the car, just saw the headlights. Tex told us girls to lie down and be still and not make a sound. He went out of sight I heard him say, `Halt!"'
The car had been coming down the driveway as the four were climbing over the front gate, Linda recalls, and "Tex jumped forward and stuck the gun to the man's head. The man pleaded, `Please don't hurt me. . .-
Susan also heard him say, "Please don't hurt me, I won't say anything." Then, she said, "I heard a gunshot and I heard another gunshot and another one and another one. Four gunshots. Tex came back to us and told us to come on. I saw him go to the car ... He reached inside, turned off the lights, and then proceeded to push the car to where it stopped. Then we walked. I walked past the car - could see someone inside the car - I couldn't see the face, I just saw the head and it wa
s leaning with the face toward the right to the passenger side. I didn't pay too much attention to it," Susan says. "We walked toward the residence, past the garage ... We walked past that, came down to the walk but got off the walk. We came and walked over to this window - to the right of the front door . . . Tex opened up the window, crawled inside and the next thing I knew he was at the front door opening the front door - only two of us entered - Linda Kasabian stayed outside. Tex was already inside ...
"As I walked in, Tex was in front of the couch and there was a man lying on the couch and his head - the back of his head was facing me and he was facing the opposite direction. It was - I was standing here and he was lying with his head here and his feet extending that way ... The man stretched his arms and woke up. I guess he thought some of his friends were coming from somewhere. He said, `What time is it?' Tex jumped in front of him and held a gun in his face and said, `Be quiet. Don't move or you're dead.' The man said something like `Well who are you and what are you doing here?' Tex said, `I am the Devil and I'm here to do the Devil's business ... Where is your money?'
"The man said, `My money is in the wallet on the desk.' And Tex told me to go over and look at the desk. I went over and looked at the desk, but I didn't see a wallet and I told Tex I didn't see one. Tex told me to go to the other rooms, go in and see if there was anybody else in the house. I went into two bedrooms, walked past one room and saw a woman sitting wearing glasses reading a book. She looked at me and smiled and I looked at her and smiled - she held her glasses down, and looked. I looked at her and waved my hand and smiled to her and went on to the next room, and saw a man sitting with his back to me and the woman lying on the bed, apparently pregnant, and they were talking. Neither one of them saw me, and I walked back into the living room and acknowledged to Tex that there were three more people ... I had no idea who they were. When I first saw them, my reaction was, `Wow, they sure are beautiful people.'
Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family Page 14
