Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family

by John Gilmore;Ron Kenner

  "Tex told me to tie up the man on the couch, so I took the rope (this was the rope that was in the car) and very loosely tied the man's hands ... I had put his hands together in a crisscross fashion, and his wrists. I have never been very good at tying knots and I wrapped the rope around his hands a couple of times and I was shaking and everything was happening so fast that I did a very poor job of tying him up. I stood back and Tex instructed me to go back and get the other people."

  Susan did not learn until the following day who they were, but uses their names here in recollection: "I walked back to the room and went into Abigail Folger's bedroom, put a knife in front of her and said, `Get up and go into the living room. Don't ask me any questions. Just do what I say.' She then proceeded to get up out of bed and walk down the hall and was met by Katie ... And I went into the other bedroom and stood to the left of the door and told them both to get up and go into the living room [this was Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring].

  "Shock. That was the expression on all their faces. Once he got into the living room, Sebring said, `What are you doing here?' and Tex told him to shut up. He told him to go over to the fireplace and lie down - Sharon said something to the effect that she is pregnant. Jay Sebring said, `Can't you see she is pregnant, let her sit down.' Sebring didn't follow Tex's orders and Tex shot him. Sebring fell in front of the fireplace and Sharon and Abigail screamed.

  "Tex asked the two girls if they had any money. Abigail said she did. Tex told me to take her into the bedroom. Abigail Folger walked into the bedroom. She reached into her purse and pulled out a wallet and said, `I only have seventy-two dollars, I just went to the bank yesterday,' and asked me if I wanted any of her credit cards and I shook my head no. I took the money and put it in my pocket and walked her back to the living room where Tex had me re-tie Frykowski with a towel that I had gotten from the bedroom ... I didn't do a very good job of that either.

  "Abigail was standing and Sharon was sitting. Tex went over to Sebring and bent down and viciously stabbed him in the back many times with a knife. Then he told Sharon and Abigail to lie down next to him ... and told Katie to turn off the lights and all the lights went out ... There was enough light from the outside lights so that we could see on the inside. I looked over and saw a dog in the window. The dog ran away.

  "The people got down on the floor," Susan says, "And they lied down and they were crying, and they were saying, `Please don't hurt me.' Each one of them kept saying `Please don't hurt me, we won't hurt you, we won't call the police, please don't hurt me, we won't call the police.'

  "Tex proceeded to tie a rope around Sebring's neck then to Sharon Tate's neck, then to Abigail Folger's neck and threw the rope - he threw it over a high beam which he pulled which made Sharon and Abigail stand up so that they wouldn't choke to death, and then - I forget who said it, but one of the victims said `What are you going to do with us?' Tex said, `You are all going to die.' And at that time they began to plead for their lives - Frykowski and Sharon and Abigail - Sebring was dying on the floor.

  "They were pleading, I would have been, too - and Tex ordered me to go over and kill Frykowski. I went over to him and raised the knife in my hand. I looked at him and hesitated. I hesitated long enough for the man to jump up. He knocked me down and I grabbed him as best I could ... I tried to stop him and he kept pulling my hair and I was kick ing at him and I was fighting him - it was like I was fighting for my life, it was like I never fought before, something I never experienced. He had hold of my hair and pulled it very hard and I was screaming for Tex to help me, or somebody to help me, and Frykowski, he was also screaming. Somehow he got behind me and I had the knife in my right hand and I was - I was - I don't know where I was at but I was just swinging with the knife and I remember hitting something four, five times repeatedly behind me ... I just kept swinging. I kept swinging the knife, I would swing the knife backwards, it was like ... I didn't see what it was that I was stabbing - I never stabbed a human being before, but I just know it was going into something ... Then the man - he let go of me, got away from me and started running toward the front door, which was open, and screaming bloody murder, yelling for his life, for somebody to come help him ... And I went to run after him, and then I looked over and Katie was calling `Help!' She was fighting with two women. And the dark-haired woman Abigail had hold of Katie's hair and was pulling on it and Katie was fighting and she called for Linda ..

  During it all, Linda "heard a man scream - then just screams. I don't have any words to describe how a scream is. I never heard it before. It was unbelievably, terribly horrible."

  Frykowski got to the door, Susan says. "Tex hit him over the head with the gun butt ... I believe the handle of the gun broke ... He was stabbing him as best he could because Frykowski was fighting."

  Linda, outside the house, saw "there was a man who had just come out of the door and he had blood all over his face ... We looked into each other's eyes.

  "I said, `Oh, God, I'm sorry,' and he just fell into the bushes."

  Soon after, Linda says, "the man had gotten up and moved away. Tex was hitting him and stabbing him and he was on top of him. The man was struggling with him ...

  Inside, Susan says, "Sebring, he was dead I believe, lying on the floor ... Although I heard moaning, I don't know whether it came from Sebring or not - Abigail had gotten loose from the rope and was in a fight with Katie."

  Katie says, "It's all the picture-like motion, reaction, it's hard to explain, trying to describe in detail ... I remember looking up and Sadie was - and Sadie was - was fighting with like with two women, and I - I guess I just got up and ran - and ran over and started fighting with a woman over there. And I can remember finally like Sadie was fighting over here, or something, and I was fighting."

  Susan says, "Tex went over to help Katie, and I saw Katie be released from Abigail's grip, and I saw Tex stab Abigail and just before he stabbed her - maybe an instant before he stabbed her, she looked at him and let her arms go and looked at all of us and said, `I give up, take me.'

  "Tex stabbed her again and she gripped her middle section of her body and fell to the floor ... And then I saw Tex go back outside."

  Abigail crawled up and tried to run from the house, Katie recalls.

  Linda says "Katie came running out of the house and I said, `Please, make it stop - people are coming.' She said it was too late ... then I saw a girl run and Katie chasing after her with an upraised knife, 11 and I just turned and ran to the car down at the bottom of the hill ...

  Katie remembers: "I had a knife in my hands, and Abigail took off running, and she ran - she ran - she ran out through a back door ... And I went through that door, and was chasing her on the grass and we started fighting and I stabbed her and I kept stabbing her."

  Inside the house, Susan says, "I can remember seeing Sharon struggle with the rope. Tex told me to take care of her, and I ran to the pregnant woman because she was starting to take the rope off her neck. I went over and grabbed her by the hand and put my arm around her neck ... and I had her head in my arms, and then I saw Tex come back to the man on the floor with the rope around his neck [Sebring] and he was stabbing the man.

  "Sharon looked at me and begged to let me have her sit down and I was told, before we got there, no matter what they beg don't give them any leeway," Susan says. "Anyway, I went over and put her down on the couch and looked into her face, knowing that anything that I would say I was saying to myself, in a sense reassuring myself. I looked at her and said, `Woman, I have no mercy for you.' And I knew at that time I was talking to myself, not to her.

  "She said, `Please let me go. All I want to do is have my baby.' She still had the rope around her."

  Suddenly, Susan says, she found herself alone in the living room with Sharon. "She kept pleading, `Please don't kill me, please don't kill me, I'm not going to say anything.' I just looked at her like, `Shut up!' I told her to shut up, I don't want to hear it. She said, `Please, let me sit down.' I said, `I'm not going to
let you do anything, just be quiet!' I threw her down and held my knife at her, and I said, Don't move, don't move.' She said, `Please, all I want to do is have my baby.' I said, Don't move, don't talk to me, don't say anything to me. I don't want to hear it ...'

  "Tex came back in and he stood over and he looked at her and he said, `Kill her!'

  "It was just there to do," Susan says. "I didn't relate to Sharon Tate to be anything but a store mannequin ... She sounded like an IBM machine - words kept coming out of her mouth ... Begging and pleading, begging and pleading. I got sick of listening to her, so I stabbed her. And I just stabbed her, and she fell, and I stabbed her again ... just kept stabbing and stabbing. . .

  Susan says she could feel the knife jab through the skin and strike bone - feel the "razor-sharp honed" blade hit bones and strike past into the deep soft organs. She would later claim it was the most exciting sexual experience she has ever known - that knife driving deeply again and again into Sharon Tate's flesh and body.

  "Sharon put her arms up, and then her arms fell ... I don't know how many times I stabbed her. I don't know why I stabbed her."

  Then, Susan recalls, "Tex came back in, said, `Hold her!"' And Susan saw "Tex stab her in the heart area around the chest. Sharon fell to the floor off the couch and we went to the front door. I believe Tex said, `The gun doesn't work anymore. I broke it over his head.'

  "Then I ran outside and Katie was just getting up from in front of the woman on the grass." They had gone out the front door, Susan says, "and I saw Abigail on the lawn ... I just saw her nightgown, a see-through nightgown and I saw blood on it, and I saw Tex go over and stab her three or four - I don't know how many times."

  Frykowski was laying out in front of the house. Tex was stabbing Abigail, Susan recalls, and "while he was doing that, Katie and I went looking for Linda because she wasn't around anymore. In fact, we started calling for her. We didn't want to call too loud." Tex walked over to where Frykowski was, Susan says. "He was lying with his back to me. Tex kicked him in the head, and the body didn't move very much. I believe it was dead at that time. Then we walked up to the gate. We walked around there, looking for Linda.

  "Tex was walking toward Katie and me - he told me to go back into the house and write something on the door in one of the victim's blood. He said, `Write something that will shock the world.'

  "I had previously been involved in something similar to this where I saw `political piggy' written on the wall, so that stuck very heavily in my mind," Susan says. "I didn't want to go back anywhere near the house, so I just blanked my mind and walked into the house. I picked up the same towel that I had tied Frykowski up with and walked over to Sharon Tate's body - she seemed to have been cut up a lot more than when I had last seen her. I never actually saw her face. Her hair was covering her face and there were sounds coming from her body ... Gurgling sounds like blood flowing into the body out of the heart.

  "I picked up the towel and turned my head and touched her chest and at the same time I knew she was pregnant, and I knew there was a living being inside of that body and I wanted to cut it out, but I didn't have the courage to go ahead and take it. And I got the towel with her blood, walked over to the door and with the towel I wrote `PIG' on the door - outside on the front door - `PIG' in Sharon Tate's blood. I held the towel in my hand and stood there for a few minutes. I did not know what todo..."

  Susan would later confide how her mind "reeled with pictures ..." How she was impelled to drink of the spilled blood - to take her fill of it like a vampire. She would later describe the feeling of beautiful Sharon Tate's blood on her hands. "It was slick and I brought my hand to my face and I could smell the blood. I opened my mouth and I licked it on my fingers ..." Again she thought of cutting the baby from the dead woman's body - of wrapping the unborn in the same towel and taking it to Charlie. "How proud Charlie would be if I presented him with the baby cut from the womb of the woman ..." She thought of cutting Sharon Tate's heart - of cutting it from the wounded chest cavity, and how it could be eaten - as the hearts of enemies were eaten by the Indians. She thought of eating the baby - of skewering it at one of the family's bonfires - each eats of the flesh of the unborn and are reborn themselves.

  But, Susan says, "I turned around and threw the towel toward the living room where the bodies were lying ... I walked out the front door at a very rapid pace up to Tex and Katie . . . We had left the change of clothes at the gate. We picked up these clothes before we left. There was a possibility I had blood all over my body ... I'm pretty sure Tex had a lot of blood on him. Tex pushed the button that opened the gate. We proceeded to walk down the hill to the car."

  Linda was alone and didn't enter the car at first, she said. "I guess I was in a state of shock." The "first thing that came to my mind ... was to go to a neighbor's house to call the police." As she remembers, Susan said she'd left her knife inside the house, and "I think she started to run back in the house," while she herself returned to the car. After "just a few minutes" then, Tex, Susan and Katie returned to the car. "All three of them" were bloody, Linda went on. "I was sitting in the driver's seat. Tex pushed me over and got behind the wheel. He seemed really uptight because I had run back to the car."

  Susan recalls that Linda started the car and Tex said, "What do you think you're doing? Get over on the passenger side. Don't do anything unless I tell you to do it." Then, Susan said, "we got in the car and as we were driving, we changed our clothes inside the car. We started to drive all over. We drove somewhere along Mulholland Drive, somewhere up in the canyon, I can't say for sure where. All we did was drive along and all of the weapons except for one weapon, I believe it was my knife, was handed to Linda who was sitting up in the front seat along with the gun, and we drove along the road until we came to what looked like an embankment going down like a cliff with a mountain on one side and a cliff on the other. Tex asked for something white, some sort of piece of cloth. In other words, if there happened to be a car behind he could throw out the white stuff as a diversionary."

  As they drove on, Linda says, "They complained about their heads, that people were pulling their hair and that their heads hurt, and Sadie said that a man hit her in the head, and Katie said her hand hurt ... She said that when she stabbed, that there were bones in the way, and that she couldn't get the knife through all the way, and that it took too much energy or something like that, and that when she stabbed, it hurt her hand. Katie said one of the girls inside was crying for her mother and for God." As they drove on, all had changed clothes except Linda. "I held the steering wheel while Tex took off his top and he changed his pants later on. They wanted to go hose off the blood from their bodies," Linda said. She doesn't know where Tex eventually stopped the car. "I don't know the name, but it was the street where we had spotted a hose when we were coming up the hill. And we stopped and parked the car to use the hose." It was "not very far ... maybe five or ten minutes" from the Tate residence, on a hilly street.

  "We went to a street that looked dark, it didn't have any lights on it," Susan says. "We went there to wash the blood off us. Only I didn't know that until we actually got to a house. We were so much one with each other that we really didn't need too many words spoken. Everything we did from the time he cut the poles to the time we got back to the ranch was spontaneous. It was done with no thought. So we were looking for a house to wash the blood off ourselves, because that is what we did.

  "We found a very dark house and there appeared to be nobody home. Tex found the hose. We took and turned on the hose and took it out into the street and started washing ourselves off, our feet and our arms and our faces. We had already changed clothes, so - and I heard a man and a woman come out of the house and they were yelling `What is going on?' And the woman was yelling something about `My husband belongs to the Los Angeles Police Department and he is going to see that - blah, blah, and blah, blah,' I don't recall what she said.

  "Tex looked at him and said, `Gee, I'm sorry, I didn't think you were h
ome. We were just walking around and wanted a drink. We didn't mean to wake you up or disturb you.'

  "And the man looked down the street and said, `Is that your car?' and Tex said, `No, I told you we were just walking.' The man said, `I know that is your car, you better get in it and get going.' And at that time the woman said to get the license number and she was frantic and she started calling us filthy hippies and tramps and calling us girls sluts and prostitutes and all those crazy things that people do.

  "Tex told us girls to get into the car, so we walked to the car and got in ... Tex had already started the car and the man reached in to turn off the car ignition."

  Linda says, "Tex fought him, and then just `jammed,' and I thought the man's arm would come off" as they sped away. They just drove, she said. "It was like a country road, sort of ... winding and hilly ... with only a few houses - there were very few lights."

  After about ten or fifteen minutes, Linda says, "I remember we came to a sort of level part of the road, and there was a dirt shoulder, and Tex handed me the clothes and told me to throw them out - the clothes that Tex, Sadie and Katie had changed."

  She got out of the car to throw them away. "They were just in one bundle," she remembers, and she threw them over a hill at the side of the road. "We drove off, and then Tex told me to wipe off the prints on the two knives," using a rag. "After wiping them off, I threw the knives out ... while the car was moving. One landed in the bushes but the second bounced off the curb, and I could sort of see it on the road." She remembers tossing the knives out about "three, four or five minutes" after throwing away the clothes. The buck knife wasn't there, she said, because that was the one Katie had left behind. "I just reached my hand, and threw them out. I may have thrown out the revolver, but I don't remember." She recalls, however, that "the right part of the grip no longer was on the gun ... I think Tex said when he hit the man over the head, it shattered the gun ..."