Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family

by John Gilmore;Ron Kenner

  They continued driving, Linda says. "We came to streets with lights and traffic, and we stopped at a service station. Tex told Sadie and Katie to go in and wash themselves off. Then he went in himself. He ordered some gas before we left."

  Susan says, "I think the gas station was located on Sunset Boulevard. We went into the bathroom and checked for any other blood spots. In my fight with Frykowski, I had opened the sores that I had on my feet and my feet were bleeding and very sore."

  Linda stayed in the car and got into the driver's seat, while Tex was then "on the other side, in front." Sadie and Katie got back into the back seat and they returned to Spahn ranch, arriving about "an hour and a half after leaving the service station."

  As they returned to the parking area at the ranch, Linda says, Charlie was in "about the same spot where he stood when we left."

  Susan says, "I remembered being in the Tate house - I recall either hearing twelve chimes or seeing a clock that said twelve ... So we probably got back to the ranch somewhere around two o'clock in the morning. Charlie said, `What are you doing home so early?' Charlie changes from second to second," Susan says. "He can be anybody he wants to be. He can put on any face he wants to put on at any given moment. Tex was nervous like he had just been through a traumatic experience ... Katie was very silent. I almost passed out - I felt as though I had just killed myself. I felt dead.

  "All the things that happened after that are very foggy to me. All I know is that I got out of the car. I had seen blood on the car at the gas station and I went into the kitchen."

  Linda recalls Charlie had "instructed Sadie to get a sponge to wash off the car, and told the rest of us to go through the car." Susan says she "got a sponge and a rag and went back out to the car and wiped it off ... The outside of the car, door handles and the steering wheel. I don't think I did anything to the inside of the car ..

  When the car had been checked and the blood removed, "Charlie said to go in the bunk room," Linda recalls. She went into the bunk room with Katie and Sadie, "then Charlie came into the bunk room with Tex, and Tex told him, what he told the people at the house -`I'm the Devil, here to do the Devil's work."'

  Susan says, "Tex told Charlie - basically just what he had done. That it all happened perfectly. There was a lot of - it happened very fast - a lot of panic, that they were panicked, and Tex described it, `Boy, it sure was helter-skelter."'

  Linda says, "Tex said there was a lot of blood - it was really messy, and that there were bodies all over the place, but they were all dead ... Then Charlie asked us if we had any remorse. He simply asked us, `Do you have any remorse?"' Tex, Sadie, Katie and Linda each replied "No." Then, she says, "Charlie told us not to talk this over with anybody at the ranch, and to go and get some sleep." They'd done a good night's work. It was only the beginning.

  On Saturday morning, August 9th, Mrs. Chapman arrived at the Polanski house to start her day's work. Immediately she noticed the wires at the gate, cut and hanging down. "I opened the gate and went on in ... I picked up the paper and snapped out the outside lights, unlocked the back door with my own key and I went in, and I went to the kitchen phone and picked it up. Since our electric was on, I surmised it was the telephone wires, and I picked up the kitchen phone and it was dead, and I started up front to waken someone ... That is when I saw the bodies and the bloody clothes - I ran out."

  The woman ran, screaming. She did not return to the Polanski house.

  Six patrol cars soon arrived at the scene, and officers went through the property with guns drawn.

  A dog was barking behind the guest house and a voice called out, "Quiet!" But the dog continued to bark. "Christopher, be quiet!"

  Within moments the police burst through Garretson's door - he sat stunned on his bed. He was immediately taken to a patrol car, and didn't even recognize the bodies of the people he had known as he passed them on the lawn.

  At ten o'clock, Detective Manuel Granado passed the police cordon that kept back the newsmen and spectators.

  Sharon Tate's theatrical agent had been called from an early tennis match to identify the bodies. He left in tears, refusing to speak to reporters.

  Detective Granado, having entered the house, observed the three pieces of a pistol grip, two large pieces and one very small. "The two large pieces," he said, "I found inside the living room. The small piece was immediately outside, approximately a foot away from the front door ... I picked them up with my tongs and had them fingerprinted," giving instructions to "be careful with some blood that was on the pieces of the hand grip."

  Homicide Detective Michael McGann recalls on his arrival shortly after Granado's, "I entered the property and observed Steven Parent slumped over the seat of this Rambler, which is this two-door ... I continued onto the property, entered the walkway, and observed Voityck Frykowski lying on the front lawn on his side . . . I continued toward Frykowski's body, at which time I observed Abigail Folger lying on her back... I went back to the front of the house ... The window was open and the screen was sitting beside it leaning against a window ... A vertical slit had been made in the screen ... I observed numerous blood splatters about the front porch and on the front door. The word - the door was partially open and `PIG,' or `P-I-G' is written in blood.

  "Then I entered the entryway and continued into the living room of the Polanski residence. I continued over to this couch ... and observed Sharon [Tate] Polanski lying on her left side directly in front of the sofa. I also observed the body of Jay Sebring lying on his right side in front of a chair."

  Detective Granado had observed the rope around Sharon Tate's neck. "It appeared to be wrapped around and then around again and it didn't appear to have a knot in it but was just wrapped around the neck. It extended over to Jay Sebring, around his neck. It went around the same as Sharon Tate except that the rope went in and tied. His face was wrapped and he was face down ..." The rope Granado described had "three large strands with multiple smaller strands. This rope went along with the body to the coroner. It was severed by the coroner at the scene, and Sharon Tate's portion stayed with her body and the other portion stayed with Sebring's body."

  Sergeant McGann said, "The interior of the house did not appear to have been ransacked . . . The wallets of Abigail Folger and Voityck Frykowski were loosely found in one of the sofas in the Folger bedroom but they did not appear to - the house itself did not appear to have been ransacked ... There was currency inside Abigail Folger's wallet."

  Garretson was charged with five counts of murder on the basis that he had been the last living person on the premises. The housekeeper was taken to the UCLA Medical Center in a state of shock. Later, she was brought to the police station where Garretson was being held. He kept repeating that he had seen nothing, heard nothing. He had put on his record player, removed his shirt and stretched out on the bed. He remembered closing his eyes. When he opened them again it was near dawn. He picked up his telephone but the line was dead. All the lines seemed dead. He wasn't sure what to do and it made him feel "a little bit frightened." He went back to sleep. The next thing he knew the dog was barking and then the police were there.

  Later, the bodies lay in the County Morgue, six in all.

  Steve Parent was identified by his parish priest, who went to the morgue after the boy's father told him Steve was missing.

  Chief Coroner Thomas Noguchi examined the body of Abigail Folger, and also directed and supervised the autopsies performed by another medical examiner. Folger's death came from "a stab wound of the aorta, that is the large blood vessel originating from the heart, causing massive hemorrhage." Dr. Noguchi found twenty-one stab wounds on the body and said they appeared "caused by the same type of cutting instrument." As to depth of the wounds, he said, "I would say that five to six inch stab wounds were observed."

  There were no gunshot wounds in her body.

  Frykowski's death was attributed to "multiple stab wounds of the body causing massive hemorrhage ... There was one gunshot wound," Noguchi
said. "A total count of the stab wounds found on the body was fifty-one." The coroner found a total of thirteen cuts to the scalp. "I would say the wound characteristics were totally consistent with injuries caused by blunt force," he went on. There were five stab wounds in the back and eleven wounds to the chest, up to the side of the chest, and these wounds were caused by a bayonet-type instrument, the same instrument that caused the wounds in the fifty-one parts of the man's body, he said. There were sixteen stab wounds to the left arm, eight stab wounds to the left leg. Describing the gunshot wound, he said the bullet entered the left armpit, more toward the back, and "the direction of the gunshot wound track was almost horizontal" as if Frykowski were in a standing position. "Then the bullet was found in the back at the fifth dorsal vertebra ... the fifth backbone column below the neck bone."

  The autopsy of Steven Parent showed death by "multiple gunshot wounds of the chest, causing massive hemorrhage ... There were two gunshot wounds in the chest ... One gunshot wound was also found on the left face. I should, perhaps, say cheek, and another gunshot wound was found on the left arm, which was a through-and-through wound," the chief coroner said. He reported one stab wound and one cut to the left hand ... "It could be considered a defense wound," incurred as Parent sought to prevent total injury.

  Dr. Noguchi concluded that the gunshot wounds to both Frykowski and Jay Sebring were non-fatal. The cause of Sebring's death, Noguchi said, was determined as "exsanguination ... massive hemorrhage, caused by stab wounds." He said the body suffered six stab wounds generally in the left side of the chest. "The organs that were involved which caused the hemorrhage were aorta, a large blood vessel coming out from the heart and left lung, and also other injuries which are apart from the stab wounds ..." He said Sebring's face "showed bruises and swelling ... contusion. Such as the bruise on the nose, and the left eye. There were cuts found on the left hand ... As far as we can determine there was a gunshot wound on the left side of the chest penetrating to the left lung, and there are spattered fragmented bullet along the area of the central portion of the chest." There were two gunshot wounds, he said. One on the left side of the chest and another in the lower back. "The fragment was found ... on the back and just - I think between the skin and the shirt he was wearing."

  The autopsy on Sharon Tate was performed by Dr. Noguchi himself. He said death was caused by "multiple stab wounds of chest and back penetrating heart, lungs and liver, causing massive hemorrhage." The rope around her neck had left no abrasion or scarring mark, and, he said, "there was no indication of strangulation ..." There were sixteen stab wounds on Sharon Tate's body. In the chest area, Dr. Noguchi found four stab wounds, and eight stab wounds to the back. "And," he said, "certain wounds to the arms and other areas of the body."

  Had death come instantly?

  "In my opinion," Dr. Noguchi said, "based on the study of the previous cases where a person receives stab wounds to the heart causing massive hemorrhage, the average person would first receive a profuse hemorrhage into the body cavity, thus causing a sudden drop of the blood pressure ... It is quite possible still that the person would be able to move to escape from the location where he or she was injured, but most likely the person would be incapacitated very shortly after infliction of the stab wound through the heart ... As the blood pressure decreased to less than one third of the normal blood pressure," he went on, "then it is very unlikely the person would be able to move and probably suffer a short period of coma and death usually within fifteen minutes."

  Dr. Noguchi said a number of the wounds in Sharon Tate's back and chest "penetrated through the ribs." He was asked if this would require a great deal or moderate amount of force, and if the assailant could be male or female. Dr. Noguchi answered that "this type of wound could be caused by a number of factors. One, the instrument has to be reasonably sharp and ... heavy enough to have a momentum so that it can continue penetrating into the deeper tissue of the body, and the person has to have the strength to give a strong thrust into the body. I would be probably speculating too much if I would differentiate whether male or female. The strength of male, female, sometimes is equal and sometimes depending on the circumstances," Noguchi continued. The examination of Sharon Tate revealed that she "was eight months in pregnancy stage and the male fetus was found." However, Noguchi said, "there was no injury to abdominal area nor the unborn baby ... I performed an autopsy on the unborn male and there was no congenital abnormalities and maturation of the baby was entirely consistent with eight months pregnancy."

  The death of the unborn baby, he said, "would not be simultaneous ... we know ... a number of cases where after a maternal death the babies have been saved by emergency Caesarian sections. We feel that the fetus is resistant to lack of oxygen to enable it to survive a period of fifteen to twenty minutes of cessation of the maternal circulation."

  The perfectly formed baby boy made the sixth victim of the slaying.

  Dr. Noguchi gave a brief statement to the press, saying, "This crime was so weird and bizarre that we are showing photographs of the bodies to a psychiatrist and a psychologist who are consultants on our staff in an effort to determine from them a behavior evaluation of the killer ..."

  One detective said that since the telephone lines had been cut the murders were apparently premeditated. He suggested the victims were "caught unawares" and that an escape attempt was apparent by the manner in which the bodies were found. "It was a weird homicide," he said, "but I don't think we have a maniac running around loose."

  Garretson's attorney disagreed with the police. "I think there is a maniac running around," he said. His client underwent an hour of polygraph tests at central police headquarters that Sunday afternoon, but detectives were "not entirely satisfied with the results," and Garretson was released with "insufficient evidence to detain him any longer."

  Both Linda and Susan learned for the first time who "those people" were "the next morning on the news and TV, in a trailer next to George Spahn's house."

  Linda says, "It seems I had slept most of the day, and then when I got up, Sadie told me to come and watch TV."

  "The Soul sure did pick a lulu," Susan recalls saying, "But the Soul did a good job, or something to do with the Soul, not meaning Charlie Manson picked a good one, meaning the Infinite Soul ... I believe the words came from my mouth, I'm not sure because I don't know, I just know that something to that effect was said. And I said something to the effect that it served its purpose - to instill fear into the Establishment."

  Susan says, after the news, "Some of the girls talked about it and that - I don't recall exactly what they said, but they were aware of the fact that we had gone out the night before ... At that time they weren't aware of the fact that we had done it but we didn't actually have to say anything. The Family was so much together that nothing ever had to be said. We all just knew what each other would do or had done ... I got the impression that they put two and two together."

  Linda doesn't remember seeing Tex that day, although the whole family was together for dinner later. Then, she says, "I was in the kitchen, cleaning up, and we were all sitting around, and Gypsy came in from town with a whole bunch of zuzus, you know - candy - and she was going to take a bunch of us up to the water hole and I was hoping I would get to go. Then Charlie came and called Katie and Leslie and myself aside. He told me to get a change of clothes ... my driver's license ... and to meet him at the bunk house." Soon after she met Manson and others at the bunk house, "I can't remember exact faces ... but eventually we were all there. Myself, Charlie, Leslie, Sadie, Katie, Tex and Clem."

  That night, Susan says, "Charlie told me to go get two changes - get a change of clothes. I looked at him and I knew what he wanted me to do, and I gave a sort of a sigh and went and did what he asked me to do. I didn't pick up any weapons."

  Linda says Charlie told them then, "we were going out again tonight, that last night was too messy, and he was going to show us how to do it. No one said anything to Charlie then," she
recalls, though at one point "Tex said we needed better weapons, that the ones we took were not good enough." She remembers seeing "two long swords" then in the bunkhouse, though she didn't notice if anyone picked them up.

  The group then went to a car owned by a ranch hand, the same car that had been driven the night before, Linda says. "I sat between Charlie and Clem in the front seat with Clem on the right. Tex was directly in back of Charlie, and Leslie sat on Tex's lap, and then there were Katie and Sadie ..."

  Then, Charlie handed Linda "a leather thong he had been wearing around his neck." It was rolled up, Linda recalls. "I put it in my pocket. It was sort of decorative ... it was wound around ... it looked like a hangman's noose."

  Twenty-four hours had not passed since the killings. Susan says, "I was still in a state of shock from the previous night ... I know it was in the early evening. It was after dark. Charlie drove. There was a gun in the car, and Charlie had it." But she knew it was not the same gun that had been used the night before and was "thrown over a hill."

  "We just started driving," Susan says. "The only discussion I can recall, sticks in my mind, is that we were going to do the same thing we had done last night only two different houses, there was to be two sets of- two groups consisting of one man and two girls to go to two different houses. That is why there were two men and four girls ... I don't know if these were Charlie's exact words, but basically that is what he said."

  They drove to a gas station and bought some gas, and Linda believes Charlie went out and got some cigarettes. Then, she says, "Charlie told me to take over the driver's seat, sitting beside me ... I drove on the freeway, a long way. Charlie gave me directions." Tex was quiet, and only Charlie gave the directions.

  Linda recalls Charlie directing her "on the freeway and then we got to a turnoff, and he told me to turn, and I remember it was Fair Oaks in Pasadena." Eventually Charlie told her to stop. "We stopped in front of a house. Charlie got out of the car and told me to drive around the block." When they returned to the house, "Charlie was standing in front ... We sat in the car for awhile because there was a man and a woman sitting in a car nearby." Charlie said "something like the man was too big, and told me to drive off." Linda started the car.