Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders Read online

  I interviewed Danny numerous times, one session lasting nine hours, obtaining considerable information that hadn’t come out in previous interviews. Each time I picked up a few more examples of Manson’s domination: Manson would tell the Family when it was time to eat; he wouldn’t permit anyone to be served until he was seated; during dinner he would lecture on his philosophy.

  I asked Danny if anyone ever interrupted Manson while he was talking. He recalled that one time “a couple of broads” started talking.

  Q. “What happened?”

  A. “He threw a bowl of rice at them.”

  Although DeCarlo was extremely reluctant to testify, Sergeant Gutierrez and I eventually persuaded him that it was in his own best interests to do so.

  I had less success with Dennis Wilson, singer and drummer for the Beach Boys. Though Wilson initially claimed to know nothing of importance, he finally agreed to “level” with me, but he refused to testify.

  It was obvious that Wilson was scared, and not without good reason. On December 4, 1969, three days after LAPD announced they had broken the case, Wilson had received an anonymous death threat. It was, I learned, not the only such threat, and the others were not anonymous.

  Though denying any knowledge of the Family’s criminal activities, Wilson did supply some interesting background information. In the late spring of 1968, Wilson had twice picked up the same pair of female hitchhikers while driving through Malibu. The second time he took the girls home with him. For Dennis, home was 14400 Sunset Boulevard, a palatial residence formerly owned by humorist Will Rogers. The girls—Ella Jo Bailey and Patricia Krenwinkel—stayed a couple of hours, Dennis said, mostly talking about this guy named Charlie.

  Wilson had a recording session that night and didn’t get home until 3 A.M. When he pulled into the driveway, a strange man stepped out of his back door. Wilson, frightened, asked, “Are you going to hurt me?” The man said, “Do I look like I’m going to hurt you, brother?” He then dropped to his knees and kissed Wilson’s feet—obviously one of Charlie’s favorite routines. When Manson ushered Wilson into his own home, he discovered he had about a dozen uninvited house guests, nearly all of them girls.

  They stayed for several months, during which time the group more than doubled in number. (It was during Manson’s “Sunset Boulevard period” that Charles “Tex” Watson, Brooks Poston, and Paul Watkins became associated with the Family.) The experience, Dennis later estimated, cost him about $100,000. Besides Manson’s constantly hitting him for money, Clem demolished Wilson’s uninsured $21,000 Mercedes-Benz by plowing it into a mountain on the approach to Spahn Ranch; the Family appropriated Wilson’s wardrobe, and just about everything else in sight; and several times Wilson found it necessary to take the whole Family to his Beverly Hills doctor for penicillin shots. “It was probably the largest gonorrhea bill in history,” Dennis admitted. Wilson even gave Manson nine or ten of the Beach Boys’ gold records and paid to have Sadie’s teeth fixed.

  The newly divorced Wilson obviously found something attractive about Manson’s life style. “Except for the expense,” Dennis told me, “I got along very well with Charlie and the girls.” He and Charlie would sing and talk, Dennis said, while the girls cleaned house, cooked, and catered to their needs. Wilson said he liked the “spontaneity” of Charlie’s music, but added that “Charlie never had a musical bone in his body.” Despite this, Dennis tried hard to “sell” Manson to others. He rented a recording studio in Santa Monica and had Manson recorded. (Though I was very interested in hearing the tapes, Wilson claimed that he had destroyed them, because “the vibrations connected with them don’t belong on this earth.”) Wilson also introduced Manson to a number of people in or on the fringes of the entertainment industry, including Melcher, Jakobson, and Altobelli. At one party, Charlie gave Dean Martin’s daughter, Deana, a ring and asked her to join the Family. Deana told me she kept the ring, which she later gave to her husband, but declined Manson’s invitation. As did the other Beach Boys, none of whom shared Dennis’ fondness for the “scruffy little guru,” as one described him.

  Wilson denied having any conflicts with Manson during this period. However, in August 1968, three weeks before his lease was to expire, Dennis moved in with Gregg, leaving to his manager the task of evicting Charlie and the girls.

  From Sunset Boulevard the Family moved to Spahn Ranch. Although Wilson apparently avoided the group for a time, he did see Manson occasionally. Dennis told me that he didn’t have any trouble with Charlie until August 1969—Dennis could not recall the exact date, but he did know it was after the Tate murders—when Manson visited him, demanding $1,500 so he could go to the desert. When Wilson refused, Charlie told him, “Don’t be surprised if you never see your kid again.” Dennis had a seven-year-old son, and obviously this was one reason for his reluctance to testify.

  Manson also threatened Wilson himself, but Dennis did not learn of this until an interview I conducted with both Wilson and Jakobson. According to Jakobson, not long after Dennis refused Manson’s request, Charlie handed Gregg a .44 caliber bullet and told him, “Tell Dennis there are more where this came from.” Knowing how the other threat had upset Dennis, Gregg hadn’t mentioned it to him.

  This incident had occurred in late August or early September of 1969. Jakobson was startled by the change in Manson. “The electricity was almost pouring out of him. His hair was on end. His eyes were wild. The only thing I can compare it to…is that he was just like an animal in a cage.”

  It was possible there was still another threat, but this is strictly conjecture. In going through the Spahn Ranch phone bills, I found that on September 22, 1969, someone called Dennis Wilson’s private number from the pay phone at Spahn and that the following day Wilson had the phone disconnected.

  Looking back on his involvement with the Family, Dennis told me: “I’m the luckiest guy in the world, because I got off only losing my money.”

  From rock star to motorcycle rider to ex–call girl, the witnesses in this case all had one thing in common: they were afraid for their lives. They needed only to pick up a newspaper or turn on TV to see that many of the Family members were still roaming the streets; that Steve Grogan, aka Clem, was out on bail, while the Inyo County grand theft charges against Bruce Davis had been dismissed for lack of evidence. Neither Grogan, Davis, nor any of the others suspected of beheading Shorty Shea had been charged with that murder, there being as yet no physical proof that Shea was dead.

  Perhaps in her cell at Sybil Brand, Susan Atkins recalled the lyrics of the Beatles’ song “Sexy Sadie”:

  “Sexy Sadie what have you done

  You made a fool of everyone…

  Sexy Sadie you broke the rules

  You laid it out for all to see…

  Sexy Sadie you’ll get yours yet

  However big you think you are…”

  Or perhaps it was simply that the numerous messages Manson was sending, by other Family members, were getting to her.

  Susan called in Caballero and told him that under no circumstances would she testify at the trial. And she demanded to see Charlie.

  Caballero told Aaron and me that it looked as if we’d lost our star witness.

  We contacted Gary Fleischman, Linda Kasabian’s attorney, and told him we were ready to talk.

  From the start Fleischman, dedicated to the welfare of his client, had wanted nothing less than complete immunity for Linda Kasabian. Not until after I had talked to Linda myself did I learn that she had been willing to talk to us immunity or not, and that only Fleischman had kept her from doing so. I also learned that she had decided to return to California voluntarily, against the advice of Fleischman, who had wanted her to fight extradition.

  After a number of discussions, our office agreed to petition the Superior Court for immunity, after she had testified. In return it was agreed: (1) that Linda Kasabian would give us a full and complete statement of her involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders; (2) that Linda Kasabian would
testify truthfully at all trial proceedings against all defendants; and (3) that in the event Linda Kasabian did not testify truthfully, or that she refused to testify, for whatever reason, she would be prosecuted fully, but that any statement that she gave the prosecution would not be used against her.

  The agreement was signed by Younger, Leavy, Busch, Stovitz, and myself on February 26, 1970.

  Two days later I interviewed Linda Kasabian. It was the first time she had discussed the Tate-LaBianca murders with anyone connected with law enforcement.

  As noted, given a choice between Susan and Linda, I’d preferred Linda, sight unseen: she hadn’t killed anyone and therefore would be far more acceptable to a jury than the bloodthirsty Susan. Now, talking to her in Captain Carpenter’s office at Sybil Brand, I was especially pleased that things had turned out as they had.

  Small, with long light-brown hair, Linda bore a distinct resemblance to the actress Mia Farrow. As I got to know her, I found Linda a quiet girl, docile, easily led, yet she communicated an inner sureness, almost a fatalism, that made her seem much older than her twenty years. The product of a broken home, she herself had had two unsuccessful marriages, the last of which, to a young hippie, Robert Kasabian, had broken up just before she went to Spahn Ranch. She had one child, a girl named Tanya, age two, and was now eight months pregnant with another, conceived, she thought, the last time she and her husband were together. She had remained with the Family less than a month and a half—“I was like a little blind girl in the forest, and I took the first path that came to me.” Only now, talking about what had happened, did she feel she was emerging from the darkness, she said.

  On her own since sixteen, Linda had wandered from the east coast to the west, “looking for God.” In her quest she had lived in communes and crash pads, taken drugs, had sex with almost anyone who showed an interest. She described all this with a candor that at times shocked me, yet which, I knew, would be a plus on the witness stand.

  From the first interview I believed her story, and I felt that a jury would also. There were no pauses in her answers, no evasions, no attempts to make herself appear something she was not. She was brutally frank. When a witness takes the stand and tells the truth, even though it is injurious to his own image, you know he can’t be impeached. I knew that if Linda testified truthfully about those two nights of murder, it would be immaterial whether she had been promiscuous, taken dope, stolen. The question was, could the defense attack her credibility regarding the events of those two nights? And I knew the answer from our very first interview: they wouldn’t be able to do so, because she was so obviously telling the truth.

  I talked to her from 1 to 4:30 P.M. on the twenty-eighth. It was the first of many long interviews, a half dozen of them lasting six to nine hours, all of which took place at Sybil Brand, her attorney usually the only other person present. At the end of each interview I’d tell her that if, back in her cell, anything occurred to her which we hadn’t discussed, to “jot it down.” A number of these notes became letters to me, running to a dozen or more pages. All of which, together with my interview notes, became available to the defense under discovery.

  The more times a witness tells his story, the more opportunities there are for discrepancies and contradictions, which the opposing side can then use for impeachment purposes. While some attorneys try to hold interviews and pre-trial statements to a minimum so as to avoid such problems, my attitude is the exact opposite. If a witness is lying, I want to know it before he ever takes the stand. In the more than fifty hours I spent interviewing Linda Kasabian, I found her, like any witness, unsure in some details, confused about others, but never once did I catch her even attempting to lie. Moreover, when she was unsure, she admitted it.

  Though she added many details, Linda Kasabian’s story of those two nights was basically the same as Susan Atkins’. There were only a few surprises. But they were big ones.

  Prior to my talking to Linda, we had assumed that she had probably witnessed only one murder, the shooting of Steven Parent. We now learned that she had also seen Katie chasing Abigail Folger across the lawn with an upraised knife and Tex stabbing Voytek Frykowski to death.

  She also told me that on the night the LaBiancas were killed, Manson had attempted to commit three other murders.

  PART 5

  “Don’t You Know Who You’re Crucifying?”

  “For there shall arise false Christs,

  and false prophets, and shall shew

  great signs and wonders; insomuch that,

  if it were possible, they shall deceive

  the very elect…Wherefore, if they

  shall say unto you, Behold, he is in

  the desert; go not forth…”

  MATTHEW 24:24, 26

  “Just before we got busted in the desert,

  there was twelve of us apostles and Charlie.”

  Family member

  RUTH ANN MOOREHOUSE

  “I may have implied on several occasions

  to several different people that I may

  have been Jesus Christ, but I haven’t

  decided yet what I am or who I am.”

  CHARLES MANSON

  MARCH 1970

  On March 3, accompanied by attorney Gary Fleischman and some dozen LAPD and LASO officers, I took Linda Kasabian out of Sybil Brand. For Linda it was a trip back in time, to an almost unbelievable night nearly seven months ago.

  Our first stop was 10050 Cielo Drive.

  In late June of 1969, Bob Kasabian had called Linda at her mother’s home in New Hampshire, suggesting a reconciliation. Kasabian was living in a trailer in Topanga Canyon with a friend, Charles Melton. Melton, who had recently inherited $20,000, and had already given away more than half, planned to drive to the tip of South America, buy a boat, and sail around the world. He’d invited Linda and Bob, as well as another couple, to come along.

  Linda, together with her daughter, Tanya, flew to Los Angeles, but the reconciliation was unsuccessful.

  On July 4, 1969, Catherine Share, aka Gypsy, visited Melton, whom she had met through Paul Watkins. Gypsy told Linda about “this beautiful man named Charlie,” the Family, and how life at Spahn was all love, beauty, and peace. To Linda it was “as if the answer to an unspoken prayer.”* That same day Linda and Tanya moved to Spahn. Though she didn’t meet Manson that day, she did meet most of the other members of the Family, and they talked of little else. It was obvious to her that “they worshiped him.”

  That night Tex took her into a small room and told her “far-out things—nothing was wrong, all was right—things I couldn’t comprehend.” Then “He made love to me, and a strange experience took place—it was like being possessed.” When it was over, Linda’s fingers were clenched so tightly they hurt. Gypsy later told her that what she had experienced was the death of the ego.

  After making love, Linda and Tex talked, Linda mentioning Melton’s inheritance. Tex told her that she should steal the money. According to Linda, she told him she couldn’t do that—Melton was a friend, a brother. Tex told her that she could do no wrong and that everything should be shared. The next day Linda went back to the trailer and stole $5,000, which she gave to either Leslie or Tex. She had already turned over all her possessions to the Family, the girls having told her, “What’s yours is ours and what’s ours is yours.”

  Linda met Charles Manson for the first time that night. After all she had heard about him, she felt as if she were on trial. He asked why she had come to the ranch. She replied that her husband had rejected her. Manson reached out and felt her legs. “He seemed pleased with them,” Linda recalled. Then he told her she could stay. Before making love to her, he told her that she had a father hangup. Linda was startled by his perception, because she disliked her stepfather. She felt that Manson could see inside her.

  Linda Kasabian became a part of the Family—went on garbage runs, had sex with the men, creepy-crawled a house, and listened as Manson lectured about the Beatles, Helter Skelter
, and the bottomless pit. Charlie told her that the black man was together but the white man was not. However, he knew a way to unite the white man, he said. It was the only way. But he didn’t tell her what it was.

  Nor did she ask. From the first time they met, Manson had stressed, “Never ask why.” When something he said or did puzzled her, she was reminded of this. Also of another of his favorite axioms, “No sense makes sense.”

  The whole Family, Linda said, was “paranoid of blackie.” On weekends George Spahn did a brisk business renting horses. Occasionally among the riders there would be blacks. Manson maintained they were Panthers, spying on the Family. He always hid the young girls when they were around. At night everyone was required to wear dark clothing, so as to be less conspicuous, and eventually Manson posted armed guards, who roamed the ranch until dawn.

  Gradually Linda became convinced that Charles Manson was Jesus Christ. He never told her this directly, but one day he asked her, “Don’t you know who I am?”

  She replied, “No, am I supposed to know something?”

  He didn’t answer, just smiled, and playfully twirled her around.

  Yet she had doubts. The mothers were not allowed to care for their own children. They separated her and Tanya, Linda explained, because they wanted “to kill the ego that I put in her” and “at first I agreed to it, I thought that it was a good idea that she should become her own person.” Also, several times she saw Manson strike Dianne Lake. Linda had been in many communes—from the American Psychedelic Circus in Boston to Sons of the Earth Mother near Taos—but she’d never seen anything like this, and, forgetting Charlie’s commandment, she did ask Gypsy why. Gypsy told her that Dianne really wanted to be beaten, and Charlie was only obliging her.