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

  If Manson was planning on using Stephanie Schram as an alternative alibi, we were now more than ready for him.

  On March 19, Hollopeter, Manson’s court-appointed attorney, made two motions: that Charles Manson be given a psychiatric examination, and that his case be severed from that of the others.

  Enraged, Manson tried to fire Hollopeter.

  Asked whom he wished to represent him, Manson replied, “Myself.” When Judge Keene denied the change, Manson picked up a copy of the Constitution and, saying it meant nothing to the Court, tossed it in a wastebasket.

  Manson eventually requested that Ronald Hughes be substituted for Hollopeter. Like Reiner and Shinn, Hughes had been one of the first attorneys to call on Manson. He had remained on the periphery of the case ever since, his chief function being to run errands for Manson, as indicated by a document Manson had signed on February 17, designating him one of his legal runners.

  Keene granted the substitution. Hollopeter, whom the press called “one of L.A. county’s most successful defense attorneys,” was out, after thirteen days; Hughes, who had never before tried a case, was in.

  Something of an intellectual, Hughes was a huge, balding man with a long, scraggly beard. His various items of apparel rarely matched and usually evidenced numerous food stains. As one reporter remarked, “You could usually tell what Ron had for breakfast, for the past several weeks.” Hughes, whom I would get to know well in the months ahead, and for whom I developed a growing respect, once admitted to me that he had bought his suits for a dollar apiece at MGM; they were from Walter Slezak’s old wardrobe. The press was quick to dub him “Manson’s hippie lawyer.”

  Hughes’ first two acts were to withdraw the motions for the psychiatric examination and the severance. Granted. His third and fourth were requests that Manson be allowed to revert to pro per status and to deliver a speech to the Court. Denied.

  Although Manson was displeased with Keene’s last two rulings, he couldn’t have been too unhappy with the defense team, which now consisted of four attorneys—Reiner (Van Houten), Shinn (Atkins), Fitzgerald (Krenwinkel), and Hughes (Manson)—each of whom had been associated with him since early in the case.

  Unknown to us, there were still changes ahead. Among the casualties would be both Ira Reiner and Ronald Hughes, each of whom dared go against Manson’s wishes. Reiner would lose considerable time and money for having linked himself with the Manson defense. His loss would be small, however, compared to that of Hughes, who, just eight months later, would pay with his life.

  On March 21, Aaron and I were walking down the corridor in the Hall of Justice when we spotted Irving Kanarek emerging from the elevator.

  Although little known elsewhere, Kanarek was something of a legend in the Los Angeles courts. The attorney’s obstructionist tactics had caused a number of judges to openly censure him from the bench. Kanarek stories were so common, and usually incredible, as to seem fictional when they were actually fact. Prosecutor Burton Katz, for example, recalled that Kanarek once objected to a prosecution witness’s stating his own name because, having first heard his name from his mother, it was “hearsay.” Such frivolous objections were minor irritations compared with Kanarek’s dilatory tactics. As samples:

  In the case of People vs. Goodman, Kanarek had stretched a simple theft case, which should have taken a few hours or a day at most, to three months. The amount stolen: $100. The cost to the taxpayers: $130,212.

  In the case of People vs. Smith and Powell, Kanarek spent twelve and a half months on pre-trial motions. After an additional two months trying to pick a jury, Kanarek’s own client fired him in disgust. A year and a half after Irving Kanarek came onto the case, the jury still hadn’t been selected, nor a single witness called.

  In the case of People vs. Bronson, Superior Court Judge Raymond Roberts told Kanarek: “I am doing my best to see that Mr. Bronson gets a fair trial in spite of you. I have never seen such obviously stupid, ill-advised questions of a witness. Are you paid by the word or by the hour that you can consume the Court’s time? You are the most obstructionist man I have ever met.”

  Outside the presence of the jury, Judge Roberts defined Kanarek’s modus operandi as follows: “You take interminable lengths of time in cross-examining on the most minute, unimportant details; you ramble back and forth with no chronology of events, to just totally confuse everybody in the courtroom, to the utter frustration of the jury, the witnesses, and the judge.”

  After examining the transcript, the Appellate Court found the judge’s remarks were not prejudicial but were substantiated by the trial record.

  “All we need, Vince,” Aaron remarked jocularly to me, “is to have Irving Kanarek on this case. We’d be in court ten years.”

  The next day Ronald Hughes told a reporter that “he may ask Van Nuys attorney I. A. Kanarek to enter the case as Manson’s lawyer. He mentioned that he and Manson conferred with Kanarek at the County Jail Monday night.”

  Though no miracle was involved, the Black Panther whom Charles Manson had shot and killed in July 1969 had resurrected. Only he wasn’t a Panther, just a “former dope dealer,” and, contrary to what Manson and the Family had believed, after Manson shot him he hadn’t died, though his friends had told Manson that he had. His name was Bernard Crowe, but he was best known by the descriptive nickname Lotsapoppa. Our long search for Crowe ended when an old acquaintance of mine, Ed Tolmas, who was Crowe’s attorney, called me. He told me he had learned we were looking for his client and arranged for me to interview Crowe.

  After Manson and T. J. had left the Hollywood apartment where the shooting took place, Crowe, who had been playing dead, told his friends to call an ambulance. They did, then split. When questioned by the police at the hospital, Crowe said he didn’t know who had shot him or why. He nearly didn’t make it; he was on the critical list for eighteen days. The bullet was still lodged next to his spine.

  I was interested in Crowe for two reasons. One, the incident proved that Charles Manson was quite capable of killing someone on his own. Though I knew I couldn’t get this into evidence during the guilt phase of the trial, I was hopeful of introducing it during the penalty phase, when other crimes can be considered. Two, from the description it appeared that the gun Manson had shot Crowe with was the same .22 caliber Longhorn revolver which, just a little over a month later, Tex Watson would use in the Tate homicides. If we could remove the bullet from Crowe’s body and match it up with the bullets test-fired from the .22 caliber revolver, we’d have placed the Tate murder weapon in Manson’s own hand.

  Sergeant Bill Lee of SID wasn’t optimistic about the bullet. He told me that since it had been embedded in the body for over nine months, it was likely that acids had obliterated the stria to an extent where a positive identification would be difficult. Still, it might be possible. I then talked to several surgeons: they could take out the bullet, they told me, but the operation was risky.

  I laid it out for Crowe. We’d like to have the bullet, and would arrange to have it removed at the Los Angeles County Hospital. But there were serious risks involved, and I didn’t minimize them.

  Crowe declined the operation. He was sort of proud of the bullet, he said. It made quite a conversation piece.

  Eventually Manson would have learned, through discovery, of the resurrection of Bernard Crowe. Before this, however, Crowe was jailed on a marijuana charge. As he was being escorted down the hall, he passed Manson and his guard, who were on their way back from the attorney room. Charlie did a quick about-face, then told Crowe, according to the deputies who were present, “Sorry I had to do it, but you know how it is.”

  Crowe’s response, if there was one, went unreported.

  Toward the end of March the prosecution nearly lost one of its key witnesses.

  Paul Watkins, once Manson’s chief lieutenant, was pulled out of a flaming Volkswagen camper and rushed to Los Angeles County General Hospital with second-degree burns on 25 percent of his face, arms, and back. When su
fficiently recovered to talk to the police, Watkins told them he had fallen asleep while reading by candlelight, and either that, or a marijuana cigarette he had been smoking, could have caused the fire.

  These were only guesses, Watkins told them, as he was “unsure of the origin of the blaze.”

  Three days before the fire, Inyo County authorities had heard a rumor that Watkins was going to be killed by the Family.

  As far back as November 1969, I’d asked LAPD to infiltrate the Family. I not only wanted to know what they were planning as far as defense strategy was concerned; I told the officers, “It would be tragic if there was another murder which we could have prevented.”

  I made this request at least ten times, LAPD finally contending that if they did plant an undercover agent in the Family, he would have to commit crimes, for example, smoke marijuana. For there to be a crime, I noted, there had to be criminal intent; if he was doing it as part of his job, to catch a criminal, it wouldn’t be a crime. When they balked at this, I said he didn’t even have to be a police officer. If they had paid informers in narcotics, bookmaking, even prostitution cases, surely they could manage to come up with one in one of the biggest murder cases of our time. No dice.

  Finally I turned to the DA’s Bureau of Investigation, and they found a young man willing to accept the assignment. I admired his determination, but he was clean-cut, with short hair, and looked as straight as they come. As desperate as we were for information, I couldn’t send him into that den of killers; once they stopped laughing, they’d chop him to pieces. Eventually I had to abandon the idea. We remained in the dark as to what the Family was planning to do next.

  APRIL 1970

  The words PIG, DEATH TO PIGS, RISE, and HEALTER SKELTER contain only thirteen different letters. Handwriting experts told me it would be extremely difficult—if not impossible—to match the bloody words found at the Tate and LaBianca residences with printing exemplars obtained from the defendants.

  It wasn’t only the small number of letters involved. The words were printed, not written; the letters were oversize; in both cases unusual writing implements had been used, a towel at the Tate residence, probably a rolled-up piece of paper at the LaBiancas; and all but the two words found on the refrigerator door at the latter residence had been printed high up on the walls, the person responsible having to stretch unnaturally high to make them.

  As evidence, they appeared worthless.

  However, thinking about the problem, I came up with an idea which, if successful, could convert them into very meaningful evidence. It was a gamble. But if it worked, it would be worth it.

  We knew who had printed the words. Susan Atkins had testified before the grand jury that she had printed the word PIG on the front door of the Tate house, while Susan had told me, when I interviewed her, that Patricia Krenwinkel had admitted printing the words at the LaBiancas. Though Susan’s grand jury testimony and her statements to me were inadmissible because of the deal we had made with her, she had confessed the printing at Tate to Ronnie Howard, so we had her on that. But we had nothing admissible on Krenwinkel.

  The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this is limited to verbal utterances, and that a defendant cannot refuse to give physical evidence of himself, like appearing in a lineup, submitting to a breath-analysis test for drunken driving, giving fingerprint and handwriting exemplars, hair samples, and so on. After researching the law, I drew up very explicit instructions for Captain Carpenter at Sybil Brand, stating exactly how to request the printing exemplars of Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten.

  Each was to be informed: “(1) You have no constitutional right to refuse; (2) you have no constitutional right to have your attorney present;(3) your constitutional right to remain silent does not include the right to withhold printing exemplars; and (4) if you submit to this process, this can be used as evidence by the prosecution in your case.”

  Captain Carpenter assigned Senior Deputy H. L. Mauss to obtain the exemplars. According to my instructions, she informed Susan Atkins of the above, then told her: “The word PIG was printed in blood at the Tate residence. We want you to print the word PIG.” Susan, without complaint, printed the exemplar as requested.

  Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel were brought in individually and given similar instructions concerning their rights. However, each was told, orally: “The words HELTER SKELTER, DEATH TO PIGS, and RISE were printed in blood at the LaBianca residence. We want you to print those words.”

  In my memo to Captain Carpenter there was one additional instruction for the deputy: “Do not write any of this for them.” I wanted to see if Krenwinkel misspelled “helter” as “healter” as she had on the refrigerator door.

  Leslie Van Houten printed the exemplar.

  Patricia Krenwinkel refused.

  We’d won the gamble. We could now use her refusal in the trial as circumstantial evidence of her guilt.

  As evidence, this was doubly important, since, before this, I’d had absolutely no independent evidence corroborating Linda Kasabian’s testimony regarding Patricia Krenwinkel’s involvement in the LaBianca murders. And without corroborating evidence, as a matter of law, Krenwinkel would have been entitled to an acquittal on those charges.

  Though we’d won that gamble, Krenwinkel herself could just as easily have emerged the winner. Leslie could have refused to make an exemplar also, which would have diluted the force of Katie’s refusal. Or Katie could have made the exemplar, the handwriting experts then failing to match her printing with that found at the LaBiancas.

  We were less lucky when it came to putting the Tate-Sebring rope and the wire cutters in Manson’s possession before the murders, evidence I was counting on to provide the necessary corroboration of Linda Kasabian’s testimony as to Manson.

  We knew from DeCarlo, who had been present, that Manson had purchased about 200 feet of the white, three-strand nylon rope at the Jack Frost surplus store in Santa Monica in June 1969. However, when Tate detectives finally interviewed Frost—three and a half months after my initial request—he was unable to find a purchase order for the rope. Nor could he definitely state that this was the same rope he had stocked.* An attempt to identify the manufacturer, then trace it back to Frost, also failed. Frost usually picked up his stock in odd lots from jobbers or through auctions, rather than directly from the manufacturer.

  Just as these were blind alleys, so was one other—literally. According to DeCarlo, Manson had given part of the rope to George Spahn, for use on the ranch. Spahn’s near blindness, however, eliminated him as a witness.

  It was then I thought of Ruby Pearl.

  For some reason, though the police had visited Spahn Ranch numerous times, none of the officers had interviewed Ruby, George’s ranch manager. I found her a fund of valuable information. Examining the Tate-Sebring rope, she not only said it looked like the rope Manson had, she also supplied numerous examples of Manson’s domination; recalled seeing the .22 Longhorn at the ranch many times; identified the leather thong found at the LaBiancas’ as similar to the ones Manson often wore; and told me that, prior to the arrival of the Family at Spahn, she had never seen any Buck knives there, but that in the summer of 1969 “suddenly it seemed everyone had one.”

  While disappointed that we couldn’t obtain documented proof of the rope sale, I was pleased with Ruby. Being an experienced horse wrangler—as well as a tough, gallant lady who showed not the slightest fear of the Family*—her testimony would carry weight. There was a fine streak of stubborn authority about her.

  Another find was Randy Starr, whom I interviewed the same day as Ruby. A sometime movie stunt man who specialized in fake hangings, Starr said the Tate-Sebring rope was “identical” to a rope he’d once used to help Manson pull a vehicle out of the creek bed. Starr told me, “Manson always kept the rope behind the seat in his
dune buggy.”

  Even more important was Randy Starr’s positive identification of the .22 Longhorn revolver, for Starr had once owned the gun and had given it to Manson.†

  One question remained unanswered. Why, on the night of the Tate murders, did the killers bring along 43 feet 8 inches of rope? To tie up the victims? Manson accomplished this the next night with a single leather thong. I obtained a glimpse of a possible answer during one of my interviews with DeCarlo. According to Danny, in late July of 1969, Manson had told him that the establishment pigs “ought to have their throats cut and be hung up by their feet.” This would really throw the fear into people, Manson said.

  The logical inference, I felt, was that the killers brought along the rope intending to hang their victims. It was only a guess, but I suspected it was correct.

  The wire cutters presented their own problems. Linda Kasabian said the pair found in Manson’s dune buggy looked like the pair that had been in the car that night. Fine. Joe Granado of SID used them to test-cut a section of the Tate telephone wire and concluded that the two cuts were the same. Great. But then officer DeWayne Wolfer, considered LAPD’s foremost expert on physical evidence, made some test cuts also, and he concluded that these wire cutters couldn’t have been the ones used.

  Not about to give up, I asked Wolfer if the tautness of the wire could have been a factor. Possibly, he said. I then asked Wolfer to accompany telephone company representatives to 10050 Cielo Drive and make another cut, only this time I wanted him to sever the wire while it was strung up and tight, the way it was the night of the murders. Wolfer eventually made the test, but his opinion remained unchanged: the actual cut made on the night of the murders and the test cut did not match.

  While it was possible that the cutting edge of the wire cutters could have been damaged subsequent to the Tate murders, Wolfer’s tests literally severed this important link between Manson and the Tate evidence.