Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders Page 42

  When I’d accompanied LAPD to Spahn Ranch on November 19, 1969, we’d found a number of .22 caliber bullets and shell casings. Because of the terrific windstorm, and the necessity of following up other leads, our search had been cursory, however, and I’d asked Sergeant Lee to return and conduct a more thorough search. The much repeated request became even more important when, on December 16, 1969, LAPD obtained the .22 caliber Longhorn revolver. Yet it was not until April 15, 1970, that Lee returned to Spahn. Again concentrating on the gully area some two hundred feet behind George Spahn’s residence, Lee found twenty-three more .22 caliber shell casings. Since twenty-two had been found during the first search, this brought the total to forty-five.*

  It was not until after the latter search that Lee ran comparison tests on any of the Spahn shell casings. When he finally did, he concluded that fifteen of the forty-five had been fired from the Tate murder gun.†

  Belatedly, but fortunately in time for the trial, we now had scientific evidence linking the gun to Spahn Ranch.

  Only one thing would have made me happier: if Lee had returned and found the rest of the shell casings before the gun was discovered. As it was, the defense could contend that during the four and a half months between the two searches the police and/or prosecution had “planted” this evidence.

  For months one item of physical evidence had especially worried me: the pair of eyeglasses found near the trunks in the living room at the Tate murder scene. The natural conclusion was that if they didn’t belong to any of the victims, they must belong to one of the killers. Yet neither Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, nor Kasabian wore glasses.

  I anticipated that the defense would lean heavily on this, arguing that since they didn’t belong to any of the defendants, at least one of the killers was still at large. From there it was only a short step to the conclusion that maybe the wrong people were on trial.

  This posed an extremely serious problem for the prosecution. That problem, though not the mystery itself, vanished when I talked to Roseanne Walker.

  Since Susan Atkins had confessed the murders to both Virginia Graham and Ronnie Howard, it occurred to me that she might have made incriminating statements to others, so I asked LAPD to locate any girls Atkins had been particularly close to at Sybil Brand.

  One former inmate who agreed to talk to me, though she wasn’t very happy about it, was Roseanne Walker. A pathetic, heavyset black girl who had been sent to Sybil Brand on five drug-related charges, Roseanne had been a sort of walking commissary, selling candy, cigarettes, and makeup to the other inmates. Not until the fifth or sixth time I interviewed her did Roseanne recall a conversation which, though it seemed unimportant to her, I found very significant.

  Susan and Roseanne were listening to the radio one day, when the newscaster began talking about a pair of eyeglasses LAPD had found at the Tate murder scene. Amused, Susan remarked, “Wouldn’t it be too much if they arrested the person the glasses belonged to, when the only thing he was guilty of was losing his glasses?”

  Roseanne replied that maybe the glasses did belong to the killer.

  Susan said, “That ain’t the way it went down.”

  Susan’s remark clearly indicated that the glasses did not belong to the killers.

  Other problems remained. One of the biggest concerned Linda Kasabian’s escape from Spahn Ranch.

  Linda told me that she decided to flee after the night of the LaBianca murders; however, Manson sent her to the waterfall area later that day (August 11) and she was afraid to leave that night because of the armed guards he had posted.

  Early the next morning (August 12) Manson sought her out. She was to put on a “straight” dress, then take a message to Mary Brunner and Sandra Good at Sybil Brand, as well as Bobby Beausoleil at the County Jail. The message: “Say nothing; everything’s all right.” After borrowing a car from Dave Hannum, a new ranch hand at Spahn, Linda went to Sybil Brand, but learned that Brunner and Good were in court; at the County Jail her identification was rejected and she wasn’t allowed to see Beausoleil. When she returned to the ranch and told Manson she had been unsuccessful, he told her to try again the next day.

  Linda saw her chance. That night she packed a shoulder bag with some clothing and Tanya’s diapers and pins, and hid it in the parachute room. Early the next morning (August 13) she again borrowed Hannum’s car. On going to get the bag, however, she found Manson and Stephanie Schram sleeping in the room. Deciding to forget the bag, she went to get Tanya, but discovered that the children had been moved to the waterfall area. There was no way she could go there to get Tanya, she said, without having to explain her actions. So she left the ranch without her.

  Instead of going to Los Angeles as instructed, Linda began driving to Taos, New Mexico, where her husband was now living. Hannum’s car broke down outside Albuquerque. When she tried to have it repaired, using a credit card Bruce Davis had earlier given her for gas, the gas station owner checked and learned the card was no longer valid. Linda then wrote a letter to Hannum, enclosing the keys, telling him where he could find the car, and apologizing. She then hitchhiked the rest of the way.

  (Susan Atkins apparently intercepted the letter, as she gave Hannum the information and keys, but didn’t show him the rest of the letter. Understandably unhappy, Hannum took a bus to Albuquerque to reclaim the vehicle.)

  Linda found her husband living with another girl in a commune at Lorien, outside Taos. She told him about the Tate murders, the events of the second night, and leaving Tanya at Spahn. Bob Kasabian suggested they return to Spahn together and get Tanya, but Linda was afraid Manson would kill them all. Kasabian said he wanted to think about it for a few days. Unwilling to wait, Linda hitchhiked into Taos and went to see Joe Sage. Sage, who had a reputation for helping people, was a rather colorful character. When the fifty-one-year-old Zen monk wasn’t busy running his Macrobiotic Church, he was campaigning for president of the United States on an anti-pollution ticket. Linda asked Sage for enough money to return to Los Angeles to get her little girl. Sage, however, began questioning Linda, and eventually she told him and a youth named Jeffrey Jacobs about the murders.

  Not believing Linda’s tale, Sage placed a call to Spahn Ranch, talking first to an unidentified girl, then to Manson himself. Sage asked Manson—whose reaction can only be imagined—if Linda’s story was true. Manson told him Linda had flipped out; that her ego was not ready to die, and so she had run away.

  Linda did not talk to Charlie, but she did talk to one of the other girls—she believed, but was not sure, it was Squeaky—who told her about the August 16 raid. The authorities had kept Tanya, she learned; she was now in a foster home. Linda also spoke to Patricia Krenwinkel, Katie saying something to the effect, “You just couldn’t wait to open your big mouth, could you?”

  Linda subsequently called the Malibu police station and learned the name of the social worker who was handling Tanya’s case.* Sage gave Linda enough money for round-trip air fare, as well as the name of a Los Angeles attorney, Gary Fleischman, who he felt might be able to help her reclaim Tanya. When Linda saw Fleischman, she did not tell him about the murders, only that she had left the ranch to look for her husband. Eventually, after a court hearing, the mother and daughter were reunited and flew back to Taos. Bob was still involved with the other girl, however, and Linda took Tanya and hitchhiked first to Miami, Florida, where her father was living, then to her mother’s home in Concord, New Hampshire. It was here, on December 2, 1969, when the news broke that she was being sought in connection with the Tate murders, that Linda turned herself into the local police. Waiving extradition, she was returned to Los Angeles the next day.

  I asked Linda, “Why, between the time you reclaimed Tanya and the date of your arrest in December, didn’t you contact the police and tell them what you knew about the murders?”

  She was afraid of Manson, Linda said, afraid that he might find and kill both her and Tanya. Also, she was pregnant, and didn’t want to go through this ordeal unt
il after the baby was born.

  There were, of course, other reasons, the most important being her distrust of the police. In the drug-oriented world she inhabited, police were considered neither friends nor allies. I felt that this explanation, if properly argued, would satisfy the jury.

  An even bigger question remained: “How could you leave your daughter in that den of killers?”

  I was concerned not only with the jury’s reaction to this, but also with the use to which the defense could put it. That Linda had left Tanya with Manson and the others at Spahn Ranch could be circumstantial evidence that she did not really believe them to be killers, clearly contradicting the main thrust of her testimony. Therefore both the question and her answer became extremely important.

  Linda replied that she felt Tanya would be safe there, just so long as she did not go to the police. “Something within me told me that Tanya would be all right,” Linda said, “that nothing would happen to her, and that now was the time to leave. I knew I would come back and get her. I was just confident that she would be all right.”

  Would the jury accept this? I didn’t know. This was among my many concerns as the trial date drew ever closer.

  When contacted by Lieutenant Helder and Sergeant Gutierrez, both Sage and Jacobs verified Linda’s story. I was unable to use either as a witness, however, most of their testimony being inadmissible hearsay. Ranch hand David Hannum said he had begun work at Spahn on August 12, and that Linda had borrowed his car that same day, as well as the next. And a check of the jail records verified that Brunner and Good had been in court on August 12.

  The various interviews yielded unexpected bonuses. Hannum said that once when he killed a rattlesnake, Manson had angrily castigated him, yelling, “How would you like it if I chopped your head off?” He then added, “I’d rather kill people than animals.” At the same time I interviewed Linda’s husband, Robert Kasabian, I also talked to Charles Melton, the hippie philanthropist from whom Linda had stolen the $5,000. Melton said that in April 1969 (before Linda ever met the Family) he had gone to Spahn Ranch to see Paul Watkins. While there, Melton had met Tex, who, admiring Melton’s beard, commented, “Maybe Charlie will let me grow a beard someday.”

  It would be difficult to find a better example of Manson’s domination of Watson.

  These were pluses. There were minuses. And they were big ones.

  To prove to the jury that Linda’s account of these two nights of murder wasn’t fabricated out of whole cloth, I desperately needed some third person to corroborate any part of her story. Rudolf Weber provided that corroboration for the first night. But for the second night I had no one. I gave LAPD this all-important priority assignment: Find the two officers who spoke to Manson and Linda on the beach, the man whose door Linda knocked on that night, the man and woman at the house next to the Malibu Feedbin, or any of the drivers who gave them rides. I’d like to have had all these people, but if they could turn up even one, I’d be happy.

  Linda had located the spot where the two police officers stopped and questioned them. It was near Manhattan Beach. But, Los Angeles being the megalopolis that it is, it turned out to be an area where there were overlapping jurisdictions, not one but three separate law-enforcement agencies patrolling it. And a check of all three failed to turn up anyone who could recall such an incident.

  We had better luck when it came to locating the actor Linda had mentioned. LaBianca detectives Sartuchi and Nielsen found him still living in Apartment 501, 1101 Ocean Front Walk, Venice. Not Israeli but Lebanese, his name was Saladin Nader, age thirty-nine. Unemployed since starring in Broken Wings, the movie about the poet Kahlil Gibran, he remembered picking up the two hitchhiking girls in early August 1969. He described both Sandy and Linda accurately, including the fact that Sandy was noticeably pregnant; picked out photos of each; and related essentially the same story Linda had told me, neglecting to mention only that he and Linda had gone to bed.

  After questioning Nader, the investigating officers, according to their report, “explained to subject the purpose of the interview, and he displayed amazement that such sweet and sociable young ladies would attempt to inflict any harm upon his body after he assisted them to the best of his ability.”

  Though their stories jibed, Nader was only partial support for Linda’s testimony, as (fortunately for him, and thanks to Linda) he did not encounter the group that night.

  One floor down was the apartment of the man on whose door Linda had knocked. Linda had pointed out the door, 403, for us, and I’d asked Gutierrez and Patchett to try to locate the man, hopeful he’d recall the incident. When I got their report, it was on the tenant of 404. Returning, they learned from the landlady that 403 had been vacant during August 1969. It was possible some transient may have been staying there, she said—it wouldn’t have been the first time—but beyond that we drew a blank.

  According to the rental manager of 3921 Topanga Canyon Boulevard—the house next to the Malibu Feedbin where Linda said she, Sadie, and Clem had stopped just before dawn—a group of hippies had moved into the unrented building about nine months ago. There had been, he said, as many as fifty different persons living there, but he didn’t know any of them. Sartuchi and Nielsen, however, did manage to locate two young girls who had lived there from about February to October 1969. Both were friends of Susan Atkins, and both recalled meeting Linda Kasabian. One recalled that once Susan, another girl, and a male had visited them. She remembered the incident—though not the date, the time, or the other persons present—because she was “on acid” and the trio “appeared evil.” Both girls admitted that during this period they were “stoned” so much of the time their recollections were hazy. As witnesses, they would be next to useless.

  Nor was LAPD able to locate any of the drivers who had picked up the hitchhikers that night.

  The LaBianca detectives handled all these investigations. Going over their reports, I was convinced they had done everything possible to run down the leads. But we were left with the fact that of the six to eight persons who could have corroborated Linda Kasabian’s story of the events of that second night, we hadn’t found even one. I anticipated that the defense would lean heavily on this.

  Any defendant may file at least one affidavit of prejudice against a judge and have him removed from the case. It isn’t even necessary to give a reason for such a challenge. On April 13, Manson filed such an affidavit against Judge William Keene. Judge Keene accepted Manson’s challenge, and the case was reassigned to Judge Charles H. Older. Though more affidavits were expected—each defendant was allowed one—the defense attorneys, after a brief huddle, decided to accept Older.

  I’d never tried a case before him. By reputation, the fifty-two-year-old jurist was a “no nonsense” judge. A World War II fighter pilot who had served with the Flying Tigers, he had been appointed to the bench by Governor Ronald Reagan in 1967. This would be his biggest case to date.

  The trial date was set for June 15. Because of the delay, we were again hopeful that Watson might be tried with the others, but that hope was quickly dashed when Watson’s attorney requested, and received, still another postponement in the extradition proceedings.

  The retrial of Beausoleil for the Hinman murder had begun in late March. Chief witness for the prosecution was Mary Brunner, first member of the Manson Family, who testified that she had witnessed Beausoleil stab Hinman to death. Brunner was given complete immunity in exchange for her testimony. Claiming that he had only been a reluctant witness, Beausoleil himself took the stand and fingered Manson as Hinman’s murderer. The jury believed Brunner. In Beausoleil’s first trial the case against him had been so weak that our office hadn’t asked for the death penalty. This time prosecutor Burton Katz did, and got it.

  Two things concerned me about the trial. One was that Mary Brunner did everything she could to absolve Manson—making me wonder just how far Sadie, Katie, and Leslie would be willing to go to save Charlie—and the other that Danny DeCarlo hedged on ma
ny of his previous statements to LAPD. I was worried that Danny might be getting ready to split, all too aware that he had little reason to stick around. Though the motorcycle engine theft charge had been dropped in return for his testimony in the Hinman case, we had made no deal with him on Tate-LaBianca. Moreover, although he had a good chance of sharing the $25,000 reward, it was not necessary that he testify to obtain it.

  DeCarlo and Brunner did testify that same month before the grand jury, which brought additional indictments against Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, and Bruce Davis on the Hinman murder. But testifying before a grand jury in secret and having to face Manson himself in court were two different things.

  Nor could I blame Danny for being apprehensive. As soon as the grand jury indictments were made public, Davis, who had been living with the Family at Spahn, vanished.

  MAY 1970

  In early May, Crockett, Poston, and Watkins encountered Clem, Gypsy, and a youth named Kevin, one of the newer Family members, in Shoshone. Clem told Watkins: “Charlie says that when he gets out you all had better not be around the desert.”

  From a source at Spahn Ranch we learned that Family members there appeared to be “preparing for some activity.”

  The Manson girls were interviewed so often that they were on a first-name basis with many of the reporters. Inadvertently, several times they implied that Charlie would be out soon. Perhaps significantly, the girls said nothing about his being “acquitted” or “released.”

  It was obvious that something was being planned.

  On May 11, Susan Atkins filed a declaration repudiating her grand jury testimony. Both Manson and Atkins used the declaration as basis for habeas corpus motions, which were subsequently denied.