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

  On Monday, August 10, 1970, the People petitioned the Court for immunity for Linda Kasabian. Though Judge Older signed the petition the same day, it was not until the thirteenth that he formally dropped all charges against her and she was released. She had been in custody since December 3, 1969. Unlike Manson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten, she had been in solitary confinement the whole time.

  My wife, Gail, was worried. “What if she goes back on her testimony, Vince? Susan Atkins did; Mary Brunner did. Now that she has immunity—”

  “Honey, I have confidence in Linda,” I told her.

  I did, yet in the back of my mind was the question: Where would the People’s case be if that confidence was misplaced?

  The next day Manson passed Linda a long handwritten letter. It seemed, at first, mostly nonsensical. Only on looking closer did one notice that key phrases had been marked with tiny check marks. Extracted, spelling errors intact, they read:

  “Love can never stop if it’s love…The joke is over. Look at the end and begin again…Just give yourself to your love & give your love to be free…If you were not saying what your saying there would be no tryle…Don’t lose your love its only there for you…Why do you think they killed JC? Answer: Cause he was a Devil & bad. No one liked him…Don’t let anyone have this or they will find a way to use it against me…This trile of Man’s Son will only show the world that each man judges himself.”

  Coming just after she had been granted immunity, the message could only have one meaning: Manson was attempting to woo Linda back into the Family, in hopes that once freed she would repudiate her testimony.

  Her answer was to give the letter to me.

  Though a number of people had seen Manson pass Linda the letter, Kanarek maintained that she had grabbed it out of his hand!

  The most effective cross-examination of Linda Kasabian was surprisingly that of Ronald Hughes. Though this was his first trial, and he frequently made procedural mistakes, Hughes was familiar with the hippie subculture, having been a part of it. He knew about drugs, mysticism, karma, auras, vibrations, and when he questioned Linda about these things, he made her look just a little odd, just a wee bit zingy. He had her admitting that she believed in ESP, that there were times at Spahn when she actually felt she was a witch.

  Q. “Do you feel that you are controlled by Mr. Manson’s vibrations?”

  A. “Possibly.”

  Q. “Did he put off a lot of vibes?”

  A. “Sure, he’s doing it right now.”

  HUGHES “May the record reflect, Your Honor, that Mr. Manson is merely sitting here.”

  KANAREK “He doesn’t seem to be vibrating.”

  Hughes asked Linda so many questions about drugs that, had an unknowing spectator walked into court, he would have assumed Linda was on trial for possession. Yet Linda’s alert replies in themselves disproved the charge that LSD had destroyed her mind.

  Q. “Now, Mrs. Kasabian, you testified that you thought Mr. Manson was Jesus Christ. Did you ever feel that anybody else was Jesus

  Christ?”

  A. “The biblical Jesus Christ.”

  Q. “When did you stop thinking that Mr. Manson was Jesus Christ?”

  A. “The night at the Tate residence.”

  Though I felt confident the jury was impressed with Linda, I was pleased to hear an independent evaluation. Hughes requested that the Court appoint psychiatrists to examine Linda. Older replied: “I find no basis for a psychiatric examination in this case. She appears to be perfectly lucid and articulate. I find no evidence of aberration of any kind insofar as her ability to recall, to relate. In all respects she has been remarkably articulate and responsive. The motion will be denied.”

  Hughes ended his cross-examination of Linda very effectively:

  Q. “You have testified that you have had trips on marijuana, hash,

  THC, morning-glory seeds, psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, peyote, methedrine, and Romilar, is that right?”

  A. “Yes.”

  Q. “And in the last year you have had the following major delusions:

  You have believed that Charles Manson is Jesus Christ, is that right?”

  A. “Yes.”

  Q. “And you believed yourself to be a witch?”

  A. “Yes.”

  HUGHES “Your Honor, I have no further questions at this time.”

  The basic purpose of redirect examination is to rehabilitate the witness. Linda needed little rehabilitating, other than being allowed to explain more fully replies which the defense had cut off. For example, I brought out that Linda meant “state of shock” figuratively, not medically, and that she was very much aware of what was going on.

  On redirect the prosecution can also explore areas first opened on cross-examination. Since the theft of the $5,000 had come out on cross, I was able to bring in the mitigating circumstances: that after stealing the money, Linda had turned it over to the Family and that she neither saw it again nor benefited from it.

  Not until the re-redirect was I able to bring out why Linda had fled Spahn Ranch without Tanya.

  The delay in getting this in was actually beneficial, I felt, for by this time the jury knew Linda Kasabian well enough to accept her explanation.

  Direct. Cross. Redirect. Recross. Re-redirect. Re-recross. Just before noon on Wednesday, August 19, Linda Kasabian finally stepped down from the stand. She had been up there seventeen days—longer than most trials. Though the defense had been given a twenty-page summary of all my interviews with her, as well as copies of all her letters to me, not once had she been impeached with a prior inconsistent statement. I was very proud of her; if ever there was a star witness for the prosecution, Linda Kasabian was it.

  Following the completion of her testimony, she flew back to New Hampshire for a reunion with her two children. For Linda, however, the ordeal was not yet over. Kanarek asked that she be subject to recall by the defense, and she would also have to testify when Watson was brought to trial.

  Randy Starr was not the only witness the People lost during August.

  Still afflicted with wanderlust, Robert Kasabian and Charles Melton had gone to Hawaii. I asked Linda’s attorney, Gary Fleischman, if he could locate them, but he said they were off on some uncharted island, meditating in a cave, and there was no way to reach them. I’d wanted Melton especially, to testify to Tex’s remark, “Maybe Charlie will let me grow a beard someday.”

  The loss of the other witness was a far greater blow to the prosecution. Saladin Nader, the actor whose life Linda had saved the night the LaBiancas were killed, had moved out of his apartment. He’d told friends he was going to Europe, but left no forwarding address. Although I requested the LaBianca detectives to try to locate him through the Lebanese Consulate and the Immigration Service, they were unsuccessful. I then asked them to interview his former landlady, Mrs. Eleanor Lally, who could at least testify that during August 1969 the actor had occupied Apartment 501, 1101 Ocean Front Walk, Venice. But with Nader’s disappearance, we lost the only witness who could even partially corroborate Linda Kasabian’s story of that second night.

  On August 18, however, we found a witness—one of the most important yet to appear.

  Over seven months after I had first tried to get Watkins and Poston to persuade him to come in for an interview, Juan Flynn decided he was ready to talk.

  Fearful that he would become a prosecution witness, the Family had launched a campaign of harassment against the tall, lanky Panamanian cowboy that included threatening letters, hang-up phone calls, and cars racing past his trailer in the night, their occupants oinking or shouting “Pig!” All this had made Juan mad—mad enough to contact LASO, who in turn called LAPD.

  Since I was in court, Sartuchi interviewed Flynn that afternoon at Parker Center. It was a short interview; transcribed, it ran to only sixteen pages, but it contained one very startling disclosure.

  SARTUCHI “When did you first become aware of the fact that Charles Manson was being charged with
the crimes that he is presently on trial for?”

  FLYNN “I became aware of the crimes that he is being charged with when he admitted to me of the killings that were taking place…”

  In his broken English, Flynn was saying that Manson had admitted the murders to him!

  Q. “Was there any conversation about the LaBiancas, or was that all at the same time, or what?”

  A. “Well, I don’t know if it was at the same time, but he led me to believe—he told me that he was the main cause for these murders to be committed.”

  Q. “Did he say anything more than that?”

  A. “He admitted—he boasted—of thirty-five lives taken in a period of two days.”

  When LAPD brought him to my office, I hadn’t yet talked to Sartuchi or heard the interview tape, so when in interviewing Flynn I learned of Manson’s very incriminating admission, it came as a complete surprise.

  In questioning Juan, I established that the conversation had taken place in the kitchen at Spahn Ranch, two to four days after news of the Tate murders broke on TV. Juan had just sat down to lunch when Manson came in and, with his right hand, brushed his left shoulder—apparently a signal that the others were to get out, since they immediately did. Aware that something was up, but not what, Juan started to eat.

  (Ever since the arrival of the Family at Spahn Ranch, Manson had been trying to get the six-foot-five cowboy to join them. Manson had told Flynn: “I will get you a big gold bracelet and put diamonds on it and you can be my head zombie.” There were other enticements. When first offered the same bait as the other males, Juan had sampled it eagerly, to his regret. “That damn case of clap just wouldn’t go away,” Juan told me, “not for three, four months.” Though he had remained at Spahn, Juan had refused to be anybody’s zombie, let alone little Charlie’s. Of late, however, Manson had become more insistent.)

  Suddenly Manson grabbed Juan by the hair, yanked his head back, and, putting a knife to his throat, said, “You son of a bitch, don’t you know I’m the one who’s doing all of these killings?”

  Even though Manson had not mentioned the Tate-LaBianca murders by name, his admission was a tremendously powerful piece of evidence.*

  The razor-sharp blade still on Juan’s throat, Manson asked, “Are you going to come with me or do I have to kill you?”

  Juan replied, “I am eating and I am right here, you know.”

  Manson put the knife on the table. “O.K.,” he said. “You kill me.”

  Resuming eating, Juan said, “I don’t want to do that, you know.”

  Looking very agitated, Manson told him, “Helter Skelter is coming down and we’ve got to go to the desert.” He then gave Juan a choice: he could oppose him or join him. If he wanted to join him, Charlie said, “go down to the waterfall and make love to my girls.”

  (Manson’s “my girls” was in itself a powerful piece of evidence.)

  Juan told Charlie that the next time he wanted to contract a nine-month case of syphilis or gonorrhea, he’d let him know.

  It was at this point that Manson boasted of killing thirty-five people in two days. Juan considered it just that, a boast, and I was inclined to agree. If there had been more than seven Manson-ordered murders during that two-day period, I was sure that at some point in the investigation we would have found evidence of them. Too, as far as the immediate trial was concerned, the latter statement was useless, as it was obviously inadmissible as evidence.

  Eventually Manson picked up the knife and walked out. And Juan suddenly realized he didn’t have much appetite left.

  I talked to Juan over four hours that night. Manson’s admission was not the only surprise. Manson had told Juan in June or July 1969, while Juan, Bruce Davis, and Clem were standing on the boardwalk at Spahn, “Well, I have come down to it. The only way to get Helter Skelter going is for me to go down there and show the black man how to do it, by killing a whole bunch of those fuckin’ pigs.”

  Among Flynn’s other revelations: Manson had threatened to kill him several times, once shooting at him with the .22 Longhorn revolver; on several occasions Manson had suggested that Juan kill various people; and Flynn had not only seen the group leave Spahn on probably the same night the LaBiancas were killed; Sadie had told him, just before they left, “We’re going to get some fucking pigs.”

  Suddenly Juan Flynn became one of the prosecution’s most important witnesses. The problem now was protecting him until he took the stand. Throughout our interview Juan had been extremely nervous; he’d tense at the slightest noise in the hall. He admitted that, because of his fear, he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in months. He asked me if there was any way he could be locked up until it came time for him to testify.

  I called LAPD and requested that Juan be put in either jail or a hospital. I didn’t care which, just so long as he was off the streets.

  Bemused by this unusual turnabout, Sartuchi, when he picked up Juan, asked him what he wanted to be arrested for. Well, Juan said, thinking a bit, he wanted to confess to drinking a beer in the desert a couple of months ago. Since he was in a National Park, that was against the law. Flynn was arrested and booked on that charge.

  Juan remained in jail just long enough to decide he didn’t like it one bit. After three or four days he tried to contact me. Unable to reach me right away, he called Spahn Ranch and left a message for one of the ranch hands to come down and bail him out. The Family intercepted the message, and sent Irving Kanarek instead.

  Kanarek paid Juan’s bail and bought him breakfast. He instructed Juan, “Don’t talk to anyone.”

  When Juan had finished eating, Kanarek told him that he had already called Squeaky and the girls and that they were on their way over to pick him up. Hearing this, Juan split. Though he remained in hiding, he called in periodically, to assure me that he was still all right and that when the time came he would be there to testify.

  Although it would never be mentioned in the trial, Juan had a special reason for testifying. Shorty Shea had been his best friend.

  AUGUST 19–SEPTEMBER 6, 1970

  After Kasabian left the stand, I called a series of witnesses whose detailed testimony either supported or corroborated her account. These included: Tim Ireland, counselor at the girls’ school down the hill from the Tate residence, who heard the cries and screams; Rudolf Weber, who described the hosing incident and dropped one bombshell: the license-plate number; John Swartz, who confirmed that was the number on his car and who told how, on two different nights in the first part of August 1969, Manson had borrowed the vehicle without asking permission; Winifred Chapman, who described her arrival at 10050 Cielo Drive on the morning of August 9, 1969; Jim Asin, who called the police after Mrs. Chapman ran down Cielo screaming, “Murder, death, bodies, blood!” the first LAPD officers to arrive at the scene—DeRosa, Whisenhunt, and Burbridge—who described their grisly find. Bit by bit, piece by piece, from Chapman’s arrival to the examination of the cut phone wires by the telephone company representative, the scene was recreated. The horror seemed to linger in the courtroom even after the witnesses had left the stand.

  Since Leslie Van Houten was not charged with the five Tate murders, Hughes did not question any of these witnesses. He did, however, make an interesting motion. He asked that he and his client be permitted to absent themselves from the courtroom while those murders were discussed. Though the motion was denied, his attempt to separate his client from these events ran directly counter to Manson’s collective defense, and I wondered how Charlie was reacting to it.

  When McGann took the stand, I questioned him at some length as to what he had found at the Tate residence. The relevancy of many of the details—the pieces of gun grip, the dimensions and type of rope, the absence of shell casings, and so on—would become apparent to the jury later. I was especially interested in establishing that there was no evidence of ransacking or robbery. I also got in, ahead of the defense, that drugs had been found. And a pair of eyeglasses.

  Anticipating the
next witness, Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi, Kanarek asked for a conference in chambers. He’d had a change of heart, Kanarek said. Though he’d earlier shown the death photos to Mrs. Kasabian, “I have thought about it, and I believe I was in error, Your Honor.” Kanarek asked that the photos, particularly those which were in color, be excluded. Motion denied. The photos could be used for identification purposes, Older ruled; as to their admissibility as evidence, that motion would be heard at a later time.

  Each time Kanarek tried such a tactic, I thought surely he can’t better this. And each time I found he not only could but did.

  Although I had interviewed Dr. Noguchi several times, I had a last conference with him in my office before we went to court. The coroner, who had conducted Sharon Tate’s autopsy as well as supervised those of the other four Tate victims, had a habit of holding back little surprises. There are enough of these in a trial without getting them from your own witnesses, so I asked him outright if there was anything he hadn’t told me.

  Well, one thing, he admitted. He hadn’t mentioned it in the autopsy reports, but, after studying the abrasions on her left cheek, he had concluded, “Sharon Tate was hung.”

  This was not the cause of death, he said, and she had probably been suspended less than a minute, but he was convinced the abrasions were rope burns.

  I revised my interrogation sheets to get this in.

  Although almost all of Dr. Noguchi’s testimony was important, several portions were especially so in terms of corroborating Linda Kasabian.

  Noguchi testified that many of the stab wounds penetrated bones; Linda had testified that Patricia Krenwinkel had complained that her hand hurt from her knife striking bones.

  Linda testified that the two knives she’d thrown out the car window had about the same blade length, estimating, with her hands, an approximate length of between 5½ and 6½ inches. Dr. Noguchi testified that many of the wounds were a full 5 inches in depth. This was not only close to Linda’s approximation, it also emphasized the extreme viciousness of the assaults.