Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders Page 49

  Linda estimated the blade width at about 1 inch. Dr. Noguchi said the wounds were caused by a blade with a width of between 1 and 1½ inches.

  Linda estimated the thickness as maybe two or three times that of an ordinary kitchen knife. Dr. Noguchi said the thickness varied from 1/8 to ½ inch, which corresponded to Linda’s approximation.

  Linda—who, on Manson’s instructions, had several times honed knives similar to these while at Spahn Ranch—testified that the knives were sharpened on both sides, on one side all the way back to the hilt, on the other at least an inch back from the tip. Dr. Noguchi testified that about two-thirds of the wounds had been made by a blade or blades that had been sharpened on both sides for a distance of about 1½ to 2 inches, one side then flattening out while the other remained keen.*

  As I’d later argue to the jury, Linda’s description of those two knives—their thickness, width, length, even the fine point of the double-edged blade—was strong evidence that the two knives she was talking about were the same knives Dr. Noguchi had described.

  In his cross-examination of Noguchi, Kanarek not only repeatedly referred to the victims’ “passing away,” he spoke of Abigail Folger running to her “place of repose.” It was beginning to sound like a guided tour of Forest Lawn.

  The idiocy of all this was not lost on Manson. He complained: “Your Honor, this lawyer is not doing what I am asking him to do, not even by a small margin…He is not my attorney, he is your attorney. I would like to dismiss this man and get another attorney.”

  I was not sure whether Manson was serious or not. Even if he wasn’t, it was still a good tactical move. Charlie was in effect telling the jury, “Don’t judge me by what this man says or does.”

  Kanarek then questioned Noguchi about each of Miss Folger’s twenty-eight stab wounds. His purpose, as he admitted at the bench, was to establish “the culpability of Linda Kasabian.” Had she run for help, he suggested, perhaps Miss Folger might still be alive.

  There were several problems with this. At least for the purpose of the questioning, Kanarek was in effect admitting Linda’s presence at the scene. He was also stressing, over and over and over again, the involvement of Patricia Krenwinkel. There was nothing unethical about this: Kanarek’s client was Manson. What was surprising was that Krenwinkel’s own attorney, Paul Fitzgerald, didn’t object more often.

  Aaron spotted the basic fallacy of all this. “Your Honor, had Dr. Christiaan Barnard been present with an operating room already set up to operate on the victim, the wound to the aorta would still have been fatal.”

  Later, while the jury was out, Older asked Manson if he still desired to replace Kanarek. By this time Charlie had changed his mind. During the discussion Manson made an interesting observation as to his own feelings on the progress of the trial thus far: “We did pretty good at the first of it. Then we kind of lost control when the testimony started.”

  Although Channel 7 newscaster Al Wiman had actually been the first to spot the clothing the TV crew found, we called cameraman King Baggot to the stand instead. Had we used Wiman as a witness, he wouldn’t have been able to cover any portion of the trial for his station. Before Baggot was sworn, the judge and attorneys conferred with him at the bench, to make sure there was no mention of the fact that Susan Atkins’ confession had led them to the clothing. Thus, when Baggot testified, the jury got the impression that the TV crew just made a lucky guess.

  After Baggot identified the various items of apparel, we called Joe Granado of SID. Joe was to testify to the blood samples he had taken.

  Joe wasn’t on the stand very long. He’d forgotten his notes and had to go get them. Fortunately, we had another witness ready, Helen Tabbe, the deputy at Sybil Brand who had obtained the sample of Susan Atkins’ hair.

  Although I liked Joe as a person, as a witness he left much to be desired. He appeared very disorganized; couldn’t pronounce many of the technical terms of his trade; often gave vague, inconclusive answers. Granado’s failure to take samples from many of the spots, as well as his failure to run subtypes on many of the samples he had taken, didn’t exactly add to his impressiveness. I was particularly concerned about his having taken so few samples from the two pools of blood outside the front door (“I took a random sampling; then I assumed the rest of it was the same”) and his failure to test the blood on the bushes next to the porch (“At the time, I guess, I assumed all of the blood was of similar origin”). My concern here was that those samples he had taken matched in type and subtype the blood of Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring, although there was no evidence that either had run out the front door. While I could argue to the jury that the killers, or Frykowski himself, had tracked out the blood, I could foresee the defense using this to cast doubt on Linda’s story, so I asked Joe: “You don’t know if the random sampling is representative of the blood type of the whole area here?”

  A. “That is correct. I would have had to scoop everything up.”

  Granado also testified to finding the Buck knife in the chair and the clock radio in Parent’s car. Unfortunately, someone at LAPD had apparently been playing the radio, as the dial no longer read 12:15 A.M., and I had to bring out that this occurred after Granado observed the time setting.

  Shortly after the trial Joe Granado left LAPD to join the FBI.

  Denied access to the courtroom, the Family began a vigil outside the Hall of Justice, at the corner of Temple and Broadway. “I’m waiting for my father to get out of jail,” Sandy told reporters as she knelt on the sidewalk next to one of the busiest intersections in the city of Los Angeles. “We will remain here,” Squeaky told TV interviewers, as traffic slowed and people gawked, “until all our brothers and sisters are set free.” In interviews the girls referred to the trial as “the second crucifixion of Christ.”

  At night they slept in the bushes next to the building. When the police stopped that, they moved their sleeping bags into a white van which they parked nearby. By day they knelt or sat on the sidewalk, granted interviews, tried to convert the curious young. It was easy to tell the hard-core Mansonites from the transient camp followers. Each of the former had an X carved on his or her forehead. Each also wore a sheathed hunting knife. Since the knives were in plain view, they couldn’t be arrested for carrying concealed weapons. The police did bust them several times for loitering, but after a warning, or at most a few days in jail, they were back, and after a time the police left them alone.

  Nearby city and county office buildings provided rest-room facilities. Also public phones, where, at certain prearranged times, one of the girls would await check-in calls from other Family members, including those wanted by the police. Several sob sisters who were covering the trial wrote largely sympathetic stories about their innocent, fresh, wholesome good looks and their devotion. They also often gave them money. Whether it was used for food or other purposes is not known. We did know the Family was adding to its hidden caches of arms and ammunition. And, since the Family was against hunting animals, it was a safe guess that they were stockpiling for something other than self-protection.

  The deaths of her mother and stepfather had caused Suzanne Struthers to have a nervous breakdown. Though she was slowly recovering, we called Frank Struthers to the stand to identify photographs of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca and to describe what he’d found on returning home that Sunday night. Shown the wallet found in the Standard station, Frank positively identified it, and the watch in the change compartment, as his mother’s. On questioning by Aaron, Frank also testified that he had been unable to find anything else missing from the residence.

  Ruth Sivick testified to feeding the LaBianca dogs on Saturday afternoon. No, she saw no bloody words on the refrigerator door. Yes, she had opened and closed the door, to get the food for the dogs.

  News vender John Fokianos, who testified to talking to Rosemary and Leno between 1 and 2 A.M. that Sunday, was followed by Hollywood Division officers Rodriquez and Cline, who described their arrival and discoveries at the
crime scene. Cline testified to the bloody writings. Galindo, the first of the homicide officers to arrive, gave a detailed description of the premises, also stating: “I found no signs of ransacking. I found many items of value,” which he then enumerated. Detective Broda testified to seeing, just prior to the autopsy of Leno LaBianca, the knife protruding from his throat, which, because of the pillowcase over the victim’s head, the other officers had missed.

  This brought us to Deputy Medical Examiner David Katsuyama. And a host of problems.

  According to the first LaBianca investigative report, “The bread knife recovered from [Leno LaBianca’s] throat appeared to be the weapon used in both homicides.”

  There was absolutely no scientific basis for this, since Katsuyama, who conducted both autopsies, had failed to measure the victims’ wounds.

  However, since the knife belonged to the LaBiancas, if this was let stand the defense could maintain that the killers had gone to the residence unarmed; ergo, they did not intend to commit murder. While a killing committed during the commission of a robbery is still first degree murder, this could affect whether the defendants escaped the death penalty. More important, it negated our whole theory of the case, which was that Manson, and Manson alone, had a motive for these murders, and that that motive was not robbery—a motive thousands of people could have—but to ignite Helter Skelter.

  Shortly after I received the LaBianca reports, I ordered scale blowups of the autopsy photos, and asked Katsuyama to measure the length and thickness of the wounds. Initially I presumed there was no way to determine their depth, which would indicate the minimum length of the blade; however, in going over the coroner’s original diagrams, I discovered that two of Rosemary LaBianca’s wounds had been probed, one to the depth of 5 inches, the other 5½ inches, while two of Leno LaBianca’s wounds were 5½ inches deep.

  After many, many requests, Katsuyama finally measured the photos. I then compared his measurements with those of the bread knife. They came out as follows:

  Length of blade of bread knife: 47/8 inches.

  Depth of deepest measurable wound: 5½ inches.

  Thickness of blade of bread knife: just under 1/16 inch.

  Thickness of thickest wound: 3/16 inch.

  Width of blade of bread knife: from 3/8 to 13/16 inch.

  Width of widest wound: 1¼ inches.

  There was no way, I concluded, that the LaBiancas’ bread knife could have caused all the wounds. Length, width, thickness—in each the dimensions of the bread knife were smaller than the wounds themselves. Therefore the killers must have brought their own knives.

  Recalling, however, how Katsuyama had confused a leather thong for electrical cord before the grand jury, I showed him the two sets of figures and—questioning him in much the same manner as I would in court—asked him: Had he formed an opinion as to whether the bread knife found in Leno LaBianca’s throat could have made all of the wounds? Yes, he had, Katsuyama replied. What was his opinion? Yes, it could have.

  Suppressing a groan, I asked him to compare the figures again.

  This time he concluded there was no way the LaBianca knife could have made all those wounds.

  To be doubly safe, the day I was to call him to the stand I interviewed him again in my office. Again he decided the knife could have made the wounds, then again he changed his mind.

  “Doctor,” I told him, “I’m not trying to coach you. If it’s your professional opinion that all the wounds were made by the bread knife, fine. But the figures that you yourself gave me indicate that the bread knife couldn’t possibly have caused all the wounds. Now, which is it? Only don’t tell me one thing now and something different on the stand. You’ve got to make up your mind.”

  Even though he stuck to his last reply, I had more than a few apprehensive moments when it came time to question him in court. However, he testified: “These dimensions [of the bread knife] are much smaller than many of the wounds which I previously described.”

  Q. “So it’s your opinion that this bread knife, which was removed from Mr. LaBianca’s throat, could not have caused many of the other wounds, is that correct?”

  A. “Yes, it is.”

  Rosemary LaBianca, Katsuyama also testified, had been stabbed forty-one times, sixteen of which wounds, mostly in her back and buttocks, having been made after she had died. Under questioning, Katsuyama explained that after death the heart stops pumping blood to the rest of the body, therefore post-mortem wounds are distinguishable by their lighter color.

  This was very important testimony, since Leslie Van Houten told Dianne Lake that she had stabbed someone who was already dead.

  Though Dr. Katsuyama had come through on direct, I was worried about the cross-examination. In his initial report the deputy coroner had the LaBiancas dying on the afternoon of Sunday, August 10—a dozen hours after their deaths actually occurred. This not only contradicted Linda’s account of the events of that second night, it gave the defense an excellent opportunity to go alibi. Conceivably, they could call numerous people who would testify, truthfully, that while horseback riding at Spahn Ranch that Sunday afternoon they had seen Manson, Watson, Krenwinkel, Van Houten, Atkins, Grogan, and Kasabian.

  I not only hadn’t asked Katsuyama about the estimated time of death on direct, I hadn’t even asked Noguchi this on the Tate murders, because—though I knew his testimony would have supported Linda’s—I didn’t want the jury to wonder why I asked Noguchi and not Katsuyama.

  Since Fitzgerald led off the cross-examination, he always had first chance to explode any bombs in the defense arsenal, and this was certainly a big one. But he only said, “No questions, Your Honor.” As, to my amazement, did Shinn, Kanarek, and Hughes.

  I could think of only one possible explanation for this: though they had received all these reports through discovery, none of the four had realized their importance.

  Susan Atkins had a stomach-ache. Though a fairly minor occurrence, in this instance it led to Aaron Stovitz’ being yanked off the Tate-LaBianca case.

  Four court days were lost when Susan Atkins complained of stomach pains which the doctors who examined and tested her said “did not exist.” After sending the jury out, Judge Older called Susan to the stand, where she dramatically enumerated her ailments. Unimpressed, and convinced “she is now putting on an act,” Older brought the jury back in and resumed the trial. As he was leaving the courtroom, a reporter asked Aaron what he thought of Susan’s testimony. He replied, “It was a performance worthy of Sarah Bernhardt.”

  The next morning Aaron was ordered to appear in District Attorney Younger’s office.

  After the Rolling Stone interview, Younger had told Aaron: “No more interviews.” Being somewhat easygoing by nature, Aaron had trouble complying with the edict. Once, when Younger was in San Francisco, he’d turned on the radio to hear Aaron commenting on some aspect of the day’s courtroom proceedings. Though Aaron’s comments were not in violation of the gag order, on his return to L.A. Younger warned Aaron, “One more interview and you’re off the case.”

  I accompanied Aaron to Younger’s office. There was no way Aaron’s comment could be called an interview, I argued. It was simply a passing remark. All of us had made many such during the trial.* But Younger autocratically declared, “No, I’ve made up my mind. Stovitz, you’re off the case.”

  I felt very badly about this. In my opinion, it was completely unfair. But in this case there was no appeal.

  Since I had prepared the case and examined most of the witnesses, Aaron’s removal did not affect this portion of the trial. We had agreed, however, that we would share the arguments to the jury, each of which would last several days. Having to handle them all myself added a tremendous burden to the load I was already carrying; in terms of time alone it meant another two hours of preparation each night, when I was already putting in four or five. Although two young deputy DAs, Donald Musich and Steven Kay, had been assigned to replace Aaron, neither was familiar enough with the case
to participate in the trial.

  Ironically, Steve Kay had once dated Family member Sandra Good, the pair, both of whom had grown up in San Diego, having gone on a date arranged by their mothers.

  Sergeants Boen and Dolan of the Latent Prints Section of SID came across as the experts they were. Latents, exemplars, lift cards, smudges, fragmentary ridges, nonconductive surfaces, points of identity—by the time the two officers had finished, the jury had been given a mini-course in fingerprint identification.

  Boen described how he had lifted the latent prints found at the Tate residence, particularly focusing on the latent found on the outside of the front door and the latent on the inside of the left French door in Sharon Tate’s bedroom.

  Using diagrams and greatly magnified photographs I’d ordered prepared, Dolan indicated eighteen points of identity between the print lifted from the front door of the Tate residence and the right ring finger on the Watson exemplar and seventeen points of identity between the print lifted from the door of the master bedroom and the left little finger on the Krenwinkel exemplar. LAPD, he testified, requires only ten points of identity to establish a positive identification.

  After Dolan had testified that there has never been a reported case of two separate persons having an identical fingerprint, or of any single person having two matching prints, I brought out, through him, that in 70 percent of the crimes investigated by LAPD’s fingerprint men not a single readable print belonging to anyone is obtained. Therefore, I could later argue to the jury, the fact that none of Susan Atkins’ prints were found inside the Tate residence did not mean she had not been there, since the absence of a clear, readable print is more common than uncommon.*