Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (64 page)

B
UGLIOSI
“Oh, stop arguing.”

K
ANAREK
“Your Honor, he’s interrupting!”

B
UGLIOSI
“Be quiet.”

T
HE
C
OURT
“Mr. Bugliosi, now, I’m not going to warn you again, sir.”

B
UGLIOSI
“What’s he doing, Your Honor? He’s accusing me of something and I don’t like it.”

T
HE
C
OURT
“Approach the bench.”

B
UGLIOSI
“I am not going to take it. I’ve had it up to here.”

My indignation was as much a matter of trial tactics as anything else. If I let Kanarek get away with the same trick time after time, the jury might assume there was some truth to his charges. At the bench I told Older: “I’m not going to be accused of a serious offense by this guy day in and day out.”

T
HE
C
OURT
“That’s absurd. You interrupted Mr. Kanarek. You made outrageous statements in front of the jury…I find you in direct contempt of Court, and I fine you fifty dollars.”

To the amusement of the clerk, I had to call my wife to come down and pay the fine. Later the deputy DAs in the office put up a buck each for a “Bugliosi Defense Fund” and reimbursed her.

As with the earlier citation of Hughes, I felt if I was in contempt of anyone, it was Kanarek, not the Court. The following day, for the record, I responded to the contempt, noting among other things that “in the future I would ask the Court to please consider two obvious points: this is a hotly contested trial and tempers become a little frayed; and also take into consideration what Mr. Kanarek is doing which incites a response on my part.”

With my citation, we now had a perfect score: every attorney involved in the trial had been either cited for contempt or threatened with it.

T
he defense tried their best to ridicule Juan’s fear of Manson.

Hughes brought out that since Manson was locked up, it was hardly likely he could hurt anyone; did Mr. Flynn actually expect the jury to believe that he was afraid of Mr. Manson?

Juan might have been speaking for all the prosecution witnesses when he answered: “Well, not of Mr. Manson himself, but the
reach
that he has, you know.”

B
y now I could see the pattern. The more damaging the testimony, the more chance Manson would create a disturbance, thereby assuring that he—and not the evidence itself—would get the day’s headlines. Juan Flynn’s testimony was hurting him badly. Several times while Flynn was on the stand, Older had to order Manson and the girls removed because of their outbursts. When it happened again, on October 2, Manson turned to the spectators and said: “Look at yourselves. Where are you going? You’re going to destruction, that’s where you’re going.” He then smiled a very odd little smile, and added, “
It’s your Judgment Day, not mine.
”

Again the girls parroted Manson, and Older ordered all four removed.

K
anarek was livid. I’d just showed the judge the transcript pages where Kanarek accused Flynn of lying. Older ruled: “There is no question: there was an implied, if not express, charge of recent fabrication.” Highway patrolman Dave Steuber would be permitted to play that portion of the taped interview dealing with Manson’s incriminating admission.
*

After establishing the circumstances of the interview, Steuber set up the tape recorder and began playing the tape at the point where the statement had begun. There is something about such physical evidence that deeply impresses a jury. Again, in words very similar to those they had heard him use when he was on the stand, the jurors heard Juan say: “Then he was looking at me real funny…And then he grabbed me by the hair like that, and he put a knife by my throat…And then he says, ‘Don’t you know I’m the one who is doing all the killings?’”

Monday, October 5, 1970. Bailiff Bill Murray later said he had a very strong feeling that something was going to happen. You get a kind of sixth sense dealing with prisoners day after day, he said, noting that when he brought Manson into the lockup he was acting very tense and edgy.

Although they had made no assurances that they would conduct themselves properly, Older gave the defendants still another chance, permitting them to return to the courtroom.

The testimony was dull, undramatic. There was, at this point, no clue as to its importance, though I had a feeling Charlie just might suspect what I was up to. Through a series of witnesses, I was laying the groundwork for destroying Manson’s anticipated alibi.

LASO detective Paul Whiteley had just finished testifying, and the defense attorneys had declined to cross-examine him, when Manson asked: “May I examine him, Your Honor?”

T
HE
C
OURT
“No, you may not.”

M
ANSON
“You are going to use this courtroom to kill me?”

Older told the witness he could step down. Manson asked the question a second time, adding, “I am going to fight for my life one way or another. You should let me do it with words.”

T
HE
C
OURT
“If you don’t stop, I will have to have you removed.”

M
ANSON
“I will have
you
removed if you don’t stop.
I have a little system of my own.
”

Not until Manson made that very startling admission did I realize that this time he wasn’t playacting but deadly serious.

T
HE
C
OURT
“Call your next witness.”

B
UGLIOSI
“Sergeant Gutierrez.”

M
ANSON
“
Do you think I’m kidding?
”

It happened in less time than it takes to describe it. With a pencil clutched in his right hand, Manson suddenly leaped over the counsel table in the direction of Judge Older. He landed just a few feet from the bench, falling on one knee. As he was struggling to his feet, bailiff Bill Murray leaped too, landing on Manson’s back. Two other deputies quickly joined in and, after a brief struggle, Manson’s arms were pinned. As he was being propelled to the lockup, Manson screamed at Older: “
In the name of Christian justice, someone should cut your head off!
”

Adding to the bedlam, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten stood and began chanting something in Latin. Older, much less disturbed than I would have expected, gave them not one but several chances to stop, then ordered them removed also.

According to the bailiffs, Manson continued to fight even after he had been taken into the lockup, and it took four men to put cuffs on him.

Fitzgerald asked if counsel might approach the bench. For the record, Judge Older described exactly how he had viewed the incident. Fitzgerald asked if he might inquire as to the judge’s state of mind.

T
HE
C
OURT
“He looked like he was coming for me.”

F
ITZGERALD
“I was afraid of that, and although—”

T
HE
C
OURT
“If he had taken one more step, I would have done something to defend myself.”

Because of the judge’s state of mind, Fitzgerald said, he felt it incumbent upon him to move for a mistrial. Hughes, Shinn, and Kanarek joined. Older replied: “It isn’t going to be that easy, Mr. Fitzgerald…They are not going to profit from their own wrong…Denied.”

Out of curiosity, after court Murray measured the distance of Manson’s leap: ten feet.

Murray wasn’t too surprised. Manson had very powerful leg and arm muscles. He was constantly exercising in the lockup. Asked why, he’d once told a bailiff: “I’m toughening myself up for the desert.”

Murray tried to re-create his own leap. Without that sudden shot of adrenaline, he couldn’t even jump up on the counsel table.

Though Judge Older instructed the jury to “disregard what you saw and what you have heard here this morning,” I knew that as long as they lived they’d never forget it.

All the masks had been dropped. They’d seen the real face of Charles Manson.

From a reliable source, I learned that after the incident Judge Older began wearing a .38 caliber revolver under his robes, both in court and in chambers.

J
udgment Day.
Echoing Manson, the girls waiting outside on the corner spoke of it in conspiratorial whispers. “Wait till Judgment Day. That’s when Helter Skelter will really come down.”

Judgment Day. What was it? A plan to break out Manson? An orgy of retribution?

As important was the question of when. The day the jury returned their verdict of “Not guilty” or “Guilty”? Or, if the latter, the day the same jury decided “Life” or “Death”? Or perhaps the day of sentencing itself? Or might it even be tomorrow?

Judgment Day.
We began to hear those words more and more often. Without explanation. As yet unaware that the first phase of Judgment Day had already begun, with the theft, from Camp Pendleton Marine Base, of a case of hand grenades.

Some weeks earlier, on returning to my office after court, I’d found a phone message from attorney Robert Steinberg, who was now representing Virginia Graham.

On the advice of her previous attorney, Virginia Graham had withheld some information. Steinberg had urged her to give this information to me. “Specifically,” the phone message read, “Susan Atkins laid out detailed plans to Miss Graham concerning other planned murders, including the murders of Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor.”

Since I was very busy, I arranged to have one of the co-prosecutors, Steve Kay, interview her.

According to Virginia, a few days after Susan Atkins told her about the Hinman, Tate, and LaBianca murders—probably on November 8 or 9, 1969—Susan had walked over to Virginia’s bed at Sybil Brand and begun leafing through a movie magazine. It reminded her, Susan said, about some other murders she had been planning.

She had decided to kill Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Susan matter-of-factly stated. She was going to heat a knife red-hot and put it against the side of Elizabeth Taylor’s face. This was more or less to leave her mark. Then she’d carve the words “helter skelter” on her forehead. After which, she was going to gouge her eyes out—Charlie had shown her how—and—

Virginia interrupted to ask what Richard Burton was supposed to be doing during all this.

Oh, both would be tied up, Susan said. Only this time the rope would be around their necks and their feet, so they couldn’t get away “like the others.”

Then, Susan continued, she would castrate Burton, placing his penis, as well as Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes, in a bottle. “And dig this, would you!” Susan laughed. “And then I’d mail it to Eddie Fisher!”

As for Tom Jones, another of her intended victims, she planned to force him to have sex with her, at knife point, and then, just as he was climaxing, she would slit his throat.

Steve McQueen was also on the list. Before Susan could explain what she had in mind for McQueen, Virginia interrupted, saying, “Sadie, you can’t just walk up to these people and kill them!”

That would be no problem, Susan said. It was easy to find out where they lived. Then she’d simply creepy-crawl them, “just like I did to Tate.”

She had something choice for Frank Sinatra, Susan continued. She knew that Frank liked girls. She’d just walk up to his door and knock. Her friends, she said, would be waiting outside. Once inside, they’d hang Sinatra upside down, then, while his own music was playing, skin him alive. After which they’d make purses out of the skin and sell them to hippie shops, “so everyone would have a little piece of Frank.”

She had come to the conclusion, Susan said, that the victims had to be people of importance, so the whole world would know.

Shortly after this, Virginia terminated the conversation with Susan. When asked by Steve Kay why she hadn’t come forward with the story before this, Virginia explained that it was just so insane that she didn’t think anyone would believe her. Even her former attorney had advised her to say nothing about it.

Were these Sadie’s own plans, or Charlie’s? Knowing as much as I did about Susan Atkins, I doubted if all this came from her. Though I had no proof, it was a reasonable inference that she had probably picked up these ideas from Manson.

In any case, it didn’t matter. Reading a transcript of the taped interview, I knew I’d never be able to introduce any of this in evidence: legally, its relevance to the Tate-LaBianca murders was negligible, and whatever limited relevance it did have would be outweighed by its extremely prejudicial effect.

Though Virginia Graham’s statement was useless as evidence, a copy of it was made available to each of the defense attorneys under discovery.

It would soon make its own kind of legal history.

A
lthough it was Ronnie Howard who first went to the police, I called Virginia Graham to the stand first, since Susan had initially confessed to her.

Her testimony was unusually dramatic, since this was the first time the jury had heard what had happened inside the Tate residence.

S
ince their testimony was only against Susan Atkins, only Shinn cross-examined Graham and Howard. His attack was less on their statements than their backgrounds. He brought out, for example, sixteen different aliases Ronnie Howard had used. He also asked her if she made a lot of money as a prostitute.

Asking him to approach the bench, Older said, “You know the rules, Mr. Shinn. Don’t give me that wide-eyed innocent stare and pretend you don’t know what I am talking about.”

S
HINN
“Does Your Honor mean I cannot ask a person their occupation?”

The prosecution had made no “deals” with either Virginia Graham or Ronnie Howard. Howard had been acquitted on the forgery charge, while Graham had served out her full sentence at Corona. In both cases, however, Shinn did bring up the reward. When he asked Ronnie if she knew about the $25,000, she bluntly answered: “I think I am entitled to it.”

On redirect I asked each: “Are you aware that testifying in court is not a prerequisite to collecting the money?” Objection. Sustained. But the point was made.

The letters Susan Atkins had written to her former cellmates, Ronnie Howard, Jo Stevenson, and Kitt Fletcher, were very incriminating. Although I was prepared to call a handwriting expert to testify to their authenticity, Shinn, in order to save time, stipulated that Susan had written them. However, before they could be introduced in evidence, we had to “Arandize” them, excising any references to Atkins’ co-defendants. This was done in chambers, outside the presence of the jury.

Kanarek fought to exclude almost every line. Disgusted at his constant objections, Fitzgerald complained to Older: “I don’t have the rest of my life to spend here.” Older, equally disgusted, told Kanarek: “I would suggest that you use a little more discretion and not try to clutter up the record with motions, objections, and statements which any ten-year-old child can see are either nonsense or totally irrelevant…”

Yet time and again Kanarek pointed out subtleties the other defense attorneys missed. For example, Susan had written Ronnie: “When I first heard you were the informer I wanted to slit your throat. Then I snapped that I was the real informer and it was my throat I wanted to cut.”

You don’t “inform” on yourself, Kanarek argued; you “confess.” This implied that other people were involved.

After nineteen pages of argument, much of it very sophisticated, we finally edited this particular section to read: “When I first heard you were the informer I wanted to slit your throat. Then I snapped that it was my throat I wanted to cut.”

Kanarek wanted the line “Love Love Love” excluded from the Stevenson letter because “it refers to Manson.”

T
HE
C
OURT
“It sounds more like Gertrude Stein.”

Since the “Love” references were among the few favorable things in Susan’s letters, Shinn fought to retain them, remarking, “What do you want to do, make a killer out of her?”

LIZ, SINATRA ON SLAY LIST

The Los Angeles
Herald Examiner
broke the story on October 9, in an exclusive article bearing the by-line of reporter William Farr. Learning the night before that the story was going to appear, Judge Older again ordered the windows of the jury bus covered so the jurors couldn’t see the headlines on corner newsstands.

Farr’s article contained direct quotes from the Virginia Graham statement, which we had turned over to the defense on discovery.

Questioned in chambers, Farr declined to identify his source or sources. After observing that under California law he could not order the reporter to do so, Older excused Farr.

It was obvious that one or more persons had violated the gag order. Older, however, did not press the issue, and there, it appeared, the matter rested. There was no indication at this time that the issue would eventually become a
cause célèbre
and result in the jailing of Farr.

Prior to his questioning by Older, Farr told Virginia Graham’s attorney, Robert Steinberg, that he had received the statement from one of the defense attorneys. He did not say which one.

G
regg Jakobson was an impressive and very important witness. I had the tall, modishly dressed talent scout testify in detail to his many conversations with Manson, during which they discussed Helter Skelter, the Beatles, Revelation 9, and Manson’s curious attitude toward death.

Shahrokh Hatami followed Jakobson to the stand, to testify to his confrontation with Manson at 10050 Cielo Drive on the afternoon of March 23, 1969. For the first time the jury, and the public, learned that Sharon Tate had seen the man who later ordered her murder.

In Rudi Altobelli, Kanarek finally met his match. On direct examination the owner of 10050 Cielo Drive testified to his first encounter with Manson at Dennis Wilson’s home, and then, in considerable detail, he described Manson’s appearance at the guest house the evening before he and Sharon left for Rome.

Extremely antagonistic because Altobelli had refused him permission to visit 10050 Cielo Drive, Kanarek asked: “Now, presently, the premises on Cielo Drive where you live are quite secure, is that correct?”

A.
“I hope so.”

 

Q.
“Do you remember having a conversation with me when I tried to get into your fortress out there?”

 

A.
“I remember your insinuations or threats.”

 

Q.
“What were my insinuations or threats?”

 

A.
“That ‘We will take care of you, Mr. Altobelli,’ ‘We will see about you, Mr. Altobelli.’ ‘We will get the court up at your house and have the trial at your house, Mr. Altobelli.’”

 

Altobelli had told Kanarek that if the Court ordered it, he would be glad to comply. “Otherwise, no. It is a home. It is not going to be a tourist attraction or a freak show.”

Q.
“Do you respect our courts of law, Mr. Altobelli?”

 

A.
“I think more than you, Mr. Kanarek.”

 

D
espite defense objections, I had succeeded in getting in perhaps 95 percent of the testimony I’d hoped to elicit through Jakobson, Hatami, and Altobelli.

With the next witness, I suddenly found myself in deep trouble.

Charles Koenig took the stand to testify to finding Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet in the women’s rest room of the Standard station in Sylmar where he worked. He described how, on lifting the top of the toilet tank, he’d seen the wallet wedged above the mechanism, just above the waterline.

Kanarek cross-examined Koenig at great length about the toilet, causing more than a few snickers among spectators and press. Then I suddenly realized what he was getting at.

Kanarek asked Koenig if there was a standard procedure in connection with servicing the toilets in the rest room.

Koenig replied that the Standard station operating manual required that the rest room be cleaned every hour. The bluing agent, which is kept in the tank of the toilet, Koenig further testified, had to be replaced “whenever it ran out.”

How often was that? Kanarek asked.

As “lead man,” or boss of the station, Koenig had not personally cleaned the rest rooms, but rather had delegated the task to others. Therefore I was able to object to this and similar questions as calling for a conclusion on Koenig’s part.

Fortunately, court then recessed for the day.

Immediately afterward I called LAPD with an urgent request. I wanted the detectives to locate and interview every person who had worked in this particular station between August 10, 1969 (the date Linda Kasabian testified she left the wallet there) and December 10, 1969 (the date Koenig found it). And I wanted them interviewed before Kanarek could get to them, fearing that he might put words in their mouths. I told the officers: “Tell them, ‘Forget what the Standard station operating manual says you should do; forget too what your employer might say if he found you didn’t follow the instructions to the letter. Just answer truthfully: Did you personally, at any time during your employment, change the bluing agent in that toilet?’”

To replace the bluing agent, you had to lift the top off the tank. Had anyone done so, he would have immediately seen the wallet. If Kanarek could come up with just one employee who claimed to have replaced the bluing agent during that four-month period, the defense could forcefully contend that the wallet had been “planted,” not only destroying Linda Kasabian’s credibility as to all of her testimony, but implying that the prosecution was trying to frame Manson.

LAPD located some, but not all, of the former employees. (None had ever changed the bluing agent.) Fortunately, Kanarek apparently had no better luck.

Hughes had only a few questions for Koenig, but they were devastating.

Q.
“Now, Sylmar is predominantly a white area, is it not?”

 

A.
“Yeah, I guess so.”