The Investigation—Phase Two 1 page

“No sense makes sense.”

CHARLES MANSON

NOVEMBER 18, 1969

By now the reader knows a great deal more about the Tate-LaBianca murders than I did on the day I was assigned that case. In fact, since large portions of the foregoing story have not been made public before this, the reader is an insider in a sense highly unusual in a murder case. And, in a way, I’m a newcomer, an intruder. The sudden switch from an unseen background narrator to a very personal account is bound to be a surprise. The best way to soften it, I suspect, would be to introduce myself; then, when we’ve got that out of the way, we’ll resume the narrative together. This digression, though unfortunately necessary, will be as brief as possible.

A conventional biographical sketch before the Manson trial would probably have read more or less as follows: Vincent T. Bugliosi, age thirty-five, Deputy District Attorney, Los Angeles, California. Born Hibbing, Minnesota. Graduate Hollywood High School. Attended the University of Miami on a tennis scholarship, B.A. and B.B.A. degrees. Deciding on the practice of law, attended UCLA, LL.B. degree, president graduating class 1964. Joined the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office same year. Has tried a number of highly publicized murder cases—Floyd-Milton, Perveler-Cromwell, etc.—obtaining convictions in all. Has tried 104 felony jury trials, losing only one. In addition to his duties as deputy DA, Bugliosi is a professor of criminal law at Beverly School of Law, Los Angeles. Served as technical consultant and edited the scripts of two pilot films for Jack Webb’s TV series “The D.A.” Series star Robert Conrad patterned his part after the young prosecutor. Married. Two children.

That’s probably about how it would read, yet it tells nothing about how I feel toward my profession, which is even more important.

“The primary duty of a lawyer engaged in public prosecution is not to convict, but to see that justice is done…”

Those words are from the old Canon of Ethics of the American Bar Association. I’d thought of them often during the five years I’d been a deputy DA. In a very real sense they had become my personal credo. If, in a given case, a conviction is justice, so be it. But if it is not, I want no part of it.

For far too many years the stereotyped image of the prosecutor has been either that of a right-wing, law-and-order type intent on winning convictions at any cost, or a stumbling, bumbling Hamilton Burger, forever trying innocent people, who, fortunately, are saved at the last possible minute by the foxy maneuverings of a Perry Mason.

I’ve never felt the defense attorney has a monopoly on concern for innocence, fairness, and justice. After joining the DA’s office, I tried close to a thousand cases. In a great many I sought and obtained convictions, because I believed the evidence warranted them. In a great many others, in which I felt the evidence was insufficient, I stood up in court and asked for a dismissal of the charges, or requested a reduction in either the charges or the sentence.

The latter cases rarely make headlines. Only infrequently does the public learn of them. Thus the stereotype remains. Far more important, however, is the realization that fairness and justice have prevailed.

Just as I never felt the slightest compunction to conform to this stereotype, so did I rebel against another. Traditionally, the role of the prosecutor has been twofold: to handle the legal aspects of the case; and to present in court the evidence gathered by law-enforcement agencies. I never accepted these limitations. In past cases I always joined in the investigation—going out and interviewing witnesses myself, tracking down and developing new leads, often finding evidence otherwise overlooked. In some cases, this led to the release of a suspect. In others, to a conviction that otherwise might not have been obtained.

For a lawyer to do less than his utmost is, I strongly feel, a betrayal of his client. Though in criminal trials one tends to focus on the defense attorney and his client the accused, the prosecutor is also a lawyer, and he too has a client: the People. And the People are equally entitled to their day in court, to a fair and impartial trial, and to justice.

T he Tate-LaBianca case was the farthest thing from my mind on the afternoon of November 18, 1969. I’d just completed a long trial and was on my way back to my office in the Hall of Justice when Aaron Stovitz, head of the Trials Division of the District Attorney’s Office and one of the top trial lawyers in an office of 450 deputy district attorneys, grabbed me by the arm and, without a word of explanation, hurried me down the hall into the office of J. Miller Leavy, director of Central Operations.

Leavy was talking to two LAPD lieutenants I’d worked with on previous cases, Bob Helder and Paul LePage. Listening for a minute, I heard the word “Tate.” Turning to Aaron, I asked, “Are we going to handle it?”

He nodded affirmatively. My only comment was a low whistle.

H elder and LePage gave us a sketchy résumé of what Ronnie Howard had said. As a follow-up to Mossman and Brown’s visit the previous night, two other officers had gone to Sybil Brand that morning and talked to Ronnie for a couple of hours. They had obtained considerably more detail, but there were still huge gaps in the story.

To say that the Tate and LaBianca cases had been “solved” at this point would be a gross overstatement. Obviously, in any murder case finding the killer is extremely important. But it’s only a first step. Neither the finding, the arresting, nor the indicting of a defendant has evidentiary value and none are proof of guilt. Once the killer is identified, there remains the difficult (and sometimes insurmountable) problem of connecting him with the crime by strong, admissible evidence, then proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, be it before a judge or a jury.

And as yet we hadn’t even made the first step, much less the second. In talking to Ronnie Howard, Susan Atkins had implicated herself and “Charles,” presumably meaning Charles Manson. But Susan had also said that others were involved, and we lacked their actual identities. This was on Tate. On LaBianca there was virtually no information.

One of the first things I wanted to do, after reviewing the Howard and DeCarlo statements, was to go to Spahn Ranch. Arrangements were made for me to go out the next morning with several of the detectives. I asked Aaron if he wanted to come along, but he couldn’t make it.[26]

When I returned home late that afternoon and told my wife, Gail, that Aaron and I had been assigned the Tate case, she shared my excitement. But with reservations. She had been hoping that we could take a vacation. It had been months since I’d taken a full day off. Even when I was at home in the evenings, I was either reading transcripts, researching law, or preparing arguments. Although every day I made sure I spent some time with our two children, Vince, Jr., three, and Wendy, five, when I was on a big case I totally immersed myself in it. I promised Gail I’d try to take a few days off, but I honestly had to admit that it might be a while before I could do so.

At that time we were, fortunately, unaware that I would be living with the Tate-LaBianca cases for almost two years, averaging one hundred hours per week, rarely, if ever, getting to bed before 2 A.M. seven days per week. And that the few moments Gail, the kids, and I had together would be devoid of privacy, our home transformed into a fortress, a bodyguard not only living with us but accompanying me everywhere I went, following a threat by Charles Manson that he would “kill Bugliosi.”

NOVEMBER 19–21, 1969

We’d picked a hell of a day for a search. The wind was incredible. By the time we reached Chatsworth, it was almost buffeting us off the road.

It wasn’t a long drive, well under an hour. From the Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles it’s about thirty miles to Chatsworth. Going north on Topanga Canyon Boulevard past Devonshire for about two miles, we made a sharp left onto Santa Susana Pass Road. Once heavily traveled but in recent years bypassed for a faster freeway, the two-lane road winds upward a mile or two. Then, suddenly, around a bend and to the left, there it was, Spahn’s Movie Ranch.

Its ramshackle Main Street was less than twenty yards from the highway, in plain view. Wrecked automobile and truck bodies littered the area. There wasn’t a sign of life.

There was an unreality to the place, accentuated by the roaring wind and the appearance of total desertion, but even more so by the knowledge, if the Atkins-Howard story was true, of what had begun and ended here. A run-down movie set, off in the middle of nowhere, from which dark-clad assassins would venture out at night, to terrorize and kill, then return before dawn to vanish into the surroundings. It might have been the plot of a horror film, except that Sharon Tate and at least eight other real human beings were now dead.

We pulled off onto the dirt road, stopping in front of the Long Branch Saloon. In addition to myself, there were Lieutenant Helder and Sergeant Calkins of the Tate team; Sergeant Lee of SID; Sergeants Guenther, Whiteley, and William Gleason from LASO; and our guide, Danny DeCarlo. Danny had finally agreed to accompany us, but only on one condition: that we handcuff him. That way, if any members of the Family were still around, they wouldn’t think he was voluntarily “flapping to the fuzz.”

Though the sheriff’s deputies had been to the ranch before, we needed DeCarlo for a specific purpose: to point out the areas where Manson and the Family target-practiced. The object of our search: any .22 caliber bullets and/or shell casings.

But first I wanted to obtain George Spahn’s permission to search the ranch. Guenther pointed out his shack, which was to the right and apart from the Western set. We knocked and a voice, that of a young girl, said, “Come right on in.”

It was as if every fly in the area had taken shelter there during the storm. Eighty-one-year-old George Spahn was sitting in a decaying armchair, wearing a Stetson and dark glasses. In his lap was a Chihuahua, at his feet a cocker spaniel. A hippie girl of about eighteen was fixing his lunch, while a transistor radio, tuned to a cowboy station, blared “Young Love” by Sonny James.

It seemed as staged as the setting itself: according to DeCarlo, Manson called his girls “young loves.”

Because of Spahn’s near blindness, Calkins handed him his badge to feel. Once we had identified ourselves, Spahn seemed to relax. Asked for permission to search, he magnanimously replied, “It’s my ranch and you’re welcome to search it any time you want to, day or night, and as often as you like.” I explained his legal rights. Under the law, no search warrant was required, only his permission. If he did give permission, however, it might be necessary at some later date for him to testify to this in court. Spahn still agreed.

There was no mention of Manson and his Family. But Spahn must have known that they were in some way the reason for our being there. Although on other occasions I would interview George at length, our conversation at this time was brief and confined to the search.

Once we went back outside, people began appearing from almost every building. There must have been ten to fifteen, most of them young, most in hippie-type clothes, although a few appeared to be ranch hands. How many, if any, were actual members of the Family we didn’t know. While looking around, I heard some odd sounds coming from a doghouse. Leaning down and looking in, I saw two dogs and, crouched in the corner, a toothless, white-haired old woman of about eighty. I later checked with one of the ranch hands to see if she needed help, but he said she was happy where she was.

It was a very strange place.

About a hundred yards behind the main cluster of buildings there was a drop down to a creek, then, beyond it, the hills rose up and became a part of the Santa Susana mountain range. Rocky, brush covered, the area looked far more rugged than it actually was. I wondered how many times as a boy I’d seen this scene in B-grade cowboy films. According to Lutesinger and DeCarlo, it was here, in the canyons and gullies behind the ranch, and across the road, in Devil’s Canyon, that the Family hid out from the police. Here, too, somewhere in this area, if the various accounts were correct, were the remains of Donald “Shorty” Shea.

Charlie’s favorite firing spot, DeCarlo said, was in the creek bed, well out of sight from the road. As targets he used fence posts and a trash can. Under the direction of Sergeant Lee, we began searching. Though no shell casings had been found at 10050 Cielo Drive—the Buntline being a revolver, which doesn’t automatically eject its shell casings—we wanted to collect both in case the gun or additional evidence was found.

While we were searching the creek bed, I kept thinking about George Spahn, alone and almost defenseless in his blindness. I asked, “Anybody bring a tape recorder?” Calkins had; it was in the back of his car. “Let’s go back and get Spahn’s consent on tape,” I said. “Between now and the time we go to trial, I don’t want some s.o.b. putting a knife to Spahn’s throat, forcing him to say he didn’t give us permission.” We went back and taped Spahn’s consent. It was for his protection as well as our own; knowing the tape existed could be discouragement.

DeCarlo indicated another area, about a quarter of a mile up one of the canyons, where Charlie and the men sometimes target-practiced. We found a number of bullets and shell casings there. Because of the wind and dust, the search was less thorough than I’d hoped for; however, Sergeant Lee promised to return at a later date and see what he could find.

Altogether, that day we found approximately sixty-eight .22 caliber bullets (approximate because some were fragments rather than whole slugs) and twenty-two shell casings of the same caliber. Lee put them in envelopes, noting where and when found, and took them back to the police lab with him.

While looking around the corral area, I spotted some white nylon rope, but it was two-strand, not three.

G uenther and Whiteley had made their own find, in Danny DeCarlo. That afternoon they interviewed him on the Hinman murder and Beausoleil’s confession. The only problem was that the Beausoleil trial had been going on for a week now, and both the prosecution and defense had rested.

Against the objections of Beausoleil’s attorney, a continuance was obtained until the following Monday, at which time the prosecution hoped to reopen its case to introduce the confession.

It was agreed that if DeCarlo testified in the Beausoleil trial, LASO would drop the motorcycle engine theft charge against him.

O n my return to the Hall of Justice there was a meeting in the office of the then Assistant District Attorney, Joseph Busch. Present in addition to Busch, Stovitz, and myself from the DA’s Office were Lieutenant Paul LePage (LaBianca) and Sergeant Mike McGann (Tate) representing LAPD.

The police wanted to wrap up the case, Lieutenant LePage informed us. The public pressure on LAPD to solve these murders was unbelievable. Every time Chief Edward M. Davis encountered a reporter, he was asked, “What, if anything, is happening on Tate?”

LAPD wanted to offer Susan Atkins immunity, in exchange for telling what she knew about the murders.

I was in total disagreement. “If what she told Ronnie Howard is true, Atkins personally stabbed to death Sharon Tate, Gary Hinman, and who knows how many others! We don’t give that gal anything! ”

Chief Davis wanted to rush the case to the grand jury, LePage said. But before that he wanted to break the news that we had caught the killers in a big press conference.

“We don’t even have a case to take to the grand jury,” I told LePage. “We’re not even sure who the killers are, or if they’re free or in custody. All we have is a good lead, but we’re getting there. Let’s see if, on our own, we can get enough evidence to nail all of them. If we can’t, then, as a last resort—a very, very last resort—we can turn to Atkins.”

I could sympathize with LAPD; the media were blasting the department almost daily. On the other hand, it would be nothing compared to the public response if we let Susan Atkins walk off scot-free. I couldn’t forget Susan describing how it felt to taste Sharon Tate’s blood: “Wow, what a trip!”

LePage was firm; LAPD wanted to make a deal. I conferred with Busch and Stovitz; they were far less adamant than I. Against my very strong objections, Busch told LePage that the DA’s Office would be willing to settle for a second degree murder plea for Atkins.

Susan Atkins would be offered a deal. The precise terms, or whether she would even accept them, remained unknown.

A t eight that night, the citizens of Los Angeles still thinking that the Tate-LaBianca killers were completely unknown, two cars sped out of Los Angeles, their destination the last home of the Manson Family: Death Valley.

It seemed more than ironic that, following the murders, Manson had chosen as his refuge a place so aptly named.

Sergeants Nielsen, Sartuchi, and Granado were in one car; Sergeants McGann, Gene Kamadoi, and I were in the other. We broke a few speed limits along the way, arriving in Independence, California, at 1:30 A.M.

Independence, seat of Inyo County, is not a large town. The county itself, though second largest in the state, has less than 16,000 residents, just over one per square mile. If one were looking for a hideaway, he could find few better.

We checked into the Winnedumah Hotel for what amounted to little more than a long nap. When I got up at 5:30, the temperature had dropped below zero. I slipped my clothes on over my pajamas and was still cold.

Before leaving Los Angeles, I had telephoned Frank Fowles, Inyo County DA, and we had arranged to meet at a nearby café at 6 A.M. Fowles, his deputy Buck Gibbens, and their investigator Jack Gardiner were already there. The three men were, I would soon learn, very conscientious; the help they would give us in the months ahead would be considerable. At the moment they were also very excited. Unexpectedly, they were in the middle of one of the most publicized murder cases in modern history, the Tate case. Then, with puzzled looks, they’d glance across the table at the big-city prosecutor, pajamas sticking out of his cuffs.

Fowles told me that although they had seized some of Manson’s belongings during the October raid on Barker Ranch, a number of things remained there, including an old school bus, which was littered with clothing and other items. I suggested that before leaving Independence we obtain a search warrant for the ranch that specifically mentioned the bus.

This caught Fowles by surprise. I explained that if we did find evidence, and wished to use it in a trial, we didn’t want it suppressed just because someone suddenly appeared with a pink slip saying, “I’m the real owner of the bus. I only loaned it to Charlie, and you didn’t get my permission.”

Fowles understood that. It was only, he explained cryptically, that they didn’t do things quite that way in Inyo County. We returned to his office and, after waiting for the typist to come to work, I dictated the warrant.

It was necessary to state exactly what we were looking for. Among the items I enumerated were: a .22 caliber revolver; knives and other weapons; rope; wire cutters; wallet, driver’s license, and credit cards belonging to Rosemary LaBianca; motor plates to any vehicle; any male and/or female clothing, including footwear.

It was also necessary that I cite the crime—187 PC, murder—and the suspected perpetrators—“tentatively believed to be CHARLES MANSON, CLEM TUFTS, CHARLES MONTGOMERY, SADIE GLUTZ, and one or more additional females.” The information was based on the testimony of two “untested informants,” whom I did not name but who were Ronnie Howard and Danny DeCarlo.

When typed, the warrant ran to sixteen pages. It was an impressive document, the evidence cited therein more than sufficient to obtain a search warrant. Only I was aware how weak our case actually was.

With McGann and me tagging along, Fowles took the warrant to the office of Judge John P. McMurray. The white-haired jurist was, I guessed, in his seventies; he told us he was near retirement.

A search warrant! Judge McMurray looked at it with amusement. This was the first one he had seen in eighteen years, he told us. In Inyo, he explained, men are men. If you knock on a door and the people inside don’t want to let you in, you assume they are hiding something, and bust the door in. A search warrant indeed! But he read and signed it.[27]

T he trip to Barker Ranch would take three hours, leaving us little more than an hour to search before the sun set. En route Fowles told me some of the things he had learned about the Manson Family.[28]The first few members—in effect, a scouting party—had appeared in the area in the fall of 1968. Since you have to be somewhat different to want to live on the edge of Death Valley, residents of the area had developed a tolerance for people who elsewhere would have been considered odd types. The hippies were no stranger than others who passed through—prospectors, desert rats, chasers after legendary lost mines. There were only a few minor brushes with the authorities—the girls were advised to desist from panhandling in Shoshone, and one made the mistake of giving a marijuana cigarette to a fifteen-year-old girl, who just happened to be the sheriff’s niece—until September 9, 1969, when National Park Rangers discovered that someone had attempted to burn a Michigan loader, a piece of earth-moving equipment that was parked in the race-track area of Death Valley National Monument. It appeared a senseless act of vandalism. Automobile tracks leading away from the area were determined to belong to a Toyota. Several persons recalled seeing the hippies driving a red Toyota and a dune buggy. On September 21, Park Ranger Dick Powell spotted a 1969 red Toyota in the Hail and Hall area. The four females and one male who were riding in it were questioned but not detained. Powell later ran a license check, learning that the plates on the Toyota belonged to another vehicle. On September 24, Powell returned to look for the group, but they had gone. On September 29, Powell, accompanied by California Highway Patrolman James Pursell, decided to check out Barker Ranch. They found two young girls there, but no vehicles. As they had found standard in their contacts with this group, the girls gave vague, uncommunicative answers to their questions. As the officers were leaving the area, they encountered a truck driven by Paul Crockett, forty-six, a local miner. With him was Brooks Poston, eighteen, who had previously been a member of the hippie band but was now working for Crockett. On hearing that there were two girls at the ranch, Crockett and Poston appeared apprehensive and, when questioned, finally admitted that they feared for their lives.

Powell and Pursell decided to accompany them back to Barker. The two girls had vanished, but the officers presumed they were still nearby, probably watching them. They began questioning Crockett and Poston.

The officers had come looking for arson suspects, and a possible stolen vehicle. They found something totally unexpected. From Pursell’s report: “The interview resulted in some of the most unbelievable and fantastic information we had ever heard: tales of drug use, sex orgies, the actual attempt to re-create the days of Rommel and the Desert Corps by tearing over the countryside by night in numerous dune buggies, the stringing of field phones around the area for rapid communication, the opinion of the leader that he is Jesus Christ and seemed to be trying to form a cult of some sort…”

The surprises weren’t over. Before leaving Barker, Powell and Pursell decided to check out some draws back of the ranch. To quote Powell: “In doing so we stumbled into a group of seven females, all nude or partially so, hiding behind various clumps of sagebrush.” They saw one male, but he ran away when they approached. They questioned the girls but received no useful information. In searching the area, the officers found the red Toyota and a dune buggy, carefully camouflaged with tarps.

The officers had a problem. Because of the Panamint mountain range, they couldn’t use their police radio. They decided to leave and return later with more men. Before departing, they removed several parts from the engine of the Toyota, rendering it inoperative; the dune buggy had no engine, so they weren’t concerned with it.

They would later learn that “as soon as we left, the suspects pulled a complete Volkswagen engine from under a pile of brush, put it in the disabled dune buggy, and drove off within two hours.”

A check on the two vehicles revealed “wants” on both. The Toyota had been rented from a Hertz agency in Encino, a town near Los Angeles, on a credit card stolen in a residential burglary. The dune buggy had been stolen off a used-car lot only three days before Powell and Pursell saw it.

On the night of October 9, officers from the California Highway Patrol, the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office, and National Park rangers assembled near Barker for a massive raid on the ranch, to commence the following morning.

At about 4 A.M., as several of the officers were proceeding down one of the draws some distance from the ranch, they spotted two males asleep on the ground. Between them was a sawed-off shotgun. The two, Clem Tufts [t/n Steve Grogan] and Randy Morglea [t/n Hugh Rocky Todd], were placed under arrest. Though the officers were unaware of it, the pair had been stalking human game: Stephanie Schram and Kitty Lutesinger, two seventeen-year-old girls who had fled the ranch the previous day.

Another male, Robert Ivan Lane [aka Soupspoon], was apprehended on a hill overlooking the ranch. Lane had been acting as lookout but had fallen asleep. There was still another lookout post, this one a very well disguised dugout, its tin roof hidden by brush and dirt, on a hill south of the ranch. The officers had almost passed it when they saw a female emerge from the brush, squat, and urinate, then disappear back into the bushes. While two officers covered the entrance with their rifles, one climbed above the dugout and dropped a large rock on the tin roof. The occupants rushed out. Apprehended were: Louella Maxwell Alexandria [t/n Leslie Van Houten, aka Leslie Sankston]; Marnie Kay Reeves [t/n Patricia Krenwinkel]; and Manon Minette [t/n Catherine Share, aka Gypsy].

Those inside the ranch house were caught unawares, and offered no resistance. They were: Donna Kay Powell [t/n Susan Denise Atkins, aka Sadie Mae Glutz]; Elizabeth Elaine Williamson [t/n Lynette Fromme, aka Squeaky]; and Linda Baldwin [t/n Madaline Cottage, aka Little Patty].

Other members of the raiding party surrounded nearby Myers Ranch, where the group had also been staying, arresting: Sandra Collins Pugh [this was her married name; her maiden name was Sandra Good, aka Sandy]; Rachel Susan Morse [t/n Ruth Ann Moorehouse, aka Ouisch]; Mary Ann Schwarm [t/n Diane Von Ahn]; and Cydette Perell [t/n Nancy Pitman, aka Brenda McCann].

A total of ten females and three males were arrested during this first sweep of the Barker Ranch area. They ranged in age from sixteen to twenty-six, with the average nineteen or twenty. Two babies were also found: Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz, age one year, whose mother was Susan Atkins; and Sunstone Hawk, age one month, whose mother was Sandra Good. Both were badly sunburned. Mrs. Powell, wife of ranger Dick Powell, who had been brought along as matron, took care of them.

A search of the area revealed a number of hidden vehicles, mostly dune buggies, mostly stolen; a mailbag with a .22 Ruger single-shot pistol inside, also stolen; a number of knives; and caches of food, gasoline, and other supplies. Also found were more sleeping bags than people, indicating that there might be others still in the area.

The officers decided to take the prisoners into Independence and book them, then make a surprise raid at a later date, in case the others returned.

The strategy paid off. The second raid occurred on October 12, two days after the first. CHP officer Pursell and two Park rangers arrived in the area before their support and were hiding in the brush, waiting for the others, when they saw four males walk from one of the washes to the ranch house and enter. Pursell spotted sheriff’s deputy Don Ward of the backup unit approaching in the distance. It was already after 6 P.M., the dusk rapidly becoming dark. Not wanting to risk a gunfight at night, Pursell decided to act. While Powell covered the front of the building, Pursell drew his gun and, to quote from his report, “I quickly moved to the back door, flung it open, and making as much use of the wall on the left of the doorway as possible, I ordered all occupants to remain still and place their hands on their heads.”

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 1265