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.

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.[70]

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.”

A lthough 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.

D enied 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.

T he 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.

A ccording 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.

S hortly 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.

S usan 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.[71]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.[72]

No print belonging to Manson, Krenwinkel, or Van Houten had been found at the LaBianca residence. Anticipating that the defense would argue this proved that none of them had been there, I asked Dolan about the handle of the fork found protruding from Leno LaBianca’s stomach. It was ivory, he said, a surface which readily lends itself to latent prints. I then asked him: “Did you secure anything at all from that fork, a smudge, a trace, a fragmentary fingerprint, anything at all?”

A. “No, sir, there was not so much as a slight smudge on it; in fact it gave the impression to me”—Kanarek objected, but Older let

Dolan finish—“it gave the impression to me that the handle of that particular fork had been wiped.” Later, Dolan testified, he had run a test: he’d grasped the fork with his fingers, then dusted it, “and found fragmentary ridges.”

Although Mrs. Sivick had opened and closed the refrigerator door about 6 P.M. on the night of the murders, Dolan had found “not a smudge” on the chrome handle or enamel surface of the door. However, in examining the door, he testified, he did find “wipe-type marks.”

Also important were the locations of the Krenwinkel and Watson latents at the Tate residence. That Krenwinkel’s print had been found on the inside of the door which led from Sharon Tate’s bedroom outside to the pool not only proved that Patricia Krenwinkel had been inside the residence, together with other evidence it indicated that she had probably chased Abigail Folger out this door. Blood spots inside the house, on the door itself, and outside the door were determined to be B-MN, Abigail Folger’s type and subtype.[73]Therefore finding Krenwinkel’s print here was completely consistent with Linda Kasabian’s testimony that she saw Abigail running from this general direction chased by the knife-wielding Krenwinkel.

Even more conclusive was the position of the Watson print. Although Boen testified that it was on the outside of the front door, he’d also said that it was six to eight inches above the handle, near the edge, the tip of the finger pointing downward . As I illustrated to the jury, to leave the print where he did, Watson would have to be inside the Tate residence coming out. To make the print had he been outside, he would have had to twist his arm in a very uncomfortable and extremely unnatural direction. (Using the right ring finger and trying it both ways on a door, the reader will see what I mean.)

The logical assumption was that Watson left his print while chasing Frykowski, Krenwinkel while in pursuit of Folger.

These were the strong points of the fingerprint testimony. There was one weak spot. Anticipating that the defense would try to make the most of those unidentified latents—twenty-five of the fifty found at the Tate residence, six of the twenty-five found at the LaBianca residence—I brought this out myself. But with several possible explanations. Since, as Dolan testified, no person has two matching fingerprints, it was possible the twenty-five unmatched Tate latents could have been made by as few as three persons, while the six at the LaBiancas’ could even have been made by one person. Moreover, I established through Dolan that latent fingerprints can have a long life; under ideal conditions those inside a residence may last for several months. I could afford to point this out, since I’d already established that the two prints I was most concerned about, Krenwinkel’s and Watson’s, were on surfaces Winifred Chapman had recently washed.

I expected Fitzgerald to hit hardest on that one weak spot. Instead, he attacked Dolan where he was least vulnerable: his expertise. Earlier, I’d brought out that Dolan had been in the Latent Prints Section of SID for seven years, while assigned there conducting over 8,000 fingerprint investigations and comparing in excess of 500,000 latent fingerprints. Fitzgerald now asked Dolan: “Correct me if my mathematics are incorrect, Sergeant, but you testified you went to the scene of 8,000 crimes. If you went to one a day, and worked an average of 200 days a year, you would have been doing this for forty years?”

A. “I would have to figure that out on a piece of paper.”

Q. “Assuming that you went to one crime scene per day—is that a fair statement, that you went to one crime scene per day, Sergeant?”

A. “No, sir.”

Q. “How many crime scenes did you go to per day?”

A. “Anywhere, for two or three years there, between fifteen and twenty.”

Q. “A day?”

A. “Yes, sir.”

Fitzgerald had been knocked on his rump. Instead of getting up, dusting himself off, and moving onto safer territory, he set himself up for another pratfall by trying to attack the statistics. Had he done his homework (and, since a fingerprint was the only physical evidence linking his client to the murders, there was no excuse whatsoever for his not doing so) he would have learned, as the jury now did, that since 1940 SID had kept detailed records indicating exactly how many calls each officer made, the number of readable latents he obtained, and the number of times a suspect is thus identified.

Kanarek, in his cross-examination of Dolan, tried to imply that in using benzidine to test for blood, Granado could have destroyed some of the prints at the LaBianca residence. Unfortunately for Kanarek, Dolan noted that he had arrived at the LaBianca residence before Granado did.

Though Kanarek did less well with Dolan than some of the other prosecution witnesses, this didn’t mean I could relax my guard. At any moment he was apt to do something like the following:

KANAREK “Your Honor, in view of the fact that the Los Angeles Police Department did not even choose to compare Linda Kasabian’s fingerprints—”

BUGLIOSI “How do you know that, Mr. Kanarek?”

KANAREK “—I have no further questions of this witness.”

THE COURT “Your comment is out of order.”

BUGLIOSI “Would Your Honor admonish the jury to disregard that gratuitous remark of Mr. Kanarek’s?”

Older did so.

Hughes’ cross was brief and to the point. Had the witness compared a fingerprint exemplar of Leslie Van Houten with the latents found at the LaBianca residence? Yes. And none of those prints matched the prints of Leslie Van Houten, is that correct? Yes, sir. No further questions.

Hughes was learning, fast.

Apparently believing Kanarek was really on to something, Fitzgerald reopened his cross-examination to ask: “Now, did you have occasion to compare the latent fingerprints obtained at the Tate residence and the latent fingerprints obtained at the LaBianca residence against an exemplar of one Linda Kasabian?”

A. “Yes, sir, I did.”

Q. “What was the result of that comparison?”

A. “Linda Kasabian’s prints were not found at either scene.”

FITZGERALD “Thank you.”

As much as possible, I tried to avoid embarrassing LAPD. It wasn’t always possible. Earlier, for example, I’d had to bring in Sergeant DeRosa’s pushing the gate-control button, so the jury wouldn’t wonder why there was no testimony regarding that particular print. In my direct examination of eleven-year-old Steven Weiss, I stuck to his finding the .22 caliber revolver on September 1, 1969, and did not go into the subsequent events. However, Fitzgerald, on cross, brought out that although an officer had recovered the gun that same day, it was December 16, 1969, before LAPD Homicide claimed the weapon—after Steven’s father called and told them they already had the gun they were looking for. Fitzgerald also brought out how, after Steven had taken care not to eradicate any prints, the officer who picked up the gun had done so literally, putting his hands all over it.

I felt sorry for the next witness. The spectators had barely stopped laughing when officer Watson of the Valley Services Division of LAPD took the stand to testify that he was the officer who recovered the gun.

Officer Watson’s testimony was essential, however, for he not only identified the gun—bringing out that it was missing its right-hand grip and had a bent barrel and broken trigger guard—he also testified that it contained two live rounds and seven empty shell casings.

Sergeant Calkins then testified that on December 16, 1969, he had driven from Parker Center to the Valley Services Division to pick up the .22 caliber revolver.

On cross, Fitzgerald brought out that between September 3 and 5, 1969, LAPD had sent out some three-hundred gun flyers—containing a photograph and detailed description of the type of revolver they were looking for—to different police agencies in the United States and Canada.

Lest the jury begin wondering why LAPD hadn’t recovered the gun from the Valley Services Division immediately after the flyers went out, I was forced to ask Calkins, on redirect: “Did you ever send a flyer to the Valley Services Division of the Los Angeles Police Department in Van Nuys?”

A. “Not to my knowledge, sir.”

To avoid further embarrassment to LAPD, I didn’t ask how close the Valley Services Division was to the Tate residence.

SEPTEMBER 7–10, 1970

Because of the State Bar Convention, court recessed for three days. I spent them working on my arguments, and worrying about a telephone call I’d received.

When court reconvened on the tenth, I made the following statement in chambers:

“One of our witnesses, Barbara Hoyt, has left her parents’ home. I don’t have all the details, but the mother said Barbara received a threat on her life, that if she testified at this trial she would be killed and so will her family.

“I know two things. I know the threat did not come from the prosecution and it did not come from an aunt I have that lives in Minnesota.

“I think the most reasonable inference is it came from the defense.

“I’m bringing this out because I want the defense attorneys and their clients to know that we are going to prosecute whoever is responsible for subornation of perjury. Not only will we prosecute, when our witnesses take the stand I will do my best to bring out, in front of the jury, that they received threats on their lives. It is relevant.

“I suggest the defendants tell their friends this.”

W hen we returned to the courtroom, I had to leave such concerns behind and focus completely on the evidence we were presenting. It was crucial. Piece by piece we were trying to link the gun to Spahn Ranch and Charles Manson.

On Friday, before our long adjournment, Sergeant Lee of the Firearms and Explosives Unit of SID positively identified the Sebring bullet as having been fired from the gun. Lee also stated that while the other bullets recovered from the Tate scene lacked sufficient stria to make a positive identification, he found no markings or characteristics which would rule out the possibility that they too were fired from the same gun.

When I attempted to question Lee about still another link in this chain, the shell casings we had found at Spahn Ranch, Fitzgerald asked to approach the bench. It was the defense’s contention, he said, that the shell casings were the product of an illegal search, and therefore inadmissible.

“Anticipating that just such an objection might be raised,” I told the Court, “I obtained George Spahn’s permission on tape. Sergeant Calkins should have it,” I said. “He was there with me.”

Only Calkins didn’t have the tape. And now, nearly a week later, he still hadn’t found it. Finally, I called Calkins to the stand to testify that we had obtained Spahn’s permission. Cross-examined by Kanarek, Calkins denied that the tape had “disappeared” or was “lost”; he just hadn’t been able to locate it, he said.

Older finally ruled the search valid, and Lee testified that when examined under a comparison microscope the shell casing he’d test-fired from the gun and fifteen of the shell casings he’d found at Spahn Ranch had identical firing pin compression marks.

Stria, lands, grooves, firing pin marks: after hours of highly technical testimony, and more than a hundred objections, most of them by Irving Kanarek, we had placed the Tate murder gun at Spahn Ranch.

A lthough he had agreed to testify, Thomas Walleman, aka T. J., was a reluctant witness. He’d never completely broken with the Family. He’d drift away, drift back. He seemed attracted by the easy life style, repelled by the memory of the night he saw Manson shoot Bernard Crowe.

Though I knew I couldn’t get the shooting itself in during the guilt trial, I did question T. J. as to the events immediately prior to it. He recalled how, after receiving a telephone call, Manson borrowed Swartz’ ’59 Ford, got a revolver, then, with T. J. accompanying him, drove to an apartment house on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. After stopping the car, Manson handed T. J. the revolver and told him to put it in his belt.

Q. “Then you both entered the apartment, is that correct?”

A. “Yes.”

This was as far as I could go. I then showed T. J. the .22 caliber Hi Standard revolver and asked: “Have you ever seen that particular revolver before?”

A. “I don’t think so. It looks like it, but I don’t know for sure, you know.”

T. J. was hedging. I wasn’t about to let him get away with it. Under further questioning, he admitted that this gun differed from the gun he had seen that night in only one particular: half the grip was missing.

Q. “Now, your first statement, I believe, was to the effect that you didn’t think this was the revolver, and then you said it looked like it.”

A. “I mean, I don’t know for sure whether it was the revolver, but it looks like the revolver . There are a lot of those made.”

I wasn’t worried about that little qualification, for Lomax of Hi Standard had already testified that this model was relatively uncommon.

Though qualified, T. J.’s testimony was dramatic, as he was the first witness to connect Manson and the gun.

L APD contacted me that night. Barbara Hoyt was in a hospital in Honolulu. Someone had given her what was believed to be a lethal dose of LSD. Fortunately, she had been rushed to the hospital in time.

I did not learn many of the details until I talked to Barbara.

After fleeing Barker Ranch, the pretty seventeen-year-old had returned home. Though she had cooperated with us, Barbara was extremely reluctant to testify, and when she was contacted by the Manson girls on the afternoon of September 5 and offered a free vacation in Hawaii in lieu of testifying, she’d accepted.

Among the Family members who’d helped persuade her were Squeaky, Gypsy, Ouisch, and Clem.

Barbara spent that night at Spahn Ranch. The next day Clem drove Barbara and Ouisch to one of the Family hideouts, a house in North Hollywood which was being rented by one of the newer Family members, Dennis Rice.[74]

Rice took the pair to the airport, bought them tickets, and gave them fifty dollars in cash plus some credit cards, including, not inappropriately, a TWA “Getaway” card. Using assumed names, the two girls flew to Honolulu, where they booked the penthouse suite of the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel. Barbara saw little of the islands, however, since Ouisch, sure the police would be looking for Barbara, insisted they remain in the suite.

While there, the pair, who had been close friends, had several long talks. Ouisch told Barbara, “We all have to go through Helter Skelter. If we don’t do it in our heads, we’ll have to do it physically. If you don’t die in your head, you’ll die when it comes down.” Ouisch also confided that Linda Kasabian was not long for this world; at the most, she had six months to live.

At approximately the same time each morning, Ouisch made a long-distance call. (The number was that of a pay phone in North Hollywood, three blocks from the Rice residence. At least one of these calls was to Squeaky, the unofficial leader of the Family in Manson’s absence.)

Just after the call on the ninth, Ouisch’s manner suddenly changed. “She became very serious and looked at me kind of strangely,” Barbara said. Ouisch told Barbara that she had to go back to California, but that Barbara was to remain in Hawaii. She called and made a reservation on the 1:15 flight to Los Angeles that afternoon.

They caught a cab to the airport, arriving just before noon. Ouisch said she wasn’t hungry, but suggested that Barbara eat something. They went into a restaurant, and Barbara ordered a hamburger. When it arrived, Ouisch took it and went outside, telling Barbara to pay the check.

There was a line at the cash register, and for several minutes Barbara lost sight of Ouisch.

When she came out, Ouisch gave her the hamburger, and Barbara ate it while they were waiting for Ouisch’s flight. Just before she was to board, Ouisch remarked, “Imagine what it would be like if that hamburger had ten tabs of acid in it.” Barbara’s response was, “Wow!” She had never heard of anyone taking more than one tab of LSD, Barbara later said, and the thought was kind of frightening.

After Ouisch left, Barbara began feeling high. She tried to take a bus to the beach but became so sick she had to get off. Panicked, she then started running, and ran and ran and ran until she collapsed.

A social worker, Byron Galloway, saw the young girl sprawled on a curb near the Salvation Army headquarters. Fortuitously, Galloway was employed at the State Hospital, his specialty drug cases. Realizing that the girl was extremely ill, he rushed her to Queen’s Medical Center, where her condition was diagnosed as acute psychosis, drug-induced. The doctor who examined her was able to get her name and her Los Angeles address, but the rest made little sense: according to the hospital records, “Patient said, ‘Call Mr. Bogliogi and tell him I won’t be able to testify today in the Sharon Tate trial.’”

After giving her emergency treatment, the hospital called the police and Barbara’s parents. Her father flew to Hawaii and was able to bring her back to Los Angeles with him the next day.

On receiving the first fragmentary report, I told LAPD I wanted the persons involved charged with attempted murder.

Since Barbara was a witness in the Tate case, the investigation was given to Tate detectives Calkins and McGann.

SEPTEMBER 11–17, 1970

Though I knew Danny DeCarlo was afraid of Manson, the motorcyclist did a good job of disguising it while on the stand. When Charlie and the girls smiled at “Donkey Dan,” he grinned right back.

I was concerned that DeCarlo might qualify his answers, as he had in the Beausoleil trial. After only a few minutes of testimony, however, my concern suddenly shifted from DeCarlo to Older. When I tried to establish the Manson-Watson relationship through DeCarlo, Older repeatedly sustained the defense objections. He also sustained objections to Manson’s dinnertime conversations when he discussed his philosophy about blacks and whites.

Back in chambers Older made two remarks which totally stunned me. He asked, “What is the relevance of whether or not Manson was the leader?” And he wanted an offer of proof as to the relevance of Helter Skelter! It was as if Older hadn’t even been present during the trial thus far.

That I was more than a little disturbed at his stance came across in my reply: “The offer of proof is that he used to say that he wanted to turn blacks against whites. Of course, this is only the motive for these murders. That is all it is. Other than that, it is not much else.”

I noted: “The prosecution is alleging Mr. Manson ordered these murders. It was his philosophy that led up to these murders. The motive for these murders was to ignite Helter Skelter . I think it is so obviously admissible that I am at a loss for words.”

THE COURT “I would suggest this to you, Mr. Bugliosi. Over the noon hour give some careful thought as to what you contend your proof is going to show. Now, I realize that part of it may have to come in through one witness and part through another. This is not unusual. But so far I can’t see any connection between what Mr. Manson believed about blacks and whites in the abstract and any motive.”

I sweated through that noon hour. Unless I could establish Manson’s domination of the other defendants, I wouldn’t be able to convince the jury they had killed on his instructions. And if Older foreclosed me from bringing in Manson’s beliefs about the black-white war from DeCarlo, when my heavyweight witnesses on this—Jakobson, Poston, and Watkins—were still to come, then we were in deep trouble.

I returned to chambers armed with citations of authority as to both the admissibility and the relevance of the testimony. Yet even after a long, impassioned plea, it appeared that I had not changed Older’s mind. He still couldn’t see, for instance, the relevance of Watson’s subservience to Manson, or why I was trying to bring out, through DeCarlo, that Tex had an easygoing, rather weak personality. The relevance, of course, was that if I didn’t establish both, the jury could very well infer that it was Watson, not Manson, who had ordered these murders.

BUGLIOSI “I think the Court can tell the relevancy by the fact the defense counsel are on their hind legs trying to keep it out.”

KANAREK “I think the heart of what we have here is this, that Mr. Bugliosi has lost his cool, because he has a monomania about convicting Mr. Manson.”

BUGLIOSI “He is charged with seven murders, and I am going to be tenacious on this…I intend to go back with these witnesses and find out who Tex Watson was other than a name, Your Honor.”

THE COURT “I am not going to stop you from trying , Mr. Bugliosi.”

On returning to court, I asked DeCarlo exactly the same question I had asked hours earlier: “What was your impression of Tex Watson’s general demeanor?”

KANAREK “Your Honor, I will object to that as calling for a conclusion.”

BUGLIOSI “People vs. Zollner , Your Honor.”

I so anticipated Older saying “Sustained” that I almost thought I was imagining it when he said, “Overruled. You may answer.”

DECARLO “He was happy-go-lucky. He was a nice guy. I liked Tex. He didn’t have no temper or anything that I could see. He never said much.”

Glancing back, I saw both Don Musich and Steve Kay staring in open-mouthed disbelief. Moments ago in chambers Older had objected to my whole line of inquiry. He’d now completely reversed himself. Going as fast as I could through the questioning, before he again changed his mind, I brought out that whenever Charlie told Tex to do anything, Tex did it.

That Older had gone along with us on the domination issue didn’t mean that he saw the relevance of Helter Skelter. My fingers were crossed when I asked: “Do you recall Mr. Manson saying anything about blacks and whites? Black people and white people?”

Stunned and perturbed, Kanarek objected: “It is the same question that he was asking previously!”

THE COURT “Overruled. You may answer.”

A. “He didn’t like black people.”

DeCarlo testified that Manson wanted to see the blacks go to war with the police and the white establishment, both of whom he referred to as “pigs”; that Charlie had told him that the pigs “ought to have their throats cut and be hung up by their feet”; and that he had heard Manson use the term Helter Skelter many, many times. Through all this Kanarek objected repeatedly, often in the midst of DeCarlo’s replies. Older told him: “You are interrupting, Mr. Kanarek. I have warned you several times today. I warn you now for the last time.”

KANAREK “I don’t wish to make unnecessary objections, Your Honor.”

THE COURT “Don’t you? Then cease from doing it.”

Within minutes, however, Kanarek was doing it again, and Older called him to the bench. Very angrily, Older told Kanarek: “You seem to have some sort of physical infirmity or mental disability that causes you to interrupt and disrupt testimony. No matter how many times I warn you, you seem to do it repeatedly, again and again and again…You are trying to disrupt the testimony of this witness. It is perfectly clear. Now, I have gone as far as I am going to go with you, Mr. Kanarek.”

Kanarek complained, “I am trying to conscientiously follow your orders.”

THE COURT “No, no, I am afraid your explanation won’t go. I have heard too much from you. I am very familiar with your tactics, and I am not going to put up with it any longer.” Older found Kanarek in contempt of Court and, at the conclusion of the day’s testimony, sentenced him to spend the weekend in the County Jail.

Danny DeCarlo had never really understood Helter Skelter, or cared to. As he admitted to me, his major interests while at Spahn were “booze and broads.” He couldn’t see how his testimony about this black-white stuff really hurt Charlie, and he testified to it freely and without qualification. But when it came to the physical evidence—the knives, the rope, the gun—he saw the link and pulled back, not much, but just enough to weaken his identifications.

In interviewing Danny, I’d learned a great many things which were not on the LAPD tapes. For example, he recalled that in early August 1969, Gypsy had purchased ten or twelve Buck knives, which had been passed out to various Family members at Spahn. The knives, according to DeCarlo, were about 6 inches in length, 1 inch in width, 1/8 inch in thickness—very close to the dimensions provided by Kasabian and Noguchi. In going through the sheriff’s reports of the August 16 raid, I found that a large number of weapons had been seized (including a submachine gun in a violin case) but not a single Buck knife.

The logical presumption, I’d later argue to the jury, was that after the murders the rest of the Buck knives had been ditched.

I intended to call Sergeant Gleason from LASO to testify that no knives were found in the raid. First, however, I wanted Danny to testify to the purchase. He did, but he qualified it somewhat. When I asked him who bought the Buck knives, he replied: “I’m not sure. I think Gypsy did, I’m not sure.”

When it came to the Tate-Sebring rope, DeCarlo testified it was “similar” to the rope Manson had purchased at the Jack Frost store. I persisted: “Does it appear to be different in any fashion?”

A. “No.”

DeCarlo had told me that Charlie preferred knives and swords to guns because “in the desert guns could be heard for a long distance.” I asked DeCarlo if, among the guns at Spahn Ranch, Manson had a special favorite. Yeah, DeCarlo said, a Hi Standard .22 caliber Buntline revolver. I showed him the gun and asked him: “Have you ever seen this revolver before?”

A. “I saw one similar to it.”

Q. “Does it appear to differ in any fashion?”

A. “The trigger guard is broken.”

Other than that?

A. “I can’t be sure?”

Q. “Why can’t you be sure?”

A. “I don’t know. I don’t know the serial number of it. I am not sure that is it.”

DeCarlo had cleaned, cared for, and shot the gun. He had an extensive background in weapons. The model was unusual. And he had made a drawing of it for LAPD even before he was told that such a gun had been used in the Tate homicides. (I’d already introduced the drawing for identification purposes, over Kanarek’s objection that it was “hearsay.”) If anyone should have been able to make a positive identification of that revolver, it was Danny DeCarlo. He didn’t do so, I suspected, because he was afraid to.

Though he was a shade weaker on the stand than in our interviews, I did succeed in getting a tremendous amount of evidence in through DeCarlo. Though court was interrupted for another three-day recess, DeCarlo’s direct took less than a day and a half of actual court time. I completed it on September 17.

That morning Manson passed word through Fitzgerald and Shinn that he wanted to see me in the lockup during the noon recess. Kanarek was not present, though the other two attorneys were.

I asked Manson what he wanted to talk to me about.

“I just wanted you to know that I didn’t have anything to do with the attempted murder of Barbara Hoyt,” Manson said.

“I don’t know whether you ordered it or they did it on their own,” I replied, “but you know, and I know, that in either case they did it because they thought it would please you.”

Manson wanted to rap, but I cut him off. “I’m not really in the mood to talk to you, Charlie. Maybe, if you have enough guts to take the stand, we’ll talk then.”

I asked McGann what was happening on the “Honolulu hamburger case,” as the papers had dubbed the Hoyt murder attempt. McGann said he and Calkins hadn’t been able to come up with any evidence.

I asked Phil Sartuchi of the LaBianca team to take over. Phil efficiently turned in a detailed report, with information on the airline tickets, credit card, long-distance calls, and so forth. It was December, however, before the case was taken to the grand jury. In the interim, Ouisch, Squeaky, Clem, Gypsy, and Rice remained at large. I’d often see them with the other Family members at the corner of Temple and Broadway.

On cross-examination Fitzgerald asked DeCarlo: “Is it not true that Mr. Manson indicated to you that he actually loved the black people?”

Danny replied: “Yeah. There was one time he said that.”

On redirect I asked DeCarlo about that single conversation. Charlie had told him he loved the blacks, he said, “for having the guts to fight against the police.”

Shinn brought out that DeCarlo was aware of, and more than passingly interested in, the $25,000 reward, thereby establishing that he had a reason to fabricate his testimony. Kanarek pursued the subject in detail in his cross. He also dwelt at length on DeCarlo’s fondness for weapons. Earlier DeCarlo had testified that he loved guns; would he describe that love? Kanarek asked.

DeCarlo’s replay brought down the house. “Well, I love them more than I do my old lady.”

It was easy to see where Kanarek was heading: he was trying to establish that it was DeCarlo, not Manson, who was responsible for all the weapons being at Spahn Ranch.

Kanarek switched subjects. Wasn’t it true, he asked DeCarlo, that “during the entire time you were at the ranch you were smashed?”

A. “I sure was.”

Q. “Were you so smashed that on many occasions you had to be carried to bed?”

A. “I made it a few times myself.”

Kanarek hit hard on DeCarlo’s drinking, also his vagueness as to dates and times. How could he remember one particular Saturday night, for example, and not another night?

“Well, that particular night,” DeCarlo responded, “Gypsy got mad at me because I wouldn’t take my boots off when I made love to her.”

Q. “The only thing that is really pinpointed in your mind, that you really remember, is that you had a lot of sex, right?”

A. “Well, even some of that I can’t remember.”

Kanarek had scored some points. He brought out that DeCarlo had testified on an earlier occasion (during the Beausoleil trial) that while at Spahn he was smashed 99 percent of the time. The defense could now argue that DeCarlo was so inebriated that he couldn’t perceive what was going on, much less recall specific conversations. Unfortunately for the defense, Fitzgerald unintentionally undermined this argument by asking DeCarlo to define the difference between “drunk” and “smashed.”

A. “My version of ‘drunk’ is when I’m out to lunch on the ground. ‘Smashed’ is just when I’m walking around loaded.”

SEPTEMBER 18, 1970

That afternoon we had a surprise visitor in court—Charles “Tex” Watson.

After a nine-month delay that would necessitate trying him separately, Watson had finally been returned to California on September 11, after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black refused to grant him a further stay of extradition. Sergeants Sartuchi and Gutierrez, who accompanied Watson on the flight, said he spoke little, mostly staring vacantly into space. He had lost about thirty pounds during his confinement, most of it during the last two months, when it became obvious his return to Los Angeles was imminent.

Fitzgerald had asked that Watson be brought into court, to see if DeCarlo could identify him.

Realizing that Fitzgerald was making a very serious mistake, Kanarek objected, strenuously, but Older granted the removal order.

The jury was still out when Watson entered the courtroom. Though he smiled slightly at the three female defendants, who grinned and blew him kisses, he seemed oblivious to Manson’s presence. By the time the jury came in, Watson was already seated and appeared just another spectator.

FITZGERALD “Mr. DeCarlo, you previously testified that a man by the name of Tex Watson was present at Spahn Ranch during the period of time that you were there in 1969, is that correct?”

A. “Yeah.”

Q. “Do you recognize Mr. Watson in this courtroom?”

A. “Yeah. Right over there.” Danny pointed to where Tex was sitting.

Obviously curious, the jury strained to see the man they had heard so much about.

FITZGERALD “Could I have this gentleman identify himself for the Court, Your Honor?”

THE COURT “Will you please stand and state your name.”

Watson stood, after being motioned to his feet by one of the bailiffs, but he remained mute.

Fitzgerald’s mistake was obvious the moment Watson got up. One look and the jury knew that Charles “Tex” Watson was not the type to order Charles Manson to do anything, much less instigate seven murders on his own. He looked closer to twenty than twenty-five. Short hair, blue blazer, gray slacks, tie. Instead of the wild-eyed monster depicted in the April 1969 mug shot (when Watson had been on drugs), he appeared to be a typical clean-cut college kid.

Offstage, Watson could be made to seem the heavy. Having once seen him, the jury would never think this again.

S ince our first meeting in Independence, I had remained on speaking terms with Sandy and Squeaky. Occasionally one or both would drop in at my office to chat. I usually made time for such visits, in part because I was still attempting to understand why they (and the three female defendants) had joined the Family, but also because I was remotely hopeful that if another murder was planned, one or the other might alert me. Neither, I was sure, would go to the police, and I wanted to leave at least one channel of communication open.

I’d had more hopes for Sandy than Squeaky. The latter was on a power trip—acting as Manson’s unofficial spokesman, running the Family in his absence—and it seemed unlikely she would do anything to jeopardize her status. Sandy, however, had gone against Manson’s wishes on several occasions, I knew; they were minor rebellions (when her baby was due, for example, she had gone to a hospital, rather than have it delivered by the Family), but they indicated that maybe, behind the pat phrases, I’d touch something responsively human.

On her first visit to my office, about two months earlier, we’d talked about the Family credo: Sandy had maintained it was peace; I’d maintained it was murder, and had asked how she could stomach this.

“People are being murdered every day in Vietnam,” she’d countered.

“Assuming for the sake of argument that the deaths in Vietnam are murders,” I responded, “how does this justify murdering seven more people?”

As she tried to come up with an answer, I told her, “Sandy, if you really believe in peace and love, I want you to prove it. The next time murder is in the wind at Spahn Ranch, I want you to remember that other people like to live just as much as you do. And, as another human being, I want you to do everything possible to prevent if from happening. Do you understand what I mean?”

She quietly replied, “Yes.”

I’d hoped she really meant that. That naïve hope vanished when, in talking to Barbara Hoyt, I learned that Sandy had been one of the Family members who had persuaded her to go to Hawaii.

As I left court on the afternoon of the eighteenth, Sandy and two male followers approached me.

“Sandy, I’m very, very disappointed in you,” I told her. “You were at Spahn when Barbara’s murder was planned. There’s no question in my mind that you knew what was going to happen. Yet, though Barbara was your friend, you said nothing, did nothing. Why?”

She didn’t reply, but stared at me as if in a trance. For a moment I thought she hadn’t heard me, that she was stoned on drugs, but then, very slowly and deliberately, she reached down and began playing with the sheath knife that she wore at her waist. That was her answer.

Disgusted, I turned and walked away. Looking back, however, I saw that Sandy and the two boys were following me. I stopped, they stopped. When I started walking again, they followed, Sandy still fingering the knife.

Gradually they were closing the distance between us. Deciding it was better to face trouble than have my back to it, I turned and walked back to them.

“Listen, you God damn bitch, and listen good,” I told her. “I don’t know for sure whether you were or weren’t involved in the actual attempt to murder Barbara, but if you were, I’m going to do everything in my power to see that you end up in jail!” I then looked at the two males and told them if they followed me one more time, I was going to deck them on the spot.

I then turned and walked off. This time they didn’t follow me.

My reaction was, I felt, exceptionally mild, considering the circumstances.

Kanarek felt otherwise. When court reconvened on Monday, the twenty-first, he filed a motion asking that I be held in contempt for interfering with a defense witness. He also asked that I be arrested for violating Section 415 of the Penal Code, charging that I had made obscene remarks in the presence of a female.

SEPTEMBER 21–26, 1970

Finding nothing in Sandra Good’s declaration “that in my opinion constitutes contemptuous conduct on the part of Mr. Bugliosi,” Judge Older dismissed Kanarek’s several motions. Again Manson asked to see me in the lockup during the noon recess. He hoped I wasn’t taking all this—the attempted murder, the knife incident, the trial—personally.

“No, Charlie,” I told him, “I was assigned to this case; I didn’t ask for it; this is my job.”

By now it should be obvious to me, Manson said, that the girls were acting on their own, that nobody was dominating them. When I raised a skeptical eyebrow, Manson said, “Look, Bugliosi, if I had all the power and control that you say I have, I could simply say, ‘Brenda, go get Bugliosi,’ and that would be it.”

It was interesting, I thought, that Manson should single out Brenda McCann, t/n Nancy Pitman, as his chief assassin.

Later I’d have good reason to recall Manson’s remarks.

N othing personal. But immediately after this, the middle-of-the-night hang-up calls began. They’d continue even after we changed our unlisted number. And several times when I left the Hall of Justice at night, I was followed by various Family members, including Sandy. Only the first time disturbed me. Gail and the kids were circling the block in our car, and I was afraid they would be identified or the license numb

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 572