Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover (58 page)

On December 18, Squeaky, Ruth Ann, Gypsy, Clem, and Dennis Rice were indicted for conspiracy to prevent Barbara Hoyt’s testimony in the Tate-LaBianca trial. The judge released Squeaky, Gypsy, and Rice on bail (Clem remained in custody in Inyo County on an illegal weapon possession charge), and nine-months-pregnant Ruth Ann on her own recognizance.

On December 21, Older called the court to order. No sooner had he done so than Leslie stood and berated him for appointing Keith to replace Hughes. She told the judge that she had nothing to do with her original attorney’s disappearance, and wondered if Older might be behind it. Charlie yelled at Older, too, and the judge ordered all four defendants removed. Bugliosi then began his closing arguments. The defense attorneys would follow, and then the prosecutor would make a final statement before the jury retired to consider its verdict.

Bugliosi began with a series of charts, summarizing the evidence presented and saving any emotional appeal for his final statement. It took him a while—since July 24, the prosecution had introduced hundreds of items. Bugliosi was still summing up evidence when Older permitted the defendants to return to court. The three women immediately began talking loudly and Older ordered them removed again. On her way out, Susan grabbed some notes out of Bugliosi’s hand and tore them in half. Bugliosi snatched them back and snarled, “You little bitch.” The judge prohibited all four defendants from returning to the courtroom until the
jury announced its verdict. If Susan thought losing some of his notes would faze Bugliosi, she was mistaken. He’d memorized most of his remarks just in case. He told the jury that the Family was “a closely knit bunch of robots,” and Charlie was “the dictatorial master of a tribe of bootlicking slaves.”

On December 28 Bugliosi declared, “The people of the state of California are entitled to a guilty verdict,” and stepped aside for final arguments by each of the four defense attorneys.
Paul Fitzgerald, speaking on behalf of Pat Krenwinkel, tried to turn Bugliosi’s words to his client’s advantage, telling the jury that “mindless robots cannot be guilty of first degree murder” because that charge involved premeditation. Yes, one of Pat’s fingerprints was apparently inside the Cielo house, but Fitzgerald suggested that perhaps she’d been there “as an invited guest or a friend.”

Daye Shinn, Susan Atkins’s attorney, attacked the character of the witnesses for the prosecution. Would members of the jury, he wondered, invite Virginia Graham to their homes for Christmas?

It took Shinn less than ninety minutes to complete his closing statement. Irving Kanarek took a week. He expounded on every facet of the trial, once again boring even Charlie, listening in the mouse house adjacent to the courtroom. The mouse house wasn’t entirely soundproofed. At one point the jury could hear Charlie shouting, “You’re just making things worse!” On the fifth day of Kanarek’s argument, the jury sent a note to Older requesting NoDoz. The gist of Kanarek’s statement was that Tex Watson was really the mastermind behind the murders. Charlie was just an innocent bystander.

Maxwell Keith, representing Leslie Van Houten, spoke last. He was new to the trial, but his arguments were the best of any of the defense attorneys. He began with a sarcastic reference to
Linda
Van Houten, underscoring that Leslie was at a real disadvantage due to her attorney’s lack of familiarity with the case. Like Fitzgerald, he reminded jurors of Bugliosi’s own words—if Leslie was a “mindless robot,” how could she in any sense have committed premeditated murder at Waverly Drive? But he also made a key point about Leslie’s limited role in the slaying of Rosemary LaBianca: “Nobody in the world can be guilty of murder . . . [by stabbing] somebody after they are already dead. I’m sure that desecrating
somebody that is dead is a crime in this state, but she is not charged with that.”

Bugliosi’s final summation took two days.
He responded to the closing arguments by the four defense attorneys, and conceded he had referred to Susan, Pat, and Leslie as “robots.” But that didn’t mean that they should be acquitted for the murders: “They were not suffering, ladies and gentlemen, from any diminished mental capacity. They were suffering from a diminished heart, a diminished soul.” He concluded with what the media afterward described as the roll call of the dead. “Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, Leno LaBianca, Rosemary LaBianca, are not here with us now in this courtroom, but from their graves they cry out for justice. Justice can only be served by coming back to this courtroom with a verdict of guilty.”

•  •  •

The jurors retired to deliberate on Friday afternoon, January 15, 1971. Ten days later, they sent word to Judge Older that they had reached verdicts, and Older reconvened court. After agreeing with Bugliosi and the four defense attorneys that the penalty phase, if any, would begin in three days, Older instructed the bailiffs to bring Charlie, Susan, Pat, and Leslie into court. As the defendants were led in, Charlie winked at the girls and they giggled and winked back. Then all four listened impassively as they were found guilty on all counts.
As the jury filed out, Charlie told them, “You are all guilty.” On his way back to his ninth floor cell, Charlie said to the bailiff escorting him, “What did you expect?” He didn’t appear concerned.

Kathleen Maddox was in Los Angeles when the jury found her son guilty of murder. For more than a year, she’d been horrified by the stories describing what he’d become and what he’d apparently led foolish followers to do. During that time, Kathleen didn’t try to contact Charlie. She was convinced that he was mentally ill—what other explanation could there be for the things that he’d done? Her hope was that instead of going to the gas chamber, Charlie would get some kind of psychiatric help. Kathleen felt certain that was what he needed. She didn’t excuse what he’d done—she cried when she thought about the people who had died.

It also bothered her that so many stories about Charlie claimed that
he was the son of an unfit mother, that he’d had a deprived childhood and no one ever loved him. So when she went down to L.A. during the last days of the trial and a
Los Angeles Times
reporter guessed who she was, Kathleen agreed to talk. On January 26, “Mother Tells Life of Manson as Boy” vied with “Manson Verdict: All Guilty” for front page space. Kathleen did her best to make the reporter understand. She told about how strict her mother, Nancy, was, how she herself had made some mistakes as a girl, all about Colonel Scott being Charlie’s father and her struggle to raise her son right. If anything, Kathleen said, Charlie was a spoiled little boy who was given anything he wanted instead of having to work for it. But she felt that the resulting story had a lot of mistakes in it, quoting her as saying Charlie was born out of wedlock when he wasn’t—she was married to William Manson by then—and how Charlie loved his baby sister, Nancy, when in fact he’d had a temper tantrum just learning about the adopted child. Kathleen decided that reporters weren’t to be trusted and rushed back home.
Over the next months she received letters from famous TV newsmen asking her to come on their shows and tell her story, but she never responded.

Just before the penalty phase of the trial began,
Charlie sent word through Sandy and Squeaky to Susan, Pat, and Leslie that they were now to take the stand and swear they’d committed the murders without any orders or suggestions from him. Months earlier, he’d asked all his followers if they would die for him. Now he expected three of them to do it.

Vincent Bugliosi called only two witnesses in penalty phase, a policeman from Oregon who testified that a gun-toting Susan Atkins once said she wanted an opportunity to shoot him, and Lotsapoppa, massive living proof that Charlie was capable of attempting murder as well as ordering it. The Oregon cop’s testimony went smoothly, but Lotsapoppa had just taken the stand when Charlie stood and demanded to question the drug dealer himself. Judge Older told Charlie that he could suggest questions, but Kanarek would have to ask them. Charlie scribbled down several and handed them to Kanarek, who ignored the list and began asking Lotsapoppa questions of his own.
Charlie yelled at Kanarek to ask the ones he’d been given, and the lawyer said no. Charlie sprang to Kanarek’s side and punched him hard on the arm; Kanarek yelped in pain. The
bailiffs moved forward to grab Charlie, but halted when they saw Judge Older give a subtle shake of his head. The judge apparently enjoyed seeing Irving Kanarek acquire a few bruises. Charlie belted his attorney on the arm several more times before Older finally nodded, and the bailiffs dragged Charlie off to the mouse house.

Bugliosi rested the prosecution’s case on February 1. The defense began by calling Pat’s parents and Leslie’s mother. All three said they loved their daughters and were bewildered by what they had apparently done. A parade of Family members took the stand—Squeaky, Sandy, Gypsy, Ruth Ann, and Clem. Their testimony rambled—Charlie breathed on a dead bird and brought it back to life, he petted rattlesnakes, people didn’t understand how death wasn’t anything to take seriously. But besides the prattling, there were serious charges. According to Gypsy, Gary Hinman was killed by Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, and Leslie Van Houten, and Linda masterminded the Cielo and Waverly Drive murders because she was in love with Bobby Beausoleil and wanted to commit copycat crimes so he would be set free. Charlie had nothing at all to do with it. During the days that Family members testified, word spread that Tex Watson had been ruled competent to stand trial. His murder case would come to court as soon as the penalty phase trial of Charlie, Susan, Pat, and Leslie concluded.

Susan Atkins took the stand on February 9. She immediately testified that she participated in the Cielo and Waverly murders. She also killed Gary Hinman, she insisted. Then Susan offered grisly details about slaughtering Sharon Tate. Charlie, she insisted, had nothing to do with the August 9 murders because he was back at Spahn Ranch, sleeping.

Judge Older took pity on the jury and ended their sequestration. They went home on February 16 for the first time in more than eight months, and returned to court the next day to hear testimony by Pat Krenwinkel. Pat supported Susan’s account that Linda Kasabian plotted the copycat murders, and told jurors about stabbing Abigail Folger and mutilating Leno LaBianca. Leslie followed Pat to the stand, but was vague about whether it had been she or Mary Brunner who was involved in killing Gary Hinman. She claimed that she couldn’t remember Charlie ordering any murders. Leslie agreed that somewhere, sometime she might
have mentioned something about Charlie going into the LaBianca house, but when the prosecutor pressed her, she shouted, “Mr. Bugliosi, you are an evil man!” With Linda Kasabian now set up as the real criminal mastermind, the defense recalled her to the stand. But Linda calmly held her ground during aggressive questioning. She strongly denied everything Gypsy, Susan, Pat, and Leslie had claimed.

Three Family members were the final defense witnesses. Cathy Gillies said Charlie had nothing to do with any murders, there had never been any discussion of a race war, and the Tate-LaBianca murders were copycat killings to free Bobby Beausoleil. She was only sorry that on the night the LaBiancas died, she couldn’t go along and participate because there wasn’t enough room in the car. Mary Brunner testified that the police told her she’d be charged with Gary Hinman’s murder if she didn’t implicate Charlie. Nancy Pitman swore that Charlie never left the ranch on the night of the LaBianca murders. She was dismissed from the stand on March 16 and the defense rested. Charlie never testified on his own behalf—he’d said what he wanted to in his hour-long harangue back in January. Nor did he want to distract jurors’ attention from the confessions by Susan, Pat, and Leslie.

In the penalty phase of the trial, during final arguments the prosecution made a statement, the defense followed, the prosecution had a second turn and the defense went last. It took Vincent Bugliosi just ten minutes to present the first of his two closing arguments. If the Tate-LaBianca slayings didn’t merit the death penalty for all four perpetrators, he told the jury, then no murders ever would: “These defendants are human monsters, human mutations.”

Irving Kanarek conceded that “Mr. Manson is not all good,” but “Mr. Manson is innocent of these matters that are before us.” For three days, Kanarek rambled: Charlie was only on trial so somebody (he didn’t specify Bugliosi, but his intent was clear) in the District Attorney’s Office “can have a gold star.” Susan, Pat, and Leslie all said Charlie wasn’t involved in the murders, and they also claimed they weren’t sorry for slaughtering seven people. If they were lying about Charlie not ordering them to kill, why wouldn’t they lie some more and say that they were sorry for their victims, in case the jury might take pity on them and not
sentence them to death? And about those five people who died at Cielo, Kanarek assured the jury, if at least some of them hadn’t been “engaged in a narcotic episode of some type, these events would not have taken place.” When Kanarek finally concluded, Daye Shinn argued that Susan Atkins was still young, just twenty-two. No matter what she had done, she might still be rehabilitated if she wasn’t sentenced to death. Maxwell Keith suggested that jurors consider “the roll call of the living dead,” the Family members whose lives “have been so damaged.” As for his client, “I am not asking you to forgive her. . . . She deserves to live. What she did was not done by the real Leslie.” Paul Fitzgerald noted that his twenty-three-year-old client, Pat, had so far lived “approximately 200,000 hours.” The two nights of murder totaled perhaps three hours. “Is she to be judged solely on what occurred during three of 200,000 hours?”

Charlie felt less confident after the four defense attorneys’ initial summations. Before court convened on the morning of March 23, he called over to Bugliosi, “If I get the death penalty, there is going to be a lot of bloodletting, because I am not going to take it.” Informed of the threat, Judge Older immediately sequestered the jury again since it was the kind of public outburst that was bound to make the papers.