Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover (63 page)

(13) Little Paul Watkins. A good-looking, smooth-talking young man, he became Manson’s chief procurer and self-styled second-in-command. He would leave Manson to follow prospector Paul Crockett in Death Valley.

(14) Terry Melcher, the wunderkind record producer on whom Manson eventually pinned all his hopes for superstardom. Melcher and his girlfriend Candice Bergen lived at the Cielo Drive house before Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate.

(15) Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate at their wedding in London in January 1968.

(16) The Cielo Drive house in Benedict Canyon.

(17) Charles “Tex” Watson, seen here after his extradition from Texas to California. He did most of the killing at Cielo Drive.

(18) Caretaker William Garretson survived the Cielo Drive murders because Patricia Krenwinkel lied to Tex Watson about checking the cottage in which he was hiding. Initially, Garretson was the LAPD’s chief suspect in the killings.

(19) The LaBianca residence in Los Feliz. Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were killed there on the night after the Cielo Drive murders.

(20)
Left to right:
Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten on their way to court on August 11, 1970. Each woman gouged an X onto her forehead in imitation of Manson, who had previously carved an X onto his.

(21) Manson is led from court after deferring a plea to the murder charges against him. He is wearing the buckskin outfit made for him by Family women.

(22) Key witness Ronnie Howard waits to testify that Susan Atkins confessed the Tate murders to her in jail.

(23) Vincent Bugliosi, the ambitious, hard-charging prosecutor whose reputation was made in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial.
Helter Skelter
, the account of the trial that he would later write with Curt Gentry, became the best-selling true-crime book of all time.

(24) The defense team.
Left to right:
Daye Shinn, Irving Kanarek, Paul Fitzgerald, and Ronald Hughes. Kanarek’s courtroom tactics were so annoying that even Manson complained to the judge about them.

(25) Former Family member Linda Kasabian, the star witness for the prosecution.