Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Mrs. Van Houten did not testify to the period which followed; possibly she knew little if anything about it. From interviews I’d learned that Leslie went full spectrum. The former nun was now anxious to “try anything,” be it drugs or answering sex-partner ads in the Los Angeles Free Press. A long-time friend stopped dating her because she had become “too kinky.”

  For a few months Leslie lived in a commune in Northern California. During this period she met Bobby Beausoleil, who had his own wandering “family,” consisting of Gypsy and a girl named Gail. Leslie became a part of the ménage à quatre. Gail, however, was jealous, and the arguments became near constant. First Gypsy split, moving to Spahn Ranch. Then, shortly after, Leslie followed, also joining Manson. She was nineteen.

  About this time Leslie called her mother and told her that she had decided to drop out and that she wouldn’t be hearing from her again. She didn’t, until Leslie’s arrest.

  Keith asked Mrs. Van Houten: “How do you feel about your daughter now?”

  A. “I love Leslie very much.”

  Q. “As much as you always have?”

  A. “More.”

  As the parents testified, one realized that they too were victims, just as were the relatives of the deceased.

  Calling the defendants’ parents first was a bad tactical error on the part of the defense. Their testimony and plight evoked sympathy from everyone in the courtroom. They should have been called at the very end of the defense’s case, just before the jury went out to deliberate. As it was, by the time the other witnesses had testified, they were almost forgotten.

  Shinn called no witnesses on behalf of Susan Atkins. Her father, Shinn told me, had refused to have anything more to do with her. All he wanted, he said, was to get his hands on Manson.

  A reporter from the Los Angeles Times had located Charles Manson’s mother in a city in the Pacific Northwest. Remarried and living under another name, she claimed Charles’ tales of childhood deprivation were fictions, adding, “He was a spoiled, pampered child.”

  Kanarek did not use her as a witness. Instead, he called Samuel Barrett, Manson’s parole officer.

  Barrett was a most unimpressive witness. He thought he first met Manson “about 1956, around that” he couldn’t remember whether Manson was on probation or parole; he stated that since he was responsible for 150 persons, he couldn’t be expected to recall everything about each one.

  Repeatedly, Barrett minimized the seriousness of the various charges against Manson prior to the murders. The reason he did this was obvious: otherwise, one might wonder why he hadn’t revoked Manson’s parole. One still did wonder. Manson associated with ex-cons, known narcotics users, and minor girls. He failed to report his whereabouts, made few attempts to obtain employment, repeatedly lied regarding his activities. During the first six months of 1969 alone, he had been charged, among other things, with grand theft auto, narcotics possession, rape, contributing to the delinquency of a minor. There was more than ample reason for parole revocation.

  During a recess one of the reporters approached me in the hall. “God, Vince,” he exclaimed, “did it ever occur to you that if Barrett had revoked Manson’s parole in, say, April of 1969, Sharon and the others would probably still be alive today?”

  I declined comment, citing the gag order as an excuse. But it had occurred to me. I had thought about it a great deal.

  On direct, Barrett had testified that there was nothing in Manson’s prison records to indicate that he was a behavioral risk. Over Kanarek’s objections, on cross-examination I had him examine the folder on Manson’s attempted escape from federal custody in 1957.

  The parade of perjurers began with little Squeaky.

  Lynette Alice Fromme, twenty-two, testified that she was from an upper-middle-class background, her father an aeronautical engineer. When she was seventeen, she said, her father kicked her out of the house. “And I was in Venice, sitting down on a curb crying, when a man walked up and said, ‘Your father kicked you out of the house, did he?’

  “And that was Charlie.”

  Squeaky placed great importance on the fact that she had met Manson before any of the other girls, excepting only Mary Brunner.

  In questioning her about the Family, Fitzgerald asked: “Did you have a leader?”

  A. “No, we were riding on the wind.”

  No leader, but—

  “Charlie is our father in that he would—he would point out things to us.”

  Charlie was just like everyone else, but—

  “I would crawl off in a corner and be reading a book, and he would pass me and tell me what it said in the book…And also he knew our thoughts…He was always happy, always…He would go into the bathroom sometimes to comb his hair, and there would be a whole crowd of people in there watching him because he had so much fun.”

  Squeaky had trouble denying the teachings of her lord and master. When Fitzgerald tried to minimize the importance of the Beatles’ White Album, she replied, “There is a lot in that album, there is a lot.” Although she claimed, “I never heard Charlie utter the words ‘helter skelter,’” she went on to say that “it is a matter of evolution and balance” and “the black people are coming to the top, as it should be.”

  Obviously these were not the answers Fitzgerald wanted, and apparently he betrayed his reaction.

  FROMME “How come you’re making those faces?”

  FITZGERALD “I’m sorry, continue.”

  Calling counsel to the bench, Judge Older said, “She can only harm the defendants doing what she is doing.”

  I explained to Older, “If the Court is wondering why I am not objecting, it is because I feel that her testimony is helpful to the prosecution.”

  So helpful, in fact, that there was little need for cross-examination. Among the questions I had intended to ask her, for example, was one Kanarek now asked: “Did you think that Charles Manson was Jesus Christ?”

  Squeaky hesitated a moment before answering. Would she be the apostle who denied Jesus? Apparently she decided she would not, for she replied: “I think that the Christians in the caves and in the woods were a lot of kids just living and being without guilt, without shame, being able to take off their clothes and lay in the sun…And I see Jesus Christ as a man who came from a woman who did not know who the father of her baby was.”

  Squeaky was the least untruthful of the Family members who testified. Yet she was so damaging to the defense that thereafter Fitzgerald let the other defense attorneys call the witnesses.

  Keith called Brenda McCann, t/n Nancy Laura Pitman, nineteen. Though not unattractive, Brenda came across as a tough, vicious little girl, filled with hostility that was just waiting to erupt.

  Her father “designed the guidance controls of missiles over in the Pentagon,” she said. He also kicked her out of the house when she was sixteen, she claimed. The dropout from Hollywood High School asserted there was no such thing as a Family, and Charlie “was not a leader at all. It was more like Charlie followed us around and took care of us.”

  But, as with Squeaky and the girls who would follow her, it was obvious that Brenda’s world revolved around a single axis. He was nobody special but “Charlie would sit down and all the animals would gather round him, donkeys and coyotes and things…And one time he reached down and petted a rattlesnake.”

  Questioned by Kanarek, Brenda testified that Linda “would take LSD every day…took speed…Linda loved Tex very much…Linda followed Tex everywhere…”

  On cross-examination I asked Brenda: “Would you give up your life for Charles Manson if he asked you to?”

  A. “Many times he has given you his life.”

  Q. “Just answer the question, Brenda.”

  A. “Yes, I would.”

  Q. “Would you lie on the stand for Charles Manson?”

  A. “No, I would tell the truth on the stand.”

  Q. “So you would die for him, but not lie for him?”

  A. “That’s right.”


  Q. “Do you feel that lying under oath is a more serious matter than dying, Brenda?”

  A. “I don’t take dying all that seriously myself.”

  All these witnesses were extremely antagonistic toward their real families. Sandra Good, for example, claimed that her father, a San Diego stockbroker, had disowned her, neglecting to mention that this was only after he had sent her thousands of dollars and was threatened by Manson if he didn’t give her more.

  Manson had severed their umbilical cords while fastening one of his own. And throughout their testimony it showed. Even more than Squeaky and Brenda, Sandy rhapsodized on Manson’s “magical powers.” She told the story of how Charlie had breathed on a dead bird and brought it back to life. “I believe his voice could shatter this building if he so desired…Once he yelled and a window broke.”

  It was not until the penalty trial that the jury learned of the vigil of the Family members on the corner of Temple and Broadway. Rather movingly, Sandy testified to life there. “You can hardly see the sky most of the time for the smog. They are always digging; every day there is a new project going; something is always under construction. They are always ripping out something and putting something in, usually of a concrete nature. It is insane out there. It’s madness, and the more I am out there the more I feel this X. I am X’d out of it.”

  After I’d declined to cross-examine Sandy, she very angrily asked, “Why didn’t you ask me any questions?”

  “Because you said nothing which hurt the People’s case, Sandy,” I replied. “In fact, you helped it.”

  I had anticipated that Sandy would testify that Manson wasn’t even at Spahn Ranch at the time the murders had occurred. When she didn’t, I knew the defense had decided to abandon the idea of using an alibi defense. Which meant they had something else in mind. But what?

  Manson and the three female defendants had been allowed to return to court during the penalty phase. They were much quieter now, far more subdued, as if it had finally got through to them that this “play,” as Krenwinkel had characterized it, might cost them their lives. While Squeaky and the other Manson girls testified, their mentor looked thoughtful and pulled on his goatee, as if to say: They’re telling it like it is.

  The female witnesses wore their best clothes for the occasion. It was obvious that they were both proud and happy to be up there helping Charlie.

  The jurors shared a common expression—incredulity. Few even bothered to take notes. I suspected that all of them were mulling over the astonishing contrast. On the stand the girls talked of love, music, and babies. Yet while the love and the music and the babies were going on, this same group was going out and butchering human beings. And to them, amazingly enough, there was no inconsistency, no conflict between love and murder!

  By February 4, I was fairly sure, from the questions Kanarek had been asking the witnesses, that Manson was not going to take the stand. This was my biggest disappointment during the entire trial, that I wouldn’t have the chance to break Charlie on cross-examination.

  That same day our office learned that Charles “Tex” Watson had been returned to Los Angeles and ruled competent to stand trial.

  Only three days after his transfer to Atascadero, Watson had begun eating regular meals. Within a month, one of the psychiatrists who examined him wrote: “There is no evidence of abnormal behavior at the present time except his silence, which is purposeful and with reason.” Another later noted: “Psychological testing gave a scatter pattern of responses inconsistent with any recognized form of mental illness…” In short, Tex was faking it. All this information would be useful, I knew, if Tex tried to plead insanity during his trial, which was now scheduled to follow the current proceedings.

  Catherine Share, aka Gypsy, was the defense’s most effective liar. She was also, at twenty-eight, the oldest female member of the Family. And, of all its members, she had the most unusual background.

  She was born in Paris in 1942, her father a Hungarian violinist, her mother a German-Jewish refugee. Both parents, members of the French underground, committed suicide during the war. At eight, she was adopted and brought to the United States by an American family. Her adoptive mother, who was suffering from cancer, committed suicide when Catherine was sixteen. Her adoptive father, a psychologist, was blind. She cared for him until he remarried, at which time she left home.

  A graduate of Hollywood High School, she had attended college for three years; married; divorced a year later. A violin virtuoso since childhood, with an unusually beautiful singing voice, she had obtained work in a number of movies. It was on the set of one, in Topanga Canyon, that she became involved with Bobby Beausoleil, who had a minor role. About two months later Beausoleil introduced her to Charles Manson. Though it was, on her part, love at first sight, she continued traveling with the Beausoleil menage for another six months, before splitting for Spahn Ranch. Although she was an avowed Communist when she joined the Family, Manson soon convinced her that his dogma was ordained. “Of all the girls,” Paul Watkins had told me, “Gypsy was most in love with Charlie.”

  She was also the most eloquent in his defense. But, though brighter and more articulate than most of the others, she too occasionally slipped up.

  “We are all facing the same sentence,” she told the jury. “We are all in a gas chamber right here in L.A., a slow-acting one. The air is going away from us in every city. There is going to be no more air, and no more water, and the food is dying. They are poisoning you. The food you are eating is poisoning you. There is going to be no more earth, no more trees. Man, especially white man, is killing this earth.

  “But those aren’t Charles Manson’s thoughts, those are my thoughts,” she quickly added.

  During her first day on the stand Gypsy dropped no bombshells. She did try to rebut various parts of the trial testimony. She said that Leslie often went out and stole things, to explain away the back-house incident. She claimed that it was Linda who suggested stealing the $5,000. She also said that Linda didn’t want Tanya, and had dumped her on the Family.

  It was not until her second day on the stand, on redirect by Kanarek, and immediately after Kanarek had asked to approach the witness and speak to her privately, that Gypsy suddenly came up with an alternative motive—one that was designed to clear Manson of any involvement in the murders.

  Gypsy claimed that it was Linda Kasabian, not Charles Manson, who had masterminded the Tate-LaBianca murders! Linda was in love with Bobby Beausoleil, Gypsy said. When Bobby was arrested for the Hinman murder, Linda proposed that the girls commit other murders which were similar to the Hinman slaying, in the belief that the police would connect the crimes and, realizing that Beausoleil was in custody when these other murders occurred, set him free.

  The “copycat” motive was in itself not a surprise. In fact, Aaron Stovitz had suggested it as one of several possible motives in his interview with the reporters from Rolling Stone. There was only one thing wrong with it. It wasn’t true. But in an attempt to clear Manson and to cast doubt on the Helter Skelter motive, the defense witnesses, starting with Gypsy, now began manufacturing their own bogus evidence.

  The scenario they had so belatedly fashioned was as transparent as it was self-serving.

  Gypsy claimed that on the afternoon of August 8, 1969, Linda explained the plan to her and asked her if she wanted to go along. Horrified, Gypsy instead fled to the mountains. When she returned, the murders had already occurred and Linda was gone.

  Gypsy further testified that Bobby Beausoleil was innocent of the Hinman murder; all he had done was drive a car belonging to Hinman. And Manson wasn’t involved either. The Hinman murder had been committed by Linda, Sadie, and Leslie!

  Maxwell Keith quickly objected. At the bench he told Judge Older: “It sounds to me like this girl is leading up to testimony of an admission by my client to her participation in the Hinman, Tate, and LaBianca murders. This is outrageous!”

  THE COURT “I don’t know if Mr. Kanarek ha
s the faintest idea of what he wants to do.”

  FITZGERALD “I am afraid so.”

  KANAREK “I know exactly.”

  Keith observed: “I talked to this witness yesterday at the County Jail about her testimony. It was sort of innocuous testimony regarding Leslie. And all of a sudden, boom, we are being bombed out of the courtroom.”

  On cross-examination I asked: “Isn’t it true, Gypsy, that what you are trying to do is clear Charles Manson at the expense of Leslie and Sadie?”

  A. “I wouldn’t say that. No, it isn’t true.”

  To destroy her credibility, I then impeached Gypsy with a number of inconsistent statements she had previously made. Only then did I return to the bogus motive.

  Gypsy had testified that immediately after hearing of the Tate-LaBianca murders, she was sure that Linda, Leslie, and Sadie were involved.

  I asked her: “If in your mind Linda, Sadie, and Leslie were somehow involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders, and Mr. Manson was innocent and had nothing to do with it, why haven’t you come forward before today to tell the authorities about this conversation you had with Linda?”

  A. “I didn’t want anything to do with it. I don’t believe in coming to you at all.”

  Earlier on cross-examination Gypsy had admitted that she loved Manson, that she would willingly die for him. After reminding her of these statements, I said: “All right, and you believe he had nothing to do with these murders, right?”

  A. “Right.”

  Q. “And yet you let him stay in jail all these months without coming forward with this valuable information?” Gypsy evaded a straight reply.

  Q. “When was the first time that you told anyone about this infamous conversation that you had with Linda when she asked you to go out and murder someone?”

  A. “Right here.”

  Q. “Today?”