Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

by Vincent Bugliosi

  There were other surprises in the Brown report. Krenwinkel also told the doctor that she had fled to Mobile “because she was afraid of Manson finding her and killing her”* that on the day of the Tate murders she was coming off an acid trip and wasn’t on any drugs that night; and that following the murders “she was always fearful that they would be arrested for what they had done, but ‘Charlie said nobody could touch us.’”

  This latter statement proved that Katie was well aware of the consequences of her acts.

  This was important, since it was obvious from their questions that the defense attorneys were trying to imply that the three female defendants were insane at the time they committed these murders.

  Under California law an insanity plea must be entered before the start of the trial. A separate sanity phase is then held, after the guilt trial. The defense, however, had not entered such a plea at the proper time. Therefore, in one sense, the question of whether the defendants were sane or insane was irrelevant, since this was not an issue which the jury would have to decide. In another sense, however, it was crucial. If the defense could cause the jury to doubt the sanity of the defendants, this could strongly influence their vote on the penalty they were to pay.

  Suddenly I was not only having to prove Manson’s guilt all over again, I was also having to prove that the girls were legally sane.

  In most states, including California, the legal test of insanity is the M’Naghten Rule. Among other things, M’Naghten provides that if a defendant, as a result of mental disease or defect, does not realize that what he did was wrong, then he is legally insane. It is not enough, however, that he personally believe his acts were not wrong. Were this so, every man would be a law unto himself. For instance, a man could rape a dozen women, say, “I don’t think it’s wrong to rape,” and therefore evade criminal punishment. The clincher is whether he knows that society thinks his actions are wrong. If he does, then he cannot be legally insane. And deliberate acts to avoid detection—such as cutting telephone wires, eradicating prints, changing identities, disposing of incriminating evidence—constitute circumstantial evidence that the defendant knows society views his acts as wrong.

  Earlier Dr. Tweed had testified that Patricia Krenwinkel didn’t believe these murders were wrong. I now asked him on cross: “In your opinion, when Patricia Krenwinkel was committing these murders, did she believe that society thought it was wrong to do what she was doing?”

  A. “I believe so.”

  BUGLIOSI “No further questions.”

  On March 4, Manson trimmed his beard to a neat fork and completely shaved his head, because, he told newsmen, “I am the Devil and the Devil always has a bald head.”

  Interestingly enough, this time the three female defendants did not follow Manson’s example. Nor, when he occasionally acted up in court, did they parrot him, as they had in the guilt trial. Obviously it had got across to them, albeit belatedly, that such antics only proved Manson’s domination.

  While denying that LSD can cause brain damage, the next witness, psychiatrist Keith Ditman, testified that the drug can have a detrimental effect on a person’s personality. He also stated that a person using LSD is more susceptible to the influence of a second party, and that Leslie’s use of the drug, plus Manson’s influence over her, could have been significant factors in causing her to participate in a homicide.

  VAN HOUTEN “This is all such a big lie. I was influenced by the war in Vietnam and TV.”

  On cross-examination I got Ditman to concede that not all people react the same to LSD, that it depends upon the personality structure of the person ingesting the drug. I then brought out that Ditman had never examined Leslie; therefore, not knowing what her personality structure was, he couldn’t say what effect, if any, LSD had on her mental state.

  Nor, turning this around, not having examined her, could he say for certain whether she did or did not have inherent homicidal tendencies.

  Keith, on redirect, asked Ditman: “What is meant by inherent homicidal tendencies?”

  A. “That a person has, let’s say, more than the average human being, a killer instinct…”

  Q. “Psychiatrically speaking, do some people have greater killer instincts than others, in your opinion?”

  A. “Well, some people have a more covert and overt hostility and aggression. In that sense, they are more capable of committing crimes of violence, such as murder.”

  Dr. Ditman had just articulated one of the chief points of the final argument I was preparing to give at the close of the penalty phase.

  Dr. Joel Fort, the almost legendary “hippie doctor of the Haight,” didn’t look the part. The founder of the National Center for Solving Social and Health Problems was fortyish, dressed conservatively, talked quietly, didn’t have long hair (in fact he was bald). Angered by his testimony, Manson shouted, “If he ever seen a hippie, it was in the street while he was driving by in his car.”

  Manson’s anger had good cause. Even on direct, Dr. Fort was more helpful to the prosecution than the defense. The author of one book on drugs and co-author of eleven others, Dr. Fort stated that “a drug by itself does not perform a magical transformation—there are many other factors.”

  On cross-examination I brought out one. Fort said: “It was my feeling [after examining Leslie Van Houten] that Mr. Manson’s influence played a very significant role in the commission of the murders.”

  Another very crucial point came out on cross. To negate the defense’s new argument that the girls were on LSD during the murders, and therefore less responsible for their acts, I asked Fort: “Isn’t it true, Doctor, that people under the influence of LSD do not tend to be violent?”

  A. “That is true.”

  Still attacking the prosecution’s theory of Manson’s domination, Kanarek asked Fort: “Now, do you know of any cases where someone has—I mean, other than in the Frankenstein type of picture—do you know where someone has sat down and programmed people to go out, let’s say, and commit armed robberies, burglaries, assaults? Do you know of any such instances?”

  A. “Yes. In one sense, that is what we do when we program soldiers in a war…The Army uses a peer group technique and the patriotic ideals that are instilled in citizens of a particular country to bring about this pattern of behavior.”

  Dr. Fort was typical of many persons who, though opposed to capital punishment in principle, felt that these murders were so savage and senseless, so totally lacking in mitigating circumstances, that justice demanded that these persons be sentenced to death. I learned this in a conversation with him in the hall outside court, in which he stated that he was extremely unhappy that he had been called to testify for the defense in this case. Greatly concerned about the stain the Manson Family had cast on all young people, Dr. Fort offered to testify for the prosecution when I brought Charles “Tex” Watson to trial, an offer which I later accepted.

  It was in just such a hallway interview that I discovered how potentially damaging to the defense their next witness could be. Learning that Keith intended to call Dr. Joel Simon Hochman during the afternoon session, I cut my lunch hour short so I could spend a half hour interviewing the psychiatrist.

  To my amazement, I learned that Maxwell Keith hadn’t even interviewed his own witness. He was calling him to the stand “cold.” Had he talked to him for just five minutes, Keith would never have called Hochman. For the doctor, who had interviewed Leslie, felt that the use of LSD wasn’t an important influence on her; rather, he felt there was something very seriously wrong with Leslie Van Houten.

  In his testimony and the psychiatric report he wrote following the examination, Dr. Hochman called Leslie Van Houten “a spoiled little princess” who was unable “to suffer frustration and delay of gratification.” From childhood on, she’d had extreme difficulties with impulse control. When she didn’t get her way, she went into rages, for example beating her adopted sister with a shoe.

  “From a position of over-all perspective,” Hoc
hman noted, “it is quite clear that Leslie Van Houten was a psychologically loaded gun which went off as a consequence of the complex intermeshing of highly unlikely and bizarre circumstances.”

  Hochman confirmed something I had long suspected. Of the three female defendants, Leslie Van Houten was the least committed to Charles Manson. “She listened to [Manson’s] talk of philosophy, but it wasn’t her trip.” Nor could she “get that in to Charlie sexually, and that bothered her a lot. ‘I couldn’t get it on with Charlie like I could with Bobby,’ she said…” According to Hochman, Leslie was obsessed with beauty. “Bobby was beautiful, Charles was not, physically. Charles was short. That is something that always turned me off.”

  Yet she killed at his command.

  Keith asked Hochman: “Doctor, did you ask her whether or not Mr. Manson, during her association with him, had any influence over her in her thought process and in her conduct and activity?”

  A. “She denies it. But I don’t buy that.”

  Q. “Why don’t you buy that?”

  A. “Well, I don’t understand why she would stay on the scene that long if there was nothing there for her, on some unconscious basis.”

  As I’d observe in my final argument, many came to Spahn Ranch but only a few stayed; those who did, did so because they found the black-hearted medicine Manson was peddling very palatable.

  According to Hochman, in talking to him Leslie professed “a kind of primitive Christianity, love for the world, acceptance of all things. And I asked her, ‘Well, professing that, how can it be you would murder someone?’ She said, ‘Well that was something inside of me too.’”

  Maxwell Keith should have stopped right there. Instead, he asked Hochman: “How do you interpret that?”

  A. “I think it’s rather realistic. I think that in reality it was something inside of her, despite her chronic denial of the emotional aspects of herself, that a rage was there.”

  Nor did Keith leave it at that. He now asked: “When you say a rage was there, what do you mean by that?”

  A. “In my opinion it would take a rage, an emotional reaction to kill someone. I think it is unquestionable that that feeling was inside of her.”

  Q. “Bearing in mind that she had never seen or heard of Mrs. LaBianca, in your opinion there was some hate in her when this occurred?”

  A. “Well, I think it would make it easier for her not to know Mrs.

  LaBianca…It is hard to kill someone that you have good feelings towards. I don’t think there was anything specific about Mrs.

  LaBianca.

  “Let me make myself clear: Mrs. LaBianca was an object, a blank screen upon which Leslie projected her feelings, much as a patient projects his feeling on an analyst whom he doesn’t know…feelings towards her mother, her father, toward the establishment…

  “I think she was a very angry girl for a long time, a very alienated girl for a long time, and the anger and rage was associated with that.”

  Hochman was articulating one of the main points of my final summation: namely, that Leslie, Sadie, Katie, and Tex had a hostility and rage within them that pre-existed Charles Manson. They were different from Linda Kasabian, Paul Watkins, Brooks Poston, Juan Flynn, and T. J. When Manson asked them to kill for him, each said no.

  Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten said yes.

  So there had to be something special about these people that caused them to kill. Some kind of inner flaw. Apart from Charlie.

  Though he had badly damaged his own case, Keith had tried to put the hat on Manson. Fitzgerald, in his examination of Hochman, did just the opposite. He sought to minimize the importance of Manson’s influence over Leslie. Asking Hochman what Manson’s influence actually was, he received this reply: “His ideas, his presence, the role he played in his relationship to her, served to reinforce a lot of her feelings and attitudes. It served to reinforce and give her a way of continuing her general social alienation, her alienation from the establishment.”

  Q. “So, really, all you are saying is that (A) Manson could possibly have had some influence, and (B), if he did have some influence, it would only contribute to the lowering of her restraints on her impulsiveness, is that correct?”

  A. “Yes.”

  Q. “So any influence Manson had on Leslie Van Houten, in terms of your professional opinion, is tenuous at best, is that correct?”*

  A. “Let me give you another example that may make it clearer…

  Suppose someone comes in and says, ‘Let’s eat the whole apple pie.’ Obviously your temptation is stimulated by the suggestion, but your final decision on whether or not to eat the whole pie or just one piece comes out of you. So the other person is influential, but is not a final arbiter or decider of that situation…

  “Someone can tell you to shoot someone, but your decision to do that comes from inside you.”

  Kanarek, when his turn came, picked up the scent. “And so you are telling us then, in layman’s language, that when someone takes a knife and stabs, the decision to do that is a personal decision?”

  A. “In the ultimate analysis it is.”

  Q. “It is a personal decision of the person who does the stabbing?”

  A. “Yes.”

  Ironically, Kanarek and I were now on the same side. Both of us were seeking to prove that, even independent of Manson, these girls had murder within them.

  Manson was very impressed by Hochman and at first wanted to be interviewed by him. I was relieved, however, when he later abandoned the idea. I wasn’t greatly worried about Manson conning Hochman. But even if Hochman didn’t buy Manson’s story, Kanarek would make sure he repeated it on the stand. Thus, using Hochman as a conduit, Manson could get almost everything he wanted before the jury, without being subject to my cross-examination.

  Hochman found in all three girls “much evidence in their history of early alienation, of early antisocial or deviant behavior.” Even before joining the Family, Leslie had more emotional problems than the average person. Sadie actively sought to be everything her father warned her not to be. “She thinks now, in retrospect,” Hochman noted, “that even without Charles Manson she would have ended up in jail for manslaughter or assault with a deadly weapon.” Katie first had sex at fifteen. She never saw the boy again, and she suffered tremendous guilt because of the experience. Manson eradicated that guilt. He also, in letting her join the Family, gave her the acceptance she desperately craved.

  Of the three, Hochman felt Sadie had a little more remorse than the other two—she often talked of wishing her life were over. Yet he also noted, “One is struck by the absence of a conventional sense of morality or conscience in this girl.” And he testified, “She does not seem to manifest any evidence of discomfort or anxiety about her present circumstances, or her conviction and possible death sentence. On the contrary, she seemed to manifest a remarkable peacefulness and self-acceptance in her present state.”

  According to Hochman, all three girls denied “any sense of guilt whatever about anything.” And he felt that intellectually they actually believed there is no right or wrong, that morality is a relative thing. “However, I, as a psychiatrist, know that you cannot rationally do away with the feelings that exist on the irrational, unconscious level. You cannot tell yourself that killing is O.K. intellectually when you have grown up all your life feeling that killing is wrong.”

  In short, Hochman believed that as human beings the girls felt some guilt deep down inside, even though they consciously suppressed it.

  Keith asked Hochman: “In your opinion, Doctor, would Leslie be susceptible or respond to intensive therapy?”

  A. “Possibly.”

  Q. “In other words, you don’t feel that she is such a lost soul that she could never be rehabilitated?”

  A. “No, I don’t think she is that lost a soul, no.”

  To a psychiatrist, no one is beyond redemption. This is essential, standard testimony. Yet only one of the defense attorneys,
Maxwell Keith, asked the question, and then only on redirect.

  Earlier I’d brought out that Hochman had only the word of the girls that they were on LSD either night. I now asked him: “Have you ever read a reported case in the literature of LSD of any individual who committed murder while under the influence of LSD?”

  A. “No. Suicide, but not murder.”

  As I’d later ask the jury, could Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten, all four, be exceptions?

  A large portion of Hochman’s testimony had dealt with the mental states of the three girls. Susan Atkins was suffering from a diagnosable condition, he said: an early childhood deprivation syndrome which had resulted in a hysterical personality type.

  This was not legal insanity as defined by M’Naghten.

  Leslie Van Houten was an immature, unusually impulsive person, who tended to act spontaneously without reflection.

  Nor was this legal insanity as defined by M’Naghten.

  In his report on Krenwinkel, Dr. Claude Brown, the Mobile psychiatrist, had stated that “at the time I saw Miss Krenwinkel, she showed a schizophrenic reaction.” He added, however, that “I do not state with any certainty that this psychosis existed at the time of the alleged murders.”

  Schizophrenia may be legal insanity as defined by M’Naghten. But Dr. Brown’s opinion was qualified, and when Fitzgerald asked Dr. Hochman if, on the basis of his examination of Krenwinkel, he agreed that she was, or had been, schizophrenic, Hochman replied, “I would say no.”

  It remained to bring these points across to the jury, in terms they could easily understand.

  On recross-examination I had Hochman define the word “psychotic.” He replied that it meant “a loss of contact with reality.”

  I then asked him: “At the present time, Doctor, do you feel any of these three female defendants are psychotic?”

  A. “No.”

  Q. “In your opinion, do you feel that any of these three female defendants have ever been psychotic?”