Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

by Vincent Bugliosi

  As to some of those whose lives brought them into contact with Manson and his Family in a significant way, Doris Day’s son, record producer Terry Melcher, at whose former home the Tate murders took place and whom Manson unsuccessfully sought to have record him and his music, is now primarily in the hotel and real estate business on the West Coast. He continues, however, to be involved in the music world. Since 1985, he has been the producer of the Beach Boys’ recordings. Terry and his wife have become quite active in the civic affairs of the community in which they live.

  Gregg Jakobson, who met Manson at Dennis Wilson’s home and was the one who introduced Melcher to Manson, whose philosophy on life he found intellectually stimulating, is, to quote him, “half retired and leading the good life” in the charming oceanside community of Laguna Beach, California. Gregg and his wife, comic Lou Costello’s daughter, divorced and he has not remarried. He is the part-owner of a Chinese restaurant in nearby Newport Beach, buys and sells antiques, and does a little music composition working with local musicians.

  Dennis Wilson, the drummer for the Beach Boys at whose home on Sunset Boulevard Manson, without invitation, moved into with his Family in the late spring of 1968, and who told me, when I sought musical tapes he had made of Manson, that he had destroyed them because “the vibrations connected with them don’t belong to this earth,” drowned on December 27, 1983, at Marina del Rey, California, while diving off a dock near a friend’s boat. The coroner’s report provided a possible explanation for the drowning. The alcohol level in Wilson’s blood was .26 percent, nearly three times the legal limit for operating a motor vehicle in the state of California. Traces of cocaine and Valium were also found in his system.*

  George Spahn didn’t much care for the rainy Oregon weather nor the ranch he bought there in 1971, and after a year returned to Los Angeles and moved back with his wife, from whom he had been legally separated. Spahn died in late 1974 at the age of eighty-five. One of Spahn’s daughters told me that Ruby Pearl, the one-time circus bareback rider and horse wrangler who helped Spahn run the ranch, had accompanied Spahn to Oregon. She bought a smaller ranch in Oregon after Spahn reunited with his wife, and is still living there.

  In 1979, Ronnie Howard died in a Los Angeles hospital from injuries sustained in a beating by two unknown male assailants. Laurence Merrick, who produced the 1970 Academy Award-nominated documentary Manson, was shot to death in 1977 at his Hollywood studio. The police concluded that both murders were unrelated to Manson or his Family.

  After she resolved her parole problems, Virginia Graham opened up a health spa at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel in Honolulu with the $12,000 she received as her share from the Polanski reward money. A survivor, Virginia today is the manager of a fine art gallery in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, and just completed a much expanded version of her 1974 book, The Joy of Hooking, titled Look Who Is Sleeping in My Bed: Madames, Mansions, Murder and Manson. I appreciated what she said about me in her 1974 book, especially in view of Manson’s familiar refrain that I railroaded him. She wrote: “I can’t remember how many times we went down to the District Attorney’s Office to go over my statement with Vincent Bugliosi. I have to say this about Bugliosi. Although I’ve never had much love for authority of any kind, he was absolutely fair, straight and honest. He never once even hinted that I might alter my testimony a little bit to help the state’s case. He was careful to the other extreme, in fact.”

  Spahn Ranch was never rebuilt after it was burned to the ground by brush fires that swept the area from Newhall to the sea in September of 1970. The German company that bought the land from George Spahn never developed it into the dude ranch resort for German tourists they had planned. Today, there are no signs that the murderous Manson Family was ever there. All of the ramshackle structures on the ranch are gone and the property, which was eventually sold to the state of California, is deserted, weed-choked land.

  The Tate residence went through several owners after Rudi Altobelli, the landlord at the time of the murders. The current owner tore the house down in January of 1994 because he didn’t like “the history of the place,” and is in the process of constructing an enormous $10 million home that will tower over all other homes in the area. The LaBianca home was owned for years by a Filipino couple, the wife reportedly being a friend of Imelda Marcos. They sold it recently to their daughter and son-in-law.

  As for the Manson trial participants today, Irving Kanarek, Manson’s lawyer, was ordered to be inactive by the California State Bar on January 29, 1990. He resigned from the bar on October 26, 1990, “with charges pending.” I do not know the basis for the charges (being a privileged matter) nor Kanarek’s present whereabouts.

  Paul Fitzgerald, Patricia Krenwinkel’s lawyer, practices law in Beverly Hills and is a prominent member of the criminal defense bar in the Los Angeles area. Fitzgerald, a fine trial lawyer who continues to win more than his share of cases, manages to do so without sacrificing grace and civility in the courtroom, a place inherently inhospitable to both qualities.

  Daye Shinn, Susan Atkins’ lawyer, was disbarred by the California State Bar on October 16, 1992, for misappropriating a client’s money.

  Maxwell Keith, the urbane lawyer who replaced Ronald Hughes as Leslie Van Houten’s lawyer, is still in the private practice of law in Los Angeles, and this year was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Bar Association.

  The cause of Ronald Hughes’ death in the Sespe Hot Springs area of Ventura County remains a mystery to this day. In 1976, a former member of Manson’s Family, understandably wanting to remain anonymous, called me. Without furnishing any additional or supporting information, he stated categorically that Hughes had been murdered by the Manson Family. Lieutenant Greg Husband of the Ventura County Sheriff’s office reports that since it was never determined whether Hughes’ death was the result of an accident, homicide, or suicide, the Hughes case file is still open, though no investigators are presently assigned to the case. It should be remembered that there is no statute of limitations for the crime of murder.

  I write almost full-time, trying cases on a very selective basis. My two most recent non-fiction books, both published in 1991, are And the Sea Will Tell and Drugs in America: The Case for Victory. I’m presently writing a book on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. My read on the case? Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone.

  Curt Gentry, the co-author of this book, went on to write J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. Published in 1991, it is the definitive biography of Hoover, and in my opinion and that of many others, a literary tour de force.

  My co-prosecutor, Aaron Stovitz, has always wanted (and, I feel, is still eminently qualified) to be a judge. In October of 1991, Aaron, who was retired from the DA’s office, became a part-time Los Angeles Municipal Court commissioner in San Fernando, a city in the northeast section of Los Angeles County. His sense of humor intact, Aaron says he is “the Judge Wapner of the San Fernando Valley,” and orders anyone who comes to his Small Claims court unprepared “to watch two reruns of People’s Court.”

  Judge Charles Older is in retirement, having left the bench in 1987.

  In a three-volume work by Jay Robert Nash called Bloodletters and Badmen, a who’s who of virtually every well-known criminal in American history, Jesse James is on the cover of Volume I, Al Capone on Volume II, and Manson on Volume III. In the elite pantheon of heinous criminals, Manson has made his mark, and he appears to relish this fame, as steeped in infamy as it is.

  In the twenty-five years that have elapsed since the atrocities which Charles Manson ordered and masterminded occurred, mass murder, as never before, has almost become a staple in our society. Disgruntled or demented killers flip out, go into a former place of employment, fast-food establishment, law firm, etc., and murder five to ten people or more. Such carnage no longer shocks a desensitized public when reported on the evening news. But fortunately, as of this date, the singularity of Manson
’s evil and the particular brand of demonic murders he authored have not again been inflicted upon our nation. We can only hope that the ensuing years will be the same.

  V.B.

  June 1994

  * The confusion extends to the arrival times of the units. Officer DeRosa would later testify he arrived about 9:05 A.M., which was before he supposedly received the Code 2. Officer Whisenhunt, who came next, set the time of his arrival at between 9:15 and 9:25, while officer Burbridge, who arrived after both men, testified he was there at 8:40.

  * Why he failed to identify the youth, whom he did know, is unknown. A good guess would be that Garretson was in shock. Also, adding to his confusion, it was about this time that, in looking toward the gate, he saw Winifred Chapman, whom he presumed dead, alive and talking to a police officer.

  * Since Granado, who arrived after DeRosa, Whisenhunt, and Burbridge, also saw them near the entryway, it would appear that the original officers weren’t responsible.

  * Apparently overlooked by LAPD, this was discovered by Roman Polanski when he visited the residence on August 17.

  * One writer would later claim that the police found a vast collection of pornography in the residence, including numerous films and still shots of famous Hollywood stars engaged in various sexual acts. Aside from the above, and several unexposed rolls of videotape, the only photographs found anywhere on the property were a set of wedding pictures and a large number of publicity shots of Sharon Tate.

  The same writer also claimed that a number of black hoods were found in the loft. Apparently he created them out of the same material as his photos, for nothing even resembling a hood was found.

  * LAPD learned of him from Sharon’s parents. They also learned, from one of Sebring’s ex–girl friends, that he had had an argument with the hair stylist a few nights before the murder, in one of the Hollywood discothèques. After checking the man’s alibi, they cleared him of any possible involvement in the murders. The argument itself was minor: he had interrupted Sebring while he was trying to pick up a girl.

  * In 1972 a Los Angeles Superior Court judge broke with precedent and permitted the results of a polygraph test to be received into evidence in a marijuana case.

  * It was possible when Parent asked the time he also set the radio clock.

  * Since no one tried the door before using the key, it is unknown whether it was locked.

  * Some of the details were garbled. It was reported, from example, that the pillowcases were white hoods; that the phrase DEATH TO PIGS had been printed in blood on the refrigerator door, when it actually appeared on the wall in the living room. But enough information had leaked out for the detectives again to have trouble finding polygraph keys.

  * Everything in this book is based on fact. In a few instances the names of persons only tangentially involved have been changed for legal reasons, the cross symbol (+) indicating the substitution of a pseudonym for the true name. The persons were and are real, however, and the incidents depicted are entirely factual.

  * This would be actress Joanna Pettet’s second close brush with violent death. She had also been a friend of Janice Wylie, who, together with her roommate Emily Hoffert, had been murdered in New York City in the summer of 1963, in what became known as the “career girls murder case.”

  * LAPD eventually located the girl and determined that she had not accompanied Sebring to the Tate residence that night.

  * When Officer Whisenhunt searched the guest house following Garretson’s arrest, he noticed the volume control on the set was between 4 and 5.

  * Police shorthand for “also known as” “t/n” means “true name.”

  * She was referring to Mary Brunner, first member of the Family, who had had a child by Manson. At this time the police were unaware of her involvement in the Hinman homicide.

  * The Atkins-Graham-Howard conversations have been taken from LAPD’s taped interviews with Virginia Graham and Ronnie Howard; my interviews with both; their trial testimony; and my interview with Susan Atkins. There are, of course, minor variations in wording. Major discrepancies will be noted.

  † Virginia Graham had seen the owner of the house, Rudi Altobelli, interviewed on TV, and although she couldn’t remember his name, she knew it wasn’t Terry Melcher. This was one reason why, initially, she was inclined to disbelieve Susan Atkins’ story. Susan, however, insisted Melcher was the owner, apparently believing he was.

  * Since neither the deputy nor her lieutenant was available for interviews, therefore making it impossible to present their version of these incidents, pseudonyms have been used for both.

  * Manson told DeCarlo that because he, Manson, was less amply endowed, he needed DeCarlo to keep the girls from running away. This sounds like a Manson con, though DeCarlo maintains it was true.

  * Since the Hinman residence in Malibu and Spahn’s Movie Ranch in Chatsworth were in the same dialing area, this was not a toll call; therefore the telephone company kept no record of it.

  * Beausoleil, Brunner, and Atkins went to Hinman’s residence on Friday, July 25, 1969. Manson slashed Hinman’s ear sometime late that night. Hinman was not killed, however, until Sunday, July 27, and it was not until the following Thursday, July 31, that his body was discovered by LASO, following a report from a friend who had been trying to reach Hinman for several days.

  † Ironically, on July 28, two LASO deputies—Olmstead and Grap—visited Spahn Ranch on another matter. While there they saw the Fiat, ran a spot check on the license, and learned that it belonged to Gary Hinman. Grap knew Hinman; he also knew he was a friend of the people at Spahn Ranch, and therefore didn’t feel there was anything suspicious about the station wagon’s being there. At this time, although Hinman was dead, his body had not yet been discovered.

  After the discovery of the body on July 31, LASO put out a “want” on Hinman’s vehicles. Grap didn’t learn of it, or Hinman’s death, until much later. If he had known, of course, he could have directed the investigation to Spahn Ranch and the Manson Family months before Kitty Lutesinger implicated Atkins and the others.

  * The exact date of Shea’s death still remains unknown. It is believed to have occurred on either the night of Monday, August 25, or Tuesday, August 26, 1969.

  * As will become all too apparent, in this instance “solved” was a misstatement if ever there was one.

  * Although Aaron was my superior in the office, we had been assigned the case as co-prosecutors, each of us having an equal say in its handling. Though major, nationally prominent criminal cases of even less magnitude and complexity than the Tate-LaBianca murders frequently have three and sometimes four prosecutors working on the case full time, for some reason only Aaron and I were assigned to the case. Though neither Aaron nor I could have foreseen that months later he would be yanked off the case, leaving me to go it alone, I did realize from the start that owing to his other duties as head of the Trials Division, at least his pretrial participation would be limited.

  * In 1971, California Governor Ronald Reagan arranged to have Judge McMurray taken out of retirement to try the Angela Davis case. The defense challenged him for cause.

  * Exact dates, details, quotes from the investigating officers, etc. I would obtain the following day when going over reports of the various law-enforcement agencies.

  When booked, almost all the Family members used aliases. In a number of cases their true names were not known until much later. To avoid confusing the reader as much as I was confused at the time, true names and most-used aliases have been inserted in brackets.

  * I had no evidence that Cathy Gillies was a party to this plot.

  * As with almost everything else written about Manson’s early years, even his date of birth is usually given erroneously, although for an understandable reason. Unable to remember her child’s birthday, the mother changed it to November 11, which was Armistice Day and an easier date to remember.

  * His first name remains unknown. Even in official records he is referred to as �
��Colonel Scott.”

  * I would not obtain the results of these until much later; however, portions are quoted here.

  * In one of his pamphlets, Hubbard defined a “clear” as “one who has straightened up this lifetime.” It is rather hard to see how this might apply to Charles Manson.

  * He in fact requested a transfer to Leavenworth, considered a much tougher institution, because “he claimed he would be allowed to practice his guitar more often.” The request was denied.

  * Virginia Graham would later state that she was unaware that Ronnie Howard had already talked to the police. However, a group of girls was transferred from Sybil Brand to Corona shortly before this, and it’s possible they carried along some jail scuttlebutt.

  * This was probably garbled, “convent” having been mistaken for “commune.”

  * We later received information indicating that Manson may have sent three of his followers to Los Angeles with instructions to either bring back the girls or kill them, but we were never able to prove this. This was the same trip when a flat tire prevented the murder of Cathy Gillies’ grandmother, the owner of Myers Ranch.