Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover

by Jeff Guinn

  • • •

  At the LAPD’s downtown Parker Center, the investigators assigned to the LaBianca murder felt that they’d exhausted almost every possible lead. One of the few remaining was to contact their counterparts at Los Angeles County to ask if they were aware of any similar murders with victims stabbed and words written on walls in blood.

  Whiteley and Guenther were in the L.A. County offices when a member of the LAPD LaBianca team called. Whiteley and Guenther told about the Hinman murder and shared their latest information based on what they’d learned from Lutesinger and Susan Atkins. The LaBianca investigators got copies of the interrogation transcripts. They studied them carefully and felt disappointed. Yes, there were similarities between the Hinman and LaBianca slayings. But the city lawmen were bothered by discrepancies. Lutesinger implicated this guy Manson in the Hinman murder, but Susan Atkins, who’d actually been there when Hinman died, hadn’t mentioned Manson at all. Lutesinger said Susan had helped stab Hinman; Susan said Beausoleil did it. Yes, the county cops had established that Beausoleil knew Manson and hung around with Manson and his friends a lot, but there was nothing that either woman had told Whiteley and Guenther to link Manson and his people in any way with the LaBiancas.

  Still, it was something new to run down, and the LaBianca squad did. They started putting together files on Charlie Manson and the members of his so-called Family, and they talked with Lutesinger. She had little to add to what she’d already told the county investigators, beyond the fact that once Charlie tried to turn a motorcycle gang called the Straight Satans into a Family army. Only one of them, some guy named Danny, was interested. The rest of them laughed Charlie off. But Danny hung around for a while. The LAPD team contacted the police in Venice and asked for help finding a Straight Satan named Danny. Kitty also talked about someone named Tex whose first name was the same as Charlie’s. She thought the guy’s last name was Montgomery.

  Police department administration wanted another progress report, and the LaBianca team didn’t want to appear stymied. They filled some pages with descriptions of either currently cross-checking or intending to cross-check the LaBianca murders against other recent homicides, and added a new name at the bottom of their dwindling suspect list: MANSON, CHARLES.

  Local media badgered the LAPD for news about the Tate investigation. She had been murdered two months ago—why hadn’t the police caught her killers yet? On October 18, the Los Angeles Times cited new evidence that Lt. Robert Helder, the head of the Tate team, said might “point us in the direction of the killers.” Helder wouldn’t specify what the evidence was, only that it was potentially crucial.

  L.A. county investigators Whiteley and Guenther assumed that the LaBianca squad had blown off any connection between their murders and Gary Hinman’s. That was their business; the county cops had their own case to make against Bobby Beausoleil. Yet Whiteley and Guenther kept coming back to something in Kitty Lutesinger’s statement that puzzled them. Lutesinger swore Susan had told her about stabbing a man in the legs. Gary Hinman was stabbed in the chest. But Whiteley and Guenther had read the stories about the Tate murders like everybody else, and they remembered that one of the victims at the actress’s house was a man who got stabbed in the legs. What if Susan had been talking about that murder and Lutesinger just assumed she meant Hinman? The county investigators had been blown off once before by the LAPD; the day after the Cielo slayings they’d tried telling that LAPD investigator, Sergeant Buckles, that there might be a link between Tate and Hinman. He’d said no, they already knew Tate was all about drugs. Now Whiteley and Guenther tried again. They contacted the Tate team and told about what Lutesinger had said about Susan Atkins stabbing a victim in the legs, and gave them Lutesinger’s contact information. The Tate cops took everything down and thanked them. Talking to Kitty Lutesinger was added to their list of things to do, though not as a priority. There was another lead that took precedence—the critical clue Lieutenant Helder had told the Times about.

  On October 23, the LAPD held a press conference and revealed that their ballyhooed clue was a pair of prescription eyeglasses discovered at the Tate murder scene. A flyer describing the glasses had been sent out to thousands of eye doctors and to professional journals with high circulation. The LAPD hoped that someone would recall prescribing the glasses, which would then lead to the arrest of at least one of the Tate killers. It was the longest of long shots, and Helder refused comment when a reporter asked him to confirm that the flyers had yielded tips on just seven suspects, all of whom were cleared.

  Tex Watson decided that the outside world made no sense, and he wanted to return to Charlie in Death Valley. True, Charlie had promised to kill anyone in the Family who ran away, but he’d let Tex return after his previous defection and probably would this time, too. Tex had committed murder for him. Even if Charlie didn’t appreciate that, he would have to value Tex’s ability to keep dune buggies running in rugged desert conditions.

  But when Tex returned to Barker Ranch, everybody was gone. An old-timer in the area told Tex about the arrests, how all of them got hauled off to Independence on charges of car theft and arson. Tex didn’t want to risk arrest himself, so he hustled back to L.A. and called his folks again for airfare back home. Before they sent the money, they made him promise that this time he’d stay. Tex promised and meant it. He wanted to keep far away from the cops in California.

  Squeaky and Sandy visited the Inyo County jail often, and Charlie began giving them messages to take back to the other Family members who’d been released and had gone back to L.A. Everybody was to keep believing in Charlie, and above all they were to keep their mouths shut. Charlie had particular doubts about Zero, who always struck him as a weakling.

  Squeaky and Sandy did what they could, but for a while it was hard to find Susan Atkins. She’d been transferred to the Sybil Brand Institute, the forbidding downtown L.A. facility for female prisoners. The place scared Susan with its three-story stacks of cells and motley collection of inmates, including truly tough women looking for any excuse to whale away on newcomers. Susan was placed in a dormitory and bunked near two other recent arrivals, Ronnie Howard and Virginia Graham. Ronnie and Virginia were longtime pals. They’d known each other when both worked as prostitutes, and Ronnie had married Virginia’s ex-husband, which Virginia didn’t hold against her. Now Ronnie was charged with forging a prescription, and Virginia had been picked up for a parole violation. They took pity on the girl other inmates immediately nicknamed “Crazy Sadie” because she acted much too cheerful—singing, breaking into wild, spontaneous dances. Susan was pleased to have friends; long-term Sybil Brand inmates were assigned jobs, and Susan and her new pal Virginia were assigned as runners, carrying messages between facility staffers. In between assignments, Susan and Virginia chatted. At night in the dormitory, Susan whispered to Ronnie. Ronnie and Virginia had colorful lives and lots of good tales to tell, but their stories were nothing compared to Susan’s. She wanted to amaze them—and she did.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Unraveling

  For almost three months, investigators working the Tate and LaBianca murder cases made little significant progress. They had no promising leads or suspects; and they failed to consider any link between the crimes. But over a five-week period beginning in early November evidence fell into their laps and, almost despite themselves, they began solving the crimes.

  • • •

  On November 3, Virginia Graham and Susan Atkins sat in the Sybil Brand message center bored because they had no work to do. Virginia idly asked Susan what she was in for, and was startled to hear, “First-degree murder.” Susan explained that a guy in county lockup snitched on her—she didn’t realize the informant was Kitty Lutesinger, not Bobby Beausoleil. Virginia let the subject slide; it was usually better not to know the details about what other inmates had done. But Susan wouldn’t let it drop. The next day she informed Virginia that the murder victim was somebody named Gary Hinman; she, Bobby Beausol
eil, and another girl did it. The second girl had been in Sybil Brand, but not for murder, and now she was back in Wisconsin with her baby. Susan said the cops were stupid. They thought she held Hinman while Bobby stabbed him when it was the other way around. But it was good the cops were dumb because they would never be able to prove it. From there, Susan prattled on about “Charlie,” who was leading Susan and some others she called “the Family” into the desert to find a bottomless pit where they would live. Oh, and Charlie was really Jesus Christ.

  Virginia thought the girl was nuts.

  • • •

  Two nights later, Venice police responded to a call from a house near the beach. They discovered a body there. John Philip Haught, “Zero,” was dead of a gunshot wound to the head. Friends who had been there with him—Cathy Gillies, Bruce Davis, and several other Family members—told the officers that Zero was playing Russian roulette with an eight-shot handgun. Their stories were accepted and Zero’s death was recorded as suicide. Afterward the Venice PD discovered that instead of having one live round and seven empty chambers, the gun had seven live rounds and one spent shell. The cops had more important things to do than spend more time on a hippie who was probably too stoned to know how many bullets were in the gun before he spun the cylinder and pulled the trigger. The Family member whom Charlie considered a weak link was now out of the picture.

  • • •

  Two detectives assigned to the LaBianca team drove up to Independence to interview the Family members still in custody there. Charlie’s questioning was brief. They asked if he had any information about the LaBianca or Tate murders and he said he didn’t. All the others they interrogated had the same response, with one exception. Leslie Van Houten was feeling off-balance because she was convinced elf wings were prematurely budding on her back and she wasn’t safely in the bottomless pit yet. Distracted by that concern, she didn’t deny that Susan Atkins might have been involved in Gary Hinman’s murder. Leslie admitted being aware of the Tate killings, though she claimed no knowledge of the LaBianca murders. There were some unspecified “things” that led her to believe some people in the Family might have something to do with Tate. Leslie wanted to think about it overnight. In the morning she told the LAPD officers that she had nothing more to say to them.

  Before returning to L.A., the LaBianca investigators asked to see the Family’s personal effects. They noticed that Charlie’s deerskin pants and moccasins were fastened with leather thongs like the ones used to tie the hands of Leno LaBianca. They took a few of the thongs back with them.

  • • •

  Susan kept elaborating to Virginia. When she ran out of details about Gary Hinman, she moved on to a fresh subject. There was a well-known case, Susan said, where the cops were “so far off the track” that it would never be solved, “the one on Benedict Canyon.” Virginia felt sure she knew what Susan was talking about, but wanted confirmation—did she mean Sharon Tate? Susan did, and informed Virginia that “You know who did it? You’re looking at her.” From there, Susan couldn’t stop blabbing. They killed the people at Cielo because they wanted to commit a crime that would shock the world. They picked the house because they knew a guy, Terry Melcher, who used to live there. She talked about Charlie telling them to wear dark clothing and how they parked the car and walked up to the gate. Four of them did it, a man and Susan and two other girls. The first one they saw, Charles shot. Virginia assumed that Susan was referring to the man she’d previously mentioned named Charlie, Susan’s leader.

  Susan warmed to her story, layering on one gruesome detail after another. Tate and Jay Sebring were strung up with nooses around their necks. Susan stabbed Voytek Frykowski several times, and when he ran out onto the lawn they finished him off. Sharon Tate died last, begging for her life, but Susan laughed at her and killed her and then tasted her blood, which was “warm and sticky and nice.” When she and the other three drove off, they stopped by a house to wash their hands and a man ran over and tried to grab the car keys, but they got away. And then, Susan said, there was what they did to “the other two” the next night.

  Virginia wanted to get away from Susan and excused herself to take a shower. But over the next few days, Susan kept talking to Virginia and to Ronnie, too. Besides the Tate and LaBianca murders, she yammered about Terry Melcher, how Charlie was furious because Melcher broke some promise, about living at Beach Boy Dennis Wilson’s house, and how Dennis and Gregg Jakobson did things for the Family. When they were away from Susan, Virginia and Ronnie compared notes. Was this crazy girl telling the truth? So much of it seemed impossible, like this death list she claimed they had of other celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor. Susan claimed Sharon Tate was only going to be the first famous person they killed. Every time Susan talked to Virginia or Ronnie, she added more horrendous details, including how she wrote “Pig” on the front door at Cielo in Tate’s blood. In all these stories, Susan assigned herself a leading role. She stabbed Gary Hinman and Sharon Tate. Besides Charlie, she was the star. And Susan made a dire prophecy: More people were going to die.

  Though Sybil Brand inmates had informal if rigid rules against snitching, Virginia and Ronnie debated whether they should tell someone about what Susan was claiming. They decided to wait a while longer and see what else she might say. Maybe the girl would admit that she was making it all up, and then they’d be off the hook. They hoped so.

  On November 12, Susan Atkins went to court for a preliminary hearing in the Hinman murder case. Through the testimony of L.A. County officers Whiteley and Guenther, she learned that Kitty Lutesinger rather than Bobby Beausoleil had informed on her. When she was returned to her dormitory in Sybil Brand, Susan angrily informed Virginia and Ronnie that Lutesinger’s life now “wasn’t worth anything.”

  Virginia couldn’t listen to Susan long; she had just learned she was being transferred to the state’s main women’s prison in Corona, about forty miles east of L.A., to serve out her sentence. Ronnie would be left at Sybil Brand with Susan. She and Virginia still couldn’t decide whether they should inform on Susan.

  • • •

  As Virginia was packing her few belongings before being moved to Corona, the LaBianca investigators at Parker Center in downtown L.A. received a call from the Venice PD. The L.A. cops had mentioned to Venice police that they wanted to talk to a Straight Satan named Danny. The Venice cops hadn’t yet run across him, but they did have another Straight Satan in custody if the LaBianca squad had any interest in talking to him. The biker’s name was Al Springer, and the Venice police delivered him to a Parker Center interrogation room.

  Springer had plenty to tell about Charlie Manson and the Family. He related all of Charlie’s bragging about having a sword and knocking on rich people’s doors and killing them when they answered. Did they know about some dead body that had an ear cut off, Al wanted to know. Well, Charlie said he did that. He said he’d killed a black guy, too, with a .22 Buntline long barrel. Some of this Springer had from Charlie, and some from Danny DeCarlo, who’d heard it from Charlie and “Tex” and a few others. But Springer swore that on August 11 or 12 Charlie told him directly that “we knocked off five of them just the other night.” Then he wanted to know if the LaBianca squad knew about “anybody hav[ing] their refrigerator wrote on.” Despite all the other leaks, the LAPD had managed to keep secret the writing of “Healter Skelter” on the LaBianca refrigerator door. Al Springer had to be taken seriously.

  Since much of what Springer said concerned the Tate rather than the LaBianca killings, someone from the LaBianca squad went to fetch Sgt. Mike McGann from the Tate team. Springer repeated to McGann what he’d already told the LaBianca investigators, and added new information about the murder of somebody named Shorty. Danny DeCarlo told Springer that he’d heard Shorty got his head and arms and legs cut off for something he’d said or done that made Charlie mad. What the L.A. cops needed to do, Springer insisted, was find DeCarlo. Danny was scared of Charlie and the Family, so he’d tel
l what he knew about them for sure. With Springer’s help, DeCarlo was located at his mother’s. DeCarlo had some current legal issues and thought the LAPD might help him avoid jail on the charges if he voluntarily talked to them about Manson. He agreed to come to Parker Center the next day.

  Finally, the Tate and LaBianca investigators were working together.

  • • •

  On November 12, the rest of the nation was preoccupied with a different tragedy. A story by journalist Seymour Hersh indicated that the Army was investigating a mass murder that dwarfed in number the seven victims in L.A.’s Tate and LaBianca slayings. In March 1968, Lt. William Calley allegedly directed the slaughter of over three hundred defenseless women, children, and old men while searching out North Vietnamese soldiers in the South Vietnam hamlet of My Lai. Calley, secretly charged by the military with murder in September 1969, stated in his own defense that he was simply carrying out orders to destroy the enemy, and it was his understanding that men, women, and children were all classified the same. Hersh’s article further inflamed the antiwar movement at a critical moment—another protest march was already set for Washington on November 15.

  • • •

  Ronnie Howard was deeply disturbed by Susan Atkins’s prediction that her leader Charlie and the so-called Family planned to kill more people. On the day that her friend Virginia was taken to the women’s prison in Corona, Ronnie told a female deputy at Sybil Brand that she knew who committed the Tate and LaBianca murders. Ronnie asked for permission to call the L.A. police so she could tell them what she knew. The deputy said she didn’t have the authority to let Ronnie make such a call, but she’d kick the request up the ladder. It would probably be a few days before her boss got back to her on it. Ronnie protested that the LAPD had to get this information right away; if they didn’t, more people might die. If she couldn’t make the call herself, would the deputy do it for her? But the deputy said it was against the rules for her to make a phone call on behalf of an inmate.