other reason why you have decided to tell everything you know about these seven murders?”
Another torrent of objections from Kanarek before Linda was able to answer: “I strongly believe in the truth, and I feel the truth should be spoken.”
Kanarek even objected to my asking Linda the number of children she had. Often he used a shotgun approach—“Leading and suggestive; no foundation; conclusion and hearsay”—in hope that at least some of the buckshot would hit. Many of his grounds were totally inapplicable. He would object to a “conclusion,” for example, when no conclusion was called for, or yell “Hearsay” when I was simply asking her what she did next.
Since I’d anticipated this, it didn’t bother me. However, it took over an hour to get Linda up to her first meeting with Manson, her description of life at Spahn Ranch, and, over Kanarek’s very heated objections, her definition of what she meant by the term “Family.”
A. “Well, we lived together as one family, as a family lives together, as a mother and father and children, but we were all just one, and Charlie was the head.”
I was questioning Linda about the various orders Manson had given the girls when, unexpectedly, Judge Older began sustaining Kanarek’s hearsay objections. I asked to approach the bench.
Lay people believe hearsay is inadmissible. Actually there are so many exceptions to the hearsay rule that many lawyers feel the law should read, “Hearsay is admissible except in these few instances.”[66] I told Older: “I had anticipated many legal problems in this case, and I have done research on them—because I kind of play the Devil’s advocate—but I never anticipated I’d have any trouble showing Manson’s directions to members of the Family.”
Older said he sustained the objections because he couldn’t think of any exception to the hearsay rule that would permit the introduction of such statements.
This was crucial. If Older ruled such conversations inadmissible, there went the domination framework, and our case against Manson.
Shortly after this, court recessed for the day. Aaron, J. Miller Leavy, and I were up late that night, looking for citations of authority. Fortunately, we found two cases—
Opposition now came from a totally unexpected direction: Aaron.
Linda had already testified that Manson ordered the girls to make love to male visitors to induce them to join the Family, when I asked her: “Linda, do you know what a sexual orgy is?”
Kanarek immediately objected, as did Hughes, who remarked, in a somewhat revealing choice of words: “We are not trying the sex lives of these people. We are trying the murder lives of these people.”
Not only were the defense attorneys shouting objections, many of which Older sustained; Aaron leaned over to me and said, “Can’t we skip this stuff? We’re just wasting time. Let’s get into the two nights of murder.”
“Look, Aaron,” I told him sotto voce, “I’m fighting the judge, I’m fighting Kanarek, I’m not going to fight you. I’ve got enough problems. This is important and I’m going to get it in.”
As Linda finally testified, in between Kanarek’s objections,
That Manson controlled even this most intimate and personal aspect of the lives of his followers was extremely powerful evidence of his domination.
Moreover, among the twenty-some persons involved in the particular orgy Linda testified to were Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel.
The sexual acts were not detailed, nor did I question Linda about other such “group encounters.” Once the point was made, I moved on to other testimony—Helter Skelter, the black-white war, Manson’s belief that the Beatles were communicating with him through the lyrics of their songs, his announcement, late on the afternoon of August 8, 1969, that “Now is the time for Helter Skelter.”
Describing her appearance on the stand, the Los Angeles
Her testimony was also at times very moving. Telling how Manson separated the mothers and their children, and relating her own feelings on being parted from Tanya, Linda said, “Sometimes, you know, when there wasn’t anybody around, especially Charlie, I would give her my love and feed her.”
Linda was describing Manson’s directions to the group just before they left Spahn Ranch that first night when Charlie, seated at the counsel table, put his hand up to his neck and, with one finger extended, made a slitting motion across his throat. Although I was looking the other way and didn’t see the gesture, others, including Linda, did.
Yet there was no pause in her reply. She went on to relate how Tex had stopped the car in front of the big gate; the cutting of the telephone wires; driving back down the hill and parking, then walking back up. As she described how they had climbed the fence to the right of the gate, you could feel the tension building in the courtroom. Then the sudden headlights.
A. “And a car pulled up in front of us and Tex leaped forward with a gun in his hand… And the man said, ‘Please don’t hurt me, I won’t say anything!’ And Tex shot him four times.”
As she described the murder of Steven Parent, Linda began sobbing, as she had each time she had related the story to me. I could tell the jury was moved, both by the mounting horror and her reaction.
Sadie giggled. Leslie sketched. Katie looked bored.
By the end of the day I had brought Linda to the point where Katie was chasing the woman in the white gown (Folger) with a knife and Tex was stabbing the big man (Frykowski): “He just kept doing it and doing it and doing it.”
Q. “When the man was screaming, do you know what he was screaming?”
A. “There were no words, it was beyond words, it was just screams.”
Reporters keeping track of Kanarek’s objections gave up on the third day, when the count passed two hundred. Older warned Kanarek that if he interrupted either the witness or the prosecution again, he would find him in contempt. Often a dozen transcript pages separated my question and Linda’s answer.
BUGLIOSI “We are going to have to go back, Linda. There has been a blizzard of objections.”
KANAREK “I object to that statement.”
When Kanarek again interrupted Linda in mid-sentence, Older called us to the bench.
THE COURT “Mr. Kanarek, you have directly violated my order not to repeatedly interrupt. I find you in contempt of Court and I sentence you to one night in the County Jail starting immediately after this court adjourns this afternoon until 7 A.M. tomorrow morning.”
Kanarek protested that “rather than my interrupting the witness, the witness interrupted me”!
By day’s end Kanarek would have company. Among the items I wished to submit for identification purposes was a photograph which showed the Straight Satans’ sword in a scabbard next to the steering wheel of Manson’s own dune buggy. Since the photograph had been introduced in evidence in the Beausoleil trial, I didn’t get it until it was brought over from the other court. “The District Attorney is withholding great quantities of evidence from us,” Hughes charged.
BUGLIOSI “For the record, I just saw it for the first time a few minutes ago myself.”
HUGHES “That is a lot of shit, Mr. Bugliosi.”
THE COURT “I hold you in direct contempt of Court for that statement.”
Though in complete agreement with Older’s earlier citing of Kanarek, I disagreed with his finding against Hughes, feeling if he was in contempt of anyone, it was me, not the Court. Too, it was based on a simple misunderstanding, one which, when explained to him, Hughes quickly accepted. Older was less understanding.
Given a choice between paying a seventy-five-dollar fine or spending the night in jail, Hughes told the Court: “I am a pauper, Your Honor.” With no sympathy whatsoever, Older ordered him remanded into custody.
