In his broken English, Flynn was saying that Manson had admitted the murders to him!
Q. “Was there any conversation about the LaBiancas, or was that all at the same time, or what?”
A. “Well, I don’t know if it was at the same time, but he led me to believe—he told me that he was the main cause for these murders to be committed.”
Q. “Did he say anything more than that?”
A. “He admitted—he boasted—of thirty-five lives taken in a period of two days.”
When LAPD brought him to my office, I hadn’t yet talked to Sartuchi or heard the interview tape, so when in interviewing Flynn I learned of Manson’s very incriminating admission, it came as a complete surprise.
In questioning Juan, I established that the conversation had taken place in the kitchen at Spahn Ranch, two to four days after news of the Tate murders broke on TV. Juan had just sat down to lunch when Manson came in and, with his right hand, brushed his left shoulder—apparently a signal that the others were to get out, since they immediately did. Aware that something was up, but not what, Juan started to eat.
(Ever since the arrival of the Family at Spahn Ranch, Manson had been trying to get the six-foot-five cowboy to join them. Manson had told Flynn: “I will get you a big gold bracelet and put diamonds on it and you can be my head zombie.” There were other enticements. When first offered the same bait as the other males, Juan had sampled it eagerly, to his regret. “That damn case of clap just wouldn’t go away,” Juan told me, “not for three, four months.” Though he had remained at Spahn, Juan had refused to be anybody’s zombie, let alone little Charlie’s. Of late, however, Manson had become more insistent.)
Suddenly Manson grabbed Juan by the hair, yanked his head back, and, putting a knife to his throat, said, “
Even though Manson had not mentioned the Tate-LaBianca murders by name, his admission was a tremendously powerful piece of evidence.[69]
The razor-sharp blade still on Juan’s throat, Manson asked, “Are you going to come with me or do I have to kill you?”
Juan replied, “I am eating and I am right here, you know.”
Manson put the knife on the table. “O.K.,” he said. “You kill me.”
Resuming eating, Juan said, “I don’t want to do that, you know.”
Looking very agitated, Manson told him, “Helter Skelter is coming down and we’ve got to go to the desert.” He then gave Juan a choice: he could oppose him or join him. If he wanted to join him, Charlie said, “go down to the waterfall and make love to my girls.”
(Manson’s “my girls” was in itself a powerful piece of evidence.)
Juan told Charlie that the next time he wanted to contract a nine-month case of syphilis or gonorrhea, he’d let him know.
It was at this point that Manson boasted of killing thirty-five people in two days. Juan considered it just that, a boast, and I was inclined to agree. If there had been more than seven Manson-ordered murders during that two- day period, I was sure that at some point in the investigation we would have found evidence of them. Too, as far as the immediate trial was concerned, the latter statement was useless, as it was obviously inadmissible as evidence.
Eventually Manson picked up the knife and walked out. And Juan suddenly realized he didn’t have much appetite left.
I talked to Juan over four hours that night. Manson’s admission was not the only surprise. Manson had told Juan in June or July 1969, while Juan, Bruce Davis, and Clem were standing on the boardwalk at Spahn, “Well, I have come down to it. The only way to get Helter Skelter going is for me to go down there and show the black man how to do it, by killing a whole bunch of those fuckin’ pigs.”
Among Flynn’s other revelations: Manson had threatened to kill him several times, once shooting at him with the .22 Longhorn revolver; on several occasions Manson had suggested that Juan kill various people; and Flynn had not only seen the group leave Spahn on probably the same night the LaBiancas were killed; Sadie had told him, just before they left, “We’re going to get some fucking pigs.”
Suddenly Juan Flynn became one of the prosecution’s most important witnesses. The problem now was protecting him until he took the stand. Throughout our interview Juan had been extremely nervous; he’d tense at the slightest noise in the hall. He admitted that, because of his fear, he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in months. He asked me if there was any way he could be locked up until it came time for him to testify.
I called LAPD and requested that Juan be put in either jail or a hospital. I didn’t care which, just so long as he was off the streets.
Bemused by this unusual turnabout, Sartuchi, when he picked up Juan, asked him what he wanted to be arrested for. Well, Juan said, thinking a bit, he wanted to confess to drinking a beer in the desert a couple of months ago. Since he was in a National Park, that was against the law. Flynn was arrested and booked on that charge.
Juan remained in jail just long enough to decide he didn’t like it one bit. After three or four days he tried to contact me. Unable to reach me right away, he called Spahn Ranch and left a message for one of the ranch hands to come down and bail him out. The Family intercepted the message, and sent Irving Kanarek instead.
Kanarek paid Juan’s bail and bought him breakfast. He instructed Juan, “Don’t talk to anyone.”
When Juan had finished eating, Kanarek told him that he had already called Squeaky and the girls and that they were on their way over to pick him up. Hearing this, Juan split. Though he remained in hiding, he called in periodically, to assure me that he was still all right and that when the time came he would be there to testify.
Although it would never be mentioned in the trial, Juan had a special reason for testifying. Shorty Shea had been his best friend.
AUGUST 19–SEPTEMBER 6, 1970
After Kasabian left the stand, I called a series of witnesses whose detailed testimony either supported or corroborated her account. These included: Tim Ireland, counselor at the girls’ school down the hill from the Tate residence, who heard the cries and screams; Rudolf Weber, who described the hosing incident and dropped one bombshell: the license-plate number; John Swartz, who confirmed that was the number on his car and who told how, on two different nights in the first part of August 1969, Manson had borrowed the vehicle without asking permission; Winifred Chapman, who described her arrival at 10050 Cielo Drive on the morning of August 9, 1969; Jim Asin, who called the police after Mrs. Chapman ran down Cielo screaming, “Murder, death, bodies, blood!”; the first LAPD officers to arrive at the scene—DeRosa, Whisenhunt, and Burbridge—who described their grisly find. Bit by bit, piece by piece, from Chapman’s arrival to the examination of the cut phone wires by the telephone company representative, the scene was recreated. The horror seemed to linger in the courtroom even after the witnesses had left the stand.
Since Leslie Van Houten was not charged with the five Tate murders, Hughes did not question any of these witnesses. He did, however, make an interesting motion. He asked that he and his client be permitted to absent themselves from the courtroom while those murders were discussed. Though the motion was denied, his attempt to separate his client from these events ran directly counter to Manson’s collective defense, and I wondered how Charlie was reacting to it.
When McGann took the stand, I questioned him at some length as to what he had found at the Tate residence. The relevancy of many of the details—the pieces of gun grip, the dimensions and type of rope, the absence of shell casings, and so on—would become apparent to the jury later. I was especially interested in establishing that there was no evidence of ransacking or robbery. I also got in, ahead of the defense, that drugs had been found. And a pair of eyeglasses.
Anticipating the next witness, Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi, Kanarek asked for a conference in chambers. He’d had a change of heart, Kanarek said. Though he’d earlier shown the death photos to Mrs. Kasabian, “I have thought about it, and I believe I was in error, Your Honor.” Kanarek asked that the photos, particularly those which were in color, be excluded. Motion denied. The photos could be used for identification
