purposes, Older ruled; as to their admissibility as evidence, that motion would be heard at a later time.
Each time Kanarek tried such a tactic, I thought surely he can’t better this. And each time I found he not only could but did.
Although I had interviewed Dr. Noguchi several times, I had a last conference with him in my office before we went to court. The coroner, who had conducted Sharon Tate’s autopsy as well as supervised those of the other four Tate victims, had a habit of holding back little surprises. There are enough of these in a trial without getting them from your own witnesses, so I asked him outright if there was anything he hadn’t told me.
Well, one thing, he admitted. He hadn’t mentioned it in the autopsy reports, but, after studying the abrasions on her left cheek, he had concluded, “Sharon Tate was hung.”
This was not the cause of death, he said, and she had probably been suspended less than a minute, but he was convinced the abrasions were rope burns.
I revised my interrogation sheets to get this in.
Although almost all of Dr. Noguchi’s testimony was important, several portions were especially so in terms of corroborating Linda Kasabian.
Noguchi testified that many of the stab wounds penetrated bones; Linda had testified that Patricia Krenwinkel had complained that her hand hurt from her knife striking bones.
Linda testified that the two knives she’d thrown out the car window had about the same blade length, estimating, with her hands, an approximate length of between 5? and 6? inches. Dr. Noguchi testified that many of the wounds were a full 5 inches in depth. This was not only close to Linda’s approximation, it also emphasized the extreme viciousness of the assaults.
Linda estimated the blade width at about 1 inch. Dr. Noguchi said the wounds were caused by a blade with a width of between 1 and 1? inches.
Linda estimated the thickness as maybe two or three times that of an ordinary kitchen knife. Dr. Noguchi said the thickness varied from 1/8 to ? inch, which corresponded to Linda’s approximation.
Linda—who, on Manson’s instructions, had several times honed knives similar to these while at Spahn Ranch—testified that the knives were sharpened on both sides, on one side all the way back to the hilt, on the other at least an inch back from the tip. Dr. Noguchi testified that about two-thirds of the wounds had been made by a blade or blades that had been sharpened on both sides for a distance of about 1? to 2 inches, one side then flattening out while the other remained keen.[70]
As I’d later argue to the jury, Linda’s description of those two knives—their thickness, width, length, even the fine point of the double-edged blade—was strong evidence that the two knives she was talking about were the same knives Dr. Noguchi had described.
In his cross-examination of Noguchi, Kanarek not only repeatedly referred to the victims’ “passing away,” he spoke of Abigail Folger running to her “place of repose.” It was beginning to sound like a guided tour of Forest Lawn.
The idiocy of all this was not lost on Manson. He complained: “Your Honor, this lawyer is not doing what I am asking him to do, not even by a small margin…He is not my attorney, he is your attorney. I would like to dismiss this man and get another attorney.”
I was not sure whether Manson was serious or not. Even if he wasn’t, it was still a good tactical move. Charlie was in effect telling the jury, “Don’t judge me by what this man says or does.”
Kanarek then questioned Noguchi about each of Miss Folger’s twenty-eight stab wounds. His purpose, as he admitted at the bench, was to establish “the culpability of Linda Kasabian.” Had she run for help, he suggested, perhaps Miss Folger might still be alive.
There were several problems with this. At least for the purpose of the questioning, Kanarek was in effect admitting Linda’s presence at the scene. He was also stressing, over and over and over again, the involvement of Patricia Krenwinkel. There was nothing unethical about this: Kanarek’s client was Manson. What was surprising was that Krenwinkel’s own attorney, Paul Fitzgerald, didn’t object more often.
Aaron spotted the basic fallacy of all this. “Your Honor, had Dr. Christiaan Barnard been present with an operating room already set up to operate on the victim, the wound to the aorta would still have been fatal.”
Later, while the jury was out, Older asked Manson if he still desired to replace Kanarek. By this time Charlie had changed his mind. During the discussion Manson made an interesting observation as to his own feelings on the progress of the trial thus far: “We did pretty good at the first of it. Then we kind of lost control when the testimony started.”
Although Channel 7 newscaster Al Wiman had actually been the first to spot the clothing the TV crew found, we called cameraman King Baggot to the stand instead. Had we used Wiman as a witness, he wouldn’t have been able to cover any portion of the trial for his station. Before Baggot was sworn, the judge and attorneys conferred with him at the bench, to make sure there was no mention of the fact that Susan Atkins’ confession had led them to the clothing. Thus, when Baggot testified, the jury got the impression that the TV crew just made a lucky guess.
After Baggot identified the various items of apparel, we called Joe Granado of SID. Joe was to testify to the blood samples he had taken.
Joe wasn’t on the stand very long. He’d forgotten his notes and had to go get them. Fortunately, we had another witness ready, Helen Tabbe, the deputy at Sybil Brand who had obtained the sample of Susan Atkins’ hair.
Although I liked Joe as a person, as a witness he left much to be desired. He appeared very disorganized; couldn’t pronounce many of the technical terms of his trade; often gave vague, inconclusive answers. Granado’s failure to take samples from many of the spots, as well as his failure to run subtypes on many of the samples he had taken, didn’t exactly add to his impressiveness. I was particularly concerned about his having taken so few samples from the two pools of blood outside the front door (“I took a random sampling; then I assumed the rest of it was the same”) and his failure to test the blood on the bushes next to the porch (“At the time, I guess, I assumed all of the blood was of similar origin”). My concern here was that those samples he had taken matched in type and subtype the blood of Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring, although there was no evidence that either had run out the front door. While I could argue to the jury that the killers, or Frykowski himself, had tracked out the blood, I could foresee the defense using this to cast doubt on Linda’s story, so I asked Joe: “You don’t know if the random sampling is representative of the blood type of the whole area here?”
A. “That is correct. I would have had to scoop everything up.”
Granado also testified to finding the Buck knife in the chair and the clock radio in Parent’s car. Unfortunately, someone at LAPD had apparently been playing the radio, as the dial no longer read 12:15 A.M., and I had to bring out that this occurred after Granado observed the time setting.
Shortly after the trial Joe Granado left LAPD to join the FBI.
Denied access to the courtroom, the Family began a vigil outside the Hall of Justice, at the corner of Temple and Broadway. “I’m waiting for my father to get out of jail,” Sandy told reporters as she knelt on the sidewalk next to one of the busiest intersections in the city of Los Angeles. “We will remain here,” Squeaky told TV interviewers, as traffic slowed and people gawked, “until all our brothers and sisters are set free.” In interviews the girls referred to the trial as “the second crucifixion of Christ.”
At night they slept in the bushes next to the building. When the police stopped that, they moved their sleeping bags into a white van which they parked nearby. By day they knelt or sat on the sidewalk, granted interviews, tried to convert the curious young. It was easy to tell the hard-core Mansonites from the transient camp followers. Each of the former had an X carved on his or her forehead. Each also wore a sheathed hunting knife. Since the knives were in plain view, they couldn’t be arrested for carrying concealed weapons. The police did bust them several times for loitering, but after a warning, or at most a few days in jail, they were back, and after a time the police left them alone.
Nearby city and county office buildings provided rest-room facilities. Also public phones, where, at certain prearranged times, one of the girls would await check-in calls from other Family members, including those wanted by the police. Several sob sisters who were covering the trial wrote largely sympathetic stories about their innocent, fresh, wholesome good looks and their devotion. They also often gave them money. Whether it was used for food or
