Though Aaron’s comments were not in violation of the gag order, on his return to L.A. Younger warned Aaron, “One more interview and you’re off the case.”
I accompanied Aaron to Younger’s office. There was no way Aaron’s comment could be called an interview, I argued. It was simply a passing remark. All of us had made many such during the trial.[71] But Younger autocratically declared, “No, I’ve made up my mind. Stovitz, you’re off the case.”
I felt very badly about this. In my opinion, it was completely unfair. But in this case there was no appeal.
Since I had prepared the case and examined most of the witnesses, Aaron’s removal did not affect this portion of the trial. We had agreed, however, that we would share the arguments to the jury, each of which would last several days. Having to handle them all myself added a tremendous burden to the load I was already carrying; in terms of time alone it meant another two hours of preparation each night, when I was already putting in four or five. Although two young deputy DAs, Donald Musich and Steven Kay, had been assigned to replace Aaron, neither was familiar enough with the case to participate in the trial.
Ironically, Steve Kay had once dated Family member Sandra Good, the pair, both of whom had grown up in San Diego, having gone on a date arranged by their mothers.
Sergeants Boen and Dolan of the Latent Prints Section of SID came across as the experts they were. Latents, exemplars, lift cards, smudges, fragmentary ridges, nonconductive surfaces, points of identity—by the time the two officers had finished, the jury had been given a mini-course in fingerprint identification.
Boen described how he had lifted the latent prints found at the Tate residence, particularly focusing on the latent found on the outside of the front door and the latent on the inside of the left French door in Sharon Tate’s bedroom.
Using diagrams and greatly magnified photographs I’d ordered prepared, Dolan indicated eighteen points of identity between the print lifted from the front door of the Tate residence and the right ring finger on the Watson exemplar and seventeen points of identity between the print lifted from the door of the master bedroom and the left little finger on the Krenwinkel exemplar. LAPD, he testified, requires only ten points of identity to establish a positive identification.
After Dolan had testified that there has never been a reported case of two separate persons having an identical fingerprint, or of any single person having two matching prints, I brought out, through him, that in 70 percent of the crimes investigated by LAPD’s fingerprint men not a single readable print belonging to anyone is obtained. Therefore, I could later argue to the jury, the fact that none of Susan Atkins’ prints were found inside the Tate residence did not mean she had not been there, since the absence of a clear, readable print is more common than uncommon.[72]
No print belonging to Manson, Krenwinkel, or Van Houten had been found at the LaBianca residence. Anticipating that the defense would argue this proved that none of them had been there, I asked Dolan about the handle of the fork found protruding from Leno LaBianca’s stomach. It was ivory, he said, a surface which readily lends itself to latent prints. I then asked him: “Did you secure anything at all from that fork, a smudge, a trace, a fragmentary fingerprint, anything at all?”
A. “No, sir, there was not so much as a slight smudge on it; in fact it gave the impression to me”—Kanarek objected, but Older let
Dolan finish—“it gave the impression to me that the handle of that particular fork had been wiped.” Later, Dolan testified, he had run a test: he’d grasped the fork with his fingers, then dusted it, “and found fragmentary ridges.”
Although Mrs. Sivick had opened and closed the refrigerator door about 6 P.M. on the night of the murders, Dolan had found “not a smudge” on the chrome handle or enamel surface of the door. However, in examining the door, he testified, he did find “wipe-type marks.”
Also important were the locations of the Krenwinkel and Watson latents at the Tate residence. That Krenwinkel’s print had been found on the inside of the door which led from Sharon Tate’s bedroom outside to the pool not only proved that Patricia Krenwinkel had been inside the residence, together with other evidence it indicated that she had probably chased Abigail Folger out this door. Blood spots inside the house, on the door itself, and outside the door were determined to be B-MN, Abigail Folger’s type and subtype.[73] Therefore finding Krenwinkel’s print here was completely consistent with Linda Kasabian’s testimony that she saw Abigail running from this general direction chased by the knife-wielding Krenwinkel.
Even more conclusive was the position of the Watson print. Although Boen testified that it was on the outside of the front door, he’d also said that it was six to eight inches above the handle, near the edge, the tip of the finger pointing
The logical assumption was that Watson left his print while chasing Frykowski, Krenwinkel while in pursuit of Folger.
These were the strong points of the fingerprint testimony. There was one weak spot. Anticipating that the defense would try to make the most of those unidentified latents—twenty-five of the fifty found at the Tate residence, six of the twenty-five found at the LaBianca residence—I brought this out myself. But with several possible explanations. Since, as Dolan testified, no person has two matching fingerprints, it was possible the twenty-five unmatched Tate latents could have been made by as few as three persons, while the six at the LaBiancas’ could even have been made by one person. Moreover, I established through Dolan that latent fingerprints can have a long life; under ideal conditions those inside a residence may last for several months. I could afford to point this out, since I’d already established that the two prints I was most concerned about, Krenwinkel’s and Watson’s, were on surfaces Winifred Chapman had recently washed.
I expected Fitzgerald to hit hardest on that one weak spot. Instead, he attacked Dolan where he was least vulnerable: his expertise. Earlier, I’d brought out that Dolan had been in the Latent Prints Section of SID for seven years, while assigned there conducting over 8,000 fingerprint investigations and comparing in excess of 500,000 latent fingerprints. Fitzgerald now asked Dolan: “Correct me if my mathematics are incorrect, Sergeant, but you testified you went to the scene of 8,000 crimes. If you went to one a day, and worked an average of 200 days a year, you would have been doing this for forty years?”
A. “I would have to figure that out on a piece of paper.”
Q. “Assuming that you went to one crime scene per day—is that a fair statement, that you went to one crime scene per day, Sergeant?”
A. “No, sir.”
Q. “How many crime scenes did you go to per day?”
A. “Anywhere, for two or three years there, between fifteen and twenty.”
Q. “A day?”
A. “Yes, sir.”
Fitzgerald had been knocked on his rump. Instead of getting up, dusting himself off, and moving onto safer territory, he set himself up for another pratfall by trying to attack the statistics. Had he done his homework (and, since a fingerprint was the only physical evidence linking his client to the murders, there was no excuse whatsoever for his not doing so) he would have learned, as the jury now did, that since 1940 SID had kept detailed records indicating exactly how many calls each officer made, the number of readable latents he obtained, and the number of times a suspect is thus identified.
Kanarek, in his cross-examination of Dolan, tried to imply that in using benzidine to test for blood, Granado could have destroyed some of the prints at the LaBianca residence. Unfortunately for Kanarek, Dolan noted that he had arrived at the LaBianca residence
Though Kanarek did less well with Dolan than some of the other prosecution witnesses, this didn’t mean I could relax my guard. At any moment he was apt to do something like the following:
KANAREK “Your Honor, in view of the fact that the Los Angeles Police Department did not even choose to compare Linda Kasabian’s fingerprints—”
BUGLIOSI “How do you know that, Mr. Kanarek?”
KANAREK “—I have no further questions of this witness.”
