A. “I sure was.”
Q. “Were you so smashed that on many occasions you had to be carried to bed?”
A. “I made it a few times myself.”
Kanarek hit hard on DeCarlo’s drinking, also his vagueness as to dates and times. How could he remember one particular Saturday night, for example, and not another night?
“Well, that particular night,” DeCarlo responded, “Gypsy got mad at me because I wouldn’t take my boots off when I made love to her.”
Q. “The only thing that is really pinpointed in your mind, that you really remember, is that you had a lot of sex, right?”
A. “Well, even some of that I can’t remember.”
Kanarek had scored some points. He brought out that DeCarlo had testified on an earlier occasion (during the Beausoleil trial) that while at Spahn he was smashed 99 percent of the time. The defense could now argue that DeCarlo was so inebriated that he couldn’t perceive what was going on, much less recall specific conversations. Unfortunately for the defense, Fitzgerald unintentionally undermined this argument by asking DeCarlo to define the difference between “drunk” and “smashed.”
A. “My version of ‘drunk’ is when I’m out to lunch on the ground. ‘Smashed’ is just when I’m walking around loaded.”
SEPTEMBER 18, 1970
That afternoon we had a surprise visitor in court—Charles “Tex” Watson.
After a nine-month delay that would necessitate trying him separately, Watson had finally been returned to California on September 11, after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black refused to grant him a further stay of extradition. Sergeants Sartuchi and Gutierrez, who accompanied Watson on the flight, said he spoke little, mostly staring vacantly into space. He had lost about thirty pounds during his confinement, most of it during the last two months, when it became obvious his return to Los Angeles was imminent.
Fitzgerald had asked that Watson be brought into court, to see if DeCarlo could identify him.
Realizing that Fitzgerald was making a
The jury was still out when Watson entered the courtroom. Though he smiled slightly at the three female defendants, who grinned and blew him kisses, he seemed oblivious to Manson’s presence. By the time the jury came in, Watson was already seated and appeared just another spectator.
FITZGERALD “Mr. DeCarlo, you previously testified that a man by the name of Tex Watson was present at Spahn Ranch during the period of time that you were there in 1969, is that correct?”
A. “Yeah.”
Q. “Do you recognize Mr. Watson in this courtroom?”
A. “Yeah. Right over there.” Danny pointed to where Tex was sitting.
Obviously curious, the jury strained to see the man they had heard so much about.
FITZGERALD “Could I have this gentleman identify himself for the Court, Your Honor?”
THE COURT “Will you please stand and state your name.”
Watson stood, after being motioned to his feet by one of the bailiffs, but he remained mute.
Fitzgerald’s mistake was obvious the moment Watson got up. One look and the jury knew that Charles “Tex” Watson was not the type to order Charles Manson to do anything, much less instigate seven murders on his own. He looked closer to twenty than twenty-five. Short hair, blue blazer, gray slacks, tie. Instead of the wild-eyed monster depicted in the April 1969 mug shot (when Watson had been on drugs), he appeared to be a typical clean- cut college kid.
Offstage, Watson could be made to seem the heavy. Having once seen him, the jury would never think this again.
Since our first meeting in Independence, I had remained on speaking terms with Sandy and Squeaky. Occasionally one or both would drop in at my office to chat. I usually made time for such visits, in part because I was still attempting to understand why they (and the three female defendants) had joined the Family, but also because I was remotely hopeful that if another murder was planned, one or the other might alert me. Neither, I was sure, would go to the police, and I wanted to leave at least one channel of communication open.
I’d had more hopes for Sandy than Squeaky. The latter was on a power trip—acting as Manson’s unofficial spokesman, running the Family in his absence—and it seemed unlikely she would do anything to jeopardize her status. Sandy, however, had gone against Manson’s wishes on several occasions, I knew; they were minor rebellions (when her baby was due, for example, she had gone to a hospital, rather than have it delivered by the Family), but they indicated that maybe, behind the pat phrases, I’d touch something responsively human.
On her first visit to my office, about two months earlier, we’d talked about the Family credo: Sandy had maintained it was peace; I’d maintained it was murder, and had asked how she could stomach this.
“People are being murdered every day in Vietnam,” she’d countered.
“Assuming for the sake of argument that the deaths in Vietnam are murders,” I responded, “how does this justify murdering seven more people?”
As she tried to come up with an answer, I told her, “Sandy, if you really believe in peace and love, I want you to prove it. The next time murder is in the wind at Spahn Ranch, I want you to remember that other people like to live just as much as you do. And, as another human being, I want you to do everything possible to prevent if from happening. Do you understand what I mean?”
She quietly replied, “Yes.”
I’d hoped she really meant that. That naive hope vanished when, in talking to Barbara Hoyt, I learned that Sandy had been one of the Family members who had persuaded her to go to Hawaii.
As I left court on the afternoon of the eighteenth, Sandy and two male followers approached me.
“Sandy, I’m very, very disappointed in you,” I told her. “You were at Spahn when Barbara’s murder was planned. There’s no question in my mind that you knew what was going to happen. Yet, though Barbara was your friend, you said nothing, did nothing. Why?”
She didn’t reply, but stared at me as if in a trance. For a moment I thought she hadn’t heard me, that she was stoned on drugs, but then, very slowly and deliberately, she reached down and began playing with the sheath knife that she wore at her waist. That was her answer.
Disgusted, I turned and walked away. Looking back, however, I saw that Sandy and the two boys were following me. I stopped, they stopped. When I started walking again, they followed, Sandy still fingering the knife.
Gradually they were closing the distance between us. Deciding it was better to face trouble than have my back to it, I turned and walked back to them.
“Listen, you God damn bitch, and listen good,” I told her. “I don’t know for sure whether you were or weren’t involved in the actual attempt to murder Barbara, but if you were, I’m going to do everything in my power to see that you end up in jail!” I then looked at the two males and told them if they followed me one more time, I was going to deck them on the spot.
I then turned and walked off. This time they didn’t follow me.
My reaction was, I felt, exceptionally mild, considering the circumstances.
Kanarek felt otherwise. When court reconvened on Monday, the twenty-first, he filed a motion asking that I be held in contempt for interfering with a defense witness. He also asked that I be arrested for violating Section 415 of the Penal Code, charging that I had made obscene remarks in the presence of a female.
