Phillips, and Beatle John Lennon, the latter to testify as to how he interpreted his own song lyrics. But that, and the rumors that Manson himself planned to testify, were the only clues to the defense. And even Manson’s testifying was an iffy thing. In my talks with Charlie, he seemed to vacillate. Maybe I’ll testify. Maybe I won’t. I continued to goad him, but was worried that perhaps I’d overplayed my hand.
The defendants hadn’t been in court since Manson’s attack on the judge. The day Terry Melcher was to testify, however, Older permitted their return. Not wanting to face Manson, Terry asked me, “Can’t I go back in the lockup and testify through the speaker?”
Of all the prosecution witnesses, Melcher was the most frightened of Manson. His fear was so great, he told me, that he had been under psychiatric treatment and had employed a full-time bodyguard since December 1969.
“Terry, they weren’t after you that night,” I tried to reassure him. “Manson knew you were no longer living there.”
Melcher was so nervous, however, that he had to be given a tranquilizer before taking the stand. Though he came over somewhat weaker than in our interviews, when he finished his testimony, he told me, with evident relief, that Manson had smiled at him, therefore he couldn’t be too unhappy with what he’d said.
Kanarek, probably at Manson’s request, did not question Melcher. Hughes brought out that when Wilson and Manson drove Terry to the gate of 10050 Cielo Drive that night, they probably saw him push the button. The defense could now argue that if Manson was familiar with the gate-operating device, it would be unlikely he’d have the killers climb over the fence, as Linda claimed they had.
By this time I had proof that
Some months earlier I’d learned that after Terry Melcher had moved out of the residence, but before the Polanskis had moved in, Gregg Jakobson had arranged for Dean Moorehouse, Ruth Ann Moorehouse’s father, to stay there for a brief period. During this time Tex Watson had visited Moorehouse at least three, and possibly as many as six, times. In a private conversation with Fitzgerald, I informed him of this (which I had a legal obligation to do) and he replied that he already knew it. Though I intended to introduce this evidence during the Watson trial, I didn’t want to bring it in during the current proceedings, and I was hoping that Fitzgerald wouldn’t either, since it emphasized the Watson rather than the Manson link. Although I suspected that Manson had visited there also during the same period, I had no proof of this until the trial was well under way, when I learned from the best possible source that Manson had been to 10050 Cielo Drive “on five or six occasions.” My source was Manson himself, who admitted this to me during one of our rap sessions. Manson denied, however, having been in the house itself. He and Tex went up there, he said, to race dune buggies up and down the hills.
But I couldn’t use this information against Manson, because, as he well knew, all of my conversations with him were at his insistence and he was never advised of his constitutional rights.
It was a decidedly curious situation. Although Manson had vowed to kill me, he still asked to see me periodically—to rap.
Equally curious were our conversations. Manson told me, for example, that he personally believed in law and order. There should be “rigid control” by the authorities, he said. It didn’t matter what the law was—right and wrong being relative—but it should be strictly enforced by whoever had the power. And public opinion should be suppressed, because part of the people wanted one thing, part another.
“In other words, your solution would be a dictatorship,” I remarked.
“Yes.”
He had a simple solution to the crime problem, Manson told me. Empty the prisons and banish all the criminals to the desert. But first brand their foreheads with X’s, so if they ever appeared in the cities they could be identified and shot on sight.
“Do I need two guesses as to who’s going to be in charge of them in the desert, Charlie?”
“No.” He grinned.
On another occasion, Manson told me that he had just written to President Nixon, asking him to turn over the reins of power to him. If I was interested, I could be his vice-president. I was a brilliant prosecutor, he said, a master with words, and, “You’re right on about a lot of things.”
“What things, Charlie? Helter Skelter, the way the murders came down, your philosophy on life and death?”
Manson smiled and declined to answer.
“We both know you ordered these murders,” I told him.
“Bugliosi, it’s the Beatles, the music they’re putting out. They’re talking about war. These kids listen to this music and pick up the message, it’s subliminal.”
“You were along on the night of the LaBianca murders.”
“I went out a lot of nights.”
Never a direct denial. I couldn’t wait to get him on the stand.
Manson told me that he liked prison, though he liked the desert, the sun, and women better. I told him he’d never been inside the green room at San Quentin before.
He wasn’t afraid of death, Manson responded. Death was only a thought. He’d faced death before, many times, in both this and past lives.
I asked him if, when he shot Crowe, he’d intended to kill him.
“Sure,” he replied, adding, “I could kill everyone without blinking an eye.” When I asked why, he said,” Because you’ve been killing me for years.” Pressed as to whether all this killing bothered him, Manson replied that he had no conscience, that everything was only a thought. Only he, and he alone, was on top of his thought, in complete control, unprogrammed by anyone or anything.
“When it comes down around your ears, you’d better believe I’ll be on top of my thought,” Manson said. “I will know what I am doing. I will know
Manson frequently interrupted the testimony of Brooks Poston and Paul Watkins with asides. Kanarek’s interruptions were so continuous that Older, calling him to the bench, angrily told him: “You are trying to disrupt the testimony with frivolous, lengthy, involved, silly objections. You have done it time and again during this trial…I have studied you very carefully, Mr. Kanarek. I know exactly what you are doing. I have had to find you in contempt twice before for doing the same thing. I won’t hesitate to do it again.”
It was all too obvious, to both Kanarek and Manson, that Poston and Watkins were impressively strong witnesses. Step by step they traced the evolution of Helter Skelter, not intellectually, as Jakobson understood it, but as onetime true believers, members of the Family who had watched a vague concept slowly materialize into terrifying reality.
The cross-examination didn’t shake their testimony in the slightest; rather, it elicited more details. When Kanarek questioned Poston, for example, he accidentally brought out a good domination example: “When Charlie would be around, things would be like when a schoolteacher comes back to class.”
Hughes asked Poston: “Did you feel you were under Mr. Manson’s hypnotic spell?”
A. “No, I did not think that Charlie had a hypnotic spell.”
Q. “Did you feel he had some power?”
A. “I felt he was Jesus Christ. That is power enough for me.”
Looking back on his time with Manson, Poston said: “I learned a lot from Charlie, but it doesn’t seem that he was making all those people free.” Watkins observed: “Charlie was always preaching love. Charlie had no idea what love was. Charlie was so far from love it wasn’t even funny.
Since his extradition to California, Charles “Tex” Watson had been behaving peculiarly. At first he spoke little, then stopped speaking entirely. The prisoners in his cell block signed a petition complaining of the unsanitary condition of his cell. For hours he’d stare off into space, then inexplicably hurl himself against his cell wall. Placed in restraints, he stopped eating and, even though force-fed, his weight dropped to 110 pounds.
