Helter Skelter

Though there was evidence that he was faking at least part of his symptoms, his attorney, Sam Bubrick, asked the Court to appoint three psychiatrists to examine him. Their conclusions differed but they agreed on one point: Watson was rapidly reverting to a fetal state, which, unless immediately treated, could be fatal. Acting on the basis of their examination, on October 29 Judge Dell ruled Watson was at present incompetent to stand trial and ordered him committed to Atascadero State Hospital.

Manson asked to see me during the recess.

“Vince,” Manson pleaded through the lockup door, “give me just half an hour with Tex. I’m positive I can cure him.”

“I’m sorry, Charlie,” I told him. “I can’t afford to take that chance. If you cured him, then everyone would believe you were Jesus Christ.”

NOVEMBER 1–19, 1970

The day before Watson was committed to Atascadero, two court-appointed psychiatrists found seventeen- year-old Dianne Lake competent to testify.

Following her release from Patton, Dianne had received some good news: Inyo County investigator Jack Gardiner and his wife, who had befriended Dianne after her arrest in the Barker raid, had been appointed her foster parents. She would live with them and their children until she finished high school.

Because of Aranda, there were some things the jury never heard—for example, that Tex had told Leslie to stab Rosemary LaBianca and, later, to wipe fingerprints off everything they had touched—since Katie had related these things to Dianne, and any reference by Katie to her co-defendants had to be excised.

Dianne could testify to what Leslie had told her she had done; however, the problem here was that Leslie never told Dianne whom she had stabbed. She said she had stabbed someone who was already dead; that this occurred near Griffith Park; and that there was a boat outside. From these facts I hoped the jury would conclude that she was talking about the LaBiancas. Dianne also testified that one morning in August Leslie had come into the back house at Spahn and proceeded to burn a purse, a credit card, and her own clothing, keeping only a sack of coins, which the girls divided and spent on food. Dianne, however, was unable to pinpoint the exact date, and though I hoped the jury would surmise this had occurred the morning after the LaBiancas were killed, there was no proof that this was so.

Since this was the only evidence, independent of Linda Kasabian’s testimony, which I had linking Leslie Van Houten to the LaBianca homicides, it hurt, and badly, when Hughes on cross brought out that Dianne wasn’t sure whether Leslie had told her about the boat or whether she had about it in the newspapers.

Hughes also focused on a number of minor discrepancies in her previous statements (she’d told Sartuchi the coins were in the purse, while she’d told me they were in a plastic bag), and what could have been one very big bombshell. On direct Dianne had said that she, Little Patty, and Sandra Good, “I believe,” had divided the money.

If Sandy was present, this couldn’t have been August 10, the morning after the LaBianca murders, since Sandra Good, along with Mary Brunner, was still in custody. However, questioned further, Dianne said Sandy “might not have been there.”

In his cross-examination Kanarek brought out that Sergeant Gutierrez had threatened Dianne with the gas chamber. Fitzgerald also came up with a prior inconsistent statement: Dianne had told the grand jury that she was in Inyo County, rather than at Spahn Ranch, on August 8 and 9.

On redirect I asked Dianne: “Why did you lie to the grand jury?”

A. “Because I was afraid that I would be killed by members of the Family if I told the truth. And Charlie asked me not to—he told me not to say anything to anybody who had the power of authority.”

On November 4, Sergeant Gutierrez, in search of a cup of coffee, had wandered into the jury room where the female defendants stayed during recesses.

He found a yellow legal pad with the name Patricia Krenwinkel on it. Among the notes and doodlings, Katie had written the words “healter skelter” three times—misspelling that first word exactly the same way it had been misspelled on the LaBianca refrigerator door.

Older would not permit me to introduce it in evidence, however. I felt he was 100 percent wrong about this: it was unquestionably circumstantial evidence; it had relevance; and it was admissible. But Older ruled otherwise.

Older also gave me a scare when I attempted to introduce Krenwinkel’s refusal to make a printing exemplar. Older agreed it was admissible, but he felt Krenwinkel should be given another chance to comply, and ordered her to do so.

The problem here was that this time Krenwinkel just might, on the advice of counsel, make the exemplar, and if she did, I knew there would be real problems.

Katie refused—on the instructions of Paul Fitzgerald!

What Fitzgerald apparently did not realize was that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for LAPD to match the two printing samples. And had LAPD failed to do so, by law Patricia Krenwinkel would have to be acquitted of the LaBianca murders. Her refusal to give an exemplar was the only speck of independent evidence I had supporting Kasabian’s testimony regarding Krenwinkel’s involvement in these crimes.

Krenwinkel had been given an excellent chance to “beat the rap.” To this day I still don’t understand why her attorney instructed her as he did and so lost her that chance.

The People’s last two witnesses, Drs. Blake Skrdla and Harold Deering, were the psychiatrists who had examined Dianne. On both direct and redirect examination, I elicited testimony from them to the effect that, although a powerful drug, LSD does not impair memory, nor is there any demonstrable medical evidence that it causes brain damage. This was important, since the defense attorneys had contended that the minds of various prosecution witnesses, in particular Linda and Dianne, had been so “blown” by LSD that they could not distinguish fantasy from reality.

Skrdla testified that people on LSD can tell the difference between the real and the unreal; in fact, they often have a heightened awareness. Skrdla further stated that LSD causes illusions rather than hallucinations—in other words, that which is seen is actually there, only the perception of it is changed. This surprised a lot of people, since LSD is called a hallucinogenic drug.

When Watkins was on the stand, I personally brought out that although he was only twenty, Paul had taken LSD between 150 and 200 times. Yet, as the jury undoubtedly observed, he was one of the brightest and most articulate of the prosecution witnesses. Skrdla also testified: “I have seen individuals who have taken it several hundred times and show no outward sign of any emotional disturbance while they are not on the drug.”

Fitzgerald asked Skrdla: “Would LSD in large doses over a period of time make someone sort of a zombie, or would it destroy rational thought processes?”

If, as I suspected, Fitzgerald was trying to lay the foundation for a defense based on this premise, that foundation collapsed when Skrdla replied: “I have not seen this, counsel.”

Dr. Deering was the People’s last witness. He finished testifying on Friday, November 13. Most of Monday, the sixteenth, was spent introducing the People’s exhibits into evidence. There were 320 of these, and Kanarek objected to every one, from the gun to the scale map of the Tate premises. His strongest objections were to the color death photos. Responding, I argued: “I grant the Court that these photographs are gruesome, there is no question about it, but if in fact the defendants are the ones who committed these murders, which the prosecution of course is alleging, they are the ones who are responsible for the gruesomeness and the ghastliness. It is their handiwork. The jury is entitled to look at that handiwork.”

Judge Older agreed, and they were admitted into evidence.

One exhibit never made it into evidence. As mentioned earlier, a number of white dog