Helter Skelter

Ironically, Kanarek and I were now on the same side. Both of us were seeking to prove that, even independent of Manson, these girls had murder within them.

Manson was very impressed by Hochman and at first wanted to be interviewed by him. I was relieved, however, when he later abandoned the idea. I wasn’t greatly worried about Manson conning Hochman. But even if Hochman didn’t buy Manson’s story, Kanarek would make sure he repeated it on the stand. Thus, using Hochman as a conduit, Manson could get almost everything he wanted before the jury, without being subject to my cross-examination.

Hochman found in all three girls “much evidence in their history of early alienation, of early antisocial or deviant behavior.” Even before joining the Family, Leslie had more emotional problems than the average person. Sadie actively sought to be everything her father warned her not to be. “She thinks now, in retrospect,” Hochman noted, “that even without Charles Manson she would have ended up in jail for manslaughter or assault with a deadly weapon.” Katie first had sex at fifteen. She never saw the boy again, and she suffered tremendous guilt because of the experience. Manson eradicated that guilt. He also, in letting her join the Family, gave her the acceptance she desperately craved.

Of the three, Hochman felt Sadie had a little more remorse than the other two—she often talked of wishing her life were over. Yet he also noted, “One is struck by the absence of a conventional sense of morality or conscience in this girl.” And he testified, “She does not seem to manifest any evidence of discomfort or anxiety about her present circumstances, or her conviction and possible death sentence. On the contrary, she seemed to manifest a remarkable peacefulness and self-acceptance in her present state.”

According to Hochman, all three girls denied “any sense of guilt whatever about anything.” And he felt that intellectually they actually believed there is no right or wrong, that morality is a relative thing. “However, I, as a psychiatrist, know that you cannot rationally do away with the feelings that exist on the irrational, unconscious level. You cannot tell yourself that killing is O.K. intellectually when you have grown up all your life feeling that killing is wrong.”

In short, Hochman believed that as human beings the girls felt some guilt deep down inside, even though they consciously suppressed it.

Keith asked Hochman: “In your opinion, Doctor, would Leslie be susceptible or respond to intensive therapy?”

A. “Possibly.”

Q. “In other words, you don’t feel that she is such a lost soul that she could never be rehabilitated?”

A. “No, I don’t think she is that lost a soul, no.”

To a psychiatrist, no one is beyond redemption. This is essential, standard testimony. Yet only one of the defense attorneys, Maxwell Keith, asked the question, and then only on redirect.

Earlier I’d brought out that Hochman had only the word of the girls that they were on LSD either night. I now asked him: “Have you ever read a reported case in the literature of LSD of any individual who committed murder while under the influence of LSD?”

A. “No. Suicide, but not murder.”

As I’d later ask the jury, could Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten, all four, be exceptions?

A large portion of Hochman’s testimony had dealt with the mental states of the three girls. Susan Atkins was suffering from a diagnosable condition, he said: an early childhood deprivation syndrome which had resulted in a hysterical personality type.

This was not legal insanity as defined by M’Naghten.

Leslie Van Houten was an immature, unusually impulsive person, who tended to act spontaneously without reflection.

Nor was this legal insanity as defined by M’Naghten.

In his report on Krenwinkel, Dr. Claude Brown, the Mobile psychiatrist, had stated that “at the time I saw Miss Krenwinkel, she showed a schizophrenic reaction.” He added, however, that “I do not state with any certainty that this psychosis existed at the time of the alleged murders.”

Schizophrenia may be legal insanity as defined by M’Naghten. But Dr. Brown’s opinion was qualified, and when Fitzgerald asked Dr. Hochman if, on the basis of his examination of Krenwinkel, he agreed that she was, or had been, schizophrenic, Hochman replied, “I would say no.”

It remained to bring these points across to the jury, in terms they could easily understand.

On recross-examination I had Hochman define the word “psychotic.” He replied that it meant “a loss of contact with reality.”

I then asked him: “At the present time, Doctor, do you feel any of these three female defendants are psychotic?”

A. “No.”

Q. “In your opinion, do you feel that any of these three female defendants have ever been psychotic?”

A. “No.”

BUGLIOSI “May I approach the witness, Your Honor? I want to ask the witness a question privately.”

THE COURT “Yes, you may.”

I had already questioned Dr. Hochman once about this. But I wanted to be absolutely certain of his reply. Once I had received it, I returned to the counsel table and asked him a number of unrelated questions, so the jury wouldn’t know what we had been talking about. I then gradually worked up to the big one.

Q. “The term ‘insanity,’ Doctor, you are familiar with that term, of course?”

A. “Yes.”

Q. “Basically, you define the word ‘insanity’ to be the layman’s synonym for ‘psychotic’?”

A. “I would say that the word ‘insanity’ is used generally to mean ‘psychotic.’”

Q. “Then, from a psychiatric standpoint, I take it that in your opinion none of these three female defendants are presently insane nor have they ever been insane, is that correct?”

A. “That is correct.”

As far as the psychiatric testimony was concerned, with Hochman’s reply the ball game was over.

The defense called only three more witnesses during the penalty trial, all hard-core Family members. Each was on the stand only a short time, but their testimony, particularly that of the first witness, was as shocking as anything that had gone before.

Catherine Gillies, whose grandmother owned Myers Ranch, parroted the Family line: Charlie never led anyone; there was never any talk of a race war; these murders were committed to free Bobby Beausoleil.

Coldly, matter-of-factly, the twenty-one-year-old girl testified that on the night of the LaBianca murders, “I followed Katie to the car, and I asked if I could go with her. Linda, Leslie, and Sadie were all in the car. And they said that they had plenty of people to do what they were going to do, and that I didn’t need to go.”

On direct examination by Kanarek, Cathy stated: “You know, I am willing to kill for a brother, we all are.”

Q. “What do you mean by that?”

A. “In other words, to get a brother out of jail, I would kill. I would have killed that night except I did not go…”

Q. “What prevented you from going with them, if anything?”

A. “Just the fact that they didn’t need me.”

Apparently Fitzgerald hoped to soften the harshness of her reply when he asked her: “Have you killed anybody to get someone out of jail?”

With a strange little smile, Cathy turned her head and, looking directly at the jury, replied: “Not yet.”