Helter Skelter

62

Later, after obtaining revised estimates from the various attorneys, Judge Older changed this to “three or more months,” after which the hardship excuses abruptly declined.

63

He later did.

64

The twelve jurors were: John Baer, an electrical tester; Alva Dawson, a retired deputy sheriff; Mrs. Shirley Evans, a school secretary; Mrs. Evelyn Hines, a dictaphone-teletype operator; William McBride II, a chemical company employee; Mrs. Thelma McKenzie, a clerical supervisor; Miss Marie Mesmer, former drama critic for the now defunct Los Angeles Daily News; Mrs. Jean Roseland, an executive secretary; Anlee Sisto, an electronics technician; Herman Tubick, a mortician; Walter Vitzelio, a retired plant guard; and William Zamora, a highway engineer.

65

The six alternate jurors were: Miss Frances Chasen, a retired civil service employee; Kenneth Daut, Jr., a state Division of Highways employee; Robert Douglass, an employee of the Army Corps of Engineers; John Ellis, a telephone installer; Mrs. Victoria Kampman, a housewife; and Larry Sheely, a telephone maintenance man.

66

For example, Susan Atkins’ confessions to Virginia Graham and Ronnie Howard were hearsay, but admissible under the admission exception to the hearsay rule.

67

She had taken LSD about fifty times, she testified, the last time being in May 1969, three months prior to the murders.

68

On the way back to Washington on Air Force One, President Nixon issued a supplementary statement:

“I have been informed that my comment in Denver regarding the Tate murder trial in Los Angeles may continue to be misunderstood despite the unequivocal statement made at the time by my press secretary.

“The last thing I would do is prejudice the legal rights of any person, in any circumstances.

“To set the record straight, I do not now and did not intend to speculate as to whether the Tate defendants are guilty, in fact or not. All the facts in the case have not yet been presented. The defendants should be presumed to be innocent at this stage of the trial.”

69

Legally, Manson’s statement was an admission rather than a confession.

An admission is a statement by a defendant which, by itself, is not sufficient to warrant an inference of guilt, but which tends to prove guilt when considered with the rest of the evidence.

A confession is a statement by a defendant which discloses his intentional participation in the criminal act for which he is on trial and which discloses his guilt for that crime.

70

The other one-third of the wounds, Noguchi said, could have been made by a single-edged blade—but he didn’t rule out the possibility that even these might have been made by a double-edged weapon, the unsharpened portion blunting the wound pattern so it appeared, on the surface, that a single-edged blade had been used.

71

Although for diplomatic reasons I didn’t mention it, Younger, who was currently running for attorney general of California on the Republican ticket, had himself called several press conferences during the trial, much to the displeasure of Judge Older.

72

I could have broken this down further. A print matching that of a defendant is obtained at only 3 percent of the crime scenes visited by LAPD. Therefore 97 percent of the time they don’t find a matching print. 97 percent is a powerful statistic when introduced in a case where none of the defendant’s prints are found. My reason for not mentioning it in this case was obvious: LAPD had found not one but two matching prints at 10050 Cielo Drive.