someone over immediately, but she told him she would be in court the rest of the day.
She hung up, however, before the officer could ask which court she would be in.
All day in court Ronnie Howard had the feeling that she was being watched. She was sure that two men, sitting in the back of the courtroom, were homicide detectives, and expected at any minute they would arrange to speak to her. But they never did. When court adjourned, she was taken by bus back to Sybil Brand, Dormitory 8000, and Susan Atkins.
Shortly before 5 P.M., Danny DeCarlo arrived at LAPD Homicide. He had been on his way downtown earlier when he noticed he was low on gas and had pulled into a service station. On leaving, he had made an illegal turn, had been spotted by a black-and-white, and, after the officers checked and found he had some outstanding traffic tickets, had been hauled in. It had taken all day to secure his release.
Unlike Al Springer, Danny DeCarlo looked, talked, and acted like a biker. He was short, five feet four, weighed 130 pounds, had a handlebar mustache, tattoos on both arms, and burn scars on one arm and both legs from motorcycle pile-ups. Wary, frequently glancing back over his shoulder as if expecting to find someone there, he spoke in a colorful jargon that the interviewing officers—Nielsen, Gutierrez, and McGann—unconsciously adopted. Now twenty-five, he had been born in Toronto, then given U.S. citizenship after serving four years in the Coast Guard, his job: weapons expert. Currently he was in business with his father, selling firearms. When it came to the guns at Spahn Ranch, the detectives couldn’t have found a better source. When he wasn’t getting drunk and chasing girls—which he admitted occupied most of his time—he looked after the weapons. He not only cleaned and repaired them, he slept in the gunroom where they were kept. When a weapon was taken out, Danny knew about it.
He also knew a great deal about Spahn’s Movie Ranch, which was located in Chatsworth, not more than twenty miles from downtown Beverly Hills, yet, seemingly, a world away. Once William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Johnny Mack Brown, and Wallace Beery had made movies here; it was said that Howard Hughes had come to Spahn, to oversee personally the filming of portions of
Over the years George had sired ten children, each of whom he had named after a favorite horse. He could recall in detail the namesakes but was less clear about the kids. All lived elsewhere, and only a few visited him with any regularity. When the Manson Family arrived, in August 1968, George was living alone in a filthy trailer, feeling old, lonely, and neglected.
This was long before Danny DeCarlo became involved with the Family, but he had often heard the tale from those who were there.
Manson, who originally asked Spahn’s permission to stay for a few days, but neglected to mention that there were twenty-five to thirty people with him, assigned Squeaky to look after George.
Squeaky—t/n Lynette Fromme—had been with Manson more than a year at that time, having been one of the first girls to join him. She was thin, red-headed, covered with freckles. Though nineteen, she looked much younger. DeCarlo told the detectives, “She had George in the palm of her hand. She cleaned for him, cooked for him, balanced his checkbook, made love with him.”
Q.
A. “Yeah…Charlie’s trip was to get George so he had so much faith in Squeaky that come time for George to go off into the happy hunting ground he’d turn the ranch over to Squeaky. That was their thing. Charlie’d always tell her what to tell George…and she’d report back to Charlie anything anyone else told him.”
Squeaky maintained that she was George’s eyes. According to DeCarlo, they saw only what Charlie Manson wanted them to see.
Possibly because he suspected, possibly because his own children on their occasional visits strongly resisted the idea, George never did get around to willing the property to Squeaky. Which, the detectives surmised, was probably why he was still alive out at Spahn Ranch.
George Spahn had frustrated one of Charlie’s plans. Danny DeCarlo had played along with, then failed to come through on another—Manson’s scheme to get the motorcycle gangs to join him in “terrorizing society,” as DeCarlo put it. Danny had met Manson in March 1969, just after separating from his wife. He had gone to Spahn to repair some bikes, and had stayed; “I had a ball,” he later admitted. Manson’s girls had been taught that having babies and caring for men were their sole purpose in life. DeCarlo liked being cared for, and the girls, at least at first, appeared very affectionate toward “Donkey Dan,”[20] a nickname they had bestowed upon him because of certain physical endowments.
There were problems. Charlie was against drinking; Danny liked nothing better than to swill beer and lie in the sun—later he testified that while at Spahn he was smashed “probably 90 percent of the time.” And, with the exception of a couple of “special sweeties,” DeCarlo eventually tired of most of the girls: “They would always try preaching to me. It was always the same shit Charlie preached to them.”
With the August 15 visit of the Straight Satans, Manson must have realized that he would never succeed in getting the bikers to join him. After that, Danny was ignored, left out of Family conferences, while the girls denied him their favors. Though he went to Barker Ranch with the group, he stayed only three days. He split, DeCarlo said, because he had begun to believe all the “murder talk” he had heard, and because he had strong suspicions that unless he left he might be next. “After that,” he said, “I started watching my back.”
When the LaBianca detectives had talked to DeCarlo the previous Thursday, he’d promised to try to locate Manson’s sword. He turned it over to Sergeant Gutierrez, who booked it as the personal property of “Manson, Charles M.,” probable crime “187 PC”—murder.
The sword had accumulated a history. A few weeks after Danny moved to Spahn, the president of the Straight Satans, George Knoll, aka “86 George,” had visited him. Manson had admired George’s sword and had conned him out of it by promising to pay a twenty-dollar traffic ticket George owed. According to Danny, the sword became one of Charlie’s favorite weapons; he had a metal scabbard built for it, next to the steering wheel of his personal dune buggy. When the Straight Satans came to get Danny the night of August 15, they spotted the sword and reclaimed it. On learning that it was “dirty,” i.e., had been used in a crime, they had broken it in half. It was in two pieces when DeCarlo handed it over to Gutierrez.
Over-all length, 20 inches; blade length, 15 inches. The width of its razor-sharp blade, the tip of which had been honed on both sides, was 1 inch.
This was the sword, according to DeCarlo, that Manson had used to slice Gary Hinman’s ear.
From DeCarlo the detectives now learned that, in addition to Bobby Beausoleil and Susan Atkins, three others had been involved in the murder of Hinman: Manson, Mary Brunner, and Bruce Davis. DeCarlo’s primary source was Beausoleil, who, on returning to Spahn after the murder, had bragged to DeCarlo about what he had done. Or, as Danny put it, “He came back with a big head the next day, you know, just like he got him a cherry.”
The story, as DeCarlo claimed Beausoleil had related it to him, went as follows. Mary Brunner, Susan Atkins, and Bobby Beausoleil had dropped in on Hinman, “bullshitting about old times and everything like that.” Bobby then asked Gary for all his money, saying they needed it. When Gary said he didn’t have any money, Bobby pulled out a gun—a 9 mm. Polish Radom automatic—and started pistol-whipping him. In the scuffle the gun went off, the bullet hitting no one but ricocheting through the kitchen. (LASO found a 9 mm. slug lodged under the kitchen sink.)
Beausoleil then called Manson at Spahn Ranch and told him, “You’d better get up here, Charlie. Gary ain’t cooperating.”[21] A short time later Manson and Bruce Davis arrived at the Hinman residence. Puzzled and hurt, Gary pleaded with Charlie, asking him to take the others and leave; he didn’t want any trouble; he couldn’t understand why they were doing this to him; they had always been friends. According to DeCarlo, “Charlie didn’t say anything. He just hit him with the sword. Whack. Cut part of his ear off or all of it.
