my husband?”—would be the thought she would carry with her into infinity.
Afterwards, Katie told Susan, they wrote “‘Death to all pigs’ on the refrigerator door or on the front door, and I think she said they wrote ‘helter skelter’ and ‘arise.’”
Then Katie walked into the living room from the kitchen with a fork in her hand, and “she looked at the man’s stomach and she had the fork in her hand and she put the fork in the man’s stomach and watched it wobble back and forth. She said she was fascinated by it.”
Susan also said that it was “Katie, I believe,” who carved the word “war” on the man’s stomach.
The three then took a shower and, since they were hungry, they went to the kitchen and fixed themselves something to eat.
According to Susan, Katie also told her that they presumed the couple had children and that they would probably find the bodies when they came over for Sunday dinner later that day.
After leaving the residence, “they dumped the old clothing in a garbage can a few blocks, maybe a mile, away from the house.” Then they hitchhiked back to Spahn Ranch, arriving about dawn.
I had only a few more questions for Susan Atkins.
Q. “Susan, did Charlie oftentimes use the word ‘pig’ or ‘pigs’?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “How about ‘helter skelter’?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “Did he use the words ‘pigs’ and ‘helter skelter’ very, very frequently?”
A. “Well, Charlie talks a lot…In some of the songs he wrote, ‘helter skelter’ was in them and he’d talk about helter skelter. We all talked about helter skelter.”
Q. “You say ‘we’; are you speaking of the Family?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “What did the word ‘pig’ or ‘pigs’ mean to you and your Family?”
A. “‘Pig’ was a word used to describe the establishment. But you must understand that all words had no meanings to us and that ‘helter skelter’ was explained to me.”
Q. “By whom?”
A. “Charlie. I don’t even like to say Charlie—I’d like to say the words came from his mouth—that helter skelter was to be the last war on the face of the earth. It would be all the wars that have ever been fought built one on top of the other, something that no man could conceive of in his imagination. You can’t conceive of what it would be like to see every man judge himself and then take it out on every other man all over the face of the earth.”
After a few more questions, I brought Susan Atkins’ testimony to an end. As she nonchalantly stepped down from the witness stand, the jurors stared at her in disbelief. Not once had she shown a trace of remorse, sorrow, or guilt.
There were only four more witnesses that day. After Susan Atkins was taken from the room, Wilfred Parent was brought in to identify his son in a high-school prom picture. After identifying photos of the other Tate victims, Winifred Chapman testified that she had washed the front door of the Tate residence shortly before noon on Friday, August 8. This was important, since it meant that in order to leave a print Charles “Tex” Watson had to have been on the premises sometime after Mrs. Chapman left at four that afternoon.
Aaron questioned Terry Melcher. He described meeting Manson; told of how Manson had been along when Dennis Wilson drove him home to 10050 Cielo Drive one night; and described, very briefly, his two visits to Spahn Ranch, the first to audition Manson, the second to introduce him to Michael Deasy, who had a mobile recording unit and who he felt might be more interested in recording Manson than he was.[39]
According to various Family members, Melcher had made numerous promises to Manson, and hadn’t come through on them. Melcher denied this: the first time he went to Spahn, he had given Manson fifty dollars, all the money he had in his pocket, because “I felt sorry for these people”; but it was for food, not an advance on a recording contract; and he’d made no promises. As for Manson’s talent, he “wasn’t impressed enough to allot the time necessary” to prepare and record him.
I wanted to interview Melcher in depth—I had a feeling that he was withholding something—but, like most of the other grand jury witnesses, he was here for a very limited purpose, and any real digging would have to wait.
Los Angeles Coroner Thomas Noguchi testified to the autopsy findings on the five Tate victims. When he had concluded, the session was adjourned until Monday.
That the proceedings were secret encouraged speculation, which, in some cases, appeared not as conjecture but fact. The headline on the Los Angeles
It wasn’t true; Susan Atkins had stated the very opposite, that the killers were not on drugs either night. But the myth was born, and it persisted, perhaps because it was the easiest explanation for what had happened.
Though, as I’d soon learn, drugs were one of several methods Manson used to obtain control over his followers, they had no part in these crimes, for a very simple reason: on these two nights of savage slaughter, Charles Manson wanted his assassins in complete control of their faculties.
The reality, and its implications, were far more frightening than the myth.
DECEMBER 6–8, 1969
On Saturday, Joe Granado went to the impound garage in Canoga Park to examine John Swartz’ 1959 Ford, which had been held there since the August 16 Spahn raid. This was the car Susan Atkins said the killers had used on both nights.
Granado got a positive benzidine reaction on a spot in the upper right-hand corner of the glove compartment, indicating blood, but there wasn’t enough to determine whether it was animal or human.
When I finally got Joe’s written report, I noticed the blood wasn’t mentioned. Asked about this, Joe said the amount was so small he hadn’t bothered to note it. I had Joe prepare a new report, this time including reference to the blood. Our case thus far was basically circumstantial, and in such a case each speck of evidence counts.
“I just had a talk with Gary Fleischman, Vince,” Aaron said. “He wants a deal for his client Linda Kasabian. Complete immunity in exchange for her testimony at the trial. I told him maybe we could go along with her pleading to voluntary manslaughter, but we couldn’t give her—”
“Christ, Aaron,” I interrupted. “It’s bad enough that we had to give Susan Atkins something! Look at it this way—Krenwinkel’s in Alabama, Watson’s in Texas; for all we know, we may not be able to extradite them before the others go on trial; and Van Houten wasn’t along on the night of the Tate murders. If we give deals to Atkins and Kasabian, who are we going to prosecute for the five Tate killings? Just Charlie? The people of this city won’t tolerate that. They’re shocked and outraged by these crimes. Drive through Bel Air sometime; the fear is still so real you can feel it.”
According to Fleischman, Linda was anxious to testify. He had urged her to fight extradition; she’d gone against his advice and come back to California because she wanted to tell the whole story.
“O.K., what can she testify to? According to Susan, Linda never entered either the Tate or LaBianca residences. As far as we know, she wasn’t an eyewitness to any of the murders, with the possible exception of Steven Parent. More important, as long as we have Susan, Linda’s testimony would be valueless to us, since Susan and Linda are both accomplices. As you well know, the law is clear on this: the testimony of one accomplice can’t be used to corroborate the testimony of another accomplice. What we really need, more than anything else, is
