Helter Skelter

Atkins and Manson met in the courtroom he’d persuade her to repudiate her testimony.

A reporter located Susan Atkins’ father in San Jose. He said he didn’t believe this claim that Susan was under the “hypnotic spell” of Manson. “I think she is just trying to talk her way out of it. She’s sick and she needs help.” According to the reporter, Mr. Atkins blamed Susan’s involvement on her use of drugs and the leniency of the courts. He said he’d tried for three years to get the courts to keep his rebellious daughter off the streets; had they done so, he implied, this might not have happened.

For Susan, I realized, the Family was her only family. I understood now why Caballero felt it was only a matter of time before she returned to the fold.

On December 10, Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and Leslie Van Houten were brought before Judge William Keene. All three requested and were granted continuances before entering pleas.

This was the first time I had seen Kasabian. She was short, about five feet one, with long, dark-blond hair and green eyes, and was quite obviously pregnant. She looked older than twenty. In contrast to Susan and Leslie, who smiled and giggled through most of the proceedings, Linda seemed on the edge of tears.

Following the grand jury hearing, Judge Keene had called Aaron and me into chambers. At that time he’d told us that since the DA’s Office was not discussing the case with the press, he saw no need to issue a “publicity order” (or, as it is most often called, a “gag order”) covering the case. However, owing to the incredible amount of pre-trial publicity—a New York Times reporter told me that already it far exceeded that given the first Sam Sheppard trial—Judge Keene, without consulting our office, now went ahead and issued a detailed publicity order. Later amended several times, it would run to a dozen pages. In essence, it forbade anyone connected with the case—prosecutors, defense attorneys, police officers, witnesses, and so forth—to discuss the evidence with any representative of the media.

Though unknown to me at the time, the order was already too late to prevent an inside account of the murders from making headlines around the world. The previous evening, attorney Richard Caballero, acting on the basis of an agreement with Susan Atkins, had arranged the sale of the publication rights to her story.

Call from LAPD. Charles Koenig, an attendant at the Standard service station at 12881 Ensenada Boulevard in Sylmar, was cleaning the women’s rest room when he noticed the toilet was running. Lifting the lid off the tank, he found, on top of the mechanism, damp but above the waterline, a woman’s wallet. He’d checked the driver’s license and credit cards, saw the name “Rosemary LaBianca,” and immediately called LAPD.

SID was checking the wallet for prints but, because of both the material and the dampness, they doubted they’d find any.

Just the discovery of the wallet was enough for me, for it provided another piece of independent evidence supporting Susan Atkins’ story. Apparently the wallet had been there, undiscovered, since Linda Kasabian placed it there the night of the LaBianca murders, exactly four months ago.

At 11 A.M. on December 11 buckskin-clad Charles Manson was brought before Judge William Keene. The courtroom was so packed with reporters and spectators you couldn’t have squeezed another person in with a shoehorn. Since Manson lacked funds to hire an attorney, Keene appointed Paul Fitzgerald of the Public Defender’s Office to represent him. I’d come up against Paul before on several jury trials and knew he had a good reputation in his office. Manson was arraigned, and a postponement granted until December 22 for the entering of his plea.

In Independence, Sandra Good had told me that once, in the desert, Charlie had picked up a dead bird, breathed on it, and the bird had flown away. Sure, Sandy, sure, I replied. Since then I’d heard a great deal about Manson’s alleged “powers”; Susan Atkins, for example, felt he could see and hear everything she did or said.

Midway through the arraignment I looked at my watch. It had stopped. Odd. It was the first time I could remember that happening. Then I noticed that Manson was staring at me, a slight grin on his face.

It was, I told myself, simply a coincidence.

Following the arraignment, Paul Fitzgerald told Ron Einstoss, veteran crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times: “There’s no case against Manson and these defendants. All the prosecution has are two fingerprints and Vince Bugliosi.”

Fitzgerald was right about our case being weak. But I didn’t intend that it should remain that way. Nearly three weeks ago I’d given the Tate detectives, Calkins and McGann, an initial list of things to do, among which were to interview Terry Melcher; check the prints of every known Family member against the unmatched Tate latents; show photographs of Family members to friends and relatives of the victims; determine if the glasses belonged to anyone in the Family.

I called in Calkins and McGann and asked for a progress report. I learned that only one of the things on the list had been done. Melcher had been interviewed. By the LaBianca detectives.

To date LAPD hadn’t even begun looking for the Tate weapons and clothing, though Susan Atkins’ statements gave us some good clues as to the general area where they should be. Arrangements were made through our office for Susan to be taken from Sybil Brand the following Sunday, to see if she could point out the spots where Linda Kasabian had thrown the various items.

Fitzgerald was not the only one who felt we had no case. The consensus in the DA’s Office and the Los Angeles legal community—which I picked up from many sources, usually with some such remark as “Too bad you had to get involved in such a bummer”—was that the case against Manson and most of the other defendants would be thrown out on an 1118 motion.

Under section 1118.1 of the California Penal Code, if at the end of the People’s case the court feels the prosecution has failed to put on enough evidence to sustain a conviction on appeal, the judge is empowered to acquit the defendants. They aren’t even required to put on a defense to the charges.

Some felt it wouldn’t even get that far. Newsweek quoted an unnamed Los Angeles County deputy district attorney as saying that our case against Manson was so anemic that it would be thrown out even before we went to trial.

Such talk, in addition to the national exposure that would be accorded any defense attorney connected with the case, was, I suspected, the reason Manson was having so many visitors at the Los Angeles County Jail. As one deputy sheriff put it, “It’s like a bar association convention over here.” (Between December 11, 1969, and January 21, 1970, Manson had 237 separate visits, 139 of which were by one or more attorneys.) Among the first lawyers to call on him were Ira Reiner, Daye Shinn, and Ronald Hughes, none of whom I knew at that time, though I’d know all three much better before the trial ended.

Rumors multiplied like bacteria. One was that, prior to the imposition of the gag order, Caballero had sold Atkins’ story to a European press syndicate, with the stipulation that the story was not to be released in the United States until after the grand jury transcript was made public. If true, I seriously doubted if American papers would respect such an agreement. There were bound to be leaks.

DECEMBER 14, 1969

I didn’t have to look for a newsstand that sold foreign papers. When I got up that Sunday morning, I needed only to walk out the front door, reach down, and pick up the Los Angeles Times.

SUSAN ATKINS’ STORY OF 2 NIGHTS OF MURDER

The story covered nearly three pages. Though obviously edited and rewritten, with some additional material on her childhood, it was essentially the same story Susan Atkins had related on the tape made in Caballero’s office.

Not until the trial itself would the story-behind-the-story come out. The following is reconstructed from the