Helter Skelter

Times and checked Carroll Righter’s “Astrological Forecast” for his sign.

August 8: Do whatever you think will help you to extend your sphere of influence. Take care of that private task wisely and well. Get the information at the right source. Then use it cleverly.

August 9: If you go about it tactfully, you can get a reluctant associate to understand what you have in mind. Cooperate with this individual when some problem arises.

August 10: There are fine opportunities all around you. Don’t hesitate to seize the best one. Extend your sphere of influence…

You could, I realized, read just about any meaning you wanted into such forecasts. Including plans for murder?

It was indicative of our desperation that I went to such unlikely lengths in trying to ascertain why Manson had ordered these murders.

I didn’t even know whether Manson read newspapers.

Since the story first broke, LAPD had been receiving inquiries from various police departments regarding unsolved murders in their jurisdictions which they believed could have been committed by one or more members of the Manson Family. I went through these reports, eliminating a great many, setting others aside as “possibles.”[43] Though my principal concern was the Tate- LaBianca homicides, I wanted to see if there was a discernible pattern which might help explain the killings at Cielo and Waverly drives. Thus far, if there was one, I couldn’t find it.

In her printed “confession” Susan Atkins had described how, after changing clothes in the car, the Tate killers drove “along a steep embankment,” with a mountain on one side, a ravine on the other. “We stopped and Linda got out of the car and threw all the clothes, all drippy with blood…over the side.”

With the Times story on the seat beside them, a TV camera crew from Channel 7, KACB-TV, attempted to re-create the scene. Driving from the gate at 10050 Cielo Drive, they proceeded down Benedict Canyon, all but the driver changing clothes on the way. It took them six minutes and twenty seconds— during which they later admitted they felt more than a little foolish—to complete their change of apparel. At the first spot where they could pull off the road—a wide shoulder opposite 2901 Benedict Canyon Road—they stopped and got out.

Mountain on one side, ravine on the other. Newscaster Al Wiman looked down the steep embankment and, pointing to some dark objects about fifty feet down, said, laughing, “Looks like clothing down there.” King Baggot, the cameraman, and Eddie Baker, the sound man, looked too and had to agree.

It was just too easy—if the clothing was in plain view from the road, surely LAPD would have found it by now. Still, they decided to check it out. They were about to descend the slope when the car radio buzzed: they were needed on another story.

While on the other assignment they couldn’t get those dark objects out of mind. About 3 P.M. they returned to the spot. Baker went down first, followed by Baggot. They found three sets of clothing: one pair of black trousers, two pairs of blue denim pants, two black T-shirts, one dark velour turtleneck, and one white T-shirt which was spotted with some substance that looked like dried blood. Some of the clothing was partly covered by dirt slides; all of it, however, was in an area about twelve feet square, as if thrown there in one bundle.

They yelled the news up to Wiman, who called LAPD. By the time McGann and three other detectives arrived, shortly before five, it was beginning to get dark, so the TV crew set up artificial lighting. While the detectives placed the clothing in plastic bags, Baggot filmed the incident.

On learning of the find, I asked the Tate detectives to conduct a thorough search of the area, to see if they could locate any of the weapons. I had to make the request not once but many, many times. In the interim, a week after the initial discovery, Baggot and Baker returned to the scene and conducted their own search, finding a knife. It was an old, badly rusted kitchen knife, which, because of its dimensions and dull edge, was eliminated as one of the murder weapons, but it was in plain view less than a hundred feet from where the clothing had been found.

That a TV crew had found the clothing was an embarrassment to LAPD. Faces at Parker Center, however, would be far redder before the end of the following day.

On Tuesday, December 16, Susan Atkins appeared before Judge Keene and pleaded not guilty to all eight counts of the indictment. Keene set a trial date of February 9, 1970. Since this was the same date set for the retrial of Bobby Beausoleil, I was taken off the Beausoleil-Hinman case, and it was assigned to Deputy DA Burton Katz. I wasn’t unhappy about this; I had more than enough to do on Tate-LaBianca.

That Tuesday was, for Bernard Weiss, a most trying day.

Weiss hadn’t read Susan Atkins’ story when it appeared in the Los Angeles Times, but a colleague at work had, and he mentioned to Weiss that a .22 caliber revolver had definitely been used in the Tate murders. Odd coincidence, wasn’t it, his boy finding a similar type gun?

Weiss thought it might be something more than that. After all, his son had found the revolver on September 1, a little over two weeks after the Tate murders; they lived not far from the Tate residence; and the road right above the hill where Steven had found the gun was Beverly Glen. That morning Weiss called the Valley Services Division of LAPD in Van Nuys and told them he thought they might have the missing Tate gun. Van Nuys referred him to LAPD Homicide at Parker Center.

Weiss called there about noon, and repeated his story. He observed that the gun his son had found had a broken trigger guard and part of the wooden grip was missing. “Well, it sounds enough like the gun,” the detective told him. “We’ll check it out.”

Weiss anticipated that the detective would call him back; he didn’t. That evening on arriving home, Weiss read the Atkins story. It convinced him. About 6 P.M. he again called LAPD Homicide. The officer he’d talked to at noon was out, so he had to repeat the story a third time. This officer told him, “We don’t keep guns that long. We throw them in the ocean after a while.” Weiss said, “I can’t believe you’d throw away what could be the single most important piece of evidence in the Tate case.” “Listen, mister,” the officer replied, “we can’t check out every citizen report on every gun we find. Thousands of guns are found every year.” The discussion became an argument, and they hung up on each other.

Weiss then called one of his neighbors, Clete Roberts, a newscaster for Channel 2, and told Roberts the story. Roberts in turn called someone at LAPD.

Although it remains unclear which of the five calls triggered a response, at least one did. At 10 P.M.—three and a half months after Weiss gave the gun to officer Watson—Sergeants Calkins and McGann drove over to Van Nuys and picked up the .22 caliber Hi Standard Longhorn revolver.

POLICE FIND GUN BELIEVED USED IN SLAYING OF 3 TATE VICTIMS

News of the find “leaked” to the Los Angeles Times four days later. It was a somewhat selective leak. There were no details as to when or where the gun was found, or by whom, the implication being that it had been discovered by LAPD sometime after the clothing, and in the same general area.

The cylinder contained two live rounds and seven empty shell casings. This tallied perfectly with the original autopsy reports, which stated that Sebring and Frykowski had each been shot once, and Parent five times. There was only one problem: I’d already discovered the autopsy reports were in error.

After Susan Atkins testified that Tex Watson shot Parent four (not five) times, I’d asked Coroner Noguchi to re-examine the Parent autopsy photos. When he did, he found that two of the wounds had been made by the same bullet. This reduced the number of times Parent was shot to four; it also left one bullet unaccounted for.

This time I had Noguchi re-examine all the autopsy photos. In doing so, he found that Frykowski had been shot not once but twice, the coroners performing the autopsy having overlooked a gunshot wound in the left leg. So the count was again consistent, even if the reports were not.