They convinced her that other people did care about her. Gardiner’s wife and children visited her regularly. Hesitantly at first, Dianne began telling the officers what she knew. And, contrary to what she had told the grand jury, she knew a great deal. Tex, for example, had admitted to her that he’d stabbed Sharon Tate. He did it, he told her, because Charlie had ordered the killings.
On December 30, Sartuchi and Nielsen interviewed Dianne in Independence. She told them that one morning, maybe a week to two weeks before the August 16 raid, Leslie had come into the back house at Spahn with a purse, a rope, and a bag of coins. She hid them under a blanket. When, a short time later, a man arrived and knocked on the door, Leslie hid herself. She told Dianne the man had given her a ride from Griffith Park and she didn’t want him to see her.
The two LaBianca detectives exchanged looks. Griffith Park was not far from Waverly Drive.
After the man left, Leslie came out from under the blanket and Dianne helped her count the money. There was about eight dollars in change, in a plastic sack.
Because of Leno LaBianca’s coin collection, the detectives were very interested in that bag of change.
Q. “O.K., you say you helped Leslie count the money or coins. Did you see any coins in there from another country?”
A. “Canada.”
Leslie then built a fire and burned the purse (Dianne recalled it as being brown leather), some credit cards (one was an oil company card), and the rope (it was about 4 feet long and 1 to 1? inches in diameter). Then she took off her own clothing and burned it too. Had Dianne noticed any blood spots on the clothing? No.
Later, in late August or early September, while they were at Willow Springs, about ten miles from Barker Ranch, Leslie told Dianne that she had stabbed someone who was already dead. Was it a woman or a man? Leslie hadn’t said.
Leslie also told Dianne that the murder had occurred someplace near Griffith Park, near Los Feliz; that someone had written something in blood on the refrigerator door; and that she, Leslie, then wiped everything so there would be no prints, even wiping things they hadn’t touched. When they left, they took some food with them. What kind of food? A carton of chocolate milk.
Had Leslie said anything about the Tate murders? Leslie had told her she wasn’t in on that.
Sartuchi attempted to get more details. The only other thing Dianne could recall was that there had been a big boat outside the house. But she couldn’t remember whether Leslie had told her about the boat or whether she had read it in the paper. She did, however, remember Leslie describing it.
Prior to this, the only evidence we had linking Leslie Van Houten with the LaBianca murders was the testimony of Susan Atkins. Since Susan was an accomplice, this would not stand up in court without independent corroboration.
Dianne Lake supplied it.
There was a question, however, as to whether Dianne would be able to testify at the trial. She was obviously emotionally disturbed. She had occasional LSD flashbacks. She feared Manson, and she loved him. At times she thought he was inside her head. Shortly after the first of the year the Inyo County court arranged for her to be sent to Patton State Hospital, in part for treatment for her emotional problems, in part because the court didn’t know what else to do with her.
Additions to my list of Things to Do: Check to see if any LaBianca credit cards are still missing. When doctors permit, interview Dianne; find out if anyone else present during back-house incident or Willow Springs conversation. Check with Katsuyama to see if any of the LaBianca stab wounds were post-mortem, i.e., inflicted after death. Ask Suzanne Struthers if her mother had a brown leather purse and if it is missing. Ask Suzanne and/or Frank Struthers if either Rosemary or Leno liked chocolate milk.
Tiny details, but they could be important.
The “Harold” whose letter I’d found in the Tate tubs
From True, who remained friendly to Manson, visiting him several times at the County Jail, Aaron learned that he had met Charlie in March of 1968, while the Family was living in Topanga Canyon. The next day Charlie and about ten others (including Sadie, Katie, Squeaky, and Brenda, but not Tex or Leslie) had shown up at 3267 Waverly Drive, the house True shared with three other youths, and stayed overnight. Manson had visited him maybe four or five times there, before True and the others moved out in September 1968. While they were still living at Waverly, True said, neighbors had frequently complained about their noisy parties.
Aaron hadn’t asked True if the LaBiancas had been among the neighbors who complained, and I made a note to check this. When I did, I learned that True couldn’t recall having ever seen the LaBiancas; as best he could remember, 3301 Waverly Drive was vacant all the time they were living there.
Going back to the LaBianca investigative reports, I saw that Leno and Rosemary hadn’t moved into 3301 Waverly Drive until November 1968, which was after True and the others moved out.
I’d been looking for a possible incident involving the LaBiancas and the Family. I didn’t find it. We were left with two facts, however: Manson had been to the house next door to the LaBianca residence on five or six occasions, and he had been as far as the gate to the Tate residence at least once.
Coincidence? Anticipating that this was probably what the Manson defense would argue, I jotted down some ideas for my rebuttal.
Charles Manson was not without a sense of humor. While in the County Jail he had somehow managed to obtain an application for a Union Oil Company credit card. He filled it in, giving his correct name and the jail address. He listed “Spahn’s Movie Ranch” as his previous residence, and gave George Spahn as a reference. As for his occupation, he put “Evangelist”; type of business, “Religious”; length of employment, “20 years.” He also wrote, in the blank for wife’s first name, “None,” and gave as his number of dependents “16.”
The card was smuggled out of jail and mailed from Pasadena. Someone at Union Oil—obviously not a computer—recognized the name, and Charles Manson didn’t get the two credit cards he’d requested.
Another characteristic I’d noticed while observing Manson in court was his cockiness. One possible reason for this was his new notoriety. At the beginning of December 1969 few had ever heard of Charles Manson. By the end of that month the killer had already upstaged his famous victims. An enthusiastic Family member was heard to brag, “Charlie made the cover of
But it was something more. You got the feeling that, despite his verbal utterances, Manson was convinced that he was going to beat the rap.
He wasn’t the only one to feel this. Leslie Van Houten wrote her parents that even if convicted she’d be out in seven years (in California a person given life imprisonment is eligible for parole in seven years), while Bobby Beausoleil wrote several of his girl friends that he expected to be acquitted in his new trial, after which he was going to start his own Family.
The problem, at year’s end, was that there was a very good chance that at least Manson would be right.
“What if Manson demands an immediate trial?”
Aaron and I discussed this at length. A defendant has a constitutional right to a speedy trial and a statutory right to go to trial within sixty days after the return of the indictment. If Manson insisted on this, we were in deep trouble.
We needed more time, for two reasons. We still desperately lacked evidence to corroborate the testimony of Susan Atkins, presuming—and it was a very big presumption—that she agreed to testify. And two of the defendants, Watson and Krenwinkel, were still out of state. They just happened to be the only two defendants against whom there was scientific evidence of guilt, i.e., the fingerprints at the Tate residence. If there was to be a joint trial, which we wanted, we needed at least one of the two sitting behind that defense table.
I suggested we bluff. Every time we were in court, we should indicate that we wanted to go to trial as quickly as possible. Our hope was that Manson would think this was bad, and start stalling himself.
It was a gamble. There was a very real possibility that Charlie might call our bluff, saying, with his strange
