become. If Linda didn’t testify, Gypsy told him on numerous occasions, everyone would get off. Fleischman did take her along one time when he went to see his client. Gypsy told Linda—in the presence of several persons—that she should lie and say that on the nights of the Tate-LaBianca murders she had never left Spahn Ranch but remained with her at the waterfall. Gypsy promised to back up her story.
Given a choice between Susan and Linda as the star witness for the prosecution, I much preferred Linda: she hadn’t killed anyone. But in the rush to get the case to the grand jury, we’d made the deal with Susan and, like it or not, we were stuck with it. Unless Susan bolted.
Yet this posed its own problems. If Susan didn’t testify, we’d need Linda, but without Susan’s testimony we had no evidence against Linda, so what could we offer her? Fleischman wanted immunity for his client, yet from Linda’s standpoint it would be better to be tried and acquitted than get immunity, testify against Manson and the others, and risk retribution by the Family.
We were very worried at this point. Exactly how worried is evidenced by a telephone call I made. After Manson had been indicted for the Tate-LaBianca murders, the Inyo County authorities had dropped the arson charges against him, though they had a strong case. I called Frank Fowles and asked him to refile the charges, which he did, on February 6. We were that afraid that Manson would be set free.
FEBRUARY 1970
That an accused mass murderer could emerge a counterculture hero seemed inconceivable. But to some Charles Manson had become a cause.
Just before she went underground, Bernardine Dohrn told a Students for a Democratic Society convention: “Offing those rich pigs with their own forks and knives, and then eating a meal in the same room, far out! The Weathermen dig Charles Manson.”
The underground paper
The cover of the next issue had Manson on a cross.
Manson posters and sweat shirts appeared in psychedelic shops, along with FREE MANSON buttons.
Gypsy and other spokesmen for the Family took to the late-night radio talk shows to play Charlie’s songs and denounce the prosecution for “framing an innocent man.”
Stretching his pro per privileges to their utmost limits, Manson himself granted a number of interviews to the underground press. He was also interviewed, by phone from the County Jail, by several radio stations. And his visitor’s list now included, among the “material witnesses,” some familiar names.
“I fell in love with Charlie Manson the first time I saw his cherub face and sparkling eyes on TV,” exclaimed Jerry Rubin. On a speaking tour during a recess in the Chicago Seven trial, Rubin visited Manson in jail, giving rise to the possibility that Manson might be considering the use of disruptive tactics during his own trial. According to Rubin, Charlie rapped for three hours, telling him, among other things, “Rubin, I am not of your world. I’ve spent all my life in prison. When I was a child I was an orphan and too ugly to be adopted. Now I am too beautiful to be set free.”
“His words and courage inspired us,” Rubin later wrote. “Manson’s soul is easy to touch because it lays quite bare on the surface.”[47]
Yet Charles Manson—revolutionary martyr—was a difficult image to maintain. Rubin admitted being angered by Manson’s “incredible male chauvinism.” A reporter for the
As yet the pro-Mansonites appeared to be a small, though vocal minority. If the press and TV reports were correct, a majority of the young people whom the media had lumped together under the label “hippies” disavowed Manson. Many stated that the things he espoused—such as violence—were directly contrary to their beliefs. And more than a few were bitter about the guilt by association. It was almost impossible to hitchhike any more, one youth told a New York
The irony was that Manson never considered himself a hippie, equating their pacifism with weakness. If the Family members had to have a label, he told his followers, he much preferred calling them “slippies,” a term which, in the context of their creepy-crawly missions, was not inappropriate.
What was most frightening was that the Family itself was growing. The group at Spahn had increased significantly. Each time Manson made a courtroom appearance, I spotted new faces among the known Family members.
It could be presumed that many of the new “converts” were sensation seekers, drawn like moths to the glare of publicity.
What we didn’t know, however, was how far they would go to gain attention or acceptance.
Leslie Van Houten was legally sane, Judge Dell ruled on February 6, basing his decision on the confidential reports of the three psychiatrists, and granting her motion for a substitution of attorneys.
In court the same day, Manson unexpectedly called our bluff: “Let’s have an early trial setting. Let’s go tomorrow or Monday. That’s a good day for a trial.” Keene set a trial date of March 30, the date already assigned Susan Atkins. That gave us a little more time, but not nearly enough.
On February 16, Keene heard Manson’s motion for a change of venue. “You know, there has been more publicity on this, even more, than the guy who killed the President of the United States,” Manson said. “You know, it is getting so far out of proportion that to me it is a joke, but actually the joke might cost me my life.”
Though the other defense attorneys would later submit similar motions, arguing that it would be impossible for their clients to obtain fair trials in Los Angeles because of the extensive pre-trial publicity, Manson didn’t argue this too strongly. The motion was really “trivial,” he said, because “it doesn’t seem it could be done anywheres.”
Though Keene disagreed with Manson’s contention that he couldn’t obtain a fair trial, he did observe, in denying the motion, that “a change of venue, even if warranted, would be ineffectual.”
This was also the view of the prosecution. It was doubtful if there was any place in California, or the rest of the United States, where the publicity had not reached.
Each time the defense made a motion—and there would be hundreds before the end of the trial—the prosecution had to be prepared to answer. Though Aaron and I shared the verbal arguments, I prepared the written briefs, many of which required considerable legal research. All this was in addition to the heavy investigative responsibilities I had taken on.
Yet the latter job had its special satisfactions. At the start of February there were still huge holes in our case, big areas where we had almost no information whatsoever. For example, I still had very little insight into what made Charles Manson tick.
By the end of the month I had that, and a great deal more. For by then I understood, for the first time, Manson’s motive—the reason why he’d ordered these murders.
I rarely interview a witness just once. Often the fourth or fifth interview will bring out something previously forgotten or deemed insignificant, which, in proper context, may prove vital to my case.
When I had questioned Gregg Jakobson before the grand jury, my primary concern had been to establish the link between Manson and Melcher.
Reinterviewing the talent scout, I was surprised to discover that since meeting Manson at Dennis Wilson’s home in the early summer of 1968, Jakobson had had over a hundred long talks with Charlie, mostly about Manson’s philosophy. An intelligent young man, who flirted off and on with the hippie life style, Gregg had never joined the Family, though he’d often visited Manson at Spahn Ranch. Besides seeing in Manson certain commercial possibilities, Jakobson had found him “intellectually stimulating.” He was so impressed that he often touted him to
