wastebasket.
Manson eventually requested that Ronald Hughes be substituted for Hollopeter. Like Reiner and Shinn, Hughes had been one of the first attorneys to call on Manson. He had remained on the periphery of the case ever since, his chief function being to run errands for Manson, as indicated by a document Manson had signed on February 17, designating him one of his legal runners.
Keene granted the substitution. Hollopeter, whom the press called “one of L.A. county’s most successful defense attorneys,” was out, after thirteen days; Hughes, who had never before tried a case, was in.
Something of an intellectual, Hughes was a huge, balding man with a long, scraggly beard. His various items of apparel rarely matched and usually evidenced numerous food stains. As one reporter remarked, “You could usually tell what Ron had for breakfast, for the past several weeks.” Hughes, whom I would get to know well in the months ahead, and for whom I developed a growing respect, once admitted to me that he had bought his suits for a dollar apiece at MGM; they were from Walter Slezak’s old wardrobe. The press was quick to dub him “Manson’s hippie lawyer.”
Hughes’ first two acts were to withdraw the motions for the psychiatric examination and the severance. Granted. His third and fourth were requests that Manson be allowed to revert to pro per status and to deliver a speech to the Court. Denied.
Although Manson was displeased with Keene’s last two rulings, he couldn’t have been too unhappy with the defense team, which now consisted of four attorneys—Reiner (Van Houten), Shinn (Atkins), Fitzgerald (Krenwinkel), and Hughes (Manson)—each of whom had been associated with him since early in the case.
Unknown to us, there were still changes ahead. Among the casualties would be both Ira Reiner and Ronald Hughes, each of whom dared go against Manson’s wishes. Reiner would lose considerable time and money for having linked himself with the Manson defense. His loss would be small, however, compared to that of Hughes, who, just eight months later, would pay with his life.
On March 21, Aaron and I were walking down the corridor in the Hall of Justice when we spotted Irving Kanarek emerging from the elevator.
Although little known elsewhere, Kanarek was something of a legend in the Los Angeles courts. The attorney’s obstructionist tactics had caused a number of judges to openly censure him from the bench. Kanarek stories were so common, and usually incredible, as to seem fictional when they were actually fact. Prosecutor Burton Katz, for example, recalled that Kanarek once objected to a prosecution witness’s stating his own name because, having first heard his name from his mother, it was “hearsay.” Such frivolous objections were minor irritations compared with Kanarek’s dilatory tactics. As samples:
In the case of
In the case of
In the case of
Outside the presence of the jury, Judge Roberts defined Kanarek’s modus operandi as follows: “You take interminable lengths of time in cross-examining on the most minute, unimportant details; you ramble back and forth with no chronology of events, to just totally confuse everybody in the courtroom, to the utter frustration of the jury, the witnesses, and the judge.”
After examining the transcript, the Appellate Court found the judge’s remarks were not prejudicial but were substantiated by the trial record.
“All we need, Vince,” Aaron remarked jocularly to me, “is to have Irving Kanarek on this case. We’d be in court ten years.”
The next day Ronald Hughes told a reporter that “he may ask Van Nuys attorney I. A. Kanarek to enter the case as Manson’s lawyer. He mentioned that he and Manson conferred with Kanarek at the County Jail Monday night.”
Though no miracle was involved, the Black Panther whom Charles Manson had shot and killed in July 1969 had resurrected. Only he wasn’t a Panther, just a “former dope dealer,” and, contrary to what Manson and the Family had believed, after Manson shot him he hadn’t died, though his friends had told Manson that he had. His name was Bernard Crowe, but he was best known by the descriptive nickname Lotsapoppa. Our long search for Crowe ended when an old acquaintance of mine, Ed Tolmas, who was Crowe’s attorney, called me. He told me he had learned we were looking for his client and arranged for me to interview Crowe.
After Manson and T. J. had left the Hollywood apartment where the shooting took place, Crowe, who had been playing dead, told his friends to call an ambulance. They did, then split. When questioned by the police at the hospital, Crowe said he didn’t know who had shot him or why. He nearly didn’t make it; he was on the critical list for eighteen days. The bullet was still lodged next to his spine.
I was interested in Crowe for two reasons. One, the incident proved that Charles Manson was quite capable of killing someone on his own. Though I knew I couldn’t get this into evidence during the guilt phase of the trial, I was hopeful of introducing it during the penalty phase, when other crimes can be considered. Two, from the description it appeared that the gun Manson had shot Crowe with was the same .22 caliber Longhorn revolver which, just a little over a month later, Tex Watson would use in the Tate homicides. If we could remove the bullet from Crowe’s body and match it up with the bullets test-fired from the .22 caliber revolver, we’d have placed the Tate murder weapon in Manson’s own hand.
Sergeant Bill Lee of SID wasn’t optimistic about the bullet. He told me that since it had been embedded in the body for over nine months, it was likely that acids had obliterated the stria to an extent where a positive identification would be difficult. Still, it might be possible. I then talked to several surgeons: they could take out the bullet, they told me, but the operation was risky.
I laid it out for Crowe. We’d like to have the bullet, and would arrange to have it removed at the Los Angeles County Hospital. But there were serious risks involved, and I didn’t minimize them.
Crowe declined the operation. He was sort of proud of the bullet, he said. It made quite a conversation piece.
Eventually Manson would have learned, through discovery, of the resurrection of Bernard Crowe. Before this, however, Crowe was jailed on a marijuana charge. As he was being escorted down the hall, he passed Manson and his guard, who were on their way back from the attorney room. Charlie did a quick about-face, then told Crowe, according to the deputies who were present, “Sorry I had to do it, but you know how it is.”
Crowe’s response, if there was one, went unreported.
Toward the end of March the prosecution nearly lost one of its key witnesses.
Paul Watkins, once Manson’s chief lieutenant, was pulled out of a flaming Volkswagen camper and rushed to Los Angeles County General Hospital with second-degree burns on 25 percent of his face, arms, and back. When sufficiently recovered to talk to the police, Watkins told them he had fallen asleep while reading by candlelight, and either that, or a marijuana cigarette he had been smoking, could have caused the fire.
These were only guesses, Watkins told them, as he was “unsure of the origin of the blaze.”
Three days
As far back as November 1969, I’d asked LAPD to infiltrate the Family. I not only wanted to know what they were planning as far as defense strategy was concerned; I told the officers, “It would be tragic if there was another murder which we could have prevented.”
I made this request at least ten times, LAPD finally contending that if they did plant an undercover agent in
