the Family, he would have to commit crimes, for example, smoke marijuana. For there to be a crime, I noted, there had to be criminal intent; if he was doing it as part of his job, to catch a criminal, it wouldn’t be a crime. When they balked at this, I said he didn’t even have to be a police officer. If they had paid informers in narcotics, bookmaking, even prostitution cases, surely they could manage to come up with one in one of the biggest murder cases of our time. No dice.
Finally I turned to the DA’s Bureau of Investigation, and they found a young man willing to accept the assignment. I admired his determination, but he was clean-cut, with short hair, and looked as straight as they come. As desperate as we were for information, I couldn’t send him into that den of killers; once they stopped laughing, they’d chop him to pieces. Eventually I had to abandon the idea. We remained in the dark as to what the Family was planning to do next.
APRIL 1970
The words PIG, DEATH TO PIGS, RISE, and HEALTER SKELTER contain only thirteen different letters. Handwriting experts told me it would be extremely difficult—if not impossible—to match the bloody words found at the Tate and LaBianca residences with printing exemplars obtained from the defendants.
It wasn’t only the small number of letters involved. The words were printed, not written; the letters were oversize; in both cases unusual writing implements had been used, a towel at the Tate residence, probably a rolled-up piece of paper at the LaBiancas; and all but the two words found on the refrigerator door at the latter residence had been printed high up on the walls, the person responsible having to stretch unnaturally high to make them.
As evidence, they appeared worthless.
However, thinking about the problem, I came up with an idea which, if successful, could convert them into very meaningful evidence. It was a gamble. But if it worked, it would be worth it.
We knew who had printed the words. Susan Atkins had testified before the grand jury that she had printed the word PIG on the front door of the Tate house, while Susan had told me, when I interviewed her, that Patricia Krenwinkel had admitted printing the words at the LaBiancas. Though Susan’s grand jury testimony and her statements to me were inadmissible because of the deal we had made with her, she had confessed the printing at Tate to Ronnie Howard, so we had her on that. But we had nothing admissible on Krenwinkel.
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this is limited to verbal utterances, and that a defendant cannot refuse to give physical evidence of himself, like appearing in a lineup, submitting to a breath-analysis test for drunken driving, giving fingerprint and handwriting exemplars, hair samples, and so on. After researching the law, I drew up very explicit instructions for Captain Carpenter at Sybil Brand, stating exactly how to request the printing exemplars of Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten.
Each was to be informed: “(1) You have no constitutional right to refuse; (2) you have no constitutional right to have your attorney present;(3) your constitutional right to remain silent does not include the right to withhold printing exemplars; and (4) if you submit to this process, this can be used as evidence by the prosecution in your case.”
Captain Carpenter assigned Senior Deputy H. L. Mauss to obtain the exemplars. According to my instructions, she informed Susan Atkins of the above, then told her: “The word PIG was printed in blood at the Tate residence. We want you to print the word PIG.” Susan, without complaint, printed the exemplar as requested.
Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel were brought in individually and given similar instructions concerning their rights. However, each was told,
In my memo to Captain Carpenter there was one additional instruction for the deputy: “Do not write any of this for them.” I wanted to see if Krenwinkel misspelled “helter” as “healter” as she had on the refrigerator door.
Leslie Van Houten printed the exemplar.
Patricia Krenwinkel refused.
We’d won the gamble. We could now use her refusal in the trial as circumstantial evidence of her guilt.
As evidence, this was doubly important, since, before this, I’d had absolutely
Though we’d won that gamble, Krenwinkel herself could just as easily have emerged the winner. Leslie could have refused to make an exemplar also, which would have diluted the force of Katie’s refusal. Or Katie could have made the exemplar, the handwriting experts then failing to match her printing with that found at the LaBiancas.
We were less lucky when it came to putting the Tate-Sebring rope and the wire cutters in Manson’s possession before the murders, evidence I was counting on to provide the necessary corroboration of Linda Kasabian’s testimony as to Manson.
We knew from DeCarlo, who had been present, that Manson had purchased about 200 feet of the white, three-strand nylon rope at the Jack Frost surplus store in Santa Monica in June 1969. However, when Tate detectives finally interviewed Frost—three and a half months after my initial request—he was unable to find a purchase order for the rope. Nor could he definitely state that this was the same rope he had stocked.[56] An attempt to identify the manufacturer, then trace it back to Frost, also failed. Frost usually picked up his stock in odd lots from jobbers or through auctions, rather than directly from the manufacturer.
Just as these were blind alleys, so was one other—literally. According to DeCarlo, Manson had given part of the rope to George Spahn, for use on the ranch. Spahn’s near blindness, however, eliminated him as a witness.
It was then I thought of Ruby Pearl.
For some reason, though the police had visited Spahn Ranch numerous times, none of the officers had interviewed Ruby, George’s ranch manager. I found her a fund of valuable information. Examining the Tate-Sebring rope, she not only said it looked like the rope Manson had, she also supplied numerous examples of Manson’s domination; recalled seeing the .22 Longhorn at the ranch many times; identified the leather thong found at the LaBiancas’ as similar to the ones Manson often wore; and told me that, prior to the arrival of the Family at Spahn, she had never seen any Buck knives there, but that in the summer of 1969 “suddenly it seemed everyone had one.”
While disappointed that we couldn’t obtain documented proof of the rope sale, I was pleased with Ruby. Being an experienced horse wrangler—as well as a tough, gallant lady who showed not the slightest fear of the Family[57]—her testimony would carry weight. There was a fine streak of stubborn authority about her.
Another find was Randy Starr, whom I interviewed the same day as Ruby. A sometime movie stunt man who specialized in fake hangings, Starr said the Tate-Sebring rope was “identical” to a rope he’d once used to help Manson pull a vehicle out of the creek bed. Starr told me, “Manson always kept the rope behind the seat in his dune buggy.”
Even more important was Randy Starr’s positive identification of the .22 Longhorn revolver, for Starr had once owned the gun and had given it to Manson.[58]
One question remained unanswered. Why, on the night of the Tate murders, did the killers bring along 43 feet 8 inches of rope? To tie up the victims? Manson accomplished this the next night with a single leather thong. I obtained a glimpse of a possible answer during one of my interviews with DeCarlo. According to Danny, in late July of 1969, Manson had told him that the establishment pigs “ought to have their throats cut and be hung up by their feet.” This would really throw the fear into people, Manson said.
