Helter Skelter

for her husband. Eventually, after a court hearing, the mother and daughter were reunited and flew back to Taos. Bob was still involved with the other girl, however, and Linda took Tanya and hitchhiked first to Miami, Florida, where her father was living, then to her mother’s home in Concord, New Hampshire. It was here, on December 2, 1969, when the news broke that she was being sought in connection with the Tate murders, that Linda turned herself into the local police. Waiving extradition, she was returned to Los Angeles the next day.

I asked Linda, “Why, between the time you reclaimed Tanya and the date of your arrest in December, didn’t you contact the police and tell them what you knew about the murders?”

She was afraid of Manson, Linda said, afraid that he might find and kill both her and Tanya. Also, she was pregnant, and didn’t want to go through this ordeal until after the baby was born.

There were, of course, other reasons, the most important being her distrust of the police. In the drug- oriented world she inhabited, police were considered neither friends nor allies. I felt that this explanation, if properly argued, would satisfy the jury.

An even bigger question remained: “How could you leave your daughter in that den of killers?”

I was concerned not only with the jury’s reaction to this, but also with the use to which the defense could put it. That Linda had left Tanya with Manson and the others at Spahn Ranch could be circumstantial evidence that she did not really believe them to be killers, clearly contradicting the main thrust of her testimony. Therefore both the question and her answer became extremely important.

Linda replied that she felt Tanya would be safe there, just so long as she did not go to the police. “Something within me told me that Tanya would be all right,” Linda said, “that nothing would happen to her, and that now was the time to leave. I knew I would come back and get her. I was just confident that she would be all right.”

Would the jury accept this? I didn’t know. This was among my many concerns as the trial date drew ever closer.

When contacted by Lieutenant Helder and Sergeant Gutierrez, both Sage and Jacobs verified Linda’s story. I was unable to use either as a witness, however, most of their testimony being inadmissible hearsay. Ranch hand David Hannum said he had begun work at Spahn on August 12, and that Linda had borrowed his car that same day, as well as the next. And a check of the jail records verified that Brunner and Good had been in court on August 12.

The various interviews yielded unexpected bonuses. Hannum said that once when he killed a rattlesnake, Manson had angrily castigated him, yelling, “How would you like it if I chopped your head off?” He then added, “I’d rather kill people than animals.” At the same time I interviewed Linda’s husband, Robert Kasabian, I also talked to Charles Melton, the hippie philanthropist from whom Linda had stolen the $5,000. Melton said that in April 1969 (before Linda ever met the Family) he had gone to Spahn Ranch to see Paul Watkins. While there, Melton had met Tex, who, admiring Melton’s beard, commented, “Maybe Charlie will let me grow a beard someday.”

It would be difficult to find a better example of Manson’s domination of Watson.

These were pluses. There were minuses. And they were big ones.

To prove to the jury that Linda’s account of these two nights of murder wasn’t fabricated out of whole cloth, I desperately needed some third person to corroborate any part of her story. Rudolf Weber provided that corroboration for the first night. But for the second night I had no one. I gave LAPD this all-important priority assignment: Find the two officers who spoke to Manson and Linda on the beach, the man whose door Linda knocked on that night, the man and woman at the house next to the Malibu Feedbin, or any of the drivers who gave them rides. I’d like to have had all these people, but if they could turn up even one, I’d be happy.

Linda had located the spot where the two police officers stopped and questioned them. It was near Manhattan Beach. But, Los Angeles being the megalopolis that it is, it turned out to be an area where there were overlapping jurisdictions, not one but three separate law-enforcement agencies patrolling it. And a check of all three failed to turn up anyone who could recall such an incident.

We had better luck when it came to locating the actor Linda had mentioned. LaBianca detectives Sartuchi and Nielsen found him still living in Apartment 501, 1101 Ocean Front Walk, Venice. Not Israeli but Lebanese, his name was Saladin Nader, age thirty-nine. Unemployed since starring in Broken Wings, the movie about the poet Kahlil Gibran, he remembered picking up the two hitchhiking girls in early August 1969. He described both Sandy and Linda accurately, including the fact that Sandy was noticeably pregnant; picked out photos of each; and related essentially the same story Linda had told me, neglecting to mention only that he and Linda had gone to bed.

After questioning Nader, the investigating officers, according to their report, “explained to subject the purpose of the interview, and he displayed amazement that such sweet and sociable young ladies would attempt to inflict any harm upon his body after he assisted them to the best of his ability.”

Though their stories jibed, Nader was only partial support for Linda’s testimony, as (fortunately for him, and thanks to Linda) he did not encounter the group that night.

One floor down was the apartment of the man on whose door Linda had knocked. Linda had pointed out the door, 403, for us, and I’d asked Gutierrez and Patchett to try to locate the man, hopeful he’d recall the incident. When I got their report, it was on the tenant of 404. Returning, they learned from the landlady that 403 had been vacant during August 1969. It was possible some transient may have been staying there, she said—it wouldn’t have been the first time—but beyond that we drew a blank.

According to the rental manager of 3921 Topanga Canyon Boulevard—the house next to the Malibu Feedbin where Linda said she, Sadie, and Clem had stopped just before dawn—a group of hippies had moved into the unrented building about nine months ago. There had been, he said, as many as fifty different persons living there, but he didn’t know any of them. Sartuchi and Nielsen, however, did manage to locate two young girls who had lived there from about February to October 1969. Both were friends of Susan Atkins, and both recalled meeting Linda Kasabian. One recalled that once Susan, another girl, and a male had visited them. She remembered the incident— though not the date, the time, or the other persons present—because she was “on acid” and the trio “appeared evil.” Both girls admitted that during this period they were “stoned” so much of the time their recollections were hazy. As witnesses, they would be next to useless.

Nor was LAPD able to locate any of the drivers who had picked up the hitchhikers that night.

The LaBianca detectives handled all these investigations. Going over their reports, I was convinced they had done everything possible to run down the leads. But we were left with the fact that of the six to eight persons who could have corroborated Linda Kasabian’s story of the events of that second night, we hadn’t found even one. I anticipated that the defense would lean heavily on this.

Any defendant may file at least one affidavit of prejudice against a judge and have him removed from the case. It isn’t even necessary to give a reason for such a challenge. On April 13, Manson filed such an affidavit against Judge William Keene. Judge Keene accepted Manson’s challenge, and the case was reassigned to Judge Charles H. Older. Though more affidavits were expected—each defendant was allowed one—the defense attorneys, after a brief huddle, decided to accept Older.

I’d never tried a case before him. By reputation, the fifty-two-year-old jurist was a “no nonsense” judge. A World War II fighter pilot who had served with the Flying Tigers, he had been appointed to the bench by Governor Ronald Reagan in 1967. This would be his biggest case to date.

The trial date was set for June 15. Because of the delay, we were again hopeful that Watson might be tried with the others, but that hope was quickly dashed when Watson’s attorney requested, and received, still another postponement in the extradition proceedings.

The retrial of Beausoleil for the Hinman murder had begun in late March. Chief witness for the prosecution was Mary Brunner, first member of the Manson Family, who testified that she had witnessed Beausoleil stab Hinman to death. Brunner was given complete immunity in exchange for her testimony. Claiming that he had only been a reluctant witness, Beausoleil himself took the stand and fingered Manson as Hinman’s murderer. The jury believed Brunner. In Beausoleil’s first trial the case against him had been so weak that our office hadn’t asked for the death penalty. This time prosecutor Burton Katz did, and got it.

Two things concerned me about the trial. One was that Mary Brunner did everything she could to absolve