Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (28 page)

The morning Charles Manson was to be freed, he begged the authorities to let him remain in prison. Prison had become his home, he told them. He didn’t think he could adjust to the world outside.

His request was denied. He was released at 8:15
A.M
. on March 21, 1967, and given transportation to Los Angeles. That same day he requested and received permission to go to San Francisco. It was there, in the Haight-Ashbury section, that spring, that the Family was born.

Charles Manson was thirty-two years old. Over seventeen of those years—more than half his life—had been spent in institutions. In those seventeen years, Manson had only been examined by a psychiatrist three times, and then very superficially.

I
was surprised, in studying Manson’s record, to find no sustained history of violence—armed robbery age thirteen, homosexual rape age seventeen, wife beating age twenty, that was it. I was more than surprised, I was amazed at the number of federal offenses. Probably ninety-nine out of one hundred criminals never see the inside of a federal court. Yet here was Manson, described as “criminally sophisticated,” violating the Dyer Act, the Mann Act, stealing from the mails, forging a government check, and so on. Had Manson been convicted of comparable offenses in state courts, he probably would have served
less than five years
instead of over seventeen.

Why? I could only guess. Perhaps, as he said before his reluctant release from Terminal Island, prison was the only home he had. It was also possible that, consciously or unconsciously, he sought out those offenses that carried the most severe punishments. A third speculation—and I wasn’t overlooking the possibility that it could be a combination of all three—was a need, amounting almost to a compulsion, to challenge the strongest authority.

I was a long way from understanding Charles Manson. Though I could see patterns in his conduct, which might be clues to his future actions, a great deal was missing.

Burglar, car thief, forger, pimp—was this the portrait of a mass murderer?

I had far more questions than answers. And, as yet, not even a clue as to the motive.

Although Lieutenants Helder and LePage remained in charge of the Tate and LaBianca cases, the assignments were more jurisdictional than operational, since each was in charge of numerous other homicide investigations. Nineteen detectives had originally been assigned to the two cases. That number had now been cut to six. Moreover, for some odd reason, though there were only two victims in the LaBianca slayings, four detectives remained assigned to that case: Sergeants Philip Sartuchi, Mike Nielsen, Manuel “Chick” Gutierrez, and Frank Patchett. But on Tate, where there were five victims, there were only two detectives: Sergeants Robert Calkins and Mike McGann.

I called Calkins and McGann in for a conference and gave them a list of things I needed done. A few samples:

Interview Terry Melcher.

Check the fingerprints of every known Family member against the twenty-five unmatched latents found at 10050 Cielo Drive.

Put out a “want” on Charles “Tex” Montgomery, using the description on Inyo Deputy Sheriff Cox’s August 21, 1969, F.I.R. card (M/C/6 feet/145 pounds/slim build/ruddy complexion/born December 2, 1945). If the case breaks before we arrest him, I told them, we may never find him.

Show photos of every Family member to Chapman; Garretson; the Tate gardeners; and the families, friends, and business associates of the victims. It there’s a link, I want to know about it.

Check everyone in the Family to see who wears glasses, and determine if the pair found at the Tate murder scene belongs to a Family member.

“How do we do that?” Calkins asked. “They’re not about to admit it.”

“I presume you talk to their acquaintances, parents, relatives, to any of the Family members like Kitty Lutesinger and Stephanie Schram who are willing to cooperate,” I told him. “If you can check out the glasses with eye doctors all over the United States and Canada, you can certainly check out some thirty-five people.”

This was our initial estimate of the size of the Family. We’d later learn that at various times it numbered a hundred or more. The hard-core members—i.e., those who remained for any length of time and who were privy to what was going on—numbered between twenty-five and thirty.

Something occurred to me. “You
did
check out Garretson, didn’t you, to see if those glasses were his?”

They weren’t sure. They’d have to get back to me on that.

I later learned that although Garretson had been the first—and, for a time, the
only
—suspect in the murders, no one had thought to ascertain if those glasses, the single most important clue found at the murder scene, belonged to him. They hadn’t even asked him if he wore glasses. It turned out he sometimes did. I learned this in talking to his attorney, Barry Tarlow. Eventually I was able to get LAPD to contact the police in Lancaster, Ohio, Garretson’s home town, where he had returned after his release, and they obtained the specifics of Garretson’s prescription from his local optometrist. Not even close.

From the evidence I’d seen, I didn’t believe Garretson was involved in the murders, but I didn’t want a defense attorney popping up in court pointing a finger, or rather a pair of eyeglasses, at an alternate suspect.

I was also curious about whom those glasses belonged to.

After Calkins and McGann left, I got in touch with the LaBianca dectectives and gave them similar instructions regarding the photos and the Waverly Drive latents.

F
ive of the Manson girls were still in jail in Independence. LAPD decided to bring them to Los Angeles for individual interrogation. They would be confined at Sybil Brand but a “keep away” would be placed on each. This meant they could have no contact with each other or with anyone else LAPD designated—for example, Susan Atkins.

It was a good move on LAPD’s part. There was a chance that, questioned separately, one or more might decide to talk.

T
hat evening TV commentator George Putnam startled his listeners with the announcement that on Wednesday he would reveal who had committed the Tate murders. Our office called LAPD, who had their public relations spokesman, Lieutenant Hagen, contact Putnam and other representatives of the media asking them to hold off, because publicity now would hurt our investigation. All the newspapers, wire services, and radio and TV stations agreed to sit on the story, but only for one week, until Monday, December 1. The news was too big, and each was afraid someone else would try for a scoop.

There had been a leak. It wouldn’t be the last.

O
n Tuesday, the twenty-fifth, Frank Fowles, the Inyo County DA, called, and we traded some information.

Fowles told me that Sandra Good had been overheard talking again. She had told another Family member that Charlie was going to “go alibi.” If he was brought to trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders, they would produce evidence showing he wasn’t even in Los Angeles at the time the murders occurred.

I told Fowles of a rumor I’d heard. According to McGann, a police informant in Las Vegas had told him that Charles “Tex” Montgomery and Bruce Davis had been seen there the previous day, driving a green panel Volkswagen. They had allegedly told someone that they were attempting to raise enough money to bail out Manson; failing in that, they intended to kill someone.

Fowles had heard similar rumblings among the Manson girls. He took them seriously enough to send his own family out of Inyo County over the Thanksgiving weekend. He remained behind, however, ready to forestall any bail attempt.

After hanging up, I called Patchett and Gutierrez of the LaBianca team and told them I wanted a detailed report on Manson’s activities the week of the murders. Unlike the Tate detectives, they didn’t ask how to do it. They went out and did it, eventually giving me evidence which, together with other information we obtained, would blow any alibi defense to smithereens.

That afternoon McGann and Patchett re-interviewed Ronnie Howard, this time on tape. She provided several details she’d recalled since LAPD last talked to her, but nothing that was of help in the current investigation. We still didn’t know who all the killers were.

W
ednesday, November 26. “Hung jury on Beausoleil,” one of the deputy DAs yelled in the door of my office. “Eight to four for conviction.”

The case had been so weak our office hadn’t sought the death penalty. Also, the jury hadn’t believed Danny DeCarlo. Brought in at the last minute, without adequate preparation, he had not been a convincing witness.

Later that day LASO asked my office if I would take over the prosecution of Beausoleil in his new trial, and I was assigned this case in addition to the two cases I was already handling.

T
hat same morning Virginia Graham decided she had to tell someone what she knew. A few days earlier her husband had visited her at Corona. Whispering through the wire screen in the visitor’s room, she told him she had heard something about the Benedict Canyon murders, and didn’t know what to do.

He advised her: “Mind your own business.”

But, she would later state: “I can see a lot of things I don’t say anything about, but this is sick. This is so bad that I don’t know who could mind their own business with this.”
*

Having failed to get an appointment with Dr. Dreiser, Virginia instead went to her counselor. The authorities at Corona called LAPD. At 3:15 that afternoon Sergeant Nielsen arrived at the prison and began taping her story.

Unlike Ronnie, who was unsure whether four or five people were involved in the Tate homicides, Virginia recalled Sadie’s saying there were three girls and one man. Like Ronnie, however, she presumed the man, “Charles,” was Manson.

T
he individual questioning of the five girls took place that afternoon and evening at Sybil Brand.

Sergeant Manuel “Chick” Gutierrez interviewed Dianne Bluestein, aka Snake, t/n Dianne Lake, given age twenty-one, true age sixteen. The interview was taped. Listening to the tapes later, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Q.
“My name is Sergeant Gutierrez and I’m with the Los Angeles Police Department and I work homicide…. I’ve talked to several of the girls. The girls have been real nice and we’ve had some long, long chats. We know a lot of things that went on over at Spahn. We know a lot that happened other places. We know who is involved, and who is not involved. We also know things that maybe you don’t know, that we’re not going to tell you until the right time comes up, but we’ve got to talk to everybody who was involved, and I think you know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Charlie and the Family and everybody. I don’t know how tight you are with the Family. You’re probably real tight with them, but somebody’s going to go down the tubes, and somebody’s going to get the pill in the gas chamber for a whole bunch of murders which you are a part of, or so some other people have indicated.”

 

There was no evidence whatsoever that Dianne was involved in any of the murders, but “Chick” wasn’t deterred by this.
“Now, I’m here for one specific reason, and that’s to listen to you, see what you’ve got to say, so I can go to the District Attorney and tell him, ‘Look, this is what Dianne told me, and she’s willing to turn state’s evidence in return for her full release.’ We’re not interested in nailing you. We’re interested in the big guy, and you know who we’re talking about, right, honey?”

A.
[No audible answer]

 

Q.
“Now, somebody’s going to go to that gas chamber, you know that.

 

This is just too big. This is the biggest murder of the century. You know that and I know it. So, in order to protect yourself from getting even indicted or spending the rest of your life in jail, then you’re going to have to come up with some answers…We know of about fourteen murders right now, and you know which ones I’m talking about.”

A.
[Unintelligible]

 

Gutierrez accused her of involvement in all fourteen. He then said: “I’m prepared to give you complete immunity, which means that if you are straight with me, right down the line, I’ll be straight with you, and I’ll guarantee you that you will walk out of that jail a free woman ready to start over again and never go back up there to Independence to do any time. I wouldn’t say that unless I meant it, right?”

Actually, Sergeant Gutierrez did not have the authority to guarantee this. The granting of immunity is a complicated procedure, involving the approval not only of the Police Department but also of the District Attorney’s Office, with the final decision being made by the Court. Gutierrez offered it to her as casually as if it were a stick of gum.

Commenting on her silence, Sergeant Gutierrez said, “Now, what’s that going to prove, huh? Right now the only thing you’re proving to me, honey, is that, heck, you’re out there sticking your nose out for a guy by the name of Charlie. Now, what’s Charlie? He got you guys in all this problem. You could have been out right now doing your thing, but here you’re holding silent for what? For Charlie? Charlie ain’t never going to get out of that jail. You know that, right? Didn’t we start out on good terms? Huh?”

A.
“Yes.”

 

Q.
“O.K. And I’m not about to beat you over the head with a hammer or hose and all that. All I want to do is talk to you friendly…”

 

Gutierrez interviewed Dianne for nearly two hours, obtaining from the sixteen-year-old little more than the admission that she liked candy bars.

Later Dianne Lake would become one of the prosecution’s most important witnesses. But credit for this goes to the Inyo County authorities, in particular Gibbens and Gardiner, who, instead of threats, tried patient, sympathetic understanding. It made all the difference.

H
aving got nothing from Dianne, Gutierrez next interviewed Rachel Morse, aka Ouisch, t/n Ruth Ann Moorehouse, age eighteen. Ruth Ann was the girl Danny DeCarlo identified as his “favorite sweetie,” the same girl who at Barker Ranch had told him she couldn’t wait to get her first pig.

Unlike Dianne, Ruth Ann answered Gutierrez’ questions, though most of her replies were lies. She claimed she’d never heard of Shorty, Gary Hinman, or anyone named Katie. The reason she knew so little, she explained, was that she had been with the Family only a short time, a month or so before the Spahn Ranch raid (all five girls said this, obviously by prearrangement).

Q.
“I want to know everything you know, because you’re going to testify before that grand jury.”

 

A.
“I don’t know anything.”

 

Q.
“Then you’re going to hang with the rest of them. You’re going to go to the joint. If you don’t start cooperating, you’re going to go to the joint, and let me tell you what it is down there. They may drop that pill on you. They may drop that cyanide pill on you.”