Charles Manson Trial(英)

The Charles Manson (Tate-LaBianca Murder) Trial

by Doug Linder (2002)

　　In the annals of crime, there might never have been a more bizarre motive for killing than that revealed in the 1970-71 trial of four Manson "Family" members. In the twisted mind of thirty-four-year-old Charles Manson, a wave of bloody killings of high-society types in Los Angeles would be the spark that would set off a revolution by blacks against the white establishment. When "blackie," as Manson called black people, proved unable to govern, they would turn to Manson and his tribe of followers, who would have survived "Helter Skelter" by hiding out in an underground cave in the Death Valley area of California while the chaos raged above.

　　Manson's vision never materialized. Instead, he and several of his followers found themselves convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in one of the strangest trials the strange state of California has ever witnessed.

　　THE ROAD TO SPAHN RANCH

　　Manson's early life marked him for trouble. The illegitimate son of a a heavy drinking, promiscuous sixteen-year-old girl from Cincinnati——who would enter prison for armed robbery when Charles was five——, Manson spent most of his life in institutions. By age thirteen, he had committed his first crime, the burglary of a grocery store. The next nineteen years were a parade of crimes, apprehensions, incarcerations, escapes, and paroles. Most of the crimes were non-violent, the major exception being Manson's 1952 sodomization of a boy while holding a razor to his throat.

　　Psychiatrists saw Manson as "a very emotionally upset youth," "slick" but "extremely sensitive" (1951), "dangerous" with "homosexual and assaultive tendencies" (1952), having "an unstable personality" but being potentially able "to straighten himself out" (1955), being "unable to control himself" with "a tendency to cut up" (1956), having "work habits that range from good to poor" (1957), being "erratic and moody" and "a classic text book case of a correctional institution inmate" (1958), as an "energetic person" who hides "his loneliness, resentment and hostility behind a facade of superficial ingratiation" (1961), being "emotionally insecure" and tending to "involve himself in various fanatical interests" (1963), and, finally, as "in need of a great deal of help in the transition from institution to the free world" (1966).

　　Manson was scheduled for release on March 21, 1967, following completion of a ten-year sentence for forging a Treasury check. Manson begged prison officials to allow him to stay——prison, he told them, was his home. Unable to comply, the State of California released Charles Manson. He headed north to the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco. Within months of his arrival, "the Family" had begun to form around him.

　　The activities of the Family included sexual orgies, hallucinogenic drug trips, and frequent sermons by Manson on the meaning of Beatles' music and the coming of Helter Skelter. Manson dominated Family life, even to the extent of telling members who they could have sex with. No one questioned his authority. Many Family members seemed even to see Manson as having "Christ-like" characteristics, a perception Manson encouraged by often asking, "Don't you know who I am?"

　　After traveling a circuitous route around the American West in an old school bus for nearly eighteen months, the Family moved into a series of residences in the Los Angeles area in 1969. It was at Spahn Ranch, a ramshackle collection of movie-set buildings in the Simi Hills northwest of Los Angeles, where Manson developed his murderous plan to set off Helter Skelter.

　　THE TATE-LABIANCA MURDERS

　　On the afternoon of August 8,

1969, Manson set his plan in motion. Calling together several Family members, Manson announced, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter." That evening he told three female members of the Family——Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian——to get an additional change of clothes, a knife, and a driver's license. Manson discussed details of his plan with a fourth Family member, Charles "Tex" Watson before all four piled into an old Ford. As they drove down the driveway of the ranch, Manson stuck his head in the car window and told them "to leave a sign." He said, "You girls know what I mean, something witchy." Although Tex understood his mission fully, the three women knew neither their destination nor that the night was destined for murder.

　　Forty-five minutes or so later, shortly after midnight on August 9, the group pulled up in front of the Bel Air residence of actress Sharon Tate, famous for her recent role in the movie Valley of the Dolls. Tate shared the home with her husband, director Roman Polanski, who was in London at the time working on his next film project, The Day of the Dolphin. In his absence, two friends were staying at the large home at 10050 Cielo Drive, including coffee heiress Abigail Folger and her lover, Voytek Frykowski. Also in the home that night was hair stylist Jay Sebring, a friend of Tate's.

　　After Tex cut the telephone wires leading to the Tate home, the four scrambled over the fence at the bottom of the property and began heading up the hill leading to the residence. A car pulled up the driveway. Tex leaped forward, stuck his hand through the car window, aimed at the driver's head, and pulled the trigger four times. The first victim in the Tate-LaBianca killings was eighteen-year-old Steven Parent, in the wrong place at the wrong time. While Kasabian waited below by the car, the other three Family members entered the Tate home. Within minutes, the screams began. Watson would later describe the next four victims "as running around the place like chickens with their heads cut off."

　　In all, the four victims received 102 stab wounds. Sharon Tate was the last to die, knived by Watson while she was held down by Susan Atkins. Atkins said later that she tasted Tate's blood and found it to be "warm and sticky." She took some of Tate's blood and used it to scrawl, on the porch wall, "PIG."

　　The next morning, a maid arriving at the Tate home left screaming, "Murder! Death! Bodies! Blood!" Within hours, investigators discovered two badly mutilated bodies on the lawn of the Tate residence, those of Folger and Frykowski. Inside, near a couch in the living room, they discovered the bloody pregnant body of Tate and, with a rope around his neck and a bloody towel over his face, Jay Sebring.

　　Manson, meanwhile, expressed his displeasure with the attack at the Tate residence. Too messy, he thought. He decided to accompany the next Helter Skelter mission, which he scheduled for that very night. In addition to the four Family members from the previous night's mission, Manson was joined by Clem Tufts and Leslie Van Houten. Manson ordered Kasabian to cruise the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, in search for potential victims, before settling on the home of Leno and and Rosemary LaBianca. Watson, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten were the killers chosen by Manson. As they left the car, Manson told them: "Don't let them know you are going to kill them."

　　Police found Leno LaBianca with a knife lodged in his throat, twelve stab wounds, and seven pairs of fork wounds. The word "WAR" had been carved on his stomach. Rosemary LaBianca was found with multiple stab wounds in her chest and neck. On the LaBianca's living room wall, written in blood, were the words "DEATH TO PIGS" and "RISE." On the refrigerator door was written, "HEALTER SKELTER."

　　INVESTIGATION AND ARRESTS

　　On September 1, 1969, a ten-year-old boy in Sherman Oaks discovered a .

22 caliber Longhorn revolver under a bush near his home. His parents notified the LAPD, who picked up the gun, but failed to make any connection between it and the Tate murders.

　　In October, Inyo County officers raided Barker Ranch, in a remote area south of Death Valley National Monument. Twenty-four members of the Manson Family were arrested, on charges of arson and grand theft. Cult leader Charles Manson (dressed entirely in buckskins) and Susan Atkins were among those arrested.

　　After her arrest, Atkins was housed at Dormitory 8000 in Los Angeles. On November 6, she told another inmate, Virginia Graham, an almost unbelievable tale. She told of "a beautiful cat" named Charles Manson. She told of murder: of finding Sharon Tate, in bed with her bikini bra and underpants, of her victim's futile cries for help, of tasting Tate's blood. Atkins expressed no remorse at all over the killings. She even told Graham a list of celebrities that she and other Family members planned to kill in the future, including Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Tom Jones, Steve McQueen, and Frank Sinatra. Through an inmate friend of Graham's, Ronnie Howard, word of Atkins's amazing story soon reached the LAPD.

　　About the same time, detectives on the LaBianca case interviewed Al Springer, a member of the Straight Satan biker's group that Manson had tried to recruit into the Family. Word had leaked to police that the Straight Satans might have some knowledge about who was responsible for another recent murder with several similarities to the LaBianca killings. Springer told detectives that Manson had bragged to him in August at Spahn Ranch——after offering him his pick from among the eighteen or so "naked girls" scattered around the ranch——about "knocking off" five people. When Springer told detectives that Manson had said the Tate killers "wrote something on the……refrigerator in blood"——"something about pigs"——, th

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