“I know two things. I know the threat did not come from the prosecution and it did not come from an aunt I have that lives in Minnesota.
“I think the most reasonable inference is it came from the defense.
“I’m bringing this out because I want the defense attorneys and their clients to know that we are going to prosecute whoever is responsible for subornation of perjury. Not only will we prosecute, when our witnesses take the stand I will do my best to bring out, in front of the jury, that they received threats on their lives. It is relevant.
“I suggest the defendants tell their friends this.”
When we returned to the courtroom, I had to leave such concerns behind and focus completely on the evidence we were presenting. It was crucial. Piece by piece we were trying to link the gun to Spahn Ranch and Charles Manson.
On Friday, before our long adjournment, Sergeant Lee of the Firearms and Explosives Unit of SID positively identified the Sebring bullet as having been fired from the gun. Lee also stated that while the other bullets recovered from the Tate scene lacked sufficient stria to make a positive identification, he found no markings or characteristics which would rule out the possibility that they too were fired from the same gun.
When I attempted to question Lee about still another link in this chain, the shell casings we had found at Spahn Ranch, Fitzgerald asked to approach the bench. It was the defense’s contention, he said, that the shell casings were the product of an illegal search, and therefore inadmissible.
“Anticipating that just such an objection might be raised,” I told the Court, “I obtained George Spahn’s permission on tape. Sergeant Calkins should have it,” I said. “He was there with me.”
Only Calkins didn’t have the tape. And now, nearly a week later, he still hadn’t found it. Finally, I called Calkins to the stand to testify that we had obtained Spahn’s permission. Cross-examined by Kanarek, Calkins denied that the tape had “disappeared” or was “lost”; he just hadn’t been able to locate it, he said.
Older finally ruled the search valid, and Lee testified that when examined under a comparison microscope the shell casing he’d test-fired from the gun and fifteen of the shell casings he’d found at Spahn Ranch had identical firing pin compression marks.
Stria, lands, grooves, firing pin marks: after hours of highly technical testimony, and more than a hundred objections, most of them by Irving Kanarek, we had placed the Tate murder gun at Spahn Ranch.
Although he had agreed to testify, Thomas Walleman, aka T. J., was a reluctant witness. He’d never completely broken with the Family. He’d drift away, drift back. He seemed attracted by the easy life style, repelled by the memory of the night he saw Manson shoot Bernard Crowe.
Though I knew I couldn’t get the shooting itself in during the guilt trial, I did question T. J. as to the events immediately prior to it. He recalled how, after receiving a telephone call, Manson borrowed Swartz’ ’59 Ford, got a revolver, then, with T. J. accompanying him, drove to an apartment house on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. After stopping the car, Manson handed T. J. the revolver and told him to put it in his belt.
Q. “Then you both entered the apartment, is that correct?”
A. “Yes.”
This was as far as I could go. I then showed T. J. the .22 caliber Hi Standard revolver and asked: “Have you ever seen that particular revolver before?”
A. “I don’t think so. It looks like it, but I don’t know for sure, you know.”
T. J. was hedging. I wasn’t about to let him get away with it. Under further questioning, he admitted that this gun differed from the gun he had seen that night in only one particular: half the grip was missing.
Q. “Now, your first statement, I believe, was to the effect that you didn’t think this was the revolver, and then you said it looked like it.”
A. “I mean, I don’t know for sure whether it was the revolver, but it looks like the revolver. There are a lot of those made.”
I wasn’t worried about that little qualification, for Lomax of Hi Standard had already testified that this model was relatively uncommon.
Though qualified, T. J.’s testimony was dramatic, as he was the first witness to connect Manson and the gun.
LAPD contacted me that night. Barbara Hoyt was in a hospital in Honolulu. Someone had given her what was believed to be a lethal dose of LSD. Fortunately, she had been rushed to the hospital in time.
I did not learn many of the details until I talked to Barbara.
After fleeing Barker Ranch, the pretty seventeen-year-old had returned home. Though she had cooperated with us, Barbara was extremely reluctant to testify, and when she was contacted by the Manson girls on the afternoon of September 5 and offered a free vacation in Hawaii in lieu of testifying, she’d accepted.
Among the Family members who’d helped persuade her were Squeaky, Gypsy, Ouisch, and Clem.
Barbara spent that night at Spahn Ranch. The next day Clem drove Barbara and Ouisch to one of the Family hideouts, a house in North Hollywood which was being rented by one of the newer Family members, Dennis Rice.[74]
Rice took the pair to the airport, bought them tickets, and gave them fifty dollars in cash plus some credit cards, including, not inappropriately, a TWA “Getaway” card. Using assumed names, the two girls flew to Honolulu, where they booked the penthouse suite of the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel. Barbara saw little of the islands, however, since Ouisch, sure the police would be looking for Barbara, insisted they remain in the suite.
While there, the pair, who had been close friends, had several long talks. Ouisch told Barbara, “We all have to go through Helter Skelter. If we don’t do it in our heads, we’ll have to do it physically. If you don’t die in your head, you’ll die when it comes down.” Ouisch also confided that Linda Kasabian was not long for this world; at the most, she had six months to live.
At approximately the same time each morning, Ouisch made a long-distance call. (The number was that of a pay phone in North Hollywood, three blocks from the Rice residence. At least one of these calls was to Squeaky, the unofficial leader of the Family in Manson’s absence.)
Just after the call on the ninth, Ouisch’s manner suddenly changed. “She became very serious and looked at me kind of strangely,” Barbara said. Ouisch told Barbara that she had to go back to California, but that Barbara was to remain in Hawaii. She called and made a reservation on the 1:15 flight to Los Angeles that afternoon.
They caught a cab to the airport, arriving just before noon. Ouisch said she wasn’t hungry, but suggested that Barbara eat something. They went into a restaurant, and Barbara ordered a hamburger. When it arrived, Ouisch took it and went outside, telling Barbara to pay the check.
There was a line at the cash register, and for several minutes Barbara lost sight of Ouisch.
When she came out, Ouisch gave her the hamburger, and Barbara ate it while they were waiting for Ouisch’s flight. Just before she was to board, Ouisch remarked, “Imagine what it would be like if that hamburger had ten tabs of acid in it.” Barbara’s response was, “Wow!” She had never heard of anyone taking more than one tab of LSD, Barbara later said, and the thought was kind of frightening.
After Ouisch left, Barbara began feeling high. She tried to take a bus to the beach but became so sick she had to get off. Panicked, she then started running, and ran and ran and ran until she collapsed.
74
Rice, thirty-one, had a rap sheet that went back to 1958 and, in common with Clem, had been convicted of offenses ranging from narcotics possession to indecent exposure. He was currently on probation for assaulting a police officer. Though new to the Family, he became one of its most hard-core members.