In interviewing Danny, I’d learned a great many things which were not on the LAPD tapes. For example, he recalled that in early August 1969, Gypsy had purchased ten or twelve Buck knives, which had been passed out to various Family members at Spahn. The knives, according to DeCarlo, were about 6 inches in length, 1 inch in width, 1/8 inch in thickness—very close to the dimensions provided by Kasabian and Noguchi. In going through the sheriff’s reports of the August 16 raid, I found that a large number of weapons had been seized (including a submachine gun in a violin case) but not a single Buck knife.
The logical presumption, I’d later argue to the jury, was that after the murders the rest of the Buck knives had been ditched.
I intended to call Sergeant Gleason from LASO to testify that no knives were found in the raid. First, however, I wanted Danny to testify to the purchase. He did, but he qualified it somewhat. When I asked him who bought the Buck knives, he replied: “I’m not sure. I think Gypsy did, I’m not sure.”
When it came to the Tate-Sebring rope, DeCarlo testified it was “similar” to the rope Manson had purchased at the Jack Frost store. I persisted: “Does it appear to be different in any fashion?”
A. “No.”
DeCarlo had told me that Charlie preferred knives and swords to guns because “in the desert guns could be heard for a long distance.” I asked DeCarlo if, among the guns at Spahn Ranch, Manson had a special favorite. Yeah, DeCarlo said, a Hi Standard .22 caliber Buntline revolver. I showed him the gun and asked him: “Have you ever seen this revolver before?”
A. “I saw one similar to it.”
Q. “Does it appear to differ in any fashion?”
A. “The trigger guard is broken.”
Other than that?
A. “I can’t be sure?”
Q. “Why can’t you be sure?”
A. “I don’t know. I don’t know the serial number of it. I am not sure that is it.”
DeCarlo had cleaned, cared for, and shot the gun. He had an extensive background in weapons. The model was unusual. And he had made a drawing of it for LAPD even before he was told that such a gun had been used in the Tate homicides. (I’d already introduced the drawing for identification purposes, over Kanarek’s objection that it was “hearsay.”) If anyone should have been able to make a positive identification of that revolver, it was Danny DeCarlo. He didn’t do so, I suspected, because he was afraid to.
Though he was a shade weaker on the stand than in our interviews, I did succeed in getting a tremendous amount of evidence in through DeCarlo. Though court was interrupted for another three-day recess, DeCarlo’s direct took less than a day and a half of actual court time. I completed it on September 17.
That morning Manson passed word through Fitzgerald and Shinn that he wanted to see me in the lockup during the noon recess. Kanarek was not present, though the other two attorneys were.
I asked Manson what he wanted to talk to me about.
“I just wanted you to know that I didn’t have anything to do with the attempted murder of Barbara Hoyt,” Manson said.
“I don’t know whether you ordered it or they did it on their own,” I replied, “but you know, and I know, that in either case they did it because they thought it would please you.”
Manson wanted to rap, but I cut him off. “I’m not really in the mood to talk to you, Charlie. Maybe, if you have enough guts to take the stand, we’ll talk then.”
I asked McGann what was happening on the “Honolulu hamburger case,” as the papers had dubbed the Hoyt murder attempt. McGann said he and Calkins hadn’t been able to come up with any evidence.
I asked Phil Sartuchi of the LaBianca team to take over. Phil efficiently turned in a detailed report, with information on the airline tickets, credit card, long-distance calls, and so forth. It was December, however, before the case was taken to the grand jury. In the interim, Ouisch, Squeaky, Clem, Gypsy, and Rice remained at large. I’d often see them with the other Family members at the corner of Temple and Broadway.
On cross-examination Fitzgerald asked DeCarlo: “Is it not true that Mr. Manson indicated to you that he actually loved the black people?”
Danny replied: “Yeah. There was one time he said that.”
On redirect I asked DeCarlo about that single conversation. Charlie had told him he loved the blacks, he said, “for having the guts to fight against the police.”
Shinn brought out that DeCarlo was aware of, and more than passingly interested in, the $25,000 reward, thereby establishing that he had a reason to fabricate his testimony. Kanarek pursued the subject in detail in his cross. He also dwelt at length on DeCarlo’s fondness for weapons. Earlier DeCarlo had testified that he loved guns; would he describe that love? Kanarek asked.
DeCarlo’s replay brought down the house. “Well, I love them more than I do my old lady.”
It was easy to see where Kanarek was heading: he was trying to establish that it was DeCarlo, not Manson, who was responsible for all the weapons being at Spahn Ranch.
Kanarek switched subjects. Wasn’t it true, he asked DeCarlo, that “during the entire time you were at the ranch you were smashed?”
A. “I sure was.”
Q. “Were you so smashed that on many occasions you had to be carried to bed?”
A. “I made it a few times myself.”
Kanarek hit hard on DeCarlo’s drinking, also his vagueness as to dates and times. How could he remember one particular Saturday night, for example, and not another night?
“Well, that particular night,” DeCarlo responded, “Gypsy got mad at me because I wouldn’t take my boots off when I made love to her.”
Q. “The only thing that is really pinpointed in your mind, that you really remember, is that you had a lot of sex, right?”
A. “Well, even some of that I can’t remember.”
Kanarek had scored some points. He brought out that DeCarlo had testified on an earlier occasion (during the Beausoleil trial) that while at Spahn he was smashed 99 percent of the time. The defense could now argue that DeCarlo was so inebriated that he couldn’t perceive what was going on, much less recall specific conversations. Unfortunately for the defense, Fitzgerald unintentionally undermined this argument by asking DeCarlo to define the difference between “drunk” and “smashed.”
A. “My version of ‘drunk’ is when I’m out to lunch on the ground. ‘Smashed’ is just when I’m walking around loaded.”
SEPTEMBER 18, 1970
That afternoon we had a surprise visitor in court—Charles “Tex” Watson.
After a nine-month delay that would necessitate trying him separately, Watson had finally been returned to California on September 11, after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black refused to grant him a further stay of extradition. Sergeants Sartuchi and Gutierrez, who accompanied Watson on the flight, said he spoke little, mostly staring vacantly into space. He had lost about thirty pounds during his confinement, most of it during the last two months, when it became obvious his return to Los Angeles was imminent.
Fitzgerald had asked that Watson be brought into court, to see if DeCarlo could identify him.