“I don’t believe that for one minute,” I told the press. “It is just weeping on the part of the defense. The jury was not only fair, they based their verdict solely and exclusively on the evidence that came from that witness stand.”
“Yes,” I responded to the most frequently asked question, “we will seek the death penalty against all four defendants.”
The Manson girls on the corner outside the Hall of Justice first heard the news over the radio. They too were strangely calm. Though Brenda told newsmen, “There’s a revolution coming, very soon,” and Sandy said, “You are next, all of you,” these were Manson’s words, delivered in court months before, which they had been mouthing ever since. There were no tears, no outward display of emotion. It was as if they really didn’t care. Yet I knew this wasn’t true.
Watching the interview later on TV, I surmised that perhaps they had conditioned themselves to expect the worst.
In retrospect, another possibility emerges. Once the lowest of the low in the Manson hierarchy, good only for sex, procreation, and serving men, the girls had now become his chief apostles, the keepers of the faith. Now Charlie was dependent on them. It appears quite likely that they were undisturbed by the verdict because they were already formulating a plan which, if all went well, could set not only Manson but all the other Family members free.
PART 8
Fires in Your Cities
“Mr. and Mrs. America—you are wrong. I am not the King of the Jews nor am I a hippie cult leader. I am what you have made of me and the mad dog devil killer fiend leper is a reflection of your society…Whatever the outcome of this madness that you call a fair trial or Christian justice, you can know this: In my mind’s eye my thoughts light fires in your cities.”
JANUARY 26–MARCH 17, 1971
During the penalty trial the sole issue for the jury to decide was whether the defendants should receive life imprisonment or the death penalty. Considerations like mitigating circumstances, background, remorse, and the possibility of rehabilitation were therefore now relevant.
To avoid prolonging the trial and risk alienating the jury, I called only two witnesses: officer Thomas Drynan and Bernard “Lotsapoppa” Crowe.
Drynan testified that when he arrested Susan Atkins outside Stayton, Oregon, in 1966, she was carrying a .25 caliber pistol. “I asked Miss Atkins what she intended to do with the gun,” Drynan recalled, “and she told me that if she had the opportunity she would have shot and killed me.”
Drynan’s testimony proved that even before Susan Atkins met Charles Manson she had murder in her heart.
On cross-examination Shinn asked Drynan about the .25 caliber pistol.
Q. “The size is very small—it looks like a toy gun—is that correct?”
A. “Well, not to me.”
Crowe described how, on the night of July 1, 1969, Manson had shot him in the stomach and left him for dead. The importance of Crowe’s testimony was that it proved that Manson was quite capable of committing murder on his own.
On February 1, I rested the People’s case. That afternoon the defense called their first witnesses: Katie’s parents, Joseph and Dorothy Krenwinkel.
Joseph Krenwinkel described his daughter as an “exceedingly normal child, very obedient.” She was a Bluebird, Camp Fire Girl, and Job’s daughter, and belonged to the Audubon Society.
FITZGERALD “Was she gentle with animals?”
MR. KRENWINKEL “Very much so.”
Patricia had sung in the church choir, Mr. Krenwinkel testified. Though she was not an exceptional student, she received good grades in the classes she liked. She had attended one semester of college, at Spring Hill College, a Jesuit school in Mobile, Alabama, before returning to Los Angeles, where she shared an apartment with her half sister.
The Krenwinkels had divorced when Patricia was seventeen. According to Joseph Krenwinkel, there was no bitterness; he and his wife had parted, and remained, friends.
Yet just a year later, when Patricia was eighteen, she had abandoned her family and job to join Manson.
Dorothy Krenwinkel said of her daughter, “She would rather hurt herself than harm any living thing.”
FITZGERALD “Did you love your daughter?”
A. “I did love my daughter; I will always love my daughter; and no one will ever convince me she did anything terrible or horrible.”
FITZGERALD “Thank you.”
BUGLIOSI “No questions, Your Honor.”
Fitzgerald wanted to introduce into evidence a number of letters Patricia Krenwinkel had written to various persons, including her father and a favorite priest at Spring Hill.
All were hearsay and clearly inadmissible. All I would have needed to do was object. But I didn’t. Though aware that they would appeal to the sympathies of the jury, I felt that justice should prevail over technicalities. The issue now was whether this girl should be sentenced to death. And this was an issue for the jury to decide, not me. I felt that in reaching that extremely serious decision, they should have any information even remotely relevant.
Fitzgerald was both relieved and very grateful when I let them come in.
Keith handled the direct examination of Jane Van Houten, Leslie’s mother. Keith later told me that although Leslie’s father didn’t want to testify, he was behind Leslie 100 percent. Although, like the Krenwinkels, the Van Houtens were divorced, they too had stuck by their daughter.
According to Mrs. Van Houten, “Leslie was what you would call a feisty little child, fun to be with. She had a wonderful sense of humor.” Born in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena, she had an older brother and a younger brother and sister, the latter Korean orphans whom the Van Houtens had adopted.
When Leslie was fourteen, her parents separated and divorced. “I think it hurt her very much,” Mrs. Van Houten testified. That same year Leslie fell in love with an older youth, Bobby Mackey; became pregnant; had an abortion; and took LSD for the first time. After that she dropped acid at least once and often two or three times a week.[81]
During her freshman and sophomore years at Monrovia High School, Leslie was one of the homecoming princesses. She tried out again her junior year, but this time she didn’t make it. Bitter over the rejection, she ran away with Mackey to Haight-Ashbury. The scene there frightened her, however, and she returned home to finish high school and to complete a year of secretarial training. Mackey, in the meantime, had become a novitiate priest in the Self Realization Fellowship. In an attempt to continue their relationship, Leslie became a novitiate nun, giving up both drugs and sex. She lasted about eight months before breaking with both Mackey and the yoga group.
Mrs. Van Houten did not testify to the period which followed; possibly she knew little if anything about it. From interviews I’d learned that Leslie went full spectrum. The former nun was now anxious to “try anything,” be it drugs or answering sex-partner ads in the Los Angeles Free Press. A long-time friend stopped dating her because she had become “too kinky.”
81
Patricia Krenwinkel had also taken LSD before meeting Manson. Very obese in her early teens, she began using diet pills at fourteen or fifteen, then tried reds, mescaline, and LSD, provided by her half sister Charlene, now deceased, who was a heroin addict.