Of the four defense attorneys, Maxwell Keith gave the best opening argument. He was also the only one who really attempted to rebut my contentions.
“Mr. Bugliosi tells you that if the death penalty is not appropriate in this case, it would never be appropriate. Well, I wonder if it ever is appropriate?
“Mr. Bugliosi read to you at the close of his argument on the guilt phase the roll call of the dead. Let me read to you now, ladies and gentlemen, the roll call of the living dead: Leslie, Sadie, Katie, Squeaky, Brenda, Ouisch, Sandy, Cathy, Gypsy, Tex, Clem, Mary, Snake, and no doubt many more. These lives, and the lives of these three young girls in particular, have been so damaged that it is possible, in some cases, their destruction is beyond repair. I hope not, but it is possible.”
Leslie Van Houten, he strongly argued, was capable of rehabilitation. She should be studied, not killed. “I am not asking you to forgive her, although to forgive is divine. I am asking you to give her the chance to redeem herself. She deserves to live. What she did was not done by the real Leslie. Let the Leslie of today die—she will, slowly and maybe painfully. And let the Leslie as she once was live again.”
Nowhere in Paul Fitzgerald’s argument, which followed, did he state, or even imply, that Manson was responsible for what had happened to Patricia Krenwinkel.
“Patricia Krenwinkel is twenty-three years old,” Fitzgerald observed. “With 365 days in the year, there are approximately 8,400 days in 23 years, and approximately 200,000 hours in her lifetime.
“The perpetration of these offenses took at best approximately three hours.
“Is she to be judged solely on what occurred during three of 200,000 hours?”
Just before court commenced on March 23, I walked over to the water cooler. Manson, in the nearby lockup, called out to me, rather loudly, “If I get the death penalty, there is going to be a lot of bloodletting. Because I am not going to take it.”
Both the court clerk and Steve Kay overheard the remark. Kay intemperately rushed out of the courtroom and repeated it to the press. Learning of this, I asked the reporters not to print it. The Herald Examiner wouldn’t agree, and it broke the story with a banner headline:
Before this, however, Judge Older, made aware of what had happened, decided that rather than wait to the close of arguments, he would sequester the jury immediately.
In my final argument I rebutted point by point the earlier defense contentions. For example, the defense had claimed that Linda got her story from listening to the Susan Atkins tapes. Why would Linda need to listen to the tapes, I asked, when she was present both nights?
Kanarek had told the jury that if they returned death penalty verdicts, they would be killers. This was a very heavy argument. As support, he cited the Fifth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.”
In answer, I told the jury that most biblical scholars and theologians interpret the original language to mean: “Thou shalt not commit murder,” which is exactly how it appears in the New English Bible, dated 1970.
The Ten Commandments appear in Exodus, chapter 20, I noted. What Kanarek did not mention, I observed, is that the very next chapter authorizes the death penalty. Exodus 21, verse 12, reads: “Whoever strikes a man a mortal blow must be put to death,” while verse 14 of the same chapter reads: “When a man kills another, after maliciously scheming to do so, you must take him even from my altar and put him to death.”
Kanarek argued that there was no domination. In addition to all the evidence during the guilt trial, I observed, during the penalty trial, “When Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten played the part of the sacrificial lamb and admitted their participation in these murders, and then lied on that witness stand and said that Manson wasn’t involved, the fact that they were willing to lie on that witness stand just proves, all the more, Manson’s domination over them…” As for the other Family witnesses, Squeaky, Sandy, and the others, “All of them sounded like a broken record on that witness stand. They all have the same thought; they use the same language; each one was a carbon copy of the other. They are all still totally subservient and subject to Charles Manson. They are his X’d-out slaves.”
I came now to the copycat motive. My objective was to completely demolish it, yet not dwell on it so long that it would seem that I was giving it credence.
“It is really laughable, ladies and gentlemen,” I began, “the way the three female defendants and the defense witnesses sought to take the hat off Charles Manson.
“They had to come up with a motive for these murders other than Helter Skelter. Why? Because no less than ten witnesses during the guilt trial had irrevocably connected Manson with Helter Skelter, so they certainly could not say from that witness stand that the motive for these murders was Helter Skelter. If they said that, they would be saying, ‘Yes, Charles Manson masterminded these murders.’ So they came up with the copycat motive.
“I could give you between twenty and thirty reasons why it’s obvious that this nonsensical story of the defense was fabricated out of whole cloth, but I won’t take up your time with it, and I am not going to insult your intelligence.” I did point out a few:
Linda Kasabian testified during the penalty trial that she had never heard anyone discuss committing these murders to free Bobby Beausoleil.
Gary Hinman was stabbed not more than four times. Voytek Frykowski was stabbed fifty-one times, Rosemary LaBianca forty-one times, Leno LaBianca twenty-six times. Rather a great difference, if these were copycat slayings.
And, if these murders were to be carbon copies, why weren’t the words “political piggy” used at the Tate and LaBianca residences? And why no bloody paw print at the latter two houses?
The most powerful evidence demolishing this ridiculous motive, I noted, was that as early as February 1969, “long before there was any Hinman murder to copy, long before there were any words ‘political piggy’ to copy, Manson told Brooks Poston and other Family members—including all of his co-defendants—that, quoting Poston: ‘He said a group of real blacks would come out of the ghettos and do an atrocious crime in the richer sections of Los Angeles and other cities. They would do an atrocious murder with stabbing, killing, cutting bodies to pieces, smearing blood on the walls, writing “pigs” on the walls.’
“Writing ‘pig’ on the walls,” I repeated.
“So writing ‘pig’ at the Tate and LaBianca residences was simply a part of Manson’s blueprint for starting Helter Skelter, not an effort to copy the Hinman murder.
“Incidentally,” I observed, “Mr. Kanarek never did try to explain to you why the words ‘helter skelter’ were printed in blood on the refrigerator door at the LaBianca residence. What does Helter Skelter have to do with freeing Bobby Beausoleil or an alleged $1,000 MDA burn at the Tate residence? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. The words ‘helter skelter’ were found printed in blood on the LaBianca refrigerator door because all of the evidence at this trial shows beyond all doubt that Helter Skelter was the principal reason for these savage murders.
“Yes,” I admitted, “there is a connection between the Hinman murder and the Tate-LaBianca murders. But it was not this silly Bobby Beausoleil nonsense. Here is the connection. Mr. Manson not only ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders, he also ordered the Hinman murder. That is the connection.”
As for Susan Atkins’ claim that Linda Kasabian masterminded these murders, I noted that not until the penalty phase did she say anything about this, and then “all of a sudden Linda Kasabian is Charles Manson.”