However, when Burdick again questioned her the next morning, “she stated she had decided she did not want to say anymore about the subject and the conversation was terminated.”
Though the interviews yielded nothing, the LaBianca detectives did pick up one possible lead. Before leaving Independence, Patchett asked to see Manson’s personal effects. Going through the clothing Manson had been wearing when arrested, Patchett noticed that he used leather thongs both as laces in his moccasins and in the stitching of his trousers. Patchett took a sample thong from each back to Los Angeles for comparison with the thong used to tie Leno LaBianca’s hands.
A leather thong is a leather thong, SID in effect told him; though the thongs were similar, there was no way to tell whether they had come from the same piece of leather.
LAPD and LASO have no monopoly on jealousy. To a certain extent it exists between almost all law-enforcement agencies, and even within some.
The Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department is a single room, 318, on the third floor of Parker Center. Although it is a large room, rectangular in shape, there are no partitions, only two long tables, all the detectives working at either one or the other. The distance between the Tate and LaBianca detectives was only a few feet.
But there are psychological as well as physical distances and, as noted, while the Tate detectives were largely the “old guard,” the LaBianca detectives were for the most part the “young upstarts.” Also, there was apparently some residual bitterness stemming from the fact that several of the latter, rather than the former, had been assigned to L.A.’s last big publicity case, Sirhan Sirhan’s assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In short, there was a certain amount of jealousy involved. And a certain lack of communication.
As a result, none of the LaBianca detectives walked those few feet to tell the Tate detectives that they were following a lead which might connect the two homicides. No one informed Lieutenant Helder, who was in charge of the Tate investigation, that they had gone to Independence and interviewed one Charles Manson, who was believed involved in a strikingly similar murder, or that while there one of his followers, a girl who went by the name of Leslie Sankston, had admitted that someone in their group might be involved in the Tate homicides.
The LaBianca detectives continued to go it on their own.
Had Leslie Sankston—true name Leslie Van Houten—yielded to that impulse to talk, she could have told the detectives a great deal about the Tate murders, but even more about the LaBianca slayings.
But by this time Susan Atkins was already doing enough talking for both of them.
On Thursday, November 6, at about 4:45 P.M., Susan had walked over to Virginia Graham’s bed and sat down. They had finished work for the day, and Susan/Sadie was in a talkative mood. She began rapping about the LSD trips she had taken, karma, good and bad vibrations, and the Hinman murder. Virginia cautioned her that she shouldn’t be talking so much; she knew a man who had been convicted just on what he told a cellmate.
Susan replied, “Oh, I know. I haven’t talked about it to anyone else. You know, I can look at you and there’s something about you, I know I can tell things to you.” Also, she wasn’t worried about the police. They weren’t all that good. “You know, there’s a case right now, they are so far off the track they don’t even know what’s happening.”
Virginia asked, “What are you talking about?”
“That one on Benedict Canyon.”
“Benedict Canyon? You don’t mean Sharon Tate?”
“Yeah.” With this Susan seemed to get very excited. The words came out in a rush. “You know who did it, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re looking at her.”
Virginia gasped, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
Susan just smiled and said, “Huh-uh.”[17]
Later Virginia Graham would be unable to remember exactly how long they had talked—she would estimate it as being between thirty-five minutes and an hour, maybe longer. She would also admit confusion as to whether some details were discussed that afternoon or in subsequent conversations, and the order in which some topics came up.
But the content she remembered. That, she would later say, she would never forget as long as she lived.
She asked the big question first: Why, Sadie, why? Because, Susan replied, we “wanted to do a crime that would shock the world, that the world would have to stand up and take notice.” But why the Tate house? Susan’s answer was chilling in its simplicity: “It is isolated.” The place had been picked at random. They had known the owner, Terry Melcher,[18] Doris Day’s son, from about a year back, but they didn’t know who would be there, and it didn’t matter; one person or ten, they had gone there prepared to do everybody in.
“In other words,” Virginia asked, “you didn’t know Jay Sebring or any of the other people?”
“No,” Susan replied.
“Do you mind me asking questions? I mean, I’m curious.” Susan didn’t mind. She told Virginia that she had kind brown eyes, and if you look through a person’s eyes you can see the soul.
Virginia told Susan she wanted to know exactly how it had come down. “I’m dying of curiosity,” she added.
Susan obliged. Before leaving the ranch, Charlie had given them instructions. They had worn dark clothing. They also brought along a change of clothes in the car. They drove up to the gate, then drove back down to the bottom of the hill, parked the car, and walked back up.
Virginia interrupted, “Then it wasn’t just you?”
“Oh, no,” Susan told her. “There were four of us.” In addition to herself, there were two other girls and a man.
When they reached the gate, Susan continued, “he” cut the telephone wires. Virginia again interrupted to ask whether he wasn’t worried he’d cut the electrical wires, extinguishing the lights and alerting the people that something was wrong. Susan replied, “Oh, no, he knew just what to do.” Virginia got the impression, less from her words than from the way she said them, that the man had been there before.
Susan didn’t mention how they got past the gate. She said they had killed the boy first. When Virginia asked why, Susan replied that he had seen them. “And he had to shoot him. He was shot four times.”
At this point Virginia became somewhat confused. Later she would state, “I think she told me—I’m not positive—I think she said that this Charles shot him.” Earlier Virginia had got the impression that although Charlie had instructed them what to do, he hadn’t come along. But now it appeared he had.
What Virginia didn’t know was that there were two men named Charles in the Family: Charles Manson and Charles “Tex” Watson. The complications this simple misunderstanding would later cause would be immense.
On entering the house—Susan didn’t say how they got in—they saw a man on the couch in the living room, and a girl, whom Susan identified as “Ann Folger,” sitting in a chair reading a book. She didn’t look up.
Virginia asked her how she knew their names. “We didn’t,” Susan replied, “not until the next day.”
At some point the group apparently split up, Susan going on to the bedroom, while the others stayed in the living room.
17
The Atkins-Graham-Howard conversations have been taken from LAPD’s taped interviews with Virginia Graham and Ronnie Howard; my interviews with both; their trial testimony; and my interview with Susan Atkins. There are, of course, minor variations in wording. Major discrepancies will be noted.
18
Virginia Graham had seen the owner of the house, Rudi Altobelli, interviewed on TV, and although she couldn’t remember his name, she knew it wasn’t Terry Melcher. This was one reason why, initially, she was inclined to disbelieve Susan Atkins’ story. Susan, however, insisted Melcher was the owner, apparently believing he was.