After killing him, they covered the body with leaves (DeCarlo guessed, but was not sure, that this had occurred in one of the canyons behind the ranch buildings); some of the girls had helped dispose of Shorty’s bloody clothing, his automobile, and other possessions; then “Clem came back the next day or that night and buried him good.”
Q. (unidentified voice) “Can we break this up for about fifteen minutes, maybe send Danny up to get some coffee? There’s been an accident and they want to talk to you guys.”
Q. “Sure.”
Q. “I’m going to send Danny up to the eighth floor. I want him back down here in fifteen minutes.”
A. “I’ll wait right here.” Danny was not anxious to be seen wandering the halls of LAPD.
Q. “It won’t take more than fifteen minutes. We’ll close the door so nobody will know you’re in here.”
There had been no accident. Mossman and Brown had returned from Sybil Brand. As they related what they had heard, the fifteen minutes stretched to nearly forty-five. Although the Atkins-Howard conversations left many unanswered questions, the detectives were now convinced that the Tate and LaBianca cases had been “solved.”[25] Susan Atkins had told Ronnie Howard details—the unpublished words written at the LaBianca residence, the lost knife at Tate—which only one of the killers could know. Lieutenants Helder (Tate) and LePage (LaBianca) were notified.
When the detectives returned to the interrogation room, they were in a lighthearted mood.
Q. “Now, when we left Shorty, he was in nine pieces and his head and arms were off…”
DeCarlo was not told what they had learned. But he must have sensed a change in the questioning. The matter of Shorty was quickly wrapped up. Tate was now the topic. Exactly why did Danny think Manson was involved?
Well, there were two incidents. Or maybe it was the same incident, Danny was not sure. Anyway, “they went out on one caper and they came back with seventy-five bucks. Tex was in on that. And he fucked up his foot, fucking somebody out of it. I don’t know whether he put his lights out or not, but he got seventy-five bucks.”
There were no calendars at Spahn Ranch, DeCarlo had told them earlier; no one paid much attention to what day it was. The one date everyone at the ranch remembered, however, was August 16, the day of the raid. It was before this.
Q. “How much before?”
A. “Oh, two weeks.”
If DeCarlo’s estimate was correct, this would also be before Tate. What was the other incident?
A. “They went out one night, everybody went but Bruce.”
Q. “Who went?”
A. “Charlie, Tex, and Clem. Them three. O.K., the next morning—”
One of the detectives interrupted. Had he actually seen them leave? No, only the next morning—Another interruption: Did any of the girls go that night?
A. “No, I think—No, I am almost positive it was just them three that went.”
Q. “Well, do you remember, were the rest of the girls there that night?”
A. “See, the girls were scattered all over the place, and there is no possible way that I could have kept track of who was there and who wasn’t there…”
So it was possible the girls could have gone without DeCarlo’s knowing about it. Now, what about the date?
This one Danny remembered, more or less, because he was rebuilding the engine on his bike and had to go into town to get a bearing. It was “around the ninth, tenth, or eleventh” of August. “And they split that night and they came back the next morning.”
Clem was standing in front of the kitchen, DeCarlo said. Danny walked up to him and asked, “What’d you do last night?” Clem, according to Danny, smiled “that real stupid smile of his.” Danny glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Charlie was standing behind him. He got the impression that Clem had been about to answer but that Charlie had signaled him to be quiet. Clem said something like “Don’t worry about it, we did all right.” At this point Charlie walked off. Before starting after him, Clem put his hand on Danny’s arm and said, “We got five piggies.” There was a great big grin on his face.
Clem told DeCarlo, “We got five piggies.” Manson told Springer, “We knocked off five of them just the other night.” Atkins confessed to Howard that she stabbed Sharon Tate and Voytek Frykowski. Beausoleil confessed to DeCarlo that he had stabbed Hinman. Atkins told Howard that she had done the stabbing. Suddenly the detectives had a surfeit of confessors. So many that they were thoroughly confused as to who was involved in which homicides.
Skipping Hinman, which, after all, was the sheriff’s case, and concentrating on Tate, they had two versions:
(1) DeCarlo felt that Charlie, Clem, and Tex—without the help of any of the girls—had killed Sharon Tate and the others.
(2) Ronnie Howard understood Susan Atkins to say that she, two other girls (the names “Linda” and “Katie” had been mentioned, but whether they were involved in this particular homicide was unclear), plus “Charles,” plus possibly one other man, had gone to 10050 Cielo Drive.
As for the LaBianca murders, all they knew was that there were “two girls and Charlie,” that “Linda wasn’t in on this one,” and that Susan Atkins was somehow involved in that collective “we.”
The detectives decided to try another approach—through the other girls at the ranch. But first they wanted to wrap up a few loose ends. What clothing had the three men been wearing? Dark clothing, DeCarlo replied. Charlie had on a black sweater, Levi’s, moccasins; Tex was dressed similarly, he thought, though he may have been wearing boots, he wasn’t sure; Clem wore Levi’s and moccasins, too, plus an olive-drab field jacket. Had he noticed any blood on their clothes when he saw them the next morning? No, but then he hadn’t been looking for any. Did he have any idea which vehicle they took? Sure, Johnny Swartz’ ’59 Ford; it was the only car working at that time. Any idea where it was now? It had been hauled off during the August 16 raid and, so far as Danny knew, was probably still in the impound garage in Canoga Park. Swartz was one of the ranch hands at Spahn, not a Family member, but he let them borrow his car. Any idea what Tex’s true name was? “Charles” was his first name, Danny said; he’d seen the last name once, on a pink slip, but couldn’t recall it. Was it “Charles Montgomery”? the detectives asked, using a name Kitty Lutesinger had supplied. No, that didn’t sound familiar. What about Clem—does the name “Tufts” ring any bell? No, he’d never heard Clem called that, but, “That boy that was found shot up in Topanga Canyon, the sixteen-year-old kid. Wasn’t his name Tufts?” One of the detectives replied, “I don’t know. That’s the sheriff’s case. We got so many murders now.”
O.K., now about the girls. “How well did you know the broads out there?”
25
As will become all too apparent, in this instance “solved” was a misstatement if ever there was one.