A. “Pretty well, man.” [Laughter]
The detectives began going through the names the girls had used when arrested in the Spahn and Barker raids. And they immediately encountered problems. Not only had they used aliases when booked, they also used them at the ranch. And not a single alias but several, seemingly changing names like clothes, whenever the mood hit them. As a further complication, they even traded aliases.
As if these weren’t problems enough, Danny provided another. He was extremely reluctant to admit that any of the girls might be capable of murder.
The guys were something else. Bobby, Tex, Bruce, Clem, any would kill, DeCarlo felt, if Charlie told him to. (All, it later turned out, had.)
Ella Jo Bailey was eliminated; she’d left Spahn Ranch before the murders. Mary Brunner and Sandra Good were out also; they’d been in jail both nights.
What about Ruth Ann Smack, aka Ruth Ann Huebelhurst? (These were booking names. Her true name was Ruth Ann Moorehouse, and she was known in the Family as “Ouisch.” Danny knew this, but for personal reasons didn’t bother to enlighten the detectives.)
Q. “What do you know about her?”
A. “She used to be one of my favorite sweeties.”
Q. “Do you think she would have the guts to get into a cold-blooded murder?”
Danny hesitated a long time before answering. “You know, that little girl there is so sweet. What really made me sick to my stomach is when she came up one night, when I was up there in the desert, and she said, ‘I can hardly wait to get my first pig.’
“Little seventeen-year-old! I looked on her like she was my daughter, just the sweetest little thing you would ever want to meet in your life. She was so beautiful and so sweet. And Charlie fucked her thinking around so much it turned your guts.”
The date when she told DeCarlo this was determined to be about September 1. If she hadn’t killed by then, she couldn’t have been in on LaBianca or Tate. Eliminate Ruth Ann.
Ever know a Katie? Yeah, but he didn’t know what her real name was. “I never knew anyone by their real name,” DeCarlo said. Katie was an older broad, not a runaway. She was from down around Venice. His description of her was vague, except that she had so much hair on her body that none of the guys wanted to make it with her.
What about a Linda? She was a short broad, Danny said. But she didn’t stay long, maybe only a month or so, and he didn’t know much about her. She’d left by the time they raided Spahn Ranch.
When Sadie went out on “creepy-crawly” missions, did she carry any weapons? one of the detectives asked.
A. “She carried a little knife…They had a bunch of little hunting knives, Buck hunting knives.”
Q. “Buck knives?”
A. “Buck knives, right…”
They now began firing specific questions at DeCarlo. Ever see any credit cards with an Italian name on them? Anybody ever talk about somebody who owned a boat? Ever hear anyone use the name “LaBianca”? Danny gave “No” answers to all.
What about glasses, anybody at Spahn wear them? “None of ’em wore glasses because Charlie wouldn’t let ’em wear glasses.” Mary Brunner had had several pairs; Charlie had broken them.
DeCarlo was shown some two-strand nylon rope. Ever see any rope like this up at Spahn? No, but he had seen some three-strand. Charlie had bought about 200 feet of it at the Jack Frost surplus store in Santa Monica, in June or July.
Was he sure about that? Sure he was sure; he’d been along when Charlie bought it. Later he’d coiled it so it wouldn’t develop snags. It was the same as they used in the Coast Guard, on PT boats; he’d handled it hundreds of times.
Although DeCarlo was unaware of it, the Tate-Sebring rope was also three-strand.
Probably by prearrangement, the detectives began to lean on DeCarlo, adopting a tougher tone.
Q. “Did you ever caper with any of the guys?”
A. “Fuck no. No way at all. Ask any of the girls.”
Q. “Did you have anything to do with Shorty’s death?”
DeCarlo denied it, vehemently. Shorty had been his friend; besides, “I’ve got no balls for putting anybody’s lights out.” But there was just enough hesitation in his reply to indicate he was hiding something. Pressed, DeCarlo told them about Shorty’s guns. Shorty had a matched pair of Colt .45s. He was always hocking, then reclaiming the pistols. In late August or early September—after Shorty had disappeared but supposedly before DeCarlo knew what had happened to him—Bruce Davis had given him Shorty’s pawn tickets on the guns, in repayment for some money he owed DeCarlo. Danny had reclaimed the pistols. Later, learning that Shorty had been killed, he’d sold the guns to a Culver City shop for seventy-five dollars.
Q. “That puts you in a pretty shitty spot, you’re aware of that?”
Danny was. And he got in even deeper when one of the detectives asked him if he knew anything about lime. When arrested, Mary Brunner was carrying a shopping list made up by Manson. “Lime” was one of the items listed. Any idea why Charlie would want some lime?
Danny recalled that Charlie had once asked him what to use “to decompose a body.” He had told him lime worked best, because he had once used it to get rid of a cat that had died under a house.
Q. “Why did you tell him that?”
A. “No particular reason, he was just asking me.”
Q. “What did he ask you?”
A. “Oh, the best way to ah, ah, you know, to get rid of a body real quick.”
Q. “Did you ever think to say, ‘Now what in the fuck makes you ask a question like that, Charlie?’”
A. “No, because he was nuts.”
Q. “When did that conversation take place?”
A. “Right around, ah, right around the time Shorty disappeared.”
It looked bad, and the detectives left it at that. Although privately they were inclined to accept DeCarlo’s tale, suspecting, however, that although he probably had not taken part in the murder, he still knew more than he was telling, it gave them some additional leverage to try and get what they wanted.
They wanted two things.
Q. “Anybody left up at Spahn Ranch that knows you?”
A. “Not that I know of. I don’t know who’s up there. And I don’t want to go up there to find out. I don’t want nothing to do with the place.”
Q. “I want to look around there. But I need a guide.”
Danny didn’t volunteer.
They made the other request straight out.
Q. “Would you be willing to testify?”
A. “No, sir!”
There were two charges pending against him, they reminded him. On the stolen motorcycle engine, “Maybe we can get it busted down to a lesser charge. Maybe we can go so far as to get it knocked off. As far as the federal thing is concerned, I don’t know how much weight we can push on that. But here again we can try.”
A. “If you try for me, that’s fine. That’s all I can ask of you.”
If it came down to being a witness or going to jail—
DeCarlo hesitated. “Then when he gets out of jail—”
Q. “He isn’t going to get out of jail on no first degree murder beef when you’ve got over five victims involved. If Manson was the guy that was in on the Tate murder. We don’t know that for a fact yet.