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Linda Kasabian, Star
Witness for the Prosecution
Linda Kasabian grew up in broken home with a
stepfather
she strongly disliked. At age 16, she left her mother's home in
New
Hampshire and headed west "looking," she said, "for God."
Instead,
she found lots of drugs, lots of sex, and--on July 4, 1969--Charles
Manson.
Married, mother of a two-year-old girl and pregnant at the time,
Kasabian
learned from a friend about "this beautiful man named Charlie" and the
idyllic life his followers led at Spahn Ranch. To Kasabian, it
was
the "answer to an unspoken prayer."
Soon after arriving at Spahn, Kasabian made
love to
Manson. She said later that she thought Manson "could see inside
her." She soon fell in love with the man who would send her on a
mission of death.
Kasabian had only been a member of the
Family for six
weeks when Manson announced, on August 8, 1969, "Now is the time for
Helter
Skelter." Kasabian joined Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia
Krenwinkel in traveling to the Tate home, where she witnessed the
shooting
of Steven Parent and the vicious attacks on Abigail Folger and Voytek
Frykowsi.
Kasabian did not directly participate in the murders, later telling
Manson,
"I'm not you, Charlie--I can't kill anybody." The next night
Kasabian
rode with Manson and other Family members to the LaBianca home, but did
not enter the home or see either of the murders.
Three days after the LaBianca murders,
Kasabian slipped
out of Spahn Ranch in a borrowed car and headed for Taos, New Mexico,
where
she rejoined her husband. After returning to California to
retrieve
her child, Tanya, Kasabian hitchhiked first to Florida and then to her
mother's home in New Hampshire.
California authorities issued a warrant for
Kasabian's
arrest on December 1, 1969. Kasabian voluntarily surrendered to
police
in Concord, New Hampshire and was flown back to California. She
wanted
to tell her story.
Almost immediately, her attorney, Gary
Fleishman, proposed
to prosecutors a deal whereby Kasabian would testify against other
Family
members in return for complete immunity. Having previously made a
deal with Susan Atkins, Prosecutor Vince Bugliosi initially rejected
the
proposal. When Atkins changed her mind and announced she would
not
testify at the trial, Bugliosi quickly negotiated a deal with
Kasabian's
attorney: the prosecution would petition for immunity after she
testified. Kasabian turned out to be a great witness--brutally
frank
and very believable. She left the stand after eighteen days of
testimony.
In his closing argument, Bugliosi said Charles Manson "sent out from
the
fires of hell at Spahn Ranch three heartless, bloodthirsty robots
and--unfortunately
for him--one human being, the hippie girl Linda Kasabian."
After completing her testimony, Kasabian
rejoined he
husband and children, moving into a small farm in New Hampshire.
She moved to the Pacific Northwest for awhile, living under an assumed
name. Later, she left her husband and returned to New Hampshire,
where she lived a rough, rather down-and-out life in the 1980s.
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Vincent Bugliosi, Chief
Prosecutor
Vincent Bugliosi, chief prosecutor in the
Tate-LaBianca
murder trials, was born in the northern Minnesota town of Hibbing (also
the childhood home of musician Bob Dylan and basketball star Kevin
McHale).
His family moved to southern California, where Bugliosi graduated from
Hollywood High School before attending Miami University on a tennis
scholarship.
After graduating from UCLA Law School in
1964, Bugliosi
took a job in the office of the Los Angeles District Attorney.
Bugliosi
quickly developed a strong reputation, winning convictions in 103 of
104
felony jury trials. On November 18, 1969, Bugliosi learned that
he
had been given his greatest responsibility to date: trying the
Tate-LaBianca
murder case.
Bugliosi threw himself into the case,
working 100-hour
weeks for the almost two years between assignment and
sentencing.
Unlike many prosecutors, Bugliosi became very involved in the
investigation,
accompanying detectives on searches of Spahn and Barker ranches,
checking
on leads, and interviewing key witnesses.
Bugliosi's chief goal in the Tate-LaBianca
case was
securing a first-degree murder conviction of Charles Manson. He
identified
the key to the case as proving that Manson had total dominion over
other
Family members. With the important testimony of Linda Kasabian
and
others, he was successful in doing so.
During the course of the trial, Charles
Manson told
the bailiff, "I am going to have Bugliosi and the judge killed."
Knowing Manson's record, officials did not take this to be an idle
threat
and a bodyguard was assigned to accompany Bugliosi during the remainder
of the trial. Bugliosi received numerous hang-up calls during the
middle of the night (even when he changed to an unlisted number), but
no
attempts were made on his life. After Manson's sentencing,
Bugliosi
had, at Manson's request, a ninety-minute conversation with
Manson,
in which the convicted killer told him, "I don't have hard feelings"
and
that he did "a fantastic" job in convicting him.
After the Manson trials, Bugliosi took to
almost full-time
writing. His book about the Manson trial, Helter Skelter,
was published in 1974. Other subjects of his writing include the
war on drugs, the Kennedy assassination, and a 1996 book on the O. J.
Simpson
trial, Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O. J. Simpson Got Away With
Murder.
Two of his most recent books are No Island
of Sanity:
Paula Jones v Bill Clinton (1998) and The Betrayal of America
(2001), a book criticizing the Supreme Court decision handing the
presidency
to George W. Bush.
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Irving Kanarek, Attorney
for Charles Manson
Even before his remarkable performance as the
defense
attorney for Charles Manson in the Tate-LaBianca murder case, Irving
Kanarek
earned a reputation as an obstructionist of the first order. He
was
frequently censured by judges. One judge bluntly called him
"the most obstructionist man I have ever met." Kanarek has a
purpose
for his obstructionism tactics: his goal seemed to be to confuse juries
and knock opposing attorneys off stride, especially in cases where the
evidence against his client was overwhelming.
In March 1970, Ronald Hughes--Manson's
first attorney--suggested
to Manson that Kanarek enter the case as his attorney. Although
calling
Karerek "the worst man in town I could pick," Manson requested that
Kanarek
be substituted as his attorney two weeks before the start of
trial.
Prosecutor Vince Bugliosi strongly objected to the substitution of
Kanarek
as Manson's attorney, but Judge Older found no legal ground for denying
Manson's request and Kanarek.
Kanarek may have established some sort of
record for
objections in the Manson trial. He objected nine times during the
prosecution's opening statement, and by the third day of trial had
registered
more than 200 objections when the press stopped counting.
Frequently,
Kanarek's objection were made in "shotgun" form, including many
suggested
grounds that were totally inapplicable: "Leading and suggestive; no
foundation;
conclusion and hearsay." Other times his objections were intended
to influence the jury. For example, he objected to the testimony
of Linda Kasabian by declaring, "Object, Your Honor, on the grounds
this
witness is not competent because she is insane!" Kanarek also bombarded
the court with motions, many of them novel to say the least, such as a
motion to have "Mr. Manson suppressed from evidence" as the product of
an illegal search. Kanarek raised eyebrows for asking bizarre
questions,
such as when he asked Kasabian (during his seven-day cross-examination
after Kasabian's direct testimony in which she revealed she had
taken
LSD about fifty times), "Describe what happened on trip number
twenty-three."
Kanarek was found guilty of contempt four
times during
the Manson trial. The first contempt came when Judge Older found
Kanarek guilty of "directly violating my order not to repeatedly
interrupt."
On two occasions, Kanarek was ordered to overnight in the county
jail.
Near the end of the long trial, Older told Kanarek he was "totally
without
scruples, ethics, and professional responsibility."
Despite his aggressive representation,
Kanarek's work
did not always please his client. At one point, Manson was ready
to dismiss Kanarek when the defense attorney begged on his knees to
keep
him. Manson reportedly also threatened at various times to have
Kanarek
killed.
In his seven-day summation--which Judge
Older called
not an "argument but a filibuster"--, Kanarek argued that the female
defendants
killed their victims not for Manson, but out of love for Tex Watson.
Despite the press's view of Kanarek as
something of
a joke, Prosecutor Vince Bugliosi had a different opinion.
Bugliosi
wrote in his book Helter Skelter that Kanarek "frequently
scored
points."
Kanarek was ordered to be inactive by the
California
State Bar in 1990.
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Ronald Hughes, Murdered
Attorney for Van Houten
Prior to his representation of Leslie Van
Houten in
the Tate-LaBianca murder trial, Ronald Hughes had never tried his
case.
His inexperience showed frequently early on in the trial, but by the
trial's
midpoint, Prosecutor Vince Bugliosi though he was doing "damn
well."
Hughes, called "the hippie lawyer" by some, had an intimate knowledge
of
the hippie subculture that sometimes served his client well. For
example, he was able to raise questions about Linda Kasabian's
credibility
by asking her about hallucinogenic drugs, her belief in ESP, her
thoughts
that she might be a witch, and her experiencing "vibrations" from
Charles
Manson.
Hughes was among the first lawyers to meet
with Charles
Manson in December, 1969. Initially signed on as the attorney for
Charles Manson, Hughes was replaced by Irving Kanarek two weeks before
the start of the trial.
As attorney for defendant Leslie Van
Houten, Hughes
tried to separate the interests of his client from those of Charles
Manson.
He hoped to show that Van Houten was not acting independently, but was
completely controlled in her actions by Manson.
Hughes decision to pursue an independent
strategy almost
certainly cost him his life. On the last weekend of November,
1970,
Hughes disappeared while camping in a remote area near Sespe Hot
Springs.
His badly decomposed body was not discovered until four months
later.
Although no one was ever charged with the murder of Hughes, at least
two
Family members have admitted that the killing of Hughes was a
"retaliation
murder" by Manson.
After Hughes disappeared, police searched
the garage
behind a friend's house that was Hughes's home. In the dirty
garage,
police saw the mattress Hughes used as his bed and his framed bar
certificate
on the wall, but no clues that might explain what happened to him.
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