The Manson Women and Me Read online

  I wrote to Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel at the California Institution for Women at Frontera, requesting interviews. For reasons I will explain later, I decided to hold off on contacting Susan Atkins.

  chapter two

  ABIGAIL FOLGER’S SMILE

  August 1969

  The nightmare started on August 8, 1969. Though decades later some of the particulars of the murders are still in question, we do know that Charles Manson instructed Tex Watson (22), Susan Atkins (20), Patricia Krenwinkel (20), and Linda Kasabian (19) to drive to 10050 Cielo Drive—a gated estate at the edge of Benedict Canyon—and rob and kill everyone inside. Manson did not include Leslie Van Houten that first night nor did he go himself. He remained at Spahn Ranch, an old movie set in Chatsworth on the outskirts of Los Angeles, where he and about twenty young people were living, commune style.

  Why Manson targeted that house, on that night, and for what reason is still subject to debate, but we do know that his connection to the house involved record producer Terry Melcher, Doris Day’s son. Though he had since moved out, Melcher once lived at 10050 Cielo Drive with his then girlfriend Candice Bergen. Manson was obsessed with the idea that Melcher, with whom he was acquainted, would help him become a recording star. When Melcher reneged on producing a long-promised record, Manson, according to Susan Atkins’s subsequent grand jury testimony, decided to scare the hell out of him.

  Once they got to the estate, the four—armed with bolt cutters, a gun, ropes, and knives—severed the phone lines and scaled the fence. Walking toward the house, they encountered an old Nash Rambler driven by Steven Parent, an eighteen-year-old friend of William Garretson, the estate’s caretaker, who lived in the guest cottage at the back of the property. Parent was on his way home. Tex Watson shot and killed him.

  While Kasabian stood guard outside, the other three went into the house where they found four people. The best known was Sharon Tate. Tate was a veteran of more than ten films, mostly of the B variety, but she hadn’t gained public attention until 1967 when she starred in Valley of the Dolls with Patty Duke and Barbara Parkins. Lovely, luminous, sweet, sexy are the words her family and friends still use when they talk about her. One of those friends, Mia Farrow, described Tate in her memoir, What Falls Away, as a fairy princess, “as sweet and good as she was beautiful.”

  Tate met Roman Polanski in 1967 when he cast her as the female lead in The Fearless Vampire Killers, a horror spoof, and they were married a year later. In August 1969 she was eight months pregnant with their child.

  At the time of the murders, Polanski was in London writing the script for his next film. He was still riding high from the previous year’s success of Rosemary’s Baby—a film starring Mia Farrow about a young woman who is forced by her husband into an alliance with a group of devil worshippers. After the murders, of course, the film would come to seem mysteriously prophetic.

  In the first frenzied weeks after the murders, there were rumors that Polanski had been involved. To some, his preoccupation with violence and the occult as reflected in his films made him suspect. Any connection was soon disproved. His preoccupation with violence was a logical consequence of his childhood during World War II. Polanski, who is Jewish, was consigned with his family to live in the Krakow ghetto. When his mother was four months pregnant, she was captured by storm troopers and sent to Auschwitz, where she was gassed.

  Also in the house that night was hairstylist Jay Sebring, thirty-five, whose clients included Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, George Peppard, and Paul Newman. Sebring and Sharon Tate had once been lovers, but now he was a family friend.

  Abigail Folger, twenty-five, an heiress to the Folger Coffee fortune, was also there that night. In spite of her pedigree—she grew up on Nob Hill in San Francisco; boarded at the Santa Catalina school in Monterey (as would Patty Hearst ten years later); held her debutante ball at the St. Francis Hotel; graduated from Radcliff—she veered away from the high society path after moving to Los Angeles. She worked in the inner city for the L.A. County Welfare Department as a volunteer social worker and in the months before she was murdered she had joined Tom Bradley’s 1969 campaign to become the first black mayor of Los Angeles. When Bradley was defeated by Sam Yorty, Folger, according to her friends, was incensed by the racist tactics used by Yorty’s campaign staff.

  The fourth person in the house that night was Abigail Folger’s thirty-two-year-old lover, Voytek Frykowski—a bon vivant, and a sometime writer. As a youth, he’d been friends with Polanski in Poland, but Abigail met him in 1968 through Polish novelist Jerzy Kosinski.

  The victims, who were located in various rooms, were apparently not immediately alarmed by the presence of strangers. According to subsequent testimony by the murderers, the victims must have believed that they were connected to someone in the household. Susan Atkins, who had slipped into the house through a back window, walked down the hall and poked her head into a bedroom where she saw Abigail Folger lying on the bed reading. Sensing someone at the door, Abigail looked up from her book and smiled.

  She would have smiled. On the surface at least, it was still a casual, open time in L.A. There were serial parties, parties with ample drugs—cocaine, hashish, LSD—and where the music was loud and ever-present as were the hangers-on. This was the kind of house where people were always dropping in—a place where someone’s friend’s cousin would stop by, smoke a joint, listen to a record, take a swim, and end up staying for a month. It would later be said that what happened that night was inevitable, that the drugs had gotten too hard, the sex too easy, that a deranged tension had been building. The party had gone on too long. But that night, Abigail Folger looked up from her book and simply smiled at the girl with the bright brown eyes and long dark hair.

  It would also be said later that the hope and promise of the 1960s was vanquished forever that night when Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Watson killed eighteen-year-old Steven Parent, rounded up the four occupants of the house, and then clubbed, stabbed, and shot them to death.

  Accounts of the bloody tableau found by the housekeeper the next day stunned the country, but even more horrifying were the details we later learned about the terror the victims had suffered. Sharon Tate begged Susan Atkins not to kill her. “I want to have my baby,” she cried. In recounting this exchange to the grand jury, Atkins recalled her reply: “I have no mercy for you, woman.”

  We learned that Steven Parent, a kid from the San Gabriel Valley whose family priest described him as a “stereo bug,” a kid who knew everything about phonographs and radios, had been at Cielo Drive only to see if he could sell his clock radio to William Garretson, the caretaker. According to Linda Kasabian’s account, Steven also begged for his life. Just before Tex Watson shot him in the head, he cried, “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  From Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi, we learned that in his entire experience as a medical examiner he had never before seen evidence of the kind of savagery that was applied to Voytek Frykowski, a man who fought fiercely for his life. According to Noguchi’s report, Frykowski was struck over the head thirteen times with a blunt object, stabbed fifty-one times, and shot twice.

  The first suspect was William Garretson whom police found sleeping in the guest cottage when they arrived at the crime scene the next morning. But twenty-four hours later, with Garretson still in custody, a second night of terror took place ten miles from Benedict Canyon.

  chapter three

  “HEALTER SKELTER”

  1969

  On August 9, 1969, Manson and the crew from the night before—Atkins, Kasabian, Watson, and Krenwinkel—set out in search of another house of victims. This time, however, Leslie Van Houten joined them. Earlier in the day at Spahn Ranch, Manson had asked Leslie if she believed enough in what he said to kill for him. Leslie replied, “Yes.” She didn’t know the details of the previous night’s mayhem, but she did know people had died. She was upset that she’d been excluded. There was a buzz at the ranch, nothing specif
ic, but enough to make her feel left out, the way you do when friends have been to a party to which you weren’t invited.

  After wandering through L.A. for a couple of hours, Manson directed Kasabian, who was at the wheel, to drive to 3301 Waverly Drive in Los Feliz. Once again, why he targeted this house is still in dispute, but he did know the neighborhood because Harold True, a friend and occasional drug dealer, had once lived across the street.

  Inside the house, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were getting ready for bed. That day they had been to Lake Isabella, a resort 150 miles northeast of L.A., with Rosemary’s children from a previous marriage—Frank, (15), and Suzan (21). Frank had been staying at the lake with friends of the LaBiancas but planned to return home with his mother and stepfather at the end of the outing. Before they left, however, he persuaded his parents to let him stay behind with his friend for one more night. The LaBiancas returned to L.A. with the boat and dropped Suzan off at her apartment.

  Leno, a heavyset Italian-American, was a wealthy man. He owned real estate in California and Nevada, a small collection of thoroughbred racehorses, and he was chief stockholder of the State Wholesale Grocery Company, which operated a chain of food markets. He had met Rosemary, a pretty dark-haired woman, at the Los Feliz Inn where she was working as a hostess. From all accounts, her life had been difficult before she met Leno. Abandoned by her biological parents at an early age, she’d lived in an orphanage until she was adopted by a family at the age of twelve. After graduating from high school, she got a job as a carhop at the Brown Derby where she met her first husband. They were married in 1948, when she was eighteen, and divorced in 1958. Suzan and Frank were the result of that marriage.

  After marrying Leno, she was able to buy her own business, Boutique Carriage, a women’s dress shop in downtown L.A. According to family and friends, Rosemary and Leno, who’d been married for eleven years, were still very much in love when they were killed.

  When the Manson group arrived at the LaBiancas’, Manson snuck into the house while the others remained in the car. Once inside, he brandished a knife and told the family that he was there to rob them and if they cooperated they wouldn’t be hurt. Using leather thongs, he tied the two together back to back and returned to the car, instructing Tex, Pat, and Leslie to go in and kill the couple and then to hitchhike back to the ranch. Then he, Atkins, and Kasabian drove away.

  When the three got into the house, they went to the kitchen and found a ten-inch carving fork and an eight-inch serrated wood-handled knife. Patricia and Leslie untied Rosemary LaBianca and took her into the bedroom, where they placed her facedown on the bed. They put a pillowcase over her head and wrapped the cord from a bedside lamp around her neck.

  In the living room, Tex pushed Leno back onto the couch and began stabbing him. Leno screamed in terror and tried to free his hands, which were still tied behind his back. Tex stabbed him four times in the abdomen and then slashed his throat with the serrated knife, which he left in his throat.

  In the bedroom, Mrs. LaBianca started to fight back and, in the struggle, fell to the floor and pulled the lamp down with her. Both Leslie and Patricia tried to stab her but they weren’t strong enough, so they called Tex from the living room, who came in and did the actual killing. He then ordered Leslie to stab her, which she did. Before they left, Tex carved the word “war” on Mr. LaBianca’s chest. Patricia took the carving fork and plunged it into Mr. LaBianca’s abdomen fourteen times.

  After killing the couple, they removed a tapestry from the wall and in its place, with a towel dipped in Mr. LaBianca’s blood, wrote “death to pigs.” In the living room, they wrote “rise” and then Patricia wrote “Healter [sic] Skelter” on the refrigerator. Before leaving they had a snack and petted and fed the LaBiancas’ three dogs.

  The following night, Sunday, Frank was dropped off at his house by his friend’s parents. As he lugged his suitcase and camping equipment up the driveway, he was puzzled by the fact that the boat was still hitched to the car. Leno never left the boat out overnight. When he went to the back door, he noticed that the window shades, usually up, were all pulled down. When he knocked on the door and there was no response, he became frightened and walked to a pay phone a few blocks away. He called his house and then his sister. She and her boyfriend met Frank at the pay phone and the three of them drove to the house. Inside they found the bodies.

  chapter four

  BANNED—TOOLS OF THE TRADE

  1996

  When I first wrote to the women, I was reluctant to use my home address. Every few years one of Manson’s true believers on the outside would appear in the news, usually for making threats against people they perceived as Manson’s enemies or, in the case of Lynette Squeaky Fromme, for acting on those threats. On September 5, 1975, Fromme was arrested for attempting to kill President Gerald Ford. (“ ‘Squeaky’ Fromme unrepentant, still devoted to Manson,” David Casstevens, September 26, 2005, Fort Worth Star-Telegram).

  I decided to send the women copies of articles I’d written and during the few days it took for me to organize them, I woke up with the same terror I’d felt when I first read Helter Skelter. I didn’t know enough about Pat and Leslie to know whether they still had ties to some of Manson’s followers on the outside. Every once in a while, Manson groupie Sandra Good would utter some outrageous threat to make everyone think she was dangerous.

  I got permission from a former editor to use the address of a newspaper where I once worked.

  I heard from Pat first. She sent me a letter agreeing to an interview. A few weeks later, I got a letter from Leslie, who also agreed to an interview. And then I got a surprise. I met a filmmaker who was planning to make a documentary on the three women. Or, rather, she had planned to until the California Department of Corrections instituted a policy banning the media from conducting one-on-one interviews in prisons. This was unprecedented and occurred at a time when there were an increasing number of reports of abuse of prisoners. Without the press having access, there was no other way for the public to know about the treatment or mistreatment of prisoners. Prison reform depended on that kind of access. I had a hard time believing it was true. I called a reporter who covered criminal justice issues.

  “Yep. It’s true,” he said. “You can go in and do a piece on a topic, say, the variety of food served in the prison. Anyone you can buttonhole while you’re in there you can talk to, but you can’t arrange an interview with a specific prisoner ahead of time. It’s not all bad news,” he said. “You can visit specific prisoners, if they agree, but only as a friend.”

  When we talked further he told me that Charles Manson was one of the reasons for the ban. The Department of Corrections officials didn’t like that he was doing so many interviews. They believed that the interviews encouraged more followers and were painful for the families of the victims.

  “How long has this been in effect?”

  “It was just instituted!”

  When he said “just” he meant just—two or three days before. I have a slightly superstitious nature. I’m always sure that the person who arrives at the restaurant ten seconds before me will get the last table. And, I swear, it happens 99 percent of the time. Once I have that mind-set, it’s difficult to see it any other way. In this case, my superstitious nature led me to the conclusion that there were unseen forces colluding to prevent me from doing this story.

  chapter five

  UNFATHOMABLE REMORSE

  September 1996

  The fifty-mile stretch of the Pomona Freeway that connects downtown Los Angeles with the turnoff for Frontera Prison skirts an endless series of arid, suburban towns, all lacking the subtropical sensuality of the rest of L.A. The prison directions recommended taking the Euclid Avenue exit. I know Euclid Avenue. When I was a child, my family often drove to Ontario to have Sunday dinner with my aunt, and that end of Euclid now looked very much the same as it did back then—a broad boulevard with many grand Victorians and a center parkway lined with pepper trees.
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  As I drove, I could almost smell the traces of the orange groves I remembered from childhood. That part of Euclid Avenue is east of the Pomona Freeway. The prison is west. As soon as I passed the subdivisions that replaced those orange groves, the smell of cow shit permeated the air. It’s a scrabbled, disarranged part of the state—a mixture of dairies, horse ranches, strip malls, boxy housing tracts, and refrigeration plants. In a pasture next to the prison, Guernsey cows stood chewing their cud, ankle deep in dung. The smell was dizzying.

  The guard towers and the concertina wire around the top of the cyclone fence made it obvious this was a prison. The sprawling complex of one-story, red brick buildings had none of the art deco grandeur or the imposing presence of San Quentin—California’s flagship prison and the one where women were once housed.

  It was a warm day and the smells from the pasture clung to the low-lying haze surrounding Frontera Prison. Swarms of pasture flies flitted around my face and the faces of the other visitors as we walked from our cars. Outside the front gate, there was a structure that resembled a bus shelter. Inside were request forms and pens. I filled out my form and, along with about twenty other people, waited to be admitted.

  The last time I’d been there was to interview women who were serving time for killing their husbands. Battered women’s syndrome was a relatively new diagnosis, and lawyers were beginning to use it as a defense in such murders. One of my friends, a forensic psychologist, had been hired to testify in the trials of two of them. Their histories demonstrated that they had been beaten by those husbands over a period of years. They finally reached their respective tipping points. Unfortunately for them, that threshold was reached when their lives were not at that moment in danger, so their pleas of self-defense didn’t work. (I interviewed a third woman who claimed to have been battered but her case was less than convincing. There was the fact that she’d hired contract killers; that she bought a new Cadillac with life insurance money; and that there was no corroboration for her claim that she’d been beaten.)