Helter Skelter II (August 9-10)
I slept very late Saturday, then spent part of
the afternoon working on dune buggies and snorting
speed with Bruce Davis. At some point during the
day Sadie told me that our murders were on the
news and that we'd killed some really "beautiful
people," but the names didn't mean anything
to me and I immediately forgot most of them except
Sharon Tate. I did listen to a few radio broadcasts
later in the afternoon, but when the Family members
who were in the know gathered around a television
up at the house for the six o'clock news, I stayed
away. I didn't even get together with them later
in the evening when Charlie broke out the grass
and they all sang. I didn't really feel anything
for what had happened, for what I'd done-but I
needed to be by myself.
Then it was night and Charlie called us together
again - Linda, Katie, Sadie, and me. And two more
as well: mentally defective Clem and Leslie, the
little mountain-folk girl who was so easy for
the others to push around. It would be the same
as last night, he told us, only tonight we'd get
two separate houses instead of just one. And this
time we'd do it right. There'd been too much panic
at the Tate house; the girls had told him what
had gone down. Tonight would be different. Tonight
he would show us how to do it.
We all put on dark clothing again, except Clem
who wore a khaki jacket, and before we left, Charlie
gave me a light tab of acid. While people were
getting things together, Sadie and I took the
opportunity to hit our speed bottle and I gave
myself three good snorts in each nostril. I knew
now I'd need it for what was to come. When we
were all gathered at the car, Charlie handed me
a .45 automatic pistol. He also had the chrome-plated
bayonet we'd bought at the army-surplus store
at the same time we'd purchased the Buck knives
used at the Tate house. Linda and I got in the
front seat with Charlie, and the four others piled
in back.
We ended up driving for about three hours. Sometimes
Charlie would be at the wheel, sometimes Linda,
with Charlie giving her directions. Between the
speed and the acid, I wasn't always certain exactly
where we were. Somehow we managed to get from
Pasadena to the beach to Hollywood, with several
stops along the way. There wasn't much conversation
as we drove, except for Charlie's asking Sadie
a few details about the night before-if we'd been
careful not to leave prints, how she lost her
knife, what had been written on the walls.
Our first stop was somewhere in Pasadena. We'd
driven slowly through several neighborhoods before
Charlie and I finally walked up to a house and
peered in the windows. In the living room, bathed
in warm light, we could see framed photographs
of children arranged neatly on one wall. Charlie
shook his head, and when we were back at the car
he told us he didn't want to kill children, not
yet-but the time might come, he warned, when we'd
have to kill the children as well. A few minutes
later another house-a mansion on top of a hill-was
rejected because the neighboring homes were too
close to it. Charlie said that someone might hear
screams.
Before Charlie settled on the house on Waverly
Drive, he would consider three more murders and
attempt one of them. Somewhere in Pasadena he
stopped at a church and left us in the car, saying
he was going to kill the priest. He returned after
a few moments and told us everything was locked
up and no one had answered the rectory bell. In
another residential neighborhood, we saw a couple
pulling into their driveway. Charlie stopped across
the street, but after waiting for a few minutes
he changed his mind and we headed out to the beach.
An hour later, coming toward town on Sunset Boulevard,
we passed a small white sports car. Linda was
driving at this point, and Charlie told her to
pull up beside the car at the next signal-he was
going to kill the driver. She did what she was
told and he jumped out, the gun in his hand. But
just then the light turned green and the sports
car took off, the driver never aware how close
he had come to death.
After that, Charlie started giving very specific
directions to Linda, as if he had a particular
place in mind. Eventually we ended up parked across
the street from a large old Spanish - style house
at 3301 Waverly Drive, near Griffith Park in the
Los Feliz section of town. Apparently Linda recognized
a house nearby, because she said something to
Charlie about not hitting it. Charlie also knew
the other place, having been there for an acid
party with some of the Family over a year before,
but he told her no, it was this house, the one
directly across from us with the boat in the driveway-this
was the house where Helter Skelter would fall
again.
Telling us to wait, Charlie slipped up to the
house alone. A few minutes later he was back,
telling me to come with him. Pointing through
one of the windows, he showed me a man asleep
on a couch with a newspaper over his face. We
went in the unlocked back door and, as a big dog
nosed at us with friendly curiosity, crossed through
the kitchen into the living room, Charlie still
carrying the gun, me with the bayonet.
Charlie poked the man gently with the pistol
to wake him up. As with Voytek Frykowski the night
before, grocery-store owner Leno LaBianca's first
words were: "Who are you? What do you want?"
Holding the gun on him, Charlie smiled and murmured,
"We're not going to hurt you. Just relax.
Don't be afraid."
"How can I help being afraid when you've
got a gun on me?" LaBianca asked with unintentional
irony.
Charlie's voice remained low, soothing: "It's
okay; I'm your friend. We don't want anything
but money."
Telling the heavyset man to roll over onto his
stomach, Charlie pulled off a leather thong that
had been looped around his neck and had me tie
LaBianca's hands with it. I must have cinched
him up pretty firmly, because he immediately protested
that it was too tight, especially when we turned
him onto his back again with the weight of his
body pressing down on his wrists.
Charlie asked if there was anyone else in the
house. Yes, LaBianca answered, his wife was in
the bedroom. Charlie disappeared for a minute
or two and then returned with Rosemary LaBianca,
holding the gun on her but still murmuring assurances
that no one was going to be hurt, this was just
a simple robbery. He sat the frightened-looking
woman at her husband's feet. LaBianca had on pajamas,
and I later found out that his wife had pulled
the blue dress she was now wearing over her pink
nightgown after Charlie had suddenly appeared
in her bedroom.
Mr. LaBianca was still complaining that his hands
were bound too tightly, and Mrs. LaBianca turned
to Charlie and said, "You're hurting my husband
. . . the way he's sitting. Can't you get him
in a more comfortable position?" But LaBianca
stayed as he was. Soon after his wife was brought
into the room he turned to Charlie with an attempt
at reason: "Look, we'll give you anything
you want; just tell us."
Charlie, still speaking with almost hypnotic
calm, answered, "Do you have any cash?"
LaBianca told him that the only cash in the house
was what he'd left on his nightstand next to the
bed and perhaps a little in his wife's wallet.
Charlie sent me for both and was obviously displeased
at how little money there was. "I can get
you more," LaBianca insisted nervously. "Just
let me take you to my store and you can get as
much as you want."
"No," Charlie answered, "we just
want what's here." Then he decided to separate
them again.
We took Mrs. LaBianca back to the bedroom and
stripped off the pillowcases. Following Charlie's
instructions to gag them, I went into the living
room, put a pillowcase over Leno LaBianca's head
and tied a lamp cord around his skull and through
his mouth as tightly as I could. Then I went back
into the bedroom and did the same with Mrs. LaBianca,
telling her not to make a sound because we would
be right in the next room.
Charlie left at this point, taking the gun and
the wallet with him. His last words were: "Make
sure the girls get to do some of it, both of them."
A minute or two later, Katie and Leslie appeared
in the kitchen, holding their changes of clothing.
I thought I was whispering when I asked, "Did
he say to kill them?"-but perhaps my voice
was louder than I thought, because as they nodded
grimly, Leno LaBianca began to scream from the
living room, "You're going to kill us, aren't
you? You're going to kill us!" I somehow
knew from the look on her face that Leslie didn't
want to go through with what was coming, but like
all the rest of us, she must have felt she owed
it to Charlie to do whatever he asked, since he'd
given himself so totally for us. Katie, on the
other hand, began to look through the kitchen
drawers for knives with positive relish.
Mr. LaBianca continued to shout. I remember being
surprised that he could talk so much with the
wire and pillow material in his mouth. As the
girls ran to the bedroom on my instructions, I
walked back to the sofa with the bayonet and the
horror began all over again. I drove the chrome-plated
blade down full force. "Don't stab me anymore,"
he managed to scream, even though the first thrust
had been through his throat. "I'm dead, I'm
dead . . . ." The shiny bayonet plunged again
and again. Once more, as had happened the night
before, the room began to explode with color and
motion.
In the background, as LaBianca rolled off the
sofa onto the floor, I could hear his wife screaming
from the bedroom: "What are you doing to
my husband?" There were the sounds of some
sort of scuffle and I ran in to join the girls.
Mrs. LaBianca was in a corner of the room, still
hooded with the pillowcase, swinging a large lamp
(the wire was wrapped around her head) in an arc
that kept the two girls from getting close to
her. The bayonet had greater range and I struck
out time after time, even after the woman had
fallen to the floor.
Katie had run into the living room at some point
and now she returned, saying, "He's still
alive!"
I went back to the living room and used the bayonet
again, over and over. Suddenly Charlie's face
clicked in my head, as I heard the words he had
sent me off with the night before: ". . .
make it as gruesome as you can." Out of some
horrible part of my brain an image formed and
I reached down and carved WAR on the bare belly
below me. Later-while I was washing away the LaBiancas'
blood in their own shower - Katie would add to
the grotesque picture by stabbing the dead man
fourteen times (with an ivory-handled carving
fork that she left wobbling in his stomach) and
by planting a small steak knife in his neck, both
these weapons coming from the LaBiancas' kitchen
drawers.
After I'd finished my butchery on the man, I
went back to the bedroom and told Leslie to help
Katie stab the woman, even though it was obvious
that Rosemary LaBianca was already dead. Leslie
obeyed me, striking mainly on the exposed buttocks,
but with none of the enthusiasm that Katie showed.
We started looking through the house, rifling
drawers, opening closets-partly for money (we
did find a bag of coins) and also for a change
of clothes for me. While I washed off the bayonet
in the bathroom sink and showered, the girls wrote
on the walls and refrigerator door in blood: RISE,
DEATH TO PIGS and Katie's misspelled HEALTER SKELTER.
I changed into an old pair of brown khaki pants
and a shirt of Mr. LaBianca's. We took some milk
and cheese from the refrigerator. After making
sure that the girls had wiped everything for fingerprints,
I led them out the back door, patting the head
of the dog that had followed us everywhere through
the house as we left.
Charlie and the others were gone. I'd later learn
that, while the three of us wandered through the
Los Feliz district - getting lost and walking
in circles for hours-Charlie was planting Mrs.
LaBianca's wallet in the rest room of a gas station
in Sylmar (thinking it was a black neighborhood)
and trying to set up the murder of a young actor
Linda Kasabian knew in Venice, an attempt that
Linda foiled by deliberately going to the wrong
apartment door.
As we walked on in the predawn darkness, we came
across a reservoir. I threw the bayonet out as
far as I could into the water. Finally, half an
hour later, we settled down under a tree in a
vacant lot, waiting for dawn.
Once the sky started to lighten, we began walking
again. I was still carrying my bloody clothes
and when we found a large cardboard box full of
trash at the curb, I pushed them down under the
grass and garbage. Shortly afterward we met a
man coming out for his morning paper and got directions
to the Golden State Freeway.
We were picked up in a beat-up, multicolored
car by a hippie who was also a night guard at
Griffith Park. Ironically, he knew Spahn Ranch;
he'd been there about a year before and thought
he recognized the girls. While Leslie played up
to him enough to get us a ride all the way to
Chatsworth, we pretended we knew nothing about
the ranch and were just on our way up to Big Sur.
Apparently Leslie did her job on the guy too well,
because after having breakfast with us (we spent
most of the time telling him about Helter Skelter,
never mentioning what we had just done to bring
it down, and paid for the food out of the bag
of coins we'd stolen from the LaBianca house),
he kept insisting on taking us all the way to
wherever we were going. Even after we finally
got out of the car and took a long way around
the back of the ranch to avoid letting him see
us on the road, he turned up at Spahn later in
the day, still looking for Leslie.
Charlie had already gone back into the hills
to a camp we had by a waterfall, so I didn't see
him. The girls disappeared and I flopped down
on a mattress in one of the buildings, ready to
sleep.
As I lay there, my mind raced and turned with
images from the past two nights, like some horrible
light show all full of red glare and frantic motion.
Yet I felt nothing for what had been done to seven
innocent people and an unborn child. Charlie had
killed all that sort of feeling in me, just as
I had killed those seven strangers.
I wondered what would happen this next night
and the night after that. Although Susan Atkins's
later claim that we had a death list of famous
Hollywood stars was untrue, Charlie had made it
clear that two nights would not be the end of
it, that we would do more and more killing until
either the blacks or the whites took matters into
their own hands-and Helter Skelter would begin.
I have no doubt that things would have continued
just as Charlie planned-for another night, for
three more nights, ten, however long-if later
that Sunday afternoon my mother had not called
Willis Carson in Los Angeles and asked him to
get in touch with me because she hadn't had a
word from her son in six months.
That call, and Willis's to the ranch that followed,
set up my lie about the F.B.I. having come to
my parents' home in Copeville, accusing me of
murder. And that lie stopped the killing and sent
us all to the desert where, nearly two months
later, I refused to murder again for Manson and
headed home to Copeville, with its peeling white
wood and railroad, home to the store and the gas
pumps and the kitchen-back to the world I thought
I'd blasted out of my mind forever.
(Will You Die For Me? Copyright 1978, by Ray
Hoekstra. Published by Cross Roads Publications,
Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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