Because of the unprecedented high-profile nature of the Tate-LaBianca murders and the extensive national media attention they had garnered, the judge presiding over the case issued a sweeping gag order on December 10, 1969.
Judge William Keene’s order, issued the day after Charles Manson was arrested on murder and conspiracy charges, prohibited all attorneys, elected officials, grand jurors, subpoenaed witnesses—or any other parties who had received information about the case—from speaking or releasing any related documents outside of court, other than the basic facts. The same parties were also prohibited from expressing opinions on the defendants’ guilt or innocence.
Once Bobby Beausoleil’s ties to the Manson Family came to light, his second trial was moved to Judge Keene’s downtown courtroom.
Bobby’s attorney attempted to have the case retried under the same sentencing guidelines as before—“other than a death penalty case”—but Keene denied the motion. The DA was going all the way with this one.
Although Vincent Bugliosi had been appointed to take over the case after the mistrial, he, too, had to be replaced because of scheduling conflicts with the Tate-LaBianca trial, so Burton Katz took the helm.
After Katz presented his opening statement on April 3, 1970, the proceedings went quickly.
The DA’s office flew Mary Brunner out from Wisconsin on April 8, the day before she was to testify before the grand jury as prosecutors sought indictments against Manson, Atkins, and Davis in the Hinman murder case. Mary was also slated to be the prosecution’s primary witness in Bobby’s trial.
The night she arrived, Mary and her attorney met with the prosecution team to go over her testimony and immunity agreement, which required her to admit being part of a conspiracy to rob, torture, and murder Gary Hinman. As this story was told multiple times by Mary and others, Hinman’s alleged inheritance sum varied from three thousand to thirty thousand dollars.
It was a long night. After the initial discussion, everyone left except for Deputy District Attorney Aaron Stovitz, who stayed behind so he could review some questions in more detail with Mary.
Knowing that Family members Lynette Fromme and Brenda McCann, whose real name was Nancy Pitman, had visited Mary in Wisconsin the week before, Stovitz urged Mary to try to rest up at the hotel and ignore any pressure from the Family. He also asked why she’d never reported Gary’s murder to police.
“‘Cause I was an outlaw then,” she said.
“I see,” Stovitz said. “You do feel it’s wrong to murder, right?”
“I feel that either all was wrong or all was right and there’s no ‘sometimes it isn’t,’” she said.
After Mary finished her grand jury testimony, Stovitz said, he wanted her to hear Bobby’s anticipated testimony that Charlie was the one who had killed Gary Hinman.
“I just want you to know what—how—these people do things, that they say anything they can to save themselves. And I don’t think it’s right,” Stovitz said. “. . . We don’t want any harm to come to you.”
The prosecutor was right to be concerned. When Mary took the stand the next morning she announced that she couldn’t testify.
“I can’t do it, man,” she said. “They’re my brothers.”
“Who are your brothers?” Stovitz asked.
“Everybody. I can’t use my life, you know, I can’t use their life to buy mine, man.”
Stovitz reminded her that she saw her friend Gary die at the hands of these “brothers.”
“Do you think that the people who are responsible for his death should continue walking and being free and living their normal lives even though they are responsible for Gary Hinman’s death?”
“The people that did it, you know, they’re going to get it anyway, and if you got to give it to me too, okay,” she said. “But I can’t testify against them to save myself, because they’re me too.”
Mary claimed that Lynette and Nancy’s visit had nothing to do with her decision.
“You are asking for the death penalty on Bobby, man, and you want me to help you,” she said. “Killing is wrong any way you do it and I’m not going to help you.”
Reminded that she would go to jail if she didn’t testify, and that she would also likely be indicted for murder, Mary conferred briefly with her attorney, then reluctantly returned to the stand.
After recounting the story she told during Bobby’s trial, that he had stabbed Gary Hinman, Mary stayed in court to hear Bobby’s contradictory testimony, which went just as Stovitz had predicted.
The jury believed Mary and found Bobby guilty of first-degree murder. Within three days, the jury had also voted to send him to the gas chamber.
As is typical in such cases, Bobby’s defense attorney filed a motion for a new trial and to reduce the death penalty punishment. But the Manson Family trials never fit the norm.
Manson was determined to represent himself in the Family’s “united” strategy, and his codefendants all followed suit, including Bobby. During his weeklong motion hearing, Bobby represented himself as his two ex-girlfriends, Gypsy and Kitty, sat watching in the courtroom with Sandy Good.
When Bobby recalled Mary to the stand, he knew that she had just submitted a signed affidavit disclaiming her previous testimony, and claiming that she’d “been coerced, lied to, and tricked into making statements” out of fear that she would “lose [her] baby.” He then tried to lead Mary through new testimony that would support his claim that Charlie had killed Gary.
“Bobby didn’t kill Gary,” Mary said.
“Who killed Gary?” Judge Keene said, jumping in.
“I don’t have to answer that.”
“Yes, you do have to answer that,” Keene said.
But Mary still wouldn’t budge, citing the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. When she still refused to answer, Keene cited her for contempt, had her taken into custody, and told her again she could be arrested for murder.
In the prosecution’s view, her affidavit and false testimony nullified her immunity agreement. In fact, prosecutors later contended that she never had full immunity, which became a matter of debate.
Mary’s brief break outside the courtroom, away from the Family’s watchful stare, gave her a chance to reconsider. When she returned, she was on the verge of tears as she retook the stand. Her voice shaking, she returned to her original story, admitting that she’d simply been trying to help Bobby get a retrial and save his life.
“Bobby got the gas chamber, and . . . you’re doing the same thing to him as he did to Gary, and you’ve made me a part of [that],” she said.
Three days later, Judge Keene denied Bobby’s requests for a new trial and reduced sentence. Before sending him to death row, Keene posed one last question.
“Is there any other legal cause why sentence in this matter should not now be imposed, other than what you have already stated for the record?”
Brash and indignant as always, Bobby did not hold back.
“I just would like to say that you are right when you say that I have no remorse,” he said. “I have read the definition of remorse and the definition of remorse is a strong feeling of guilt . . . I have none of those feelings.”
Keene said Bobby would be sent to San Quentin State Prison within ten days. But Bobby was determined to have the final word.
“I only have one last thing to say,” he said.
“There is nothing further to say, Mr. Beausoleil,” Keene replied. “You are now excused.”
“You can’t judge me.”
“Take Mr. Beausoleil out of the courtroom,” the judge ordered.
“Only God can judge me and God is on my side!”
Deputy Public Defender Paul Fitzgerald was appointed to represent Manson the day of his arraignment. But as Manson stubbornly argued that it was his constitutional right to represent himself, Fitzgerald was relieved eleven days later.
Judge Keene asked Manson to consult with Joseph Ball, a well-respected local attorney, whom he hoped would talk some sense into the defendant.
After doing so, Ball reported back that he found Manson to be “an able, intelligent young man, quiet-spoken and mild-mannered” with a good understanding of the law and a high IQ.
“Mr. Manson is a man with a fine brain, good intellect,” Ball said, recounting that Manson didn’t believe he could get a fair trial in California because he’d already been tried and condemned in the press.
“I must sympathize with him in that attitude, because I don’t think that there has ever been a case that has received worse publicity than that which Mr. Manson has received,” Ball said. “I did tell him, however, that I thought that in the hands of an able, experienced lawyer that perhaps he would set the pattern and that he would have a chance to show his quiet, benign personality to a jury through his lawyer.”
Ball said he’d advised Manson against representing himself, but he was unable to change the defendant’s mind. Manson insisted that he still wanted to go it alone, albeit with the help of two attorneys to assist him.
Judge Keene reluctantly agreed that day, Christmas Eve, to allow Manson to proceed.
It took six weeks before Manson agreed to enter a “not guilty” plea on the charges against him, which started a sixty-day clock for his right to a “speedy trial” to run its course.
At a hearing on February 9, Manson politely posed several requests to the judge, including a change of venue, access to contact information for a number of prosecution witnesses he wanted to question as defense witnesses, and, of course, a dismissal.
“Today was supposed to be my trial date,” he said. “Everything that has been denied, the district attorney always says I am stalling for time, but now that it’s time, somebody else seems to be stalling for time.”
After correcting Manson’s miscalculations based on the “speedy trial” provisions, Keene set the trial date for Monday, March 30. The judge denied him access to the witness contact information, but said he would allow Manson to argue for a change of venue at a hearing on February 16.
Susan Atkins had been cooperating with the prosecution team, including the investigators who were pursuing every possible lead to try to locate Shorty Shea’s body.
In January, Sergeant Whiteley obtained a court order to take Atkins from jail to an area along Santa Susana Pass Road, where she claimed that Charlie had taken her in the middle of the night, pointed to some bushes down a ravine, and told her to clean up Shorty’s blood. Atkins tried to lead Whiteley to the spot, but they couldn’t find any trace of Shorty’s allegedly dismembered body.
By February, however, Atkins had changed her tune. She disclaimed her grand jury testimony and refused to testify for the prosecution, which nullified her arrangement with the DA.
Stovitz and Bugliosi were actually relieved. They met with Linda Kasabian and offered her full immunity if she testified truthfully. The deal wouldn’t become official, however, until after she’d proven her worth on the stand. She had now moved into the top slot for most important prosecution witness.
They also granted immunity to Family member Ella Jo Bailey, who, in exchange for her testimony, would win dismissal of the pending first-degree forgery charges against her in Washington State.
Judge Malcolm Lucas filled in for Keene at Manson’s change of venue hearing, where Manson showed that he could conduct himself quite rationally and respectfully when he so chose.
Manson argued that the trial should be moved out of California due to the sweeping negative publicity that he and the case had received, but he didn’t see how a fair trial could be held anywhere in the nation.
“You know there has been more publicity on this, even more than the guy that killed the president of the United States,” Manson said. “I think it’s not like anything we have ever done in this country.”
To support his argument, Manson submitted a sampling of articles from national publications such as LIFE magazine, as well as a prescient Sacramento Union editorial that described the state of “communication in our society” as “disturbing.”
“The claim by defendant Charles Manson that news media have already tried and convicted him in the Sharon Tate murder case has a familiar and disturbing ring,” the editorial stated. “It is familiar because hardly any criminal case of special notoriety reaches the courtroom these days without the issue of pre-trial publicity being raised to argue that the defendant’s right to a fair trial has been abridged.”
Manson also maintained that the DA and some judges were unfairly giving statements to the media, despite the gag order.
“The media is used by the district attorney to try a man before trial,” he said. “But I got a side . . . to my story [too]. You know, like, they say I am a vicious demon overnight, and actually I am not.”
Prosecutor Aaron Stovitz argued that the trial should remain in LA, where the county’s vast population could provide a “wider base of jurors to draw from” than anywhere else in California. He also disagreed that Manson had already been “condemned or tried in the newspapers.”
Judge Lucas denied Manson’s motion, noting that given the nationwide media coverage, it wouldn’t help to move the trial elsewhere. But he said the court would continue to safeguard the defendant’s right to a fair trial, “even against his own perhaps ill-advised actions.” Manson’s phone privileges had been temporarily revoked, he said, because he was giving out “unauthorized telephone interviews, possibly to his own detriment.”
The trial, he decreed, would stay in LA.