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Evidence showed that many of Mrs. LaBianca's 41 stab wounds had, in fact, been inflicted post-mortem.
While Watson cleaned off the bayonet and showered, Krenwinkel wrote "Rise" and "Death to pigs" on the walls and "Healter Skelter" on the refrigerator door, all in LaBianca's blood.
She gave Leno LaBianca 14 puncture wounds with an ivory-handled, two-tined carving fork, which she left jutting out of his stomach.
She also planted a steak knife in his throat.
Meanwhile, hoping for a double crime, Manson had gone on to direct Kasabian to drive to the Venice home of an actor acquaintance of hers, another "piggy".
Depositing the other three Family members who had departed Spahn with him that evening at the man's apartment building, Manson drove back to Spahn Ranch, leaving them and the LaBianca killers to hitchhike home.
Kasabian thwarted this murder by deliberately knocking on the wrong apartment door and waking a stranger.
As the group abandoned the murder plan and left, Atkins defecated in the stairwell.
The Tate murders became national news on August 9, 1969.
The Polanskis' housekeeper, Winifred Chapman, had arrived for work that morning and discovered the murder scene.
On August 10, detectives of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which had jurisdiction in the Hinman case, informed Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detectives assigned to the Tate case of the bloody writing at the Hinman house.
Thinking the Tate murders were a consequence of a drug transaction, the Tate team ignored this and the crimes' other similarities.
The Tate autopsies were under way and the LaBianca bodies were yet to be discovered.
Steven Parent, the shooting victim in the Tate driveway, was determined to have been an acquaintance of William Garretson, who lived in the guest house.
Garretson was a young man hired by Rudi Altobelli to take care of the property while Altobelli was away.
As the killers arrived, Parent had been leaving Cielo Drive, after a visit to Garretson.
Held briefly as a Tate suspect, Garretson told police he had neither seen nor heard anything on the murder night.
He was released on August 11, 1969, after undergoing a polygraph examination that indicated he had not been involved in the crimes.
Interviewed decades later, he stated he had, in fact, witnessed a portion of the murders, as the examination suggested.
Garretson died in August 2016.
The LaBianca crime scene was discovered at about 10:30 p.m. on August 10, approximately 19 hours after the murders were committed.
Fifteen-year-old Frank Struthers—Rosemary's son from a prior marriage and Leno's stepson—returned from a camping trip and was disturbed by seeing all of the window shades of his home drawn and by the fact that his stepfather's speedboat was still attached to the family car, which was parked in the driveway.
He called his older sister and her boyfriend.
The boyfriend, Joe Dorgan, accompanied the younger Struthers into the home and discovered Leno's body.
Rosemary's body was found by investigating police officers.
On August 12, 1969, the LAPD told the press it had ruled out any connection between the Tate and LaBianca homicides.
On August 16, the sheriff's office raided Spahn Ranch and arrested Manson and 25 others, as "suspects in a major auto theft ring" that had been stealing Volkswagen Beetles and converting them into dune buggies.
Weapons were seized, but, because the warrant had been misdated, the group was released a few days later.
In a report at the end of August when virtually all leads had gone nowhere, the LaBianca detectives noted a possible connection between the bloody writings at the LaBianca house and "the singing group the Beatles' most recent album."
Still working separately from the Tate team, the LaBianca team checked with the sheriff's office in mid-October about possible similar crimes.
They learned of the Hinman case.
They also learned that the Hinman detectives had spoken with Beausoleil's girlfriend, Kitty Lutesinger.
She had been arrested a few days earlier with members of "the Manson Family".
The arrests, for car thefts, had taken place at the desert ranches to which the Family had moved and where, unknown to authorities, its members had been searching Death Valley for a hole in the ground—access to the Bottomless Pit.
A joint force of National Park Service Rangers and officers from the California Highway Patrol and the Inyo County Sheriff's Office—federal, state, and county personnel—had raided both Myers Ranch and Barker Ranch after following clues unwittingly left when Family members burned an earthmover owned by Death Valley National Monument.
The raiders had found stolen dune buggies and other vehicles and had arrested two dozen people, including Manson.
A Highway Patrol officer found Manson hiding in a cabinet beneath Barker's bathroom sink.
The officers had no idea that the people they were arresting were involved with the murders.
Following up leads a month after they had spoken with Lutesinger, LaBianca detectives contacted members of a motorcycle gang Manson tried to enlist as his bodyguards while the Family was at Spahn Ranch.
While the gang members were providing information that suggested a link between Manson and the murders, a dormitory mate of Susan Atkins informed LAPD of the Family's involvement in the crimes.
Atkins was booked for the Hinman murder after she told sheriff's detectives that she had been involved in it.
Transferred to Sybil Brand Institute, a detention center in Monterey Park, California, she had begun talking to bunkmates Ronnie Howard and Virginia Graham, to whom she gave accounts of the events in which she had been involved.
On December 1, 1969, acting on the information from these sources, LAPD announced warrants for the arrest of Watson, Krenwinkel, and Kasabian in the Tate case; the suspects' involvement in the LaBianca murders was noted.
Manson and Atkins, already in custody, were not mentioned; the connection between the LaBianca case and Van Houten, who was also among those arrested near Death Valley, had not yet been recognized.
Watson and Krenwinkel were already under arrest, with authorities in McKinney, Texas and Mobile, Alabama having picked them up on notice from LAPD.
Informed that a warrant was out for her arrest, Kasabian voluntarily surrendered to authorities in Concord, New Hampshire on December 2.
Before long, physical evidence such as Krenwinkel's and Watson's fingerprints, which had been collected by LAPD at Cielo Drive, was augmented by evidence recovered by the public.
On September 1, 1969, the distinctive .22-caliber Hi Standard "Buntline Special" revolver Watson used on Parent, Sebring, and Frykowski had been found and given to the police by Steven Weiss, a 10-year-old who lived near the Tate residence.
In mid-December, when the "Los Angeles Times" published a crime account based on information Susan Atkins had given her attorney, Weiss's father made several phone calls which finally prompted LAPD to locate the gun in its evidence file and connect it with the murders via ballistics tests.
Acting on that same newspaper account, a local ABC television crew quickly located and recovered the bloody clothing discarded by the Tate killers.
The knives discarded en route from the Tate residence were never recovered, despite a search by some of the same crewmen and, months later, by LAPD.
A knife found behind the cushion of a chair in the Tate living room was apparently that of Susan Atkins, who lost her knife in the course of the attack.
The trial began June 15, 1970.
The prosecution's main witness was Kasabian, who, along with Manson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel, had been charged with seven counts of murder and one of conspiracy.
Since Kasabian, by all accounts, had not participated in the killings, she was granted immunity in exchange for testimony that detailed the nights of the crimes.
Originally, a deal had been made with Atkins in which the prosecution agreed not to seek the death penalty against her in exchange for her grand jury testimony on which the indictments were secured; once Atkins repudiated that testimony, the deal was withdrawn.
Because Van Houten had participated only in the LaBianca killings, she was charged with two counts of murder and one of conspiracy.
Originally, Judge William Keene had reluctantly granted Manson permission to act as his own attorney.
Because of Manson's conduct, including violations of a gag order and submission of "outlandish" and "nonsensical" pretrial motions, the permission was withdrawn before the trial's start.
Manson filed an affidavit of prejudice against Keene, who was replaced by Judge Charles H. Older.
On Friday, July 24, the first day of testimony, Manson appeared in court with an X carved into his forehead.
He issued a statement that he was "considered inadequate and incompetent to speak or defend [him]self"—and had "X'd [him]self from [the establishment's] world."
Over the following weekend, the female defendants duplicated the mark on their own foreheads, as did most Family members within another day or so.
(Years later, Manson carved the X into a swastika.
See "Remaining in view", below.)
The prosecution argued the triggering of "Helter Skelter" was Manson's main motive.
The crime scene's bloody White Album references ("pig", "rise", "helter skelter") were correlated with testimony about Manson predictions that the murders blacks would commit at the outset of Helter Skelter would involve the writing of "pigs" on walls in victims' blood.
Testimony that Manson had said "now is the time for Helter Skelter" was supplemented with Kasabian's testimony that, on the night of the LaBianca murders, Manson considered discarding Rosemary LaBianca's wallet on the street of a black neighborhood.
Having obtained the wallet in the LaBianca house, he "wanted a black person to pick it up and use the credit cards so that the people, The Establishment, would think it was some sort of an organized group that killed these people."
On his direction, Kasabian had hidden it in the women's restroom of a service station near a black area.
"I want to show blackie how to do it," Manson had said as the Family members drove away after leaving the LaBianca house.
During the trial, Family members loitered near the entrances and corridors of the courthouse.
To keep them out of the courtroom proper, the prosecution subpoenaed them as prospective witnesses, who would not be able to enter while others were testifying.
When the group established itself in vigil on the sidewalk, some members wore sheathed hunting knives that, although in plain view, were carried legally.
Each of them was also identifiable by the X on his or her forehead.
Some Family members attempted to dissuade witnesses from testifying.
Prosecution witnesses Paul Watkins and Juan Flynn were both threatened; Watkins was badly burned in a suspicious fire in his van.
Former Family member Barbara Hoyt, who had overheard Susan Atkins describing the Tate murders to Family member Ruth Ann Moorehouse, agreed to accompany the latter to Hawaii.
There, Moorehouse allegedly gave her a hamburger spiked with several doses of LSD.
Found sprawled on a Honolulu curb in a drugged semi-stupor, Hoyt was taken to the hospital, where she did her best to identify herself as a witness in the Tate–LaBianca murder trial.
Before the incident, Hoyt had been a reluctant witness; after the attempt to silence her, her reticence disappeared.
On August 4, despite precautions taken by the court, Manson flashed the jury a "Los Angeles Times" front page whose headline was "Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares".
This was a reference to a statement made the previous day when U.S. President Richard Nixon had decried what he saw as the media's glamorization of Manson.
Voir dired by Judge Charles Older, the jurors contended that the headline had not influenced them.
The next day, the female defendants stood up and said in unison that, in light of Nixon's remark, there was no point in going on with the trial.
On October 5, Manson was denied the court's permission to question a prosecution witness whom defense attorneys had declined to cross-examine.
Leaping over the defense table, Manson attempted to attack the judge.
Wrestled to the ground by bailiffs, he was removed from the courtroom with the female defendants, who had subsequently risen and begun chanting in Latin.
Thereafter, Older allegedly began wearing a revolver under his robes.
On November 16, the prosecution rested its case.
Three days later, after arguing standard dismissal motions, the defense stunned the court by resting as well, without calling a single witness.
Shouting their disapproval, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten demanded their right to testify.
In chambers, the women's lawyers told the judge their clients wanted to testify that they had planned and committed the crimes and that Manson had not been involved.
By resting their case, the defense lawyers had tried to stop this; Van Houten's attorney, Ronald Hughes, vehemently stated that he would not "push a client out the window".
In the prosecutor's view, it was Manson who was advising the women to testify in this way as a means of saving himself.
Speaking about the trial in a 1987 documentary, Krenwinkel said, "The entire proceedings were scripted—by Charlie."
The next day, Manson testified.
Lest Manson's address violate the California Supreme Court's decision in "People v. Aranda" by making statements implicating his co-defendants, the jury was removed from the courtroom.
Speaking for more than an hour, Manson said, among other things, that "the music is telling the youth to rise up against the establishment."
He said, "Why blame it on me?