Defending the indefensible? Lawyers on representing clients accused of nightmarish crimes

Rory Carroll and Simon Hattenstone talk to the lawyers who've taken on some of the toughest cases
Rory Carroll and Simon Hattenstone   
The Guardian, Friday 27 June 2014 10.00 EDT   

Irving Kanarek, 94, practiced law in California from 1957-1989. He represented Charles Manson, who was convicted in 1971 of conspiracy to murder actor Sharon Tate and six other people. He also defended Jimmy Lee Smith, convicted of abducting and murdering an LA police officer in 1963, a case immortalized in the book The Onion Field.

Irving Kanarek: ‘I don’t dream or even think much about Charlie.'
Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

I would defend a client who I knew was guilty of horrific crimes. They have to be proved guilty. I've had cases where people were guilty as hell but they couldn't prove it. And if they can't prove it, he's not guilty. In that case, the person walks free. That's American justice.

I got a reversal of Jimmy Lee's death sentence, and he had been accused of killing a police officer. That made me the victim of police non-objectivity. They pulled me over, gave me tickets undeservedly.

It wasn't a difficult decision to take the Manson case. My purpose was to fight legally admissible evidence, and the amount of that was scant. His guilt was based on a few hearsay words, inadmissible in court, that he supposedly told this guy to do a number on the Tate residence. No question he was legally innocent. And, more than that, he was actually innocent. There was no evidence connecting him to those murders.

The newspapers, the magazines, the motion pictures got people all excited – Manson as the embodiment of human evil. Charlie wasn't a monster. When you look at the legally admissible evidence, you come to a very different conclusion. Just looking at him from objective considerations, he's a personable person.

I've thought a lot about the case in terms of the legalities. I haven't dwelt much on the human tragedy of it. There's a lot of myth, for example that the baby was taken out of Tate's body. Not so. The wounds were not in the abdomen. The wounds were primarily in the breast area.

I didn't spend much time [thinking about Tate and the other victims], because they were victims of disputes that Charlie had nothing to do with. I think his direct involvement has been woefully extrapolated.

By the time I visited the house, the bodies were gone. The scene was what I'd call mechanical. Nothing about it was gruesome, per se. They'd marked where they were in chalk. So it isn't as overwhelming as some people may feel. None of it stayed with me. The tools of the courtroom make such scenes less than human. I didn't think about it emotionally. The victims are part of the case, but are not that tangible. I lost sleep on other cases, but not on this one.

People ask me, have I ever felt in the presence of evil, I don't know how to respond to that. I don't dream or even think much about Charlie.

I have regrets about every case where someone is killed or injured. Murder is unappetizing. But I've never defended anyone who's been accused of horrible criminal acts on children.

Hat tip to Emily, a regular reader of the blog (or something like that).

George Stimson has a newly released book.

Goodbye Helter Skelter

A New Look at the Tate-LaBianca Murders

"There's an image and a person that the District Attorney created called 'Manson Helter Skelter.' And there's an image that's in the press that you've been reading and watching and looking at for years. And that's built up in your mind. That's an image that somebody else made up. It's got nothing, really, to do with me personally. I am not that guy. But yet that guy is built up in your mind and you think that that guy is me. You think that I'm that fire-breathing, seven-foot-tall, no good hippie cult leader bullshit bunkum punk shit that they put on me, you know. And then sometimes I think you guys get to believing that shit.

"That's not me.

"I might be worse than that, in some ways." -- Charles Manson

In August of 1969 the spectacular Tate-LaBianca murders rocked Los Angeles, the country, and the world. But even more shocking than those murders was the story behind them: the story of a homicidal maniac named Charles Manson, how he turned the sons and daughters of middle-class America into a "Family" of murderous slaves, and an insane plan to achieve world domination by sparking a race war called "Helter Skelter."

But what if it was just a story?

Here is the first realistic and reasonable examination of the Tate-LaBianca murders and the true reasons behind them. Based on years of research and exclusive information from Charles Manson and many of his former and present friends, Goodbye Helter Skelter presents the conclusions of a long-time Manson associate -- conclusions that will likely change everything you think you know about Charles Manson, his "Family," and some of the most infamous murders in the history of American crime.

Goodbye Helter Skelter includes material taken from hundreds of hours of tape-recorded conversations with Charles Manson. Never before has Manson's point of view been presented in such a complete and coherent format.

416 pages, including over thirty pages of color photographs
 

Goodbye Helter Skelter by George Stimson Available Now

Ordering Information

contact@goodbyehelterskelter.com  

Copyright © 2014 The Peasenhall Press

No Words...

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Who's that Girl?

Patty has seen this image before but she always assumed it was Photoshopped. Recently she noticed that Aes-Nihil has the original in his collection. Obviously it's Sandy and Lynn, but now Patty is wondering, "who's that girl?"

Anyone?

TRASH TALK

Okay, I will admit it, I have an affinity for these old trashy tabloids!  You know the stuff they write is totally blown out of proportion and sometimes outright made up but, damn, it is entertaining!

 

 

 

 

You rarely hear anything about Mike Armstrong and his wife Denise, I don't think they testified at the trial.  I have found a couple of articles about them though, here's one that Cielodrive has transcribed about a fire destroying their trailer at Spahn Ranch.

Claire Vaye Watkins

This summer as part of a summer workshop Claire will do a special reading at The Cabin, a literary center in Boise Idaho on June 22nd. 

An article in the Boise Weekly reveals the news that Claire is expecting her first child in a couple of months.

Rare old photo

This Charming Man

What exactly was it that made people want to spill their guts out (no pun intended) to a man named Charles Manson? How did Charlie become so skilled at reading people? Was it just something he was born with, or was it something he learned in reform schools/prisons? Was he always charming? Back in the days of yonder, when he was a pimple-faced teen, did he have the ability to charm the girls out of their poodle skirts? Did he purposely pick certain people he knew he could dominate? Is he a man, monster, or both? What do you think he is? I don't think the answer is all that complicated. In my opinion, and I am sure I am going to get reamed for saying so, he is an extremely dangerous, unstable man who was nothing more than a clever pimp. His ability to get people to do stuff on his command is what makes him dangerous. That, and his opinion that human beings other than himself had no rights to their own lives & money. Their money was his money, according to the Gospel of Charlie. He always talked against being materialistic, but he was always the first one reaping the benefits of other people's goods. Manson loved the benefits of money more than he has ever let on, and that, right there makes him more human than ever! You didn't ever see him turning his nose up against all of the material possessions, luxuries & comforts that Dennis Wilson's money provided, did you? Hell no! He's no fool. The following excerpt from Paul Watkins book is an extremely good description of CM:

Later people would ask me how a man like Charlie Manson could ever be considered Christlike. How could he ever get that close to people, so close that they spoke his rap, and thought his thoughts. The answer is simple, really. He listened to them, each of them. He concentrated on what they said. He sympathized with their problems, knew their idiosyncrasies. He allowed them to express all their fears, hopes, aspirations. Seemingly, he did not judge, he merely listened, and focused all his attention on them. He became friend, brother, lover, and father. He gave himself in a way that, perhaps no one else ever had, particularly in the beginning. Ironically, few people ever really pay attention on that level. He taught the girls not only to love their minds, but their bodies, and to use them without inhibition. What he had started at Spahn's, he continued at Gresham Street. He was always changing the motion, remaining unpredictable. 

He went on to write:

The girls in the Family adored Charlie; he knew each of them-their hang-ups, their likes, dislikes, phobias, their tastes in food, sex, music, their backgrounds-everything. Whenever someone appeared who might cause a problem to our scene-a narc, redneck, probation officer, anyone from the straight world-Charlie knew immediately which girl would be best suited to neutralize that person. He was masterful at this; to do it, he had to know his women well.

In closing, I would like to add that while I am sure Manson is a fascinating character to know, and to correspond with, he is just too damned unstable to let out. He couldn't just go out into the desert to disappear into anonymity, because every moron in town would be chasing after him, following him around, and trying to recreate "The Family." Of course, I am sure old Charlie wouldn't mind an assortment of groupies following him out there to cater to his every need, but we all know that isn't ever going to happen. While I think Tex Watson is a helluva lot more dangerous than Manson ever will be, I still don't think he is innocent.

Linda Kasabian

Linda Kasabian 2014

Linda Kasabian 1970

Manson-related art exhibit opens today in LA

Blog reader John Tottenham has an exhibit opening today at:

Maloney Fine Art

2680 South La Cienega Blvd.

(between Venice & Washington)

Los Angeles, CA 90034

(310) 570-6420

On the subject of "The Undesirables" John writes:

"I encountered the Manson story as an impressionable 15-year-old who had recently been kicked out of one the least notable public schools in the south of England. I was sent to a school for difficult kids but spent most of my days walking the streets of London. I found a copy of  'The Family,' Ed Sanders' colorful account of the Manson murders, and I went round and round on the Circle Line in London, unable to put it down. The atmosphere it evoked, thick with sex and dread, was  intoxicating to a morbidly romantic youth whose voice still hadn't broken. In the evening, after a day of truancy, I returned to the family home in a quaint Kentish village - 35 miles from London but deep in the heart of the country, and very remote insofar as public transport was concerned - where I would read it while listening repeatedly to 'Forever Changes' by Love. Fortuitously enough, I discovered this record at precisely the same time, and it served as the perfect soundtrack, evoking an eerie, damaged, distinctively Los Angeles atmosphere. Arthur Lee's cryptic, riddling lyrics - 'Sitting on a hillside, watching all the people die,' etc, are not dissimilar to Manson's  "No sense makes sense" logic: "Look down at me and you see a fool, look up at me and you see a God, look straight at me and you see yourself," etc. The Manson case offered an exotic and extreme form of vicarious  teenage rebellion, being the complete antithesis of my staid rural colonial upbringing.

After gazing upon the grainy full page shot of Susan Atkins (AKA Sadie Mae Glutz)  in 'Helter Skelter' I became hopelessly besotted. I would stare at that photograph for minutes on end, completely losing myself in it. Her expression was very haunting, very penetrating. What most drew me to the Manson story was the  predicament of the girls. They seemed, in a way, like victims themselves, and they hadn't been much older than I was when they had fallen under Charlie's spell.

I projected most of my adolescent romantic longing onto them, though there was a lot to go around. I wrote a billet-doux to Susan Atkins and sent it to her care of the Frontera Women's Institute. A few weeks later my mother, understandably perplexed, handed over an envelope with a California prison stamp upon it and a complicated series of numbers denoting the sender. Susan had written back, informing me that she had seen the light and recommended I do likewise. After the epistolary letdown I began to feel guilty about my Manson-immersion. I built a ceremonial bonfire and burned the Atkins letter, along with other artifacts, including an original copy of the Manson 's 2019 record on ESP that I had found so affecting, especially 'Look at your Game Girl,' which perfectly evoked the eerie sun-dried lostness of those times.

When I started digging into the case again, I realized that the photograph of Sadie in 'Helter Skelter' was rather a flattering one. She certainly wasn't doing herself any favors when she started showing up in court with a shaved head and unshaven legs: that was a look I couldn't get behind. In hindsight, the Sadie infatuation probably had an unhealthy effect upon the kind of women I subsequently gravitated towards.

My interest in the case had faded by the time I made it out to LA. By then it had become off-puttingly trendy in transgressive circles. But it has turned out to be a constantly revisited fascination. And obviously I'm not alone in it. I frequently  meet people whose early impressions of Southern California were formed by the Manson case. Murder stories often serve as a portal to another time and place. In this case, it served as a window into the Los Angeles of the late 60s, obviously a very interesting time, especially as the idealism and hedonism began to sour. Here was a unique confluence of circumstances - a crucible of chaos in which a bizarrely charismatic ex-con with a messianic complex attracted just the right group of vulnerable and manipulable young men and women on just the right/wrong combination of potent drugs in a climate that facilitated a horrific and previously unthinkable chain of events.

My intention with the drawings was to capture as precisely as possible my most intimate impressions of nature. In this case, feminine nature. I was never interested in the murders as much as the shadows they cast and by the girls who dwelled in those shadows. And what became of them. The drawings are of all the girls in the Family, not just the killers; in fact, some of the killers are under-represented. I used almost every suitable image I could find. There has always been something haunting about a mugshot, especially old ones, and these mugshots are about 45-years-old now.

They started out, as everything seems to, as doodles on post-it notes, and they evolved on to slightly larger pieces of finer paper. Though tiny, some of them took a long time to complete. I wouldn't be satisfied until I felt that I'd captured something, if not an exact rendering of the photograph, then something that evoked.

The drawings are a personal exercise in nostalgia. When I think of the Manson saga I don't think so much of where it took place - and where I ended up - but rather of where I was when first exposed to it; the canyons and deserts of Southern California come sweeping back to me as I first imagined them, borne on the cold autumn wind through the English countryside, while I sat on the sofa in the living room of a modest country house with 'Forever Changes' repeatedly playing on the stereo. I know it's all played out now but it wasn't when I first came across it. It's my attempt to capture what I found so haunting when I first became obsessed with the case.