The Testimony of Charles Manson... Continued

I can only judge you if you try to judge me. That is the fact. Mr. Bugliosi is a hard-driving prosecutor, with a polished educa- tion. Semantics, words. He is a genius. He has got everything that every lawyer would want to have except one thing: a case. He doesn't have a case. Were I allowed to defend myself, I could have proven this to you. I could have called witnesses and showed you how these things lay, and I could have presented my picture. You are dealing with facts and positive evidence. If you are dealing with things that are relative to the issues at hand, then you look at the facts. What else do you look at? Oh, the leather thong. How many people have ever worn moccasins with a leather thong in it? So you have placed me on the desert with leather clothes on and you took a leather thong from my shoe. How many people could we take leather thongs from? That is an issue. Then you move on and you say I had one around my neck. I al- ways tie one around my head when my hair is long. It keeps it out of my eyes. And you pull it down on your neck. And I imagine a lot of long-haired people do. There are so many aspects to this case that could be dug into and a lot of truth could be brought up, a lot of understanding could be reached. It is a pretty hideous thing to look at seven bodies, one hundred and two stab wounds. The prosecutor, or the doctor, gets up and he shows how all the different stab wounds are one way, and then how all the different stab wounds are another way; but they are the same stab wounds in another direction. They put the hideous bodies on display and they say: "If he gets out see what will happen to you." Implying it. I am not saying he did this. This is implied. A lot of diagrams are actually in my opinion senseless to the case. Then there is Paul Watkins' testmony. Paul Watkins was a young man who ran away from his parents and wouldn't go home. you could ask him to go home and he would say no. He would say, "I don't got no place to live. can I live here?" And I'd say, "Sure." So, he looks for a father image. I offer no father image. I say, "To be a man, boy, you have got to stand up and be your own father." And he still hungers for a father image. So he goes off to the desert and finds a father image. When he gets on the stand, I forget what he said, whether it had any relative value, oh, I was supposed to have said to go get a knife and kill the Sheriff of Shoshone. Go get a knife and kill the Sheriff of Shoshone? I don't know the Sheriff of Shoshone.

charles manson testimony continued