TRIALS: Life with Father

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Squeaky described the tribe's radically unordered life: "You could say it's a nonsense world of Alice in Wonderland, but it makes a lot of sense. Everybody makes their own rules . . . Each moment is different." One clay, she said, a family member named Mary Brunner "had her baby in this old condemned house and we delivered it. We called him Sunstone Hawk, because at the time she had him, the sun was just rising, and a hawk flew over the house."

Another follower, Nancy Pitman, 19, described Manson's almost Franciscan mysticism. "Animals would come around him a lot," she testified. Once she saw him pet a rattlesnake and bring a dead bird back to life. Sandy Good, 27, who was raised in a wealthy San Diego family, said: "The energy in that man you have not seen. I believe his voice could shatter this building."

The dilemma of the defense lawyers is that the women convicted of murder with Manson will be equally devoted should they take the stand, possibly starting this week. There is speculation that eventually both Paul Fitzgerald and Maxwell Keith, lawyers for Krenwinkel and Van Houten, will turn on Manson in their summary arguments and claim that the women were victims of Manson's will. Even though the women have already been convicted, the lawyers may, through an argument of "diminished capacity," try to save them from death sentences. On the other hand, if the women do try to absolve Manson by claiming all of the guilt for themselves, that in itself might be an illustration of Manson's weird hold over them.