• Manson Jury Recesses in ‘Circus Mood’

Manson Jury Recesses in ‘Circus Mood’

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 24 – Obviously in a “circus” mood, jurors deliberating the fate of Charles Manson and three of his girlfriends quit their job early Saturday so they could return to their hotel to rest.

The five-woman, seven-man panel, deliberating for almost 42 hours, apparently were told by the judge that if they got tired they could recess.

Wearing bright sports clothing – most of the women in jeans and sweaters – they came back to the Los Angeles Hall of Justice from lunch carrying clown masks. Two of the masks decorated a back window of the Sheriff’s Department bus which transports them.

One of the alternate jurors stepped from the bus with the mask firmly in place waving to newsmen who were kept behind a wire fence about 100 feet away. Most of the panel, spotting news media representatives they recognized from the courtroom, waved and laughed as they entered and exited the bus.

As the bus, its windows clouded to prevent jurors from seeing streetcorner newsstands, passed the newsmen, one of the jurors smiled out through a giant peace symbol he had etched in the Bon-Ami.

Earlier the jury bus was involved in a minor accident with a car in the crowded parking lot as the bus driver missed a turn and scraped a fender. Then, apparently flustered, the driver turned the wrong way on a one-way street which sent deputies running into the thoroughfare to halt oncoming traffic.

By MARY NEISWENDER

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