• Manson On Way Back To L.A. Trial

Manson On Way Back To L.A. Trial

SAN QUENTIN, Calif., Apr. 23 — Charles Manson, cult leader condemned to die for the murder of Sharon Tate and six others, was removed from his Death Row cell today and returned to Los Angeles to face trial on two other murder charges.

Manson arrived Thursday from Los Angeles to undergo processing on Death Row. He was prisoner No. 94.

His 21-hour stay at the high security prison across the bay from San Francisco ended at 8:45 a.m., when members of the Los Angeles sheriff’s office transferred him to a bus for the 475-mile trip back to Los Angeles.

Susan Atkins, one of his three women followers convicted in the Tate murders, was transferred today to newly constructed death cell at the California Institution for Women at Frontera. The other two are to be transferred by next Thursday.

The 36-year-old Manson was loaded onto a sheriff’s bus at 4:40 a.m. Thursday and rode inside the walls at San Quentin less than seven hours later.

Within two hours prison officials had photographed and fingerprinted him, issued him new blue denim clothing and Warden Louis Nelson said, told him “what he can expect and what we expect from him.”

He was taken by elevator to his single cell in Condemned Unit One, becoming the 94th man in the two Death Row sections.

Nelson said Manson’s arrival was quiet and routine.

On the ground floor, the gas chamber stood empty, as it has since the execution of Aaron Mitchell on April 12, 1967, for shooting a Sacramento policeman.

There has been a moratorium on executions pending decision by the U.S. Supreme Court of a challenge of the death penalty as unconstitutional.

Manson was moved to prison because the law requires that a convict be turned over to the warden within 19 days of sentencing.

He, Miss Atkins, 22, Leslie Van Houten, 21, and Patricia Krenwinkel, 23, were sentenced last Monday.

Miss Atkins will have to return to Los Angeles to stand trial with Manson for the death in July, 1969, of Gary Hinman, a Los Angeles musician.

Two other followers of Manson, Bruce Davis, 27, and Steve Grogan, 19, are charged in that slaying. The three men also are charged with killing “Shorty” Shea, a movie stunt man.

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