LOS ANGELES, Mar. 30 – Grim-faced jurors Monday returned 27 verdicts of death against the Tate-LaBianca killers: Charles Manson, 36, Patricia Krenwinkel, 23, Susan Atkins, 22, and Leslie Van Houten, 21.

But, the four were not present to hear themselves condemned. Each had disrupted the hearing with loud comments and had been removed.

The same seven men and five women who returned a total of 27 counts of first-degree murder last Jan. 25 filed back into Superior Judge Charles H. Older’s courtroom at 4:22 p.m.

They had deliberated a total of 10 hours since receiving the case last Friday, after a two-month penalty hearing and seven-and-a-half-month guilt-or-innocence trial.

Some of the jurors glanced at the defendants sitting at the counsel table as they entered the courtroom but most avoided looking at them as they took their seats in the jury box.

“Mr. Tubick,” Older asked jury foreman Herman C. Tubick, “has the jury reached a verdict?”

“Yes, we have, your honor,” Tubick replied, handing a sheaf of papers to bailiff William Murray.

The judge was looking through the verdicts when the 36-year-old Manson called out:

“I don’t see how you can get by with this without letting me put on some kind of defense. Who gives you authority to do this?”

Older warned Manson to be quiet or he would be removed from the courtroom.

“I didn’t ask to come back,” replied Manson, who had been removed to a loudspeaker-equipped holding room for creating disturbances in the last two weeks of the penalty trial.

The judge continued to read the verdicts handed to him by the bailiff.

“Hey, boy!” Manson called, “You people don’t have no authority over me. Half of you in here ain’t as good as I am.”

Older ordered bailiffs to remove Manson. As the defendant was being guided to the holding cell, he said, “It’s not the people’s courtroom.”

Court clerk Gene Darrow had prepared to read the jury’s verdict on the first count of the indictment against Manson when the defendant was taken out.

Darrow began reading at 4:27 p.m. When he announced that the jury’s verdict was death for Manson for the murder of coffee heiress Abigail (Gibby) Folger, the three women defendants cried out.

“You have just judged yourselves,” said Patricia Krenwinkel.

“You’d best lock your doors and watch your own kids, chimed in Susan Atkins. “You are removing yourselves from the face of the earth, you old fool.”

“Your whole system is a game,” said Leslie Van Houten. “You blind stupid people, your children will turn against you.”

Each was guided to the holding room door where Manson had been taken moments before.

It took Darrow 17 minutes to read the jury’s verdicts on the 27 counts. His voice was a monotone as he methodically read the stiff, formalized language of the indictments. The effect was this:
Manson, “Sadie” Atkins, and “Katie” Krenwinkel — Death on seven counts of murdering Miss Folger, 26, Sharon Tate, 27, Jay Sebring, 37, Voityck Frykowski, 37, Steven Parent, 18, Leno LaBianca, 44, and Rosemary LaBianca, 38, on Aug. 9 and 10, 1969.

Leslie Van Houten — Death on two counts of murdering Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

Each of the four defendants was sentenced to death for conspiracy to commit murder.

Jurors were polled collectively after verdicts on each count had been read and individually on counts 1 through 8 after Darrow completed reading all the verdicts.

“Yes, it is,” “yes,” “yes, sir,” “yes,” “yes, it is,” the jurors replied as they were asked if the verdicts were theirs.

Older set April 19 for sentencing and all post-trial motions, and denied a request by Manson’s attorney, Irving A. Kanarek, to impose a gag rule on the jury. Then he turned to the. jurors.

The judge said the people of California owed them a “tremendous debt of gratitude.”

“To my knowledge,” he said, “no jury in history has been sequestered for so long a period or subjected to such an ordeal,” Older said.

He praised their devotion “above and beyond the call of duty,” thanked them on the people’s behalf, and said if it was within his power he would award each of them a “medal of honor.”

Before he dismissed them, Older told the jurors, he wanted to thank them individually. While the crowded courtroom watched, the judge shook hands with each of the 12 regular jurors and three alternates, smiling and calling them by name.

Older left the courtroom, the jurors followed and the Tate-LaBianca murder trial, begun June 15, 1970, ended March 29, 1971, was over.

Dep. Dist. Atty. Vincent T. Bugliosi, speaking for coprosecutors Stephen H. Kay and Donald A. Musich, joined ini Older’s praise of the jury as conscientious people “deserving a pat on the back.”

“If the death penalty is to mean anything in California other than two empty words, this unquestionably was a proper case for it,” Bugliosi said. “Such conduct cannot go unpunished.”

Paul Fitzgerald, the attorney who had acted in effect as chief counsel for the defendants’ “umbrella” defense, accused the jury of “perpetuating the very crime they sought to eradicate.”

I don’t know how their verdicts can help anyone — these young girls, the country or the community,” he said.

Outside, five of “Charlie’s girls,” their heads freshly shaved, the Manson “X” scarring some of their foreheads, received the news of the jury’s verdicts as they sat on the sidewalk at Temple St. and Broadway.

Tears welled in the eyes of one family member, when a television reporter announced that death appeared to be the verdict. Earlier, Manson follower Sandra Good, 26, had suggested they might burn themselves alive to demonstrate that Manson “is innocent.”

“Death?” she said after learning the penalty. “That’s what you’re all going to get.”

At his Palos Verdes Estates home, actress Sharon Tate’s father, Col. Paul J. Tate, 48, a retired Army intelligence officer, commented, “There’s still justice.”

Tate, a daily spectator in the early stages of the guilt trial, told the Associated Press that he “naturally wanted the death penalty.”

“They took my daughter and my grandchild.” (Miss Tate was eight and a half months pregnant when she was killed.)

“I feel that justice has been appropriate.”

He said there is “no jubilation” and “no sense of satisfaction” but that now he can get back “into the business of living.”

Commenting on his early attendance in the courtroom, Tate said:

“I did it because jurors get wrapped up in the defendants. My main purpose was to let them know that someone cared for Sharon Tate. And to let Manson and those three girls know there was still somebody looking at them.”

For the moment, “Man’s game,” as Manson liked to call it, is over for Charlie and his “girls.”

But hardly anyone is likely to think that the legal system has neatly and finally disposed of the Tate – LaBianca defendants with a lengthy trial, costing about $915,172.

As it does in all capital cases, the State Supreme Court must review the verdicts, a process which could take more than two years. Aside from that, there are the issues of possible appeal raised in the sometimes tumultuous hearing.

The defense is talking about filing appeals, the disposition of which could take years.

Then, there is the combined Gary Hinman-Donald (Shorty) Shea indictment, charging Manson, Miss Atkins and Manson followers, Bruce Davis and Steve Grogan with murder.

Charles (Tex) Watson, 24, one of those indicted on Dec. 8, 1969, for the seven Tate-LaBianca murders, still must be tried for his part in the killings.

What remains is the horror of mass murder by killers expressing no remorse and at least one vital, unanswered question.

What caused it? Manson? The chronic use of LSD? Both?

The question “Why?” still remains.

By JOHN KENDALL