• Testify Watson Fingerprint Found at Scene of Slaying

Testify Watson Fingerprint Found at Scene of Slaying

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 22 — Two police crime laboratory experts testified on Friday that a bloody fingerprint found at the Sharon Tate home was that of Charles (Tex) Watson, the remaining defendant in the Tate-LaBianca mass murders.

Investigators Jerome Bolen and Harold Dolan told a jury the fingerprint found in Miss Tate’s bedroom remained a mystery for several months, but after Watson was arrested in Texas it was matched to his prints.

Watson, 25-year-old member of the Manson “family,” is charged with seven counts of murder and one of conspiracy. He is being tried separately from cult leader Charles Manson and other co-defendants because of delays in extraditing him last year.

Most of the testimony on Friday centered on physical conditions which police found at the two murder homes in August of 1969. The testimony about the fingerprint was given previously in the Manson trial.

Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten previously were convicted and sentenced to the gas chamber over the five murders at Miss Tate’s home in Benedict Canyon and the slaying the next night of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca at their home in the Los Feliz area.

Watson is being tried before a jury of six men and six women in the court of Superior Judge Adolph Alexander.

The trial was recessed until tomorrow.

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3 Responses to Testify Watson Fingerprint Found at Scene of Slaying

  1. Gary Stewart says:

    Tex’s print was found in Miss Tate’s bedroom ?

  2. checkeredemon says:

    I thought Tex’s print was on front door.

  3. Gary Stewart says:

    Have they mixed it up with Pats print ?

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