Los Angeles Times
December 13, 1969 - front page

BOTH TOLD TO LEAVE TEXAS
     Judge Rebukes 2 Attorneys
   Over Claims in Tate Case               

BY WILLIAM ENDICOTT
Times Staff Writer

    Two Los Angeles attorneys were ordered to jail for 72 hours and fined $100 each by a Texas judge Friday for "making a circus" out of the case of Charles D. Watson, charged in the Sharon Tate and La Bianca murders.
    But Judge David H. Brown gave the attorneys, Perry Walshin and David DeLoach, an alternative: "Take the next plane back to California and shut your mouths about this case."
    Walshin and DeLoach agreed to leave.
    The 24-year-old Watson is being held in the McKinney, Tex. jail on a California murder warrant. He is a member of the nomad cult accused of killing Miss Tate and four others at her Benedict Canyon estate Aug. 9 and grocery store owner Leno La Bianca and his wife, Rosemary, the following night.
    Walshin and DeLoach claimed to represent Watson and told a press conference in Dallas last week he was being held incommunicado and that they had been refused a chance to talk to him.
    Brown called Friday's hearing in McKinney solely for the purpose of denying that charge and to admonish the two attorneys.
    He charged Washin and DeLoach with holding a "press spectacular" for no other purpose "than to enhance your own future by cheap publicity."
    He continued: "You have more brazen effrontery than any two so-called lawyers I have seen in my life. Your conduct is not only in contempt of this court but it is in contempt of the entire judicial system of which you are supposed to be a part."
    DeLoach, reached later at a Dallas hotel, said he did not understand the contempt charge and maintained that "we understood he (Watson) wanted to see us."
    He said he had represented Watson in a civil case in Los Angeles and that "he's been in the office 30 or 40 times."
    DeLoach was a Republican candidate for the State Assembly in 1964 and is a former county chairman of the California Young Republicans. He and Walshin are associates in a law firm on Santa Monica Blvd.
    Watson, dressed in green work clothes, made his first public appearance since he gave himself up Nov. 30 when he was taken into Brown's courtroom Friday to be asked by the judge:
    "Do you want to talk to these men (Walshin and DeLoach) or be represented by them?"
    Watson replied, "No, sir, I do not."
    The judge then asked, "Do you want to see them?"
    Watson again replied, "No, I do not."
    DeLoach said he did not know "if Watson even saw us in the courtroom."
    "We weren't allowed to cross-examine him. We weren't allowed to discuss anything with him," he said.
    At least 20 Texas highway patrolmen and sheriff's deputies were on hand to guard the suspect.
    Susan Denise Atkins, another member of the band, told the Los Angeles County Grand Jury last week that Watson was the one who killed Miss Tate.
    Watson, Miss Atkins, 21, and four others were indicted by the grand jury in the Tate and La Bianca slayings.

GETTING OUT OF TOWN—Attorneys David DeLoach, left, and Perry Walshin leave courthouse in McKinney, Tex., after agreeing to return to California rather than serve contempt sentences.          (AP) Wirephoto

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