LOS ANGELES, Jul. 12 – The 1973-74 Los Angeles County Grand Jury chose one version of Vincent Bugliosi’s involvement in handing information to reporter William Farr despite a court gag order over the lawyer’s own sharply different account, and pieced together slivers of information about Daye Shinn to indict the two lawyers for perjury June 28, the 714-page transcript indicated Thursday.

Both Bugliosi and Shinn have pleaded “not guilty” to the felony charges. Bugliosi is scheduled for pretrial motions and Shinn for trial setting Wednesday before Superior Judge Earl Broady.

Testimony from the eight-day closed-door hearing revealed little new information about the four-year-old case that stems from Farr’s obtaining transcripts during the 1970 Charles Manson murder trial from two of the six trial attorneys.

Farr based a story for the Herald-Examiner about Manson cult plans to murder celebrities on the transcripts of a statement of trial witness Virginia Graham. He now is a reporter for the Times.

Trial judge Charles H. Older jailed Farr (and could give him a further sentence July 29) for refusing to identify his sources. Older originally sought the names of the attorneys to consider contempt charges against them for violating the court gag order, but the statute of limitations on that contempt has expired.

The Board of Supervisors requested the appointment last April 30 of special prosecutor Theodore P. Shield to conduct the perjury investigation. Bugliosi and Shinn are accused of lying under oath twice before Older and once before the grand jury in denying that they gave Farr the transcripts.

In Bugliosi’s case, the 23-member grand jury apparently adopted completely the narrative of Dep. Dist. Atty. Stephen Kay, who assisted Bugliosi moderately in the Manson trial and clearly admired his boss. The tone of Kay’s lengthy appearance in the grand jury hearings was that of the concerned boy-next-door who punctuated his comments with “gee,” the transcript disclosed.

Kay related that he delivered copies of the transcript to Bugliosi in his office and saw Farr there at the time; that a few days later Farr asked him outside court to hand a manila envelope to Bugliosi, and that Bugliosi the same day threatened to have him and Dep. Dist. Atty. Donald Musich taken off the case if they sought a hearing into the Virginia Graham matter.

Bugliosi’s attorney, Harland Braun, strongly criticized Shield as “totally irresponsible” for presenting what he said was evidence that could not be admitted in a trial — including hearsay, opinions, speculation and prior testimony which is not automatically admissible. Braun said the special prosecutor, who is predominantly a civil attorney, had ignored guidelines in the Penal Code of what can be presented to a grand jury.

“The whole system has gone haywire,” Braun, a former deputy district attorney, said after reading the transcript.

Bugliosi told jurors that Kay had given him the transcripts in the courtroom; that no envelope incident occurred, and that he made no such threat to the coprosecutors in relation to the Virginia Graham statement.

He told the grand jury at great length that he had been upset by Kay’s remarks to district attorney and attorney general investigators and had suggested to Kay by phone that Dist. Atty. Joseph P. Busch put Kay up to it and that Kay himself was suspected of giving Farr the transcript and of perjury.

Asked by Shield if he talked to Farr outside the Manson trial court Oct. 8, 1970, Kay said, in part: “Mr. Farr came up to me, and he handed me a manila envelope, and he asked me if l would give the manila envelope to Vince. He gave me some reason why he couldn’t be there to give it to him. He had a meeting with somebody, or he had to do something, and I said, ‘Sure.’ ”

Asked what he did with the envelope. Kay said: “Well, I took it in and put it at my place on the counsel table, and when Mr. Bugliosi showed up. I either handed it to him or just flipped it down to him and said, ‘Here. This is from Farr.’ And he didn’t say anything.”

When Shield questioned Bugliosi, the former district attorney and state attorney general candidate insisted Kay brought copies of the statement to court, not to his office.

“I know he (Kay) claims this,” Bugliosi testified. “I don’t recall that. It’s possible, but I doubt it. My recollection is that he delivered several copies in court, and I think he’s the one that passed them out. I may have been the one. That’s the first time that I recall seeing them but it’s hard to remember. That was four years ago.”

When Shield asked Bugliosi if he remembered Kay giving him an envelope in court on Oct. 8. Bugliosi said: “No. I don’t recall that at all.”

Farr declined to answer any questions about the envelope-passing incident on grounds of the newsmen’s “shield” law which allows them to keep confidential their sources of Information.

Musich, whose testimony showed only hazy recollections of the entire episode, said he vaguely remembered Kay handing a manila envelope to Bugliosi, which Bugliosi put in his briefcase. But Musich remembered the transaction occurring in Bugliosi’s small office and was not sure when it happened.

The accounts became more sharply divided concerning the purported meeting between Kay and Bugliosi in Bugliosi’s office at noon Oct. 8, 1970, after Mrs. Graham’s attorney, Robert K. Steinberg had told Older that Farr had a copy of the transcript and planned to print a story about it.

Kay said he and Bugliosi were in the office and that Musich was there a part of the time.

“I asked him (Bugliosi) a question to the effect of, ‘What was in the envelope from Farr?’ I think I asked him, ‘Was it the Virginia Graham statement in there'” Kay said in part.

“And the best way I can describe his (Bugliosi’s) demeanor was just — almost stone silence. Just no movement to his face or anything,” Kay said. “He just turned and he looked at me, and he asked me, he said, ‘Did you look in the envelope?”’

“And I said, ‘No,’ because I hadn’t looked in the envelope.” Kay continued. “And then, the best way I can describe it is like if you were walking under a tree and a tiger jumped out at you, jumped right on top of you. That would be the way that this next part happened.

“He (Bugliosi) said, ‘If either one of you ask for a hearing on the matter’ — and at that point I noticed that Mr. Munich was behind, me…” Kay testified.

“Anyway, he (Bugliosi) said. ‘If either one of you ask for a hearing, I’ll have you removed from the case,” Kay told the grand jury. “He said, ‘The only reason you’re on the case is because I personally selected you, and all I have to do is walk up to the front office and tell them I don’t like the job you’re doing, and you’ll be taken off the case.’

“He (Bugliosi) appeared to be irate,” Kay said. “I mean, it was just like a tiger jumping right down on me from a tree. Just irate.”

Questioned by Shield about the noon office scene, Bugliosi said: “No such envelope incident ever took place …” After Shield went over his question again. Bugliosi said: “No such envelope conversation ever took place.”

Bugliosi denied that he ever asked Kay if the latter looked in any envelope. Asked if he ever told Kay and Musich he would take them off the case if they “asked for a hearing on the matter of the envelope and the statement that might have been in there,” Bugliosi said:

“No, I never asked Kay at any time not to ask for a hearing on anything. That is a complete, unadulterated fabrication on his part”

The grand jury may have been impressed by the brief testimony of Dep. Atty. Gen. William R. Pounders which supported Kay’s version of the confrontation. Pounders conducted an investigation more than a year ago for the office of Atty. Gen. Evelle J. Younger into the perjury question, but no report was made public and no official action taken.

Pounders testified that when he interviewed Bugliosi March 8, 1973, Bugliosi responded, “No, I never told them not to seek a hearing on the case.” Pounders said that he had not asked Bugliosi about the comment on the hearing, but that Bugliosi originated it.

The unsolicited comment was very close to Kay’s account. No transcription was made of the interview.

“So then the mention about not asking for a hearing was initiated by him (Bugliosi) in your conversation?” Shield pressed.

“That’s correct,” Pounders testified. “And it startled me. The reason I recall the specific response is that it startled me in view of the fact that I had Mr. Bugliosi’s reputation in mind, and I could not conceive of him having misunderstood my question by saying no, this didn’t occur, when I had never asked him about this occasion, about that specific part of the response.”

Part of the evidence leading toward Shinn’s indictment apparently was what most principals in the case considered a joke.

Kay, who was not questioned about it in detail before the grand jury, testified several times, most recently in a deposition concerning a libel suit against Farr and others by Manson defense attorneys Irving Kanarek and Paul Fitzgerald, that:

“I was walking down the hall one day and Mr. Farr came up to me, and he was in a very jovial mood and laughing and everything and he said, ‘Oh, that Shinn, you know, you wouldn’t believe him. He called me on the phone and asked me whether or not he had given me a copy of the Virginia Graham statement. He said he couldn’t remember because he had given me so much stuff during the course of the trial.'”

In one of the few questions he did answer for the grand jury, Farr confirmed the incident in these words:

“I did say to Mr. Kay, jokingly, that Mr. Shinn said, ‘I gave you quite a bit of stuff during the trial, and I can’t say whether that statement was among them.’ He did not call me. It was said to me in jest by Shinn. I repeated it to Kay jokingly, which ought to be manifestly clear why I wouldn’t be repeating it…”

Shinn, however, denied he ever made the comment jokingly or otherwise.

“Did you ever make a statement to Mr. Farr to this effect, asking Mr. Farr whether or not you gave him a copy of the statement. Did you ever ask Mr. Farr, ‘Did I give you a copy of the statement?’ ” Shield asked.

“No, I never asked,” Shinn told the grand jury.

“Did you ever make a statement to Mr. Farr, ‘I gave you so much stuff that I can’t remember whether I gave you a copy of that statement or not?’ ” Shield probed.

“No,” Shinn said.

Another piece in the Shinn puzzle was testimony concerning Shinn’s separate receipt of the transcript and Steinberg’s original comment that Farr told him he received a copy from a “defense lawyer.”

(Steinberg later said in an affidavit before Older and before the grand jury he was not positive Farr had said a “defense lawyer,” that it could have been “a lawyer in the case.”)

Fitzgerald told the grand jury he accepted three of the defense crew’s transcripts — for the late Ronald Hughes, Kanarek and himself — but that Shinn was in court and got his own copies from Kay or Bugliosi.

Shinn also testified that he received his copy personally and probably, as was his usual custom, put it in his briefcase and took it home with him. He said he had been unable to find it recently in his office files, probably because he moved his office two years ago.

The grand jury may have weighted against Shinn a curious part of Fitzgerald’s testimony that, on its face, favors Shinn as innocent of handing Farr the transcript. Fitzgerald said Farr told
him he did not get the copy from Shinn.

Asked by the grand jury about that conversation, Farr denied it, saying “I did not. I have never told anyone as to who the attorneys were or the persons were or who they were not. I can’t any more emphatically state that.”

(He said in an interview Thursday: “Paul did say to me, shortly after the in-chamber session with Older, that he presumed it was Shinn. What I recall saying to him was that it was unfair to make such a presumption.”)

Fitzgerald’s account for the grand jury was:

He (Farr) told me he did not get it from Shinn. When Steinberg said that Farr obtained a statement from a defense attorney, I knew that it couldn’t have been Hughes because I had Hughes’ copy of the transcript and it was in the file cabinet. I knew that I didn’t give it to him. I virtually knew that Kanarek didn’t give it to him, because Kanarek never gave the time of the day to the press. He hated them.

“And I also know,” Fitzgerald continued, “that Shinn had given Farr materials in the past, mainly, a drawing that one of the defendants had drawn of the jury, a very unflattering drawing of the jury, and Shinn gave it to Farr and it appeared on the front page of the Herald – Examiner. Farr and Shinn were close to one another, actually, talked frequently.

“So I formed the opinion that it was Shinn,” Fitzgerald said, “and I confronted Farr and said, ‘Shinn gave you the transcript, didn’t he?’ … Farr said, ‘for once, Shinn didn’t do it. I didn’t get it from Shinn’ … ”

The grand jury, miffed by Farr’s refusal to answer most of their questions, may have discarded the account of his denying he received a copy from Shinn. The jurors apparently took quite seriously the opinion (that Shinn was a source) of the bespectacled, stooped and scholarly looking Fitzgerald over the denial in the nervous, clipped English of Shinn.

By MYRNA OLIVER