Jan. 16 – A 26-year-old man linked by California law officials to mass murderer Charles Manson’s notorious Family was ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination in federal court here yesterday.

Moments earlier, he was granted permission to act as his own attorney.

Herbert Darrell Hay, a Texas Department of Corrections inmate serving a sentence for murder, is accused of sending two letters last May threatening Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Berg — a charge that could tack another five years on his prison term.

From his cell in the Nueces County Jail, Hay recently drafted and filed several motions on his own behalf, which included a request to defend himself and an announcement that he would offer a defense of temporary insanity to the two-count indictment.

U.S. District Judge Owen D. Cox yesterday allowed Hay, who refused court-appointed counsel last month, to act in his own defense, but appointed attorney Rick Fancher as a “standby.”

Cox denied Hay’s requests for more time and for a local doctor to determine his mental state at the time he allegedly wrote the letters to Berg. Instead, Cox ordered a 90-day psychiatric examination at a federal correctional facility in Springfield, Mo., at the government’s request.

A likely witness at Hay’s trial, Berg is not serving as prosecutor in the case, but as yet no one else is, either.

“I can’t prosecute it, but I answer the docket calls because no one else will take it,” Berg said. “I guess they don’t want to get on the list (to receive Hay’s letters).”

Berg received the mailed threats last year after he successfully prosecuted another prison correspondent with a poison pen — Dale William Okenfuss.

Okenfuss, 29, was assessed a five-year prison term in March for threatening Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Kamin, who as a Nueces County prosecutor in 1976 won a 60-year sentence against Okenfuss for abducting and raping a 13-year-old girl.

Okenfuss, a Missouri drifter and sometime Corpus Christi resident, was indicted again on similar charges two months later in May 1980 — this time for threatening Berg.

Hay and Steven Douglas Hamilton, who were incarcerated with Okenfuss at the Ramsey No. 1 Unit at Rosharon, were subpoenaed as defense witnesses at the second trial, court records show.

John Buck, Okenfuss’ court-appointed attorney, said his client denied penning the vitriolic note, but pleaded guilty to the charge in October. Okenfuss unsuccessfully appealed the three-year sentence to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Hay was indicted in November for allegedly firing off two letters to Berg threatening him with bodily harm one week after Okenfuss was charged with menacing the prosecutor by mail.

Yesterday in federal court Hay, clad in a neat, brown leisure suit provided by Okenfuss’ father, said he would pursue a defense of temporary insanity to the charges and pleaded for access to law books and writing materials to prepare his case.

In letters to the Caller and in conversations with Corpus Christi private investigator Raymond K. Pekarovic, Hay has indicated he believes crowded and brutalizing conditions in Texas prisons caused him to temporarily lose his mind.

By PAMELA LYON