Charles Manson Behind Bars (19 page)

While in the San Francisco Bay area, Charlie and his girls bought an old school bus. They had collected enough money panhandling and stealing that they could afford the few hundred dollars needed for the bus and a full gas tank. They used their new wheels to travel the west coast. They looked for others to join them, often picking up hitchhikers, and talking to anyone they met. Some of their new friends just wanted a ride somewhere, others stayed with the group a few days. A few became full-time family members as the group continued to grow.

Charlie became disillusioned with the Haight-Ashbury district in 1968. What had started out with the great ideals of love and sharing was eventually becoming little more than a haven for squalor and drug abuse. Many of the original hippies had moved on to new areas or new challenges, some returning to their civilian lives with jobs and responsibilities. The hippies who remained in San Francisco were more recent run-aways or those whose drug abuse forced them to remain on the streets. The magic was gone so Charlie left too.

Charlie and his girls traveled as far north as Washington State and as far south as San Diego and a couple hundred miles into Mexico. They kept returning to Hollywood because Manson liked that area so much. “The weather is perfect there,” he told me. “It’s no wonder that movie stars and famous musicians end up there.” He also hoped to break into the music business in southern California.

An important theme to Charlie, I could tell, was the control of people. Charlie regularly told me how he managed the actions of others and how it was crucial for success to be able to manipulate other people. He told me that there is a great misconception about leading others. So many people think that to make others do what you want them to do means that you must boss them around, telling them what to do and how to do it. Charlie disagreed with this philosophy. He hated following orders and knew that most other people did too. “To control other people,” he told me, “you have to let them do what they want to do.” He acknowledged the contradiction, but said it was true: “If you want people to follow you, you have to let them do what they want to do. If you let others be free, they’ll follow you wherever you fly. You just gotta let them be free.”

I wondered whether this Zen-like wisdom was true. It would seem that if you let others be free and do whatever they wanted, they would desire to not follow. I thought following was the exact opposite of being free. Don’t people seek to be free from following? Charlie had found exactly the opposite to be true. Perhaps there was something else that Charlie did, or was, that attracted so many people. There must be something to his charm that enabled him to send young women out to the street to earn him money. There must have been something to his personality that attracted others to join his family.

He was adamant about the need for control within the “family.” He told me that everyone was allowed to stay with him and his group. There were no exceptions; everyone was welcome. However, as I learned in subsequent conversations, everyone was also told not to cause trouble. If anyone did, the welcome quickly faded. Sometimes, Charlie had to threaten members who were getting out of line. Charlie warned more than a few people that they would become “closer to the earth” if they did not change their ways. Once, a dog was acting weird and not leaving people alone. It became so annoying (and not in a cute way) that Charlie got up, grabbed his gun, and took the mutt for a walk. It was never seen again. The man who usually stuck up for the animals didn’t tell me what happened to the dog. He didn’t have to. Apparently, not all animals received tender care from Charles Manson.

Charlie was adversely affected by drug use in the 1960s. He told me that he often took marijuana, which was much weaker in the late 1960s than marijuana is today. He was also a regular LSD user. Most of his acid trips went without incident, but he did have a few trips that really scared him. He slugged a couple of women during one trip, and was quite ashamed of it. He used cocaine when it was available and even experimented with heroine, though he didn’t like the effect that heroine gave him. He got high a few times with mescaline and some other hallucinogens.

During his time in Berkeley, he consumed drugs daily, frequently mixing several different ones together. Alcohol was also a constant in his life at this time. Of all the drugs and alcohol that he consumed on the outside, he confided to me that he missed the taste of cold beer. Drugs were available to him behind bars. Even inmate-created alcohol is omnipresent. For Charlie, none of these compare to the experience of drinking a pitcher of ice-cold beer in a bar full of friendly and rowdy patrons.

While Charlie took advantage of people during his time of freedom in California, he also helped a great many as well. He was generous to anyone in need. One woman who Charlie helped was affectionately named, “Yellow.” When he met her, she was pregnant with only days left in her pregnancy. She was scared and alone. She didn’t know what to do, returning home not being an option. Charlie gave her the first positive attention she had ever received. She was grateful that Charlie allowed her to hang out with him and his friends.

When she went into labor, Charlie was there ordering others to get towels and warm water. He cleaned her genitals to prepare for the baby’s arrival. He gently steered the baby’s head as it emerged into the world. Charlie told me that he was as proud to cut the baby’s umbilical cord as if it had been his own child. Yellow named the boy, “Elf.” After a few months, mother and child departed from the group. A couple decades later, Charlie received a letter from Elf and continued to correspond with him for many years.

Charlie told me that around that time, he frequented bars. He would visit with his guitar and play for others. Occasionally, he found resistance and ridicule from redneck types. This didn’t deter him. If necessary, he fought for his right to party. The bar scene included many drugs, regular fights, and lots of women. Sometimes, he would be invited to join a private party at someone’s home.

At one of these parties, he met Dennis Wilson who had achieved fame as a member of the rock and roll band, the Beach Boys. Dennis had also given a ride to a couple of Manson’s girls when they were hitchhiking. After listening to Charlie for a while, Dennis expressed an interest in his music. “Take all you want,” offered Manson. This was typical of his attitude. In the free love and sharing environment of the 1960s, he knew that if he gave generously, he would never have to worry about not receiving generously. Too, he was not into material wealth. He preached a gospel of love, distaining greed in all its forms. He expected Dennis to remember him later on, if his new friend benefited from the gifts that were bestowed on him. Charlie moved into Dennis’ mansion with the girls. It was a great arrangement for Charlie, at least until things soured.

Dennis asked the group to leave after a few weeks, apparently dismayed by the family’s disinterest in work and their unwillingness to contributing anything for their room and board. The free ride was over. The family had been living off Dennis, and they all knew it.

Soon, Wilson began to socialize in circles that didn’t include Charlie. He lived in a world of glamour and wealth with other celebrities. He had massive riches, but was equally awash in debt. As easily as any of the Beach Boy’s, Dennis could go into a car dealership or jewelry store and walk out with his choice of items, leaving only a signature behind as collateral.

Several months later, according to Charlie, Dennis attended a party to which Charlie has also been invited. Without so much as a word, the famous musician, remembering the songs he had received from Charlie, gave the song-writer a brand new Ferrari. Dennis never said a word, just handed Charlie the keys and walked away. Because Charlie didn’t care for riches, he showed himself to be one of the most generous people who ever lived by giving his new car away to someone who “needed a ride.” He never heard what happened to that car or to its recipient. Probably never before, or since, has a sports car changed so many hands so quickly.

Charlie told me that in Los Angeles, he found a cape in a clothing store. It was black on the outside with a red lining, Charlie’s two favorite colors. It looked like a movie prop from a production of Dracula. Charlie purchased it and proceeded to wear it every day. He thought it made him look dignified, like some kind of mafia don. His girls liked it, too. He got a lot of looks as he walked down the streets of Los Angeles. The attention he drew to himself included many long looks from police officers gliding down the street in their patrol cars. Not wanting that kind of publicity, he got rid of the cape after a few days. Charlie seemed to get into the strangest of situations, I noted. I wondered if that was by choice because he went looking for them, by luck for he was always in the wrong place at the wrong time, or by character, proving that weird things happen to weird people. I suspected that it was a combination of all three.

Charlie told me that he was once threatened by man pointing a gun at him. Charlie had been sending some women out to gather discarded food or make a quick buck with drugs on the streets of Los Angeles. One drug customer, a young man named Martin, ran away from one of his girls after refusing to pay. He had previously beaten another of Manson’s girls. Charlie decided not to take any disrespect and caught up with the man in an alley behind a bar they frequented.

Upon seeing Manson, Martin pulled out a 9mm pistol and pointed it at him, though he didn’t appear willing to use it, Charlie told me. Charlie ran up to him, hit he gun out of his way and pounded on the man’s face. Martin was left in a pool of blood, lying in the alley, absent his gun.

I think Charlie told me this story to impress upon me the need to be strong. “If your gonna pull a gun out,” he warned, “you had better be prepared to use it. Otherwise, don’t bother carrying it.” He also wanted me to know that he was not afraid of anyone or anything, not even a weapon. “You can’t let people treat you with disrespect,” he added. “You have to stand up to them or else they will walk all over you every time.”

Charlie told me that he went to Death Valley on numerous occasions during this time. He was fascinated by the name and the mystique of living in a desert. Though he had no personal connection to the area, he met a variety of interesting characters there, including Whiskey Jim who could walk in the desert for hours while sipping water from whiskey bottles.

Charlie explained to me that while in Death Valley, he learned about the burrowing owl, a particular breed of owl well suited to live in the hot sun. To escape the heat, it would burrow into the sand or into any dirt that it could find. Charlie told me that he identified with the bird. He saw it as a kindred spirit: he was in Death Valley to avoid the heat too, only his heat was the attention he received from the police and modern society whose values he could not understand or accept.

In Los Angeles, Charlie continued to collect people he termed, “throw aways.” He called them, “throw-aways,” because no one wanted these drifters. They were an eyesore to most people, and a threat to the establishment. They were dirty, smelly, and hungry. These were the daughters and sons who had run away from impressive homes and respectable parents in a quest to find something more interesting or more meaningful in life. Charlie wondered what was so bad about their lives that made them migrate to California. He himself had never experienced a stable home, and concluded that their lives had not been all that stable either.

Charlie told me that he was the only one who would care for these people. Grateful for a helping hand and a friend, some individuals began to associate with Charlie and travel around with him. The women would do anything for him, none short of illegal drug dealing and prostitution. The men often hung around for the sex that Charlie could grant them from the girls. They too were put to use dealing drugs. A couple of gay guys among the family members agreed to homosexual prostitution, yet another avenue of income for Charlie.

At the time of the murders, Charlie’s “family” had grown to about thirty people, mostly girls with a handful of guys. They resided at the Spahn movie ranch. They crashed at several buildings, including a trailer that was formerly used by Ronald Reagan during his movie-making days. The murders, Charlie confided, occurred on evening missions from the Spahn ranch.

Charlie remained bitter over the two incidences that resulted in his incarceration. He insisted that he was innocent of all wrong doing in those murders. He was not in the houses and had instructed no one to do anything nefarious at all. “I didn’t kill nobody,” Charlie regularly repeated. The police had pressured some of the people involved to finger Charlie in exchange for a reduced sentence. Linda Kasabian agreed to testify against Charlie in exchange for complete immunity from prosecution. She participated in both murder scenes, Charlie told me. Her hands were covered in blood, both figuratively and literally. “How could she be trusted?” Charlie ranted. “She just testified to save her own ass. She told lie after lie. She told them what they told her to tell them.”

Charlie told me that he heard nothing about the Tate murders until after the events had occurred. He suspected that it was a robbery gone wrong. “I think the girls were there to find food and cash,” Charlie speculated. “They were pretty deep into drugs at that time. I tried to get them to cool it with the hard stuff.”

He also postulated another theory. “They may have been trying to cover up a previous murder,” Charlie added. “Our friend Bobby Beausoleil had killed a guy named Gary Hinman. Some words were written in blood on the walls of Gary’s apartment. The girls may have figured that if they committed a crime and wrote things on the walls, the police might have concluded that the murderer was still on the loose, and Bobby may have been released from prison. I think the girls went to steal, but somehow things got out of hand.

“Probably, the large number of people in the house scared them,” Charlie guessed. “Maybe, someone put up a fight.” Five dead bodies were found on August 9, 1969, the morning after the attack. Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski, several friends of hers, and a teenager who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, had each been butchered with a knife, shot, or hung with rope. Some were attacked with more than one weapon.