Charles Manson Behind Bars (20 page)

Charlie claimed that the unborn baby was cut out of Sharon Tate and eaten. He never said who did the cutting or who did the eating. I heard from news reports that Charlie was not in the house at the time. Charlie once hinted that the investigators got it wrong, that he had been to the home where the killing took place, though he never committed any of the murders. I cannot imagine Charlie as the one who killed Sharon Tate, or the one who ate her fetus. I’m not sure what to think of him claiming not to have been in the house, then suggesting that he had been. Maybe he was testing my reaction.

“I went with the group the next night.” Charlie told me. “We were looking for food and cash. That’s all we ever took. It’s not like we meant to hurt anyone. We just wanted the rich people to share what they had, just as we shared with each other in northern California. When I was done tying the couple up, and taking the food we needed, I returned to the car.

“I have no idea why the girls killed those two,” Charlie claimed. “They never did anything to us. We didn’t even know them. I think the girls were just plain crazy. They were intending to write on the walls. That’s it. There was no plan for murder. I got blamed because they were younger than me.” Charlie sounded like an accused older sibling who was wrongly implicated in the disobedient act of a younger brother or sister.

Charlie was charged with murder and demonized as the leader of the kids. He told me that he resented being blamed for what others did. “I never told nobody to do nothing.” He proclaimed. “I gave them freedom. I let them be whoever they wanted to be. I let them do whatever they wanted to do, and this is how I got treated.”

At this point in the conversation, Charlie compared himself to Christ, explaining that just as Jesus was popular among the needy for helping them, and ended up dead, so he was reviled for his caring and his popularity, and given the metaphoric death of imprisonment. I asked him whether he thought he was Jesus. He replied by telling me that what he thought did not matter. What mattered was the truth. He confided in me that he was Jesus, the devil, God, the Buddha, or anything else people wanted him to be. Often, he pointed out that Jesus called himself the “Son of Man,” making it clear to me that “Manson” and “the son of man” were interchangeable to him, even if he didn’t come right out and say it.

I asked Charlie, one day when we were having a heart-to-heart conversation, whether he in fact ordered the killings that were committed by the Manson Family. He replied, “I didn’t have to.” When I asked him to clarify, he explained to me that leaders are able to insulate themselves from blame for what their underlings do. He pointed out that American presidents regularly claim that they didn’t order this or that illegal activity, even though they had full knowledge of what was going to take place. A president’s advisors will take the fall, if criminal activity is ever discovered. Charlie claimed similar executive privilege for himself.

“So you knew about the killings and let them happen even if you didn’t order them?” I asked.

“All I’m saying is that I didn’t have to order nothing.” Charlie changed the topic and would not answer any more of my questions on the topic.

If Charlie were to be retried on the charges that got him sent to prison, I have no doubt that he would be acquitted and set free. I am not a member of the California State Bar Association, but the information that Charlie related to me proves to me that he would walk out of court a free man. Not only liberated, he would likely receive a large settlement check from the state of California.

Tex Watson, one of Manson’s most trusted “family” members had testified against Charlie in return for a reduced sentence. Tex told the court that Charlie had been the mastermind behind all the killings, the one in control of the events. However, that’s not good evidence against Charlie. Tex couldn’t be believed because he had a vested interest in making up a story. To escape greater punishment, Tex would have told the court anything that the prosecutors asked him to say, anything at all.

Charlie told me that he hadn’t been allowed to call any witnesses in his own defense. Time and time again, he asked the judge for permission to represent himself in court. Each time he was denied. His defense lawyer didn’t represent him well: he didn’t allow Charlie to testify to his side of the story, and didn’t call a single witness in Charlie’s defense. All this would come out in a retrial or in an unbiased appeal.

Charlie has tried to prove his innocence, but without success. One lawyer, many years ago, offered to help him overturn his conviction. Instead of aiding Charlie, the unscrupulous man gathered all the information that Charlie could supply him with, and wrote a book. He had no intention of helping get Charlie free. His work of defaming Charlie probably made it more difficult for Charlie to get a fair trial and get out of prison.

My friend said to me with sadness in his voice, “Boxcar, it’s better to just stay in here than to put all my hope into a lawyer who may not give his all to get me out.”

I asked whether the bar association could disbar the deceitful lawyer for his lack of ethics and the disservice he provided. Charlie responded that the lawyer in question had taken his millions of dollars from the book and fled the country. “He could’ve helped me,” he moaned. “Instead, he took the money and ran.”

Charlie hated the way the media portrayed him. “All they show is footage of me being walked to court,” he complained, “then they show the girls crawling along the sidewalk. That’s not who I am. Those girls did what they did to demonstrate against injustice. ALL INJUSTICE. That wasn’t just about me!”

Every anniversary of the death of Sharon Tate, Manson gets featured in a television show about the murder spree that killed seven people. Charlie hates these shows because he thinks they give a distorted picture of him. When thoroughly frustrated with the world and his mistreatment, Charlie turned to his music and his art for solace. In the most difficult of times, art and music were his only solace.

As I got to know Charlie, I came to see him as one of the most talented people I had ever known—in prison or beyond the walls. He demonstrated skill in music, in creativity, in art, and in lyrics. I began to wonder if there was an area in which he was not gifted. He was no prodigy, to be sure. I never saw him do a parlor trick with his talents, but he was able to master so much of life behind bars. While many inmates wondered what to do to fill their time, Charlie always seemed to be busy as he pursued his many interests.

Music was by far his greatest love. Charlie once told me that he could take anyone and very quickly teach him how to sing. “He would be the perfect singer in 15 minutes,” he boasted. I assumed he was referring to voice coaching and hypnosis. Since it never appealed to me, I never took him up on the offer. I was curious, and now regret not asking more questions. At the time, I was doubtful of his claims. Perhaps he could teach a child to carry a tune, I concluded, but not much else. I’m not so sure anymore.

As we talked about music, Charlie shared with me some of the songs that he enjoyed. Because his music was before my time, he had to tell me about Frank Sinatra, fats Domino, and so many other musicians. The oldest band of which I had any familiarity was the Beatles, who broke up when I was a toddler. I asked whether the murders he was charged with were inspired by that British group’s music.

He denied it. “The prosecutor invented the story that I killed in response to so-called messages in the Beatles songs,” Manson assured me. “The girls had written phrases from Beatles songs on the walls in blood because those were the words that they liked best. They thought that they were common words so that they could never be traced back to them.” Stupidly, they had also written similar words on the walls of Spahn Ranch, though not in blood. Charlie told me that he liked most of the songs written and performed by the Fab Four. “That had nothing to do with who I am and what I’m about,” he informed me. “I did play music and sing at Spahn Ranch, but my music was about love and about caring.”

Charlie shared his artwork with me as he came to trust me. I was astounded by the things he was able to do. He demonstrated a talent and resourcefulness I was not aware even existed. To do what he was able to do would have been difficult for any artist on the outside with all the materials within reach. Charlie expressed his creativity not only in his art, but also in his ability to take the limited amount of prison supplies and use them as though he had a full art studio.

He showed me some beads that he had fashioned entirely out of bathroom tissue. He taught me how to make them, as well. “All you need to do,” he explained, “is get a sheet of toilet paper, fold it lengthwise, and wrap it around the insert of a pen. As it is being set in place, the paper needs to be wetted. When it is fully wrapped about the pen insert, you take string and wind it tightly about the paper, using a crisscross pattern. As the string is pulled tight, the water will get squeezed out of the toilet paper. By loosening and rewrapping the string around the paper, the donut shaped mass gets harder and harder.” I found that with a little patience and practice, I could make a bead that dried to a density of rock or hard plastic.

Charlie explained out that once the water is squeezed out of the paper “donut,” the paper has to be carefully slid off the pen insert so that the drying process can be completed. When several hours, preferably days, have elapsed, the bead, I learned, can be painted with a mixture of Kool-Aid powder and water, ink from the pen insert, or whatever other coloring is available. It is best to do the painting in stages so that the paper does not get soggy and come apart. Larger beads can be created with two or even three sheets of bathroom tissue used at a time. The beads that he created, and showed me, were unbelievably hard, harder than any wooden bead I had ever felt. If someone didn’t know, he or she would never have guessed that the beads were created out of toilet paper and not a hardwood plank.

The development of a painting utensil requires no less creativity. A tiny paint brush can be constructed out of strands of hair forced into another pen insert. Charlie described the process as I listened intently. I now know that if you stuff the pen insert with a wad of moist paper, once a few strands of hair have been threaded into the insert, you can create a rather durable brush. The shorter the hair that protrudes from the brush, the more detailed the artwork that can be managed.

Once several beads were produced, they could be displayed together on a string or rope. Charlie showed me how to make the rope too, which can be fashioned out of the elastic band of boxer shorts. If you carefully peel layers of the band from around the tops of typical shorts, you can soon amass great lengths of stretchy material, even from a single pair of underwear. These rubber filaments can be braided together or wrapped around a pen insert in several directions. By repeating the braiding into larger and larger thicknesses, or providing more and more layers on the pen insert, you can make the rope as thick as you like. Inmates have committed suicide by hanging themselves with this type of woven strand. Consequently, prisons don’t allow inmates who are on suicide watch to be left alone in their cells, unobserved, lest they manufacture this or some other type of homemade device.

Beads and rope can be assembled into bracelets, anklets, or necklaces. Anyone can produce the jewelry in the exact same manner as was done by Charles Manson, but few have the patience to make them as intricately and accurately as he did. I suspect that many of his tricks were taught to him by other inmates, just as he graciously shared the things that he knew with me and anyone else who cared to learn. Charlie provided me with many samples of his work and lots of advice in how to perfect my artistic creations. He warned me, though, to keep the pieces well hidden. Some of them are contraband and could lead authorities directly back to him.

Charlie informed me that there is a room in the prison full of contraband items taken from inmates. He boasted that there was a separate room containing only the stuff that had been taken from him: oil paintings, jewelry, drawings, as well as items sent to him from well-meaning fans, such as shoes, pants, shirts, hats, harps, and water colors. I believed him because I saw many items removed from his cell during repeated shakedowns. It became a sort of cat and mouse game between Charlie and his guards: Charlie attempting to conceal items and the guards determined to find them. Generally, these confiscations were done respectfully, each side acknowledging the others’ ability and need to compete.

On one particular shakedown, I did lose some of the things Charlie had entrusted to me. I was so angry. He had shown faith in me, and I had repaid it by allowing the guards to find and take Charlie’s things. I lost about six beads and two larger pieces of art, a painting of a scorpion and a drawing of a mutilated woman. I would be more careful in the future with the things given to me by my friend, I resolved. I apologized profusely to Charlie. He assured me that it was no big deal.

Charlie had told me about his “Satan’s Babies,” his hand-crafted spiders, but for many months, I never saw one. One day, he ordered me to shoot him my fishing line over because he wanted to show me something. I gathered my line and caste my car in the direction of his cell. In one smooth motion, the car swung around the cinder block wall that separated our cells, and landed with a thump within his reach.

Charlie drew in some of the slack that remained. After tying something to my line, he jerked it tight. “OK pull, Soul. Pull it slowly,” he demanded.

When my car was fully back in my cell, I found one of Charlie’s works of art tied to it. It was a large spider, a Satan’s Baby, about the size of my hand. It was an amazing representation of a real arachnid with the detail of authentic legs and tiny body hairs. It was entirely white, however, as though it had been born albino. I found it hard to believe that it could have been created behind bars.