Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (41 page)

With such clues, his followers had little trouble guessing his true identity.

I was curious about something. Up until his arrest in Mendocino County on July 28, 1967,
*
Charlie had always used his real name, Charles Milles Manson. On that occasion, however, and thereafter, he called himself Charles
Willis
Manson. Had Manson ever said anything about his name? I asked. Crockett and Poston both told me that they had heard Manson say, very slowly, that his name was “Charles’ Will Is Man’s Son,” meaning that his will was that of the Son of Man.

Although Susan Atkins had emphasized Charlie’s surname in talking to Virginia Graham, I hadn’t really thought, until now, how powerful that name was. Man Son. It was tailor-made for the Infinite Being role he was now seeking to portray.

But Charlie carried all this yet a step further, Poston said. Manson claimed that the members of the Family were the original Christians, reincarnated, and that the Romans had returned as the establishment.

It was now time, Manson told his closest followers, for the Romans to have their turn on the cross.

E
xactly how did Manson “program” someone? I asked Brooks.

He had various techniques, Poston said. With a girl, it would usually start with sex. Charlie might convince a plain girl that she was beautiful. Or, if she had a father fixation, have her imagine that he was her father. (He’d used both techniques with Susan Atkins.) Or, if he felt she was looking for a leader, he might imply that he was Christ. Manson had a talent for sensing, and capitalizing on, a person’s hangups and/or desires. When a man first joined the group, Charlie would usually take him on an LSD trip, ostensibly “to open his mind.” Then, while he was in a highly suggestible state, he would talk about love, how you had to surrender yourself to it, how only by ceasing to exist as an individual ego could you become one with all things.

As with Jakobson, I queried Poston as to the sources of Manson’s philosophy. Scientology, the Bible, and the Beatles. These three were the only ones he knew.

A peculiar triumvirate. Yet by now I was beginning to suspect the existence of at least a fourth influence. The old magazines I’d found at Barker, Gregg’s mention that Charlie claimed to have read Nietzsche and that he believed in a master race, plus the emergence of a startling number of disturbing parallels between Manson and the leader of the Third Reich, led me to ask Poston: “Did Manson ever say anything about Hitler?”

Poston’s reply was short and incredibly chilling.

A.
“He said that Hitler was a tuned-in guy who had leveled the karma of the Jews.”

 

I
spent most of two days interviewing Crockett and Poston, obtaining much new information, some of it very incriminating. For example, Manson had once suggested Poston take a knife, go into Shoshone, and kill the sheriff. In the first real test of his newly found independence, Poston had refused to even consider the idea.

Before Crockett and Poston returned to Shoshone, I told them I wanted to talk to Juan Flynn and Paul Watkins. They weren’t sure if Juan would talk to me—that big Panamanian cowboy was an independent cuss—but they thought Paul might. Since he was no longer procuring girls for Charlie, he had some free time on his hands.

Watkins agreed to the interview, and I arranged for Watkins, Poston, and Crockett to stay in a motel in downtown L.A.

“P
aul, I need a new love.”

Paul Watkins was describing for me how Manson would send him out to recruit young girls. Watkins admitted that he liked his special role in the Family. The only problem was, after he’d located a likely candidate, Charlie would insist on sleeping with her first.

Why didn’t Manson pick up the girls himself? I asked.

“He was too old for most of the girls,” the nineteen-year-old Watkins replied. “He frightened them. Also, I had a good line.” It was also obvious that Watkins was better-looking than Charlie.

I asked Paul where he found the girls. He might go down to the Sunset Strip, where the teenyboppers hung out. Or drive the highways watching for girls who were hitchhiking. Once Charlie, through the connivance of an older woman who posed as Watkins’ mother, even had him arrange a phony registration at a Los Angeles high school so he could be closer to the action.

Watkins also described the orgies that took place at the Gresham Street house and at Spahn. For a while there was one about every week. They would always start with drugs—grass, peyote, LSD, whatever was available—Manson rationing them out, deciding how much each person needed. “Everything was done at Charlie’s direction,” Paul said. Charlie might dance around, everyone else following, like a train. As he’d take off his clothes, all the rest would take off their clothes. Then, when everyone was naked, they’d lie on the floor, “and they’d play the game of taking twelve deep breaths and releasing them and close eyes and then rub against each other” until “eventually all were touching.” Charlie would direct the orgy, arranging bodies, combinations, positions. “He’d set it all up in a beautiful way like he was creating a masterpiece in sculpture,” Watkins said, “but instead of clay he was using warm bodies.” Paul said that the usual objective during the orgies was for all the Family members to achieve a simultaneous orgasm, but they were never successful.

Manson often staged these events to impress outsiders. If there were guests who he felt could be of some use to him, he’d say to the Family, “Let’s get together and show these people how to make love.” Whatever the reaction, the impression was a lasting one. “It was like the Devil buying your soul,” Watkins said.

Manson also used these occasions to “eradicate hangups.” If a person indicated reluctance to engage in a certain act, Manson would force that person to commit it. Male-female, female-female, male-male, intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, sodomy—there could be no inhibitions of any kind. One thirteen-year-old girl’s initiation into the Family consisted of her being sodomized by Manson while the others watched. Manson also “went down on” a young boy to show the others he had rid himself of all inhibitions.

Charlie used sex, Paul said. For example, when it became obvious that DeCarlo was making no effort to persuade his motorcycle gang to join the Family, Manson told the girls to withhold their favors from Danny.

The fact that Manson directed even the sex lives of his followers was powerful evidence of his domination. I asked Watkins for other examples specifically involving co-defendants. He recalled that once at Spahn Ranch, Charlie told Sadie: “I’d like half a coconut, even if you have to go to Rio de Janeiro to get it.” Sadie got right up and was on her way out the door when Charlie said, “Never mind.”

It was a test. It was also, by inference, evidence that Susan Atkins would do anything Charles Manson asked her to do.

As with the others, I questioned Watkins about Manson’s programming techniques. He told me something very interesting, which apparently the other Family members didn’t know. He said that when Manson passed out the LSD, he always took a smaller dose than the others. Though Manson never told him why he did so, Paul presumed that during the “trip” Manson wanted to retain control over his own mental faculties. It is said that LSD is a mind-altering drug which tends to make the person ingesting it a little more vulnerable and susceptible to the influence of third parties. Manson used LSD “trips,” Paul said, to instill his philosophies, exploit weaknesses and fears, and extract promises and agreements from his followers.

As Manson’s second in command, Watkins had enjoyed Charlie’s confidence more than most of the others. I asked him if Manson had ever mentioned Scientology or The Process. Watkins had never heard of The Process, but Manson had told him that while he was in prison he had studied Scientology, becoming a “theta,” which Manson defined as being “clear.” Watkins said that in the summer of 1968 he and Charlie had dropped into a Church of Scientology in downtown Los Angeles, and Manson asked the receptionist, “What do you do after ‘clear’?” When she was unable to tell him anything he hadn’t already done, Manson walked out.

One aspect of Manson’s philosophy especially puzzled me: his strange attitude toward fear. He not only preached that fear was beautiful, he often told the Family that they should live in a constant state of fear. What did he mean by that? I asked Paul.

To Charlie fear was the same thing as awareness, Watkins said. The more fear you have, the more awareness, hence the more love. When you’re really afraid, you come to “Now.” And when you are at Now, you are totally conscious.

Manson claimed that children were more aware than adults, because they were naturally afraid. But animals were even more aware than people, he said, because they always lived at Now. The coyote was the most aware creature there was, Manson maintained, because he was completely paranoid. Being frightened of everything, he missed nothing.

Charlie was always “selling fear,” Watkins continued. He
wanted
people to be afraid, and the more afraid the better. Using this same logic, “Charlie said that death was beautiful, because people feared death.”

I would learn, from talking to other Family members, that Manson would seek out each individual’s greatest fear—not so the person could confront and eliminate it, but so he could re-emphasize it. It was like a magic button, which he could push at will to control that person.

“Whatever you do,” Watkins advised me, as had both Crockett and Poston, “don’t ever let Charlie know you are afraid of him.” One day at Spahn, without warning or provocation, Manson had jumped on Watkins and started strangling him. At first Paul resisted, but then, gasping for breath, he suddenly gave up, stopped resisting. “It was really weird,” Watkins said. “The instant I stopped fearing him, his hands flew off my throat and he jumped back as if he’d been attacked by an unseen force.”

“Then it’s like the barking dog,” I commented. “If you show fear, it will attack; if you don’t it won’t?”

“Exactly.
Fear turns Charlie on.
”

Paul Watkins was inherently more independent than Brooks Poston, much less the follower type. Yet he too had remained with the Family for a long period. Other than the girls, was there some reason why he stayed?

“I thought Charlie was Christ,” he told me, not blinking an eye.

Both Watkins and Poston had severed the umbilical linking them to Manson. But both admitted to me that they still weren’t completely free of him, that even now they would sometimes lapse back into a state where they could feel Manson’s vibrations.

I
t was Paul Watkins who finally supplied the missing link in Manson’s motive for the murders. Yet, if I hadn’t talked to Jakobson and Poston, I might have missed its importance, for it was from all three, Gregg, Brooks, and Paul, that I obtained the keys to understanding (1) Charles Manson’s unique interpretation of the Book of Revelation, and (2) his decidedly curious and complex attitude toward the English musical group the Beatles.

Several persons had told me Manson was fond of quoting from the Bible, particularly the ninth chapter of Revelation. Once Charlie had handed Jakobson a Bible, already open to the chapter, and, while he read it, supplied his own interpretation of the verses. With only one exception, which will be noted, what Gregg told me tallied with what I later heard from Poston and Watkins.

The “four angels” were the Beatles, whom Manson considered “leaders, spokesmen, prophets,” according to Gregg. The line “And he opened the bottomless pit…And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth; and unto them was given power…” was still another reference to the English group, Gregg said. Locusts—Beatles—one and the same. “Their faces were as the faces of men,” yet “they had hair as the hair of women.” An obvious reference to the long-haired musicians. Out of the mouths of the four angels “issued fire and brimstone.” Gregg: “This referred to the spoken words, the lyrics of the Beatles’ songs, the power that came out of their mouths.”

Their “breastplates of fire,” Poston added, were their electric guitars. Their shapes “like unto horses prepared unto battle” were the dune buggies. The “horsemen who numbered two hundred thousand thousand,” and who would roam the earth spreading destruction, were the motorcyclists.

“And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.” I wondered about that seal on the forehead. How did Manson interpret that? I asked Jakobson.

“It was all subjective,” Gregg replied. “He said there would be a mark on people.” Charlie had never told him exactly what the mark would be, only that he, Charlie, “would be able to tell, he would know,” and that “the mark would designate whether they were with him or against him.” With Charlie, it was either one or the other, Gregg said; “there was no middle road.”

One verse spoke of worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze. Manson said that referred to the material worship of the establishment: of automobiles, houses, money.

Q.
“Directing your attention to Verse 15, which reads: ‘And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.’ Did he say what that meant?”

 

A.
“He said that those were the people who would die in Helter Skelter…one third of mankind…the white race.”