Restless Souls

by Alisa Statman

  Unlike Manson, who had never entered the Cielo house, Watson had visited inside with Melcher several times, so he knew the living room had exposed beams he could hang a rope from, and he knew that a buzzer sounded in the house if the gate outside was activated. So only Watson knew to cut the gate communication wire. He even added the precaution of climbing the fence just in case he’d cut the wrong wire.

  “Tex, I believe you testified yesterday that after you climbed over the front gate, a car approached, is that right?” Bugliosi asked on cross-examination.

  “Yes, I remember seeing some headlights.”

  “And you went to the car and shot the man?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Where did you shoot the man in the car?”

  “I didn’t see. I just shot at the thing that was there.”

  “Oh, the thing that was there. It was not a human being?”

  “I didn’t have any thought of human beings.”

  “Did the boy in the car have on glasses?”

  “I didn’t see his face.”

  “You testified yesterday that the people you murdered were like blobs to you. What do you mean by that?” Bugliosi asked.

  “It was hard to see them,” Watson said. “It was hard to tell what they were in a lot of ways, really.”

  “You knew they were human beings, didn’t you?” Bugliosi stated.

  “The thought of anything like that just didn’t occur.”

  “Didn’t you testify yesterday that the woman on the front lawn—number one, you’re correct, it was a woman not an object—didn’t you testify that she was covered with blood?”

  “She was covered with blood, yes.”

  “Well, now, a woman with blood on her, that’s not a blob, is it, Tex? Looked kind of like a woman with blood on her.”

  “Well, it’s hard to say what she did look like.”

  “You also testified yesterday that there was a man inside. Again, not a blob, but a man and he was wearing blue jeans?”

  “Right. That’s right.”

  “Is that what you mean when you say ‘blobs,’ Tex? Men with blue jeans on and women with blood on them?”

  “I didn’t mean anything, you know.”

  “Did they beg you not to kill them; did they say, ‘Please don’t kill me? Please let me live’?”

  “I couldn’t hear that, no. I just heard a bunch of screams and hollers.”

  “Weren’t you laughing with Diane Lake [a family member] while you told her how Sharon Tate pleaded for her life, and how much fun it was to kill her?”

  “No. I did not.”

  “What did it feel like when you stabbed these people, Tex? What type of sensation was it?”

  “I had no feeling.”

  “Did you see blood coming out of their bodies when you stabbed them?”

  “I saw blood, but I don’t know, I guess it was coming out.”

  “They were covered with blood, weren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew they were human beings, didn’t you.”

  “The thought of anything like that didn’t occur. The only thing going through my head was just what Manson said.”

  Before penning his account of the murders, Watson noted for the reader: “It would actually be some time before I learned the names of our victims. That night, there were so many impersonal blobs to be dealt with as Charlie had instructed.”

  Two pages later, Watson wrote: “A terrified teenage boy [Steven Parent] looked up at me, his glasses flashing. As I lunged forward the boy cried out, ‘Please don’t hurt me. I’m your friend. I won’t tell anyone I saw you here.’ . . . Sebring turned back, protesting my roughness [toward Sharon] so I shot him. . . . He slumped over, still alive, breathing hard, groaning. . . . Sadie was sitting next to Sharon on the couch as the beautiful, pathetic, blond woman sobbed, begging us to take her with us, and let her have her baby before we killed her. It was the first time I’d realized she was pregnant. . . . My hand struck out over and over until the cries of ‘Mother, Mother’ stopped. . . .”

  Watson also recalled that Woytek was “enormously powerful” and that Woytek screamed, “Oh God, help me, oh God.” Watson even detailed the inflection in Abigail’s voice: “As she lay on her back, she whispered, without emotion, ‘I give up, you’ve got me.’”

  Call me a crazy old lady if you will, but his memory is darned explicit regarding those blobs.

  Years after Watson’s book was published, he attempted to show he had compassion; in the process, he inadvertently made an admission. “The girls and I didn’t enjoy murdering human beings, it was insanely difficult for us all, but our slavish hearts were committed. We wanted this outbreak of violence to be over with. We wanted to get the job done and leave. It was horrific for us.”

  Though Tex wouldn’t admit it on the witness stand, the prosecutor had evidence that Watson fled Los Angeles immediately after the murders to avoid detection. He traveled first to Death Valley, Mexico, Hawaii, and then back home to Texas.

  “Each day it seemed as though I got more confused,” Watson wrote of his Texas homecoming. “Added to all the turmoil that had been boiling in my mind, it was obvious to everyone that something had happened to me in California. I didn’t wash. I’d just lay around, watching television blindly with the shades drawn, screaming at my parents to shut up if they tried to speak to me.”

  Upon his arrival in Texas, Watson rekindled a high school romance. Since Denise had known Watson through the years—before and after Manson—her testimony was the most insightful of the entire trial.

  Bugliosi held a picture at the witness stand. “Denise, do you recognize this as being a photograph of Charles Tex Watson as he looked in November of 1969, when you saw him in Texas?”

  “Yes.”

  “During this week that you saw him, how did he dress?”

  “He was always very neat; had on slacks and a shirt most of the time.”

  “Did he look clean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you notice any difference in his walk during this period?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Or in the manner in which he spoke to you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He seemed to be the same old Tex that you had always known. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Tex discuss the ranch that he lived on in California?”

  “Yes, he talked a lot about it.”

  “Did he say with whom he lived on this ranch?”

  “He said there were quite a few women, maybe thirty girls, but just a couple of men.”

  “Did he say who was the leader of this group?”

  “He said that he and one other person were the main people.”

  “Did he tell you that he met anyone in California who, in his opinion, was kind of a supernatural being or Christ?”

  “No, he did not.”

  Watson’s inaugural proclamation of rehabilitation commenced in his jail cell before his trial began.

  Watson the novelist asserted, “Prosecutor Bugliosi would insist that my claim to feel remorse was untrue, but he was wrong. As much as my scarred conscience was capable of feeling anything at the time, I had genuine sorrow for what I had done, for the unspeakable pain I had caused both the victims and those who loved them. I felt more deeply than ever before the reality of what we’d done those nights.”

  “Tex, how do you feel about Charlie Manson at the present time?” Bugliosi asked in the courtroom.

  “I feel that he was a kind of false god or something. A false prophet, as you would say.”

  “Do you feel he was an evil man?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And when did you come to that conclusion?”

  “Well, since I have been slowly getting back to my parents and writing them every day. I don’t know for how many months, but I have slowly been getting back to what I think is right.”

  “I believe you testified that you don’t
feel the same way about killing at the present time as you did at the time of the killings?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “You testified that you had no feelings then, but you do now. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. My feelings are gaining each day,” Watson said.

  “Again, talking about Dr. Frank, when he interviewed you, did you tell him, ‘I saw a guy laying on the couch. He started coming at me and I shot him and then I stabbed him and stabbed him and stabbed him. People were running everywhere like chickens with their heads cut off. I had no feelings then or now. It just doesn’t affect me like it does others.’ Now, when you said that to Dr. Frank—I had no feelings then or now—what did you mean by that?”

  “Well—uh,” Watson stammered, “at the time he interviewed me, I must not have had any feelings.”

  In a chapter Watson titled “On Trial,” Tex avows that he welcomed Christ back into his life with an experience that occurred just before Dr. Frank interviewed him. “Hour after hour, I’d turn the pages of the Bible. As I did, something else began to happen inside me . . . I began tasting the reality of what I had actually done during those two nights of blood. Suddenly they [his victims] were not nameless, impersonal things, not pigs, they were terrified men and women who had begged to be allowed to live. I began to see that even for guilt as gross as mine, a penalty had already been paid. A death penalty, carried by God Himself in His son Jesus. Slowly I began to see the power of God’s love to overcome that death and destruction, to heal it, not just abstractly but immediately and specifically for me. Charlie’s trip had been death, but this Jesus promised life. God didn’t turn away from those two nights of butchery. He took all that anguish and horror. He took the guilt of my bloody hands, and that if I would let go of it, it could be nailed up and done away with. It seemed impossible, too good to be true, but the Bible said it. Something inside of me said it, too. There could even be light in my darkness.”

  Despite these profound feelings, Watson sat in court daily, with a Bible in front of him, and plotted out his insanity plea. He swore in a court of law and before God to tell the truth, then turned around to tell blatant lies—and threaten to take another life.

  “Tex, one last question,” Bugliosi said. “You were interviewed by a Dr. Alfred Owre?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Do you recall telling Dr. Owre, in October of 1971, ‘I could kill you right now, very easily’?”

  “Uh, I told him . . . see, that’s what he said I said, but uh, I did say, uh . . . it was relating to him what kind of mind I had at the time of the killings . . . that I could have killed anyone at that time. That is what I said.”

  “When talking to Dr. Owre, weren’t you talking about the present? Did you not tell him, ‘I could kill you right now, very easily’?”

  “Well, I guess I could have said that. Yes.”

  Would a man who rejoiced in the knowledge that God had forgiven him for his sins gone on to threaten another life?

  After reading the rest of the trial testimony, I probed for a deeper understanding of what made Watson tick.

  Turning again to his autobiography, I examined a passage that Watson penned on acclimating to an existence behind bars, in particular, psychiatric therapy. “The prisoner is caught in a bind. Attendance to group therapy in whatever game the psychologist may come up with are imperative, because such participation is necessary for good board reports when you come up for parole. Thus, by participation, the prisoner is blackmailed into supporting a bureaucratic system that does little or nothing for him. Not surprisingly, cynicism is widespread among inmates, and even the newest and most naïve prisoner soon learns the particular jargon and poses that will get him a good report from his shrink. It didn’t take me long to figure out how to play the game.”

  To classify an inmate’s progress, the Department of Corrections biannually assigns a group of seven psychiatrists to interview and gauge the rehabilitation for each convict. The parole board considers the psychiatric counsel’s assessment invaluable when they review a prisoner for release.

  Watson’s impeccable reports from 1972 to 1976 showed him to be an expert sportsman. By 1978 Watson became so commendable, that the counsel concluded: “In Mr. Watson’s case, retention in the CDC—California Department of Corrections—will have to be on grounds other than psychiatric ones.”

  In a world where an inmate is sent to the isolation unit for jumping the lunch line, missing an appointment with the psychiatric counsel wasn’t taken lightly within the CDC. In 1980 Watson added his own game rules by defying the CDC’s mandate and authority; he skipped his session to spend time with a visitor.

  Two years later, the counsel called Watson for another interview. By this time, Watson had thrown away the playbook, and the counsel’s findings were the most unfavorable he’d received since his incarceration. One of the doctors noted Watson was “a walking time bomb.” Another felt, “Mr. Watson has a very high degree of suppressed hostility . . . who has only superficially changed since 1969.” The seven psychiatrists agreed on an overall diagnosis: “Antisocial personality with characteristics of the narcissistic and histrionic personality disorders. . . . The extremely high degree of repressed hostility in a man who has committed heinous and sadistic crimes must be confronted through therapy. Until that hostility decreases substantially, Counsel agrees Mr. Watson has a high potential for violence.”

  Due to my early departure from his 1982 parole hearing, I missed Watson’s fifteen-minute justification for the counsel’s findings: “I feel that I’m sort of misunderstood by the psychiatrists here due to my lack of participation with them. Not that I have rebelled against anything they’re doing, it’s just that I got away from them since 1979.

  “Because I had missed my last evaluation, when I walked into the 1981 evaluation, it was a very hostile atmosphere because they felt that I was some kind of prima donna. So I feel that reflected part of their bad evaluation. As I look back on it, I find that it was one of the worst mistakes that I ever made in my life—besides the murders. But since that time, I’ve availed myself to them again. I really want to work with the psychiatrists here.”

  Watson’s personal vendetta theory had a flaw. The counsel’s reports were based on an interpretation of a computer score of his answers rather than on their personal opinion of his answers.

  Following that episode, Watson was very careful and re-entered the game. He was always in some type of therapy, kept every appointment, and was sure to tell the parole board at each subsequent hearing how beneficial the psychiatrists were to his rehabilitation.

  I began all of this research seeking to reveal Watson’s genuine persona. From Watson’s own words, I found clues from his earlier background that unmasked the killer.

  Born on December 2, 1945, in Dallas, Texas, Watson enjoyed a self-described happy childhood supported by a loving family.

  From Watson’s youth through his teens, he excelled in every endeavor. By age six, he worked hard to help his father run their country store. By eight, he labored in the onion fields near his home. At ten, a local reporter columned Watson as an industrious child for gathering crawdads to sell to the local fishermen. In his early teens, the town of McKinney, Texas, named him “Future Farmer of America” for raising a prize-winning calf.

  In high school, Watson continued on a positive course with above average accolades. As an “A” student, he was popular among his peers, who voted him “Campus Kid” three out of the four years. He outshone his teammates in all the sports that he participated in, bringing home numerous first-place ribbons and lettering in basketball, football, and track.

  Religion was important to the youthful Watson. “God was very much a part of my world,” Watson wrote. “Next to my older brother, God was probably one of my favorite people.”

  Every Sunday, he attended church as well as led devotions for the youth group.

  Like most high school boys, Watson led the simple life of cruising for
girls in souped-up cars and drinking beer on the weekends.

  Upon high school graduation, Watson had saved enough money to buy a new car and a higher education. At college, he was comparable to eighty-five percent of all students experiencing their first taste of freedom; partying, joining fraternities, and in between the fun, studying just enough to get by.

  By his own account, Watson had strong goals, identity, and direction in life. So what happened to this all-American boy? “Inside I was beginning to feel as if God and my mother had one thing in common,” Watson wrote. “They both wanted to hold me down, to keep me from doing the things I wanted to. My parents’ world of church and God and rules wasn’t what I wanted. I was a success; I could handle my life without them or that pale-faced Jesus in church. I started thinking about getting out, finding a more larger, more exciting world.”

  I referred to the psychiatric counsel’s deduction of Watson’s narcissistic tendencies and the puzzle pieces fell into place. Watson’s ego led him to the killing field.

  Watson decided California was the answer to his problems. He noted of his first day in Los Angeles: “It was a long way from Texas and if freedom was what I’d been looking for, I was certain this was it.”

  Once in Los Angeles, Watson began the steady descent that led him to Manson.

  After unsuccessfully trying to hold down numerous jobs, he gave up on the business world and began selling drugs. It was his first step to making up his own bylaws.

  By the time Watson found the Manson Family, he thought they were the answer to his dreams; they had dropped out of society, lived without rules, rent bills, or work hours. They existed to please only themselves.

  When Watson and the Family’s lives intertwined, they resided freely in Beach Boys’ drummer Dennis Wilson’s estate. The parklike setting held riches beyond their dreams: a huge home, swimming pool, fancy cars, drugs, an endless cash flow from Wilson, and every extravagance available to Hollywood’s elite. As long as they didn’t have to work for it, Manson, Watson, and the others embraced this life.

  Eventually Wilson evicted the group from his house. Manson moved his flock to Spahn’s Ranch. Within twenty-four hours, they’d gone from the lap of luxury to flea-ridden, dilapidated buildings; their meals scavenged from trash Dumpsters.