Charles Manson Behind Bars: The Crazy Antics and Amazing Revelations Of America’s Icon of Evil

by Mark Hewitt

  When the numbers of the Native Americans housed in the institution had grown to more than twenty, the group chose one of its members to function as a leader, the one who would have the final say in many matters. Leaders were always chosen by the group during a ceremony that involved a sweat lodge, a sort of sauna that functioned as a spiritual experience, a fellowship time, and a formal means of deliberation. For weightier issues, the natives would return to the sweat lodge to discuss and decide. Small issues were always decided by the leader of the band. Minor decisions only rose in prominence if one of the members demanded a gathering, Charlie told me. Through these sweat lodges, members of the various Native American groups represented in prison would cooperate and communicate their needs to one another, later informing the prison’s administration of any needs, objections, or frustrations.

  One day, it was learned that the current leader would be transferred to a different facility. This greatly upset the community, the members of which would be required to choose a new leader and adjust to the changes. Iron Teeth explained the situation to Charlie and then added a prediction. He told Manson what he had foreseen in a dream: that another Native American would be chosen to be leader, but that a separate role would be created, that of spiritual advisor, a role that Charles Manson would fill. Honored, but more than a little surprised, Charlie made a bet with Iron Teeth that that would not happen. “I’ve got two packs of smokes and one prison meal that says that you are wrong,” Charlie offered. Iron Teeth accepted the bet. Soon after, the large native was called to participate in the sweat lodge.

  Just as Iron Teeth had predicted, a new Native American was chosen to lead, and Charlie was invited to be the spiritual advisor of the band. Charlie accepted the proposal that was unheard of in Native American circles: an outsider invited to join and take a leadership role. The band eagerly welcomed Charlie, granting him the honorary native name, “Walks on Clouds.”

  Charlie informed me that parole from McNeal Island penitentiary came unexpectedly and quickly. In preparation for life on the outside, he was transferred to Terminal Island Penitentiary, a familiar place where he had served time in the 1950s. Terminal Island, located outside of Los Angeles, functioned as a last prison for many inmates as they transitioned to life after prison. The transfer informed him that he would be released, but it didn’t tell him the date of parole. One day, several months into his time at Terminal Island, he was notified that he was to appear before the parole board. With only about an hour’s notice, he quickly washed and dressed in his finest attire. He was ushered into a hearing with no wait and with no lawyer. He noted the unusual nature of this meeting and wondered. All his questions were answered when the spokesperson for the board began to speak.

  “You have been chosen for parole, Mr. Manson,” the man said, reading from a script. “You may gather your belongings. You will be released immediately. Congratulations and good luck!”

  This turn of events greatly concerned Charlie. He didn’t know how to act on the outside, he told me. Up until then, he had spent nearly half of his life behind bars at one institution or another. The only places he felt truly comfortable, and relatively safe, were highly regulated institutions where he knew the rules and understood the system. He admitted that he was afraid to leave his familiar life behind bars.

  He asked the parole board if it was necessary for him to leave, and whether he could stay. To me, his questions appeared more information gathering in nature, and not a plea to remain in prison. The answers he received didn’t give him any room to negotiate. The board told him that he had no say in the matter and that he was to be released immediately.

  He stepped off the island ferry to freedom on September 11, 1967. He told me that at the time he felt exhilarated but intensely fearful of the future.

  CHAPTER 10

  Charlie’s Mail and Visitors

  “It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.”

  Albert Einstein

  I was regularly amazed at the amount of mail Charlie received, something to which I never got accustomed. Several times he informed me that no prisoner in the United States got more mail than him. I don’t know how he knew this, but I didn’t doubt it, seeing the piles of letters that came his way each day. Usually, he was bragging when he claimed the “postal crown,” but once he lamented the volume that had just been delivered. I suspect that he was overwhelmed by his deluge of letters quite often. He couldn’t reply to all of the letters he received. Even reading them all would have consumed most of his waking hours.

  Every prisoner receives at least some mail. Unpopular inmates only get a letter once or twice a month or less, as well as any inevitable pieces of junk mail; others will receive a small pile each day, especially those inmates who dedicate large portions of their time to preparing missives and responding to numerous pen pals. Charlie, by contrast, practically needed his own postmaster general. On a daily basis, he received stacks and stacks of mail. Everybody, it seemed, wanted a piece of Charlie.

  As our friendship blossomed, he would share some of his mail with me. Some of it would make us laugh; other pieces caused us to roll our eyes.

  Charlie noted, “Everybody has their angle: this person wants to write a book, that person plans to make a movie.” His insights into the schemes of others only reinforced his pessimism toward the human heart. Daily, he had to sort through the avalanche of mail with its demands that came to his cell.

  Charlie generally ignored books and magazines. He was not much of a reader. Sometimes, he paged through these to observe the pictures. He might glance at the first paragraph or two of an article that caught his attention, but usually these did not hold much interest for him. He was more interested in the many personal letters he received.

  He received so many personal letters that it was all he could do to skim the most interesting ones. Over the course of his many years of incarceration, he had developed a methodical system of moving his mail from an “in pile” to the trash can, a procedure that he worked through almost every day of the year.

  Junk mail was quickly identified and deposited in his trash pile. What need he had of credit card offers or home equity loan applications was beyond him. He ridiculed the banks and companies that reached out to him. He didn’t need money: he was above and beyond the economy in his mind. “My world is not their world,” he declared to me in response to a picture of a flashy boat and a pile of cash.

  He saved pieces of blank white paper, heavy stock paper, and cardboard to use in his artwork or his outgoing mail. Rough stock could be used in his art projects for its pulp content. He was generous in sharing the materials that he saved. Our tier never lacked for writing paper, even if it had been torn from the inside of a brochure or was the blank page of a magazine.

  Charlie appreciated the magazines and books that were sent to him by friends and concerned admirers, though he never requested them nor agreed to receive them when offered. Depending on the issue, he would skim, discard, or study very carefully what published materials were sent. Very few articles actually held any interest for him. Most of this material was quickly added to the discard pile.

  Personal mail received more care. Charlie prioritized it. Letters that were a thinly veiled (or not so thinly veiled) request for something were quickly tossed. Often, he had to read less than a paragraph, sometime only a few words, to realize where the note was headed.

  Those letters that came from particular people with whom he corresponded, and those that drew his notice and interest, were given special attention. These were generally set aside until his could dispose of the large volume of mail that proved no attraction. His most personal letters were not shared with anyone, not even with me as we became close. They were evidently for his personal consumption only.

  Charlie did share with me many of the letters from people who wanted something from him. Sometimes, he invited me to correspond with these people, if there was something that drew his attention and he thought I might b
e interested. We regularly shared jokes about the people who made demands of him.

  I saw numerous requests that he received from reporters who wanted to write a story or produce a show about him or his crimes. Every time an anniversary of Sharon Tate’s murder approached, his volume of requests from newsmen, newswomen, and authors would increase. Some reporters sent questions in their letters. Usually, the queries were neither profound nor original. “Why did you do it?” and “How did you gather your ‘family?’” were the most common.

  Only a few pieces of his personal mail ever received a reply from Charlie. The letters to which he responded usually came from those who appeared to be part of his inner circle. Whether this was due to the writer’s malleability of mind and openness to his ideas, I can only speculate. I knew of no one who engaged in a give and take intellectual discussion with Charlie. Always, it was Charlie’s way or the highway. Always.

  Charlie passed many of his letters over to my cell. They were good for a chuckle. Not only did people want to sell him things, there were requests for a wide range of items: samples of his pubic hair, pieces of his art, his ideas or opinion some topic or another, his blessing, his advice, or his agreement to live with the sender upon his unlikely parole. Reading his mail was unbelievably entertaining for me. It was clear that Charlie was a celebrity by the amount and type of mail he received. I was honored to be given the opportunity to view hundreds and hundreds of letters and other pieces of mail that Charlie had received.

  Reading through the voluminous mail that he shared with me, I was reminded of his words to me. Charlie would often say, “You’re going to be famous now!” Being housed beside the old man, I could enjoy what these many people only desired: some attention from Charles Manson. My association with Charlie gave me an insight into the many people who wanted to be close to him.

  The letters Charlie disliked the most arrived from Christians. It never made sense to him why sincere people would write him to castigate him for all the bad things he supposedly did, how horrible a person he was, and how he was on his way to hell, only to invite him to join their church. Many, many letters arrived imploring Charlie to repent. Charlie admitted to me that he never felt he had anything of which to repent. He had paid any debt he may have owed to society a long, long time ago by spending so much time in prison. In his opinion, it would be justice for him to be released--the prison system and society owed him an apology. “What about the apology society owes me?” he often lamented.

  Charlie also disliked the letters that just told him off. He received his share of this kind of hate mail. On the anniversaries of the Tate and La Bianca murders, in early August, probably spurred by news reports or documentaries, an increased volume of mail arrived from people accusing Charlie of being a serial killer, a baby killer (Sharon Tate was 8 months pregnant), the man responsible for the end of the free and loving 1960s, the one responsible for the killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay area under the name of “the Zodiac,” and any number of other crimes or ills of our society. Charlie got a letter from a man who had spent time in a psychiatric ward. The man wrote to blame Charlie for the mental illness and the institutionalization that the man had received. Though he never met Charlie, apparently he had been attracted to Charlie’s image and reputation, and began to model his life after the icon. The letter was sent to criticize and point blame at the man he once venerated and continued to emulate.

  Charlie sometimes responded to those who requested his help or offered him something without any strings attached. One writer coveted Charlie’s ideas on the topic of change; another sent him some food items without even identifying the sender’s last name. Each of these was rewarded with a reply. He was most open to those who sounded sincere, were respectful of him, and were believed to be interesting contacts. Occasionally, Charlie would respond to the kindness of a writer only to find that the gift he had received was sent with some momentous expectations.

  Many of the requests he received were blatant grabs for fame and money. One day, he received a check made payable to him in the amount of one dollar. The sender, a man from Texas, invited Manson to, “Use this to get whatever you need.” Charlie laughed when he shared this letter with me. It was no secret that the sender hoped to receive Charlie’s signature on the cancelled check. “For the price of a dollar plus postage? No way,” was Manson’s statement to me. I deposited the request in my trash (and not in a bank account) once we were through laughing at it.

  Some of the mail was very peculiar. One letter I saw was a request for a donation to a religious organization, a church that worships cows. The letter included a pamphlet detailing how the group was devoted to cows and their protection. It requested donations of $100, $500, or $1000 to preserve the purity of cows. An MIT professor wrote to Charlie, asking him to make a simple line drawing for him. Apparently, the professor was teaching a class on the human mind and wanted to demonstrate the difference between a normal brain with its thought processes, and Charlie’s brain. I heard that there is a course being taught at some university on the rap star, Tupac Shakur. Perhaps someone should teach a course on Charles Manson.

  Some letters contained offers of assistance. The writers of these letters told Charlie to let them know if he had a need and offered to send money. Charlie would let these individuals know the procedure for mailing items to the prison—along with the rules and regulations that might prevent him from receiving something. Quite frequently, a few weeks later, he would receive food items (purchased through a prison-related company), clothing, tobacco, or even money. Most of these items found there way to other inmates who had need of them.

  Many of the offers later turned out to be less than sincere, however. One woman wrote him offering to send him money. Suspicious, Charlie requested that she send $5000. She balked, explaining that she had to take care of her own family before she could help him or anyone else. It was apparent that she never intended to send anything in the first place.

  Charlie received plenty of mail from women, some of whom were very willing to help him in any way they could. I do mean, “In any way.” I became the recipient of many of these offers when they were passed on to me. One woman from the Ukraine wrote Charlie telling him that she would do anything, absolutely ANYTHING, for him.

  “Boxcar, do you want to write a chick from the Ukraine?” Charlie asked me.

  “No.” I responded. “That’s too far away. Shoot me some chicks from the United States, preferably from California or the surrounding states so I can receive visits from them.” His piles of mail made my targeted request not as demanding as it might sound. Soon after I said this to Charlie, I was corresponding with dozens of women, all who had first reached out to him. Some were kind and interesting; others were dull or not very friendly. A few of these contacts seemed to be using me, attempting to further a relationship only to get to Charlie. These contacts peppered me with questions about Charlie, what he was doing, what he thought, and how he was coping with life.

  More than a few of the letters sent to Charlie were requests for a song or some lyrics. Numerous bands from all over the globe wanted to receive some fresh material from the icon. Some had incorporated Charlie’s name, or the name of one of his family members or one of his victims, in the title of their band. Apparently hoping for some legitimacy, they requested endorsements of him.

  A few of the letters I read were from individuals claiming to be illegitimate children of Manson’s. We both laughed at those. Charlie has been incarcerated in maximum security since 1971, soon after the Tate and LaBianca murders, and these letters came from individuals born in the 1980s and 1990s. We could only wonder what these people were thinking. The sex that Charlie engaged in over that the last forty years wasn’t with fertile women! “Dumb asses,” Charlie would call them.

  Charlie received numerous letters from students. They would send questions for him to aid them in their next term paper or report. He didn’t know why he received so many of these: perhaps teachers were su
ggesting his name, he thought, or the students themselves had a profound interest. Some of the questions from the students that I read included the following: “Why did you do the murders?” “How do you feel being stuck in jail?” “What do you do with your time in prison?” and, “Is it true what is written about you?”

  Not infrequently, Charlie received contraband in the mail. Someone would send him a pair of panties, a condom, or a publication that he was not allowed to receive. He would be notified by the prison that the forbidden item had been sent, that it was a violation of law for the prison to forward it on to him, and that, if he chose to, he would have to arrange to have it sent back to the sender. Since it cost him money from his account to have something returned, he usually just ignored the memos.

  What Charlie was not able receive in prison included panties, rubbers, bras, cash, food not sent through an approved company, offensive material, drugs (legal or illegal), alcohol, repair tools, heavy equipment, large musical instruments, and books not sent directly from the publisher. All these items would be relegated to a storage room, stacked along side his blue suede shoes, obscene pictures, and paintings deemed to be of a deranged nature. Someday, I expect these items to be made public for all to see and understand a little bit more of the mind of Charles Manson.

  Charlie once asked me to respond to a couple of letters for him. I suspect that the pile of letters he wanted to answer had grown so high that he needed the help. He shot me over three letters with his fish line. As I read them, I found that all three were from journalists. One was a request for an interview. Charlie suggested that this woman might be able to supply me with a television and some money for my prison canteen account if I played my cards right. I was honored that he would trust me to speak to the press, given all the stories I had heard from him and all the experiences we had shared by that time. It showed me that even though we bumped heads from time to time, and could get downright nasty with each other, he still saw me as a close associate and trusted confidant.