Charles Manson Now

by Marlin Marynick

  I arrived first. As I stood there, waiting, Graywolfpulled up in a small, blue four-door sedan and parked beside me. It put me at ease to see that Graywolf looked the part of the man he’d seemed on the phone: a healthy fusion of southern gentleman and mountain man. We introduced ourselves and, before I could say anything else, Graywolf urged me, “Come on, let’s go this way.” He seemed alert, overly cautious. Eventually, he explained to me why he had to be so vigilant: Manson attracts an unbelievable number of unstable people. All kinds of men and women from all walks of life want to be associated with him, for all kinds of reasons. And it’s often impossible to determine precisely what those reasons are. People actually think they can just walk up to Corcoran and visit him, as if he were that accessible. And though there is a tremendous number of people who want to be near Manson, there are just as many, if not more, who wouldn’t mind seeing him dead. He is one of the most hated men in America, often held to the same level of notoriety as Adolf Hitler. A bit into our walk, I began to appreciate the serene privacy the park provided. I wanted to understand Graywolf and the complex history he shares with Manson as completely as possible.

  Graywolfis now sixty years old. At age twenty, he met Charles Manson in Los Angeles. It all began one day, while hitchhiking in the San Fernando Valley, when he happened to score a ride with Manson family members Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, who was later convicted of attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford, and Sandra Good. Once inside their car, Graywolf noticed a large book on the front dash and asked, “Is that a Bible?” They replied, “Yeah, that’s a Bible” without looking back. “It’s a good book,” Graywolf affirmed. At which point they turned around and the three made an instant connection. They started talking about the Bible and how it related to the plight of the modern world. Graywolf hit it off with Lynette and Sandra so well that they told him about their community dwelling at a ranch in Chatsworth, and encouraged him to visit. “Bring candles if you ever come,” they insisted. It took only three days for Graywolf to respond to the invitation, and once there, he stayed for six months. I asked him to describe the community:

  “It was a group of people living together in sort of a mutual agreement of peacefulness, and harmony, and non-ego-type living. Everyone was responsible for himself or herself. No one there was telling anyone what to do. No one was pushing you to be something or not be something. And yet if you could handle that, and grow in that self-awareness within the group, you would begin naturally to take more responsibility for the world around you. Like by helping to make sure the horses were always cared for. There were group meals too, every evening by lamplight, and singing together afterwards. It was an exciting and joyful place to just BE.”

  By the time Graywolf arrived at the commune, Charles Manson was already in prison. One day, Lynette and Sandra summoned Graywolf. They were on one of their frequent trips to the jail to see Charlie. “We think you’ll probably like Charlie,” they’d said, and so he went and met Manson for the first time, from behind a screen window.

  I asked Graywolf to describe his first impression of Manson and he told me, simply, that Charles was a person who was “basically illuminated, a man with an immense presence, an undeniable energy about him.” Graywolf attended some of Manson’s trial and has kept up with Manson ever since. A decade ago, Graywolf decided to reconnect and write Manson a letter, and the two forged a friendship they’ve maintained through the mail and over the phone. Graywolf’s visits to Corcoran prison began just a year and a half before I attempted to visit Charlie, but they are frequent: once, twice, sometimes three times a week. And through all this time, from his introduction to Manson in the aftermath of the Tate/Labianca murders, to his continued communication with him behind the foreboding walls of Corcoran State Prison, Graywolf says he’s come to fully appreciate Manson’s “understanding, energy, and vision for the planet.”

  Hollywood

  Well, it’s all gotta come to one, and one has to come to one.Jt’s all gotta add up to one. It’s going to be one, one way or another, there’s no way to get around it. I don’t think it could be done any better than through the silver screen.

  Here’s what they do. People come in and they say, “Hi, we want to be your friend. We like you. We think you’re really cool. You did nice things, blah, blah, blah, you know. We’d like to get this and we want to help you. We got a website and our website is really doing good.” And then they say, “Charlie and our website, Charlie and our website, website, website, website.” It’s always website, website. And pretty soon they say, “I don’t have to work now. I got enough money, later. It was nice of you to send us letters. You sure are a fool, we tricked you, we’re gone.” It’s like, man, I did what you asked me to do and I never asked you to do anything, and then when I ask you to do something it’s too late because you already got what you wanted and you got your website and you’re a movie star now and you’re Mel Gibson and you’re Tom Selleck and you’re Guns n Roses and it’s a whole entourage of all the way back to the Cadillac and heart attacks and saying no slack, no act, your life is over. “Ha, ha, we tricked you, stupid ass, fucking mass murderer.”

  I raise up on it and I make it happen, and they get me and claim it and say it’s theirs. Tom Selleck says he’s my Magnum P.I. I stole that from Pasadena in the fifties and took it to Mexico and scared everybody to death down there with something they’d never seen before. They seen that .357 Magnum, they thought I was from outer space. Can you imagine that .357 Magnum coming in a field of .45s and .38s. It’s the biggest thing in town and no one’s ever seen it before, so what would it do? It would take all of the iron, man, pull that gun out and blow a can apart, one of those bigfive-gallon cans. So it’s, like, I didn’t even realize it until thirty, forty years later. I got to thinking about that gun and how it’s been following me around. The people from down there have been following me around with that thing. I thought it was just a satellite, a Russian satellite. It’s the Sputnik. Remember the Sputnik? Well, it just so happens that the penitentiary I was in had a yard about as big as a football field and that Sputnik used to go over it every night and I would think how in the hell could that happen? Of all the world, why would that Sputnik come over my prison.

  David Carradine was my cousin; he was a sorry old thing. Yeah. Well, he could have helped me a little bit. All he had to do was recognize [me]and say hello and send me a letter or come and visit or something. That would have took four or five cops off my ass, but he wouldn’t show like he was anything that belonged to what we were doing, but he made a couple of movies off of what I was, him and Tom Selleck too. There’s a whole bunch of fucking assholes that have been riding on my life man. Bruce Willis, Tom Selleck, Mel Gibson. You know how those dudes are. The only one that reached out was that guy that didEasy Rider, what the hell was his name, Dennis Hopper. Angela Lansbury’s daughter is a good friend. Nancy Sinatra, I made her mad at me. A lot of them were mad at me because I never… was impressed by them, you know. Neil Young and I got along good because he wasn’t… a show off and he wasn’t trying to bully people around, he was pretty good too….James Taylor, he came off of England. Like his daddy got him over, you know. When you got parents, your parents can get you in and out of things that you can’t get in and out yourself because you’re not in that generation.

  I got a new pair of shoes, and the shoes I [loaned]to somebody in 1957, I loaned him a pair of shoes, and I told him, “You can’t wear those shoes, they’re too big for you.” He said, “I’ll put toilet paper in the toes,” and he took my shoes and he said, “Let me borrow your gray suit.” So he borrowed my gray suit, and he said, “Do you got fifty dollars?” So I gave him fifty dollars. He said, “And if I score this broad from the beauty parlor, I’ll give you half of everything I get.” I told him alright, ‘cause I was young and I didn’t know. And he married Cher. His name was Sonny Bono.

  Fantasy

  I was thinking about how to communicate reality to a fantasy land where people are act
ors and movie stars, put up shows and overall bullshit. How can we get back to reality? I was thinking that if we play act, like we’re not acting, and everybody that knows that we’re not acting knows that it’s a reality to do it that way. If we was to do an interview that was a reality to get through to the minds of the people that this was not an act, that it was not an interview for money. It wasn’t done for entertainment. It wasn’t done to try and get a vote or to win approval or to get attention or to enhance some particular political view towards whatever. Is there any way we can communicate a reality? Charlton Heston said that very, very strongly, and he convinced thousands of people. He had people that thought he was God; he was so intense with his acting. But how do you know the difference between an act and what is not an act?

  I mean ifyou come to interview me and I cut your throat and throw blood all over the camera and they see your body lying there, they might think you’re just another cowboy act, man. And then they see you in a toothpaste commercial the next five minutes, selling toilet paper. You know, so how can you get through to that kind of mind that has already been impressed with so much fear and locked to so much insanity. You’ve got a high spiritual level of existence where the altar is the sacrifice of a human life. They cut the heart out of a young girl and hold the heart up and eat it in front of everybody and say, “This is the reality of everyone gives this much love to their priest and their God, and everybody must work in the field and grow cotton and do what the master says.” You know, you’ve got all these servants doing all this stuff ‘cause they want to give the best love, as this girl gave by giving her heart.

  But, actually, she didn’t give her heart. They just had a bunch of guys in the back taking it and telling everybody on the backside that ifyou don’t do what we tell you this is what we’re going to do to you. They send soldiers to die in war because they can’t face the reality out the back door. The trash can reality of the garbage people. You know they’re the ones that have to work it all out and virgins are not sacrificed on the pyramids for good. We could have saved a whole lot of it. The Manson Family changed the whole world. But they won’t even accept that, you know. The whole thing is turning out crazy. I just say fuck it, run away, and hide.

  There’s not that much left of what I’m doing. I boiled up my life down; it took me forty years in the hole. I’ve never been on the mainline in California. Not in California prisons. I’ve been mainline in federal prisons in California. But state prisons, I’ve never got into prison yet. I’ve always been kept in special quarters with everything they could put on me to push me over the edge because they didn’t want to face the truth of what they did. They didn’t want to face the truth of how much they owe me for everything they’ve been stealing, because it’s all being run by criminals. Criminals, actors, movie stars and such, you know. Doing everything they say I can’t do. No honesty there, man.

  Charles Manson and I. Just before this photo was taken Manson remarked “How does it feel to have your photo taken with the most famous man in the world?” June 2010.

  Taken while going through John Acs-Nihil’s archives, slide recovered by the police after the murders, in them the victims appear oblivious to their fate.

  Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring posing for Voytek Frykowski on the property at 10050 Cielo Drive during the first week of August 1969. All three of them along with Abigail Folger and Steve Parent would be murdered several days later by members of Charles Manson’s so called ‘family’ This photo was printed from the original slide owned by John Aes-Nihil.

  Self portrait of Charles Manson, based on the famous Life Magazine cover, arguably the most famous image of Manson. From the collection of william Harding.

  Candid photo of Manson taken during a visit, photo courtesy of Graywolf.

  Charlie with his pet crow, when I asked him about it he said that he was the crow’s pet, and that the crow was very smart. From the collection of Graywolf.

  John Aes-Nihil in the dreaded Mojave desert. He is a filmmaker and photographer, owner of the largest archive of Manson materials and information, recognized in Manson circles as the “authority.”

  Star, Graywolf, and Manson. Star is a young woman who befriended Manson because of his philosophy on the environment. She lives with Graywolf, one of Manson’s close friends and confidantes outside of prison. September 2010.

  Matthew Roberts is a DJ in Los Angeles, research on his biological parents indicates he could be the son of Charles Manson. September 30, 2010.

  Robin Hood in Laurel Canyon. June 2010.

  Graywolf first met Manson in 1969 after the murders, reconnected with him ten years ago; one of Manson’s close friends and confidantes outside of prison.

  String spider created by Manson by meticulously tying thousands of knots, made with thread from his clothing. It is the most sought after Manson collectible.

  Stanton LaVey is the grandson of Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. Sacramento. June 2010.

  Star at the Sequoia National Park, California. June 2010.

  Pentagram necklace made by Charles Manson from toilet paper and string. From the collection of William Harding.

  The first letter I got from Manson, a lot of our conversations center around music.

  Charles Manson. Photo taken during a visit. June 2010.

  Kenny Calihan, an inmate at Corcoran Prison and close friend of Charles Manson. Corcoran Prison. June 2010.

  David Hooker, an inmate of Corcoran Prison and close friend of Charles Manson. Photo taken during a visit. June 2010.

  The first piece of artwork Manson sent to me, it's a coy fish.

  Artwork created by Charles Manson, from my collection.

  Close up photo of the vest Charlie is wearing in the photo with the crow. Very vibrant and colorful. Once he was arrested, it was cut into pieces, and divided amongst his friends.

  Recent artwork by Charles Manson. It is made out of acrylic paint and pencil on paper. From the collection of Graywolf.

  Artwork created by Manson using various pens and markers.

  Manson when I started talking with him on the phone, a few months later he would shave his head. From the collection of Graywolf.

  VIII

  ATWA

  That vision of which Graywolf spoke is, of course, ATWA. I sat with Graywolf for hours, discussing his attraction to Charlie’s ideas and his passion for Charlie’s philosophy. He explained that ATWA is a concept coined by Charlie and given to the world. But, he says, the world at large is conditioned not to recognize the problems pollution has caused in what Graywolf calls our “life support systems”: air, trees, water, and animals.

  “With the experiences I’ve had with Charlie in the last few years, I’m seeing the word ATWA as a tool, a focus. You could say it’s a tool to grow understanding. It’s an awareness tool. It’s like a lens or a mantra. A lot of cultures and traditions have tools like that to focus the mind, and from Charlie helping with this process, I’ve come to understand that we have to be aware of the problem and the extent of the problem before we can basically focus our lives to solve the problem…to slow ourselves down enough.”

  Graywolf made it clear that eradicating the pollution has been Charlie’s predominant push since the late ‘60s, when he started the rebirth movement. “There is a balance,” said Graywolf, “an equation consisting of water, air, and the ratio of clean recourses verses pollution.” Graywolflamented the condition of the world’s oceans and its biggest, most beneficial forests. “Beneficial,” he qualified, “from the standpoint of providing medicine, food, cover, and carbon sinks.” He spoke of China’s industrial revolution, its overwhelming population. “They have so many people. And they have technology with which they can build dams and factories in almost a virtual instant. But they’re polluting on such a grand scale, that it’s affecting the entire planet.”

  Graywolfis deeply concerned that the planet is being pushed to its brink, while its people maintain purely materialistic priorities. As he emphasized
the destruction of our natural resources-the damming of our rivers, the pollution of our oceans, the failure of our agriculture from the obscene amount of chemicals used to grow genetically engineered crops, devoid of natural diversity-Graywolf asserted that the only way to free ourselves from a bleak and bloody future is by ceasing to entertain ourselves with luxuries like sports, and ending the destructive process by which we fill our lives, our space, with material goods. “None of those things will matter in the near future, because we’ve gone so long without listening to the truth.”

  Graywolf believes that a lot of people, especially those his age, have been aware of a pending environmental catastrophe since the ‘60s. But there are many agents “programming people” to disregard even that which stares them blatantly in the face: parents, schools, and especially the media, which he sees tied to the corporate organizations running the planet. But Graywolf sees Charlie as an exception: “I feel like Charlie, growing up on the other side of the tracks, so to speak, and inside the system of oppression, or at least inside the justice system, ‘behind the robes of the courtroom,’ as he says, was ‘deprogrammed’ because he never was programmed.”