Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

by Vincent Bugliosi

  The report did note that the stomach contained some evidence of “medication residue.” But its exact composition—drugs, poison, whatever—was, like the nature and cause of death, left undetermined.

  Completely dissatisfied with the report, I requested that our office conduct an investigation into the death of Hughes. The request was denied, it being decided that since there was no evidence of foul play, such an investigation was unnecessary.

  There the matter remained, until very recently. While the Tate-LaBianca trial was still in progress, motion-picture director Laurence Merrick began work on a documentary on the Manson Family. The film, simply titled Manson, dealt only briefly with the murders and focused primarily on life at Spahn and Barker ranches. I narrated a few segments, and there were interviews with a number of Manson’s followers. The movie was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1972 and nominated for an Academy Award the following year. During its filming Merrick gained the confidence of the Manson girls. Sandra Good admitted, for example, on film, that when she and Mary Brunner learned of the Tate murders, while still in the Los Angeles County Jail, “Mary said, ‘Right on!’ and I said, ‘Wow, looks like we did it!’”

  Off camera, and unrecorded, Sandy made a number of other admissions to Merrick. She told him, in the presence of one other witness, that to date the Family had killed “thirty-five to forty people.” And that “Hughes was the first of the retaliation murders.”

  The trials did not write finis to the Manson saga. As Los Angeles Times reporter Dave Smith observed in West magazine: “To pull the curtain over the Manson case is to deny ourselves any possible hint of where the beast may come from next, and so remain afraid of things that go bump in the night, the way we were in August of 1969.”

  Mass murders have occurred throughout history. Since the Tate-LaBianca slayings, in California alone: labor contractor Juan Corona has been convicted of killing twenty-five migrant farm workers; John Linley Frazier slaughtered Dr. Victor Ohta, his wife, two of his sons, and his secretary, then dumped their bodies in the Ohta swimming pool; in a rampage that lasted several months, Herbert Mullin killed thirteen persons, ranging in age from three to seventy-three; Edmund Kemper III, ruled insane after slaying his grandmother and grandfather, was ruled sane and released, to later kill his mother, one of her friends, and six college coeds; and a possible total of seventeen murders has been attributed to two young ex-convict drifters.

  With the exception of the latter pair, however, these were the work of loners, obviously deranged, if not legally insane, individuals, who committed the murders by themselves.

  The Manson case was, and remains, unique. If, as Sandra Good claimed, the Family has to date committed thirty-five to forty murders, this may be near the U.S. record. Yet it is not the number of victims which makes the case intriguing and gives it its continuing fascination, but a number of other elements for which there is probably no collective parallel in the annals of American crime: the prominence of the victims; the months of speculation, conjecture, and pure fright before the killers were identified; the incredibly strange motive for the murders, to ignite a black-white Armageddon; the motivating nexus between the lyrics of the most famous rock group ever, the Beatles, and the crimes; and, behind it all, pulling the strings, a Mephistophelean guru who had the unique power to persuade others to murder for him, most of them young girls who went out and savagely murdered total strangers at his command, with relish and gusto, and with no evident signs of guilt or remorse—all these things combine to make Manson perhaps the most frightening mass murderer and these murders perhaps the most bizarre in American history.

  How Manson gained control remains the most puzzling question of all.

  During the Tate-LaBianca trials, the issue was not so much how he did this but proving that he did it. Yet in understanding the whole Manson phenomenon, the how is extremely important.

  We have some of the answers.

  During the course of his wanderings Manson probably encountered thousands of persons. Most chose not to follow him, either because they sensed that he was a very dangerous man or because they did not respond to his sick philosophy.

  Those who did join him were not, as noted, the typical girl or boy next door. Charles Manson was not a Pied Piper who suddenly appeared on the basketball court at Texas State, handed Charles Watson a tab of LSD, then led him into a life of crime. Watson had quit college with only a year to go, gone to California, immersed himself in the selling as well as the using of drugs, before he ever met Charles Manson. Not just Watson but nearly every other member of the Family had dropped out before meeting Manson. Nearly all had within them a deep-seated hostility toward society and everything it stood for which pre-existed their meeting Manson.

  Those who chose to go with him did so, Dr. Joel Hochman testified, for reasons “which lie within the individuals themselves.” In short, there was a need, and Manson seemed to fulfill it. But it was a double process of selection. For Manson decided who stayed. Obviously he did not want anyone who he felt would challenge his authority, cause dissension in the group, or question his dogma. They chose, and Manson chose, and the result was the Family. Those who gravitated to Spahn Ranch and stayed did so because basically they thought and felt alike. This was his raw material.

  In shaping that material into a band of cold-blooded assassins who were willing to vent, for him, his enormous hostility toward society, Manson employed a variety of techniques.

  He sensed, and capitalized on, their needs. As Gregg Jakobson observed, “Charlie was a man of a thousand faces” who “related to all human beings on their level of need.” His ability to “psych out” people was so great that many of his disciples felt he could read their minds.

  I doubt seriously if there was any “magic” in this. Having had many, many years to study human nature in prison, and being the sophisticated con man that he is, Manson probably realized that there are certain problems that nearly every human being is beset with. I strongly suspect that his “magical powers” were nothing more, and nothing less, than the ability to utter basic truisms to the right person at the right time. For example, any girl, if she is a runaway, has probably had problems with her father, while anyone who came to Spahn Ranch was searching for something. Manson made it a point to find out what that something was, and supply at least a semblance of it, whether it was a father surrogate, a Christ figure, a need for acceptance and belonging, or a leader in leaderless times.

  Drugs were another of his tools. As brought out in the psychiatric testimony during the trials, LSD was not a causal agent but a catalyst. Manson used it very effectively, to make his followers more suggestible, to implant ideas, to extract “agreements.” As Paul Watkins told me, Charlie always took a smaller dose of LSD than the others, so he would remain in command.

  He used repetition. By constantly preaching and lecturing to his subjects on an almost daily basis, he gradually and systematically erased many of their inhibitions. As Manson himself once remarked in court: “You can convince anybody of anything if you just push it at them all of the time. They may not believe it 100 percent, but they will still draw opinions from it, especially if they have no other information to draw their opinions from.”

  Therein lies still another of the keys he used: in addition to repetition, he used isolation. There were no newspapers at Spahn Ranch, no clocks. Cut off from the rest of society, he created in this timeless land a tight little society of his own, with its own value system. It was holistic, complete, and totally at odds with the world outside.

  He used sex. Realizing that most people have sexual hangups, he taught, by both precept and example, that in sex there is no wrong, thereby eradicating both their inhibitions and their guilt.

  But there was more than sex. There was also love, a great deal of love. To overlook this would be to miss one of the strongest bonds that existed among them. The love grew out of their sharing, their communal problems and pleasures, their relationship with Charlie. They were a
real family in almost every sense of that word, a sociological unit complete to brothers, sisters, substitute mothers, linked by the domination of an all-knowing, all-powerful patriarch. Cooking, washing dishes, cleaning, sewing—all the chores they had hated at home they now did willingly, because they pleased Charlie.

  He used fear, very, very effectively. Whether he picked up this technique in prison or later is not known, but it was one of his most effective tools for controlling others. It may also have been something more. As Stanford University professor Philip Zimbardo, a long-time student of crime and its effects, noted in a Newsweek article: “By raising the level of fear around you, your own fear seems more normal and socially acceptable.” Manson’s own fear bordered on paranoia.

  He taught them that life was a game, a “magical mystery tour.” One day they would be pirates with cutlasses, slashing at anyone who dared board their imaginary ship; the next they’d change costumes and identities and become Indians stalking cowboys; or devils and witches casting spells. A game. But there was always a pattern behind it: them versus us. Dr. Hochman testified: “I think that historically the easiest way to program someone into murdering is to convince them that they are alien, that they are them and we are us, and that they are different from us.”

  Krauts. Japs. Gooks. Pigs.

  With the frequent name changing and role playing, Manson created his own band of schizophrenics. Little Susan Atkins, who sang in the church choir and nursed her mother while she was dying of cancer, couldn’t be held responsible for what Sadie Mae Glutz had done.

  He brought to the surface their latent hatred, their inherent penchant for sadistic violence, focusing it on a common enemy, the establishment. He depersonalized the victims by making them symbols. It is easier to stab a symbol than a person.

  He taught his followers a completely amoral philosophy, which provided complete justification for their acts. If everything is right, then nothing can be wrong. If nothing is real, and all of life is a game, then there need be no regret.

  If they needed something that couldn’t be found in the garbage bins or communal clothing pile, they stole it. Step by step. Panhandling, petty theft, prostitution, burglaries, armed robberies, and, last of all, for no motive of gain but because it was Charlie’s will, and Charlie’s will is Man’s Son, the final step, the ultimate act of defiance of the establishment, the most positive proof of their total commitment—murder.

  Comedians punned that “the family that slays together stays together.” But behind the grim jest there was truth. Knowing they had violated the strictest of all commandments created a bond not less but more binding in that it was their secret.

  He used religion. Not only did he find support for much of his philosophy in the Bible, he often implied that he was the Second Coming of Christ. He had his twelve apostles, several times over; not one but two Judases, Sadie and Linda; his retreat to the desert, Barker Ranch; and his trial, in the Hall of Justice.

  He also used music, in part because he was a frustrated musician but also because he must have known it was the one thing that could get through to more young people than any other.

  He used his own superior intelligence. He was not only older than his followers, he was brighter, more articulate and savvy, far more clever and insidious. With his prison background, his ever adaptable line of con, plus a pimp’s knowledge of how to manipulate others, he had little trouble convincing his naïve, impressionable followers that it was not they but society which was sick. This too was exactly what they wanted to hear.

  All of these factors contributed to Manson’s control over others. But when you add them all up, do they equal murder without remorse? Maybe, but I tend to think that there is something more, some missing link that enabled him to so rape and bastardize the minds of his followers that they would go against the most ingrained of all commandments, Thou shalt not kill, and willingly, even eagerly, murder at his command.

  It may be something in his charismatic, enigmatic personality, some intangible quality or power that no one has yet been able to isolate and identify. It may be something he learned from others. Whatever it is, I believe Manson has full knowledge of the formula he used. And it worries me that we do not. For the frightening legacy of the Manson case is that it could happen again.

  I believe Charles Manson is unique. He is certainly one of the most fascinating criminals in American history, and it appears unlikely that there will ever be another mass murderer quite like him. But it does not take a prophet to see at least some of the potentials of his madness in the world today. Whenever people unquestioningly turn over their minds to authoritarian figures to do with as they please—whether it be in a satanic cult or some of the more fanatic offshoots of the Jesus Movement, in the right wing or the far left, or in the mind-bending cults of the new sensitivity—those potentials exist. One hopes that none of these groups will spawn other Charles Mansons. But it would be naïve to suggest that that chilling possibility does not exist.

  There are some happy endings to the Manson story. And some not so happy.

  Both Barbara Hoyt and Dianne Lake returned to and graduated from high school, with apparently few if any permanent scars from their time with Manson. Barbara is now studying to be a nurse.

  Stephanie Schram has her own dog-grooming shop. Paul Watkins and Brooks Poston formed their own combo and appear at various clubs in the Inyo County area. Their songs were good enough to be used as background music in the Robert Hendrickson documentary film on Manson.

  After the fire George Spahn sold his ranch to an investment firm, which planned to turn it into a dude ranch for German visitors to the United States. He’s since purchased another ranch, near Klamath Falls, Oregon, and Ruby Pearl is running it for him.

  I haven’t heard from Juan Flynn recently, but I’m not worried about him. Juan was always able to take care of himself. Though I last saw him in my office, for some reason I visualize him on a big white horse, his pretty girl friend behind him holding on for dear life as they gallop off into the sunset. Which, I suspect, is Juan’s own image of himself.

  Since the murder of his wife, Roman Polanski has produced several motion pictures, including a new version of Macbeth. Critics noticed in his interpretation disturbing parallels to the Tate murders. Polanski himself posed for an Esquire interview, holding aloft a shiny knife, and, according to the press, he has recently moved back to Los Angeles, into a home not far from 10050 Cielo Drive.

  Polanski’s attorney, working in conjunction with LAPD, divided the $25,000 reward as follows: Ronnie Howard and Virginia Graham each received $12,000, while Steven Weiss, the young boy who found the .22 caliber murder weapon, received $1,000.

  Neither Danny DeCarlo nor Alan Springer was around to share in the reward. Shortly before the Watson trial, Danny skipped bail on the federal gun charge and fled to Canada; his exact whereabouts are unknown. According to LAPD, biker Al Springer simply “vanished.” It is not known whether he is alive or dead.

  Ronnie Howard tried working as a cocktail waitress but found it difficult to hold a job. Everywhere she went, she said, she was identified as the “Manson case snitch.” Several times she was beaten up on her way home from work, and one night someone fired a bullet through the living-room window of her apartment, missing her head by inches. The would-be assailant was never identified. The next day she told reporters: “I should have kept my mouth shut in the first place.”

  Virginia Graham had a job as a receptionist in a legal office and seemed well on the way to rehabilitation, when she jumped parole. As this is written, she is still a fugitive.

  Seven months after reporter Bill Farr declined to tell Judge Older who gave him the Virginia Graham statement regarding the “celebrity murders” the Manson Family had planned, Judge Older called Farr back into court and ordered him to either do so or be found in contempt.

  Under California law the confidentiality of a reporter’s news sources is protected. However, since the Tate-LaBianca trial, Far
r had left the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and was now working in a press secretary job. Older said that since he was no longer a reporter he was no longer protected by the law. Farr argued that if Older’s order was permitted to stand, both the news media and the public would suffer, since, if not guaranteed anonymity, many persons would decide not to provide essential information to the press. Farr testified he obtained copies of the Graham statement from two lawyers and another person subject to the gag order. But he declined to name them. (Indeed, at a June 30, 1971, hearing, one of the Manson case lawyers testified that when he asked Farr who gave him copies of the statement, Farr said, “I wouldn’t even tell my attorney [Grant Cooper] that.” At a July 19, 1971, hearing, Farr asked his attorney to remind Older that “the jury was sequestered,” suggesting that since jurors never saw his story, the gag order violation caused no harm, and told the Los Angeles Times [January 30, 1973] he already had the Graham story anyway, and got copies from his three sources merely to “verify” the story he already had.)

  Defense attorneys Daye Shinn, Irving Kanarek, and Paul Fitzgerald, and prosecutors Steven Kay, Donald Musich, and I all took the stand. All six denied under oath giving the statement to Farr. At least two of the six were apparently lying. All I know is that I didn’t give Farr the statement. As for who did, the reader’s guess is probably as good as mine.

  Judge Older held Farr in civil contempt and sentenced him to an indefinite jail term. He served forty-six days in the Los Angeles County Jail before being freed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on January 11, 1973, pending the outcome of a new appeal. Had Farr been cited for criminal contempt and given consecutive sentences, the maximum penalty would have been sixty-five days in jail. But Older cited him for civil contempt, and gave him an indefinite sentence, which could mean that if the higher courts rule against Farr, he could remain in jail for as long as fifteen years, until fifty-five-year-old Charles Older reaches seventy, the mandatory age of retirement!