Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars

by Edward George

  Like the choir he preached to, Manson understood loneliness, rejection, and fear of the unknown. He used that to comfort his lost followers and give them the friendship, love, and sense of belonging that they craved. When the bus became overcrowded, they moved out to the old Spahn Movie Ranch in the Simi Hills and transformed into a full-fledged communal family.

  Only Manson was the wrong father, a man still poisoned by his years in prison. He’s been widely accused of using his influence to take a band of peaceful flower children, fill their heads with prison paranoia, and turn them into stoned killers. And even then, their subsequent acts of mayhem didn’t serve some greater purpose, as he would later claim. It allegedly began prison style out of simple vengeance.

  Manson’s one passion, all along, was music. By now, it’s been well documented that his goal was to achieve success in the music world. Charlie wanted to be a rock star. The prevailing theory is that his failure, and the anger and disillusionment that resulted, led to the murders that would stun the world and make Manson a household name. In short, a record producer named Terry Melcher—actress Doris Day’s son—caught Manson’s act, but wasn’t very impressed. Manson never forgot. On Saturday, August 9, 1969, Manson dispatched a band of brainwashed, drug-crazed killers to the estate Melcher leased at 10050 Cielo Drive in the canyons above Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Only Melcher and his then live-in girlfriend, actress Candice Bergen of Murphy Brown fame (people forget), no longer resided there—a fact Manson might or might not have known. (In hindsight, the stories have varied widely.) Instead, director Roman Polanski had rented the place to share with his pregnant twenty-six-year-old wife, actress Sharon Tate. Polanski was out of town, but his home wasn’t deserted. Tate was entertaining a small group of friends and house sitters, including her former boyfriend, Jay Sebring, thirty-five, a hairstylist and close friend of actor Steve McQueen; coffee heiress Abigail Folger, twenty-five; and Folger’s boyfriend, Wojiciech “Voytek” Frykowski, thirty-two, a Polish friend of Polanski. Manson’s killers, undeterred by the different set of residents (if they even noticed), slaughtered them all in bloody, ritualistic fashion. Tate, eight and a half months pregnant with a son to be named Paul Richard, was stabbed sixteen times, her blood used to write “witchy” messages on the walls. Tate’s main attacker, Susan “Sadie” Atkins, was unmoved by the fact that she herself was the mother of a seven-month-old child. She ignored Tate’s pleas and directed her bloody knife into the actress’s back and chest.

  Tragically, Tate had penned up her two large watchdogs that evening because she had taken in a stray kitten.

  To complicate the bizarre circumstances, the slain included a young man, Steve Parent, eighteen, who showed up briefly to visit the compound’s caretaker, William Garretson. Parent stumbled upon the murderers on his way out. (Garretson didn’t notice Parent’s or any of the other murders. He remained in his guesthouse through it all listening to rock music, and was missed by the killers.) All told, the victims suffered 169 stab wounds and were shot seven times.

  The following night, a smaller band, including Charlie himself, set out laughing and singing like a Sunday school class going on a summer retreat. They pulled up to 3301 Waverly Drive—Walt Disney’s former residence—and arbitrarily murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, ostensibly to further Manson’s insane plan of igniting a war between the races, and to provide imprisoned clan member Bobby Beausoleil with a second, look-alike alibi. Beausoleil had been arrested for the July 31 ritualistic murder of musician-drug dealer Gary Hinman, and the Family wanted to make it look like the killers were still on the loose. Manson selected the house, broke in, and tied up the couple, assuring them that they would be okay. He then left, ordering Tate murder veterans Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten to finished the job. Another gruesome slaughter ensued. Leno LaBianca’s body was discovered with an ivory-handled carving fork sticking in his chest, a knife in his neck, and the word “war” cut into his stomach. His body was littered with twenty-six stab and puncture wounds. His wife Rosemary was stabbed forty-one times. The newspaper Leno had been reading was turned to the pages covering the Tate murders from the night before.

  The Family’s last moments in the desert after the murders, described to me by Manson, Squeaky, and others, dramatizes how deeply the dream had died, and how little the participants were aware of it.

  “We are at Barker’s [Ranch] now, sneaked in at dusk,” Squeaky wrote in a chilling, strangely poetic letter that vividly described the end of the Family’s glory days. “It feels good here all in one room, all in one circle. We’re dusty brown and smoothly tough, with cactus cut hands of lizard scale and sun. The feeling is animal, of wind and rough ground under our feet, and real. So really real. We can’t stay here at Barker’s. There’s too many of us. We are hunted. So tonight we dig.”

  And dig they did, but they didn’t get far. Huddled together in Death Valley, their minds seized by LSD, they hid by day and moved like a pack of starving hyenas at night. The peace and love of San Francisco had transformed into dried-out gulches and barren ravines. Manson’s insipid personal agenda left them stranded, naked, frightened, and clinging to one another, lost and alone as never before. They pawed out caves and bunkers, urinating and defecating like thoughtless animals. Suddenly, a shotgun blast signaled the end. They were surrounded and rounded up like rats. Babies cried, burned by the hot sun. Rifles prodded them. Two sheriffs searched Lynette. When she complained, she was smashed in the face. She needed Charlie then; they all did. They longed for his wisdom and comfort in their time of great duress, but he was gone. He had reverted back to the prison code of looking out for number one.

  Three days later, Manson was flushed out of a tiny Barker’s Ranch lavatory cabinet. It was October 12, 1969, two and half years after his release from Terminal Island. Another brief period of freedom had ended.

  4.

  FOLLOWING ONE OF the longest criminal trials in history, Charles Manson was convicted of seven counts of murder and sentenced to death. On April 22, 1971, he was sent to San Quentin. To the world, it was over. The threat was gone. Justice had prevailed. The good guys won. Only the gas chamber was never used, and Manson’s treachery was far from over.

  Despite his defiant fearlessness and lack of concern about being incarcerated, Manson’s new death row home had to come as a shock. He had never served time in a state prison system as an adult, a factor that made him unfamiliar with the horrors that awaited. The federal pens he was used to were in better shape, had well-paid staffs, weren’t nearly as overcrowded, and had minimal gang activity. The last item was the most telling. Seasoned as he was, he had yet to encounter the violent clans of vicious, aggressive ethnic prison gangs that infested the California corrections system. These gangs operated like silent schools of sharks, keeping quiet for a while, lulling everyone to sleep, then attacking designated enemies in sudden, barbaric strikes. To them, Manson’s loud mouth and grandiose “guru” posture would have the same effect as an injured, bleeding tuna flapping madly in the water.

  Quickly realizing this, Manson tempered his antics and initially tried to fit in. That didn’t work on either end. Most of the cons, despite being ruthless savages themselves, were repelled by what Manson and his followers had done. They weren’t exactly breaking down the bars of his cell with a special invitation to rush their fraternity. As time passed and some opportunities surfaced, notably with the racist Aryan Brothers (ABs), Manson found that he wasn’t good at being a faceless soldier in someone else’s army. Further, he learned that what worked on the outside was meaningless here. Instead of receptive flower children, he was back in the domain of violent, dominant males. Nobody on death row, or throughout San Quentin for that matter, gave a shit about the environment, the system, or who had the money. All they cared about was themselves. Whenever Manson launched into one of his hippie speeches, some sullen con would invariably bark, “Shut your fuckin’ mouth!” Manson usually obliged. (One of Manson’s followers, Bobby Beaus
oleil, learned to back off the hard way. His defense of Manson not only fell on deaf ears, he ended up getting his jaw broken when an argument turned into a full-fledged brawl.)

  The most startling example of Manson’s slow adjustment to San Quentin, and how far he had truly fallen, could be seen in his sex life. Although Manson repeatedly bragged that “there’s plenty of sex in prison,” I’m sure he was in no way prepared for his fate at San Quentin. The small, thin, chauvinistic guru was pursued like a schoolgirl and eventually “punked” by an extremely dangerous and aggressive Aryan Brotherhood inmate. A tough, brutal criminal, who took what he wanted, he made Manson his mate, forcing the once dominant cult leader into the passive, submissive “woman’s” position of his nightmarish childhood—both literally and figuratively. Although he had gained an important protector, the role reversal had to grate on whatever remained of Manson’s sense of personal dignity. Playing housemaid to an arrogant, abusive sexual bully while waiting to be executed had to be the worst period of his life.

  The 1972 court decision that threw out California’s death penalty as “cruel and unusual punishment” rescued Manson from the dual horrors of sexual depravity and death. The ruling commuted his sentence and enabled him to escape more sexual abuse through a temporary transfer to the California Medical Facility (CMF). Gradually, he rebuilt both his fearsome image and his damaged psyche. Ever the survivor, he soon returned to his loud, threatening, menacing, and preachy ways.

  At CMF, Manson was housed at the Northern Reception Center, where his mental state was analyzed and he was evaluated for treatment and placement. In an interview with his counselor, he described himself in terms of a “Christlike” prophet whose disciples grew out of control. Susan Atkins, the vicious Tate-LaBianca killer who sang big-time against Manson during his trial, was his Judas.

  “From the day I met her, Susan was a millstone around my neck,” he griped.

  The counseling staff repeatedly described Manson as extraordinarily manipulative, following up on the evaluations of his previous administrators. Only now, the magnitude of his persuasive powers had increased tenfold. He had become especially adept at rationalizations. After a lifetime of being brutalized by society, he felt it was his reward to do drugs, have sex with a multitude of partners, and even kill those he felt deserved it. He explained these concepts in a seemingly logical manner, as if he were talking about changing his bedsheets.

  When Manson wasn’t constructing shields or justifying his behavior, he could usually be found sitting quietly in his cell making something with his hands. He has an artistic side that often comes out in stunning ways. His favorite trick was to unravel yarn from socks, sweaters, or any colorful swatch of cloth people sent him. He’d use the material to weave dolls, hats, or decorative handkerchiefs. He also read a lot, dispelling the much repeated notion that he’s illiterate. The illiterate tag was something he promoted himself, apparently to lure his adversaries into underestimating him.

  Wherever he went, Charlie invariably decorated his cell with pictures of animals and nature scenes torn from magazines. Apparently, his “save the environment” raps were more than just a come-on to recruits.

  During one period, he befriended an inmate named Fraizer who shared his interest in the art of tying knots. The pair kept ordering books on the subject until the guards became suspicious, figuring they were planning to construct a rope ladder as a means of escape. When the officers began denying the requests, Manson went ballistic, showering them with obscenities and threatening torture, murder, and destruction. After a second turndown, he threw a tantrum and destroyed virtually everything in his cell. “You might as well gas me now, because if I get out, there is going to be blood running all over you!” he raged.

  Despite such incidents, Manson was cleared medically and mentally by the CMF doctors. On October 6, 1972, following two months of observation and evaluation, he was transferred to Folsom Prison and caged in the maximum-security unit. Once again, his neighbors were vicious and incorrigible state felons. Violent gangs ruled the population areas. Manson was now keenly aware of the law of the land in such environments and behaved accordingly. As he had learned at San Quentin, he wasn’t gang material—unless it was his own gang. And again, as at San Quentin, the gangs saw little benefit in having the tiny troll join their armies. He didn’t have the physical strength the gangs cherished, he brought way too much heat and attention with him, and there was always the fear that he might challenge for leadership. Knowing this, Manson tempered his antics and tried to stay low-key.

  The same couldn’t be said for new members of his still-active Family. They flocked to Sacramento and established cells of their own, plotting and scheming ways to free their leader. They also mounted verbal and written attacks on a host of American and international corporations which they felt were destroying the planet and polluting the environment. “We did it to save the world. Can’t you see it?” Squeaky proclaimed.

  Though low-key on the inside, Manson seemingly continued to shake things up on the outside. On October 24, 1972, two weeks after arriving at Folsom, he told a guard that he’d dispatched a team of five assassins to kill President Nixon. Manson hated Nixon for having made the famous statement during Manson’s trial declaring the cult leader guilty. (Manson, no dummy, got hold of a newspaper and flashed the banner headline before the jury, nearly causing a mistrial.) The Secret Service took the threat seriously.

  In a strange bit of irony, Richard Nixon’s life was probably saved by the Watergate scandal. After Manson sent out the hit squad, Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace and went into heavily guarded seclusion.

  In December 1972, Manson and another inmate went on a ten-day hunger strike over the Christmas holidays. The purpose was to dramatize Folsom’s refusal to allow his followers to visit him. Manson aborted the effort the day after Christmas because the press wasn’t sympathetic.

  Manson was receiving little sympathy from anyone at that time. Life at Folsom was becoming increasingly unbearable, and things appeared to be coming to a head. Early on, he had tried to ingratiate himself with the gangs by inviting Aryan Brotherhood members to visit with his girls. He ordered his female followers to give the Aryan Brothers vigorous, surreptitious hand jobs and lap dances in the visiting room, along with allowing themselves to be fondled in every manner possible by the sex-starved cons. Naturally, the inmates began to pressure Manson for more frequent sessions. Weary of their threats and increasing demands, he decided to go into his crazy act, talking gibberish while alternately flooding and burning his cell. The Folsom administrators, tired of Manson’s antics on the inside and sick of the harassment from his Family on the outside, were only too happy to ship him back to the California Medical Facility. The March 20, 1974, transfer was based on the “deterioration of his mental condition.” He was classified as a category A, which was the designation of an acute psychotic, and was housed in the S-3 wing under tight security.

  As always, once away from the specific hassles he had schemed to escape, Manson immediately became sane. After several months of evaluations, CMF doctors ruled that there was “no evidence of overt psychosis.” He was ordered back to Folsom. That was the last thing Manson wanted, so he decided to prove everyone wrong again. On July 29, 1974, he halfheartedly assaulted an officer, slapping the man’s face and shoulders with little force. The officer easily slipped an arm around Manson’s neck and took him down. He was subdued without further resistance and returned to his cell.

  The ploy bought him a few more months of soft time. When CMF officers found escape plans outlined in a note in Manson’s cell, they decided to ship him out. On October 27, 1974, Manson found himself right back inside Building 4A, the maximum-security Adjustment Center of Folsom Prison. He had been unceremoniously returned to the realm of gang heavies, and wasn’t the least bit happy about it. He refused to leave his cell, self-imposing a twenty-four-hour lockdown. He remained there for the next seven months, keeping a very low profile. When he couldn’
t stand it any longer, he decided to test the waters by venturing out into the exercise yard for a bit of sunshine and fresh air. Two ABs promptly jumped him. They were so intent on pounding the cult leader into a bloody pulp that they refused to stop even when the guards fired warning shots. A gun rail officer had to hurl a nonlethal “stinger” round (a wooden pellet) into the back of one of the assailants before they would stop.

  Manson, battered and shaken, responded by befriending a burly African-American prisoner who sent out the word that Manson was not to be harmed. Since Manson was an avowed racist, this was an extremely strange relationship. It’s hard to fathom what the black inmate got out of the relationship. His radical brothers gave him serious hell about it, so much, in fact, that the bruiser later freaked and ended up at CMF with deep emotional and psychological problems. That was the price he paid for helping Charles Manson.

  The loss of his latest protector forced Manson to again retreat to the full-time safety of his lonely cell. His tenuous relationship with the Aryan Brothers worsened, and they put a hit on him. The opportunity never arose, but they were able to give him the “midnight therapy” treatment. That’s when a group of ABs take turns verbally harassing a target throughout the night, preventing him from sleeping. Manson stayed cool, but fumed about the unnerving treatment. (Years later, two of his tormentors were found murdered. “Tank” was blasted with a shotgun shortly after being paroled. “Bear” was knifed in his cell at Folsom. When I brought Manson the news about Tank, he smiled, rubbed his beard, and said, “And he thought he was such a tough guy.”)

  A short time after the ABs began getting on his case, Manson was shipped out again, this time to San Quentin. That’s where I caught up with him.

  I continued my background investigation by pulling the psychiatric reports on Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, the two women convicted of the Tate-LaBianca murders with Manson and Susan Atkins. Both Krenwinkel and Van Houten were outspoken in the areas of law, murder, life, death, society, drugs, and sex. When they became agitated and upset, they mirrored Manson’s tirades about death, destruction, and rivers of blood flowing through the streets of the world and drowning the masses. Even when calm, they spewed parroted versions of Manson’s monologues. It was as if he’d wiped them clean of their own personalities and infected them with his. They had given themselves completely to him and his belief system.