Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars

by Edward George

  Sometime later, I was chatting with Manson and Pin Cushion and mentioned offhand how impossible it was to stop the constant waves of violence at San Quentin. To my surprise, both cons supported the guards.

  “If an inmate jumps an officer, he should get the shit beat out of him,” Pin said. “They did it to me, and I finally learned.”

  Manson’s opinion was even stronger. “Put me in charge of this prison for one day, and I’ll stop all the killing. Give me just one hour, and I’ll end the violence. Show them no mercy, and they’ll obey. Give them a dose of fear, a taste of the wolf’s fangs, a sting of the scorpion’s tail, and all your problems will be over.”

  “I can’t do that,” I explained. “Legally, or morally.”

  “You have the power to do anything you want,” Manson snapped. “You just need the balls to do it.”

  I walked away, marveling at how Manson’s sentiments echoed those expressed by the hard-line guards. Someone had told me once that there was “a thin line between cops and robbers.” That statement never rang truer than at that moment. Charles Manson was a gooner.

  8.

  I WAS CASUALLY chatting with Charlie one afternoon when he started going on about how horrible it was that “the system” had caged him. “You have no idea what it’s like. You’re close, but you’re still on the right side of the bars, so you don’t know.”

  Actually, I did—to an extent. I wanted to explain, but I always had to be careful what I said because Charlie fed on human weakness and would use it against me later. This day, however, I decided to open up a crack. “When I was at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Mountain View [California], there were a lot of similarities. I was there nearly six years, a solid sentence.”

  “Like armed robbery.”

  “Yeah, something like that. It was pretty torturous, full of loneliness and despair. Seminarians are well protected from the world. No girls. No newspapers. No radios or television. Tons of silence. In some ways, it’s worst than here. The study load was rigorous, the discipline strict, stricter than here because you guys can run your mouths. We couldn’t. We had small private rooms with a closet, a bed, a bureau, a desk, a chair, and a sink with a mirror. It was similar to a prison cell. There were community showers and toilets. We didn’t even have the privacy and convenience that you guys have. Silence was imposed in the living areas, so even with other people around, I couldn’t talk. The spiritual exercise and prayer was heavy. Like here, we formed societies and had secret gatherings to survive mentally. Only we took a bigger risk. If we were caught, we’d be sent home in shame, a vocation lost. Of my class, twenty-five made it through, fifteen didn’t. The ones who left did so mainly because of the celibacy thing.”

  “Went for the pussy, eh? No surprise there. But you guys had a choice. You could have left anytime,” Manson gruffed, unimpressed. “That’s a big difference.”

  “It’s no different with you. You had a choice. You could have chosen not to end up here in the first place. Then, after your first few falls, you could have done your time and made sure you never came back. How many times have you been paroled?”

  “It’s still not the same,” he parried, ignoring my logic. “You don’t know how I grew up, man. Even in prison, I was at the bottom. Because of my high security and history of escapes, I wasn’t allowed to participate in the trade programs. While other guys were learning how to be auto mechanics, welders, plumbers, electricians, printers, and things like that, I was locked in a cell and kept out of the classes. So what good did that do me? What did they prepare me for when I was released? Nothing! See, you haven’t walked in my shoes.”

  No, thankfully, I hadn’t.

  Fortunately, Manson interrupted me before I slipped and went further. Near the end of my “sentence” I began suffering headaches and dizzy spells. They increased in pain and frequency until I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A Methodist psychologist told me I was trying to be something I wasn’t “cut out to be.” He suggested that I reconsider my career path. Because he was Methodist, I cast it off as heathen heresy. I’d persevere, I insisted, through prayer and faith. I prayed and had faith, but the headaches wouldn’t ease. Finally, a Catholic psychologist advised me to leave the seminary immediately before I had a complete mental breakdown. Back home in San Francisco, the pain and dizziness vanished. I walked the beach for a month, breathing in the air and slowly rejoining the world, secure in my decision to escape my “prison.” Strange how things turn out. After an up-and-down stint in the military as a pilot candidate (probably overcompensating for my desire to be free), I settled into a career as a correctional administrator. I could take what I’d learned about being “caged,” and try to ease the burden of men who had no other choice. Even men like Charles Manson.

  I doubted whether my personal bio helped Manson, especially since I’d ended it with a scolding. He was probably beyond help anyway. But that wasn’t going to stop me from trying.

  A lot of decent people were trying at San Quentin in the middle 1970s. There were numerous renovation projects under way, some of which I personally handled. I supervised the design and building of a new exercise yard for the lockup units. Basketball and handball courts were spread across a smooth asphalt surface, complete with freshly painted white lines. At the completion of a series of similar projects, we held a big dog and pony show for area politicians, central office staffers, and other big shots. Associate Warden Rinker was set to give them the grand tour and was on pins and needles about it. We all knew how many things can go wrong inside a prison.

  “It’ll be a disaster,” Manson warned in a nonthreatening manner. “You watch. You give these guys an audience, and they’ll take it every time. You march a bunch of lambs in front of a den of lions, and what do you think will happen? It’s the natural order.” Recalling how the death row gang had played to the media, I couldn’t help agreeing with him.

  On the big day, Rinker led an entourage of twenty corrections department officials, dignitaries, and legislative types through the buildings and housing units to display our proud accomplishments. Everything was going fine until the group entered B section, otherwise known as the seventh level of Dante’s Inferno. On the surface, the “ol’ hellhole” had never looked better. It had been closed six months for a total overhaul. The cells had been rewired, sinks and toilets replaced, hot-water lines installed, walls painted, and open drains covered and diverted to pipes that connected with the main sewer system. The ingrained stench had been scrubbed and disinfected away, and the floor surfaces had been sealed.

  Despite the face-lift, it was still a maximum-security unit, a factor that wasn’t lost on the visiting dignitaries. This was the place where society’s worst vermin lived—people like Charles Manson. And in this case, it wasn’t just “people like Charles Manson,” it was Charles Manson! I wondered how many in the group were pondering that fact as they entered the ominous arena. They must have been thinking something scary because their faces paled with fear and apprehension as they hesitantly filed through the huge metal door and gingerly stepped into the five-story cellblock.

  Instead of regaling them with the titillating history of all the famous felons who’d lived there, like a good haunted-house tour guide would have, Rinker tried to sell the place like it was Disneyland. He bragged about how wonderful and humane things at San Quentin were now that it was under his personal control. Even the guards had miraculously transformed from sadistic goons to patient professionals trained to correct and rehabilitate, not punish.

  Bang! A shot rang out in the new exercise yard, interrupting the fantasy and totally mortifying the visitors. It was just a routine warning round intended to break up a fight, but these people had no clue. If that wasn’t bad enough, the shot was followed by the terrifying sound of the piercing alarms. The group stood speechless, shuddering. Suddenly, an army of officers blasted through the B-section door, charging recklessly toward the yard. Rinker himself instinctively bolted to the door to the yard to see what ha
d taken place, abandoning his now thoroughly frightened guests. Boom! A second, louder shot exploded inside everyone’s brain. The first shot had failed to end the scuffle, so a rifleman had blasted one of the participants with a beanbag projectile, knocking him down.

  Rinker had left the dignitaries standing in the middle of the section, right between the entrance to the unit and the exit to the yard. That placed them directly in the path of the stampeding gooners. Normally, such groups are briefed before entering that if an emergency should occur, they’re to hug the walls and clear the pathways. Apparently, this particular gathering had not been told about such potential unpleasantries. That oversight placed them literally in harm’s way. Intent on quelling what, for all they knew, was a serious riot, the gooners crashed into, through, and around the stunned visitors.

  The dignitaries also knew nothing about certain routine prison procedures which, if viewed in the wrong light, could give off a decidedly mistaken impression. A pack of guards had been using ax handles in a nearby section to check the strength of the restraints in various cells. By slipping the handles through the bars and pulling back, they can determine if a crafty inmate has been sawing away for a future break. Naturally, when the alarm sounded, these guards came sprinting through B section carrying their ax handles like famed racist politician Lester Maddox, giving the visitors the vivid image of unwary cons about to get their skulls cracked.

  With the situation outside under control, Rinker finally returned to the outsiders quaking in the hallway. He darted back inside and was appalled by what he saw. “Stop! The emergency’s over. Stop! Stop!” he cried to the ax-handle gang. It was no use. The officers had been trained to drop everything and respond to the alarms, and were oblivious of the PR disaster that was unfolding. Rinker ran to the entrance in a panic and tried to slam the iron door. Instead of succeeding, he was nearly trampled by a third wave of officers. “Stop!” he screamed, clutching at them. “It’s over, damn it! I tell you. It’s over!” This group ignored him as well, cursing his efforts while slamming into the visitors. Chaos reigned as a number of the women began to scream with terror.

  Meanwhile, the inmates were loving every minute of it. They charged to the front of their cells like rabid monkeys, whooped it up, shouted obscenities, and showered the group with vile threats and biting insults. After about five minutes of this madness, things finally calmed—everything, that is, except the dignitaries’ heartbeats. The respite was only temporary. Screeeeeech! The alarm sounded again, this time signaling an emergency in the adjoining hospital wing. A pack of twenty officers, pumped and full of adrenaline, had gathered near the exercise-yard door, catching their breath. The second siren sent them charging back down the hall, a larger and more menacing mass than before. The dignitaries, who still hadn’t figured out how to protect themselves, were stomped for the fourth time. By now, the group wanted no part of San Quentin. They didn’t give two shits about our new basketball and handball courts anymore. All they wanted was to get the hell out of there. They dashed for the door and began spilling out into the outside corridor.

  When the second alarm sounded, it was unclear precisely where the emergency was. Half of the officers hung a right and headed for the hospital, while the other half hooked a left toward the mess hall. Once there, the mess-hall gang realized their mistake and came rumbling back with renewed haste. Only now, the civilians were again blocking their path! Seeing the oncoming herd, the dignitaries retreated back into B section—the last place in the world they wanted to be. Screaming and cursing, they squeezed through the door in a panic and were immediately greeted by a welcoming roar of obscenities from the gleeful inmates.

  Dr. Sutton and I observed the fiasco with subdued delight. “Just keep your back to the wall and you’ll be all right,” I reminded her each time the Keystone Guards came barreling by. “There’s nothing we can do but stay out of the way.”

  Rinker fumed for days afterward, careening about looking for someone to blame. “Why didn’t you help me stop those idiots from charging into the unit like that?” he demanded after cornering me. “You saw what they did. You were standing by the door. You didn’t do a damn thing!”

  “I didn’t know what was going on, so I had to let the officers through. One of our men could have been in trouble. Once they started pouring inside, there was no way I could stop them. Thank God none of the visitors were seriously injured,” I added, twisting the knife.

  When things settled and emotions subsided, I paid a visit to one particularly interested observer.

  “So, I heard everything went off without a hitch,” Manson teased, stroking his goatee the way he always did when he was extremely pleased with himself.

  “Did you have anything to do with that?” I demanded.

  “Me?” he protested. “Ruin Rinker’s big moment? Why would I do that? Just because he ordered his pigs to drag me halfway across the prison, then took me out of population, that doesn’t mean I don’t love the guy. Just remember, Ed, hurt me, and you hurt yourself. Try to bite me like a mosquito, and I’ll bite you back like a bear. If these guys didn’t give me so much shit, things like this wouldn’t happen. It all revolves around me. It’s your choice. Peace or violence.”

  I wasn’t sure if Charlie had really instigated the mess, or was just trying to take undeserved credit. Probably the latter, but I never knew with him. Either way, he’d been right. You can’t march a bunch of squeamish citizens through a dungeon where five hundred madmen are caged without expecting something to go wrong. We were lucky it hadn’t been worse.

  “Things always go wrong for people during their big moments,” Charlie said, falling into a philosophical mode. “Hey, I wanted to be a musician and things didn’t work out. They tried to pin that Beatles White Album thing on me at the trial, but that wasn’t me, man. They weren’t of my era. I was into the music of my youth, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Frankie Laine, Mel Torme, they meant more to me than the Beatles, Beach Boys, and those guys. Hell, it was the kids who saw all those messages in the White Album.… I had my own music. We actually had some recording sessions that [Terry] Melcher set up, but they didn’t go too well. The studio guy was too controlling and we ended up getting into a pissing match and leaving. They were messing with our groove, and I wouldn’t stand for it. Dennis [Wilson of the Beach Boys] convinced me to sit still and let the pros in the studio do their thing, and we finally laid down some tracks. But nothing came of it.”

  “Why? From what I hear, you’re pretty decent.”

  “I was! Some of the songs I wrote could have been classics, big hits.”

  “So what happened?”

  Charlie sighed, then grew silent. It was rare for him to drop his macho/ crazy posture, open up, and express his true emotions—especially on this topic. I had no idea what had prompted it, but I didn’t want the mood to pass. “Come on, you’ve never told me this stuff,” I pressed. “You always pretend not to give a shit about anything, but we both know better.”

  “I don’t give a shit! Not now. But I did back then. Off and on. That music deal was when things started falling apart out there. When paradise was lost, man. We were at the crossroads. Fame was going to come after me, one way or another, good or bad. It could have gone either way. It had been perfect for a while. The music. The promise of an album. The women. There were fifteen, sometimes twenty girls out there that I could have any time I wanted. Imagine that. A different one every night. Two or three at a time. They were all young, eager, and beautiful. They did anything I asked, fucking and sucking for as long as I wanted them to. Me, the other guys, each other, whatever I commanded they happily obeyed. It was a rush.… But there were just too many people to control, too many drugs fuckin’ up everybody’s head. We had about forty people at the ranch near the end. Most, about twenty-five, were my group. The others were ex-convicts, bikers, and some kids just drifting through. There were always new people coming in and out. That was the whole point. Total freedom. Nobody wanted to work, so
we had to steal cars, sell drugs and stuff just to keep everybody fed. The ranch hands started getting suspicious and threatened to snitch.”

  “Shorty?”

  “Yeah, he was the worst. I had to come down on him, but I knew our time was running out. The plan was to sell my album and use the royalties to build our own private city way out in the desert. A place where we could live like we wanted, do whatever we desired, with no rules or cops or nothing. No hassles, drug busts, angry neighbors—you know, free, man. Our own world! It would have happened, too, but the drugs just ate us up. None of that bad shit would have gone down if we’d only controlled the drugs, instead of letting them control us. That’s how the whole nightmare started. Tex [Watson] burned this black pusher and the guy grabbed Tex’s girlfriend and was holding her hostage. They called the ranch asking for “Charles” and I answered. I told him I wasn’t the right Charles, but I’d try to straighten it out. I took the gun [the .22 Buntline later used in the Tate-LaBianca murders] and went to reason with the guy. He was a big, arrogant asshole who played his bully mind games. He wanted his money and wasn’t going to let the girl go. Said he was going to fuck her to death. He came at me and tried to strangle me. I fired, but the gun didn’t go off. Now I was in deep shit. I pulled the trigger again, and this time it fired. The guy dropped. I grabbed the girl and got out of there, convinced that the pusher was dead.

  “The next day, there was a report on the news that some big-shot Black Panther had been wasted the night before. I was certain he was my guy. Paranoia was rampant. I felt that the police were in a race with an angry army of Black Panthers to make it to the ranch first. That’s when I began telling everybody about the blacks rising up and coming after us. It wasn’t some symbolic war like everybody thinks, it was real!

  “After that, everything changed. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll became fear, anxiety, and paranoia, dig? And it was all a mistake. We had the wrong guy. The Panther was somebody else. My guy didn’t even die. The bastard survived! And he didn’t even snitch. But we didn’t know that. So the police and Panthers never came. Problem was … Dennis, and some of the others in the music business heard about it.”