Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars

by Edward George

  In the penitentiary you live with it, with constant fear of death, because it is a violent world in there, and you have to be on your toes constantly.

  So, it is not without violence that I live. It is not without pain that I live.

  I look at the projection that comes from this witness stand often to the defendants. It isn’t what we said, it is what someone thought we said. A word is changed: “in there” to “up there,” “off of that” to “on top.” The semantics get into a word game in the courtroom to prove something that is gone in the past. It is gone in the past, and when it is gone, it is gone, sisters. It is gone, brother.

  You can’t bring the past back up and postulate or mock up a picture of something that happened a hundred years ago, or 1970 years ago, as far as that goes. You can only live in the now, for what is real is now.

  The words go in circles.

  You can say everything is the same, but it is always different. It is the same, but it is always different. You can “but” it to death. You can say, “You are right, but, but, but.”

  You sat here for nineteen days questioning that girl.

  She got immunity on seven counts of murder.

  She got. I don’t know how much money she is going to make in magazines and things. You set her up to be a hero, and that is your woman. That is the thing that you worship.

  You have lost sight of God. You sing your songs to woman. You put woman in front of man. Woman is not God. Woman is but a reflection of her man, supposedly. But a lot of times man is a reflection of his woman. And if a man can’t rise above a woman’s thought, then that is his problem, it is not my problem. But you give me this problem when you set this woman against me.

  You set this woman up here to testify against me. And she tells you a sad story. How she has only taken every narcotic that is possible to take. How she has only stolen, lied, cheated, and done everything that you have got there in that book.

  But it is okay. She is telling the truth now. She wouldn’t have any ulterior motive like immunity for seven counts of murder.

  And then comical as it may seem, you look at me, and you say, “You threatened to kill a person if they snitch.”

  Well, that is the law where I am from. Where I am from, if you snitch, you leave yourself open to be killed.

  I could never snitch because I wouldn’t want someone to kill me.

  So, I have always abided by that law. It is the only law that I know of, and it is the law that I have always abided by.

  But she will come up here and you enshrine her, you put her above you, and you strive to be as good as something below you.

  It is circles that just don’t make any sense in my reality. But of course again that is my reality and it has nothing to do with you, because you have got your reality and you have to live with what you believe in.

  But this woman has got here and she has testified. She said she wasn’t sure, but maybe.

  Then the magical mystery tour wouldn’t be able to be explained to you.

  A magical mystery tour is when you pick up somebody else and play a part. You may pick up a cowboy today, and you go around all day and play like a cowboy. You put on a hat and you ride a horse.

  This is all we have done. We have played like mom and dad. We have loved each other. We have done everything we could to stay outside the frame of the law, the shakedowns. Nothing has been stolen. I have got better sense than to break the law. I give to the law what it has coming. It is his law. If I break his law, he puts me back in the grave again.

  I haven’t broken his law yet but it seems as if somebody lays around and somebody needs to fulfill a spot, they snatch it up and say, “This will do. We will put this over here, we can hang this on him. Or we can do this to that.”

  Then the words go into another meaning and another level of understanding.

  Why a woman would stand up and project herself into a man and say, “Actually he never told me anything, but I knew it all came from him.”

  Her assumption.

  Am I to be found guilty on her assumption?

  You assume what you would do in my position, but that doesn’t mean that is what I did in my position. It doesn’t mean that my philosophy is valid. It’s only valid to me. Your philosophies, they are whatever you think they are and I don’t particularly care what you think they are.

  But I know this: that in your own hearts and your own souls, you are as much responsible for the Vietnam War as I am for killing these people.

  I knew a guy that used to work in the stockyards and he used to kill cows all day long with a big sledgehammer, and then go home at night and eat dinner with his children and eat the meat that he slaughtered. Then he would go to church and read the Bible, and he would say, “That is not killing.” And I look at him and I say, “That doesn’t make any sense, what are you talking about?”

  Then I look at the beast, and I say, “Who is the beast?”

  I am the beast.

  I am the beast.

  I am the biggest beast walking the face of the earth. I kill everything that moves. As a man, as a human, I take responsibility for that. As a human, it won’t be long, and God will ask you to take responsibility for it. It is your creation. You live in your creation. I never created your world, you created it.

  You create it when you pay taxes, you create it when you go to work, then you create it when you foster a thing like this trial.

  Only for vicarious thrills do you sell a newspaper and do you kowtow to public opinion. Just to sell your newspapers. You don’t care about the truth. You take another Alka-Seltzer and another aspirin and hope that you don’t have to think of the truth and you hope that you don’t have to look at yourself with a hangover as you go to a Helter Skelter party and make fun of something that you don’t understand.

  (The Judge asks Manson to stick to the point.)

  The issues in this case? The issues in this case?

  The issues are that Mr. Younger is Attorney General, and I imagine he is a good man and does a good job. I don’t know him. I can’t judge him. But I know he has got me here. He set me in this seat.

  Mr. Bugliosi is doing his job for a paycheck. That is an issue. He is doing whatever he is doing. Whether he thinks it is right or not, I couldn’t say. That is up to him.

  The only way that I have been able to live on that side of the road was outside the law. I have always lived outside the law. When you live outside the law it is pretty hard, you can’t call the man for protection. You have got to pretty much protect your own.

  You can’t live within the law and protect yourself. You can’t knock the guy down when he comes over and starts to rape one of the girls, or starts to bring some speed or dope up there. You can’t enforce your will over someone inside the law.

  I gave everything I could think of to that old man and that ranch for permission to stay there, and I have given the people that stayed on that ranch my all. When no one wanted to go out in front and fight, I would go out and fight. When no one else wanted to clean the toilets, I would go and clean them.

  People would see me and they would see what I do and see the example that I set. They see, when I am cleaning out a cesspool, that I am happy and smiling and making a game of it. Like I was on a chain gang somewhere once upon a time and they come and pass the water. I make a game out of it, or I make a pleasure out of a job. We turn it into a magical mystery tour.

  We speed down the highway in a 1958 automobile that won’t go but fifty, and an XKE Jaguar goes by, and I state to Clem, “Catch him Clem, and we’ll rob him or steal all of his money,” you know. And he says, “What shall we do?” I say, “Hit him on the head with a hammer.” We magical mystery tour it.

  Then Linda Kasabian gets on the stand and says: “They were going to kill a man, they were going to kill a man in an automobile.”

  To you, it seems serious. But like Larry Kramer and I would get on a horse and we would ride over to Wichita, Kansas, and act like cowboys. We make it a g
ame on the ranch.

  Like, Helter Skelter is a nightclub. Helter Skelter means confusion. Literally. It doesn’t mean any war with anyone. It doesn’t mean that those people are going to kill other people. It only means what it means. Helter Skelter is confusion.

  Confusion is coming down fast. If you don’t see the confusion coming down fast around you, you can call it what you wish.

  It is not my conspiracy. It is not my music. I hear what it relates. It says, “Rise!” It says, “Kill!” Why blame it on me? I didn’t write the music. I am not the person who projected it into your social consciousness, that sanity that you projected into your social consciousness, today. You put so much into the newspaper and then you expect people to believe what is going on. I say back to the facts again.

  How many witnesses have you got up here and projected only what they believe in. What I believe in is right now. I don’t believe in anything past now. I speak to you from now.

  Because there is nothing here to worry about, nothing here to think about, nothing here to be confused over. My house is not divided. My house is one with me, myself.

  Then I look at the facts that you have brought in front of this court and I look at the twelve facts that are looking at me and judging me. If I were to judge them, what scale would that balance? Would the scale balance if I was to turn and judge you? How would you feel if I were to judge you? Could I judge you? I can only judge you if you try to judge me. That is the fact.

  Mr. Bugliosi is a hard-driving prosecutor, with a polished education. Semantics, words. He is a genius. He has got everything that every lawyer would want to have except one thing; a case. He doesn’t have a case.

  Were I allowed to defend myself, I could have proven this to you. I could have called witnesses and showed you how these things lay, and I could have presented my picture.

  You are dealing with facts and positive evidence. If you are dealing with things that are relative to the issues at hand, then you look at the facts. What else do you look at? Oh, the leather thong.

  How many people have ever worn moccasins with a leather thong in it? So you have placed me on the desert with leather clothes on and you took a leather thong from my shoe.

  How many people could we take leather thongs from? That is an issue.

  Then you move on and you say I had one around my neck. I always tie one around my head when my hair is long. It keeps it out of my eyes. And you pull it down on your neck. And I imagine a lot of longhaired people do.

  There are so many aspects to this case that could be dug into and a lot of truth could be brought up, a lot of understanding could be reached.

  It is a pretty hideous thing to look at seven bodies, one hundred and two stab wounds.

  The prosecutor, or the doctor, gets up and he shows how all the different stab wounds are one way, and then how all the different stab wounds are another way; but they are the same stab wounds in another direction.

  They put the hideous bodies on display and they say: “If he gets out see what will happen to you.” Implying it. I am not saying he did this. This is implied. A lot of diagrams are actually in my opinion senseless to the case.

  Then there is Paul Watkins’ testimony. Paul Watkins was a young man who ran away from his parents and wouldn’t go home. You could ask him to go home and he would say no. He would say, “I don’t got no place to live. Can I live here?” And I’d say, “Sure.” So, he looks for a father image. I offer no father image. I say, “To be a man, boy, you have got to stand up and be your own father.” And he still hungers for a father image. So he goes off to the desert and finds a father image.

  When he gets on the stand, I forget what he said, whether it had any relative value, oh, I was supposed to have said to go get a knife and kill the sheriff of Shoshone. Go get a knife and kill the sheriff of Shoshone? I don’t know the sheriff of Shoshone. I don’t think I have been there but once.

  I am not saying that I didn’t say it, but if I said it, at that time I may have thought it was a good idea. Whether I said it in jest and whether I said it in joking, I can’t recall and reach back into my memory. I could say either way. I could say, “Oh, I was just joking.” Or I could say I was curious. But to be honest with you I don’t ever recall saying, “Get a knife and change of clothes and go do what Tex said.” Or I don’t recall saying, “Get a knife and go kill the sheriff.”

  I don’t recall saying to anyone, “Go get a knife and kill anyone or anything.” In fact it makes me mad when someone kills snakes or dogs or cats or horses. I don’t even like to eat meat because that is how much I am against killing.

  So you have got the guy who is against killing on the witness stand, and you are all asking him to kill you. You are asking him to judge you. Because with my words, each of your opinions or diagrams, your thoughts, are dying. What you thought was true is dying. What you thought was real is dying. Because you all know, and I know you know, and you know that I know you know. So, let’s make that circle.

  You say, “Where do we start from there?” Back to the facts again. You say that the facts are elusive in my mind. Actually, they just don’t mean anything. The District Attorney can call them facts. They are facts. You are facts.

  But the facts of the case aren’t even relative, in my mind. They are relative to the thirteenth century. They are relative to the eighth century. They are relative to how old you are or what kind of watch you wear on your arm. I have never lived in time. A bell rings, I get up. A bell rings and I go out. A bell rings, and I live my life with bells. I get up when a bell rings and I do what a bell says. I have never lived in time. When your mind is not in time, the whole thought is different. You look at time as being man-made. And you say time is only relative to what you think it is. If you want to think me guilty then you can think me guilty and it is okay with me. I don’t dislike any of you for it. If you want to think me not guilty it is okay with me.

  I know what I know and nothing and no one can take that from me.

  You can jump up and scream, “Guilty!” and you can say what a no-good guy I am, and what a devil, fiend, eeky-sneaky slimy devil I am. It is your reflection and you’re right, because that is what I am. I am whatever you make me.

  You see, it is what happens inside the now that … the words just lose meaning. A motion is more real than a word. The Indians spoke with it. They could explain to you with motions what they felt. This is what I intended to do if I could represent myself. Explain to you what is inside of me, how I feel about things.

  Because words are your words. You invented the words, and you made a dictionary and you gave me the dictionary and you said, “These are what the words mean.” Well, this is what they mean to you, but to someone else, they have got a different dictionary. And things mean different things to different people, and to match the symbols up as you talk back and forward. Then you put a witness up here to say what you said.

  I could never say what someone else said. I could only say what I said.

  You tell me something and, tomorrow, I try to repeat it, if I didn’t write it down, I couldn’t tell you what you said. Let alone a year ago, let alone eight months ago, let alone a week ago. I am forgetful. I forget one day to the next. I forget what day it is or what month it is or what year it is. I don’t particularly care because all that is real to me is right now.

  But” then, the case is real to me, and I say, “What do I have to do to make you people let me go back to the desert with my children?”

  You have your world. You are going to do whatever you do with it. I have got nothing to do with it. I don’t have the schooling in it. I don’t believe in your church. I don’t believe in anything you do. I am not saying you are wrong, and I hope that you say I am not wrong for believing what I believe in.

  Murder? Murder is another question. It is a move. It is a motion. You take another’s life. Boom! and they’re gone. You say, “Where did they go?” They are dead. You say, “Well, that person could have made the motion.” He could ha
ve taken my life just as well as I took his.

  If a soldier goes off to the battlefield, he goes off with his life in front. He is giving his life. Does that not give him permission to take one? No. Because then we bring our soldiers back and try them in court for doing the same thing we sent them to do. We train them to kill, and they go over and kill, and we prosecute them and put them in jail because they kill. If you can understand it, then I bow to your understanding. But in my understanding I wouldn’t get involved with it.

  My peace is in the desert or in the jail cell, and had I not seen the sunshine in the desert I would be satisfied with the jail cell much more over your society, much more over your reality, and much more over your confusion, and much more over your world, and your word games that you play.

  And each witness got up here and only testified for what was best for them, they did not testify for what was best for me. They testified for what was best for them, their own benefit. So you say, “Okay, and then what else did she say?” She said, “You only see in me what you want to see in me.” You only see in her what you put in her, because when you take LSD enough times you reach a stage of nothing. You reach a stage of no thought.

  An example of this: if you were to be standing in a room with someone and you were loaded on LSD and the guy says, “Do you like my sports coat?” And you would probably not pay any attention to him. About two or three minutes later the guy loaded on LSD will turn around and say, “My, you have a beautiful sports coat” because he is only reacting. He is only reacting to the individual terminology, the person that he has in the room.

  As you would put two people in a cell, so would they reflect and flow on each other like as if water would seek a level.

  I have been in a cell with a guy eighty years old and I listened to everything he said. “What did you do then?” And he explains to me his whole life and I sat there and listened, and I experienced vicariously his whole being, his whole life, and I look at him and he is one of my fathers. But he is also another one of your society’s rejects.