The Manson Women and Me

by Nikki Meredith

  The blows stopped the noise but didn’t completely kill him, so Karla’s boyfriend, who’d taken time out from murdering to load motorcycle parts into his truck, re-entered the room, dealt the final blow, and then went back to his task. Meanwhile, Karla Faye noticed a woman hiding under bed covers. Deborah Thornton was there because she’d had the great misfortune of meeting the first victim, Jerry Dean, at a party earlier that afternoon. Karla Faye went after her with the pickax, eventually embedding it in Deborah’s heart. She told friends and later testified in court that she experienced intense multiple orgasms with each blow of the pickax. (Could there be a more perfect example of the blood lust killing that Chris Browning referred to in his book about Battalion 101?)

  Upon reading the description of Karla Faye’s murders, I couldn’t help thinking about Bugliosi’s characterizations of Pat and Leslie in 1970 as human monsters. But I also felt that their total lack of feelings, empathy or otherwise, put them in a more elevated category, mutation-wise, than the state of a woman bragging about multiple orgasms as she plunged a pickax into Deborah Thornton’s heart. Part of this weird mechanism I’m trying to understand is that I could always find a way that Pat and Leslie, as bad as they’d been, were not as bad as whoever I was thinking about when these issues came up. Your murderer is much worse than mine.

  I noted with dismay that I derived a measure of satisfaction from the anger I felt toward Karla Faye. It seemed very much like the anger I’d heard others express toward Pat and Leslie or that I’d seen on Lorna’s face in that writers’ workshop. I didn’t understand what function these intense negative feelings served. I only knew that they seemed important, almost necessary. Necessary for what?

  There was no way for me to absorb the savagery of the Tate-LaBianca murders without blaming someone. I needed someone other than Leslie and Pat to be the repository of these feelings. It helped me live with the material and it protected my feelings for the two women. At any given time it was necessary for me to have one or more persons whom I blamed, disliked, distrusted.

  Manson holds permanent first place but, irrationally, he’s inadequate to the task. The world continues to be fascinated by him, but he holds no interest for me. He knew intuitively how to manipulate young people—I suppose you could say he had a gift—but he also learned some tricks of the trade in prison. If it hadn’t been for certain external factors converging, what I’ve described unoriginally as a perfect storm, he wouldn’t have been as effective. Psychopaths are a dime a dozen. Kids who grow up being loved and who are socialized with humane values and end up committing senseless murders are much less common.

  In the beginning of this journey, I didn’t understand my need for scapegoats. I thought my lack of interest in Susan was primarily due to her identification as born-again. I saw the conversion as lazy, a shortcut for taking responsibility. I think that’s what John Waters meant when he said he admired Leslie for resisting the temptation to adopt “religious fanaticism,” a route that would provide her instant forgiveness.

  When Leslie’s mother told me she always urged her to keep her distance from Susan Atkins and Pat Krenwinkel, I think she was using a similar mechanism to cope. (She had needed more than one.) She believed that Leslie was made of different stuff than they were, and she wanted the world to think so, too. But before she died, she told me she was rethinking this attitude as she was rethinking many things. She realized that her commitment to these categories hadn’t helped; it certainly hadn’t helped get Leslie out of prison. “Recently I happened to talk to Susan Atkins and her husband and I quite enjoyed it. She seemed pleasant and he’s so bright.”

  As I’ve indicated, when the photos from Abu Ghraib prison surfaced, I was acutely aware of the similarity between me and those people I had accused of being narrow-minded. Despite the consensus of many experts that it was the system that was evil, not the individuals at the bottom who were acting out the pathology of the system, I had a problem with letting those people at the bottom off the hook—in particular, Lynndie England. She’s the one laughing and smiling while those men were so palpably suffering. The government may have treated her as a scapegoat, Philip Zimbardo certainly thought so, but to me her participation was unforgivable. England was convicted on September 26, 2005, of one count of conspiracy, four counts of maltreating detainees, and one count of committing an indecent act. Along with a dishonorable discharge she received a three-year prison sentence. She was paroled on March 1, 2007, after serving 521 days.

  It hasn’t escaped my attention that every example I’ve mentioned is a woman, and apparently I’m not alone in this focus. According to researchers Georgie Ann Weatherby, Jamie Blanche, and Rebecca Jones, the public has a particular fascination with cases that involve women, and certainly the media coverage is more sensational when the murderers are women. “When the media (and thus the public) learns of a violent female crime they automatically enter a frenzied state,” they write in “The Value of Life: Female Killers & the Feminine Mystique” (Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice Research & Education Volume 2, Issue 1, 2008). They maintain that this frenzied state leads to distortions. “In order to deal with such a rare occurrence, society’s rules automatically shut down, which causes people to bring forth biased and stereotypical notions about these women.”

  I’m convinced that the unforgiving anger expressed toward Pat and Leslie is more intense because they are women. But maybe I’m talking about my own unforgiving anger when it comes to women other than Pat and Leslie.

  There are many reasons, I suppose, that the image of a woman murdering in situations other than self-defense is more threatening to me than the image of a murdering man. For one thing, women grow up with the awareness that men can hurt us; we’re practically socialized to believe this. From the local news to mainstream TV series, we’re bombarded with images of men hurting women. We can’t help but be desensitized to it. On some primitive level, perhaps women believe that men’s sexual drive renders them incapable of self-control and capable of atrocious brutality. Much of this is myth, and some of it is perpetuated by men themselves. For the most part, I think this expectation operates on a subconscious level.

  There is something particularly chilling about a woman without empathy—much more frightening than a man without empathy. The anger I feel about the women I’ve listed above is qualitatively different from any anger I’ve ever felt toward male murderers. It feels as though it comes from a different part of my brain. The most obvious basis is our original relationship with our mothers.

  The part I have the most trouble understanding is how oddly committed I am to my negative feelings about poor Lynndie England. It seems connected to my humanity and not in a good way.

  For me, one of the problems with Lynndie is that, because of the photos, her laughter in the face of all of those suffering men is frozen in time. It’s a problem for me but apparently not for Lynndie. She feels no remorse. In 2013, she told NBC news she does not regret her actions. “They [Iraqis] got the better end of the deal. They weren’t innocent. They’re trying to kill us, and you want me to apologize to them? It’s like saying sorry to the enemy.”

  As I’ve said, when I think of Mrs. LaBianca I feel a heartbreaking sadness. She not only suffered on her own behalf, she heard her husband being killed in the other room. Does it help that Leslie didn’t experience any pleasure from the killing? What she describes is a state of numbness, of unfeeling. If that’s true, and I believe her (though there are those who don’t), does it make the act more palatable? It doesn’t in any way absolve her of responsibility, she’s the first to say that, but in terms of her humanity, does it make a difference to me that she was an automaton rather than a sadist?

  But how can I forget one very important distinction? Lynndie didn’t kill anyone. She may have inflicted horrible psychological, emotional, and spiritual damage, but she did not murder anyone. That makes it all the more puzzling that I cannot find it in my heart to feel forgiveness for her while I f
eel true compassion for Leslie.

  chapter forty-three

  “SHE DID APPEAL TO MY HUMANITY BUT I HAD NONE TO GIVE HER”

  One day I told Pat about a recurring dream I had as a child that involved appealing to Hitler’s humanity—begging him not to kill me because I was just a little girl. Before I even had a chance to get the whole question out, Pat said, “If you’re asking me about Abigail Folger, she did appeal to my humanity but I had none to give her.”

  As usual, Pat’s response was straightforward and blunt and, as usual, I was startled by it. Her brand of honesty always feels like a door being slammed. I think the question of what happened to her humanity that night is still, to some extent, untapped. I’m not sure Pat can truly let herself feel the depth of this. Not because she doesn’t want to, but because she doesn’t have the psychological tools to do so. The born-again Christians don’t need those tools. Religion provides them with automatic redemption.

  And that leads me to the issue of remorse. I have no doubt that Pat feels remorseful about the murders; I also believe her remorse is complicated.

  In a 1988 psychiatric report, she told a psychiatrist that while she knew it was wrong to kill Abigail Folger, it was also true that Folger, who was known to use drugs, “could have made more out of her life.” One day I asked her about this statement, expecting her to claim it was distorted, taken out of context, not what she meant at all. But she repeated it. It’s part of a rap she does about drugs and bad behavior and you reap what you sow. In essence, if those people at the Tate house had been leading more honorable lives, none of this would have happened to them. She seems not to recognize that she is in no position to be making any kind of moral judgment about the life of the woman she murdered.

  I pushed her a bit on her logic: “But Mr. and Mrs. LaBianca didn’t take drugs and they were murdered anyway.” Instead of reflecting on this, she immediately pointed out that a neighbor of the LaBiancas, but someone they didn’t know, did take drugs. In fact, Manson knew him through partying, and he may have selected that neighborhood simply because he was familiar with it.

  That day when I was driving back to L.A. from Frontera, I thought about an interview I’d once heard with Robert Jay Lifton, the psychiatrist who has done considerable research on Nazi doctors. He said most of the doctors were candid about the war crimes they committed, but they expressed very little true remorse. He concluded that what they’d done was so horrendous they couldn’t come close to truly looking at their guilt. (Lifton said, from that point of view, the experience of interviewing them, while psychologically valuable, was not morally satisfying.)

  The conversation with Pat, when she mentioned Abigail Folger’s drug use, was a reminder of how difficult it is to peel away layers of guilt and remorse. I was also aware of being deeply disappointed though it took me awhile to understand why. I wanted to see her in the best possible light because I know how hard she’s worked on her rehabilitation, and I also know that she’s never given any acknowledgment for that when she goes in front of the parole board. The thought that I would write anything that could contribute to the brutal and unfair way she’s treated in those sessions is hard to accept.

  I think I understand her position on Abigail Folger’s drug use, but it doesn’t sell well. She has accepted responsibility for her behavior and, in her mind, if she’s going to judge herself for her past behavior, she’s going to judge everyone. I’m not sure she’s capable of the kind of nuanced thinking that would let either herself or her victims off the hook for anything. Her perspective is black and white—just as black and white as the district attorney’s. That doesn’t mean that I believe there’s any reason for her to remain in prison. I don’t. She’s not a danger to anyone. If we kept people locked up forever because of their psychological shortcomings, no one would ever be released. And I do believe she has found her humanity. She just can’t explain it very well.

  * * *

  In my early conversations with her, some of her softest feelings emerged when we talked about Leslie. One day we somehow got onto the topic of legacies. She said Leslie was the only person in the world to whom she would leave whatever possessions she owned. (This conversation took place many years ago.) I’ve never been able to visit them together, but they talk respectfully of each other and they know each other better than they know anyone else in prison. I believe they have a different circle of friends, both inside and outside the prison.

  As far as I know, they have never talked to each other about what happened that night at the LaBiancas’. At first that surprised me, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. What, after all, could they say to each other that wouldn’t be horrible?

  chapter forty-four

  THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL GANG

  March 1997

  My daughter was home for spring break from college when I decided we should travel to Death Valley to take a look at Barker Ranch, the Manson desert outpost where he was arrested a month after the Tate-LaBianca murders. The ranch held so much significance that it had been designated a national monument. We rented a four-wheel-drive Ford Explorer and took off for the desert.

  We slept the first night at the Furnace Creek Lodge. Actually, she slept. I didn’t. At 2:00 a.m. I was lying in my bed, my heart pounding. What was my problem? I’d carefully planned the trip. I had maps, many maps, including the forest service topographical map, and I had stocked up on food, water, extra sweaters, and even a blanket. We were only going to the Barker Ranch for the day, but I knew that many people who rent cars to explore unfamiliar deserts end up dead—it’s not called Death Valley for nothing—and usually those people had set out unprepared.

  Since 1970 when I read Diane Kennedy Pike’s account of having to drink her own urine after she and her husband, James Pike, a former Episcopalian bishop, got stranded in the Judean Desert, I’ve had a keen interest in being prepared in such circumstances. (The couple set off for a journey in their Avis rental car with only two bottles of Coca-Cola to drink. The car got stuck in a rut. When Bishop Pike was unable to walk with her to get help, she continued without him. He died. She didn’t but before she didn’t die, she drank her urine.)

  But, as I say, we were well prepared and we had four-wheel-drive to deal with the ruts. My panic had little to do with the desert. It had to do with Barker Ranch, which had become a shrine to Manson, attracting all sorts of bikers, survivalists, Satanists, and who-knows-what-ists. Or so I had heard. And Manson still had a couple of crazy women followers from the old days who occasionally threatened people they perceived as his enemies. I knew people occasionally camped there, but otherwise I didn’t know what to expect. Why was I going? What could I learn from the place?

  But my panic also had to do with my daughter, the very same daughter who had been a newborn infant when I first read Helter Skelter. All of the fear I felt then came roaring back—a primitive, almost reptilian fear combined with intense protective instincts.

  All I could think of were the ways I had been a bad parent when my kids were young: slapping my son once in the face, leaving a red mark; subjecting my daughter to Mommy and Me swim classes; on a couple of occasions being late picking them up from summer camp. These failings may seem totally unrelated to driving out to Barker Ranch with my college-age daughter, but in those hours before dawn there was hardly anything too trivial in the parenting department for me to dredge up, and by first light I had decided to call off the excursion. It was way too risky.

  When my daughter woke up, I announced my decision. Responding in a calm and clinical voice, the kind of voice you use with someone you’re trying to coax down from a ledge or a bad acid trip, she said that perhaps my lack of sleep had made me a bit overwrought. She said she wasn’t frightened and she didn’t think I should be.

  So we embarked on our journey, following the homemade wooden signs to Golar Wash, the area where the Ranch was located. It was slow going; the sandy road was arduous, with deep potholes and giant boulders, but we were doin
g it. We had gone about ten miles when we came to a fork in the road. No signs, hand-painted or otherwise. We studied the maps. We studied the directions. Neither provided a clue.

  We got out of the car and I looked up at the rugged Panamint Mountains. In my concerned state, they were casting deep, sinister shadows as the sun seemed to be sinking toward them at an alarming rate. We had just about decided to turn back when a pickup rambled up behind us.

  A couple, Joe and Maggie, stopped and got out of their truck. She was a big-boned, freckled thirtyish blonde wearing short cutoff jeans and Frye boots. He was a burly forty-something man with pumped-up muscles and his shiny black hair in a modified mullet. He was short and very sweet and, best of all, because he was a Manson buff and lived in the area, he’d been to Barker Ranch before. He knew which fork to take and invited us to follow. Not only that, his pickup, a fire-engine red, four-by-four, Dodge Ram included an off-road winch on its front bumper, which came in handy when our car did indeed get stuck in a particularly deep rut. We caravanned the ten miles, and whatever fears I’d had the night before were completely erased. I was pretty sure neither of us was going to have to drink our pee that day.

  Barker Ranch sits high on a hill at the end of a canyon, with lookouts perfectly situated to spot any strangers coming up the canyon. Those of us of a certain age have all seen many hideouts for hole-in-the-wall gangs like this in Western movies—where scouts were assigned to watch for the U.S. Marshal. Golar Wash is a desert oasis and one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen. The homestead is surrounded by rocks and boulders and fed by crystalline streams that nourish cottonwood trees. I had not expected it to be beautiful.

  I remember feeling this kind of surprise, on a much broader scale, when I visited Rwanda post-genocide. The verdant beauty of the country was disorienting. It seemed utterly impossible that people had been hacked to death with machetes in such lush surroundings.