The Manson Women and Me

by Nikki Meredith

  Manson promoted an ongoing Mardi Gras, leading the way by constantly changing the style of his clothing, his beard, the length of his hair, and even his personality, alternating between slow-paced and soft-spoken to boisterous and wired. His unpredictability kept everyone on edge but also gave them permission to try out new personas; in addition to changing appearances, everyone adopted aliases. Leslie was LuLu, Pat was Katie, Susan was Sadie, Catherine was Gypsy. A new costume, a new name, a new identity—all of it helped to shed inhibitions and old values acquired from parents, church, teachers. Smoking weed and dropping acid also played a part.

  The system was patriarchal: Manson was the boss; men like Tex Watson were his top deputies; women were subservient and their roles rigidly structured. The “backstreet” girls, the women Manson deemed less attractive, were assigned to care and maintenance. “Front street” girls were more attractive and used as bait to lure new male recruits into the fold. But that didn’t mean they had more standing in the hierarchy. Pat, who functioned as a surrogate mother, managing meals, laundry, and child care, was, according to Leslie, at the very top. “I don’t think Pat ever recognized how much status she had among the women. I, for one, worshipped her.”

  Leslie said that when she found out that Pat had gone to the Tate house that first night, it gave legitimacy to Manson’s “Helter Skelter” plan. “It had a huge influence on me,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that I blame her for my actions, I don’t. It’s only to describe how influential she was in the group.” (For an explanation of Manson’s “Helter Skelter” scheme see chapter 13.)

  Pat’s view is a little different. She knows that she provided support and comfort to the other women and feels guilty about it because she was responsible for some of them sticking around. But she was unaware of Leslie’s adulation and didn’t realize that her actions the first night inspired Leslie to go the second night. She said her focus was on keeping her head down to avoid Manson’s wrath.

  Manson intuitively knew how to manipulate their anxiety about their place in the hierarchy, keeping them constantly off-balance. With one hand he conferred status; with the other he took it away. Pat may have been the designated surrogate mother, but when she made mistakes—a shirt crease in the wrong place, the soup too cold, the lemonade too warm, his dinner not warm enough—he would berate her mercilessly, claiming that if she really loved him, she would take care of his needs properly.

  The very qualities that earned Leslie the “front street” designation—her coltish beauty, her good breeding, her solid middle-class background—also earned her Manson’s scorn. At first it was subtle. He never called her by name, only “whatshername.” Eventually, whatshername became “stupid,” and then he started savagely criticizing her for questioning his philosophy or any of the increasing number of rules. “There you go again,” he’d say. “That question is just another example of your parents . . . you haven’t gotten rid of them yet.”

  This left Leslie longing to be on the inside with the ones who were close to Charlie. According to Leslie, Manson held up a girl named Dianne Lake (nickname Snake) as a role model. When she was a little girl, her parents had joined a commune where she was introduced to group sex and LSD. When she joined Manson at the age of thirteen, it was with her parents’ approval. He said she was the ideal: an empty vessel. “She was very young and we were all jealous of her,” Leslie said. Eventually, however, even Dianne Lake wasn’t submissive enough for him. One day when he was angry at her, he hit her over the head with a chair and kicked her across the room.

  In The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo contends that almost any individual is capable, depending on the circumstances, of being transformed from an ordinary person to someone capable of committing horrendous acts. “That knowledge does not excuse evil: rather it democratizes it, sharing its blame among ordinary actors rather than declaring it the province only of deviants and despots—of Them, but not Us.”

  Zimbardo reviews case after case of these kinds of situations worldwide. In a study of torturers in Brazil, torturers and death squad executioners were not unusual or deviant in any way prior to practicing their new roles, nor were there any persisting pathologies among any of them in the years following their work as torturers and executioners. Their transformation was caused by a combination of factors: intense camaraderie, indoctrination around ideas of national security, and the whipping up of anger that socialists and communists were enemies of their state.

  Their actions were entirely explainable as being the consequence of a number of situational and systemic factors, such as the training they were given to play this new role; their group camaraderie.

  Since 1971 when Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment, numerous studies have been done that demonstrate to what an alarming degree anonymity diminishes accountability. Perhaps that’s not surprising, but what is surprising is how quickly it can happen.

  While I believe that Pat and Leslie were subjected to extremely manipulative techniques, it’s still astonishing that the socialization of a lifetime was stripped away in a few months and that it took more than five years for their basic humanity to re-emerge.

  chapter fifty-three

  “A DAMN GOOD WHACKING”

  1968–1969

  Manson gradually, if somewhat chaotically, created threats from several quarters. He became expert at inciting anger in the group on his behalf; his supply of enemies wasn’t quite as vast as those ISIS has in its inventory, but, while he couldn’t go wide, he went deep; he drew from a reservoir of his own anger and transferred it to Tex and the women. The source of the anger included:

  • Manson’s dreadful childhood. His stories of abuse and neglect by parents drew on the women’s sympathy for him and stimulated anger at society; eventually that anger generalized and was used to justify murdering the Tate-LaBianca victims who represented middle-class society.

  • Manson’s fixation on getting a deal with a record company. He was a mediocre talent at best, but his hopes were inflated when Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys and Terry Melcher (Doris Day’s son) hung out with him. Melcher ultimately declined to produce a record. To save face, Manson lied and told the members of the group that he had made a deal and Melcher reneged. His humiliation was converted to anger at Dennis Wilson and Terry Melcher. That anger, which his followers absorbed, consumed him.

  • The convoluted mess that was “Helter Skelter” and the race war. According to the book Helter Skelter, this delusion of Manson’s was based on a blend of messages he gleaned from the Beatles’ White Album and the New Testament and fueled by the racial tensions that existed in the late 1960s. When the White Album was released, he gathered the family around and made them listen to it over and over and over. Each song had prophetic significance and provided a musical road map to the future. “Piggies” described the disgusting sense of entitlement enjoyed by the rich and powerful and concluded that the rich and powerful needed a “damn good whacking.” “Blackbird” predicted an uprising by the downtrodden blacks—“this was the moment for them to arise”—“Revolution” was a call to arms. “Helter Skelter” was the name for the chaos to come.

  Manson was a disciple of Dale Carnegie, and by using his techniques, he got the group to take ownership of the words of the White Album. He convinced them that it was not only a call to arms to the entire world, it was specifically directed toward Manson and the Family. He was convinced also that the Beatles would become followers of his. Mixed in there were prophesies from the New Testament—further proof that all of this was divine intervention.

  The Family was collecting dune buggies that would provide them with transport to the bottomless pit in the desert; they would hide out in said bottomless pit until called upon by the victorious blacks to govern.

  It was never entirely clear when the race war would start, but in the process of selling drugs to accumulate money for the dune buggies, Manson killed a black drug dealer. After that he was convinced and convinced his followers that
the Black Panthers were after them. They started amassing weapons along with the dune buggies. Charlie told them that anyone who defected would either be slaughtered in the racial cataclysm or they would be made into slaves serving black masters. Their choice was to be a slave or a ruler.

  In Swann’s terms, identity fusion coalesced around two beliefs: members of the Family were the most special people on earth; Manson must always be obeyed. And then there were his mumbo jumbo proclamations. He constantly reminded them that all things are the same: love and hate, sanctity and sin, life and death. The Family was meant to rule the earth. After “Helter Skelter,” they would reign benevolently and the world would become a far better place, so they had to do whatever was necessary to bring about that era. If it meant killing, so be it. It would not be murder, because the spirit was what counted; you didn’t kill anyone’s spirit . . . you just sent it to a different place. These were acceptable sacrifices to the eventual greater good.

  According to Swann, once an individual’s identity has fused with the group, it becomes important to parade the extent of that commitment. “I’ll do more for my group than any other group members would do.”

  chapter fifty-four

  THE SWASTIKA

  October 2016

  I once asked Leslie about her reaction when Manson showed up in court with a swastika carved on his forehead. (Originally he had carved an X on his forehead to symbolize his removal from society.) Leslie (along with Pat and Susan) followed suit and seared an X on her forehead with a hot bobby pin. After getting to know Leslie’s mother and learning about her upbringing, I wondered what her reaction was to that symbol. It may seem like a trivial question, given that she was being tried at the time for murdering two innocent people. That, too, was against the values her mother had instilled. But to anyone growing up so soon after World War II, the swastika was a powerful and jarring symbol. This man had been a Christ-like figure to her and now he was claiming allegiance to Hitler. How did that square with what she knew about him?

  When I asked her about it, she told me she was stunned when she saw him with the swastika on his forehead. She questioned him and he told her it was some kind of Native American symbol. “As usual he was telling me one thing and meaning something else.” She doesn’t remember anti-Semitic talk before that . . . that language seemed to come with the trial. “When he told me it was a Native American symbol, I held on to that. I saw the media’s reaction as yet another example of how he was being misunderstood and persecuted.”

  chapter fifty-five

  YES, SHE WOULD KILL FOR HIM

  August 10, 1969, Spahn Ranch

  Something big had happened the night before. Leslie didn’t know exactly what it was, but she knew it was part of Manson’s “Helter Skelter” plan. She concluded from the comments she’d overheard in the morning that unlike previous outings, this one had not been a trial run. In the past they had conducted what they called “creepy crawlies.” They would all dress in black and break into people’s houses as dress rehearsals. The point was not to be detected. On the previous night’s venture, confrontation was the point. She was pretty sure people had died. She knew Pat had been included, along with two others of Charlie’s inner circle: Tex and Susan.

  Leslie felt terrible at being left out. The fact that Linda Kasabian, a new member of the group, was invited along as the driver was salt in the wound. Mid-morning, Leslie met Charlie on the boardwalk and he stopped her and asked, “Do you believe enough in what I say and who I am to kill?”

  She did not hesitate. Yes, she believed in him and yes, she would kill for him. She was desperate for his approval. She would do anything for his approval. She wanted him to know she would be obedient. A good soldier. That she was ready to lay her life on the line for him. She didn’t know what the assignment would be. She didn’t care. She would do what she was told to do. She would try to live up to Charlie’s selection of her. She was, at last, on the inside. She was happy.

  chapter fifty-six

  INSATIABLE AND WARPED NEED FOR LOVE

  From the outset of this inquiry, after meeting Pat and Leslie, I was looking for what I call my “Priscilla Phillips” moment. Because I have often written about subcultures, as well as individuals behaving aberrantly, I’ve always found it essential to find something in my life that corresponded—no matter how remotely—to the experience of my subjects. The first in-depth magazine article I wrote as a rookie reporter was about a social worker named Priscilla Phillips, a woman who was convicted of intentionally killing her three-year-old daughter by surreptitiously spiking her baby formula with baking soda. The baking soda caused a deadly imbalance in the child’s electrolytes and required extended hospitalizations. The little girl was subjected to countless tests, including exploratory surgery, in which surgeons opened up her weakened little body from stem to stern. These repeated assaults accumulated and eventually killed the child.

  During the trial, in an effort to establish a motive, the prosecutor’s expert psychiatric witness testified that it was a case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy—in essence, Priscilla was a mother who made her kid sick in order to garner attention and sympathy for herself. (This was Martin Blinder, the same psychiatrist who devised the “Twinkie defense” for Dan White.)

  At the time, my own daughter was three, the same age as Priscilla’s when she killed her. One rainy afternoon, stumped and desperate to take a break from my deadline, I escaped from my office that was littered with half-empty coffee cups and crumpled false starts and repaired to the living room to spend time with my daughter. She wanted to dance. She wanted to dance to The Beatles. I put on the White Album and watched her dance to “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” in that unfettered way toddlers dance. I wept. How on earth could a mother want to end the life of such a joyful little creature? I knew I wouldn’t be able to write the article if I couldn’t tap into the motivation, and I didn’t buy the prosecution’s theory. (I could understand killing a child impulsively—out of anger, sleep deprivation, frustration—but systematic poisoning?)

  And then I remembered the relationship I had with my childhood dog. When I was around six, I started gratuitously scolding her. Randomly and without provocation, I’d shake my finger and say, “Bad girl, bad girl.” She’d put her tail between her legs and slump into the corner. Then I would tell her that she was a good girl, a very good girl. She was so relieved that she was forgiven for her non-existent crime, she’d wag her tail furiously and lick my face. (Even now I feel ill when I think about it.)

  And then I understood: Priscilla Phillips didn’t want to kill her kid, she wanted to make her sick because of her insatiable and warped need for love, for the little girl to cling to her, to be totally dependent on her. I could have been wrong, I don’t think I was, but establishing that link to my life experience helped me write the article. Her behavior was still demonic, but I could see it in a human context. Hard as I tried, even after living with this material for years, I could find no such entry point to either Leslie’s or Pat’s violent behavior. The “Priscilla Phillips” moment continued to elude me, and I realized that I would have to settle for other ways of understanding the women.

  chapter fifty-seven

  THE ULTIMATUM

  Summer of 1961

  I left El Cholo and returned to my parents’ house in Santa Monica where I told them what happened with Craig’s parents. They were as shocked as I had been. We talked and talked and talked until we couldn’t talk anymore. Since there wasn’t much we could do, eventually talking seemed pointless.

  I got up early to take a walk. My first stop was at Pacific Ocean Park, the amusement pier. When I was in high school my dream was to have a summer job there. I applied many times, and on every application I wrote that I’d be willing to take any assignment—even work at the cotton candy counter in spite of the fact that you got spun sugar in your hair, on your eyebrows, and on the fine hairs of your arm. I was never hired.

  When I got to the Senior Center on the Venice
Beach walk, I felt a rush of affection for the old Jews clustered around the benches and picnic tables playing chess and mah-jongg even at that early hour. The women all looked like versions of my grandmother—leathery faces, wispy gray hair, and babushkas. No matter the season, they all wore threadbare wool coats and carried around shopping bags, and they all looked as though they’d just walked off the steerage compartment of the boat, chicken feathers from the shtetl still in their hair.

  They had come in waves, the first in the late 1800s fleeing the sadistic boots of the Cossacks; in the second wave, fleeing the sadistic boots of the Nazis. It was agonizing that they were being forced to flee again, this time by work boots of the construction companies hired by developers who were beginning to tear down the single-occupancy hotels, the only places they could afford to live. The vision the developers had—high-end, high-rise apartment buildings—prevailed and destroyed that community.

  When I was younger and walked there with my mother, she always stopped to speak Yiddish to the women, and invariably one or more of them would pinch my cheek until it hurt. Shayna maidel (pretty girl) one would say as my mother looked on admiringly. As a kid, I didn’t like those pinches on my cheek but today I felt affection for this ragtag remnant of my grandmother’s tribe. I also felt a flash of anger. I thought about Craig’s parents. How dare they? Maybe they were too young to know about pogroms, or Cossacks, but surely they knew what came later. They knew about Hitler. Craig’s father served in the military in World War II. Why would I want to have anything to do with them? Why would I want to attend those goddamn weddings? Why would I want to be involved with their perfect specimen of an Aryan son?