The Manson Women and Me

by Nikki Meredith

  The relatives of the victims have picked up the theme. In Leslie’s 2010 parole hearing, Louis Smaldino, a nephew of Mr. LaBianca, said, “Miss Van Houten is a murdering terrorist, and her character does not change,” adding that she should have been executed.

  Over the years, Leslie has tried to parse what factors contributed to her attraction to Manson as well as the factors that contributed to her willingness to murder for him. She has mentioned, among other things, her alienation from her parents, the abortion her mother arranged, and her drug use. Of course, these were the very things the shrinks encouraged her to talk about, and when she answered their questions, the shrinks put what she said in her evaluations. This, to the Deputy DA, is proof that Leslie refuses to take responsibility for her behavior. “Blame Charlie, blame LSD . . . and more recently it’s blame the abortion,” Sequeira said in Leslie’s last parole hearing. “It’s blame all of these other factors. This inmate has always portrayed herself as being the victim, as being subject to these forces outside of her control that have forced her to become one of the most notorious murderers in U.S. history.”

  Examining one’s life and what influenced it in the context of a therapeutic relationship is very different from blaming others for your behavior. Since I have known Leslie, she has assumed total responsibility and has never tried to rationalize what she did; in fact, this is the only reason I was interested in getting to know her.

  In 1978, Steve Kay announced that Leslie was the only one of the Manson group that he could see being paroled one day. What changed that?

  There’s an incident in Leslie’s history that is held against her with the same frequency and almost the same intensity as are the murders. It’s her marriage in 1982. She was in her early thirties when she started corresponding with Bill Cywin, an inmate in the nearby men’s prison. When he was paroled, he started visiting her and they eventually married in a small prison ceremony. They were subsequently allowed to have a conjugal visit.

  The man had bigger plans for Leslie. He devised a nutty scheme to break her out of prison, a plan she knew nothing about. A prison matron’s uniform was discovered by the police in his apartment. As soon as Leslie learned of this, she cut off all contact with him, divorced him, and never saw him again. Steve Kay acknowledged that she knew nothing of this plan, but he continued to use it as a reason, decades later, for her unsuitability for parole. Mr. Sequeira continues the tradition. In her last parole hearing, he used the marriage as evidence of her lack of judgment.

  Leslie says Cywin was the last man in a series of bad choices she made but ultimately learned from. “I was lonely. He was a grifter, but I didn’t know it until later.”

  “How many in this room can say they haven’t made bad marriage choices thirty years ago?” asked Brandie Devall, Leslie’s lawyer at her 2010 parole hearing.

  The truth is: the truth doesn’t matter. Year after year, as Leslie has gotten better as a human being—more mature, better educated, wiser—the case against her has mounted correspondingly.

  At each hearing, the parole panel goes through the motions of making a fair decision. The panel enters the positive reports and letters of support into the record, discusses their conclusions, but then proceeds to ignore them.

  The exercise is a charade. It doesn’t matter how accomplished, insightful, or remorseful she is. No one has the courage to say the decision is political. That the case has too high a profile for fairness to apply.

  In 2006, the board once again denied parole but said she could come back in one year. This seemed reason to celebrate. Leslie was hopeful but guarded. Debra Tate, Sharon’s youngest sister, was outraged at the one-year interval. To her, this was evidence that the board was ignoring the spirit in which the crimes were committed. “The perpetrators get to dance their prison victories before the board, but [the board] doesn’t hear from the people who were murdered.”

  Historically, Debra Tate was prohibited from speaking at Leslie’s parole hearings because she was unrelated to the LaBiancas and Leslie didn’t have anything to do with killing Sharon. But in recent years, she has appeared regularly as a spokesperson for the LaBianca relatives at Leslie’s parole hearings, arguing against her release.

  The one-year date was a hopeful sign. After that, Leslie got two-year intervals until 2013 when she was given a five-year date. That hearing was the most brutal one yet. The transcript reads more like a character assassination than an honest assessment of the pros and cons of release.

  Since the advent of DNA testing and the growth of innocence clinics across the country, increasing numbers of people care about injustice. But Leslie isn’t innocent. Her best friends can pay for attorneys, but it’s hard to get the public to care. The Manson murders have embedded themselves in the national psyche in a way that’s impossible to shake loose. Even young people who weren’t alive at the time, have strong opinions.

  In addition to the horror of the murders, I have another theory about why Leslie is treated so harshly. I believe that her normality, along with her intelligence, her empathy, her warmth, is far more threatening than an inmate who seems creepy. If someone with her gifts is capable of murder, if someone with her upbringing and her basic humanity is capable of killing someone like Mrs. LaBianca, anyone is capable, and that means we can never be safe. I believe that everyone in the district attorney’s office, every person on those parole panels, and every relative of Mr. and Mrs. LaBianca is aware that we are safe from Leslie now, but they still worry. The more she is Every Woman, the more dangerous the world seems even if she isn’t.

  (Note: in 2016 both truth and justice prevailed when the parole board recommended parole. See the epilogue for the outcome.)

  chapter fifty-nine

  NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL

  Spring of 1962

  We were talking about God. It was spring break and we had just left my parents’ house in Silver Lake and were on Sunset Boulevard headed to downtown L.A. I was feeling expansive. Not because we were talking about God but because the day before I had mastered a stick shift for the first time. My newly acquired skill meant that we were able to take my mother’s new car, a fire-engine red VW Bug that I’d been wanting to drive, and I was excited about our destination. Craig had never been to Olvera Street, the tree-shaded Mexican marketplace—part of the original Pueblo de Los Angeles—and I wanted to share it with him. I didn’t care that its shops were crammed with kitsch and crowded with tourists. The aroma of perfumed candle wax, the pastel piñatas, the cactus lollypops, and the Mexican jumping beans were all a joyful part of my childhood.

  God entered the picture when I took a little detour around Echo Park to show him Angelus Temple, the church founded by evangelical preacher Aimee Semple McPherson. In addition to being the first woman to preach on the radio, in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, she was known for faith healing and for whipping up enormous crowds by speaking in tongues. Craig was religious— Lutheran or Methodist or one of those Protestant denominations I can never distinguish from each other—and I knew he harbored evangelical fantasies. Before he decided on politics, he had planned to be a minister, and he once confided that his goal had been to reach thousands, if not millions, of people with his oratory. Since I was an atheist, born and raised, we’d had a few conversations about religion, some of them testy.

  “Too bad Preacher Aimee isn’t still alive,” I said. “She could have healed your knee.” We’d been in an accident six months before, and Craig was still hobbling on his injured knee. As soon as I said it I worried that he’d take offense, but I looked over at him and he was smiling. We were on safe ground.

  “Did I ever tell you about my month as a Christian?” I said.

  “You? A Christian?” I looked over. Still smiling.

  I told him that in high school many of my friends were members of the Hollywood First Presbyterian Church, and I often tagged along to functions in the teen program. Unlike other high school parties, these were the opposite of hip and, I guess, so was I. No dri
nking, no sex, no dancing. Instead, they had taffy pulls, ice cream socials, and they played parlor games. At one of the parties, a counselor in the teen program introduced herself and invited me to join my friends the following weekend at a retreat in the San Bernardino Mountains.

  This experience combined all that was great about camp with a religious dimension that, to me, translated as emotion, topped off with a bonus of just enough heterosexuality in the mix to make it interesting. Those folks knew what they were doing. The teen boys were in a club called the Crusaders . . . they were all good looking, athletic, and looked trustworthy. Think Mitt Romney. No longer my cup of tea, but in those days that type was my ideal 1950s cute guy. I loved every minute of that retreat—flirting, swimming, singing, and, occasionally, praying. After two days of that, I buckled under the pressure to accept Christ as my savior. I think that’s what’s called born-again, though, for me, it was born-again for the first time.

  I was having fun dredging up the details for Craig, and my tone got increasingly jocular. “My parents were tolerant of my deviant behavior. I didn’t yet have my license, so they cheerfully drove me to Sunday school every week and every night, when they came into my bedroom to kiss me good night and found me reading the Bible, they said nothing. If they worried about me or laughed at my newfound religious zeal, they waited until they closed the door of their bedroom. In a way, it made sense. They always said they wanted me to be happy, and I was a happy Presbyterian. For one month, it was a match made in heaven. And then it wasn’t.”

  “What happened?” Craig asked.

  “It all started in the beginning,” I said, laughing. “You know, Genesis. That’s where it all started.” I remember liking my little joke—the double meaning of the beginning—but my audience wasn’t so appreciative.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Sunday school teacher told me to start reading the Bible at Genesis and being the good little student that I was, I did. But Genesis was a problem for me. A big problem and I brought that problem to Sunday school. I talked about the obvious . . . you know, all the stuff the Bible says about creation doesn’t make any sense . . . take evolu—” Before I could finish the word, Craig jumped in.

  “Sounds like you’re proud of being a smart ass.”

  “Come on, Craig,” I said, “are you telling me that you don’t have a little trouble with the time table in Genesis? I’m a little hazy on it now, but doesn’t the Bible tell us that God created the universe in seven days? Or was it six? Either way, it’s not logical.”

  “That’s not the point,” he said. “The point is that religion provides comfort to people. It’s about faith; logic doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters. We’re talking about young, impressionable kids.” I was into the volley so it took a while for me to become aware of how angry he was. Finally I noticed the scowl on his face.

  “Why are you getting so worked up about this?”

  “Because you have no way of knowing how important that church or that religion was to the other kids in that Sunday school class. Maybe there was a kid whose parents were getting a divorce. What if his faith was helping him get through it? And what about poor kids? Religion provides solace to them.”

  “Come on, Craig,” I said, “these were not poor kids . . . we’re talking about some of the most privileged kids in L.A.”

  “That snide remark about my knee shows . . . well, your . . . ignorance. Faith healing gives people hope.”

  “What about talking in tongues?” I asked. “Does that give you hope? Do you even know what’s being said?”

  “You are so fucking cocky.” Now he was yelling.

  I had to admit I was feeling a little cocky, but it had to do with mastering a clutch and a gearshift. I didn’t think my views on evolution and talking in tongues reflected arrogance, just common sense. “Why can’t we talk about this calmly? I can’t believe how seriously you’re taking this.”

  “Stop!” he yelled.

  “Jesus, what is going on with you? This is crazy.”

  “Let me out of the car,” he bellowed.

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Stop!”

  I kept driving.

  He suddenly reached his leg over my leg and jammed his foot on the brake. The car came to a screeching halt and both of us lurched forward. If there had been a car behind us, it would have sailed into the back of the car, launching the VW engine into our backs.

  Shaking, I pulled over to the curb. I was only seventeen, but I was certain the adrenaline surge was going to give me a heart attack. I looked at him, expecting an apology. He was defiant. “I asked you to stop!”

  He got out of the car and walked about a half block up Sunset Boulevard. I had no idea what to do. Now, of course, I wonder why I didn’t just leave him there, but I don’t think it occurred to me. I hate to admit it, but I pleaded with him to get back in the car and, eventually, he did. We didn’t go to Olvera Street and we didn’t talk. I took him back to his brother’s car that was parked at my parents’ house.

  We had argued before, but outbursts like this started after we had the accident. We’d been on a lonely stretch of Highway 99, somewhere around Turlock in the San Joaquin Valley, on our way home for Christmas vacation. A sixteen-year-old kid who’d only had his license a couple of weeks moved into our lane without signaling. We crashed into him and Craig’s right knee slammed into the car keys that were in the ignition, damaging the tendons in his knee. I hit my face on the dashboard, but, according to the paramedic, I avoided serious injury because I’d been asleep. We were in Craig’s 1949 Chevy—no bucket seats, no seat belts—so I was sleeping with my head in his lap. I was bruised and my nose and my lips were so swollen they joined together, comprising a single facial feature.

  It was a bad night for me and Craig but perhaps a worse night for the kid who’d been driving the car that hit us. When we were all in the emergency room at Turlock (it was, literally, one small room) the kid kept saying his father was going to kill him when he got home. He was standing, slightly rocking and trying to steady himself against the wall, and then he fainted, falling face-first into a crash cart. The clatter of the metal on the tile floor was terrifying. The nurses revived him with some mixture, I assume of smelling salts, and he seemed okay, but he was so scared I think he might have preferred remaining unconscious.

  For some reason the accident seemed to have unleashed anger at me. Craig hadn’t hit his head, so I didn’t understand his new belligerence.

  Even though he couldn’t walk without a crutch and my face was so grotesque people stared at me, we kept telling ourselves that we were lucky that more damage wasn’t done. But something had changed. As I said, we had always argued a bit, but now our fights were more frequent and fiercer.

  The first time he hurt me was one morning when we were eating breakfast in the dining room of our dorm complex after school started in January. Two days before, I’d confessed a flirtation I’d had with a guy who also lived in the same complex. I don’t know why I confessed it. I told myself that my motive was honorable . . . I didn’t want us to have secrets between us. It’s quite possible, however, that it was retribution for Craig’s policy of not acknowledging me as his girlfriend when we were on the Cal campus as part of his political calculations. As I said before, he planned to run for student body president some day and believed that girls would be more likely to vote for him if he was unattached romantically. I laughed it off, but it hurt my feelings.

  He insisted on calling the flirtation an “extra-marital affair.” When I pointed out that we weren’t married and it was not an affair but a flirtation that involved some kissing, it made him angry. When I realized that he was also hurt, even tearful, I felt terrible. I promised to cut off contact with the guy. I thought it was settled, but the next morning it became clear that it wasn’t. I was sitting next to Craig at a long, communal table, and Craig’s crutch was propped up against the table. The guy, I’ll call him Michae
l, walked by with some friends, and just as he did, Craig’s crutch slid down to the floor. Before I or Craig had a chance to retrieve it, Michael picked it up and propped it up again in the same place. I said, “Thank you.” Michael nodded at me and kept walking. Craig didn’t say a word, but he took my hand, which was in my lap twitching nervously, and smashed it forcefully against the underside of the table, bruising my knuckles. I was stunned. It hurt like hell, but I was embarrassed so I said nothing. I massaged my hand and watched it turn blue. We never talked about it.

  The next outburst was a couple of weeks later. We’d been to see Westside Story, which was playing at the Shattuck Theater. As we were walking back to the car in the underground garage after the movie, we started fighting about Natalie Wood. One of us said her singing voice had been dubbed and the other said it wasn’t. I don’t even remember which of us took which position, but I do remember the nightmarishly dim light in the garage, the dead echo to his voice as he yelled at me, and my fear as he started to wave his crutch overhead—not close enough to hit me but close enough to make me think he was going to. I felt the breeze as it passed near my head. I don’t know if he intended to strike me, but I think the possibility even scared him because he immediately cooled off. We got in the car and he drove me back to my dorm. We didn’t talk.

  I remember telling my kids about this relationship years later and how puzzled they were. It wasn’t consistent with how they saw me. My son, who was then a teenager, was especially surprised. He and I were going through a tumultuous time in our relationship, but he was protective of me and couldn’t fathom a guy hitting me.