The Manson Women and Me

by Nikki Meredith

  “I’m sure.”

  When we were finished we had many balls of pretty wool yarn: half were periwinkle blue, and the other half were camel colored. We divided into two teams and created a game using badminton racquets.

  I loved those sweaters—Craig had good taste—but the satisfaction I felt tossing around those balls of yarn was worth the sacrifice. I wasn’t, however, quite done with him.

  His “consider it said” letter was hurtful and confusing, but his birthday stunt was so transparently mean, I wanted an explanation. I called him and suggested coffee. He wanted to take a walk. We compromised and met in front of Sproul Hall, the administration building. He was waiting when I got there. “Why don’t we find a place on the grass?” he said. The grass would have been pleasant—it was a warm, fall day—but I had an agenda. I shook my head and told him I was on a fact-finding mission, and I didn’t need or want to take the scenic route.

  I sat down on the steps. He sat down next to me. I turned to face him: “Why are you so angry at me?”

  On my walk to campus, I realized that my biggest fear was that he would deny his anger. If he did that, there would be nothing to talk about. Sure enough, he shrugged and gave me a “Who me?” look.

  “You really need evidence? First there was your letter . . . then your stunt on my birthday—”

  “I surrender,” he said, throwing his arms up dramatically, the way someone would in a hold-up in an old fashioned Western. “You’ve caught me. I was angry.”

  “Was? Your birthday stunt was two days ago.”

  He smiled, a not pleasant smile. “Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Give me a minute to think about this.”

  We sat on the steps watching students stream through Sather Gate onto campus. I wasn’t sure what I expected but something along the lines of, “You’re a bitch when you argue,” or “You don’t give me time to respond before you come back at me,” or “I can’t catch my breath.” This is how I would have answered my question.

  Finally, in almost a whisper, he said. “You took everything away from me.” He looked tearful. “Everything I cared about.”

  This, I didn’t expect. “What did I take away from you?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “You took God away from me.”

  “I . . . what?”

  “You hammered away, questioning me relentlessly . . . questioning what shouldn’t be questioned because the answers are about faith, my faith . . . day in and day out you worked on me.”

  At first I was too shocked to respond, but then I said I thought he was exaggerating. We argued about religion but I didn’t think I hammered away. I started to say more, and then I realized he wasn’t finished with his list.

  “My politics . . . you mocked my ambition . . . you belittled my strategy.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. “You mean your hands-off policy? Treating me like a stranger to get votes? That strategy? That’s not a strategy, that’s a—”

  “Hold on, I’m not done,” he said. “I know this isn’t your fault but . . . the situation with my family . . . my parents . . . because of you I—”

  I erupted. “You’re angry at me because your parents hate Jews?” I stood up, grabbed my book bag, and took off toward Telegraph Avenue. As I threaded my way against the stream of students on their way to classes, I looked back at him and yelled, “You’re crazy.”

  His reaction finished it for me, finished him for me. These days it’s called closure. It was the complaint of a little boy. I was hurt, but I knew I couldn’t revive the respect I once had for him.

  After that I started dating other guys. Self-made atheists. Life was good.

  In November, the weekend before Thanksgiving, the doorbell rang. When I answered it, I found Craig standing on the porch.

  “Look,” he said, holding up car keys. “I rented a car . . .” he pointed to a Mustang convertible that was parked in front of the house. “I know you love convertibles.”

  I figured he had another sadistic ploy in mind. A new girlfriend would pop up from the backseat. I said nothing. I waited. The man did indeed have a plan: he wanted us to get married.

  “It’s only a four-hour drive to Reno. We can get married and make a weekend out of it. I called the wedding chapel and they’re open until midnight.”

  “Craig. This is nuts.”

  “I want you to be my wife.”

  I told him, in the nicest way possible, that I thought he was insane. He lobbied. I listened politely. Finally, I told him I had laundry to wash. He said he’d check with me later to see if I changed my mind.

  I didn’t run off to Reno with him, but his grand gesture did have an effect. I agreed to go out with him when I got back from Thanksgiving vacation. He stayed in Berkeley over the holiday but wrote letters and called me long distance every day. He sent flowers. When I got back to school, we started going out again. Things were calmer. We didn’t argue and he didn’t hit me. He applied to a PhD program in economics instead of law school. He graduated in December and signed up for the Coast Guard Reserve. He was required to do six months active duty, but he’d be stationed nearby at Treasure Island. We didn’t talk about his parents.

  chapter sixty-two

  UNFORGETTING, UNFORGIVING

  In late 2016 I got a letter from Pat asking that I write to the parole board recommending her release. I was surprised by the request. In the twenty years that I’d known her, she had appeared before the board thirteen times but had never before asked. When I first knew her, she told me that she’d requested that people not write to the parole board on her behalf because she felt there was no chance she would be paroled and didn’t want them to go to the trouble. This letter, which was addressed to “dear friend,” was, as far as I knew, the first time she was organizing support for her release.

  The letter presented a problem for me. My book was finished and being shown to publishers. One of the people on whom I rely for publishing advice suggested that it would be better for me to abstain because writing it would place me in the category of advocate and detract from my credibility as a journalist. Though I had already crossed that line with Leslie a few years before, the circumstances had been different. As I explain earlier in the book, Leslie asked at a time when I had given up the idea of publishing anything about the women so I wasn’t worried about blurring the lines. Now I was.

  I agonized about the decision. Didn’t I owe this to Pat? The two of us had spent many hours together, and she had helped me understand the hold Manson had on her and the other women. Also, she was the one who talked Leslie into meeting with me in the first place. Ultimately, though, I decided to decline. Since her letter was not directed to me alone, I was able to reassure myself that she would have enough people writing on her behalf. I didn’t think the absence of a letter from me would present a problem. I wrote to her explaining all of the above.

  One of the reasons I was surprised at her request: because of the extent of her involvement in the murders, the chances for parole didn’t seem much better than when we first met. She had taken an active role in both nights of bloodshed. She had confessed to chasing down Abigail Folger before stabbing her twenty-eight times on the first night; on the second night, she was found guilty of stabbing both of the LaBiancas. After Leno LaBianca had been killed, she had plunged a fork into his abdomen and in his blood, wrote “Death to pigs,” “Arise,” and “Healter [sic] Skelter” on the walls. Because she had participated both nights, she’d been convicted of murdering seven people. And though the courts had recently ruled that the nature of the crime could not be the sole criterion for refusing parole, the details of those murders were going to be very difficult for members of parole panels to extinguish from their brains.

  If parole had been a tough sell for Leslie who was convicted of killing the LaBiancas, getting the parole board to recommend release for Pat and then getting the governor to approve it seemed like a bridge too far.
I didn’t know anyone who thought Pat had a chance. Why was she putting herself through the ordeal? If the past was any indication, she would be subjected to terrible verbal abuse by the deputy district attorney as well as the relatives of the victims. But maybe none of the above was the point. Perhaps she was simply looking for support from her friends. I didn’t think of it that way at the time. If I had, the outcome might have been different and Pat and I might still be friends.

  Weeks went by. I didn’t hear from her. Christmas came—I had always received warm holiday greetings from her—and Christmas went. Nada from Pat. I was worried.

  In spite of my anguish, the earth continued to turn on its axis and on December 29, 2016, Pat’s parole board convened. After an all-day hearing, the members of the panel voted to postpone a decision. According to a statement released by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the decision to postpone was made after Pat’s attorney, Keith Wattley, claimed that she had been a victim of intimate partner battery while she was with Manson. The panel concluded that the information warranted further investigation.

  Relatives of the victims were outraged by the reason given for the postponement. Debra Tate, Sharon Tate’s surviving sister, called it “absurd”; Anthony DiMaria, the nephew of Jay Sebring, said an investigation of this nature at this late date was “mind-boggling.”

  I saw the postponement as a chance to redeem myself. I called Pat’s lawyer’s office and found out that there was still time for me to write a letter on Pat’s behalf. I wrote her again, telling her that I’d been having second thoughts about my initial decision. Would she consider meeting with me so we could talk about it? Would she give me a chance to explain more fully what my pushes and pulls had been? I suggested a couple of dates. I didn’t hear from her. I wrote again expressing sadness about the breach. Once again, I asked for the chance to discuss what happened in person. “If, after we talk, you decide you don’t want anything to do with me, fair enough, I’ll leave you alone.” I told her I would hold every weekend free the following month until I heard from her. In closing, I wrote that given the politics in Washington, it seemed more important than ever for kindred spirits to stick together. I didn’t hear from her. Clearly, she no longer considered us kindred spirits.

  Was she hurt? Was she angry? Was she both? Whatever her reaction, I was bewildered that her feelings were so extreme that she was foreclosing even the possibility of discussing what had happened. Looking at it in the framework of crime, she was treating me as though I had committed a serious felony while I believed I had committed the equivalent of a misdemeanor. She was asking society for a measure of forgiveness for brutally murdering people. I was asking for a measure of forgiveness for initially declining to write a letter to the parole board. I not only wanted the chance to explain my decision, I wanted to hear what it had meant to her. Her unyielding refusal made me doubt how well I actually did know her.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that she was not interested in trying to understand what had happened. I’d been aware that she had unexamined areas of her psyche, but it seemed that there had been enough good stuff between us to try to salvage a relationship of twenty years. And I was the most puzzled by the abrupt way she slammed the door on the possibility.

  I remembered that once, when Pat and I were talking about movies, books, and articles about the so-called Manson Family, she had said: “All those people have gotten rich on our backs.” At the time I assumed she was referring to people who requested interviews, feigned interest in her, and after completing their projects, moved on. Did she think I was one of those people? Did she think I feigned interest in her for a couple of decades so I could achieve fame and fortune at her expense?

  My daughter wondered whether being a high-profile criminal (she used the term “celebrity criminal”) is a bit like being any kind of celebrity. (It is an apt characterization. Both Pat and Leslie have gotten requests from high school students for donations of their running shoes for school auctions—an idea that repulses both of them.) There must be times when you wonder whether people are interested in you for yourself or just want to be close to fame, even this kind of fame.

  If that was the case with Pat, maybe my refusal was proof to her that I was never interested in her in the first place. It seemed like a plausible explanation, but we’d known each other for twenty years, and even when I had abandoned the idea of writing about her, I continued to visit and to write. I thought about what Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections, who, in discussing Pat with an L.A. Times reporter, listed the qualities the parole board would be seeking: “They are looking for insight from the inmate and a sense of true taking responsibility, contrition, accountability.”

  Wasn’t I doing that? If she was asking a parole board to judge her on those issues, why couldn’t she extend that consideration to me?

  Now I had another problem. Could I, in good conscience, write a letter of recommendation to the parole board based on knowing Pat? When she first asked me to write the letter and I declined, it was all about my issues—my concern about my boundaries, my role. Now it had to do with my concern about hers. But was it fair of me to think that the way she cut off our relationship had anything to do with her suitability to be paroled? Did I think she would be a danger to society if released? No I didn’t but, on the other hand, I no longer believed I could claim that I knew her well enough to predict much about her at all. Once again, I struggled with the decision. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t declining to write the letter out of anger that she had “ghosted” me. Then I realized that I wasn’t angry at all—I was sad and confused. I had believed that we would know each other for the rest of our lives.

  But was I confused enough to believe that she should be deemed unsuitable? On paper, she can check most of the criteria for suitability: she’s expressed remorse for the murders; she’s served many more years than required for her offense; she had no prior criminal history. She’s made rehabilitative efforts and she’s free of disciplinary action. It is also true that she harbors a well of bitterness—but isn’t that understandable in someone who has been incarcerated for so many years? Was her anger relevant to her parole? I hadn’t thought so before but now I wasn’t so sure.

  After a few turbulent dreams, I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I couldn’t possibly answer those questions. My only responsibility was to answer one question: Did I know her well enough to recommend anything to the parole panel?

  In my life I have written three letters to parole boards. One was for my brother when I was in college and the other two were for inmates more recently incarcerated in California’s correctional system. In all three cases, if I had been asked whether I knew the person well enough to be comfortable inviting him or her to live with me and my family, the answer would have been an unqualified “yes.” In Pat’s case it would be a question mark. Writing a letter containing a question mark would not be doing her a favor.

  In many ways, convicted murderers, at least those asking for parole, have to be better than everyone else: kinder, more forgiving, more able to turn the other cheek. With every movement, gesture, decision, they need to telegraph “I am safe . . . I am above the fray of ordinary life.” In normal life, one has the luxury of snubbing a friend or acquaintance, no matter how trivial the reason. When one is applying for parole, the rules are different. It must, at times, seem unfair to be scrutinized this way. Fair or not, it is the reality. Pat’s refusal to explore the feelings in a relationship of long-standing is a refusal to play by those rules. My hunch is that there are other people in her life she’s decided to treat that way. I don’t know what to make of those decisions; I suspect I never will.

  chapter sixty-three

  “I’D BE NICE TO A STRAY DOG IF IT NEEDED HELP”

  December 1962

  There was a holiday party at the prison. My parents couldn’t go because my mother had planned some sort of celebration for foster parent
s at the Coconut Grove in L.A. that night. Craig offered to come to the prison party with me. I picked him up at a Denny’s a couple blocks from his home.

  Nothing had changed with his parents since the summer except that we had stopped talking about “it” or them. The ultimatum just sat there on the virtual table, avoided by everyone. Every once in a while, Craig would start to say something about what had happened at one of the weddings, and then he’d catch himself. I never said it, but I thought he should have boycotted them on my behalf. I knew that wouldn’t have been fair to his siblings. But I also wished that his siblings had insisted that I be allowed to come. But how could I expect that kind of loyalty from people who didn’t know me? On the other hand, what about loyalty to the principle of standing up against anti-Semitism? Craig and I tried to talk about this once right after my invitations were withdrawn, but it was clear we couldn’t.

  Craig couldn’t talk to his own parents about it, but I had to give him credit—he talked to mine. The summer his parents had issued their ultimatum, he stopped to talk to my parents on his drive back to Berkeley. He told my parents once again that he loved me but he also loved his parents and he didn’t know what to do. He reiterated that he didn’t share any of his parents’ prejudices and he was hoping that someday they would change. But he couldn’t predict.

  I don’t think my parents knew how to handle it. Or maybe they handled it perfectly by doing nothing. My mother had a history of taking on my battles even when I didn’t want her to, especially when I didn’t want her to. But she didn’t this time. Occasionally she’d ask if anything had changed and when I said no, she’d say, “I wish you didn’t have to go through this.” Before that, she’d instilled in me the policy of dumping before getting dumped though she never said it quite that way. This time was different. I’m not sure why. I had assumed she’d be outraged by his parents, but then she probably wasn’t surprised given her “scratch the surface of a gentile” philosophy.