Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover

by Jeff Guinn

  For the first forty-six years of her life, Nancy—“Nannie” to close friends and family—had ample evidence that God was rewarding her piety as the Good Book promised. She married Charlie Milles Maddox, also from Kentucky, who came back from the First World War and found work as a conductor for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. He and his bride weren’t rich but they became comfortably middle-class, at least by rural Kentucky standards. Beyond being a good provider Charlie was the kind of solid citizen that Nancy could respect as well as love. He was a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen and the Masonic Lodge. They lived happily in Rowan County in northeast Kentucky, and beginning in 1911 their marriage was regularly blessed with children. God sent Glenna in 1911, Aileene (sometimes spelled “Aline”) in 1913, Luther in 1915, and finally Ada Kathleen in 1918. When their youngest child was ten, the Maddoxes moved their brood sixty miles northeast to the sparkling city of Ashland on the banks of the Ohio River. Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia all came together around there, with the river providing convenient state boundaries. Ashland was a business port and home to several major entities, including Ashland Oil, the thirteenth-largest petroleum refining company in the United States, and steel mills that ultimately were purchased by and became part of the American Rolling Mill Company, commonly known as Armco. Barges floated the area’s timber and coal upriver and down to major metropolises like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The C&O Railroad thrived as it whisked businessmen of every stripe in and out of town. Having sensibly lived within their means back in Rowan County, Charlie and Nancy were able to buy a house on Hilton Avenue in Ashland for $5,000, a considerable sum in 1928. When the Depression crumbled the U.S. economy one year later, the Maddoxes were spared any real discomfort. Unlike many of their friends, Charlie didn’t have to worry about losing his job and ending up in a bread line. Glenna met a local boy named Cecil Racer and in January 1930 she married him in a ceremony at her parents’ house. The Ashland newspaper printed a lovely article about the wedding. Almost a year to the day later Glenna gave birth to a daughter named Jo Ann. Blessings piled upon blessings. Nancy bowed her head and gave thanks daily.

  Then suddenly everything began falling apart. In October 1931 Charlie complained of chest congestion. He died a week later of pneumonia. His loss staggered Nancy; she moaned that she felt as though she had died, too. But she soon took solace in her faith. God’s will might be mysterious, but it was not to be questioned. At least there were no immediate financial concerns. Charlie left his widow a railroad pension of about $60 a month. It was enough, if she was careful, to continue raising the three children that were still at home without Nancy having to take a job herself. Mothers in that time and place worked only if they had to. Fifteen-year-old Luther and thirteen-year-old Ada Kathleen, now called by her middle name, were still school kids, and eighteen-year-old Aileene enrolled in Ashland’s Booth Business College with the goal of becoming a secretary or perhaps a bookkeeper.

  Then came another blow. Glenna and her husband, Cecil, fought constantly, and Nancy often kept her granddaughter Jo Ann for days or took her on short trips to keep the child from being exposed to such marital strife. Nancy prayed that God would touch the battling spouses’ hearts and bring them back together, but it didn’t happen. Glenna divorced Cecil, and for a little while she and Jo Ann moved back with her mother, brother, and sisters. Nancy didn’t believe in divorce. The Bible insisted that husband and wife should cleave to each other forever. But Glenna was in every other way a dutiful daughter, and little Jo Ann now required more than ever the example of a proper Christian household. So, as God expected of her, Nancy accepted this additional heartache and soldiered on.

  Aileene graduated from business college in early 1933 and celebrated with a short trip across the river into Ohio. While she was away she developed the same sort of chest congestion that had struck down her father, was hospitalized, and, like Charlie Maddox seventeen months earlier, died within a week.

  Once again, Nancy was devastated. In every way she had followed God’s commandments and now He seemed determined to take away all the happiness that had been bestowed upon her. A woman of lesser conviction might have abandoned religion altogether, but Nancy never considered that option. Instead, she pored over biblical passages and was reminded how God used awful ways to test the faithful. Job endured all sorts of suffering, refused to betray his reverence for the Lord, and was eventually exalted for it. In fact, the Bible stated that God rewarded Job with twice as many good things as he had had before. So Nancy would endure, too. Charlie and Aileene couldn’t be given back in earthly life, but they awaited her in heaven. Meanwhile, Nancy’s beliefs gained rather than lost strength. She would continue to live a righteous life, and she became even more determined that her surviving offspring would, too. Though Nancy was tolerant of other types and degrees of faith in anyone else, with her children it was different. The Bible was explicit about a parent’s responsibility to raise sons and daughters in the way that the Lord wanted them to go, and to Nancy that meant that they must believe every word in the Bible and observe each of the Good Book’s rules and admonitions. Any deviation from this divinely mandated behavior would count against them in the eyes of God and Nancy couldn’t let that happen. If she did, she herself would have failed the Lord. So Nancy not only kept Bible reading and churchgoing mandatory, she acquired bulky books written as guides to the study of Scripture. Her copy of The Self-Interpreting Bible, Volume III, devoted to the teachings of Old Testament prophets and one of Nancy’s favorites, remains intact. In case the rest of the family didn’t fully grasp the concept of absolute obedience to the Lord or else, she underlined the most critical passages in Isaiah—Chapter 1, Verses 18 and 19: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.” In keeping with biblical carrot-and-stick instruction, Verse 20, though not underlined, bluntly spelled out the alternative: “But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

  In part, things worked out as Nancy desired. Glenna met Bill Thomas, an engine fireman with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. He hoped to work his way up to engineer and eventually did. Because of her husband, Charlie, Nancy always had special regard for railroad men, so she approved of Bill even though he had something of a temper. Glenna married him and, with daughter Jo Ann, joined Bill in North Charleston, West Virginia, about sixty-five miles from her mother’s home. Bill Thomas proved to be a loving, if strict, stepfather. He and Jo Ann quickly became close. Glenna’s successful remarriage allowed Nancy to concentrate on her two youngest children, both of whom evinced little interest in leading godly lives despite their mother’s good example and constant urging. Luther was eighteen now and Kathleen fifteen. Nancy felt that boys were always difficult to raise because of their natural rambunctiousness, and Luther suffered additionally from not having a father’s proper example anymore. Nancy never considered remarrying because Charlie Maddox had been her soul mate. Without a husband to keep her son in line, she relied mostly on nagging and prayer, hoping the combination would influence Luther to outgrow his immature interest in un-Christian carousing.

  Kathleen caused her mother even greater concern. Nancy believed girls were supposed to cheerfully obey their parents and the Bible, but Kathleen didn’t always comply. Nancy was raised as a Protestant, most likely as a Baptist, and eventually became a proud, active member of the Nazarene Church, which had conservative rules for its young ladies. They were expected to dress modestly—no sleeveless dresses or tops, for instance, and very little if any makeup. Girls were discouraged from cutting their hair based on biblical admonitions that a woman’s hair was her glory. Going to movies, dancing, interacting improperly with the opposite sex, cursing, and drinking alcohol comprised a don’t list informally known as “the Big Five” for Nazarene teens. Such corrupt
ing acts were to be avoided because they were clearly sinful.

  Nancy was baffled when Kathleen complained that her mother wouldn’t allow her to have any fun. Surely Ashland offered all the wholesome pleasures that any decent teenage girl could want. Besides church and Sunday School, which bestowed the unparalleled joy of worship, the town had lovely parks in which to stroll, soda shops, and even the South’s first enclosed shopping mall, where decent, limb-covering dresses were sold. Kathleen could enjoy these delights in the company of other nice girls from the church, and at some point she would surely come to love and marry a boy of proper Christian faith. But the willful child declared that these godly activities and future were boring. She was willing to forgo movies and makeup if she absolutely had to, but Kathleen insisted on her right to engage in something Nancy ranked with blasphemy and failure to attend church as awful sins—the girl wanted to go out dancing. Nancy tried to make her wayward daughter realize what should have been obvious: dancing, which was essentially moving one’s body in suggestive ways with a boy (who would inevitably have his unholy desires enflamed by the experience), brought girls to the very edge of Satan’s fiery pit. No good could come of it, and therefore the church forbade it, and so did her mother.

  For a little while, Kathleen let Nancy believe that she’d been persuaded. There was an empty space between the stove and the kitchen counter in the Maddox house, and if Nancy was in another room Kathleen would squeeze in there and practice jitterbugging without her mother seeing. Kathleen didn’t necessarily want to cause her mother any grief—she loved her. She considered Nancy to be a hard person, probably because of the church and the losses of Charlie and Aileene, but still well intentioned. What Kathleen couldn’t stand was her mother’s constant nagging. All Kathleen wanted was to have a little fun. Other girls she knew went to dances and wore makeup and had their hair cut fashionably short, flapper-style. These things didn’t seem sinful to her. Fifteen-year-old Kathleen wasn’t particularly pretty—she was sharp-featured like Nancy—but she had lots of personality and she was pleased that boys seemed attracted to her. Luther understood her frustration with their mother, but he spent most of his time running around with his friends and didn’t want his kid sister tagging along. Soon Kathleen decided that she would go out and dance whether Nancy allowed it or not. She had the right to live her life however she pleased so long as she didn’t do anything really bad. And if Nancy didn’t know what her youngest child was up to, that would be even better.

  The problem was that in Ashland, everybody knew everybody else and a teenage girl couldn’t even smile at a boy without someone reporting it back to her mother. If Kathleen had a good time dancing in her hometown Nancy would immediately hear about it, and Kathleen couldn’t stand being lectured for the millionth time about how she was headed straight to hell if she didn’t adhere to all those stultifying church rules.

  Fortunately for Kathleen, there was a convenient alternative to Ashland. The town was linked to Ohio by a bridge over the river, and on the other side was Ironton, a place with an exciting reputation for dance clubs and people having fun. Upstanding citizens in Ashland grumbled that Ironton was a hotbed of sin, with a red-light district replete with drinking and gambling and prostitutes on every corner, but that intrigued rather than repelled Kathleen. Having been warned about sin all her life, she wanted the opportunity to observe some of it firsthand. Her own intentions were limited to dancing, though if in the process she made some new friends who didn’t lecture her about what God did and didn’t want, well, that would be fine, too. Kathleen was fifteen and not a child anymore. She was eager to become more worldly.

  So Kathleen began sneaking out and crossing the bridge into Ohio. She discovered that Ironton had delightful clubs where the music was loud and prospective dance partners were plentiful. The most popular of these, the one where all the most convivial people seemed to congregate, was called Ritzy Ray’s, and that is probably where she met him.

  • • •

  In the 1920s farmer Walter Scott moved his family from Catlettsburg, Kentucky, to a spot near Ashland where he tried his luck tilling along the Big Sandy, a tributary of the Ohio River, before giving up farming and going to work in a mill. Scott’s two sons soon gained local reputations as con men. Darwin and Colonel—the latter a given name, not a military rank—found sporadic employment at local mills but preferred loot from illicit schemes. Their most notorious scam involved a bridge over the Ohio between Ashland and Catlettsburg. The structure was originally private, built by an entrepreneur who charged the public 10 cents to cross. The state bought the bridge and repealed the toll, but the Scott brothers took over the empty toll booth and made money for four days until word spread that there was no longer a crossing fee. The Scott boys, their pockets jingling with dimes, lay low until the furor died down.

  Colonel Scott was a strapping, handsome fellow who very much enjoyed the seamy pleasures that Ironton offered. He was a smooth talker and fifteen-year-old Kathleen Maddox was the perfect prey for his smarmy charm. Since Scott was twenty-three, Kathleen felt flattered to receive the attentions of an older man. He let her think that he really was an Army colonel. Scott also failed to mention that he was married. They danced, Scott treated Kathleen to drinks, undoubtedly her first (Why not? Everybody else in the place was drinking), and she felt quite sophisticated. Kathleen began crossing the Ironton Bridge to see her new beau on a regular basis. Clearly, he loved her and she loved him back.

  In the spring of 1934 Kathleen discovered that she was pregnant. When she told Colonel Scott, he said that he had just been called away on military business, but he’d return soon. It was several months before Kathleen realized that he had no intention of having any further contact, let alone marrying her.

  Kathleen didn’t keep her pregnancy secret from Nancy. The teenager was not disowned. Despite having her most baleful predictions confirmed, Nancy still loved the girl. But to remain in her mother’s house Kathleen was informed that she must set aside her sinful ways and live according to biblical strictures. The baby would be raised in the church. Kathleen, queasy in early pregnancy, clung as long as she could to the belief that Colonel Scott would return and rescue her from the dull future that she’d been sentenced to by her mother. But as Scott stayed away and the baby in her belly began to kick, Kathleen’s emotions spun into adolescent rage. How dare Colonel Scott get her pregnant and then not marry her? Somehow, she’d show him and he’d be sorry. She might not have been the most sensible girl, but she still had plenty of gumption. In one sense her mother’s example did influence her; Kathleen was determined to be married. She wanted a man like Charlie Maddox who would take care of her and the baby, someone who would provide her child with a name and her with a home and maybe make Colonel Scott jealous all at the same time. She had a candidate in mind.

  Very little is known about William Manson apart from some sketchy military information and perfunctory death records. He was born in 1909 in West Virginia and died fifty-two years later in California. He is buried in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. William was a small man; when he enlisted in the Army in 1942 his height was recorded as five foot eight and he weighed 136 pounds. Under “Civil Occupation,” the military noted “unskilled machine shop.” A 1909 business directory for Wheeling, West Virginia, lists “Wm. G. Manson” as an insurance agent. That may be his father or an uncle.

  How William knew Kathleen Maddox in 1934 remains a mystery. He may have been another regular at Ritzy Ray’s who’d made it clear that he was attracted to the spunky teenager. Perhaps she met him after Colonel Scott got her in trouble and then abandoned her. Somehow they connected. On August 21 a marriage license was issued for William and Kathleen. The groom’s age was correctly listed as twenty-five. Kathleen fudged considerably and claimed to be twenty-one, which means that Nancy wasn’t informed in advance about the wedding. Since Kathleen was still only fifteen, if she’d told the truth about how old she was, her mother’s permission would have
been required for her to marry. Court records filed a few years later suggest that William knew the baby carried by his bride was the child of another man, though the possibility remains that he thought the child was his. In any event, the couple came to some understanding and Kathleen had a husband.

  On November 12, 1934, Kathleen delivered a healthy baby boy at Cincinnati General Hospital. The child’s birth certificate, filed on December 3, contained no taint of illegitimacy. His father was listed as William Manson, now of Cincinnati, a “laborer” employed at a dry cleaner’s. The infant was named Charles Milles Manson in honor of his maternal grandfather.

  The Bible directed Nancy to hate the sin and love the sinner, so she came to Cincinnati to see the new mother and to meet her grandson. Photographs show her cuddling infant Charlie and beaming. Despite the circumstances of his conception, Nancy adored the child and was determined to see that he was raised in godly fashion.

  Kathleen also loved her son, but upon turning sixteen she was as devoted to having a good time as she was to being a good wife and mother. The goals proved incompatible. Nothing much is known about Kathleen and William’s marriage, including where they lived, though it seems likely they stayed in or around Cincinnati. Kathleen began going out at night without her husband, sometimes even showing up unexpectedly in Ashland or Charleston to drop off Charlie with his grandmother or Aunt Glenna while she caroused. Nancy and Glenna were concerned that Charlie was often left with unsuitable baby-sitters. Kathleen disappeared for days at a time with her brother, Luther, who was now happy to bring his younger sister along on his escapades. Nancy, frantic and expecting the worst, told friends that her children ranged as far as Chicago, where she believed Kathleen met men in bars, enticed them outside with promises of forbidden affection, and then turned them over to Luther to be beaten and robbed. It’s certainly possible Kathleen and Luther tried to con newfound pals in bars out of their money, but any more extreme scenario at that time seems unlikely, since brother and sister soon proved completely unskilled at criminal violence. But Kathleen definitely drank and danced and to Nancy any woman who committed those sinful acts, even her daughter, was capable of any awful thing.