by Jeff Guinn
Charlie began a series of transfers among high-security California prisons. No wardens wanted him. His mere presence drew media and public attention, and on the occasions when he was allowed into the general population other prisoners threatened him. Whenever Charlie found himself in the same facility with Roger Dale Smith he had a protector. Otherwise, he was on his own. His protection agreement with the Aryan Brotherhood broke down when Charlie denounced Gypsy’s relationship with Kenneth Como—Family women weren’t supposed to be in love with anyone but Charlie. When Como and Charlie both found themselves at Folsom State Prison, they fought; the bigger, tougher Como and some of his Aryan Brotherhood cohorts beat Charlie badly. Charlie was transferred back to San Quentin soon afterward. A Family crisis ensued. Gypsy and Mary Brunner recognized Como as their new leader. Squeaky contacted all the Family members that she could, urging them to remain faithful to Charlie. Squeaky and Sandy worked hard to hold things together, renting a series of houses around the state, offering places to live to other Family women like Nancy Pitman and sometimes aligning themselves with members of the Aryan Brotherhood who didn’t have it in for Charlie. These arrangements were combustible. The men sometimes supported the households with armed robberies, and there was considerable paranoia about potential snitches within the group. When one of them, James Willett, was murdered, Squeaky and Nancy Pitman were among those arrested for the crime. Nancy received a five-year sentence as an accessory after the fact, and Squeaky was released due to insufficient evidence. Willett’s wife subsequently died while playing Russian roulette in a scene grimly reminiscent of the death of Zero several years before. Then and later, no one was ever certain just how many murders might be connected to the Family.
Besides being charged by Charlie with holding the Family together, Squeaky also felt responsible for keeping her leader—and his followers—in the public eye. Charlie wasn’t the only one among them who enjoyed being famous. Squeaky kept working on her book; the manuscript now totaled several hundred pages, many handwritten and illustrated with Squeaky’s drawings. It extolled Charlie’s philosophy of the world as a single extended community, with everyone part of a greater whole. Violence, let alone murder, went unmentioned. Squeaky managed to get her work to an editor at an East Coast publisher, and waited confidently for the offer of a contract. Instead, she received a pointed query: “Enough of this Love-Love-Love. Where’s the Kill-Kill-Kill?” Squeaky concluded that it would take something other than her book to remind the world that nothing was more important than Charlie Manson, and, by association, his most devoted disciples.
During the summer of 1973, Kathleen Maddox died of a sudden brain hemorrhage. She never recovered emotionally from the trauma caused by Charlie. Though Kathleen believed that Charlie had been incorrigible from early childhood, she still felt responsible for his crimes: If only she’d been a better parent, if only she’d been stricter with him, or more lenient, or something, anything. In particular, her daughter, Nancy, recalled, every time Kathleen saw Doris Day on television, she would break down and cry.
Bruce Davis claimed that he found the Lord in prison, and wanted to share the Good Word with others. He began writing to Susan Atkins. She initially misunderstood the purpose of his letters, thinking he was wooing her for himself rather than Christ. But Susan was inspired enough by the letters and by her own Bible readings to experience her own epiphany in 1974. She proclaimed herself born-again and set out to serve God with the same enthusiasm she once proselytized for Charlie Manson. In letters announcing her new faith, she compared herself to Moses and Paul. Susan never aimed low. She also published a memoir titled Child of Satan, Child of God. In the process, she alienated Leslie Van Houten, who thought that Susan was taking the easy way out, saying that now she was forgiven for all her sins. The two women would not speak for more than twenty years.
Though they didn’t turn to Christianity as a basis for personal redemption, Leslie and Pat did gradually wean themselves from Charlie. Without his constant presence in their lives, pressuring them with hypnotic sermonizing and physical abuse, they attempted to regain a sense of emotional balance. Gypsy and Mary Brunner were eventually paroled; Mary successfully disappeared from public view, anonymously raising her son by Charlie. Gypsy met with the press following her release and talked about making her own record album. But Susan, Pat, and Leslie remained incarcerated at the California Institution for Women, hoping that at some point parole boards would decide that they, too, had paid sufficiently for their crimes.
Tex Watson also announced that he had found the Lord. He began an evangelical ministry and, with the help of a prison chaplain, published a memoir about his time with the Family and the miracle of his Christian conversion. In the book, Tex speculated that Charlie was possessed by demons. Charlie’s response included Susan as well as Tex: “If they’re following God the way they followed me, with their own interests always in mind, then God can’t be too proud.”
Charlie had a new faith, too, though it was mostly intended for his remaining female followers rather than himself. He wrote to Squeaky that she should now consider herself a nun in “the Order of the Rainbow,” whose members must avoid all fleshly temptation: “No fornication or showing your ass.” Squeaky and the other nuns were not to eat meat, smoke, or wear makeup. They should not watch “movies with violence.” More and more, Charlie lectured them about environmental concerns. The real enemies were corporations that polluted nature. Squeaky and Sandy assembled a hodgepodge of new followers that they collectively named the International People’s Court of Retribution, environmental vigilantes who would exact revenge on corporate polluters. These criminals would be warned by letter to stop polluting or die. Sandy and Squeaky sent out press releases, and were frustrated when the flood of stories that they anticipated failed to materialize. Impossible as it seemed to them, the media believed there were more important things to write about. In August 1974 the Watergate political scandal brought down Richard Nixon, who resigned the presidency. The cease-fire in Vietnam fell apart as soon as American troops were gone; the Vietcong eventually surrounded and overran Saigon. The military intervention that tore American society apart was, in the end, for nothing.
Charlie’s return to the limelight was initiated by a surprising source. Despite Vincent Bugliosi’s ambitions, the Tate-LaBianca trial did not serve him as a political springboard. In 1972 he lost a tough race for district attorney. But in November 1974, Bugliosi and veteran true crime writer Curt Gentry published Helter Skelter, Bugliosi’s first-person account of Charlie’s apprehension, prosecution, and conviction. Written with exceptional pacing and flair—the opening page declared, “The story you are about to read will scare the hell out of you”—Helter Skelter was a sensation, selling through several printings in the first few weeks, eventually seven million copies in all. If most of the world had forgotten about Charlie, they were forcefully reminded of him now. He was depicted by Bugliosi as a charismatic, conniving degenerate who enticed willing followers to slaughter innocents in pursuit of a sick, apocalyptic vision of personal power. The image of a manipulative monster was branded indelibly on the imaginations of readers. When a TV miniseries based on the book aired two years later, it set ratings records. Thanks to Helter Skelter, Charlie was reestablished as America’s most sinister celebrity.
Ten months later, Squeaky went Helter Skelter one better.
Squeaky Fromme hated the book and denounced it to anyone who would listen. In particular she resented Bugliosi’s strong suggestions that the Manson Family had murdered more than the nine people that were public record. It was a tough time for Squeaky. Her own book remained unpublished. She and Sandy weren’t allowed to communicate directly with Charlie—prison officials thought their letters to and from him included code for an escape attempt. The two women had moved to Sacramento to be closer to him at Folsom, but he had been transferred back to San Quentin. Squeaky wanted the public always to be aware of Charlie, but not because of a book that was making Buglio
si rich and famous. Charlie was all about the environment, not some murders six years ago. Something memorable must be done to make that point.
On the morning of September 5, 1975, President Gerald Ford walked across the street from his hotel to the California state capitol in Sacramento, where he was to meet briefly with Governor Jerry Brown. Ford’s schedule was no secret; it had been published in the local papers. A small crowd lined the president’s walking route. Among them was Squeaky, dressed in a red nun’s habit and concealing beneath her robes a bulky Colt .45 semiautomatic handgun. Ford noticed the colorful outfit; the woman seemed to want to shake hands. As he turned toward her, Squeaky raised the gun. She was tackled by a Secret Service agent who grabbed the weapon and wrestled her to the ground as other agents hustled Ford away. Squeaky complained, “Can you believe it? It didn’t go off,” and asked the agent who’d tackled her, “Why are you protecting him? He’s not a public servant.”
With Squeaky in custody, authorities raided the apartment where she lived with Sandy and another woman. Sandy denied knowing anything about the assassination attempt, but claimed that she and her friend were trying to “wake you people up” about the dangers of pollution. Boxes of evidence were hauled away, including threatening materials intended for mailing to corporate executives.
In San Quentin, Charlie swore that Squeaky had acted on her own. A prison spokesman told reporters that Charlie’s “initial reaction was noncommittal and surprised.” But to many readers of Helter Skelter and those who kept reading and hearing about him in the newspapers and on TV, the Ford assassination attempt proved that even from his prison cell Charlie Manson still controlled potential murderers. Squeaky was in custody, but who knew how many more of his minions were out there? Not even the president was safe if killing was Charlie’s will.
The subsequent trial garnered Squeaky all the publicity she wanted for Charlie, if not for their environmental causes. The proceedings dominated national headlines and the covers of weekly newsmagazines. In November, Squeaky was found guilty of attempting to assassinate the president and sentenced to life in prison. When the sentence was formally passed by the court, she threw herself on the floor and howled. Sandy was subsequently indicted for violating Postal Service regulations by sending threatening letters and received a fifteen-year sentence. She and Squeaky were both sent to a federal women’s prison in Alderson, West Virginia.
In October 1975, four and a half years after she fled prior to sentencing for poisoning Barbara Hoyt with LSD, Ruth Ann Moorehouse was arrested in Sacramento. Ruth Ann said that in April 1971 she was nine months pregnant and didn’t want to give birth in jail. She added that since her disappearance she’d married, had a second child, and divorced. Three weeks later a California Superior Court judge set Ruth Ann free, noting that she no longer had anything to do with the Family and that, while still a child, she was “thrown willy-nilly into the Manson cult by her father.” Ruth Ann was represented in court by Paul Fitzgerald.
The California courts overturned Leslie Van Houten’s murder conviction in 1976, ruling that Maxwell Keith had had insufficient time to prepare after replacing Ronald Hughes as her attorney. Vincent Bugliosi was gone from the DA’s office, so Stephen Kay prosecuted Leslie’s new trial. Jurors had to determine whether she was guilty of first degree murder or manslaughter. If they chose the latter, Leslie would be freed based on time already served. The jury deadlocked, with seven voting for murder and five for manslaughter. Kay tried the case again; in the interim, Leslie made bail and spent a few months out in the world. But the second jury ruled her guilty of murder, and she was returned to the California Institution for Women.
Squeaky and Sandy wanted badly to be transferred from West Virginia to a new women’s prison in Pleasanton, California. With the exception of one newspaper interview in which Squeaky swore that the Manson Family was thriving, they had behaved themselves in West Virginia and their request was granted. But after they arrived in Pleasanton, they reverted to their old intransigence. Squeaky attacked another inmate with a claw hammer, screaming that her victim was “a white middle-class rich bitch and doesn’t deserve to live.” Squeaky was immediately shipped back to West Virginia; Sandy was allowed to go with her.
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Charlie wrote the warden of the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville, the same facility where his mother and Uncle Luther had once been imprisoned, asking to be transferred there. The warden responded that before he’d welcome Charlie “it will be a cold day in hell.” Charlie remained at a California prison in Vacaville, where he was allowed out into the general population. It was a mistake. He was attacked by another inmate. Jan Holmstrom, imprisoned for the murder of his father, doused Charlie with paint thinner and set him ablaze. Charlie suffered second- and third-degree burns to his face, scalp, and hands. Holmstrom, who had argued with Charlie about religion, told prison authorities that “God told me to kill Manson.” Afterward, Charlie was transferred yet again to San Quentin.
Back in the West Virginia prison, Squeaky pined for contact with or even news of Charlie. In December 1987, she escaped after hearing a false report that Charlie had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. Squeaky was recaptured two days later, having managed to flee only two miles. For the escape attempt, five years could have been added to her sentence plus a fine of up to $250,000. But Squeaky’s effort was so inept that the judge added just fifteen months, and assessed her $400. She began a series of transfers to facilities around the country, ending up in Fort Worth, Texas.
Charlie remained an iconic, controversial figure. Anything about him was news, including appearances before parole boards, where he frequently indulged in histrionics before eventually boycotting them altogether. He would never be seriously considered for parole and knew it.
But he also knew how to make the most of his ongoing celebrity, using the media at carefully selected intervals to remind the public just how dangerous he remained. Charlie’s most notorious outburst aired in 1988, when he snarled to TV interviewer Geraldo Rivera that “I’m going to chop up some more of you motherfuckers. . . . I’m going to pile you up to the sky.” Watching Charlie on TV, reading his print interviews, Leslie Van Houten felt frustrated—everyone must believe that Charlie had always been ranting and bloodthirsty. What kind of idiots would ever have followed him? Nobody knew or cared about the way Charlie could, when he wanted, win over almost anyone with soothing words and warm smiles. But Leslie remembered Charlie’s pledge to the Family that, if he was ever arrested, he would play “Crazy Charlie.” What the world had seen in all the years since his arrest and conviction for the Tate and La-Bianca murders was an act. She decided that in this, if nothing else, Charlie Manson proved to be a man of his word.
In 1988, a band called the Lemonheads recorded Charlie’s “Home Is Where You’re Happy”; Guns N’ Roses followed in 1993 with a version of “Look at Your Game, Girl.” Charlie earned royalties from both, but never saw a penny. Thanks to the original 1971 court judgment, all the money went to Voytek Frykowski’s son, Bartek.
Susan Atkins was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008, and passed away the next year. To the end of her life she repudiated Charles Manson and worked diligently in programs designed to assist young women inmates. In 1987 she married attorney James Whitehouse, who represented her in her final parole hearings. He remains devoted to her memory. Susan also reconciled with Leslie Van Houten, who says, “Susan died having the one thing she always wanted, somebody to love her.”
In 2009, Squeaky Fromme was paroled from the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth. Upon her release she refused to give interviews and moved to New York state, where she was spotted in a car with a bumper sticker reading, “Born Again Pagan.”
Charles “Tex” Watson operates Abounding Love Ministries from Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California. In June 2012, a Texas judge granted the LAPD the right to review cassette tapes made in 1969–70 by Watson with his lawyer, Bill Boyd. The basis for the LAPD’s app
eal was that Watson may have discussed additional Manson Family murders on the tapes.
Pat Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten remain at the California Institution for Women. They freely mingle with other inmates. Both have completed college degrees, and Leslie earned a master’s. She works in educational programs for inmates; Pat trains rescue dogs to serve the handicapped.
The house on Waverly Drive where Leno and Rosemary LaBianca died looks much the same, except for a changed street number. A pool has been added, and a carport. The Los Feliz neighborhood is quiet.
But the house on Cielo where Terry Melcher lived and Sharon Tate and four others died is gone, demolished in 1994 and replaced by an entirely new structure at the end of the narrow winding road up the high steep hill. The last resident of the original house was musician Trent Reznor, who in 1993 moved in and built studio facilities to record The Downward Spiral album with his band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor didn’t know that the infamous Tate murders had occurred there until after he moved in. He said that this news excited and disturbed him at the same time. Reznor named his recording studio “Le Pig” in honor of the word Susan Atkins scrawled in blood on a door twenty-four years earlier, but for some time every sound in the night made him jumpy. He decided to move out in part because he kept returning home to find bouquets of dead roses and lit candles placed reverently at the front gate. He was never certain, Reznor said, whether they were left in tribute to Sharon Tate or Charlie Manson.
