by Jeff Guinn
Since 1998, Charlie has been incarcerated at the California State Prison in Corcoran, about four hours’ drive north from Los Angeles. The forbidding-looking facility is ringed with guard towers and surrounded by pastures. Charlie lives in the Protective Housing Unit, reserved for those considered in danger from the general inmate population. He is far from a model prisoner, losing phone privileges for possession of unauthorized cell phones and spending time in solitary for carrying concealed weapons. Other prisoners help Charlie with his mail—Roger Dale Smith was his main assistant until Smith’s death from cancer in 2004. Charlie still receives dozens of letters a month and infrequently responds, usually to those who enclose money or endorse ATWA—Air Trees Water Animals, an organization founded by Charlie to pursue his objective of protecting the environment. Some other letters are turned over to friends outside the prison to respond to as they see fit. His supporters maintain an ATWA website that offers Manson-related booklets, art, and music to raise money for the cause. Through friends outside Corcoran who create electronic versions of his scribbled notes, Charlie frequently posts messages on another website. Many of these criticize the legal system. They are reproduced verbatim, grammatical errors and all.
When he’s not deprived of privileges for various transgressions, Charlie’s days in prison are simple. He enjoys doing artwork—the resulting sketches and small sculptures are sometimes sent to supporters and ATWA contributors—and he plays guitar and reads the Bible. Charlie also enjoys reading National Geographic. At mealtimes he skips meat and subsists on cheese, crackers, salads, potato chips, and Ramen noodles. Charlie still likes to listen to music, mostly vintage rock ’n’ roll as well as Sinatra. His favorite actor is John Wayne, and he is also a fan of comedian George Lopez.
Sometimes his fellow inmates ask Charlie to tell them the truth about Tate-LaBianca: What really happened on the nights of August 9 and 10, 1969? Charlie’s response is always the same. He says, “I don’t know anything.”
And he winks.
• • •
Thanks to Helter Skelter, Squeaky’s failed attempt to assassinate Gerald Ford, and the “Crazy Charlie” act that he’s performed to perfection, Charlie Manson remains a household name more than forty years after the seven murders. Simply surviving has a great deal to do with it. Almost everyone has forgotten the names of the teen shooters who claimed thirteen victims at Columbine in 1999 and the man who shot and killed thirty-two people on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007. But Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Seung-Hui Cho died on the spot. (Charlie didn’t personally kill any of the Tate-LaBianca victims, but his is the name associated with the crimes.) Had the California Supreme Court not overturned the death penalty in 1972 and had Charlie been executed a few years later, he might be mostly forgotten, too. But instead, there have been bizarre, well-publicized parole hearings, rants on websites, and just enough interviews to maintain the constant public awareness that he craves. After so many years, Charlie clearly doesn’t care what we think of him, only that we do. As has always been the case with Charlie, he represents different things to different people. To many, he’s evil personified. Some pity him for the terrible childhood he claimed to have endured—how could his life have turned out any way other than badly? A smaller but very vocal percentage thinks of Charlie as an anti-establishment hero who never did anything wrong besides stand up to oppression and speak the truth. Many modern-day teenagers imagine him as a cool outlaw; Manson T-shirts are common sights in high schools. But there is near-universal belief that Charlie is a product of the 1960s, that era in American history when the country, for better or worse, teetered on the brink of ruin. And that belief is wrong.
Charlie Manson is a product of the 1960s—and also of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The Tate-LaBianca murders (and Gary Hinman’s and Shorty Shea’s, though these have been largely forgotten) were the culmination of horrific coincidence. Invariably, Charlie found himself in the perfect locations and situations to exploit others to his own benefit. By the time the 1960s arrived, Charles Manson was already a lifelong social predator. Almost everyone who had anything to do with him was damaged in some way, and Charlie could not have cared less. Gregg Jakobson compares Charlie to a cancer cell because he thrived by eradicating everything around him that was healthy. There was nothing mystical or heroic about Charlie—he was an opportunistic sociopath. The unsettling 1960s didn’t create Charlie, but they made it possible for him to bloom in full, malignant flower. In every sense, one theme runs through and defines his life: Charlie Manson was always the wrong man in the right place at the right time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My agent, Jim Donovan, remained encouraging during the two sometimes difficult years it took to research and write this book. I’m grateful to Andrea Ahles Koos, Anne E. Collier, and Sara Tirrito for their research assistance. After ten years and seven books, working with me is business as usual for Andrea; Anne and Sara waded in for the first time and acquitted themselves admirably.
I’m far from the best writer, but as I work on my books I have the best readers offering constructive criticism and, when I need it, a swift kick in the pants. Mike Blackman, James Ward Lee, and Carlton Stowers came through for me as they always do.
Bob Bender deserves his reputation as one of the best editors anywhere. Also at Simon & Schuster, I owe a great deal regarding this project to Jon Karp, Johanna Li, Kelly Welsh, Julia Prosser, and Maureen Cole. It is a pleasure to work with all of them.
This is Roger Labrie’s book as much as it is mine. It has been my good fortune to work with Roger, and I hope that many more writers get the same opportunity.
Dr. Daniel Greenspan was instrumental in helping me meet with Leslie Van Houten.
Special thanks to Cash, who kept me company as I worked.
Everything I write is always for Nora, Adam, and Grant.
APPENDIX: KEY PEOPLE AFTERWARDS
Roman Polanski’s career flourished in the wake of his wife’s death. In 1974 the Polanski-directed Chinatown was nominated for several Academy Awards, winning for Best Screenplay. But in 1977 Polanski was arrested for sexual assault on a thirteen-year-old girl. He fled to Europe and has fought extradition to America ever since. His films continue to earn critical praise, and he won the Academy Award for directing 2002’s The Pianist.
The Beach Boys gradually regained their popularity and thrived as a live act, culminating with a triumphant fiftieth-anniversary concert tour in 2012. But they did so without Dennis Wilson, who drowned while diving in Marina del Rey on December 28, 1983. In his last years, Dennis was plagued by alcohol and drug abuse. But before his death he released Pacific Ocean Blue, a magnificent album that confirmed his genius as a composer and performer. Several of the songs were written with Gregg Jakobson, who co-produced the album with him.
Terry Melcher never believed that Charlie’s music was in any way special or deserving of recording. After the Tate-LaBianca trial, Melcher produced several more albums for the Byrds and also worked with the Beach Boys, producing some of their music and co-writing the band’s hit “Kokomo.” Melcher also helped resurrect his mother’s career, serving as executive producer of TV’s The Doris Day Show. He died of cancer in 2004.
Gregg Jakobson, the other original member of the Golden Penetrators, worked in the music and restaurant business in and around L.A. before relocating to Oregon, where he and his wife, Kathy, operate a bed-and-breakfast in the Corvallis Valley. In 2008 Jakobson helped engineer a “legacy edition” of Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue, which included additional unreleased studio tracks as well as the complete Bambu, which Dennis had intended to release as a follow-up album.
Phil Kaufman now lives in Nashville and remains a vital part of the music business there, still working as a road manager for several performers.
After losing a second race for Los Angeles district attorney in 1976, Vincent Bugliosi entered private legal practice and continued to write books—seven were best-sellers, and two in addition to Helter Sk
elter topped the list.
Clem, now reassuming his given name of Steve Grogan, underwent religious conversion and led authorities to the spot on the old Spahn Ranch property where Shorty Shea was buried. Despite near-universal belief to the contrary, Shea had not been dismembered. Grogan used his time in prison productively, studying mechanics and behaving as a model inmate. In 1985 he was paroled; two and a half years later he was discharged from parole, the first convicted Family killer to be completely freed.
Linda Kasabian lives under a different name in the Northwest. She is still in contact with Vincent Bugliosi, who at her request does not share her contact information.
Bobby Beausoleil is incarcerated in Oregon as part of a state prisoner sharing program with California. He continues to write and record music, most notably a soundtrack to Lucifer Rising, Kenneth Anger’s film that Beausoleil originally worked on back in the Haight.
In December 1985, Sandy Good was released on parole, which she successfully completed in 1989. She found a boyfriend who was equally devoted to Charlie. Together, they set up and for several years maintained Internet websites in his honor. Like Ruth Ann Moorehouse and Mary Brunner, Sandy eventually dropped out of sight.
In October 2012, a California state board recommended Bruce Davis for parole due to his “positive adjustment . . . and for successfully completing academica and vocational education and self-help programs.” A previous parole board had also recommended his prison release, but then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger overruled the recommendation. On March 1, 2013, California governor Jerry Brown followed suit, overruling the latest recommendation for a Davis parole.
NOTE ON SOURCES
Over a two-year period I sent more than forty letters requesting an interview to Charlie Manson at Corcoran State Prison. He replied directly once, in a letter mailed on May 17, 2012. In it he rambled about con men “talking on the come,” and concluded, “now you got a letter and I don’t have time to wast.” He added in a postscript, “They dont Just let me interview as I want.” He did not respond to my subsequent correspondence. Charlie, did, however, pass along some of my letters to a friend of his who corresponded with me for a time, usually by e-mail. The friend emphasized how Charlie is mistrustful of those claiming to write books about him. In recent years his ability to communicate with outsiders has also been limited by his loss of phone privileges—Charlie’s preferred means of communication is by telephone. Had he been willing to see me, I doubt the interview would have been useful in any sense other than allowing me to describe Charlie’s current physical appearance. In the few carefully selected interviews he has granted, he’s relied on the ongoing “Crazy Charlie” act, ranting nonsensically. The same is true in his official messages issued through ATWA. In a pamphlet offered on the ATWA website for $10, Charlie states, “We have two worlds that have been conquested by the military of the revolution. The revolution belongs to George Washington, the Russians, the Chinese. But before that, there is Manson. I have 17 years before China. I can’t explain that to where you can understand it.”
Several former Family members and others associated with the Manson story declined interviews after learning that I wouldn’t pay to talk to them. When I interviewed Gregg Jakobson, I paid to stay at his small bed-and-breakfast in Oregon for three nights after determining that staying there would cost less than staying in a hotel room in Portland or Eugene and commuting to talk to Gregg. He and his wife, Kathy, threw in two home-cooked dinners, which were delicious.
Charlie’s sister, Nancy, and cousin Jo Ann agreed to talk to me only if I concealed their identities. For that reason, nowhere in this book do I disclose their last names, where they live, or any physical description of them. It took great courage for Nancy and Jo Ann to agree to interviews after spending much of their lives trying to avoid Manson-related notice.
(1) The children of Charlie and Nancy Maddox. Clockwise from the lower left they are Luther, Aileene, Glenna (with glasses), and Ada Kathleen, the mother of Charles Manson.
(2) Left to right: Jo Ann Thomas, Manson’s cousin; Nancy Maddox, his maternal grandmother; and Charles, age about five.
(3) Manson just before his first day of elementary school. It would prove to be an inauspicious start to his abbreviated formal education.
(4) Charles Manson on the day of his sentencing to Boys Town. Manson was sent there because he convinced a gullible judge that he was Catholic. He ran away after only four days.
(5) Nineteen-year-old Charles Manson at a Halloween party. Only months after being released from reform school, he already had a reputation as a bad character.
(6) At age twenty, Charles Manson married teenager Rosalie Willis. The marriage would last only two years.
(7) Mary Brunner, the first follower recruited by Charles Manson. They met when she was working as a librarian at UC Berkeley.
(8) The Watts riots in August 1965 exacerbated the racial tension in Los Angeles, which Manson used to help convince his followers that a racial war in America was inevitable.
(9) Gregg Jakobson (left) and Dennis Wilson. Manson used his friendship with Wilson to further his goal of becoming a bigger musical star than the Beatles.
(10) The Manson Family (a name coined by Jakobson) on a garbage run behind a Los Angeles supermarket. Left to right: Lynne “Squeaky” Fromme, Sandra Good, Mary Brunner, and Ruth Ann Moorehouse.
(11) Spahn Ranch. With its rolling hills and old movie and TV sets, the ranch became the Family’s home and sanctuary.
(12) Family members at Spahn. Left to right: Jennifer Gentry, Catherine “Gypsy” Share, Sue Bartlett, Danny DeCarlo (facing away from the camera), Sandra Good, Squeaky Fromme, Chuck Lovett, and Ruth Ann Moorehouse.
(13) Little Paul Watkins. A good-looking, smooth-talking young man, he became Manson’s chief procurer and self-styled second-in-command. He would leave Manson to follow prospector Paul Crockett in Death Valley.
(14) Terry Melcher, the wunderkind record producer on whom Manson eventually pinned all his hopes for superstardom. Melcher and his girlfriend Candice Bergen lived at the Cielo Drive house before Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate.
(15) Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate at their wedding in London in January 1968.
(16) The Cielo Drive house in Benedict Canyon.
(17) Charles “Tex” Watson, seen here after his extradition from Texas to California. He did most of the killing at Cielo Drive.
(18) Caretaker William Garretson survived the Cielo Drive murders because Patricia Krenwinkel lied to Tex Watson about checking the cottage in which he was hiding. Initially, Garretson was the LAPD’s chief suspect in the killings.
(19) The LaBianca residence in Los Feliz. Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were killed there on the night after the Cielo Drive murders.
(20) Left to right: Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten on their way to court on August 11, 1970. Each woman gouged an X onto her forehead in imitation of Manson, who had previously carved an X onto his.
(21) Manson is led from court after deferring a plea to the murder charges against him. He is wearing the buckskin outfit made for him by Family women.
(22) Key witness Ronnie Howard waits to testify that Susan Atkins confessed the Tate murders to her in jail.
(23) Vincent Bugliosi, the ambitious, hard-charging prosecutor whose reputation was made in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial. Helter Skelter, the account of the trial that he would later write with Curt Gentry, became the best-selling true-crime book of all time.
(24) The defense team. Left to right: Daye Shinn, Irving Kanarek, Paul Fitzgerald, and Ronald Hughes. Kanarek’s courtroom tactics were so annoying that even Manson complained to the judge about them.
(25) Former Family member Linda Kasabian, the star witness for the prosecution.
(26) Throughout the trial, Family women would sit or kneel on the sidewalk outside the courthouse and try to win sympathy for Manson from passersby. Some people, feeling sorry for them, would bring them cookies and other sn
acks.
(27) Charles Manson meets with the press during a break in the trial.
(28) A recent photo of Manson.
(29) A sample of Manson’s prison artwork. He sent this drawing to a regular correspondent around 2009.
© JILL JOHNSON
JEFF GUINN is the author of The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral—And How It Changed the American West and Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, which was a finalist for an Edgar Award in 2010. He was a longtime journalist who has won national, regional, and state awards for investigative reporting, feature writing, and literary criticism. He has written sixteen books, including New York Times bestsellers. A member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, he lives in Fort Worth, Texas.
