Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family

by John Gilmore;Ron Kenner

  Charlie, who said of the four defense attorneys - "I think I can present a better case than the whole bunch of them" - would never confront the jury with anything but an outburst. There were so many of these that for days on end the defendants were expelled from the courtroom to sit in a locked room listening to testimony over a loudspeaker - if they even bothered to listen. But the defense attorneys would have little more success than Charlie, and in the end they would not call a single witness, and would barely manage to restrain Charlie's girls from acting out their compulsion to confess to the murders - details of which had long since spread around the world.

  When asked, "Do you have anything to say?" Charlie said yes, he did. He had a great deal to say. Part spontaneous, part planned as a verbal assault against the entire judicial system and the Establishment in general, Charlie proceeded into a monologue that would run for more than an hour - not including a much called-for recess. Spectators could barely hear him as he began his soliloquy but after several minutes the old scamman shone through; here was the Charlie the Family knew - the JesusGod-and-Devil Charlie; the martyr, the guru, the nobody on the street, the king on the mountain ... He went through almost every change he knew, every "talking blues-song-singer" he was capable of. Trying everyone's patience beyond normal endurance, Charlie seemed to ramble endlessly from the witness stand - as though trying to wedge all he knew into some coherent offering that was, finally, irrelevant and delivered with the jurors absent from the courtroom. Even the prosecution was lost as to what to say in cross-examining the witness.

  On days the court convened, Charlie and the girls would be transported from their cells to the courthouse. The trial continued for months, trying the patience and dispositions of many. But for the most part, the defendants, though often disruptive in court, went through it all in good spirits. They were having a good time.

  One young girl, Marla Rothasen, in jail three months on a narcotics charge, had been Leslie's cellmate during most of the trial, and also got to know Susan, in the same cellblock.

  "Right before Christmas," she says, "we had glass balls around the cell where the TV room was. You could volunteer to get up and do paintings on the glass balls - Christmas paintings - and Susan Atkins did elves. She did different colors of elves. A black elf, a white elf, a Chinese elf, and trees. She was a real good artist, but I always thought she was eerie. She was more of a loner, you know, she was always by herself. She didn't have as many friends and wasn't as friendly as Leslie, but she smiled a lot. She was toward painting, painting the elves on the wall.

  "Leslie and I were the only ones in the cell together when I moved in. It was my first time in jail, and I was quite worried and Leslie really settled me down. She said for me to think of a tree, think of a flower, and she helped me because I was really nervous about the whole situation. She seemed very happy. She changed my whole atmosphere in jail.

  "I didn't know at first what she was in for, she just helped me. She was really nice and friendly. After, I asked her what she was in for, and she said `murder,' and that really blew my mind, but she helped me, she helped a lot. She's very nice. She taught me how to knit, how to crochet, and we used to play cards in the cell ... lots of people in the cell block were her friends, and she played cards with the people, and she set my hair a couple of times, and made it real curly and natural. She had extra sheets and dresses and she let me use them. She was kind of privileged, you know, which really blew my mind. The guards really treated her better ... I had a dress that came down to my knees, and was old and baggy. She had two or three dresses, and gave me one that fit me nice, and I really think that she was a nice person. If it wasn't for her when I was moving in - I begged the guards to get me a psychiatrist, because I knew I was going to have a little tiny mirror in the cell and I was going to take the mirror and cut me up because I didn't want to be there, and I wanted a psychiatrist and I couldn't get one because they wouldn't give me one. And if it wasn't for her, you know, I don't know what would have happened."

  Leslie and Susan talked through a "kite," Marla says. "You know, they passed little notes. And Leslie had a girl friend - she had been in the same cell with her for a long time, and as soon as they got attached they threw her out. You know, this was Leslie's lover. She really loved the girl. The girl worked at the kitchen for the state, and she was the one that passed the kite, from Susan to Leslie, and one day Manson told them to put an X on their forehead. So they took a pin and they started hitting themselves with little holes until they got an X on their foreheads, and they both looked alike. Leslie's was a real bright red X on her forehead, bleeding and stuff, and I don't know what that signified at first, because she didn't know herself. Manson told her to put an X on her forehead and told Susan to do the same, and so they did."

  Over a period of time, Marla "got the feeling Leslie was perfectly happy in jail ... that it didn't bother her at all. Kinda like this is the way the Establishment wants it and there's nothing they could do so they might as well live with it, and make her surroundings as happy as she can. She had cut out a magazine and there was a picture in it, said something like `Home Sweet Home' on the wall. It was kinda like a home, you know. She had it all made up. She had her knitting and all her little things in her locker, and it was like this was her home ... She'd grown accustomed to it.

  "The Family philosophy was her main subject, about Charlie, and how much he was like a father to her, in a way, because she never really got on with her father and mother. She was really in love with Charlie - she talked about him like he was God or something like she said, she'd do anything for Charlie ... She talked a lot about her `family.' She missed the ranch, and the fun times that they'd had, how they used to sit out on the porch, when Charlie would sing and play guitar. She talked about how pretty it was, and how wonderful Charlie was, and like he made the whole scene come true, and just how much she loved him and respected him ... but she didn't like Watson very much, because he thought that he could be like Charlie, and he could never be like Charlie, she just didn't care about him as much as Charlie."

  Marla explained that "in the cell block there are maybe fifteen cells, and in each cell there's two bunks, and a mattress on the floor, if it gets crowded. In the cell with Leslie and I there was just the two of us. Before I got transferred to Leslie's cell, when I was in with Susan, that was a cell you go into as soon as you get in ... and then they transfer you. Susan was stationed in that cell and everybody kind of knew it was her, and the major talk in the cell was that - that's the girl that was Charlie Manson's girl, kind of gossip about what she's supposed to have done. And everybody kind of just said `Hi' to her and everything, but I only stayed in that cell for a few days. When I went down to Leslie's cell, it was more of a friendly thing because they'd all been there for a long time, and they all played cards together, and they talked about very nice things. And the general gossip in the jail was that Leslie - they didn't care if Leslie did it or not. They weren't there to judge her, they were just a friend. People in jail aren't there to judge other people," Marla says. "They don't really care, because they're in there for their own time. They're pretty uptight about their own situation ... So they were all very friendly, and like I think more than half of them, like myself, didn't think she could possibly do anything like that, because she was just too nice."

  It almost seemed Leslie wasn't concerned about the charges against her, Marla says. "She was not really having a ball, but she wasn't depressed about it. She was just herself. She'd smile a lot. She'd laugh a lot. Like I was in jail for something that I knew I was going to get out on. I knew there was nothing they could do to me, it was my first time and it was nothing anything near to murder, but I was scared to death. But Leslie, she'd already been in for over a year, and she wasn't worried about it, she'd grown accustomed to it. She said it was better than living at her parent's house, or something like that ... She figured it was such a bad trip and such a bad world that, the least you could do is help your brothers and siste
rs. That was her whole trip - to help everybody else get it together, you know. And at night sometimes, she'd think that I was asleep, and she'd just groan, to herself, and say like, `what a day,' because she really put a lot of work in the cell block. I can't really say it was happy, but it was the most together cell block. We didn't have anyone screaming or yelling or crying or killing themselves, trying anything foolish like most of the cells do. And I think all that goes on to Leslie's benefit - because she helped everyone."

  Leslie's lawyer, Ronald Hughes, who had earlier been fired as Charlie's attorney, had disappeared mysteriously, prolonging the trial and causing the jury to remain sequestered over Christmas. It was 1970 - almost a year and a half after the crimes. Hughes was gone for good, it seemed, and in petulant tantrums in court Leslie would seek to oust her new attorney, following Charlie's lead and demanding with the other codefendants to represent herself, but to no avail.

  With the jury preparing to debate, Charlie would write pompously and in pseudo-biblical terms for an underground publication, his "last will and testament." "God is with me ... I am but a flute that my father whistles through, and the tune has never been heard on this planet. Your fathers have kept you in darkness . . . I give to man what he deserves ... himself, and what he has done to others shall be done to him. To live alone forever and ever, no death or relief from his own misery ... I promised you life forever, there is no death . . ."

  Though Charlie promised "life forever," Paul Watkins, whose testimony during the trial prompted the ninth murder charge, says, "It is time we looked at this false prophet. What Charlie sold, in the name of love, was death. In the name of Jesus Christ, he tried to do everything Hitler and Genghis Khan did."

  After Charlie's long and often abstract monologues, many would wonder if such a man could really be sane. Before it would end, others would wonder how the court could "judge" Manson, or for that matter, all of the "garbage people." One renowned psychiatrist was to say, "It is inconceivable to me how the courts could try Charles Manson as a rational person. As in the case of the Boston Strangler, this man, Manson, and his cohorts, should be put away and studied - certainly never ever released upon society at large ... But after all, if Manson isn't sick, who is?"

  They had become garbage people and butchered without purpose. They were tried, but long before the verdict came in most could see that the contest was over, that they were going nowhere.

  As the trial proceeded through many months, Watson, released from Atascadero State Hospital, was returned to stand trial alone as soon as the jury ruled on Manson and the girls. Held as isolated as possible, Watson was still able to confide in one inmate, "Nothing matters - nothing matters now." Soon after, Watson's attorney would plead him innocent by reason of insanity. But nobody'd finally buy it.

  Weeks later, the decomposed body of lawyer Ronald Hughes was found near the Northern California resort where he disappeared.

  With more charges yet to come in the Hinman case and the beheading of Shorty at Spahn, Charlie's jury would issue first degree murder verdicts against Susan, Katie, Leslie and their "master."

  During the penalty phase of the trial, the girls, seeking vainly to protect Charlie with their lives, said they dreamed up the idea of a "copycat" version of the Hinman murder to make Bobby - in jail - look innocent. Yet it seemed clear to most that Charlie was pulling the strings, even as the girls confessed to what the prosecutor described as a "monstrous, macabre and nightmarish scene of human terror and massacre." He went on to declare that though Watson and the girls were "slavishly" obedient to Manson, still they did not suffer from "diminished capacity." They were, he stated, "suffering from a diminished heart, a diminished soul."

  The stabbing? "It was just there to do," Katie said.

  She was asked on the witness stand, "Do you have any remorse for these murders you committed?"

  She replied, "I don't know what the word means."

  "Do you have any sorrow for having murdered these people?"

  "No!"

  "You feel you did the right thing?"

  "It was the right thing, yes," Katie said calmly.

  Leslie was asked, "Could you tell us how you feel about it now sitting in the witness box?"

  "How I feel? I feel like it happened. I just don't think anymore," she said. "When I leave here, I go in a car and I go to a jail, and I sit in jail and I look at what goes on in the jail. And I come back here and I am in the courtroom. I just don't think about it."

  Yet she says her mind is not a blank. "I don't have time to think about what I am doing."

  "Do you feel sorrow or shame or a sense of guilt?" she was asked.

  "Sorry is only a five-letter word," she replied, and smiled.

  One could see that they were going nowhere. There was nowhere to go. As Tex said, "It doesn't matter now." For just as the "Infinite Soul" had been expounded as a dream by Charlie to unite the Family for his own purposes, it nonetheless stemmed from the harsh fortune that had hounded him since the day he was born - finally to come into being as a fullblown "vision" through the dealing out of death - of wanton, mechanical murder.

  So the soul had been diminished long before the trip through the stomach of the monster city," and the taking of lives with no thought, with only one man's malice to go on. It had been enough. No guess work for Charlie. Though there were more trials to come, more murders to wind up, it had ended. After nine months of trial the jurors handed down death in the gas chamber for Charlie and the girls. Yet it was as though the ending meant nothing - as if everything happened according to some blueprint. There had been no surprises. Susan, Leslie, and Katie knew that when they first walked arm in arm to court to account for murder, singing a song that Charlie dreamed up.

  The newspaper reporters and television commentators were calling it a "vigil for Manson." The death sentences had been pronounced, and while Charlie and the girls were waiting to die in San Quentin's gas chamber, the other Family members seemed to be sticking to a sort of worship - some kind of support for the "cause."

  Throughout history there have been those who believe in their "just cause" for killing. So despite the murders, despite everything, the rest of the family continued in their faith, calm and undisturbed. With shaved heads and X's carved between their eyes in imitation of Charlie, they sat or squatted half-asleep on the Los Angeles Hall of justice steps. Or, blocking foot traffic, congregated on the corner on Hill and First streets in the heart of the L.A. law buildings.

  The girls were Squeaky, Sandra, Skip, Gypsy, the Turtle, Snake, Billie, and others, all waiting for Charlie. Squeaky said, "We sit here every day. We don't have anything else to do, you know." As if in a drug-induced dream, she claimed, "Charlie is with us now, every minute, this moment, in my heart and soul. He's always with us."

  There was an almost pious quality about the group as they went about their knitting, singing, speaking softly or whispering in confidential tones. They would wave to the passersby on the street, and even smile at the police.

  "The cops, one of 'em brought us an apple pie once," the Turtle recalled. "Some of 'em are just traffic control cops. Like they aren't out to get you, and don't even carry a gun. Lots don't even give tickets. I don't really see any problems ... We just get stronger and stronger.

  "Charlie gives more, he loves more than anyone. He's not a man, really. He is a God." The shining eyes looked away. Her hands were busy with a brocaded vest of incredibly detailed needlework. "We're trying to finish this before Charlie gets out."

  Another girl pointed to a vivid cluster of threads "Leslie did that," she said. "We all did. Katie did that part there. All of us. We haven't quite finished it, but we've been working on it almost four years, about twelve of us. There's all our love in it, and there - over - that part, that's the dead part - the part of the killings and the dead. It's a testimonial to our lives . . ." Charlie was still the very core of their lives.

  "When he comes out," one said earnestly, "I'll shield him ... I'll shield him wit
h my body. I may take a bullet, but I'll shield him." She admitted there was nothing they wouldn't do for Charlie. Looking up, she said, "We'd kill every one of you if that's what it takes - if that's how it has to be, and gladly so gladly."

  Snake laughed. "You see, things that goes around comes around the same way. You've decided to kill Charlie - Sadie - the others. So you see, there's twelve of us, and what that means is that there are twelve of us as there were twelve who were standing beside Jesus long before the Romans came up to do away with him and nailed him to the cross - which is what you're doing to Charlie. Nailing him to the cross. It is your sins - not his."

  They wore cutaway Levi jackets with an embroidered banner across the back: Devil's Witches - Death Valley. But they were no longer living in the desert. There was a truck and a van of sorts. They slept wherever they happened to park, and with anyone who happens to join them for the night, or a week - a new recruit in the band of determined worshippers.

  "We're here - always - till Charlie comes out," Sandra said. "All the penitentiaries are full of love and soul. The rest - here the people try to make money. They've killed their soul and chosen the dollar, and it's the end. The system judged itself so it's just a matter of time before they all get them and make a revolution."

  One girl was clipping newspapers on the Manson case while another jotted notes on paper sacks or shuffled methodically through different colored sheets containing "messages" from Charlie.

  Pausing in her work, Squeaky toyed with a pen. "We don't have any parents. Our parents threw us out. We were all thrown out. Everybody's my parent, and they all act and think the same way, and somebody walks down the street and I might just as well say, `Hi Mom, Hi Dad,' it's all the same."