Krauts. Japs. Gooks. Pigs.
With the frequent name changing and role playing, Manson created his own band of schizophrenics. Little Susan Atkins, who sang in the church choir and nursed her mother while she was dying of cancer, couldn’t be held responsible for what Sadie Mae Glutz had done.
He brought to the surface their latent hatred, their inherent penchant for sadistic violence, focusing it on a common enemy, the establishment. He depersonalized the victims by making them symbols. It is easier to stab a symbol than a person.
He taught his followers a completely amoral philosophy, which provided complete justification for their acts. If everything is right, then nothing can be wrong. If nothing is real, and all of life is a game, then there need be no regret.
If they needed something that couldn’t be found in the garbage bins or communal clothing pile, they stole it. Step by step. Panhandling, petty theft, prostitution, burglaries, armed robberies, and, last of all, for no motive of gain but because it was Charlie’s will, and Charlie’s will is Man’s Son, the final step, the ultimate act of defiance of the establishment, the most positive proof of their total commitment—murder.
Comedians punned that “the family that slays together stays together.” But behind the grim jest there was truth. Knowing they had violated the strictest of all commandments created a bond not less but more binding in that it was their secret.
He used religion. Not only did he find support for much of his philosophy in the Bible, he often implied that he was the Second Coming of Christ. He had his twelve apostles, several times over; not one but two Judases, Sadie and Linda; his retreat to the desert, Barker Ranch; and his trial, in the Hall of Justice.
He also used music, in part because he was a frustrated musician but also because he must have known it was the one thing that could get through to more young people than any other.
He used his own superior intelligence. He was not only older than his followers, he was brighter, more articulate and savvy, far more clever and insidious. With his prison background, his ever adaptable line of con, plus a pimp’s knowledge of how to manipulate others, he had little trouble convincing his naïve, impressionable followers that it was not they but society which was sick. This too was exactly what they wanted to hear.
All of these factors contributed to Manson’s control over others. But when you add them all up, do they equal murder without remorse? Maybe, but I tend to think that there is something more, some missing link that enabled him to so rape and bastardize the minds of his followers that they would go against the most ingrained of all commandments, Thou shalt not kill, and willingly, even eagerly, murder at his command.
It may be something in his charismatic, enigmatic personality, some intangible quality or power that no one has yet been able to isolate and identify. It may be something he learned from others. Whatever it is, I believe Manson has full knowledge of the formula he used. And it worries me that we do not. For the frightening legacy of the Manson case is that it could happen again.
I believe Charles Manson is unique. He is certainly one of the most fascinating criminals in American history, and it appears unlikely that there will ever be another mass murderer quite like him. But it does not take a prophet to see at least some of the potentials of his madness in the world today. Whenever people unquestioningly turn over their minds to authoritarian figures to do with as they please—whether it be in a satanic cult or some of the more fanatic offshoots of the Jesus Movement, in the right wing or the far left, or in the mind-bending cults of the new sensitivity—those potentials exist. One hopes that none of these groups will spawn other Charles Mansons. But it would be naïve to suggest that that chilling possibility does not exist.
There are some happy endings to the Manson story. And some not so happy.
Both Barbara Hoyt and Dianne Lake returned to and graduated from high school, with apparently few if any permanent scars from their time with Manson. Barbara is now studying to be a nurse.
Stephanie Schram has her own dog-grooming shop. Paul Watkins and Brooks Poston formed their own combo and appear at various clubs in the Inyo County area. Their songs were good enough to be used as background music in the Robert Hendrickson documentary film on Manson.
After the fire George Spahn sold his ranch to an investment firm, which planned to turn it into a dude ranch for German visitors to the United States. He’s since purchased another ranch, near Klamath Falls, Oregon, and Ruby Pearl is running it for him.
I haven’t heard from Juan Flynn recently, but I’m not worried about him. Juan was always able to take care of himself. Though I last saw him in my office, for some reason I visualize him on a big white horse, his pretty girl friend behind him holding on for dear life as they gallop off into the sunset. Which, I suspect, is Juan’s own image of himself.
Since the murder of his wife, Roman Polanski has produced several motion pictures, including a new version of Macbeth. Critics noticed in his interpretation disturbing parallels to the Tate murders. Polanski himself posed for an Esquire interview, holding aloft a shiny knife, and, according to the press, he has recently moved back to Los Angeles, into a home not far from 10050 Cielo Drive.
Polanski’s attorney, working in conjunction with LAPD, divided the $25,000 reward as follows: Ronnie Howard and Virginia Graham each received $12,000, while Steven Weiss, the young boy who found the .22 caliber murder weapon, received $1,000.
Neither Danny DeCarlo nor Alan Springer was around to share in the reward. Shortly before the Watson trial, Danny skipped bail on the federal gun charge and fled to Canada; his exact whereabouts are unknown. According to LAPD, biker Al Springer simply “vanished.” It is not known whether he is alive or dead.
Ronnie Howard tried working as a cocktail waitress but found it difficult to hold a job. Everywhere she went, she said, she was identified as the “Manson case snitch.” Several times she was beaten up on her way home from work, and one night someone fired a bullet through the living-room window of her apartment, missing her head by inches. The would-be assailant was never identified. The next day she told reporters: “I should have kept my mouth shut in the first place.”
Virginia Graham had a job as a receptionist in a legal office and seemed well on the way to rehabilitation, when she jumped parole. As this is written, she is still a fugitive.
Seven months after reporter Bill Farr declined to tell Judge Older who gave him the Virginia Graham statement regarding the “celebrity murders” the Manson Family had planned, Judge Older called Farr back into court and ordered him to either do so or be found in contempt.
Under California law the confidentiality of a reporter’s news sources is protected. However, since the Tate-LaBianca trial, Farr had left the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and was now working in a press secretary job. Older said that since he was no longer a reporter he was no longer protected by the law. Farr argued that if Older’s order was permitted to stand, both the news media and the public would suffer, since, if not guaranteed anonymity, many persons would decide not to provide essential information to the press. Farr testified he obtained copies of the Graham statement from two lawyers and another person subject to the gag order. But he declined to name them. (Indeed, at a June 30, 1971, hearing, one of the Manson case lawyers testified that when he asked Farr who gave him copies of the statement, Farr said, “I wouldn’t even tell my attorney [Grant Cooper] that.” At a July 19, 1971, hearing, Farr asked his attorney to remind Older that “the jury was sequestered,” suggesting that since jurors never saw his story, the gag order violation caused no harm, and told the Los Angeles Times [January 30, 1973] he already had the Graham story anyway, and got copies from his three sources merely to “verify” the story he already had.)