Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars (13 page)

The realization was both disturbing and, in a strange way, comforting. I had been right in my original assessment. Nobody currently residing at San Quentin gave two shits if Charlie lived or died. That, combined with his fearsome demeanor and legendary spooky status, was enough to keep him breathing for as long as the corrections system owned his body. There was no sense losing sleep worrying about it. It hadn’t hurt to bone up on prison weapons for my own protection, or the protection of others, but as far as Charlie was concerned, there was no point in putting in the extra hours.

That weekend, I took my wife shopping around Pier 39 in San Francisco. I spotted a sign in a poster shop which read, “Human beings present. Handle with care.” I bought it and tacked it up near Manson’s cell. It was intended as a not so subtle reminder that even Charles Manson was human and deserved a measure of dignity. The next morning, the poster was gone. Some inmates told me that a hard-line guard had seen it, groused, “Who put that bullshit sign up there?” and ripped it down. I wanted to confront him, but decided to let it slide.

I had another, more important reason for letting it be known that I was going to treat Manson with common decency. Once the other prisoners knew that, they’d expect me to treat them with respect as well, which I did. There would be no need for mind games, threats, spitting, or violent posturing on either side. From my perspective, just being there was misery enough. These men were locked in cages. What “freedom” they had was limited to a few confined areas around a decidedly dismal and excruciatingly gloomy environment. Many would never see the outside again. What further punishment did they need?

I contrasted that with a bitter argument I’d recently had with the ever present Associate Warden Rinker. He objected to the humanity classes I was giving my men and went ape shit on me.

“I use Nazi methods like Hitler!” he shouted, his jaw tight and menacing. “It’s the only way of getting things done around here. I warn you, Mr. George, change your ways!”

After that, I questioned Rinker’s stability. If he cracked, all hell would break loose. He was flexing his Nazi storm trooper muscles around a place that was already teetering on the edge of another volcanic eruption. Ironically, Rinker appeared, in his own way, as tyrannical and vindictive as Manson.

That was a chilling thought. I was now forced to balance myself between what appeared to be two unraveling pieces cut from the same cloth. One had power over my career, my sense of security, and my ability to provide for my family. The other was trying to gain control over my mind.

That weekend, one of my older girls, a rebellious child of eighteen, left home at 7:00
P.M.
and seemed to vanish without a trace. I fumed and paced downstairs for hours, staying up well past 3:00
A.M.
, worrying myself silly. Although it wasn’t unusual for her to stay out late, this was later than ever before. My imagination ran wild, and I knew the reason. It was Manson. Diane was around the same age as most of the girls he’d recruited. Assertive, independent, chafing against authority, she was exhibiting the same qualities I noticed in Squeaky, Sandra, and the other Manson women. If Manson wanted to get to me through one of my children, Diane appeared to be the perfect target.

Were some of his robots working on her that very night? Were they filling her young mind with hate and rebellion, programming her to believe that I was the devil? Or would they even bother to take the time? Would they just snatch her away, hide her somewhere, and use it to force me to help Charlie escape?

By the time she waltzed in alive and well at 3:30 A.M., I was a basket case. Instead of calming myself, I made the terrible mistake of taking my anxiety out on her. “Where the hell have you been?” I demanded.

“Four-wheeling,” she replied, as if it were her routine schedule.

“Why didn’t you tell us? At least call? What do you mean coming home at three-thirty in the morning?”

“Dad, I had no idea it was so late,” she pleaded. “I didn’t have my watch. There were no phones out there.”

“Who the hell were you with?” I asked, visions of Sandra Good and a pack of sex-crazed Aryan Brothers running through my mind.

“None of your business,” she shot back.

Her back talk fueled my paranoia. I snapped. “What do you mean it’s none of my business? I shouted, grabbing her by the arms and shaking her violently. She broke away and ran screaming upstairs to her bedroom. I should have backed off, but my mind was poisoned by the image of Diane with a shaved head and a swastika carved in her forehead. I tore after her. Beth emerged from the master bedroom just as I reached the top of the stairs. She tried to cut me off, but I bullied past, nearly knocking her down. I burst into Diane’s room, grabbed her again, and pinned her to the wall.

“Don’t ever talk to me like that again, you hear me!” I raged as Diane cried out for her mother. The commotion woke up the other children and caused them to come parading into the room. Shocked by what they were witnessing, they yelled and sobbed and pleaded for me to stop. Instead of coming to my senses, the demons inside me grew stronger. I showered Diane with accusations and incriminations until she went limp and started collapsing to the floor; then I slapped her across the face and jammed my knee into her side, refusing to allow her to escape my wrath by fainting. She awakened with a deafening series of hysterical wails.

Beth fell to her knees and began hugging and comforting her daughter. She peered up and shot me an icy look that said what I had done was unconscionable. The piercing glare cleared my head and filled my soul with self-loathing and unspeakable guilt. As I walked out of the room in utter shame, I heard my precious daughter plead, “Stop him, Mom. Stop him. He’ll kill me!”

The words hit me like a shank to my heart. What had I done? Who was that man in there? I didn’t recognize him. Here I was, the softy preaching love and kisses for heinous felons like Charles Manson, and I’d gone home and turned monster on my own daughter. I wanted to go back and apologize, but knew nothing could excuse my behavior. My reappearance in the room would only terrify Diane further. I loved her so much, yet in one stupid, reckless moment of Manson Family paranoia, I’d probably destroyed our relationship forever.

I detested myself, sinking into a cesspool of depression. Panting and bewildered, I staggered into my bedroom and fell on the bed. I could still hear Diane whimpering in the next room, with Beth trying her best to console her. Exhausted and drained, I fell into a fitful sleep.

The next day, I tried my best to undo the damage. Diane wasn’t physically hurt, but she was severely traumatized. When I entered her room to beg forgiveness, she turned away, burying her face into her pillow. I didn’t try to explain. I was certain she wouldn’t understand. I merely whispered that I was sorry, then left the room feeling a great sense of emptiness. I’d lost my daughter.

In twenty years of marriage, twenty years of coming home encased in the misery and tension of some rotten prison, I’d never struck my wife or any of the children. I’d blown my top a few times, but never punched, kicked, or become that verbally abusive. Despite the horrors of my career, I’d always rationalized that I was above it all. I had been—before Charles Manson came into my life. Now, I didn’t know what I was anymore. I questioned everything. My life. My work. My existence. Where was the self-control I’d learned at the seminary? Where was my relationship with God? “Know thyself. Nothing to excess.” Those were words I’d lived by. What was going on here? Had San Quentin, Rinker, prison riots, and most of all, Charles Manson taken all that away from me?

I wasn’t sure. What I did know was I had to go right back to the fire. I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I had to confront the wicked troll in the cage down the hall. I had to face the evil spirit that in such a short period had so deeply messed up my life.

That Monday, I approached his cell tentatively, not wanting him to pick up on my emotional upheaval. My questions would be coy and random so he wouldn’t see a pattern that would reveal my true anxiety. If I slipped, it would give him yet another foothold into my soul. Still, I had a purpose and I got right to it.

“Charlie, tell me something,” I opened. “How were you able to take young, attractive, intelligent women and convince them to accept a scummy, sleazy, immoral life with murder thrown in as the only perk?”

The cult leader ignored the cutting edges of my question and readily answered. “Easy,” he boasted. “I could take one of your own daughters, and in a single hour, have her following me.”

His words pounded on my chest like an iron bar. Did he already know? How could he? I fought to stay calm, brushing it off as typical Manson hyperbole. He always made things personal when he spoke. That was part of the fear game. I studied his eyes. There was no sense of malice this time, no evil glint that he was speaking from experience. I struggled to keep my cool, to convince myself that he was just making a general point.

“Really,” I said. “That’s incredible. Just one hour?”

“Give me half an hour and I’ll turn her against you. I’d teach her to hate you and make her my disciple for the rest of her life.”

At that moment, after what had happened the previous night, he was probably right. “How, Charlie? How can you do that?”

Charlie smiled and took me through an imaginary conversation:

“I’d see a girl and come up to her and say, ‘What’s your name?’

“‘Betty.’

“‘How do you know?’

“‘My mother told me.’

“‘What does it mean?’

“‘I don’t know.’

“‘Has your mother ever lied to you?’

“‘No.’

“‘What does your mother think about marijuana?’

“‘She says it’s bad for you.’

“‘Have you tried it?’

“‘No.’

“‘Has your mother tried it?’

“‘No.’

“‘Then how does your mother know?’

“‘I don’t know.’

“‘Well, it’s good, and I’ll show you. And I’ll prove that your mother lied.’

“So I give the girl a joint. We smoke it together and it makes her feel great, better than she’s ever felt in her life. Now she’s mellow and interested, so I go on: ‘Has she told you that sex was bad?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Do you think it’s bad?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Why?’

“‘Because my mother told me.’

“‘Well, it’s good and fun, and I’ll show you. And I’ll prove again that your mother lied.’

“With the girl already high from the smoke, the seduction comes easy. Enhanced by the drug, the sex feels doubly sensational. After we finish, I explain that if her mother and father really loved her, they’d always tell her the truth. Now that we’ve bonded physically, she starts agreeing with me. I continue: ‘If your mother and father tell you that school and church are good for you, and you go and you can’t stand it, then aren’t they lying to you?’

“‘Yes, I guess so.’

“‘If they tell you that work is good, but you go to work and hate it, aren’t they lying to you?’

“‘Yes they are!’

“‘Why do you think they lie to you?’”

At that point, Charlie paused, frowned, and feigned deep thought like a very wise man. I could see where his presentation, silly and demented as it was, could have a mesmerizing effect on a stoned eighteen-year-old.

“‘I’ll tell you why your parents lie. Your parents don’t love you. They don’t care. They want to control you, so they make up rules for you to follow, so you don’t cause them trouble. They tell you to shut up, keep quiet, go play somewhere, just to get you out of their way. They don’t want you to be yourself, to enjoy life, to have fun. They push rules on you, just like the teachers, the preachers, the cops. They all love money and status more than they love you. They want to have all the fun, while you have to obey all the laws.’”

With the parent-child bond now sufficiently broken, Charlie explained that he’d cap it off by launching into a glorious speech about the wonderful life the girl could have if she chose to join his merry band of beautiful people. She could love, sing, and embrace life without a care in the world.

“Of course, this is oversimplified so you can get the basic point. It works better when I’m actually with the girl, playing off her questions, doubts, and fears. But you get my drift. Get the right girl, and you’ve got it made. Get her to drop some acid [LSD] and it’s even easier.”

Beautiful. Leave it to Charlie to put a sinister kicker on his perverse story. Get someone to drop acid, and you hardly have to sell them at all. Frankenstein could convince a girl to join him if she was flying on the powerful hallucinogen.

I walked away in a trance, just as chewed up inside as before. How would Diane react if one of Charlie’s trained soldiers gave her that rap? What if it was a young, handsome, smooth-talking guy like Bobby Beausoleil rather than a semirepulsive dirty old man like Charlie? Diane was a free spirit who might be induced to experiment with drugs. Once she took that step, the ball game would probably be over. Charlie’s genius was not so much in what he said, although that in itself could be effective, but in the candy he offered. Drugs do make people feel euphoric. That’s why so many people get hooked. Sex is fun. The whole world knows that. The combination can be exhilarating. What Charlie offered was little more than the teenage utopia of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, sprinkled with a dose of “save the world” philosophy to titillate their emerging intellects.

Back at my office, I was stricken by something I’d previously read. Charlie recruited Lynette Fromme right after she’d had a big argument with her father. I mulled that around in my head until the numbness gave way to murderous rage. If Charlie came after Diane, I wouldn’t have to worry about someone else sticking a shank into the bastard’s black heart. I’d do it myself.

6.

F
OR MOST PRISON
administrators, the worst aspect of having a celebrity prisoner like Charles Manson is that he draws the media’s attention. Correctional officers universally abhor the media. They would prefer to run their operations in the dark, meaning as harshly as possible to keep the prisoners in line. Not surprisingly, they hate when some liberal newspaper reporter comes sniffing around for a few hours and then cranks out a sob story about how badly the poor inmates are being treated.