Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars (46 page)

I’ve lived in prison all my life. That happens all the time. I’ve always walked on a line. In Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, all across this country. Cook County Jail, Chicago, it’s always about fighting. That’s part of everyday life where I live, you know.

So, a lot of the things that people were doing were just their own little episodes that they get involved in and they looked at me like I was something like a friend or a brother or a father or someone that understood because I learned in prison that you can’t really tell anyone anything because everybody’s got their own perspective. And all you can do is reflect people back at themselves and let them make up their own mind about things.

So, when Beausoleil come to me with, could I be a brother? I told him certainly, you know. So we were like in a little brotherhood together, like we didn’t lie to each other. And whatever he said do, I would do. And whatever I said do, he would do.

But as far as lining up someone for some kind of helter skelter trip, you know, that’s the District Attorney’s motive. That’s the only thing he could find for a motive to throw up on top of all that confusion he had. There was no such thing in my mind as helter skelter. Helter Skelter was a song and it was a nightclub—we opened up a little after-hours nightclub to make some money and play some music and do some dancing and singing and play some stuff to make some money for dune buggies to go out in the desert.

And we called the club Helter Skelter. It was a helter skelter club because we would be there and when the cops would come, we’d all melt into other dimensions because it wasn’t licensed to be anything in particular. And that was kind of like a speakeasy back in the moonshine days behind the movie set.

And I’m an outlaw. That’s—they’re right there, you know, and I’m a gangster and I’m bad and I’m all the things that I want to be. I’m pretty free within myself. I cut people and I shoot them and I do whatever I have to do to survive in the world I live in. But that has nothing to do with me breaking the line.

Let me explain something about the penitentiary in my mind. I came to Gilbault in Terre Haute, Indiana, overlooking the federal penitentiary in Indiana. And I was raised by a bunch of monks that taught us how to tell the truth and how to play handball and how to box in a boxing ring.

So, I learned to fight early and I ran off and stole a bicycle and then I went to reform school for that. And I ran off from reform school. And all my life I’ve been in prison. I’ve been in jail running off. I never went to school. I’ve never grown up. I’ve never accepted the system. I’ve always accepted the ole man, the ole winos and I accepted the retired veterans that were guards at the prisons and county supervisors and such.

But there’s a line that man walks. All men walk a line. And I walk that line in prison. I don’t tell on other people. I don’t carry tales about other people. If someone’s going to kill themselves, I feel obligated by Christian ethics to tell him don’t do that, your life is worth more than that. But if he continues to go on a self-destructive path, I step from his way. I get out of his way. I’ve learnt that in prison.

Someone’s got a knife and they’re going to do something, I say don’t do that. And they say I’m going to do it, I say I’m gone. It’s got nothing to do with me. So they call me on the phone and said the guy’s got a gun, what do I do? I said, well if he’s got a gun he must be afraid of something.

DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Hold on a minute. I think he’s kind of straying away from what you had going—

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay.

INMATE MANSON: I’m right there in Beausoleil’s murder.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes. I think he’s talking—that’s all right. [Inaudible.]

INMATE MANSON: I’m right there on the telephone where he called and asked me what to do. This is the point where I got convicted.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Go ahead, Mr. Manson.

INMATE MANSON: It would come from the witness stand that when on the telephone the only thing that ever connected me with Hinman’s murder was Beausoleil called me and asked me what to do and I told him, you know what to do. I didn’t tell him like [
raising voice
], you know what to do. I told him, man, you’re a man, grow up juvenile. Don’t ask me what to do. Stand on your own two feet. Be responsible for your own actions. Don’t ask me what to do. I just got out of prison. I don’t want to go back to jail.

I know what walking that line is. It’s a straight razor in the barbershop in McNeil Island. I’ve worked in a straight razor, I’ve worked in the barbershop in the McNeil Island. I was with all the ole men that came outta Alcatraz. I don’t break the law. The old man tells me, if you don’t break the law, you don’t have to go to jail. You break the law, you’re putting yourself in jail. The law is there and the will of God. You break that law, you’re breaking the will of God and you’re going to go to jail. When I got out, that was my symbol. Everybody else was doing this and this and different symbols. I would do that. And they’d say, what is that symbol? I’d say, that symbol is, I got one positive thought. I’m in a rebirth movement. I just come outta prison. I got a chance to start over. And I’m starting over and I’m not breaking no laws. So don’t come around me with no—nothing. I don’t want no money. I’ll eat out of garbage cans. I’ll stay on the complete bottom. I’m underneath this snake here. I’m not breaking no law.

So a lotta people came to me from the underworld and in the outlaw world and run away from the war, from the Vietnam War. That was—what’s his name—them guys that testified for you on them motorcycles. Them Italian kids that came off of that Venice, California. They took the witness stand and they said everything they could get away with to get their cases dropped. There wasn’t a witness that took that witness stand—

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. I don’t want to go into the hearing, Mr. Manson. Just talk about the crime. Any changes from what I read which is—

INMATE MANSON: Well, that’s what made that—that’s what wrote that down is what all these people said to you guys, you know. They told you all these trips about what I said, and when I said it, and how in the hell—

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: But any more—

INMATE MANSON:—could you possibly know what I said to somebody 25 years ago in the corner of—when we were only talking to ourselves and I couldn’t even remember what that—what I said. I may have said just anything, but I know what I would say now and I don’t lie, so I know what I would say then, you know. And I certainly wouldn’t tell nobody to go in and do nothing to anybody that I wouldn’t want done to me.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay.

INMATE MANSON: Listen, listen. I got enough sense to know that if I spit on you, that you—that gives you the God-given right to spit on me back. Anything I do to you, you got the right to do right back to me. And I’m not going get caught up in that. I’ve been in jail long enough to know if you go over on the other side of that yard and you beat somebody up and you walk that line, pretty sooner or later somebody’s going to beat you up.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Let me go on a little bit, okay, and talk about your prior criminality. You’ve covered it pretty well. It says here that you started your criminal history when you were very young, is that right? Back in ’48 you went to Terre Haute, Indiana Boys School because of a burglary of a grocery store. And then you went AWOL from the school and were placed in Indiana State Reformatory—

INMATE MANSON: Before you get into that, before you rush me off into that.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay.

INMATE MANSON: Every time I go to these committees—

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Uh-huh.

INMATE MANSON:—I’ll wait two or three years for you and I’ll sit in the cell and stare at the wall for two or three years just waiting for you people. And then when you get here you can’t even give me five minutes.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No—

INMATE MANSON: You’re in such a rush, you know, you know.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. Then what I—

INMATE MANSON: You have to slow down with my mind and to—to see where your mind is.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. All right. You’re right.

INMATE MANSON: Let me say this. The courtroom—Charles Older would not have been sitting on that bench had I not went in the courtroom. So, we’re kinda like married in this thought together, like we’re together whether we want to be here together or not, you know, we’re stuck in this madness, you know.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Right.

INMATE MANSON: I don’t want this job. I’m not getting paid very much, you know.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No, that’s true.

INMATE MANSON: And you’re certainly going to get paid if you take your time, so give me time to finish what I was trying to do, will you, please?

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Is it on the crime, Mr. Manson?

INMATE MANSON: Yes sir, it is.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Then—

INMATE MANSON: Yes, sir. It’s the very same thing that you read.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay.

INMATE MANSON: You know, I kind of anticipated what you were going to say because you’ve been saying the same thing for 20 years.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right.

INMATE MANSON: This has grown so much that the people living in my life have moved in with uniforms and penitentiaries. They built whole penitentiaries in the fear that they generated off of this case. So the public can feel safe against this monster, we’re going to charge you $200 million to build another set of penitentiaries.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson—

INMATE MANSON: So people living in my life, they don’t care whether I broke the law or not. They’ll make up a lotta things and sell a lotta books, 58 of them to be exact, and billions of dollars has been made. And it’s okay if I have to spend my life in prison—let me finish—just to hold me because I’ve shown you some strong strength and I haven’t surrendered to—to this by—by copping out to you or telling tales on someone else or playing weak. You’ve medicated me, you’ve burnt me, you’ve beat me, you’ve stabbed me, you’ve done everything you can do to me and I’m still here. And you’re still gonna have to face the truth about this case sooner or later. If not here—

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: [Inaudible.]

INMATE MANSON:—in the street.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right, Mr. Manson. I’m going to give you an opportunity to give a closing statement and you can read that or talk about that at that particular time.

We’re going to now talk about your prior criminality. I said before, and I think you stated that you were placed in a boys school at an early age, in 1948, for burglary. You tried to escape from there or run away, whatever it was, and you were placed in Indiana State Reformatory.

Again went AWOL in February of ’51. You stole an automobile, went to Utah. You were arrested there and you were convicted of the Dyer Act and sentenced to the National Training School for Boys in Washington, D.C.

Your adult convictions there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine adult convictions beginning in 1955 and ending in 1969. They’ve consisted of the Dyer Act—you were sentenced to three years in federal prison for that, attempted escape, five years probation; forgery, mail theft, ten years suspended; Los Angeles probation violation; ten years federal prison, McNeil Island, Washington; South Ukiah, interfering with an officer, three years probation; and in Ventura possession of a driver’s license and in Los Angeles, was the instant offense of murders.

Now you said you also spent time in Mexico in a prison.

INMATE MANSON: Yes, I was in Mexico for—

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: In prison down there?

INMATE MANSON: In Mexico City, prison, yes. Immigration prison.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: What was that for?

INMATE MANSON: I had been accused of killing some French people and a couple dudes in Acapulco.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: And how long were you in prison down there?

INMATE MANSON: I was there a couple different times.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: A couple times?

INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: I have here under your personal factors, Mr. Manson, that you were born on—in 1934 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Your mother was Kathy Maddox, who never—and you never saw your natural father.

INMATE MANSON: That’s not true.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: It’s not true?

INMATE MANSON: No. My father’s name was William Manson.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: William?

INMATE MANSON: Yes.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: And did you live with him for a while?

INMATE MANSON: No. You know, it’s one of those divorce trips where you see a guy walk by and he’s your father and you really don’t—you know, I remember his boots—

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes.

INMATE MANSON:—and I remember him when he went to the war. I remember when he—his uniform, but I don’t remember what he really looked like.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Your mother was arrested shortly after the birth and sentenced to prison for assault and robbery?

INMATE MANSON: Yes.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: And you lived with your maternal grandparents in West Virginia. You don’t have a southern accent, do you?

INMATE MANSON: When I need it.

PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes, when you need it. You later resided in foster homes until you were made a ward of the court in ’47. The rest of your juvenile life was spent in various informatories, reformatories and boys schools in Pennsylvania and Indiana. You dropped out of school at the age of nine in the third grade. You married Rosealie Willis in 1954. The marriage ended in divorce in 1956. You have one son, Charles, Jr., which resulted from this marriage, but you have not seen your son since the divorce. Is that correct, Mr. Manson?