by Johnny Satan
And then you get to conspiracy. The power of suggestion is stronger than any conspiracy that you could ever enter into. The powers of the brain are so vast, it’s beyond understanding. It’s beyond thinking. It’s beyond comprehension. So to offer a conspiracy might be to sit in your car and think bad thoughts about someone and watch them have an accident in front of you. Or would it be a conspiracy for your wife to mention to you twenty times a day: “You know, you’re going blind, George, you know how your eyes are, you’re just going blind; we pray to God and you’re going blind, and you’re going blind.”? And she keeps telling the old man he’s going blind until he goes blind. Is that a conspiracy? Is it a conspiracy that the music is telling youth to rise against the establishment because the establishment is rapidly destroying things? Is that a conspiracy?
Where does conspiracy come in? Does it come in that?
I have showed people how I think by what I do. It is not as much as what I say as what I do that counts, and they look at what I do and they try to do it also, and sometimes they are made weak by their parents and cannot stand up. But is that my fault? Is it my fault that your children do what they do?
Now the girls were talking about testifying. If the girls come up here to testify and they say anything good about me, you would have to reverse it and say that it was bad. You would have to say: “Well, he put the girls up to saying that. He put the girls up to not telling the truth.” Then you say the truth is as I am saying, but then when it’s gone, tomorrow it is gone, it changes, it’s another day and it’s a now truth, as it constantly moves thousands of miles an hour through space. Hippie cult leader; actually, “hippie cult leader”, that is your words. I am a dumb country boy who never grew up. I went to jail when I was eight years old and I got out when I was thirty-two. I have never adjusted to your free world. I am still that stupid, corn-picking country boy that I have always been.
If you tend to compliment a contradiction about yourself, you can live in that confusion. To me it’s all simple, right here, right now; and each of us knew what we did and I know what I did, and I know what I’m going to do and what you do is up to you. I don’t recognize the courtroom, I recognize the press and I recognize the people.
J.O: Have you completed your statement, Mr. Manson?
C.M: You could go on forever. You can just talk endless words. It don’t mean anything. I don’t know that it means anything. I can talk to the witnesses and ask them what they think about things, and I can bring the truth out of other people because I know what the truth is, but I cannot sit here and tell you anything because like basically all I want to do is try to explain to you what you are doing to your children.
You see, you can send me to the penitentiary, it’s not a big thing.
I’ve been there all my life anyway. What about your children? These are just a few, there is many, many more coming right at you.
J.O: Anything further?
C.M: No. We’re all in our own prisons, we are each all our own wardens and we do our own time. I can’t judge anyone else. What other people do is not really my affair unless they approach me with it.
Prison’s in your mind... Can’t you see I’m free?
(November 19, 1970)
THE TRIAL TESTIMONY OF CHARLES "TEX" WATSON
Q: Did you and Dean (Morehouse) then live in the tent?
A: For a couple of weeks.
Q: What, if anything, were you doing on the ranch while you lived there at this time?
A: Charlie was coming around us all the time and started talking to us and he would bring his guitar up to the tent and bring some girls with him and he would sit around and play music and I knew he had marijuana. We smoked marijuana and somewhere in that period right there we started taking acid.
Q: Well, were your acid ingestions, that is the taking of acid, something that you did alone or while as a member of the group?
A: It was always as a member of the group or when Charlie would give it to me by myself or something.
Q: Did you do anything else while you and Dean were in the tent?
A: Yes, he, Charlie, asked me to build a house for him.
Q: Did you do that?
A: I built a house for him.
Q: What sort of house did you build?
A: It was just a house, you know, just a little house called the “in case house.”
Q: Like in case you have to go somewhere?
A: In case that was the only place to go.
Q: Do you remember when you built this house, Charles?
A: It was still right there, started on it I know when I was living in the tent, in that first two-week period, and I built on it until December.
[small amount of missing testimony]
Q: And aside from singing and chanting, did he ever discuss philosophy with the group?
A: Yes, this was done every night, too.
Q: What would he tell you, if you remember?
A: Well, during this first period I was there I know he was always talking about bringing out your inhibi-tions, I believe; you bring out all the stuff that — especially on acid, he would — we’d all be on acid or something and he would throw all your faults up in front of you, and that’s the way he’d pull them out of you. He’d pull the thoughts out of your head and that wouldn’t be there any more.
Q: Is this the reaction you got to Mr. Manson?
A: Yes.
Q: How often would you use acid while you were at the ranch during this period of time?
A: Anywhere from one, two or three times a week , I’d say.
Q: And who supplied it when you used it?
A: Most of the time when it came, the girls — like Charlie used to say that they were the power, you know, the power to get new guys and power to run the whole thing. He used to say they had all the power and they would be out hitchhiking and they’d bring home a new guy or something, and pretty soon he’d be coming back with acid and this is kind of how acid came into the ranch, is by people just bringing it, you know.
Q: Well, when you first started to live at the ranch, were there any drugs other than acid which were available?
A: All different kinds of drugs: Acid, mescaline, psilocybin, and the THC, and STP, stuff like that; all psychedelic drugs, I guess you’d say.
Q: Were the drugs that you have just enumerated drugs that Manson usually kept under his control?
A: Yes, it would always be in a Baggie and it would be under his control or the girls’ control, and the girls’ control and his control was the same control. so he would just ask one of the girls to go and put the acid away and then when he wanted it, he’d ask the girls to bring it to him.
Q: Could a person who wanted acid just go over and take some on their own, without permission from Mr. Manson?
A: Nobody ever knew where the Baggie was. It was under his control all the time.
Q: [By The Court] Do you know what a stash is?
A: Yeah, that’s what it was; it was a stash.
Q: Do you know what speed is, Charles?
A: Yes.
Q: What is it?
A: It is a white powder that gets you to speeding.
Q: Were you using speed at this time?
A: Not at that time, no.
Q: What feelings, if any, did you develop about Manson during the period of time that you were talking about, between September through December, or while you were working on the house?
A: It was just — I looked on him as kind of a supreme being, I guess you’d say, like I said before, that could see all my thoughts that were in my head; and the longer I was around him, the more of these thoughts I didn’t have anymore.
Q: Were you staying in touch with your family during this time?
Q: [By The Court] That is your own family, not Manson.
Q: [By Mr. Bubrick] Yes. Your own family, your mother and father?
A: Not during that time, no.
Q: Were you aware of the fact that you were changing in some respect?
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A: I was aware of it, but I was losing — losing from what I had, it was going out of me, and that’s why I left in December.
Q: What did you feel you were losing when you left in December?
A: I was losing my — myself, my individual thinking, like I was becoming Charles Manson and I was becoming the girls. I remember we could look into each other’s face and it would be the same face; my face would be Manson’s and the girls’ faces would be Manson’s, and just have one face.
Q: Was this something that Manson preached?
A: Yes.
[Several missing pages of testimony]
Q: What happened in December?
A: I had to take an Army physical the first part of December there, so I was at a telephone, I remember, at a friend’s house, at a friend of the family’s house, in Topanga Canyon and I called up Dave and this is when I called Dave and told him that I was kind of losing myself.
Q: Dave Neale?
A: Yes; and this is when I asked if I could come and stay with him.
Q: Did you leave?
Q: Do you remember where Dave was living at this time?
A: He was living in the Pasadena like area.
Q: With whom?
A: With his brother.
Q: Jay?
A: Yes, that is correct.
Q: Did you move in with them?
A: Yes, I did.
Q: Incidentally, was it difficult to leave the ranch?
A: Yes, it was. Like I —
Q: No, I don’t mean, you know, psychologically. I mean was it difficult to just walk off the property, physically, just move, walk away from it?
A: Well, we had been up north on — Charlie had sent us up north to see a man called the Candy Man and going to bring back some candy. So we went up north and Charlie wasn’t with us then you know, like he had told us to go up there and see about the candy and so a couple of guys and I and some of the girls went up north in a school bus. When we got back down from north this is when I called Dave.
Q: Did you call him from the area of the ranch?
A: No, I called him from the beach area around Topanga Canyon.
Q: Then you never went back to the ranch, is that correct?
A: I did on one occasion.
Q: No, I mean coming back from this northern trip that you have told us about.
A: I went to live at Dave’s; then something drew me back to Manson.
Then I went back to Dave’s again.
Q: But when you called Dave in the latter part of November or early December, you went out and stayed with him in Pasadena, is that correct?
A: Right.
Q: How long did you stay with him then?
A: I stayed with him until he went into the Army.
Q: When was that, if you remember?
A: Somewhere the first of December.
Q: And after he was gone did you continue to live with Jay?
A: Yes, I did.
Q: Same apartment in Pasadena?
A: Yes.
Q: How long did you stay?
A: On and off, I’d say about a month and a half.
Q: Did you eventually get back to the family; that is, to Manson and the ranch?
A: Yes, I did.
Q: How did this happen?
A: Well, that was about — I called him up one day and said — I just called up the ranch, you know, and —
Q: Do you know why?
A: Well, like I said, there was kind of a power that was just - pulling me back, a magnetic thing between my mind and their mind that just pulled me back, I don’t know why.
Q: All right, you called Manson on the phone?
A: I called the ranch on the phone.
Q: Okay.
A: Manson convinced me to come back out and just see them, you know, just see them.
Q: Did you do that?
A: Yes, I went out.
Q: And when was this?
A: That was about some time in February.
Q: 1969?
A: Yes, February or March, somewhere like that.
Q: Did you go back out to the ranch then?
A: Yes, I did.
Q: Did you stay then?
A: Yes, I did.
[Possible missing testimony]
Q: Where did you live on the ranch, or where did you move into when you got back to the ranch?
A: We were just staying all over the ranch, kind of, all over the ranch part there.
Q: Do you have any idea how many people were at the ranch when you got back in February or March?
A: I’d say around 30, again.
Q: And how many men, if you remember?
A: There were a few more men then.
Q: And what did you do if anything? What was your work assignment?
A: Well, at that time he had started a club, a little club or something there at the ranch, and also Charlie had got a couple of dune buggies; and so he kind of got me to working on the dune buggies.
Q: Did he still preach or philosophize with you?
A: It was the same, except he had a different kind — his philosophy had changed.
Q: What was he talking about now?
A: Now, he was talking about the Beatles all the time and Helter-skelter and the revolution coming down, and singing about it and talking about the end of the world coming and about the bottomless pit out on the desert, and all of these songs that the Beatles had, someway, he was bringing all them out, too, to back his philosophy, I guess you’d call it.
Q: Had you ever listened to the Beatles’ music prior to this time?
A: Yes, on a few occasions, yes.
Q: Were they played at the ranch?
A: Yes, in the saloon where the club was.
Q: Had they been played when you were first there between September and December?
A: Not those records, no.
Q: Was there much talk about the Beatles when you were first there between September and December?
A: No, none at all.
Q: Then, how regularly would this helter-skelter philosophy of his be talked about?
A: Every night and all day long.
Q: Were drugs being used at the same time?
A: Yes, a lot of real heavy physical and mental acid, you know.
Q: I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that,.
A: A lot of heavy physical acid and mental acid, too.
Q: What was mental acid?
A: Well, that’s the kind that would — well, both of it did the same, except one of it drew your body, drew stuff out of your mind; and the other at the same time would be drawing your body.
Q: Did you ever use belladonna while you were at the ranch, Charles?
A: Yes, I used it in April of ‘69.
Q: Do you remember how you first got it?
A: Paul Watkins got some from around the ranch there and Brenda cooked it up.
Q: What form was it in when you used it?
A: A root form.
Q: Had you ever seen anybody eating it in root form?
A: No, I hadn’t. I never had seen it before.
Q: Did you know what belladonna was used for?
A: No, I didn’t even know it would have any effect on you, I had never even heard of it before this.
Q: What happened when you took it?
A: I took it on the ranch and I started hitchhiking down to this motorcycle shop and by the time I got down there I was crawling on the ground.
Q: Do you remember anything else that happened on that occasion?
A: Yeah, I remember having cotton mouth so bad that I couldn’t speak there at first; and then I got this little scooter thing out, a little hill climber, hill climber motorcycle out of the shop, and started toward the ranch with it and I blacked out going down.
Q: Where were you when you came to?