by Johnny Satan
TS: What is “S Ward?”
CM: It’s a nut ward.
TS: What goes on there?
CM: Uh, what ever goes on in there. You’d have to ask the people responsible for that.
TS: Well, do you they do things to you in there?
CM: Do they do things to me?
TS: Mmmhmmm.
CM: Uh, that depends.
TS: Do they give you medication here?
CM: Yeah, they give you medication here.
TS: [long pause] You on medication now?
CM: No. No. It took me about a few years to get off the medication. The medication has toned me down quite a bit. [pause] A whole lot. [chuckles] That’s the reason I like the desert, I get out in the desert then I can let it out and say if I see you within 50 miles then we’ll know something. Yeah I used to love that desert, out in the woods and things. I didn’t know you could get out in the woods for 30 years.
TS: How do you feel about spending the rest of your life in prison?
CM: Well, we’re our own prisons. We each our own wardens and we do our own times. We get stuck in our own little trips and we kind a judge ourselves the way we do. You know, I can’t judge uh, nobody else, best thing I can do is try to judge myself and live with that. See, what other people do is not really my affair, unless they approach me with it, and want me to do something about it, uh, then I’ll uh take into consideration what has to be done. But other than that I just uh, try to do my number, and do my time. Get out on the main line, play some tennis, walk around, make the chow a little better, you know. And then there’s the possibility the preacher can teach me something, because the preacher, the reverend is, is quite a guy. And I’m finding they got two or three doctors here that got a lot of sense. I mean as far as I’m concerned they got a lot of sense in my world, you know. And I’ve tried to shake two or three of them, but they, they’re pretty smart. And uh, then they got some uh, pretty good inmates here, trying to get out and work their lives into a decent sort of way. Trying to promote harmony. Pull ourselves together and be right and do right and have the understanding of what it is in a congenial form for world peace. There’s a lot of people working for world peace.
TS: Let’s assume that one day you were paroled. Let’s just…
CM: Parole?
TS: Let’s just make believe. Do you ever think you will be?
CM: Yeah, do I ever think I will be? Well I’ve never been paroled before. I went up to the board and they never would, they said I was incorrigible. And uh, not only was I incorrigible, I’d never grow up. And I kinda agreed with them. I had a...
TS: I mean let’s just make believe here for a second.
CM: Make believe?
TS: Let’s make believe, let’s make believe that you’re getting out tomorrow.
CM: Tomorrow.
TS: Okay?
CM: Tomorrow creeps its petty pace. Yeah.
TS: Would you go after anybody Charles?
CM: After anybody? Hell no.
TS: Do you feel, do, let me try another way...
CM: I’ll come after you, man.
TS: Do you, do you feel, do you feel that you have any scores to settle with anyone on the outside?
CM: Hmm, let me think. Do I have any scores out there? Now we’re making believe right?
TS: Mmmhmmm.
CM: Well, I’ll tell you buddy... [laughs] [long pause] Well, I don’t rightly know. I’m stupid [chuckles] to the point to where I’m not really sure, and if you’ll ask the question again, maybe the answer will come to you. What was it again?
TS: If you got out tomorrow do you have any scores to settle on the outside?
CM: Scores? You mean people that have done me wrong?
TS: Or that you feel that have done you wrong?
CM: That feel that I’ve done them wrong?
CM: That feel that I’ve done them wrong?
TS: No, feel that they’ve done you wrong.
CM: Oh...
TS: That you feel done you wrong?
CM: Oh well most people do themselves wrong.
TS: But would you want, would you want to go get anybody if you got out.
CM: No.
TS: No?
CM: They push, see what they do, see they take all that bad and then they push it off on each other. I told the dude, “You’re doing this to yourself man”. You know, I’ve been sitting in there, in other words I’m the cell, right, and they let me out, and I walk around and the guy says “If you don’t do this we’re gonna lock you back up.” I said “Ok, I don’t care anyway.” Already gave up that thought. Prison’s in your mind, man, like you know.
TS: Okay. Okay.
CM: You sit in the cell, and they guy asks “You in prison?” I say “No, I’m just here.” He says “What you doin’?” I say “I’m just sitting waiting for these uh, people to get done doin’ what they’re doing so I can get out.”
TS: Do you have a television set? Do you watch television?
CM: Yeah, I used to watch it a little bit, but kinda it looks, I don’t really like it that much.
TS: Ok, What about newspapers. Do you get newspapers?
CM: No I don’t bother with those. I know that they’re jiving there.
TS: Ok, radio? Listen to the radio?
CM: I listen to the Hearts and Space Program. I like that. And the rest of it is just like a bunch of [gibberish] There’s no uh...
TS: What about your music?
CM: I get some classical music on the 98 station that’s saying something...
TS: Okay, but what about your own music? I remember reading...
CM: Well..
TS: ...That you at one time you had a recording stint at a studio in Hollywood, that you liked guitar, that you wrote music, or that you sang music. Do you still do that?
CM: Yeah, yeah I do that. Yeah I do that. But uh, the way I do it, ain’t the same way you guys do it. And the way I do it scares you guys. So I didn’t want to scare you guys out of the neighborhood right away. [chuckles] So I just took a can and started banging on it, you know. But we used to have some cosmic gatherings back in the mountains that would probably shake a Mormon Tabernacle choir’s eardrums.
TS: You said, the kind of music you play scares people. Why shouldn’t people be scared by you?
CM: There’s only one person you should be a-scared of and that’s yourself. Afraid of what, losing your bank account? Afraid of your wife going uh, away? You have all those things. I’m not afraid of losing my watch or someone taking my money or robbing me. I went down to Mexico in the 50’s down where the Yaquis was, and they said “Man you don’t go down to where the Yaquis are. They‘re terrible” I said “Why?” he said “Well, they don’t like people like you.” I says “Well they didn’t say anything.”
TS: Yeah. I asked that question in the context of, would you believe it or not, there’s a lot of people on the outside, that think about the possibility of you coming out of here, and they’re genuinely scared of you.
CM: Oh boy I might just, just make dust, everything terrible. One little guy, terrible. Oooo. Boy, how insecure are we as human beings put all our fear on one little guy? And afraid to let him out, he might break all the toys. [laughs]
TS: Why do you say little guy?
CM: Because I’m not the guy you trying to make out of me. That’s not me. That’s some guy in somebody’s imagination that want to make a couple hundred million dollars for himself. He got rich. He had a good game going. He had a better game going than I did. But he had a good mother to help him. She helped him in a nice game, I was kind a over on the sidelines. See I had to get around that game and look over the tracks.
TS: Ok, now, here we go again on mother for a second. You said he had a nice mother to help him, does that mean you did not have a nice mother to help you?
CM: Oh, well, I imagine I have got a whole lot of nice mothers that would help me. If I I would help them you know. How much would you help yourself?
TS:
When I asked you why you got married you said for sex. Uh...
CM: That’s when I was 20 years old.
TS: Yeah, what kind... [chuckles] This is funny, what kind of sex life is there for Charles in this prison?
CM: Well I [inaudible] get a little bit now and then.
TS: Mmmhmmm.
CM: I try to hide it not to embarrass other people. But I’ve been doing it ever since I was 10. [laughs] I get to thinking, here I am an old man sitting in this cell, [laughs] that’s the damnest thing I ever seen, you know. It looks like I grow up, but I really don’t know how yet. I’m learning. Preacher’s teaching me how to grow up.
TS: Do you miss women?
CM: Certainly. My goodness, yeah, damn right, yeah. [laughs]
TS: What do you think of women?
CM: Oh, I like them. They’re nice. If they’re put together well, and everything and they’re soft and spongy, yeah, they’re nice. As long as they keep they’re mouth shut and do what they’re do what they’re supposed to do.
TS: Why do you say that?
CM: Cause that’s what a woman’s supposed to do.
TS: Keep her mouth shut and do what she’s supposed to do?
CM: Sure.
TS: Who taught you that?
CM: Well, I don’t want her snitchin’ on me.
TS: How do you feel about dying?
CM: Dying is...
TS: You know you were sentenced to the gas chamber and then they modified the death penalty, were you happy when that was done?
CM: Was I happy when what was done?
TS: When you found out that you weren’t going to the gas chamber.
CM: You talking about dying now it gets me nervous.
TS: Why?
CM: Did you have any thoughts about something? Was you wanting to go anywhere?
TS: Were you happy when you found out you weren’t gonna go to the gas chamber, Charles?
CM: Uh, I knew I wasn’t gonna go to the gas chamber, cause I hadn’t done anything wrong.
TS: You scared to die?
CM: [pause] Sometimes I feel I’m a-scared to live. Living is what scares me. Dying is easy. Getting up everyday and going through this again and again is hard. See I’m carrying a heavier thought, see, the thought I’m carrying is very heavy. Like I’m on a football team, and everybody’s, and, and I’m a little guy, I don’t have no support, I don’t have no home team. You got all the home, I got one, one uh cheerleader [chuckles] or one uh, uh, coach. See you got me in a disadvantage because I’m on your ground, see. So, and this is your street I recon, you got the cameras and the money and the things. But you can believe me that um, Bugliosi has you on a rib, and all them guys that sold you most of that stuff, sold you a bunch of things that weren’t uh, weren’t real. Not to me. We used to have games we would play on the movie set. We would take on different people. I’d be Riff Raff Rackus, Steve would be John Jones, just a-come in from Minneapolis and driving a truck. And we’d just take other people, and play act other people. And then we lost track of who we were. [chuckles] And it went off into other dimensions and levels of thought and understandings and comprehensions that were beyond most people minds, functions, computers, data. So, um, all I did was watch and learn everything I could from everybody I ever met. Then when I got out of prison I just walked around. I didn’t tell nobody to do nothing. I said do what you want to do. [inaudible] Don’t tell me what to do. I don’t like people telling me what to do. I just come from place where they told me what to do all my life, you know. I want to find out what to do for myself, you know. Never did. Not yet. But I was gonna take a trade, one of these days. Maybe learn to be a welder or something. [long pause] Till I can get to the front gate anyway.
TS: They got you involved in this whole drama where people got killed. How did you get involved in that drama?
CM: Well I was borned illegitimately that put me on the other side of the law. I’ve been an outlaw ever since I was borned. I went to reform school when I was about 10. And I learned to box and cry, and I learned to do all the things that you do in reform school. And then I went to, uh, I escaped there a bunch of times and I went to prison. And I learned everything that you do in prison. And I talked to all the guys and asked them everything they knew, and they told me all the things they knew. And then I went to the end of it and then old man would be ready to die and he’d say “Well son, un, sincerity is the best gimmick remember that.” and I say “Alright, be sincere, that’ll win it?” He says “That’s it.” Sincerity and honesty he said will do it, it’ll trick ‘em every time. [laughs] I said “Well, sincere and honesty, I’ve never tried that. I’ve tried everything else but maybe I’ll try sincere and honesty.” So then I looked in a book and it said “The wages of sin is death.” Now I figured well, I don’t want to die, so maybe I have been sinful here. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I’ll take a look at my life and say “well, I’m gonna change it and start all over.” You know, and I know I go to God and say “Hey man, are you gonna forgive me?” And he’s gonna say “What do you do? You gonna forgive you? What you come to me for? Forgive yourself man, don’t be botherin’ me.” You know, and I think well he must be a big mighty god, man. He just, you know, he ain’t got time, you gotta make an appointment or something, you know. So I see the whole aspect of the whole trip for children to play, you know, then I get stuck in the game of playing the goat here, or the lamb, or the, the some other trip. I was a teddy bear, then I was the goof ball, whatever, and uh, what is the real one, where is the real one. I don’t know where the real one is. He’s in a nut ward somewhere.
[Interview over]
TS: Now you’ve seen the real Charles Manson. Hardly the glowering, sinister and assertive mastermind that was pictured of his life before and after the Tate/LaBianca killings in Los Angeles. The real Charles Manson appears to be confused and frightened. Confused if you recall his admission that we look at ourselves to better understand him. Yet each time I pressed him on the details of the murders, Manson couldn’t even look at himself, nor his relationships with his mother, his wife and his son. And he’s frightened. During our conversation, you recall Manson said “I’m living aren’t I? They let me live didn’t they?” followed by that little nervous laugh. The man does not want to die. I think he’s frightened by death and I think he is as scared of us as we are of him. I get the feeling he’ll be quite content to spend the rest of his life playing mind games in the jail house. And I also believe that Charles Manson knows exactly what he’s done. A word about what you might think was my belligerence with Manson. I lived in Los Angeles all during his trial. I still live there from time to time. In a quiet neighborhood just across the canyon from where Sharon Tate and the others were murdered. At work by day I broadcast the six o’clock news in Los Angeles. The whole story of the trial. The shaved heads, the carved foreheads, the harangues and threats in the court room. And by night I tried to assure my young daughter, that yes even though the murder house was close by, Charles Manson and company were under lock and key and there would be no creepy crawlers in the night. So it was that Manson I was listening to, not the one that sits alone in a far away prison, where barring a most perverse miracle, he will spend the rest of his life. Thank you everybody for watching and goodnight.
(“THE TOMORROW SHOW WITH TOM SNYDER”, 1981)
Table of Contents
DEATH TRIP
credits
DEATH TRIP
PART ONE : EXTERMINATING ANGEL
CHAPTER 1.
CHAPTER 2.
PART TWO : HELTER SKELTER
THE TRIAL TESTIMONY OF CHARLES MANSON
THE TRIAL TESTIMONY OF CHARLES "TEX" WATSON
FIRST JAIL INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES MANSON
SECOND JAIL INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES MANSON
AN AUDIENCE WITH CHARLES MANSON
AN INTERVIEW WITH BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
CHARLES MANSON PAROLE STATEMENT
LETTER FROM CHARLES MANSON TO TIMOTHY LEARY
&n
bsp; CHARLES MANSON TELEVISION INTERVIEW
BACK COVER