by Greg King
Because he had spent so much time in institutions, or on the run, Manson was barely literate. His intelligence was tested as average, with a decided interest in music, which he claimed was his favorite subject. One of his counselors later declared that Manson was an “emotionally upset youth who is definitely in need of some psychiatric orientation.”12 A psychiatrist who examined him noted a “marked degree of rejection, instability and psychic trauma.”13 But Manson somehow managed to convince the doctor that he was ready to make a go of things on the outside, and he was transferred to the National Bridge Camp. After a few months at the facility, however, Manson was charged with the homosexual rape of a fellow inmate at knifepoint, and transferred to the Federal Reformatory at Petersburg, Virginia. His early psychiatric evaluations at his latest institution stressed his sense of alienation from society, and determined that he was not only “criminally sophisticated” but also “dangerous.”14
In September, 1952, Manson was transferred to the Federal Reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio. Realizing that he would be eligible for parole in a few months, he studied hard to improve his education, and became a model prisoner. On May 8, 1954, at the age of nineteen—and after spending over half of his life in various institutions and correctional facilities—Charles Manson was granted parole.
Manson stayed clean for just over a year. During that time, he met and married seventeen-year old Rosalie Jean Willis, who was soon pregnant. Manson stole several cars in July, 1955, driving one from West Virginia to Los Angeles before being apprehended, having again violated the Dyer Act. At his sentencing, he declared, “I was … confined for nine years, I was badly in need of psychiatric treatment. I was mentally confused and stole a car as a means of mental release from the confused state of mind that I was in.”15 The court ordered a new psychiatric evaluation, which stated, in part: “It is evident that he has an unstable personality and that his environmental influences throughout most of his life have not been good.… In my opinion this boy is a poor risk for probation; on the other hand, he has spent nine years in institutions with apparently little benefit except to take him out of circulation. With the incentive of a wife and probable fatherhood, it is possible that he might be able to straighten himself out. I would, therefore, respectfully recommend to the court that probation be considered in this case under careful supervision.” The Court agreed, and Manson was given five years probation in November, 1955.16
In less than five months, Manson skipped out on his probation, fleeing Los Angeles with his pregnant wife. He was arrested on 14 March in Indianapolis and returned to Los Angeles for trial. The judge revoked Manson’s probation and sentenced him to serve three years at the Federal Prison at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California. During Manson’s trial, Rosalie gave birth to his son, Charles Jr.
During this latest incarceration, Rosalie divorced him and moved back east, taking their son with her. Manson eventually was granted some privileges, but was soon caught in the parking lot, trying to hot wire a car. For this offense, an additional five years of parole was tacked on to his sentence. A psychiatric report, dated 4 September, 1959, declared: “He does not give the impression of being a mean individual. However, he is very unstable emotionally and very insecure. He tells about his life inside the institutions in such a manner as to indicate that he has gotten most of his satisfactions from institutions. He said that he was captain of various athletic teams and that he made a great effort to entertain other people in the institutions. In my opinion, he is probably a sociopathic personality without psychosis. Unfortunately, he is rapidly becoming an institutionalized individual. However, I certainly cannot recommend him as a good candidate for probation.”17
Three weeks after this report was filed, however, Manson was released from Terminal Island. At first, he worked a number of part-time jobs, before pimping several young girls on the streets of Malibu. He was finally arrested again six months after his parole for trying to cash a forged U.S. Treasury check for $34.50 in a local grocery store; he admitted he had stolen the check from a mailbox.18 Although these two crimes were federal offenses, Manson arranged for a prostitute, claiming to be his pregnant wife, to plead his case before the sentencing judge; the ploy worked, and the sympathetic judge sentenced Manson to ten years, then immediately suspended it and placed him on probation.
True to form, Manson soon returned to crime. He was arrested in December, 1959 in Los Angeles for using a stolen credit card and for grand theft auto. He also took a young girl across state lines, to New Mexico, for the purpose of prostitution, another federal offense violating the Mann Act. Rather than being incarcerated, Manson was left on parole while an investigation continued. Manson took advantage of this to run; he was later picked up in Texas, having again been caught smuggling young girls across state lines for prostitution. Arrested for both this crime and for parole violation, he spent a year in the Los Angeles County Jail before finally being sentenced to the U.S. Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington for a period of ten years.
Manson spent some six years of his ten year sentence at McNeil Island. There, he met Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, a member of the old Ma Barker gang, and the older convict taught Charles Manson to play the steel guitar. He also began to associate with several members of the Church of Scientology, which would ultimately lead him to one of its off-shoots, a dangerous cult known as The Process. Manson would later claim that he had been put through some 150 “processing” sessions in the philosophy by fellow convict Lanier Rayner, and achieved the highest level, “theta clear.”19 Although, after his release, there is no evidence that Manson had any formal affiliation with the Church of Scientology, he certainly began to sprinkle his teachings with Scientology-influenced beliefs. Among the frequent Scientology phrases which were to reoccur consistently in Manson’s later teachings were “cease to exist” and “coming to the Now.” Concurrently with his interest in Scientology, Manson also began to study techniques of hypnosis and mind control.20
Manson also appears to have been strongly infuenced by Robert Heinlein’s science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. He identified with the hero, Valentine Michael Smith, a space alien who was born on Mars and brought to Earth as a young man. Like Manson, Smith’s mother was not married to his father, living, instead, with another man. And, like Manson, Smith felt alienated by the world he found, a world which did not appreciate his peculiar talents or insight. It was no coincidence that Manson would later name his second son Valentine Michael.
In prison, Manson continued to impress prison authorities and psychiatrists as a dangerous, hardened criminal. “He has commented that institutions have become his way of life and that he receives security in institutions which is not available to him in the outside world,” one report declared.21 Another report noted his “tremendous drive to call attention to himself.”22 It was obvious to most of those authorities in regular contact with him that Manson was deeply troubled, both emotionally and psychologically. Ominously, a later report made note of Manson’s “fanatical interests.”23
These interests involved both his philosophy and his music. Of the latter, Alvin Karpis recalled, “He was constantly telling people he could come on like The Beatles, if he got the chance. Kept asking me to fix him up with high power men like Frankie Carbo and Dave Beck; anybody who could book him into the big time when he got out.”24 Manson, while claiming that one day he would be bigger than his favorite musical group, at the same time listened to their music relentlessly, absorbing their songs and studying their style. A periodic correctional report in 1966 noted that Manson was spending more and more time writing his own music, practicing in his cell, and speaking of his hopes to be a musician when he was released.
Another report later that same year summed up Manson’s progress and prospects: “He has a pattern of criminal behavior and confinement that dates to his teen years. This pattern is one of instability whether in free society or a structured institutional community. Little can be expected in the way of ch
ange in his attitude, behavior or mode of conduct.… He has come to worship his guitar and music.… He has no plans for release as he says he has nowhere to go.”25
Adjustment to life on the outside would indeed be difficult. Manson had spent over half of his life incarcerated in institutions, reform schools and prisons. “I never realized that people outside are much different than the people on the inside,” he once explained. “People inside, if you lie, you get punched, you get mis-used. You don’t lie to the lieutenant, and the lieutenant don’t lie to you. There’s a certain amount of truth in prison, and being raised in prison, I was raised in the light of that truth.”26
Manson was transferred from McNeil to Terminal Island in preparation of his parole. Here, he continued to study Scientology and practice his music. “I was in the Terminal Island Penitentary,” recalls fellow inmate Phil Kaufmann, “and Charlie was in the yard singing. I had some friends in the music industry, and he was rather like a young Frankie Laine, he had that kind of lilt in his voice. I thought his voice was good. It was during the folk period, the young hippie stuff, and the new music, and I thought he would fit in.”27
On the morning he was to be released, Manson begged the prison officials to let him remain. He had nowhere to go on the outside, he told them. He did not think that he could stay straight. The officials refused his request. On the morning of March 21, 1967, after spending over half of his life incarcerated, Charles Manson, aged thirty-two, was turned loose on society.28
Chapter 18
Beginnings of the Family
After his release from Terminal Island, Charles Manson eventually settled in San Francisco. It the middle of 1967, the height of the “Summer of Love.” The city was rapidly becoming the focus of all counter-culture, with its prominent psychedelic bands, protests, and abundance of illegal drugs. “Haight Ashbury,” recalls Larry Melton, a former associate of Manson, “was a grey, foggy street where we totally ruled; where most of us kids wore army surplus coats and bell bottom jeans. The Haight was intense emotion, the Haight was our show. A place where straight people were in the minority, and we were the rulers of what ever we wanted to do.… We had far-out places to hang out, like the Drug Store, the Psychedlic Shop, the God’s Eye, the Hip Job Coop. The Haight was a refuge for rejects and throwaways who were not wanted by their parents.… We could be anyone we wanted to be, and do anything we wanted. It was our world, and the Haight Ashbury was our wonderland.”1
While wandering through the streets of nearby Berkeley, Manson met twenty-three-year-old Mary Brunner, a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin, who worked in the library at the University of California. “He opened me up,” Brunner later declared. “I was living with my dog in an apartment, and having just a real … go to work, go home, go shopping, go to work, go home, go to movies, to bed, go shopping … you know, it was so routine, it was truly a drag … and it was getting to me, and when he came in, I just dropped it, whatever was happening.”2
Manson quickly moved in to her apartment. Brunner was not only the first of Manson’s female disciples, but would also be the first to bear him a child, Valentine Michael Manson. One day, Manson brought home a second woman, Lynnette Fromme, whom he apparently seduced while telling her, “I am the God of Fuck.”3 Like Brunner, Fromme came from a middle-class background, but felt alienated as she grew older. Mary Brunner objected strenuously to this peculiar living arrangement, and it says something for Manson’s powers of persuasion that she eventually relented, allowing Fromme to move into her apartment as well.
In the middle of 1967, at the height of the “Summer of Love,” Charles Manson and his two female followers moved to the center of the Haight-Ashbury district. The house soon had a reputation for free sex and drugs, and Manson began to attract a following among the runaways who flocked to the city. He purposely cultivated those things which he had not previously had: a family, albeit one of his own making; freedom; and easy access to drugs.
“When he came out,” recalls Roger Smith, Manson’s parole officer, “he initially told me that there was nothing I could do, that he could go back to prison, that he was not afraid of it, he was not going to do parole, that parole was going to be onerous. He was clearly an anti-social personality, he was superficial and he was very adaptable … Charlie was what he needed to be at any given time.”4
It was this very ability to adapt to his surroundings that now served Manson so well. Early on, he recognized his considerable influence, and began to make a name for himself on the streets of Haight-Ashbury. His early gospel was simple: love was the most important thing, and in trying to share his love with everyone else, Manson was simply following in the footsteps of other prophets. He began to associate himself with Jesus Christ, and, through drugs, sex, and countless, mind-numbing pronouncements on the state of the world, Manson indoctrinated his followers to his own peculiar view of the world and how things should be. As future Family member Paul Watkins later described them, these followers were seeking “a new awakening of consciousness; a generation utterly alienated from their parents by the seemingly unbreachable gap of time and acid.”5 Thus, in the summer of 1967, the Family was born.
In the summer of 1967, Charles Manson and his still relatively small number of followers lived for a time at a house located at 636 Cole Street, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Scarcely two blocks away, at 407 Cole Street, lived a man named Victor Wild, who sold leather goods by profession. But Wild and his residence also sheltered a curious organization called The Process, of The Church of the Final Judgement.
The Process had been founded by a former Scientologist, Robert Moore, who used the name Robert DeGrimston within the organization. Moore broke from the Church of Scientology in 1963 after reaching a very high level at their London headquarters. Eventually The Process produced several splinter groups around the United States, but Moore kept most of his energies focused on the ripe ground of San Francisco and the seemingly endless parade of runaways and drug addicts crowding the Haight. “De Grimston,” wrote one author, “was the subculture’s worldly philosopher, its Karl Marx. Manson was its Lenin.”6
Victor Wild, who went by The Process name of Brother Ely, was frequently seen on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury district. Manson himself apparently knew Wild, and purchased several outfits from him. Given his interest in both Scientology and in other, more bizarre philosophies, it is not surprising that Manson pursued the ideas of The Process to some degree.7 At the time of the murder trials, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi was visited by two members of The Process, a Brother Matthew and a Father John, who apparently came for the express purpose of declaring that Manson had had absolutely no ties with their organization, either in San Francisco or at any other location. The following day, both men went to visit Manson in prison. Although what they may have discussed is not known, this very action seemed to indicate some prior link.8
Further evidence that there was a connection with The Process came from Manson himself. When Bugliosi asked if he knew who Robert DeGrimston was, Manson denied any knowledge. But he admitted having met Robert Moore, which was DeGrimston’s true name. Manson went even further, telling Bugliosi, “You’re looking at him. Moore and I are one and the same.” By this, Bugliosi believed, Manson was declaring that his and Moore’s philosophies were identical. After this conversation, however, Manson suddenly became evasive, and refused to discuss The Process again.9
There is no doubt, however, that much of Manson’s philosophy was derived from his contact, however brief it may have been, with The Process. The similarities are simply too numerous to be coincidence. The Process, like Manson, preached that the end of the world was very near, and that only a chosen few would survive the destruction and chaos. Both Manson and The Process used the Book of Revelation to support these views, and both believed that motorcycle gangs would play an active role in bringing about the destruction of the end of civilization. Where Manson would speak of the bottomless pit, The Process referred to a bo
ttomless void. Within the organization itself, members of The Process were called The Family, and referred to as brother, sister, father or mother.
The Process held that there were three controlling forces in the universe, three gods: Jehovah, Lucifer and Satan. Jesus Christ served as the mediator among the three, bringing them together. There was thus little distinction between the forces of good and evil.10 Manson was almost certainly influenced by this when he later declared to his followers that he was both Jesus and the Devil. According to The Process, “Through Love, Christ and Satan have destroyed their enmity and come together for the End: Christ to judge, Satan to execute the judgements.”11 Manson put a further spin on this by declaring that this time around, it would be the Romans—the Establishment—who were crucified. “Now it’s the pigs’ turn to go up on the Cross,” he said.12
Manson’s views on fear and death seem also to have been derived from some of what he was exposed to in The Process literature. In one special issue of The Process magazine concerning fear, the organization stated: “Fear is beneficial.… Fear is the catalyst of action. It is the energizer, the weapon built into the game in the beginning, enabling a being to create an effect upon himself, to spur himself on to new heights and to brush aside, the bitterness of failure.”13
Manson, in fact, himself contributed a feature to the issue of The Process which followed the “Fear” edition; its theme was “Death.” Manson wrote, in part: “Death goes to where life comes from. Total awareness, closing the circle, bring the soul to now. Ceasing to be, to become a world within yourself. Locked in your own totalness.… Death is peace from this world’s madness and paradise in my own self. Death as I lay in my grave of constant vibrations, endless now. Prison has always been my tomb. I love myself as I love death, as being alone with self the words I send you bore me and bring me from my death only to play in your illusion and bring down the Christian thought placing new value on life being death and death being life. Your world is not your world as you may think.”14 This was a shattering, ominous hint of things to come.