by Greg King
When Doris Tate entered the parole board hearing room the next day, she found LaBerge waiting for her. She tried to convince Doris that Watson was a changed man who deserved to be let out, but Sharon’s mother would have none of it. LaBerge was adamant, however, and was prepared to make an impact statement saying as much—ironically a statement made possible by the work which Doris had undertaken on behalf of victims’ families.
During the hearing, Doris gazed at Watson, but he himself always refused to look at her. She found it troubling to sit through a re-hash of the crimes, only to hear Watson’s consistent remarks that Manson was responsible for controlling the killers. On one occasion, she reminded Watson of his statement to Frykowski on entering the house at Cielo Drive, “I’m the Devil, and I’m here to do the Devil’s business.” “As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Watson,” she said, “you’re still in business.”35
On May 4, 1990, Doris sat silent at one end of the board table as Watson, beside his attorney Allen Jay, sat to one side. She listened as the circumstances of the crimes were read, a list which included a stab-by-stab recitation of the wounds her daughter had received in death. At the conclusion of the boards’ statement, the three-man board allowed Watson to make a statement.
“I take full resonsibility for doing this,” he began slowly, in a slight southern accent. “It’s very hard to sit here and listen to this.… It really hurts.… There’s not much I can do except to go through the pain I go through day to day.” When questioned about the role Manson had played in bringing about the crimes, Watson responded, “I don’t place the total blame on him. I think I’ve said in the past that if there hadn’t been a Charles Manson, there wouldn’t have been a crime, so I guess that is blaming him.… We were followers. Even though I’ve matured and grown over the years to develop into an individual who has leadership qualities I don’t think I had leadership qualities then. We were very much deceived and at the same time very much manipulated by a man who was a con man.”36
Stephen Kay, who was present in his role as one of the original assistant prosecutors, made a long statement pointing out the considerable reasons why Watson should be denied parole, and made it a special point to reiterate his leadership role at the Tate house that first night. He was followed by the two impact statements from the victims’ families. The first to speak was Suzanne LaBerge. When she readied her notes, Doris Tate stood up and walked out of the room. She would return only after LaBerge had completed her pleas for the release of her daughter’s killer.
When it came time for Doris to make her statement, she looked at Watson for a long time. “I might say I feel sorry for this man, that he chose this way of life, and once choosing, there’s no turning back. You cannot, or society cannot trust you living next door to them. What mercy, Sir, did you show my daughter when she was begging for her life? What mercy did you show my daughter when she said give me two weeks to have my baby and then you can kill me, what mercy did you show her? In twenty-one years, I would like to have asked this prisoner why? He did not know my daughter.… How can an individual, without knowing, without any abrasive feelings, go in and slice up this woman, eight and a half months pregnant? How can you? What about my family? When will [Sharon] come up for parole? When will I come up for parole? Can you tell me that? Will these seven victims and possibly more walk out of their graves if you get paroled? You cannot be trusted.”37
In the end, Watson was denied his parole, as he had been numerous times before. It was a small victory for Doris, but only one in a chain of triumphs in the name of all victims, not only her daughter. Her sense of justice and honor, her passion and vitality, and the terrible loss of her daughter and unborn grandson, all drove Doris Tate to confront the horror of Sharon’s murder and to turn her pain into something productive. “You can’t make sense out of the innocent slaughter of Sharon and the other victims,” Doris once explained. “The most that I, or any other person touched by violence, can hope for is acceptance of the pain. You never forget it, not even with the passage of time. But, if, in my work, I can help transform Sharon’s legacy from murder victim to a symbol for victims’ rights, I will have accomplished what I set out to do.”38
Chapter 37
“I Promised My Mom Before She Died That I Would Continue On”
Doris Tate died on July 11, 1992, after a long battle against a brain tumor. She was sixty-seven years old. In the months before her death, her tireless work on behalf of victims’ rights was recognized by President George Bush, who named Doris as one of his “thousand points of light.” Her sense of purpose and her relentless pursuit of justice in the war she waged in her daughter’s name for the rights of all victims did not die with her. As Sharon’s memory passed to her mother and motivated her work for other victims, so did Doris’s memory similarly inspire others.
It was Sharon’s youngest sister Patti who took over where their mother had left. “I promised my mom before she died that I would continue on,” she said. “This … started because it was her dream to pull together all the victims’ groups to make a difference in government and so that we can all stand united.”1
One of Patti’s first tributes to her mother was the establishment of the Doris Tate Crime Victims’ Bureau. A non-profit organization dedicated to monitoring criminal legislation and raising awareness of public safety issues, the Bureau opened its doors in West Sacramento, California in July, 1993, a year after Doris’s death. In 1995, the Doris Tate Crime Victims Foundation was also established, providing further assistance to victims of violent crime and their families. Patti also took over her mother’s difficult role as victim’s next-of-kin representative at the parole hearings for members of the Manson Family. She explained that she felt she had a duty “to speak for my sister, to be the voice that they took away from her, to stand up for her rights, which she can no longer stand up for.”2
Not surprisingly, Patti found the parole hearings an emotional ordeal. She had never before come face-to-face with those responsible for the death of her pregnant sister. In 1993, she attended her first parole hearing, for Patricia Krenwinkel. Krenwinkel appeared genuinely remorseful, often breaking into tears as she looked at Sharon’s sister: “It’s grotesque,” she said, “it’s absolutely horrible. It’s very difficult for me to live with the fact that I could do anything so horrible and so horrendous because that is not who I am, that is not what I believe in. I have always felt that things should be treated with gentleness, tenderness, and love, because that’s the most lacking thing that I have found in my life and in most people’s lives. I never tried to create something that was ugly and that’s what came out of me. So, I try everyday the best I can, to deal with that. Everyday of my life, I try to define myself that I have a little bit of self-worth because it is terribly difficult to deal with this.… I cannot change it, no matter what I do, I cannot change one minute of my life, and as I’ve said before, I don’t expect the Board to say that I can go home. I am paying for this as best as I can. I have—there is nothing more I can do outside of being dead to pay for this, and I know that’s what you wish. But I cannot take my own life.”3
“It is very confusing [for] me,” Patti said in response, “to sit here and listen to her say that she was not capable … of doing what she did, and then to sit and listen to a psychological report saying … that she’d be fine out. Well, she said herself that she didn’t think it was in her then. I don’t want any chances [taken]. I don’t trust her, I don’t trust any of these people. I don’t want them out. I think, as her attorney said, that yes, her crimes are bad … [and] that … [she] should stay in prison for the rest of [her life], like my sister will stay in her grave for the rest of time [with] her baby, and Abigail Folger.… I feel like … she has no memory of what happened that night, and what she did. And she didn’t know them, I knew [them], I knew Gibby. Does she remember what she looked like, does she remember when she led my sister down the hallway what she looked like? She doesn’t … remember what she did. And I want to
put some faces and some feelings.… I mean, I feel like she’s just so blank.… Gibby, you know, [had] beautiful black hair, did she ever bother to look at these people? … I’ve seen the pictures of the aftermath of what she did and what the rest of these prisoners did, to my sister, to Gibby, to Jay, to Voyteck, to the kid out in the car.… And there’s no face with this story.… Well I remember my sister’s face, and I remember her belly that stuck out to here. And I remember Gibby and Voyteck and Jay … they were wonderful people, and she didn’t know my sister.… Tex, Atkins, Manson—none of these people knew my sister or any of the other victims … and nothing can be done about it, absolutely nothing.… My sister and Gibby and all of them paid with their lives, and I think that she should pay with her life, in prison.… I get countless letters … people are afraid of them, people will always be afraid of them, because they were easily led, they were led by Charles Manson, and I don’t want to take chances that she’s … going to get out there, I don’t care if she’s sixty-eight or 102, I don’t wanna take a chance at any of these people getting out at any age and being led again like they were. And I think that most people … aren’t willing to take that chance either.… It’s caused my family much, much, much pain. What she did will affect [us] down through generations, and generations, and generations. You know, it’s a terrible thing to have to live with, I realize that she has to live with it, too, but she seems so blank about it.… It’s such a loss, such a loss to my family. My sister didn’t deserve … when she led her down the hallway to her death. Gibby didn’t deserve it when they went [on] stabbing [her] over and over and over again. What, she couldn’t get enough? I can’t understand these people, I can’t understand why we even put them up for parole, I don’t know why we sit here, but that’s her right, and this is my right to come … here and speak my mind, and I am thankful for that.”4
The hearings allowed Patti a voice, but also forced her to endure often agonizing speeches made by the inmates as they sought their freedom. In 1996, Patti sat silent as Susan Atkins declared that she need not seek the forgiveness of the Tate family because she had found God: “As a Christian, remorse can not work without having somebody to go to repent. I have experienced remorse. Remorse naturally causes repentance. I could ask repentance [sic] today for society, I could ask repentance today, or ask forgiveness from society and from the Parole Board and from Ms. Tate. And to the best of anybody’s ability, considering what I participated in, none of you would be able to adequately forgive me with the type of forgiveness that I have needed all my life, and I had to seek a higher power.… I can’t come before my God, before the Parole Board, before the people who love me and support me, before Ms. Tate or anybody and say I did things that I didn’t do, when the things that I did were so horrible and beyond the human heart’s ability to forgive me, but I have found that forgiveness. And God, through His love, through the Word, through the reading of the Word, through the 12-Step principles, through attending church and finding support from people who were willing to help me come to terms with what I’ve done, I have been able to forgive myself.”5
Without offering an apology to Patti or to any of the victims’ families, Atkins then adroitly went on to compare her plight to that of Moses and to other Biblical figures, who, despite their sins, had been forgiven by God. Her argument seemed fixated on her own troubles, her own struggles to come to terms with her deeds, and her subsequent peace of mind once she had decided her crimes were in the past.6
Considering Atkins’ speech, Patti’s response was restrained:
“The only thing I brought is the only thing I have left of my sister, [and that] is my memory and the pictures. This is it. This is all my family has because of this woman. She could have easily stopped them. She could have gone and gotten help.… I don’t care how many times I face these people. It’s as hard and maybe even harder every time, and preparing [to come] today I thought, you know, ‘I’m going to work real hard on being rational in a real irrational situation,’ because … it’s very difficult … to look at the person who’s responsible for my sister’s death, and know that this is the face, the last face, my sister saw before she died.… I don’t care how many years go by.… Susan’s bottom line is that she committed crimes because she was at the mercy of Manson’s power over her and … was brainwashed.… We have to remember that Manson didn’t brainwash Susan or any of these other people as she’d like you to believe. Manson was simply the catalyst that allowed Susan to act upon what already naturally came to her.… She sits here today telling you what a changed person she is, but when I hear her talk, I don’t hear [the] words of someone who’s rehabilitated. I hear the desperation of someone trying to get the heck out of here. She’ll tell you anything you want to hear, just so she can be let go. She has changed her story so many times, it’s hard to keep up.… First she said she stabbed Sharon, then she said she didn’t [at] different phases of her trial, and now I … ask which one is it, but it doesn’t really matter. Did she go into my sister’s with … rope so they couldn’t escape? Yes. Did she dip a towel in my sister’s wounds and print the word ‘PIG’ on the door? Yes, she did. One way or the other, my sister and the others died at [Susan’s] hands.… As sure as if she plunged the knife into their bodies … she is responsible for all those deaths.… She doesn’t … want to remember a lot of things. [I] tell you, there [are] things that I block out, too, that I really don’t want to remember, like the days after my sister’s death. I can’t tell you what my family did on a daily basis. I have no recollection.… I know you have to look at these [inmates] as what they are today, but … I don’t understand how we can take people like them and ever … think, good God, even think of letting these types of people out of prison. I don’t understand it. Seven, eight lives these people have taken that we know [of] … and to even think … I don’t know, I can’t rationalize it.… I listened to [Susan’s] hopes and … dreams, and she wants to go home. I would love my sister to come home, too, but that never, ever will [happen] because of [Susan’s] decision. She had decisions. She [was capable of killing] before she ever even hooked up with Manson. There were many, many people at the commune … but there were only a few who went on this murderous rampage, and that was for one reason, because it ran in their blood, and each of them knew who had the capability of … killing.… I think the greatest charity given to her is life in prison. It [is] exactly where she should be for the rest of her natural life.… If she does good deeds and spreads the Word of God, that’s great if she [does it] within these prison walls. She does not deserve to ever walk the free streets.… She doesn’t talk too much about the victims’ lives she’s taken. She doesn’t pray too much. She prays in here for a lot of people … [but] she never prays for my family. She never prays for us, for what she’s done to us.”7
“It’s hard, real hard,” Patti later explained of the parole hearings, “because every emotion comes out of you. You’re mad, sad—everything just comes out and you have to sit there and listen to how well they are doing, how they’ve gotten their college degrees, how they have received all kinds of help to make them better people. And I just want to vomit. People think that, ‘Oh, they [can’t] get out of jail,’ when in fact they can get out of jail. That’s why I tell people all the time that we have to know what is going on at the capital and what needs to be changed. We need to start paying attention to our elected officials and how they are voting. Are they working for us? Are they going to be tough on crime? I am so passionate about this because I feel that people [will] make a change [if] they … know that they can.… We all have to be fighters.”8
The parole hearings were just one of the ordeals which Patti was forced to confront. The twenty-fifth anniversary of Sharon’s death, in 1994, heralded a new, inexplicable public fascination with the Manson Family, echoing, in Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s words, the “seemingly tireless resonance of the case.”9 The anniversary not only prompted media discussion of the crimes but an almost macabre celebration of Ma
nson’s rising folk-hero status.
“Manson,” wrote one author, “is the only figure who can compete with Malcolm X for the kind of iconic power that attracts disenchanted, disenfranchised, and disaffected white kids.”10 Two decades after the Tate-LaBianca murders, this hypnotic reach extended not only to television documentaries and books but, ironically, to the very medium in which Manson himself had sought recognition: the music industry.
During the Tate-LaBianca trial, members of the Family arranged to have the recording sessions from the summer of 1968 released. The album, called Lie, featuring the same wild-eyed photograph of Charles Manson which had stared from the cover of the 19 December, 1969 issue of Life Magazine.
In 1982 came a second album, this one a bootleg illegally taped during Manson’s incarceration called Charlie Manson’s Good Time Gospel Hour, a third, Charles Manson: Live at San Quentin followed several years later. Stephen Kaplan of Performance Records, distributor of Lie in the 1980s, recalled: “Kids buy it thinking they’re going to get devil-worship music. But when they get home and find they have an album of mediocre folk songs, a lot of them are disappointed.”11
But the attention sparked interest among a new group of Manson admirers: recording artists. On their 1982 album Born Innocent, Redd Kross included a version of Manson’s song “Cease to Exist,” as well as a song called “Charlie” whose lyrics included the lines: “Flag on the couch/Lady on the floor/Baby in the gut/widdle biddy boy.”12 The 1988 album Creator by Evan Dando and the Lemmonheads included notes thanking “Susan, Lynette, Gypsy, Katie, Mary, Sandra, Leslie, Snake, Ouisch, Little Paul, and, of course, Charlie.” The group Sonic Youth recorded a song, “Death Valley, 69” in tribute to the Manson Family, and, in 1990, a rock opera, The Manson Family, premiered at Lincoln Center in New York, which had commissioned the piece from composer John Moran.13