Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Sandra Good was subsequently tried for aiding and abetting an escape. Her attorney, the one and only Irving Kanarek, claimed she had been kidnaped by Como. The jury didn’t buy it, and Sandy was given six months in jail.

  The day Como escaped, Kanarek, appearing in Judge Raymond Choate’s court, claimed in his patented way: “I allege with no proof at this particular time that this escape was deliberately allowed to take place.”

  Judge Choate asked Kanarek if he could explain why Como was forced to climb down a rope from the thirteenth to the eighth floor.

  “That makes it look good, Your Honor,” Kanarek explained.

  While Manson was still on trial for the Hinman-Shea murders, I dropped into the courtroom one day. It was a welcome relief to be a spectator for a change.

  Manson, who had recently taken to wearing a black storm trooper’s uniform in court, spotted me and sent a message by the bailiff that he wanted to speak to me. There were a few things I wanted to ask him about also, so I stayed over after court recessed. Sitting in the prisoner’s dock in the courtroom, we talked from 4:30 P.M. to nearly 6 P.M. None of the talk concerned the current charges against him. Mostly we discussed his philosophy. I was especially interested in learning the evolution of some of his ideas, and questioned him at length about his relationship with Scientology and with the satanic cult known as The Process, or the Church of the Final Judgement.

  Manson had wanted to speak to me, he said, because he wanted me to know “I don’t have no hard feelings.” He told me that I had done “a fantastic, remarkable job” in convicting him, and he said, “You gave me a fair trial, like you promised.” He was not bitter about the result, however, because to him “prison has always been my home; I didn’t want to leave it the last time and you’re only sending me back there.” There were regular meals, not great, but better than the garbage at Spahn Ranch. And since you don’t have to work if you don’t want to, he’d have plenty of time to play his guitar.

  “That may be, Charlie, but you don’t have any women there,” I said.

  “I don’t need broads,” he replied. “Every woman I ever had, she asked me to make love to her. I never asked them. I can do without them.” There was plenty of sex in prison, he said.

  Although Manson again claimed that the Beatles’ music and LSD were responsible for the Tate-LaBianca murders, he admitted that he had known they were going to happen, “because I even knew what the mice were doing at Spahn Ranch.” He then added, “So I said to them: ‘Here, do you want this rope? Do you want this gun?’ And later I told them not to tell anyone about what happened.”

  Though careful never to do so in open court, in our private conversations Manson often referred to blacks as “niggers.” He claimed he didn’t dislike them. “I don’t hate anyone,” he said, “but I know they hate me.”

  Returning to the familiar theme of Helter Skelter, I asked him when he thought the black man was going to take over.

  “I may have put a clog in them,” he replied.

  “You mean the trial alerted whitey?”

  His reply was a simple, and sad, “Yeah.”

  Our conversation took place on June 14, 1971. The following day one of the attorneys complained, and Judge Choate conducted an evidentiary hearing in open court. I testified to the gist of our conversation, noting that Manson had asked to speak to me, and not vice versa, and that the current charges were not discussed. There was nothing unethical about this, I observed. Moreover, I’d told Kanarek that Manson wanted to talk to me, but Kanarek had merely walked away.

  The bailiff, Rusty Burrell, who had sat in on the conversation, staying overtime because he found it interesting, supported my account. As did Manson himself.

  MANSON “The version the man [indicating me] gave was right on. I am almost sure Mr. Kanarek knew that I had asked to see him. I had wanted to speak to this man for the last year, and it was my request that motivated it.”

  As for the hearing itself, Manson said: “Your Honor, I don’t think this is fair at all. You know, this was my mistake.”

  Agreeing, and ruling that there had been no impropriety involved, Judge Choate brought the hearing to an end.

  The irony of all this was not lost on the press, which reported, with some incredulity, that Manson had taken the stand to defend the man who had convicted him of seven murders!

  My interest in the sources of Manson’s beliefs stretched back to my assignment to the case. Some of those sources have been mentioned earlier. Others, though inadmissible as evidence in the trial, have more than a passing interest, if only as clues to the genesis of such a sick obsession.

  I knew, from Gregg Jakobson and others, that Manson was an eclectic, a borrower of ideas. I knew too, both from his prison records and from my conversations with him, that Manson’s involvement with Scientology had been more than a passing fad. Manson told me, as he had Paul Watkins, that he had reached the highest stage, “theta clear,” and no longer had any connection with or need for Scientology. I was inclined to accept at least the latter portion of his claim. In my rather extensive investigation, I found no evidence of any kind that Manson was involved with Scientology after his release from prison in 1967.* By this time, he had gone on to do his own thing.

  What effect, if any, Scientology had on Manson’s mental state cannot be measured. Undoubtedly he picked up from his “auditing” sessions in prison some knowledge of mind control, as well as some techniques which he later put to use in programming his followers.

  Manson’s link with The Process, or the Church of the Final Judgement, is more tenuous, yet considerably more fascinating. The leader of the satanic cult is one Robert Moore, whose cult name is Robert DeGrimston. Himself a former disciple of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Moore broke with Scientology about 1963 to form his own group, after apparently attaining a high position in the London headquarters. He and his followers later traveled to various parts of the world, including Mexico and the United States, and for at least several months, and possibly longer, he lived in San Francisco. He also reportedly participated in a seminar at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, though whether this coincided with any of Manson’s visits there is unknown.

  One of DeGrimston’s most fervent disciples is one Victor Wild, a young leather goods manufacturer whose Process name is Brother Ely.

  Up until December of 1967, Victor Wild’s residence, and the San Francisco headquarters for The Process, was 407 Cole Street, in Haight-Ashbury.

  From about April through July 1967, Charles Manson and his still fledgling Family lived just two blocks away, at 636 Cole. In view of Manson’s curiosity, it appears very likely that he at least investigated the satanists, and there is fairly persuasive evidence that he “borrowed” some of their teachings.

  In one of our conversations during the Tate-LaBianca trial, I asked Manson if he knew Robert Moore, or Robert DeGrimston. He denied knowing DeGrimston, but said he had met Moore. “You’re looking at him,” Manson told me. “Moore and I are one and the same.” I took this to mean that he felt they thought alike.

  Not long after this I was visited by two representatives of The Process, a Father John and a Brother Matthew. Having heard that I was asking questions about the group, they had been sent from their Cambridge, Massachusetts, headquarters to assure me that Manson and Moore had never met and that Moore was opposed to violence. They also left me a stack of Process literature. The following day the names “Father John” and “Brother Matthew” appeared on Manson’s visitor’s list. What they discussed is unknown. All I know is that in my last conversation with Manson, Charlie became evasive when I questioned him about The Process.

  In 1968 and 1969, The Process launched a major recruiting drive in the United States. They were in Los Angeles in May and June of 1968 and for at least several months in the fall of 1969, returning to England in about October, after claiming to have converted some two hundred American hippies to their sect. Manson was in Los Angeles during both periods. It is possi
ble that there may have been some contact with Manson and/or his group, but I found no evidence of this. I’m inclined to think that Manson’s contact with the group probably occurred in San Francisco in 1967, as indicated, at a time when his philosophy was still being formulated. I believe there was at least some contact, in view of the many parallels between Manson’s teachings and those of The Process, as revealed in their literature.

  Both preached an imminent, violent Armageddon, in which all but the chosen few would be destroyed. Both found the basis for this in the Book of Revelation. Both conceived that the motorcycle gangs, such as Hell’s Angels, would be the troops of the last days. And both actively sought to solicit them to their side.

  The three great gods of the universe, according to The Process, were Jehovah, Lucifer, and Satan, with Christ the ultimate unifier who reconciles all three. Manson had a simpler duality; he was known to his followers as both Satan and Christ.

  Both preached the Second Coming of Christ, a not unusual belief, except in their interpretation of it. According to a Process pamphlet: “Through Love, Christ and Satan have destroyed their enmity and come together for the End: Christ to Judge, Satan to execute the Judgement.” When Christ returned this time, Manson said, it would be the Romans, i.e., the establishment, who went up on the cross.

  Manson’s attitude toward fear was so curious I felt it to be almost unique. At least I felt that until reading in a special issue of The Process magazine devoted to fear: “Fear is beneficial…Fear is the catalyst of action. It is the energiser, 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.” Though the wording differs, this is almost exactly what Manson preached.

  Manson spoke frequently of the bottomless pit, The Process of the bottomless void.

  Within the organization, The Process was called (at least until 1969) “the family,” while its members were known as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers.

  The symbol of The Process is similar, though not identical, to the swastika Manson carved on his forehead.

  Among the precepts of The Process which parallel Manson’s own: “The Time of the End is now…The Ultimate Sin is to kill an animal…Christ said love your enemy. Christ’s enemy was Satan. Love Christ and Satan…The Lamb and the Goat must come together. Pure Love descended from the Pinnacle of Heaven, united with Pure Hatred raised from the depths of Hell.”

  One former Process member, being interrogated by LAPD in connection with two motorcycle gang slayings (neither of which was connected with The Process), said of the cult, “They don’t like anybody that they can’t indoctrinate or anybody that is not with them. They are just totally against what they call the ‘gray forces,’ the rich establishment or the Negroes—”

  Q. “Why don’t they like Negroes?”

  A. “I don’t know. They just don’t.”

  Q. “They have a natural hate for the Negro?”

  A. “They have a natural hate but they would also like to use the Negro as a whole to begin some kind of militant thing…They are really good at picking out angry people.”

  This was merely the opinion of one disaffiliated member, and may well not be the official position of The Process itself, but the similarities to Manson’s own philosophy are still chilling.

  These are only some of the parallels I found. They are enough to convince me, at least, that even if Manson himself may never have been a member of The Process, he borrowed heavily from the satanic cult.*

  Nor are these the only connections between the Manson Family and satanists.

  Bobby Beausoleil was for a time closely associated with filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who was himself deeply involved in both the motorcycle gang mystique and the occult. Beausoleil starred in Anger’s film Lucifer Rising, playing the part of Lucifer. This was before he ever met Manson.

  In his psychiatric report on Susan Atkins, Dr. Joel Hochman wrote of a portion of her San Francisco period, apparently sometime in 1967 or 1968, before she too met Manson: “At this time she entered into what she now calls her Satanic period. She became involved with Anton LaVey, the Satanist.* She took a part in a commercial production of a witch’s sabbath, and recalls the opening night when she took LSD. She was supposed to lie down in a coffin during the act, and lay down in it while hallucinating. She stated that she didn’t want to come out, and consequently the curtain was 15 minutes late. She stated that she felt alive and everything else in the ugly world was dead. Subsequently, she stayed on her ‘Satanic trip’ [for] approximately eight months…”

  During the Tate-LaBianca trial, Patricia Krenwinkel doodled. Her two favorite subjects, according to bailiff Bill Murray, were Devil’s heads and the Mendes Goat, both satanist symbols.

  Before he killed him, Charles “Tex” Watson told Voytek Frykowski: “I am the Devil and I’m here to do the Devil’s business.”

  An apparently important influence on Manson, in both precept and example, was a dead man: Adolf Hitler. Manson looked up to Hitler and spoke of him often. He told his followers that “Hitler had the best answer to everything” and that he was “a tuned-in guy who leveled the karma of the Jews.” Manson saw himself as no less a historical figure, a leader who would not only reverse the karma of the blacks but level all but his own Aryan race—his all-white, all-American Family.

  There were both surface and substantive parallels between Hitler and Manson.

  Both were vegetarians; both were little men; both suffered deep wounds in their youth, the psychological scars at least contributing to, if not causing, their deep hatred for society; both suffered the stigma of illegitimacy, in Manson’s case because he himself was a bastard, in Hitler’s because his father was.

  Both were vagrant wanderers; both were frustrated, and rejected, artists; both liked animals more than people; both were deeply engrossed in the occult; both had others commit their murders for them.

  Both were racists; yet there is some evidence that both also believed they carried the blood of the very people they despised. Many historians believe that Hitler was secretly obsessed with the fear that he had a Jewish ancestor. If Manson’s prison records are correct, he may have believed his father was black.

  Both surrounded themselves with bootlicking slaves; both sought out the weaknesses of others, and used them; both programmed their followers through repetition, repeating the same phrases over and over; both realized and exploited the psychological impact of fear.

  Both had a favorite epithet for those they hated: Hitler’s was “Schweinehund,” Manson’s was “pigs.”

  Both had eyes which their followers described as “hypnotic” beyond that, however, both had a presence, a charisma, and a tremendous amount of personal persuasive power. Generals went to Hitler intent on convincing him that his military plans were insane; they left true believers. Dean Moorehouse went to Spahn Ranch to kill Manson for stealing his daughter, Ruth Ann; he ended up on his knees worshiping him.

  Both had an incredible ability to influence others.

  Both Manson’s and Hitler’s followers were able to explain away the monstrous acts their leaders committed by retreating into philosophical abstractions.

  Probably the single most important influence on Hitler was Nietzsche. Manson told Jakobson that he had read Nietzsche. Whether true or not—Manson read with difficulty and Nietzsche is not easy reading—both Manson and Hitler believed in the three basic tenets of Nietzsche’s philosophy: women are inferior to men; the white race is superior to all other races; it is not wrong to kill if the end is right.

  And kill they both did. Both believed that mass murder was all right, even desirable, if it furthered the attainment of some grand plan. Each had such a plan; each had his own grandiose obsession: Hitler’s was the Third Reich, Manson’s was Helter Skelter.

  At some point parallels become more than coincidence. How much of this was conscious borrowing on Manson’s part, how much unconscious e
mulation, is unknown. I do believe that if Manson had had the opportunity, he would have become another Hitler. I can’t conceive of his stopping short of murdering huge masses of people.

  Some mysteries remain. One is the exact number of murders committed by members of the Manson Family.

  Manson bragged to Juan Flynn that he had committed thirty-five murders. When Juan first told me this, I was inclined to doubt that it was anything more than sick boasting on Charlie’s part. There is now evidence, however, that even if this wasn’t true then, the total to date may be very close to, and may even exceed, Manson’s estimate.

  In November 1969, Susan Atkins told Ronnie Howard, “There are eleven murders that they will never solve.” Leslie Van Houten used the same number in her interrogation by Mike McGann, while Ouisch told Barbara Hoyt that she knew of ten people the Family had killed “besides Sharon.”

  Susan told Virginia Graham that, in addition to the eight Hinman-Tate-LaBianca slayings, “there’s more—and more before.” One was undoubtedly Shea. Another was probably the “Black Panther” (Bernard Crowe), whom Susan, like Manson himself, erroneously believed dead.

  Susan may have been referring to Crowe when, in the tape she made with Caballero, she said that the .22 caliber Longhorn revolver used in the Tate homicides had been used in “other killings,” though on the tape this was clearly plural, not singular.

  Susan also told Virginia, “There’s also three people out in the desert that they done in.” According to Virginia, Susan “just said it very nonchalant like, mentioning no names.” When Steve Zabriske tried unsuccessfully to convince Portland police that a Charlie and a Clem were involved in both the Tate and the LaBianca murders, he also said that Ed Bailey had told him that he had seen this Charlie shoot a man in the head. The murder had occurred in Death Valley, according to Bailey, and the gun was a .45 caliber automatic. When interrogated by LAPD in May 1970, Bailey, t/n Edward Arthur Bailey, denied this. However, another source, who was for a time close to the Family, claims he heard “there are supposed to be two boys and a girl buried about eight feet deep behind Barker Ranch.”