Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars

by Edward George

  “That’s okay,” she said. “It’s all right.”

  Charlie had simply answered her question in a fashion that made it clear exactly how he controlled his women—with fear and intimidation. They, like Chris, would forever remember the chilling act.

  Manson acted as if the terrifying demonstration were all part of a routine interview. He continued without pause, describing how he slapped and chided his women to keep them in their proper place. That place, in his chauvinistic mind, was to stay home, take care of the men’s needs, and rear the kids. According to Charlie, women exist for no other reason than to suck cocks and please men. “Women are okay as long as they keep their mouths shut and do what they’re told. When a good girl came around, I didn’t want to mess with her. I’d tell her to leave and don’t come back. But if she stayed or came back, I dragged her off in the bushes or behind the barn and fucked her on the dirt.”

  The lurid image and harsh language were intended to shock the reporter, but she didn’t flinch. To keep him from going further, I interrupted again. “If you loved your women so much, why didn’t you take the rap for them? I read your interview with Dr. Forte, the expert who testified for the prosecution in Leslie’s retrial. You said that you had no influence over them, yet you talk about how they had to follow your will, become one with your ‘truth’ and obey you. They didn’t do anything without your okay. So why not help her out by confessing that you took over their minds? You’re never getting out anyway.”

  This was usually a hot button with Charlie. After the hair-pulling act, it was a big risk pushing it with Chris there, but I couldn’t help myself. His contradictions were too maddening to go unchallenged.

  “They are responsible because they held the gun!” he dodged. “They pulled the trigger. I only showed them how. I was not there. Can’t you get that through your head? They knew what they were doing! That was their ‘truth.’”

  It was also, sadly, Charlie’s truth. Whenever it came time for him to step up and do something remotely decent for someone else, the old prison credo of self-preservation interfered.

  The interview ended without further incident. Chris pulled out her camera and shot some pictures. Charlie dutifully posed like a professional model, offering a wide set of expressions. In a suddenly playful mood that belied his previous anger, he slipped behind me, grabbed me in a head-lock, and flashed a demon smile.

  “Do you want me to take it?” Chris asked, pointing the camera.

  “Hell no!” I answered. “People will wonder who’s running this place.”

  Despite all the theatrics, Chris wrote a surprisingly lackluster article, failing to capture Manson’s fearsome enthusiasm and energy. To my shock, either she or her editors totally eliminated the part where Charlie jerked her head back and yelled in her face. Incredible. She had promised she wouldn’t say anything bad about him, and had literally bent over backward to keep her word, even after he graced her with a sensational performance. All that aside, Charlie’s quotes alone were enough to make the story worth reading, including this rare comment on his mother. “You might say she was a 1933 runaway flower child,” he quipped.

  Asked about having to spend his life in prison, he became philosophical. “You’re in prison more than I’m in prison. It’s all prison. You’ve got more rules to live by than I do. I can sit down and relax, can you? I take my own time in doing something. I live in my own time, you live in the time left to you by the dead. You live in the past that controls your future. I live in the now, controlled by your past and your future. Because I have the controls over it, I have the power in it and not the controls over it, so anywhere I am is where I am. If I’m here, I’m here. If I’m in San Quentin, I’m here. If I’m in the desert, I’m here. I have to be satisfied with myself wherever I am. So wherever I am is freedom to be because I am free within my own soul.…

  “I don’t do the same things you do. I don’t live the same lifestyle you live. You live the lifestyle you were trained and conditioned to live. I create my own lifestyle, my own world. You live in the world that was created for you. You accept the things you were taught to accept because you don’t know any different. I don’t accept the things I was taught. I don’t accept the trees being cut down. I don’t accept the water being polluted. You people accept that. You say it’s always been that way. You got jet airplanes that go six thousand miles per hour. You know how small that makes the world? The world is a little place now. We’re still thinking 1776 laws for a jet age, does that make sense.… Kind of silly that we’re living in a prison made by past thoughts, by past confusion. So, are we in prison? Can you do what you want? Are you free to be yourself? Do you get up when you want or are you forced to do things you don’t want to every day?

  “… It would take ten books to unexplain the fifty books that have been written. It would take a trial to unexplain the district attorney who had two years to put everything he could think of on me. He didn’t miss anything. I’m God, I’m the devil, I’m every kind of thing you can think of but at the same time I’m nobody. I’m a maniac, I’m keen, I’m clever, I’m sharp, I’m insane. I’m everything, but at the same time when I say ‘well, let me…’ they say no you can’t say anything. But if I’m everything why can’t I defend myself in court? If I’m so smart to overtake the world or undertake the world or undermine all the greatest minds of the planet since the day one … I must be some kind of genius. Yet I’m so inadequate that I can’t even walk in a courtroom to put on a defense. Come on!…

  “I may not be a decent person … but I respect decent people.”

  To back up that hard-to-swallow line, Manson explained that he once ordered a young woman into his van at knifepoint (possibly to rape her). When she responded that she couldn’t obey because she believed in Jesus, he let her go.

  “If somebody is afraid of Charlie Manson, they’re afraid of themselves,” he elaborated. “If somebody is afraid of Charlie Manson, they’re afraid of the newspapers that created Charlie Manson. How can they be afraid of the newspapers that created Charlie Manson? How can they be afraid of somebody they don’t even know? Does that mean I have to spend the rest of my life in prison because the public is afraid, or shall we take the news media and lock the news media up because they created the situation?… I’m just doing my number, what they call doing your own time. I just do my number, doing the best I can for each day because I live for this day.”

  The quotes Weinstein emphasized were solid, but again, it was the presentation that really told the story. Interestingly enough, three days later, the Vacaville Reporter announced that Weinstein was leaving the paper to take a (no doubt better-paying) position with the in-house publications department of the California State Employees Association. Her dance with Charlie thus became the swan song of her brief journalistic career.

  A similarly frightening performance Charlie had given earlier did not go unreported. This time, the menacing aspects were pushed to the front. I received an ominous official memorandum from an obviously shaken officer. “I asked Manson if he needed any supplies to which he responded with the following: ‘Yeah, I need something. I need you to do something about the foul air and the stinking water! If you don’t do something about it I’ll break your fucking neck! Save my children from the polluted air and water or I’ll break your fucking back. Don’t you remember the blood smeared all over the walls and the women with their heads cut off and stuffed up their pussies? Well, it will all happen again if you don’t clean up the water and air. If you don’t clean it up you just might end up with a broken back or neck or an unexpected car accident. So you better drive real careful when you go home from here at night.’”

  Knowing he was rattling this guy’s cage, Manson laid it on thicker. The guard filed a second report nine days later:

  “He regularly speaks of mass murder and of the vengeance which he will carry out against the established society in general, and correctional personnel specifically,” the guard wrote. “I view him as being a
n extremely violent individual obsessed with eradication of all segments of society not aligned with his self ordained life style.” The concerned guard was thoughtful enough to again quote Manson directly. It helped explain why he was so upset:

  “Why the hell would I want out? Hell, the first day I’m out I’m going to have to kill fifty people! All those people who lied about me, that fucked with my life. Those so-called judges and lawyers that put me in here. Yeah, I’m going to kill them all! And that’s just at first. There’s a lot more I’m going to kill when I get out! I have thousands of people writing to me all across the country. They think I’m their god. They would do anything for me! They would kill for me because I’m their god and I told them to. You just might walk out in the parking lot and get your throat cut from ear to ear. Just like a lot of other assholes that work around this fucking place, that don’t do what I tell them to do! I’m as much a judge and jury as those that put me in here. I judge you to die! I’m putting you on my list because you didn’t do what I told you to do. All I have to do is get the word out to them and you’re a dead man!”

  I could see how this would disturb the uninitiated. To me, it was just Charlie’s routine ranting. The guard probably refused to fetch some allotted toiletry in a timely fashion, and Charlie went berserk. There was, unfortunately, some truth to these threats. He was absolutely right about the “thousands” of letters from Manson Family wanna-bes who were eager to kill for him. I knew because I was still reading his mail! That was and remained the scariest part about Manson. We had him under control, but we could never control his followers on the outside. And from what I was reading, that group was growing.

  “As long as Manson views himself as a god of vengeance and is able to maintain a following to carry out his violently anti-social doctrine, he constitutes a serious threat,” the officer correctly concluded. “[He poses a] threat to the prison setting by way of his almost constant haranguing about killing correctional staff, and the upheaval of the prison system. More importantly, judging by Manson’s present attitude, I feel that he would constitute an even greater threat to society if he were allowed to re-enter it feeling as he proclaims to. I sincerely urge that this matter be given the most serious consideration at such a time as he be considered for release.”

  This was obviously one guard who never wanted to see Charlie on the streets again. Hell, I’m sure the guy didn’t even want to pass by his cell anymore! I noted his concerns, but there really wasn’t anything I could do. I’d heard it all before. The disturbed officer would just have to get used to it like everyone else.

  The newspaper interview dramatics and the guard conflict were the exact kind of horror-movie-type cheap thrills that continued to feed my intellectual attraction to Manson. In contrast, it was nowhere near the same with CMF’s other “celebrity” prisoners. At one time, serial killer Juan Corona’s fame rivaled Manson’s. As with Manson, Corona’s name itself came to symbolize evil incarnate. Writers and comedians would bandy it about to make points about scary situations. “I couldn’t have been more afraid if I’d spotted Juan Corona standing in my garden with a shovel!” they’d quip. Corona earned his reputation by murdering and burying something like twenty-five migrant workers before his capture. He was appealing his conviction based on poor legal representation, and had won himself a new trial. He was sent to me because it was more convenient for his attorneys and investigators to visit him. (The California corrections system always strives to accommodate the needs of its celebrity mass murderers.)

  For all his infamy, Juan was a disgusting, fearful man, distrustful of both staff and inmates. He was the kind of person who literally made your skin crawl. When I shook his hand, it felt soft and mushy like a boneless fish, a sensation that gave me the creeps. A man of no particular intelligence, skill, or insights, he was nothing more than a low-rent sicko. The only significant thing I ever remember him saying came when his attorneys arrived one day. “Look,” he quipped to a Spanish-speaking guard. “I got three white lawyers working for me. Pretty good, huh?”

  “Fuck you, Corona,” the officer shot back.

  Even the other inmates wanted nothing to do with him. He remained a loner, without a single friend or lover. Manson regarded him the way he would a cockroach squashed on the bottom of his shoe. He wasn’t even a worthy topic of discussion.

  Big Ed Kemper joined the circus around the same time. He was somewhat more interesting, if just in size alone. Six feet nine, three hundred pounds, he was both a literal and figurative monster. A passive, congenial man, he appeared totally harmless. He was—unless you happened to remind him of his mother. Then it was lights out. Unfortunately, too many women had had the misfortune of resembling the late Mrs. Kemper. Ed obviously hated his mom, painting her as a mean, vindictive witch who abused and tormented him throughout his youth. On his glorious day of vengeance, the tall, gawky teenager first cut off the head of his mother’s best friend and placed it on the mantel. When his mother came home, she was shocked and horrified—but not for long. Ed promptly killed her next, taking great pleasure in the act. He then killed his grandfather to spare him the heartbreak.

  Ed was sent to Atascadero State Hospital and became the perfect patient. After a few years, the doctors announced that he was cured and ready to rejoin society. Once free, he seemingly dedicated his life to giving lifts to needy female hitchhikers. Nine out of ten came away with nothing more than a helpful ride from the jolly fellow. Those are good odds in everything except murder. The remaining ten percent—the ones who reminded him of his mom—were killed in a series of gruesome ways. He strangled some, stabbed others, and smothered at least one by sitting on her face.

  Struggling with his conscience, Ed finally turned himself in to the disbelieving police. “Stop me before I kill again,” he begged. To prove his case, Ed led the cops to his victims’ graves. When the digging was done, nine “Mrs. Kempers” had been unearthed. Ed wasn’t just killing his mother, he was trying to eliminate the entire gene pool!

  “I didn’t want to hurt anybody,” he explained to me after his arrival. “I just couldn’t stop.”

  Ed’s main problem at CMF was that he couldn’t stop talking about his crimes. He related his stories with a fiendish relish, giving detailed descriptions of how he killed each girl, how their eyes popped out, how they gasped and struggled, how their tongues protruded as they died. It was almost like he was describing a sporting event. One story he told was particularly creepy. He picked up two girls and decided to do them both when one had that familiar maternal look about her. He locked the second girl in the car and dragged the first out in a field, where he repeatedly stabbed her. When he came back to the vehicle, he realized that he’d left his keys in the ignition! The girl was locked inside with the keys! All she had to do was hop into the front seat and drive away. Her life would have been spared and Big Ed Kemper’s reign of terror would have been over. Ed stayed cool. He calmly tapped on the window and pointed to the lock, ordering the petrified girl to kindly release it. Incredibly, she did—and died horribly shortly thereafter. “That was really stupid,” Ed cracked, recalling it with glee.

  “You have to stop talking like that on the mainline,” I warned. “Don’t go telling everybody your war stories.”

  “Why?” he asked, hurt that he couldn’t boast about the only thing he felt made his worthless existence significant.

  “Because somebody’s going to kill you! Inmates don’t like guys like you.”

  I found it interesting that Ed and Charlie had similar dysfunctional backgrounds—mothers they hated—then fed off the same niche of people—lost and alienated young women. After that, the differences were dramatic. Ed killed his women, while Charlie recruited, bewitched, brainwashed, drugged, and fornicated with his zombies, then sent them out to kill others for him. (A deciding factor might be that Charlie’s mother, though criminal, immoral, and neglectful, was not mean.) The only thing the pair—one a giant, the other a shrimp—had in common from the end-re
sult aspect was they aborted the lives of lot of innocent people.

  Richard Allen Davis, the sex offender who would later gain notoriety for snatching a young girl named Polly Klass from a slumber party at her California home, dragging her off, and fatally raping her, was also around CMF at the time. However, Davis was a nobody then, a “chomo” (child molester) everybody hated, so he wasn’t a factor.

  While Manson had little use for Corona, Kemper, or Davis, the same couldn’t be said for Willie Spann, another of CMF’s resident celebrities. Spann, thirty-three, was the son of then-president Jimmy Carter’s sister Gloria, making him the President’s nephew. The affable young man with long, curly brown hair had been in and out of jail for years, mostly for drugs, robberies, and burglaries, and came to CMF after faking a stabbing at San Quentin. He wanted out of there because he said the gangs believed he snitched on someone back in 1971 and were planning to kill him. Prior to Carter’s surprise, come-from-nowhere election, nobody cared about Willie Spann. He was just another unstable, bisexual hype clogging the system. Then his uncle became President, and suddenly the lifelong loser magically transformed into a somebody—at least from our perspective. Actually, nobody seemed to care about him in Washington. He was a black sheep who was an embarrassment to the President, and Carter was already having enough trouble in that department with his loony brother Billy. Willie wasn’t very close to his mother either. A party girl in her youth, she matured into the quiet Carter sibling who stayed out of the limelight and spent her whole life down on the farm. She was no doubt overwhelmed by the antisocial behavior of her troubled son combined with the sudden fame of her brother. (Jimmy Carter’s youngest sister, Ruth, was the vibrant one who became a traveling evangelist.) The only person who appeared to care about Willie, aside from the media, was his grandmother, the extremely famous and much beloved Miss Lillian. A kind, decent woman, she sent Willie money and wrote him frequent letters of encouragement.