Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars

by Edward George

  Several years ago, a Harvard University professor completed a study at the Rockefeller Institute that posed the question “What is ‘demonic’ from a psychiatric point of view?” He cited three major elements in his conclusion: (1) nudity, (2) aggressiveness, and (3) a schizophrenic mentality—a tearing apart. The first one, nudity, was somewhat confusing, while number 2, aggressiveness, might be seen as obvious. It was number 3 that caught my attention. Below that, he had three subcategories: (a) whatever destroys unity, (b) creates discord, and (c) alters patterns.

  Based on number three alone, and tossing out demented political leaders like Hitler, Stalin, and their ilk, I’d have to rate Manson as one of the major demonic creatures of our time. Tearing things apart, destroying unity, creating discord, and altering patterns are what he’s all about.

  He’s also about sleight of hand and miscommunication. Under my watch, he’d been protected, provided for, tolerated, and sometimes even pampered. I lost count of how many guitars, televisions, radios, and tape players he acquired, destroyed, and was allowed to have again, usually through the bending of rules. Yet, to read his letters or hear him speak to his followers in the visiting room, you’d think he was spending his time chained to some torture rack. He wanted his Family to view him as a martyr suffering enormous pain and deprivation because of the great father of all demons—usually me. It was bullshit and he knew it, but it played better in Peoria.

  Something odd was playing in Pleasanton around that time that again linked Squeaky and Charlie to Patty Hearst. Squeaky went after a Croatian nationalist terrorist named Julienne Busic with a claw hammer, whacking her a few good licks on the noggin before the guards broke it up. According to witnesses, Squeaky called Busic “a white, middle-class, rich bitch who doesn’t deserve to live.” The Pleasanton officers, who never prosecuted Squeaky, were probably sympathetic—as were most of New York’s finest. Busic was convicted of a 1976 bombing at La Guardia Airport that resulted in the death of a policeman. No motive was given for Squeaky’s attack at the time, but she would later tell a reporter that, to use modern slang, Busic “dissed” her. She called Busic “a rat, Patty Hearst’s best friend,” who was “very disrespectful of me.”

  I wondered if there was more to it than that. Manson had mentioned “the Hearst thing” during the Christmas call I’d arranged for Squeaky, making me suspicious that something was up. I queried Charlie, but he blew the hammer incident off as “chick stuff” and claimed to have no knowledge of any grander scheme involving Hearst—not that he would have told me if there was.

  As I waited for the other shoe to drop in that incident, my association with Charlie once again exploded into my off-duty life. I was working as a volunteer teacher at St. Mary’s Church in Vacaville, instructing high school students in religious studies. Often, I’d mention my prison experiences to the class and tie them in to Christian values. Specifically, I’d emphasize how so many inmates destroyed their lives by failing to obey basic Christian principles. Naturally, I used Manson in many examples, mostly because the students knew him and he captured their attention. Whenever the class appeared bored and distant, I’d tell a Manson story. It never failed to perk them up and get them involved in the discussion.

  Some of the young folks began sharing the stories with their parents. Normally, getting a student excited enough to run home and relay an event to his or her folks is a good thing. This is especially true for an off-hours, church-related religious class. You can imagine how thrilled the kids were to give up their free time for that. The problem was, the parents recoiled at the name Manson and began to express their disapproval to the priest. The priest took me aside one evening and outlined their concerns.

  “That’s baloney,” I responded, cutting him off. “Some of these kids will say anything to get out of having to come. They’re exaggerating. It’s not like I’m telling them to join Manson’s Family and go out on killing sprees. I do my best to make the classes interesting enough to keep the students coming. If I have to tell some prison stories to do that, then I do it.”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s appropriate,” the father intoned.

  Tired and tense from my long, stressful days, I felt my blood begin to rise. “Maybe you should tell those meddling parents to come down and sit in my class before they criticize.”

  Unaware of my building anger, the priest kept pushing his issue, going so far as to suggest that I switch classes with another teacher and start over, minus the prison talk.

  “You know, Father, I never see you over here. You never visit the classes and I don’t think you have the right to criticize me. We all volunteer our time, come here and do the best we can. We’re not professionals. We have to teach what we know, where our experiences lie. Prison is what I know, and it’s a damn good place to learn about the costs of living a life of sin!”

  He blinked at the mild profanity, but still wouldn’t budge, suggesting again that I switch classes. The suggestion sounded like an order. Furious, I lost control. “These kids can learn a hell of a lot from Charles Manson! When their parents don’t listen or make them mad, and they feel lost and alone, men like him are going to be there waiting, pretending to care and saying all the right things, but all along hiding some evil agenda. Charlie’s warned the world about that hundreds of times, but he’s right, nobody’s listening. Now I’m trying to warn them. I’m trying to keep their eye focused on Jesus, not athletes, celebrities, cults, drugstore gurus, and other worshiped humans. But you’ll never understand that, because you live in this pristine world. Well, you can take your fucking program, Father, because I’ve had it!”

  I turned away from his shocked face and stormed off. When I arrived home, I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I’d used harsh prison language inside a house of God to defend my right to prattle on about my buddy Charles Manson. I’d screamed the F word in a Catholic priest’s face! What was happening to me? Had Manson once again altered my behavior? I’d done everything but grab my balls and warn the father that I wasn’t going to stand for his bullshit interference.

  I spent the next few weeks racked with shame and guilt. How could I have lost it like that in front of a priest? I was too embarrassed to face him, so I prayed that he’d sense my sorrow and call or visit. He never did. I wrote a long letter of apology and eventually tried to make up, but our relationship was never the same. I could always detect a sense of fear and distrust in his eyes, like I was some emotional time bomb that could go off at any moment. As with my career and my daughter, Charlie had reached out from his cell and screwed up my life again. Would it ever end?

  Not in my lifetime. In 1979, after nine years in lockups, Good Time Charlie was formally recommended for a transfer to the CMF mainline—mostly through my efforts. He promptly blew the opportunity when he appeared before the institution classification committee. “You people can’t judge me,” he preached. “Your laws are not my laws that I live by. You’ve kept me locked up for nine years. For what? I’ve seen killers on the mainline who are much worse than me, yet you keep me caged like an animal. Someday, I’ll treat you just like you treat me!”

  So much for that attempt. The appalled committee rejected him, causing me to lose no small amount of face.

  “Why can’t you just shut up for once?” I scolded when he was back in his cell. “I know you wanted it. You’ve been bitching about being mainlined for years. I stuck my neck out for you. Yet, when you get your chance, you have to let your mouth ruin it!”

  “They needed to hear what I said!” he raged back. “Just because I tell them the truth doesn’t mean they should punish me for it. They should listen, learn, then give me what I want!”

  “The world doesn’t work that way, Charlie. When will you learn that?”

  “That’s your paper-bag world. Not mine!”

  “Either way, what’s the point? You’ve been saying the same thing for twenty years. We’ve heard it all. Why do you have to keep shooting yourself in the foot by repeati
ng those ridiculous accusations?”

  He paused for an instant, momentarily caught off guard. The silence didn’t last. “I have to keep saying it over and over because you people are so thick!”

  Angry as I was, I couldn’t help laughing. I chided myself for trying to outtalk the master.

  Far from absorbing any of my words, Charlie poured it on even stronger a few days later when he graced our presence at a Willis Unit classification meeting. He set the tone right off by bounding in wearing a Russian Cossack hat he had apparently swiped from Dr. Hyberg. The damn thing looked so out of place on him that we all cracked up. He ignored us and sat down.

  “I don’t give a fuck what you do with me,” he opened. “The only reason I’m here is to pay you guys a visit. You make decisions, I don’t. I don’t tell you what to do. You don’t listen. I’m in your thoughts, in the thoughts of Germany, Ireland, Scotland, France, England, Japan, and Australia.” He paused, staring at our puzzled faces. “You still don’t see what’s happening, do you? You’ll wait till its too late. Can’t you see that my life is your life? Cheat me and you cheat yourself. I’m your child. When you and Nixon failed to give me a fair trial, when you found me guilty, you found yourselves guilty. I’m in Nixon’s thoughts. He condemned me!”

  Charlie stood on his chair, his head shaking with disgust. “I can’t get a toilet-paper decision out of anyone around here. No one can stand up and make a decision. I only get paper words, promises that have no meaning. For God’s sake, if you’re going to stroke me, please let me shoot my wad!”

  “Getting back to that ‘thought’ thing,” Dr. Rotella interrupted. “Are you saying that everybody’s thoughts are on top of one another, so they’re all piled up? Do I read you right?”

  Charlie sensed that the shrink was poking fun at him. That was a no-no during Charlie’s lectures. His eyes burned. “If I ever get out of here, little fat man, I’m going to the desert. And if I catch you there, I’ll treat you like you treat me. I’ll tie you to a tree and torture—” He paused, catching himself. He liked Dr. Rotella and didn’t want to lay it down too heavy. “I’ll keep you there and keep changing my mind about what I’m going to do with you. I’ll make my decision and then change it. And all the time, you’ll suffer the way you’ve made me suffer.”

  Charlie’s controlled anger was a warning that he was in no mood for any more snide interruptions of his from-the-mouth-of-the-gods discourse. Sufficiently scolded, we allowed him to continue unchallenged. “Let me tell you about your good friends Mr. and Mrs. Pocketbook. These are the people who are so afraid of my girls because they’re into their dirty money and neglect their children and the environment. Mrs. Pocketbook is dizzy with pills and distasteful to Mr. Pocketbook. All her life, she pushed Mr. P. to make more and more money and he tried to oblige, driven to drink by her endless dissatisfaction. Deep inside, Mrs. P. felt guilty for this, but because she didn’t want to face the truth, she pushed her guilt on others. She blamed the neighbor’s kids and dogs for keeping her awake at night. She blamed her husband for things he hadn’t even done yet. They fought over his paycheck and how to spend it on themselves. Then the word came that prowlers were roaming the neighborhood. This summoned up Mrs. P.’s fear because she felt guilty and had no way to balance her guilt. Her husband was away. She’s alone. She remembered the warnings of Sandra Good and Lynette Fromme, those Manson women who seek retribution from greedy women like her who are more concerned about status and money than the earth, the children, and the natural world. Mrs. P. remembered Red and Blue saying that sometimes murder has to happen. The victims are cancerous growths contaminating the environment. They need radical surgery. They need to be cut off. The murders are done to save you, because without clean air and water, you’ll all die. If you don’t believe that, stop breathing and see what happens. We’re all one soul. Murdering someone who is killing the soul is justified!

  “So look within your souls, my friends. Are you running home with your paychecks and letting your wives and husbands make all the decisions? Are you, and you, and you and you Mr. and Mrs. Pocketbook? And if you are, what should be done to you?”

  With that, Manson hopped off the chair and marched toward the exit, his furry hat bobbing on his goofy head. He paused at the doorway, turned toward us, dug his index finger up his nose, twirled it around, then wiped his boogers on the doorjamb. In a flash, he was gone.

  We all sat in stunned silence, each absorbed in something Manson had said that touched us personally. Finally, Dr. Rotella broke the spell. “Strange little man,” he quipped.

  “Yeah, but oh so entertaining,” I added, far more immune to Manson’s diatribes than the others. They laughed nervously, then one by one paraded out of the room.

  The following year, I again referred Charlie to the mainline. (I’m nothing if not persistent.) This time, the liberal doctors and counselors said what the hell and gave it a shot—at least during the day. Like the vampire he was, he’d still have to be locked down in the high-security wing at night. On July 28, 1980, Manson strolled out of Willis Unit, wandered through the main corridor, and entered the general population. A new era in Manson’s life had dawned. Typically, it was a strange one.

  Charlie was given a job to go with his freedom. Nick Ristad, an extremely dedicated and caring Protestant chaplain, stuck his neck out and accepted Manson as his chief clerk. That was no small sacrifice considering that on the night of the LaBianca murders, Charlie first stopped in front of a Catholic church, got out, and told his startled group he was going to kill the priest because they “eat, shit, and tell lies like everybody else.” He came back a few minutes later and reported that the priest wasn’t home. (Ever the spin master, Manson subsequently claimed that he had just stopped to relieve himself and had told his gang the murder story to shake everybody up.)

  For the first few days, things went well on the mainline. The guards hung close, making sure nobody took a stab at him. When I swung by for a visit, I noticed that Tommy, a double murderer who’d previously been in Willis, was hanging around the chapel, fidgeting and eyeing everyone who passed.

  “What’s up, Tommy?” I asked, alarmed by his activities.

  “Not much.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He looked around, then leaned in close. “Protecting Charlie,” he whispered. “I’m his bodyguard.”

  Apparently, Charlie had brought along his own security.

  The moment the guards backed off, inmates began to gravitate to the chapel. They weren’t coming to pray. In yet another stroke of bizarre irony, they entered into the house of God to worship at the feet of a man frequently referred to as the devil. As I feared, the weak-willed head cases who populated CMF flocked like lost sheep to their famous cellmate. Before long, a white racist enclave had formed, filling a normally placid religious environment with hate and tension. Even Charlie could see that the experiment wasn’t working. He preferred to mold receptive, initially healthy minds. The guys coming to him now brought along enough mental baggage to sink a battleship. He found it frustrating to try and wash brains that weren’t there to begin with. The parade of psychotic worshipers and autograph seekers started rattling his nerves.

  Mine too! When a couple of guys emerged zombie-like from the chapel one day with X’s and swastikas carved into their foreheads, I knew the gig was up. Needless to say, Charlie didn’t protest when I yanked him out of there and locked him down at Willis. He adjusted for a while, then began moaning and groaning about wanting to go back into population. “It wasn’t my fault it didn’t work,” he wailed; “it was all those fuckin’ crazies!”

  Building steam for a new tantrum, he refused to go to the hospital for a regularly scheduled visit. At times like this, I often turned the situation over to Sergeant Tommy Thompson, a retired air force officer who took shit from no human. A grizzled Texan, Sergeant Thompson was totally immune to Manson’s manipulative ways.

  “You’ll have to cuff me and carry me down there!” Mans
on screamed to the guards just as Sergeant Thompson arrived. The military veteran looked Charlie straight in the eye.

  “You little son of a bitch,” he drawled. “You get up on your feet and you walk or I’ll drag your ass down there feet first like the motherfuckin’ dog you are!”

  Charlie shut up and walked on his own.

  A week later, we gave in to Charlie’s annoying nagging and tried the mainline experiment again. This time, we made a special effort to keep a better watch on the parade of leaderless Cuckoo’s Nest types marching like sacrificial natives to the chapel door. The second day there, Charlie was doing some work with an X-Acto knife and accidentally sliced his hand, earning him another trip to the hospital. Sergeant Thompson happened to be on Cuckoo’s Nest duty at the time. He wasn’t sympathetic. “Why didn’t you cut your throat and save everybody the trouble?” he cracked.

  While Manson was being bandaged, his two favorite girls were making big news three thousand miles away at a Virginia prison, where they’d once again been reunited. Squeaky and Sandra granted a wide-ranging joint interview with an industrious Sacramento Bee reporter named Wayne Wilson. Squeaky, then thirty-one, covered the Ford assassination attempt, her childhood, and Charlie, among other things, in the September 1980 story.

  “I was fed up. With lots and lots of things. Here’s this guy [Ford] coming in to Sacramento, smiling like everything’s all right with the world, and we got all these problems over here. And this is wrong and that’s wrong, and my air and water’s at stake, and I’m going to see this guy. And then I thought, ‘Wait a minute. He’s not going to do anything for you. He’s just going to pass right by.’ And I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just take my gun.’ And I thought, ‘Well, are you going to use it?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. Just go and check it out.’ Now that’s exactly what I was doing, going and checking it out. But I was not determined to kill the guy, obviously, because I didn’t do it.… People ask me, ‘Well, were you going to? Did you want to?’ Well, I say I did not make any decision on it while I was going down there. That doesn’t make sense to most people because they’ve never been to the point where they were that undecided. Maybe I’m dumb. Maybe I’m a clunk, like somebody told me. But I’m kind of a graceful clunk, and I got reasons and I got heart and I cared about my Family. I didn’t want to go over my Family. That was nine deaths that should have done something. You know, people should have at least wanted to know why? What was it? What is the cause? And try and fix it if possible.