Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars

by Edward George

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Hold up. Will you—

  INMATE MANSON: What do you want to prove here?

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: And I’m not going to tell Corrections what to do with you, but we’re going to follow some kind of decorum and procedure in this hearing room.

  INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: I’m going to let you go just a little bit longer on this that you’re talking about, then we’re going to move to your psych reports. Now go ahead.

  INMATE MANSON: I reflect the procedure back to stay alive, man, and I’ve got to get nasty sometimes, because everybody you sending here working over me is not a nice guy, you know. I think if any of you have any experience in jail, you know that jail is not a very nice place to be.

  And you have all kinds of different people in all kinds of different levels and I have to deal with all those levels. I have to deal with every kind of psychotic maniac you got in the world trying to burn me up, trying to beat me up, trying to get some attention to get me in any kind of direction he can. And I have to propose a certain image and keep a certain kind of guy stuck up there to keep those bullies off of me. Because if I show any weakness, if I fall down in any perspective, I get ate up because I run with a pack of wolves and I’ve got to be a wolf.

  And when it reflects back to you that I’m a no-good so-and-so and so forth, I’m reflecting a procedure that’s reflected onto me. If I don’t have any other choice but to get a 115 to stay out of something more dangerous or more terrible, rather than stand—rather than stay out of my cell and fight this big old ugly guy, I’m going to call him a bunch of names so he’ll put it on paper. And then when he puts it on paper, I say, whew, boy, I didn’t have to go with that physically, then I could do it mentally.

  As long as I run my jaw mentally and I get it put on the paper, then physically I can walk around all the violence and I can stay in peace and harmony.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Are you saying that you’re deliberately keeping yourself placed in a security holding unit?

  INMATE MANSON: No, I’m saying that we’re all doing this. We all only use each other in different perspectives all the time. If the song’s saying, love won’t let you go—it ain’t got nothing to do with, love won’t let you go. It’s people who need you that they don’t want to let you go.

  They need you for different reasons. They need you to feel secure in—because if they got guys they’re afraid of, you got two or three dudes over there that are bad and you’re afraid of them and you’re a correctional officer, but yet you got a guy over here that ain’t afraid of you. It’s like this woman come to work and she goes over to this guy and tells him, “Turn your radio down,” and he tells her, “Shove it right up your ass [inaudible],” run her off.

  So she comes over to my cell and because she sees that he’s afraid of me, so she takes my radio away and looks back at him and says, “Humph.” So then she uses me to stand up over you, because in the darkness on the yard out there, you do what I tell you to do.

  When you’re on that committee, I’ll do what you tell me to do. I’m the man in here. And that’s a fact.

  [Off the Record]

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: This is Tape 2 in the case of Charles Manson, April the 21st, 1992, California State Prison, Corcoran, California.

  We’re going to proceed to your psychiatric evaluations. You don’t have one. Well, you had one for this year, but you didn’t have one completed for the Board of Prison Terms specifically.

  Bruce T. Reed, Ph.D., Clinic Psychologist, went over to see you on February the 19th and you refused to be evaluated. Any reason why?

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, I had two other doctors trying to evaluate me at the same time. I couldn’t—I can’t write that many books.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: What doctors were trying to interview you at that time?

  INMATE MANSON: Well, see the front side, you see the doctor coming to me to give me help. The back side, he get his information, he’ll go to Turkey. He’s over in France writing books about the psychotherapy or [inaudible] therapy—

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Which doctors came to visit you at the time Dr. Reed tried to get in?

  INMATE MANSON: Dr. Christopherson, Dr. White.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Where are they from?

  INMATE MANSON: Right here. Since then, I think Christopherson’s been fired for ethics violation of some sort. Then there’s Willis—Dr. Willis.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Willis came over to see you this—

  INMATE MANSON: Willis has been my psychiatrist. We went through—if you’ll check the record, we went through two sessions. He said I was okay for level 3. He said that I was all right for level 3.

  What this latest doctor wants is a—what’s happening out of Frisco is this law firm is coming up with new psych evaluation with the prisoners union. The prisoners union in San Quentin, they got a bunch of inmates to sign a suit for better psychiatric treatment. What that means is more political power because they’re using the psychiatric base to get their doctors in here so they can get doctors up over the uniform, so they can hold the reality up over the courts and the minds of the people that live inside the prisons. Because when they can do that, then they can do Vacaville.

  See when I left Vacaville, there was 12 dead doctors there of heart attacks. Dr. Morgan was the last doctor that they found dead in the parking lot with his brains blown out. I went to doctors—

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Dr. Christopherson saw you on January the 24th of this year.

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, sir.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: And in his report of that date, states that he went over to see you because you were not eating. Staff was concerned.

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, he came to see me two or three times about that.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: But he didn’t appear to be concerned because he said you were eating something, either candy bars or canteen or—

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, I fast a lot.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN:—or whatever, but he wasn’t concerned about your not eating. He talked about your paranoid delusional disorder at that time in his report.

  INMATE MANSON: Perspective.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: He prescribed a plan for you and that was to put you on [inaudible] and said this will have two affects. One, they will support or deny the fact that he is on hunger strike, and they will also give the inmate a chance to get out of his cell on occasions as a form of environmental stimulation.

  On the same vein, one, will have more frequent visits to the psychiatrist. This too will monitor signs and symptoms of active psychosis versus malingering; three, if indeed he’s on a hunger strike, he should be considered for the M.O.U. What’s M.O.U.?

  INMATE MANSON: It’s some kind of—

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Memorandum of Understanding? If he does refuse psychotropic—

  INMATE MANSON: Medical observation unit.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Medical observation unit.

  INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: If indeed he’s on a—if he does refuse psychotropic medications, we may ask him [inaudible] our decision, which is adjudged ordered involuntary medication. It should also be noted that we should have a careful monitoring of his intake and output including material from the canteen.

  So he’s suggesting that you were kind of faking things a little bit.

  INMATE MANSON: Whenever you do something beyond someone else’s understanding, and they don’t want to understand it, they—they’ll hate it and look at it as being bad. It doesn’t really—it isn’t really bad. I fast. I fast to tighten my stomach up. It makes me healthy. It’s a spiritual experience. Sometimes I go ten, 15, 30 days. Sometimes I go longer than that. I fast until I can get my mind straightened around.

  Whenever—when a bad circumstance comes
to me and I have to deal with the mental situation all around me, I’m surrounded by inmates and officers and all kinds of things beyond your comprehension, I have to sit and I have to balance all those things in my mind.

  So what I do is I quit eating, and when I quit eating, what happens is that everything trusts, and trust is going one way, but trust it goes the other way too. I’m your economy. If I don’t eat, then you don’t know whether I’m trusting you, because the only way you know if I trust you is if I eat from your hands.

  So I hold all the trust with the food and when I don’t eat, then everybody gets scared and they start going through—they’re not sure and then I’m paranoid, because anything around me is going to be my fault because I’m the last chicken in line.

  One chicken—the dogs bark at the chickens and the chickens get to pecking on each other and then you get the last chicken in line and they just peck him till he’s either gone, or they get it straightened around, you know.

  And like, being the last chicken in line, I have to take up the slack, so I—what I do is I quit eating. And then all the fat people that can’t quit eating, they start going through a lot of changes when I show them I’m about ten times stronger then they ever thought about dreaming about.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Let me ask you something, now that you got the fat joke out. What have you done in all the years that you’ve been on prison that this panel or anybody could look at that would indicate that there’s been a change in Charles Manson?

  INMATE MANSON: I change all the time, sir. Every day I’m going to change.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Well, I can’t measure that. You have to tell me.

  INMATE MANSON: Can I ask you a couple questions? What did you do before this—so I know what foundation in your mind where I can speak to you from? You got any jurisprudence? You got any correctional officer experience or policeman or what?

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: I don’t think you need to know that. All you need to know is—

  INMATE MANSON: Can I ask you?

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Just answer the question.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: All you need to know is that I’m sitting on this panel today.

  INMATE MANSON: Okay. Well, we’ll go to the judge. The judge sits on the bench and he takes in his mind the crime. It comes to him for judgment. If it goes through his understanding and he watches it, judge itself. The judge really doesn’t judge it. He judges—he lets the district attorney and it passes through his understanding.

  He does this six hours a day, seven days a week, five days a week. He retires 65 years old. He’s done that for 8,000 hours. I’ve done the same thing all my life, 24 hours a day, so I’m about 15 street poor judges in my mind. In other words, I know more about law than anybody in the world. I know more about courts and procedures and criminology and penology and procedure than any card shark dealing devils off the bench in Monte Carlo.

  I know more about the economy, more about money, more about the government than any ten presidents you got. You know, in other words, I’ve sat in solitary confinement and I’ve watched everything you guys do, and the truth is you’re all lying to yourselves, you know. And like—

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson, you’re not answering Mr. Brown’s question.

  INMATE MANSON: I’m not?

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No. He asked you what have you done in the institution to show the Board of Prison Terms and society that you’ve changed?

  INMATE MANSON: I’m real with you. I don’t pretend. I’m not bringing you a bunch of phony garbage. I’m not trying to tell you that I’m a good guy. I’m just myself, whatever that is. I believe in God and I do the best I can every day by everybody I can, you know. When something bad comes up, I react bad to it, you know. I can fight. I can’t read and write too good, but boy I can fight. You wouldn’t believe how I could fight because I’ve been fighting all my life to survive, and I live right on that edge of survival, you know. I just survive.

  I play a little music when I’m allowed to. I draw real good, but they took my pencils.

  Everything I do, if I can do it real good, they’ll take it away from me. I used to do—make little dolls of strings, then he come took the string. So I’m not allowed to do anything. I don’t have any clothes. I haven’t combed my hair in two, three years, you know, I can’t comb my hair. I can’t do that.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Have you been involved in any psychiatric intervention?

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, yes. I’ve seen more doctors than doctors have seen inmates. I was with Dr. Nich there in the back alley over there in Vacaville with [inaudible].

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Was this in a therapy setting?

  INMATE MANSON: Well, I guess you could call it the therapy setting. I was handling all the crazy people and taking care of the kids in the visiting room and [inaudible] in the garden and chapel.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Was anybody doing anything with you?

  INMATE MANSON: No, everybody was doing what I told them.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: No, no. Were any of the therapists doing anything to assist you in your life?

  INMATE MANSON: No. It was me doing it for them. I had to look out for the veterans just came back from the war and all the wheelchairs and all the doctors. They had a lot of Vietnamese doctors come in, couldn’t speak English, so I had to get the medication all straightened around for that, you know, because my life at the bottom, I got to look out for everybody else’s life too or I can’t get on through what I’m trying to do.

  I like to play music, but they took my music away and they took my guitar away. That’s the only thing I do. I play a little music. But they’re scared of that. Anything I do, they get afraid of and then they’ll run and tell the cops that they’re afraid of whatever I’m doing and they run, take it away from me and I’m not allowed to do anything. So I just sit in a cell, you know. I don’t really need to do anything because I’m doing everything all the way anyway. And my radio—

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Now you keep talking about not being able to read and write.

  INMATE MANSON: Not that well. I read and write [inaudible].

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: You have an I.Q. that’s up well over a 100 points.

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, I am pretty smart.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: And you’ve been in prison all these years. Have you done anything at all to improve your grades?

  INMATE MANSON: Grades for what? What am I doing?

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Well, you keep harping on the fact that you cannot read very well, nor can you write very well.

  INMATE MANSON: No, I just—I’m not harping. I’m just explaining that that’s—

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: You keep saying it.

  INMATE MANSON:—that’s where I’m at.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Have you done anything to improve your reading and writing skills?

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, I read a book. I read a book. It was kind of boring, man. You know, I can think better things than I can read. I mean, reading is kind of like slowing down and people only love each other in books. You can’t love each other in reality, because you’re all trapped in books, locked up in wars. You’re all locked up in the Second World War, man. You’re still fighting wars over there, you know.

  I was trying to unlock that war. That’s what was over there trying to unlock the wars. Bob Arondis [phonetic spelling] came from India and the Dr. Hyler [phonetic spelling] used to come over and tell me what Bob Arondis had to say about, you know, the lovey love center there in Berkeley where they’ve had to hire minds of the religious perspective there.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: And so you haven’t done any of those kinds of things?

  INMATE MANSON: Well, what I’m trying to explain to you without a lot of—I don’t want to appear like I’m somebody,
but I’m on top of everything. I’m the smartest guy in the world, you know. I can’t—I don’t think there’s anyone in the world—there’s no subject I can’t tell you everything you want to know about it, you know. I’ve even fixed a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. I’m short change, I know how to deal off the bottom. I’ve learned everything that you taught me, Dad.

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Okay—

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, yes, yes, uh-huh, well [inaudible]—

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Return to the Chair.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Thank you. Okay. Mr. Manson, we’re going to the third area of the hearing now, parole plans. Mr. Aceto [background noise/inaudible].

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Thank you. We have to talk about your parole plans. Do you know the statement that you made to your counselors?

  INMATE MANSON: No.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You stated that you had no plans for the future. You also stated that you were not interested in paroling and that you would be lost in our society. His main concern at this time is to be released to a general population setting in order to program.

  INMATE MANSON: Makes sense to me.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: That’s a good statement, if it’s yours. It doesn’t sound like you.

  INMATE MANSON: Well—

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Was that your statement?

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, basically I said that to that broad, yes, but I might’ve said something else to somebody else in a different perspective. I generally say to people what they want to hear.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Hold it. What broad are you talking about?

  INMATE MANSON: Some caseworker woman. Name was Virginia. I think her name was Virginia.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Correctional counselor?

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, who was it?

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: I’m not going to tell you. It’s your counselor, you should know.

  INMATE MANSON: Well, yes, I have—there’s all kinds of counselors, man—

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Talk too loud [inaudible].

  INMATE MANSON: There’s all kinds of counselors, they turn over all the time. They come and go like—I can’t keep track of those.