Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars

by Edward George

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Montero [phonetic spelling].

  INMATE MANSON: [Inaudible.]

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Montero.

  INMATE MANSON: Montero, I think that’s a broad.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: It’s not a broad. It’s a woman.

  INMATE MANSON: I should say woman, okay.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. That’s good enough.

  INMATE MANSON: Let me explain something.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: I didn’t ask you nothing yet. I just want to get the statement out of the way. Is that your statement?

  INMATE MANSON: Partly.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Partly.

  INMATE MANSON: To that person on that level. I’ve got other legs. Cockroach got eight legs [inaudible] got six.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You said that you would be lost in society today.

  INMATE MANSON: My position is taken.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You’re safe in here without society.

  INMATE MANSON: No. It’s got nothing to do with safety. I’m not in that [inaudible]. The position that I should be holding is taken by someone else.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: All right. Let me tell you what you’ve got here. You may have seen them yourself. You had 45, what your counselor calls, fearful letters. Fearful letters opposing your parole. That right?

  INMATE MANSON: I’ve got a bunch of them, but I think they’re all from one person, aren’t they?

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Well, it would appear that they’re written by different people at a certain time, except for a few. And it’s all based on some rumor you let out of this joint that you were going to be paroled and that you would be accepting a hideout place and money in the bank and that’s what you put out as a rumor. Did you do that?

  INMATE MANSON: Can’t say for real.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Can’t say for real?

  INMATE MANSON: No. There’s a lot of rumors that go in and out of different things I’ve been doing. That’s what’s hard about this whole thing. They put so much pressure on you that everything I say or do goes—gets twisted around to what people want it to be, what they wanted to have said. It hasn’t really got anything to do with what it really is. It’s what other people need it to be.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: This appeared in an article in the paper, I know that. Here it is. Charlie Manson should never return to society. It was written because the news media said that Charlie Manson masterminded through his claim the outrageous murder of Sharon Tate, da-da-da-da-da, according to them [background noise/inaudible] admitted [inaudible] put fear into the system. Now the system may be putting fear into us. That the witness protection program [inaudible] program to release Charlie Manson.

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, they offered me a place in Valachi [phonetic spelling].

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Who was they?

  INMATE MANSON: F.B.I.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: What do you got to do with the F.B.I.? You don’t have nothing to do with the F.B.I.

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, I do. I was a barber in the federal penitentiary for 20 years.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Were you a snitch?

  INMATE MANSON: Nope. That’s the reason I didn’t take the program.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Well, anyway—

  INMATE MANSON: If I had been a snitch, I’d been gone for Virginia.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: There was a [inaudible] there in 1990 that almost got out of hand for you.

  INMATE MANSON: Well, they come to me two or three times and they wanted me to work and do different—draw profiles for new criminal types. And that Mexican—New Mexico thing jumped off the—they asked for some help. I’m not really a—I’m not a—an informant-type guy.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. Now, you’re talking what’s [inaudible] when you get home, mom and dad? You got a mom and dad? [Inaudible] sir?

  INMATE MANSON: I’d like to explain. I really would.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You don’t have to. I mean, it’s—

  INMATE MANSON: But I mean, I really want to. I really want to.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: The question is, do you have folks to rely on?

  INMATE MANSON: But you don’t understand. Each one of you is somebody. I ain’t nobody. I’m nothing. I’m now [inaudible] now [inaudible]. My mother went to prison. She left me. And everybody’s lied to me. A few old men in the Second World War were honest with me, you know. The older dudes were, you know—I was used to working the hospital [inaudible] you know.

  I’ve always run with the—I’ve always run a main line with the guys that were truthful and honest. And like, the reason I haven’t been—you haven’t been able to kill me is you haven’t been able to find me, because every time you send somebody after me they can’t find me because I’m not really there in your minds.

  Just like you draw a line across the desert and I’m sitting there and you come and draw a line, you say, “You can’t get out of there.” I say, “I’m aware.” You say, “You’re locked up.” I say, “Locked up in what?” He say, “Well, you’re locked up and we’re free.” And I say, “Oh yeah?” And then you walk back and forth and you play important with my life as if you’ve got something that I want, you know.

  Like you got out and I’m supposed to be in, but yet I’m everywhere and I’m out and in and I’m all around, down to San Diego Zoo, and I’m riding a motorcycle and I’m your children and I’m the trees and I’m your—

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. Hold it. Hold it up. Hold it up.

  INMATE MANSON: I’m crazy and you got to get another doctor. Yes, sir.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: I get the point.

  INMATE MANSON: In other words, like you won’t find them on here, man. Not [inaudible]—

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You do have some letters on your behalf. Okay? Let me find it here. Support letters. Sharon Quimbley—Sharon Quimbley, Cindy White. Do you know a Cindy White?

  INMATE MANSON: No. I know Squeaky. She’s doing time. She wrote a letter to the president.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Margaret Ramone—Ransom? You don’t know that person?

  INMATE MANSON: No, I don’t know them.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: These are your supporters I’m talking about.

  INMATE MANSON: Well, I didn’t know I had any supporters. I didn’t really need any supporters actually. I thought I was my supporter.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: George Stimson from Cincinnati, Ohio.

  INMATE MANSON: Simpson. Yes. George—St. George. Yes, he’s a good man. He’s an orthodox religious kind of guy. He’s got a very good—very good mind.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: A relative of yours?

  INMATE MANSON: Huh?

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Is he a relative?

  INMATE MANSON: No, no. Spiritually we’re allies. I’m allied spiritually with a lot of things.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. He wrote a two-page letter for you. Cindy White, again, she has—

  INMATE MANSON: I never really applied for this, or asked my friends for any support.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Well, I know that, but you do have some people out there that are interested in you.

  INMATE MANSON: But you realize where most of those letters come from, don’t you?

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Don’t have an idea.

  INMATE MANSON: Ulterior motive. I think the doctor sent you one of them, but he sent it to you and he didn’t sign his name. He sent it from Sacramento. They hoodwink their own paperwork, and then when it comes back, then he can keep me here and then he can build a medical association with me.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You talking about Dr. White?

  INMATE MANSON: Yes. He—yes, Dr. White and Christopherson.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Did you want to show us something here? The pictures?

  INMATE MANSON: Oh, no. I had some pictures here. No, no. These are just—I’m working
on a zoo project for the ecology. I’ve got frogs and I’ve got hawks and turtles, lizards, and I’m working on the backside of this game, trying to get CO camps. We was trying to start C.C. camps when I was in Folsom with Governor Brown. That’s when Squeaky and Red and Blue and Gold was out. That’s when we were running colors out.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. One last thing I have. Somewhere I read that you were getting $500 for an autographed picture on the outside.

  INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Is that correct?

  INMATE MANSON: Yes.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: How is that done?

  INMATE MANSON: Well, you see I live in the underworld. You live in the over world. I do a lot of things under world that you guys don’t see. I made about 75 albums in Vacaville and I bootlegged about three times more music than the Beatles put out.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Music?

  INMATE MANSON: Yes. I had the surfboard of the Beach Boys but I didn’t sell it because every time I would go to the music, they’d want to change the music. So rather than change the music, I went into the subculture with it. I got in an old nuclear submarine that I had from the Navy when I was Section 8 in Leavenworth, Kansas, with brother Dynamite and the Mafia coming off of Frankie Costello and the Horseshoe Pits in Pennsylvania in 1952. And it was like, I’m an awful big fellow. I’m really big. I’ve got a great big body, because my body’s underground.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Tell me about the albums.

  INMATE MANSON: This is music about the ecology, the air [inaudible].

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: The pictures—the autographs were on the albums. Is that what you’re saying?

  INMATE MANSON: No, no. That’s just a backlash of the younger generations, like—

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You got me mixed up then.

  INMATE MANSON: Remember the old movie where the piper—the pied piper, they said you play all the rats into the river and that they would pay you. And then the people never paid the piper so they always kept losing their children. Well, you’ve lost six generations of children to me, because you won’t pay me what you owe me. Because I didn’t break no law. I didn’t kill nobody. I didn’t tell nobody to get killed.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay.

  INMATE MANSON: I didn’t get no trial, you know.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. Okay, Mr. Manson.

  INMATE MANSON: We don’t want to hear none of that, see—

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: That’s it. I don’t have anything—

  INMATE MANSON: We don’t want to mention anything up in the truth.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: We’re back to me. I’m the Chairman.

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: I’m all done.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. And this is time for questions by any one of the panel members and the District Attorney. I have a couple questions. Do you feel any responsibility for the murders?

  INMATE MANSON: Sure.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Could you elaborate briefly?

  INMATE MANSON: I influenced a lot of people, unbeknownst to my own understanding of it. I didn’t understand the fears of the people outside. I didn’t understand the insecurities of people outside. I didn’t understand people outside.

  And a lot of things that I said and did affected a lot of people in a lot of different directions. It wasn’t intentional and it definitely wasn’t with malice or aforethought.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. You answered it. Do you have remorse, Mr. Manson? Do you feel any remorse for the victims whatsoever?

  INMATE MANSON: Now, we’ve reached an impasse here, man. We’re in pawn four, bishop four and seven—let’s see. How do I finesse that? You say in your minds that I’m guilty of everything that you’ve got on paper. So therefore, it would run logic that I would need to have remorse for what you think is reality, and if that be true, then all the oceans’ contents, if it were my tears, there would not be enough to express the remorse that I have for the sadness of that world that you people live in.

  But I don’t have—on the other side of that, I ask you back the same thing, you know. You’ve been using me ever since I was ten years old. You used to beat me with leather straps, you know. It’s like, does anyone have any remorse that I’ve spent 23 years in a solitary cell and even on Devil’s Island, you didn’t keep anyone over five years. You broke every record that they’ve ever set in the planet Earth. You only kept Christ on the cross three days.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson, I think you answered the question. Do you have a—still have a family, per se, that is, the type of family you had at the time of the crimes? Do you still have a family?

  INMATE MANSON: Family?

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Uh-huh.

  INMATE MANSON: That’s another one of the District Attorney’s—see, when they set that case into the paper were to make it real, they had to get—catch a little words so they could turn all that into—make it into a reality. Hippie cult leader, is a word that they used, leader, family.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Well, I believe I read in the reports where you yourself mentioned your family [inaudible]—

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, well, you—

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: [Inaudible]—

  INMATE MANSON:—you keep driving that on me, and then I have to refer to what’s already on me.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: My simple question is, do you still have a family as existed at that particular time?

  INMATE MANSON: Well, I can’t—I can’t answer that in just a—you know, it would take more time than you want to listen to me—

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Well, yes or no? You either have a family [inaudible]—

  INMATE MANSON: Well, there’s no yes or no [unintelligible].

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. All right.

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, no, or [unintelligible] you know, like you is stuck in yes or no, yes, all right.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. Mr. Brown, do you have any other questiens?

  DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: I have no further questions. Thank you.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Aceto?

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: No.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. Mr. Kay, we’re going to go to questions by the District Attorney on something that has not been covered, anything that has not been covered or something that he would like to emphasize. He will pose the questions to the panel and when you answer the panel—the questions, Mr. Manson, would you answer the panel, please.

  INMATE MANSON: All right.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Kay. Do you have any questions?

  INMATE MANSON: And do we get to do this back the other way?

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No.

  INMATE MANSON: Oh, yes, yes. Now what do all you people think about that? Yes, yes. We have fair play, huh?

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: This is—[inaudible]—

  INMATE MANSON: [Inaudible]—

  BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Don’t look at the camera. Look at the panel.

  INMATE MANSON: Yes, I know, yes, I know [inaudible].

  MR. KAY: Thank you. I think the interesting thing for the Board to do here is to question Mr. Manson about the ninth murder he was convicted of. He doesn’t mind talking about the Tate-LaBianca murders and Hinman murder because he’s never accepted the law of conspiracy and aiding and abetting in California. And he always thought that if he didn’t physically do the murder himself, that he wouldn’t be guilty. His followers would be guilty, but he didn’t really care about that.

  But the one murder that he doesn’t like to talk about because the evidence came out in court that he personally stabbed Shorty Shea to death. He stabbed him, Bruce Davis stabbed him, Tex Watson st
abbed him.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Excuse me, Mr. Kay.

  MR. KAY: Yes.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: This is time for questions.

  MR. KAY: Yes.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Do you have any questions?

  MR. KAY: Yes. That’s the question I would like you to ask Mr. Manson, what he did to Shorty Shea and how Shorty Shea died.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. You heard the question, Mr. Manson. Would you answer—face the panel and answer, please?

  INMATE MANSON: Shorty Shea was not short. He was a great big guy and he’s very tough. He had everybody bullied, he had everybody buffaloed and there was a whole bunch of guys around. And he was pushing on Steve and he was pushing on someone else and I moved in and I said, if you go into combat with someone you don’t hesitate, and I’m going to show you kids how to do this one time and then don’t invoke me to no violence anymore.

  And I moved on Shorty and I put him in a—in a situation where he couldn’t move. And then I said, “Now can you understand what I’m saying to you?” And he said, “Yeah.” I stepped up on the highway and hitchhiked a ride. And about three or four minutes later, somebody stabbed him and he was stabbed to death and he was killed.

  Now wait a minute—

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Go ahead.

  INMATE MANSON: Anybody that knows anything about combat knows that when you go into a combat situation and you’re on a line with something, that line can mean your life or your death. If you’re on the line of life and death and you’re gone and you’re up on another line, that other reality’s a completely different reality. It hasn’t got anything to do with the other side of that line.

  I was on that side of the line and it was a violent situation and I did deal with it and I put it into where it was—let me say this—there’s only one way I can explain it. Duke in the joint is a guy that can fight with his fists.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Kay—

  INMATE MANSON: Wait a minute, let me explain this.

  PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right.

  INMATE MANSON: This will explain it. The count is somebody who don’t fight with his fists. He fights with his mind. He sits up on top of the count. When the count is clear, he runs the radio and the duke does all the physical things, like the first cop does his level, then the sergeant—