The Manson Women and Me

by Nikki Meredith

  Tania Singer conducted another study on couples that also caught my attention. In an attempt to understand the interaction between empathy and pain, she tested nineteen couples who were romantically involved. The woman from each pair was monitored with an fMRI. The researchers gave her a brief electric shock and recorded her neural activity. Then they administered the same shock to her partner. When her partner received the shock, the same critical brain regions involved in processing the physical sensation of pain were activated in each case. Feelings of empathy for the partner’s pain triggered regions of the brain responsible for processing pain in the same way it did when the shock was administered to the subject directly.

  When I read this study, I couldn’t help thinking about Mr. and Mrs. LaBianca. As you recall, Leslie reported that when Mrs. LaBianca heard her husband’s cries in the next room, she started to sob. From Tania Singer’s study it seems possible that she wasn’t only reacting to hearing his cries emotionally, her brain was also registering his physical pain as though it were her own. In that way, Mrs. LaBianca was murdered twice. First when her husband was murdered, and then when she was.

  During the past few years, every time I came across an article about empathy and brain cells, I’d write to the researcher asking if he or she could explain what might have been going on neurologically with Pat and Leslie at the time of the murders. The universal response has been that brain research is still too new to answer such questions definitively, but aforementioned neuroscientist Christian Keysers was willing to speculate. In an e-mail, he referred to experiments, such as Tania Singer’s, that demonstrate a marked decrease in empathy for people perceived as unfair, and pointed out that Nazi propaganda was centered on making Jews seem unfair. Hitler used this switch of empathy cunningly by portraying Jews as a threat to cooperative Nazi society.

  Keysers explained that our success as humans has been dependent on our capacity to work cooperatively. In that kind of system, defectors have to be punished. To that end, evolution has equipped us with mechanisms that make us cut off empathy to individuals who jeopardize cooperation. He wrote that he suspected that this “switch” that turns off feeling is more powerful than, say, anesthesia, because it’s at the heart of our evolutionary history. He suspects Manson, after selecting women who were particularly susceptible, exerted this kind of control—the switch from empathy for each other to punishment for ‘the other’ like the La Biancas who he portrayed as threatening their system of cooperation. “I know there is quite a step from mild electroshocks after a trust game to crushing skulls, but I suspect it is a similar mechanism.”

  In fact, Manson cleverly utilized “them” and “us” labeling. He hammered away constantly at people who were educated, middle or upper class, or in any way privileged in the way he wasn’t. (He did seem to make an exception for people in the music industry who he wanted to help him with his music career.) To his followers, all traces of influence of their families, who were, for the most part, educated and comfortably middle class, were to be expunged. He would say to Leslie, “I still see your parents in you.”

  It’s still difficult to understand how, in the women’s eyes, Manson’s labeling was enough to render the people in those two houses undeserving of life, deserving only of brutal murder, but there was another way that Manson’s categorizing worked to dehumanize “them.” The women felt a genuine sadness for the way Charlie had been treated by society—first as a child and then as a teenager and then as an adult in prison. Their own anger against their parents merged with the sadness for Charlie, and both grew into a hate for everything they considered established society.

  chapter thirty-one

  “LESLIE IS MY DAUGHTER”

  May 1998

  Mrs. Van Houten and I met again at the same suburban park. It was a Saturday and there were many more people, but we managed to find an empty bench. This time we were both dressed in casual clothes and the jacaranda were still in bloom, giving the park a lavender cast. We didn’t have much time—when she’d arrived Mrs. V. told me she had plans to babysit for her granddaughter, whom she had to pick up in a half-hour.

  I wanted to ask her about the final phone call that Leslie made to her from Haight-Ashbury, but I didn’t want to pounce abruptly with a question about what had to be a painful memory. I should have raised a neutral topic, such as the jacaranda or the weather, but for some reason, in blurting mode, what popped out of my mouth was the Unabomber. I mentioned that Ted Kaczynski had just been sentenced to eight life terms.

  “I heard about that,” she said. “Talk about a family’s anguish. That poor mother. That poor brother.” We talked about how unfair it was that after the brother went to the FBI and they were able to crack the case, the only thing he asked in return was that the federal prosecutor would not go for the death penalty, and then the prosecutor went for the death penalty anyway. That decision was reversed when he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. The U.S. government doesn’t like to kill people who are crazy.

  When we finally got back to her family, I told her that Leslie had described running away to Haight-Ashbury, twice. I waited to see if she would talk about the abortion since that seemed to be such a critical issue for Leslie. What she did talk about was the “good-bye forever” phone call Leslie made when she arrived in the Haight-Ashbury for the second time.

  “We hung up on each other. I was angry.”

  She didn’t hear from Leslie for weeks after that phone call, and then some kids in the neighborhood told her that she was living with a group in Chatsworth, northwest of L.A. No one mentioned Charles Manson, but that’s who they were talking about. When they described the group’s nomadic existence, Mrs. Van Houten was convinced Leslie could never survive that kind of life. “It sounded like total chaos.”

  Leslie’s brother Paul, who was by this time home from his Kerouac adventure, drove up to Chatsworth to try to find her. The longer she was away, the more convinced Mrs. Van Houten was that she was dead. (I remembered how horrible it was for my mother when she was convinced that my brother was dead and, for a minute, I thought of mentioning it and then reminded myself that I was there to talk about her family, not mine.)

  And then in June 1969, two months before the murders, Mrs. Van Houten received a call from the Reseda police, who said they had Leslie. “I can’t remember what she’d been arrested for . . . it was something minor, like shoplifting.” The police asked if she would come and get her.

  “When I picked her up, she was filthy and her clothes were ragged. We got in the car and I looked at her and said, ‘Leslie, you smell bad.’ ”

  Mrs. Van Houten shifted her weight on the bench and took a deep breath. “Leslie looked at me.” There was a flicker of pain in her eyes. “She said, ‘Mom, I smell like Leslie.’

  “I can’t tell you how many times I dissected that exchange over the years. I can still see Leslie’s face when I said it. She was still such a child and I was rejecting that child.”

  The atmosphere had been chilly between them. They said very little to each other either on the drive home from Reseda or in the days following. “I was still cross with her and she didn’t have much to say to me.” Leslie did talk to her adopted younger sister Betsy, whom she told that her life on the ranch with Manson was wonderful. She also said something that alarmed her mother when Betsy relayed it. She said the dogs at the ranch talked to her. But Mrs. Van Houten held back her questions. She thought it was best to allow time for both of them to calm down before she tried to sort it out. She wanted Leslie to have a chance to bathe, sleep, and eat nutritious meals. As it turned out, there would be no time for more questions. A few days later, when she came home from work, Leslie was gone. Two months later, the Tate-LaBianca murders were headlines.

  “When news of the murders and the suspects—a hippie and his band of gypsies—hit the newspaper, I told friends that I was worried that Leslie was involved. My friends said, ‘Oh Jane, you know how many runaways there are? Thousands of parents a
re thinking the same thing.’ ”

  But one of her neighbors who worked at the L.A. Times found out that Leslie had been arrested and booked at Sybil Brand, the women’s jail in downtown L.A.

  Mrs. Van Houten said the only thing that saved her sanity was her job and the support she got from her co-workers, the other members of the teaching team. “They provided me with a protective shell. Sometimes it was all too much for me and I’d excuse myself and go into the cloak room and cry, but their compassion and solidarity got me through it.”

  She told me about a day at the peak of the media frenzy when the teaching team was meeting with an outside consultant. When he was introduced to Mrs. Van Houten, he said, laughing, “No relation to Leslie Van Houten, I presume.” There was a collective gasp and no one knew what to say.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” she said, breaking the silence, “Leslie is my daughter.”

  When Mrs. Van Houten was recalling this incident to me, her voice faltered as she said “my daughter” and she stopped talking to compose herself. “After I said that there was silence again. As I recall we all just sat there. No one could think of anything to say. What was there to say?”

  At that moment, I couldn’t think of anything to say, either. Her portrayal of the scene was so vivid, I felt as though I’d been in that meeting with her. I felt the flush of her embarrassment. Platitudes popped into my mind, some version of “that must have been so hard for you.” I noticed that a tiny jacaranda blossom had landed in her hair. I pinched it off with my fingers and showed it to her, surprising both of us with the intimacy of the gesture. She smiled but she also blushed and stood to go.

  “Maybe we can have lunch someday,” she said, and was off.

  chapter thirty-two

  ICH BIN EIN JUDE

  1956–present

  On my family’s road trip through Europe in 1956, we had stopped in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. We arrived during lunch so both the Tower and the baptistery beside it were closed until 2:00 p.m. My father and brother set off to find a place to buy film; my mother and I took a nap in our VW bus. When we reconvened, my father told us that in the shop where they’d found film, he had struck up a conversation with a German woman. She was traveling alone and had just come from Rome. Since we had also just come from Rome, the two of them compared enthusiastic observations of that city’s landmarks—the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, the Sistine Chapel. They talked for a few more minutes and then my father said he had to leave to meet his wife and daughter. The baptistery was the woman’s next stop, too, and she asked if she might meet us there and spend the afternoon with our family. My father said he would talk to his wife about it and let the woman know after we had all taken the tour of the baptistery.

  My father was recounting the story to my mother when a stout woman in a brown tweed skirt suit and a tan pill box hat walked through the enormous carved wooden doors. I remember watching my mother as she watched the approaching figure while listening to my father’s account of his encounter. When he said he thought the woman was lonely, my mother’s expression went from neutral to sympathetic, but as the woman got closer, I saw her face change. Her eyes narrowed. Her mouth grew rigid. She was about to answer my father when the guide said, “Attenzione” and embarked on his narrative. The guide explained that the marble cupola was famous for its resonance. The acoustics were so perfect, he said, that it was believed that the Renaissance architects had designed it to mimic a pipe organ. He proceeded to demonstrate by singing “Figaro, Figaro, Figaro,” which echoed and echoed and echoed.

  When we had heard the last “Figaro,” my mother asked if she could try. “Come no?” he said, clearly pleased by the prospect of audience participation. My mother cleared her throat and intoned, “Ich bin ein Jude” (I am a Jew!), which echoed and echoed and echoed.

  The stout woman’s eyes popped open, the color drained out of her face, she turned and hurried out the door.

  Did she walk out because my mother was a Jew? Or did she walk out because the declaration was hostile? I’ll never know. I do know, however, what was on my mother’s mind. When my parents argued about it later she said that at first she thought of course we should include her, a woman alone without a family, but her thoughts quickly flipped. This was a prosperous, middle-aged woman who had gotten through the war unscathed. “She’s healthy and has enough money to travel,” she said with tears in her eyes. “What was she doing when my relatives were being made into lampshades?”

  My mother’s behavior not only embarrassed me, it shocked me. It shocked my brother, too. We knew she had intense feelings against Hitler’s Germany, but she was acting out hostility to one lone and lonely German woman. We couldn’t believe that this was the same woman who had raised us to fight against prejudice of any kind and to care about people who suffered—from illness, from poverty, from loneliness. She was always inviting people for dinner who lived alone or bringing meals to shut-ins. In fact, sometimes I wish she hadn’t sensitized me so much to other people’s suffering. Apparently she didn’t consider Germans worthy of the empathy she felt for everyone else on the planet.

  My father, an Irish Catholic, was more cerebral about his sympathies. He believed in doing the right thing for people less fortunate, but he didn’t necessarily feel their pain. What he did feel was a particular affection and respect for Jews. His Catholicism had fallen away when he fell in love with my mother. (Growing up, he had a calling to be a Jesuit priest.) Because of his respect for Jews culturally and intellectually, he, more than my mother, would in years to come be concerned that his grandchildren were too removed from their Jewish heritage. He gave them books like A History of the Jewish People and The Jewish Book of Why.

  I mention this only to point out that his refusal to share my mother’s prejudice against Germans didn’t have anything to do with not caring about Jews. But he was disturbed by her behavior, so disturbed that early in the morning after the incident, while my mother was still sleeping in our hotel, he rousted me and my brother from our slumber and asked us to dress. We followed him a few blocks to a nearby park. It was barely light as we walked. My father was quiet and I started to worry that he was going to announce that he and my mother were getting a divorce. Instead, he said, “It’s dangerous to hate the Germans because it assumes that what happened under the Nazis couldn’t happen anywhere else.” It could, he said, and if the world wasn’t careful, it would.

  My father, of course, was right and he instilled in me a determination to be as unlike my mother as I could be, at least when it came to Germans. But less than a decade after that day in Pisa, I was in Germany with my new husband and a visit to Dachau triggered in me a hatred for Germans that was so pure, it was as though I was channeling my mother. I hated the language, I hated the food, I hated the Autobahn. I had not inherited my father’s lesson of universal truths; I had internalized my mother’s belief in German anti-Semitism and racism. Genetic? Cultural? Who cared? It was immutable.

  It was unsettling, but I was also aware that disliking Germans was not altogether unpleasant. For one thing, it made me feel closer to Jews, a closeness I welcomed as a young adult, unlike the detachment I felt in high school. As we all know, when you’re a member of a group, animosity toward another group, “the other,” can be a powerful bonding agent.

  Then, gradually, it changed again. I learned of Germany’s determination to make amends, to prosecute the culprits, and, unlike the Austrians, to teach younger people about what happened. I learned that Germany, more than any other European country, welcomed poor immigrants and, even more important, I got to know some Germans. And of course, atrocities, both large and small, fueled by hatred of “the other,” continued to occur. Again and again and again. In the killing fields of Cambodia, in the jungle at My Lai, in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Darfur.

  And it happened on two successive nights in Los Angeles in the summer of 1969. A small group of people who had committed no other crime than being human were savagely murdered by a group of y
oung people who felt not an ounce of empathy toward their suffering. How many times did I have to learn that my father was right? It wasn’t a German cluster of culture and genes, it was a human cluster.

  I thought of what a survivor of the Holocaust told Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who has studied the social and psychological causes of violence.

  VICTIM OF AUSCHWITZ: When they did what they did were they men or were they demons?

  ROBERT JAY LIFTON: Well, of course they were men; that’s why I went to study them.

  VICTIM: Ah but it is demonic that they were not demonic.

  ROBERT JAY LIFTON: They were very ordinary men who became demonic, doing demonic things. They weren’t inherently evil. Human beings aren’t inherently evil. Rather we have the capacity for good or for evil and we become what we are through our own personal decisions.

  chapter thirty-three

  BAD APPLES OR BAD BARREL?

  May 2004

  The country was in an uproar. Photographs of prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, a prison in Iraq, had surfaced. When I first looked at those images, the horror made me ill, but it was the images of Lynndie England that held my attention: Lynndie England, a petite tomboy, giving a jaunty thumbs-up and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi who is naked except for a hood over his head; Lynndie England holding a leash that encircles the neck of a naked Iraqi man lying on his side on a cell block floor, his face contorted in pain and humiliation; Lynndie England, laughing, arms around her boyfriend while bloodied, naked Iraqis writhe in pain in front of them.