by Jeff Guinn
Jo Ann was astonished when Charlie showed up unexpectedly one afternoon at her home across the river from McMechen in Ohio. It was miles from her grandmother’s house in West Virginia and Charlie didn’t have a car. Either he’d taken the bus or walked. Ever since Charlie got out of reform school, Jo Ann had avoided seeing him, and he hadn’t shown any interest in reconnecting with her, either. Now Jo Ann felt obligated to invite him in, even though her minister husband was there counseling a troubled teenage member of his church who was having problems getting along with her parents. As soon as Charlie was introduced to the girl he completely ignored Jo Ann and her husband. Charlie built the teenager up, telling her she was so special and pretty; Jo Ann felt that next he would ask her to leave the house with him and go God knew where to do God knew what. The way Charlie was acting with the girl felt wrong and evil. So Jo Ann said loudly that Charles needed to get back home to McMechen, and she made sure that he was gone before she let the girl out of her sight. “He was a good talker and would have gotten her for some bad purpose otherwise,” Jo Ann said.
Though he’d learned to give and take sexual relief with other boys in reform school, Charlie was mostly attracted to women. He could go to the prostitutes in Wheeling, but they cost money that Charlie didn’t have. The thing about the prostitutes that mostly interested Charlie was how they subsidized their pimps—men making their livings off of subservient women seemed like a fine thing to him. Meanwhile, what he really wanted was a girlfriend, and Charlie’s near-universal unpopularity among other McMechen teens made it unlikely that he could find one in his current hometown. Then fate intervened in the form of someone else controversial.
Clarence Willis was nicknamed Cowboy because of the Stetson hat that he wore everywhere. Cowboy got a scandalous reputation in McMechen for divorcing his wife, Virginia, and moving to a small apartment in town, leaving her, their three daughters, and son behind in his old house. Virginia remarried, and Cowboy somewhat mitigated local scorn by remaining on decent terms with his ex-wife and kids. He worked for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and spent weekends making and usually losing small bets at Wheeling Downs. On one of his excursions there he met Charlie Manson and took a shine to him. Cowboy made a point of introducing Charlie to his children.
The Willis girls were especially pretty and had lively personalities. Eileen, the oldest, married a man who coached the town’s youth baseball team. Even though she was still in high school, younger sister Rosalie took a part-time job at Warsinsky’s Grocery Store. It was either there or at her father’s apartment that Rosalie met Charlie Manson. Charlie turned the full force of his personality on her. Perhaps this time he was smart enough not to brag about shooting up. Whatever Charlie did, it worked. He and Rosalie began going steady. It was an unlikely romance between a cute, popular girl and the town pariah; observers agreed that every town seemed to have at least one nice girl who couldn’t resist a bad boy. But dating was one thing; only a few months later most of McMechen was staggered to learn that Rosalie Willis and Charlie Manson were getting married. It was assumed that they had to—“the baby came early and the wedding came late,” in local parlance. If Rosalie was pregnant, she didn’t carry the baby to term. But on January 13, 1955, Charlie and Rosalie applied for a marriage license at the Marshall County courthouse in Moundsville. Charlie incorrectly gave his birthdate as November 11, 1933, making himself a year older than his actual age of twenty, and Rosalie claimed to be seventeen, though some in modern-day McMechen believe that she was two years younger. Cowboy Willis and his ex-wife were required to give consent for their underage daughter to marry. The wedding took place four days later at the Nazarene Church. Afterward Nancy gave a reception for the newlyweds in her home. Most of the congregation attended, and crowded around as a beaming Charlie and his teenage bride cut and handed out slices from a sizable wedding cake. They may not have liked Charlie much, but they all loved his grandmother. Jo Ann and her husband stayed away; she couldn’t stand Charlie and didn’t feel obligated to pretend any longer. Kathleen wasn’t there, either. She had left Lewis again, and this time she put the most distance possible between them by moving all the way west to California.
For a little while, Charlie Manson tried to be a typical McMechen resident. He and his bride found an inexpensive place to rent. Charlie kept his job at Wheeling Downs and looked for other part-time work to bring in extra money. Often, McMechenites spent pleasant evenings perched out on front stoops, calling out greetings and chatting with passersby. Now Charlie and Rosalie joined her mother and stepfather on their porch, engaging in friendly banter with neighbors until bedtime. Once when some kids needed a ride to baseball practice, Charlie borrowed a car and took them. He seemed to look for small ways to demonstrate that he was really a nice guy. Some people warmed to Charlie just a little. He seemed to be acting normal. Ethel Miller, whom everybody in town loved because she extended credit at her grocery to any neighbors who needed it, hired Charlie to do some fix-ups at the store. When he wasn’t on the job out at the track you’d see him at Miller’s hammering and sawing and generally doing honest, respectable work. Charlie still wasn’t popular, but now he was tolerated.
Charlie finally made a few friends, though not from among the Nazarene teens. As a married man living with his wife, he no longer had to please his grandmother with church or Sunday School attendance. Charlie found companionship with Buster Willis, his brother-in-law, and with Junior Mulgrew. Junior was the one young man in McMechen whose reputation was worse than Charlie’s. During the day he loafed around a gas station near the high school, and at night he roared up and down the area’s narrow roads in a Studebaker Golden Hawk, much too fancy a ride for a kid with no discernible income. Charlie and Buster and Junior palled around together when Charlie wasn’t working or with his wife. If his grandmother Nancy disapproved of the new company he was keeping, it didn’t bother Charlie. He didn’t need anything from her anymore, so her opinion no longer mattered.
Somehow Charlie got his hands on a guitar and learned to play basic chords. He strummed and sang along with tunes on the radio and particularly liked Frankie Laine. Besides Laine’s countryish hits of “That Lucky Old Sun” and “High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me),” Charlie favored the crooner’s more middle-of-the-road recordings, lush ballads like “Jezebel” and “I Believe.” Charlie liked Frank Sinatra and Perry Como, too, but not as much as Laine. As he once had on his Aunt Glenna’s piano, Charlie spent hours plinking on his guitar. Though Charlie had a high opinion of his ability, he was no virtuoso; his playing didn’t advance much beyond beginner’s level. Music was just a hobby, a distraction from the constant concern about paying his bills.
Charlie’s attempt to fit in lasted only a few months. Whether she’d miscarried earlier or not, Rosalie became pregnant. Her trips to the doctor added to costs for rent and food strained the young couple’s finances. Even the extra money Charlie brought in from part-time jobs wasn’t enough. It was natural for him to fall back on his criminal past to make up the difference, but it wouldn’t be easy. The most obvious way for Charlie to make quick, fairly substantial money was by stealing cars. There were plenty close by, especially in Wheeling, for him and his pals Buster and Junior to heist. But to do that would be to court death as well as arrest and imprisonment. An army of Wheeling mobsters led by Big Bill Lias zealously guarded their territory. Lias and his crew gained most of their illicit income from men who came from as far away as Pittsburgh to gamble and dally with hookers in the casinos, bars, and hotels that Lias operated. News of car thefts in Wheeling might discourage them from driving to town. Accordingly, the Wheeling mob wouldn’t wait for police to solve the crimes. They’d hunt down the car thieves themselves and make short, bloody work of them as a warning to others. Charlie knew from painful reform school experience that it was suicidal to take on tougher guys.
To avoid attracting the wrath of Lias, Charlie stole cars across the river in Ohio. He drove one car all the way down to Florida and unloaded it th
ere. In the process of crossing state lines in the stolen vehicle he once again violated the Dyer Act and was guilty of a federal crime, this time as an adult, not as a juvenile.
Spring 1955 turned into summer, and Charlie saw no reason to remain in McMechen. He told people that he wanted to go see his mother in California. That bothered Jo Ann. She couldn’t stand Charlie, but she thought it was in some way poignant that, after everything, he still loved his mother so much that he was willing to cross the country to be with her. Rosalie, in early middle pregnancy, was willing to go west. In July Charlie stole a 1953 Mercury in Bridgeport, Ohio, and he and his wife drove all the way to Los Angeles.
When Charlie arrived, he reconnected with Kathleen—Lewis wasn’t around to begrudge her spending time with her son—and Charlie scratched out a living doing odd jobs. He and Rosalie apparently stayed with his mother. Los Angeles dwarfed any other place Charlie had been; he drove around the city in the stolen Mercury as if the car were legitimately his own. He called Jo Ann back in Ohio to brag that he was having the best time of his life. But in September an eagle-eyed L.A. cop checked the Mercury’s out-of-state license plate, discovered that the car was stolen, and arrested Charlie. In federal court Charlie admitted the Mercury theft. He pleaded with the judge for leniency, claiming that he’d been confused ever since his release from the reformatory at Chillicothe. As further proof of his shaky mental state he also confessed to taking another stolen car from Ohio to Florida.
The judge ordered psychiatric testing. Dr. Edwin McNiel met with Charlie, who said that he’d originally been sent to reform school for being mean to his mother. After so many years in reformatories he had trouble adjusting to the regular world. Charlie claimed that he loved his wife very much. Maybe he’d beaten her a few times; when he got frustrated with life he sometimes turned mean—he knew that he needed to control his temper better. But now that Rosalie was pregnant he desperately wanted to stay out of prison to be with her. Dr. McNiel reported to the court that, based on his past record, Charlie was a poor risk for probation. But “with the incentive of a wife and probable fatherhood, it is possible that he might be able to straighten himself out.” On November 7 Charlie was sentenced to five years’ probation.
Charlie still had to face charges on the stolen car he drove down to Florida; he was ordered to return to court in L.A. in February 1956. There was very little chance that he would face any actual jail time. A few more years of probation was likely going to be tacked on to the first sentence. But Charlie panicked and ran. He and Rosalie went to ground in Indianapolis. It was a familiar place and he thought he could hide there. On March 10, Rosalie gave birth to a son, who was named Charles Manson Jr. If Charlie took any pleasure in the birth of his child it was short-lived. The Los Angeles court had issued a bench warrant, Indianapolis cops were looking for him, and on March 14 Charlie was taken into custody. Indiana returned him to California, and on April 23 Charlie’s probation was revoked. He’d turned twenty-one in November, so he was too old for reform school. The judge gave Charlie three years at San Pedro’s Terminal Island Penitentiary in Los Angeles Harbor.
CHAPTER FIVE
Prison
Charlie caught a break when he was sent to Terminal Island. It was one of a handful of federal prisons intended to house low-risk, nonviolent prisoners. Many Terminal Island inmates began their sentences at higher security prisons and then transferred to the San Pedro facility for their last few months or years before release. Even though Charlie had an extensive record as a juvenile offender, as an adult he’d been found guilty only of car theft and an ill-advised flight from sentencing. Still, the Terminal Island counselor who conducted Charlie’s orientation exam predicted that he might prove to be a disciplinary problem because he had trouble controlling himself.
Despite its designation as a place for low-risk inmates, Terminal Island was still a prison. Charlie was used to reformatories where the most grizzled inmates were still teenagers. The Terminal Island prisoner population included older, longtime cons who dominated everyone else. Charlie’s “insane game” would have no effect on them. He realized that and spent his first months there quietly observing. Those convicted of white-collar crimes held no interest for Charlie. He was never going to be in position to embezzle funds from a bank or put together a fraudulent multimillion-dollar real estate deal. But just as he had been on earlier visits to Wheeling, he was still fascinated by pimps. At Terminal Island, they were sometimes willing to talk about the intricacies of their trade. They bragged to Charlie about recruiting young women and bending them to their will. You had to know how to pick out just the right girls, Charlie learned, the ones with self-image or Daddy problems who’d buy into come-ons from a smooth talker. First you kept them separated from family and friends. Then you brought them under your control with a judicious combination of affectionate gestures and just enough beatings to remind them who was boss—Charlie yearned to be somebody’s boss. The veteran pimps cautioned him that it was critical to stay away from women who were completely nuts, because then you’d spend all your time propping them up emotionally instead of sending them out on the street to work. You wanted girls who were cracked but not broken. The trick was to make them love you and fear you at the same time. Charlie listened and learned.
His initial months at Terminal Island were brightened by weekly visits from Rosalie and Charlie Jr. Kathleen came less often but still regularly. Rosalie and the baby were living with her and Kathleen was apparently their sole source of support. Having visitors was a status symbol among prisoners, and Charlie always enjoyed any sort of status. Getting attention remained important to him. Prison officials even restricted him to small work details because Charlie admitted to “a tendency to cut up and misbehave if [I am] around a [larger] gang.” He seemed to have the potential to become a model prisoner; one report noted that Charlie’s work performance improved as his first parole hearing neared, proof that he could demonstrate self-control if he wanted to. All signs pointed to early release, perhaps even after serving just a year or so of his three-year sentence.
Then, abruptly, Rosalie stopped coming. She’d left West Virginia with the expectation of a more exciting life in California. Sharing a cramped apartment with her mother-in-law and visiting her husband in jail every week fell far short of that. Kathleen had to break the news to Charlie that his wife had moved out and was living with another man. Charlie, who thought he understood women so well, was taken completely by surprise. Rosalie soon returned to Appalachia with her new beau, taking Charlie Jr. with her. Charlie was subsequently served with divorce papers; his marriage was over.
Rosalie’s adult life got off to a rough start with Charlie, and even after she left him it remained rocky. She moved around a lot—to Ohio, Nevada, and Arizona as well as towns in California—and remarried several times before she died of lung cancer in Tucson in 2009. She was not married at the time, but her obituary noted the presence of a “loving companion.” Also according to the obituary, Rosalie “enjoyed playing golf, bowling, dancing, playing cards, slot machines and spending time with her family.” That may have been true with children from her post-Manson marriages, but for the last sixteen years of Rosalie’s life it wasn’t the case with Charles Jr. He committed suicide in 1993. Even though he called himself Charles White, taking the last name of his mother’s second husband, Charles Jr. was well aware of his real father’s identity. It apparently troubled him greatly.
Just before Rosalie deserted him, Charlie was transferred to Terminal Island’s minimum security cells in a separate prison building. It was a clear signal that he could expect imminent release after his parole hearing on April 22, 1957, but Charlie, stunned by Rosalie’s desertion, exhibited one of his periodic lapses of patience and self-control. On April 10 he was caught in the prison parking lot wearing civilian clothes and trying to hotwire a car. Twelve days later his near-certain parole was denied, and five years’ additional probation were tacked on to his original three-year prison senten
ce.
Terminal Island officials didn’t give up on Charlie. He’d scored 121 on an IQ test when he’d arrived at the prison, which placed him in the “high normal” range. His subpar reading skills and primitive, chicken-scratch handwriting indicated lack of educational opportunity, not ability. As it happened, Terminal Island had a wide variety of self-improvement courses available to inmates, the result of a nationwide penal system overhaul intended to prepare prisoners for success in the outside world. In the 1940s and early 1950s prison focus was on punishment; by 1957 it was rehabilitation. At Terminal Island, inmates could work toward high school diplomas, learn car repair or machine shop skills, or even be tutored in how to apply for jobs. Charlie, still just twenty-two, spurned all of these opportunities but one. In another decade it would become fashionable for young people to seek out and follow gurus, spiritual advisors who would lead them on the path to enlightenment. To date at Terminal Island, Charlie’s unofficial tutors had been pimps, and he eagerly absorbed what they had to teach him. But now, Charlie latched on to someone whose wisdom would guide many of his future acts—a man who though they never met became Charlie Manson’s personal guru.
Born on a Missouri farm in 1888, Dale Carnegie was a successful salesman before developing self-help instruction that emphasized ways to win over individuals and audiences. Initially, Carnegie targeted his how-to lectures and print publications toward businessmen, offering lessons in effective public speaking and product sales. But in 1936 How to Win Friends and Influence People, aimed at a general audience, became a massive best-seller (five million copies) and made Carnegie one of the most famous men in America. He founded the Dale Carnegie Institute. Crowds flocked to its programs. Carnegie never claimed there was anything unique about the techniques he proselytized; his gift was gathering all the best methods of influencing others and relating them in easy-to-understand, one-step-at-a-time instruction. Those who couldn’t attend Carnegie classes in person received instruction through correspondence courses, and by 1957 Carnegie’s reach even extended to classes conducted in selected prisons. Terminal Island was one of them.