Manson in His Own Words

by Nuel Emmons

  Not being a big guy, I could never impress anyone with a display of physical strength. But at sixteen, with almost five years of jail time behind me, I had all the cunning and knowledge needed to maneuver myself around any situation I didn’t want to be involved in. Trouble was, I always wanted to be part of the power. So what I lacked in size, I made up for in daring. I was game for anything and saw everything that went on. I knew where all the knives were, how to score contraband, who the under-cover punks were, who to trust and who not to trust. I was smart enough not to step on the toes of anyone who might bite me.

  It was important to me to hang around with the guys who had been successful and enjoyed luxuries on the outside. Their conversation was like a school for me. I was a good listener. I realized a lot of their talk was filled with exaggeration or fantasy, but they were still talking about a world I had never known. Cars, girls, school dances, parties, nice clothes and being able to come and go as they pleased. I built an imaginary world of my own from their conversations. I envied every guy who had had a pleasant experience on the outside, and tried in my imagination to substitute myself for them when they talked about it. I envied their letters and pictures from wives and girlfriends. I enjoyed sharing their plans for release and the promises of good things from their parents and friends when they got home. At the same time, I was aware that I could not relate a single moment of similar joys and dreams, unless of course I counted that day when I was eight years old and my mother took me in her arms—the day she returned home from prison.

  Those were my smothered feelings. On the outside I projected arrogance and disdain for rules and regulations. I strove to prove myself to the others to be a person who had experienced everything, was afraid of nothing and could get by with anything. For a while I would actually believe I really didn’t care about all that I’d missed. But then in a moment of reality, I’d be aware of never having kissed a girl. I was in reform school before I’d reached puberty. The only climax I’d ever had was from jacking-off or sticking some punk in the butt. Having a wet dream wasn’t even possible for me; I’d never had the real thing so I had to finish any dream I started by hand. Still, between the stories of others and my own imagination, I had strong sexual urges, urges that got me in trouble several times. A prison psychiatrist labeled me as having homosexual tendencies. So I was supposed to be some kind of a freak. But, hey, I just went for sex the only way it had ever been taught to me. I didn’t have any respect for a joint punk then and I don’t now.

  A lot of stories go around about forced sodomy and oral copulation in prisons and reform schools. There is some of it happening; I mean, out-and-out rape. I experienced it and I’m still ashamed to cop to it. Most of the sex is by mutual agreement, but however it comes down, those things are printed in a convict’s prison record and are with him for the rest of his life. I lost a possible parole date once by getting involved with a punk. I was accused of holding a razor blade to the kid’s throat while I screwed him in the ass. Truth was, the guy was an undercover queer and wanted a dick in his ass, and I didn’t mind doing it to him. We both agreed that if we got caught, he could say I forced him. We got caught. I was not only listed as a homosexual, but one with assaultive tendencies. That kid knew I didn’t force him, and I knew it, but I got the reputation and before long I did put a razor to a kid’s throat. If you keep pushing something off on a person, pretty soon that person stops fighting the reputation and becomes everything he is accused of being. It has proven itself out over the years. You start to think, “Fuck them. If that’s what they think I am, and I have to bear that cross, I got nothin’ to lose in being all they think I am.”

  On a car-theft beef, an average kid with the average things—family, home, school, job—is usually cut loose by the parole board in a year or eighteen months. I did three years and two months in four different institutions: The National Training School for Boys in Washington, DC, Natural Bridge Honor Camp, the Federal Reformatory at Petersburg, Virginia and the Federal Reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio. It seems none of the good of these places rubbed off on me, only the bad. My heroes weren’t the movie stars or the headline-making sports figures, but the guys who got away with the biggest bank heist; the Al Capones, the Mickey Cohens, all the mobsters who defied the system that was keeping me locked up.

  When I was at Chillicothe I met Frank Costello. When I walked down the halls with him or sat at the same table for meals, I probably experienced the same sensation an honest kid would get out of being with Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle: admiration bordering on worship. To me, if Costello did something, right or wrong, that was the way it was supposed to be. One morning Costello and I were seated at the same table for breakfast. He was reading the morning newspaper and a new guard walked over to him and started to take the paper, saying, “You read in your cell or the library.” Costello removed the guard’s hand from his paper and replied, “Sonny, when I’m at home it’s my habit to read the newspaper while eating my breakfast. The government has made this place my home for a while. You’re here to see that I stay, not to tell me where and when I can’t read.” The guard hesitated for an instant, then looked around the dining room, left our table and started hassling one of the younger guys on some infraction. Anyone without the status of Costello would have been on his way to the hole after confronting a guard that way. Yeah, I admired Frank Costello, and I listened to and believed everything he said.

  In May of 1954 I was finally paroled. I was nineteen, and it was the first time I was legitimately on the streets since I was twelve years old.

  The parole stipulated that I return to McMechen and live with the same aunt and uncle who had taken care of me while my mother was in prison. I loved them for giving me my chance on the outside. It was through their efforts, not Mom’s, that I ever got released at all.

  I doubt that the average person could ever relate to the sense of freedom I felt. It was more like a dream than something good really happening to me. Each morning—no, not just each morning, but each breath was like being born again. I wanted to sing, dance and shout, “Hey, I’m free, I’m out, I’m one of you!” Hell, I didn’t want to ever go to sleep. Being awake, so as not to miss a single thing that was going on in my new world, was too important. When I did go to sleep, waking up and being able to lie in bed was a treat. The smell of breakfast being cooked by my aunt, with my choice of anything I wanted, instead of powdered eggs or soggy pancakes, was as rewarding as being a millionaire. One of my biggest pleasures was just walking—in the city, in the country, going anywhere or going nowhere. Just appreciating that there were no fences, no boundaries. Being able to watch people and hear them laugh, seeing children playing in the park, looking at pretty girls in short skirts and tight sweaters. Above all, no one was demanding that I do this or that. I didn’t have to keep looking over my shoulder to see if “the man” was coming, or if a bunch of inmates were up to something that I ought to check out. I was my own person. The feeling was so pure, and it was so wonderful to be free, that if someone had said to me then, “You’ll be back in jail one of these days,” I’d have bet my life the person didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Still, with all the joys of being free, it wasn’t long before I realized that there is more to life in the free world than just walking around taking in the sights, especially when seven of perhaps the most important years in a person’s lifetime have been spent in reform schools. In jail I was glib and aggressive and knew everything that happened from the hole to the chapel, but out on the streets I couldn’t even hold a decent conversation with my aunt and uncle, let alone a stranger. All I knew was jail. I couldn’t talk about what school I’d graduated from, or even gone to. There weren’t any yesterdays or last months that I could refer to without exposing my past. For employment, I had to look for jobs no one else wanted. I did janitor and busboy work, weeded gardens and worked in a service station or two. I even shoveled shit and fed the horses oats at Wheeling Downs.

  When it came t
o girls, my heart throbbed and I ached with desire but I couldn’t think of the proper things to say. I didn’t know the first thing about finesse, so I’d revert to some of the bullshit I had heard laid down by some of the older guys in reform school. It didn’t work for me; in most cases that kind of conversation sent the girls packing instead of impressing them.

  The first girl I ever made it with I ended up marrying. I’d worked all day at the race track and had stopped by a card room in Steubenville to see if I could run my day’s wages into a small fortune. After a couple of hours at the poker table, I had a pretty healthy pile of money in front of me. The cocktail waitress and some of the other girls were giving me and my roll some attention. Across from me, looking over the shoulder of a coal miner, was this pretty girl who gave me an occasional smile but wasn’t putting on the hustle like some of the other girls were. When I cashed in I was a big winner. I would have shared my winnings with any of those girls for a night in the sack, but a certain pride in not wanting to be some whore’s trick helped me walk right by the obvious advances and single out the pretty girl I’d noticed on the other side of the table.

  She had come into the place with her coal-miner father. Since he was still wrapped up in the poker game, I had no problem getting a few words in with her. She told me she worked as a waitress in a cafeteria at McMechen. We didn’t make it together that night, but after visiting her at her job and dating a couple of times, we were in love.

  She may not have been the most beautiful girl in the world but to me she was Marilyn Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor and Lana Turner all rolled up in one. She was a healthy, smooth-skinned Irish girl who stirred things in me I’d never experienced. I didn’t get her cherry, but she damn sure got mine. The first time we made it together, I couldn’t believe it was happening. Beyond concentrating on the sex act, all I could think of was, “Wow, it’s happening, I’m really making it witji a girl.” I trembled with excitement and anticipation; so much so, I came before my prick touched her box. But that didn’t kill anything for me, and when I got inside her—our arms around each other, her smooth soft body in contact with mine—I really didn’t care if I ever took another breath. I was in heaven and I wanted to stay. She whispered, “I love you,” and goose bumps tingled all over my body. I was loving someone and she was returning my love. A huge void was being filled. For the first time in my life, I felt I could conquer the world.

  We were married in January of 1955. It was a good life and I enjoyed the role of going off to work every morning and coming home to my wife. She was a super girl who didn’t make any demands but we were both just a couple of kids. We didn’t know how to budget our income. We were constantly broke and neither of us had the maturity to sit down and make plans based on what we were earning. Being broke and wanting things can build up a lot of pressure. That pressure grows even greater when you haven’t got the money to pay routine bills, like rent, gas, lights and transportation. Sometimes we couldn’t even buy groceries. It’s too bad I didn’t know how to handle it. Trouble was, all I knew was reform schools, stealing and not trusting anyone. The patience, the willingness to struggle and earn that normal life demands wasn’t part of my make up.

  I started looking for ways to get things in a hurry. With all my jail-house connections, getting back into crime was no problem. My wife also had a little bit of the outlaw tendency in her nature, so she didn’t try to restrain me—not that she could have.

  The larceny consisted of small time burglaries and several stolen cars. One theft was at the request of an older gangster friend: the deal was for me to steal a late model Cadillac and deliver it to an acquaintance of his in Florida. My friend put enough dollars in my hand to pay the expenses and the other guy would pay me five hundred when I got there. I stole the car and drove it to Florida. The guy at the other end took it all right, gave me a hundred, and told me to get fucked. Naturally I was pissed, but took the hundred and left. I lay low for a few hours and then doubled back and restole the Cadillac. Not to drive it, just to keep the guy from feeling too chesty about burning me. After a while I abandoned the car and returned home. By the time I got back word was out the gangster was looking for me. So far the law wasn’t on my back, but I didn’t want to come face to face with either of the two guys involved in the car deal.

  My wife had been wanting to head to California even before we were married. My promise to take her there might have been the only reason she married me. No, that isn’t true, but now that someone was out there waiting to even things up with me, we both wanted to leave town. I stole a ’51 Mercury and we loaded in all our worldly possessions, but we still had plenty of room in the car when we headed for the land of opportunity. The trip west was a leisurely one. We’d stop in some town or city that interested us and I’d hustle for anything I could, or case a place to burglarize. If I got money, great. If not, we’d load whatever I had taken into the Mercury and sell the goods along the way.

  By the time we got to Los Angeles we had a few dollars and a few items to set up housekeeping. We rented an inexpensive place to live. My wife was in the early months of pregnancy, so I went looking for honest employment and the next few weeks saw me with a variety of jobs. With the jobs, and some thievery, we weren’t enjoying great luxury but things weren’t too bad for us. I had gotten used to the Mercury and felt like I was the legal owner. So much so that when they arrested me in it for car theft, I gave the arresting officer a lot of shit. Because the car had been stolen in another state, the FBI took over the case. They gave me that old song and dance about coming clean on everything to clear up the books and said they would show leniency. I’m no longer sure if I voluntarily told them about the car in Florida or if they tricked me into telling them. Anyway, I did get a hell of a break when I went to court for the stolen Mercury. Mostly because of my wife’s pregnancy, the judge put me on the streets with five years’ probation. I still had the other charge in Florida to face. If I’d had the guts to show up in court on that charge I might have gotten another break, but I was afraid to be too trusting of the courts. Instead I hit the road as a fugitive.

  I put my wife through a lot of shit for the next four months. Why she stuck with me, I don’t know. We traveled a lot of miles, and we stole a lot of things to keep from being hungry or for travel money. She was getting close to having the baby and I didn’t know how that could be handled on the run, so I shipped her back to Los Angeles where my mom was now living and could look after her.

  Not long after sending my wife to Los Angeles I was arrested in Indianapolis. You would think I’d had enough of that city, but there I was again in the same county jail where I had started. It was easier and less expensive for the court to revoke the five years’ probation than to prosecute me on the other theft, so I was returned to California and sentenced to the Federal Penitentiary at Terminal Island, San Pedro. I was twenty-one years old—no longer a juvenile delinquent. But looking back, I was never a juvenile anything, only an inmate in some reformatory. Now that I was twenty-one, it seemed only appropriate that I start my adult life in a prison with the big guys.

  Terminal Island was a paradise compared to the institutions I had been in as a youth offender. The guards were there strictly for security and weren’t continually hassling the convicts. And the cons themselves did their own time, without trying to run anybody else’s life. It was a whole lot easier doing time with men instead of a bunch of kids who were always trying to play macho. It was so good, I didn’t create any problems. Escape wasn’t even on my mind. It was my intention to do my time like a saint and earn an early release. I sincerely thought that when I got on the streets again I would never do anything to put myself back in jail. I thought of those months with my wife, the thrills and warmth her body had given me, the new baby and all the pleasures the free world afforded me, and I realized what a goddamn fool I was for wasting my life being locked up.

  Those first few months I went about doing my time with a positive attitude toward becoming a straight person.
My wife wrote to me almost daily and came to visit as often as she could. I marveled at our new son during our visits and knew that I would break my ass to give him a better childhood than I had gone through.

  But!—and it seems like in my life there has always been a “but”—before the baby was a year old, she stopped visiting. Her letters ceased without even a “Dear John.” My mother brought the news. “Your wife has moved out of the house and is living with some truck driver.” I flipped! The whole fucking world caved in on me. I wrote to her pleading for her to reconsider, begging her to come and see me. I needed her, loved her, and wanted to see little Charlie. Though the letters were never answered, for a few weeks I held on to the hope that her affair with the truck driver was just temporary and that she would eventually come back to me. All hope ended when Mom reported, “Your wife, your son, and her truck driver friend have moved out of the state.” To this day I have never seen or heard from her or the son that came from our marriage. When I gave up on her, my attitude of wanting to be Mr. Straight left me.

  My work assignment was outside the prison walls, and I decided if my wife wasn’t going to come and see me any more, I was going to try and locate her. I attempted an escape. However, like so many of my escape attempts while in reform school, I was caught before I was out of sight of the prison, in the prison parking lot trying to hot wire a car.

  For my attempt, I was taken off the minimum custody work assignment, which meant I was no longer allowed outside the prison walls, and given an additional five-year probation period to begin after I completed my existing sentence. It was a break from the court, but I wasn’t in an appreciative mood. My marriage, the new baby and a good clean work record inside the prison had been my ace in the hole toward an early parole date. And now that was gone.