Manson in His Own Words
Page 28
Prison personnel say that Manson constantly tests the staff and abuses most of the opportunities given to him. Manson says, “That’s bullshit. Like at Plainfield when I was a kid, I’m still the whipping post for anyone who wants to feel important, and the guy to use when an example is needed. If I demand to be treated like any other convict, some guard writes me up as threatening him or her, and I go back in the hole. Those suckers don’t know what truth is, and when I try to hold them up to their rules, they turn it around on me and I’m written up as arrogant and defiant.”
Prison psychiatrists diagnose Manson as suffering from paranoia and schizophrenia, and Manson himself accepts that diagnosis, explaining, “Sure I’m paranoid. I’ve had reason to be ever since I can remember. And now I have to be, just to stay alive. As for schizophrenia, take anybody off the streets and put them in the middle of a prison yard and you’ll see all kinds of split personalities. I’ve got a thousand faces, so that makes me five hundred schizophrenics. And in my life, I’ve played every one of those faces. Sometimes because people push me into a role, and sometimes because it’s better being someone else than me.”
Manson’s many faces were never more apparent to me than on a day very early in our working relationship when I brought with me the young woman mentioned in the Introduction who wanted to interview him for a local newspaper. When we arrived, Manson was already in the room provided for us. Either because he knew I would be taking photographs, or because the interviewer was a woman, he had changed his appearance significantly. His full beard was gone, reduced to a square goatee that covered only his chin. He was dressed immaculately, in pressed blue jeans adorned with symbolic patches embroidered by his two favorite girls, Lynette Fromme and Sandra Good. He wore a blue-grey velour shirt that was handstitched by Fromme.
At first Manson virtually ignored the woman, but as he showed us his photo album and identified those pictured he became a charmer. The interviewer was in her late twenties, neither a beauty nor homely, but by the time Manson had talked to her for a while, she must have believed she was the most attractive woman on earth. Since I was now the one being ignored, I had ample opportunity to observe Manson’s performance, and I was fascinated by it.
When he spoke to her, he was polite, courteous and complimentary. His normal profanity and prison slang had disappeared, and in fact, he was more articulate than I would have believed possible. Very soon he was holding her hand and caressing the skin of her bare arm while she listened intently to every word he said.
He stood up and began massaging the back of the interviewer’s neck and shoulders. She closed her eyes and smiled appreciatively. Then, continuing the conversation, he casually reached across the table and picked up the cord of the tape recorder we were using. He looked at me and winked. Suddenly and menacingly, he wrapped the cord around the woman’s neck. Her eyes opened wide, filling her glasses, and she looked at me pleadingly. Manson applied some pressure on the cord and in an intimidating voice said, “Whatta ya think Emmons, should I take this little bitch’s life?”
The woman was terrified, and though Manson’s wink had indicated he was not serious, the pressure of the cord on the woman’s neck gave me cause for a moment’s real concern. Just as I was contemplating a rescue effort, he laughed and loosened the cord, saying, “See bitch, you never want to trust a stranger.” To this day, I don’t know why Manson decided to frighten the woman, but his sudden mood changes and drastic attempts to impress or intimidate those around him have become familiar to me.
Gaining Manson’s trust and keeping it was one of the constant struggles I fought in our relationship, and Manson continually tested me. He would often say “You could get me out of here if you wanted to,” and then give me detailed escape plans, including what someone on the outside would have to do to help him get out. In the beginning, wanting to build his confidence in me but hoping to discourage him, I would point out flaws in his plans. However, my continued evasions eventually became.transparent, and one day he confronted me. “You know what Emmons?” he said. “You’re not my friend. You haven’t got the guts to help a brother when he’s down. All you’re after is to get rich like the DA and all those other assholes who wrote books about me. Shit, now that I’ve told you things I’d never tell anyone else, I’m worth more to you dead than alive. When are you going to send someone in to do a number on me?”
“That’s not true, Charlie!” I replied vehemently. “I don’t want to see you dead. And if those are your true feelings, we can stop working on this project right now. I’m a firm believer in the guilty being punished, and I think you got what you deserved. So if all I am is a tool for you to make a break, I’ll leave now and never come back. But if we continue to visit, you’d be doing me, and maybe yourself in the long run, a favor by never mentioning your schemes again.”
Our eyes were glued to each other’s and I seriously thought my words might terminate our relationship, which was the last thing I wanted, even though I knew I had to make the point. But Manson smiled and said, “You know what, man? That’s pretty straight and I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t put my life on the line for any son-of-a-bitch either. I did in ’69 and look what it got me. Anyway, don’t stop showing up. You’re about the only sane person I get to talk to. They keep telling me how crazy I am, but the guys they got me locked in seg [segregated housing] with still believe I’m everything Sadie said I was. They are worse than those kids out there wanting to believe I’m some kind of God. I hear it so much, sometimes I believe it—believe it so strongly that I think the world should bow down to me and ask forgiveness. Not forgiveness for what they did to me, but forgiveness for what they do to themselves.
“Maybe this book of yours was meant to be. Maybe some kind of God out there cut me loose to live the life I lived and brought you into the picture to write a book about it so the world could look at itself. I’m nothing but the reflection of evil that goes through the minds of all those people who created the monster and keep pushing the myth to kids who don’t know any better.”
As inflated as such statements are, I believe they betray something of the reason Manson allowed this book to be written. Behind his feelings of obligation to me for our past association lies his desire to let others see him as he sees himself. For that reason, this book may be as close to the “real” Charles Manson as we may ever get. In the course of gathering material for this book, Manson has often said to me, “I owe this to you because you let me live.” In saying “you” Manson was probably referring not only to me, but to society as a whole, for not having executed him.
Even so, Manson is still not sure which “Charlie” he wants people to know. He has said to me, “Man, you didn’t have to write everything I told you. You’re pulling the covers off me. All that stuff the DA fed the world has been my shell. It immortalized me and gave me something. It’s my protection. You’ve been in these hallways, you know the convicts I’m living with—they don’t respect nothing but the meanest and baddest.” I told him that he was the one who felt the shell had become too heavy a load to bear, and that he was tired of carrying it. “Yeah man,” he replied, “but sometimes I was God to some of those kids.”
The “God” he perhaps was to his followers was turned into a monster for the rest of us. Yet Manson has no superhuman powers, neither divine nor demonic. The image of “the most dangerous man alive” bears little resemblance to the man I have been visiting these past seven years. Perhaps the myth of Charles Manson satisfied our hunger for sensationalism, but certainly it also absolved us of the darker side of the humanity we share with him.
What made Manson what he is? The unbroken chain of horrifying abuse and neglect from early childhood on doesn’t explain it all, for others with an equally unhappy past have managed to escape his fate. Ultimately, the mystery of Manson’s life and the man he became is a complex one that doesn’t yield easily to examination. But somewhere in this story and his own words, some of the answers may begin to emerge, allowing us to see
him, and perhaps some part of ourselves, more clearly.
Table of Contents
PART ONETHE EDUCATION OF AN OUTLAW
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
PART TWOA CIRCLE OF ONE
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
PART THREEWITHOUT CONSCIENCE
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9