Charles Manson Now (31 page)

“Jay Sebring and Voytek were trying to corner the MDA market. According to rumors, Rosemary LaBianca was somehow involved in the MDA deals (she did leave behind one million dollars), while Leno LaBianca was being hounded by the Mafia to pay up. (The FBI tapped his phone.) The connections between Leno LaBianca and the Mafia were
well documented. In their initial investigation, LA police immediately looked into this angle. According to Leno’s first wife, Leno had complained to her a week before the killings that someone had been in the house moving things around. Later, some of the girls in the family would admit to doing this. That’s how arbitrary it all is; these drug deals involve like everyone in Hollywood.

“Vincent Bugliosi (prosecutor in Manson case, coauthor of Helter Skelter) was ordered to come up with a motive that did not implicate the rich and the famous-hence, Helter Skelter, baby. This idea basically came from Paul Watkins, a “member” of the Manson family-it was his take on things he heard around the ranch. As for August 10, I am rather certain that the plan was always to go to the LaBianca’s. Apparently they did all this driving all over the place beforehand and maybe that was to confuse the passengers in the car: Linda, Clem, Susan, Leslie, Pat, and Tex, presuming that Charlie was driving. It is fact that the family had gone to parties at Harold True’s next door and that the family had creepy crawled (broke in and moved belongings around) at the LaBianca’s about a week before. Years later, Charlie stated that they were after Leno’s ‘little black book.’ In a 1991 episode of Hard Copy, Manson admitted to knowing about LaBianca’s Mafia connections when confirming that he in fact asked Leno for his ‘little black book.’ The family partied at Harold True’s house often, and the LaBianca’s daughter Suzan had a boyfriend in the Straight Satans, perhaps DiCarlo, who also hung out at Spahn Ranch. I have the original map hand-drawn by Harold True, showing the family how to get from
Spahn Ranch to his house.

“There’s the idea that the LaBiancas were somehow involved in the same drug situation as Jay and Voytek. There is not really anything to back this up, aside from things that Charlie insinuated to Geraldo Rivera about the Mafia being involved with Leno or Rosemary leaving an estate of one million while Leno owed his bookie money and the FBI or some such entity tapped his phone. Then there’s the idea that Leno was embezzling money from his grocery store business and cooking the books and possibly using it as money laundry.

“Tex Watson came to Hollywood to be somebody. He became a hairdresser and met the hairdresser to the stars, Jay Sebring. Tex met Terry Melcher, who was living at what became the Tate house. Tex met Charlie Manson. They both met Dennis Wilson. Everyone was driving around, hitch hiking around, even a big deal rock star like Dennis hitched sometime.

“Tex had been in the Tate house before he was in the family, because Terry Melcher lived there. There was a lot of involvement between the people in the Tate house and the people who were involved with the family before the murders happened. Tex partied there a number of times. Tex and Jay Sebring knew each other and they were both hairdressers. Tex was, at one point, renting a house that belonged to Leno LaBianca. There are massive connections between everybody. The free clinic in Haight-Ashbury had a benefit party. General Tate was there; Charlie, Susan Atkins, and Abigail Folger were there. An LA county fireman personally told me he saw Sharon Tate horseback riding at Spahn Ranch when the
family was running the horse concession for George. There were no coincidences, no randomness; everyone knew each other. Tex created the Crowe situation by getting money for drugs from him and then running off with the money, leaving the girls there. Charlie had to rescue them. According to the girls’ account, Tex and Voytek were involved in a similar situation.

“As far as the parties at the Tate house, now this depends on to whom you talk. Debra Tate stated that the family partied there. As I said, Voytek and Jay were trying to corner the MDA market, and they were working with these three drug dealers from Canada, who the LAPD interrogated. Mama Cass assumed these three guys did the murders because they were her drug dealers, and John Phillips called the LAPD and said the same guys most likely committed the crimes. In a very recent interview, Debra Tate just out of nowhere said, ‘Those Manson people were here all the time; they used the pool; they used the bathroom…’

“As for “Helter Skelter,” these killings brought out a pile of dirt that had to be swept under the carpet. The big deal was that movie and rock stars were slumming by picking up hippies on Sunset Strip and bringing them home to party with. Sex and drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll and movie stars. The American Dream. One of the stranger stories I’ve heard is that Cary Grant was having sex with some boy in the bushes near the Tate house the night of the murders; when he heard all this screaming and stuff, he fled.

“I’ve run into several people who were in jail with Tex, and they all said the same thing. One of these stories made
it into a Boston tabloid. Basically Tex would be in the chapel preaching against homosexuality; then he would go back to his cell and get a blowjob. I think he’s a flat out sociopath, who is a genius at lying. Tex was a drug dealer and Tex killed everyone, which is what he told Pat Robertson on his show. Pat Robertson actually makes a statement at the end of my movie. It’s one of the most amazing things anyone has ever said about this situation: ‘You didn’t kill a pregnant woman and smear her guts all over the walls, but this man did, and Jesus saved him; think what he can do for you.’“

Hearing John’s analysis of the Manson murders, I felt in over my head. It occurred to me that the reason so many people are interested in the Manson murders might be the simple fact that there is really no way to figure it all out. I could spend the next five years trying to piece it all together, and I would likely end up at the same place I started. The more I talked to John and Vicki, the more I thought about Bill Nelson, how he’d relentlessly stalked and harassed Sandra Good and one of Charlie’s sons-his obsession was a story all on its own. The Manson murders seemed to have taken over his life. I thought about all the secrets Nelson took with him to the grave and how, ultimately, he’d become another casualty in the Manson story.

When I think about the desert John calls home, I remember a lot of wind; it felt exactly like where I live, in the middle of the Canadian prairies. But somehow, out there, the wind had an emptiness to it. Everything I experienced on that trip had a momentum I really couldn’t understand, yet things were coming together in a way that seemed almost necessary. It felt as though
I had to meet all of these different people and take from them whatever I could the better to prepare myself for what would happen next.

After my failed attempt to visit Charlie, I’d written the warden, and my visitor application had been approved. The day after I left the desert, I would go back to Corcoran for a meeting with Charles Manson.

I left the desert and began the trip back to Los Angeles. On the road, I couldn’t focus on anything. I had serious doubts about what I was doing, but I managed to ignore them enough to keep going; part of me shut down. I went over in my head how the meeting should go, even though I’d convinced myself that it probably wouldn’t happen anyway. There was a level of insanity involved in this visit, and I began to question how much sanity I had left. Because, though I had yet to understand fully why meeting Manson was so important to me, it was something I felt compelled to do. It took three hours to get to my hotel, but it felt like fifteen minutes. Once I arrived, I had no idea what to do with myself. I tried to catch up on emails but that was hardly a diversion. I couldn’t possibly explain any of this to someone on the outside.

Sleep didn’t come easy; it didn’t really come at all. In the morning, I gathered my things and walked, rather like a zombie, into the cool morning air. As I made my way to Corcoran, I felt oddly at ease, as if a huge pressure had been lifted and I no longer cared what happened. I pulled up to Corcoran’s first security point; that morning, the guard was chatty. He told me about
some Manson movie he’d seen before warning me that I probably wouldn’t be meeting Charlie that day. He wished me luck and patted my car twice on the roof. Inside the prison walls, the guards seemed shocked that the pending part of my application status had been lifted. I was cleared to go through. I think I was more surprised than they were, but I strolled outside to wait for the bus that would take me out to PHU.

It was ten A.M. when I cleared the final security desk. I was processed and walked through a metal detector before waiting outside with a guard for the gate to open. The early morning had developed into a beautiful day; a low-lying fog added to the quiet. “Is it always this quiet out here?” I asked the guard. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s kind ofthe opposite ofwhat goes on in there.” With that, the gate opened and we walked into an enclosure. As the first gate shut behind us, another gate opened in front and, once through it, we were on our way to the visiting room. As we walked, we talked about Corcoran and what it was like to work there. The guard told me he was thankful for his j ob, though he found it very challenging and stressful; he didn’t feel like there were any other options for him. He told me his job was his own way of doing time, until he was able to retire. “Just go through there and walk straight ahead,” he said. “Have a good visit.” He pointed to a door and let me walk the final twenty steps on my own. I opened the door, paused for a few seconds, gathered my thoughts, and walked into a large room.

I was caught off guard. He was there, just as I rounded the corner. He was arranging a couple of chairs around a table. I interrupted him, “Hey, General.” He looked up and walked over, and with a genuine smile on his face he said, “Hey, hey,” and
offered his hand in friendship. I slowly extended my hand too, though I’m sure the look on my face would have been the same if I’d seen a monster.

August 9

On August 9, they dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. That’s the same date Sharon Tate was killed. There is this anti-Manson woman from Atlanta that’s always writing stories about the family, and she wants to advertise August 9 as a historical date, or some kind of crazy shit like that. I said, “Why don’t you look at August 9, as the day they dropped the atomic bomb.” She said she didn’t know that. I told her, “You don’t know the shit you guys do, you only know how to put all that shit on me, man.” It’s funny how you tell somebody you know. They say you did 6, 7, and 8. You say, “No, I did 1,2,3,4,5,9,10,11,12,13 and the rest of it, but I didn’t do 6,7,8.” They say, “You did 6,7,8,” and I said, “What the fuck reason would I have to lie. I did the rest of it but I didn’t do 6,7,8. Why would I want to lie about that.” There’s no fuckin’ reason you know, the time is done, the game is over, now that’s already past, and they still won’t accept the fact that I didn’t have anything to do with that, not directly, like conspiring or conceiving, or thinking about that, you dig?

It’s like you and I are doing things together, we do things together, we do whatever we want. And I take you out and I say, “Here’s the way you use a knife,” and I stab six people to death, and I say, “You see that.” You say, “Yeah.” And I cut their throats, and I say, “Now, you see how that’s done.” And you say, “Yeah.” And I say, “Now, when I tell you to do something, don’t hesitate, do it, you understand me?” And you say, “Yeah, I understand you.” So, well, “Don’t play me for a goddam idiot!” And you say, “I won’t.” So, later on, you say, “I’m going downtown.” I say, “Well, you have a good day.” And they say, “Well, Fish went downtown and killed ten people, you told him to do it.” I say, “No, I didn’t tell him to do nothin, man. Fish got his own head, he’s got his own mind, you know.”“Yeah, you’re his leader.” I said, “I’m no fuckin’ leader, you’re out of your fuckin’ mind. If I gotta be a leader, I gotta be responsible for that. I’m not responsible for nothing, fuck you!” You dig? If I tell someone to go do something, it’s worse than if I do it myself.

If I wanted that done, I would have done it. I didn’t need nobody to do nothing for me. I can take care of myself. They keep saying I’m responsible for what you did; I’m not responsible for what you did. You come and you tell me, “Look, I’m having some problems with 1, 2, 3.” I say, “Okay.” You said, “Willyou help me?” I said, “Sure, I’ll be glad to, but now if I help you, dontforget you owe me 1,2,3.” And you say, “Okay, I’ll owe you.” I say, “All right.” And I go and take care of 1,2,3, then I come back to you and say, “Look, I need 6,7,8,” and you say, “All right.” I say, “You deal with it.” You say, “What do I do?” I say, “Don’t ask me, I don’t care what you do, it’s none of my business, I don’t want to get involved in that.” I don’t want no conspiracy on me, I know what malice of forethought is. You know, I don’t have malice of forethought against a pussycat, I don’t sin against, I don’t waste nothing. I don’t leave camp fires burning. In other words, I don’t make mistakes. The mistakes that somebody makes, that accuses me of making a mistake.

That’s something that other people play, they play mistakes. I don’t play mistakes. Yeah, I knew them (everyone at the Tate house), sure, that’s my neighborhood, I knew everybody there. There is no doubt in my mind about anything. I know everybody there now. Who’s not to know, sweetheart? When Igo on the set it’s me, I’m Mel Gibson, and Tom Selleck. I’m .357Magnum, I’m Buffalo Bill, I’m Marshall Dillon, I’m Charlie Chaplain, I’m Shirley Temple, I’m everyone, I’m God, I’m you!

My So-Called Friend

See, if I got no say-so out there, pretty soon what happens is people come in to me and say, “Hi, I want to be your friend and la, la, la” and all that. And “I was going to commit suicide and then I thought, no, that you were my last hope and da, da, da, da and all that.” And I end up in the fucking nut ward because they end up playing their suicide and bullshit on me, trying to put another psychiatrist in play with that goddamn lying stinking-ass Italian who’s double dealing on the district attorney’s office, who wouldn’t give me my rights to start with. But me not having no parents and having no help, the system’s always…able to do anything they want to do to me. I think the greatest philosophy I ever came across is when I decided I didn’t give a fuck, and all stress left me because I was all tied up with the people that I love that was using me.