Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (26 page)

Therefore, Manson’s statement to Springer, “We knocked off five of them just the other night,” was useless. As was Clem’s remark to DeCarlo, “We got five piggies.”

Manson and Grogan could have made such confessions on nationwide TV and, if there was a joint trial, we could never use their remarks against them.

So we had virtually nothing on Clem.

In going through Grogan’s file, I noticed that one of his brothers had made application for the California Highway Patrol; I made note of this, thinking maybe his brother could influence Clem to cooperate with us. DeCarlo had described Grogan in two words: “He’s nuts.” In his police photograph—big, wide grin, chipped front tooth, moronic stare—he did look idiotic. I asked Fowles for copies of the recent psychiatric reports.

Asked, “Why do you hate your father?” Grogan replied, “I’m my father and I don’t hate myself.” He denied the use of drugs. “I have my own bennies, adrenalin. It’s called fear.” He claimed that “love is everything,” but, according to one psychiatrist, “he also revealed that he could not accept the philosophy of interracial brotherhood. Quotes supposedly from the Bible with sexual correlation were given in defense of his attitude.”

Other quotes from Clem: “I’m dying a little every day. My ego is dying and knows he’s dying and struggles hard. When you’re free of ego you’re free of everything…Whatever you say is right for yourself…Whoever you think I am, that’s who I am.”

The philosophy of Clem? Or Charles Manson? I’d heard the same thoughts, in several instances even identical words, from the girls.

If the psychiatrists had examined one of Manson’s followers and, on the basis of such responses, found him insane, what of his leader?

I
saw Charles Manson for the first time that day. He was walking from the jail to the courtroom for arraignment on the Michigan loader arson charge, and was accompanied by five sheriff’s deputies.

I hadn’t realized how small he was. He was just five feet two. He was thin, of slight build, a shade hunchbacked, wore his brown hair very long, almost to his shoulders, and had a good start on a beard, grown—I’d noticed in comparing the LASO and Inyo mug shots—after his arrest in the Spahn Ranch raid. He wore fringed buckskins, which were not inexpensive. Though handcuffed, his walk was casual, not stiff, as though he was completely at ease.

I could not believe that this little guy had done all the things it was said he had. He looked anything but a heavyweight. Yet I knew that to underrate him would be the biggest mistake I could make. For if the Atkins and DeCarlo stories were true, he was not only capable of committing murder himself, he also possessed the incredible power to command others to kill for him.

Manson’s girls had talked a great deal about the Indian concept of karma. It was like a boomerang, they said. Whatever you threw out would, eventually, come back to you. I wondered if Manson himself really believed this and if he sensed that, nearly three and a half months after these hideous murders, his own karma was finally returning. He must. You don’t assign five sheriff’s deputies to an arson suspect. If he didn’t know now, he would soon enough, when the jail grapevine repeated some of the questions we’d been asking.

Before leaving Independence, I gave Frank Fowles both my home and office numbers. If there were any developments, I wanted to be notified, whatever the hour. Manson had pleaded not guilty to the arson charge, and his bail had been set at $25,000. If anyone attempted to meet it, I wanted to know immediately, so we could move fast on the murder charges. It might mean revealing our case before we were ready to do so, but the alternative was worse. Aware that he was suspected of murder, once free Manson would probably split. And with Manson at large it would be extremely difficult to get anyone to talk.

That weekend I went through LAPD’s files on the Tate-LaBianca murders; the Inyo County files; LASO’s reports on the Spahn Ranch raid and other contacts with the Family; and numerous rap sheets. LAPD had conducted over 450 interviews on Tate alone; although they had netted less than had a ten-cent phone call from an ex-hooker, I had to familiarize myself with what had and hadn’t been done. I was especially interested in seeing if I could find any link between the Tate-LaBianca victims and the Manson clan. Also, I was looking for some clue as to the motive behind the slayings.

Occasionally writers refer to “motiveless crimes.” I’ve never encountered such an animal, and I’m convinced that none such exists. It may be unconventional; it may be apparent only to the killer or killers; it may even be largely unconscious—but every crime is committed for a reason. The problem, especially in this case, was finding it.

After listening to the seven-hour taped interview with Daniel DeCarlo, I began studying the criminal record of one Manson, Charles M.

I wanted to get to know the man I would be up against.

C
harles Manson was born “no name Maddox” on November 12, 1934, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the illegitimate son of a sixteen-year-old girl named Kathleen Maddox.
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Though Manson himself would later state that his mother was a teenage prostitute, other relatives say she was simply “loose.” One remarked, “She ran around a lot, drank, got in trouble.” Whatever the case, she lived with a succession of men. One, a much older man named William Manson, whom she married, was around just long enough to provide a surname for the youth.

The identity of Charles Manson’s father was something of a mystery. In 1936 Kathleen filed a bastardy suit in Boyd County, Kentucky, against one “Colonel Scott,”
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a resident of Ashland, Kentucky. On April 19, 1937, the court awarded her a judgment of $25, plus $5 a month for the support of “Charles Milles Manson.” Though it was an “agreed judgment,” Colonel Scott apparently didn’t honor it, for as late as 1940 Kathleen was attempting to file an attachment on his wages. Most accounts state that Colonel Scott died in 1954; though this has never been officially verified, Manson himself apparently believed it. He also stated on numerous occasions that he never met his father.

According to her own relatives, Kathleen would leave the child with obliging neighbors for an hour, then disappear for days or weeks. Usually his grandmother or maternal aunt would have to claim him. Most of his early years were spent with one or the other, in West Virginia, Kentucky, or Ohio.

In 1939 Kathleen and her brother Luther robbed a Charleston, West Virginia, service station, knocking out the attendant with Coke bottles. They were sentenced to five years in the state penitentiary for armed robbery. While his mother was in prison, Manson lived with his aunt and uncle in McMechen, West Virginia. Manson would later tell his counselor at the National Training School for Boys that his uncle and aunt had “some marital difficulty until they became interested in religion and became very extreme.”

A very strict aunt, who thought all pleasures sinful but who gave him love. A promiscuous mother, who let him do anything he wanted, just so long as he didn’t bother her. The youth was caught in a tug-of-war between the two.

Paroled in 1942, Kathleen reclaimed Charles, then eight. The next several years were a blur of run-down hotel rooms and newly introduced “uncles,” most of whom, like his mother, drank heavily. In 1947 she tried to have him put in a foster home, but, none being available, the court sent him to the Gibault School for Boys, a caretaking institution in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was twelve years old.

According to school records, he made a “poor institutional adjustment” and “his attitude toward schooling was at best only fair.” Though “during the short lapses when Charles was pleasant and feeling happy he presented a likable boy,” he had “a tendency toward moodiness and a persecution complex…” He remained at Gibault ten months, then ran away, returning to his mother.

She didn’t want him, and he ran away again. Burglarizing a grocery store, he stole enough money to rent a room. He then broke into several other stores, stealing, among other things, a bicycle. Caught during a burglary, he was placed in the juvenile center in Indianapolis. He escaped the next day. When he was apprehended, the court—erroneously informed that he was Catholic—made arrangements through a local priest to have him accepted at Father Flanagan’s Boys Town.

He didn’t make its distinguished alumni list. Four days after his arrival, he and another boy, Blackie Nielson, stole a car and fled to the home of Blackie’s uncle in Peoria, Illinois. En route they committed two armed robberies—one a grocery store, the other a gambling casino. Among criminals, as in the law itself, a distinction is made between non-violent and violent crimes. Manson had “graduated,” committing his first armed robbery at age thirteen.

The uncle was glad to see them. Both boys were small enough to slip through skylights. A week after their arrival in Peoria, the pair broke into a grocery store and stole $1,500. For their efforts, the uncle gave them $150. Two weeks later they tried a repeat, but this time they were caught. Both talked, implicating the uncle. Still only thirteen, Charles Manson was sent to the Indiana School for Boys at Plainfield.

He remained there three years, running away a total of eighteen times. According to his teachers, “He professed no trust in anyone” and “did good work only for those from whom he figured he could obtain something.”

In February 1951, Charles Manson and two other sixteen-year-olds escaped and headed for California. For transportation they stole cars. For support they burglarized gas stations—Manson would later estimate they hit fifteen or twenty—before, just outside Beaver, Utah, a roadblock set up for a robbery suspect netted them instead.

In taking a stolen vehicle across a state line, the youths had broken a federal law, the Dyer Act. This was the beginning of a pattern for Charles Manson of committing federal crimes, which carry far stiffer sentences than local or state offenses.

On March 9, 1951, Manson was ordered confined to the National Training School for Boys, in Washington, D.C., until reaching his majority.

Detailed records were kept on Charles Manson during the time he was there.
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On arrival, he was given a battery of aptitude and intelligence tests. Manson’s IQ was 109. Though he had completed four years of school, he remained illiterate. Intelligence, mechanical aptitude, manual dexterity: all average. Subject liked best: music. Observed his first case worker, with considerable understatement, “Charles is a sixteen-year-old boy who has had an unfavorable family life, if it can be called family life at all.” He was, the case worker concluded, aggressively antisocial.

One month after his arrival: “This boy tries to give the impression that he is trying hard to adjust although he actually is not putting forth any effort in this respect…I feel in time he will try to be a wheel in the cottage.”

After three months: “Manson has become somewhat of an ‘institution politician.’ He does just enough work to get by on…Restless and moody most of the time, the boy would rather spend his class time entertaining his friends.” The report concluded: “It appears that this boy is a very emotionally upset youth who is definitely in need of some psychiatric orientation.”

Manson was anxious to be transferred to Natural Bridge Honor Camp, a minimum security institution. Because of his run-away record, school officials felt the opposite—i.e., transfer to a reformatory-type institution—was in order, but they decided to withhold decision until after the boy had been examined by a psychiatrist.

On June 29, 1951, Charles Manson was examined by a Dr. Block. The psychiatrist noted “the marked degree of rejection, instability, and psychic trauma” in Manson’s background. His sense of inferiority in relation to his mother was so pronounced, Block said, that he constantly felt it necessary “to suppress any thoughts about her.” Because of his diminutive stature, his illegitimacy, and the lack of parental love, “he is constantly striving for status with the other boys.” To attain this, Manson had “developed certain facile techniques for dealing with people. These for the most part consist of a good sense of humor” and an “ability to ingratiate himself…This could add up to a fairly ‘slick’ institutionalized youth, but one is left with the feeling that behind all this lies an extremely sensitive boy who has not yet given up in terms of securing some kind of love and affection from the world.”

Though the doctor observed that Manson was “quite unable to accept any kind of authoritative direction,” he found that he “accepted with alacrity the offer of psychiatric interviews.”

If he found this suspicious, the doctor did not indicate it in his report. For the next three months he gave Manson individual psychotherapy. It may be presumed that Charles Manson also worked on the doctor, for in his October 1 report Dr. Block was convinced that what Manson most required were experiences which would build up his self-confidence. In short, he needed to be trusted. The doctor recommended the transfer.

It would appear that Charles Manson had conned his first psychiatrist. Though the school authorities considered him at best a “calculated risk,” they accepted the doctor’s recommendation, and on October 24, 1951, he was transferred to Natural Bridge Camp.

That November he turned seventeen. Shortly after his birthday he was visited by his aunt, who told the authorities that she would supply a home and employment for him if he was released. He was due for a parole hearing in February 1952, and, with her offer, his chances looked good. Instead, less than a month before the hearing, he took a razor blade and held it against another boy’s throat while he sodomized him.

As a result of the offense, he lost ninety-seven days good time and, on January 18, 1952, he was transferred to the Federal Reformatory at Petersburg, Virginia. He was considered “dangerous,” one official observing, “He shouldn’t be trusted across the street.” By August he had committed eight serious disciplinary offenses, three involving homosexual acts. His progress report, if it could be called that, stated, “Manson definitely has homosexual and assaultive tendencies.” He was classified “safe only under supervision.” For the protection of himself as well as others, the authorities decided to transfer him to a more secure institution, the Federal Reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio. He was sent there on September 22, 1952.

From the Chillicothe files: “Associates with trouble makers…seems to be the unpredictable type of inmate who will require supervision both at work and in quarters…In spite of his age, he is criminally sophisticated…regarded as grossly unsuited for retention in an open reformatory type institution such as Chillicothe…” This from a report written less than a month after his transfer there.

Then, suddenly, Manson changed. For the rest of the year there were no serious disciplinary offenses. Except for minor infractions of the rules, and a consistently “poor attitude toward authority,” his good conduct continued into 1953. A progress report that October noted: “Manson has shown a marked improvement in his general attitude and cooperation with officers and is also showing an active interest in the educational program…He is especially proud of the fact that he raised his [educational level from lower fourth to upper seventh grade] and that he can now read most material and use simple arithmetic.”

Because of his educational advancement and his good work habits in the transportation unit, where he repaired and maintained vehicles belonging to the institution, on January 1, 1954, he was given a Meritorious Service Award. Far more important to Charles Manson, on May 8, 1954, he was granted parole. He was nineteen.

O
ne of the conditions of his parole was that he live with his aunt and uncle in McMechen. He did, for a time, then, when his mother moved to nearby Wheeling, he joined her. They seemed drawn together, yet unable to stand each other for any length of time.

Since fourteen, Charles Manson’s only sexual contacts had been homosexual. Shortly after his release he met a seventeen-year-old McMechen girl, Rosalie Jean Willis, a waitress in the local hospital. They were married in January 1955. For support Manson worked as a busboy, service-station helper, parking-lot attendant. He also boosted cars. He would later admit to stealing six. He appeared to have learned nothing; he took at least two across state lines. One, stolen in Wheeling, West Virginia, he abandoned in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The second, a 1951 Mercury, he drove from Bridgeport, Ohio, to Los Angeles in July 1955, accompanied by his now pregnant wife. Manson had finally made it to the Golden State. He was arrested less than three months later, and admitted both Dyer Act violations. Taken to federal court, he pleaded guilty to the theft of the Mercury, and asked for psychiatric help, stating, “I was released from Chillicothe in 1954 and, having been confined for nine years, I was badly in need of psychiatric treatment. I was mentally confused and stole a car as a means of mental release from the confused state of mind that I was in.”

The judge requested a psychiatric report. Manson was examined on October 26, 1955, by Dr. Edwin McNiel. He gave the psychiatrist a much abbreviated version of his past, stating that he was first sent to an institution “for being mean to my mother.” Of his wife, Manson said, “She is the best wife a guy could want. I didn’t realize how good she was until I got in here. I beat her at times. She writes to me all the time. She is going to have a baby.”

He also told McNiel that “he spent so much time in institutions that he never really learned much of what ‘real life on the outside was all about.’ He said that now he has a wife and is about to become a father it has become important to him to try to be on the outside and be with his wife. He said she is the only one he has ever cared about in his life.”

Dr. McNiel observed: “It is evident that he has an unstable personality and that his environmental influences throughout most of his life have not been good…In my opinion this boy is a poor risk for probation; on the other hand, he has spent nine years in institutions with apparently little benefit except to take him out of circulation. With the incentive of a wife and probable fatherhood, it is possible that he might be able to straighten himself out. I would, therefore, respectfully recommend to the court that probation be considered in this case under careful supervision.” Accepting the suggestion, on November 7, 1955, the court gave Manson five years probation.