Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (27 page)

There remained the Florida charge. Though his chances of getting probation on it were excellent, before the hearing he skipped. A warrant was issued for his arrest. He was picked up in Indianapolis on March 14, 1956, and returned to Los Angeles. His probation was revoked, and he was sentenced to three years imprisonment at Terminal Island, San Pedro, California. By the time Charles Manson, Jr., was born, his father was back in jail.

“T
his inmate will no doubt be in serious difficulty soon,” wrote the orientation officer. “He is young, small, baby-faced, and unable to control himself…”

Given another battery of tests, Manson received average marks in all the categories except “word meaning,” where he had a high score. His IQ was now 121. With some perception, when it came to his work assignment Manson requested “a small detail where he is not with too many men. He states he has a tendency to cut up and misbehave if he is around a gang…”

Rosalie moved in with his mother, now living in Los Angeles, and during his first year at Terminal Island she visited him every week, his mother somewhat less frequently. “Manson’s work habits and attitudes range from good to poor,” noted his March 1957 progress report. “However, as the time of his parole hearing approaches, his work performance report has jumped from good to excellent, showing that he is capable of a good adjustment if he wants to.”

His parole hearing was set for April 22. In March his wife’s visits ceased. Manson’s mother told him Rosalie was living with another man. In early April he was transferred to the Coast Guard unit, under minimal custody. On April 10 he was found in the Coast Guard parking lot, dressed in civilian clothes, wiring the ignition of a car. Subsequently indicted for attempted escape, he pleaded guilty, and an extra five years probation was tacked onto the end of his current sentence. On April 22 the parole request was denied.

Rosalie filed for divorce not long after this, the divorce becoming final in 1958. She retained custody of Charles, Jr., remarried, and had no further contact with Manson or his mother.

April 1958, annual review: His work performance was “sporadic,” his behavior continued to be “erratic and moody.” Almost without exception, he would let down anyone who went to bat for him, the report noted. “For example, he was selected to attend the current Dale Carnegie Course, being passed over a number of other applicants because it was felt that this course might be beneficial in his case and he urgently desired enrollment. After attending a few sessions and apparently making excellent progress, he quit in a mood of petulance and has since engaged in no educational activity.”

Manson was called “an almost classic text book case of the correctional institutional inmate…His is a very difficult case and it is impossible to predict his future adjustment with any degree of accuracy.”

He was released September 30, 1958, on five years parole.

By November, Manson had found a new occupation: pimping. His teacher was +Frank Peters, a Malibu bartender and known procurer, with whom he was living.

Unknown to Manson, he was under surveillance by the FBI, and had been since his release from prison. The federal agents, who were looking for a fugitive who had once lived with Peters, told Manson’s parole officer that his “first string” consisted of a sixteen-year-old girl named Judy, whom he had personally “turned out”; as additional support, he was getting money from “Fat Flo,” an unattractive Pasadena girl who had wealthy parents.

His parole officer called him in for a talk. Manson denied he was pimping; said he was no longer living with Peters; promised never to see Judy again; but stated that he wished to continue his relationship with Flo, “for money and sex.” After all, he said, he had “been in a long time.” After the interview the parole officer wrote: “This certainly is a very shaky probationer and it seems just a matter of time before he gets in further trouble.”

On May 1, 1959, Manson was arrested attempting to cash a forged U.S. Treasury check for $37.50 in Ralph’s, a Los Angeles supermarket. According to the arresting officers, Manson told them he had stolen the check from a mailbox. Two more federal offenses.

LAPD turned Manson over to Secret Service agents for questioning. What then happened was somewhat embarrassing. “Unfortunately for them,” read a report of the incident, “the check itself has disappeared; they feel certain subject took it off table and swallowed it when they momentarily turned their backs.” The charges remained, however.

I
n mid-June an attractive nineteen-year-old girl named Leona called on Manson’s parole officer and told him she was pregnant by Charlie. The parole officer was skeptical and wanted to see a medical report. He also began checking her background.

With the aid of an attorney, Manson obtained a deal: if he would plead guilty to forging the check, the mail theft charge would be dropped. The judge ordered a psychiatric examination, and Dr. McNiel examined Manson a second time.

When Manson appeared in court on September 28, 1959, Dr. McNiel, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the probation department
all
recommended against probation. Leona also appeared and made a tearful plea in Manson’s behalf. They were deeply in love, she told the judge, and would marry if Charlie were freed. Though it was proved that Leona had lied about being pregnant, and that she had an arrest record as a prostitute under the name Candy Stevens, the judge, evidently moved by Leona’s plea and Manson’s promise to make good, gave the defendant a ten-year sentence, then suspended it and placed him on probation.

Manson returned to pimping and breaking federal laws.

B
y December he had been arrested by LAPD twice: for grand theft auto and the use of stolen credit cards. Both charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. That month he also took Leona-aka-Candy and a girl named Elizabeth from Needles, California, to Lordsburg, New Mexico, for purposes of prostitution, violating the Mann Act, still another federal beef.

Held briefly, questioned, then released, he was given the impression that he had “beat the rap.” He must have suspected that the investigation was continuing, however. Possibly to prevent Leona from testifying against him, he did marry her, though he didn’t inform his probation officer of this. He remained free throughout January 1960, while the FBI prepared its case.

Late in February, Manson’s probation officer was visited by an irate parent, +Ralph Samuels, from Detroit. Samuels’ daughter +Jo Anne, nineteen, had come to California in response to an ad for an airline stewardess school, only to learn, after paying her tuition, that the school was a fraud. She had $700 in savings, however, and together with another disillusioned student, +Beth Beldon, had rented an apartment in Hollywood. About November 1959, Jo Anne had the misfortune to meet Charles Manson, who introduced himself, complete with printed card, as “President, 3-Star-Enterprises, Nite Club, Radio and TV Productions.” Manson conned her into investing her savings in his nonexistent company; drugged and raped her roommate; and got Jo Anne pregnant. It was an ectopic pregnancy, the fetus growing in one of the Fallopian tubes, and she nearly died.

The probation officer could offer little more than a sympathetic ear, however, for Charles Manson had disappeared. A bench warrant was issued, and on April 28 a federal grand jury indicted him on the Mann Act violation. He was arrested June 1 in Laredo, Texas, after police picked up one of his girls on a prostitution charge, and brought back to Los Angeles, where, on June 23, 1960, the court ruled he had violated his probation and ordered him returned to prison to serve out his ten-year sentence. The judge observed: “If there ever was a man who demonstrated himself completely unfit for probation, he is it.” This was the same judge who had granted him probation the previous September.

The Mann Act charge was later dropped. For a full year Manson remained in the Los Angeles County Jail, while appealing the revocation. The appeal was denied, and in July 1961 he was sent to the United States Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington. He was twenty-six.

According to staff evaluation, Manson had become something of an actor: “He hides his loneliness, resentment, and hostility behind a façade of superficial ingratiation…An energetic, young-appearing person whose verbalization flows quite easily, he gestures profusely and can dramatize situations to hold the listener’s attention.” Then a statement which, in one form or another, was to reappear often in his prison records, and, much later, in post-prison interviews: “He has commented that institutions have become his way of life and that he receives security in institutions which is not available to him in the outside world.”

Manson gave as his claimed religion “Scientologist,” stating that he “has never settled upon a religious formula for his beliefs and is presently seeking an answer to his question in the new mental health cult known as Scientology.”

Scientology, an outgrowth of science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics, was just coming into vogue at this time. Manson’s teacher, i.e., “auditor,” was another convict, Lanier Rayner. Manson would later claim that while in prison he achieved Scientology’s highest level, “theta clear.”
*

Although Manson remained interested in Scientology much longer than he did in any other subject except music, it appears that, like the Dale Carnegie course, he stuck with it only as long as his enthusiasm lasted, then dropped it, extracting and retaining a number of terms and phrases (“auditing,” “cease to exist,” “coming to Now”) and some concepts (karma, reincarnation, etc.) which, perhaps fittingly, Scientology had borrowed in the first place.

He was still interested in Scientology when his annual progress report was written that September. Furthermore, according to the report, that interest “has led him to make a semi-professional evaluation of his personality which strangely enough is quite consistent with the evaluations made by previous social studies. He appears to have developed a certain amount of insight into his problems through his study of this discipline. Manson is making progress for the first time in his life.”

The report also noted that Manson “is active in softball, basketball, and croquet” and “is a member of the Drama Club and the Self Improvement Group.” He had become “somewhat of a fanatic at practicing the guitar.”
*

He held one fairly responsible job eleven months, the longest he held any prison assignment, before being caught with contraband in his cell and reassigned to janitorial work.

The annual report that September took a close, hard look at the twenty-eight-year-old convict:

“Charles Manson has a tremendous drive to call attention to himself. Generally he is unable to succeed in positive acts, therefore he often resorts to negative behavior to satisfy this drive. In his effort to ‘find’ himself, Manson peruses different religious philosophies, e.g., Scientology and Buddhism; however, he never remains long enough with any given teachings to reap meaningful benefits. Even these attempts and his cries for help represent a desire for attention, with only superficial meaning. Manson has had more than the usual amount of staff attention, yet there is little indication of change in his demeanor. In view of his deep-seated personality problems…continuation of institutional treatment is recommended.”

On October 1, 1963, prison officials were informed, “according to court papers received in this institution, that Manson was married to a Leona Manson in 1959 in the State of California, and that the marriage was terminated by divorce on April 10, 1963, in Denver, Colorado, on grounds of mental cruelty and conviction of a felony. One child, Charles Luther Manson, is alleged to have been of this union.”

This is the only reference, in any of Manson’s records, to his second marriage and second child.

Manson’s annual review of September 1964 revealed a clear conduct record, but little else encouraging. “His past pattern of employment instability continues…seems to have an intense need to call attention to himself…remains emotionally insecure and tends to involve himself in various fanatical interests.”

Those “fanatical interests” weren’t identified in the prison reports, but at least several are known. In addition to Scientology and his guitar, there was now a third. In January 1964 “I Want to Hold Your Hand” became the No. 1 song on U.S. record charts. With the New York arrival of the “four Liverpool lads” the following month, the United States experienced, later than Great Britain but with no less intensity, the phenomenon known as Beatlemania. According to former inmates at McNeil, Manson’s interest in the Beatles was almost an obsession. It didn’t necessarily follow that he was a fan. There was more than a little jealousy in his reaction. He told numerous people that, given the chance, he could be much bigger than the Beatles. One person he told this to was Alvin Karpis, lone survivor of the Ma Barker gang. Manson had struck up a friendship with the aging gangster after learning he could play the steel guitar. Karpis taught Manson how. Again an observable pattern. Manson managed to get something from almost everyone with whom he associated.

May 1966: “Manson continues to maintain a clear conduct record…Recently he has been spending most of his free time writing songs, accumulating about 80 or 90 of them during the past year, which he ultimately hopes to sell following release…He also plays the guitar and drums, and is hopeful that he can secure employment as a guitar player or as a drummer or singer…

“He shall need a great deal of help in the transition from institution to the free world.”

In June 1966, Charles Manson was returned to Terminal Island for release purposes.

August 1966: “Manson is about to complete his ten-year term. He has a pattern of criminal behavior and confinement that dates to his teen years. This pattern is one of instability whether in free society or a structured institutional community. Little can be expected in the way of change in his attitude, behavior, or mode of conduct…” This last report noted that Manson had no further interest in academic or vocational training; that he was no longer an advocate of Scientology; that “he has come to worship his guitar and music”; and, finally, “He has no plans for release as he says he has nowhere to go.”