Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Monday, August 28, 2006
Hairy Katie- At the Family She Found Acceptance
This is from a site I found called 2Violent...
I chose Katie's because the point of view was interesting and actually reflective. Whoever wrote this made mistakes as they usually do. But they got some real insight into Katie.
Anyway check the site and tell us what you think.
Patricia Diane Krenwinkel was born on December 3, 1947 to an insurance salesman father and a homemaker mother. She was six and a half years younger than her half-sister Charlene, from her mother's previous marriage. Her teenage life in Los Angeles left much to be desired. At one point she was very overweight, and overcame this problem only after getting hooked on diet pills supplied by her junkie sister. Even after she lost the weight, though, young Pat still felt very ugly and unloved, partly due to an endocrine problem that caused an excess of hair on her body. She lost her virginity at fifteen as a means of combating her loneliness, only to never hear from the boy again. To top it all off, her parents got divorced when she was seventeen.
After graduating from Westchester High School, Pat moved out her mother's home state of Alabama to attend a Catholic college there. She dropped out after her first semester, though, and moved back to California. There she took a job as a secretary and shared a Manhattan Beach apartment with the heroin-addicted Charlene. Life was obviously less than ideal, and when Charlie Manson came knocking on her door, she readily answered.
One September night in 1967,Pat came home to find a group of her sister's friends and acquaintances at the apartment, one of whom was a grubby little man with a guitar by the name of Charlie. Charlie immediately took an interest in the shy Patricia, perhaps sensing her vulnerability. The two of them made love that night and Manson told his young partner over how beautiful she was. Pat, never having heard anything like that from a lover before, was so moved that she broke down crying, telling Charlie that she would follow him anywhere he went.
And follow him she did. With Daddy's credit card in hand, she became the third girl to join the traveling caravan, after Mary Brunner and Lynette Fromme. Charlie now had a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead in his collection. The four of them headed up north to Seattle, where Pat (soon to be known as Katie) wrote her father a letter; it was the last Mr. Krenwinkel would hear from her for over two years.
Katie became one of Charlie's most devoted followers, and even talk of Helter Skelter did not scare her off. Therefore it makes sense that Manson chose her to go to the Tate house on the evening of August 8, 1969. There she was arguably the most active female participant in the night's events, stabbing Tate friend Abigail Folger numerous times before having Charles "Tex" Watson finish the job.
The next night Charlie dropped Tex, Katie, and Leslie Van Houten off at the Waverly Drive home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. There Katie, perhaps now fancying herself an accomplished murderess, stabbed Mrs. LaBianca over and over again and wrote "witchy" messages in blood on the wall. Her indulgence in the macabre was not over, though; to top things off, she stuck a carving fork in the dead Leno's stomach, tweaked it, and watched it wobble back and forth, but not before she used the fork to carve the word "WAR" on his chest.
Not long after the murders, Charlie sent Katie to live with her aunt in Mobile, Alabama. It was there, in December 1969, that she was arrested for her part in what have come to be known as the Tate-LaBianca murders. For a while she tried to fight extradition to California, but gave up when fellow Family members persuaded her to be tried along with Charlie. She was sentenced to death in 1971 and remained loyal to Manson for years after that. In a 1978 interview with author Clara Livsey, Sandra Good proclaimed that "she is still with us."
Eventually Pat did separate herself from Charlie and became a model prisoner, having never received a writeup for over thirty years at CIW. She also comes across as perhaps the most remorseful of the three women. In a 1994 interview with Diane Sawyer, she said "I wake up everyday knowing that I'm a destroyer of the most precious thing, which is life; and I do that because that's what I deserve, is to wake up every morning and know that."
In September 1967, twenty-year-old Patricia Krenwinkel joined the Family, leaving behind her Manhattan Beach apartment, her car, her job, and even her last paycheck. She joined many other Family members on a drug-and-sex-filled eighteen-month tour of the American West in an old school bus, before settling into Spahn ranch in 1969. At her sentencing, Krenwinkel idealized the Family's early days: "We were just like wood nymphs and wood creatures. We would run through the woods with flowers in our hair, and Charles would have a small flute."
In August 1969, Krenwinkel participated in the murders at the Tate and LaBianca residences. At the Tate home, Krenwinkel dragged Abigail Folger from her bedroom to the living room, fought with her, and stabbed her. Later she would say, "I stabbed her and I kept stabbing her." Asked about how it felt, she replied, "Nothing--I mean, what is there to describe? It was just there, and it was right." The next night, Krenwinkel stabbed Rosemary LaBianca and carved the word "WAR" on Leno LaBianca's stomach.
Krenwinkel was arrested near her aunt's home in Mobile, Alabama on December 1, 1969. Krenwinkel had gone to Alabama, she said much later, because she feared Manson would find her and kill her. In February, she waived extradition proceedings and voluntarily returned to California to stand trial with the other defendants. Her trial attorney, Paul Fitzgerald, offered only a weak defense. At one point, Fitzgerald suggested that although Krenwinkel's fingerprints were found inside the Tate home, she might just have been "an invited guest or friend." Krenwinkel spent much of the trial drawing doodles of devils and other satanic figures.
At the California Institution for Women in Frontero, Krenwinkel has been a model prisoner. She has, with Leslie Van Houten, counseled young drug offenders, completed a course in data processing, and played on the prison softball team. She has expressed deep remorse for her role in the killings. In a 1994 interview broadcast on ABC, Krenwinkel said, "I wake up every day and know that I'm a destroyer of life, and living with that is the most difficult thing of all. That's what I deserve--to wake up every morning and know that."
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Another Novel Pretending to be Non-Fiction
Yes Yes Yes, the Col is getting the emails about the evil Mark Turner saying on his great site that the amazingly untruthful BUG has written another book about the Manson Case.
Now I am not saying that Mark is lying BLOWJOB but he says it is coming out in a couple of months. A couple is TWO. If this book were coming out in two months there would be a listing on Amazon.com. Which there isn't. So maybe this is a self-xeroxed book coming out from the BUG's basement. Otherwise do you not think that there would be publicity for it somewhere? Not to say that Mark is lying BLOWJOB.
You know what would make the book totally awesome, if it were to come out? No, not Pirates fighting Ninjas (though that would be pretty awesome come to think of it). How's about a chapter about that family BUG stalked back in the sixties because he thought his wife Gail had boned the milkman? Then he could follow that up with a chapter about beating up his girlfriend because she took money for an abortion he wanted her to have and she never had it? Then wrap that up with his love for Latino Love Songs in a chapter. God that would be awesomely sweet. Then Mark Turner could write the epilogue with Vince's Christian Testimony highlighted and a photo of a Vest not made by any Manson girls but by Jesus Christ himself BLOWJOB.
I would buy ten copies of such a book and give them to my closest friends.
Wouldn't you?
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Handsome Angel
The Col hasn't talked to Bobby lately but whenever I do one gets the feeling that he and Charlie at least were way closer than one would assume with Dennis Wilson. Which I guess shouldn't be surprising, but is, at least to me. I mean I know the three of them were all "musicians" and hung out and shared girls and what have you. But now, decades later, even after evicting them and all Dennis is still regarded well by Bobby, as a lost soul, a pal.
Makes you wonder. Dennis obviously was all behind the Charlie album. He had the group record the Charlie songs. He pushed for a signing. He called Charlie the "Wizard" in an interview. What if his brothers had left Dennis alone and the album had come out. I've heard most of the tapes. The are fine, kinda James Tayloresque, kinda Johnny Cash. Odds are that it would have done okay. Maybe even spawned two or three more. But Charlie was too mental to really break through like Cash. He'd probably have ended up a footnote like Paul Revere and the Raiders. Who were also produced by Terry Melcher. Hmmmmm.
Anyway, was just thinking how, if that had happened we'd have three albums that were in the bargain bin at Best Buy and a lot more Sharon Tate films.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Could He Be... Insane?
This isn't very good- you can watch it for free so shut up.
More Old Parole Madness
He mentions Clem!
Clem where are you?
Wait- did Charlie torture Shorty? Hmmmm.
Kay doesn't show up since he is having that hairdo replaced. Surgically.
Friday, August 18, 2006
The Most Danerous Man Alive, LOL.
He's still manipulating people today the Barbie Doll says...A Master Convict wants to escape... I mean don't you love the news people that just make shit up and then serve it to the public.
Charlie is a comedy god.
Kay's haircut comes back and it is alive.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
A Caged, Vicious Wild Animal
I don't fear Charlie.
I fear Tex.
I would Fear Doris but she is dead.
I have a lot of Fear.
Fear turns Col on.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Memories... of the Way We Were
Usually you only see the murderous bastards and dancing puppets present day looking older and decrepit. I like this video because everyone is so damn young.
Special treat for you all- the only damn footage I have ever seen of Col Paul Tate, unless some of you have seen the photos of Paul's ashes on Debra's bench.
Who did Kay's hair? He should be arrested.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Is it Harold True, True or False?
In the endless search for answers that don't exist in the TLB case, many things become the conventional wisdom.
Sebring threw a party where they whipped a drug dealer that burned them.
Parent met Garretson casually only the day before.
Sandra Good was married to Joel Pugh.
The Family made films of their adventures.
You can probably name dozens of them. Things that might or might not be true but are accepted as true by us scholars without any actual evidence. (And no, the Bug mentioning it in a book is not evidence).
The one I'm here to ruminate about is the idea that 3301 Waverly was chosen for the second night of slaughter because Charlie had been shunned at a party NEXT DOOR.
Again, pause for me. Think about what I just wrote. Think about all you have learned together.
Now read that again. The conventional wisdom is that the LaBianca estate was chosen because Harold True had offended Charlie while True lived next door.
DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE TO ANYONE?
Didn't think so.
True (pictured) was friends with Phil Kaufman a former cellmate of Charlie's. I think they both, umm, partaked of some of the girls. But the evidence is unclear as to whether True still lived next door in August 1969. He may have only rented for a few months. So if Charlie was "sending a message" it wasn't very effective. Indeed, it made as much sense as Sadie trying to make Tate look like Black Panthers. Nobody got it.
No, the Col questions the conventional wisdom.
Tate was targeted, likely because of Frykowski's actions. (not a rape though)
LaBianca was targeted. Maybe mob related, I don't know.
Then the killings stopped. Helter Skelter had not started. But they stopped. (Some motive, Vince).
Strike one for the Conventional Wisdom.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Ten Years Later is Twenty Seven Years Ago
I found another interesting article so here it is. It is by Bill Farr who was put in jail thanks to Bugliosi's perjury.
You can click on each jpeg to read it better.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness
Hey Catherine I notice here that you took the stand and lied under oath.
That is a Jesus NO NO.
Love,
JC
Tell Me More Catherine, Tell Me More
So listen I dug up some press and it seems you also robbed a liquor store.
Now I need to know, did Charlie make you do it or Kenneth? Or was it the LSD?
Please advise.
Love,
Jesus
Thursday, August 10, 2006
She Was A Gypsy Woman
The evil man Mark Turner has linked to Dennis Rice's (the man who brought his young children to be molested by the Family AFTER the murders) site to advertise Catherine Share's Christian Testimony.
Jesus Christ I believe I am gonna sound like Nelson in this post.
The Col only believes in one God, his own bad self. But before he became a not real Film Producer or a disbarred attorney he was a minstry student who had the Bible crammed up every hole he had. So I can smell bullshit a mile away.
And Gypsy stinks to HIGH HEAVEN, Amen.
I entered in ‘the sixties’ completely alone in this world, wounded, and looking for someone to love me and tell me the truth. I tried just about everything to fill the empty gaping wound in my soul. I became addicted to anything that would temporarily stop the pain of loneliness and rejection - including food, marijuana, sex and LSD (which completely destroyed my mind and made me like a little child for many years). Except LSD doesn't do that, Gypsy. Maybe you hope it did so that could explain why you were doing softcore porn westerns with Bobby. But no, LSD does not make one a child. I was the Hippie of hippies and The ‘flower child’.
I thought I had found peace at last but I was still searching for the truth and the truth giver. No family, I wandered around in a false euphoria of drugs and ‘relationships’. This is code for I got stoned and fucked anyone who asked. Which is fine, not wrong, but why call it what it isn't?
I was so convinced that he had all the answers and that he was Jesus Christ personified that I convincingly told many ‘Family’ members that he was. Okay, but that really isn't Charlie's fault. You were a dumb hippie chick. That's cool. But it only shows you're dumb.
Ever so slowly, things began to change. I was the oldest besides Charlie and I had a lot of fears that he constantly was ‘working on’. I also had lots of unresolved issued that caused me to overeat, something I had done off and on most of my life. This caused Charlie to leave me out of a lot of the ‘more advanced’ training sessions, that I actually only learned about after reading Charles Watson’s book. The bottom line is that I was left out of the murders. Anyone else having trouble following her bullshit? He's Jesus, but he's working on you? Because of course YOU cannot be responsible for anything you did, right, it had to be a short ex-con loser with such amazing hypnosis powers he could probably convince George Bush he was a good president, right? AND LOOK PEOPLE- the dumb hippy bitch BELIEVES WHAT TEX WROTE. I mean Jesus H. look at what she wrote- she claims she was too busy stuffing her face so she missed the murders- you know the ones she at the time wished she had attended. YOU ARE FULL OF SHIT GAL.
During the trial, from his jail cell, Charlie hooked me up with an escaped convict that nearly got me killed in a shootout with the police. It took many years to fully see what Charlie was all about and even more years to see that I was hooked in much the same way to this convict. I just wanted to be loved and accepted and would do just about anything for it.
Hooked you up? That is funny shit. While on trial for his life Charles Manson made you bed down with a scuzzy convict- MADE YOU do marry is skanky ass. I've read the Hawthorne Shoot Out report you lying suzzy filth. YOU SHOT AT COPS. I will say that again. YOU SHOT AT COPS REPEATEDLY. You would not have given a shit if you killed them. NO ONE made you do a damn thing. You were robbing a store for weapons and you shot at cops. BOO HOO bitch. Listen to this - YOU FIRED THE FIRST SHOT!
Soon after, I was asked to come back to the United States to take care of a storage place for my then husband, Kenneth Como (the escaped convict who was back in prison). That is what I thought I was coming back for. THIS lying harlot completely skips why she was on the run to Canada. She was part of a far reaching credit card scame and the FBI was after her. Tell Us Catherine who made you do that ? Pooh Bear?
Who made you jump Bail, Catherine?
Read more about this lying sack of feces here.
If you really accepted Jesus Christ you would know that the truth will set you free. That blaming losers for your own behavior is obvious to Christ and he sees through you.
I don't care what you did girly- but own up to it. Jesus is hating you right now- you let him down.
You lied.
Tell the truth. You were a young slut drug addict. You joined a group of other slut guys and girls who were addicts. But that was the time period. Your friends butchered innocent people for fun and you regretted not joining them. You left Charlie for another loser and tried to rob stores and commit crimes with him. You tried to kill cops. You ripped off credit card companies. You ran from the law. And now that you are old and fat you wish you didn't.
Tell the truth and the Col will forgive you.
Aww who am I kidding???? I can never forgive you for going on that show and hugging the Bug. I was vomiting for a week.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Helter Skelter is Coming Down Fast
Tonight they played music and made love. They worried about their brother Bobby and wondered about a dead Black Panther.
Tomorrow they would strike.
Sadistic Sadie.
Evil Devil Doer Tex.
Conscienceless, Hairy Katie.
Yana The Witch.
Here's a lot of footage from 1989.
The BUG is everywhere because there is no show without PUNCH.
ENJOY
Sunday, August 06, 2006
CandyGramma's Gang of Subliterate Cretins
I was trying to let the real world dates catch up with the blog.
And I did.
Here's the deal-
I am COL SCOTT. It doesn't matter whether I am one person or three. I am Col Scott and I have been since Internet research into this case started.
I am often accused of being Don Murphy. The morons from Candy Gramma's board call him a film director. He is a film producer according to imdb.com. In any case I am not he. I am unsure of why anyone would THINK I am he Except that a guy named Dave from KTS who drives trucks and dates strippers once accused me of being Don Murphy and then we went on for a year as a joke that I had hired him as my personal driver. I was also accused by Adam GoRightly of being David Frechelle, a disbarred attorney practicing law in Torrance California. I am also not he.
I am certainly not Savage. While I enjoy his outrageous posts from time to time, he mostly just states things that are palpable nonsense. And I never would delete my posts.
My email is ColScott@hotmail.com. I have joined some yahoo groups as cortex_jnr. That is it.
But that's me- what you see if what you get.
What some of the dildoes out there (like Candygramma ((pictured)) and her group) don't get is that THIS IS THE INTERNET. Now I never accused this clown Poche of anything illegal. He is as dumb as nails, but that is not a crime. In any case, you cannot slander or libel Poche because POCHE is not real. It is a name. An alias. It is not a real person. He/she/it was accused by somebody in the comments of being a molester or something. I don't know. I do know he's a dick who should be ignored.
Larry Melton is a registered sex offender for having sex with underage human beings. He is a real person. This makes him reprehensible scum. In My opinion. And those who include him in his group therefore associate with scum.
When I post I post as the Col. Period. End of sentence. Any other argument is spurious and stupid.
Yes I am working on a book with other persons. So what? And if I WERE Don Murphy I would probably know some book agents and have the damn thing published by now.
There have always been ignorant people out there. SOMEBODY has to clean out public lavatories. If you go to CG's group you will realize there isn't a brain among them. Pity them. Then flick ashes on the floor for them to mop up.
This blog exists TO DISCOVER THE TRUTH.
I put up videos and book synopses at GREAT TIME COST so that you can be as educated as I am and MAYBE one of you will catch something that I missed and make this whole thing make sense.
I don't have time to hide behind multiple ids or to delete my posts like a pussy.
I am COL SCOTT. Whether you are OOGLY or GLO or any other internet retard, go ahead, play your games. You are sad because you don't know shit about anything.
Sad. Pathetic. Worthless.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
We Got Some LA TIMES Love
KTS peeps were asking about Ronnie Howard.
Here's the story from the LA TIMES.
Also we haven't had a story about the BUG being sued for lying and shit for a whole month.
Enjoy.
(click on images to see larger)
Friday, August 04, 2006
I almost feel bad for the guy he cannot hold a thought for more than an eyeblink. In part two when he started to babble about compulsions I really felt bad for him.
Now here he starts talking about the All White Album? Wot?
Anyway, Judas doesn't seem like he had a good life after his betrayal.
Then BOOM the show is just OVER.
Thank you for watching.
Not sure who our caller is...they say Jenny... is it Ginny Gentry? Hey why doesn't Paul say that he went BACK to the Family?
Paul has an acid flashback two minutes in. Check it it is crazy. He looks stoned on the screen shots behind Reagan.
Caller two brings up Naval Intelligence...then Paul starts to blame it on OCD behavior then his ADD takes over- Sisters of Mercy??? Wtf?
Maureen then brings up Jim Jones... and Paul claims he knew people who knew him like what???? Then he mentions a script....then back to the drug addled ramble- guy cannot hold a thought.
To commemorate our group read of the Paul Watkins book, the Col presents - PAUL WATKINS. This is the only interview I have ever seen with Paul other that the Hendrickson documentary.
"I was acting out my antisocial tendencies"
"He controlled these young women"- odd, that is not in his book.
This is one year before Paul died at age forty and he looks and sounds like shit.
Watch him- he tries to remember things through the new BUG filter and stammers over the new answers.
Anyway, 1989 here's Little Paul!
(nice hair on Maureen Reagan lady!)
(and what is up with his teeth? he looks like Eddie Munster all grown up)
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
My Life With Charles Manson Epilogue
Epilogue
Ironically, the story of Charles Manson and his Family does us all a favor. It reveals in no uncertain terms the disease of our own society. It chronicles the transformation of communal love into its opposite. There was nothing simplistic in what happened. And it isn’t something to turn away from. People seem to feign a horror of blood and carnage, yet invariably rush to accident scenes and fistfights, to anything that will put them in touch with their own blood and something that is primal – to something that will wake them up to the fact that they are not robots but living, breathing organisms. The Manson Family did more than this. It tore the lid off suburban complacency with a vengeance, and left us with a lot of questions to answer.
I thought once the headlines and the novelty had worn off that the questions would cease. But as the days went by after the trials, and the months turned into years, the questions continued. Even after the publication of Helter-Skelter, it was clear that people did not understand what had actually transpired in the Manson Family. During the trials, I was approached by producers Robert Hendrickson and Lawrence Merrick, who wanted to make a documentary film on the Manson Family. They had already shot footage around Spahn’s while Charlie was on trial, inducing the remaining Family members to make music and rap about Charlie on film. The group obliged, believing that they were helping to program Helter-Skelter. Later, we shot some footage in
After Helter-Skelter hit the stands I began touring with Vince Bugliosi to promote the book on TV talk shows. I realized then that there was a genuine need to know what caused the phenomenon of the Manson Family. I remember people asking me, “What can we do to protect our kids?” Often, I became the scapegoat for people’s collective outrage. When I appeared on the Tom Snyder Tomorrow show, his first question nearly floored me. “How is it that you are allowed to walk the streets and do this show?” Along with Bugliosi, I wasted no time in setting him straight. But I was astonished and angry, and I asked myself: why go through this? I questioned my own motives, realizing that deep down I did feel a sense of guilt. I had played a part and did have a responsibility to explain what had happened. After the Snyder show I got serious about public speaking and learned to handle myself under fire. I began giving lectures on the effects of drugs. I spoke at district attorneys’ conventions on college campuses. I pondered the idea of writing a book. In my own mind, I knew the Manson story had not really been told.
With the exception of the Vietnam war, the Kennedy assassinations, the slaying of Martin Luther King, Watergate, and perhaps the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, few events in the last twenty years have had more impact on the public at large than the story of Charlie Manson and his Family. People’s fascination with death, violence, abduction, and money, it seems, can never be fully satiated – which says something about the public consciousness. Oddly enough, the Manson Family originated as a rebellion against that very state of consciousness and was a direct outgrowth of the psychedelic revolution of the early sixties, grounded theoretically in principles of love and the freedom “to be.” What happened to those ideals, to me, and to the minds of Charlie’s followers was the story I wanted to tell – the story of mind control and mental programming.
The questions to be answered were crucial – the echoing refrain of a lady from Atlanta who asked me on the Phil Donahue show: “What experiences in your own background would make you susceptible to a man like Manson?” The woman appeared shocked when I told her we had shared many of her own experiences. Like her, we had shuddered through the Cuban missile crisis. We too cried for our country and the Kennedys. We watched in disgust while our natural inheritance turned into plastic and concrete, and bit our lips in rage as our brothers died in Southeast Asia. We saw movies on drugs made by people who knew nothing about drugs. We felt the need to live and to believe that we had inherited a world worth living in. So we hit the road in the mid-sixties; searching for truth, hoping we might recognize it once we saw it. We needed to love and to be loved. One by one we met Charlie and saw in him and his followers the love we were looking for.
It has been too easy to classify the Manson Family as a pack of sick, drug-bludgeoned kids duped by an ex-con. The transformation from a “flower-child” Family whose only revolutionary activity was an alternate lifestyle into a militant, Helter-Skelter-ready band of death-wielding robots was slow, methodical, insidious. Yet, many still cling to the notion that all Charlie had to do to get people to kill was to stuff them full of dope and say “sic ‘em.” Had that been the base, the interest in the Manson story would have waned long ago.
No, Charlie Manson was intelligent, and so were most of his followers. Hippies who wanted only to get laid or stoned were neither susceptible nor acceptable to Charlie. In conversation, he would lose the average “lodle” as soon as he opened his mouth. People are still surprised when reminded that Sandy and Mary both had college degrees; that Leslie Van Houten was a homecoming queen and one of the most popular girls at Monrovia High School; that Katie was a Sunday-school teacher… and so the list goes. And how could it be that Tex Watson, who took part in so much killing, was not only an A student and a top athlete but was voted the most likely to succeed by his classmates in high school. No, Tex was programmed to kill, just as young soldiers are programmed to kill in the name of democracy or the flag or whatever. But in that case, it’s just an all-American boy performing a heroic act. It’s possible that had Tex gotten into that kind of program, he’d have been one hell of a marine – a hero with decorations instead of a murderer in jail for life. It may be stretching a point, but it’s one that should be made nevertheless.
What drew us to Charlie initially was a real love we helped put there. So we submitted to his trip; we burned our bridges and left our past far behind, to become lost in Charlie’s nightmare with nowhere to go. But Charlie always had the “joint” to go back to. The Family didn’t realize that he had a home and that the bridge to it could not be burned.
Still, there are questions that remained unanswered. Just how and why did Charlie change? Did he have Helter-Skelter planned from the start, or was it only a bud in his subconscious awaiting its time to flower? Only Charlie knows the answers to all the questions. But ultimately he must be seen for what he was: the worst kind of criminal, a man who subverted the power of love, turning it into the most despicable evil imaginable – the domination of souls.
Charlie did more than give hitchhikers and hippies a bad name. He manifested and expressed not only the mechanism of his own twisted psyche, but the latent evils existing within our own society. You cannot divorce Manson from the culture that spawned him. That too is an easy way out and would be a grave error. I know that his incarceration has not put an end to my own struggles. It has taken years for me to untangle and come to grips with all that I experienced in the Family. But more than anything, in the wake of all the destruction, the killing, the inner crippling of those who survived, I wanted to salvage something, if only the knowledge that what happened to the Family could well have happened to others; that mind control and programming are a part of our daily lives and that the results, unless people develop an awareness, can be, in the long run, no less insidious and destructive. Clearly, in a world where the majority of the populace speeds around in varied states of hypnosis, bombarded into stupor around in varied states of hypnosis, bombarded into stupor by the media, it is necessary to understand the fundamentals of programming.
Perhaps, if there is one lesson I have learned, it is to listen to myself. To be what I am. This is the bottom line of awareness, and paradoxically the greatest link to humanity after all. Had I been so grounded in March 1968, on the day I met Charles Manson, I would probably find it hard now to remember who he was.
But the Manson saga is not over. In June 1977 and again in May 1978 I testified in Leslie Van Houten’s retrials, each of which resulted in her reconviction. Whether or not she will appeal that conviction is not certain. I don’t know what happened to all the others. I do know that Susan Atkins and Charles Watson, both born-again Charistians, have written books about their experiences and are serving life sentences for their crimes, as are convicted murderers Bruce Davis, Mary Brunner, and Bobby Beausoleil. Lynette Fromme is also in prison following her attempted assassination of former President Gerald Ford. Diane Lake (Snake) has been completely rehabilitated and the last I heard was working as a teller in a bank in northern California. As for Brooks, Juanita, Juan Flynn, and Crockett, all are doing well: Brooks is a full-time musician, while Juan lives in Panama, where he works on a ranch.
Charles Manson, meanwhile, now forty-four, is serving a life sentence in California, awaiting his eligibility for parole.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Watkins was the class president of all his high school classes in a suburb of Los Angeles and student body president in his senior year when he dropped out and took to the road. A series of circumstances led to his being picked up by two girls of the Manson Family and he soon became one of Manson’s most devoted followers. Later, however, he became concerned about Manson’s predilection for violence and left the family before the Tate murders. He now lives in the desert town of Tecopa, California, and earns his living in construction and by lecturing on the subject of drug prevention and rehabilitation.
Guillermo Soledad is the pen name of a member of the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has written a number of magazine articles for publications such as Ms., Playboy and Playgirl.
We hope you enjoyed reading this special presentation of the only Official Tate-LaBianca Murders Blog. August is a new month so it is fitting we end as it begins. If you read the book, you learned a hell of a lot. If you read intelligently, you could see the lies as Paul wrote them. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks to the elves who typed it. Will we do this again? Maybe. But the Blog wants you to learn- so come and learn!