Massive Lying Hypocrite

One-time Manson follower now following Son of Man

By GARY HARMON
The Daily Sentinel

Monday, July 14, 2008

A man who tried to break cult leader and murderer Charles Manson out of jail now reaches into prisons in hopes of saving souls.

Dennis Rice, who served seven years in prison as a result of his ill-starred effort to free Manson, speaks at 7:30 tonight and Wednesday night at The Door Christian Fellowship Church, 1141 N. 25th St., in Grand Junction.

Rice, who became a member of Manson’s infamous family, said he came to believe Manson’s hallmark murders of the riotous 1960s represented nothing less than the Second Coming.

“A lot of the things he said made sense to me,” Rice said of his encounters, first with the news of Manson’s arrest and jailing and then with Manson himself, whom Rice visited in jail before joining his family.

Manson is incarcerated in California for nine murders. He was sentenced to death for the August 1969 fatal stabbings of five people in the home of actress Sharon Tate and the murders the next day of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Two other killings also are blamed on Manson, whose death sentence was commuted. He is eligible for parole in 2012.

Manson’s appeal, Rice said, lay in his ability to read the times and take advantage of them.

“He was the king of the rebels,” and his well-known photo from Life Magazine remains an “icon for evil,” Rice said.

Even so, getting to see Manson in jail wasn’t difficult and Rice said he quickly was sold on the message of revolution and setting the country straight, Rice said.

Rice took his four children, then ages 2 to 10, and joined the Manson family, and soon was part of the plot to spring the family’s eponymous leader. Rice and others were captured on Aug. 21, 1971, after a shootout at an Army surplus store in California.

The shootout marked the breakup of the Manson family, which scattered.

Rice’s children eventually were taken into state custody, then reunited in Arizona, where he rejoined them after serving his prison sentence.

During most of his incarceration, Rice remained a loyal member of the Manson family, until he was converted by the writings of another Manson acolyte, Charles “Tex” Watson, who remains in prison.

Other Christians had approached him behind bars, but it wasn’t until he read of Watson’s Christian testimony in a prison evangelical magazine that he began to consider the idea he might have been wrong about Manson and about Christianity.

“One of the hardest things was just admitting that I was wrong,” he said.

Once released, he moved to Arizona and began attending a church.

Even so, it wasn’t until 10 years later that he asked his children if they would oppose him offering public testimony.

“We knew God was real when saw him change our dad,” he remembers them saying.

His children are now engaged in ministry and churches, he said.

Since then, Rice launched Free Indeed Ministries, a nonprofit Christian organization based in Tempe, Ariz., and has a Web site, manson2jesus.com.

He speaks at about 150 prisons per year and will speak to inmates at the Rifle and Delta prisons on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.

Manson, said Rice, almost certainly is aware of what his family members are doing.

As to Manson’s true beliefs, Rice said it seems now that he “just tapped into what was going on,” but he was no different from other people in one important way.

“I just think he was deceived,” Rice said. “Just like I was when I was my own God.

“Now I see others as more important than me. That is a miracle.”

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No mention of making his four kids live in holes they dug themselves at the ranch or the abuse they suffered while he went and played cops and robbers and left them at the Family. Jesus fucking hates you, Dennis, he told me so.