Manson follower to speak in Vallejo

Former Family member gives lecture tours about his past and finding God

By RACHEL RASKIN-ZRIHEN/Times-Herald staff writer

Article Launched: 10/01/2008 07:58:52 AM PDT

A former member of the violent Charles Manson cult is coming to Vallejo, and a local church pastor said he couldn't be more pleased.

A generation ago, Dennis Rice decided to throw his lot in with convicted killer and cult leader Manson. Older now, and evidently much wiser, Rice spends his time traveling to prisons worldwide telling his story of redemption. The former Manson Family member will tell his story at Vallejo's "The Door" - Christian Fellowship Church on Oct. 12, and the public is invited, Pastor Stuart Reblin said Tuesday.

During the free presentations in Vallejo, at 11 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., Rice, who now lives in Tempe, Ariz., said in a phone interview Tuesday that he will recount how he spent seven years in prison for trying to break Manson out, and how he later found God. He said he runs the nonprofit Free Indeed Ministries. His Web site is manson2jesus.com.

Rice will make a stop in Vallejo during a lecture tour of Bay Area correctional facilities including San Quentin and county facilities in Oakland and Martinez, Reblin said.

"I've never heard him before, but I've heard he shares his life story with the Manson gang and his life before he became a Christian," Reblin said. "I understand he communicates a very positive testimony of new life, and the ability of a person's life to change."

Rice says he was a loose cannon in 1960s Los Angeles when the Tate-LaBianca murders rocked the country in 1969.

"I was a jack-of-all- trades, when I wasn't stealing,"

he said of his life before Manson.

Deciding "nothing short of the Second Coming of Christ or a revolution were necessary to solve America's problems," Rice went to visit Manson in jail. Based on that visit, he and his four children, age 2 to 10, moved in with "Manson Family" members who weren't already behind bars.

"We played music in the evenings and ate dinner together, and the ladies would go out Dumpster diving during the days to bring back food," Rice said. "And we planned for the day Charlie would be released."

IF YOU GO

What: A free presentation by former Manson Family member Dennis Rice.

When: 11 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. Oct. 12.

Where: 'The Door' - Christian Fellowship Church, 315 Henry St., Vallejo.

Information: 208-6914.

There was a shared vision of the future, he said.

"Charlie and the others were convicted of the murders and sentenced to die," Rice said. "In order to save them we held up an Army surplus store to obtain enough guns to break them out of jail."

That didn't work out

as planned, and Rice spent the next seven years in prison, where he "was introduced to the real Jesus Christ," he said.

For the past 25 years, Rice has shared his life-altering experience with inmates nationwide about "the One who has come to set them free," he says.

"It was a cathartic moment, when I realized that Charlie wasn't

Jesus Christ, that I had based my whole life on something that was wrong and not true," he said.

Pastor Reblin said that having someone with as bizarre a tale as Rice's speak to his

congregation is an important learning opportunity.

"There's an odd fascination in our society with the criminal lifestyle," Reblin said. "Despite the glorification that goes on, there's a huge price to pay personally and societally, and (Rice) discusses the deception in that. And at a time when so many are searching for answers, we are very fortunate to have him coming to Vallejo."

• E-mail Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at RachelZ@thnewsnet.com or call 553-6824.

Friday, September 05, 2008

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.”

•------------

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.