There's a heated debate in the comments which serves to illustrate that people can be SO close to having good reading comprehension and yet SO far. I'll be your little helper in red.
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...Truth has not special time of its own. Its hour is now — always and indeed then most truly when it seems unsuitable to actual circumstances. (Albert Schweitzer).....the truth about these murders has not been uncovered, but we believe the time for the truth is now. Join us, won't you?


MrPoirot said...Col you have spent years trying to create your unique version of TLB. You think Tate was a drug burn retaliation and Labianca was a mob hit by Charlie. Sorry but I've never heard any of the killers back up your versions. Ive spent a lot of time reading your versions over the past 5 years. I really can't see why you make claims that are never once backed up by any of the killers or Family members. I really don't give a rats ass if Bug ever existed or not. You know darn well that Charlir flipped his lid after Bobby, Mary and Sandy ended up in jail only s few days after he thought he had murdered Crowe. Within minutes of this triple jailing dilema on the day Charlie got back from Easelen Inst Charlie and the girls concocted the copycat murder spree of TLB in order to get Bobby off. I believe you know this to be the case yet you continually try to write your own script that has nothing to do with the events that are backed up by every person involved. Not a single Family member has ever substantiated your claims even after over 40 years. Not one person ever testified about a mob hit or drug burn in any of the many murder trials that lasted nearly 9 years. Most of these trials Bug was not involved with.
MrPoirot said...Col you have spent years trying to create your unique version of TLB.Sir I am not trying to create anything. I don't have any version. I am trying to make sense out of things that are lies upon lies upon lies. I do not think I have succeeded, despite a 34 year obsession with the case. The Col NEVER says he is right because he knows he is not. I do not have a unique version of the events I examine EVERY version of events. You think Tate was a drug burn retaliation No I do not. In recent posts we are exploring that. This is one possible scenario. There are many others.and Labianca was a mob hit by Charlie. Fuck you dickhead for putting words in my mouth. I have never said this. I find this highly unlikely. It is a theory and so we explore it. But if you can't read then don't write.Sorry but I've never heard any of the killers back up your versions. Because the killers all tell the truth? Retard. Many of them testified that it was all about Helter Skelter. That is one thing that I am certain it was NOT about.Ive spent a lot of time reading your versions over the past 5 years.Only not very well I really can't see why you make claims that are never once backed up by any of the killersThe Killers all say Charlie made them do it. This is ludicrous. or Family members.Maybe I should believe Little Paul's testimony. After all, he only wanted to take the whole Family over, why would he lie about Charlie, right? I really don't give a rats ass if Bug ever existed or not. What does this mean? More retardation. He always existed. WHY did he make up a motive and suppress evidence and perjure himself? Insanity? (much evidence for this) Arrogance? (more evidence for this!) Cover Up (I don't know but would like to. You know darn well that Charlir flipped his lid after Bobby, Mary and Sandy ended up in jail only s few days after he thought he had murdered Crowe. Within minutes of this triple jailing dilema on the day Charlie got back from Easelen Inst Charlie and the girls concocted the copycat murder spree of TLB in order to get Bobby off.First off, I don't darn well know anything. Second off, this is a good solid theory. Like all theories there are major holes. Firstly, no one in authority EVER thought they were copycats- were they just super lame? And secondly, why stop? Why 2 and not 4 nights? Or 8? I believe you know this to be the caseI know nothing, which is one hundred times more than you do. yet you continually try to write your own script that has nothing to do with the events that are backed up by every person involved.The majority of testimony is about Helter Skelter, idiot, not copycats- so your own paragraph is contradictory bullshit. Not a single Family member has ever substantiated your claims even after over 40 years.And again, I guess Tex and Bruce are telling us the truth, right? Not one person ever testified about a mob hitagain, NEVER said this nor do I believe it or drug burn in any of the many murder trials that lasted nearly 9 years. Most of these trials Bug was not involved with.Most of them he was involved in actually.
Published on September 18, 1992 in the Journal Star:
I've been amazed by two facts regarding Charles Manson:
One of his first arrests was in Peoria.
There's scant information about his activities here.
In the Journal Star morgue, we have only two short stories about his local doings.
It's small potatoes compared to the Tate-LaBianco murders for which he's doing life at California State Prison in Corcoran, Calif.
The stories say that in 1949, the 16-year-old Manson and another youth broke into Waugh's Market, 3919 SW Adams, taking $1,200.
On March 22 of that year, Peoria police got a call someone was breaking into Earl Johnson Chevrolet on Main Street.
As a squad car pulled up to a side door, Manson, thinking the police car was his getaway car, ran from the building and jumped in the squad car.
Within seconds, he was looking at two pistols in his face. His reaction: "Ah, (expletive)! "
I wanted to know what brought him to Peoria and what he did here, so I dropped him a line.
I got his address from a California prison spokesman, who said he doubted I'd get a response. He was wrong.
My letter came back with messy yet legible cursive scrawl on the front, back and margins.
Though the spelling and grammar are poor, (Manson admits, "I dont spell . . . in English to good"), the response was cordial and devoid of expletives.
What follows is the letter, nearly unedited except for grammar and spelling changes. The parenthetical additions are mine.
____
I ran out of Boys Town, stole a car in Lincoln, Neb., and rolled to Idaho. I stole a hearse, (a) meat wagon, (and) ran with a kid.
Went to the Peoria housing projects, where his uncle ran the numbers out of Chicago.
We took a safe box -- 500 pounds -- and threw it off the bridge onto the railroad tracks and did a lot of underworld stuff.
That town's always been good to me. It's not too big like L.A. or St. Louis, yet big enough to get lost in.
The cops got me for a lot of money two times. I wrecked the hearse and they send me back to Indiana reform school.
I was never a real kid. I grew up myself, fast, and was raised by the underworld and monks and sisters in the boys' homes.
Me and Blackie buried a lot of rings, gold watches from a jewelry-store heist. I guess he went back and got it because we got split up.
Yeah, I did a lot of growing up in that town (Peoria) -- fast growing up. They put me in the jail last time I went through there. . . .
It may sound foolish, but that town has always been sweet for some reason.
____
I'm not sure where Manson and his buddy Blackie dumped the safe and buried the jewelry. Maybe Manson can clear this up.
He wrote that the Journal Star stories I had sent him weren't with the letter, and he'd like to see them.
"Send and I'll respond," he wrote.
What happened to the stories?
"It's very possible someone in the mailroom in the prison took the clips as a souvenir or whatever," wrote Sandra Good, who sent along Manson's letter to me.
I assume this is the same Sandra Good who was a member of the Manson family and once roomed with Squeaky Fromme, who once tried to kill Gerald Ford.
Why would Manson send the letter to her first, instead of directly to me? Maybe to save a stamp, or maybe she's his press agent.
I don't know; her number's unlisted. I'll ask about this in my next letters to both of them.
And maybe we'll find out if he left any hidden treasures during his short stay in Peoria.

In 1969, a cult of brainwashed hippies killed eight people in a seemingly random, unprovoked two-night spree. Charles Manson is normally the boogeyman attached to the Tate-LaBianca murders, but Manson didn't even set foot in either crime scene. He sent his "family" to do the dirty work for him. The Manson Family legend is one of the scariest and most fascinating in true crime, yet the focus frequently is on Manson himself. Writer/director Susanna Lo is set to change that with her film, Manson Girls, which will tell the stories of followers such as Sadie Atkins, "Squeaky" Fromme, Linda Kasbian, and Patricia Krenwinkel.
We chatted with Tania Raymonde (Death Valley, Lost) about her role as Leslie Van Houten, and what sets this film apart from other Manson films.
Tell us about the movie.
Everyone knows about the Manson story. Everyone has seen the movies and read Helter Skelter. This is a very different take on the Manson story. The focus is exclusively on the girls. The focus is on the girls' life before Barker Ranch, how they met one another, and then them living as a family together on the ranch. The movie ends a minute before the first murder. You never see any of the murders. You only hear about Sharon Tate vaguely, but you know it is coming.
Not only that, but you never see Manson. You only hear him off-screen talking to the girls. It is really about the girls interacting with one another, discovering things for the first time. Sexually, emotionally, spiritually. It's about seeing how these girls could be manipulated into going down a path that would lead them to murder someone. It's more of a psychological thriller, showing how the girls got to that point. I'm very excited about it.
Have you started shooting yet?
No, we start in about two or three weeks.
Will you be shooting at the actual Barker Ranch?
We were thinking about it, but logistically there are problems with that. Plus, the actual ranch was burnt down. I think we will be shooting in and around LA for the first week or two, then we are going down to Puerto Rico for the rest. That will be our desert.
That's got to be intense. Manson's manipulation was astounding.
Yeah. You also find out a lot about the girls' personal lives. No one ever thinks of the girls as people. You are so horrified by this awful thing they all did, and it colors your perception of who these girls were. A lot of them came from interesting backgrounds. Weird stuff happened to some when they were young. All that stuff, combined with living at the end of the 1960s, the political movements of the time, really molded them into the women they would become. That was one of the reasons Manson picked these girls. It's interesting to see the way these girls interact with one another. A lot of people just don't know about them, or about peripheral murders and dramas that happened on the ranch. For once, it tells the Manson story but doesn't exploit the murders or rehash the horrible things done to Sharon Tate and the LaBiancas. It's just about how these girls were manipulated. It's creepy, but there is something interesting about it.
Did you do a lot of research for the role?
I've been reading everything I can find. The great part about playing a real person is that I can go on YouTube and look up interviews of Leslie when she was young, when she was old, all her court hearings. She is an enigma. There is a lot that I don't think people know about Leslie. I think it will be interesting to play a real person, and get to the core of her. It's scary. The whole Manson thing, the murders and his ideology... it really frightens me. I'm really scared by that kind of stuff, and I think that is why I wanted the part. It scares me.
Apparently the girls stabbed Sharon Tate and her friends like 55 times, then took a shower in their bathroom and ate a watermelon from their fridge, then drove home, had sex, watched TV, and just had a laugh. But they weren't bad girls. Some were abused, but some weren't. They were normal kids. But there was just something about Manson that allowed him to completely brainwash them. It's really creepy. I do wonder what it will be like to get to that point, mentally.
It's going to be especially weird, since in the project I am just wrapping up, my character is very focused, very goal-oriented, and kind of a badass. Then I am going to play a brainwashed, head-in-the-clouds hippie. It's going to be strange. But fun.
one of the things that always sticks with me is Danny DeCarlo's early statement that while out at Barker before they were arrested, Ruth Ann Morehouse said to him, "I can't wait to kill my first pig."
The cute Ouisch couldn't wait to emulate Katie and Sadie and Leslie. It is strong testimony that the "death trip" that Charlie preached seriously took hold with many in his family.
It is strong testimony ONLY that the youngest child at the ranch felt left out that she wasn't doing what the "cool" kids were doing. It says NOTHING about Charlie except in your head.
Ruth Ann was one of Danny's favorites so it is doubtful he was making that up.
Point?
Maybe the Bug colored up the facts to sell it to the jury, There is NO maybe about it. You lose all credibility when you state maybe. ALL the other attorneys say he made this shit up.but there is NO DOUBT Charlie was preaching an impending race war as well as the thrill and need to kill.There is plenty of doubt. Charlie talked smack. Bullshit. BUG and Watkins created the "theory" of the case.
For 42 YEARS folk have been trying to rewrite the TLB murders as a drug burn or mafia hit or Tex thing. They have been throwing shit against the wall for nearly a half century and none of it has stuck.Again, no, MUCH of it has stuck. And for sure, no one educated in the case believes HS as a motive.
How's about this, Col? What if the motive is simply Charles Manson's assholeness - his anger and resentment and ego and schizoid and megalomania etc etc.But wait? You just told me it was HS. That the BUG was right. Now you want to offer a new theory? Without evidence? Can you not reason logically?
Maybe all those people died because Charlie was one angry evil asshole, and he convinced several drug adled idiots that it was cool to kill. Maybe Charlie is exactly like his idol AdolphHis idol? This was again Bug and Paul creating a boogey man for the ages. and just a pure evil asshole who was adept at getting idiots to do his dirty work.
Sorry, no disrespect, but it just seems like the Col and others spend a whole lot of time trying to apply logic and rationale to a completely irrational act. And a completely irrational person.Charlie was many things. But irrational? Not even close. Man was wicked smart.
Manson did not need a motive to order the killings.But you just said it was a race war? It was just what got him off.
7:50 PM, August 05, 2011
my attempt to clarify....
For 48 years several dozen people have dedicated their lives to proving Oswald was not the lone assassin.what do you mean, prove? IT has been established through science that he could not have fired all the shots.
Even though I knew the case well because of my relationship with his daughter, I could never argue Lee's guilt/innocence on better than a 60/40 proposition. Why?
Because without a confession or eyewitness all you had was circumstantial evidence. And there was strong circumstantial evidence BOTH WAYS.
But one problem arguing for Lee's guilt was the lack of motive. Several who knew him testified he liked JFK. So why do it?
Because he was a miserable asshole with an enormous ego. He was seriously pissed off that the world did not recognize his greatness. He was convinced Cronkite should interview him, that the NY Times should publish his life story and so on. He had no friends, a love/hate realtionship with his wife, and hated his mother. But he was convinced of his destiny to be famous while living seperated from his family in a $7 a week boarding house and working a $2.65 an hour job packing books into cartons.
So when he read the leader of the free world was going to be driving right under his work window, maybe he thought...the world will know me now.
No motive, just an egotistical asshole determined the world should know his name.except of course he had motive...and Ruby was there to shut him up
Maybe, likewise, Charlie was convinced the Beatles should know his name and that he should be on the cover of Rolling Stone. Certainly his behavior at the trial was fantastically self-destructive, and self-promotional. He basically convicted himself with his antics. He was convicted of ordering the murders by a Prosecutor with a made up motiveBut maybe that is what he wanted all along - to show the world how little regard he had for it and how everyone should not just know him but fear him.
No motive, just an egotistical asshole determined the world should know his name.
It was the 60's. Everyone wanted to be famous. Oswald and Manson are certainly two of the top ten famous names from that decade
really, do people still want to wave the "Charlie is no killer" banner?Yeah, isn't that weird. He never killed anyone so I say he isn't a killer. A loser, yes. A punkass bitch? Yes. But to be called a killer usually you need to, you know, KILL someone.
He shot and believed he had killed Crowe. Several eyewitnesses put him in the car when Shorty got shafted. And by his own admission he went in and tied up the LaBiancas who were subsequently killed and by the letter of law Manson was guilty of their murder as much as if he had weilded the knife.Agreed. Never said he was innocent as charged. Never said he should be released. Just said he was falsely prosecuted and didn't kill anyone. I remain accurate.
Charlie no killer? Come on, order yourself a reality sandwhich. And maybe watch the taped interview of Charlie shouting out "that he wished he had killed 500 or so people, then maybe everyone would take him seriously.Hey, I'll scream out that when I next see JimNy I would like to kick his ass so he never walks again. That don't make me an ass kicker.
7:11 AM, August 06, 2011
one last thing, I promise.
Col Scott...though I have the upmost respect for you, here is why I have always thought your obsession/hatred of the Bug and Helter Skelter was somewhat misplaced.
I simply do not believe that Vincent and HS were responsible for Manson being convicted of murderEven if I grant you this point (which I do not) the fact is by manufacturing motive and making shit up, the REAL reason why 9 people are dead is still obscured this many years later. I don't care about Charlie. I want to understand what happened. And the pathology of the Bug makes that almost impossible. I think Charlie Manson convicted Charlie Manson of murder.
The Bug put forth HS because a number of people, from Sadie to Danny to Al Springer to Watkins and others - told him that Charlie controlled everything and everyone in the Family and had ordered the killings. The Bug packaged the story in the Helter Skelter fairy tale.
But do you know, Col, if anyone ever did a comprehensive follow up with the jury as to why they convicted Charlie?That wasn't the norm back then. There are a couple of interviews I think but nothing comprehensive.
My belief is that it wasn't the Bug and Helter Skelter that convinced the jury, it was Charlie's own antics and outbursts during the trial that convinced them he was a certified sociopath.
And it was his leaping over the defense table and lunging for the judge that convinced the jury that Charlie was capable of violence.
And it was the girl's idiot robot behavior - their singing and head shaving and proclaiming that Charlie was Christ - that convinced the jury that Manson had a Svengali control over them and probably had it on August 8th and
9th as well.
One of the Great Questions that hovers over the TLB story is this...if Charlie had had a quality lawyer and had sat quietly at the defense table clean shaven and wearing a tie, and the girls had likewise behaved, would Manson have been convicted of murder? Or would he, like the obviously guilty OJ and Casey Anthony after him, have gotten off? Imagine Charlie walking around a free man these past 42 years. It could easily have happened.
But I am convinced Charlie wanted something more than his freedom.This is true. He wanted to be famous anyway he could. He wanted the world to know how little he thought of it. And he wanted everyone to know that he was the real deal, and everyone else was just a two-bit supporting actor. Charlie was the Oscar winner in his mind, everyone else was just an extra.I buy this
In short, I believe with all due respect Col, that the Bug and HS are really just a backstory to the TLB case. Charlie wanted the fame, or the infamy, more than he wanted his freedom. His behavior during the trial, and even in the countless interviews he has done since then, testify to that.
If you frame it in the old chicken and egg question....the Bug didn't make Charlie famous, Charlie made the Bug famous. And far more important and reknowned then the Bug should be.They both did everything possible to make themselves famous.
Photo is so people stop fucking asking. Sheesh.