Documentary Film (for Reelz network)
Title: Charles Manson: The Final Words
Written by: James Buddy Day
Produced by Pyramid Productions, Calgary, Canada
FINAL EDIT SCRIPT, September 9th 2017
EXT. CALIFORNIA STATE PRISON – DAY
AUTOMATED RECORDING
You have a collect call from ‘Charles’ an inmate in California State Prison, Corcoran, CA, to accept say or dial 5 now. BEEP.
CHARLES MANSON
Hello.
CHARLES MANSON
They’re still sending me naked pictures of Sharon Tate all stabbed up saying “There’s blood on your hands” and “you did this and you did that.” There’s a lot of ways of crucifying somebody without hanging them on a cross —
AUTOMATED RECORDING
You have sixty seconds remaining.
CHARLES MANSON
You being a producer it’s like, you kind of got get in the heads of everybody. Have you ever trusted anyone?
PRODUCER
Have you?
CHARLES MANSON
That’s what I’m doing in here.
(laughs)
NARRATOR
This began a year ago when Charles Manson, a man thought to be the embodiment of evil, started calling.
CHARLES MANSON
If you can find a way to get me a cell phone where I can use it and call. (yeah). Let me get in the game and you can find a way where we can do what you want to do. But as soon as you get there you’re gonna have 15,000 people who are covering up what they’ve already been stealing and doing.
NARRATOR
What do you say to one of the most infamous mass murderers of all time when given the chance? We asked for his story in his own words.
CHARLES MANSON
I don’t give a fuck about telling my story. My story has already been all over the world, 1,000 times, 1,000 times. You are for you, right. Right on, as long as we understand that, this is not based on friendship, not based on brotherhood, it’s based on guns and knives, it’s based on revolution and war, politics and governments. Survival.
NARRATOR
Though decades have passed since his conviction, the obsessive interest has never waned. Manson, of all people, appreciates his notoriety.
CHARLES MANSON
I’m the most famous human being not only that is alive, but the most famous human being that ever lived. And, I’m not even dead yet. – What do you think the fuck is going to happen when I die?
STEPHEN KAY
The problem is Manson is famous. The kids nowadays, they don’t look behind to see what it is he did.
BLACK.
BOARD – THE CRIMES OF CHARLES MANSON
NARRATOR
In the late sixties, Charles Manson was convicted for the brutal murder of actress Sharon Tate and eight others. He was sentenced to death for all of them. When the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in nineteen seventy-two his sentence was commuted to life in prison.
CHARLES MANSON
The reality of it is, beyond the bullshit, is on death row. I’ve already done that been there. The people that haven’t done it and haven’t been there, they don’t understand it, you know, they have no respect for it. I got respect man.
NARRATOR
Manson’s murder spree took place in the summer of nineteen sixty-nine. It was the peak of the Vietnam war, and a time of civil unrest. It’s said that Charles Manson was the leader of a cult called The Manson Family. They lived outside of society indulging in a constant stream of drugs and sex.
CHARLES MANSON
We went where nobody had ever went before, not thinking about it, it just, it just happened man. I wasn’t nobody’s leader.
CHARLES MANSON (CONT’D)
All I was doing was fucking everybody I could. The sexual revolution everybody was doing I, was just getting my share that’s all.
NARRATOR
The first murder took place in July of nineteen sixty-nine. Manson was convicted of ordering three of his disciples to kill an associate in a plot to extort money. After they stabbed the victim to death Manson’s followers wrote on the walls in his blood.
NARRATOR
A month later the murders escalated. The official account from the Los Angeles District Attorney is this; Charles Manson sent out more cult members to an isolated house in Beverly Hills with orders to kill everyone inside. It was the home of a beautiful and pregnant movie star named Sharon Tate who was spending the evening with friends.
PHIL KAUFMAN
(Lived with Manson Family)
How could they drive up to that house, get out and know what their gonna do, nobody was going to leave that house alive. It boggles the mind. He says alright go out and do this and then you’re all in the car together going ok we’re going to do it, nobody says, man should we be doing this? Is Charlie right? They did what they did.
NARRATOR
At Charles Manson’s trial the prosecution stated:
“On the evening of August, the eighth, nineteen sixty-nine, Charles Manson sent his robots out on a mission of murder. There is no evidence that he actually personally killed any of the victims in this case”.
CHARLES MANSON
If you had to get up and hunt and kill your food every day, you’d be a hell of a warrior man.
NARRATOR
Before they left one of the killers wrote on a door, this time using Sharon Tate’s blood.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
They wanted to – shock – the public
NEWS FOOTAGE(OS)
In a scene described by investigators as reminiscent of a weird religious ritual, five persons including actress Sharon Tate were found dead. Among the other victims we’re Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring. One officer summed up the murders when he said “In all my years I have never seen anything like this before”.
SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN
(Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)
I was in the kitchen and the phone rang. He said they think Jay and Sharon have just been murdered. I remember just sinking down, I was standing next to the sink and I just sank down to the floor, like I’m melting, I’m melting just, I was stunned. I was shocked, I was in hysterics.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
(Manson Family Attorney)
When the murders took place, people were buying Gatling guns. The whole town bought guns they we’re frightened to death for months.
SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN
(Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)
But for someone to hang up the phone on their boyfriend and the next morning hear that he’s been brutally murdered with three of his friends, it’s horrifying.
NARRATOR
Manson’s crime spree wasn’t finished. The day after the murder of Sharon Tate and others, Charles Manson took members of his group out again. This time they went to the home to an affluent couple named Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Allegedly, Manson ordered three of his followers to butcher the couple, leaving more messages written in blood.
CHARLES MANSON
They never lied about me. all the broads said is “I THINK he said go in there and kill those people”. Well she can think a pink elephant, that’s hear-say.
SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN
(Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)
It’s like a horror movie, like those movies where you wonder who’s going to be next.
CHARLES MANSON
People will put the bad mouth on somebody, for all kinds of psychological reasons. Jealousy is a big reason people maneuver.
NARRATOR
When Charles Manson and his family were arrested, and charged, it became the longest and most expensive trial in the history of Los Angeles.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
(Manson Family Attorney)
The fright in the town was so gigantic and he looked like the devil sitting in court. That trial was like a circus. I mean it was insanity.
NARRATOR
During in the trial, Manson carved an “X” in his forehead, which he later turned it into a swastika and shaved off all his hair. He says to symbolize his desire to be discarded from society. His followers all did the same.
CHARLES MANSON
They don’t realize that the X on their heads means the head is gone, man. You know, they still think that person’s there because they got a head, you dig? But I took the head. I got it on my belt.
PHIL KAUFMAN
(Lived with Manson Family)
Every time I went to court, everyday they’d be out there singing ‘Charlie, Charlie’ with the swastikas on their head, shaving their hair. You know that’s not normal, you know looney tunes right there.
NARRATOR
For half a century, Charles Manson’s bizarre behavior has continued, and speculation over his unspeakable crimes has only intensified. But the question has always remained, how did Charles Manson get these people to kill for him?
BLACK.
BOARD – HELTER SKELTER
CHARLES MANSON
That’s what that stupid -fuckin’ district attorney did, convicted me for the fuckin’ ‘Helter Skelter’ thing that he was thinking. And it took me 40 years to figure out what a cult was.
NARRATOR
When speaking to Charles Manson the topic of Helter Skelter comes up and frequently, and Manson’s answer is always the same. He maintains that Helter Skelter was invented by the prosecution. The Manson Family’s prosecutions were led by Vincent Bugliosi who wrote the book Helter Skelter which became the best-selling true crime book of all time. According to Bugliosi, Helter Skelter, was the name Charles Manson gave to his own bizarre philosophy which he derived from the name of a Beatles Song.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
One of their favorite things to do is they would sit around on acid and listen to the Beatles White album. They determined that what the Beatles were doing is they were sending messages to blacks to rise up and start a revolution.
NARRATOR
Manson allegedly convinced his followers that he foresaw the race war prophesized by the Beatles and told them they needed to slaughter white affluent victims to further inspire the black revolution.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative reporter)
Helter Skelter, a social uprising between the blacks and the whites. The start of a race war. The apocalyptic end, if you will. Charlie and the family will hide underground. They will be the remaining ones left.
NARRATOR
The prosecution claimed that Charles Manson and his followers planned to hide in a secret cave located in Death Valley and wait out the war. When the dust settled, they would emerge and Charles Manson believed he would rebuild of the world.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
To say that it was an unusual motive is an understatement. But I can tell you that was the motive.
SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN
(Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)
Nothing could have been more horrendous than what happened that night to innocent people who didn’t even know their murderers. And the reasons that this maniac orchestrated this whole thing was just looney tunes.
CHARLES MANSON
I mean goddamn, this is not what I wanted to be. It doesn’t matter what I wanted.
NARRATOR
Manson insists that he’s been misjudged. He says Helter Skelter is a myth and that the true story behind the murders is one that remains untold.
CHARLES MANSON
And I’ve been deep in thought for almost 40 years, thinking what the hell does all this mean, how does that work? And the stuff that I’ve come up with, it’s just unbelievable, it’s fucking totally unbelievable.
NARRATOR
When speaking to Charles Manson, the most famous mind controlling mass murderer of all time, you have to be careful not to take him at his word. But after months of conversations, questions began to emerge.
CHARLES MANSON
The precious point is that the Helter Skelter that the DA made into what he was doing was wrong basically, when they lose control, they don’t admit that they lost control. They just lost face and they make another movie, like you’re doing.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter)
People who have looked into the case, beyond just a superficial level of reading of Helter Skelter, don’t believe any of that stuff. In fact, most of the media do believe he was trying to start a race war called Helter Skelter, and the whole thing.
NARRATOR
We spoke with authors, researchers and people who know Manson directly. Charles Manson personally put us in contact with people who know him, others we found on our own. We sought to speak to anyone who was there when the crimes took place, all to unravel what actual happened.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative reporter)
Back in 1969, we didn’t have access to the police reports, we didn’t have access to autopsy or the FBI files so we’re more inclined to believe the official narrative.
CHARLES MANSON
You’ll find out man. Have a good day, brother man.
BLACK.
BOARD – A CONVERSATION WITH BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
AUTOMATED RECORDING
This is Global Tel Link you have a pre-paid call from ‘Bobby’ an inmate at the California medical Facility, Vacaville California, this call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
Hello.
BOARD – BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL, SERVING LIFE SENTENCE FOR FIRST “MANSON FAMILY” MURDER
NARRATOR
Bobby Beausoleil was the first person arrested and accused of being member of the Manson Family. He’s been in prison since nineteen sixty-nine.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
It is extremely important that people understand what happened. We don’t want the same things to happen again we have to understand them and we can’t understand them in the context of Vincent Bugliosi’s little horror story. He did more to victimize Sharon Tate than Charlie Manson ever did.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
It’s the same regurgitated Helter Skelter nonsense. That is so far away from the truth. I don’t care, I won’t say that, I will never, to get a parole, say that what Bugliosi said was true. Never…I’d rather die in prison than get out on a lie.
Part of it was the times and the desperation that had set in, in 1969. The events got out of hand. A lot of his attitudes and beliefs that he had been engendered while he was in prison became expressed. And again, I’m not defending him, he was a sociopath for sure. Not genetic, but something that had been developed – you know his compassion and empathy had been beaten out of him by the system that he grew up, in which was the juvenile justice and criminal justice system.
NARRATOR
Manson’s told many people many stories about his childhood but certain aspects of his upbringing are irrefutable. His birth certificate from nineteen thirty-four identifies his mother as Kathleen Maddox. A fifteen-year-old single mother who struggled with alcoholism and was often arrested.
CHARLES MANSON
My mother and my uncle did time. She was a throw away.
NARRATOR
Sometime around nineteen forty-four, When Kathleen couldn’t care for her son or when she was arrested, Manson began what would become a lifetime in prison. Michael Channels has known Manson personally for twenty-five years and has quite possibly spent more time face-to-face with him than anyone else.
MICHAEL CHANNELS
(Manson Supporter)
If there is a “Charlie Manson”, Charlie Manson was probably created the first time he went into those boys homes. That kid went through some hell in there, and some of the things that he told me. He would never admit to being raped by men or anything like that. That’s just one thing he just don’t do, he don’t.
CHARLES MANSON
In Boys Town, you’re a juvenile. You go in when you’re ten years old and you play ping pong and if someone beats you, you gotta give the table up to them unless you want to fight ‘em.
CHARLES MANSON
Everything is about fight. If you don’t fight they’ll fuck you in the ass.
MICHAEL CHANNELS
(Manson Supporter)
He’ll tell you about being taken down in the basement and put on the table and they make him get naked and then beat him with a strap. That’ll turn you into something that your starting to think ok…
CHARLES MANSON
They’ll take everything you got. And you’re raised up like that. So, you learn how to box and you learn how to fight. And then some guy gets a dagger or a knife or an ice pick and it’s a different kind of fight. You graduate and you grow up.
MICHAEL CHANNELS
(Manson Supporter)
That puts you in a whole different mindset. It’s about life or death where’s he’s at.
CHARLES MANSON
I’d only been outside a couple years when I caught this case here. You figure that if you get locked up in reform school when your nine years old and you don’t get out until your twenty, in your brain you’re still nine years old on the outside. Can you see that?
MICHAEL CHANNELS
(Manson Supporter)
He don’t trust nobody. He doesn’t even trust me. As long as I’ve known him as a pen pal, visited him in jail, talked to him all the telephone for some twenty-five years now. He doesn’t trust me as far he can spit.
CHARLES MANSON
Anybody that helps me is helping themselves, and I don’t get much help because their ‘aint nobody there. You see it. So, it’s like, everybody that’s using me, they’re not helping me, they’re just riding on me.
NARRATOR
Police records reflect that by the time Charles Manson was twenty-four years-old, he’d been arrested more than thirty times. Among his numerous offenses he’d been caught driving stolen cars across state lines, broken his probation, escaped from a federal prison, was convicted of check forgery, mail theft and even pimping.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter)
The first time I visited him and he walked out of the back, prison was just radiating off of him. He’s from prison. He’s not from your world and my normal world out here.
NARRATOR
Those like George Stimson who’ve spent time visiting Charles Manson in person insist that his view of the world is defined by his life in prison.
CHARLES MANSON
Prison is a mind. The mind is prison. That’s why they haven’t been able to break me because there’s no such thing. They’re in a fantasy. They don’t have a reality. Had I not done 22 years in prison before I got arrested this time, I would not have survived. The only reason I survived is, I’ve been through everything in prison ever since I was nine years old.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
It’s hard to understand. I mean, unless you really kind of have an understating of how things operate in prison and how selfish people tend to think when they’re in that environment.
NARRATOR
Leading up to the summer of nineteen sixty-seven, Charles Manson was in Los Angeles serving time for check forgery in a federal prison called Terminal Island
BLACK.
BOARD – TERMINAL ISLAND PRISON
NARRATOR
Two years before the murder spree Phil Kaufman was arrested trying to smuggle Marijuana into the U.S. from Mexico. He ended up in prison alongside Charles Manson.
PHIL KAUFMAN
(Lived with Manson Family)
I got arrested in Tucson, Arizona. I got to terminal Island. I had just gone through the A&O, admission and orientation, before I was allowed out in the yard. There’s this guy with a guitar. Being in prison you gotta be careful who you associate with, and Charlie was a good guy to hang out with because he did give a fuck and he played music.
NARRATOR
Phil Kaufman knew Manson on the inside before anyone ever associated the name “Charles Manson” with the devil incarnate. Kaufman recalls the man he called “Charlie” as a laid-back inmate fully comfortable in prison life, to the point that he was completely unwilling to reform.
PHIL KAUFMAN
(Lived with Manson Family)
If you get five years in a federal penitentiary and they don’t give you any incentive, you’ll just do five years and your uncontrollable. But when you’re sentenced they give you good time so a five-year sentence may be only forty months… But Charlie didn’t do that, he did all the time. He didn’t program. You know he got five years, Charlie did five years.
NARRATOR
According to prison records Charles Manson has received countless reprimands. He once described a prison confrontation in the sixties when a common punishment was for the guards to have the inmates ‘give in’ by putting their “nose to the wall”.
CHARLES MANSON
We fought for 48 days and 48 nights trying to make me put my nose on the wall. I told him “I ain’t putting my goddamn nose on that wall, fuck you”. And they’d come in and rush me and throw me up against the wall, like it or not. Then I’d slide down the wall. Next day they’d come, say, “Get up against the wall”. I’d say “No way”. Here we go again. Yeah, they can beat me but that can’t eat me.
PHIL KAUFMAN
(Lived with Manson Family)
He was playing his guitar and so a guard comes up to him and said “Manson, you ‘aint never gonna get outta here”, and Charlie just kept playing his guitar and said “outta where man”, and just kept going.
CHARLES MANSON
I was a federal prisoner, DEAD, I got out of Terminal Island. Can you understand that? You know it’s like, I had played that game and won every pocket.
NARRATOR
Manson’s release paperwork from Terminal Island is dated March twenty first, nineteen sixty-seven. Vietnam was at the forefront of the American consciousness and a large segment of the male population was either at school or war. Many of the women left behind were embracing what would become known as the summer of love.
PHIL KAUFMAN
(Lived with Manson Family)
There was a lot of runaways at the time and a lot of people disenchanted with the status quo and they were easy marks, especially up in San Francisco.
The acid you know the pot and everything, they we’re looking for love and Charlie was selling it whole sale.
NARRATOR
This is when it’s been reported that Charles Manson formed a cult called The Manson Family. How did he transition from a chronic petty criminal to a psychotic villain capable of mind control? Until this point in his life, he’d never been charged with a violent crime and no one had ever described him as a guru or spiritual leader so something had to change in the summer of nineteen sixty-seven.
BLACK.
BOARD – THE MANSON FAMILY
CHARLES MANSON
You see in they call it. In prison, they call it a run. When I get out of prison I run until I’m back in prison again.
NARRATOR
According to Manson, right after prison he spent the first year going back and forth between Haight Ashbury in San Francisco and Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles.
CHARLES MANSON
I went to ‘Frisco and I was talking to this supposedly great holy guy. You dig? And he’s telling me when you can sit and be comfortable and at peace with yourself that you’re just in harmony, you dig? Now check this out. I figured a lot of things out. I figured this out. I figured it would be easier not to understand anything and keep your mind open and never make your mind up about nothing.
NARRATOR
Charles Manson’s mix of sixties culture and prison jargon attracted young women. Communes were abundant in California in nineteen sixty-seven. This is when Manson met the first two members of what would become known as the “Manson Family”; Mary Brunner who later gave birth to his child, and Lynette Fromme better known as “Squeaky”.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
Remember these weren’t ordinary people. And I get upset with the historians that refer to this group as hippies. They weren’t hippies. Hippies were flower children, they believed in “Make love, not war.” The Family referred to themselves as ‘Slippies.’ They said they were going to slip under the awareness of society. They were very violent. It was a religious cult.
NARRATOR
At trial the prosecution stated the family was nothing more than a closely-knit band of vagabond robots who were slavishly obedient to one man and one man only, their master, their leader, their god Charles Manson. One member of the group was Catherine Gillies. She adopted the nickname “Capistrano” or “Cappi” for short after fell in with Manson in the spring of nineteen sixty-eight.
CAPPI
I mean none of that shit was real, ok. We we’re trying to step out of society is what we we’re trying to do. We didn’t have stabbing practice on Saturday and hang Charlie from a cross on Sunday. I mean none of those things are real. We didn’t call ourselves ‘The Manson Family’, okay. That was, that was the press. We called ourselves a family but we meant that because we were brothers and sisters not because we were ‘The Family’ we were ‘A’ family.
NARRATOR
Another member named Sandra Good collaborated on a book with her partner George Stimson in which he talked about life inside the so-called Manson Family.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter’)
A lot of people do that when you’re young and you’re living like a family, but you know, it doesn’t have the connotation that Manson Family does, capital M, capital F.
NARRATOR
This contention appears to be supported by the trial transcripts. In many instances Vincent Bugliosi says clearly that the group called themselves “the family” but no one ever refers to them as “The Manson Family” the label often reported, which according to George Stimson is significant.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter’)
The thought that he was actively recruiting people to set up some kind of organization to carry out his homicidal aims is just ridiculous.
NARRATOR
But the reality is that they did commit homicidal acts, however, according to several individuals who were part of the group, the label THE MANSON FAMILY was only used by the press and not consistent with how they interacted or viewed themselves at that time.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
You know most of them we’re inexperienced with communes prior to joining that one. So, their only experience with communes would have been with Charlie.
AUTOMATED RECORDING
You have sixty seconds remaining.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
They were always free to leave.
CHARLES MANSON
You know it’s weird man, it’s like you see a bunch of people and their coming along in your life and they’re doing what you’ve already done. I noticed this about people when they think I’m a hippie cult leader.
NARRATOR
The group was made up primarily of young women. Contrary to the common picture of Manson being a master manipulator who recruited them and controlled their minds, Bobby Beausoleil related that they came together much differently.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
What most people don’t understand is that it wasn’t Charlie’s charisma that attracted more women. It was once he had the two women together, the women attracted the women. Women who like a community of women, and that was the attraction in that group.
NARRATOR
How they came together and viewed themselves genuinely matters because it’s the first part of understanding whether Manson and the others were a hippy commune or a religious cult. The Helter Skelter theory is dependent on Charles Manson being a brainwashing cult leader, but people who were part of the group deny that dynamic. Is there another explanation for their heinous acts other than Manson dictating that they murder on his behalf?
CHARLES MANSON
I never ordered nobody to do anything but other than what the fuck they wanted to do. Do what you want, if you’re with me you’re free like me. I do what I want to do. You do what you want to do. Be careful with this phone call and don’t use it cause any more persecution to my friends, my family. Peace, I gotta go. My phone time’s up.
BLACK.
BOARD – THE MANSON GIRLS
NARRATOR
The media has characterized the women who participated in the murders as middle-class and virtuous. They’ve been described as girl scouts, or good students, or Sunday school teachers, that Manson transformed into serial killers. Why would young women with good backgrounds leave their homes to live with an ex-convict who just wanted sex and death?
Leslie Van Houten was nineteen when she met Charles Manson. The following summer she joined two others in the slaughter of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.
RICH PFEIFFER
(Leslie Van Houten’s Lawyer)
The problem people have is how can you go from a homecoming queen to being a Manson follower? Her childhood was really good until her parents got divorced. Back then it was very different than it is now. It was a big social stigma. She ended up with the druggie kids and the less desirables and she ended up doing drugs at that time. She got pregnant. Her parents pretty much pressured her into having an illegal abortion in the home, and they buried the fetus in the back yard, and that’s something she couldn’t get away from. After that the drug use escalated.
PETER CHIARAMONTE
(Leslie Van Houten’s former
Boyfriend).
She was looking for a spiritual leader and she had home already left home and went out on the road. Bobby takes her to meet Charlie. I think it might have bothered him – that she would challenge him, she and Pat were really the only two that would.
NARRATOR
Patricia Krenwinkel, nicknamed Katie, was with Leslie Van Houten the night they killed the LaBiancas. Krenwinkel also participated in the Sharon Tate murders. At parole hearings, she’s described that her sister was a drug addict who died from an overdose at the age of twenty-nine. Before her death she introduced Patricia to drinking, drugs and alcohol. When Krenwinkel met Manson, she was nineteen. She’d left home to live with her heroin addicted sister in Venice, California.
One of the most infamous murders was Susan Atkins who took the nickname Sadie. She brutally murdered Sharon Tate and used her blood to write PIG on a door.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
Susan Atkins had a terrible childhood she was abandoned by her parents, she was molested.
NARRATOR
When Susan Atkins was fifteen her mother died from cancer, sending her home life into a spiral. When Atkins met Charles Manson she’d already worked as a topless dancer, been arrested for car theft, stolen property, and was a heavy drug user.
SUSAN ATKINS
I used to think you came down off an acid trip after 12 hours. Every time you drop acid you get a little bit further away from reality.
CHARLES MANSON
Susan’s pretty, she’s me actually. You see me is all there is, there’s nobody but you.
SUSAN ATKINS
I took so much acid that I was what I would term spaced, and it took me many years to, what I would term now, re-enter, and that was just through not having any acid and having to deal with reality every day.
NARRATOR
If these were not perfect young women, plucked from society and corrupted solely by Charles Manson, did he actually brainwash them or were they working alongside him in a common motive? What was life like inside the so-called family the year leading up to the murders?
BLACK.
BOARD – THE SUMMER OF ’68
NARRATOR
When you ask Charles Manson about life in the group before the murders, he talks about sex.
CHARLES MANSON
Everybody walked around naked. We’d all get together and just have a big bang man.
PHIL KAUFMAN
(Lived with “Manson Family”)
I lived with them for almost a month. He’d say you know everybody has to make love. Love. It’s love, spread the love, you know. It was like sex on demand.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter’)
When you’re inside you have nothing, and all of a sudden he’s out and, you know, he said it was a prisoner’s dream come true.
NARRATOR
Another member of the group was Barbara Hoyt who like many of the others was seventeen when she ran away from home after an argument with her father.
BARBRA HOYT
I met Squeaky. Sandy was pregnant. Sadie, we talked about the hypocrisies of life.
CHARLES MANSON
Nobody’s been able to get women together with each other. They’re jealous creatures, it’s hard to get two women together. And here comes along a nobody from prison who ‘aint even been out of prison long enough to spell his name right. He’s got thirty-five women up and doing whatever, you dig?
NARRATOR
If Manson had found the dream life of an ex-convict, why would he indoctrinate them to murder people?
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative reporter)
These murders did not happen because there was not going to be an apocalyptic race war, that’s not why this happened, the victims weren’t chosen at random.
NARRATOR
Brian Davis has spent more than a decade speaking to anyone involved in the events surrounding the murders on his online radio show. From his viewpoint, the key to understanding what happened is Charles “TEX” Watson because he was the person that actually led the murder parties on both nights, and killed more than anyone else.
CHARLES MANSON
Tex was perfect. A solider, a solider who’s in service is righteous and real. There’s no in between.
NARRATOR
At trial the Vincent Bugliosi said Manson had “total and complete domination over his family including the actual killer Tex Watson”. How did Tex Watson come to be with Manson and perhaps fall under his control? Brian Davis recounts that in nineteen sixty-seven, Watson left Northern Texas to live with a friend in Los Angeles, finding a part-time job at a Hollywood wig shop.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
I talked with the guy that worked with Tex. He said Tex was an all-American boy. After about a year, Tex started to hang out at parties and smoke marijuana, grew his hair out a little bit and at that point he said Tex started to turn. So, all this was going on leading up before Tex ever met Charlie.
NARRATOR
Tex Watson met Charles Manson when he was invited to a never-ending party that was being held at a Pacific Palisades mansion. The house was owned by the drummer of the Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
Charlie crosses over into that because of the girls, Pat and Ella Joe Bailey we’re out hitchhiking and Dennis Wilson picked them up.
NARRATOR
The Beach Boys fifteenth studio album Twenty-Twenty, features a song co-written by Charles Manson called “Never Learn Not to Love”. During that time Manson befriended a record producer through Dennis Wilson named Terry Melcher.
Leslie Van Houten interviewed by LAPD, November 26th, 1969
LAPD: Tell me about Terry Melcher. Remember him?
LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: Terry Marshmallow?
LAPD: Mel- Melcher. Terry Melcher.
LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: I call him Terry Marshmallow.
LAPD: Oh, is that what you call him.
LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: I don’t know really. I knew that he said he could get us recorded and that he had known one of the Beach Boys.
NARRATOR
When he met Charles Manson, Terry Melcher lived on Cielo Drive in the same house that was later rented to film director Roman Polanski and his movie star wife Sharon Tate, after Melcher moved out. This is a direct connection between Manson and the Sharon Tate murders. Prosecutors claimed that Manson was an ambitious musician who aspired to be like The Beatles and The Beach Boys, so Dennis Wilson introduced him to Terry Melcher, but Melcher rejected him. When Manson decided to begin a race war by killing random white people, he chose Terry Melchers house. According to the prosecution the residence was symbolic to Charles Manson and particularly the establishment’s rejection of him. Phil Kaufman worked in the music industry and recorded Charles Manson shortly before the murders took place. This is an audio recording from nineteen seventy made as part of the investigation.
Phil Kaufman interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970.
Up to this point he had recorded at various studios, and being as transient as he was, he never stayed around long enough, you know, to consummate a record deal. So, every time he recorded no one could ever release his music because he never signed any contracts.
PHIL KAUFMAN
(Lived with “Manson Family”)
‘Cause he had a good thing going for him, you know. Money wasn’t even involved in anything. He didn’t have to earn a living, he had girls going out and getting him food, he was having sex, playing his music you know. Life was good for him.
CHARLES MANSON
I could have been a rock and roll star. I could have been a movie star. That’s a slowdown. I don’t want a fuckin’ job. I’d rather have a vine of wine on the beach and be free as a dog looking for a place to sleep under the bridge rather than go to work. I was trying to get away from civilization.
NARRATOR
If Manson wasn’t rejected by the music industry, and Melcher’s house didn’t represent the establishment to him, then what was the real reason for Tex Watson taking three women over to Terry Melcher’s house and killing five people?
We put this question to Charles Manson directly.
CHARLES MANSON
Tex wasn’t wrong, you understand what I’m saying? Tex had to do what he had to do, and he said that. He didn’t say I told him to do a damn thing. They said the girls said it but the girls didn’t say it. She said, “Charlie told me to go do what Tex said.” You know why the District Attorney put the race war on me?
AUTOMATED RECORDING
You have thirty seconds remaining.
CHARLES MANSON
You got the whole damn fuckin planet against me.
NARRATOR
Charles Manson’s answers are not always straightforward, and he denies involvement in the Sharon Tate murders, but the missing factor may be the song Charles Manson contributed to the Beach Boys.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
Charlie was told that he would be compensated for the use of the song, and the amount he was told was $5000. Now he didn’t care so much about the money. If you’re in prison and you owe somebody and you give your word and you don’t keep your word, that’s a justification for, you know, being killed. So, he sent Tex to kill Terry. Not a house full of five people. See that’s what’s so critical here. He wasn’t picking a house full of innocent people, he was picking Terry Melcher. The people that were there are the ones that took the brunt of what Tex Watson brought there that night.
NARRATOR
Charles Manson seeking retaliation on Terry Melcher for breaking his word, contradicts the motive laid out by the prosecution because it changes Manson’s intent from starting a race war to vengeance. According to the Helter Skelter Theory, Charles Manson planned to inspire a race war by killing affluent whites, so he sent his follower to Terry Melcher’s house. During the war, Manson would hide with his followers in a secret cave located in Death Valley. Afterwards, they would emerge and Manson would lead the victorious black army.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
When members joined the Family, he was telling them how Adolph Hitler was his hero for what Hitler did to Jews in World War II. He was a follower of Nietzsche. You know, just sick stuff.
MICHAEL CHANNELS
(Manson Acquaintance)
They say Manson wants to have a race war. He wants the black people – they’re going to rise up and kill all the white people. For a supposed person that hates black people why would he now want to be in charge. The story kind of loses me all over the place.
NARRATOR
Some have proposed that the prosecution made-up the Helter Skelter theory in order to more easily convict Charles Manson through a sensational conspiracy narrative. Another theory exists which some believe can explain the murders without the race war motive.
Brian Davis
I’m not supporting Charlie Manson at all. I’m supporting more of the truth.
NARRATOR
If the prosecution did construct the Helter Skelter Theory, is convicting a man like Charles Manson so essential that any means of achieving it is acceptable?
Brian Davis
It’s not about proving Charlie innocent. Even if it’s Charlie Manson. The law has to work for everybody.
CHARLES MANSON
This thing is so vast. I don’t know whether you can accept it.
BLACK.
BOARD – AN ALTERNATE THEORY
NARRATOR
Another theory proposes that the murders were the culmination of events centered around Charles Manson. Charles Manson had been released from prison and had formed a commune of lost souls. Several months before the murders the group had moved to a farmstead built as a backdrop for western movies and television shows, called Spahn Ranch.
CHARLES MANSON
I never realized it but the reason the ranch was so cool was that nobody ever lied to each other, man. We all got a long with each other, man. Everybody was straight up, there was no bullshit. We had a pretty nice group of people there.
GRAY WOLF
(MANSON SUPPORTER)
When I went to the ranch, I felt it was just the most mellow place I’d ever been. There was no ambitions. It’s a lot different than what the media might portray.
NARRATOR
The ranch was owned by an eighty-year-old blind man named George Spahn, who lived in the main house which was located here. The ranch burned down in nineteen seventy-one but at the time extended along the Santa Susana Pass, isolated by the hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley.
CHARLES MANSON
Everybody at the ranch was one. There was only one moving thing on that ranch, that was George Spahn, the old blind man. George was the boss. You know it’s like the horses ruled the ranch. We all served whatever was capable of service. A slave understands it’s master much more than the master understands the slave.
BARBRA HOYT
Charlie told Squeaky to take care of George so they could stay at the ranch, and she did.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
She didn’t like having sex with other men. That’s why she got into that for Charlie. She took care of George and that became her thing. She wanted to only have sex with Charlie, and so she put herself in that position where she wouldn’t have to have sex with anyone else. She was a caretaker.
BARBRA HOYT
She loved him. I think he wanted George to will the ranch to Squeaky.
NARRATOR
Records reflect that while living at Spahn Ranch Tex Watson was arrested on a drug charge in April of nineteen sixty-nine, three months before the murders.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
It was business for Tex, you know, he partook and he sold. That’s how he made a lot of his money. You go back before the murders, Tex has got the history for dealing drugs, and making drug deals, you know. That’s what Tex does.
CHARLES MANSON
I said don’t lie on this ranch. Other than that you can do anything you want here. Just don’t hurt nobody.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
This is the connection. This is where it all connects.
Tex Watson had a dope dealer. Tex Watson describes the drug dealer in his book as a mafia connected guy who owned a vending machine company that he used as a front for his dope business.
CHARLES MANSON
Episodes like that happen every day in the drug world.
NARRATOR
On July first, Tex Watson spoke with his vending machine dope dealer who was looking to sell twenty-five kilos of marijuana for two thousand five hundred dollars. Watson didn’t have that kind of money so he called his girlfriend in the city. She introduced him to another drug dealer named Bernard Crowe who was thought to be associated with The Black Panthers political movement. It was then that Watson came up with a scam. He would buy twenty-five kilos from his vending machine dealer for two thousand five hundred dollars, then sell twenty-two kilos to Crowe at a mark-up for two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. That way Watson could buy the drugs from the vending machine dealer, and deliver what he promised to Bernard Crowe, all the while keeping the difference in money and drugs for himself and his girlfriend. To make that work neither of the drug dealers could meet, so Tex Watson planned to have Bernard Crowe pay upfront.
CHARLES MANSON
As the convicts say, if you do all the talking you got to be all the right. Lying’s what gets everything fucked up.
NARRATOR
When the time came, Crowe wouldn’t hand over his money to a hippie he didn’t know, so he kept Tex Watson’s girlfriend as collateral while Watson went to pick up the drugs. When this complication arose, Watson burned them both.
CHARLES MANSON
He just promised to deal some drugs for them, and took the money and ran.
CAPPI
What happened was Tex made a deal with him evidently, and then fuckin’ bummed out on the deal. We didn’t get anything out of it, it had nothing to do with us. It was all about Tex, trust me.
NARRATOR
After that an enraged Bernard Crowe set out to find the man he knew as Charlie Watson.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter)
When Crowe called the ranch, and asked for Charlie, meaning Charles Watson, TJ got Charlie Manson on the phone because he knew Watson as TEX. And when Crowe said I want my money and I’m coming up to the ranch to burn the place down and rape all the girls there Charlie said no you’re not. I’ll come down and talk to you about it.
CHARLES MANSON
To deal drugs you gotta be real. That’s underworld. Underworld means anybody can take that away from you and there’s nothing the laws going to do about it. Before the cops catch drug dealers, drug dealers catch drug dealers.
CAPPI
He was worried about us getting killed. We had babies there and all kinds of stuff, and all these young people, okay and they we’re trying to kill us. And that’s why Charlie went to Bernard, to stop him before he killed somebody.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
Bernard Crowe had Tex Watson’s girlfriend tied up, and I guess words were exchanged. And Charlie pulled out then gun a shot him.
CHARLES MANSON
Yeah, yeah I shot the Crowe. She said that Bernard was going to kill her. So we went down to help her, and ended up shooting him to help her.
CAPPI
Bernard Crowe didn’t give him a chance. He had to shoot him or he was going to get shot, and Bernard Crowe just said “You better shoot me now, do it,” you know, and Charlie shot him.
NARRATOR
Bernard Crowe survived this shooting, although as Manson has often detailed, he was unaware of this.
CHARLES MANSON
That’s the difference between the underworld and being righteous with the underworld. In other words you don’t get caught off base or you get tagged out. It’s a simple game.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
He saw all the people he was with as children. They were weak they wouldn’t know how to hold their mud. Rather than try to convince them that they should, he just manipulated them to try to make them so complicit in violent crimes that they would not snitch on him.
NARRATOR
In the alternate theory, Charles Manson’s shooting of Bernard Crowe left him with two problems. First, he had to be sure no one in the commune would talk to the police. Accordingly, he encouraged them to commit violent crimes for the group just like he had done.
CHARLES MANSON
I play cards. My family’s cards. My family are righteous; They can’t get away. They’re dead. Everyone in my family is dead like me.
NARRATOR
Manson’s second problem was that he believed the Black Panthers would retaliate for the shooting, something he told members of the group.
BARBRA HOYT
He was very worried about the black panthers attacking the ranch. It went from happy go lucky fun. It got so intense, so fearful. It makes me nervous just to talk about it.
CHARLES MANSON
We were in trouble with everybody that was against us. Anybody that didn’t like us, we didn’t like them. We we’re fighting all the time man.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
Charlie, when he had that situation with Crowe and I went out there to hang out, I didn’t know what I had happened. And he told me, he pulled me aside and he said, “Man, you know I don’t have enough guys here, you know. I’m expecting a retaliation from the Black Panthers and I need more guys here”. So, you know, I was a young kid and that sort of appealed to my ego.
CHARLES MANSON
Everybody likes everybody else dead. Nobody likes anybody.
BARBRA HOYT
I heard Charlie was recruiting the Straight Satan’s to be guards.
NARRATOR
To protect the commune and himself from the Black Panthers, Manson enlisted a motorcycle club called the Straight Satans. In this audio recording with the L-A-P-D, the Straight Satans former president, Al Springer, described their arrangement.
AL SPRINGER interview with LAPD 11/69
Charlie says, “Now wait a minute”, he says uh, “maybe I can give you a better thing then you got over there.” I goes “What’s that?” He says, “Move up here. You can have all the girls you want, and all the girls”, he says, “are all yours.”
NARRATOR
Three days after the Bernard Crowe shooting, Linda Kasabian arrived at Spahn Ranch for the first time.
BARBRA HOYT
Linda was, she was a nice girl who was looking for, I don’t know if she was looking for Jesus or, um, she was just looking for life, and what was real and what wasn’t.
CHARLES MANSON
You don’t find too many women who will stand up in any kind of fight.
NARRATOR
Linda Kasabian’s account is critical because she was one of the four directly involved in the Sharon Tate murders. When she was later arrested, Kasabian gave her first statement to her lawyer Gary Fleischman.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
I heard her version of it the first night they brought her back.
None of it made any sense that’s the problem. It was nonsensical and that’s where Vince came up with the Helter Skelter theory. But I never heard that theory during the period I was representing her, she didn’t know anything about it.
NARRATOR
Days after the Bernard Crowe shooting Bobby Beausoleil committed the first murder. The prosecution said that Manson “needed money” but the specifics of this motive were never fully explained. The motive was described as generally related Manson’s preparation for the race war.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
Manson wanted money. He wanted money because he was preparing for the revolution.
NARRATOR
The prosecution contended that Manson sent Bobby Beausoleil, and two women, Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins, to the home of an acquaintance named Gary Hinman. Their orders were supposedly to retrieve money from Hinman and kill him if he refused.
CHARLES MANSON
It’s all crap. You don’t have to look it up, you just have to look at it.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
Nobody sent me over to recruit Gary to the family. He was as much of the so-called family as I was and I wasn’t a part of the family.
NARRATOR
Bobby Beausoleil contends that in the aftermath of Bernard Crowe shooting, Manson’s arrangement with the biker gang made them a constant presence at the ranch. Two weeks before the Sharon Tate murders, Beausoleil says the Straight Satans were looking for drugs. Beausoleil sold them mescaline he got from his former roommate Gary Hinman. Beausoleil maintains that the day after the drug deal the Straight Satans demanded their money back claiming the drugs were bad.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
I don’t really believe you I think they were trying to get the drugs for free. They were playing me for a sucker. There wasn’t any bad drugs or anything like that.
CHARLES MANSON
Beausoleil was a strong individual. Yeah, he was in trouble with the motorcycle gang. And, we were dealing and wheeling underworld man. That’s what motorcycle gangs do, you know. In other words, the strongest survive.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
There is a property report of Gary Hinman. And in that property, report they list homemade scales with white powder. They didn’t test it for it mescaline, so we don’t know if it was or not. To me that’s evidence.
NARRATOR
With the Straight Satans threat looming, Bobby Beausoleil claims he went to Gary Hinman’s house to retrieve the money from the drug deal and return it to the biker gang.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
I went there for one thing and that was to collect the money. And ‘cause they asked to come along, Mary had a relationship with Gary, and I don’t know why Susan Atkins asked to come along. I didn’t see any problem going there. I figure it was going to be no problem to get the money back and, you know, and come back and give it to ‘em, and it was going to be done.
NARRATOR
As recalled by Bobby Beausoleil, when Gary Hinman refused to return the money the confrontation escalated. Along with Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins, Beausoleil stayed at the house for two days. Beausoleil thought he could reason with Hinman to give up the money. They wrestled over a gun which went off but hit no one. During the confrontation, someone called the Ranch to ask for help. At some point, Bobby Beausoleil gained the upper hand and made Gary Hinman sign over his cars.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
So he had these two old wrecks and they were, I figured between the two of them they were worth maybe a grand. The grand that they were saying I owed them.
NARRATOR
With the pink slips in hand they prepared to leave. As they were walking out the door Manson unexpectedly rushed in with a sword and cut Gary Hinman across the face.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
Charlie had slashed his face and left me with the problem. And I didn’t know how to get out of it, you know, I didn’t know how to get away without getting arrested, unless I killed him.
NARRATOR
After the murder, someone wrote on the walls in Gary Hinman’s blood.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
To be honest with you, I don’t remember a lot that happened immediately after my having killed Gary. That really devastated me. My memories of what happened afterwards have never really been clear.
NARRATOR
A black panther paw print was drawn on the wall along with the words POLITICAL PIGGY.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
It was in everyone’s minds. Everyone believed Charlie had killed a black panther, according to what he had told everyone. There was an intent to throw the investigators of the trail.
NARRATOR
From this perspective, Gary Hinman’s murder was directly related to the Bernard Crowe shooting. They staged the crime scene to frame the Black Panthers because they feared retaliation. At the same time, Manson’s intent to make the others complicit had been unexpectedly furthered. This prevented members of the group from telling the police about what Manson had done. According to police records on Wednesday, August sixth, two days before the Sharon Tate murders, Bobby Beausoleil was arrested in one of Gary Hinman’s cars.
CHARLES MANSON
I was in San Diego when that happened.
BARBRA HOYT
I heard he got arrested for murder. I thought that the police had just made it up. No, I didn’t believe it.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter)
I think it’s important to look at the timing of this. You’re looking at these murders that happened on Cielo and Waverly are like two days later, and it’s very important that they happened then rather than a month later or two weeks earlier. So, that indicates that they we’re a reaction to Bobby’s arrest and the idea of getting him out of prison by committing copycat murders.
NARRATOR
In the alternate theory, two days after Bobby Beausoleil was arrested the group planned to commit another murder. This turned out to be the murders of Sharon Tate and those who were at her home on August eighth. The group planned to stage the crime scene to make it appear as if Gary Hinman’s killer was still on the loose. They reasoned this would compel the police to let Bobby Beausoleil go. Charles Manson admitted that this was their thinking.
CHARLES MANSON
He was in prison. He was in the LA county jail when it happened. See we we’re all in a brotherhood. We were all in one family and we were helping the brother. It happened to be Beausoleil.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
He told other people he was trying to send a message to me, and others make the police think that they had the wrong person.
NARRATOR
According to Bobby Beausoleil this is not the entire picture but reaffirms Manson’s deeper motive. Committing a copycat murder to free Beausoleil would make the others complicit, preventing more members of the group from potentially talking to the police about the Bernard Crowe shooting.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
Depending on the orientation of whoever he was talking to he would say things that would support some sort of agenda that he had.
NARRATOR
Manson’s agenda comes full circle when you consider that he still harbored a grudge against Terry Melcher for the song Manson had contributed to the Beach Boys. According to the alternate theory, this is why four members of the commune ventured out to Terry Melcher’s house, two days after Bobby Beausoleil’s arrest, on August eighth, nineteen sixty-nine.
BLACK.
BOARD – LOS ANGELES, AUGUST 8TH, 1969, NIGHT OF THE SHARON TATE MURDERS
BARBRA HOYT
I remember after dinner in the backhouse, and I remember Charlie and Tex talking in the corner, and it was like there was black around them. It was just like evil around them, a black cloud around them.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter)
There were people at the ranch who owed Charlie favors, and he said you owe me, I’m collecting. Do something to get Bobby outta jail, I don’t care what you do but do it.
CHARLES MANSON
I gave my life to what I thought was a brother. Every time I do that man I always end up on the short end of everything because I’m, I’m stupid. I can’t do school books stuff. I’m a stupid hillbilly is what it boils down to.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter)
I know he told Tex Watson, “You either take care of the problem or get on the road.” Tex Watson could have just left the ranch and there wouldn’t have been any “Tate-Labianca” murders.
CHARLES MANSON
Tex didn’t say that I told him to tell him anything. I told him four or five different ways.
MICHAEL CHANNELS
(Manson Acquaintance)
He don’t tell nobody to do nothing. He don’t tell you to do anything today. He can convince you that that’s your idea, because usually it is your idea.
CHARLES MANSON
You can do what you want to do when you make up your mind and you decide that that’s what you’re going to do.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
What they didn’t volunteer to do was something they didn’t understand which was his need to protect himself. He manipulated them.
SUSAN ATKINS
I remember when we first went in, one of the people said ‘who are you’ and Tex said, ‘I’m the devil and I’m here to do the devil’s business”. I don’t think Charles Manson’s mind was in control of Tex’s mind that night. Charlie’s human too, and his mental powers are just as limited, maybe not as limited as other humans, but there was an evil force in control of Tex that night.
BARBRA HOYT
They died so horribly, I don’t know if people really think about how. You just how much they suffered. You know, I think about Sharon Tate and she must have been insane with fear by the time they got to her.
PHIL KAUFMAN
What does it take to have somebody tell you to go and kill people, for what reason? I couldn’t conceive what could allow them to be influenced to go down… They didn’t kill people they butchered people, and these are the people that I’d been sleeping with.
NARRATOR
When Susan Atkins used Sharon Tate’s blood to write on a door, it appeared to call back to the murder of Gary Hinman. The police never made this connection.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
Sherriff’s homicide was handling the Hinman murders and two of the homicide investigators went to the Tate investigators and said look we have this murder of Gary Hinman, blood on the wall, in Hinman’s blood. So they said, look we think these are connected, the LAPD investigators sent them away said, nah, they’re not connected.
NARRATOR
The prosecution maintained that the events of that summer were not connected. They claimed that Charles Manson led a religious cult and was trying to start a race war called Helter Skelter, inspired by the Beatles.
DIRECTOR (OS)
If they’re trying to frame black people, why aren’t they writing “kill white people” or something very obvious?
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
Probably because they didn’t think of it. That of course, you know, people would connect blacks because of the Beatles white album, so some black would figure it out and tell somebody, oh ya know (cough), Beatles, this is part of the murders–
DIRECTOR (OS)
It just seems like a lot of dots to connect.
BLACK.
BOARD – LOS ANGELES, SATURDAY – AUGUST 9TH, 1969, NIGHT OF THE LABIANCA MURDERS
NARRATOR
If members of the group killed Sharon Tate and others as a copycat murder in order to free Bobby Beausoleil, then why did they commit more murders the next night?
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
The second night at the LaBianca’s was to cover up for what he had done the first night, which was kill a house full of people. He didn’t realize it was gonna be this big thing that had unfolded up there at the house on Cielo. He didn’t know that Terry Melcher had rented the place out so it basically turned into a fiasco.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
It was the weekend so, he’s going out the next night because he’s gotta cover up those Tate murders, because that’s going to get out and that’s going to be nasty.
DIRECTOR (VO)
Who did kill those people?
CHARLES MANSON
The people that told you they killed ‘em. They said on the witness stand, yeah I killed ‘em.
NARRATOR
On the second night, another member of the group became complicit; Nineteen-year-old Leslie Van Houten.
PETER CHIARAMONTE
(Leslie Van Houten’s former
Boyfriend).
Tex was Leslie’s boyfriend, ok, at the time. When Pat is explaining, what happened to Leslie, as I understand it, Pat was shaken by what she’d done but Leslie felt that she had to prove herself now, we’re gonna go out again and this has to be done. She must have been told at that point the line, “We’re doing it for Bobby.”
NARRATOR
Catherine Gilles, also known as Cappi, recalls seeing Leslie Van Houten get into a car with Patricia Krenwinkel and others.
CAPPI
I had no idea where they were going but Katie and Lulu were the closest people in the universe to me. That girl was my other me and Katie was like our big sister. And they were in the car, and they we’re going somewhere without me, you know, and so I tried to get in the car and they wouldn’t let me. I didn’t know why. They were protecting me.
NARRATOR
Manson often speaks in riddles. This ensured many members of the group were not aware of what was going on.
CHARLES MANSON
What’s real has different levels. You could go on certain levels of reality, that other people don’t really understand at all. And they call it insanity.
NARRATOR
The group drove to Los Feliz and parked near an intersection on Waverly Drive. Inside the home to the west was an affluent couple who owned a chain of grocery stores, named Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.
PHIL KAUFMAN
It was a place that they knew. They had been to Harold’s house which is right next door.
NARRATOR
This audio recording from the LA District Attorney shows that the house next door to LaBianca residence was once occupied by a man named Harold True, who knew Manson and the girls.
Harold True interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970:
They called and asked if they could spend the night in the house. And we let them stay the night. At Waverly? Yeah it was a big house, a lot of people stayed there. “Now how did he get your… have your phone number to call?” I don’t know. I guess maybe I gave him a map.
PHIL KAUFMAN
When I skipped the country and the time of my marijuana bust, Harold True gave me his passport. He had never had a passport so I got a passport in Harold’s name. And then when I got out and I went to see Charlie, I took Harold along. Harold was a big old lumpy guy and you know he thought he might get laid.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
They were camping out with the bus there and living at Harold True’s place, and the neighbours called the cops. They had to leave there because the neighbours called the cops. And the neighbours were the LaBiancas.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
Charlie picked people he had grudges against. He didn’t just pick people at random.
NARRATOR
This adds to the alternate theory that on the second night Manson continued manipulating the others. It wasn’t because he would rule the world after a race war, instead it was a series of interconnected events. It began with the Bernard Crowe shooting, which led to the Gary Hinman murder and Bobby Beausoliel’s arrest. This culminated in the Sharon Tate and LaBianca murders. A significant amount of the commune became complicit and Manson’s outstanding grudges were satisfied. There is one additional piece that appears to support this theory, Charles Manson’s actions after the LaBianca murders. According to Tex Watson’s account, summarized from numerous public statements, he and Charles Manson went up to the LaBianca house and broke in through the back door. Manson woke up Leno LaBianca and tied him up. They retrieved Rosemary LaBianca from her bedroom and tied her up, before threatening to kill the couple in the living room. Manson disputes Tex Watson’s version of events.
CHARLES MANSON
What has he told you about me? Everything that’s going to help him, right? You are for you. I am for me. I’m for Charlie. I didn’t kill nobody.
NARRATOR
It’s undisputed that Manson drove to the LaBianca house and that he went into the house for some period of time. According to the trial transcripts, Linda Kasabian is asked; Question, how long after he left the car did he return to the car? Answer, I remember we all lit up cigarettes and we smoked about three-quarters of a Pall Mall cigarette, however long that takes.
The question is, what did Charles Manson do once he left the car?
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter)
If you’re looking at three quarters of a cigarette, it’s five minutes. When you’re looking at what Tex says, there’s just not enough time.
NARRATOR
Manson and Tex Watson went up to the house. After a few minutes Manson returned, at which point Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten went into the house. Manson then drove away with the others.
Those in the car claim that while in the house Manson had retrieved Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet which police later found twenty miles away in a gas station bathroom located in Sylmar.
According to the prosecution Manson conspired to plant the wallet in a black neighbourhood, reasoning a black person would use the credit cards and be connected to the murders. This would help spur the impending race war. But this motive is contradicted by the evidence. Census data from the nineteen seventies shows that Sylmar was not a black neighbourhood.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
Obviously, he got screwed up. The wallet got planted in the wrong city, I mean there’s no point in planting it in a white area and having a white person use the credit cards. That defeats the whole purpose of blaming the murders on the blacks.
NARRATOR
If framing black people wasn’t Manson’s motive, then what was he trying to achieve in the few minutes that he was in the LaBianca house? And, what was the reason for taking Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet?
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
My theory is, Charlie goes up to the house. Tex Watson says in his book when they get in there Mr. LaBianca says “Hey, what do you all want, you all want money? I can get you money.” Let’s say Charlie did accept the money offer. My Theory is Charlie got the money and then he left, that’s why he left.
NARRATOR
No one disputes that once Manson left, Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten stayed in the house and murdered the LaBiancas.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
With Leno LaBianca there was a carving fork protruding out his abdomen and Krenwinkel had written on his abdomen WAR. They found a knife with the handle sticking out of one end the blade traversing his neck, severing a carotid artery and part of the blade sticking out of the other side.
NARRATOR
During the LaBianca murders, all agree that Charles Manson took the rest of the group to Venice. The prosecution insisted that Manson went to Venice to get his followers to commit another murder. Once again, the motive was to frame a black person and fuel the race war. According to trial testimony, Manson allegedly took his followers to the apartment building located here.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
The address to that apartment building is, you could literally say a stone’s throw from the Straight Satans clubhouse in Venice. You mean that Straight Satan biker gang that Charlie owed money to? Yeah that biker gang, they were in Venice.
NARRATOR
In the alternate theory, after Manson shot Bernard Crowe he feared retaliation and enlisted the Straight Satans for protection. Bobby Beausoleil compromised this protection by getting into a conflict with the Straight Satans over a drug deal.
If Manson took enough money from the LaBianca residence, he could have gone to Venice to settle the debt that Bobby Beausoleil owed the Straight Satan’s from the Gary Hinman drug deal. This would’ve regained their protection from the Black Panthers.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
It’s what, 4 in the morning, 3 or 4 in the morning? They didn’t go back to ranch, they went to Venice. That’s how pressing this was for Charlie. They could wait until Monday to do business. I think they went to Venice to pay off the Straight Satans.
CHARLES MANSON
When you’re in the know with somebody that’s in the know. You don’t play games with them.
BRIAN DAVIS
That next morning Charlie sent Linda Kasabian down to the jail with a message for Bobby Beausoleil, don’t say anything, everything’s cool. Why all of a sudden is everything cool? By Monday before any court proceedings started they get a message to Bobby, everything’s cool, we’ve taken care of everything. Don’t say a word about nothing. We’ll have you out of there soon.
NARRATOR
By Monday morning seven people were dead but the string of murders was not finished.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
The neighboring rancher, he didn’t like the Manson family. So, what was going on then is, they we’re trying to get them off the ranch.
NARRATOR
It’s been long speculated that the neighboring rancher may have recruited a ranch hand named Donald “Shorty” Shae to rid Spahn Ranch of the group. Manson believed Shae had tipped off the police leading to a raid.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
You know there was definitely no love lost between Shorty Shae and Charles Manson as far as I can gather.
NARRATOR
On August sixteenth, nineteen sixty-nine, twenty-six members of the commune were arrested for suspicion of auto theft. Because of a date error, the search warrant was ruled invalid and all were released. The police had no idea that they were connected to the murders making national news. When they returned to Spahn Ranch, Donald Shae was never seen again.
BARBRA HOYT
I went to sleep in a little trailer. I heard a scream, And then I heard more screaming and it just didn’t end and it was horrific. It was horrible, and it kept going on and on and I recognized Shorty’s voice.
NARRATOR
After Donald Shae’s disappearance, Manson and the commune left Spahn Ranch.
BRIAN DAVIS
(Investigative Reporter)
Cappi suggested that her grandmother had a place out there in Death Valley, when he was looking for a place to go. They went out there and looked at it. He fell in love with it. And he said this is it. This is it, this is our utopia.
NARRATOR
The land in Death Valley was an isolated mining property owned by Catherine Gilles’ grandmother. After the murders, Charles Manson and the group stayed there until October of nineteen sixty-nine.
CAPPI
We went to the desert because of me. My favorite place besides the ocean. I was born on the ocean and I lived in the desert, and I love the desert so I offered up the desert.
NARRATOR
Just like authorities had in Los Angeles, Inyo County officers raided the Death Valley ranch on August twelfth, nineteen sixty-nine for suspicion of auto theft.
Twenty-four members of the group we’re arrested and once again police had no idea they were involved in any of the murders. The killers were imprisoned except for Patricia Krenwinkel, who went on both nights, and Tex Watson.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter)
After the murders, Pat Krenwinkel went back to Alabama, Tex Watson went back to Texas. Nobody was holding them around.
NARRATOR
Records show that Linda Kasabian was bailed out by her parents and left California. Before anyone else could arrange for bail, Susan Atkins confessed.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
Susan Atkins is the one that broke the case. I mean they didn’t know that it was Charles Manson or Susan Atkins or anything until she blabbed.
PHIL KAUFMAN
That was her, that was very much her. Charlie would have been better killing her and he probably would have gotten away with it a little bit longer.
NARRATOR
While inside the country jail, Susan Atkins told her cellmates that she was involved in the murder of Sharon Tate. One of the first people Atkins confessed to was a call girl named Virginia Graham.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM
Susan Atkins, she plopped herself down and she sat on the bunk and we started talking, and she presumed to tell me how stupid the police were, and they were dumb. She said to me, “You know those murders up benedict canyon?” She said you know who did it don’t you and I said no, and she said cold as can be “you’re looking her”. She didn’t say Helter Skelter to me. I found out about, Helter Skelter, later on. But I don’t recall her telling me Helter Skelter.
NARRATOR
Susan Atkins was denied compassionate release in two thousand and eight, and died from brain cancer in prison. However, in nineteen sixty-nine the DA was willing to overlook the brutality of her actions.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
The deal with Susan Atkins, the prosecution was going to let her plead to second degree murder. Sharon was begging for her life. She was being held by Susan Aktins and – she said “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me. I just want to have my baby.”
SUSAN ATKINS
I felt nothing, I felt absolutely nothing for her as she begged for the life of her baby.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor) She said “Look bitch, I don’t care about you or your child. You’re going to die and I don’t feel a thing behind it.” Having Susan Atkins as the witness that wouldn’t have gone over to well with the jury.
NARRATOR
The prosecutor who was working out the deal was the author of HELTER SKELTER, Vincent Bugliosi.
DANIEL SIMONE
Vincent Bugliosi was an outstanding prosecutor. But if one really we’re to dig much deeper, what emerges is he was a womanizer. He loved attention, he was over-ambitious
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
He had a guy sitting in court that I thought was a reporter but it turned out he was Curt Gentry, who Vince had hired to write a book on the case. He didn’t tell me that he was writing a book during the trial. So, yeah, he didn’t tell anybody it. This was gonna make him rich and famous.
CHARLES MANSON
It’s all underworld solider. Who you think the president is? Where you think his office is, in my cell?
NARRATOR
This is the Helter Skelter theory that was presented to the jury in the Charles Manson trials.
NARRATOR
Manson formed a cult of obedient followers who wanted to drop out of society. Their connection to the Bernard Crowe shooting is unknown as the motive and was not explored by the prosecution.
Manson wanted to be a rock star and was obsessed with the Beatles. He had also met the Beach Boys.
Through the Beach Boys, Manson came to resent Terry Melcher and considered Melcher’s house a representation of the establishment.
Manson believed the Beatles were predicting a race war through hidden messages in their songs, and he needed money to supplement his preparation.
Because of this, Manson further brainwashed his cult to believe in the race war and ordered them to kill Gary Hinman.
Meanwhile, to start the race war, Manson decided to murder white people and frame black people. He indirectly ordered his followers to kill whoever lived at Terry Melcher’s house.
Manson also chose another house at random and ordered its occupants to be killed.
Manson’s plot was to frame black people by having his followers leave indirect references to the Beatles White Album at the crime scenes. Manson believed that both the police and black people would understand these references, and this would lead into the race war.
Once the race war began, Manson and the family would hide in a secret cave in the desert. After the war, Manson would emerge and become the leader of the victorious black army. At that point he would rebuild the world.
This is the theory that convicted Charles Manson and others, and gained prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi fame, and a best-selling book.
CHARLES MANSON
That’s what the DA said. Everybody will tell you what they think about me, according to what they want to use me for. All I’m looking for is someone to help me. I’ve always been by myself alone.
Phil Kaufman interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970.
Anything on the recordings that you know of whereby he speaks of his philosophy of Helter Skelter, the ruination and damnation of this world? No.
PHIL KAUFMAN
I was really not a friendly witness. I was on parole for one thing, I really didn’t, you know, want to get connected with these people. And this DA comes out to my house and tries to get stuff out of me that wasn’t there.
CHARLES MANSON
They know how to milk the cow man. And they do it so well the cow don’t even know it.
NARRATOR
The Helter Skelter theory is not only sensational, it establishes the elements of murder and conspiracy under California law. To be found guilty, the defendant must agree to commit a crime as well as commit an overt act in furtherance of that agreement.
GEORGE STIMSON
(Author – ‘Goodbye Helter
Skelter)
Without proving the Helter Skelter motive there was no evidence whatsoever that Manson wanted these murders to happen. You have to be a party to it, you can’t just know about it.
CHARLES MANSON
I didn’t break the law because I’ve been in prison all my life and I know the law. I know what conspiracy is. I’m not going to conspire to do something. That’s kind of stupid isn’t it? I’m not a stupid dude. I’m dumb but I’m not stupid.
NARRATOR
This is the implication of what Manson is saying. It’s not that he wasn’t involved in the events of the summer of sixty-nine. Manson admits to shooting Bernard Crowe, his involvement with drugs, the Straight Satans, and the motive of getting Bobby out of prison. But when it came to the murders he maintains he purposely kept himself at a distance.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
I thought it was a horrible case against him. Remember he was not at the scene. He was forty miles away when the murders took place so he was an armchair murderer.
NARRATOR
The Helter Skelter theory was how the prosecution demonstrated that Manson was guilty of conspiracy and murder under the requirements of the law. They described a scenario where he ordered the murders without actually saying the words.
STEPHEN KAY
(Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)
I mean they all knew about Helter Skelter but we didn’t have any evidence from that specific night that Manson said go out and start Helter Skelter. He just said “Go with Tex and do what Tex tells you to do”.
CHARLES MANSON
They still won’t admit the truth. They had no evidence against me, none.
NARRATOR
There was no evidence that Manson himself killed anyone. The prosecution said that Manson was guilty under the rule of “vicarious responsibility”. The notion that Manson’s plot to start a race war made him responsible for all the crimes committed to further it.
BRIAN DAVIS
Remember, Vince is trying to push the agenda that Charlie just came out of nowhere and said, hey, we gotta start a race war – Bernard Crowe, drug dealing, grand theft auto, none of that has anything to do with this. If Vince introduces anything outside of that it starts to wash away the Helter Skelter theory. Then you have that reasonable doubt creeping in. Well maybe it has something to do with the drug deal? And Vince doesn’t want you going down that road.
CHARLES MANSON
People don’t want to look at it from the point of view that brings them to something they don’t like.
NARRATOR
The prosecution used the race war as the basis of their legal argument. If the alternate theory is correct, might they have ignored the true nature of events to gain a conviction? Whatever Manson’s crimes are, do the ends justify the means?
GARY LAWYER
I think if he had had a competent lawyer, he would of either walked on the trial or walked on appeal because there just wasn’t sufficient testimony to convict him of anything.
NARRATOR
To convict Manson the prosecution’s entire case depended on one of the murderers corroborating their theory. On December second, nineteen sixty-nine, four months after the death of Sharon Tate, the last of the murderers was captured. Linda Kasabian surrendered in New Mexico and returned to California. She immediately met with her attorney Gary Fleischman.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
I talked to her and the only conversation I can tell you, I said keep your mouth shut and keep it shut in that jail. Don’t talk to anybody about this ever. I can’t tell you the conversation I had with her but I was lead to believe that the murders up there started long before the Tate-Labianca case. I can’t describe what she told me but it was scary, the whole thing was scary.
NARRATOR
At that time, Linda Kasabian had few options because Susan Atkins had already turned state’s witness. According to Gary Fleischman, he had Kasabian sabotage Susan Atkins’s testimony to bolster Kasabian’s bargaining position with prosecutors.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
I had Linda pass kites to her, in the jail. A kite is a little letter, saying in Charlie talk, Charlie talk being ‘the DA is your lawyer, Charlie is the DA’. And this Atkins was a little nuts, and she then refused to testify. So now they we’re left with Linda, period – and then negotiations started.
First they offered me murder in the second degree, I said no, then they offered me voluntary manslaughter, I said no.
She was technically guilty of first degree murder before and after the fact.
NARRATOR
Linda Kasabian was one of the four who participated in the Sharon Tate murders and was with Charles Manson the night of the LaBianca murders. Prior to that, she had only been with the group for about thirty days and had spent little time with Manson himself.
CHARLES MANSON
Nobody ratted on me, except, she didn’t rat because she didn’t know anything. What they did was, they got some of the women that didn’t know me. I can’t get in their mind.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
So, we typed up an immunity agreement and the immunity agreement said, Linda Kasabian will receive immunity if she testifies to the truth in the so-called Manson murders. The truth is as follows. I knew exactly what was necessary to convict him, and whether that was true or not it was wasn’t my business to decide. That was Vince’s business. I said Linda if you testify to that you’re going to walk out of that courtroom.
NARRATOR
Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Charles “Tex” Watson and Leslie Van Houten were all charged with murder and conspiracy. Tex Watson was arrested in Texas and faced extradition to California. With Linda Kasabian ready to testify, Watson was not brought back in time for Manson’s trial.
BRIAN DAVIS
Tex sat out a whole year and watched that trial develop. If he had brought Tex in with him there’s no way he would have got that conviction.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
They wanted to get rid of me. I had gone to Stanford. I was really the only lawyer in the place who knew what the hell was going on. We filed a very detailed motion to get the case out of LA county.
It had like a hundred newspaper clippings and I claimed that the bad publicity was instigated by the prosecutors and that’s enough to get the case dismissed at least on appeal.
That case should have never been tried in Los Angeles county. But when we went to make a deal we withdrew the motion.
CAPPI
You should have seen my face when, when I was sitting in the in with the demure act this whole gold cross that she was fingering, and got up on the stand and said “I’m just an angel sent here from Heaven, to tell the world that Charlie’s the devil not Jesus Christ”.
CHARLES MANSON
Listen and learn. The courtroom shows our justice. The courtroom is the eye of the social consciousness. You’ve got to go along with the courtroom. Right or wrong doesn’t have anything to do with it. I’m a mass murderer in the courtroom.
DANIEL SIMONE
In this case, Bugliosi was brilliant. He had no rivals. It came down to who the jurors believed and Manson’s own conduct which was absolutely absurd.
CHARLES MANSON
They think they’re stealing me but all they’re doing is stealing what I’ve left for them to steal. In other words, they’re plagiarizing all my dreams but I left those on the bus stop.
BRIAN DAVIS
It literally branded Charles Manson the most evil, dangerous man in the world.
CHARLES MANSON
There’s no end to my insanity. My insanity is so much genius I’ve got five heads in one hand.
DANIEL SIMONE
None of the defense attorneys challenged that Linda Kasabian’s testimony remained uncorroborated.
CAPPI
I know how involved she was and I won’t say, but she was definitely involved, yes.
NARRATOR
When the trial wound to a close, those associated began to fear for their lives. Many changed their names in fear of reprisal.
CHARLES MANSON
Live and let live. You don’t let me live, you don’t live. That’s all. If you let me live, you live.
I you don’t let me live then you get your own judgment. Everybody gets to judge themselves. I didn’t want the job, you know.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
Charlie went like this to mean, meaning I’m going to cut your throat. And I said to him “Charlie, when you get out of jail I’m going to have a turkey neck and bring you a sharp knife to cut it.” He started laughing.
PHIL KAUFMAN
They came to my house twice to kill me. My neighbor said you know guys have been crawling over your fence.
STEPHEN KAY
One night during the first trial on my way to the parking lot where I had parked, Squeaky and Sandra Good snuck up behind me and said they were going to do to my house what was done at the Tate house.
NARRATOR
Leslie Van Houten’s attorney, Ronald Hughes, went missing during the trial. Many have speculated about his disappearance.
STEPHEN KAY
I remember we broke for the weekend on a Friday afternoon. Manson pointed directly at Ronald Hughes and said, Attorney, I don’t ever want to see you in this courtroom again.” His body was found six months later but it was so badly decomposed that they couldn’t tell the cause of death.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
I’ll bet your bottom dollar that he said something that got under Charlie’s skin, and Manson had him killed. I mean, he went up to (something) hot springs, and all of sudden he’s dead. I don’t believe it was an accident.
NARRATOR
After the first trial the Manson Family became infamous. Vincent Bugliosi published HELTER SKELTER the best-selling true crime book of all time. This began decades of movies, books, and TV shows, portraying Charles Manson as the incarnation of evil.
BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL
It’s such an insidiously created book – It’s a curse having to live with it.
CHARLES MANSON
The DA fucked up man. Convicted me in the press, didn’t convict me in court. I got my own media.
NARRATOR
Charles Manson and the rest continued on through the courts. They received additional death sentences for the murder of Donald Shea based primarily on the testimony of Barbara Hoyt.
Tex Watson received a separate trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders and was sentenced to death like the others. The following year, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and all of their sentences were commuted to life in prison.
BRIAN DAVIS
The first trial, everybody was brainwashed, Tex was brainwashed, everybody went and killed for Charlie. But when Tex gets to trial he wasn’t brainwashed, he acted on his own.
NARRATOR
In November of nineteen sixty-nine, Bobby Beausoleil was tried for the murder of Gary Hinman. This was before the DA had labelled Charles Manson as the mastermind. Beausoleil’s first trial ended in a mistrial when the jury could not come to a unanimous verdict. There was no mention of Helter Skelter.
BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL
The first trial was just a quiet little trial in Santa Monica, the Jury was hung 8 to 4. I didn’t even testify because the case was really very weak.
NARRATOR
In a second trial, which took place after Manson was charged, Bobby Beausoleil was rebranded as a “member of The Manson Family”. He and Susan Atkins were sentenced to death alongside Manson for the murder of Gary Hinman.
BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL
They brought up this race war thing and all of that. It was horrible, man. They did a lot of insidious things.
NARRATOR
Many of those convicted for the Tate-LaBianca murders remain in jail. Leslie Van Houten has been granted parole on numerous occasions but because of her association with Charles Manson her parole has been continually overturned.
STEPHEN KAY
I don’t think that she deserves to get out. They we’re all lucky that they didn’t suffer the death penalty.
RICH PFIEFFER
I’m going to get her out. The DA is not operating fairly. Just follow the law, that’s all I’m asking.
NARRATOR
Lynette Squeaky Fromme served thirty-five years in prison for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Fromme was paroled in two thousand and nine. Vincent Bugliosi died in two thousand and fifteen. His book HELTER SKELTER has become gospel in terms of information on Charles Manson.
NARRATOR
Manson remains in California State Prison, Corcoran, where he will almost certainly live for the remainder of his life.
CHARLES MANSON
That’s hard for me to believe that all this time has gone by man.
NARRATOR
Charles Manson is not an innocent man but does it matter how we know that? Should those in power be allowed to construct their own truth in the pursuit of justice?
CHARLES MANSON
I see things as they really are in truth. You got a constitution in the United States, and they read and study it in school but they never really understand the validity of it, and how powerful it really is.
GRAY WOLF
I don’t care who it is, if somebody doesn’t get a fair trial then we’re all in trouble.
GARY FLEISCHMAN
Do I think he’s suffered an injustice, not really (laughs), not in my heart of hearts. But as a matter of litigation, yes he did suffer an injustice. Whether morally he suffered an injustice I don’t think so.
NARRATOR
This leaves some to ask, if the prosecution had pursued the alternate theory with its brutal but less sensational elements, would anyone even know who Charles Manson is? And, would he be sitting in jail today?
MANSON
I believe what I’m told to believe. Don’t you?
THE END
Bobby Beausoleil Reference Archive 
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