Bobby Beausoleil Reference Archive

In late 1972 or early 1973, Truman Capote came to San Quentin to interview some of the prisoners there. Word was spread about that he had come there to “expose prison problems”. This stated mission appealed to many of the prison inmates there at the time, and naturally – “revolutionary” that I considered myself to be at the time – I must count myself among them. As I would learn later, I was among a handful of prisoners Mr. Capote specifically requested interviews with, all young men who were doing time for murder, or known homosexuals. My ignorance of this was an extreme liability, as it turned out.

I knew very little about Capote at the time. I had seen a couple of his appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and from these I knew he had done some jail time. It seemed reasonable to assume from that that he might be sympathetic to the plight of prisoners. Beyond this I knew virtually nothing about him.

In the pre-interview that took place the day before the actual interview, I laid out a couple of preconditions. I told Mr. Capote that I was still appealing my case, and that I would consent to be interviewed only if he would agree to refrain from asking me questions about the crime I was doing time for, or about Charles Manson and company. Furthermore, I told him that I was willing to discuss my personal history in the counter-culture movement, and my “philosophy of life”, but that questions about my parents and siblings were off limits. He agreed to my terms. Believing him was my second mistake.

The interview took place in a section of South Block that wasn’t being used to house prisoners at the time. The tiers of empty cells formed a dramatic backdrop. Flanking the setting were six or eight prison guards. There were there ostensibly to supervise and protect Mr. Capote and his crew from potential harm, but likely more out of curiosity than as a hedge against threats.

With the first questions Mr. Capote posed to me, I knew that he was out for blood. He probed my defenses and I naively, ignorantly, played right into his hands. What I desired most in those days was some understanding in the eyes of the world. In my arrogance I assumed that I could steer Capote’s insinuating line of questioning to talk about what I considered important. So I evaded and danced around his blatant betrayal of my preconditions, and attempted to bring the exchanged around to serve my own interests. After about fifteen minutes it finally dawned on me that I had was behaving stupidly, that I was engaged in an exercise of futility. Abruptly and somewhat angrily I ended the interview.

Mr. Capote had the upper hand the entire time, and he knew it. All he had to do was bide his time. It would not be until years later that I would come to realize the full scope of the mistake I had made.

Many of the comments attributed to me in Capote’s book actually bear some resemblance to what I said in the interview. What was changed, primarily, were the questions. All Capote had to do to get the interview he wanted, for the most part, was to reframe the context of my answers and add some fictional set pieces. First he characterized me as a gum-popping antisocial brat who had dissolved his conscience with too much pot and LSD. Setting the interview in my prison cell where he was allowed to sit on my bunk with me was entirely an invention – that would never have been allowed at San Quentin, any more than prisoners being allowed to chew gun. Virtually all of the written descriptions of the surroundings, the offhand remarks and idiosyncratic behaviors he attributed to me, as well as his bemused and chagrined responses to them, were contrivances of the author. We can only speculate about the true nature of the fantasy Mr. Capote was indulging when he depicted me in this manner.

Worse yet was the license taken when he rephrased his questions for the book version of the interview. Mind you, I’m not proud of much that I said in the actual interview but at least I can take ownership of my remarks in their original context, and attribute them to the folly of my youth. This was hardly possible when a writer of some repute had deliberately reframed the interview to warp the intended meanings of my statements.

For example, I attempted to express my neo-Zen approach to life and my fledgling spiritual awareness when I spoke about how life flows and “I flow with it,” and when I said, “It’s all good’ – meaning that the universe, the totality of creation, is ultimately and inherently good. These are statements that I might make even today, in the appropriate context. Under subtle manipulations of the author’s pen, the context was sufficiently altered to make these statements seem as though I was offering lame justifications for murder, or at least a cavalier regard for the well being of others. I was not – then or now – so irresponsible or blind to the consequences of my actions as this characterization would suggest.

Other examples of Capote’s manipulation include comments I made in reference to the kinship I felt toward people I had been involved with in the youth movement in general. These were subtly re-purposed and made to seem as though I was referring to the so-called Manson family. Admittedly, some of this interpretation can be attributed to my own poor choice of words, but my biggest mistake was being gullible and allowing myself to be set up this way in the first place.

By the time an account of the interview had appeared in Capote’s book the business about there being an Aryan Brotherhood connection had crept into it, much to my dismay. Presumably Mr. Capote lifted this bit from Vincent Bugliosi’s book, Helter Skelter, which has spread a lot of this sort of misinformation.

Once and for all, I have never been allied with the Aryan Brotherhood, as a member or otherwise. It would have put my life at risk to even claim such an affiliation, especially when it was untrue. Moreover, I have never been an adherent to any racial supremist or racial separatist ideologies. Early in my incarceration I may have mouthed some inane remarks about sticking to one’s own culture, because adopting such a stance was de rigueur in California prisons at that time. Crossing racial boundaries was dangerous – and to some extent this is still the case. I was intent on surviving. In my heart of hearts, though, I’ve never been able to embrace any sort of racial elitism.

Back in ’65, when I was seventeen, I joined what is widely accepted to be the first racially integrated counter-culture rock band – Arthur Lee’s band, The Grass Roots (later known as Love). When I was living in San Francisco in ’66 and ’67, I occasionally sat in with an R&B trio at the Bar-B-Que Bar in the Filmore District, the only white face in the crowd. I’m a musician, and music is a language that cuts across all ethnic and cultural barriers. In this arena it’s good musicianship that counts, not skin color or cultural background. For me, this same rule of thumb applies to all aspects of my life. My standard response when someone attempts to play the race card with me is: “Life is too short to get hung up over a couple of silly chromosomes”. So you can imagine how offended I felt when I found myself characterized as a racist in Capote’s book, and a couple of others. However, in fairness, it must be said that neither Capote nor Bugliosi originated the misinformation of the AB affiliation. It actually came out of a misbegotten press release issued by the public relations officer at San Quentin following an incident that occurred at the prison some months after my interview with Capote.

During the period when I was on the mainline at San Quentin, I preferred to hang with guys who avoided associating with prison gangs – or “tips”, as they were called back then. Such groups by their nature tend to bully individuals who do not have the protection of numbers, and to predate on them through intimidation and the threat of any degree of violence required to meet a given objective of the group. Often the sole purpose of such predation might be to provide a prospective member an opportunity to “make his bones” to prove himself worthy to gain acceptance in the group, or for an accepted member to obtain greater stature within its ranks. My motivation for the crime that brought me to prison was not so far removed from the dynamic at work in prison gangs. By this time I had wised up enough to know that I did not want to make the same mistake a second time. I was fortunate to have made a few friends at Quentin who, like me, chose to avoid joining a lifestyle that could only, we all agreed, lead a man to a bad end.

I suppose it was inevitable that a confrontation would develop. My closest friend at that time ran afoul of one of the most sanguinary tips on the Quentin yard. Through sympathetic sources within that group we learned that a “hit” had been put on my friend – that he had, in other word, been targeted for murder. In those days there were few options for dealing with that sort of dire challenge. My friend chose to take the offensive and face the threat head on, and I – because staying on the sidelines and letting him face it alone was not something I believed that I could bear to live with afterward – made the fateful decision to stand by him.

The fight that ensued grew larger as it went on, and before it ended involved seven or eight guys, several of whom – myself included – had to be taken to the infirmary for treatment of injuries (remarkably, my friend was unhurt). Prison authorities considered the incident to be relatively significant, even for those insane times, and decided that notification of the public through a press release was warranted in this case. The upshot is that the prison officials didn’t know quite what to make of the incident, and none of the participants were talking. Since everyone involved was Caucasian there was a natural inclination for the authorities to jump to certain conclusions prior to issuing a statement to the press. The day following the incident a San Francisco newspaper ran a small article characterizing it as “an in-house power struggle within the Aryan Brotherhood”, naming me among those injured.

By such foibles is history written.

A little fact checking would have revealed the truth, as there is no evidence in my legitimate prison record of any actual gang involvement. It was just the product of a misunderstanding, but the truth would not have served the interests of Mr. Bugliosi, who was quick to exploit this bit of misinformation.

For years, I bitterly resented Truman Capote for the way he exploited me. I felt so violated that I seemed justified in maligning in some pretty harsh terms in the years following publication of his fabricated interview piece. Gradually the resentment turned to pity. He became a pathetic figure to me, one who compromised his own integrity as a journalist and book author – and this for the meager payoff of having his characterization of me to use as window dressing for the image of himself that he wished to present to the world.

Eventually even the pity faded. As I came to face the truth about my own actions and accept that I had violated another far worse than Capote violated me, I was finally able to forgive him and move on.

Bobby BeauSoleil Summer 2006