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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 4: Good Evening.
Speaker 2: In the late summer of nineteen sixty nine, the nation
Speaker 2: was transfixed by a series of gruesome murders in the
Speaker 2: hills of Los Angeles. Newspapers and television programs detailed the
Speaker 2: brutal slayings of a beautiful actress twenty six years old
Speaker 2: and eight months pregnant with her first child, as well
Speaker 2: as a hair stylist, an heiress, a business man, and
Speaker 2: other victims. The city of angels was plunged into a
Speaker 2: nightmare of fear and dread. In the weeks and months
Speaker 2: that followed, law enforcement faced intense pressure to solve crimes
Speaker 2: it seemed to have no connection. Finally, after months of
Speaker 2: dead ends, false leads, and near misses, Charles Manson and
Speaker 2: members of his family were arrested. The bewildering trials that
Speaker 2: followed once again captured the nation and forever secured Manson
Speaker 2: as a byword for the evil that men do. Drawing
Speaker 2: upon deep archival research and exclusive personal interviews, including unique
Speaker 2: access to manson family parole hearings, former federal prosecutor in
Speaker 2: Fox News legal analyst Lis Wheel has written a propulsive,
Speaker 2: page turning historical thriller of the rhymes and manhunt that
Speaker 2: mesmerized the nation, and in the process she reveals how
Speaker 2: the social and political context that gave rise to Manson
Speaker 2: is eerily similar to our own. The book that we're
Speaker 2: featuring this evening is Hunting Charles Manson, The Quest for
Speaker 2: Justice in the Days of Helter Skelter, with my special
Speaker 2: guest Liz Wheel and Kitlyn Rother. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 2: and thank you very much for greeting this interview. Liz
Speaker 2: Wheel and Kitlyn Rother.
Speaker 7: Id Am just wanted to let you know that Lese
Speaker 7: had a personal emergency and she may or may not
Speaker 7: be able to join us part way through if you
Speaker 7: allow that during this kind of broadcast.
Speaker 2: Sure sure if she she just calls in, we'll cotect
Speaker 2: her immediately. So welcome to the program the book, so
Speaker 2: we're good with me talking absolutely, absolutely, And as fans
Speaker 2: of the program, we'll know you've been on many times
Speaker 2: with your books, so we're not new to the book.
Speaker 8: Now. Is it eleven, it's twelve.
Speaker 2: It's quite a few times, it's quite a few times.
Speaker 2: All of your books, I would believe we've covered. I
Speaker 2: would believe. So, yeah, and here we are with number twelve,
Speaker 2: so it must be yes, amazing, Thank you, thank you
Speaker 2: for coming on. And let's let's get right to this.
Speaker 2: For all the books that have written about Manson and
Speaker 2: Diane Lake published one last year, what was the purpose.
Speaker 6: For writing this book?
Speaker 2: What did you hope to give the fans, for the people,
Speaker 2: what was what was left to say? What was the purpose?
Speaker 7: Well, that's the challenge. This is what this is the
Speaker 7: biggest case ever really when you look at murder cases,
Speaker 7: it's the most notorious. Like you said, he becomes Charles
Speaker 7: Manson became the icon for evil. So we wanted to
Speaker 7: advanced the story though as much as we could, because
Speaker 7: you know, the book that everybody says is you know,
Speaker 7: sort of the authoritative version Helter Skelter that was published
Speaker 7: in nineteen seventy four. So there's been many, many years
Speaker 7: since then that you know, much new information has come out,
Speaker 7: and so Lisa and I wanted to advance this story
Speaker 7: as much as we could and use new information to
Speaker 7: not only go over what people thought they knew from before,
Speaker 7: but to also introduce new evidence. When I say new evidence,
Speaker 7: I mean a new a fresh look at new information
Speaker 7: that would go back and give a fresh perspective and
Speaker 7: a new perspective on many of the details that had
Speaker 7: come out previously. And so that's why those parole hearings
Speaker 7: were very important, because these family members who you know
Speaker 7: are still in prison and are trying to get out
Speaker 7: of prison. They have become more and more forthcoming about
Speaker 7: details that they were previously you know, unwilling or you know,
Speaker 7: I don't know if they were willing at the time,
Speaker 7: and Manson said, no, you can't, but I think you know,
Speaker 7: at the time they were brainwashed and they were under
Speaker 7: his control still, and during the trials they did not testify.
Speaker 7: So not only were they under his influence, they didn't
Speaker 7: really get a chance to say anything. And so you know,
Speaker 7: there are some people today who still claim that you know,
Speaker 7: that they want to get out and you know, Manson
Speaker 7: didn't kill anyone, and they're just saying these things that
Speaker 7: they can.
Speaker 8: Get out of prison.
Speaker 7: But there are details that they've said that really add
Speaker 7: a much clearer picture, a more comprehensive picture of what
Speaker 7: was really going on in the dynamic in that family.
Speaker 7: And that's what we presented in this book.
Speaker 2: Now, especially intriguing is you say these the new parole hearings,
Speaker 2: the subsequent parrole hearings after Helter Skelter was obviously published,
Speaker 2: and that's what people know of. You offer even more
Speaker 2: intimate details of the actual murders themselves, and not only
Speaker 2: the ones that were covered in Helter Skelter, but over
Speaker 2: and beyond. And I say that for the audience that
Speaker 2: even if you thought the details were chilling before, even
Speaker 2: more chilling, even more detailed based on the information that
Speaker 2: you've done in this book, but especially from those parole hearings,
Speaker 2: am I correct from that information?
Speaker 7: What I guess what I'm saying is there are things
Speaker 7: that did not come out of the mouths of these women,
Speaker 7: for example, until like a couple of years ago. So
Speaker 7: for example, Patricia Krimlincole in her twenty and sixteen parole
Speaker 7: hearing for the first time, made an intimate partner battery claim. Now,
Speaker 7: you know, you hear a lot about Oman and you know,
Speaker 7: had sex with these women and there was a lot
Speaker 7: of LSD and you know they were just you know,
Speaker 7: it was the sixties and you know, free love and
Speaker 7: all that. Well, no, not just that he be you know,
Speaker 7: he controlled them by fear and intimidation and violence. So
Speaker 7: she came out and told stories about how, you know,
Speaker 7: he and I don't remember if this all came out
Speaker 7: in twenty sixteen, but I'm just saying that was when
Speaker 7: that official claim was made, which was given a name,
Speaker 7: and that defense wasn't even a defense at the time
Speaker 7: that these trials happened. It came out years later. You know,
Speaker 7: the spousal battery kind of you know defense where you know,
Speaker 7: he beat me and so I was just protecting myself
Speaker 7: that kind of thing. She feared for her life and
Speaker 7: she feared you know, repercussions if she didn't do what
Speaker 7: he said. And so that was her claim, and so
Speaker 7: the the Parole Board actually took it under advisement. They
Speaker 7: went back and they did some investigation for a few months.
Speaker 7: They came back and they said, yes, we find that
Speaker 7: this is true, but you know, you still can't get
Speaker 7: out of prison, and it's still not of you know,
Speaker 7: enough of.
Speaker 8: A reason for us to let you out.
Speaker 7: So my point is there's new information that has actually
Speaker 7: come out only in the last you know, few years,
Speaker 7: even about what actually happened back then, so you didn't
Speaker 7: have a complete picture. We feel like we've filled in
Speaker 7: a lot of those holes to be more comprehensive so
Speaker 7: that you have a better understanding of why did those
Speaker 7: women stay why not only why did they kill for him?
Speaker 7: Why did they stay in that group? You know, what
Speaker 7: power did he have over them? And how did he operate?
Speaker 2: Yeah, as it explains exactly how it was done, how
Speaker 2: they first were lured or influenced, and the kinds of people.
Speaker 2: He was a experienced con man, many years in prison,
Speaker 2: and so he knew who was vulnerable, who he knew
Speaker 2: who to pick on, didn't he right?
Speaker 7: And not just women but men too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, also, some of the highlights of this book
Speaker 2: too are when I say highlights, but I mean the
Speaker 2: whole book is a highlight. But some of the things
Speaker 2: that you welcome that won't be found anywhere else is
Speaker 2: that exclusive interviews with Jason Freeman, the son of Manson's
Speaker 2: first born Charles Mills Manson aka j White for people, right,
Speaker 2: So and this his first wife is Rosalie Willis. What
Speaker 2: kind of information and what kind of surprises and what
Speaker 2: kind of information did you elicit from Jason Freeman and
Speaker 2: those interviews.
Speaker 7: Well, when we were doing this research, one of the
Speaker 7: areas I personally found really intriguing and at least it too,
Speaker 7: was what happened. Now? You know, we hear a lot
Speaker 7: about his quote unquote family. Well, those are not his
Speaker 7: blood relatives. Those are people he troubled, souls he picked
Speaker 7: up along the way. What about his real family? What
Speaker 7: about the people who you know, were his people he
Speaker 7: married and the people the sons that he had turned off.
Speaker 7: He had three sons.
Speaker 8: He had.
Speaker 7: Charles Manson Junior, who who he mentioned as Jay White,
Speaker 7: who went on to have Jason Freeman with a woman
Speaker 7: who he was not married to, and actually initially tried
Speaker 7: to claim that it wasn't his son and fought not
Speaker 7: to have to pay any kind of child support, and
Speaker 7: she took him to court and there was a ruling.
Speaker 7: And I have the court documents which basically show that
Speaker 7: this woman Sean Freeman Matt Charles Manson Jr. Who was
Speaker 7: going by Jay White at the time in a small
Speaker 7: town in Ohio, and he complained that his mother, you know,
Speaker 7: had a boyfriend and I think maybe she was on
Speaker 7: her second husband by then, or a third husband. I mean,
Speaker 7: because there was a White was his stepfather, and that's
Speaker 7: why he has that last name. So she had moved
Speaker 7: on already and moved on to someone else. And apparently,
Speaker 7: you know, he claimed that this stepfather or boyfriend beat him,
Speaker 7: and you know, he was living on the streets, and
Speaker 7: so he moved in with Sean, and then Sean was
Speaker 7: already pregnant with somebody else's baby, but he hung in
Speaker 7: there and they they got pregnant too, and so then
Speaker 7: things kind of fell apart because he had some drug
Speaker 7: and alcohol issues and he was still very young. But
Speaker 7: the biggest problem that he was dealing with in the
Speaker 7: seventies in the early seventies was that Charles Manson was
Speaker 7: on trial and his picture was everywhere and they apparently
Speaker 7: looked alike, and so everywhere he went. He went to
Speaker 7: go get a job, actually, and he had a couple
Speaker 7: of different Social Security cards and he had to keep
Speaker 7: the one that had his real birth name on it,
Speaker 7: and he had to use that one, so people actually
Speaker 7: found out who he was, and so they just kept
Speaker 7: beating him up. So he'd go to a bar and
Speaker 7: he'd just get beaten up. There's a story in the
Speaker 7: book where the bartender basically breaks a bottle over his
Speaker 7: head and it's bleeding. You know, I mean, people they
Speaker 7: just they beat him up because he had the same name.
Speaker 7: So he was very troubled also because he was trying
Speaker 7: to reach out to Charles Manson and there was no response.
Speaker 7: So for many years he was tortured by that. And
Speaker 7: he told Jason about that, and you know, after initially
Speaker 7: saying that it wasn't his kid, he still wanted to
Speaker 7: see him and still wanted to talk to him. But
Speaker 7: Sean tried to kind of keep them apart because she
Speaker 7: didn't think it was good to hear for her son
Speaker 7: to hear all about his father's obsession with, you know,
Speaker 7: wanting to meet his father who was this notorious murderer.
Speaker 7: So maybe there's a lot of stories about that in
Speaker 7: the book, which I thought was pretty interesting. And what's
Speaker 7: more interesting now, you know, we kept updating the book
Speaker 7: as much as we could until the very last minute
Speaker 7: while the battle over his Charles ham Manson's remains. What's
Speaker 7: going on followed that every step of the way, but
Speaker 7: we had to ultimately there had to be a point
Speaker 7: where we had to print the copies of the book.
Speaker 7: So I can't delay how many times that part was
Speaker 7: rewritten because things kept changing. But Jason did actually turn
Speaker 7: out to be a pretty newsworthy figure. So he was
Speaker 7: the one person that I managed to find and did
Speaker 7: speak with him numerous times, and as I said, I
Speaker 7: wanted to make sure he was who he said he was,
Speaker 7: so I had him send me those documents from the
Speaker 7: court showing his father's name on the court records, and
Speaker 7: also ultimately his father ultimately committed suicide, and so, you know,
Speaker 7: I just thought that that was important to show. These
Speaker 7: are the ramifications not only of not only did Manson
Speaker 7: have victims within his own family, these women who have
Speaker 7: been in prison ever since then, he made kill other
Speaker 7: people by brainwashing them and convincing them to do it,
Speaker 7: and it actually convinced them that it was their own idea,
Speaker 7: and that was what they said for many years, that
Speaker 7: this this. You know, he had no responsibility for it
Speaker 7: because he wasn't there. He physically wasn't there, so he
Speaker 7: had them believing that they did all this on their own.
Speaker 7: He wasn't there. They wanted to please him, and so
Speaker 7: they all became his victims as well in a sense.
Speaker 7: I mean, I'm not taking sides with or expressing sympathy,
Speaker 7: but I'm just saying this is how a cult works,
Speaker 7: and that's essentially what the Manson family was was a cult.
Speaker 7: So not only do you have those people in his wake,
Speaker 7: you have the victims who were stabbed and mutilated and
Speaker 7: shot by the family members, and then you also have
Speaker 7: his own blood family members, one of whom obviously committed
Speaker 7: suicide because of all of this fallout, you know, genetically
Speaker 7: and socially, culturally, you know it. It's sad all the
Speaker 7: way around. And I thought that was important to include
Speaker 7: in the book, and I wish that I had been
Speaker 7: able to track down Michael Brunner. He actually contacted me
Speaker 7: pretty recently on Facebook, because that's actually how I managed
Speaker 7: to do some of my research, was to contact people
Speaker 7: through to some of these secret groups on Facebook, and
Speaker 7: you know, they all know, these people know each other,
Speaker 7: and there's still a lot of people who are still
Speaker 7: very obsessed with this case. And anyway, he emailed me
Speaker 7: and I just said, wow, I wish I had been
Speaker 7: able to locate you earlier so that we could have
Speaker 7: interviewed you for the book. And he said, well, that
Speaker 7: was on purpose. So you know, he kind of lost
Speaker 7: out of this last round in the estate battle, but
Speaker 7: he wanted to make sure that, you know, his father's
Speaker 7: remains were not just scattered around for money, and that's
Speaker 7: essentially what's happening now, which you know, that's the way
Speaker 7: after what happened in the book. But turned out that
Speaker 7: Jason Freeman really was a very timely and topical story
Speaker 7: all on his own. But you know, when I interviewed
Speaker 7: him at the time, none of this had happened yet.
Speaker 7: So we managed to get good information from him before
Speaker 7: the spotlight got on him and before there was any
Speaker 7: documentary you know, following him around and all that. So
Speaker 7: I'm proud to say that that chapter happened before all
Speaker 7: this other stuff.
Speaker 2: So long answer to you, we have we have to
Speaker 2: mention so just for those that Michael is the son
Speaker 2: of Mary.
Speaker 7: Burner, all right, Yeah, Mary is the very first family
Speaker 7: member technically, the very first family member that Charles Manson
Speaker 7: met at Berkeley right after he was released from federal
Speaker 7: prison in nineteen sixty seven. He met her apparently on
Speaker 7: the Berkeley campus where she was a librarian, and they
Speaker 7: started living together. And Lynette from who everyone knows is Squeaky,
Speaker 7: she joined them pretty shortly thereafter, so she was number two.
Speaker 7: And Mary quit her job to go on the road
Speaker 7: with Charlie and Lynette and got pregnant, and so Michael Brunner,
Speaker 7: who basically, you know, in Manson's view, the children did
Speaker 7: not really belong to any one person. They were kind
Speaker 7: of it was a communal living situation, and it was
Speaker 7: going to be a group kind of upbringing. So his
Speaker 7: name has changed a number of times. But ultimately, after
Speaker 7: all this happened and his mother had to testify for
Speaker 7: the prosecution to get immunity and what have you, and
Speaker 7: she lost basically control over her own child because the
Speaker 7: child was taken from her and given to her parents.
Speaker 7: So he was brought up actually by his grandparents thinking
Speaker 7: that they were his parents and that Mary was his
Speaker 7: sister for quite some time. And he knows the truth now,
Speaker 7: and he seems like a really nice guy actually, you know,
Speaker 7: just from the emails. He seemed really to have the
Speaker 7: right intentions, and you know, doesn't really seem to have
Speaker 7: a stomach for everything that's been going on with the
Speaker 7: you know, filling the ashes and what have you. It's
Speaker 7: just kind of unfortunate.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. You also provide a more comprehensive understanding of
Speaker 2: how the family's activities progressed how they began. You talk
Speaker 2: about the drug burns. I've read a little bit of this,
Speaker 2: but again this is more detailed. Again, more comprehensive. The
Speaker 2: drug burns and the nighttime creepy crawlers when in preparation.
Speaker 2: This is a form of training of sorts, more detailed.
Speaker 7: People might know drug burns were training. I think the
Speaker 7: creepy crawley things probably were, But the training was more
Speaker 7: at spawn ranch. So he had you know, these sessions,
Speaker 7: he had them working on, you know, building them up
Speaker 7: and trying to get the fear out of them and
Speaker 7: you know, showing.
Speaker 8: He had text teach a class on how to.
Speaker 7: Stab somebody and do the most damage to human tissue
Speaker 7: and and that sort of thing. So the training was
Speaker 7: like trying to get rid of fear and to teach
Speaker 7: them that, you know, some really twisted ideas about you know,
Speaker 7: fear and awareness and you know that you're actually helping
Speaker 7: somebody reach a I don't really understand it, to be honest,
Speaker 7: I somebody might differ with my interpretation because I I,
Speaker 7: I honestly don't really understand this. But there was this
Speaker 7: whole crazy idea about fear and awareness and love and
Speaker 7: you know it it was it was very odd and
Speaker 7: that they were not real people that that that when
Speaker 7: they were actually stabbing these people text Watson later told
Speaker 7: the psychiatrists I was able to get a hold of
Speaker 7: his uh psychiatric records that he he said, you know,
Speaker 7: I didn't feel like they were real. I heard Charlie's
Speaker 7: voice in my head telling me what to do, and
Speaker 7: you know, everybody was running around and to me, it
Speaker 7: sort of sounded like a cartoon in his head because
Speaker 7: he's on hallucinogens, and he's been on hallucinogens for quite
Speaker 7: some time, and so they basically found that he had
Speaker 7: organic brain damage and so he was out there, you know,
Speaker 7: stabbing and shooting everybody, and he said he was basically
Speaker 7: making happy noises and grinting, and it just the whole
Speaker 7: thing was just surreal.
Speaker 8: The way with the horrible it was. It was very
Speaker 8: difficult to have to dive.
Speaker 7: Into this very violent mindset to get those scenes written.
Speaker 7: It was just well, really not pleasant to I don't
Speaker 7: usually get involved with writing books that are this violent,
Speaker 7: but that's we couldn't really, we couldn't avoid that in
Speaker 7: this case, or it would not be telling the truth,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's it's it exposes the mindset which is
Speaker 2: so important to not to understand this because it's beyond comprehension, right,
Speaker 2: don't understand what they were told. And like you talk
Speaker 2: about this fear thing, fear will make us love more
Speaker 2: and then with more fear more love. It's nonsensical. Nonsensical really, it.
Speaker 7: Really makes sense, you know. I mean, but but the
Speaker 7: thing was, you know, he gave him so much LSD
Speaker 7: and he told him this stuff, and they thought he
Speaker 7: was some you know, mystic. You know, he was Jesus
Speaker 7: Christ and he was preaching and they were just going
Speaker 7: to listen and they were going to do what he said.
Speaker 7: And they want, you know, they wanted to shock the.
Speaker 2: World and they did, but very much like a cult,
Speaker 2: they had some of the girls not as compliant. And
Speaker 2: then so when this he when Charlie picked out the
Speaker 2: people to do these murders. He picked out the people
Speaker 2: that were are not going to as you write, not
Speaker 2: going to disobey in any way. They were going to
Speaker 2: follow orders implicitly.
Speaker 7: But that's what he thought, I guess at the time
Speaker 7: when he picked him. Yeah, but I mean Linda Kasabian
Speaker 7: did not follow all the directions, obviously, and she she left,
Speaker 7: She left the scene, and she was outside just screaming stop,
Speaker 7: you know, don't do that. And basically Susan Atkins is like,
Speaker 7: it's too late, you know, and texts. Watson ignored her,
Speaker 7: and the next night Charlie told her to go kill
Speaker 7: some other person and someone she used to be involved with,
Speaker 7: I guess, and told her told her to go to
Speaker 7: this apartment and go kill this guy. And she purposely,
Speaker 7: you know, pretended that it was the wrong apartment and
Speaker 7: the middle of the night and said, oh, no, it's
Speaker 7: the wrong apartment. So I mean it, you know, they
Speaker 7: some of them she said she couldn't do it, yeah,
Speaker 7: and the other ones could so and Patricia Crenwinkle I read,
Speaker 7: I believe it was one of her transcripts from the
Speaker 7: Pearl Hearing. It might have been someplace else or an
Speaker 7: interview with her that she actually did go to the
Speaker 7: guest house and there was you know, the caretaker was
Speaker 7: in there, and she chose not to pursue that. She
Speaker 7: said she just was so tired by that point, she
Speaker 7: didn't have anything left in her and said because she'd
Speaker 7: already stabbed Abby Abigail Folger, yeah, on the grass and
Speaker 7: so and it had helped, you know, with all the
Speaker 7: other ones inside. So she was spent. And so that's
Speaker 7: the reason that William Garrison was still alive. He died recently,
Speaker 7: but his life was spared because she just couldn't do anymore. So,
Speaker 7: you know it, it's a very grizzly story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have included a lot again, more details you'd
Speaker 2: be able to provide about murders that happened before and
Speaker 2: after and we know of the you there has been
Speaker 2: talk at the trial you say there was nine victims
Speaker 2: potential other victims identified, but you said that even Bulagosi
Speaker 2: at that time said there could have been up to
Speaker 2: thirty five. And in this book you provide some other
Speaker 2: details about those other victims and their potential at least
Speaker 2: not up to thirty five, but other victims, other than
Speaker 2: the nine that were registered or the quarterback.
Speaker 7: Right, we didn't have really the space in the book
Speaker 7: to go into as much of this as you know,
Speaker 7: I think we would have liked, but you know, because
Speaker 7: it's not proven, because it never came out in court,
Speaker 7: and you know, it's a little problematic. But up and
Speaker 7: down California, you know, the police in many places we're
Speaker 7: trying to see if they had unsolved cases that were
Speaker 7: linked to the these family members. So you know, I
Speaker 7: there's a there's a spot in the book where I
Speaker 7: kind of list some generically in a sentence or two.
Speaker 7: There were and I don't remember, to be honest at
Speaker 7: this point without looking at the book, if even if
Speaker 7: they even ended up in that sentence, But I can
Speaker 7: tell you what from my memory. There were two scientology
Speaker 7: students in LA who were found. And the reason that
Speaker 7: a lot of these that they did name and the
Speaker 7: police did talk about and there was news coverage of
Speaker 7: some of these, the reason they thought these were linked
Speaker 7: was because they were stabbed so many times and that
Speaker 7: that was pretty usual and that's not you know, that's
Speaker 7: not a common way to kill somebody. And this is
Speaker 7: at right around the same time, in the same general
Speaker 7: geographical area. But there was there was a those two
Speaker 7: students there were stabbed. God, I can't even remember some
Speaker 7: like fifty times or something crazy like that. There was
Speaker 7: a I just did an interview with a documentary last
Speaker 7: week about the Marina Hobbe murder, which was in December,
Speaker 7: late December of sixty eight, and she was seventeen and
Speaker 7: her body was found off Mulholland Drive against stabbed. And
Speaker 7: then there was Jane of number fifty nine, whose body
Speaker 7: was found also off Molan Mulholland Drive, and that was
Speaker 7: in the following November and they didn't know who she
Speaker 7: was for forty six years. So yeah, that she was
Speaker 7: just pretty recently identified as ret Jervitsen and she was
Speaker 7: dabbed one hundred and fifty seven times. So it's crazy,
Speaker 7: you know. But see, the thing is to me, you know,
Speaker 7: I didn't fight to put more than that into the
Speaker 7: book because sorry, I need some water, because they seem
Speaker 7: tangential to me. I can't say for sure either way
Speaker 7: that they were Manson family victims or not. Yes, they
Speaker 7: were in the same general area, Yes they were in
Speaker 7: the same timeframe. But Riete Jervidsen the time of that murder.
Speaker 7: Manson and the family members who did the other killings
Speaker 7: were all in jail, right, So I don't know about
Speaker 7: text Watson when he was let go. Honestly, they were
Speaker 7: arrested in October, but if if anything, you know, he
Speaker 7: was probably in Texas by that point. So Bruce Davis
Speaker 7: was still wandering around. And so you know, there are
Speaker 7: people who are still trying to put these you know,
Speaker 7: links together and say that these are related. But you know,
Speaker 7: part of the reason that they're doing that is because
Speaker 7: Manson bragged to one of the ranch hands that there
Speaker 7: were as many as you know, thirty five victims. Susan
Speaker 7: Atkins and Leslie Van Houghton both mentioned the number of
Speaker 7: eleven murders. Now we still only know of nine for sure, right,
Speaker 7: so that's even two more. Then there's a guy out
Speaker 7: in the desert. His name is Paul Dosti. He's a
Speaker 7: retired Argist police sergeant who has made it his life's
Speaker 7: work essentially to use his cadaver dog, who has since
Speaker 7: passed away. His name was Buster, went out into the desert.
Speaker 7: And this is a dog trained to find not the recently.
Speaker 8: Dead, but the old dead.
Speaker 7: And they can smell these chemicals and these results were
Speaker 7: confirmed actually by scientific devices developed by these these people
Speaker 7: and there this is all in the book too, who
Speaker 7: went out there and basically they were able to detect
Speaker 7: chemicals that are found in the earth from human decomposition.
Speaker 7: So you know, obviously they've decompensated. It's been fifty years,
Speaker 7: but they are these these things are still in there.
Speaker 7: And the dog alerted at five different places. This is
Speaker 7: where they were camping out and when they were finally
Speaker 7: arrested near Barker and Myers Ranches in Dath Valley. And
Speaker 7: so they're you know, Paul Dosti's pretty sure, and so
Speaker 7: it's his partner, our pad boss, that there are five
Speaker 7: bodies out there.
Speaker 8: These there are stories.
Speaker 7: About you know, young kids who were kind of hanging
Speaker 7: around the family and disappeared very oddly, suspiciously, didn't come back.
Speaker 7: So they're thinking that maybe two of them or two
Speaker 7: of those, and who knows who the other three are.
Speaker 7: And then you know, and then there are others that
Speaker 7: are we've mentioned in the book as well that could
Speaker 7: be linked, may may or may not be, but there,
Speaker 7: you know, that's a number that's been out there, thirty
Speaker 7: five and we don't know who the rest are, honestly,
Speaker 7: so who knows? And Manson went to his grave basically
Speaker 7: denying killing anyone, so we may never know.
Speaker 2: You include the details about Gary Henman, a mussession friend,
Speaker 2: and it's important because it just shows the barbarity of
Speaker 2: this family to turn on somebody that they knew. And
Speaker 2: even through it is it's he almost thinks it's a
Speaker 2: joke or he's trying to talk these people into that
Speaker 2: it's ridiculous what they're doing. But this is really chilling
Speaker 2: information about the murder of Gary Henman mm hms and
Speaker 2: also Bernard Crowe too as well. Right, these are details
Speaker 2: that yeah, go ahead, Now these details didn't help where
Speaker 2: I mean, how is it a result that you've got
Speaker 2: Where did you get those results of those from the
Speaker 2: parole hearings or how did that research get you that information?
Speaker 7: Well, what we did with this research is, you know,
Speaker 7: we approached it like cold case investigators, and basically what
Speaker 7: was important was to try to say something different if
Speaker 7: we could. You know, everyone's like, well, why Man's and
Speaker 7: why you know there's fifty books out there already, and
Speaker 7: I'm like, well, okay, normally when I do a book,
Speaker 7: they're pretty new, and there may be one other book
Speaker 7: out there. You know, there's been a lot of news articles.
Speaker 7: So this really was a huge challenge to try to
Speaker 7: do something different. So, you know, we purposely did not
Speaker 7: read Helter Skilter, so I don't want to be like
Speaker 7: accidentally copying somebody else's stuff. So we just basically, I
Speaker 7: had to get all of the original source materials, so
Speaker 7: so we could you know, look at it and review
Speaker 7: it and come up with our own conclusions and that way,
Speaker 7: you know, And I didn't didn't interview. We didn't interview
Speaker 7: Vincent Bugliosi because he was dead. And that's the other
Speaker 7: thing with the challenge of this the research in this case,
Speaker 7: you know, we didn't have access, but it's it's kind
Speaker 7: of a miracle that have this much detail, to be honest,
Speaker 7: But I've had a lot of practice, and this was
Speaker 7: even a brand new approach because it was so difficult.
Speaker 7: The LAPD and the La County Sheriff's Department would not cooperate.
Speaker 7: I initially thought they were the Sheriff's department was going
Speaker 7: to let us look at They said they had thirty
Speaker 7: boxes of you know, photos and reports and stuff that
Speaker 7: I could come in with my coffee machine and start
Speaker 7: to work and then next thing you know, I'm county
Speaker 7: council put the kebash on that, and I'm getting, you know,
Speaker 7: a call from a lieutenant saying no, sorry, no.
Speaker 8: I'm like, oh really, Oh I thought we were.
Speaker 7: Gonna come, and it's like no, no.
Speaker 8: So you know, that's a mystery to me.
Speaker 7: Why we're doing a historical book and we're trying to
Speaker 7: be accurate and thorough. Why can't we look at stuff
Speaker 7: that's sitting there. You know, I haven't had that problem
Speaker 7: with other cases I've written about. You know, I've got
Speaker 7: to judge, prosecutor whatever I need. You know, they'll talk
Speaker 7: to me. But in this case, people were either dead
Speaker 7: or they said no. So it was very, very difficult.
Speaker 7: So what ended up finally happening is I managed to
Speaker 7: meet somebody one of these, like I said, these Facebook groups,
Speaker 7: who said, hey, you know, you should try the DA's office.
Speaker 7: I never have gotten information from a DA's office unless
Speaker 7: it was an ongoing trial or something. And then you know,
Speaker 7: they've got a case going and they want to help
Speaker 7: the media an author, you know that's they will, but
Speaker 7: not after thet I've never really other than interviews. I've
Speaker 7: never thought to go to get documents or whatever, but
Speaker 7: in this case that's what that was. They were the
Speaker 7: keeper of the documents. So what I ended up getting
Speaker 7: was some some discs of information, and they were basically
Speaker 7: all the exhibits in pictures which were not reproducible. They
Speaker 7: were pretty bad. They were mostly xerox copies of photos
Speaker 7: and that sort of thing, but a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 7: And then there was like partial transcripts, partial grand jury transcripts,
Speaker 7: partial trial transcripts. And the main problem is they were
Speaker 7: all watermarked, which meant if you printed them out you
Speaker 7: would have big gaps on your paper, so we couldn't
Speaker 7: use a copy of you know, regular printer. And they
Speaker 7: weren't searchable either, so basically I couldn't do a keyword search,
Speaker 7: and they were not organized or indexed, and so there
Speaker 7: was a massive number, you know, just I don't know
Speaker 7: how many thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of
Speaker 7: trial transcripts, but a lot of them were missing. So honestly,
Speaker 7: this was the biggest challenge to try to make sense
Speaker 7: of all this and under deadline. But the Gary Hinman stuff,
Speaker 7: there was a lot of detail. Actually Mary Brunner testified
Speaker 7: to the grand jury, and she testified. I think she
Speaker 7: testified to the grand jury. I might be remembering that wrong,
Speaker 7: and I'm pretty sure, yeah, she was at the grand jury.
Speaker 7: And then she also gave interviews which were included I know,
Speaker 7: I'm sorry. The two detectives that interviewed her, they testified
Speaker 7: before the gran jury, and that's why I got a
Speaker 7: lot of a lot of that. And then she also
Speaker 7: had an interview with what's his name, the original prosecutor
Speaker 7: who was taken off the case, Aaron. I can't remember
Speaker 7: his name anyway. There were so that on those various
Speaker 7: discs from the DA's office, there were little treasure troves
Speaker 7: of pretty detailed information, which then you know, we're able
Speaker 7: to craft into a scene which is pretty detailed and
Speaker 7: so and that way. You know, I didn't read anybody
Speaker 7: else's book to say, you know that read that that's
Speaker 7: going to be very similar to so and so's book,
Speaker 7: because I don't I don't know how other people work,
Speaker 7: but that's you know, you take a lot of stuff
Speaker 7: from a lot of places and you weave narrative narrative
Speaker 7: nonfiction together, and that's what we did in this case.
Speaker 7: And so that was the product of that's the technique.
Speaker 7: Thank god it was on those discs, I guess otherwise. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and Leth went to the parole hearing for tex Watson
Speaker 7: and she met Gary Hinman's cousin. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 7: we talked to her too for something you know, more
Speaker 7: current and a little bit more of the family background.
Speaker 2: You include right in the beginning of the book that
Speaker 2: Charlie's in Corcoran State Prison where he's spent the last
Speaker 2: bunch of his years, thirty of his last years of
Speaker 2: all of his prison stint. But you offer that you
Speaker 2: introduce a young woman at Charlie gives a name Star Manson.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about Afton Elaine Burton as
Speaker 2: a seventeen year old, and why you included this story,
Speaker 2: and what is included in this story in your mind,
Speaker 2: what does it illustrate or demonstrate.
Speaker 8: Well, one of the sources that I found was.
Speaker 7: In the prologue there's a woman who's not named. I
Speaker 7: was able to interview her, and so she.
Speaker 8: Told me.
Speaker 7: Quite a bit about what happened that day, first person
Speaker 7: eyewitnessed account. And the other last thing is when I
Speaker 7: wrote Lost Girls and interviewed John Gardner.
Speaker 8: This was sort of a weird.
Speaker 7: Thing that happened, but I arranged to go on a
Speaker 7: Saturday to interview John Gardner, who was in the same
Speaker 7: unit as Charles Manson, and his mother told me that
Speaker 7: Charles Manson usually had visitors on a Saturday, So I
Speaker 7: purposely went on a Saturday to try to see if
Speaker 7: maybe Charles Manson might be in the visiting room when
Speaker 7: I went to go interview John Gardner, and they were
Speaker 7: actually friends for a while. In fact, Charlie was telling
Speaker 7: John Gardner, Hey, you know, you ought to sell some
Speaker 7: of your stuff online. You can make some money that way,
Speaker 7: some of your belongings or whatever. And that ended up
Speaker 7: turning into a whole thing where John Gardner autographed a
Speaker 7: copy of Lost Girls, which caused all this commotion, and
Speaker 7: he did it on the page that was dedicated to
Speaker 7: the victims, and it was just like, oh God, John Gardner,
Speaker 7: why did you do that? Honestly I did not, you know,
Speaker 7: and it was being sold on a murder of billious site.
Speaker 7: But basically they were friends. Charlie Manson had John Gardner
Speaker 7: read his mail and set and sign his name because
Speaker 7: Charlie had reading problems. I'm pretty sure just my layman's
Speaker 7: diagnosis that he probably had either dyslexy or some sort
Speaker 7: of reading disability because he wasn't really able to read.
Speaker 7: So we had other people. But anyway, I had actually
Speaker 7: been in that room. So I had this woman who
Speaker 7: I interviewed, and I had already also been in that room,
Speaker 7: So it was I was able to create this scene
Speaker 7: from you know, first person observations, and so we thought
Speaker 7: that that was an important scene because number one, it
Speaker 7: showed that even at his age, I think it's time
Speaker 7: he was with something like seventy nine years old. I
Speaker 7: think the day that that visit happened, and she was
Speaker 7: twenty seven, I think or twenty four, I can't remember,
Speaker 7: twenty probably twenty four, but the huge you know, he
Speaker 7: was more than three times age, right, So basically that
Speaker 7: was the point. And he was still able to influence
Speaker 7: young women even with the way he looked, you know,
Speaker 7: and I saw pictures of him and he was not handsome,
Speaker 7: you know, he was you know, kind of you know,
Speaker 7: kind of cute and mischievous when he was young, and
Speaker 7: you know, he got a lot of women, but a
Speaker 7: lot of the women that he that he got into
Speaker 7: the family were kind of homely looking. If you look
Speaker 7: at the pictures, there are some pretty ones, but mostly
Speaker 7: he really, you know, Patricia Cranwinkle was not pretty. She
Speaker 7: looked like kind of like a boy, you know, or man.
Speaker 7: And so anyways, Star was drawn to him when she
Speaker 7: was only seventeen. She heard about him from a friend
Speaker 7: for his environmental activism, and so she basically moved across
Speaker 7: the country to Corkoran so that she could visit him.
Speaker 7: So they started writing letters and then she moved there,
Speaker 7: and you know, they were together for what seven years,
Speaker 7: and they were supposed to get married. She went and
Speaker 7: got them a marriage license so that they could actually
Speaker 7: get married in the prisons. And so we thought that
Speaker 7: that was pretty significant to show the dynamic and that
Speaker 7: he was still at it and still able to do it.
Speaker 7: And also because I just thought that that was such
Speaker 7: a poignant moment where they're dancing together in the visiting room.
Speaker 7: It's very just very visual, and it just stuck and
Speaker 7: stuck in my head and thought, I just thought that
Speaker 7: readers would really relate to that somehow. And she became,
Speaker 7: you know, his She was one of the very few
Speaker 7: important people that he could rely on. And depend on
Speaker 7: to do his work on the outside. And so there's
Speaker 7: another guy named Gray Wolf who smuggled in some cell
Speaker 7: phones to him and finally got caught enough times that
Speaker 7: he was banned from the prison, couldn't come back anymore,
Speaker 7: but she could still come and so she was working
Speaker 7: on the at w A website, which was something that
Speaker 7: Sandra Good had and her partner had started some years earlier. Basically,
Speaker 7: you know, Manson saying that the same thing that he
Speaker 7: said before, which is that the rich white people are
Speaker 7: destroying the planet, and look where we are today. So
Speaker 7: you know, it's you know, and there was the whole
Speaker 7: thing about at w A. It's a nonprofit, it's a
Speaker 7: one five oh one c three that she and this
Speaker 7: guy gray Wolf set up basically, you know, on Manson's behalf.
Speaker 7: But Manson is not mentioned anywhere. So the whole thing
Speaker 7: about putting her in the book was number one, to
Speaker 7: show that Manson was still capable of getting young women
Speaker 7: and influencing them. Number two, that he could get them
Speaker 7: to fall in love with him and do what he said.
Speaker 7: Number three, that he still had people on the outside
Speaker 7: doing what he wanted them to do. And in this case,
Speaker 7: you know, change his image, tell everyone that he was
Speaker 7: wrongfully convicted, you know, like a pr person almost, you know.
Speaker 7: And then you know he wanted them to plant trees
Speaker 7: and do things like that. So I thought it was
Speaker 7: I thought she was pretty important. I was not able
Speaker 7: to get her to talk to us.
Speaker 8: I tried.
Speaker 7: I went through various people who all knew her, called
Speaker 7: her on the phone, and she just kept saying no.
Speaker 7: So I did find though, some interviews with her online
Speaker 7: where I could actually hear her speaking, and I could,
Speaker 7: you know, we could quote her directly, use her own words.
Speaker 7: And there was you know, some obviously a lot of
Speaker 7: news articles and media attention on her and Rolling Stone
Speaker 7: and various other places. So she was the most recent
Speaker 7: of his women, you know. So there you have it.
Speaker 2: You talk about that before the Gary Hinman murder, that Mary,
Speaker 2: Bobby and Sadie had no history of violence. And then
Speaker 2: in the book you go into even more detail than
Speaker 2: I've read, and say Diane Lake's book about the techniques,
Speaker 2: how he started, how the brainwashing. We've mentioned brainwashing, but
Speaker 2: what are the details of Brainwashington? And that's what you
Speaker 2: provide in this on how it started and how it
Speaker 2: became and What I found very interesting too, is that
Speaker 2: the people that were seemed to be reluctant when they
Speaker 2: tried to leave, like Katie, they were Manson instituted a
Speaker 2: lot that no one could leave alone. So he didn't
Speaker 2: trust those people that didn't trust him one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: As he became more paranoid, and as he became more
Speaker 2: delusional about this idea of going underground and Death Valley,
Speaker 2: and his idea that the Black Panthers the Black Man
Speaker 2: would rise. And so you provide more details of exactly
Speaker 2: how he seduced these women and these men.
Speaker 7: Right. A couple other things though, that I think are
Speaker 7: important to mention. We tried to really get down to
Speaker 7: a real analysis of motive. So part of the reason
Speaker 7: and it took a while to get this right. We
Speaker 7: had to kind of reorganize the book until this made sense.
Speaker 7: And what we ended up deciding is that doing it
Speaker 7: strictly chronologically so that these murders that people really don't
Speaker 7: know about that you know, it's not like nobody knew
Speaker 7: about it, But I'm just saying they're not the ones
Speaker 7: that people commonly think of as Manson murders. The Gary
Speaker 7: hinmanman and the attempted murder of Bernard Crowe and then
Speaker 7: the one after which is of Shorty Shae the ranch hand.
Speaker 7: These are you know, the not the high profile murders
Speaker 7: that everybody thinks of, you know, with regard to this case.
Speaker 7: But when you read them and the domino start following falling,
Speaker 7: and you can sort of understand that, you know, this
Speaker 7: helter skelter thing that Bugliosi focused on in court in
Speaker 7: order to win this case. Yes, there was there was
Speaker 7: something the helter skelter idea where yeah, they're going to
Speaker 7: go under ground, go out.
Speaker 8: Into the desert.
Speaker 7: And this is Charlie's crazy idea, which is actually not
Speaker 7: even his own original thought. You know, it's based on
Speaker 7: his his ideas melding the Beatle lyrics and the parts
Speaker 7: of the Bible and the Krishna Venta cult which operated
Speaker 7: or what was left of it operated actually just a
Speaker 7: few miles away from Spawn Ranch, which also you know,
Speaker 7: the guy Krishna Venta also talked about taking people out
Speaker 7: to the desert, to this bottomless pit and there would
Speaker 7: be one hundred and forty four thousand chosen people. And
Speaker 7: you know this is all from the Bible. So all
Speaker 7: these rantings that Manson told the family and that that Bugliosi.
Speaker 8: This was how he was able to get.
Speaker 7: Manson convicted a murder as part of the conspiracy. Since
Speaker 7: he was physically not at most of these murders, we
Speaker 7: really wanted to get to motive and and in order
Speaker 7: to understand that there was more than one motive. That's
Speaker 7: why the Gary Henman, that's why the Bernard Crow, That's
Speaker 7: why those early murders are important because it shows, you know,
Speaker 7: some of these other these other theories that are out,
Speaker 7: they're not really theories. They they are other motives that
Speaker 7: that play into this that that just did not come
Speaker 7: out in court. So we thought that was very important.
Speaker 7: And so it shows when he when they go there
Speaker 7: to the Henman house to go get money so that
Speaker 7: that'll subsidize the move out to the desert, and he
Speaker 7: didn't have any money, so they end up killing him.
Speaker 7: And you know, initially Bobby Bosley is the one who
Speaker 7: actually stabbed Gary Henman. He's changed his story a number
Speaker 7: of times, but you know, he claims he called up
Speaker 7: the branch and talked to Manson, and Manson said, you
Speaker 7: know what you need to do, and so he stabbed him.
Speaker 7: But you know, the thing was that these other murders,
Speaker 7: there are people in the family who say, well, we
Speaker 7: did that so we could get Garrett, we could get
Speaker 7: Bobby Busley out of jail because he was being held
Speaker 7: on the murder of Gary Hinman. And if we made
Speaker 7: it look like the Black Panthers did these other murders
Speaker 7: by painting these messages in blood of pigs and rise
Speaker 7: and helter skelter like they did at at the Tay
Speaker 7: and La Bianca houses, we can show that make it
Speaker 7: look like there's somebody still out there who actually did this.
Speaker 7: And you know, Bobby was in jail when these other
Speaker 7: murders were committed, So you know, it's a whole other
Speaker 7: motive for why not just helter skelter, which is pretty
Speaker 7: crazy set of you know ideas as a way to
Speaker 7: you know, make these people do these crazy things that
Speaker 7: are seemed pretty inexplicable. Why that would be a motive.
Speaker 7: So it's helped part of the big mix.
Speaker 5: And so.
Speaker 7: You know, talking about each of the murders and then
Speaker 7: and how they were done and in detail in the
Speaker 7: drug burn with Bernard Crow that Tex Watson did, which
Speaker 7: Charlie ended up being involved in as well, and he
Speaker 7: ended up shooting this guy in the stomach. Had to
Speaker 7: be included in the whole case because it showed that
Speaker 7: Manson was capable of shooting somebody since he wasn't at
Speaker 7: all the other scenes. And by now I've forgotten your
Speaker 7: original question.
Speaker 2: Well that's it was a statement basically, but you've covered
Speaker 2: a few things here certainly with that. No, I mean
Speaker 2: that's what I was trying to get to listen from
Speaker 2: you too, was that what the purpose of that was,
Speaker 2: to show the mindset even before the Tate and La
Speaker 2: Bianca murders, Right, And then I guess.
Speaker 7: I guess one other place that I was going to
Speaker 7: go is the brainwashing you had mentioned earlier, how how
Speaker 7: that happened and why? And I want to I want
Speaker 7: to get to the mental illness because Lisa and I
Speaker 7: really felt that that was important, that that really has
Speaker 7: not been explored as much as as we think it
Speaker 7: should have, you know, and this happened a lot in
Speaker 7: trial cases even today, where the prosecutors always say, you
Speaker 7: know this this defendant is evil. Well, yes, these were horrible, heinous,
Speaker 7: brutal killings. But you know, if you're someone like me
Speaker 7: who has a psychology background and has covered prisons and
Speaker 7: mental illness and how addiction often plays into killings. You know,
Speaker 7: he was mentally ill. The guy has been was until
Speaker 7: he died, classified as a mentally ill inmate. He was
Speaker 7: at Vacaville for a dozen years. He was in there
Speaker 7: with all these crazy people. He was diagnosed with aspects
Speaker 7: of schizophrenia. He was paranoid, he had personality disorders, and on.
Speaker 8: Top of all of that, he took all those crazy drugs.
Speaker 8: And so you know, was he crazy or was he
Speaker 8: crazy like a fox?
Speaker 7: I don't know that it matters, but I mean, if
Speaker 7: you've listened to him, you know, his ideas kind of
Speaker 7: flow into each other. There was a guy when I
Speaker 7: went to UC Berkeley. He was called the Polka Dot Man.
Speaker 7: And I sat down and I talked to him one day,
Speaker 7: because you know, I was a psychology major and I
Speaker 7: was really into all this and fascinated by all this.
Speaker 7: And I sat down talked to him one day and
Speaker 7: he said, yeah, I'm schizophrenic, and I don't like the
Speaker 7: way the pills make me feel because I have all
Speaker 7: this stuff in my head and the pills basically just
Speaker 7: keeps it all inside my head. But I still have
Speaker 7: it all bouncing around in this way. If I don't
Speaker 7: take the pills, it can come out physically, but the
Speaker 7: pills keep it trapped. Well. So while Manson was out,
Speaker 7: you know, he was obviously, you know, not taking any
Speaker 7: kind of medicaid for any of these and even I
Speaker 7: think when he was in prison they did medicate him
Speaker 7: at least while he was at.
Speaker 8: Vacaville, because he's talked about that.
Speaker 7: So you know, he has a lot of these ideas,
Speaker 7: and when you listen to him. There's a section in
Speaker 7: the book from one of his Pearl hearings which gives
Speaker 7: you a really good idea about how these ideas kind
Speaker 7: of roll into each other when he's talking, and it's
Speaker 7: almost poetic. But it's also like a schizophrenic. If you've
Speaker 7: ever talked to a schizophrenic or listened to a schizophrenic,
Speaker 7: which I don't think most people have, but I have personally,
Speaker 7: that's what it sounds like. And so, you know, crazy
Speaker 7: is kind of a bad term. It's just the way
Speaker 7: his mind works, and so people thought he was mystical,
Speaker 7: and people were mesmerized by the way he talked and
Speaker 7: the ideas that came out of his mouth, and that's
Speaker 7: part of what brainwashing was, especially when they were on LSD,
Speaker 7: because what he said became had much more relevance, and
Speaker 7: he you know, pulled it all together and into this
Speaker 7: whole crazy idea of going to the desert and finding
Speaker 7: this bottomless pit and this and that, and so when
Speaker 7: you look at all of those things, it's the totality
Speaker 7: of all of those factors together of what he was
Speaker 7: doing to them with fear, intimidation, with sex, with drugs,
Speaker 7: with these you know, mystical quote unquote rants about what
Speaker 7: was going to happen, and the fear and the brainwashing techniques,
Speaker 7: and then the classes on stabbing. I mean, these people,
Speaker 7: you know, basically did whatever whatever he told them to
Speaker 7: do because he trained them. I mean, if you've studied
Speaker 7: any kind of cult, that's what they do. They bring
Speaker 7: you in, come join the group. You know, these are
Speaker 7: lost people who are looking for some direction. They're looking
Speaker 7: for somebody to give them the answers. They're looking for
Speaker 7: somebody to tell them what to do with their lives,
Speaker 7: to give their lives. Meaning, these were a lot of
Speaker 7: young people who had problems with their parents, with their mothers,
Speaker 7: with their fathers. Some of them were sexually molested. A
Speaker 7: number of the men and women were you know, Bruce
Speaker 7: Davis was was raped and molested when he was young,
Speaker 7: and so was Charlie. Charlie was raped by these kids
Speaker 7: in prison when he was not prison, I'm sorry, in
Speaker 7: the institutions when he was growing up, because he was
Speaker 7: in juvenile facilities from the time he was a teenager
Speaker 7: until the time he got out and met Rosalie Willis.
Speaker 7: It was the first She was the first woman he'd
Speaker 7: ever had sex with. He'd been having sex with boys
Speaker 7: for you know, five years before that, so it's really
Speaker 7: interesting that, you know, he was institutionalized and all of
Speaker 7: that became part of his whole thing, and the Dale Carnegie,
Speaker 7: Norman Vincent Peale scientology and then Stranger from a Strange
Speaker 7: Land Robert Heinland. Those concepts, books and ideas he picked
Speaker 7: up also while he was in prison. So by the
Speaker 7: time he gets out, he's got this whole like mythology
Speaker 7: built up in his mind about this stuff that he's
Speaker 7: preaching to these people. And I have to say, you know,
Speaker 7: it must have been it must have been pretty provocative
Speaker 7: and pretty powerful because it caused these people to go
Speaker 7: kill other people.
Speaker 8: So that's a one of.
Speaker 2: The surprising things is for people, I think, and there's
Speaker 2: it's been explored a little bit, but you do that,
Speaker 2: you talk about it. Here is the Terry Melcher producer.
Speaker 2: Charles Manson is an adequate musician, singer, songwriter. I've even
Speaker 2: heard the material Surprise, surprised, and they were taking him
Speaker 2: somewhat seriously. If you think, you know top guys in
Speaker 2: the LA scene at that time in sixty eight, tell
Speaker 2: us about Terry Melcher, the house and any thing that
Speaker 2: you discovered that was again you didn't read Helter Skelter
Speaker 2: in preparation for this, But what did you find about
Speaker 2: the Terry Melcher and that motive in that house and
Speaker 2: that producer?
Speaker 7: Well, you know, there's a lot of different theories. There's
Speaker 7: a lot of different things that have been said. He
Speaker 7: Charles Manson had been to that house before number one,
Speaker 7: which I didn't know before I got involved with this book.
Speaker 7: He had gone over there and this came out in
Speaker 7: testimony in court testimony. He went over there. He had
Speaker 7: met the guy who owned the house at Dennis Wilson's house,
Speaker 7: So Tex Watson picked up Dennis Wilson hitchhiking one day,
Speaker 7: went back to the Pacific Palisades, dropped him off and
Speaker 7: Dennis was like, oh, come on inside my house. So
Speaker 7: he did, and that's how Tex Watson met Manson. Well,
Speaker 7: so Manson next thing you know is he's moving all
Speaker 7: these young girls in with Dennis Wilson because he's like, oh,
Speaker 7: here's my ticket.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: So while he was at Dennis Wilson's house, Terry Melcher
Speaker 7: came over. Music producer. Uh, this guy who owned the
Speaker 7: house on Cielo Drive, whose name.
Speaker 8: Is Rudy Altabelli, he was over there.
Speaker 7: He was a talent manager and some other people who
Speaker 7: were involved in the music business. So you know, he
Speaker 7: was hanging around with these movers and shakers in the
Speaker 7: Hollywood movie and music industry. And Charlie really really wanted
Speaker 7: to be a rock star. He wanted to record his
Speaker 7: songs in the he wanted he loved to sing. He
Speaker 7: had written a lot of songs in federal prison, and
Speaker 7: he wanted other people to hear him. And so Terry Melcher,
Speaker 7: there was another guy who worked for Terry Melcher who
Speaker 7: was also involved in this story, who basically convinced Terry
Speaker 7: to come over to the to spawn Ranch and listen
Speaker 7: to this you know, unusual group with Charlie Manson, who
Speaker 7: Terry had already met at Demis Wilson's house.
Speaker 8: So he agreed to go over there.
Speaker 7: And and you know, he listened, and I guess he
Speaker 7: wasn't all that impressed. But Charlie thought that he had
Speaker 7: promised him a record deal and then thought that he
Speaker 7: had renicked down them, so he went over to He
Speaker 7: knew that Terry Melcher lived at the Clo Drive house.
Speaker 7: Tex Watson also knew that Terry Melcher had lived in
Speaker 7: that house, and Terry had actually borrowed.
Speaker 8: Terry's car and credit cards.
Speaker 7: So I mean, there's actually more that I wasn't really
Speaker 7: able to find out that because there's just so many
Speaker 7: different theories and I'm not really sure on what's credible
Speaker 7: what is and but I do know that they knew
Speaker 7: each other, and so ter Terry had lived there before
Speaker 7: Sharon Tate and Roman Polanskin. You know, he basically gave
Speaker 7: them I don't know if it was like a sublease
Speaker 7: or basically just he moved and said, why don't you
Speaker 7: guys move in? So Charlie came over in March of
Speaker 7: sixty nine, and went to go find Rudy else Belly
Speaker 7: in the guest house or was looking for him. I
Speaker 7: don't know what he said exactly, but there was a
Speaker 7: photographer over there shooting Sharon Tate, and he came out
Speaker 7: and talked to Charlie who was just wandering around the
Speaker 7: front yard, and basically the guy said, you're looking for
Speaker 7: whoever's in the guest house. And so Charlie went to
Speaker 7: the guest house and no one was there. So he
Speaker 7: came back that night talked to Rudy and he wanted
Speaker 7: to know where Terry Melcher was. You know, he knew
Speaker 7: he wasn't living there anymore, but he wanted to know
Speaker 7: where he was, and Rudy wouldn't tell him. Well, when
Speaker 7: he came over in the afternoon, Sharon Tate actually came
Speaker 7: to the door and was like, what's going on, and
Speaker 7: so he actually looked her eye to eye. There was actually,
Speaker 7: you know, so he knew who was in that house
Speaker 7: and he knew it wasn't Terry Melcher.
Speaker 8: So there are people who say, oh, he.
Speaker 7: Went to the house. He told them to go to
Speaker 7: the house because he knew that, you know, he wanted
Speaker 7: them to kill Terry Melcher. Well, he knew that Terry
Speaker 7: wasn't there, so that's not true. But what we think
Speaker 7: is credible thing is that you know this other statement,
Speaker 7: which is that he said basically that go kill the
Speaker 7: people who live at Terry's house now or the house
Speaker 7: where Terry used to live. Just go kill him and
Speaker 7: get as much money as you can and then go
Speaker 7: to every house on the street and don't come back
Speaker 7: until you have at least six hundred dollars. And that
Speaker 7: was the mission that night. And so you know there
Speaker 7: are people today who were like, well, it was revenge.
Speaker 7: That's probably partially true. Susan Atkins told her lawyers that
Speaker 7: that house represented a symbol of rejection for Charlie because
Speaker 7: he felt it that Terry Melcher renegged on him. But
Speaker 7: you know, more overall globally, he wanted he wanted to
Speaker 7: kill the beautiful people. He wanted to make a statement,
Speaker 7: He wanted to shock the world because he felt like
Speaker 7: the white people were destroying society. And that's where this
Speaker 7: whole race war thing came from. The black people, you know,
Speaker 7: the Muslim black Muslims and the black Panthers were all
Speaker 7: already out, you know, causing their movement, you know, and
Speaker 7: so he said, they're already out there doing it, and
Speaker 7: so they're going to keep doing it, and then we're
Speaker 7: gonna go to the desert. They're going to join us
Speaker 7: out there in the desert, and then you know, when
Speaker 7: they're done killing everybody, then they're going to make me
Speaker 7: their leader, because they're not going to know how to
Speaker 7: lead themselves. So that it's a crazy theory, but there
Speaker 7: are actually parts of it that that do make sense.
Speaker 7: But I think, you know, he sent them to that
Speaker 7: house because he wanted to kill the rich, beautiful white
Speaker 7: people who he knew now occupied that space. And there
Speaker 7: may be more to it than that. There's also another
Speaker 7: thing that we mentioned in the Alternative Theories chapter in
Speaker 7: the book, where Manson has had had later and and
Speaker 7: since and was still telling friends of his that he
Speaker 7: went actually after text Watson and the girls came back
Speaker 7: and they told them what happened. He was really upset
Speaker 7: that they made such a mess, and so he went
Speaker 7: back that night, later that night to clean up quote
Speaker 7: unquote and see what his children quote unquote had done.
Speaker 7: And then so there, you know, supposedly he left some
Speaker 7: glasses there, He moved the bodies around. It's possible that
Speaker 7: he went there with someone else. We don't know who
Speaker 7: that is, because it does say in the police reports
Speaker 7: that the bodies uh See Bring, Jacy Bring and Sharon
Speaker 7: Tate's bodies appear to have been moved, So that actually
Speaker 7: does match what Charlie was saying later, I'm gonna have
Speaker 7: to I'm gonna have to get going pretty soon. So
Speaker 7: let's see if you have any last one or two questions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the thing is in the epilogue. It
Speaker 2: was very interesting, and I mentioned it in the introduction
Speaker 2: as well, that you said the social and political context
Speaker 2: that gave ride to Manson is eerily similar to today.
Speaker 7: How you know, the whole time that we were working
Speaker 7: on this book, I just kept feeling and I feel
Speaker 7: it even more so today that we were in nineteen
Speaker 7: sixty seven. And then the longer the longer this has
Speaker 7: gone on, with this administration that we have now, it
Speaker 7: just seems like there's more and more political divide, there's
Speaker 7: more and more racial divide. I mean, at the time
Speaker 7: actually that we were working on this, there was a
Speaker 7: lot more of the black men, unarmed black men being
Speaker 7: shot by the police officers, the white police officers. That
Speaker 7: was a big thing that was happening while we were
Speaker 7: working on this, which doesn't we're not the media is
Speaker 7: not focusing on that so much. We're seemed to be
Speaker 7: more focusing on Russia and global divides now. But basically,
Speaker 7: you know, here's the thing. We have the opiate epidemic,
Speaker 7: so there's a lot of people out there who are
Speaker 7: in a vulnerable state. There are a lot of people
Speaker 7: out there who you know, more and more this has
Speaker 7: actually gotten even stronger since since we were working on
Speaker 7: the book. More and more people distrust the government. More
Speaker 7: and more people mistrust the establishment. The conservative and the
Speaker 7: more progressive factions are factions you know that you know,
Speaker 7: just like they were back back in those days. It
Speaker 7: just seems like there's so many of the same kinds
Speaker 7: of dynamics going on, except today it's much more dangerous
Speaker 7: because we have the Internet, we have social media, we
Speaker 7: have these Russian bots, we have whoever is putting together
Speaker 7: these the propaganda that you can see on Facebook where
Speaker 7: they're drumming up, you know, division and trying to pit
Speaker 7: people against each other and causing chaos. It is the
Speaker 7: perfect time for an ideologue who has dangerous intentions to
Speaker 7: come in and try to sway mass opinion. And it's
Speaker 7: happening every day today. So that's why. You know, if
Speaker 7: you're a student of history, you can see that that
Speaker 7: history does repeat itself, and it's happening right now. And
Speaker 7: so Lisa and I felt very strongly that we wanted
Speaker 7: to end the book with that message that you know,
Speaker 7: people learn from the past, look at what's going on
Speaker 7: around you. This could happen again. Manson, you know, Manson
Speaker 7: was a product of the media. Manson was you know,
Speaker 7: people say always. He even said this himself, I'm a
Speaker 7: product of Bugliosi. I'm a product of all of you
Speaker 7: people looking for basically someone to blame this all on
Speaker 7: and I became, you know, the icon, and he's he
Speaker 7: was right. I think he really did manage to be
Speaker 7: the guy who was easy to blame. And you know,
Speaker 7: you look online and who is the most talked about
Speaker 7: evil killer ever and it's Manson always right, So I mean,
Speaker 7: it could anyone could step in and do that, and
Speaker 7: in fact, I think there are people doing that right now.
Speaker 7: And I won't name any names, but it's a dangerous
Speaker 7: it's a dangerous time.
Speaker 8: It's a perfect storm.
Speaker 7: I just hope that, you know, that people can really
Speaker 7: pull together and resist that and try to focus on
Speaker 7: what's real. You know, because culture made and ideologuice prey
Speaker 7: on people who feel vulnerable and hopeless, and they're looking
Speaker 7: for somebody to make sense of it. They're looking for
Speaker 7: somebody to tell them what they think is the truth,
Speaker 7: you know, the truth, which is a kind of a
Speaker 7: fleeting thought.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think a lot of philosophy for an afternoon, certainly.
Speaker 2: And I also think Charles Manson has the goals that
Speaker 2: he had once he had this failed musical career, that
Speaker 2: he would do something else to achieve infamy. I think
Speaker 2: that is a symptom of a lot of people today
Speaker 2: that are desperate for any kind of attention. They go
Speaker 2: out in a glory like there's nothing to lose.
Speaker 7: That's why there's so many of these school shootings. And
Speaker 7: you know, they're all these young white men, right, not
Speaker 7: they're not all, yeah, but a lot of them are.
Speaker 7: But most of them are these white men who feel
Speaker 7: that they have no power, they have no control. Some
Speaker 7: of them are mentally ill, many of them are mentally.
Speaker 8: Ill, and they have guns and.
Speaker 7: Anson that that was what was kind of interesting about
Speaker 7: this is he didn't he didn't do it with guns.
Speaker 7: He had these people doing it with knives mostly, So
Speaker 7: I mean, it doesn't you know, I'm not a I'm
Speaker 7: not gonna say i'm pro proer against guns publicly, but
Speaker 7: you know, it doesn't always involve a gun when you can,
Speaker 7: when you're doing something as a mass murder like this,
Speaker 7: you can use knives too.
Speaker 2: So absolutely absolutely, I want to thank you very much,
Speaker 2: Caitlin for coming on and talking about this. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 2: least Wiel didn't join us.
Speaker 7: I didn't even know until right before I called you
Speaker 7: that she wasn't going to be able to make it,
Speaker 7: and I know she really wanted to, so her I'm
Speaker 7: sure she's uh, she's uh. She had a, like I said,
Speaker 7: a personal situation that crept up all of a sudden.
Speaker 7: So anyway, we both thank you for inviting a song
Speaker 7: and letting letting me talk about the book, and I
Speaker 7: hope everybody out there will pick up a copy and
Speaker 7: read it.
Speaker 2: For those that might want to look. Do you have
Speaker 2: a website or Facebook page for this? Tell us about that.
Speaker 7: Sure, I have a website, Caitlin Rother dot com. Uh
Speaker 7: lease has a Facebook page LESE. Wheel. I also I
Speaker 7: have two an author page and uh personal page people.
Speaker 7: They're both public, We're both on Twitter, and I'm also
Speaker 7: on Instagram as well, And there's plenty of information out there,
Speaker 7: and you know, there are groups, like I said on
Speaker 7: Facebook if you want to know even more after reading
Speaker 7: the book and your your opinions are are peaud There's
Speaker 7: a lot of people out there with a lot of opinions.
Speaker 8: That may differ from what.
Speaker 7: You get in the book. So there's a little bit
Speaker 7: of everything out there.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Again, I want to thank you very much for
Speaker 2: talking about hunting Charles manson The Quest for Justice in
Speaker 2: the Days of Helter Skelter. Congratulations on a fascinating and
Speaker 2: fabulous book. Thank you very much for Kaitlyn.
Speaker 7: Don't talk to you soon the next next round.
Speaker 2: Absolutely talk to you against him. Thank you, good night,
Speaker 2: by bye.
Speaker 7: H