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Charlie Manson, Nomadic Guru, Flirted With CrimeNew York Times LOS ANGELES, Dec. 6 - "Charlie pulled me up one day out in the desert," Juan Flynn said the other day, recalling a recent conversation with Charles Manson. "There were tears in his eyes and he said: 'Juan, when they catch me, it's going to be like feeding me to the lions. They're going to put me far away because I have no family, no one that will help me. " 'When I was in jail,' " Juan continued, quoting his friend, 'I noticed the bulls [guards] in there used to keep track of everything - the letters you got, the visitors who remembered you in there. I knew they could do anything to me, because I had nobody.' " Not long after that conversation, Charles Manson was caught. The police raided a hideout near Death Valley, where he lived with several dozen youthful followers, and arrested them for stealing automobiles and receiving stolen property. That was in mid-October. Last Monday, the Los Angeles police issued warrants for the arrest of three people, one man and two women, who had belonged to Manson's "family" of wanderers. They were charged with the murder of Sharon Tate, the actress, and four others last Aug. 9, and were under suspicion for at least six other killings in the Los Angeles area. Slavish DevotionOn Friday, the Los Angeles District Attorney asked a grand jury to indict Manson, who was still in jail on charges stemming from the Death Valley raid, and six of his friends for the Tate murders. Indictments were also requested in the slaying of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, owners of a grocery chain, who were killed the night after Miss Tate was found dead. Manson is a slight man, about 5 feet 7 inches tall, with dark, shoulder-length hair. For the last two years, he has lived at the center of a band of young drifters, mainly girls, who follow his whims and wishes with almost slavish devotion. The trail that led Charles Manson to California and to the "family" he never had before is one that includes a searing childhood and a crime-ridden youth. His story, patched together from interviews with acquaintances and the public records he had left behind, is a turbulent one. Manson was born into loneliness. His mother was a teenager in Cincinnati when she became pregnant by one of her many boyfriends, reportedly an Army colonel. Wanting to give her child a name, she married William Manson shortly before her son was born on Nov. 11, 1934. The boy never knew the colonel or Mr. Manson. His mother moved and the boy was sent to live with his grandmother and a maternal aunt in West Virginia. The aunt was a harsh disciplinarian, he recalled later, and punished him severely when he left his yard to play with other children. When Manson was 13, his uncle fell ill with tuberculosis and the youngster rejoined his mother in Indianapolis. The woman did not want him and tried to get him placed in a foster home. He had previously lived in several foster homes, including one on a farm, and once told the juvenile authorities that his dream in life was to become a farmer. Running AwayWhen the foster home could not be arranged, his mother sent Manson to the Gibault School in Terre Haute, Ind., a boarding school run by Roman Catholic priests. When his mother could not keep up the payments at Gibault, Manson returned home, but quickly ran away. His mother was frequently drunk, he said, and living with a succession of men. "I didn't want to stay where mother lived in sin," he told juvenile officials in Indianapolis. At the age of 14, he rented a room and supported himself by delivering messages for Western Union and by petty theft. The robbery of $9 from a grocery store put him back in the hands of the juvenile authorities. He did not want to go home, he said. Soon it was a moot question; his mother left town after getting arrested for adultery. About this time, young Manson came under the attention of the Rev. George Powers, a local priest. "This particular boy seemed very lonesome, just craving attention and affection," recalled Father Powers, now an instructor at the New York Theological Seminary. "He looked like an innocent altar boy, and he was so ashamed of his mother." Father Powers arranged for Manson to be sent to Boys Town near Omaha, and the Indianapolis newspaper ran a big story. "He won everybody over," the priest said. "The juvenile court judge was completely taken with his personality. He had an ability beyond his years to present himself; he was a beautiful kid for his age." Back to IndianaManson arrived in Boys Town in March of 1949. Four days later, he ran away and stole a motor scooter, then a car. He was arrested while robbing a grocery store in Peoria, Ill., and sent back to Indianapolis. Officials there, puzzled and frustrated, sent him to reform school in Plainfield, Ind. For the next five years, Manson was in and out of institutions. In 1954, he returned to West Virginia where his grandmother and aunt lived, and married Rosalie Jean Willis on Jan. 17, 1955. Some reports indicate they had a son, and, that by the time the child was born, Manson was in jail in California for transporting stolen vehicles. When he was released in September, 1958, his wife had already divorced him. He was arrested several times for theft, forgery and probation violations. In 1960, he was arrested for violating the White Slave Traffic Act in Laredo, Tex., and when he was sentenced to 10 years in jail for check forgery and probation violations. During his stay at McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington state, Manson took up new interests: Music, philosophy, and Scientology, a pseudo-religious cult then becoming popular on the West Coast. Charles Manson started a new life after his release on March 21, 1967. He headed for the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, where the hippie movement was centered. Soon he started exercising what appeared to be enormous power over women and his clan began to grow. Part of His Group"Charlie always had first crack at the new girl," a male friend recalled recently. "But he also used them as bait. He'd share them with you, but if you accepted you were part of his group, you were obligated to him." About a year later Manson and his "family" piled into an old school bus and headed south for Los Angeles. His interest in music had grown and he had made friends with various musical figures: Gary Hinman, a musician who let the group stay in his home at Malibu (where he was found murdered last July); Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, a popular singing group and Terry Melcher, a young producer who lived in the home near Beverly Hills in which Sharon Tate was later murdered. The group stayed in various borrowed accommodations for a while and then settled at the Spahn Ranch, an old western movie set and riding stable in the Santa Susanna Mountains about 20 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The ranch's owner was not overjoyed about the arrangement, but he was too old and blind and frightened to object. He even helped the group out with its grocery bills - and installed an alarm system in his bedroom. 'All There Is, Man'While the membership of the "family" shifted constantly, it generally consisted of about 12 girls and six boys living an indolent life of easy sex (several girls had babies that members of the family delivered themselves), plentiful marijuana (but few hard drugs), and such projects as converting the "Longhorn Saloon" on the movie set into communal sleeping quarters. What attracted people to Manson's family? He found lonely outcasts like himself, and they gave each other the affection they gave each other the affection they had always sought and seldom found. "That's all there is, man," Manson often told friends. "If you don't have someone to love you, you don't have anything." Attorneys for several of the defendants in the Tate murders contend that Manson had a "hypnotic effect" on his followers, but his friends tend to scoff at the theory. "It's not hypnotism, " said one, "it's making good love to the girls." "He gave off a lot of magic," said on his girls. "Everyone was always so happy around him." Another said: "He's got the look that he needs to be mothered." Manson's followers tended to be young and "impressionable" girls, said one acquaintance. Often they had trouble at home with their parents. Several had early and unhappy marriages. An Eclectic Philosophy"You're brought up to believe that you can't have sex unless you're married," explained one girl who was close to the family. "Here girls could do whatever they wanted, they didn't have to worry about getting caught or toeing the mark. Charlie always said 'you don't have to answer to anybody, you can be whatever you want to be.' " The precept of individuality was at the basis of an eclectic philosophy that Manson preached to his followers. "He used to say all the time, 'each man is a god, I am god, and you are god,' " one friend recalled. At the same time, Manson could explode with fury at people who disagreed with him. When a neighbor complained about motorcycle racing late at night, a hand at the Spahn Ranch said, Manson told him: "Shut up, you son of a bitch, or I'll burn your goddamn house down." Friends called him "Hymie" behind his back, by which they meant "Hitler." His anger was usually directed at those he considered comfortable and successful. He said "society" was "corrupting" the minds of children and not letting them think for themselves. He hated the term "hippie," because he felt the "establishment" used it as an equivalent of "nigger." He admired the Beatles. He sent them singing telegrams and found deep meaning in some of their songs. One of his favorites, called "Piggies," has this verse:
Friends said Manson desperately wanted to make his own record as a way of reaching the public and resented several friends who failed to help him get a recording contract. He had a deep fear of the black power movement. It was Manson's conviction, friends said, that militant blacks would soon "take over" the country, and be was apparently fortifying his desert encampment to fend them off. The group had a number of guns and often practiced with them at the Spahn Ranch. The girls were sewing clothes that they said would be particularly durable for the siege in the desert. "I always thought good and evil were fighting for control of Charlie," a longtime friend said recently. "He could be the most charming person alive and then something would touch him off. I guess the evil finally won out." |
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