The Manson Women and Me Read online

  Monsters, Morality, and Murder

  The Manson Women and Me

  NIKKI MEREDITH

  CITADEL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  CITADEL PRESS BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 Nikki Meredith

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of nonfiction. To protect the privacy of certain individuals, their names have been changed or omitted.

  CITADEL PRESS and the Citadel logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-8065-3858-7

  First electronic edition: April 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8065-3860-0

  ISBN-10: 0-8065-3860-0

  This book is dedicated to:

  My son, for being my technology consultant

  My daughter, for being my editorial consultant

  My husband, for being my everything

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Foreword

  INTRODUCTION

  chapter one - THE FORMOSA CAFÉ

  chapter two - ABIGAIL FOLGER’S SMILE

  chapter three - “HEALTER SKELTER”

  chapter four - BANNED—TOOLS OF THE TRADE

  chapter five - UNFATHOMABLE REMORSE

  chapter six - WALLET ON THE BEACH

  chapter seven - MRS. TATE’S FURY

  chapter eight - LIVING WITHOUT HOPE

  chapter nine - ORPHANED BY THE HOLOCAUST

  chapter ten - MONDO VIDEO A-GO-GO

  chapter eleven - DISORDERED THOUGHTS AND DEMENTED MACHINATIONS

  chapter twelve - “I FELT LIKE A PREDATOR”

  chapter thirteen - FOLIE À FAMILLE

  chapter fourteen - FALLING IN LOVE WITH ANNE FRANK

  chapter fifteen - EVERYBODY CAN BE A KILLER

  chapter sixteen - “IS THERE ANYTHING WORSE THAN DYING IN TERROR?”

  chapter seventeen - THE EMPATHIC BRAIN

  chapter eighteen - UNFORGETTING RETRIBUTION

  chapter nineteen - DUES-PAYING MEMBER OF THE LITTLE WILDLIFE SOCIETY

  chapter twenty - “THEY WERE ON A TEAR”

  chapter twenty-one - DREAMING OF HITLER

  chapter twenty-two - THE NEED FOR A SCAPEGOAT

  chapter twenty-three - AN ABIDING FRIEND TO FAMILIES OF VICTIMS

  chapter twenty-four - THE AGONY OF MOTHERS

  chapter twenty-five - HOMECOMING PRINCESS

  chapter twenty-six - A GOOD SOLDIER

  chapter twenty-seven - SEARCHING FOR A CESSNA

  chapter twenty-eight - THE METAPHORICAL MICROSCOPE

  chapter twenty-nine - DECODING MANSON

  chapter thirty - BROKEN EMPATHY CIRCUIT

  chapter thirty-one - “LESLIE IS MY DAUGHTER”

  chapter thirty-two - ICH BIN EIN JUDE

  chapter thirty-three - BAD APPLES OR BAD BARREL?

  chapter thirty-four - A PSYCHEDELIC CITY-STATE

  chapter thirty-five - “EENIE, MEENIE, MINEY, MO”

  chapter thirty-six - MICHELTORENA HILL

  chapter thirty-seven - MULE CREEK PRISON

  chapter thirty-eight - EVERY FACET OF HER MOTHERING

  chapter thirty-nine - A LETHAL CONVERGENCE

  chapter forty - “YOU COULDN’ T FIND A NICER GROUP OF PEOPLE”

  chapter forty-one - PAT’S ANGER

  chapter forty-two - SCAPEGOATS—THE NEED TO BLAME

  chapter forty-three - “SHE DID APPEAL TO MY HUMANITY BUT I HAD NONE TO GIVE HER”

  chapter forty-four - THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL GANG

  chapter forty-five - HEAVEN’S GATE

  chapter forty-six - A DIFFERENT PAT

  chapter forty-seven - THE TERROR OF BEING EXCLUDED

  chapter forty-eight - HATRED MORE POWERFUL THAN A MOTHER’S LOVE

  chapter forty-nine - THE SHADE TREES OF HOLLYWOOD HIGH

  chapter fifty - FUSED IDENTITIES

  chapter fifty-one - A DROP OF JEWISH BLOOD

  chapter fifty-two - A MAKE-BELIEVE DODGE

  chapter fifty-three - “A DAMN GOOD WHACKING”

  chapter fifty-four - THE SWASTIKA

  chapter fifty-five - YES, SHE WOULD KILL FOR HIM

  chapter fifty-six - INSATIABLE AND WARPED NEED FOR LOVE

  chapter fifty-seven - THE ULTIMATUM

  chapter fifty-eight - THE TRUTH IS, THE TRUTH DOESN’T MATTER

  chapter fifty-nine - NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL

  chapter sixty - WE ARE ALL RWANDAN

  chapter sixty-one - “YOU TOOK GOD AWAY FROM ME”

  chapter sixty-two - UNFORGETTING, UNFORGIVING

  chapter sixty-three - “I’D BE NICE TO A STRAY DOG IF IT NEEDED HELP”

  chapter sixty-four - THE MOTHERS WHO POISONED THEIR BABIES AT JONESTOWN HAUNT HER

  chapter sixty-five - STARLIGHT BALLROOM

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  BY CAITLIN MEREDITH

  I teach a journalism class in the local jail where I live in Austin, Texas. I alternate between the men’s and women’s sides, as well as the medium- and maximum-security units. Though I receive an enrollment list with each student’s full name at the beginning of the term, because of a rule I made for myself, I make a point of only learning the nickname they ask me to call them in class. My rule? Don’t Google until after the final projects are handed in. This is to protect my students from the inevitable biases that would emerge if I knew everything about their worst day on the first day I meet them. It’s also to protect me from truly testing my beliefs in the power and promise of rehabilitation for all. In this way, I hope to teach the class to the best part of my students, no matter their pasts.

  It turns out some of my most interesting, vibrant, and articulate students have been murderers and attempted murderers. They have used fire and knives and cars to injure and kill—sometimes by accident, and sometimes very much on purpose. One, in particular, comes to mind. She came to class each day, glossy dark brown hair in a high-perched ponytail, bubbling with ideas and enthusiasm. Whenever it came time for the students to read their day’s work—a jail-related review, op/ed, or profile—and it was her turn, there would be an extra hush as we prepared to smile, sigh, and reflect on her lively prose. Each time, I would ask myself, how is this woman in jail? (Not to say that it was always obvious why my other students were in jail, but she seemed particularly unravaged by the usual: poverty, drugs, or mental illness.)

  After the last class, I finally looked her up. The mystery of why she’d been such a class star was solved: she’d been a mommy blogger on the outside and, according to the prosecutor in her case, she wrote with a “witty, engaging, self-deprecating style that cultivated a regular readership.” On a rare break from her social media status updates, however, she drove seven hours, broke into her ex-husband’s house in the middle of the night, bound his limbs with zip ties, wrapped him in plastic wrap, and beat him over the head with a billy club. For some reason, this had seemed to her the best way to guarantee that she would get full possession of her children in their hotly contested custody battle. Wow. But she sure did write a riveting review of the Thanksgiving dinner at the Travis County Jail!

  My mom, in her work with notorious former Manson “Family” members Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel, has done the opposit
e of my no-Google rule. Instead of protecting herself from the grotesque realities of human behavior at its worst, her meetings with Leslie and Pat were front-loaded with the meticulous descriptions—and even photos—of the heinous cruelty they’d inflicted on their victims on their worst days, acts so evil that most Americans would never want to be in the same room, much less sit down for a chat. Through this process, she had to navigate her own visceral aversion and anger toward human beings who had committed these acts with eyes wide open. In her work, unlike in my classroom, she could never look away from their crimes, but was compelled instead to look right into the deep center of the wounds, asking again and again: Why? How?

  My mother’s quest to understand what motivated the Manson women to commit their crimes was contagious. As she embarked on her research, spending time at Frontera Prison talking to Leslie and Pat, traveling up and down California to interview relatives, high school friends, and psychologists, I was hearing about it over the phone from my liberal arts college on the East Coast. I was born after the crimes and I’d never read Helter Skelter, so I only learned about Manson and his Family legacy through her recounted discussions with Leslie and Pat. When she first got to know them, I was twenty years old, just Leslie’s age when she was in thrall with Charles Manson, so I was susceptible to projecting myself into the L.A. stoner scene of the late ’60s. There was (and is) something deeply disturbing about the male/female dynamic that played out through Leslie’s relationship with Manson that bled into my subconscious. I started to have a recurring nightmare that involved an enigmatic Manson-like figure seizing control of me while I was driving. The dream took on the characteristic of a warped real-life version of the video game Pole Position, though this game was no fun. At the man’s direction, I started mowing down pedestrians. As the body count rose, my fear would finally shake me awake. Was the dream a glimpse of my own capabilities to inflict harm under the influence of a dark force? Was the message that under the right circumstances, maybe I was no different from Leslie and Pat?

  My mom confronted this same question in the light of day for twenty years. Her curiosity brought her to some uncomfortable places. The better she has come to know Leslie and Pat, the harder it has been to dismiss them, as most of the world would like to, as incomprehensible demons with nothing to teach the rest of us about our own natures. When confronted by evil acts, we hope for monsters, but what my mom found instead were two very human humans. Humans so familiar, in fact, that the comparisons to her own life and choices became inevitable. Where most of us would look only for differences, my mom sought resonances . . . and found them.

  Make no mistake, the murders Leslie and Pat committed on behalf of Charles Manson can and never will fade into the continuum of “normal” human experience—there was true, permanent harm done to the victims and their families. But averting our eyes from what we share with these women serves only to perpetuate the myth that the rest of us are somehow immune to influences that might corrupt our own characters.

  In 1995, my mother started an experiment. Her guiding question was to understand the far reaches of the human psyche. Though she spent hours plumbing the depths of Leslie’s and Pat’s lives and experiences to help her understand how these particular women could find themselves wielding a murderous knife, she also spent considerable time examining the ways in which the pushes and pulls in her own background both protected her but, at times, didn’t protect her in her weakest moments. Few of us want to know how close to the edge we might veer. How lucky we are to be invited along on this fascinating investigation.

  April 2017

  INTRODUCTION

  In August 1969, on two consecutive nights, a group of young people entered two homes in Los Angeles and systematically murdered everyone present—a total of seven people. It’s impossible to overstate the fear that gripped the city that summer. Initially, the lack of an apparent motive served to heighten the panic. There was no evidence of a connection between the victims and their murderers, and though the victims were wealthy, except for incidentals, they were not robbed. Creating terror seemed to be the only motive, and it worked.

  From the Westside to South Central, from the beaches of the Pacific to the San Fernando Valley, the panic was palpable. The murders left an indelible stain on the psyche of our culture; it would later be said that the boundless, creative spirit of the 1960s died along with the victims those two nights in August.

  When the guilty people were ultimately identified—Charles Manson, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten—the dread only intensified. Manson, the mastermind of the carnage, was scary but he was scary in predictable ways. There was much in his life to explain his twisted psyche. The young people he controlled, especially the women, didn’t look like anyone’s idea of frightening. They looked like our sisters, our daughters, our friends— ourselves—and yet their bloodthirsty behavior was like something out of a horror movie.

  The murders were bad enough. The behavior of the murderers during their trial was unbearable; they mocked the grief of their victims’ families and thumbed their collective noses at society’s fears and outrage.

  Twenty years ago, I started visiting two of these women in prison—Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel—in an attempt to discover whether they were radically different from the young women who carried out Charles Manson’s barbaric orders in 1969. If they were different, from their perch of middle age, how did they understand what happened?

  In the course of my inquiry, because I more or less share the same demographic as the women, I was lured into exploring the ways in which my own life had been affected by some of the same influences. In doing so I recognized that there were times when had I zigged instead of zagged, my life might also have veered dramatically off course.

  I was high school friends with two of the people involved in the case: Catherine Share, Manson’s chief recruiter of young women; and Stephen Kay, the deputy district attorney who was second chair to Vincent Bugliosi in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial. As I traced Catherine Share’s story and my relationship to that story, I realized how, for a variety of reasons, my connection to her at the age of fifteen was pivotal in my own moral development. Stephen Kay helped me understand the machinations of the justice system; by his side, I observed the parts that are just and the parts that are decidedly unjust.

  The journey to find answers has been bumpy, with deep potholes, wide-ranging detours, and frequent dead ends. Many times, I gave up, stowed the ugly, battered baggage, and took off for more scenic and straightforward jaunts.

  From the beginning I encountered many roadblocks—so many that they contributed to a recurring fear that the project was doomed. The first was that as soon as I decided to interview the women, I learned that the California legislature had recently passed a law preventing journalists from doing so. I could visit as a friend but I couldn’t take notes or record.

  At the time, the new law seemed like an omen—so did losing a man whose expertise I had counted on to help me understand essential aspects of the case. Early on I had sought out Dr. Chris Hatcher, a world-renowned forensic psychologist and an authority on violence who had been involved in many high-profile cases such as David Koresh (Waco) and Jim Jones (Jonestown). For years I had followed his work, reading his articles and attending rounds he conducted at U.C. Medical Center in San Francisco. For weeks we kept missing each other by phone, but when we finally connected, he not only agreed to meet with me, he was enthusiastic about the project and about helping me make sense of the material I was collecting. I was thrilled. Two days before our scheduled appointment, he died of a brain aneurysm at the age of fifty-three.

  Some days my superstitious nature got the best of me and I started to suspect that somebody or something didn’t want me to write this book. Essential tools of the trade started to malfunction at an alarming rate. Hard drives crashed, monitors failed, keys on my keyboard stuck. My right arm started to ache, my fingers got numb, and at one poi
nt I was in too much pain to use the keyboard or write longhand. I couldn’t shake the belief that it was not meant to be.

  Many of the problems I encountered were of my own making. In the first few years of the venture, I ignored my better judgment and instead of maintaining a sharp focus, I adopted a shotgun approach. Every journalist knows the danger of spending too much time with subjects of questionable value or endlessly chasing down material that is likely to be peripheral. I talked to anyone and everyone who would talk to me, scouted locations far and wide where the band of reprobates left its mark, and compiled my own little Manson Family library. But the quest for “color” and context can take you just so far.

  This insatiable yearning to acquire even the tiniest clue was sustained by the hope that once assembled with all of the other tiny clues, I might discern a pattern of human behavior that made sense to me. One particularly low-yield example comes to mind: I tracked down a guy who knew a guy whose best friend’s grandmother had been a friend of Manson’s in the 1960s. That’s several hours of my life I’ll never get back.

  My interest in the two women was the primary draw, but there was also a personal angle. When my brother was the same age as Leslie, he committed a felony home invasion that involved an older couple. No one died, but he did go to prison; in fact he went to the men’s prison just a few miles from where Leslie and Pat are incarcerated. I knew how that experience affected my family. I knew that my brother wasn’t a psychopath, but I also knew that something enabled him to detach emotionally from the terror of his victims. My unanswered questions about this detachment, in part, fueled my interest in Patricia and Leslie.

  In addition to the universe acting as a real or imagined opponent, my progress or lack thereof was influenced by major news events. I completely stopped working on it for a long time post-9/11. After that cataclysmic event, the loss of seven people in the Tate-LaBianca murders seemed almost trivial. Abu Ghraib had the opposite effect. In 2004, the photos of the smiling Lynndie England humiliating prisoners reminded me of the smirking mockery displayed by Leslie and Pat after the murders. On the other side of the cultural divide, as information about young women jihadists started to trickle in, I noticed many parallels with Pat and Leslie: more or less educated, middle class, and under the influence or control of a malevolent “spiritual” leader.