Chapter 17

The Hippie Messiah

Charles Manson was born on 12 November, 1934, the illegitimate son of a sixteen-year old runaway, Kathleen Maddox. Manson never knew his father, although he was believed to be a man known by the name of Colonel Scott. In 1936, Kathleen filed a suit for child support against a Colonel Scott of Ashland, Kentucky, and was awarded a judgment of $25, plus $5 a month until young Charles reached the age of eighteen. Scott apparently never paid, and is believed to have died in 1954.¹ The surname Manson came from William Manson, a man to whom his mother was at one time briefly married.²

From the moment of his birth, Manson was unwanted. His mother was an alcoholic, young and unstable; when money was tight, she occasionally turned to prostitution to survive, leaving her son in the care of relatives.³ When he was four years old, Kathleen and her brother were arrested after robbing a service station and sent to prison in West Virginia.⁴ For a few weeks, Manson lived with his grandparents, a rather strict, religious couple who made no secret of the fact that they thoroughly disapproved of both Kathleen and her bastard child. After a few weeks, Manson was sent to McMechen, West Virginia, to live with his mother’s sister Joanne and her husband Bill.

For Manson, home was now a large, Victorian-style house, whose wide, curved front porch looked over the town and down to the river. Although he appears to have been treated well, the boy never entirely fit in.⁵ “He had just about anything he wanted,” recalls childhood friend Delores Longwell. “His aunt and uncle and grandmother took him to church. He didn’t like going. The only thing he really liked was the singing. Charles liked to sing.”⁶

Kathleen was paroled in 1942, and returned to McMechen. “She was very, very motherly looking,” Longwell remembers, “she was as motherly looking as my mother was.”⁷ Manson, aged eight, was returned to her custody, and Kathleen embarked upon a nomadic existence, alcoholism and abusive lovers, sharing rooms with Charles in shabby, run-down hotels and boarding houses. On several occasions, she tried to place him in temporary foster care, claiming that she was unable to care for him; when this failed, Manson was sent to Gibault School for Boys in Terre Haute, Indiana.⁸ “The only thing,” Manson would later declare, “my mother taught me was that everything she said was a lie. And I learned never to believe anyone about anything.”⁹

Twelve-year-old Charles, according to the school reports from his time at Gibault, although on some occasions pleasant, also had “a tendency toward moodiness and a persecution complex.…”¹⁰ This was scarcely surprising, considering that, by his own account, young Manson was regularly beaten and raped. He ran away shortly after his arrival to return to his mother, only to find that she did not want him. He managed to rob several stores before being apprehended and sent to Father Flanagan’s Boy’s Town.

“A dead-end kid who has lived in an emotional blind alley is happy today—he’s going to Boy’s Town,” declared an article in the Indianapolis News. A large photograph of a smiling young Manson, accompanied the story.¹¹ His stay at the legendary school, however, was brief; four days after Manson’s arrival, he and another boy stole a car and drove to Illinois, committing two armed robberies along the way. They stayed for a time with the other boy’s uncle, stealing from local businesses at his direction. When finally caught, thirteen-year old Charles was sent to the Indiana School for Boys at Plainfield.

During his three year term, he ran away eighteen times, hating the violence and harsh discipline. In 1951, he and several other sixteen-year-old boys stole a car and headed for California, robbing gas stations along the way. In Utah, they were finally caught. Driving a stolen car across state lines was a federal offense, and young Manson was sent to the National Training School for Boys in Washington, D.C., where he was to remain until his eighteenth birthday.

Because he had spent so much time in institutions, or on the run, Manson was barely literate. His intelligence was tested as average, with a decided interest in music, which he claimed was his favorite subject. One of his counselors later declared that Manson was an “emotionally upset youth who is definitely in need of some psychiatric orientation.”¹² A psychiatrist who examined him noted a “marked degree of rejection, instability and psychic trauma.”¹³ But Manson somehow managed to convince the doctor that he was ready to make a go of things on the outside, and he was transferred to the National Bridge Camp. After a few months at the facility, however, Manson was charged with the homosexual rape of a fellow inmate at knifepoint, and transferred to the Federal Reformatory at Petersburg, Virginia. His early psychiatric evaluations at his latest institution stressed his sense of alienation from society, and determined that he was not only “criminally sophisticated” but also “dangerous.”¹⁴

In September, 1952, Manson was transferred to the Federal Reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio. Realizing that he would be eligible for parole in a few months, he studied hard to improve his education, and became a model prisoner. On May 8, 1954, at the age of nineteen—and after spending over half of his life in various institutions and correctional facilities—Charles Manson was granted parole.

Manson stayed clean for just over a year. During that time, he met and married seventeen-year old Rosalie Jean Willis, who was soon pregnant. Manson stole several cars in July, 1955, driving one from West Virginia to Los Angeles before being apprehended, having again violated the Dyer Act. At his sentencing, he declared, “I was … confined for nine years, I was badly in need of psychiatric treatment. I was mentally confused and stole a car as a means of mental release from the confused state of mind that I was in.”¹⁵ The court ordered a new psychiatric evaluation, which stated, in part: “It is evident that he has an unstable personality and that his environmental influences throughout most of his life have not been good.… In my opinion this boy is a poor risk for probation; on the other hand, he has spent nine years in institutions with apparently little benefit except to take him out of circulation. With the incentive of a wife and probable fatherhood, it is possible that he might be able to straighten himself out. I would, therefore, respectfully recommend to the court that probation be considered in this case under careful supervision.” The Court agreed, and Manson was given five years probation in November, 1955.¹⁶

In less than five months, Manson skipped out on his probation, fleeing Los Angeles with his pregnant wife. He was arrested on 14 March in Indianapolis and returned to Los Angeles for trial. The judge revoked Manson’s probation and sentenced him to serve three years at the Federal Prison at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California. During Manson’s trial, Rosalie gave birth to his son, Charles Jr.

During this latest incarceration, Rosalie divorced him and moved back east, taking their son with her. Manson eventually was granted some privileges, but was soon caught in the parking lot, trying to hot wire a car. For this offense, an additional five years of parole was tacked on to his sentence. A psychiatric report, dated 4 September, 1959, declared: “He does not give the impression of being a mean individual. However, he is very unstable emotionally and very insecure. He tells about his life inside the institutions in such a manner as to indicate that he has gotten most of his satisfactions from institutions. He said that he was captain of various athletic teams and that he made a great effort to entertain other people in the institutions. In my opinion, he is probably a sociopathic personality without psychosis. Unfortunately, he is rapidly becoming an institutionalized individual. However, I certainly cannot recommend him as a good candidate for probation.”¹⁷

Three weeks after this report was filed, however, Manson was released from Terminal Island. At first, he worked a number of part-time jobs, before pimping several young girls on the streets of Malibu. He was finally arrested again six months after his parole for trying to cash a forged U.S. Treasury check for $34.50 in a local grocery store; he admitted he had stolen the check from a mailbox.¹⁸ Although these two crimes were federal offenses, Manson arranged for a prostitute, claiming to be his pregnant wife, to plead his case before the sentencing judge; the ploy worked, and the sympathetic judge sentenced Manson to ten years, then immediately suspended it and placed him on probation.

True to form, Manson soon returned to crime. He was arrested in December, 1959 in Los Angeles for using a stolen credit card and for grand theft auto. He also took a young girl across state lines, to New Mexico, for the purpose of prostitution, another federal offense violating the Mann Act. Rather than being incarcerated, Manson was left on parole while an investigation continued. Manson took advantage of this to run; he was later picked up in Texas, having again been caught smuggling young girls across state lines for prostitution. Arrested for both this crime and for parole violation, he spent a year in the Los Angeles County Jail before finally being sentenced to the U.S. Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington for a period of ten years.

Manson spent some six years of his ten year sentence at McNeil Island. There, he met Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, a member of the old Ma Barker gang, and the older convict taught Charles Manson to play the steel guitar. He also began to associate with several members of the Church of Scientology, which would ultimately lead him to one of its off-shoots, a dangerous cult known as The Process. Manson would later claim that he had been put through some 150 “processing” sessions in the philosophy by fellow convict Lanier Rayner, and achieved the highest level, “theta clear.”¹⁹ Although, after his release, there is no evidence that Manson had any formal affiliation with the Church of Scientology, he certainly began to sprinkle his teachings with Scientology-influenced beliefs. Among the frequent Scientology phrases which were to reoccur consistently in Manson’s later teachings were “cease to exist” and “coming to the Now.” Concurrently with his interest in Scientology, Manson also began to study techniques of hypnosis and mind control.²⁰

Manson also appears to have been strongly infuenced by Robert Heinlein’s science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. He identified with the hero, Valentine Michael Smith, a space alien who was born on Mars and brought to Earth as a young man. Like Manson, Smith’s mother was not married to his father, living, instead, with another man. And, like Manson, Smith felt alienated by the world he found, a world which did not appreciate his peculiar talents or insight. It was no coincidence that Manson would later name his second son Valentine Michael.

In prison, Manson continued to impress prison authorities and psychiatrists as a dangerous, hardened criminal. “He has commented that institutions have become his way of life and that he receives security in institutions which is not available to him in the outside world,” one report declared.²¹ Another report noted his “tremendous drive to call attention to himself.”²² It was obvious to most of those authorities in regular contact with him that Manson was deeply troubled, both emotionally and psychologically. Ominously, a later report made note of Manson’s “fanatical interests.”²³

These interests involved both his philosophy and his music. Of the latter, Alvin Karpis recalled, “He was constantly telling people he could come on like The Beatles, if he got the chance. Kept asking me to fix him up with high power men like Frankie Carbo and Dave Beck; anybody who could book him into the big time when he got out.”²⁴ Manson, while claiming that one day he would be bigger than his favorite musical group, at the same time listened to their music relentlessly, absorbing their songs and studying their style. A periodic correctional report in 1966 noted that Manson was spending more and more time writing his own music, practicing in his cell, and speaking of his hopes to be a musician when he was released.

Another report later that same year summed up Manson’s progress and prospects: “He has a pattern of criminal behavior and confinement that dates to his teen years. This pattern is one of instability whether in free society or a structured institutional community. Little can be expected in the way of change in his attitude, behavior or mode of conduct.… He has come to worship his guitar and music.… He has no plans for release as he says he has nowhere to go.”²⁵

Adjustment to life on the outside would indeed be difficult. Manson had spent over half of his life incarcerated in institutions, reform schools and prisons. “I never realized that people outside are much different than the people on the inside,” he once explained. “People inside, if you lie, you get punched, you get mis-used. You don’t lie to the lieutenant, and the lieutenant don’t lie to you. There’s a certain amount of truth in prison, and being raised in prison, I was raised in the light of that truth.”²⁶

Manson was transferred from McNeil to Terminal Island in preparation of his parole. Here, he continued to study Scientology and practice his music. “I was in the Terminal Island Penitentary,” recalls fellow inmate Phil Kaufmann, “and Charlie was in the yard singing. I had some friends in the music industry, and he was rather like a young Frankie Laine, he had that kind of lilt in his voice. I thought his voice was good. It was during the folk period, the young hippie stuff, and the new music, and I thought he would fit in.”²⁷

On the morning he was to be released, Manson begged the prison officials to let him remain. He had nowhere to go on the outside, he told them. He did not think that he could stay straight. The officials refused his request. On the morning of March 21, 1967, after spending over half of his life incarcerated, Charles Manson, aged thirty-two, was turned loose on society.²⁸