CHAPTER FOUR

“I live in my world, and I am my own king in my world, whether it be a garbage dump or if it be in the desert or wherever it be. I am my own human being.”

—CHARLES MANSON, COURT STATEMENT, NOVEMBER 19, 1970

Outside of the Family, people did not view Charlie Manson as the messianic figure he saw every day in the mirror. Between the summer of 1968 and the fall of 1969, three people successfully challenged Manson’s infallibility. One stood his ground and came off relatively unscathed, one experienced the scare of a lifetime, and one would not survive.

Manson lacked self-perspective. One of the cornerstones of a messiah complex is that even if an individual does not believe he or she is a messiah, they are destined to become one. They are not just part of a movement, they are the movement. Adolf Hitler is the gold standard of this disorder. Manson was not far behind in dementia, if not in numbers killed.

Manson’s omnipotent view of himself carried over to his assessment of his musical talents. By most accounts, Manson was only slightly better a musician than he was a criminal. Nonetheless, he brought drive, shamelessness, and sociopathy to his quest. His adoring bevy of women and manipulation tactics got him into the orbits of recording industry luminaries. But his talent could not keep him there. Rather than recognize his own limitations, he shifted blame and rose to anger.

In time, one of the most prominent targets of Manson’s wrath would become record producer Terry Melcher.

Manson’s hate for Melcher—son of screen legend Doris Day—was born out of his runaway ego. Manson was sure fate had put Melcher in his path for the purpose of creating a masterpiece album. Manson felt in his head he was destined to become a rock star bigger than The Beatles—yet better, because he would be the one to unite the children, and his message and philosophy would inspire teens all across the western world. He would be the one to bring about a “new consciousness” and enlightenment. In his mind, he felt he was capable of this, not realizing the huge gap between the confused misfits he had convinced to join him and the rest of society.

He was so assured he felt nobody could say no to Charlie.

Eventually, Melcher would. But not at first.

When Dennis Wilson first picked up Patricia Krenwinkle and Ella Bailey in 1968 and took them to his house he must have been delighted at the thought of two young, free loving hippie women at his Sunset Boulevard mansion. However, they spent hours talking about how great and life changing Charlie was. Ever the optimist, Wilson let them stay at the home while he went to a nighttime recording session.

Wilson arrived home at 3 a.m. to find Charlie Manson himself standing at his back door. Manson welcomed Wilson into his own home by dropping to his knees and kissing his feet—a tactic he had used to disarm people before.

Walking into the house, Wilson found himself face-to-face with Krenwinkel, Bailey, and a dozen more Family members whom they had invited, nearly all of whom were female.

Manson easily won Wilson over. They bonded over music and girls, and Manson’s ability to say what others wanted to hear convinced Wilson he had found a spiritual leader, someone through whom he could achieve a certain level of enlightenment.

Furthermore, the girls were more than willing to cook, clean...or do anything else the men at the mansion wanted.

The Manson Family took, and took a great deal. The number of uninvited guests soon doubled. Members happily indulged in drugs on Wilson’s tab, helped themselves to items around the homestead, and took Wilson’s clothing, credit cards, and cars as desired.

Wilson enjoyed the idea of an on-call, on-premises spiritual leader. Manson drew on his Dale Carnegie teachings—tell people what they want to hear, be enthusiastic in your presentations, build up your listener—as well as his mix of spiritual and hedonistic philosophies, and fed them to Wilson.

In return, Wilson indulged Manson’s musical grandiosity. He and Manson jammed together, and made a few attempts at collaboration. He arranged for recording time in a Santa Monica, California, studio (which did not end well because Manson refused to take suggestions from people in the control booth). He introduced Manson to a variety of Hollywood stars and children of stars, including Rudi Altobelli, who managed some of the entertainment industry’s top talent, and producer Terry Melcher.

Melcher was born into the celebrity lifestyle because of his mother, but at age twenty-six, in the summer of 1968, he was established in his own right. He shone as a television and record producer, orchestrating hits for Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Byrds, and other chart-topping California acts.

Melcher had been a longtime friend of Wilson and stopped by the ongoing party at his mansion. That’s where he first met Manson, who was surrounded by half a dozen people, playing his guitar and singing.

Wilson had been enthusiastic about Manson’s music, although whether it was real or just playing to his ego seemed like the best way to keep the party going was not clear. At any rate, musician Manson was introduced to hitmaker Melcher.

Manson was clearly the more impressed of the two. Melcher did not hear anything exceptional in those first songs, but he also knew that a casual gathering, where the performers had not been in audition mode, more than likely was not the best setting to properly evaluate talent.

Melcher eventually bummed a ride from Wilson; somehow Manson managed to tag along, sitting in the back seat as the Beach Boys drummer drove his friend home.

Manson, Melcher, and Wilson drove to a quiet part of Benedict Canyon, north and west of Beverly Hills. They drove through a gate, behind which was a 4,600-square foot French country-style estate with a small guest house in the back.

Manson and Wilson stayed in the car. Melcher got out, and went to the home he had been renting, along with his girlfriend actress Candice Bergen, since the summer of 1966. The house was part of an estate at 10050 Cielo Drive—an address that would loom large in many people’s lives by year’s end.

Melcher might have forgotten Manson then and there, but neither Wilson nor his protégé were going to let him. Wilson still saw himself as a springboard for his guru’s career. And Manson saw music stardom and his golden opportunity to be bigger than The Beatles.

Melcher was ultimately more interested in Ruth Ann Moorehouse, one of the prettiest of Manson’s girls. By one account, he wanted her to move into the home he shared with Bergen and serve—nominally—as their housecleaner. Bergen put her foot down on that plan, and with that Manson, whose musical abilities were those of a talented amateur, had little left to offer Melcher.

Wilson still believed in Manson, however, and arranged studio time for him. But Manson still refused to take any direction from producers during the sessions and the recordings were deemed unusable. What percentage was the artist and how much was the messiah complex is difficult to say; rock-and-rollers were notoriously fussy about their personal expression and frequently acted in an entitled manner. With Manson, it was undoubtedly a schizophrenic partnership between the artist and the violent enforcer. At one point, Manson pulled a knife on the head engineer, and after two days the recording sessions had come to an end.

Manson did not see this as a result of his over-the-top antics. He thought it meant there was enough material for an album. The importance of that belief cannot be understated. In an era before any wannabe recording artist could capture a tune on a smartphone and drop it on any number of platforms, a performer needed vinyl—either a two-sided single or an LP. Having even a small label release your work was a coup. For a major label to release your album, was almost guaranteed stardom.

Manson, of course, would have had an across-the-board belief in his miraculous destiny.

Wilson, however, had a different view. He reviewed the tapes as potential source material for his own contribution to the next Beach Boys album. One tune, “Cease to Exist,” had some promise. To Manson, that sounded an awful lot like a co-writing credit for a song released on a major label...which Wilson was happy to let his spiritual advisor believe.

Meanwhile, several members of the Family were living well and without restrictions at Wilson’s mansion. However, after several costly and destructive months, including an incident in which Clem Grogan stole—and wrecked—Wilson’s uninsured Ferrari, Wilson’s manager evicted the group, which decamped to the Spahn Ranch.

There are several stories regarding why Manson and Wilson went their separate ways. According to one, someone realized several of the girls who hung out with Manson at Wilson’s mansion were underage.

In another, Wilson supposedly saw Manson kill a black man and stuff him into a well. However, no such murder was ever reported.

Another has several different versions, with Manson threatening Wilson by either pointing a gun at him, showing him a bullet, or leaving a bullet in Wilson’s bed.

The most likely, however, is that with the end of his rental agreement on the mansion coming up, Wilson fled, leaving his manager to tell the Family it no longer had a place to crash in the ritzy part of Los Angeles. Despite kicking them out, Wilson remained on friendly terms with the Family. That would change.

By some reckonings, the expenses and damage to Wilson’s property that had been run up by Family members exceeded $100,000. Since no money was likely to be forthcoming from Manson, Wilson simply appropriated Manson’s song “Cease to Exist” and reworked it into “Never Learn Not to Love,” which appeared on the Beach Boys album 20/20.

Wilson took the sole writing credit.

The recording artist may have seen his actions as justly getting a little back. But Manson, who had staked his ego on becoming a huge rock star, was incensed. On the one hand, it was another example of the Hollywood entertainment complex screwing him over. On the other, it was a major impediment on his rocket ride to fame and glory. His ego, his vanity, and his plans had taken big, simultaneous, hard-stop hits. Charlie Manson did not handle those kinds of blows well.

More than that, Wilson had changed the lyrics to the song. And just as Manson thought the songs on the White Album were carefully coded, so were the lyrics to “Cease to Exist.” Manson’s message had been destroyed.

Later, after the Tate/LaBianca murders, a shaken but grateful Wilson had this perspective: he would say he was one of the luckiest people to have come across the Family, because he only ended up losing money.

Despite their differences with Wilson, the relationship with Melcher was still ongoing—in Manson’s eyes, at least. Tex Watson, whom Manson had met at Wilson’s mansion, would end up joining Melcher at 10050 Cielo Drive around half a dozen times during the summer of 1968. And Watson was getting chummier with Manson.

By the fall of 1968, the Family was at the Spahn Ranch, but not exclusively. One of their hangouts was, during January and February of 1969, at 21019 Gresham Street in Canoga Park, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. The house, which is no longer there, was a single-family home rented by Bill Vance, who had met Charlie in prison. Vance would occasionally let Family members crash there, and as Charlie’s obsession with creating a record grew, Vance let the Family take the house over so they could set up a recording studio.

In keeping with Charlie’s Beatles fascination, the private little retreat was nick-named the “Yellow Submarine” in honor of its bright yellow exterior.

It was a four-bedroom home, and Charlie saw it as a better place than the desert to house his Family during the winter, although he did leave a handful of Family members—mostly girls—to keep on with the chores and make sure George Spahn did not forget about them.

Spahn Ranch, with its various distractions—chores Manson’s Family had agreed to do—did not allow much time for members to practice their music. The Yellow Submarine did, and furthermore its four bedrooms would house a double handful of Family members comparatively comfortably.

Best of all, it had a large front room which, in Charlie’s opinion, would serve perfectly as a recording studio. However, two employees at the Spahn Ranch were indirectly responsible for that plan never coming to fruition.

Donald “Shorty” Shea had worked at Spahn as an animal handler and general maintenance man since October 1962, well before the Family had shown up. Shea had been an on-again, off-again employee at the Spahn Ranch. He also was a

manager at a strip club, ran adult bookstores in Las Vegas, and took mining and truck driving gigs when they came along.

All this was in addition to his low-level film career. Shea would do animal handling and stunt work during movie shoots, and even appeared onscreen in an uncredited role in a Prohibition-era gangster flick titled The Fabulous Bastard from Chicago (1969).

Shea’s cousin, Windy Bucklee, was similarly employed-as-needed at Spahn Ranch. She had been a stagecoach driver in live Western shows.

Bucklee had been alarmed when the Manson Family moved in, as she saw them taking a family-friendly horse ranch and turning it into a hippie paradise, which meant minimum cleanliness and maximum nudity. She approved of neither.

Despite this, Bucklee kept to her side of the fence until Family business interfered with hers. In 1968, she was pulled over while driving her Ford truck. The police officer stopped her and explained her truck had been seen close by to where four small businesses had been robbed.

As she was able to prove she had clocked in at her job on the nights of the robberies, Bucklee was quickly removed from the suspect list. But she knew what had happened. Bill Vance, her neighbor, had a set of keys for the truck and would borrow it occasionally.

In a fury, Bucklee confronted Vance and demanded her keys back. A few hours later, Charlie Manson showed up at her home, demanding the keys. She told him to “fuck off,” and he responded by hitting her face so hard it broke her jaw.

Bucklee somehow managed to get upstairs to her bedroom, where she kept a gun. Unfortunately, the gun she grabbed was a German Luger pistol someone had given to her, and she had not figured out its safety mechanism.

Had she known how to use it, Manson would have died right there.

Instead, he ran off.

Bucklee was in the hospital for three days, as her broken jaw needed to be wired shut. While Shea did not care how many people were in the Manson Family, he did have issue with Manson breaking Bucklee’s jaw, and so ran over to Vance’s house and confronted Charlie Manson, who had a knife and no qualms about fighting. Here, the messiah fell short. Shea beat the crap out of him and left him on the ground.

For Shea, the incident was over. But Manson had been beaten up in front of Family members. Instead of working that into a kind of revelation, a show of Christ-like humility, Manson seethed with vicious purpose. He would close up the Yellow Submarine house and move his operations back to Spahn Ranch, where the seemingly victorious Shea still worked. There, he would wait.

There is one more aspect to the Yellow Submarine house worth noting. According to Tate/LaBianca murder trial prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, during the Family’s brief stay both Paul Watkins and Brooks Poston heard Manson talk about slaughtering well-heeled “pigs” and writing things on walls with their blood.

Brooks Poston would be in a position to share these tidbits with investigators as a result of associating with Paul Crockett. Crockett, along with Melcher and Shea, were the three men who, at one point or another during 1969, would each impede Manson’s path to glory.

At the beginning of 1969, Manson realized the Spahn Ranch was not going to be a sufficient stronghold when Helter Skelter came down. He had two other locations which were suitable: the Myers Ranch and the Barker Ranch, which was adjacent to Myers. The ranches were deep in mining country in Death Valley National Park, hours from Los Angeles, across rough roads and desert terrain.

Myers Ranch, for all its desolation, had amenities and buildings that made it livable. Barker Ranch offered much less in the way of comforts. There were no electric lines. It did, however, have water, thanks to a 5,000-gallon reservoir, and generators. Its buildings were strong—they were made of stone and concrete. It was perfect, as Manson explained to Arlene Barker, who owned the ranch, for musicians who wanted a quiet place to live while they made music, free from distractions. These included radio, as the ranch’s remoteness meant it did not receive broadcasts well.

All this was fine for Manson. Where prospectors in the area once sought gold and uranium, all he wanted was some peace and quiet.

To seal the deal with Barker, Manson presented her with a gold Beach Boys record. Only a bona fide musician would have such a prize, right? Sources vary on whether Dennis Wilson had given the record to Manson or whether it had been unofficially “liberated” when the Family was forced out of his mansion. At any rate, it proved payment enough.

The isolation Manson sought offered protection from the race war he had convinced himself would happen. But there were also drawbacks. Few Family members were willing to brave the blasting heat of summer, the bitter cold of winter, the jerry-rigged utilities, and the incessant bugs. Anything that could not be grown near the ranch or taken from the land had to be trucked in. And the free-flowing drugs necessary to keep the Family obedient were largely supplied by ranch visitors. Spahn Ranch was much more accessible than Barker.

Nonetheless, Manson began sending Family members there with orders to determine how they could make it work.

Much like the act of killing, Manson did not want to do the dirty work himself. But in sending his small advance teams away from him, and not controlling their minds or drug intake, his control over them began to slip.

In March 1969, Paul Crockett, a lead prospector and site investigator for various mining companies, set up a small outpost near the two ranches. His partner, Bob Berry, had been in the area for several months, scouting for mining sites—but also enjoying the hospitality offered by the Manson girls who occasionally stayed at Barker. One in particular, Juanita Wildebush, had captured his fancy.

Crockett was less impressed. Wildebush and another Family member, Brooks Poston, had described the Family dynamics to him, and Crockett was disturbed by Manson’s control over the followers. The kids the forty-five-year-old miner was meeting seemed zombified, which was bad enough. Depending on whom he was speaking with, as Family members came in and out of Barker, he got a picture of a little man with a huge messiah complex. Watkins had a grounding in Scientology and mysticism, and realized how much Manson was twisting these.

Furthermore, the apocalyptic ramblings about Helter Skelter that came out in bits and pieces ranged from fantastic to incoherent. But as Crockett spent evenings speaking with Manson Family kids, he saw something else: fear.

Even though Manson was more than 200 miles away, those at the Barker Ranch felt closely tied to him. If they had any doubts or impulses to leave, they were deeply buried.

The more Crockett heard about Manson, the more he saw the skinny, nervous kids who were coming in and out of Barker, and felt the need to step in. His first steps in deprogramming Family members were strikingly similar to what Manson had used to entrap them. Crockett persuaded a few of them to join him in prospecting work. The work was physically demanding, involving digging, shoveling, lifting, and hauling rocks, and Crockett was not shy about pushing the kids to their limits. It was a far cry from the easier life at Spahn Ranch, but the kids who did it found themselves getting physically stronger as their minds cleared.

Even so, not every Family member who came to the Barker Ranch was enticed by Crockett. Some, when they returned to Manson at the Spahn Ranch, reported that a paternal figure had been getting close to some of his Family. At some point, Manson was going to have to intervene.

Instead, in May 1969, he sent Paul Watkins to investigate. Unfortunately for Manson, there was one more conversion tactic Crockett borrowed from him. Both Watkins and Poston had an interest in music. Crockett didn’t share this enthusiasm, but found a way around it.

“Every person has his own music, the things he listens to, the things that harmonize in his universe,” Crockett later said. “So I thought, I don’t need to teach [them] anything about music if I can get him [meaning Manson] out” of their heads.

Just as had been the case with Poston, Watkins found Crockett’s folksy mysticism—in truth, opportunism and counter-Scientology programming—attractive. If Manson had realized the depth of Crockett’s influence, he likely would not have let Watkins stay at Barker Ranch through mid-August. But Watkins was surprisingly good at keeping one foot in each camp. Under Crockett’s urging, Poston and Watkins would start a band, calling themselves Desert Sun. It did not go anywhere commercially, but it had a much bigger impact metaphysically. In essence, it would eventually be part of what freed them.

Juanita Wildebush would find freedom in a different way. She and Bob Berry, Crockett’s mining partner, would run off and get married.

Manson and Crockett would maintain an uneasy peace throughout the summer; this was mostly because Manson was focused on his recording career. It was sure to take off at any moment, he thought, and so he needed to stay close to Los Angeles.

In addition, July and August would yield other, more pressing concerns. Tragically for many people, the start of a brilliant music career for Charlie Manson was not one of them.

Terry Melcher had not had any contact with Manson since the Family had been thrown out of Wilson’s mansion the summer before. Nonetheless, in mid-March 1969, Manson got it into his head that Melcher was coming to the Spahn Ranch to audition his music—and even imagined a specific day!

Manson and the Family launched into a frenzy of cleaning, baking, joint-rolling, and choreographing. On the day of Melcher’s arrival, there would be a focus on Manson, with a choir of his girls singing backup. Both Manson and Melcher would be positioned so that nature would also play a part in the performance. It was not going to be an audition; it was going to be an experience.

Melcher never showed up and, once again, Manson was humiliated in front of his Family.

But he was not one to give up so easily. He had never forgotten being in the car when Dennis Wilson dropped Melcher at his home. And so, on May 23, without any advance notice, Manson arrived at 10050 Cielo Drive.

Manson initially walked around the front yard, perhaps composing how he would approach Melcher. He was spotted by someone inside—Iranian photojournalist Shahrokh Hatami, who had been visiting the home’s current resident.

Hatami went out on the front porch of the home and confronted the stranger. He did not know the name Melcher, but thought the stranger might be a friend of the man who actually owned the property—Rudi Altobelli, whom Manson had met earlier at Dennis Wilson’s mansion. Altobelli, as it happened, was staying in one of the houses behind the main house.

Altobelli being on premises was a rarity. He usually did not stay at the estate, preferring to make it available for entertainment luminaries such as actors Samantha Eggar, Henry Fonda, and Olivia Hussey—all former tenants. Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon had even used it as their honeymoon retreat four years earlier.

Had Manson known more about the person who had spoken with him, he might not have been so quick to scurry away. Hatami had photographed The Beatles during their early days, when they were performing in Liverpool’s Cavern Club. If nothing else, Manson would have taken their interaction as a further sign of his destiny.

But then one of the current residents, having heard the conversation, came to the door. And for a very brief moment, Charlie Manson and Sharon Tate stared at each other. Without saying hello, or anything else, Manson left.

Manson returned to the guest house later in the day. He found Altobelli packing, as he and Tate were leaving for Rome the next morning. Manson introduced himself, but Altobelli was dismissive, pointing out they had met the previous summer.

Manson started by asking where Melcher was, and Altobelli lied, saying he did not know. He did—Melcher and Bergen had moved to Malibu—but Altobelli was not going to tell Manson that.

Manson tried several times to engage Altobelli, but Altobelli dismissed him.

Through one means or another Melcher did eventually promise to come out to the Spahn Ranch in May and listen to Manson perform. Melcher never addressed what had happened in March—whether he was scheduled to come to the ranch and forgot, or whether he never knew about the supposed audition.

Once again, Manson threw the Family into a frenzy of cleaning and rehearsal.

Melcher showed up with Gregg Jakobson, an acquaintance of Tex Watson who was also in the industry. The two were all business; Melcher was there to listen to Manson’s music, not to partake in any of the Family’s other offerings. He did not want to talk to Manson about world philosophies or anything else. Nor did he want sex with any of the Manson girls.

Melcher heard Manson play for about an hour. Manson was the lead singer, of course, but from time to time a choir of Family members would join in. Some banged on tambourines while others clapped.

When the concert was over, Melcher asked Manson a few questions, mostly practical—such as if he was in any musicians’ unions, such as the AFL or AFTRA. He was not, he said. But inside he had to be thinking, of course not. Messiahs do not need to belong to unions.

But people who wanted to be recorded in a professional studio did. Without union membership there would be no serious recording effort—despite what Dennis Wilson had done earlier for Manson.

With the conversation unhelpfully concluded, Melcher sought a way to excuse himself. As a courtesy, and because many of the Family members looked hungry and were clearly living in the squalor of the Spahn Ranch, Melcher handed Manson fifty dollars and left. He had made no indication of commitment about the music one way or another.

To Manson, that was little different from an outright rejection. He was again faced with a potential humiliation in front of his Family. There was no big recording contract signing. Nobody fell and kissed the singer’s feet. There was no promise of a major record release, which would have funded preparations in advance of Helter Skelter. And absent that money, Manson was going to have a difficult time keeping his Family safe.

Angry and disappointed and unable to keep one from fueling the other, Manson fell back on his usual strategy of saying or doing whatever it would take to keep their confidence for however long he could. As long as he kept telling people what they wanted to hear, he would be able to stay afloat.

Giving Manson the money was a kind mistake, but Melcher would soon make another one. Privately, he told Jakobson that he was not interested in recording Manson, but that he would be willing to bring a friend, Mike Deasy, who had a mobile recording unit he used to tape Hopi Indian music, to the ranch. There was no way Manson was going to be able to set foot in a studio without union membership.

In June, Melcher arranged for Deasy to join him and Jakobson at the Spahn Ranch. The excursion lasted for three days, and was a disaster. Deasy got hold of some bad acid, and his resulting trip was a nightmare. There is no record, one way or another, of anything being recorded on the four-track unit in Deasy’s trailer.

On the third day, Deasy was still in bad shape and needed to leave. Jakobson, Manson, and Melcher were bringing him back to a car that would take him home, when they were approached by forty-seven-year-old Randy Starr. In addition to being an occasional ranch hand, Starr was also the husband of Windy Bucklee, the woman whose jaw Manson had broken.

Starr was obviously, almost comically, drunk. He was also in a fighting mood, waving a gun around though not really pointing it at anyone. Fortunately, he was not in a condition to fight. Unfortunately for him, Manson, who had seen the promise of recording time go down the outhouse hole during the prior three days, was.

Manson let his anger out and began viciously beating Starr. Deasy, Jakobson, and Melcher got in their car as fast as they could and left.

A few days later, Melcher called Manson and tried to give him the ego-preserving brush off he used with other acts. The talent was there, Melcher would say, but as a producer he was not sure how he could shape it. Best of luck, take care.

Goodbye, recording career. Goodbye, funding for Helter Skelter preparations.

Like the petty crimes of his past—the simple check scam that involved going into a mailbox, making it a federal crime, the pimping rap that he compounded by taking girls across state lines, a likely probation sentence that he turned into jail time by jumping bail—over the next two months, Charlie Manson was going to make a series of bad decisions.

This time, however, the consequences would shake the entire country.