Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover (8 page)

Even though the reformatory in Petersburg was considered high security, administrators despaired of keeping others safe from Charlie. In late September he was transferred to a maximum security reformatory in Chillicothe, Ohio. Even there he was still considered dangerous to the general population: “In spite of his age he is criminally sophisticated [and] regarded as grossly unsuited for retention in an open reformatory type institution such as Chillicothe.” Over five years, Charlie Manson had slid to the very bottom of the reform school pit. There was no lower place left to go until November 12, 1955, when he reached his twenty-first birthday and had to be set free. Any release prior to that was improbable; one evaluation declared that Charlie “shouldn’t be trusted across the street.” Reformatory authorities who’d dealt with the worst delinquents in America concluded that Charlie Manson was beyond rehabilitating.

Then Charlie shocked them all. He couldn’t erase forced rape and other egregious offenses from his record, but he could appear to do by himself what reformatory professionals believed he couldn’t achieve even with their help—become a model inmate and, once again, a candidate for early release. Throughout his life, Charlie would outwardly reform or at least summon the self-discipline to keep his worst inclinations under control for short periods. This time was by far the most extended.

Beginning in the fall of 1952, Charlie stopped committing serious infractions. He spent all of 1953 working hard at academics. It was noted in his record that Charlie raised his general skills from a fourth to upper
seventh grade level, and “he can now read most [printed] material and use simple arithmetic.” Charlie also shone in his assigned work in the reformatory transportation unit, where he did maintenance work on the facility’s cars and trucks. This background in automobile engine upkeep and repair would serve him well later on. Combined with his unexpected progress in class, Charlie’s exemplary work record impressed the staff at Chillicothe to the extent that on January 1, 1954, he was presented with an award for meritorious service. Four months later the prison recognized his apparently changed attitude in the most significant way possible: At age nineteen, and after seven years in six different reform schools, Charlie was released to live with his uncle and aunt.

Modern experts in child psychology, juvenile justice, and the history of the American reform school system in the 1950s agree that Charlie’s adult pattern of lawbreaking and violence was virtually guaranteed by the experiences of his childhood. He had no nurturing father figure. While his mother loved him, Kathleen often battled her own demons at the expense of her son’s emotional security. Charlie entered the reformatory school jungle as an undersized, helpless twelve-year-old who survived by convincing bigger, predatory kids that he was crazy. The most notable skills Charlie exhibited as a child were criminal—he could steal cars, break into small businesses, rifle safes, and commit armed robberies like a grown-up. His childhood was certainly troubled in ways that were no fault of his own. But there was also something in Charlie that consistently led him to act out in ways completely against his own self-interest. He made bad situations in which he found himself even worse. Charlie proved that again when he returned to McMechen.

W
hen Charlie Manson left the reformatory in Chillicothe in May 1954 and returned to McMechen, the West Virginia town was little changed. But America was changing. National debates over the threat of communism, the wisdom of placing military advisors in South Vietnam, and the ruling by the Supreme Court in
Brown v. Board of Education
that segregated schools were unconstitutional had no impact on daily life in McMechen.
Town residents were deliberately insular. The city of
Wheeling a few miles to the north was widely recognized as a regional hotbed of crime, with prostitution and gambling controlled by mobster “Big Bill” Lias, and Moundsville to the south was a brooding place dominated by the penitentiary. McMechen took pride in its working-class decency.

As he returned to McMechen,
Charlie’s immediate concern was where he would stay. His release technically required him to live with Glenna and Bill Thomas. They had plenty of room at their house. Jo Ann had married a minister; she and her husband lived several miles across the river in Ohio. But Charlie and Uncle Bill still didn’t get along. An intriguing possibility for Charlie was to live with his mother. Kathleen had recently moved to nearby Wheeling. She was still trying to hold together her marriage with Lewis, and Charlie had some of the same problems with him as he did with Uncle Bill. Though mother and son were glad to see each other again, Kathleen didn’t feel that she could allow Charlie to be anything more than an occasional overnight guest.

So Charlie sometimes stayed with the Thomases, less frequently with Kathleen, and most nights lived in a small house on 15th Street with his grandmother Nancy. She still doted on the boy, and believed that with proper guidance Charlie might yet make a godly life for himself.

With the question of where he would live resolved, Charlie looked for work. It was harder for him than for other young men in town. Charlie didn’t have a father to put in a good word at the company where he worked. He didn’t have a high school diploma, or even experience at a part-time job beyond his work assignments in various reformatories.
He was finally hired at Wheeling Downs, a local racetrack. Charlie swept out stables and cleaned up after horses as they were walked about the grounds. His salary was meager even by local standards. But it was still honest, legal employment that satisfied the terms of his reformatory release. Besides, Charlie loved animals and enjoyed being around them, even with a bucket and shovel. The hardest part of the racetrack job was that other people were always telling him what to do. Charlie felt like he’d been bossed around all his life and was tired of it. He wanted to be the one in charge.

With a place to live and a job, Charlie set out to explore social life. This proved hardest of all. In general, people in McMechen didn’t hold his reformatory time against him. Lots of families had a child or two who’d been in trouble. But the town was still clannish and protective of its teenagers.
McMechen parents tried to provide their youngsters with plenty of wholesome entertainment possibilities. Most Fridays and Saturdays found events scheduled at the high school gym—sock hops, bake sales, amateur theatricals, anything to keep kids busy and out of trouble. Everyone turned out for sports events featuring the local school teams. Very few of the teenage boys had cars. They wore near-identical flannel shirts, blue jeans, and Converse sneakers. Teen girls wore dresses to school and on most weekend outings. When they wanted fluffy curls they wrapped their hair around cardboard toilet paper rolls. At parties a popular prank was dropping aspirin in cups of Pepsi or Coke; the combination supposedly made you feel a little bit drunk. Most of the teenagers had known each other all their lives.
Newcomer Charlie, with no social skills to speak of—reform schools didn’t offer training in asking girls on dates or laughing with pals at the movies—seemed incapable of breaking into their circle.

Charlie’s best chance to make friends was directly related to a demand from his grandmother.
He was allowed to live with Nancy only if
he faithfully attended Sunday morning services with her at the Nazarene church across from her house. Originally formed in 1907 as a coalition of conservative, “holiness” churches, Nazarene enclaves were soon established all over the country. Small-town Appalachia, where so many believers sprang from fundamentalist roots, proved to be particularly fertile ground. It was natural for a Nazarene church to be founded in McMechen, but it did not flourish there. Almost everyone in town went to worship on Sunday, just not as Nazarenes. Most McMechenites preferred a friendly, understanding God to a my-way-or-hell Lord, and
many did not consider the small cinder block church a warm, inviting place. Nazarene Sunday attendance topped out at about eighty according to its members, and at fifty or so in the opinion of outsiders. Either way, it was one of the smallest congregations in town. But the Maddox family was always well represented. Besides Nancy, Bill and Glenna Thomas were also members. Kathleen, just a few miles away in Wheeling, never joined the Nazarenes in McMechen or affiliated herself with any other denomination. Nancy’s fundamentalist faith soured Kathleen on attending church forever,
though, in her own way, she still believed in God.

Each Sunday found Charlie in shirt and tie sitting next to his grandmother at the Nazarene service. She expected him to pay attention to the minister and sometimes Charlie did. The uncomfortable wooden pews made it too hard to doze off. So Charlie heard on a weekly basis that the Holy Scripture contained no errors at all, that women were meant to be subservient to men, and that in order to achieve salvation it was necessary to follow the instructions in 1 Thessalonians—to completely empty yourself by giving up your individuality and pride and possessions. Some biblical passages, including colorful sections from the apocalyptic Book of Revelation that described a bottomless pit, were cited so often that Charlie had ample opportunity to learn them by heart. As with song lyrics, Charlie had a knack for recalling Scripture.

Besides requiring him to go to church with her on Sundays, Nancy also insisted that Charlie join the church’s Sunday School class for teenagers, attend their meetings, and participate in their social functions. Though he dutifully attended Sunday services with his grandmother, Charlie was less amenable to spending more of each weekend perched in
a pew listening to the Nazarene minister lecture about all the things God didn’t want young people to do. Though the dozen or so other teenagers there seemed to hang on every word, Charlie was always restless.
Since he was out of Nancy’s sight, he wasn’t shy about showing it. Called on to offer comment, Charlie often responded insolently. He slouched where he sat, propped his feet up on the row in front of him, and even carved his initials on a pew.

Charlie didn’t care what the pastor thought of him, but he cared very much about the opinions of his Sunday School classmates. Though they apparently bought in to church restrictions Charlie personally found laughable—all those biblical contradictions! You were commanded to honor your parents (like Charlie’s were even worth honoring), yet you were also supposed to reject them to follow Jesus—these teens were still the closest thing to potential friends that he had. Charlie set out to impress them, but picked the worst way. In reform school, popular, dominant boys usually had the lengthiest, most colorful criminal records. Far from minimizing his delinquent past to the Nazarene kids,
Charlie mistakenly tried to glorify it by emphasizing that he was worldly in ways that these small-town teens were not. He bragged about reformatory fights, running from the law, and even his considerable experience “shooting up.”

It was this last claim that undid him with the Sunday School youth. Even with protective parents and hovering church elders,
teens in McMechen had some familiarity with sin. High school boys sneaked into town bars and if no responsible adults were there
they were sometimes allowed to buy shots of whiskey—under curious local law, bartenders might be fined if caught peddling liquor to minors, but a bar’s license would be revoked if anyone underage was sold beer on the premises. Everybody knew there were prostitutes in Wheeling and sometimes for a lark McMechen kids would take the bus there and gawk at the painted women. Just about all the town teens, Nazarene or not, sneaked cigarettes. But none of them had any idea of what Charlie Manson meant when he claimed that he’d been shooting up. The kids knew nothing about drugs.
They’d never heard the word “marijuana,” let alone references to anything harder. It baffled them, but they decided that they didn’t like the sound of it.

The Nazarene kids closed ranks against Charlie. On Halloween the youth group had a combination costume party/hot dog cookout at one girl’s house. For once, Charlie enthusiastically participated. It was his first costume party, and he decked himself out as a carnival barker complete with arm garter and a big black hat. But when Charlie arrived, none of the kids except the embarrassed young hostess and her cousin would even speak to him. He gamely posed with them for a photograph, but the rejection stung. And when the Sunday School teens discussed Charlie with their non-Nazarene friends at school, the shunning spread to include all the self-styled decent kids in McMechen. By not even acknowledging Charlie as they passed him on the street or bumped into him at the grocery store, the town’s other teenagers also made it clear that they were not interested in his company. Charlie got the message. He was a social outcast.

Jo Ann was astonished when Charlie showed up unexpectedly one afternoon at her home across the river from McMechen in Ohio. It was miles from her grandmother’s house in West Virginia and Charlie didn’t have a car. Either he’d taken the bus or walked. Ever since Charlie got out of reform school, Jo Ann had avoided seeing him, and he hadn’t shown any interest in reconnecting with her, either. Now Jo Ann felt obligated to invite him in, even though her minister husband was there counseling a troubled teenage member of his church who was having problems getting along with her parents. As soon as Charlie was introduced to the girl he completely ignored Jo Ann and her husband. Charlie built the teenager up, telling her she was so special and pretty; Jo Ann felt that next he would ask her to leave the house with him and go God knew where to do God knew what. The way Charlie was acting with the girl felt wrong and evil. So Jo Ann said loudly that Charles needed to get back home to McMechen, and she made sure that he was gone before she let the girl out of her sight. “He was a good talker and would have gotten her for some bad purpose otherwise,” Jo Ann said.

Though he’d learned to give and take sexual relief with other boys in reform school, Charlie was mostly attracted to women. He could go to the prostitutes in Wheeling, but they cost money that Charlie didn’t have.
The thing about the prostitutes that mostly interested Charlie was how they subsidized their pimps—men making their livings off of subservient
women seemed like a fine thing to him. Meanwhile, what he really wanted was a girlfriend, and Charlie’s near-universal unpopularity among other McMechen teens made it unlikely that he could find one in his current hometown. Then fate intervened in the form of someone else controversial.