Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars (43 page)

An example of this: if you were to be standing in a room with someone and you were loaded on LSD and the guy says, “Do you like my sports coat?” And you would probably not pay any attention to him. About two or three minutes later the guy loaded on LSD will turn around and say, “My, you have a beautiful sports coat” because he is only reacting. He is only reacting to the individual terminology, the person that he has in the room.

As you would put two people in a cell, so would they reflect and flow on each other like as if water would seek a level.

I have been in a cell with a guy eighty years old and I listened to everything he said. “What did you do then?” And he explains to me his whole life and I sat there and listened, and I experienced vicariously his whole being, his whole life, and I look at him and he is one of my fathers. But he is also another one of your society’s rejects.

Where does the garbage go, as we have tin cans and garbage alongside the road, and oil slicks in your water, so you have people, and I am one of your garbage people. I am one of your motorcycle people. I am one of what you want to call hippies. I never thought about being a hippie. I don’t know what a hippie is.

A hippie is generally a guy that’s pretty nice. He will give you a shirt and a flower, and he will give you a smile, and he walks down the road. But don’t try to tell him nothing. He ain’t listening to nobody. He got his own thoughts. You try to tell him something, and he will say, “Well, if that’s your bag.”

He is finding himself. You, those children there were finding themselves. Whatever they did, if they did whatever they did, is up to them. They will have to explain to you that. I’m just explaining to you what I am explaining to you. Everything is simple to me. It is what it is because that is what it is. It doesn’t go any farther.

What? That is all there is. Why?

Why?

Why comes from your mother. Your mother teaches you why, why, why. You go around asking your mother why and she keeps telling you, “Because, because” and she laces your little brain with because and: “Because.” “Why?” “Because.” “Why?” And you don’t know any different. If you had two mothers, one to tell you one tiring and one to tell you another, then your mind might be left where mine was. If you had a dozen parents that you went around with and couldn’t believe anything you were told and then you couldn’t disbelieve anything you were told. And it’s the same thing with this court. I don’t believe what these witnesses get up here and say but I don’t disbelieve them either. I won’t challenge them. If the guy says, “You’re no good,” I say, “Okay.” If that’s what you want me to believe it’s okay with me.

I don’t care what you believe. I know what I am. You care what I think of you? Do you care what I think of you? Do you care what my opinion is? No, I hardly think so. I don’t think that any of you care about anything other than yourselves because when you find yourself, you find that everyone is out for themselves anyway.

It looks that way to me here, the money that has been made, the things that I cannot talk about, and I know I can’t talk about, I won’t talk about and I will keep quiet about these things. How much all money has passed over this case? How sensational do you think that you have made this case?

I never made it sensational. I was hiding in the desert. You come and got me. Remember? Or could you prove that? What could you prove?

The only thing you can prove is what you can prove to yourselves, and you can sit here and build a lot in that jury’s mind, and they are still going to interject their personalities on you. They are going to interject their inadequate feelings; they are going to interject what they think. I look at the jury and they won’t look at me. So I wonder why they won’t look at me. They are afraid of me. And do you know why they are afraid of me? Because of the newspapers.

You projected fear. You projected fear. You made me a monster and I have to live with that the rest of my life because I cannot fight this case. If I could fight this case and I could present this case, I would take that monster back and I would take that fear back. Then you could find something else to put your fear on, because it’s all your fear.

You look for something to project it on and you pick a little old scroungy nobody who eats out of a garbage can, that nobody wants, that was kicked out of the penitentiary, that has been dragged through every hellhole you can think of, and you drag him up and put him into a courtroom.

You expect to break me? Impossible! You broke me years ago. You killed me years ago. I sat in a cell and the guy opened the door and he said, “You want out?”

I looked at him and I said, “Do you want out? You are in jail, all of you, and your whole procedure. The procedure that is on you is worse than the procedure that is on me. I like it in there.”

I like it in there—it’s peaceful. I just don’t like coming to the courtroom. I would like to get this over with as soon as possible. And I’m sure everyone else would like to get it over with too.

Without being able to prepare a case, without being able to confront the witnesses and to bring out the emotions, and to bring out the reasons why witnesses say what they say, and why this hideous thing has developed into the trauma that it’s moved into, would take a bigger courtroom, and it would take a bigger public, a bigger press, because you all, as big as you are, know what you are as I know what you are, and, I like you anyway. I don’t want to keep rehashing the same things over. There are so many things that you can get into, Your Honor, that I have no thoughts on. It is hard to think when you really don’t care too much one way or the other.

(
Interruption.
)

I was released from the penitentiary and I learned one lesson in the penitentiary, you don’t tell nobody nothing. You listen. When you are little you keep your mouth shut, and when someone says, “Sit down,” you sit down unless you know you can whip him, and if you know you can whip you stand up and whip and you tell him to sit down.

Well, I pretty much sat down. I have learned to sit down because I have been whipped plenty of times for not sitting down and I have learned not to tell people something they don’t agree with. If a guy comes up to me and he says, “The Yankees are the best ball team,” I am not going to argue with that man. If he wants the Yankees to be the best ball team, it’s okay with me, so I look at him and I say, “Yeah, the Yankees are a good ball club.” And somebody else says, “The Dodgers are good.” I will agree with that; I will agree with anything they tell me. That is all I have done since I have been out of the penitentiary. I agreed with every one of you. I did the best I could to get along with you, and I have not directed one of you to do anything other than what you wanted to do.

I have always said this: You do what your love tells you and I do what my love tells me. Now if my love tells me to stand up there and fight I will stand up there and fight if I have to. But if there is any way that my personality can get around it, I try my best to get around any kind of thing that is going to disturb my peace, because all I want is to be just at peace, whatever that takes. Now in death you might find peace, and soon I may start looking in death to find my peace.

I have reflected your society in yourselves, right back at yourselves, and each one of these young girls was without a home. Each one of these young boys was without a home. I showed them the best I could what I would do as a father, as a human being, so they would be responsible to themselves and not to be weak and not to lean on me. And I have told them many times, I don’t want no weak people around me. If you are not strong enough to stand on your own, don’t come and ask me what to do. You know what to do. This is one of the philosophies that everyone is mad at me for, because of the children. I always let the children go. “You can’t let the children go down there by themselves.” I said “Let the children go down. If he falls, that is how he learns, you become strong by falling-” They said, “You are not supposed to let the children do that. You are supposed to guide them.”

I said, “Guide them into what? Guide them into what you have got them guided into? Guide them into dope? Guide them into armies?” I said, “No, let the children loose and follow them.” That is what I did in the desert. That is what I was doing, following your children, the ones you didn’t want, each and every one of them. I never asked them to come with me—they asked me.

(Recessed.)

There’s been a lot of talk about a bottomless pit. I found a hole in the desert that goes down to a river that runs north underground, and I call it a bottomless pit, because where could a river be going north underground? You could even put a boat on it. So I covered it up and I hid it and I called it “the Devil’s Hole” and we all laugh and we joke about it. You could call it a Family joke about the bottomless pit. How many people could you hide down in this hole?

Again you have a magical mystery tour that most of the time there’s forty or fifty people at the ranch playing magical mystery tour. Randy Starr thought he was a Hollywood stuntman. He had a car all painted up and like never done any stunts. Another guy was a movie star, but he had never been in any movies, and everybody was just playing a part, you know, like most people get stuck in one part, but like we were just playing different parts every day. One day you put on a cowboy hat and say, “Shoot somebody,” or the next you might have a knife fighter, or go off in the woods for a month or two to be an Indian, or just like a bunch of little kids playing. Then you establish a reality within that reality of playacting.

And then you get to conspiracy. The power of suggestion is stronger than any conspiracy that you could ever enter into. The powers of the brain are so vast, it’s beyond understanding. It’s beyond thinking. It’s beyond comprehension. So to offer a conspiracy might be to sit in your car and think bad thoughts about someone and watch them have an accident in front of you. Or would it be a conspiracy for your wife to mention to you twenty times a day, “You know, you’re going blind, George, you know how your eyes are, you’re just going blind; we pray to God and you’re going blind, and you’re going blind.” And she keeps telling the old man he’s going blind until he goes blind.

Is that a conspiracy?

Is it a conspiracy that the music is telling youth to rise against the establishment because the establishment is rapidly destroying things? Is that a conspiracy? Where does conspiracy come in? Does it come in that?

I have showed people how I think by what I do. It is not as much what I say as what I do that counts, and they look at what I do and they try to do it also, and sometimes they are made weak by their parents and cannot stand up. But is that my fault? Is it my fault that your children do what they do?

Now the girls were talking about testifying. If the girls come up here to testify and they said anything good about me, you would have to reverse it and say that it was bad. You would have to say, “Well, he put the girls up to saying that. He put the girls up to not telling the truth.” Then you say the truth is as I am saying it, but then when it is gone, tomorrow it is gone, it changes, it’s another day and it’s a now truth, as it constantly moves thousands of miles an hour through space.

Hippie cult leader; actually, hippie cult leader, that is your words. I am a dumh country boy who never grew up. I went to jail when I was eight years old and I got out when I was thirty-two. I have never adjusted to your free world. I am still that stupid, corn-picking country boy that I always have been.

If you tend to compliment a contradiction about yourself, you can live in that confusion. To me it’s all simple, right here, right now; and each of us knew what we did and I know what I did, and I know what I’m going to do and what you do is up to you. I don’t recognize the courtroom, I recognize the press and I recognize the people.

THE COURT: Have you completed your statement, Mr. Manson?

MANSON: You could go on forever. You can just talk endless words. It don’t mean anything. I don’t know that it means anything. I can talk to the witnesses and ask them what they think about things, and I can bring the truth out of other people because I know what the truth is, but I cannot sit here and tell you anything because like basically all I want to do is try to explain to you what you are doing to your children.

You see, you can send me to the penitentiary, it’s not a big thing. I’ve been there all my life anyway. What about your children? These are just a few, there is many, many more coming right at you.

THE COURT: Anything further?

MANSON: No.

We’re all our own prisons, we are each all our own wardens and we do our own time. I can’t judge anyone else. What other people do is not really my affair unless they approach me with it.

Prison’s in your mind.… Can’t you see I’m free?

APPENDIX II

M
ANSON’S 1986
P
AROLE
H
EARING
S
TATEMENT

As anyone in the know knows, throughout the state of California, the country, and the world: the lawyers, courts, and government of the U.S. lie and cannot be trusted. (California Department of Corrections included.) To keep this so-called Board of Paroles from telling more lies about me, my family, brothers and sisters in soul in truth and of God, I have come to this hearing to make statements to and for the public record to be marked in history.

I have been kept in handcuffs for over sixteen years and kept for the most part in solitary confinement, as the so-called authorities kept changing the names from solitary to “administrative segregation” to “quiet cells” and other coverups each time the court ordered elimination of solitary time, or the public began to hear about mistreatment. Their fears and guilts were covered up by distortion, lies, and confusion to mislead and misinform the public for more tax dollars and bigger criminal justice business, actually fed by the misfortunes and blood of children.

I’ve been kept in mental wards, nut wards; I’ve been beaten, drugged, and have lost track of the times I’ve been handcuffed to the bars or left to be killed. Inmates have told me that doctors and other C.D.C. staff have tried to have me killed by telling them lies about me killing pregnant women and eating their unborn babies, or have implied threats to their personal safety along with promises of paroles and other favors. I have witnesses to all I say but no court will touch it because they broke their laws to put me back in prison, and each day they break all the laws by keeping me. They violate every human right in the book, yet they keep preaching to the world as if they had no sins and were all good guys.