Monday, April 24, 2017

Murder Cases of the Twentieth Century - Biographies and Bibliographies of 280 Convicted or Accused Killers

So recently I spent a couple of days helping a friend move (I'm that kinda guy). We moved voluminous amounts of books. At one point I'm taking them out of boxes and arranging them on shelves in the new digs. It had been a long day and I was tired. Then, a big fat red hardcover book fell out of my arms and landed on my foot. It hurt. After putting the rest of the books in my arms on the shelves and cussing a little I bent down to punish the culprit. But when I read the title my attention was thusly diverted... Murder Cases of the Twentieth Century - Biographies and Bibliographies of 280 Convicted or Accused Killers, by David K Frazier.

Naturally the titled appealed to my black little heart and I looked at the masthead. It was published in 1996. What I had was an alphabetized, encyclopedic collection of the world's most famous murder cases of the previous 95 years - with bibliographies (hello Ed Sanders...). I thought about the pub date, 1996. That's the year I got into the web business (and out of the book business). To me the internet was the future and physical paper books I believed were reaching the beginning of end of the line. I wondered if Frazier knew what lay ahead of us electronically, would he have done a website instead?

Without hesitation I flipped to the M's. There were about 5 pages devoted to Manson. I found it interesting. Naturally, he sticks to the official Helter-Skelter motive and makes common mistakes like Manson believing that Melcher still lived at Cielo.

Official narratives mean nothing to me anymore. Some of you may remember me saying my wife and I were well acquainted with a man here in NC who later murdered his wife. The trial was big news. Knowing all of the actors and the real story I was blown away by the news coverage and especially by the national piece later broadcast on Dateline NBC. The things they left out were more astounding than the things they focused on. I've never trusted media accounts since.

I'd be interested to know what else in this narrative jumps out at Manson scholars.

Here's that section of the book. I OCR'd it for those who might have trouble reading the scans. For comparison the very end of this post is the book's attention devoted to Charles Watson (you know, the guy who actually killed 7 or 8 people).








Manson, Charles Males (a.k.a. "No Name Maddox," "Jesus Christ," "God," "The Devil," "Soul," "Charles Willis Manson") Born November 12, 1934, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Car thief, cult leader. Los Angeles, California; 9 murders (possible involvement in as many as 40); bludgeon, gun, knife; July—August 1969.

Film: Manson (US, 1972), a 93-minute documentary directed by Robert Hendrickson and Laurence Merrick (Merrick International Pictures). Cast includes Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Charles "Tex" Watson, and Jess Parsons (narrator).

Theatre: Charles Manson, a.k.a. Jesus Christ: A Rock-Musical Tragedy (1972), book by Fabian Jennings and music by Allan Rae, was performed in Toronto, Canada, in 1972 by the Playwrights Co-op. The Manson Family: Helter Five-0 (1990), an avant-garde opera by John Moran, was performed in New York City's Alice Tully Hall on July 17 and 18, 1990. The work was commissioned by Serious Fun!, Lincoln Center's annual avant-garde festival. Released by Point Music (New York) on compact disk in 1992 as The Manson Family: An Opera. Television: "Helter Skelter" (1976), a two-part, four-hour made-for-tele-vision movie based on Bugliosi's book of the same title, originally aired on CBS on April 1 and 2, 1976. Cast includes George DiCenzo (Vincent Bugliosi), Steve Railsback (Charles Manson), Nancy Wolfe (Susan Atkins), Marilyn Burns (Linda Kasabian), Christina Hart (Patricia Kren-winkel), Cathey Paine (Leslie Van Houten), and Bill Durkin (Charles "Tex" Watson).

Video: Sharon Tate, the Victim ... Charles Manson, the Convicted Serial Killer (US, 1990). Doris Tate, the murdered woman's mother, discusses the case in a 50-minute video manufactured and distributed by ATI Mark V Products, Inc.

"I'm willing to get out and kill a whole bunch of people. That's one reason I'm not really too fast on getting out. Because if I got out, I'd feel obligated to get even. It would be an honorable thing."—Manson in an August 1989 interview


Hippie cult leader often viewed as the prototype of the predatory guru (see Jim Jones) whose "Family"-directed murders marked the symbolic end of the 1960s era of innocence and free love. Born "No Name Maddox" to a 16-year-old prostitute in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 12, 1934, Manson never met his father. Taking his surname from a man his mother briefly married, the young child spent his early life shuffled between relatives and foster homes. In 1939 Manson's mother was convicted of armed robbery and during her imprisonment the five year old was sent to live with a strict, religious aunt and her violent husband. To "toughen up" the youngster, the man forced Manson to wear a dress to school on the first day of class. Released from prison after serving five years, Man-son's alcoholic mother reclaimed the boy but soon tired of having him underfoot. Once in a drunken stupor, she reportedly "gave" Manson to a bar-maid in payment for a drink. In 1947 at the age of 12, Manson was placed in the first of many institutions, the Gibault School for Boys in Terre Haute Indiana. Ten months later he fled making his way on the streets by stealing. In the next several years, Manson received his early instruction in criminal behavior at a variety of institutions, including Father Flanagan's Boy's Town and the reform school at Plainfield Indiana. In his book, Manson in His Own Words, the killer graphically described his hellish three-year stay Plainfield where, if he is to be believes, he was routinely raped and beaten by the other inmates. Escaping from Plainfield in February 1951, Manson was recaptured and spent most of the fifties and sixties in and out of state and federal institutions for crimes ranging from homosexual assault, car theft, forging and cashing stolen U.S. Treasury checks, pimping and transporting prostitutes across state lines.

On March 21, 1967, Manson was paroled from Terminal Island Prison in San Pedro, California, after serving a long term for car theft and pimping at the federal prison McNeil Island in the state of Washington. Prophetically, the 32-year-old Manson realized that the 19 years he had spent behind bars had rendered him ill-equipped to adapt to the outside world and he asked authorities to permit him to remain in jail. They refused and with $35 in his pocket Manson drifted north to San Francisco, then the center of the Hippie movement. Thoroughly schooled in the "jail house con," the charismatic Manson soon realized that there was a place for him in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. A budding musician/ songwriter (Alvin "Creepy" Karpis of the Ma Barker gang had taught him to play guitar in prison), Manson used his music combined with an addled messianic philosophy buttressed with marijuana and mind-altering drugs to attract a coterie of young middle-class white women who had dropped out of society looking for "truth." Manson used his "young loves" to attract to his "Family"-disaffected males who possessed the skills he needed to make his cult self-sufficient; a handiness with weapons and automobile mechanics. With his Family in tow, Manson relocated to the Los Angeles area where lie settled his commune at Spahn Ranch, an old film set and horse ranch in Simi Valley. In exchange for care and sex from Manson's women, George Spahn, the 81-year-old owner, permitted the Family to stay there free. Manson used the ranch as a base from which to sell drugs and to convert stolen cars

At Spahn Ranch, Manson solidified his total control over the 30 or so members of his cult. Feeding them a steady stream of marijuana and LSD, the guru orchestrated sexual orgies designed to rid his followers of any of their "hang-ups." Calling himself "Jesus Christ" and "God," the 5'2" ex-convict preached his version of the upcoming apocalypse which combined his bizarre interpretation of the biblical book of Revelation with the unimagined depths of meaning he found in the Beatles' White Album, more specifically the song "Helter Skelter." According to Manson's paranoid reasoning the coming race war between the blacks and the whites was inevitable. In the ensuing struggle, the blacks would emerge victorious but lack the intelligence to rule the world. At this point, Manson and his followers would emerge from their "Bottom-less Pit," a place of safety in California's Death Valley to which they had fled to avoid the carnage, and take over the planet. Tired of waiting for "Helter Skelter," the day of the Apocalypse, Manson decided to instigate the event by sending out four of his most devoted disciples to kill prominent members of the white Establishment, then plant evidence implicating black revolutionaries. Terry Melcher, the record producer son of Doris Day and then boyfriend of actress Candice Bergen, was selected as a victim because a year earlier he had refused to give Manson a recording contract. At that time, Melcher was living at 10500 Cielo Drive in the West Los Angeles Benedict Canyon area. Unknown to Manson, Melcher had recently sublet the house to Polish film director Roman Polanski and his wife of eight months actress Sharon Tate. The beautiful actress was eight-and-a-half months pregnant and waiting for her husband to return from shooting a film in England. On the night of August 8, 1969, Manson assembled his "hit team" telling its appointed leader Charles "Tex" Watson, a 23-year-old one-time "A" student and high school football star, that "You're going out on the Devil's business tonight" and to "kill everyone inside" the house. Accompanying Watson were 21-year-old topless dancer Susan Atkins (known in the Family as "Sadie Mae Glutz"), Patricia Krenwinkel, the 21-year-old daughter of a middle-class insurance salesman, and Linda Kasabian, the group's drug-addicted 20-year-old driver and look-out who had left her home in the Mid-west to look for God.

Shortly after midnight, Watson and the three women invaded the Cielo Drive home of actress Sharon Tate. First to die was Steven Earl Parent, 18, who was visiting the caretaker who lived in a cottage on the grounds. Watson shot Parent four times at close range with a .22 caliber pistol as the teenager sat in his parked car in the driveway. Entering the house, Watson, accompanied by Atkins and Krenwinkel ultimately herded the occupants into the living room. Visiting the 26-year-old actress that night were Wojiciech (Voytek) Frykowski, a 32-year-old Polish emigre playboy and drug dealer, his lover Abigail (Gibby) Folger, 25-year-old heiress to the Folger's coffee fortune, and Jay Sebring, 35, Tate's former lover and a famous name in the recently invented field of men's hairstyling. In the ensuing carnage Frykowski was stabbed 51 times, shot twice, and pistol whipped with such force by Watson that the handle of his gun broke off. His body was found on the front yard of the estate. Folger was stabbed 28 times with a bayonet by Watson and Atkins before dying near Frykowski. Sebring was shot in the back and stabbed seven times. Last to die was Sharon Tate who, after pleading for the life of her unborn baby, was told by Atkins, "Look bitch ... I don't care if you're going to have a baby ... You're going to die and I don't feel any-thing about it." The group stabbed the actress 16 times. Per Manson's instructions, Watson tossed a rope over an exposed ceiling beam and wrapped the ends around the necks of Tate and Sebring. Atkins, who actually tasted Tate's blood, wanted to cut out the woman's unborn fetus and take it to Manson for ritualistic purposes, but was told by Watson it was time to leave. Before doing so, Atkins daubed a towel in Tate's blood and scrawled the word "PIG" on the front door.

The next night, August 10, Man-son accompanied Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, Kasabian, and Leslie Sue Van Houten, 19, on a raid in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles 15 miles from the site of the Tate massacre. Alone and armed with a gun, Manson entered the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca at 3301 Waverly Drive. He tied up the 44-year-old supermarket tycoon and his 38-year-old wife assuring them both as he left that they would not be harmed. Returning to the car, Manson ordered Watson, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten to kill the bound pair. When Leno LaBianca was later found, he had been stabbed 26 times and the word "WAR" and several crosses had been carved into his chest. A knife and a fork were found protruding from his body. His wife was strangled with an electric cord and stabbed 41 times. "DEATH TO PIGS" and "RISE" were written on the living room wall in the the victims' blood as was the slogan "HEALTER SKELTER" [sic] found scrawled across the door of the refrigerator. Acting on Manson's instructions, the killers dropped the wallet of one of their victims in a black neighborhood in the hope that someone there would be caught by police using a credit card thereby leading them to believe that the murders were racially motivated. As public pressure mounted to solve the crimes (initially believed not to be linked), Manson had relocated his Family to Barker Ranch on the edge of Death Valley where he was arrested with 22 members of his group in October 1969 on charges of grand theft auto and arson.

The killers were identified as sus-=pects in the Tate-LaBianca murders after Susan Atkins, held at the Sybil Brand Institute as a suspect in the Manson-ordered torture-murder of Malibu music teacher Gary Hinman a few days before the Tate-LaBianca killings, told her cellmates about slaughtering the people on Cielo Drive on "Charlie's" order. She also bragged about Manson's future plans to shake tip the Establishment by murdering well-known celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, and Elizabeth Taylor. At a police press conference in Los Angeles held on December 1, 1969, authorities announced that the Tate-LaBianca case was solved. In a spectacular nine-month trial in which Liinda Kasabian turned state's evidence in exchange for immunity from prosecution, Manson, Atkins, Van Houten, and Krenwinkel were convicted of murder on March 29, 1971, and subsequently sentenced to death. Tried separately, Charles "Tex" Watson received a similar verdict and sentence. Manson and two other Family members were also convicted in the murder of Donald "Shorty" Shea, a would-be actor and hand on the Spahn Ranch. The death sentences, however, were over-turned and commuted to indeterminate life sentences in 1972 after the California Supreme Court invalidated t he existing capital punishment statute. All the principals in the Manson case have been eligible for parole since 1978, but their petitions have been consistently denied due largely to the efforts of Sharon Tate's family. Van Houten was subsequently retried in 1976 because her attorney, Ronald Hughes, disappeared during the first trial. His remains were found four months later in a mountain wilderness prompting many to speculate that he was killed by Family members because he refused to follow Manson's defense strategies. A second trial for Van Houten ended in a hung jury, but she was finally convicted in 1978. Watson married, fathered two children during prison conjugal visits, served as an assistant Protestant pastor at the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo, and currently runs his own prison ministry.

The women convicted in the case have since taken advanced educational degrees and counsel new female inmates.

Manson, still sporting the swastika he carved into his forehead, continues to be a figure of fascination for the media who hungrily hang on his every word. Realistic enough to know that he will never be released from prison, he now only occasionally attends his parole hearings. On September 25, 1984, Manson was hanging about the hobby shop in the California Medical Facility at Vacaville when he argued with fellow-inmate Jan Holmstrom over the man's constant recital of Hare Krishna chants. Holmstrom, a 36-year-old devotee of the sect doing life for the 1974 shotgun murder of his father, doused Manson with paint thinner and tossed a match on him. Manson survived, but was treated for second and third degree burns over his face, scalp, and hands. In 1993, the convicted killer was again thrust into the public spotlight when the enormously popular Los Angeles-based rock band Guns N' Roses featured his song "Look at Your Game, Girl" as the 13th and final cut on their The Spaghetti Incident album. Though the song was not cited on the album's play list, the name "Charlie" appears in the credits and lead singer Axl Rose thanks "Chas" at the end of the song. Depending on record sales, Manson could have earned as much as $62,000 in royalties. How-ever, based on a judgment obtained in 1971 it was ruled that Manson's royal-ties would go to the son of Voytek Frykowski. To deflect public criticism, Axl Rose promised to donate any royalties the band received from the song to an environmental group that helps dolphins. To many, Rose further served to popularize the killer by wearing a tee-shirt bearing Manson's likeness while performing. Manson's image has been officially licensed by Zooport Riot Gear, a surf-wear company based in Newport Beach, California, which pays him 10' a shirt. Writers on the case have since speculated that Manson was part of a murderous satanic orga-nization which included "Son of Sam" killer David Berkowitz and also that many of the murders were drug-related "hits."

--------------------------------------------

The Watson Entry:




36 comments:

grimtraveller said...

It's weird, the way something can be accurate ~ but in a wholly inaccurate way. There is quite a bit of lazy writing here but I ask myself, is it vastly different to much of what has turned up subsequently on various blogs ?
I don't know why but it rather irritates me that someone's foundational or general information on this case could be this entry.

grimtraveller said...

It reminds me of a rather average omelette ~ with a few tiny bits of broken eggshell in it. Those eggshells may be tiny but that's all they need to be to make the entire eating experience unsatisfactory.

grimtraveller said...

Matt said...

Official narratives mean nothing to me anymore

I'm pretty much the same ~ with one caveat. If an official narrative lines up with what one may find after some robust research, then it is at least worth considering.
Alas, I find this to rarely be the case. And it's not just in crime cases. Be it the music biz, politics, sport, religion, school, whatever, there's often more to a situation than what one finds documented in one place, whether written or filmed.

David said...

Let's face it this is terrible. Aside from things like this:

"and Linda Kasabian, the group's drug-addicted 20-year-old driver and look-out who had left her home in the Mid-west to look for God."

that are both misleading and wrong there are errors like this:

"Melcher was living at 10500 Cielo Drive"

and I am not referring to the Melcher part.

Maybe he should have read Helter Skelter before he wrote this or even watched the TV movie.

At least he has had the common sense to remove this one from his list of authored books: http://davidkfrasier.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

What's scary to me is that the only book I ever trusted completely- HS has turned out to also not be gospel truth in the way I always assumed it was...

Thanks to Col and this blog, I have come to realize there is much Bugs said and did that leads to questions. Although, I still think he did a great job prosecuting them and loved his book..

My fear is that as time goes by and more people wade into this passing on more and more problematic versions of what happened- we get further and further away from any chance at the real truth.

Whatever the real truth is lol. I still think from what I have personally heard and read that HS makes more sense and has more evidence to support it than any other motive.

But, I don't know...

Mr. Humphrat said...

The only times I tried OCR was about 20 years ago and it obviously has come a LONG way since then!

HellzBellz said...

Interesting opera...... http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-manson-family-an-opera-mw0000288974
On 17 is Mansons Rap: ,,Why Do I have to Pay for your Sins again,,

HellzBellz said...

Nice Trailer for the Opera Manson Family

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-manson-family-opera#/

HellzBellz said...

Another verry interesting read, especially the last part, about the 90s Bands using Manson

http://www.spin.com/featured/charles-manson-woodstock-summer-of-69-spin-1994-cover-story/

Matt said...

Mr. Humphrat said...
The only times I tried OCR was about 20 years ago and it obviously has come a LONG way since then!


They have it on line now. I uploaded the jpegs and it spit out the words for me to copy. Way easier than the old way.


Gloopine said...

How in the world can anyone be expected to write authoritatively on some 280 cases? Too much for one author. Don't get the point of the exercise. I think it would be safe to assume his other essays are rife with errors that students of those cases would be aghast at also.

Mr. Humphrat said...

Matt said: "They have it on line now. I uploaded the jpegs and it spit out the words for me to copy. Way easier than the old way."

thanks Matt I may get back into that again.

Robert C said...

Rarely is any historic event or era accurately recorded. I'm part of several groups that do continual research on past events several hundred years later with positive results due to better diagnostic equipment, continual discovery and the freedom to do this without a government reserving the right to write the history.

Also missing by this time are the agendas, special interests and egos that heavily influenced matters immediately after any event and this is where we are historically with, for lack of better words, the whole Manson Affair. Lot's of agenda/interests/ego still floating around with conjectures as well as facts forming the numerous basis of different thought without consensus. This is normal, and it may take well beyond the lifetimes of those today to get it sorted by those as yet unborn.

In the meantime we'll continue our little scientific & social engineerings trying to parse together the material at hand. And I agree with Gloopine that with hundreds of interpreted cases in a book things can really get watered down or degraded when it comes to accuracy. More like a text book.

It is because of these agendas/interests/egos that we have yet to see a book or compilation that gets the current known facts sorted, a list of alternative interpretations where we have conjecture, and have this reside as a central living document capable of being upgraded as new revelations come to light. The material is there, it's just a matter of getting it organized in an unbiased way. Many blogs including this one have obviously already gotten us out of the gate and on the road to this end.

Well, my obtuse 'deep thoughts' for an early morning.

grimtraveller said...

Mr. Humphrat said...

The only times I tried OCR was about 20 years ago and it obviously has come a LONG way since then!

I've found that these optical character recognition programmes work far better on some formats and documents than others and I've also noticed that on the same document it can be really scrappy one day and brilliant the next. Some of the letters and numbers can get really mangled. But all in all, I think they really are useful and as Matt says, they've come a long way from when I first came across them around 2005. They're really useful for transcribing e-books into something editable.

St Circumstance said...

What's scary to me is that the only book I ever trusted completely- HS has turned out to also not be gospel truth in the way I always assumed it was

I think that with the benefit of hindsight, that was almost inevitable. After all, HS is one person's story, that of the prosecutor. There were so many players in the saga that the chances of there not being some questionable stuff was pretty low. That even happens in things like WW2 history where there's more of a consensus on who the good guys and the bad guys were. There's even cops and fellow prosecutors that were on his side putting their own side of the story and that's good. It gives us a far more rounded picture.
When I've said that HS is the definitive tome on the case, I mean in terms of its breadth, scope and chronology. Even within its pages are recognizable flaws; for example, one is hard pushed to not conclude that apart from Charlie and possibly Clem, as far as VB was concerned, Susan Atkins was the most dangerous person on earth, she's certainly presented as the most deranged and disgusting female. Yet his book, though not meaning to, demonstrates that no one actually died by her hand {this now is at the very least highly debatable and Dreath has debated it persuasively}. As Simon has shown, the way the death of Joel Pugh is presented and come to think of it, even matters like the way he keeps stating that Sharon Tate saw Charles Manson in March '69 when Hatami says and continued to say, nothing of the sort, demonstrate that it's a book with many theories and supposition, presented as truths when it's not certain they can be called that. And all these are deducible by reading the book and not being aware of what anyone else has said. I've come to realize that I assumed a lot in reading the book. Stuff that isn't actually there. It's surprising how much we do this in life with things people say, films we watch, events we witness, news we hear etc.
To be fair though, he also does, in places, point out the shortcomings in his own conclusions. And subsequently, saying such things like Gary Hinman used to furnish the Family with drugs or admitting that he couldn't say for sure if Charlie truly believed in the crazier minutiae of HS {stuff he very conveniently left out of both the trial and his book !} show that he later possibly started considering things that he wouldn't have contemplated a few years earlier.

there is much Bugs said and did that leads to questions

Is that a bad thing though ? We do it about the Allies of world war 2. We do it about our parents and our own upbringing. We do it about our heroes and people we admire. We do it about our history and important events. Questions are healthy but answers or conclusions should be healthier !

grimtraveller said...

There's even cops and fellow prosecutors that were on his side putting their own side of the story and that's good

People like Mike McGann, Aaron Stovitz and Stephen Kay who, while not saying anything that could be construed as disagreeing with Bugliosi {in the light of the outcome of the trials}, put things in such a way as to show that they had thoughts and feelings about him that could be filed under 'agitated' !!

Robert C said...

Well, my obtuse 'deep thoughts' for an early morning

Most enjoyable, sir.

grimtraveller said...

Matt said...

The trial was big news. Knowing all of the actors and the real story I was blown away by the news coverage and especially by the national piece later broadcast on Dateline NBC. The things they left out were more astounding than the things they focused on. I've never trusted media accounts since

Fiddy 8 said...

Leave it to Grim to say he is the only one who knows what George Martin and Paul McCartney really meant by their own historical quotes

Even in the official narrative adopted by the court there are nuances that get ignored and inaccuracies such as Pat carving WAR on Leno LaBianca's torso. It's often said that the convicted killers have to accept the official record during parole hearings or there's no chance they'll ever get out but in reality Beausoleil, Atkins, Watson, Davis, Krenwinkel and Van Houten have all at some point disputed aspects of the court's findings and it's interesting that in certain cases during hearings, some of them have been encouraged to trot out whatever they view as inaccurate about the findings that are being used against them.
I've found in popular music's history that the sort of officially rendered tales are often too simplistic, just a few examples include King Crimson putting out the first progressive rock LP and kicking off the genre when examples can be found 3 years earlier or Miles Davis being the pioneer of jazz rock when Cream and the Fourth Way had recordings out a good year before that can only be described in that vein or Black Sabbath inventing heavy metal when Led Zeppelin and Blue Cheer {and others} had albums and songs out well before them or the idea that White men consistently stole Black forms of music and then popularized them at the expense of the Black musicians or that the Rolling Stones were the sexual real thing in rock while the Beatles were lightweight teenyboppers despite them covering sex in song {and were devouring groupies} before the Stones even had an album out and were still in suits.....
Historical accounts {immediate examples are WW2, slavery and colonialism} usually leave out important nuances which remind me of the old proverb, "until the lions have their storytellers, history will always glorify the hunter."
Bobby Beausoleil made an interesting observation when he said Charlie hadn't exactly helped the situation by playing up to much of the media's lazy repetition of his persona and words and it would appear that even Charlie himself accepted this, at least in part, when he asked George in response to a criticism George made of him "how would you have played it ?"

HellzBellz said...

@ Grimm: Black Sabbath never called themselves ,Heavy Metal, that stamp was given by the ,Public/Media. The early Black Sabbath had a way more mystic/dark vibe&sound then the way more Bleusy Hardrock sound of Led Zeppelin... You cant compare them. There is also no comparisson between early UK bands and Early U.S. bands (i.e. Blue Cheer)I do know what your saying, but only your excamples dont match. and a little fact here, To keep this a little On-Topic : Black Sabbath oficialy founded at August 9 1969. Dont we all know that date ??

Zelda Formaldehyde said...

Off-topic, but anyone excited about Dianne Lake's book coming out in October?

brownrice said...

“Excited” isn’t perhaps the best description of what I feel in anticipation of Ms Lake’s book… “interested to see how much it varies from the official narrative” would be closer for me. In Bill “rock spider” Nelson’s 80/90s(?) interview with her, she seemed to display a far more nuanced view of the whole scene than the traditional Bugliosi cartoon version… despite all of Nelson’s creepy innuendo & heavy breathing.

Back-on-topic- Matt, your paragraph in the original post about distrusting the official narratives & media accounts is absolutely spot-on.

starviego said...

grimtraveller said...
Even in the official narrative adopted by the court there are nuances that get ignored and inaccuracies such as Pat carving WAR on Leno LaBianca's torso.

What's inaccurate about 'Pat carving WAR on Leno LaBianca's torso?'

David said...

Watson did it:

"Out of some horrible part of my brain an image formed and I reached down and carved WAR on the bare belly below me."

(Will You Die for Me?)

starviego said...

Thanks for the reference.

Krenwinkel July 17, 1978 Parole Hearing Transcript
STEVEN KAY, DA's representative for LA County: Miss Krenwinkel denies now carving “War” in Leno LaBianca’s stomach. To my recollection at the penalty phase of the trial, she admitted that that’s what she did. And Watson at his trial said that that’s what she did. That she actually carved with a carving fork the letters “War” across the abdomen

So why were the facts reversed from the first version?

If you look at pics of the wound, it looks the "W" in 'War' could be two "Xs" side by side. Is that the source of this FBI claim?

FBI file, pg3of32
"In addition, a series of X marks had been carved on LaBianca along with the word "war."

Didn't a few early media reports also claim "Xs" had been carved into two of the Tate victims? (I think it was Sharon and someone else)

David said...

Starviego,

Be a bit careful what is said at the parole hearings. For example, here is what Watson actually said at his trial:

Q: I show you People's 91, Tex, and the word "War," w-a-r, is carved in Mr. LaBianca's stomach. Did you carve those letters into his stomach?
A: No, I did not.
Q: Do you have any idea who did?
A: No.

The "X's" actually form the "W". There were no X's at Cielo.

starviego said...

Thanks again for the info.

So how do we know Tex wasn't lying later and telling the truth earlier? Though I don't know what he and Krenny would gain by reversing roles.

"The "X's" actually form the "W"."

Yes, but the "W" is inscribed differently than the "A" or "R." Note the cuts extending below the letter. Was there perhaps a double meaning to the body mutilation?

grimtraveller said...

Matt said...

I'd be interested to know what else in this narrative jumps out at Manson scholars.


possible involvement in as many as 40

One might as well say he was possibly involved in as many as 500. I'm very much of the opinion that the Family in general couldn't keep their mouths closed and if there really had been 40 murders attributable to them, we'd have had some inkling by now.
In saying that though, as far as I'm aware, Susan Atkins never elaborated on her statement about those extra deaths, the "more and more before," other than to say that much of what she said in jail was a mixture of exaggeration, facts and lies.

whose "Family"-directed murders marked the symbolic end of the 1960s era of innocence and free love

The writer seems to have been completely unaware of how the tumultuous events of 1968 in the Western world followed hard on the heels of the "summer of love," the Hippy heaven of '67.
Even in '67 in the Mecca of Hippiedom, San Francisco, there was the symbolic funeral in the "Death of Hippie" event. With the Beatles falling out, Crosby fired from the Byrds, Jones axed from the Stones, King and Kennedy gunned down and fun in Chicago with Mayor Daley, the dark side of the 60s was rearing its head long before Cielo.

Born "No Name Maddox"

I see this a lot but I can never understand why people find it unusual that a child did not have a name the day it was born. My 2nd child didn't have a name for a week. It was ages before my big sister named her first child {jokingly, whenever friends would ask for updates, I'd tell them he was called 'Horatio'}. The Royal baby in this country wasn't born with a name. Being born without a name is pretty normal.

to a 16-year-old prostitute

Although Charlie is supposed to have trumpeted this at various times, it's not been verified and it's always been far more about Charles Manson than Kathleen Maddox and I think that's a cheap, low blow.

In his book, Manson in His Own Words, the killer graphically described his hellish three-year stay Plainfield where, if he is to be believes, he was routinely raped and beaten by the other inmates

Aside from the fact that he castigates the book, it's in plain sight in the book that "he" says he was raped by two guys a week into his arrival. But it isn't stated that this was a constantly repeated action. In fact, in the book "he" specifically states that after that first time, no one tried to rape him at Plainfield and subsequently no guy had had sex with him.
In George's book he puts some phrases in such a way as to suggest he was raped {George only ever takes issue with the one description in the Emmons book} and AC Fisher Aldag was certainly upfront in print on Col's blog stating that he had been.

grimtraveller said...

On March 21, 1967, Manson was paroled from Terminal Island Prison in San Pedro, California, after serving a long term for car theft and pimping at the federal prison McNeil Island in the state of Washington

The legend is that he did a 10 year stretch for stealing a $37 cheque which kind of adds to the "man done wrong by the system" mythology {a bit like the guy who gets 5 years for nicking bread in "Les Miserables"} but he did those years in the 60s for violating his probation. Bobby had a point when he said that Charlie sometimes was responsible for creating/living up his own media. During his trial he said "I did seven years for a thirty seven dollar check" which completely distorts what actually happened with all its nuances.

Prophetically, the 32-year-old Manson realized that the 19 years he had spent behind bars had rendered him ill-equipped to adapt to the outside world and he asked authorities to permit him to remain in jail. They refused

According to George's book, Charlie told him that he refused to be released because he didn't want to submit to parole supervision but he told Steve Alexander in 1970 that:
Well, when I got out the last time, I didn’t want out. I told the Man, I sez, “I can’t adjust to society and I’m content to walk around the yard playing my guitar, doing the things you do in a penitentiary”
and during his trial he said:
If you put me in the penitentiary, that means nothing because you kicked me out of the last one. I didn't ask to get released. I liked it in there because I like myself.
Take your pick.

Manson used his "young loves" to attract to his "Family"-disaffected males who possessed the skills he needed to make his cult self-sufficient; a handiness with weapons and automobile mechanics

In her last hearing, Pat goes into quite a bit of detail how the women were pimped out very early on and it makes for an interesting read, seeing how she's questioned about this with such incredulity ~ but I suspect, incredulity with an agenda.

grimtraveller said...

the unimagined depths of meaning he found in the Beatles' White Album

Fact of the matter is that from 1966 on, loads of people who liked the Beatles heard all kinds of messages in their music that didn't come from the Beatles although some of them did. Lennon actually commented in their authorized biography ¬> "talking is the slowest form of communicating anyway. Music is much better. We're communicating to the outside world through our music. The office in America say they listen to 'Sergeant Pepper' over and over so that they know what we're thinking in London" but at the same time in the same set of conversations he also said "Other people take it so seriously....it's nice when people like it but when they start 'appreciating' it it, getting great deep things out of it, making a thing of it, then it's a lot of shit." To further confuse the issue, he said, again in the same set of conversations, "we're a con as well. We know we're conning them because we know people want to be conned. They've given us the freedom to con them. 'Let's stick that in there' we say, 'that'll start them puzzling.'
And with Paul McCartney openly stating that the Beatles would slip in various references in songs that their friends or the hip would pick up on, is it really unusual that Charlie might, in an acid enhanced state of being, have also picked up on stuff, imaginary or otherwise ? No, it isn't, not when artists routinely encouraged listeners to garner their own interpretations while confusingly throwing in messages that weren't supposed to be got by the unhip. And it wasn't only the Beatles that people felt were speaking through their music and it wasn't only in the 60s either. It's almost a staple of popular music. There's a reason why Keith Richards said "people, you can't take a fucking record like other people take a bible. It's only a fucking record, man........it doesn't mean to say that whatever it says in there you've got to go out and do, you've got to go out and say."
Artists of the time played a confusing game which only went to make what happened with Charlie almost inevitable.
An interesting observation by Charlie during his trial was that "The music speaks to you every day, but you are too deaf, dumb and blind to even listen to the music."

Manson decided to instigate the event by sending out four of his most devoted disciples to kill prominent members of the white Establishment, then plant evidence implicating black revolutionaries

I suppose it's not that ridiculous to construct an argument that Tex, Sadie and Pat were devoted to Charlie and that Linda, being in love with him and thinking he was Jesus, wanted to be.
I guess some Black revolutionaries did wear glasses too ! But who would be so dumb as to leave their glasses at the scene of a murder ? That doesn't even happen on telly and if it did, such a script would be roundly cussed....unless it was a brilliantly left field plot twist.

grimtraveller said...

Unknown to Manson, Melcher had recently sublet the house

As inaccurate as this is, some well respected connoisseurs of the case are of the opinion that Charlie wasn't aware that Melcher had moved out of Cielo.

Linda Kasabian, the group's drug-addicted 20-year-old driver and look-out who had left her home in the Mid-west to look for God

This was an interesting one because again, in a convoluted way it is not entirely untrue. And during his trial statement, Charlie added fuel to the fire by saying "You set this woman up here to testify against me. And she tells you a sad story. How she has only taken every narcotic that is possible to take. How she has only stolen, lied, cheated, and done everything that you have got there in that book."

Watson shot Parent four times at close range with a .22 caliber pistol as the teenager sat in his parked car in the driveway

If one didn't know anything about the case, this sort of statement gives a completely false picture of what happened. The murder is no less brutal and callous but Parent was hardly sitting in a parked car twiddling his thumbs.
That said, although the separate Tex entry is small, he's not in any way presented as a mindless zombie in this article. He's presented as he was on those nights ~ a savage killer.

Wojiciech (Voytek) Frykowski, a 32-year-old Polish emigre playboy and drug dealer

I am still waiting to see any kind of verification that Frykowski actually dealt drugs.

Folger was stabbed 28 times with a bayonet by Watson and Atkins

I suppose it doesn't matter as they were all legally responsible for her murder but.....actually, it does matter.

Sebring was shot in the back

Kind of hard to do if someone is advancing on you !

The group stabbed the actress 16 times

Susan Atkins has to take primary blame for this notion because of how she first put it to Graham and Howard in her cell confession ~ a confession that she never expected to go any further, let alone land her with the death penalty. Actually, it's a thought; had she thought Virginia Graham or Ronnie Howard would tell the authorities, would she have opened up to them ?

grimtraveller said...

Atkins, who actually tasted Tate's blood, wanted to cut out the woman's unborn fetus and take it to Manson for ritualistic purposes

Sometimes, trying to make the characters in a story worse by revealing what they wanted to do is poor form, a bit like calling Charlie's Mum a teenage prostitute in order to emphasize how bad Charlie was. That said, it's not as though they couldn't have done it, having already delivered 2 babies ~ with Atkins in on both of them. I've never come across anywhere where Atkins says exactly why she had wanted to deliver the baby. What would they have done with the baby if they had delivered it ? Brought it up on Spahn Ranch when the whole of LAPD would have been looking for a missing baby ?

The next night, August 10, Man-son accompanied Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, Kasabian, and Leslie Sue Van Houten

I wonder why Clem got a pass on that one.
The fact checking on these books that reference lots of topics isn't all it could be. I first heard of Charlie in a book I bought for my sister back in '77 called "Infamous murders" although I wasn't particularly interested in that particular case. It had lots of cases, ranging from the Black Dahlia, to George Haigh to Dr Crippen to the Vampire of Dusseldorf, Peter Kurten, to Leopold & Loeb to Bonnie & Clyde to Lizzie Borden. It makes me wonder how inaccurate the details of the crimes in that book were although it must be said, none of the entries there had close to the number of nuances of this one. They were all so much more straightforward.
I saw the book last year for the first time since '81 and I had a quick look in the Manson chapter but I wasn't able to get a handle on it because I was in a hurry to go {traffic wardens !}.

Alone and armed with a gun, Manson entered the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca at 3301 Waverly Drive

Interesting that the author gives details of things Charlie said from the Nuel Emmons book in support of things they purport in the article but totally ignores what Charlie said about going into the house of the LaBiancas, in which he says he went in the house anything but alone.

grimtraveller said...

When Leno LaBianca was later found, he had been stabbed 26 times and the word "WAR" and several crosses had been carved into his chest

Maybe it was ghost written by Ed Sanders !

Acting on Manson's instructions, the killers dropped the wallet of one of their victims in a black neighborhood in the hope that someone there would be caught by police using a credit card thereby leading them to believe that the murders were racially motivated

I've long felt that trying to put the hat on others was very much Charlie's M.O. if he could get away with it. And to be honest, who wouldn't do likewise ?
Right from when Ronald Hughes brought it up, it was clear that the place where the wallet of Rosemary LaBianca was dropped wasn't a Black neighbourhood. But Susan Atkins' said before the Grand Jury that it was an area in which they'd seen quite a few Black people so the assumption was made that it would be a good place to dump the wallet. When it comes to the ways of Black people, the pronouncements of the Family often cause me to grin because they so obviously knew so little about Black people on a reality day to day level.

Though the song was not cited on the album's play list, the name "Charlie" appears in the credits and lead singer Axl Rose thanks "Chas" at the end of the song

That in itself isn't particularly unusual. I have a few albums with songs in them that are not listed on the playlist {off the top of my head I can think of stuff by Achor, Archangel, Larry Norman, David Edwards, Brimstone and 11th House that this applies to ~ some of them are even hidden tracks in this CD age} and there's even an unlisted "song" on the White album.

Writers on the case have since speculated that Manson was part of a murderous satanic orga-nization which included "Son of Sam" killer David Berkowitz and also that many of the murders were drug-related "hits."

The former don't appear to be so in demand among those that follow and have looked into the case but the latter are a major constituent.

grimtraveller said...

HellzBellz said...

Black Sabbath never called themselves Heavy Metal, that stamp was given by the Public/Media

This is true. Until the 80s, few, if any bands, referred to themselves as heavy metal bands. However, the term 'heavy metal' was being applied to heavy rock bands long before that and there are a number of bands referred to that way in the New Musical Express Encyclopedia of rock { Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Zeppelin, Kiss, Purple, Queen, Status Quo, Blue Oyster Cult, Montrose, Grand Funk Railroad, Iron Butterfly} which came out in '77 but was written in '76. And Zeppelin were seen as the ultimate heavy metal band at the time.
Interestingly, John Lennon thought that "Ticket to ride" was one of the earliest heavy metal songs. I don't !

The early Black Sabbath had a way more mystic/dark vibe&sound then the way more Bleusy Hardrock sound of Led Zeppelin... You cant compare them

Heavy metal had little to do with vibe but was all about the sound and volume and in that regard, both Zeppelin and Sabbath fell into a similar bag. "Heartbreaker" and parts of "Dazed and confused" {and others} are as heavy as anything Sabbath came out with.

There is also no comparison between early UK bands and Early U.S. bands (i.e. Blue Cheer)I do know what your saying, but only your examples don't match

That depends on how one views it. I see heavy metal as an evolution that took place over a number of years with many bands adding to the pot. The terms, heavy, heavy metal, heavy rock and sometimes, even hard rock were interchangeable and up until the early 70s, lots of heavy bands were marketed as 'progressive rock.' Blue Cheer were one of the nascent heavy bands. Personally, I find their music weak and tinny but they were definitely part of the evolution as were Cream, the Jeff Beck group, Deep Purple, the Yardbirds and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. There were bands that included heavy metal songs or sections in their output {such as parts of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid man", Fleetwood Mac's "Oh well" or Lifetime's "Vuelta Abajo"} though the bands themselves weren't heavy as such.
There were always differences between British and American bands in just about every genre and era. A really excellent book is "Who invented Heavy Metal ?" by Martin Popoff. I don't agree with his conclusion because I don't see how something can be invented when examples of it already exist but the book is superb and as a history of the genre is pretty much unbeatable, given he has interviewed hundreds of the major protagonists.
But my point about heavy metal was really that the idea that there was an inventor of the style, though accepted by many, simply can't stand up when examined under the microscope of nuance, like many official narratives.





grimtraveller said...


Robert C said...

this is where we are historically with, for lack of better words, the whole Manson Affair. Lot's of agenda/interests/ego still floating around with conjectures as well as facts forming the numerous basis of different thought without consensus

I'm not sure there'll ever be a consensus. Even at the time of the convictions, few journalists, for example, genuinely believed in HS. It made for a readable story without the writers necessarily having to invest any weight behind believing it.

Zelda Formaldehyde said...

anyone excited about Dianne Lake's book coming out in October?

Excited, no. Pre~ordered, yes. To be honest, I'm more curious about Simon Davies' one. With Dianne's one, I'm interested in what her angle of approach will be.

starviego said...

So how do we know Tex wasn't lying later and telling the truth earlier? Though I don't know what he and Krenny would gain by reversing roles

Go back to December 1st '69, this is even before the Grand Jury. When Susan was interviewed by her lawyers, she said that it was Tex that did it and not Pat and that it was Pat that told her this. Tex said, in '78, that it was him and that he'd lied in his trial because "self preservation took over" or words to that effect. Why Susan's December '69 words are so powerful is simple; few were particularly interested in the carving of a word on a corpse. It was a minor event compared to murder but it was corroboration at a time when as much as possible was needed. It's pretty clear at this juncture that Tex carved the word on Leno ~ he says it, Pat says it, years ago Susan said Pat told her it. What Stephen Kay's words tell you is that it wasn't altogether clear, even after 7 years incarceration who had done what and to a large extent, the Family have only themselves to blame. If Bugliosi's version comes across as a cartoon version as Brownrice puts it, let's just say that the Family themselves provided the storyboards and scripts to that.

starviego said...

Krenwinkel July 17, 1978 Parole Hearing Transcript
STEVEN KAY, DA's representative for LA County: Miss Krenwinkel denies now carving “War” in Leno LaBianca’s stomach. To my recollection at the penalty phase of the trial, she admitted that that’s what she did.

Thanks for the additional info. But why would Krenny volunteer to take credit for it in the TLB trial? Did she already know her goose was cooked, and was trying to make it easier for Tex in his upcoming murder trial?

beauders said...

Grim, who is Simon Davies and what is the title of his book?

David said...

Simon Davis is an Aussi who posts here now and again. Look back a few posts. He is writing a book.

grimtraveller said...

starviego said...

Why would Krenny volunteer to take credit for it in the TLB trial? Did she already know her goose was cooked, and was trying to make it easier for Tex in his upcoming murder trial?

Everything that took part in the penalty phase was what the defence would have been if there had been one {both Clem and Susan confirm that}. The whole idea was that, as Charlie once said to Al Springer, "no matter what happens, the girls will always take the fall." The basic premise was that Charlie was to be completely cleared of any involvement which is why you had all three co ~ defendants admitting to stuff they had not done while putting the mastermind hat on Linda Kasabian. Susan admitted she'd killed Sharon Tate {which she'd denied to the Grand Jury, her lawyers, Bugliosi and subsequently after incarceration}, Leslie admitted being involved in the Hinman murder when it was well known she'd had nothing to do with it and Pat said she'd carved 'WAR' on Leno as well as the murders being a copycat ~ something she later denied.
The reason Tex said that he denied carving on Leno was simply this; the women outlined what they had 'done' and he wanted to get off so he went along with any of the things they had taken responsibility for even though he had done it. You've only got to read his trial testimony of the events of the Cielo killings to see that he lied his blaggers off.
Ronald Hughes, Paul Fitzgerald and Daye Shinn were all convinced that Manson was behind the murders and it now becomes a little clearer just why they did not put on a defence. Hughes put it best when he said that he refused to be part of any proceedings where he was forced to push his client out of the window. Remember, he'd seen that interview that Leslie had done with Marvin Part. There was no way he could go with his client's wishes, knowing what he knew and seeing how Charlie was trying to conduct the defence. It was Fitzgerald that pointed out how little control there was of their clients.
In 1969/70, Pat was dangerously in love with Charlie and would have admitted to anything he told her to. In fact, she did. Manson Mythos once poured scorn on any claims that they were admitting to stuff they didn't do by pointing out that they were all guilty of murder so they were only telling the truth about killing. Which was true but was missing the point. The point wasn't admitting to stuff they didn't do, it was admitting to stuff they didn't do to absolve Charlie.

beauders said...

who is Simon Davies and what is the title of his book?

Simon is a recent poster that has some really interesting and insightful views surrounding this case from a more or less purely legal standpoint. He rather ruffled the Col's feathers for a while back there.