A number of people have been quoted over the years saying "Sharon wasn't supposed to be there" (at Cielo the night of the murders) or words to that effect.
The Family, by Ed Sanders (2002 edition) pg512 She(Doris Tate) believed that the Manson group had advance word
that Sharon Tate was not going to be at the house that night. ... we
learned Sharon had intended to spend the night with a friend. Manson
associate Vern Plumlee had told us that he'd heard the Family thought
she wouldn't be there. My recollection was that on one point during the
trial, Krenwinkle had hinted to one of the attorneys that Sharon wasn't
supposed to be there.
Susan Atkins' lawyer has also spoken words to the effect that Sharon wasn't supposed to be there; presumably Susan told her this. Also Sandy:
From PaulcastVanIsle:
"The other thing is there are major faults in Statman's book like her
saying that Sandra went over to Patricia Tate during the intermission Of
the Beatrice Barry show And said Sharon shouldn't have been there that
night. And that she was stoned on Coke Those are two separate things and
Sandra said the part about Sharon shouldn't have been in Hollywood
during the show. She also never spoke to Tate during any breaks or after
the show."
waxidermy.com/dr-jaques-hondorus-within-a-cosmic-odyssey/ comments: Bently Merrick November 10, 2013 In
the 1973 documentary titled “Manson,” Jaques Hondorus was mentioned as
someone who had warned one of his ‘students’ Sharon Tate to leave her home and not to return. Hondorus was also a mentor to the director of that documentary, Robert Hendrickson. This
mirrored what a man named Vern Plumlee (a confidant of Charles Manson)
had stated, as well as the lone survivor of the murders (who was living
in the guest house) William Garretson. Vern said that he was told that Sharon was asked to leave and Garretson said that a man in a car told him to leave, and to make sure everyone is gone from the home.
These are puzzling statements, as they imply that the Mansonoids had advance intelligence on who would be up at Cielo, even before the murders occurred. And this further implies that the victims were deliberately targeted, as Krenny once claimed.
Krenwinkel January 20, 2011 Parole Hearing Transcript pg46 INMATE KRENWINKEL: I did know that that was, the plan was to murder two women inside the house. That was given, was a given.
Or another interpretation might be that this was an attempt at victim-blaming. Mansonoid: "Well it wasn't our fault that Sharon decided to break her date with Sheila Wells to spend the night at her house, so you can't blame us for her death."
-----------------------------------
And that's about all I have on this topic. If you have any citations to add, please do so.
How a 77-year-old Manson follower has Newsom in familiar
bind
By Bob Egelko, Courts
Reporter
June 3, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
Once again, a state parole board has found one of cult
leader Charles Manson’s followers – Patricia Krenwinkel – suitable
for release after more than 56 years behind bars for her role in seven 1969
murders. And once again, Gov. Gavin Newsom must decide whether there is any
evidence that Krenwinkel, 77, would pose any danger if released – and whether a
decision to free her would affect his political future.
The Board of Parole Hearings, whose members were
appointed by the governor, voted Friday to grant parole to Krenwinkel, the
state’s longest-serving female prisoner. The board had ruled against her 14
times before recommending parole in 2022, but Newsom vetoed her release, saying
she had not shown “sufficient insight” into her crimes.
The governor gave a similar explanation in 2022 for
vetoing the parole of another Manson follower, Leslie Van Houten, whose release
had been approved five times by the parole board since 2016 but blocked each
time by Govs. Jerry Brown and Newsom.
But a state appeals court ruled in 2023 that Newsom had
failed to justify his conclusions that Van Houten, 73, lacked sufficient
understanding of her actions and could still be dangerous after 54 years in
prison. She was freed after the governor decided not to appeal the ruling.
“The only factor that can explain this veto (of Van
Houten’s parole) is political optics, and California law does not allow
governors to veto people’s parole because it will look bad,” said Hadar Aviram,
a professor at UC College of the Law San Francisco and author of the 2020 book “Yesterday’s
Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole.”
And she said the same thinking will most likely affect
Newsom’s upcoming decision on Krenwinkel, once the parole board’s decision
becomes final in 120 days.
“What does he think people have an appetite for in this
political reality?” Aviram asked, noting California voters’ approval last
November of Proposition 36, which increased some sentences for drug crimes. “It
costs him nothing to oppose (her release). In the worst-case scenario, the
court overrules him again and she gets out.”
Newsom’s office denied a request for comment.
Manson ordered seven of his followers, including the
21-year-old Krenwinkel and two other young women, to kill nine people in three
gruesome attacks in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles in July and August
1969.
During her trial, Krenwinkel admitted chasing Abigail
Folger, heiress of the Folger coffee family, and stabbing her 25 times in the
home of actress Sharon Tate, another murder victim, and then helping to kill
grocery store executive Leno Bianca and his wife, Rosemary, and using their
blood to scrawl “Death to pigs” on a wall.
Convicted of seven murders, Krenwinkel was sentenced to
death along with Manson and three others in 1971. But the sentences were
reduced to life with the possibility of parole after the California Supreme
Court overturned the state’s death penalty law in 1972.
The voters passed a new law in 1977 making capital crimes
punishable by death or life in prison without the possibility of parole, but
those sentenced under the earlier law, including Krenwinkel, remained eligible
for parole. Another ballot measure, approved by the voters in 1988, authorized
the governor to veto decisions by the parole board.
In prison, Krenwinkel has a clean disciplinary record,
earned a college degree and has taken part in community-service programs,
working to support other inmates with mental illnesses. At her 2022 parole
hearing, she said that after dropping out of school and becoming an infatuated
member of Manson’s so-called family at age 19, “I allowed myself to just start
absolutely becoming devoid of any form of morality or real ethics.”
In a statement released by Krenwinkel’s lawyers, Jane
Dorotik, a former inmate and now part of the support group California Coalition
for Women Prisoners, said, “Those of us who served time with her came to know
her as a thoughtful, gentle, and kind person – someone deeply dedicated to
creating a safe, caring environment.”
Relatives of the murder victims have not been persuaded.
“I beg the board to consider parole for Patricia
Krenwinkel only when her victims are paroled from their graves,” Anthony
Demaria, a nephew of victim Jay Sebring, testified at one of her hearings.
And Patrick Sequeira, a prosecutor in the murder cases,
told the board that if Krenwinkel “truly understood her crimes and the horrific
nature of it, she wouldn’t be here at a parole hearing. She would just accept a
punishment.”
Not so, said her lead attorney, Keith Wattley, executive
director of UnCommon Law, an Oakland-based firm that represents inmates seeking
parole.
“Pat has fully accepted responsibility for everything she
did, everything she contributed to, every twisted philosophy she embraced and
endorsed and, most importantly, every life she destroyed by her actions in
1969,” Wattley said in a statement after the board’s latest decision.
“Now it’s the Governor’s turn to show that he believes in
law and order when the law requires a person’s release despite public
outcry.”
After his failed parole hearing where he was denied for three years because he appeared on Keith Rovere's "The Lighter Side of Serial Killers" he continues to communicate with Rovere.
These pics were snagged from Rovere's Instagram page.
They blabbed about their crimes. They blabbed, and blabbed, and blabbed. And when they were done blabbing, they blabbed some more. Sadie's famous blab to her jail mates Cory Hurst, Nancy
Jordan, Ronnie Howard, and Virginia Graham wasn't the only time the
Family suffered from loose lips when talking about the murders. Anybody watching the Family
closely would probably have picked up on the many incriminating
statements. (confessions to the cops and lawyers not included)
Chaos, by Tom O'Neill
pg125 John Parks, Beach Boy tour manager: One of Manson's girls, he explained, had already told him
that the Family had murdered one of the caretakers at the Spahn
Ranch--Donald "Shorty" Shea, whose body wasn't found until 1977.
pg174
A fire patrolman reported that Family members had told him they'd moved into the canyons because they'd "killed a member of the Black Panthers."
...Leslie told Dianne(Lake) that she had stabbed someone who was already dead. ... Leslie also told
Dianne that the murder had occurred some place near Griffith Park, near
Los Feliz; that someone had written something in blood on the
refrigerator door; and that she, Leslie, then wiped everything so there
would be no prints...
pg243
When Guenther and Whitely finally found her(Lutesinger), she told them that Susan Atkins had boasted of torturing and finally killing Hinman with Beausoleil over two nights.
pg410 At the trial, a ranch hand told police that Manson had bragged about killing thirty-five people...
pg451 I
located more than a half dozen documents in the Los Angeles District
Attorney files and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office files
indicating that Manson had discussed the Bernard Crowe shooting with Wilson within a week of the Tate murders...
Helter Skelter by Vince Bugliosi
pg102 ....Kitty
said she had heard that Manson had sent Beausoleil and a girl named
Susan Atkins to Hinman's home to get money from him. A fight had
ensued, and Hinman had been killed. Kitty couldn't recall who told her
this, just that it was the talk of the ranch. She did recall, however, another conversation in which Susan Atkins told herand several other girls that she had been in a fight with a man who had pulled her hair, and that she had stabbed him three or four times in the legs.
pg105 witness Steve Zabriskie: ... a "Charlie" and a 'Clem' had committed both the Tate and LaBianca murders. He had heard this...from Ed Bailey and Vern Plumlee, two hippie types from California... Bailey had told him
something else, Zabriskie said: that he had personally seen Charlie
shoot a man in the head with a .45 caliber automatic. This had occurred
in Death Valley.
pg119 ...Springer said that on Aug 11 or 12... Charles Manson had bragged to him
about killing people, adding, "We knocked off five of them just the
other night." ... Charlie had told him about cutting some guy's ear
off. ...(Crowe shooting) Charlie had told him about it. ... "..he told me something about writing something on the refrigerator. ...Charlie said they wrote something on the fucking refrigerator in blood."
pg124 Danny heard, from the girls,
that Shorty "got to know too much and hear too much and got worried too
much" and "so they just cut off his arms and his legs and his head
off..."
pg137 DeCarlo's primary source was Beausoleil, who, on returning to Spahn after the (Hinman)murder, had bragged to DeCarlo about what he had done.
pg144
Bruce Davis had told him about Shorty's murder, DeCarlo said. Several of the girls had also mentioned it, as had both Clem and Manson.
pg475
...Sadie told Ouisch that Sharon Tate had been the last to die...
pg492 One
night in early August 1969, Juan had been watching TV in the trailer
when Sadie came in, dressed in black, "Where are you going?" Juan asked.
"We're going to get some fucking pigs," Sadie replied.
When she left, Jaun looked out the window and saw her get into Johnny
Swartz' old yellow Ford. Charlie, Clem, Tex, Linda, and Leslie got in
also.
pg500
Tex had told Leslie to stab Rosemary LaBianca, and, later, to wipe fingerprints off everything they had touched--since Katie had related these things to Dianne....
pg550 ...Leslie told Dianne(Lake) that stabbing was fun, that, the more she stabbed, the more she enjoyed it....
pg604 Cathy (Gilles) had testified on direct examination that Katie had told her about the Tate-LaBianca murders.
“Katie didn’t say much…except that they had gone and murdered the Tates and LaBiancas,” Miss Gillies said of Miss Krenwinkel.
The Family, by Ed Sanders
pg209 The story of the shooting of the black man(Crowe) spread throughout the family...
pg249 That night the family got together for a songfest and tape-recorded a re-creation of the murder of Gary Hinman in musical form. Each person played a role.
pg250 July 27 Spahn Ranch raid According to Sheriff's Deputy George Grap, Manson said, "We got into a hassle with a couple of those black motherfuckers and we put one of them in the hospital," after which Manson told him the blacks were going to wreak vengeance...
pg296 When DeCarlo walked up to Clem and asked, "What'd you do last night?" ... Clem then placed his hand on DeCarlo and said, according to DeCarlo, "We got five piggies."
pg339 (Ranch hand David)Hannon began to talk with Manson occasionally. Manson told him about the "Black Panther" he had shot.
pg351 (around Aug 18) Tex laughed and told Snake, according to Snake, that he killed Sharon Tate: "I killed her. Charlie asked me to. It was fun."
pg354
...the Shea murder was discussed from zombi to zombi. Charlie used to joke about it at campfires.
http://www.cielodrive.com/bruce-davis-parole-hearing-2007.php ....(Bruce Davis) knew fully well what was going to happen to Mr. Hinman, that Mr. Hinman was going to be killed, and in fact he bragged about it afterwards to other Family members.
http://www.cielodrive.com/manson-case-files/BOX-24.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1lSaOh0WybfAF-4eUVZBHp3x21SzDmLCv8gZiGqzamRDO3cjCVLZPCpKs Box 24 pg265of396 VH: "Sadie came in grinning saying, "We killed him(Hinman)."
Box 57 pg180of491 April 1969 Grand Jury testimony of Brunner:
"Sadie told me she killed him(Hinman)..."
http://www.cielodrive.com/gary-hinman-homicide-report-05-18-70.php --A day or so later, late at night .. Mary and Susan ... both related
how Gary had snatched the gun and they wrestled it away from him and of
Charles Manson and Bruce coming to the house and Charles slashing
Gary’s face and telling Hinman to cooperate. Further, how they wiped the
house down for fingerprints, how Bobby killed V/Hinman and wrote on the
wall “Political Piggy” and each held the pillow over Hinman’s face
until he died.
--The following morning... Beausoleil told the same story of the Hinman killing adding that he stabbed Hinman and wrote with his blood on the wall.
--Later the same day, Miss Bailey talked with Bruce Davis who said
when he went with Charles Manson to the Hinman house, he held the gun
on Hinman while Charles hit him with the sword in the face. Then the
girls laid Gary down and Charles said to Hinman, “You might as well
cooperate, you’re gonna die anyway.”
--On the following day, while in the saloon at Spahn Ranch, Charles Manson stated, “I found it necessary to use the sword on Gary; I got $27 and his cars.”
The Killing of Sharon Tate, Lawrence Schiller, (and Susan Atkins) published in Jan 1970 pg110
But
everybody on the ranch was pretty quiet(the day after the Cielo
murders). Everybody on the ranch--and there might have been twenty-five
or thirty of us, though people came and went--knew by then there
had been a killing. But they didn't know who had done it. They had
their suspects, because most of them knew that we had gone out the night
before.
STEPHANIE SCHRAM re Cielo murders: "I knew that they did it, you know. I, nobody ever said anything, but just from the way they talked
and the things they did and you know little snatches of things I'd
hear, here and there I could read these articles and just put them
together. ....
....(at Barker)the girls were sitting around
and there was one girl who was kind of new to the group and she said
something like you mean you guys really killed, you know, somebody
before. And Sadie said, sure, she said, and then I heard her talking about stabbing some great big guy in the leg wrestling with some big guy and stabbing him."
Juan Flynn testimony at TLB trial: http://murdersofaugust69.freeforums.net/thread/479/people-manson-august-1976-appeal "Q. There was just you and Mr. Manson there?
"A.
Yes. I wasn't watching him. I was watching the food, you know. Then he
grabbed me by the hair, you know, and put a knife on my throat, and he said, 'You son-of-a-bitch, don't you know I am the one who is doing all these killings?
LVH tape-recorded disclosure to her lawyer Marvin Part:
Miss
Van Houten: *** And then the next morning Sadie was watching the news, I
think. Somehow I found out that they had done it. Oh, no. I asked Katie, and she told me. MR. PART: What did she say? MISS VAN HOUTEN: She(Krenwinkle) said that — that they had murdered five people;
Prosecution's closing argument. Bugliosi: Barbara(Hoyt) also testified that in Sept of '69, while at Myers Ranch, she heard Sadie tell Ruth Moorehouse
that Sharon Tate came out and she said "What is going on here," or
something like that, and Sadie said, "Shut up, woman." She said Sadie
also told Ruth Moorehouse that Sharon Tate was the last to die because
she had to see everybody else go first."
Lake: Van Houten and Atkins gushed
about the killings, which disgusted her. She had never connected with
either but always had seen Krenwinkel as a nurturing soul. Now she was
hearing her close friend Patty tell how she repeatedly stabbed Abigail Folger at the Tate house on Aug. 9 and Rosemary LaBianca the next night.
http://www.cielodrive.com/manson-case-files/BOX-30.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3X_Jd5u7Wyd1RIL6JfmGX0YkmzWJ6ERH2NhpQxLV767nS8aivttzhmZWU Box 30 pg190of738 Miss
Lake had a conversation with appellant Krenwinkle in the last part of
August or early September 1969, outside the house at Willow Springs.
Other people were present. Appellant Krenwinkle said that she had dragged Abigail Folger from the bedroom to the living room.
http://www.cielodrive.com/manson-case-files/BOX-11.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3DyuZZwQfA5wACZTjQHxo_MmstEU3ByrGL89hqSem2lwmlnXvNj8tkpKM Manson Case Files Box 11 pg412of446 Atkins interview with Paul Caruso "...I called Clem in (to see the report of the Tate killings on the TV), because Clem knew about it. .. Q: Was the killing discussed in front of Clem? A: Yes."
Sandra
gave birth in October 1969 to a little boy. While at the hospital
recovering from childbirth, she was visited by Susan Atkins and Patricia
Krenwinkel, another one of the Tate/LaBianca killers. Sadie started
dropping hints about the name Tate, Katie threw her an angry look and
Sandy demanded to know what was going on. They told her about Cielo Drive. They told her that Sharon was pregnant when she was stabbed to death.
http://www.aboundinglove.org/main/images/bookPDFs/Will_You_Die_For_Mesmall.pdf Tex Watson, Will You Die For Me? pg65of120
Re Crowe: ...At the ranch the next day, Charlie couldn't stop talking about how he “plugged blackie.”
(Oddly, he says this happened around July 15)
www.mansonblog.com/2017/01/when-did-dennis-wilson-finally-sever.html From the progress report
...
While at the Wilson residence, there was a conversation between Manson
and Wilson regarding a man who died from a gunshot wound to the stomach.
... During the conversation, Manson indicated that he had been the one that had killed the unknown person.
Knox document release https://wvw.mansonblog.com/First-Spahn-Raid.pdf (Charlie to Fire Dept personnel at Spahn) Further explained
they had an armed camp and that they were having trouble with the
Panthers and that there had been a guy who gave them trouble and his
body was dumped on the UCLA campus.
October 3rd, 1969 Brooks Poston interview by Inyo County Sheriff Don Ward.
And he’s(Manson) talked about killing
a negro, militant leader in Los Angeles. And he’s talked about killing,
a guy named Shorty there too. Or having his people do it – cutting his
head off and having the girls bury the body somewhere.
Regarding the rumor that a person known as "Shorty" had been killed, Watkins said Manson told him that Tufts(Grogan) had killed "Shorty". Watkins also stated that Tufts told him that he had killed "Shorty."
LADA files Box 56-2 Bruce Davis' Hinman/Shea trial Dec '71 to Feb '72
Springer: "And that (Bruce)Davis had said(at
Mark Ross' house in late Nov '69) that they had taken care of the guy
at the ranch... they were afraid he was going to inform on the police...
and they had cut him up and buried him--and Clem had buried him at the
ranch... That Mark Ross then said--then asked, "Do you mean Shorty?' And Davis said, Yeah."
My Life With Charles Manson, by Paul Watkins, Chapter 22
Bruce(Davis) did a lot of talking on that trip. ... he told me Helter-Skelter would stun the world. He also told me something I’d heard before; how hard it had been to kill Shorty Shea.
http://www.cielodrive.com/manson-case-files/BOX-23.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1CQ93nsaYFf3kB42SjqcFwZqMqh4wlkZfeQhbxUXGaZ3NLl1HKL__dBVE Manson Case Files Box 23 pg401of416 Sgt McGann interview with Van Houton 11-26-69 McGann re the Tate killings: "They talked freely about it when they got back that night, the next day, and for days following."
LADA files Box 22 vol9028 pg19of144 transcript of LVH interview with Part on Dec 29, 1969 Mr. Part: Now, when you left with Charlie in the car, was there anybody else who saw you leaving? Miss Van Houten: Only Cathy(Gilles). And she knew. 'Cause she wanted to go." ... "We were all present. We all knew what we were going to go out to do. Nobody didn't know." Mr. Part: Well, how did you know? Miss Van Houten: We all talked about it.
Kasabian trial testimonly, JULY 30, 1970 "So I hitchhiked up there the next day and I found him(her husband) and I just told him what I have told you the last couple of days, not in great detail, but just basically that I witnessed these murders and I would not go into it again, I told him — "
A:
I told him I knew about the Sharon Tate murders and the people that had
Tanya were these people that killed Sharon Tate, and that is basically
what I told him. .. Q BY MR. BUGLIOSI: When you told Joe Sage this, was any other person present? A: Yes, there was. ... A boy named Jeffrey.
The
Family blabbed so often that even if Susan Atkins hadn't told her
jail-mates what happened, and even if Lutesinger never told cops about
Charlie's involvement in the Hinman slaying, the cops eventually would
have heard the tales emanating from the Family and would have picked up
the thread that way. TLB was not a crime that would have remained
unsolved.
Chaos by Tom O'Neill, pg369 "The most puzzling question of
all," Bugliosi wrote, was how Manson had turned his docile followers
into remorseless killers. Even with the LSD, the sex, the isolation, the sleep deprivation, the social abandonment, there had to be "some intangible quality... It may be something that he learned from others."
Here are some other candidates for that 'intangible quality.'
MENTALISM
Death to Pigs, by Robert Hendrickson, c.2011 pg323 ".. Phil Phillips was actually being played by the workings of a "mentalist" ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalism ...mentalists,
appear to demonstrate highly developed mental or intuitive abilities.
Performances may appear to include hypnosis, telepathy... mind
control.... Mentalists perform a theatrical act that includes effects
that may appear to employ psychic or supernatural forces but that
are actually achieved by "ordinary conjuring means", natural human
abilities (i.e. reading body language, refined intuition, subliminal
communication, emotional intelligence), and an in-depth understanding of
key principles from human psychology or other behavioral sciences....
Long Beach Independent, 10-28-70 "When
I(Vern Plumlee) first met Charlie, he walked up and said 'Let me run
your life down' and he did. It just kinda blew my mind. He said I had
been in jail since I was 14; knew I was at McClaren (Juvenile) Hall;
knew I was AWOL. I don't know how he knew."
Maybe Charlie was employing the mentalist tactic of 'cold reading.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading Cold
reading is a set of techniques used by mentalists, psychics,
fortune-tellers, and mediums. Without prior knowledge, a practiced
cold-reader can quickly obtain a great deal of information by analyzing
the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender,
sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, level of education, manner of
speech, place of origin, etc. during a line of questioning. Cold
readings commonly employ high-probability guesses, quickly picking up on
signals as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not,
then emphasizing and reinforcing chance connections and quickly moving
on from missed guesses.
Before He Became a Monster by Lawson McDowell By
fourteen, Charlie had an uncanny ability to decipher the unspoken
vocabulary of body language. His skills were as honed as those of the
best analysts.
The Mind Manipulators, by Alan W. Scheflin and Edward Opton, c.1978 pg38 Through
his uncanny ability, developed and refined in prison, to see straight
through to a person's weaknesses. Charlie was able to build up an
immediate trust on the part of the women, and to appear clairvoyant and,
therefore, omnipotent.
Dianne Lake 2022 interview "He (Manson) ...had an uncanny ability to read people..."
------------------
MAGIC
Manson also used simple magic tricks to impress his followers with his powers:
Lynette Fromme says in Reflexion, pg19, shortly after first meeting Charlie: "Later
that night I watched cards, coins, and cigarettes disappear and
reappear, slipping through his(Manson's) fingers. Not only did the
tricks capture my awe, but his showmanship and spirit did too. I had to remind myself that this person could barely read..."
https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/mentalism/articles/history-of-mentalism/ These talented mind manipulation artists combine their keen understanding of human psychology with excellent showmanship and theatrics to create the illusion of extraordinary powers.
Death to Pigs, pg461 Good: "We've seen him do, you know, what people call supernatural things. We saw him bring a bird back to life. We've seen him jump over things that no human being could jump over, all kinds of things."
Bringing a bird back to life is actually a fairly common magic trick:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxQc3HbHJ88
----------------
HYPNOSIS
Manson apparently had sophisticated hypnosis skills, too:
medium.com/@donallogue/before-helter-skelter-2b86c0d3d8d0 (Danny Trejo) said (Manson) had hypnotic powers. “That
was the dude’s trick,” Danny said. “He survived inside by getting
people high just talking to them. If he wasn’t a career criminal he
might have been one of those dudes who went to high schools and state
fairs, the kind that brings people up on stage and gets them to do
stupid things like pretend they’re a cat and sh**.”
Helter Skelter, pg162 Joseph Krenwinkel, father of Pat, re Manson: "I am convinced he was some kind of hypnotist."
Death to Pigs, pg327 Interviewer: "How could he control people like that?" Inyo County Deputy Sheriff Don Ward: "Through suggestion--through mysticism--hypnosis if you wanna call it."
Shadow Over Santa Susanna, by Adam Gorightly, pg23
Most
likely, Charlie employed various elements of hypnotism. It all had to
do with the cadence of his voice, the intense look in his eyes, and the rhythmic movements he made with his hands and body.
Cease to Exist – Charles Manson, the Beach Boys and the Death of the Sixties Atkins:
"And as he sang, the song that hit me hardest was The Shadow of Your
Smile. Even before I saw him, while I was still in the kitchen, his
voice just hypnotised me, mesmerised me. Then, when I saw him, I fell absolutely in love with him."
Death to Pigs, pg244 Brooks: "Well, before when he put his motions in with it, all he had to do was start his motions
and it's like, I would immediately turn on like a computer. Like, the
button would be clicked and I'd become whatever machine or whatever tape
was playing at the time."
http://www.woodstockjournal.com/pdf/RFK%27sFinalDayA.pdf In late August of 1964 CIA off-oid Sydney Gottlieb put into place a project called MK-SEARCH. “A
member of the American Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis
was recruited for the purpose. The hypnotist was dubbed ‘Fingers’ by Dr.
Gottlieb from the theatrical way he used his hands to put a patient into a trance."
------------------
ACTING
Amazing acting skills were also part of his repertoire:
Reflexion, pg88
"Charlie
was full of characters who took our attention, among them a lounge
singer, a cowboy crooner, and "Hyme Feinschleister," a nebbish."
Will You Die For Me? by Tex Watson He
described Manson as a chameleon."And with each change he could be born
anew... Hollywood slicker, jail tough, rock star, guru, child, tramp,
angel, devil, son of God."
Member of the Family by Dianne Lake "He could change his voice, intonation, and accent depending upon who was on the receiving end. ,,,, Charlie
used the shape of his eyebrows and the muscles in his face to become
different people. He must have practiced a lot in prison, because he
could isolate parts of his face that I didn't realize could move
separately from the whole, dropping his brows in unison and then raising
up only one. Then he made a V with his brows that made him look like
the devil. With every movement of his face, his eyes changed as well,
like a shapeshifter creating the illusion of different people and personalities."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tdb8w6UHw8 15:25 Dianne Lake 2022 interview
"He (Manson)just had this uncanny ability to morph into these different personalities and people..."
"He can change his face so amazingly and there are so many facets of
his personality. He seems able to be whatever a person wants or needs
him to be,” Gentry said.
-------------------
LSD
Charlie's employment of LSD to influence his recruits is well known, using some well placed props:
Shadow Over Santa Susanna, pg17 On
the wall of Manson's pad was a picture of Jesus, and below it Charlie
often sat, sending out heavy vibes. ... Brockman was stunned by the
realization that, if one dropped enough acid, then--like a psychelic
alchemist--Charlie could manipulate the elements, turning himself into
Jesus at will. "Charlie as Jesus was branded into my thoughts.... ..
I knew I couldn't submit to whatever it was the idea of Charlie as
Jesus expected of me. I only knew the man was playing heavy games.
Charlie could plant that in a person's head, or create it, the same way a magician creates a bunch of flowers in the air.."
Transcript from May 1977 LVH retrial: “Looking
back,” she said, “I know he (Manson) used the acid and the acid trips
(for the group living at the Spahn ranch near Chatsworth) to help
encourage us to lose our own identities."
----------------------
PSYCHOLOGY
Charlie also used his knowledge of human nature to exploit people's vulnerablities:
Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered by Lester Grinspoon c. 1997 pg186 In
a 1977 prison interview with one of the authors... When she(LVH) became
attached to Manson as a father-substitute, he taught her to "get rid of
Leslie": abandon the self that cut her off from the work, and
allow it to die so that she could give herself up completely to him. She
had to purge from her mind everything that her parents had taught
her--what Manson called "reflections."
https://www.stlmag.com/news/years-of-chat-with-charles-manson/ Ken Dickerson, 20 in 2017, Manson pen pal 2005 to 2012 "He always wanted people to get rid of their ego..
--“He would make sure that any weirdness you had inside you, he found it.” Manson used that knowledge two ways: “He’d make you feel good about yourself,
always make sure that you were happy in one way or another, give you
compliments. If you didn’t feel comfortable with your body, he’d always
say, ‘You are perfect. There’s nothing wrong with you. What’s wrong is
other people judging.’” On the other hand, he also knew how to “make you
as uncomfortable as possible.” Suggest homosexuality to someone who was
totally straight. Keep people off base."
www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/helter-skelter-charles-manson-follower-stephanie-schram Schram said there was something about the cult leader that immediately drew her to him. “He
just had something and it’s hard to put your finger on it, but he made
you feel so special,” she said on the podcast. “It was as if he could
read your thoughts. He told you what you wanted to hear, somehow he knew that.”
hallegralansing.medium.com/was-the-manson-family-a-cult-c3626b939239 Manson frequently used fear of rejection, guilt over disloyalty... to maintain control.
----------------------
VISUALIZATIONS
Examples of how Charlie manipulated his followers, according to Tex Watson psych reports:
From Dr. Joel Fort's interview of July 1971, pg6: "In
recalling his life on the ranch Watson states that a "bunch of times
Manson would give us a lot of acid and have us play games with make
believe people there and us killing them. " "
From Dr. A. Tweed's interview of June 15, 1971, pg4,7,8: ....
Every night, while they were under the influence of various drugs,
Manson would work through their fear and resistance against killing. ...
He(Watson) became so confused during that period that he began to see
imaginary people which were being "killed" in these situations which
Manson was creating for them to visualize. Alone with the Devil by Ronald Markman and Dominick Bosco, c.1989 pg205 Manson
led the Family in "visualizations" where they were imagined they were
killing people. ... they would go through exercises in which they would
kill "imaginary people,' who were visualized sitting on chairs in the
middle of the group.
------------------------
MIRRORING
No Journey's End My Tragic Romance With Ex Manson Girl, Leslie Van Houten (c.2015) by Peter Chiaramonte, pg n49
Charlie had plenty of experience handling runaway teenaged girls like
Leslie before. First, he tacitly implied he possessed insight into all
of her lonely disaffections. For example, he used a common theatrical
device to mirror her moods. By copying each changing expression
or gesture Leslie made, Manson intended to show how well he could
identify what she was thinking and feeling.
------------------------
LOVE BOMBING
-'Love Bombing' is showering the subject with intense affection and praise
Dianne Lake: "[Manson] made you feel like you were his one and only love. ... He made you feel really special, and specially loved."
“He called me beautiful. He made me feel like I belonged, like I was
important.” (Lake & Herman, Member of the Family, c. 2017)
LVH letter written not long after being sent to prison: "Charlie
gave me and Bobbie a warm hug before we left. His touch was gentle. The
love put forth in that hug I can still recall. I carried the memory of
it for a long time knowing I had already become part of the
family."
Hoyt: "I felt like I was loved and accepted the way I was. It was unconditional. I needed that."
https://lamag.com/lahistory/manson-an-oral-history
Sharon
Rayfield, a girl who lived near the Spahn Ranch and rode horses there,
said: “I always thought I was ugly, but Charlie made me feel beautiful.” https://www.nytimes.com/1970/01/04/archives/charlie-manson-one-mans-family-charlie-manson-one-mans-family.html
-----------------------
FEAR
No Journey's End, Chiaramonte (c.2015) pg24 ...Mr.
Bugliosi discussed the ways Manson used fear to make his followers'
sense of themselves disappear, so he could replace their will with his
own. In fact, Bugliosi admitted, "Whether he perfected this technique in
prison or later is not known, but it was one of his most effective
tools for controlling others."
Death to Pigs, by Robert Hendrickson, pg209
Watkins: He'd say it like this, "if you go against me, I'll kill you." He said that many times."
------------------------
THE RUSSIAN SCAM
Give something to get something back
Another
tactic that Charlie used was something known as the "Russian Scam" in
magic circles. It's based on the theory of reciprocity. The magician
gives you something--like a playing card--and he then gets you to give
him something back--like your wallet. Charlie of course was known for
giving a lot of stuff away--cars, cash, sex with his girls--but you can
bet he always demanded or expected something in return. Note how
Charlie used this tactic to get Tex to go to Cielo when Charlie reminded
Tex that he had killed for Tex(referring to the shooting of Crowe) so
Tex had to kill for him.
Cease to Exist – Charles Manson, the Beach Boys and the Death of the Sixties Charlie was no hippie. He was an entrepreneur. He gave people things – drugs, his own shirt – to get things back. ....
----------------------------
STRUGGLE SESSIONS
Communist-style indoctrination techniques used:
LVH:
"It was a strange feeling to see them all sharing their food and
listening to each other tell secrets about themselves most people would
have been ashamed to ever reveal. The hang ups they had, things they'd
done, and incidents that used to upset them. As one would tell of a
situation, others would listen, then giggle because each of us had the
same ones. It seems that by doing this, the Family became so much
closer. Instead of hiding from one another, we were learning to show off
for one another. .... Soon, I became accustomed to revealing my
personality's hidden secrets. Everytime I gave one up, it was gone
forever, never to haunt me again."
----------------------------
REPETITION, RHYME-AS-REASON, and CHARLIE-BABBLE
The Mind Manipulators, by Alan W. Scheflin and Edward Opton, c.1978 pg39 Another
aspect of the indoctrination process that served to increase Manson's
control over his Family is a technique familiar to all persons
interested in persuasion, from teachers to brainwashers... repetition.
He preached his philosophy daily, over and over again. ... This daily
drumming-in of doctrine, did much to erase the members' former thoughts.
youtu.be/rs03qn8uSCk
"Cult
leaders often use this rhyming, ambiguous language as a tool to exert
control over followers. This can be explained by a few key principles
here. "First, there is something in psychology called the 'Rhyme as Reason' effect.
We tend to make this error because it suggests that statements that
rhyme are perceived as more truthful, So rhyming makes a statement
easier to remember and process, which tells our brain, 'Oh, that must be
some good data there.' ["Thinkin' is stinkin'" "If the glove does not
fit, you must acquit."] "Second, ambiguous or nonsensical language
[Charlie babble] can create mental confusion or cognitive dissonance, so
its a form of a confusion technique where the leader obliterates the
familiar, and replaces it with weird, and makes you more susceptible. "Finally,
unusual language can serve to separate the cult from the outside world
and kind of creates a unique little vocabulary that only members think
that they understand." ["(prosecutor Dino Fulgoni at LVH's second
re-trial) ...stated that the mansonites actually used a private language
as part of their everyday communications."]
------------------------------
AMORALITY
Another big weapon that Charlie used to bastardize the minds of his followers was his relentless promotion of amorality--the absence of any morality at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorality
Amorality
(also known as amoralism) is an absence of, indifference towards,
disregard for, or incapacity for morality. ... Amoral should not be
confused with immoral, which refers to an agent doing or thinking
something they know or believe to be wrong.
Witness to Evil, by George Bishop c.1971 pg352 Manson
told Jacobson, through the course of many conversations, that he
believed there was no such thing as right or wrong and that he
personally could do no right or wrong. Q: (Bugliosi) He told you that it was not wrong to kill? A: Yes
lamag.com/lahistory/manson-an-oral-history
Bugliosi:
While they were on these trips he’d say, “Who says it’s wrong to kill?
There’s nothing wrong with death. Death is a very beautiful thing.”
Alone with the Devil by Ronald Markman and Dominick Bosco, c.1989 pg205 ...a
major part of the Family program planned by Manson was their fear and
resistance to killing. Manson led the Family in "visualizations" where
they were imagined they were killing people. Manson told them there was no such thing as bad and no such thing as wrong,
Also, Tex recounted, "there was no such thing as death, so it was not
wrong to kill a fellow human being." ... And then they would go through
exercises in which they would kill "imaginary people,' who were
visualized sitting on chairs in the middle of the group. "He'd tell us
that they were already dead, and that the only people that were, were at
the ranch."
The Manson Women, a "Family" Portrait, by Clara Livsey MD, c.1980 pg196 She(Lynette) was admired and respected by Manson, unconditionally. ...she felt that according to Manson she could do no wrong.
Will You Die for Me? by Tex Watson pg67 I quoted Charlie and told her(Kasabian) that there was no wrong, no sin; everything anyone had was meant to be shared.
Witness to Evil, by George Bishop c.1971 pg7 I asked if they have any sense of remorse for anything they might have done.
"No guilt feelings at all," Fitzgerald replied. "They've been conditioned away from society's generally accepted mores."
Death to Pigs, by Robert Hendrickson, c.2011 pg367 Ronnie
Howard: " ...they really don't see that they've done anything wrong.
... if you wanna call it a religion or cult or whatever, that's the way
they believe. They do not believe they have done anything wrong. After
all, they haven't killed the soul, they've only killed the body or
bodies. ... So they were doing people a favor."
IMO, it was
this, rather than any inherent coldness or callousness, that caused all
the inappropriate behavior by the girls in the courts--the singing, the
giggling, etc.
The success Charlie had conning people out of their property is a testament to his powers:
Death to Pigs, pg230 Watkins: "Charlie could go into some guy's house and talk him out of a ten thousand dollar piano."
The Family, pg50 -"Manson.. gave to Melba(Cronkite) a 1967 Red Ford Mustang which a New Yorker named Michael... had given to Manson."
Death to Pigs, pg258 Watkins:
When a guy goes off the ranch and comes back thirty minutes later and
has a car and two hundred dollars and says somebody gave it to him. you
know. He used to do that...
Reflexion, pg120 Lynette: "I don't think I ever heard him directly ask for money, but it seemed that people couldn't wait to give it to him."
The point of this thread is not to show that Manson had some kind
of natural affinity for one or two mind-manipulation skills. The point, rather,
is to show that Manson seemed to be EXPERT in ALL of them. Charlie
wasn't just good at what he did, he was TOO good.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalism Like
any performing art, mentalism requires years of dedication, extensive
study, practice, and skill to perform well and perfect.
Charlie
developed a high degree of expertise in the use of these mental
techniques. The question is, where did Charlie acquire these skills? He
didn't get it from reading a book on magic tricks or hypnosis. Someone
must have taught him. He probably spent years being schooled in the
various techniques by multiple experts in their respective fields.
We
all know that Alvin Creepy Karpis schooled Charlie in prison on the
rudiments of playing the steel guitar. So why don't we know the names of
these other teachers?
