Knockin' On The Golden Door

Rosalie Jean Willis

Apologies if my discussion topic today was previously covered in a book that is no longer in print, or the edition is crazy expensive on the resale market, or even if I missed fifty-two posts here or on lsb or the Col or any of the other sites that discussed the Manson milieu during the last half century and then some since the crimes occurred. Yes, I read Sanders but probably the 2015 printing or whichever was available. Same for many of the other tomes. Regardless, there's no excuse for my failures. I've been goofy since birth, my brain is mush, and I forget much of what has been said since Brenda McCann's cyan headband was found beneath the passenger seat in Tenerelli's Beetle. 

Okay, there was no headband. But wealthy surfer chicks amirite? Sunshine. Warm salt air above the waves. Baby, young me would kill a giant shark for young you if it swam near our boards.

You can use your sharpened knife to help send that joker down to Davey Jones' locker. Later, we will listen to the Beach Boys in a giant convertible with faux wood panels on the doors. Right, maybe not the Beach Boys. How about a live performance of the Milky Way on a cassette in a cassette player that has not been invented yet? I'll say girl I know we just met but I love you and you will reply shut up you old fool. Wake up and get your post back on track. 

 

Which is sound advice so here goes. I think it's dumb that everyone has to be on Manson teams. Valid reasons abound although I wish we could be like Rodney King. I attempt to mend fences but faces quickly glaze and mouths immediately begin frothing and raging about the Statman-Schreck wars of 2014 and etc. The air around those posts and resulting arguments still hangs heavy like Gettysburg at first light on a foggy, cool morning. 

We should bury hatchets. Scene politics are exhausting. Nearly a decade has passed. 

Personally, I enjoy talking and writing about what went on during the lifetime of Charles Manson with everyone who wants to discuss it even if I'm still learning. 

Now is the best time for researching Charlie & Company since Billy came back to Ohio. New information is uncovered frequently even if it doesn't crack the case wide open. The Internet is an amazing tool. Why can't someone research areas that interest them and seek out convos with others trapped inside this hateful loop without being on a team or an idiot? Stick your expert nose up your butt or go watch Matlock if you already know everything. Or tell your doctor your medication isn't working.

Is solving the murders all that matters anyway? The settings and characters call out to me. Terrified people dying...not so much. 

We study a fascinating subject which endures. New people will never stop entering the community during our lifetimes. Should they continuously fuck off en masse because unbalanced Manson consumers, groupies, and dilettantes masquerading as authorities already argued Carl Stubbs on some primitive website the year the noobs were born or even decades earlier? Time will eventually place more noobs online than traditional Manson"experts." The tables will gloriously turn on who gets to fuck off, and the revenge will be sweet, but what's the point?  

Maybe they're turning now. Who knows. 

I know my pleas fall on deaf ears but dammit Esterhaus was right. Let's be kind out there and remember that Manson history is not an online campaign for student body president at Manson High, but rather an ongoing investigation with constantly improving research tools.  

Imagine how wild it would be if someone you were acting cruel toward was a professional writer and could hilariously nuke you all day long in places that matter. Quick as a hiccup, too. Some would say effortlessly. 

Sermon ended. I appreciate the little crew of  friends I've made here and thank you all for being my pal. You make my time well spent. +ggw

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Okay the post: 

Last week, while digging for nuclear bombs previously hidden by penniless and cigarette smelly white trash in the polluted muck beneath la belle riviere, I realized I was aware of three completely different versions of Charlie's life during the mid to late 1950's.

First, there's the story Rosalie told her coworker in 1978. I screen capped a bit below. 

Deb quickly shuts down Rosalie's fibbing. The birth records she used remain available online for verification if you're a crazy person like me who needs to prove things to themselves instead of choosing a squad and repeating (often) unverified reruns forever alongside a chorus of new best friends in a (personalized) online wind tunnel. 

Always remember that no one in history ever anticipated the Internet. You have a clear advantage over researchers in the past. Even in the last decade or year. Nobody needs to tell you anything. Look for yourself. 

Since we're all liars at times, I propose we forgive Rosalie and move on. 

While there are many books out there brimming with information, and I think we can bring several into our discussions down the road, let's keep things simple for today. I used the most famous work published on the subject, Helter Skelter, and compared it to arguably the most informative eye witness account ever produced in the genre, Lynette Fromme's Reflexion.

If you haven't bought Lynette's book yet you should today. And read it more than once. If she's not the smartest resident of this unforgiving tar pit, she is certainly at the top of the class. 

Charlie doesn't mention anything about his time in California with Rosalie in Reflexion. As always, all citations from Fromme's book refer to the Kindle version. 

"When I married Rosie at twenty years old, I had never been around chicks. Rosie played me like the fool that I was (103)." 

Sixteen year old Rosalie must've really done a number on him. She was cool like cucumber salad when freedom was on the line though. Vince forces Curt to point out that Charlie beat on a pregnant woman. 

via Helter Skelter 

Such is life. One person is told a lie while another person hears the truth. Or both people are bullshitted. You know we live in dangerous times. No one should be alone.

I said I wouldn't hate on lies told for perseverance anymore and shall refrain today. Survival is an absolute necessity. No two ways about it. 

Charlie's version of 1954-1958 in Fromme's book differs from what I found in public records so I made myself a basic timeline in an attempt to keep everything straight in my mind. I left some things out so we don't have to discuss pimping sixteen year old girls and various other successful and failed capers. 

Let's dive in. 

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May, 1954 - Charlie earns an early release for good behavior at the Maximum Security Reformatory in Chillicothe, Ohio, and moves in with his aunt and uncle. God bless you, Glenna xo. High school freshman Rosalie Jean Willis lives and works nearby. 

"One of my mom's husbands was a window washer at a U.S. Courthouse. His name was Deere. They got me out of prison and she got me a 1954 Ford. I traded it for a 1952 Cadillac and used the name Charlie Deere (103)." 

---

I imagined a convo that went a something like this:

"Hey, Judge. Got a minute?"

"Sure thing! What can I help you with, Mr. Bailiff?"

"You know that window washer guy who's always out front cleaning the glass when we arrive at work in the mornings? Deere? He asked if you might consider calling over to the prison and telling them to cut his wife's son loose?"

"Say no more, cherished friend and sworn lodge brother. I've always had a soft spot for squeegee men." 

(I could not find a husband named Deere online for Kathleen but maybe you can. I didn't look super hard.) 

The Fifties in Fromme:

The final screen cap is from Frank Costello's FBI files. Charlie and Frank are together in Lewisburg in 1952. Manson claims Big Frank raised his hand and vouched for him in the Fromme passages above. There's no way of proving they were buddies but there are more hints in our pages from Fromme. 

Charlie talks in code so I always look up every name he mentions. For example, he mentions Dewey in his letter to Fromme. Dewy took down Murder, Inc. Charlie later did time with Murder, Inc. member Frankie Carbo. You remember Frankie don'tcha? 

Even though he killed Bugsy Beatty, Carbo is small potatoes compared to the rest of that backstory. Murder, Inc was a dark child of some the most infamous of NYC mafia fathers. Meyer Lansky. The Brain. Lucky Luciano. Frank Costello. 

Let's jump back to Charlie's life in the '50's as told by Fromme. He is released from Chillicothe in 1954 and heads to Cleveland in Fromme's version of events.

That's John Scalish. He's the godfather of the Cleveland mob when Charlie shows up with a stolen car. A Viking Englishwoman says Scalish looks like my Italian brother. I don't think I've ever been that dashing but I do feel like I make that face a lot. 

Scalish had five sisters although I'm unsure if Charlie was implying something or not. I have a mysterious relative everyone in my family thinks was a con man who is buried near Scalish and the rest of Cleveland's gangster royalty. Danny Greene. People blown up by Danny Greene. Scoundrel after glorious scoundrel. 

They're all waiting to resurrect inside this beautiful, old, city cemetery. Huge mature trees dot the spacious landscape making Calvary Cemetery a great place for a walk. You don't want your car to break down outside the gates though. Times have changed in the neighborhood. 

I spent a day learning about the Cleveland mob last week and here is the road to Charlie. Scalish was the second true godfather of the city. Before power was consolidated, several gangs, Jewish and Italian, operated at the same time and sometimes worked together. Eventually, the money coming in from Prohibition became outlandish and everyone started fighting. 

Scalish married a Jewish girl whose father was the boss of a Jewish crew. Maybe they married to consolidate power or perhaps they were deeply in love. I always choose love. 

Around the same time, a local gang split into two rival gangs and a boss and his brother were killed in a Little Italy barbershop with New York's blessing. This is how it went down: Boss Joseph Lonardo, pictured below, steamed to Italy supposedly on vacation. 

Big Joe left his brother John (below) and another fellow in charge while he visited overseas. 

This is the other fellow, Big Joe's advisor, Salvatore "Black Sam" Todaro.

I know what you're thinking. Dude looks totally trustworthy. I felt the same way. The backstory here is Big Joe and the guys who split off into their own crew, the Porrello's, were lifelong friends. Both families emigrated from Sicily together and even named kids after one another. 

This was until Prohibition changed everything. Greed is number two on the list of the Seven Deadly Sins and don't ever forget it. 

Right. So anyway Black Sam cozies up to John while Big Joe is in Italy (It-LEE) and convinces him everything is copasetic between the feuding crews. When Joe returns, Black Sam lures Joe and John to Angelo Porrello's barber shop for a sit-down. Bang bang bang you know the deal. Joe and John are made to feel comfy with a card game, ambushed, and slain by their former friends. 

Following this act of magnificent treachery, Joseph Porrello becomes head corn sugar baron in Cleveland. Corn sugar is essential to every bootlegging operation in case you've never been a bootlegger.   

Porrello was suddenly king but he was also no fool. At least not at this time. Later, definitely. But for now he made Black Sam believe he was the boss of the crew. 

Killing Lonardo got rid of one enemy but another enemy immediately stepped up like they always do in organized crime. The new guys were called the Mayfield Road Mob. Fearing the MRM and attempting to place the local crown officially upon his head, Joseph Porrello holds what becomes the first big mafia summit in a downtown Cleveland hotel on December 5, 1928. Top mafiosos from New York and around the country began to arrive. 

Momentarily, the Cleveland cops said, "Dudes, how stupid do you think we are?" Gangsters were arrested as they showed up. Fearing his imminent demise, Porrello paid everyone's bail. No one was overly offended, Porrello was secretly handed Cleveland, and the MRM was told to go kick rocks. 

To their credit, the MRM was like okay cool yeah we understand no hard feelings. I'm joshing. Don't be so gullible. The MRM waited until June and violently ended Black Sam's lifetime of double-dealing in front of the same barber shop Big Joe and John Lonardo were killed. 

Black Sam, stooge the entire time and betrayed at the end, was gunned down by Lonardo's wife, his son Angelo (named after traitorous barber shop owner Angelo Porrello), and a Lonardo hit man. All had defected to the MRM. 

By the end of Prohibition, most of the Porrello gang is either dead or with the MRM. Porrello is invited to a sit-down at the Venetian restaurant on Mayfield Road. The building on the right in this photo from 1930 still exists today. You probably guessed that Porrello meets his end here and you are correct. 

Porrello and his bodyguard foolishly believe they are picking up more than a hundred grand in today's money. Greed, friends, it's a killer. Two hitmen light them up at their restaurant table. Porrello never moves and is later found with his unlit cigarette hanging from his lip. 

The bodyguard is wounded in each side, makes it outside, collapses on the sidewalk out front, the restaurant was where the parking lot is now btw, and perishes following two more shots to the dome. Neither killer was ever identified.

The owner of the Venetian Restaurant, Frank Milano, leader of the MRM, is responsible for the assassinations. But the coast is not clear yet. Porrello's brother Vincenzo "Jim" Porrello becomes the new boss of the Cleveland mafia and vows revenge on his brother's killers. His reign lasts three long weeks before the back of his head is blown off in a grocery store on his home turf. A third Porrello brother, Raymond, swears double revenge. I'm sure you see where this is going. 

Raymond's house explodes three weeks later. Bits of brick, glass, and wood splinters fill the sky before cascading back to Earth in a grotesque shower. Raymond is not home at the time but the Porrello's are nearly finished in the crime game. A couple more guys and a wife await their murders but the Porrello run is over.   

Frank Milano officially becomes the next King of Cleveland. The MRM is mentioned in The Godfather 2 and called by its first name, The Lakeville Gang. Johnny Ola and Michael Corleone discuss the gang and Hyman Roth in that clip. "Our friend in Miami." Roth is Meyer Lansky's character's name in the film. 

I wanna be handsome like young Al Pacino just for one day. "Brenda McCann, leave those slippies alone," I'd say while removing a white bow tie I was born knowing how to knot. "Let's go hang out with Hynson and August."

In 1931, Frank Milano joins the National Crime Syndicate with Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. Meyer Lansky is one of the players connecting the Manson cases to Cuba and JFK. If not for the JFK and RFK assassinations and Black Flag concert flyers, I would not be here today. 

In case you're keeping score, Angelo Lornado, Big Ange, killer of Black Sam, was a brother in law of eventual godfather John Scalish. Angelo swore and got revenge on his father's killers and then the government removed him from the mix. He currently resides in Calvary with his obligatory statue and is surrounded by family, friends, and enemies.  

And my relative who does not have a statue. 

John Scalish was running things as the godfather of Cleveland for ten years when Charlie showed up. Cleveland had a big piece of the Teamsters and were also behind Moe Dalitz in Las Vegas. The neighborhood Charlie describes housed Scalish's headquarters. No idea on the Dago Mick. If you can prove Murphy was Danny Greene, I will send you a giant-sized candy bar and a box filled with assorted zoo zoos and wham whams. 

Charlie might be lying about his connections to the most powerful mafia group in the US but then again he might be telling the truth. He lied all the time but was also honest about things that made me question his sanity, so I am never sure. 

(B.S. Murphy had parts or all of this worked out almost three decades ago. I'm sure it's also in some other books I'm unable to buy and on ten websites that all look like 1995, but I wanted to put it here on the MFB for everyone who arrives after this post and wants to look into Charlie's time in Cleveland, Ohio. +ggw) 

Bonus: Here is the Internet's reaction to Frankie and Charlie in an earlier time. The comments section makes me feel right at home. 

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All righty then. First, we covered Rosalie's lie about never making it out to California with Charlie. Next, we squared away Charlie's 1950's as told to Lynette Fromme, and explained the people and their connections inhabiting those years of his life. All that's left is a bit more from Vince and Curt, and our Charlie/Rosie/Mafia timeline culled from public records and author Jeff Guinn.   

Oh. Duh. We also discovered that Rosalie's mom and sister(s) were somehow already out in Los Angeles when Charlie and Rosalie arrived. Idk if this is new info for the bloated corpus or if Ivor Davis published the news while taking a poop one day before I was born or if some other person who is the coolest toughest senior at Manson High carved it into the bathroom stall with his switchblade but the discovery was an eye-opener for me and the rest of the nerd table. I'm the guy in the letterman jacket showing his fellow concert bandmates the 1350 he got on his SAT in case any haters ever want to stop by and say hello after you finish your lunch of Marlboros and Little Debbies.

Have you ever noticed that even the extras with no speaking parts in this drama are good looking? What's up with that? Paranoid me would surely scream crisis actors were I not so grounded in the universe and oneness and love. I'm not quite sure how these people escaped our dirty river and made it all the way to La La Land and the mighty Pacific and but I'd high five the shit out of them if they were here right now. 

Did Bugliosi not know Rosie's family was out there? The number one selling crime book of all time.

I struggled to find information on Kathleen and Rosalie's roommate situation. If anyone wants to fill in the blanks with an address, I would be much obliged. Or just grateful really. We don't have to owe one another favors or anything. 

Friends, I think we're finished for this week. I provided Buntline with millions of things to look up and typed for two straight days. The remainder of my working timeline is below. I look forward to being called out on every bit of minutia or whatever the opposite of minutia is...bigmutia maybe Idk but basically whatever I got wrong. 

Until next week...

Keep it Green. 

xo

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August-ish 1955 - Charlie and Rosalie arrive in Los Angeles. Charlie is caught with their stolen car and faces federal charges for crossing state lines with it.  

October 1955 - Charlie receives five years probation because Rosalie is preggers. 

March, 1956 - Charlie fails to appear at court in Los Angeles over a federal auto theft charge filed in Florida and is subsequently arrested in Indianapolis, Indiana. His probation is revoked while he awaits sentencing. Rosalie has carried their son nearly to full term. 

April 10, 1956 - Jay White is born in Los Angeles. (Jay dies by suicide at age 37.)

December 15, 1956  - Charlie receives three years in San Pedro for violating his probation. I'm so-so on this date. Why would they make him wait nine months? Merry Christmas regardless. 

March, 1957 - Rosalie stops visiting Charlie in prison. He finds out from his mom that Rosalie moved in with a new dude. 

July 9, 1957 - Rosalie files for divorce from Charlie. She is two months pregnant by Jack B. White.  

February 3, 1958 - Jesse James White is born. (Jesse dies of an overdose at age 28.)

September 10, 1958 - Rosalie's divorce with Charlie is official.  Charlie is paroled around the same time. 

November 8, 1958 - Rosalie marries Jack B. White. 

April 4, 1959 - Jed White is born. (Jed dies in a shotgun accident at age 11.) 

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Risin' up to paradise. I know I'm gonna shine. 

Reflexion by Lynette Fromme; Part Five: pp. 366 - End

The final 111 pages...

On Manson controlling the group:

When we were out of money, bikers offered us stolen credit cards, but we didn't want them. Paul suggested that we could sell something. "Well, we don't sell anything..." Charlie maintained seriously. His eyebrows rose, and he popped a grin. "...but we could trade it for money." It was a joke. We really didn't have a thing worth selling. Bill knew a club where girls who were so inclined might dance topless, but I don't know if anybody did. Despite what was later said to the contrary, we were a democracy, jokingly called an "Orwecouldjust." ("We could..." "Or we could..." "Or we could just..."). It was a consensus style government, everyone adding to the pool of thought. Charlie was both credited and blamed for having the most input, but anyone with ideas was welcome to toss them into the circle. 

On Charlene Cafritz who - to refresh your memory -  was Carter Cafritz's (the son of Morris Cafritz who was a real estate developer, one of Washington’s leading commercial and residential builders from the early 1920's to the mid-60's) wealthy ex-wife who was reported to apparently be a heroin addict and died of an overdose in 1970:

When it came to getting money Charlie went for what he knew. Her name was Charlene, a boot and whip-style girl with a curvy body. I read later that she was some kind of heiress, but he never mentioned it. He had met her at a party in Beverly Hills and invited her to The Ranch. She didn't come. She had invited him to her ranch in Nevada, and instead of going alone, he asked Sandy, Brenda, Paul, and me to go with him.  

Charlene's Nevada ranch had an old-time hotel with a cowboy cafe at the front. Tired and hungry from the overnight drive, we went in for breakfast. Charlie sent one of the workers to let Charlene know that he had arrived. I almost missed seeing her. She was coming toward Charlie, but, after seeing the rest of us, she wheeled on her high heeled boots and let the screen door slam behind her. He went out to talk to her, and pretty soon an employee showed the rest of us to a bare rustic room with two beds, no telephone, and no TV. I don't know what gave me the impression that this ranch was more about women than horses, but I knew about Nevada's Mustang Ranch and I was beginning to think that Charlene might be running such an establishment. In any case, it was not an entertaining trip for us - we slept most of the time - and the next day Charlie returned to say we were leaving. As we drove away, he said that he had offered Charlene a place with us, but she didn't want it. I found out later that she had offered him a Cadillac, but he refused it. Apparently, this wasn't about stuff or money.

A letter from Sandy says that Gary Hinman was homosexual and had a thing for Bobby. Either I never heard this or I just forgot it. Either way it adds a new sland to that part of the story.

One night during the time they operated a "nightclub" in the saloon, Charlie got into a tangle with a biker over the biker's treatment of one of the girls. Once the fight started "Charlie ducked under his arm and behind him, reached between his legs, took a grip, and escorted that guy out the door by the collar of his shirt and his balls".

On corn chips:

Brenda read aloud to herself the list of ingredients in a small bag of corn chips, including the then commonly added chemical preservatives BHA and BHT. In typical understatement with just a touch of amazement, she said, "Wow, now they embalm you before you die."

This made me laugh because as teens my friends and I used to joke that there should be a warning label that said something like, "If you eat this and then you die, you won't rot!"

So far in this section she reminisces about different Family members. I won't ruin it. Buy the book. This bit about Clem I found interesting. It brought back to mind one of the first questions I asked Robert Hendrickson about him.:

Clem was actually classic as a country brother. He once gifted Sandy and me with a beautiful china teapot. Inside it was a beautiful live tarantula. The surprise was not left to chance. He stood by to supervise the discovery. Another time, he woke Ouisch and me, telling us tp "be still and just watch" the snake he was putting into bed with us. His mischief and adept handling of creatures were parts of his charm, but Clem was no hick. Like Bobby, he came from a smart suburban family, and in some ways was a typical teenager, rejecting the past to form a world of his own.

And this about Clem from a letter from Sandy.

Like Sadie and Brenda, Clem would turn a question back at the questioner, or give pat answers as a way of "reprogramming" himself. In reply to "How are you?" Clem would say "perfect." If asked when his birthday was, he'd say "today." I understood his meanings and reasons, but his refusal to give a straight answer could be exasperating. I sensed his rebelling at the conventionalities that hung on in my speech, but he was never sarcastic or mean-spirited.

Jakobson/Melcher:

Charlie had been urging Gregg Jakobson to arrange the meeting with Terry Melcher, not because he wanted a recording contract - he had walked away from contracts - because when we went to the desert, we wanted to leave behind a message.

The iconic crow photo:

"There exists a fuzzy photo of Charlie by the boardwalk with the raven on his forearm. I believe Pearl took it. He's wearing his embroidered vest, and his oddly cocked brown felt hat, and his upper lip is swollen, cut by a shard of wood that splintered off some project he was working on. The raven was a wonder to him and he spent a lot of time with it." 

From a letter from Manson: 

"That bird got into my head as if I was part of it. I didn't want it to be raised dependent on humans so I would take it far away and let it go. I'd drive miles back to the ranch and that bird would be sitting there. Part of me wanted to keep it but I wanted it to be free from humans because I wanted it to be free from them also. You got to be careful for the wildlife. If you make friends with them, they run to other humans who are not friends. The raven flew to land on a guy's shoulder and he thought Alfred Hitchcock's bird movie was after him. He almost knocked the bird's head off before I got between them."

On Bug's assertion that they were attempting to steal Spahn Ranch:

For a long time George had been trying to swallow a heart burning expression someone - he thought a city assessor - had used to describe The Ranch. They'd called it "an eyesore." Since he couldn't trust his own eyes or depend upon the hands, he felt helpless and enraged. He told me he felt "cornered" because if they were to leave him for even a day, the horses would go hungry, and the business would be lost. The humiliation of needing people he often despised was enough to make him wish to be done with it, to have the satisfaction of wielding the final stroke rather than succumbing to impotence. He could sell. I thought it would take years to get a buyer, and meanwhile something would work out.

In my mind, The Ranch would always be ours. In revolutionary times, it would be a safe place to rest and refuel before moving on. The Fountain of the World would be another. A prosecutor would allege that we were leveraging George for the deed, but who needs a deed in the midst of lawlessness.

Sandy, on parental neglect (Sandy is spot on here regarding abuse & illness, IMO):

My mother didn't have a maternal bone in her body. On my first day of kindergarten she dropped me off at the school and drove away. If she'd stayed long enough to see that I found the right classroom, she would have seen that the school wasn't even open. She had brought me on the wrong day. A policeman found me wandering around, totally disoriented and crying hysterically.

I think that I began to feel the tensions of my parents' relationship even before I was born, and later to show the extreme physical effects of a child who had formed no attachment with the mother. Mostly it played out in respiratory issues. In infancy I had two tracheotomies and in childhood countless painful exploratory procedures. Doctors back then did not know much about the correlation between parental neglect and abuse and childhood and adult illness. I was in and out of the hospital and oxygen tents. When I was ten a surgeon removed most of my right lung. I still wonder if that was really necessary.

The Bikers:

Outlaw bikers demonstrated both traditional patriotism and insolent rebellion. Some members of the Oakland chapter of the Hell's Angels once barged into a crowd of anti-war marchers to stomp heads, their president, a military veteran, offering the U.S. president their service as guerrilla fighters in Vietnam. Some of the same guys wore German helmets, swastikas, Iron Crosses, and death's heads because they were imbued with a warrior spirit, because they looked "cool," and because they obviously made conventional U.S. citizens feel uncomfortable. Charlie was not the only one to think these rebels could be a force in protection of life. The Merry Pranksters, Grateful Dead, and Rolling Stones, among others, strategized them as allies; the U.S. government did not. 

Charlie took bikers on some wild dune buggy rides. He composed a song with them in mind, and interact-ed as if he lived in them, but despite their outlaw leanings many of them were traditional in their thinking. Our ideas were new and strange to them, and if they saw a revolution coming, they didn't envision hiding in the desert. They seemed to be more about illicit ways to make money.

This sure did pique my interest:

Two weeks after the ranch raid, Frank Retz called police to arrest Charlie for trespassing. They found him asleep in the farmhouse, a marijuana roach and one of the girls nearby. I think it was Gypsy because she went to the station and claimed the roach. She was not charged, and Charlie was released. Frank said he thought the police raid had taken care of the job he wanted done, but now he would have to do it himself. He openly announced that he would hire and arm a man to watch over the property. Pearl suggested Shorty Shea, and he made no secret of his intention to take the job.

Cappy describes the burning of the Michigan Loader:

Headed for refreshment from a hot desert day - a day spent close to the ground motionless as lizards, motionless as the air that let the Sun's heat turn the earth's crumbled rock to blazing dust, the same dust we had all become - two dune buggies of nude night bodies flew over the hills along the ridges and down the banks into the beds of forgotten rivers. This night had no moon but freedom was a-rise. The dune buggy engines hummed into the vast darkness. We neared the opening to a canyon that gave birth to a hot spring. Our heavenly hot springs popped into view - but SOMETHING of huge and grotesque proportions loomed out of the darkness beside it. A ruthless monster had invaded our unblemished desert home, a thing that had leveled a nearby hill and had stopped just short of shoving it into the pool of steaming water. A U.S. Government monster. Ouish's loud exclamations rebounded off the mountain walls. Then sparks lit within our eyes. We all laughed and charged to the dune buggies, lugging out gasoline and all the match-es we had stashed. What a beautiful picture it would make exploding in huge tongues of flame to return to the earth it was trying to destroy! We doused the tires and the seat with gasoline. Lit matches found their places. POOF! POOF! POOF! THE FLAMES WERE TITANIC. THE WHOLE MACHINE WAS ON FIRE... until the gas evaporated. Just how much of a Michi-gan loader burns? More gasoline - everything saturated once more - more matches - ah! And finally the seat caught a-blaze.

We slid into our pool beside the fire. And after a long bath, dawn came creeping. Goosepimply and wet we stood in the chill air, viewing the remains of the monster. There it stood unscathed - only a few patches of blistered paint and a gorged seat on melted rubber feet. We left our mark and sped off laughing into the morning. 

Sandy on Sadie and Katie telling her in September about the murders:

... I asked them if others knew about this. They told me they didn't know. Their move was for Bobby and there was really no need to say anything to anyone. After the girls left the trailer, I thought about what they told me, I could not judge them.

Paul Watkins was only called Little Paul after the Family made the final move to Golar Wash. It was to distinguish him from Paul Crockett.

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The book ends with the Barker Ranch Raid. Very little is mentioned about the murders or the motives. What Fromme has presented us with is her experiences with Manson and the group. In my opinion she did an excellent job of helping me see things through her eyes.

We all have our reasons why this little piece of history reels us in. My fascination with the whole story has always had less to do with the crimes and more to do with the communal/tribal aspects of The Family. I've been waiting decades for a core member to write a book like this one. I devoured it. I'll likely devour it again and again.

Some of her descriptions of leaving home and learning to commune with nature reminded me of the North Pond Hermit, Christopher Thomas Knight, who lived almost without human contact for 27 years in the woods in the North Pond area of Maine. I'll never forget something he later said:

"Solitude bestows an increase in something valuable, ...my perception. But...when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for...To put it romantically, I was completely free."

My reasons for reviewing in the fashion I did were (again) to bring to the fore things that either I did not know previous to reading this work, things that I found either uber-fascinating or just plain amusing. If she had gone through a major publishing house the book would have been much different. I'm appreciative of her choice.

If you haven's ordered Reflexion yet, you are missing out. It is a must read.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme on the Radio Sunday Oct. 14th

George Stimson posted this on a Facebook page.

Tune in this Sunday, October 14 at 7:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time for Lynette Fromme's first ever LIVE radio interview, with the Reverend Derek Moody, the self-proclaimed high priest of rock and roll, on radio KSKQ 89.5 FM out of Medford and Ashland Oregon. (If you are out of radio range you can stream it on www.kskq.org.) Lyn will be discussing her book Reflexion, the Pacific Trash Vortex, and anything else that time allows for.

Don't miss it if you can!

Live stream listen HERE 

Reflexion by Lynette Fromme; Part Four: pp. 253 - 365

Sorry for the delay in getting this one to you, I've been otherwise distracted. But, the "shit Matt didn't know, piqued his interest or cracked him up" tour continues with the large section of the book dealing with 1969 and Spahn Ranch. This is the last section and the largest so I'll cover it over two posts.

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Bo Rosenberg came to the Family after she stayed with the group of hippies at Spahn in the back house but elected not to go with them when they were gifted by Manson with The Black Bus to go to Oregon.

I love Lynette's description of Watson when meeting him at Dennis' house. Nothing like I've heard before:

I asked Charles about his businesses. "Wigs," he said. He sold hairpieces from a beach house in Malibu. He didn't tell me that he supplemented his income by dealing marijuana and lightweight drugs. I figured the wig business would be cut short. He was so personable he could have sold homes, cars, magazines, or anything but wigs on southern California beaches. He was politely aggressive, interested in girls, and ultra confident, even with the awe shucks guffaw. He wore the thrill of victory like wings on his head. This Hollywood he'd always heard about was the destination of dreams - not that he wanted to be a celebrity. Just being in the same house with one was not much short of meeting God.

Brooks was brought to Spahn by Dean on one of his trips to court in Mendocino. Huh...

Regarding Manson as a mastermind leader:

In less than two years, county prosecutors would indict Charlie as a 'mastermind' and 'dictator,' but Charlie didn't dictate by ordering or making rules. Most of us had had enough rules made by people who didn't follow them. He ruled by example. He still had the sharpest eyes and ears, and the most experience of anyone at the back of The Ranch. In the circle at night, we treated him as a kind of shaman, giving him sound space in exchange for his insights. They emerged not in sermons or elevated speeches, but in extemporary, often musical, response. And when his humor crept up on us, or we were amazed, or enlightened, or thrilled by what he said, he shrugged off personal attachment to the words. Once he said, just reflect thought as it goes by in the air? He could send a dart through the eye of an ego, yet his ability to target disease while leaving healthy thoughts and behaviors strengthened drew people to him. I never considered then that he had a unique and different relationship with each person, and only later did I learn others' interpretations of what he said. What I witnessed of his interactions were fostering discovery of the natural world, and a human unity I'd never seen or experienced. His leadership qualities were an unspoken fact, but, if you asked him, he was just living the time of his life.

She mentions Family member Chuck Grey (never heard of that one).

Lynette denies that she was "assigned" to George, that all the girls cleaned, cooked and kept him company.

When Clem crashed Dennis' Ferrari, Charlie gave him Juanita's camper van to "Go see the Mendocino coast and the redwoods up north." (he didn't go). That made me laugh heartily for reasons unknown. The camper probably looked something like this:

Her description of TJ had me gasping for air:

TJ was a sometimes visitor, older than most of us, balding, and missing front teeth for which he had loose replacements. He had already been through the military (demolitions), marriage and divorce (demolitions). 

Cappy was short for "Capistrano from Santa Susano".

This tidbit about The Fountain interested me:

We visited The Fountain of the World several times before offering our help with their programs and community charities in exchange for a safe place for Mary and Sunstone to stay. Katie soon joined them, specifically to work, and she wound up managing their kitchen.

Regarding The Bug's "LSD mind control":

In the two years I'd seen Charlie take psychedelics, he was the sanest, most stable person in any group. His prosecutor would speculate, and then claim as fact that Charlie issued LSD to each of us, while secretly refraining from taking it so he could program and control us. We took acid separately and together so whoever had the stash "issued" it, and I don't think Charlie's ability to program and control would've been hindered by LSD, but here is what he said: "Spirit is a power that can't be controlled. I don't move it. The two ways to lose it are when I try to use it, and when I fear and fight against it." 

Right after this, she describes a group acid trip on stronger than normal A that they afterwards referred to as "The Freak Out". I howled laughing through every bit of it. I won't ruin it for you. The book was worth every word just for these few pages.

The aforementioned Chuck Grey was arrested for taking an older woman at knifepoint on Santa Susana Pass and raping her. Lynette couldn't wrap her head around it based on "his good looks and access to girls." After being driven away in a squad car he was never seen again.

George Spahn had a wife, still living at the time the Family was on the ranch. She stopped by briefly a few times. George said she didn't want to live on the ranch. I did not know that.

During their winter months at Barker Ranch they made the acquaintance of an astrophysicist engineer named Clint Anderson and his wife Stella who lived "on a distant dark hill". Charlie and Clem were fond of them. From (what I assume is) a letter from Clem:

I used to squat on Clint Anderson's kitchen floor while he ran down to me universal laws - celestial concepts that my mind could barely grasp. I was intoxicated with the wine of his wisdom and knowledge. He was gently humble, as if plugged into and talking for the whole magnificant (sp) universe. I walked out of his little desert cottage with the top of my head gone and my brain touching the heavens. One time when I was leaving the Andersons, after bringing them a heap of goodies and supplies, they told me that if ever I feel a touch like a spring breeze on my shoulder, and soft whisperings, to know that it's them in the spirit visiting me. I've felt those feelings several times through the years, and one time found out that Clint had passed. They were magical beings.

Lynette insinuates that in late 1968, Sadie was off: "The radio has been telling me to do things!"

“Karate Dave” is mentioned here and there throughout the book but this bit was interesting to me:

Charlie was driving the three-wheeler around The Valley one night with three of us girls in the back when, at a stoplight, we met Karate Dave on a rust-dusted Indian motorcycle - a nice old bike. Dave wasn't bad looking either. He was atypically clean-cut, blond, and masculine, and he came home with us after a few more stoplights. Charlie called him Karate Dave after learning he had a black belt. 

The problem with Dave was that he wasn't done rebelling against authority figures. He was a military AWOL, and if he can be believed, he'd escaped the police twice after being handcuffed. Charlie told me that in order to respect his peers Dave needed to be beaten at his art and none of our guys was trained in the marshal arts. Charlie said this to him: "Challenge yourself, man, compete with yourself. You got more than twenty acres of hills, caves, and boulders to master. Can you run through here at night without breaking your foot or falling on your face? You can knock people down, but can you pass through a place without leaving a trace that you were there? With-out disturbing a dog or a pebble? Challenge yourself, Man." Dave had a good false ID but he was another person who had to avoid the police.

When Sandy became pregnant by Bobby everyone was surprised because "their relationship wasn't exactly dovey".

On why they left Spahn Ranch for The Yellow Submarine:

Then [George Spahn] told me something that stung, and I didn’t repeat it to anyone. After asking me how we got our money when so many of the men did not have jobs, he let on that he thought Charlie was foolish for giving money away. 

"Was he foolish for giving it to you? I asked."  

He said, "Yes." 

This time I was furious. I yelled, "Well, do you want us to leave"? And he was so stubborn, and so mad, he said yes. 

We took three hours leaving, cleaning, packing, and petting the dogs, and as the 3-wheeler roared out of the drive with the last of us, the wind hit my face and I saw the whole crazy, crooked ranch in the wet bolts of color, and it felt like I had lost my world.

On Little Patty who she describes as a tough east coast girl (and a bit woman on woman lovemaking):

... one day as we were about to pass in the hallway, she approached me with that smile and spoke to me with that voice, and before I understood her intention, she pressed herself into me, tenderly kissing my mouth. I smiled into her eyes, shook my head, and Little Patty graciously understood. Although the guys being fewer, received the attention of more than one woman, and we women were comfortably physically affectionate, none of us who lived together demonstrated a desire for homosexuality. Not to my knowledge.

On the White Album:

We acknowledged the genius that had created the album, but we did not believe that the Beatles were talking to us, unless you included us in the soul of the world. The album was just interesting.

They missed the ranch. George missed them. They agreed to come back to Spahn. George wasn't thrilled about the men, but they worked out a deal anyway. During this period they expected that violence would come to the cities so they began hoarding staples for when the time came where going shopping would become impossible...

Danny DeCarlo appears at this point with his large gun collection. He made ammo himself. This is when the bikers began appearing but none stayed. Just DDD.

Reflexion by Lynette Fromme; Part Three: pp. 167 thru 252

The "Stuff that jumped off the pages at Matt" tour continues. To remind readers, this isn't necessarily a chronicle of the book. It's Lynette's facts and ideas - that either filled in gaps for me, or made me sit back and smile. You are free to add or detract as you please.

The Family is now numbered at four: Charlie, Mary, Lynette and Patty. In Sacramento they meet a poor family named the Van Deutches. It is through their stay with them that they wind up with the school bus. Their interactions are mutually beneficial. This is the first time I heard the story of how they acquired the bus.

With their hospitality, the Van Deutches gave us a rebuilt school bus, and a view inside a loving, hard-working family. I hope we gave them more than troubles.

Through a couple named Peter DeLeo and "April", the girls take a foray into prostitution, but decide shortly thereafter that it's not for them.

The interaction at the Lyon St. House in San Francisco nets them motor mouth Susan and Ella Jo Bailey. During these days the girls realized that:

We had mimicked them (the thoughts of adults) and fit in to our advantage, but we also languished in their unconscious limitations of themselves. Superficially, we called it "negative programming," or "brainwashing," and it was roundly agreed that our brains could benefit from another washing.

They were on the receiving end of a couple of citations because the bus was still yellow and legally still a school bus, hence the famous black paint job featuring the "Holiwood Productions 9". A short time later they discovered an available house known as The Spiral Staircase, Dianne Lake, Nancy Pitman, Didi Lansbury and Bobby Beausoleil. It was then that the art of dumpster diving was taught to them by an older man named Zeb. Lynette reminds us that "you could have fed the world with just America's garbage."

Bobby introduced them all to Gary Hinman and also a counterfeiter named Donny who furnished them with very passable fake id's made yout to their new nicknames like Ella Jo Sinder, Brenda McCann and Sadie Mae Glutz. Dianne as a precaution of her age was "married to one of the Texans".

Throughout this portion of the book, a 50-ish formerly wealthy woman named Melba comes and goes from the story. She needed broke "hippies" to clean her stables so she could keep up the appearance of still being wealthy. The kids cleaned for her for free. Manson gifted her a new Mustang and a wad of cash to help her. The story of this friendship was endearing to me.

The abandoned house on Summit Trail nets them Bruce Davis and Paul Watkins. Sandra Good arrives in April and Lynette's intro to us is a 17 page letter. On that first night was the first time she had sex with Charlie. This was the same night that Pooh Bear was born. From Sandy's letter:

..."Relax," he whispered. "I'll do it. Just lie still and let me move you." My body responded while my mind was amazed. He kept moving in a gentle dance. He made love to me for a long, long time and when he sat up, he was still hard.

... He didn't move or cry. Brenda took him and held him upside down, patting him on the back. Mary put her mouth to his, drawing fluids from his mouth and nose. Finally to everyone's great relief, he let out his first breath and a tiny cry.

... I was in a state of mild shock. Charlie's lovemaking and the baby's birth began for me a mind-blowing week that included my first acid trip.

Fromme goes on to describe the "naked hippies" incident. Snake wasn't the only one to down acid rather than let it go to waste (confiscated by the police).

Charlie took whatever he was holding, it ultimately becoming responsible for an iconic mugshot of him taken at the Ventura County sheriff's substation and later published in Life Magazine.

(Photo not taken from the book)

Towards the end of this section the group moves to Spahn. However a blistering heat wave and drought leads them to Dennis Wilson's house after he picked up Patty & Ella hitchhiking.

...We talked back and forth, sang a little, and after the evening's exchange, Dennis outright invited us to stay. We told him about the black bus, and the many more of us, and he said to "bring them." Whoever claimed later that we had moved into Dennis' house uninvited was either untruthful or uninformed.

...Dennis spent a lot of time with Charlie, and I will never know all the things they talked about but there was good blood between them. Charlie obviously got a kick out of Dennis, and Dennis referred to him as a "wizard." After roaming the yard barefoot one morning, Dennis stepped into the room through one of its tall windows, sat down at the piano, and, for the first time since we had arrived, played some of his own music. His music was beautiful when he put his heart into it, and that's what was attractive about him, not just his body and face, but the opening that showed heart.  

Charlie made up a song for Dennis, and we wrote down the words. Part of it was from a man to a woman, and part from a man to his brothers. Dennis would later talk The Beach Boys into recording the song, but someone would talk him into changing the rhythm and words, and failing to even mention Charlie.

 ...It would later be widely reported that we "took" Dennis for thousands of dollars, but we took only what he gave.

The last page of this section was about Dennis and was especially poignant to me. I'll reproduce the entire page. Hopefully no one gets mad :)

Dennis and Charlie walked the grounds, comrades of many moods. Charlie asked Dennis if he wanted us to leave, and Dennis insisted not, but each time he declared he was going to take a vacation to travel with us, he only got wound up tighter, and, in turning, looped himself into even more commitments.  

"Okay, I'll see you at 5:00," I heard him tell some-one on the phone.  

I said, "Dennis, you already said you were going somewhere else at 5:00." He just shrugged and made a funny face. Wasn't he just in a big movie? He traveled the world, played before thousands who paid him for it, had girls in every state eager to lie with him or just get a scrap of paper he had touched. He meant well; what did it matter what he said? But it did, and he was perpetually agitated.  

There was good reason for Dennis' dilemma. Popularity and wealth were not entirely satisfying ends to him. Surety and peace eluded him. And while most of us girls were ordinary, Charlie showed more faith in himself than even the most successful people Dennis knew. Dennis was beyond fame and money, but even in his youth he was already spent. He couldn't roam for more than a day. He was owned and operated. Peoples' investments rode upon him. He had signed the contracts long before, and he didn't have the will or the confidence to make the change. He had gained access to half the world through his company. It was a lot to give up for a soul he was unsure of.  

Twice Dennis told us he would be home for dinner and the rest of us waited, and he didn't come, so the next day we left the estate and went back to the valley where the land was flat and wide, to the foothills above the smog line, to The Ranch.

Reflexion by Lynette Fromme; Part Two: pp. 98 thru 166

The experiences, perceptions and feelings as Lynette remembers them continues through 1967 and into 1968. There's a lot of information flying by in these pages, both biographical, historical but I can't stress enough what is most important: the way Lynette remembers those days. Here are things that jumped off the pages at me.

Manson, talking about a passing train:

"You could look at the cars as lifetimes," he continued. "And the spaces between are called 'nowhere' and 'nothing' and 'everywhere' and 'everything,' and you just ride in your own car, and the time track goes forever in both directions - yet it's always now."

Sounds like he just touched on Einstein's Theory of Relativity...

Charlie leaves the girls to see his probee. On the way, through a conduit Lynette calls The Fat man Manson meets Dean Moorehouse (and Ruthann). Moorehouse quickly goes from a dour minister to a devotee. He is the one that tells him that he is "Man's Son". I did not know that Dean was the source of that label.

Lynette's thoughts about what she was learning from him during the Summer of Love was summed up for me in this short passage:

My resistance surrendered, then as he said something I thought profound:
"What you feel is what you give, not what I give. You feel your own love."

On snitching:

He quoted Genesis to Father Mike, "First was the word, and the word was God", but he put more emphasis on the word "word" than on "God.". "Breach of word", he said, "breaks people away from the God in themselves."

Something I didn't know: They didn't get the piano that they traded for the bus from Dean Moorehouse. It came from The Fat Man.

Interspersed throughout the book are letters Fromme received from Manson (and others) from prison. The first of these is shared in this section. It is from 1986 and is autobiographical. This paragraph about his mother jumped out at me:

Moms would run her prison trip to me, how the food was so bad, and her job. Her job was sweeping and mopping the killing floor where men were hung. One day they came to hang a guy when she was still in the mop room, and she hid, and wasn't seen. They set the trap and the noose and something went wrong. The man was too big or the rope wasn't right and his head popped off. It came off his body and rolled down the steps to where she was hiding and she said it blinked at her. Her fear of that ran off onto me, and I took it and never realized until I was on death row for nine counts of murder and seven death sentences on a trip not my own.

Jeezuz, that paragraph is loaded with imagery that ties into his story in more ways than I can possibly try to delve into in a short post. I have though, always believed we carry ancestral experiences and fear in our bodies that can shape our lives in more ways than we can control consciously.

It was during this time window that they met the "florid and gentle" Patty Krenwinkel - who would go on "to, arguably, the most inexplicable mass homicide of its time" at the house of one of Manson's Terminal Island acquaintances. This coincided with Charlie's early encounter at the recording studio with producer Gary Stromberg after which Fromme "was imagining success and fame, but Charlie wondered aloud, 'What would they do with Christ?" (Talking about their previous conversation with Stromberg over what sounded like early ideas for Jesus Christ Superstar - but I could be off-base there). To me, Manson was more in the MOMENT of that philosophical conversation than thinking about what might be in the future.

Pat leaves town with them in the VW Bus and they travel up the Pacific coast:

... [Patty was a] stabilizer amongst women, a listener who demanded no attention for herself, an inspiration and conscience toward our own better attitudes, she was so easy to like that Mary couldn't stay mad [about including her in the now growing group].

...We camped in Washington and Oregon with all the natural amenities: plush green carpets, songbird canopies, clear water and air. For brief interludes we heard the summer's symphony without one beep, whine or groan from a machine, and were the only humans on Earth. 

...Tucked into woods at night, he said that all the money in the world was not worth the experience of being there with us.

This should make Panamint Patty's ears perk up:

One day I entered a room where Father Mike was standing over his open briefcase; in it were many plastic bags of marijuana and LSD. Beyond the startled second, he closed the case and behaved as though I'd seen nothing. I think now that Father Mike may have been a distributor for the Brotherhood of Love.

I haven't had a ton of time to read and post but I'll tell you, I'm enjoying the hell out of this book. Apart from interests about learning about "the motives" and so on I always want to get into the heads of the people who were there for the entire ride and see things through their eyes. Fromme is giving that to me!

Reflexion by Lynette Fromme; Part One: pp. 1 thru 97

For the sake of discussion I'll separate this review into segments. I'm not going to go into great detail, but I'll give you my impressions - what jumped out at me. Feel free to expand on this, contradict me or make your own observations.

Let me begin by saying that I like the fact that this isn't a chronology of events, per se. It's a look into Lynnette's experiences, which focus greatly on her perceptions and feelings as she remembers them. It's an opportunity to get into the head of an eighteen year old girl and see things through her eyes and heart.

Lynette begins this insightful, articulate chronicle of thoughts and experience alternating between her life as a child at home, mostly in the Westchester house that still preserves her stick signature at the corner of the concrete driveway, her first meeting with (and leaving home with) Charles Manson and Mary Brunner and her early experiences in places like The Haight and Mendocino.

In this early section of the book what the reader is engaged with her feelings of self doubt brought on in large part by her cold, painful relationship with her father who was an aeronautical engineer, and her early travels with Charlie and Mary. Her dad was wrapped up in his work and his studies, leaving him emotionally unavailable to her. He "...bared his teeth to me when he tried to teach me algebra."

She talks a bit about her studious, responsible nature as a child. She did her schoolwork and always worked side jobs. I liked her description of her time with the Westchester Lariats folk dance group that gave her the opportunity to travel: "I saw more lifestyles than I then realized, and nearly every state in the Union."

Her initial travels with Manson and Brunner were uncomfortable for her because of her love for Charlie and wanting to be more important to him than Mary. But development of her understanding for him was summed up for me in this short paragraph during their time in Mendocino. She sees Manson making her comfortable with their unconventional arrangement and Manson as having the world view of a small child:

"Back in the cabin were candles, clean bedding, and the embrace of stereo speakers. He settled down between us with an arm around each, made us comfortable, made us laugh, and appreciated the moment, sometimes dropping to sleep in the middle of a sentence. I lay awake in wonder of him. His view of the world was my earliest conscious dream."

Her exposure to the freeing lifestyle with her companions begins a transformation in her, inside and out:

"The Mendocino summer turned us beautiful colors. On a walk through the woods, Mary and I stopped by a friend's cabin and were amused to find the latest fashion magazines advertising cosmetics to make you 'look like you just walked out of the woods! The 'Natural Look' was definitely IN. I felt natural. For the first time in my adult life, laughter welled from deep inside me rather than politely from my throat, and I became so interested in the world around me that I forgot to doubt myself. Then I remembered."

And:

"... our minds traveling the past, present, and, rarely, the future. Being present for life was becoming real to me."

What this first section of the book made me understand was that the life she lived at home left her worried about the past, the future and the empty feeling of her father's cold nature. Her early experiences with Manson and Brunner gave her a real feeling of being loved and more importantly, gave her the life-altering, freeing experience of living in the moment.