My Interface With The Manson Family, by Sue Marshall: Part 3 of 3

The Trial

A few months later, in March 1970, writer Ed Sanders arrived from New York.  He had obtained the consent of Freep editor Art Kunkin to represent the paper in covering the trials of Manson and his followers.

This was a delightful two-fer for me.  First, I was freed from the duty of covering the trial, thereby allowing me to pursue news that was more in keeping with my interests.  Second, Ed turned out to be a delightful colleague, always very professional and pleasant. Later, he would be the sole reporter of Mansonite lore who would actually imbed himself in the Family in order to get an accurate story, from their point of view rather than the perspective of law enforcement.

The trial started in late 1970 and continued into 1971.  At some point in the proceedings, perhaps when Manson was forbidden to act as his own attorney, he shaved his head and carved an "X" in his forehead.

One day as I tromped up to the Hall of Justice to cover the L.A. Black Panther trial, I encountered Squeaky, Sandy, and other Mansonite girls. They were squatting on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse, as was their custom. They had also shaved their heads and carved X's into their foreheads.  They spoke to me, but all they could say was some nonsensical prattle that they had learned from their cult leader.  Looking back, I am sure that they were hungry and cold and in acute emotional distress. I did not stop to converse with them.  Their scene was just too horrifying.


Three Minutes with Manson

One day in early 1971 I accomplished a journalistic coup:  an interview with Elmer (Geronimo) Pratt, Minister of Defense for the L.A. Black Panther Party[7]. He was being held in the jail in the upper floors of the old Hall of Justice downtown during his own trial.

Through the services of a leftist lawyer connected with the case, I was able to interview Pratt in the Hall of Justice attorneys' room.  The rules allowed only one person to be with the inmate at a time, so the lawyer departed.  I stood at the north end of the long room, with its well-buffed linoleum floor and GSA steel desks, waiting for the county sheriff's deputies to bring Pratt.

To my surprise, at the south end of the room, the sheriffim opened the door and escorted in none other than Charles Manson.  He was shackled.  He stood there for several minutes, staring at me.

Few events in my life have been so astonishing. I stared back at Manson, hoping that he would not mistake my fascination for the devotion he got from his hapless followers.  I stared at him in the same sense that one stares at a biological oddity, a hideous monster fish from the darkest depths, now on public display in some aquarium.  He was short, scruffy, ugly.  I hope my glance conveyed my scorn and contempt.


Conclusion

Had I formed an opinion in 1971 as to the culpability of Manson and his followers in all those murders?  Perhaps not.  But the creepy subservience of the Manson Family girls with whom I was acquainted was enough to convince me that the man was evil incarnate.

By the time of the trials, it was clear that despite the excesses of law enforcement during that era, the cops had correctly identified the murderers of Hinman, Shea, the Tate household, and the LaBiancas.

So I will turn to the question that has vexed every student of the Manson Family:  how the hell did he get all those girls to subjugate themselves to his psychopathic bullshit?  How did he get them to commit murder for him?

With a modern perspective on what makes people tick, I favor the concept used by psychologists that there is something called "executive function", the biochemical basis for good old-fashioned common sense,

The female followers of Manson and his male counterparts would seem to have a gaping deficit in the executive function department.  In general, I  believe that bad taste in boyfriends is the primary cause of women being in jail.  While there is no doubt that some of his followers were psychopaths just like Manson[8], not all of them could have been.  Certainly overdosing on the drugs available then (and now) can make people crazy.  And crazy people can be susceptible to suggestion.

Finally, there is the almost-forgotten zeitgeist of the era before contraception was widely available – the era into which the Manson followers were born. The parents of the Manson followers could not limit the number of children they had.  This led to the phenomenon of 1960s-era "throwaway children." Dads returned from WWII or the Korean War and took up the Playboy Philosophy, leaving the Moms with too-large families to support. Some kids were rejected; others simply got neglected. Some of the Mansonites may have emerged from that type of situation.  In 21st Century America, few of us still recall those times.

Maybe it all comes down to the presence of evil in the world.  Maybe – assuming that one has common sense equal to one of Ruby Pearl's chickens – the moral person must be vigilant against getting sucked into evil. Is that not a lesson from Nazi Germany, when ordinary people became evil, one small step at a time?


end

Footnotes:

[7] Pratt served 27 years in prison for a murder he apparently did not commit. His conviction was vacated in 1997 after it was revealed that the chief witness against him was an FBI mole placed through the COINTELPRO offensive.

[8] The late Susan Denise Atkins comes to mind.

My Interface With The Manson Family, by Sue Marshall: Part 2 of 3

The Yellow Submarine House

The following day, a group of us Freep staffers drove to the West Valley in two cars. Since I lived in East Hollywood, in the opposite direction, I drove alone in my battered yellow Ford Falcon.  Paul, Shirley, and Judie lived in Reseda, in the same general direction as the Family.  The rendezvous point was the one-story ranch-style house the Family called the Yellow Submarine.[1]

The vivid detail that sticks in my memory was an antique (or imitation antique) sign on the front porch reading:  Doctor Sigafoos, Diseases of the Colon and Rectum.[2]

We were greeted by two of the men.  I believe one was "Clem," Steve Grogan.  The other may have been Bruce Davis or Dennis Rice.  These guys reminded me of weasels or ferrets.  They were thin and dirty, with the wise-ass demeanor of jailbirds. The young women were summoned from the back of the house.  We all sat in the living room on regular chairs and sofas.  I do not recall the décor in detail, but it lacked the ornate arrangements of India prints, temple bells, candles, incense, and psychedelic posters that were the hallmark of good hippie housekeeping in that era.

I stared at the girls.  Squeaky Lyn was a redhead. Gypsy had very black hair.  Sandy Good was a blonde.  They all wore the same odd hair style:  cut short at  ear length, with a few strands left long at one side of their faces. Ed Sanders would learn later that Manson had ordered his female followers to submit to a ritual tonsure, with the harvested hair woven into a vest that was presented to Charlie. [3]

One of the men, again I think it was Clem, began to hold forth:

The police had it in for Charlie. Why, a cop could sit in a topless bar in Van Nuys all evening and still not succeed in getting laid.  Wouldn't it make him want to nail Charlie, who was surrounded by pretty girls who were happy to do his bidding?

As if on cue, the girls assumed insincere smiles. There was something creepy about the scene.

But here we were, in the West Valley, a district that would become the epicenter of the loathsome L.A. porn industry.  This was early in the progress of the women's liberation movement, but I was struck by the subservience and robot-like sexuality that the Manson girls were enacting.  I had observed this vibe before around the West Hollywood groupie scene, from the young women who gravitated to rock bands.  I had already come to the conclusion that all rock musicians were assholes. So what we were witnessing was, thus far, par for the course.

The Spahn Ranch

With this preliminary indoctrination accomplished, our caravan left for the Spahn Ranch.

The Santa Susana Hills look like the backdrop of every old Western movie you've seen.

When I was a child in L.A. in the 1950s, there was no Ronald Reagan Freeway to expedite the trip between the northwest San Fernando Valley and Ventura. High above Simi Valley, a road passed along the eventual freeway route and crossed Santa Susana Pass.  It is here I would feel a great excitement, for my family would only be here if we were headed for Corriganville.

Movie stuntman Crash Corrigan had developed a small theme park and tourist trap amid his movie set in Chatsworth.  There was a fake old-West town, with false-front buildings, raised plank sidewalks, hitching posts for horses, and a rustic one-room jail, complete with barred windows. Actors would simulate gunfights for the delight of the children.  We had been raised on Western movies and TV.

At Corriganville, the surrounding hills, dotted with massive granite boulders and yucca, set the stage for those Westerns. When I was in Corriganville I was in paradise.

When our party arrived at the Spahn Ranch, I had a moment of the same giddy excitement. By some measures, at age 18 I was still a kid. I looked around at the desert hillsides, at the movie-set Western town.  The Spahn Ranch movie set was smaller than Corriganville, but it looked very similar, and the two sites were not far away from each other.

I had come to the Spahn Ranch expecting a hippie commune, perhaps with noir overtones.  But what I saw was HORSES!

To my surprise, I saw that the young women of the extended Manson family were seriously engaged in the work of renting out horses for trail rides. They were running a business there[4].  I fought a strong impulse to run to the rental corral, mount up, and explore the desert hills on horseback.  Or at least go pet the horses.

But I was a professional.  I was there to do a job. I had come to interview subjects for a news article.  Would I get the by-line?[5]  I was new on the job and eager to prove my ability.

Glancing around the movie ranch, I saw Ruby Pearl, the old cowgirl who was George Spahn's sidekick.  She emerged onto the back porch of the main house. Her orange hair was pinned up in braids around her head. She looked bemused at the scene all around her.  She must have been seeing strangers  everywhere invading her home, hippies outnumbering the horse rental customers.  And now a new group had arrived from the Freep. We were not introduced to her. She must have perceived us merely as more hippies.  She held a pan of grain.  The chickens strutted, clucking, up to the back porch where she stood.  Ruby Pearl tossed out the feed.

In the yard we were greeted by Sandy Good, holding her infant son. She told us his name was Ivan, or Elf.  She smiled and said that his father was Bobby Beausoleil.

The wind blew. We followed the Mansonites into one of the fake-western buildings. I think it was the General Store. We found seats.  A fine layer of gritty dust covered everything, as you would expect at a desert horse ranch where not a lot of cleaning was done. One hanger-on was a teenage girl, from some suburban home, incongruously dressed in clean white pants.  And she still had all her long hair.  I concluded that she must be a very recent recruit.

Gypsy took up her guitar and soulfully sang Cease to Exist, the song Manson had almost succeeded in selling to the Beach Boys.[6]

I have no recollection of whatever desultory conversation we had that afternoon.  No food or drink was served and no joints were passed. It was like many a hippie commune, without any money to speak of, and with little attention paid to household cleanliness or personal hygiene.  Perhaps the Mansonites were trying to convince us of how normal they were.

The hour grew late, and we departed at dusk.

Footnotes:

[1] According to research by Ed Sanders, the address of this house was on Gresham Street in Canoga Park.  He says the Mansonites were evicted shortly after our visit and that the house has been demolished since the events recounted here.

[2] Although I don’t recall the exact name of the purported physician, it wasn’t really “Sigafoos”.

[3] Don’t you wonder where this artifact might be today?

[4] Manson had negotiated accommodations for his entourage from elderly George Spahn;  the deal was that the girls would manage the rent string and the horse rental business. Squeaky was assigned to provide oral sex to keep George contented. Her Family name was derived from the sounds she emitted when the old gentleman felt her up, according to Ed Sanders.

[5] As I recall, it was Paul, as managing editor, who got the by-line. He seemed taken in by Clem’s rationale for the LAPD aversion to Manson. In the weeks that followed, I did not care much that I was not assigned to write an article about the Family. Now, in my maturity, I am very relieved.  I would not have been able to publish any sentiments that the Family would have found satisfactory. Who knows what might have resulted?

[6] According to the story, the Beach Boys had insisted in making revisions to the lyrics, including changing the title to Cease to Resist. This move toward marketability was unacceptable to Manson.

My Interface With The Manson Family, by Sue Marshall: Part 1 of 3

This series comes exclusively to Eviliz.com from Sue Marshall, a writer who lives in California. Sue will be monitoring the blog for the next few days to field your questions.

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At the time the Manson Family perpetrated the Tate-LaBianca murders, I had just graduated from Santa Monica High School.  Shortly thereafter I began  writing on a freelance basis for the Los Angeles Free Press, a tabloid weekly that provided sensational coverage of the counterculture, to much acclaim.

In November 1969, I was hired by the Freep as a staff writer. I began to cover the antiwar movement. Later, I would be named "military editor." To my amazement, I was soon receiving a lot of mail from soldiers in Vietnam who would prefer to be anywhere else.  My journalistic focus inclined toward covering serious news about the peace movement, social justice, and women's liberation.

Around the same time, mid-October 1969, Manson and some of the Family members were arrested at the Barker Ranch in the Panamint Mountains, now within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park.  Charges filed included auto theft and arson. It took the police authorities a few weeks to figure out who to arrest for the Tate-LaBianca murders, as well as those of Gary Hinman and Shorty Shea.


Gary Hinman

Coincidentally, I was acquainted with Manson Family victim Gary Hinman.

In the spring of 1968, as a high school junior, I met a young man named Gabriel, a musician, who recruited me to come to a Buddhist meeting. Thus I discovered the Pacific Palisades chapter of the Nicherin Shoshu Sokagakki, the Buddhist cult that chants "Nam Myho Renge Kyo" and conducts a vigorous proselytization effort. Being curious, bored, and interested in meeting young men, I joined up.

In August 1968, the sect held a convention in Honolulu. Seizing this  opportunity to have a little adventure, I had saved my earnings from a summer job and flew to Hawaii with the group.  There I met Gary Hinman.

Hinman seemed much older and wiser than the rest of us. He must have been in his early 30's. He was not very tall, of thin build, with straight brown hair of medium length and a brown beard.  He smiled and did not talk much.  He wrote his address and phone number in my little red book.  I could have gone to visit him at his house in Topanga Canyon, later to be the scene of his demise.  But I never called him. Could Gary's open and welcoming nature have eased the way for Manson and his followers to have access to him?  I suspect so.


A Visit from Sandy Good, Squeaky Lyn, and Gypsy

By December 1969, the police had arrested most or all of the Manson Family members who had been involved in the string of murders.  I was still very new in my job as a reporter when the Freep office was visited by a trio who would later become infamous in their own right.

At that time, the Free Press office was located on the north side of Beverly Boulevard, one block east of La Brea, across from CBS Television City. Because of earlier bomb threats from anti-Castro Cubans, the door between the lobby and the offices was controlled with an electric latch.  Before anyone could enter, receptionist Dee would have to buzz them in.

It was in this dim lobby, with bright sunbeams filtering through the glass door, that Sandy Good, "Squeaky" Lynette Fromme, and "Gypsy" (Catherine Share) introduced themselves to me and my neighbor, Michael.  They were carrying a stack of vinyl records: Charlie Manson's original songs performed by the Family, with Gypsy playing acoustic guitar.  The appearance of the cover art made it obvious that this was not a product of the slick record companies.  It was a blurry black-and-white version of the Life magazine cover photo of Manson with his trademark stare. The only title, in block letters, was the word "LIE," in an attempt to mimic the magazine logo.

My neighbor Michael immediately produced the five dollars that the young women were asking for their record.  If I had bought one from them then, it would be probably worth ten thousand dollars today.  But I probably didn't have five dollars in my pocket, and the Manson Family trio were activating my weirdness radar.

Soon we were joined by managing editor Paul and advertising administrator Shirley. They were very intrigued by our visitors.


We listened to the spiel:

Charlie, they said, had been targeted by the LAPD because he was having a good time with his Family.  He never did anything criminal, they said.  Everyone was innocent.  It was Us versus the Man. The Pigs were scapegoating hippies because they needed to solve these murders.

All this sounded plausible.  We made an appointment to meet the Family at their stronghold.