Central California Women's Facility

Patty learned that tourists don't usually stop to photograph prisons in central California on her way to the 45th Anniversary remembrances in Los Angeles. In case you have not already figured it out, Patty doesn't really live in Ballarat: rather, she lives in Northern California about six hours from Chatsworth. On previous trips she has been curious about the women's prison at Chowchilla: aka the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) where Susan Atkins passed away about five years ago.  This time she decided to drop in, check out the gift shop, maybe have a cup of coffee with the warden. You know, normal tourist stuff.

CCWF is across from the the men's facility (aka Valley State Prison or VSP) on Avenue 24, just east of downtown Chowchilla. Initially, Patty confused the two. The guard at VSP explained that it was part of the women's prison until about two years ago. She was also informed that without permission from the warden, she was trespassing in the parolee pickup lot and would have to leave. It is legal however, to photograph the prisons from the county road he added, though anyone doing so would likely attract a lot of attention. Boy, he wasn't kidding! After taking her photographs, Patty noticed a state vehicle tail her all the way back to the freeway presumably to ensure that she didn't pick anybody up from the surrounding orchards and vineyards. Boy, is she going to give them a bad review on Yelp!

Anywhoo, here are some pics she took:

As "Sexy Sadie" from the White Album played in her car, Patty thought about Susan's passing there, how James Whitehouse worked so hard to get a compassionate release for her in her last days. Besides the obvious fact that she took a life, that she had no compassion for a woman and her eight month old fetus forty five years ago, Patty finds James' actions odd because at CCWF, Susan received state of the art care for her terminal condition including what were probably really fucking good drugs. Isn't that compassionate enough? Maybe, some would argue, TOO compassionate. Patty remains ambivalent.

What do you think?

Live From LA: 45th Anniversary of Helter Skelter

Greetings readers. By the time you read this, Patty will be on her way from home (Ballarat! LPAO) to Los Angeles to report on the 45th anniversary activities at Spahn, Cielo and El Coyote. The illustrious Stoner Van Houten and Michael Channels will be her hosts; she'd like to bring you along with her if only vicariously through intermittent blog posts now through Sunday. She will also be seeing Mr. Jon Aes-Nihil again, and is told that Bill Nelson will be there too... she shits you not!

Anyway, stay tuned. Wish you were here.

HOUSE OF MANSON - First Teaser Trailer

"My Life After Manson" Patricia Krenwinkel

The video at the bottom of the article is one we haven't seen and
Kren speaks quite a bit in this.  Thanks Max for the heads up!

August 4, 2014.
Op-Docs
By OLIVIA KLAUS

I vividly remember entering the California Institution for Women for the first time in 2001. As the prison guard slammed the gate behind me, I wondered if I had made the right decision to become a volunteer for an inmate support group. But my nerves were eased by a woman who introduced herself as “Krenny.” Welcoming me into the group, she seemed quiet and insecure — yet also exuded an inner strength. I had no idea how she got here and didn’t ask.

It was only several years later, while documenting the support group for a documentary film, “Sin by Silence,” that I learned Krenny’s full name: Patricia Krenwinkel. I was astounded. She was one of the infamous Charles Manson followers, convicted of seven murders. She eventually approached me to go on camera with her story.

In this Op-Doc video, Ms. Krenwinkel provides her first on-camera interview since 1994, reflecting on her life before and after Manson. This week is the 45th anniversary of her crimes.

In 1969, at age 21, Ms. Krenwinkel was a member of Mr. Manson’s cult in Los Angeles. His group, which he called the “Family,” included more than a dozen men and women who adhered to a bizarre mixture of hippie culture and apocalyptic paranoia. Seeking to inspire a race war, Manson ordered Ms. Krenwinkel and other members of his group to commit a series of murders. Over the course of two nights, they savagely murdered seven people, inflicting more than 130 stab wounds. One of them, the actress Sharon Tate, was eight and a half months pregnant. At their trial, the women shamelessly admitted their crimes and flaunted their allegiance to a leader they loved, but who clearly controlled their minds.

Over the years, I had gotten to know this woman — and our many conversations about life, love and politics had revealed slivers of a dark past. But not until her on-camera interview, featured in this Op-Doc, did I fully comprehend her journey of self-discovery. In prison, she has struggled mightily to reconcile two parts of her life: the 21-year-old girl who committed crimes to win the approval of the man she loved; and the 66-year-old woman who lives each day haunted by the unending suffering she has caused.

Ms. Krenwinkel is now the longest serving woman in the California prison system. She says she takes full responsibility for her actions — finally, she says, she is a woman she can accept. But is society ready to accept her back? She is next eligible for parole in 2018.

Read original story HERE

Sharon Tate's Sister Debra Wrote a Book About Her, But Doesn't Want to Talk About It

By Samantha Bonar
Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 4:16 AM
Categories: Books, Celebrity, Fashion, History

Running Press

The exquisite Sharon Tate makes today's starlets look like the lukewarm leftovers of a half-hearted meal. Yet no matter how much we want to focus on the perfection of her beauty, the warmth of her personality or the effortlessness of her style, her horrible end, at just 26 years old and eight and a half months pregnant — 45 years ago this week — looms like a deadly, dark tsunami about to re-crash into our consciousness. It never goes away.

It never goes away for her younger sister Debra Tate, either, but in her gorgeous new photography book, Sharon Tate: Recollection (Running Press), she manages to hold that monster wave at bay for just a little while. Leafing through the pages of what is meant to be "a celebration of Sharon's life and career," you become so engrossed in Sharon Tate's brief life and stark physical perfection that, for an hour or so, you forget about that little brute named Charles Manson.

And yet, oddly, Debra Tate doesn't want to talk about Sharon Tate. She had originally agreed to an interview with the Weekly, but bailed at the last minute for unknown reasons.

Back when the interview was still a possibility, her publicist sent us "suggested interview questions," and instructed us not to ask about another book about Sharon Tate, Restless Souls (It Books, 2012) by Alisa Statman and Brie Tate, or to ask more than one question about Manson or Mad Men (which included some subtle Sharon Tate references this season). (While Recollection is more of a tribute to Tate's film and fashion career, Restless Souls describes what the publisher calls "the gruesome slayings," the hunt for the killers, the drama of their trials and the long-lasting effects on the Tate family.)

In questions submitted to Tate's publicist we did ask, however, about Sharon's widower Roman Polanski and his rape conviction, and about why Debra Tate cares what nominal starlets such as Kelly Osbourne think of her sister today (Osbourne is quoted in the book). We asked how she felt about Sharon Tate being reduced to some sort of t-shirt icon for the Millennial generation, and if she felt that cheapened her memory. We asked if her book was an attempt to counteract that. And, since we couldn't ask about the Statman book, we asked Debra what she thought of the biography by Greg King, Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders (Barricade Books, 2000). We wanted to ask how the murders had affected her family, but Debra's publicist asked us to delete that question. In the end, Debra did not answer the questions.

But as the publishing of her book shows, Sharon Tate is "in" again, an odd position for the victim of one of the grisliest murders of the 20th century. Models walk down the catwalks in looks inspired by her most famous film, Valley of the Dolls. Celebrities like Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Blake Lively, Jessica Pare, Lohan and Adele reference Sharon's style – forever frozen in the heyday of the ‘60s, yet anchored by a timeless beauty that could leapfrog backward or forward into any decade. (She was a Coppertone girl and the inspiration for Malibu Barbie.) She had "It": People called her the next Marilyn Monroe or Liz Taylor. Whether that was wishful thinking we will, of course, never know.

Debra Tate refers to Sharon's brutal murder in Los Angeles in August 1969 by followers of Manson only once in the book, calling it "an event that changed the country in ways that still resonate," and adding, "I always felt it was very unfair for her life to be remembered primarily for its final moments." Indeed, Sharon Tate has been the subject of nearly 400 books, most focusing on the sordid details of her murder.

Of the most recent of those, Restless Souls, subtitled The Sharon Tate Family's Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice, Debra Tate wrote in 2012  "I reject this book. I regard it as an insult to the memory of my parents and my two beloved sisters, filled, as it is, with un-attributed conversations, imagined thoughts, and demonstrably false incidents. It represents merely the latest in a long string of efforts by Ms. Statman to insinuate herself into my family's life and history, present herself as an expert on the subject, realize her long dream to write about my family's tragedy, and diminish my continued role as guardian of our family's legacy. Soon I will make the full story of my family and our tragedy public in a definitive way."

Statman, who was in a lesbian relationship with Debra's late sister Patti, appears to have tromped on hallowed territory. Debra Tate, who at one time worked as a Hollywood makeup artist, seems to have forged an identity for herself through her glamourous, tragic  sister, creating and maintaining the fan site sharontate.net. Even her Twitter handle, @trustedsister, references herself only through connection to Sharon; in her profile photo she looks like some sort of bizarre high priestess, forever tending the flame of her immortal goddess sister.

Debra Tate's own book opens with a brief but touching forward by Polanski, who calls Sharon "the love of my life" and directs the reader to his favorite photo of her (on page 263). Following are original and retrospective quotes and recollection essays by such notables as David Niven (who starred with Sharon in Eye of the Devil and called her "a great discovery."), Jane Fonda, Mia Farrow, Orson Welles, Warren Beatty, Truman Capote, Richard Avedon, Kirk Douglas and George Harrison.

"Sharon had a fragile, incandescent quality that brought oxygen into the room," Yul Brynner said. "She was such an innocent, and unspoiled by her success," said George Harrison.

We also hear from Sharon herself, who tells us: "I'd like to be an American Catherine Deneuve. She plays beautiful, sensitive, deep parts with a little bit of intelligence behind them," and "I'm very sensitive to ugly situations. I'm quick to read people, and I pick up if someone's reacting to me as just a sexy blonde. At times like that, I freeze."

But mostly, there are photographs, from Sharon's beauty pageant-filled childhood in Texas, her discovery in Hollywood, her years at MGM and her brief, troubled marriage to Polanski. An entire chapter is devoted to the cult classic Valley of the Dolls, with never-before seen or published images.

The few interviews we found that Debra Tate has done for Sharon Tate: Recollection are puff pieces, such as one for InStyle magazine that consists of questions like, "What were Sharon's favorite things to wear?" (antique camisoles, big hoop earrings) and "What were Sharon's favorite beauty items?" (Vaseline). This is Debra Tate's book and this time, she is controlling the way her sister is portrayed — even if that means not talking about her at all rather than answering difficult questions.

In the short story "Venus Is Blue" by Mary Hood, Hood writes: "Imagine a photograph album, with a bullet fired pointblank through it, every page with its scar. Murder attacks the future; suicide aims at the past." Despite the ravishing beauty shown on every page of Sharon Tate: Recollection, in the bigger picture, you realize that, 45 years after Sharon's murder, this family is still very damaged. There is a phantom bullet hole piercing every photograph.

Original Article HERE

Penthouse Interviews Bugliosi 1976

The June 1976 issue of Penthouse magazine has an interview with the Bug.  The interview itself was done as Bugliosi was running for District Attorney of Los Angeles County but came out after he lost.  So, the interview is heavy on him politicking for himself.  There is about a page and a half on Manson though, and he has made some interesting comments about what he felt Manson believed and didn't believe.

Penthouse:  Why do you think Manson urged his followers to be come murderers?

Bugliosi:  There were three main reasons.  One was to ignite the war between the blacks and whites that he called Helter Skelter, a war in which Manson saw himself as the ultimate beneficiary.  He said the blacks would win, but wouldn't be able to handle power and would look to leadership to those whites who survived.  So Charlie tried to frame black people for his murders.  The Manson Family believed in Helter Skelter --- hook, line and sinker.  It was the Family's credo.  But Charlie is a very evil, sophisticated con man, and I cannot conceive of his believing some of the things he preached about, such as a bottomless pit, the Family growing to 144,000 people and himself becoming the leader of the world.  Oh, he was a megalomaniac and would have loved to become the leader of the world, but I find it difficult to think he believed those murders could actually start a worldwide race war between blacks and whites.  My guess is that he used Helter Skelter as a vehicle to work his followers into such a lather that they were willing to kill for him.  Whether he believed it, I have to say no.  And I have to guess because Manson never admitted his involvement in these murders.

I feel very strongly about the two other motivations he had.  One was a kind of revenge.  He'd once been turned away at the plush residence where Sharon Tate lived.  Before she moved in, the house had been occupied by Terry Melcher, Doris Day's son.  Charlie had gone there to get Melcher, a record producer, to record him, and Terry had refused.  Manson was a frustrated singer-guitarist and on the night of the Tate murders he was striking back at that.  The residence symbolized society's rejection of him.  The third motive was his preoccupation with death.  Charlie was always lecturing the Family about death and how beautiful it was.  In fact, most of the songs he wrote contained constant references to death.  And where did he lead the Family after the murders?  Death Valley.  Paul Watkins, who left Manson before the murders, said it best: Death was Charlie's trip.

Questions & Answers with filmmaker Robert Hendrickson

Welcome to a Question & Answer session with filmmaker Robert Hendrickson. Please post any questions you may have for him in the comments section. He will respond as time allows.

For those of you who are not familiar with him, Robert Hendrickson is the co-director of the Oscar nominated documentary MANSON about the Manson Family which he directed together with partner Laurence Merrick. He also made the film,  INSIDE THE MANSON GANG and published the book DEATH TO PIGS.

Bill Nelson disrespects Mrs. Tate

This video is old, I know, but it is informative, if not extremely uncomfortable to watch. Bill Nelson, as you all know was a Tate/LaBianca researcher/stalker/extreme creep. How he was able to get the wonderful Mrs. Tate to answer some of his ridiculous questions is beyond me. This man should of been ashamed of himself asking her such things, and going into detail after detail about her daughter's horrible murder. It was so unnecessary, and I do believe he was doing it on purpose to try to make her start crying on film. This man, while alive needed a few dozen lashes with a bullwhip, preferably administered by Col. Tate! This interview was broken up in sections, and the embed feature is disabled, so I made links. Sorry about the inconvenience. The first part of the interview starts at 6:54.

First part:

Second part

Third part

Fourth part

Fifth part

Sixth part

Seventh part

Michael Channels and Stoner Van Houten on "The Mic Show"

Recently, Michael Channels and Stoner Van Houten appeared on "The Mic Show" out of Tampa. It's an interesting interview. They were kind enough to give MansonBlog.com a nice shout out. THANKS, GENTLEMEN! If you only want to hear our mention, start listening at about 59:00.

Michael's YouTube Channel is HERE

We had the pleasure of spending a day at The Backporch Tapes last year. See it HERE

Programmed Horrors: Charlie Manson, Orange Sunshine LSD and more MKULTRA

The following is part of a post from RobertsCourt.com. There is much more regarding MKULTRA, besides the Manson connection HERE.

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Is this the true face of our government? Many of our nation's bravest children are saying, yes! One of the first missions of Mind Control conspirators was to kill the messenger who would tell you the truth and build resistance. And kill they have! The Kennedys, King, Lennon and more programmed horrors than can be listed in any blog.

It is well known that followers of Charles Manson committed the Tate-LaBianca murders during the late 1960's. These murders had a profound impact on the peace movement through the long-standing psychological warfare goal of discrediting the enemy through covert associative terrorism. If one examines the case closely, it becomes obvious that Manson used mind-control techniques such as hypnotism, LSD, and other types of mental programming to turn middle-class suburbanites into selfless killers, but one has to wonder just exactly how Manson was able to accomplish this?

You were meant to believe that Manson developed all of these horrific skills on his own, though we now know he was in the hands of our own CIA. The CIA actively advanced this very same "programming" and it literally comes from Nazi German programs. LSD was developed by the Swiss who were working these programming methods and was mass-produced by major U.S. pharmaceutical companies for the CIA.

Consider that Manson was part of the hippie movement at the time of the CIA's project, MKULTRA, which implemented the use of drugs in order to conduct mind control experiments.

It appears that part of Manson's own supply of LSD may have come directly from the CIA. A new type of LSD known as "Orange Sunshine" was being used by the Manson Family immediately prior to the Tate-LaBianca murders according to Family member Charles "Tex" Watson, who wrote in his prison memoir that it was the use of Orange Sunshine LSD that finally convinced him that Manson's violent, apocalyptic vision was real.

In addition, Tex Watson recounted in his testimony that Manson used other drugs such as "mescaline, psilocybin, and the THC, and STP" and described a "mental acid" that "drew stuff out of your mind; and the other (body acid)...would be drawing your body."

Later, when asked about the use of drugs in the Manson family "Tex" said, "People seem to think that Manson had all of us drugged out, while he remained sober so he could easily manipulate our minds. This may be true, but a sorcerer such as Manson uses mind-altering drugs himself in order to contact spiritual beings, and gain supernatural powers."

"He did use drugs to manipulate and control us, and the more drugs we took, the easier it was for him to manipulate us with his philosophy. We all began to reflect his views, a mirror image of destruction, growing worse every day. We mirrored his lifestyle and attitude toward society."

Orange Sunshine LSD was manufactured and distributed exclusively by a group known as "The Brotherhood of Eternal Love" who operated out of a beach resort near Los Angeles. The Brotherhood had among it's drug manufacturers and dealers, one Ronald Stark, who is believed to have manufactured 50 million doses of LSD, and had known connections to the CIA.

It was this very same batch of acid that was available in abundance four months later during the fateful free concert held at Altamont Speedway. Four people died at that concert, one of them after being brutally stabbed to death by a group of Hell's Angels who had been given access to multiple tabs of Orange Sunshine. Many people who attended that concert noted that the LSD seemed to be "contaminated" and that the general vibe one got from using it was that of extreme negativity, violence, and death. Additionally, Orange Sunshine was in use among American ground forces during the Vietnam war, having been smuggled into that country from the California coast.

Manson's personal obsession was with "Helter Skelter" and his belief was that this event would ignite a black-white race war in America; the Tate-LaBianca murders and the murder of musician Gary Hinman were definitely staged with false clues that the killers (or perhaps someone else) hoped would be blamed on elements of the "black militant" movement.

Manson has said in interviews that he based some of his philosophy on the science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Hienlien. In a scenario perhaps reminiscent of Mark David Chapman's and John Hinckley's infatuation with Catcher in the Rye, could Stranger in a Strange Land somehow have been Manson's program-trigger mechanism? Was the concept of Helter Skelter part of Manson's program? It is interesting to note how the "science fiction" character of Valentine Michael Smith in Heinlien's Stranger in a Strange Land very closely parallels Manson's own life: Valentine Michael Smith was a human being who returned to Earth after being raised on Mars where he underwent training in the occult arts; Manson was isolated in prison where he also studied the occult extensively and has quipped that he viewed himself as a man with an alien mind after his release from prison in 1967; both Manson and the fictional "Smith" gathered about them a group of followers into a communal lifestyle and practiced a sort of "group mind" telepathy; both attempted to transform the world as we know if via their respective philosophies.

Are these cults a thing of the past, or have they only been perfected and "normalized?" The study of emotional contagion and synchronized behavior in cult groups was an ongoing mission of the CIA, was it then applied to the culture as a whole? There is no mystery how LSD was so obsessively studied and distributed to millions of Americans through CIA networks. It opens up the "religious" centers of the brain where wrongful authority can program them. LSD was simultaneously distributed to normalize and culturally accept this programming method and discredit an entire peace movement. Many, many "legal" drugs now perform the same function of opening the mind to suggestibility via mass media.

So it came to pass that Charles Manson was stuck in solitary confinement at Folsom Prison when a new inmate was placed in the adjoining cell. It was Tim Leary, who was eventually captured with Joanna Harcourt Smith, who later admitted working for the DEA. "They took you off the streets", Manson informed Leary, "so that I could continue with your work." Charlie couldn't understand how Leary had given so many people acid without trying to "control" them.

With all this in mind, consider that if a ex-convict-turned-hippie like Charles Manson could program people to kill, then why not the U.S. Government?

In the book, Helter Skelter, Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi discussed Manson's programming techniques in depth, likening much of Manson's programming abilities to those used by the U.S. military.

Manson was in prison during the time that the CIA was known to be using inmates at Vacaville prison in the MKULTRA experiments, a fact that leaves one to speculate that perhaps Manson was some sort of mind-controlled guru created by the CIA and set loose against the "subversive" left-wing elements in order to discredit them.

Since his incarceration for the Tate-LaBianca murders, Manson has again served part of his time at Vacaville.

In alot of Manson interviews he will say things like "I'm only what i've been trained to be, I'm only what you thought you" "One interview he said Jimmy Carter made me what I am"

We now have substantiated proof that the CIA was working on projects to control human behavior. You are meant to believe that these were isolated studies, not influencing us domestically, not employed against us. How could we know otherwise?

Given total silence on the subject of collective unconscious manipulation, it is safe to presume that the collective unconscious mind was the true "enemy" of these programs. The individual would need to be more insane than Manson himself to presume otherwise.