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Leslie was free in 1978

One not-very-discussed fact about Leslie Van Houten is that in 1978 while awaiting re-trial, she was free on bond.

During the original trial Van Houten's attorney, Ronald Hughes went missing in late November of 1970 while taking a break at Sespe Hot Springs. He later turned up dead. The Manson Family brashly took credit for this as the beginning of the "retaliation murders". It is far more likely (and agreed upon by TLB Scholars) that he died tragically in a flash flood.

She therefore won a retrial in 1977 on the grounds of ineffective representation by counsel. Her second trial ended in a hung jury. She was then granted a third trial.

A fact that is rarely brought up is that Leslie was granted bail for her third trial. That bail was $200K. She was free for around six months or so. During that time she worked as a legal secretary while she prepared for court and lived with an old friend.

While out on bail in 1978 she attended the Oscars with a friend... and wasn't recognized. John Waters wrote about her experience that night:

"But what did you talk about to the people you met that night?" I wondered, knowing she had been released from death row not that long before, not exactly a center of industry screenings or "For Your Consideration" Oscar campaigns. "If someone brought up one of the nominees," she shrugged, "I'd just say 'No, I missed that one' or 'I was away when that was playing.'"

Parole Denied for Leslie

US News | Weird News | More ABC News Videos

Original Story here

A parole panel refused an emotional bid by former Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten to release her from prison 44 years after she participated in a notorious set of murders.

The denial came at the 63-year-old's 20th parole hearing on Wednesday, where the panel heard from relatives of the victims who were opposed to her release.

Board of Parole Hearings Commissioner Jeffrey Ferguson told Van Houten she had failed to explain how someone as intelligent and well-bred as she was could have committed the "cruel and atrocious" murders of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca. She won't be eligible to ask for parole again for five years, but Ferguson said she could request another hearing sooner if circumstances change.

"The crimes will always be a factor," he said. "The question is whether the good will ever outweigh the bad. It certainly didn't today."

Van Houten was convicted of murder and conspiracy for her role in the slayings of wealthy Los Angeles grocers Leno and Rosemary La Bianca. They were stabbed to death in August 1969, one night after Manson's followers killed actress Sharon Tate and four others. Van Houten was 19 at the time.

Van Houten did not participate in the Tate killings but went along the next night when the La Biancas were slain in their home. During the penalty phase of her trial she confessed to joining in stabbing Mrs. La Bianca after she was dead.

"I know I did something that is unforgiveable, but I can create a world where I make amends," Van Houten said before the decision.

With survivors of the LaBiancas sitting behind her at the California Institution for Women, Van Houten acknowledged participating in the killings ordered by Manson.

"He could never have done what he did without people like me," said Van Houten, who has been in custody for 44 years.

The ruling came after a full-day hearing at which six representatives of the La Bianca family spoke in anguish about the loss of the couple.

"Today after 44 years, your crimes still instill fear in innocent people," said Ferguson. "The motive was the worst I can imagine, to incite a race war. Your crimes were gruesome and bloody."

During her comments, Van Houten repeatedly said that she was traumatized by her parents' divorce when she was 14, her pregnancy soon after and her mother's insistence that she have an abortion.

"Many people have traumatic childhoods," said Ferguson. "You have failed to explain at this time what would cause you to commit such horrific atrocities."

Van Houten showed no reaction to the ruling and quickly was escorted out of the room.

In her final statement, Van Houten apologized to everyone she harmed.

"I know that the pain goes on generationally. I want the victims to know I'm deeply ashamed of what I have done," she said.

After years of therapy and self-examination, she said, she realizes that what she did was "like a pebble falling in a pond which affected so many people."

"Mr. and Mrs. La Bianca died the worst possible deaths a human being can," she said.

Arguing to the board, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Patrick Sequiera said some crimes may be an exception to the law guaranteeing the possibility of parole.

"There are certain crimes that are so heinous, so atrocious, so horrible that it should cause denial of parole," he said, elaborating on Van Houten's contradictions over the years.

In response, Van Houten's lawyer, Michael Satris, said his client "sank to the depths of Dante's inferno and she put herself there by consorting with the devil himself, Charles Manson."

However, Satris said his client has totally reformed herself.

"Leslie committed a great sin, a great crime in 1969, and in that time (in prison) she has developed into the equal of a saint," he said. "Everything she does is for humanity."

Van Houten was portrayed at trial by her defense lawyers as the youngest and least culpable of those convicted with Manson, a young woman from a good family who had been a homecoming princess and showed promise until she became involved with drugs and was recruited into Manson's murderous cult.

Now deeply wrinkled with long gray hair tied back in a ponytail, Van Houten at times seemed near tears but did not break down at the Wednesday hearing.

She said that when she heard the Manson family had killed Tate and others, she felt left out and asked to go along the second night.

Asked if she would have done the same had children been involved, she answered, "I can't say I wouldn't have done that. I'd like to say I wouldn't, but I don't know."

Asked to explain her actions, she said, "I feel that at that point I had really lost my humanity and I can't know how far I would have gone. I had no regard for life and no measurement of my limitations."

Van Houten has previously been commended for her work helping elderly women inmates at the California Institution for Women. She earned two college degrees while in custody.

Other members of Manson's murderous "family" have lost bids for parole.

One former follower, Bruce Davis, was approved for parole last year only to have Gov. Jerry Brown veto the plan in March, saying he wanted the 70-year-old Davis to reveal more details about the killings of a stunt man and a musician. Davis was not involved in the slayings of Sharon Tate and six others.

Manson, now 78, has stopped coming to parole hearings, sending word that prison is his home and he wants to stay there.

Quotes from Leslie Today at the Hearing

 Source: abcnews.go.com

"I know I did something that is unforgiveable, but I can create a world where I make amends," Van Houten said. "I'm trying to be someone who lives a life for healing rather than destruction."

"He could never have done what he did without people like me"

[I was] "like a pebble falling in a pond which affected so many people."

"Mr. and Mrs. La Bianca died the worst possible deaths a human being can," she said. "It affected their families. It affected the community of Los Angeles, which lived in fear. And it destroyed the peace movement going on at the time, and tainted everything from 1969 on."

Parole board commissioner Jeffrey Ferguson asked her, "You felt left out and you wanted to be included the next time, is that correct?"

"Yes," Van Houten said, adding that another of the women tried with Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel, had been like a sister to her and she knew that Krenwinkel had participated in the first round of killing.

"She had crossed the line in her commitment to the race war and I wanted to cross the line, too. ... It was something that had to be done," she said.

FROM the LA Times:

"I twisted myself to the point where I thought this had to be done and I participated".

Asked if she would have done the same had children been involved, she answered, "I can't say I wouldn't have done that. I'd like to say I wouldn't, but I don't know."

Asked to explain her actions, she said, "I feel that at that point I had really lost my humanity and I can't know how far I would have gone. I had no regard for life and no measurement of my limitations."

Leslie Van Houten Parole Hearing Today

Today, June 5, 2013, is the 20th parole hearing for Leslie Van Houten.  What do you think the chances are this time for her parole?  Will she go the way of Bruce Davis and be recommended for parole only to have that opportunity negated by the governor?   Will she be outright denied like she has 19 times before?  Or will she be granted parole?

We will let you know the board's decision as soon as we learn of it.  In  the mean time here is a December 11, 1969 Pasadena Star News article, one of the first articles to feature Leslie.

MUZZLE ORDERED IN TATE CASE

Strict limits were ordered Wednesday in Los Angeles on principals in the case of the slayings of Sharon Tate and six other persons.

Superior Court Judge William B. Keene said any violation of his order would be considered contempt of court.

His order -- similar to that issued to guarantee a fair trial for Sirhan B. Sirhan, convicted of killing Sen. Robert F. Kennedy -- came after three young women defendants waived arraignment on murder charges.

Judges' Ban

Judge Keene restricted "attorneys, public officials, law enforcement officers, grand jurors, witnesses and others from making extrajudicial statements... related to this case."

A section directed at defense attorneys told them not to release evidence they intend to present not to express an opinion on the weight, value of effect or any evidence in establishing guilt or innocence.

Girl At Scene

Attorneys for one defendant last week made public her story that she was at the scene of two sets of killings, and gave limited details of her account.

Susan Atkins, 21, Linda Kasabian, 20, and Leslie Louise Van Houten, 19, were impassive during the waiving of arraignment and reading of the publicity order.  The murmured "no" when asked if they had questions about their rights or about the order.

Dec. 22 was set for pleas from Mrs. Kasabian and Miss Van Houten and Dec. 16 was set for Miss Atkins.  Miss Van Houten was identified by in the proceedings, with her home town given as Monrovia, Calif.  She previously had been identified as Leslie Sankston.

Monrovia High Grad

Miss Van Houten was reported to have gone through schools in Monrovia, at least from junior high school onward, graduating from Monrovia High School in 1967.

A girl friend said Miss Van Houten started to drop out of school activities in her senior year and had considered entering a convent to become a nun soon after graduation.  She apparently changed her mind and completed a course in a secretarial school in Manhattan Beach while living with her father, Paul Van Houten.

"She was a nice girl," the friend commented.

The three, with Charles M. Manson, 35, Charles D. Watson, 24, and Patricia Krenwinkel, 22, were indicted on murder conspiracy charges Monday in the slayings of Miss Tate and four others at her home last Aug. 9, and of Mr. and Mrs. Leno LaBianca the next night.

Watson is in custody in McKinney, Texas and Miss Krenwinkel is in custody in Mobile, Ala.

The bearded Manson, identified as the "God" and "Satan" of a communal group whose members slavishly did his bidding, is to be arraigned Thursday.  He was brought to L.A. Tuesday from Independence, Calif., where he had been held since being arrested in October.  He is accused of operating a car theft ring for the band's desert commune near Death Valley.

THE WRECK OF A MONSTROUS ‘FAMILY’

This is the text that ran in the LIFE featured in yesterday's post by Panamint Patty. Cielo Drive had it handy & sent it to us.

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Long-haired, bearded little Charlie Manson so disturbed the American millions last week – when he was charged with sending four docile girls and a hairy male acolyte off to slaughter strangers in two Los Angeles houses last August – that the victims of his blithe and gory crimes seemed suddenly to have played only secondary roles in the final brutal moments of their own lives. The Los Angeles killings struck innumerable Americans as an inexplicable controversion of everything they wanted to believe about the society and their children – and made Charlie Manson seem to be the very encapsulation of truth about revolt and violence by the young.

What failure of the human condition could produce a Charlie Manson? What possible aspects of such a creature's example could induce sweet-faced young women and a polite Texas college boy to acts of such numbing cruelty – even though they might have abandoned the social and political precepts of their elders like so many other beaded and bell-bottomed mother's children of 1969? Some of the answers seemed simple enough if one weighed Charlie Manson on the ancient scales of human venality. He attracted and controlled his women through flattery, fear and sexual attention and by loftily granting them a sort of sisterhood of exploitation – methods used by every pimp in history. He sensed something old as tribal blood ritual which most of us deny in ourselves – that humans can feel enormous fulfillment and enormous relief in the act of killing other humans if some medicine man applauds and condones the deed. But Charlie was able to attune his time-encrusted concepts of villainy to the childish yearnings of his hippie converts – to their weaknesses, their catchwords, their fragmentary sense of religion and their enchantment with drugs and idleness – and to immerse them in his own ego and in idiotic visions of apocalypse.

It is hard not to wince while considering Charlie Manson's childhood. He was born to a teen-age prostitute in Cincinnati on Nov. 12, 1934 and was raised until he was 11 by an aunt and uncle in Charleston, W. Va. His life thereafter was one of rejection and delinquency. His mother farmed him out to homes and schools until he was taken, as a delinquent of 14, to the last and most permanent of them, the Indiana Boys' School. He "ran" – as juvenile authorities term escape – repeatedly and stole cars and committed burglaries during his periods of freedom. He was released from prison when he was 20 and went back to West Virginia an accomplished car thief. He married a local girl, Rosalie Jean Willis. Rosalie became pregnant and gave birth to a boy. But Manson had already left for Los Angeles in a stolen car and soon found himself behind bars at Terminal Island. He posed as "producer" when he got out again, ingratiated himself with teen-age girls and moonlighted as an occasional procurer. McNeil Island's federal penitentiary took Charlie in after that because he cashed some stolen U.S. Treasury checks. He had never gone farther than the seventh grade; now he read the Bible and tracts on the quasi-religion Scientology, decided that the Book of Revelation had predicted the Beatles, learned to play the guitar and assumed he could compose music. One of his lyrics consisted solely of the words, "You know, you know, you know" He left prison in March 1967, ready to give new meaning to the old saw: a little learning is a dangerous thing.

Criminals and ex-cons have discovered a new sort of refuge in the last couple of years: they grow hair, assume beads and sandals, and sink – carnivores moving in with the vegetarians – into the life of hippie colonies from the East Village to Big Sur. Charlie Manson went to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury and, with an exquisite sort of diplomatic skill, adopted the local coloration as a means of controlling, utilizing and dominating the impulse-ridden, alienated, drug-directed "kids" he discovered there. Most of the kids were female – who had come to escape a cynical society or to see "reality and freedom." Charlie billed himself as a "roving minstrel" come to fulfill their dreams with magic, strike off the chains of male chauvinism and lead them to the promised land – although in fact he regarded them as squaws, treated them like cattle and excommunicated those who complained. "I was hitchhiking to San Francisco once with Charlie," says a girl who used to know him, "and we had these two big packs. He wanted me to carry both of them. I refused. I said I'd share, but I wouldn't carry both. He got more and more angry and finally said I had to carry both bags and walk 10 steps behind him. When I wouldn't do that, he took my guitar from me and smashed it into little pieces against a post."

Most of Charlie's girls, in the opinion of a San Francisco psychiatrist who encountered them, were "hysterics, wishful thinkers, seekers after some absolute" who came to regard Charlie as a high priest, "all-powerful, all-knowing."

Charlie was a fast talker with a glittering eye. He initiated new girls by taking them to bed for day-long sexual marathons. He broke down their "inhibitions" by directing them in erotic group carnivals or ordering them to carnal activity with other men – and commanding them to do so in the same tones in which he sent them into the streets to panhandle. Charlie was no hippie; the very name made him angry. He was an entrepreneur. He gave people things – drugs, his own shirt – to get things back. He gave girls – often a naked, giggling, caressing gaggle of four or five of them – to men from the "straight" world. He shaved and cut his hair – even, at times, after retreating to the desert – to facilitate dealing with "the Establishment." He boasted of 3,000 friends. One gave him a grand piano which he traded for a camper truck which he then traded for a bus with which he transported his harem to southern California and their eventual rendezvous with the fruits and fallacies of his delusions.

The delusions do not seem to have blossomed in his mind before the trip in the spring of 1968 – a leisurely trek during which he met, sponged on and grew to resent Los Angeles Musician Gary Hinman, and was rejected, in a plea for help with his own musical aspiration, by Doris Day's son Terry Melcher, then the occupant of the big house in which Sharon Tate and her friends were to die. Charlie preached a confused but vehement philosophy. Everything in the world belonged to all its people – thus there could be redivision of valuables, but no theft; all humans were part of some homogeneous and mystic whole – thus there could be no real death. The varying mob of long-haired girls and ragged young studs who clung around him in southern California were indoctrinated with Charlie's views after they settled at the first of their two outposts, a Western movie location once owned by silent star Bill Hart but now operated as a riding stable called the Spahn Movie Ranch.

But one can wonder how those who were to be indicted for murder got there in the first place:

Photographs of Charles Denton ("Tex") Watson at high school in Farmersville (pop. 2,021). Texas reflect an all-American boy: a big, good-looking kid who starred in football, basketball and track, got only A's and B's and went to the Methodist church near his father's little grocery and gas station. Watson went on to North Texas State University, 55 miles from home, turned away from sports, sank scholastically and, after three years, dropped out. But his old college sweetheart, airline stewardess Terry Flynn, reveals far more about the value judgments of Texas girls than about any emotional trauma he may have endured. "He treated me like a queen and he shaved three times a day – there was never a hint of 5 o'clock shadow – but he became too possessive." When she saw him in Los Angeles last December after an unexpected flight to California "I just couldn't believe his long hair. But he still opened car doors for me."

Maine-born Linda Darleen Kasabian, 20, grew to "sweet and pretty" adolescence in her divorced mother's white clapboard house in Milford, N.H. She quit school as a sophomore to marry a local boy but was divorced a year later. Last July she was in Los Angeles with another husband, Bob Kasabian, and her baby daughter Tanya; a young friend who had inherited some money was going to take them on a trip to South America. Gypsy, oldest of the girls in Charlie's family, spotted her in a Topanga Canyon restaurant and took her to the ranch. She came back the next day and then only to steal $5,000 in $100 bills form the friend's camper truck. When the boy followed her to the ranch to protest, Charlie "showed me this big knife and said, 'Maybe I should kill you just to show you there's no such thing as dying,' and I felt fear and split." Linda did a lot of cooking for the family: she is now five months pregnant, and crochets.

Brunette and busty Susan Atkins, 21, had "a very disorganized relationship with her family in San Jose," worked as a topless dancer and fell in with Charlie in San Francisco. Charlie renamed her "Sadie Mae Glutz." Susan is the girl who spilled the story of the Tate murders to a cellmate while being held in the Santa Monica jail on charges of having helped one Bob Beausoleil kill Musician Gary Hinman for Charlie. Susan told the grand jury that Charlie was a "beautiful guy."

Brown-haired Patricia Krenwinkel, 22, is the daughter of a hard-working Los Angeles insurance agent and lived in a cream-colored stucco house new Loyola University. She was chubby and shy but "quite a little daddy's girl" and devoted to stamp collecting. Her father left wife and daughter when she was in her teens, however, and Patty began to go with "guys who hung out at Bob's Big Boy Drive-In at Canoga Park." Patty's mother took her to Fort Lauderdale. She had a half year of college in Mobile, Ala., came back to Los Angeles, got a job in an insurance agency – and then, suddenly, ceased being ordinary. She abandoned her car in a Manhattan Beach parking lot in September 1967, quit her job without picking up her paycheck and went off with Charlie Manson. Charlie changed her name to Katie. Her job at the ranch was the "garbage run," picking through refuse cans behind nearby stores to salvage food for the family. The pickings, one witness recalls, could be good: "They got a whole Volks full of apples, plums, lettuce, avocados and candy out of two or three bins of trash."

The family stayed at the movie ranch for 12 months. Charlie gave its blind old owner, George Spahn, $5,000 – perhaps the same bills donated by Linda Kasabian. He also terrorized George and got a good deal of it back. One night, Spahn says, Charlie forced him to sit in a chair for three hours, held lighted matches before his eyes and swung punches within an inch of his face to discover whether he lied about his sightlessness. (After it was all over Spahn heard the door open and close and sat there in the dark for an hour. He couldn't hear a breath. Then he reached around – and put his hand right on Manson's head. "That's right, George, I'm still here.")

Ranch hands remember Charlie provided for everyone, sometimes by instructing girls to work their families for money. He passed out marijuana – if he felt like it. He had a plastic Baggie full of LSD tablets; these were for visitors form whom he wanted gifts of favors or recruits he wanted "to capture." There were seldom more than six or seven male members and usually four times as many girls. The boys got girls – as gifts from Charlie. Charlie had any girl he wanted. The family slept on communal mattresses, but Charlie and his choice of the evening slept in a room of their own. Charlie's word was law: he carried and fondled a Bowie knife, his scepter. "He really love knives," recalls an acquaintance. "He used to say, 'Man, everybody in this world is afraid of getting cut.'"

He also collected guns and ammunition. The family, he prophesied, was one day going into Los Angeles to set off the apocalypse foreordained from them in Revelation, Chapter 9: "They were given the power of scorpions the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots and they have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit." There was no doubt who was king. Charlie Manson talked about it to visitors: "He was going to shoot all the white people he saw, all the established people; then the black people would get enthralled and destroy everybody while he would retreat into the desert." Charlie did not just talk. He took incredible pains, with the aid of the family's males, to prepare for the day.

They stole Volkswagens, stripped them and turned them into reinforced dune buggies, some with machine gun mounts. The Spahn Movie Ranch lies only a few miles north and west of Burbank, but beyond it are sere, rugged and unpopulated hills and beyond the, eventually, the Mojave Desert. Charlie cut the padlocks off fire road gates and substituted locks of his own. He and his dune buggy drivers snarled, skidded and ground their way up the roadless draws and gulches and laid out caches of food, gasoline, tires and sleeping bags across an astonishing area. One youth who was almost but not quite "captured" was told – and believes – that Charlie got two Army half-tracks and burned them out establishing a roadless route, 300 miles long, across the Mojave and into hills edging Death Valley. This was the site of the so-called Barker Ranch, a huddle of abandoned shacks, a last, remote hole-up which Charlie had gotten on a sort of loan from a rich Burbank widow.

The apocalypse did not occur last August despite the fact that the newspapers were black with news of the Tate murders. There is no knowing yet just what part Charlie played in trying to set off his Armageddon. Susan Atkins told the grand jury that he planned the attack on the house in which he had been slighted by Terry Melcher, but took no part in murdering Actress Tate and the others who died as a result. Linda Kasabian, on the other hand, told a friend, and may well have told the jury, that he actually led the raid. Either way, however, Charlie and his helpers spent the next 48 hours with a welding machine, "popping bennies" to get on with the job of conditioning the desert buggies. Even though the blacks did not arise to begin the destruction of Los Angeles – he loaded up trucks, cars and the bus and took the family on a roundabout trip to the mesquite-dotted hideout above Death Valley.

The Barker Ranch is all but inaccessible except for a route in from Nevada, but the family's encampment in its abandoned shacks, the naked girls' sunbaths by its crude swimming pool, lasted hardly more than a month. They camouflaged the buggies, set up a defense perimeter with two field telephones and put lookouts on watch, but two raids by state police and Death Valley National Monument rangers – instigated by complaints of local car thefts – scoped up 26 of them. The police took them to Independence, the seat of Inyo County, and put them all in jail on charges of theft. The girls, many of whom were later released, did not lose faith in Charlie Manson. They demanded that their jailer supply them with peanut butter and honey for a "purification ceremony" and insisted on going naked. Forced to wear dresses, they took to raising them over their heads when exercising outside. Charlie did not forget them, either: he yipped like a coyote in his cell – and they yipped back in chorus. But last week as authorities considered the Los Angeles crimes, and police investigated other deaths – a boy killed last July near the movie ranch, a girl's slashed body found in the Death Valley hills – there seemed to be scent chance that Charlie Manson would ever again put the family beneath his spell.

A DOCTOR AND A PAROLE OFFICER REMEMBER MANSON By PAUL O'NEIL

During the year that Manson and his "family" lived in or near San Francisco, they regularly visited the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic which was founded by Dr. David Smith. Dr. Smith's views are based not on a patient-doctor relationship with Manson, but on his personal observations.

Charlie's group was unlike any other commune I've know. They called themselves a family, but most family communes are monogamous sexually. The members pair off and don't indiscriminately change partners. A new girl in Charlie's family would bring with her a certain middle-class morality. The first thing that Charlie did was to see that all this was torn down. The major way he broke through was sex. Charlie's girls were expected to have sex with any men around, anytime. If they had hang-ups about it, then they should feel guilty. That way he was able to eliminate the controls that normally govern our live. Sex, not drugs, was the common denominator.

The violence was not the kind of sociopathic "escape" violence we see in the Haight but a psychotic, Rasputin-type violence. If you believe God is on you side, anything is justified. The communal thing is very spiritual. Belief in magic, astrology, cosmic consciousness – that explains everything. One of the characteristics is to have a spiritual leader and, violence aside, Charlie Manson as a spiritual leader is probably more typical than we care to believe. Charlie appealed to too many people to say that just a few nuts were attracted to him. He would probably be diagnosed as a schizophrenic, but ambulatory schizophrenics were very much looked up to in Haight-Ashbury because they could hallucinate – without drugs. If we're going to pin a psychiatric label on Charlie's girls, then we'd have to say there are hundreds of thousands of kids in this country who are also mentally disturbed.

Manson's parole officer, after his release from prison in 1967, was Dr. Roger Smith, a research criminologist who had launched the drug treatment program at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. He speaks of Manson here out of his extensive unofficial contact with him.

Charlie was the most hostile parolee I've ever come across. He was totally up front about it. He told me right off there was no way he could keep the terms of his parole. He was headed back to the joint [prison] and there was no way out of it. In another era, I think Charlie would have been back in prison in short order. But now the patterns have changed. You have a very transient, mobile delinquent population, and many of them end up in scenes like this. They pick up the rhetoric and sort of blend in and exploit and manipulate the scene. I think that's where Charlie fit in.

In a sense I think Charlie was really sort of shaken by it all – by the fact that people were friendly, open and willing to do things with him. The first night he was in the Haight, the chicks were willing to go to bed with him. They didn't care whether he had just gotten out of the joint. That was a real shocker for him.

Drugs give you something but they also take. In the case of Charlie, he redefined what reality was. He began to drift farther and farther away. He certainly wasn't operating on anything vaguely related to reality. He did become more articulate, began to develop a distinctive kind of philosophy. He no longer seemed angry or hostile, only more intense.

They talk about the hypnotic kind of state he was able to produce. Always in the back of my mind I felt he was a con man. Charlie's rap was always a little bit too heavy, a little bit too polished. Tenderness toward girls? Not a damn bit. I never sensed he had any real warmth toward the girls. They were his possessions.

There are a lot of Charlies running around, believe me. He's just one of several hundred thousand people who are released from prison after a shattering, soul-rending experience, not prepared for anything except to go back on the streets and do more of the same – but bigger. You get them back in the community and there's no place for them to stay. I couldn't get Charlie into a halfway house because the only one was too small. I couldn't get him training because somehow he didn't meet the state requirements. The only place he was accepted was Haight-Ashbury, and doesn't that say a hell of a lot about the system.

Manson LIFE Cover: Mom-Patty finds a classic

Patty thought that Mom Patty must be on to her daughter's two and a half years of blogging: "I found something you might like," she texted. "Some old LIFE magazines from your birth year. And guess who is on the cover of the December 19th issue?" Patty feigned ignorance: "who?" "MANSON!" she texted back in all caps. Patty nearly had a damned heart attack, though she has since come clean to her Mom about Eviliz.com, and she kinda likes it. Who'd have thunk?

Anyhow, Patty is really pleased to have her own genuine copy of a classic. There were many pics inside that either she's never seen, or forgot she has seen. She'd like to share some with you right now: click to make them bigger.

The one at right you have seen before, but we have always wondered if it was taken inside the bus? LIFE magazine confirms that yes, it was.








At left and below are some good photos of Sandy with baby Ivan: What the heck has Sandy got on? It looks like an alpaca rug. In the court photo, you can really see baby Ivan's little features. If you have seen photos of him as an adult, you can definitely tell that it's the same person, right?

This one probably takes the cake. The caption reads as follows:

"Police found this mock grave of stones piled near the ranch house in Death Valley, apparently as a grisly family joke. The shoes at the top are empty. How many real graves lie undiscovered in the Family's wake may never be known."

WORD UP!

Three murders were listed in the search warrant issued last year for the Tex Watson/Bill Boyd recordings

Read it on cielodrive.com

Eviliz Tour 2013 visits the Backporch Tapes Private collections in Los Angeles

The Eviliz Tour Shirt added to "The Museum"

The BPT went down to the cave the other day, dug out all of that sediment we've told you about. You can actually get into the cave again, just like in the famous photo! Eviliz hitched a ride as you can see!

Here's another video where you can see their work.

A Letter From RED

This letter from Red was written sometime shortly before the book "The Manson Files" (1988) edited by Nikolas Schreck was published.  The name of the person it was written to was redacted when I got this copy of the letter but I believe it may have been to Boyd Rice who was one of the contributing editors of the book.  Red would have been in federal prison at the time the letter was written.