BREAKING NEWS: Charles Manson is in the Hospital

Many of you already know who Ben Gurecki is. He is a collector of Manson memorabilia, the producer of The Lost Vacaville Tapes, and a personal friend of Charles Manson. He arrived in California this past week with the express purpose of traveling to Corcoran to visit with Charlie who is to celebrate his eightieth birthday this week (November 11 or November 12, depending on who you believe).

On facebook this morning, Ben posted the following: "Charlie is officially in the hospital day #3. Confirmed by guards at visitation check in. Could not get any additional to (sic) information. Well wishes CM!!"

We will bring you more details as they become available.

Photo credit: Stoner Van Houten at "Charlie's Rock," Spahn Ranch, 11/6/2014

The Forbbiden Chapter in Sanders' Book

Everyone by now likely knows that not long after the first edition of Ed Sanders The Family came out he and his publishers were sued by The Process for writing untrue things about their group and their connection to Charles Manson.  Sanders US publisher settled with The Process.  Any books that had been published in the US but not sold had to have a slip of paper affixed to the front end page saying that anything about The Process in the book was bunk.  And the chapter about The Process and any other references to The Process were removed from subsequent editions of the book.

The case over the forbidden chapter then went to trial in England where The Process was founded and the book was also published.  Ed Sanders British publisher attended the trial but Sanders did not.  The Process lost the case in England and they were ordered to pay the defendant's legal fees. You can get a copy of the trial transcripts from Aes-Nihil if you want to delve into this further.

So, where did Sanders get that story about an "exorcism" of Pussycat by a man named Father P with Charles Manson as a witness to the whole affair, that so ruffled The Process's feathers?  This event was supposed to have taken place at the "Devil House" on Waller Street in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district.  The "Devil House" has alternately been reported as having been The Process's San Francisco headquarters or a building belonging to the Diggers.  No one, to my knowledge, has ever claimed that the Diggers and The Process were connected in any way.  Also, no one has ever been able to definitively say where the "Devil House" was located, only that it was on Waller.

Father P's real name came out in the trial but Pussycat's name did not.  Father P has since passed on but no one has learned the name of Pussycat and therefore the veracity of the story has never been tested.  I learned from Jon Aes-Nihil that both Father P and Pussycat actually did exist.  By some cosmic witchy occurrence Jon met both over New Year's in 1967/8 in Guerneville, yes, that same Guerneville where James Willett was killed! 

I was able to track down the beginnings of the story and the likely source for  the chapter in Sanders book in a January 30, 1970 Berkeley Tribe article.  This article was published a good year before Sanders book.

So, the questions remain, was Charles Manson present at this alleged event, who is Pussycat and where was the "Devil House"?

Debra Tate chicken fight of 1976

I do not know the story that goes with these photos. All I know is, Debra Tate, Nastassja Kinski, Arnold Schwartzeneggar, Johnny Crawford, and a mustachioed man of unknown origin were playing in the pool. I will note that the participants in these photos look like they are having a blast! Not everyone can say that they've had topless chicken fights with a guy who became governor of the state of California, right? More power to them. . . . . .

"Commune" (Vogue Magazine, February 1, 1971)

Patty's friend Zachary came up with another beauty for your reading pleasure, this review of a Richard Schechner1971Greenwich Village play called "Commune."

The nine players, remarkably at one, suggest American communal life from the Westward Trek on...

Various themes are suggested, but the main thrust of the work is an effort to connect Charles Manson and his group to the flow of American experience from the beginning...

Our theater is weak in historical images, in the possibility of suggesting the economic, industrial and large social forces. "The changes, the changes man, are what it's all about..."

The people dead in the Sharon Tate and LaBianca murders are...the flowing, free-change able faces of money, fame, celebrity, excitement. The La Biancas, poor victims of a strange randomness, lived amidst their visible properties, properties not altogether grand and unimaginable but just of the comfortable sort even the laziest imagination could believe a spot of luck might bring...

The deaths were not robberies, which are in their distorted way purposeful, but the symbolic way of working out of the deep social yearnings and luxurious needs that now inhabit our psyches along with more primitive forces.

What Commune wishes to suggest, if I understand its images, is the continuity of history that ended in the California murders."

Polish authorities interview Roman Polanski, decline to arrest him

By Steve Almasy and Antonia Mortensen, CNN
updated 10:21 AM EDT, Fri October 31, 2014

(CNN) -- Famed film director Roman Polanski, wanted in the United States for having sex with a minor in the 1970s, was questioned this week by Polish authorities but allowed to leave after the interview.

A spokesman for the Polish Prosecutor General's office said Thursday that authorities there didn't believe it was necessary to hold him in custody while the United States seeks to extradite him.

Mateusz Martyniuk told CNN that Poland received a request from U.S. officials to arrest Polanski, and the Oscar winning filmmaker came Wednesday to the office in Krakow.

"(The matter) was not sent to the court that could impose a temporary arrest because the prosecution did not find basis for that," Jan Olszewski, one of Polanski's attorneys, told CNN affiliate TVN24, according to the network's translation.

Polanski, who was in Krakow on Thursday, said he wants to film a movie in Poland, his parents' homeland, next spring. The director has both French and Polish citizenship.

He told TVN24 he hoped the extradition question had been settled "once and for all."

Polanski pleaded guilty in 1977 in California to having unlawful sex with Samantha Geimer, who was 13. The director of "The Pianist" was 43 at the time. He fled to Europe before he was sentenced.

Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in 2009 on a U.S. fugitive warrant.

The Swiss rejected the American extradition request in 2010 because the United States did not supply all the legal records Switzerland requested and because Polanski had a reasonable right to think he would not be arrested if he visited the country, Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said at the time.

Geimer publicly forgave Polanski in 1997 and has called for the case to be dismissed.

Besides the Oscar win for "The Pianist," Polanski also received Academy Award nominations for "Tess" and "Chinatown."

Sign Up For Our Mailing List

In the coming days we will be sending out a special treat to those folks who have signed up for our mailing list. The treat is one of my finds that after serious discussion we decided we really didn't want to publish publicly but we did want to share it. I think you will understand why when you read it. So, get on our mailing list and don't miss out, you won't be disappointed!

Colleen Sinclair

 

Sinclair was arrested with other Family members at the Barker Ranch raid in October of 1969. Outside of that, I know very little else about her. Anyone?

Thanks, Cuntry Trash!

Charles Manson.... A Tea Party Favorite???

Charles Manson and Michele Bachmann.  A brother from a different mother or a sister from a different mister?

I received a Google alert with the Tea Party's adoption of Charles Manson in the subject line.  I thought WTF? I've gotta click on this!  Seems this was basically an ad for a t-shirt.

HERE

I wanted to know more.  Why was anyone attempting to link Manson and the Tea Party?  On the surface they appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum.  I found an amusing article comparing Michele Bachmann's eyes to Charles Manson's eyes.  Both have that bat-shit crazy look in their eyes on a magazine cover.  THERE

A&E Biography: The Manson Girls

Patty didn't have very high hopes for this documentary, and the opening lines by Linda Deutsch cemented her opinion before the good stuff even started: "It was the first real cult...the first real cult murders we knew of...he perverted them and corrupted them, and they became something else." Oh, dear. As you can imagine, more of the same old same old media BS ensued, but there were some interesting photos of the girls and their parents that Patty had never seen before. First, Leslie:

 

 Then, Pat:

  

There were, Patty will concede, two interesting tidbis about Lyn's life. In high school, Lyn dated a guy named Bill Siddons, who went on to manage The Doors:

Additionally, her high school friends also related a story about her methodically stapling her arm with a staple gun, and "not flinching." Wow. Had you ever heard that one?

Anyhoo if you care to see the rest of this steaming pile of refried dog poop:

Crime and Punishment Trading Cards

In 1992 Eclipse Enterprises published a few sets of trading cards one of which is titled Crime and Punishment.  There are 110 cards in this series which was drawn by a courtroom sketch artist who worked for ABC television.  The artist, Bill Lignante, previously had been a comic book illustrator and comic strip artist for The Phantom, he also worked as an illustrator for Hanna-Barbera.  The LA Times did a story on Lignante soon after these cards came out.  The person who wrote the text for the cards was Bruce Carroll who also worked for ABC television.

There is always someone who gets their tits in an uproar about these types of things and of course there was a law suit to try to halt the sales of the cards brought on by one New York community in which Editor-in-Chief of Eclipse Enterprises Cat Yronwode deftly prevailed. 

Cat Yronwode is no slouch in the business world.  She currently owns a thriving Magick/Occult store in Forestville CA, right next door to the town of Guerneville in Sonoma County.  For a truly Witchy experience visit her website or brick and mortar store Lucky Mojo Curio Co.  Cat puts those Manson girls to shame when it comes to Witchy, but in a good way!

Here are all 26 of the Manson Trial trading cards from the Crime and Punishment series.