Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover (11 page)

Except for being surrounded by water, Terminal Island and McNeil Island had very little in common. The California prison was adjacent to the mainland and easy to reach.
The Washington penitentiary sprawled over more than two thousand rugged acres and was largely self-sustaining thanks to a large farm maintained by inmates. The most common access was by ferry; the prison maintained a few speedboats. Because commuting was so difficult, many administrators and guards lived with their families on the island. Their homes were built and roads maintained by convict work crews. There was even a school for staffers’ children.

The prisoners, who numbered about one thousand when Charlie arrived in the summer of 1961, were housed in a “stacked” five-tier cell tower. They were a mix of white-collar criminals, petty hustlers like Charlie, and vicious thugs. Daily prison life at McNeil was hard; every convict was expected to work, and guards had a relatively free hand with discipline. Few inmates plotted breakouts. Though McNeil was considered a medium- rather than a high-security prison, the rough, deep waters around it assured that escape was virtually impossible. When three inmates tried to float to the mainland on a raft fashioned from a plywood sign, the two who were recaptured had suffered hypothermia. The third had drowned.

When Charlie arrived at McNeil, staff evaluators found him to be “an energetic, young-appearing person whose verbalization flows quite easily.” Charlie had learned from the Dale Carnegie course at Terminal
Island: “he gestures profusely and can dramatize situations to hold the listener’s attention.” He hadn’t completely mastered the art of false sincerity. The report noted, “He hides his loneliness, resentment, and hostility behind a facade of superficial ingratiation.” And, despite his year-long struggle to stay out of McNeil, Charlie admitted that in a sense he was glad to be there: “He has commented that institutions have become his way of life and that he receives security in institutions which is not available to him in the outside world.”

For Manson, prison meant not just security but school. Though he didn’t sign up for any of the academic or work training courses available at McNeil, he continued his education there all the same. McNeil had inmates who were glad to share information on a variety of subjects, black and white magic and hypnotism among them. There was a large fellowship of born-again Christians eager to bring Charlie closer to God, but he’d had enough of that. The group that really captured his attention, less for his acceptance of their spiritual beliefs than the way in which they expressed them, was the Scientologists.

Much as Dale Carnegie introduced his sales philosophy to the general public with
How to Win Friends and Influence People
in 1936, in 1950 pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard utilized the best-selling
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
to publicize his technique of achieving mental health and happiness. Carnegie’s focus was on changing the perceptions of other people;
Hubbard taught how to change yourself. He advocated “auditing,” confronting traumatic events in the past to move beyond them, becoming free of old fears and restraints and moving toward a “clear” or
theta
state where the mind is able to embrace spiritual freedom without negativity. In 1954, Hubbard and his growing legion of followers founded the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles, with an emphasis on certain “essential tenets”:

You are an immortal spiritual being.

Your experience extends well beyond a single lifetime. And your capabilities are unlimited, even if not presently realized.

Furthermore, man is basically good. He is seeking to survive. And his survival depends upon himself and his fellows and his attainment of brotherhood with the universe.

As he had with Dale Carnegie, Charlie adopted those aspects of Hubbard’s teachings that lent themselves to manipulating others. He still projected himself in the future as a pimp, not a spiritual advisor. Most potential prostitutes had terrible self-images. Telling such girls that they didn’t have to be crippled by the past, that they were immortal spirits temporarily trapped in their bodies, that they were basically good and capable of achieving anything—these could be powerful recruitment techniques. Meanwhile, proclaiming himself as a wholehearted rather than a calculating Scientology convert had immediate advantages. Prison officials were always glad when inmates embraced a faith that encouraged positive attitudes. Faith helped boost potential for parole. As a relatively new arrival at McNeil, Charlie had a long way to go before parole, but conning evaluators into believing he had become a devout Scientologist was a good first step. His September 1961 report noted, “He appears to have developed a certain amount of insight into his problems through his study of [Scientology]. Manson is making progress for the first time in his life.”

Sometimes Charlie did seem to be progressing. He participated in prison sports—softball, basketball, even croquet. He joined the inmate drama club. But there were stumbles, too. After unspecified contraband was found in his cell, Charlie was made a prison janitor, the lowest work assignment. In August 1963, Charlie was served with divorce papers from Leona, who’d relocated to Denver. She’d given birth in early 1961 to Charles Luther Manson, Charlie’s second son. While there is no record that Charlie ever saw the baby, he must have at least been on decent terms with Leona when the child was born, since the boy’s middle name honored Charlie’s late uncle. Leona was granted the divorce and full custody of the child in January 1964. Nothing further is known about Charles Luther. There is also no record of Charlie reacting in any way to the divorce. He’d married Leona in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid prosecution, and she’d ended up testifying against him. Then and later, Charlie had no use for relationships from which he didn’t benefit.

Though he’d lost another wife,
he still had his mother. When Charlie was sent to McNeil, Kathleen moved from Los Angeles to Washington state to be near enough to visit him. Though she knew Charlie deserved to be in prison, her heart still ached for him. Kathleen found work as
a waitress. As part of her new life she even reconciled with Lewis. He swore that he had changed, and she wanted badly to believe him. With Lewis back, Kathleen reflected even more on all the mistakes she had made with Charlie; if she’d been a better mother, he surely wouldn’t have turned out the way that he did. When she visited the prison he was never interested in her life or how she was. Charlie always had a list of things he wanted her to get for him. She did her best, but money was tight. Lewis still had problems keeping a job and waitressing wasn’t lucrative. On one fall visit Charlie demanded money for a new guitar, and was angry when Kathleen told him that she couldn’t afford it.

The next time she came, she had a surprise for him. Kathleen wished she could somehow go back in time and raise Charlie right. That was impossible, but now that she was back with Lewis she decided to give motherhood a second try. So she came to visit Charlie at McNeil with an infant in her arms, and proudly informed him that he now had a sister. She and Lewis had just adopted the baby, who was named Nancy after Charlie’s grandmother. Charlie shocked Kathleen with his reaction: How much had adopting the baby cost? When Kathleen said the fee was $2,000, Charlie exploded. How could she waste that kind of money on adoption when she’d just told him she didn’t have enough money to buy him a guitar? He shouted that he never wanted to see Kathleen or the baby again. Charlie eventually relented and Kathleen resumed her visits, but she was afraid that seeing the little girl might set him off again. Later, some of little Nancy’s earliest memories were driving to McNeil with her mother and one of Kathleen’s friends, then waiting in the car with the other woman while Kathleen went inside to see Charlie.

Charlie could always make Kathleen feel guilty; she brooded about whether she’d been right not to get him the guitar. In December 1963 Kathleen wrote to the judge in Los Angeles who gave Charlie the ten-year sentence at McNeil. In the letter, she offered to put up her house in Washington as security for Charlie’s early release. She was even willing to risk her shaky reconciliation with Lewis by letting Charlie move in with them and the baby. The way she worded the offer indicated that she still thought of her son as a wayward teenager rather than a twenty-nine-year-old hustler: “For the first time in my life, I’m able to give
Charles a nice home and help him to make a good life.” The judge turned her down.

In prison, Charlie chose friends for what he could learn from them. The Scientologists had their uses. So did McNeil’s most famous inmate. Alvin “Creepy” Karpis became notorious in the 1930s as a member of the Barker Gang. Initially imprisoned in 1936, Karpis was transferred to McNeil in 1962 after the government closed down Alcatraz, the island penitentiary in San Francisco. Now in his mid-fifties, Karpis was no longer considered a threat to anyone’s safety; his work assignment was driving the bus that transported children of prison staff to and from the McNeil Island school.

Charlie approached Karpis, though not for tips on robbing banks.
Karpis was an accomplished steel guitar player, and Manson wanted to learn that instrumental technique. The older con obliged with some lessons, though he wasn’t much impressed with Charlie’s playing. Sometimes Charlie wanted to talk about Scientology instead of music. According to Karpis, Charlie “figured [Scientology] would enable him to do anything or be anything.” Having run with more than his share of cold-blooded killers, Karpis didn’t sense similar tendencies in Charlie. He thought the guy would be the last man on earth “to go into the mass murder business.”

Charlie picked up more than Scientology insights and steel guitar licks at McNeil.
He didn’t read books, but he listened as inmates who did talked about what they’d read. One of the most popular novels among the literate cons was Robert Heinlein’s
Stranger in a Strange Land.
Its themes of alienation, government deceit, and redemption for the despised resonated with the incarcerated. Charles was fascinated by the tale of fictional Valentine Michael Smith, born to human parents in a Mars space colony, raised by Martians and returned to Earth as a pawn of scheming politicians. Fascinated by religion, Mike founds his own faith, experiences group sex, uses psychic powers to make enemies disappear, suffers a martyr’s death, and returns in spirit form. As he would with the Bible, Dale Carnegie, and Scientology, Charlie later incorporated elements of
Stranger in a Strange Land
into a beguiling, hybrid pseudophilosophy.

Then Charlie discovered his most influential teachers of all.

•  •  •

World news generally had little effect on Charlie. In January 1964, after two and a half years of incarceration at McNeil, he probably knew President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated but beyond that he had little access to or much interest in what was happening on the outside—with one exception.

There were radios in McNeil, and Charlie loved listening to music. The vast majority of pop hits were hummable fluff that celebrated G-rated teen love and heartache. Folk artists with music that addressed social issues received more limited airplay. They and their causes didn’t matter to Charlie. But near the end of January 1964 Bobby Vinton’s “There! I’ve Said It Again” was blasted from the top of the charts by The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” A few weeks later, the British band kicked off its first short American tour with a TV appearance on the hugely popular
Ed Sullivan Show.
Most of America tuned in. “Beatle-mania” swept the nation; there had never been anything like it, even in the heydays of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. The Beatles’ burgeoning fame was such that it penetrated all the way into Charlie Manson’s cell at McNeil Island. Their songs were constantly on the radio. Charlie was intrigued by the music but even more impressed by the adulation the Beatles received. Charlie always yearned for attention; now he decided that fame was what he really wanted. If these four Beatles could have it, why couldn’t he? After all, he sang and played guitar, too. Countless other young Americans felt the same way, but few could have been as single-minded about it. Charlie started telling anyone willing to listen and also those who weren’t that he was going to be bigger than the Beatles, which meant bigger than any other music superstars ever. He didn’t care how implausible that sounded.

Besides the incredibly long odds against eventual success, Charlie faced an immediate challenge. The Beatles wrote most of their own material. They were Charlie’s new role models, so he was obligated to do the same. Charlie spent virtually every waking nonwork minute hunched over his guitar.
There was nothing special about the songs that resulted, though Charlie took great pride in them. In particular, his attempts at lyrics were banal:
“She’ll never know what’s down inside/All this lovin’ I’ll always
hide.”
He debuted some of his tunes onstage; Charlie began playing in occasional variety shows featuring performances by prisoners. Sometimes he was part of an inmate band. Though there’s no record of how his performances were received, he couldn’t have been a complete flop because he kept appearing. He didn’t always play guitar. The prison had a battered drum kit for use in the shows and sometimes Charlie thumped on it. His drumming was as rudimentary as his guitar playing but he considered himself gifted at both.

Now when Kathleen visited, all her son talked about was how he was going to become a famous musician. He seemed hungry for fame but not fortune. Charlie never mentioned anything about getting rich in the process and buying himself cars and a mansion, let alone doing something for the mother who currently paid for his guitar strings and picks with hard-earned waitressing money. Kathleen tried not to let it bother her. She understood that Charlie was never grateful for anything. At least he’d stopped griping at her so much. Besides, Kathleen had her own problems. Despite all he’d promised, Lewis kept drinking and losing jobs. She was damned if she’d let another child of hers be ruined by a parent’s bad example. She’d messed up with Charlie but it wasn’t going to happen again. In May 1964 Kathleen divorced Lewis. He tried to talk her out of it and afterward tried to worm his way back through postcards he sent to little Nancy. On the back of each one he’d remind the child that he loved and missed her. Maybe she’d beg her mother to let Daddy come home. Kathleen regularly let him visit Nancy—look what happened to Charlie from not having a father—but she was through falling for Lewis’s promises to straighten out. Kathleen still hadn’t given up on marriage. She resumed looking for a good man who would give her and her daughter some security.