Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover (34 page)

During their flight to Rome, Tate asked Altobelli, “Did that creepy-looking guy come back [to see you] yesterday?”

Charlie kept trying to contact Melcher, telling every mutual acquaintance that he was trying to get in touch. He had everyone at Spahn return to preparing for Helter Skelter. The main focus was on getting more dune buggies. The Family was able to barter for or buy some, and they stole others. Charlie, Tex, and a few of the other men brokered drug deals with the bikers. Bobby Beausoleil came around again; he had a new girlfriend named Kitty Lutesinger, who was pregnant. Charlie allowed a few new members to join the Family, notably an old prison pal and master forger currently calling himself Bill Vance, and a teenage girl named Barbara Hoyt, who’d run away from home at nearby Canoga Park. Vance was assigned to craft fake driver’s licenses and other forms of identification, and Hoyt became a baby-sitting mainstay. With Sandy Good expecting, as well as Lutesinger, child care was becoming more of a priority. Charlie kept encouraging all the female Family members to get pregnant. It was the best way to begin expanding the group to the 144,000 foretold in Revelation. When they reached that number, the Family would emerge to take over the world. Every baby counted.

One of Little Paul Watkins’s ongoing responsibilities was to seek out potential donors, and in April he connected with Charles Melton. Melton, who lived hippie-style in Topanga Canyon, had recently inherited a large amount of money and already given half away to various causes. Watkins brought Melton to Spahn and showed him around. Melton didn’t hand over any cash, but he was intrigued by what he saw. Tex Watson wandered over and admired Melton’s beard, saying, “Maybe Charlie will let me grow a beard someday.” Charlie’s word still was law among the Family; his control extended to his male followers’ facial hair.

Rudi Altobelli kept his promise to Polanski and Tate by hiring a fill-in caretaker to stay at Cielo whenever he was away. Nineteen-year-old William Garretson had come to L.A. from Ohio, and he was already planning to return home sometime soon. Altobelli told the kid that if he would be on call to stay in the guest cottage whenever Altobelli was out of town, he’d pay him $35 a week to take care of the dogs and cats and generally keep an eye on things. Sometimes Altobelli’s tenants might be home while Garretson was there, and he shouldn’t bother them. Whenever Garretson decided it was time to return to Ohio, Altobelli would also pay for his plane ticket. It was a good deal for Garretson and he took it.

Sometime in April, Voytek Frykowski and Abigail Folger moved into the main house at Cielo. Polanski and Tate were going to be overseas for a while—Tate wanted to spend as much time there with her husband as she could before her pregnancy advanced to the point where her obstetrician would forbid her to fly. Even though Tate trusted Rudi Altobelli implicitly and knew he’d hired a caretaker, she still felt better having friends staying in her home when she wasn’t there. When she was at home and Polanski was away, Frykowski and Folger could keep her company. They were apparently working through a tough time in their relationship. Folger had just given up her volunteer job with the county. They were welcome at Cielo for as long as they wanted to stay.

On April 19,
deputies of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office raided Spahn. There had been reports of hippies stealing dune buggies, and dune buggies had been spotted on the ranch. Some of the vehicles the officers impounded were stolen, but the Family had pink slips for several others. The deputies arrested the Family members present at the
time—Leslie and a few others; Charlie wasn’t there—and charged them with grand theft auto. It was an empty gesture. There was no way to prove who had actually stolen the dune buggies, or whether the people working on them at the ranch had any knowledge that they were stolen. The charges were dropped a few days later. The Family’s dune buggy fleet was depleted, so they simply stole some more. No one was intimidated by the arrests. Charlie had anticipated all along that there might be raids, and told everyone how to act if they were arrested. No one was to admit to committing any crimes because, after all, there was really no such thing as crime. Above all, they should never mention Helter Skelter or the bottomless pit in the desert, because
then the cops would think they were nuts and send them to mental hospitals where people would zap their brains with electricity. None of them, Charlie warned, wanted
that
.

Charlie also explained to his followers that if he was ever arrested, whether he was in custody for a few days or for years
he would act like “Crazy Charlie,” ranting nonsensical things until his captors grew so frustrated that they eventually would just let him go. But the Family shouldn’t be taken in—it was just a trick Charlie would be playing on the Man for however long it took.

Four days after the county raided Spahn Ranch,
Tex Watson was arrested in Van Nuys for being under the influence of drugs in public. Somebody at the ranch had a chunk of belladonna root, a potent hallucinogen, and Tex gulped some down. The next thing he knew, he was slithering on his hands and knees on a Van Nuys sidewalk, muttering “Beep, beep.” The police took him to the station, snapped his mug shot and took his fingerprints before locking him in a cell until he was coherent enough to leave. It wasn’t considered a serious crime—in April 1969 people high on drugs in public were common in L.A. and its suburbs. Tex went back to the ranch, but
some of the Family thought the belladonna must have had a lingering effect on him. Before, Tex had always been calm and sweet-natured. Now he seemed gruffer, even mean at times, and bossy in a way that he had never been before. He suddenly seemed to consider himself Charlie’s right-hand man and the Family’s surrogate leader whenever Charlie wasn’t at Spahn. Phil Kaufman, encountering
post-belladonna Tex, was
so irritated by his pushy new attitude that he punched him in the face.
Some of the women in the Family felt afraid of Tex. But Charlie wasn’t concerned. A rougher, tougher Tex Watson might come in handy somewhere down the line.

Bobby Beausoleil stayed around much longer than usual.
He had his own hopes of becoming a rock star, and if Charlie could get the deal with Terry Melcher that he kept talking about, maybe he could put in a word to Melcher on Beausoleil’s behalf. So he hung out at the ranch, and Charlie kept sending word that he wanted to hear from Melcher. Finally, around the second week of May, Melcher responded. He’d come to Spahn to hear Charlie perform his songs on May 18. Melcher didn’t apologize for standing Charlie up before, but he promised that this time he’d come without fail. Charlie was finally getting his shot. For the second time he ordered the Family to put aside their Helter Skelter responsibilities and concentrate instead on making certain that everything was perfect for Melcher’s visit. He made the women rehearse with him virtually nonstop; they were instructed not only to sing on the choruses but also to strip and dance provocatively to the music. Melcher would experience not only aural but visual delight. Charlie knew how to set scenes to elicit the response that he wanted. How could Melcher not be overwhelmed? Nothing would go wrong this time. Charlie was about to get the recording deal and then the fame he deserved.

A
merica was seething in May 1969. Tension crackled across the land. Mankind’s first moon landing was scheduled for late July, but there remained an overall sense of foreboding, as though the trauma of 1968 might have been preamble to something even worse.

Focused more on Vietnam and international tensions, President Nixon disdained hippies and student radicals, finding little if any difference between them. He also had no empathy for frustrated black rioters. Though he was not antagonistic toward minorities and believed in government programs to bolster them socially and economically, the president regarded blacks as fundamentally inferior to whites. Nixon lectured staffers that “the key is to devise a system that recognizes this while appearing not to.”

So as the weather warmed, blacks in city ghettos again began to lash out, and young white radicals who previously studied articles on organizing peaceful protest marches began poring over blueprints for making homemade bombs.

There was plenty of new evidence to cite as additional signs of the coming Helter Skelter, but Charlie ignored it all. At Spahn Ranch, preparations for race war were set aside once again so that everyone could get things ready for Terry Melcher. Charlie’s outrage when Melcher stood him up in March, and his desperation to impress him now in May, made it obvious to even his most blindly devoted followers that nothing mattered more to their leader than getting a record deal. If they hadn’t realized before how much Charlie wanted it, they did now. On May 18, as he waited for Melcher to show up at Spahn,
the sharpest-eyed among his followers realized that Charlie was
nervous.

Melcher arrived at the ranch ready to get down to business. His time was limited; he had no interest in freshly baked snacks or messing with the girls. Charlie wanted a chance to audition—all right, Melcher told him, play me your music. Charlie fetched his guitar and strummed. The women stripped, then began humming and providing percussion accompaniment. A few used tambourines. The rest knocked pieces of wood together. As they kept time to Charlie’s songs they also danced, swaying in the dusty sunshine. Charlie put all that he had into his performance. Melcher listened intently. At one point Charlie took a short break. During this time-out he tried to engage Melcher in a philosophical conversation, explaining how it was possible for anyone to “exist in a place” without restrictions, where you lived well on other people’s garbage. Melcher wasn’t interested. He was there to evaluate Charlie’s music, not the Family’s lifestyle. Charlie played and sang some more, and then the audition was over.

Though Charlie anticipated an immediate contract offer, Melcher was noncommittal. Taking Charlie aside, he said polite things about several songs being interesting. He knew a guy, Mike Deasy, who besides being a great session guitarist had his own recording van and liked going onsite to record Indian tribal music. Melcher said that he’d come back with Deasy, who might be interested in what Charlie was doing. Meanwhile, he gave Charlie $50, all the cash he had with him, to buy hay for the ranch horses or whatever the Family needed. Melcher had grown up in homes with fully stocked pantries and refrigerators. Charlie’s talk of feeding not only the Family adults but also their children from garbage bins bothered him.

Melcher left immediately after handing over the money. The Family gathered around Charlie—what did Melcher say? Did Charlie get his record deal? It was a ticklish moment for Charlie. Melcher had promised to come back and listen to Charlie again, but this time with somebody else who might want to record him. Even at his most self-delusional, Charlie couldn’t mistake the underlying message that Melcher was probably going to pass. He might change his mind after the second session, but for now Charlie had to tell his followers something. So Charlie announced that Terry Melcher had given him money. Charlie made sure that the Family thought it was in the nature of a signing bonus. And Melcher was coming back soon with a recording van! Charlie explained that he turned
down a chance to sign a contract with Melcher on the spot because, after all, Charlie Manson’s word was his bond and he didn’t believe in written contracts.

The ploy worked. So far as Charlie’s followers were concerned, the audition had been a tremendous success, as of course it had to be, since he was infallible.

Terry Melcher left Spahn Ranch that day feeling certain that Charlie Manson had nothing to offer musically.
He recalled later that Charlie’s songs were “below-average nothing, and as far as I was concerned, Manson was like every other starving, hippie songwriter who was [currently] jamming Sunset Boulevard, a hundred thousand every day, who looked, dressed, talked and sang exactly like Charles Manson, sang about the same topics of peace and revolution, about the themes that were in the Beatles’ albums.” It was possible, Melcher believed, that his friend Mike Deasy might see something in Charlie’s music that he didn’t, though if Deasy did any recording with Charlie it would be for such a tiny niche audience that very few records would be sold, let alone the unfathomably enormous number necessary to make Charlie more famous than the Beatles. Melcher talked to Deasy, and they agreed to go to Spahn on June 6, meaning Charlie had almost three weeks to build up his hopes again.

During those three weeks, Charlie put everyone back to work on Helter Skelter. There were dune buggies in various stages of repair scattered around the ranch. Towing them into the buildings where Tex and the bikers worked required particularly strong tethers, so
Charlie went to a surplus store in Santa Monica and bought several hundred feet of white three-ply nylon rope, which was much cheaper than towing chains.
Everyone was kept working at a feverish pace, but as they worked the Family members chattered about Charlie’s record deal with Melcher. Despite Charlie’s warnings about the coming race war, most members of the Family weren’t happy about returning to desolate Barker Ranch. The time they’d spent at Dennis Wilson’s log cabin mansion was very much on their minds. If Charlie became a rock star—as, of course, he inevitably would—then they could all live in posh digs like Wilson’s instead of scorpion-infested desert shacks. That was certainly much more appealing.

On June 6 Melcher and Deasy arrived at Spahn. Gregg Jakobson
was with them. Charlie performed his songs for them, with the Family women providing background vocals and percussion. In a spectacularly wrongheaded attempt at hospitality, someone slipped Deasy LSD and he suffered a horrendously bad trip. Melcher and Jakobson had to get him home and
as they guided him toward their car, with Charlie walking hopefully alongside them and the rest of the Family trailing along behind, veteran Hollywood stuntman Randy Starr, who often hung out at Spahn, staggered up. He was dressed all in black, belligerently drunk, and waving an old-fashioned six-gun. Starr reminded Melcher of the Lee Marvin character in the movie
Cat Ballou
—so far as he was concerned, the guy offered no real threat at all. But Charlie, faced with the end of his rock star dreams, screeched, “Don’t draw on me, motherfucker,” and began, Jakobson recalled, “to beat the shit out of [Starr] right in front of us.” Melcher was disgusted. Sure, the guy was twice Charlie’s size, but he was just drunk and acting stupid. There’d been no reason to beat him up.