Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, Chuck here on Saturday with this selects with
Speaker 1: a very gruesome pick trigger warnings. It's a true crime episode,
Speaker 1: perhaps one of the most infamous crimes in American history.
Speaker 1: And it's a two parter, so you get part one
Speaker 1: this week, you get part two in two weeks. It's
Speaker 1: called The Manson Family Murders. Art One from January twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. Beware. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 2: there's Charles W. Chuck Bright, and there's Jerry over there,
Speaker 2: and we make up the Stuff you Should Know family,
Speaker 2: the peace Lovin, Acid Lovin, non murdering nice family. Did
Speaker 2: I say acid Levin in there?
Speaker 1: You did?
Speaker 2: Oh? Weird, peace Lovin non murdering family.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know what, hopefully there are no kids
Speaker 1: listening to this one anyway, so we can let everyone
Speaker 1: else know that we take LSD before every episode.
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, the slogan of our show is wowie zowie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So CoA. For those of you who did not
Speaker 1: see the title, if you're listening to your kids about
Speaker 1: The Manson Family Murders without a CoA, then you need
Speaker 1: a parenting CoA.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for real.
Speaker 1: But there are lots of grizzly details in this, so
Speaker 1: obviously you may want to skip this one. With a
Speaker 1: a on a family picnic picnic, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It might kind of bring it down a couple of degrees.
Speaker 2: It might be a drag, you know, probably so, uh,
Speaker 2: speaking of drags, Chuck, I'll tell you who is a drag,
Speaker 2: Charles Manson. He was. He was so like, there's this,
Speaker 2: there's this reputed legend that Charles Manson tried out for
Speaker 2: the monkeys and was rejected and that was ultimately why
Speaker 2: he ordered these these grizzly murders of what that we'll
Speaker 2: definitely get into. But it turns out that's absolutely false.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that I've heard that, and it always sounded to
Speaker 1: me like an urban legend.
Speaker 2: Well, so the thing is, it's got like all sorts
Speaker 2: of interesting facets to it, though, right, it's demonstrably false.
Speaker 2: He was in prison at the time the monkey's tryouts
Speaker 2: were held. But it kind of coincides with this larger
Speaker 2: part of Charles Manson's life that not everybody's fully aware of,
Speaker 2: which is that he wanted to be a star. He
Speaker 2: wanted to be a musical recording star, and he actually had.
Speaker 2: He made some inroads into that career. And I have
Speaker 2: read theories that it is possible that these murders were
Speaker 2: ordered as a means of venting Manson's frustration that his
Speaker 2: music career wasn't going as well as thought it should
Speaker 2: ye and sending a message to some people in the
Speaker 2: music industry that he'd made contacts with to basically say, hey,
Speaker 2: I can't kill you because I need you, but I
Speaker 2: can kill other people to get you going and get
Speaker 2: my music career off the ground. What's the hold up?
Speaker 2: Which is just like the Manson family murders on their face,
Speaker 2: as they're largely understood, is nuts. But if that's the
Speaker 2: real thing behind all of this, that's just the depths
Speaker 2: of depravity, of human depravity that people are capable of.
Speaker 1: I bet that's not like the sole reason.
Speaker 2: But you know, like if you really strip reasons down,
Speaker 2: like what are motivations for things? Like is it really
Speaker 2: you know, to bring on Helter Skelter? Is it because
Speaker 2: he was a frustrated musician? You know? Like you can
Speaker 2: say the same thing about Hitler, like was there a
Speaker 2: kernel of Hitler's rejection from the art world and from
Speaker 2: people at large that drove him to order the horrible
Speaker 2: things that he ordered the Nazis to do. Like, it
Speaker 2: makes you wonder, like what is the motivation behind world
Speaker 2: changing events when you break them down to a personal level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, Manson, to be fair, was had
Speaker 1: mental illness in a lifetime of rejection, so right, this
Speaker 1: could all affect her in for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But so I mean you you you asked for
Speaker 2: this article to be written, didn't you. Was this your jam?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, ed the grabster. We can sort of petition
Speaker 1: him to write articles at times, and this was definitely
Speaker 1: one of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So did you know a lot about the Manson
Speaker 2: family murders and the family themselves and all that stuff already?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you this was this is probably still part
Speaker 2: of like the cultural zeitgeist when you were becoming like
Speaker 2: aware of the world as a kid. Huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, I definitely remember the book Helter Skelter being
Speaker 1: a huge, huge thing, And I remember a time before
Speaker 1: like media so robust, when the idea of Charles Manson
Speaker 1: was just so terrifying to me. I do too, And
Speaker 1: then I got older and saw interviews and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's just a little tiny redneck. Yeah, Like it all vanished.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, he's just he's just
Speaker 1: a little redneck.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's what. There were two things that
Speaker 2: kids of the eighties went through as far as awakenings.
Speaker 2: Were concerned that the Soviet people went out to murder
Speaker 2: all of us, yeah, and that Charles Manson was not
Speaker 2: actually scary. He was just a dumb redneck behind bars.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean what he did was horrific, to be sure,
Speaker 1: so I'm not like minimizing that. But as far as
Speaker 1: the person, he was this larger than life, scary as
Speaker 1: crap dude to me. Until you know, interviews started coming
Speaker 1: out and sit downs with like Diane Sawyer, I was like,
Speaker 1: this guy's a joke.
Speaker 2: But for a little while there, he was legitimately America's
Speaker 2: worst nightmare because at the time, like a lot of
Speaker 2: people say, when the Manson family committed these murders, and
Speaker 2: it came out, you know, a couple months later, that
Speaker 2: some depraved acid head hippies had actually committed these gruesome
Speaker 2: crimes that had captured the nation's attention, it suddenly gave
Speaker 2: the establishment, who had been looking for anything to lay
Speaker 2: on to hippies to say, see, see we told you
Speaker 2: you can't be trusted. Your whole peace, love free stuff
Speaker 2: like that doesn't work. You can't do that because this
Speaker 2: is the outcome of it. Manson was that personified, and
Speaker 2: for a lot of for that reason, a lot of
Speaker 2: people say this guy, these murders ended the Summer of
Speaker 2: love and the era of hippies and ushered in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean, timing wise, it just seems
Speaker 1: very natural. And Ed even points out like even during
Speaker 1: the trial that narrative was being laid down, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like years later people look back and said this. And
Speaker 1: he also, I thought it was really interesting. I never
Speaker 1: really put it into context like Ed did. But the
Speaker 1: moon landing, the very first moon landing that is, happened
Speaker 1: two weeks before the Manson family murders, and then a
Speaker 1: week after the murders was Woodstock, So that was a
Speaker 1: that was a nutty month. It really wasn't know in America.
Speaker 2: And again these murders when they took place, they were
Speaker 2: just no one had any idea who the Manson family
Speaker 2: was except for a handful of people out in LA
Speaker 2: and some cops that had run ins with them, but
Speaker 2: they were not famous, and no one realized that the
Speaker 2: Manson family had been responsible for these murders. They were
Speaker 2: just these gruesome, unsolved murders in between the moon landing
Speaker 2: and Woodstock. Yeah, so a lot of people let's start
Speaker 2: at the what a lot of people consider the beginning,
Speaker 2: which is the night of August ninth, in a house
Speaker 2: at one zero zero five zero c Yellow Drive, which
Speaker 2: is in Beverly Hills, up in the hills, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I looked at like three different places how to
Speaker 1: pronounce that, and they all said yellow except for Diane.
Speaker 1: Sawyer said cello, And I'm like, man, is Dian soil?
Speaker 1: You're wrong? No about anything?
Speaker 2: No, whatever she says is absolutely right. She could make turtlenecks, right.
Speaker 1: I used to love turtlenecks.
Speaker 2: Sure they had a real heyday, for sure.
Speaker 1: You don't see him anymore.
Speaker 2: I used to wear them on. Don't be dumb, but
Speaker 2: it was kind of a gag.
Speaker 1: I think I could still pull one off, maybe, especially
Speaker 1: with the beard.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The beard would definitely help, you know, because you
Speaker 2: could you could turn a certain way and be like
Speaker 2: regular shirt, turtleneck, regular shirt, turtleneck just by just by
Speaker 2: moving your head and your beard out of the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course in the eighties I would rock
Speaker 1: the mock turtleneck regularly.
Speaker 2: Did you I never really did. Did you wear them
Speaker 2: with Zeke Varici's.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 2: You didn't dress like ac Slater.
Speaker 1: No, it was sort of believe it or not. That
Speaker 1: was like a post preppy thing where the mock turtleneck
Speaker 1: was acceptable and not cheesy really in a preppy sense.
Speaker 1: I gotcha, Because I was sort of a prep before
Speaker 1: I became a human monster.
Speaker 2: I could see that. Did you Did you wear the
Speaker 2: LaCosta alligator and stuff?
Speaker 1: Nah? We couldn't afford that stuff, so I or the knockoffs,
Speaker 1: I gotcha. Or if I had the la cost the
Speaker 1: alligator was like accidentally so onto the collars.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, we've had this conversation. Yeah, all that
Speaker 2: good stuff factory seconds, Yep, that's mactory Remnant's nice. So
Speaker 2: on this night on August ninth, are we going with
Speaker 2: Cello or Diane Sawyer's Cello?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's just say that the house that
Speaker 1: Satan built, right, it's not there anymore, by the way.
Speaker 2: No, they tore it down, but not before Trent Rezner
Speaker 2: went in and recorded at nine Inch Nails album.
Speaker 1: There, because why not?
Speaker 2: Why not? So at this at this house at one
Speaker 2: zero zero five zero Yellow Drive, that's not there any longer.
Speaker 2: There was a knock at the door on the night
Speaker 2: of August ninth, around midnight, so I don't know if
Speaker 2: that makes it August ninth or tenth. I couldn't get
Speaker 2: a definitive answer, but the door was answered by a
Speaker 2: guy named Voytek Freikowski, who was known as a Polish playboy.
Speaker 2: He was friends of the director Roman Polanski and he
Speaker 2: was there because inside that house was Roman Polanski's wife,
Speaker 2: Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant with their I
Speaker 2: believe their first child. I don't think they had any
Speaker 2: other children. Sharon Tate was pretty young at the time.
Speaker 2: But also inside was Abigail Folger, who was the heiress
Speaker 2: to the Folger Coffee fortune. And I think, oh, one
Speaker 2: other guy, Jay Sebring, who was a stylist who is
Speaker 2: known as the guy who introduced hair styling to men.
Speaker 2: So he was pretty well off and pretty well known
Speaker 2: as far as la went. And they're just kind of
Speaker 2: this hip industry party crowd inside this this residence, and
Speaker 2: there was a knock at the door and this guy
Speaker 2: was there on the other side of the door, and
Speaker 2: he had a mustache and he was tall, kind of
Speaker 2: a natural athlete, tight type from Texas. And he said,
Speaker 2: I'm the devil and I'm here to do the devil's business.
Speaker 2: And that was Tex Watson, and he entered the house
Speaker 2: and this massacre of everybody inside began.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what had happened previous to that knock was
Speaker 1: Tex Watson climbed up a telephone pole, cut the phone
Speaker 1: line and then climbed the fence with a couple of
Speaker 1: other people, one Susan Atkins and one Patricia Krinwinkle, all
Speaker 1: Manson family members. And we'll get into the whole family
Speaker 1: thing in a minute. And so they climbed over the fence,
Speaker 1: went in. There was a kid, a teenager named Steve
Speaker 1: Parent who was leaving in his car already, and he
Speaker 1: did not make it out. He was shot five times.
Speaker 1: He was slashed and shot five times by Tex Watson
Speaker 1: before he could get down the tway. So one murder
Speaker 1: had already been committed on that property by the time
Speaker 1: they even got to the house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if any of these people, which you can
Speaker 2: definitely make the case all of them were in the
Speaker 2: wrong place at the wrong time. Stephen parent was just
Speaker 2: doubly so he was visiting the caretaker of the house,
Speaker 2: so he had nothing to do with the Hollywood jet
Speaker 2: set people inside or the Manson family. He was just
Speaker 2: friends with somebody who was like a worker at the
Speaker 2: house and he was leaving at the time too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he would have been friends with what was a
Speaker 1: guy's name from.
Speaker 2: The oj oh Man.
Speaker 1: He would have been friends with kat o'kalin, which is Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would have been a bad thing to be I.
Speaker 2: Think talk about a mock turtleneck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he has one permanently tattooed on his neck.
Speaker 1: There was also a third Manson family member, Linda Kasabian,
Speaker 1: who was not in the house, but she waited. Essentially
Speaker 1: was the getaway driver.
Speaker 2: Right and she just come into the family like a
Speaker 2: month before, And apparently the reason she was out with
Speaker 2: them was because she was the only one with a
Speaker 2: valid driver's license out of that group. So Lenny Kasaven's
Speaker 2: sitting outside, Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Susan Atkins all
Speaker 2: enter the house and they just start killing everybody. Apparently
Speaker 2: Texa was the only one with a gun, but all
Speaker 2: three of them had knives. Patricia Krenwinkle found Abigail Folger
Speaker 2: reading in bed and started to kill her. I believe
Speaker 2: Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring were in the living room
Speaker 2: together and they were both killed there in the living room.
Speaker 2: Voytech freed Kowski made it out of the house, but
Speaker 2: he was killed in the front lawn. Abigail Folger I think,
Speaker 2: made it out the back and she died on the
Speaker 2: back lawn. And one of the things about this is
Speaker 2: like the reason the word massacres like such an apt description.
Speaker 2: These were just basically, like I don't know how old
Speaker 2: text was, he was a little bit older, but these
Speaker 2: are basically like seventeen, eighteen, nineteen year old girls who
Speaker 2: had never done anything like this before and were really
Speaker 2: not very good at it while they were doing it
Speaker 2: this first time, and it was just bad for everybody. Apparently,
Speaker 2: it's very brutal. There was a lot of fear and
Speaker 2: terror and a lot of pain and torment among everybody
Speaker 2: who was being killed in this house. It wasn't easy clean.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't characterize it as like a hit it was
Speaker 2: a massacre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Abigail Folger herself was stabbed twenty eight times and
Speaker 1: then see bring in Forrakowski. In addition to being stabbed,
Speaker 1: were also shot, and obviously Sharon Tate's unborn child was
Speaker 1: killed in this process as well. And supposedly, and this
Speaker 1: is a direct quote apparently I guess from the trial
Speaker 1: the directive from Charles Manson. And if you don't know this,
Speaker 1: I guess we should go ahead and say Charles Manson,
Speaker 1: even though later on other people said that Tex Watson
Speaker 1: was more acting on his own and misunderstood Manson's directive.
Speaker 1: But Charles Manson ordered these killings, which we'll get into.
Speaker 1: But he told Watson supposedly totally destroy everyone in that
Speaker 1: house as gruesome as you can. So in addition to
Speaker 1: the mutilation of the bodies and like post mortem stab wounds,
Speaker 1: that was stuff written on the walls and their blood
Speaker 1: like pig, and well I think pig was the only
Speaker 1: thing written on the wall at.
Speaker 2: This one, right on the front door.
Speaker 1: Which is a obviously was a reference to cops at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: Right, and they wrote it in Sharon Tate's blood, right,
Speaker 2: So pig is on the door in blood the perpetrators
Speaker 2: got away, The Manson family got away. They made it
Speaker 2: back to I think the Spawn Ranch, which is one
Speaker 2: of the places they were staying. So then two nights later,
Speaker 2: Manson orders the family to go do it again. He
Speaker 2: actually said that they done according to text and the
Speaker 2: rest of them. He actually said that they'd done it wrong.
Speaker 2: They had created panic and fear in these people, and
Speaker 2: they needed to do it right this time. But to
Speaker 2: go go out and butcher another family. And he took
Speaker 2: him to a house, and it was a house next
Speaker 2: door to this house that the Manson family used to
Speaker 2: party at. It was a friend of one of Manson's
Speaker 2: record producer friends. And next door was just this normal,
Speaker 2: unassuming couple who had from what I understand, no interaction
Speaker 2: with the Mansons at any point in time. It was
Speaker 2: this couple named Leno and Rosemary Labiyanca, and they were
Speaker 2: just about his middle class, upper middle class America establishment
Speaker 2: as you could get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was actually lived less than two miles from
Speaker 1: this house. It was in the Los Filis neighborhood. And
Speaker 1: just the night before they had had a party at
Speaker 1: this dude's house who and the reason he didn't want
Speaker 1: to go back to that house is because he thought
Speaker 1: maybe it could be tied back to him in some
Speaker 1: way because he was there the night before. So they
Speaker 1: just randomly picked the neighbor and there was six of
Speaker 1: the followers there, the original four from the Tate House
Speaker 1: plus Leslie van Houghton and Clem Grogan I think it
Speaker 1: was his name. And yeah, it was talking about wrong place,
Speaker 1: wrong time. They were just in there enduring their evening
Speaker 1: and Manson did break. He was, actually, like you said,
Speaker 1: there for this one, whereas he wasn't even there for
Speaker 1: the Tate one. And he took part in the tying up,
Speaker 1: but then he left, which very cowardly left. And this
Speaker 1: whole thing just reeks of cowardice, like go do my
Speaker 1: dirty work for me, exactly kind of in most of
Speaker 1: these cases.
Speaker 2: Right, So they tie up the lot beyond because they
Speaker 2: murdered them brutally again. They carved war in mister or
Speaker 2: la Bianca's stomach with a knife. They left the knife
Speaker 2: sticking out of his neck, They left a fork sticking
Speaker 2: out of his stomach. It was just another really gruesome scene.
Speaker 2: And then again in blood they wrote they wrote things
Speaker 2: around the house like they wrote political you know, they
Speaker 2: wrote pigs again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they wrote death to Pigs, they wrote they misspelled it.
Speaker 1: They wrote Helter Skelter, which we'll get into. That was
Speaker 1: a Beatles song, which factors in pretty heavily. And then
Speaker 1: they wrote Rise. And the whole notion here and we'll
Speaker 1: cover this in detail more later too, was that Manson
Speaker 1: was trying to, or at least he says, he was
Speaker 1: trying to ignite a race war and have it appear
Speaker 1: that black people and maybe even black panthers had killed
Speaker 1: these white people, which would and then turn spark a
Speaker 1: race war. They would all kill each other and the
Speaker 1: Manson And the reason I'm laughing is because it's just
Speaker 1: so ridiculously impive, im plausible, and then the Manson family
Speaker 1: would be the only people left and they could rule
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was supposedly the whole thing behind Helter Skelter.
Speaker 2: So the cops in LA, the Sheriff's Department and the
Speaker 2: LA Cops have two different murder scenes that are obviously related,
Speaker 2: but early on they didn't They didn't connect them yet.
Speaker 2: It took it took a minute, but once they did,
Speaker 2: these two murders came to be known as the Tate
Speaker 2: LaBianca murders before anyone knew who the Manson family was,
Speaker 2: and it was a big deal. But you have to
Speaker 2: go back even further to understand what's going on and
Speaker 2: to understand the eventual prosecution of the Manson family to
Speaker 2: another murder, and we will dive into that one after this. Okay, Chuck.
Speaker 2: So everybody knows about the Tate LaBianca murders, so much
Speaker 2: so that they're frequently called the Manson family murders. But
Speaker 2: it turns out that the Manson family was already involved
Speaker 2: in another previous murder a couple of weeks before the
Speaker 2: Tate and LaBianca murders happened. I think in like late
Speaker 2: July of nineteen sixty nine, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there was one other murder and an
Speaker 1: attempted murder and then an not quite attempted murder also, right.
Speaker 1: So the one you're talking about, I think is probably
Speaker 1: Gary Henman, who he was, Well, why don't you go
Speaker 1: and explain how he fit into this whole thing?
Speaker 2: Okay? So Gary Henman was a music teacher who was
Speaker 2: a friend of the Manson family. I don't think he
Speaker 2: ever was considered like a Manson family member, but he
Speaker 2: was a buddy of them, and he either had a
Speaker 2: trust fund coming or there was a rumor that he
Speaker 2: had access to a trust fund of like twenty thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: and so the Manson family went over to rob him.
Speaker 2: I think Bobby boso Let was the leader of that,
Speaker 2: and they went over to rob him. Or he had
Speaker 2: supplied the Manson family with a bunch of mescaline that
Speaker 2: they in turn sold to a motorcycle gang that was
Speaker 2: not happy that when it turned out the mescaline was
Speaker 2: bad who wanted their money back. So the Manson family
Speaker 2: had gone to go get their money back from this guy,
Speaker 2: and apparently he had said, like, I don't have any money,
Speaker 2: but here, I'll sign over the title of my cars
Speaker 2: to you. Here are the keys. And at this point
Speaker 2: they had him tied up and I'm not entirely certain why,
Speaker 2: but Charles Manson, and this is widely agreed upon, I
Speaker 2: think even by Manson himself, that Manson came over to
Speaker 2: the house to basically assist in getting this guy to
Speaker 2: cough up his money. Maybe that's what it was. And
Speaker 2: he took a sword and chopped off part of the
Speaker 2: guy's ear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And depending on who you believe, some say Manson
Speaker 1: actually ended up killing him. Other people say that Bobby
Speaker 1: Bosalil ended up stabbing him to death. Manson was on
Speaker 1: the scene for this one, though, which was different than
Speaker 1: the other murders, And I guess it just depends on
Speaker 1: who you believe it was. Bousoalia was eventually arrested while
Speaker 1: driving that car of Hinman's.
Speaker 2: So him instead, BOSSI Little's in jail. And you have
Speaker 2: to actually go back even further to find the first
Speaker 2: at least attempted murder by the Manson family earlier in July,
Speaker 2: on July first. This is just a bad jam if
Speaker 2: you really start thinking about it, like all these dates
Speaker 2: are so compressed, and you think about the Manson family
Speaker 2: just being in this crazy like murderous killsprey and it
Speaker 2: really only went for like a month, basically, you know,
Speaker 2: four or five weeks. But they did a lot of
Speaker 2: damage in that time. But the whole thing started, and
Speaker 2: you can make the case, and a lot of people
Speaker 2: do that. The whole thing, everything else that followed actually
Speaker 2: started on July first, when Charles Manson went to the
Speaker 2: apartment of a syndicate drug dealer, like a big time
Speaker 2: drug dealer named Bernard lots of Papa Crow, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, and Manson thought that he might have been a
Speaker 1: black panther. I don't think that was ever confirmed. I
Speaker 1: read a lot of articles kind of going back and forth.
Speaker 1: But regardless, Manson thought he was a black panther. There
Speaker 1: was a double crossing deal that went on, and they
Speaker 1: went over and Manson actually shot Crow and thought he
Speaker 1: had killed him, but he did not die. And he
Speaker 1: did not go to the cops because he you know,
Speaker 1: what do you do go to the cops and say, hey,
Speaker 1: a double cross these weirdo rednecks hippies.
Speaker 2: No, they doublecross him. They double crossed him.
Speaker 1: Oh see I read that he double cross them? No, no,
Speaker 1: why no? Tex Watson, Well, either way, he would not
Speaker 1: go to the cops right in his condition, and so
Speaker 1: that's why it was never reported. But he was interviewed
Speaker 1: in the transcript is pretty interesting to listen to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, and he wouldn't go to the cops
Speaker 2: because he would just handle it himself. And that's basically
Speaker 2: what he vowed to do. So there's this guy who
Speaker 2: Manson shot in the gut and left for dead, who
Speaker 2: now wants to kill Manson. In the whole family and
Speaker 2: that Manson's convinced as a black panther, which suddenly makes
Speaker 2: sense as to why you would have found something like
Speaker 2: political piggies and a Paul print in blood at Gary
Speaker 2: Heimman's murder scene. Right, Yeah, because this is about the
Speaker 2: time that this whole helter skelter thing is happening starting out.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: The whole idea that there is a race war coming
Speaker 2: and that the Manson family might be able to nudget
Speaker 2: a long by framing the black community or black panthers
Speaker 2: for these murders of white people is the basis of
Speaker 2: this idea of what was behind the Manson family murders
Speaker 2: as far as the prosecution is concerned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mentioned an almost attempted murder, jumping back
Speaker 1: forward again the very night of the The idea of
Speaker 1: the night of the Lobbianca murders was to have two
Speaker 1: separate murders on the same night, and Manson ordered a
Speaker 1: few I think three different followers, including Linda Kasabian, to
Speaker 1: murder this kind of little known Lebanese actor named Saladin Nadar,
Speaker 1: and Kasabian basically got there, didn't want to do this
Speaker 1: and so intentionally knocked on the wrong door of the apartment,
Speaker 1: basically giving her an excuse to get out of there.
Speaker 1: So weirdly, Saladin Nadir was never was a near victim
Speaker 1: of the Manson family. So that's talk about a talk
Speaker 1: about a close call.
Speaker 2: Yeah for real, you know. Yeah, And I looked him up.
Speaker 2: He basically was a famous actor by that time, and
Speaker 2: then just didn't do much after that. So I wonder
Speaker 2: if that had if that like just broke his brain
Speaker 2: or something, you know, I don't know. I think it
Speaker 2: would have done that to me.
Speaker 1: All right, So I think it's about time for another
Speaker 1: ad break. Let's do it, all right, We'll be right
Speaker 1: back after this, all right, Chuck, we're back. Should we
Speaker 1: talk about Charles Manson a little bit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's so, like, well, let's recap real quick, Okay.
Speaker 2: Manson has shot lots of Papa Crow in his stomach,
Speaker 2: lots of Crow, has vowed to kill the whole Manson family.
Speaker 2: Bobby Bosolt killed Gary Hinman, tried to frame the Black
Speaker 2: Panthers by writing political piggies in blood on the wall.
Speaker 2: Bobby Bosolet is arrested the Manson family, supposedly trying to
Speaker 2: make it look like somebody besides Bobby bosolet might have
Speaker 2: killed Gary Henman, kill the people at the Tate residence,
Speaker 2: kill the people at the LaBianca residence. Write things like
Speaker 2: political piggies and rise and pig in blood on the
Speaker 2: walls there. And that's where we've left off so far.
Speaker 2: The Manson family hasn't been caught yet. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: Charles Manson, all right.
Speaker 1: So Manson, it's sort of mixed up on what you
Speaker 1: want to believe because a lot of the information about
Speaker 1: his life came from him, and anyone who knows anything
Speaker 1: about Charles Manson knows that he had a tendency to
Speaker 1: overstate things and certainly lie about things. But what we
Speaker 1: do know is that he was born in nineteen four
Speaker 1: to a teen mom and dad, and the dad basically
Speaker 1: would not assume any paternity or responsibility, sort of split.
Speaker 1: His name was colonel, his actual name was colonel, and
Speaker 1: he convinced people that he was an army colonel even
Speaker 1: though he was not. So he was just never on
Speaker 1: the scene at all, and he ended up taking the
Speaker 1: name Manson from his stepfather, who you know, his mom married.
Speaker 1: She was an alcoholic, may have been a prostitute, She
Speaker 1: was in and out of jail for most of her life,
Speaker 1: or most of his young life, and it was just,
Speaker 1: you know, a truly bad scene for a young Charles Manson.
Speaker 2: Right, So he actually went and lived with relatives while
Speaker 2: she was in jail for a five year stretch. She
Speaker 2: got out, they reunited, he said, He apparently said that
Speaker 2: reuniting with her was one of the few truly joyful
Speaker 2: moments in his life. But in very short order, she
Speaker 2: basically was like, I can't take care of you. I
Speaker 2: don't really want this responsibility and handed him over to
Speaker 2: the state, which begun, which began a just basically a
Speaker 2: string of institutionalization that would keep going for basically his
Speaker 2: whole life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean by the time he was eventually sent
Speaker 1: to federal prison, I think he was thirty two years
Speaker 1: old when he was released in sixty seven, and they
Speaker 1: calculated that he had spent half of his life in
Speaker 1: and out of institutions, whether it be orphanages or juvie
Speaker 1: or real deal prison in jail.
Speaker 2: Right, And that was just the first part of his life.
Speaker 2: So he was out for two years before they got
Speaker 2: him again after these murders. By the time he died
Speaker 2: in prison at age eighty three this past November twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: he had spent, from my calculations, only thirteen years of
Speaker 2: his life as a free man. Yeah, thirteen out of
Speaker 2: eighty three years outside of institutions. So he had a
Speaker 2: lot of the deck stacked again. But you can also
Speaker 2: go back to I think March nineteen sixty seven, when
Speaker 2: he was released on parole from federal prison, where he
Speaker 2: was given a choice like, hey, man, here you go.
Speaker 2: You're out. You can decide what to do with your life.
Speaker 2: Do you want to go straight, do you want to
Speaker 2: go have a nice family, Do you want to just
Speaker 2: be a productive member of society, or are you going
Speaker 2: to go the exact opposite direction. And as we know
Speaker 2: in hindsight, Charlie Manson chose the exact opposite direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know if he was ever officially diagnosed,
Speaker 1: but I did see that doctors over the years and
Speaker 1: mental health professionals say that he was probably schizophrenic, suffered
Speaker 1: from schizophrenia, and had a paranoid delusional disorder.
Speaker 2: At the very least, I hadn't heard the schizophrenia, think
Speaker 2: paranoid delusional disorder totally buy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he was a troubled dude. Of course, not
Speaker 1: excusing anything, but it was clearly a case of mental
Speaker 1: illness combined with rejection and institutionalization really led to like
Speaker 1: the man that he would eventually become right.
Speaker 2: So he gets out of prison right and he is
Speaker 2: basically released into San Francisco nineteen sixty seven. So it's
Speaker 2: like Hippiedum, the Kingdom of Hippiedom, where he shows up
Speaker 2: and there's you know, at the time, everybody's looking for
Speaker 2: like something new, something different, something that's an alternative to
Speaker 2: the establishment of the mainstream or anything different. And so
Speaker 2: Charles Manson says, like, oh, I can totally exploit a
Speaker 2: lot of these people. And he starts out by meeting
Speaker 2: a girl, a librarian named Mary Brunner, and he moves
Speaker 2: into her apartment and she apparently was very fascinated with
Speaker 2: him because she had led a fairly straight laced life.
Speaker 2: She went to college again, she was a librarian, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden there's this wild like x Khan
Speaker 2: who is preaching this kind of gospel of love and
Speaker 2: no materials. And apparently before November nineteen sixty eight, which
Speaker 2: we'll explain what happened then before that time, Charles Manson
Speaker 2: supposedly did pretty closely resemble an actual hippie, like he
Speaker 2: felt like he could take anything of yours that he wanted,
Speaker 2: but you could also take anything of his. And he
Speaker 2: apparently walked the walk when it came to stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and there are plenty of stories of him just giving
Speaker 2: up whatever material possessions saying they didn't matter before things
Speaker 2: really took a dark turn. So there's if you really
Speaker 2: kind of dive in, it becomes clear how he could
Speaker 2: have amassed some of these early followers. And the first
Speaker 2: one was Mary Brunner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get the feeling that this probably would not
Speaker 1: have happened in any other era other than this generation.
Speaker 1: When you know, we've talked about it in our Brainwashing
Speaker 1: in our Cults episodes, where this time it was just
Speaker 1: just a weird time in America and people were really,
Speaker 1: I don't know about prone, but at least ripe for
Speaker 1: the picking when it comes to falling into situations like
Speaker 1: this and believing these what looked like crackpots to us now,
Speaker 1: but at the time everyone was. It was very anti establishment.
Speaker 1: People were taking tons of drugs and reject rejecting mainstream
Speaker 1: society and embracing the counterculture, and they were just really
Speaker 1: open to all kinds of weird stuff.
Speaker 2: Right, So he again, he just kind of figured out
Speaker 2: that he could he could work this to his own means.
Speaker 2: So there's a couple of things that there's there's two
Speaker 2: basic things that you needed to know about Charles Manson
Speaker 2: from from everything I've seen. One was that his main
Speaker 2: goal was to become a recording artist, a very successful
Speaker 2: star of a recording artist. And two that he could
Speaker 2: he had a good ability to manipulate people into giving
Speaker 2: them what he wanted, and mostly that that amounted to
Speaker 2: sex and drugs, and he used that ability to get
Speaker 2: other people to do what he wanted. So, for example,
Speaker 2: when he started doing mask, like a substantial amount of
Speaker 2: girls in the Manson family, it was it was just
Speaker 2: a free love commune the whole time. So the guys
Speaker 2: who came in all of a sudden had access to
Speaker 2: these the women, and in return for Charlie granting them
Speaker 2: access to them, they would basically do his bidding or
Speaker 2: offer him physical protection because he wasn't a big guy.
Speaker 2: He's kind of a shrimpy dude. But there everything from
Speaker 2: from if you look at it from an outsider's perspective,
Speaker 2: every relationship be had it was one of extraction. He
Speaker 2: was taking something from everyone around him. It wasn't just
Speaker 2: a normal friendship or a normal relationship. It was it
Speaker 2: was what can you do for me? And what can
Speaker 2: I use from you to get something out of other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you've never seen an interview with him,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to check some of him out. He
Speaker 1: does have a very stream of consciousness, circular, sort of
Speaker 1: talks NonStop and doesn't make a lot of sense. But
Speaker 1: one thing that's often said about him is that he
Speaker 1: can be mesmerizing with the way he does that. And
Speaker 1: I imagine in the late sixties, if you've got a
Speaker 1: head full of acid and there's this guy that has
Speaker 1: the ability to like almost rebreathe like a trumpet player
Speaker 1: and talk for minutes and minutes and hours on end,
Speaker 1: they could be kind of you know, they would fall
Speaker 1: under this weird spell, right, So I definitely don't get
Speaker 1: it because now when I watch him again, tiny weird redneck.
Speaker 1: But when you you know, when you see him doing
Speaker 1: a thing, even with like Diane Sawyer, who doesn't fall
Speaker 1: for it, by the way, she clearly is just like
Speaker 1: very it's a great interview. She's pro and she stays
Speaker 1: very on point, basically kind of like, you're not going
Speaker 1: to get me to like fall for your charms, right,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty interesting. So he's got Mary Bruner as
Speaker 1: this first girlfriend. Then he said, hey, what do you
Speaker 1: think about a triad? Or rather, what do you think
Speaker 1: about a triad? That's how he sounded. And Mary Brunner,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, wasn't super into it, but she
Speaker 1: was under his spell, so she said sure. So Squeaky
Speaker 1: from Lynette, Squeaky from came into the picture and they,
Speaker 1: you know, they lived as a threesome that traveled together
Speaker 1: up and down the coast out there, and he just
Speaker 1: sort of started accumulating mostly women along the way to
Speaker 1: this sort of traveling party is probably how he framed it,
Speaker 1: and people were hip to it. There were men though,
Speaker 1: besides Tex Watson and Bobby Busolill, those guy name Danny
Speaker 1: DeCarlo who were kind of early men who joined up.
Speaker 1: And by all accounts, most of those men who joined
Speaker 1: up were there because Manson was said, you know, you
Speaker 1: can have these women. You got plenty of drugs, and
Speaker 1: so before you know it, the Manson family was born.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were just kind of this weirdo hippie
Speaker 2: group that used to commit burglaries. Manson, there has long
Speaker 2: been it's long been said that he beat a lot
Speaker 2: of the women in the group and would prostitute them
Speaker 2: for cash to pay for things for the family, like rent.
Speaker 2: They ate a lot of their food from like going
Speaker 2: through dumpsters behind grocery stores and stuff like that. And
Speaker 2: they just basically hung out and did drugs and had
Speaker 2: sex all day. That was basically their aim and their goal.
Speaker 2: And then at night they would have bonfires out in
Speaker 2: the desert and they'd all just take a bunch of
Speaker 2: acid and listen to Charles Manson to do his mesmerizing thing.
Speaker 2: And again, at first it was it was weird. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of ideas that Manson was this reincarnation of
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, or that he was not even the reincarnate
Speaker 2: of Jesus Christ. He was the same Jesus Christ who'd
Speaker 2: been alive for you know, almost two thousand years. And
Speaker 2: just like all this stuff you would find in the
Speaker 2: desert among hippies in the late sixties, on acid at
Speaker 2: night around a bonfire. Right, but when by this time,
Speaker 2: like by the time they're out in the desert, Manson
Speaker 2: had had this really amazing chance encounter that you just
Speaker 2: would never have and the fact that it did happen
Speaker 2: is just totally mind blowing. But become a recording artist.
Speaker 2: To help ensure his success at becoming a recording artist,
Speaker 2: he moved the family from San Francisco down to Los
Speaker 2: Angeles to be closer to the center of the recording industry,
Speaker 2: and it just so happened in that one night in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight, a couple of Manson family girls were
Speaker 2: hitchhiking on Sunset Boulevard and were picked up by none
Speaker 2: other than Dennis Wilson, one of the co founders of
Speaker 2: the Beach Boys.
Speaker 1: That's right, it was sixty nine, but same deal. All
Speaker 1: those years just ran together back then, and Dennis Wilson
Speaker 1: was he was a party, party dude and liked his ladies.
Speaker 1: Because it sounds very weird to say that he picked
Speaker 1: up a couple of hitchhikers and basically brought them home,
Speaker 1: but it was a different time, and like I said,
Speaker 1: he was a party dude. So they ended up being Eli,
Speaker 1: Joe Bailey and the aforementioned Patricia Crinwinkle, so they move
Speaker 1: in basically, and he goes to the studio, comes home
Speaker 1: and the Manson family had moved in, which again it
Speaker 1: sounds really strange, but at the time he I mean
Speaker 1: Ed says he was frightened that I get the feeling.
Speaker 1: He was more like, you know, what trip are you on,
Speaker 1: not like, oh my god, I need to call the cops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he I think they lived there for a while, like
Speaker 1: he let them live there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the part it was partially out of fear.
Speaker 2: I saw and I read an interview with Charles Manson
Speaker 2: when he was talking about Dennis Wilson, and he was like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'd say whatever, he just lay his weirdo
Speaker 2: trip on Dennis Wilson, and Dennis's response would be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that's cool. Listen, look I gotta go. I
Speaker 2: really got to go do this thing. Just always trying
Speaker 2: to get away from Charles Manson. So maybe he was
Speaker 2: afraid that he was they were going to kill him.
Speaker 2: Maybe he liked having access to like all his free
Speaker 2: love from all the Manson family women, or maybe he
Speaker 2: just felt like he couldn't get out of it. But he, uh,
Speaker 2: he did let them live there for a few months.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like they crashed there for a weekend. They
Speaker 2: moved in, they wrecked his ferrari. Yeah, they they met
Speaker 2: a bunch of his friends. It was it was a
Speaker 2: big It was a big deal that Dennis Wilson came
Speaker 2: into Charles Manson life because it really bolstered this idea that, yes,
Speaker 2: he is going to become a recording artist. Because not
Speaker 2: only did he hang out with Dennis Wilson, he hung
Speaker 2: out with a guy named Terry Melcher who is a
Speaker 2: record producer, hung out with another guy named Phil Kaufman
Speaker 2: who is a record producer, and he met all these
Speaker 2: people in the industry who were in a position to
Speaker 2: get Charles Manson's career off of the ground. And when
Speaker 2: you're dealing with this crazy little ticking time bomb like
Speaker 2: Charles Manson, who wants you to do something like get
Speaker 2: his musical career off the ground, but you don't think
Speaker 2: his music is good enough to actually launch, you've got
Speaker 2: a problem on your hands. And Dennis Wilson and his
Speaker 2: buddies all knew this.
Speaker 1: Yes, And two quick things here, One big shout out
Speaker 1: to Dennis Wilson's only solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue.
Speaker 2: Is it good.
Speaker 1: I think it's great.
Speaker 2: I got to check that out. And I love the
Speaker 2: Beach Boys.
Speaker 1: I mean he Dennis Wilson was clearly not the brains
Speaker 1: or voice behind the Beach Boys as the drummer, but
Speaker 1: he was a sort of I think, kind of picked
Speaker 1: on a little bit for not being the most talented dude,
Speaker 1: and he was just in the band because he was
Speaker 1: handsome and related. But I think Pacific Ocean Blue is
Speaker 1: like one of the great lost classics.
Speaker 2: I'll check it out.
Speaker 1: It's very good.
Speaker 2: He was supposedly also the only true surfer in the band.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And the other thing was that Terry Melcher,
Speaker 1: that producer that you mentioned. The reason he factors in
Speaker 1: so heavily is because he actually lived at the Tate
Speaker 1: House in Beverly Hills before Tate and them moved in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was sort of the connection there. I guess
Speaker 1: Manson was going to kill him, right, No, No.
Speaker 2: So here is what a lot of people think. They
Speaker 2: think that again, he was sending a message to Terry
Speaker 2: Melcher saying, I can't kill you, but I can get
Speaker 2: close to you. And I know you're going to hear
Speaker 2: about this because this happened at the house you were
Speaker 2: living in a month or so before. I'm just going
Speaker 2: to go in and have my people into criminentally slaughter
Speaker 2: whoever's there. But this is this is you, this is
Speaker 2: what's going on. He supposedly was well aware that Terry
Speaker 2: Melcher didn't live there any longer, because he'd spoken to
Speaker 2: the guy who actually owned the house and was asking
Speaker 2: him where Terry Melcher went, and all the guy would
Speaker 2: tell him was Malibu, So he knew it wasn't Melcher
Speaker 2: in that house.
Speaker 1: In y gotcha, all right? So they eventually leave Dennis
Speaker 1: Wilson's house. Dennis Wilson's like, you guys are great, and
Speaker 1: all the ladies are nice. The acid is decent, but
Speaker 1: it's time for you to go. So they leave in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight still and he they go to Spawn Ranch,
Speaker 1: which you mentioned earlier. SPA h N. And this was
Speaker 1: a it was kind of weird that they ended up
Speaker 1: living here, but it was. It was out in kind
Speaker 1: of the outskirts of LA There are lots of ranches
Speaker 1: like the Disney Ranch or the Universal Ranch where they
Speaker 1: shoot a lot of stuff and they have old sets
Speaker 1: that are still there. Whether it's mash or Planet of
Speaker 1: the aa Apes or just an old West set, and
Speaker 1: Spawn Ranch was one of these that had closed down,
Speaker 1: and it was an old West set and they actually
Speaker 1: it's a state park now, but they did have permission
Speaker 1: to live there. They didn't just squat there. They sort
Speaker 1: of had a little agreement to do a little maintenance
Speaker 1: work and they were allowed to stay. So some of
Speaker 1: them are there, some of them are at places like
Speaker 1: at a camp in Death Valley, and then just scattered
Speaker 1: all over La as far as Manson family members and
Speaker 1: just random houses and apartments. But the main place that
Speaker 1: Manson in the Inner Circle was at Spawn Ranch, and
Speaker 1: they would go on what they called creepy crawls, which
Speaker 1: were these little crime spreees would like you said, they
Speaker 1: would go out and burgle cars or rob people and
Speaker 1: just to kind of keep the money and the drugs flowing.
Speaker 2: Right, And so Spawn Ranch was almost like a little
Speaker 2: more legit. They were in much closer contact with other
Speaker 2: people out in Death Valley. At the Barker Ranch that
Speaker 2: was far more secluded, way out in the desert, way
Speaker 2: more disconnected from society, and that was the place where
Speaker 2: they expected to wait out helter skelter while the everybody
Speaker 2: else in the country killed one another.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: So you've got this whole weirdo family. They're criminals, they're
Speaker 2: engaged in prostitution. There's violence, you know, there's physical violence.
Speaker 2: But ultimately they kind of resemble hippies here or there,
Speaker 2: super counterculture. But things turned dark, and they turned dark
Speaker 2: after this seminal thing that happened to the rest of
Speaker 2: the world but really really spoke to Charles Manson in particular,
Speaker 2: and that was the November twenty second, nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 2: release of the Beatles White album.
Speaker 1: All Right, you know what, this is going to be
Speaker 1: a two parter. It's pretty clear. So let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and end this one on a cliffhanger featuring the Beatles.
Speaker 2: Right, does that sound good? Yeah? It does.
Speaker 1: Pick back up part two with a wide album.
Speaker 2: Let's do it?
Speaker 1: All right? All right?
Speaker 2: Well, in the meantime, while you guys are chewing over
Speaker 2: what Chuck just said, you can send us an email
Speaker 2: the Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and as always,
Speaker 2: joined us at our home on the web, Stuff Youshould
Speaker 2: Know dot Com. Stuff You Should Know is a production
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