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