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Speaker 4: It vis.
Speaker 5: Nineteen seventy five. Context of tape recording is the interview
Speaker 5: prior to forty two forty four findings of the defendant
Speaker 5: Lynette from in the case of the United States versus
Speaker 5: Lynette from criminal number S seven five four five one.
Speaker 5: Place of interview the Sacramento County Jail. Persons present during
Speaker 5: interview Doctor Richmond, the defendant Lynette From Assistant Federal Defender
Speaker 5: Robert Holly, Federal Defenders Investigator David Kraft. All parties are
Speaker 5: now present. The time is three p forty one pm.
Speaker 6: Competency right now to understand what's going on and to
Speaker 6: be able to work with counsel. And so, if it's
Speaker 6: all right with you, I like to receive the session examination.
Speaker 6: I'll be giving a report to the judge and a
Speaker 6: report to mister Walker of the Public Defender's Office, and
Speaker 6: a copy to you. The crew order specifies it. Each
Speaker 6: of you gets a copedy. So if it's okay, well
Speaker 6: get started, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Do you buy Lynette?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, what's your date of birth?
Speaker 8: Lynette on twenty second, forty eight, what's your means?
Speaker 9: Right now?
Speaker 3: Who do you charge with?
Speaker 9: Lynett attend to the assassination with the president of the Lasts.
Speaker 10: In nineteen seventy five. Lynette from was widely known for
Speaker 10: being a prominent member of Charles Manson's cult or quote
Speaker 10: unquote family. Lynette, who was known by her Manson nickname Squeaky,
Speaker 10: hadn't actually been present at either the murders at Sharon
Speaker 10: Tate's home or at the LaBianca house, but she had
Speaker 10: very openly supported Manson during his murder trial. That meant
Speaker 10: that the public linked her to the homicidal rampage of
Speaker 10: August nineteen sixty nine. The murders actually started on July
Speaker 10: twenty seventh that year with the stabbing murder of Gary Hinman.
Speaker 10: Manson believed Hinman owed him money over a drug deal
Speaker 10: gone wrong, so he had one of his followers, Bobby Boussolet,
Speaker 10: kill Hinman. Bossolet wrote political piggies on the wall in
Speaker 10: Hindman's blood. He also drew a pop print. The idea
Speaker 10: was to put suspicion on the Black Panthers, but it
Speaker 10: didn't work. Twelve days later, on August eighth, newspapers reported
Speaker 10: that Bosolet had been arrested for Hinman's murder. A cop
Speaker 10: found him sleeping in Hindman's station wagon, which had been
Speaker 10: reported stolen. In the rear of the vehicle, the cops
Speaker 10: found a bloodstained knife. The night that Bossolet's arrests was reported,
Speaker 10: members of the Manson family brutally murdered the pregnant actress
Speaker 10: Sharon Tate and four others at a house on Los Angeles'
Speaker 10: Clo Drive, in.
Speaker 11: A scene described by one investigator as reminiscent of a
Speaker 11: weird religious rite. Five persons, including actress Sharon Tate, were
Speaker 11: found dead at the home of Miss Tate and her husband,
Speaker 11: screen director Roman Polanski.
Speaker 10: The following night, they killed a businessman named Leno LaBianca
Speaker 10: and his wife Rosemary in their home. History is written
Speaker 10: by the victors, and in nineteen seventy five, the victor
Speaker 10: was Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi. In the trial
Speaker 10: and in his mega best selling book Helter Skelter, Bugliosi
Speaker 10: laid out his theory of the crime. Manson told his
Speaker 10: followers that our race war was imminent, and that the
Speaker 10: Beatles song Helter Skelter was about this war.
Speaker 12: Manson told his followers that this would be a blood
Speaker 12: bath in the streets of every American city. Manson foresaw
Speaker 12: that the black man would win this war, but later
Speaker 12: on he said, the black man, because of an experience,
Speaker 12: would simply not be able to handle the reins of power.
Speaker 12: So you'd have to look around at those white people
Speaker 12: who had survived, who had escaped from Helter Skelter. In
Speaker 12: other words, turn all the reigns of power to Charles
Speaker 12: Manson and his family.
Speaker 10: These were all things that Manson had in fact talked about,
Speaker 10: and Bugliosi tied them to the murders, making Manton both
Speaker 10: the architect of the crimes and also providing a motive
Speaker 10: for what seemed to be absolutely senseless acts. But were
Speaker 10: they the reason behind the Tate LaBianca murderers or the
Speaker 10: main reason Manton was not at the scene of any
Speaker 10: of the murders. This thinking goes, so Bugliosi had to
Speaker 10: find a way to make him culpable. The Helter Skelter
Speaker 10: theory did that, but the truth might be simpler. The
Speaker 10: Tate and LaBianca murders were committed while Bobby Bousolet was
Speaker 10: in custody. Were they an attempt to take the heat
Speaker 10: off Bosolet to reinforce the clues left by Bassolet at
Speaker 10: Gary Hinman's house that this was the work of the
Speaker 10: Black Panthers. Author Jarret Kobek.
Speaker 4: What seems to be the hardening consensus about the real
Speaker 4: motivation of the subsequent murders was this idea of doing
Speaker 4: copycat murders that then would make it seem like black
Speaker 4: radicals had done Bousolet's murder.
Speaker 10: But that's not what people were thinking in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 10: and maybe the specifics of why these killings were committed
Speaker 10: don't matter much. After Manson and the others were arrested,
Speaker 10: many of his followers slipped away. They hadn't signed up
Speaker 10: for murder. Lynette, though, remained loyal despite the death toll.
Speaker 10: That's what people knew about her in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 10: In retrospect, the Tate Loabianca murders became one of the
Speaker 10: symbols of the mythic end of the sixties, but the cultural, political,
Speaker 10: and social movements of the nineteen sixties did not end
Speaker 10: in nineteen sixty nine. As we saw last episode, they
Speaker 10: continued well into the seventies. In fact, two assassination attempts
Speaker 10: by radicalized women in September nineteen seventy five might be
Speaker 10: a more apt symbolic end. Two failed attempts on Gerald Ford,
Speaker 10: a man so representative of the Middle American establishment that
Speaker 10: he was chosen to unite and lead the wounded country
Speaker 10: in the wake of Watergate. I'm Toby Ball.
Speaker 13: And I'm Mary Catherine Garrison, and this is rip current.
Speaker 7: It just escalated.
Speaker 9: It was in and it was crazy.
Speaker 7: And then he heard about the Bottomless Pit, and so
Speaker 7: we're looking through the bottomless pit because he thinks this
Speaker 7: war's gonna happen if we need a place the.
Speaker 13: High Episode two. Don't want Out and You're Free. The
Speaker 13: Tate LaBianca murders will always define the Manson family, and
Speaker 13: rightfully so. But for Lynette, from those events brought an
Speaker 13: end to a period in which she'd experience a radical
Speaker 13: alternative to her troubled but traditional upbringing. She koremed from
Speaker 13: classic Middle America to a tiny traveling commune led by
Speaker 13: an ex conguru who came to define the furthest extreme
Speaker 13: of all that Middle America felt was wrong with the
Speaker 13: radical young. The meeting that changed the trajectory of Lynette's
Speaker 13: life occurred, in her telling, on a night in nineteen
Speaker 13: sixty seven, beneath a gazebo on Venice Beach, California. She was,
Speaker 13: in her words, alone and at a standstill. She just
Speaker 13: dropped out of college, was alienated from her father, and
Speaker 13: her future seemed uncertain. Seemingly out of nowhere, Charles Manson appeared.
Speaker 13: Over the course of several years, Lynette wrote a memoir
Speaker 13: of her time with Manson from nineteen sixty seven to
Speaker 13: nineteen sixty nine, titled Reflection spelled with an X. In
Speaker 13: the book, she presents a utopian view of Manson and
Speaker 13: his followers. She is a very unreliable narrator. Still when
Speaker 13: it comes to understanding her actions in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 13: her perceptions of the experience are probably more important than
Speaker 13: what actually happened during her time with Manson. About that
Speaker 13: meeting at the gazebo, she writes names Charlie, he said,
Speaker 13: looking directly in my eyes. In San Francisco, they called
Speaker 13: me the gardener. He appeared both big and small. I
Speaker 13: was enchanted yet flustered and mentally hiding. And then he
Speaker 13: wasn't there at all until I sought him back in
Speaker 13: earnest and he was seated on the wall. I gathered
Speaker 13: the pieces of my mind. Manson seemed to know that
Speaker 13: her father had kicked her out of the house, and
Speaker 13: Lynette responded by telling him about her life that she
Speaker 13: wanted something different. He told her the way out of
Speaker 13: that room is not through the door. She was confused,
Speaker 13: and when he explained further, Lynette noticed his West Virginia twang.
Speaker 13: Don't want out and you're free. The want ties you up,
Speaker 13: be where you are. You've got to start someplace. This
Speaker 13: advice reminded her of a poem that she'd written during
Speaker 13: a period of deep depression. She'd been staring at her
Speaker 13: red and gray checked pajamas and imagined herself trapped on
Speaker 13: a gray square again from her memoir, around and around
Speaker 13: its edges. I'd paced like a caged animal, collapsing in
Speaker 13: one corner to gnaw the bare bones of despair. But
Speaker 13: when I'd looked up within this fantasy, my square had
Speaker 13: become a diamond. Changing my perspective had changed my world.
Speaker 13: Manson told her that he had just spent seven and
Speaker 13: a half years in prison, and that he had experienced
Speaker 13: hurt and anger until he found peace with himself. He
Speaker 13: was now traveling to see his mother. Lynette could come
Speaker 13: if she wanted. This is from the psychiatric interview conducted
Speaker 13: with Lynette to determine her competency to defend herself in
Speaker 13: the trial for her failed attempt on Ford. Here she
Speaker 13: talks about her relationship with her parents as she was
Speaker 13: growing up.
Speaker 3: And if you were growing up, how would you generally
Speaker 3: categorize your relationship with them? Smooth? Locky times? Oh, let's
Speaker 3: say up until your teen years. In your preteen years,
Speaker 3: we had a good relationship with both mommy and dad.
Speaker 3: Were you closer to one late the other? No.
Speaker 13: The mixture of the unusual and the conventional that was
Speaker 13: a theme of Lynette's upbringing can be seen in her
Speaker 13: participation in a dance troupe called the Westchester Lariats. Lynette wrote,
Speaker 13: I was ten when I took the first of four
Speaker 13: cross country tours with a troop and a chartered bus
Speaker 13: and without my parents. Nearly every night in a different city,
Speaker 13: we performed a two hour song and dance show in
Speaker 13: theaters and auditoriums, military bases, and outdoor arenas. Her mother
Speaker 13: accompanied her on the first tour after that, though, starting
Speaker 13: when Lynette was eleven, her parents stayed behind. But while
Speaker 13: this seems unusual, the content of the tour was actually
Speaker 13: extremely square.
Speaker 9: This evening, we bring you a musical Tiller to Spring.
Speaker 13: Led by a professor from the University of Southern California,
Speaker 13: the group performed all kinds of dances, square dancing, polka, rumba, samba, Viennese, waltz,
Speaker 13: can can, Charleston, and so on, with.
Speaker 14: Songs like Spring Is Here, April Love, and Springtime in
Speaker 14: the Rockies.
Speaker 13: The Lariats even appeared on The Lawrence Welk Show, which
Speaker 13: is about as square as it gets.
Speaker 14: Now here's your host, Lawrence, Well war'd your girls.
Speaker 13: Here's Lynette again talking about her parents during her psychological interview.
Speaker 3: Could you just very briefly characteria his business, warm, cold, friendly, distant, wild, quiet, passy.
Speaker 3: You know how about Dad?
Speaker 9: I would describe them those passes.
Speaker 3: Mom and Dad both relatively quiet people.
Speaker 9: That's right, Well, they're very afraid.
Speaker 3: Do you know what he was afraid of?
Speaker 9: People have difference to it. Some some people were afraid
Speaker 9: of water. Some people were afraid of other people. They're
Speaker 9: afraid their own image, getting in class the sun. He
Speaker 9: had various fears on that good.
Speaker 13: Lynette's characterization of her father as harboring various fears probably
Speaker 13: stems from the complete dissolution of their relationship in her teens.
Speaker 13: Typical for the times, he was a dominant member of
Speaker 13: the family, his feelings and decisions determined the family's actions.
Speaker 13: Lynette traced the origin of their estrangement to her decision
Speaker 13: at age thirteen to go to the beach with an
Speaker 13: older cousin instead of her family. Apparently this offended her
Speaker 13: father's notion of Lynette's obligations to the family, and his
Speaker 13: reaction was harsh. In reflection, she writes, from that day
Speaker 13: he forbade my presence in any room of the house
Speaker 13: he occupied, and instructed my mother to refuse me an
Speaker 13: allowance or travel money. He permitted her to set a
Speaker 13: plate for me in the kitchen, but thenceforth ignored any
Speaker 13: other arrangements, effectively blocking me out of his life. Reads
Speaker 13: as a wild overreaction to what seemed like a relatively
Speaker 13: minor transgression, and it must have been traumatic for Lynette,
Speaker 13: who was in her teens, her grades fell, she dropped
Speaker 13: out of the Lariettes and began to drink. But despite
Speaker 13: their failed relationship, Lynette is clear that her father stopped
Speaker 13: short of any kind of violence.
Speaker 15: I never said that she was physically abused by her father.
Speaker 15: I laid out the possibility that could have happened. I mean,
Speaker 15: I said people thought that, but she was very insistent
Speaker 15: that that never happened. There was no physical abuse. There
Speaker 15: was emotional abuse, but nothing physical, she said. I'm Jess
Speaker 15: Braven and I wrote a book called Squeaky, The Life
Speaker 15: and Times of Lynette Alice Frommy or from as it's
Speaker 15: more commonly pronounced.
Speaker 13: Even with the rocky home life, Lynette managed to make
Speaker 13: a positive impression in her high school.
Speaker 15: She was considered very talented in high school. She certainly
Speaker 15: was not isolated. She had many connections. She was in
Speaker 15: a play with Phil Hartman, who went on to be
Speaker 15: on Saturday Night Live. They were friends. He gave me
Speaker 15: an interview about her and had very fond memories of
Speaker 15: her being very talented and funny. Her English teachers and
Speaker 15: everyone they imagined really great things for her.
Speaker 3: When you were in high school, what kind of grades
Speaker 3: did you get?
Speaker 9: During the former parer heart schooling years did great. The
Speaker 9: latter part of high school I became dis interesting.
Speaker 3: Didn't you have any particular run ins with teacher's principles?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 3: How did you get along with the other kids?
Speaker 9: Fine?
Speaker 13: In nineteen sixty six, the from family moved from Redondo
Speaker 13: Beach Inland to Torrance, California. Lynette had been living at
Speaker 13: different people's houses, escaping from the damage relationship with her
Speaker 13: father and the dysfunction in her home and Torrance, though
Speaker 13: she returned to live with her family before finally leaving
Speaker 13: for good. She took classes at Alchemino College, but was
Speaker 13: disappointed in the experience. From her psychiatric interview.
Speaker 9: I was also just outside the schools. I wasn't roning
Speaker 9: into the person has to be wilpen to learn.
Speaker 3: Ye that it was a time for you to do that.
Speaker 3: The paper or newsweek or somebody haven't. I don't remember
Speaker 3: where it was. You've been written about in many different publications.
Speaker 6: They said something about your having a handsome kind of
Speaker 6: a major clash when you were sixteen or something and
Speaker 6: getting fooded.
Speaker 5: Out of the hole.
Speaker 9: I know they like them times like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what did happen? What were the circumstances of your
Speaker 3: leaving home.
Speaker 9: How adore you?
Speaker 6: And when I left, I was at Okay and you
Speaker 6: were leaving because somebody said get out, we don't want
Speaker 6: you around, or something like that.
Speaker 14: Oh, my father and I had a discussion and we
Speaker 14: didn't agree.
Speaker 9: It was about something, probably very minor. I don't even
Speaker 9: remember the super.
Speaker 13: In Reflections, Lynette says that she and her father clash
Speaker 13: over something minor, in her words, a word or definition. Then,
Speaker 13: she writes, suddenly enraged, he pointed to the door and yelled,
Speaker 13: you get out of this house and never come back.
Speaker 13: I cried, stuffing a big purse full of books and
Speaker 13: makeup and miscellaneous junk. I called my college boyfriend to
Speaker 13: pick me up, but he said he was too drunk
Speaker 13: to drive and suggested I hitchhike. She walked to the
Speaker 13: nearest freeway on ramp and thumb a ride on the
Speaker 13: other end of that ride. Charles Manson After the break, like.
Speaker 14: Most young people during the late sixties, we did a
Speaker 14: lot of traveling around.
Speaker 9: We did a lot of meeting people. We will not
Speaker 9: she evenistic or solely autumn to be out only for pleasure.
Speaker 16: We were concerned about what was going on what people
Speaker 16: were thinking.
Speaker 9: I don't know how people were being treated.
Speaker 13: After meeting Charles Manson at gazebo in Venice Beach, Lynette
Speaker 13: joined him in a small group of followers as they
Speaker 13: drove around California and the Southwest. These were the early
Speaker 13: days of the family, before they settled at two ranches
Speaker 13: near Los Angeles, and before Manson's philosophy grew stranger and stranger.
Speaker 14: And we found dozens of young people out in the streets.
Speaker 14: Some of them were taking care of themselves blind, others
Speaker 14: of them were being abused by Henny. Number of people
Speaker 14: being found out that they could just swoop into San
Speaker 14: Francisco and picked people up. And it was my feeling too.
Speaker 9: Off of these people are place to stay.
Speaker 13: Manson proved to be very adept at recruiting followers among
Speaker 13: this population.
Speaker 8: At its very basic level, it was a form of trafficking.
Speaker 7: And I didn't realize it then, of course, but I'm
Speaker 7: sure he saw me that I was a valuable commodity.
Speaker 8: I'm Deborah Herman, author and indie publisher, and I was
Speaker 8: fortunate enough to collaborate with Diane Lake, formerly known as Snake,
Speaker 8: who was the youngest member of the Manson family cult.
Speaker 7: I'm Diane Lake, former member of the family, and I'm
Speaker 7: now going to be seventy.
Speaker 8: Which I can't believe. When we first connected with one
Speaker 8: another to do this book, Diane had kept her secret
Speaker 8: for how many years? Forty seven? Pretty much nobody, her
Speaker 8: children didn't even know. Manson did things so much on
Speaker 8: instinct of how to survive based on a lifetime of
Speaker 8: being in penalage.
Speaker 7: Today and this was a whole new I mean, he
Speaker 7: came out of jail. He'd had lessons on how to
Speaker 7: be a pimp, a successful pimp, because he'd been out
Speaker 7: before and tried it and failed. He'd gotten more lessons.
Speaker 7: But he came out in the middle of the lommer
Speaker 7: e the summer of love, you know, where it's like
Speaker 7: free love and free secks and free drives. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 7: I'm sure that he was just like.
Speaker 13: Wow, think about this. Manson started his second prison stent
Speaker 13: in nineteen sixty Dwight D. Eisenhower was still president, the
Speaker 13: civil rights movement had not yet begun. In earnest there
Speaker 13: was only Middle America. He was released in May of
Speaker 13: nineteen sixty seven, straight into the strangeness of the psychedelic sixties.
Speaker 13: The number one song was the Beatles Penny Lane. Timothy
Speaker 13: Leary had just participated in a public debate with a
Speaker 13: professor from MIT about the use of LSD. Manson traveled
Speaker 13: up to San Francisco at the peak of hate Ashbury.
Speaker 13: The radical Young hadn't existed when he'd entered prison in
Speaker 13: nineteen sixty. Now he was in their midst. It might
Speaker 13: as well have been a different planet.
Speaker 17: Imagine the hate Ashbury District as a lion peering through
Speaker 17: a tambourine with intense, dark golden eyes.
Speaker 13: This is from a KPIX television documentary on the Hate
Speaker 13: which aired on January first, nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 17: With a cross hanging down from the tambourine and mushrooms
Speaker 17: and roses growing below it, and the lion peering through
Speaker 17: the tambourine with intense dark golden eyes. And think of
Speaker 17: it as being an image disappearing, peering, coming back, retracting itself,
Speaker 17: manifesting itself, being beautiful, and it is all perfect. This
Speaker 17: is really it, and it is all perfect. This is
Speaker 17: really it, and it.
Speaker 8: Is all perfect.
Speaker 13: Manson was known as the Gardener in San Francisco because
Speaker 13: the skills that he had used as a pimp proved
Speaker 13: effective with the vulnerable population of young people, mostly women
Speaker 13: in the hate, who he could bring under his influence.
Speaker 13: He considered this tending to the Flower children.
Speaker 14: Young people would come to our house and say can
Speaker 14: I stay here?
Speaker 9: And would say you could stay here, but you know,
Speaker 9: you're going to have to be quiet.
Speaker 16: You're going to have to respect the place and you
Speaker 16: and if you just want attention from your parents, and
Speaker 16: if you're going to take drugs and you can't be
Speaker 16: here as we don't do that.
Speaker 13: This is clearly Lynette twisting the truth to the court
Speaker 13: appointed psychiatrist, trying to make herself look as law abiding
Speaker 13: as possible. The Manson family definitely took drugs. Manson used
Speaker 13: LSD in particular to control his followers. In nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 13: the Manson family more or less settled in the undeveloped
Speaker 13: areas outside Los Angeles.
Speaker 7: We came back, lived different places in Tipanga Canyon. Then
Speaker 7: we found the Spawn Ranch and it was like an
Speaker 7: old movie set up in the hills of Los Angeles
Speaker 7: in the San Fernando Valley. George was the blind owner
Speaker 7: and he loved the place. But George didn't really know
Speaker 7: everything that was going on, and Squeaky was in charge
Speaker 7: of kind of taking care of George and making him happy.
Speaker 13: George Spawn, the owner of Spawn Ranch, gave Lynette the
Speaker 13: nickname Squeaky because of the pitch of her voice. As
Speaker 13: Diane said, Lynette had the job of keeping Spawn content.
Speaker 13: This reportedly included keeping him sexually satisfied. This utilitarian relationship
Speaker 13: with a much older man would be echoed years later
Speaker 13: in Sacramento. In her psychiatric interview and in reflections, Lynette
Speaker 13: made her best case for the Manson family lifestyle. And
Speaker 13: there must have been attractions in order for people to
Speaker 13: join and then stay.
Speaker 7: Yes, bad things happened there, but I don't The overriding
Speaker 7: thing was the beauty of the whole area.
Speaker 13: The arrangement in a general sense was not unusual for
Speaker 13: the time.
Speaker 8: That's funny, how.
Speaker 7: She where did you come back?
Speaker 5: Then?
Speaker 7: There were lots of communes, there were lots of guru varieties,
Speaker 7: you know, and he kind of pawned himself off as
Speaker 7: this wise philosopher, you know, through his music, rather than
Speaker 7: your city.
Speaker 13: Here's Lynette again from her psychiatric interview. Remember that she
Speaker 13: is trying to put herself in the best possible light.
Speaker 13: She may not be completely candid.
Speaker 3: Here we've got a branch, kind of a foster home lovel.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 14: We weren't telling these people anything, these young people, we
Speaker 14: just offered them our land.
Speaker 9: I believe it's healthy for anyone to live in the words.
Speaker 7: I don't.
Speaker 9: I wouldn't send a kid to the to the streets.
Speaker 9: So we had this land available and let them live
Speaker 9: on it.
Speaker 14: We did not have sex orgies and drug orgies, or
Speaker 14: cult meetings, or hanging Christ in effigy or contending Charlie
Speaker 14: was Christ, or anything of that nature.
Speaker 9: This all comes out of Papa's imagination. We were actually
Speaker 9: very healthy.
Speaker 14: We found out that by giving to each other and
Speaker 14: supporting each other and building each other up, and realizing
Speaker 14: that there is a joy in giving, there was a
Speaker 14: purpose in being able to serve each other, we found
Speaker 14: great satisfaction.
Speaker 8: They were this group of hippies, and they loved each other,
Speaker 8: and they were living from They were manifesting everything they needed.
Speaker 8: They would go dumpster diving for food or people would
Speaker 8: give them things. And Charlie was always saying that he
Speaker 8: was what did he call it? He was postulating for things.
Speaker 8: And then somehow they would happen until my horse is
Speaker 8: down down.
Speaker 13: But beneath the idyllic surface there were darker currents now.
Speaker 8: Of course, he may have been scheming, and he may
Speaker 8: have been bargaining, or people need to remember he had
Speaker 8: learned to be a pimp, so he may have actually
Speaker 8: been trading some of the women for some of the
Speaker 8: things that they all needed.
Speaker 13: This is soft peddling, a practice that has been documented
Speaker 13: where at least some of the girls were expected to
Speaker 13: have sex with visitors to the ranch whom Manson wanted
Speaker 13: to curry favor with. Venereal disease was reportedly rampant on
Speaker 13: the ranch.
Speaker 8: You know, you've got several sides to what was happening,
Speaker 8: but the side he was presenting to the women was
Speaker 8: one of a guru and a musician and their lover.
Speaker 7: And he just had this uncanny ability to read people
Speaker 7: and then use it, you know, for.
Speaker 9: His survival or his forward movement.
Speaker 13: Manson, like so many male gurus, structured the group around
Speaker 13: his sexual relations with his female followers.
Speaker 7: We were like sisters, like you know, the sister wives,
Speaker 7: because we were all having sex with him and sometimes
Speaker 7: with each other with him. It was like a family.
Speaker 7: I mean, you've got to feed twenty people every night.
Speaker 7: We did the cook the cleaning, learned Charlie songs and
Speaker 7: sang them. We played music, and we smoked marijuana, and
Speaker 7: we got high on LSD, you know, probably once a week.
Speaker 7: It's not like anybody really had a job. So we
Speaker 7: had to learn how to take care of ourselves, finding
Speaker 7: housing that was free and panhandled for money. I mean
Speaker 7: that it was basically survival. So however you could eke
Speaker 7: out an existence. That's what we did. And then we
Speaker 7: you know, we moved to the spawn ranch, found that
Speaker 7: and ended up moving to the back house.
Speaker 13: The change in a single year from Lynette's conventional life
Speaker 13: to this new existence at the impoverished margins of society
Speaker 13: must have been disorienting, but she embraced it.
Speaker 7: So those girls they continued, I think to be part
Speaker 7: of the inner circle, especially Lynette. I always felt like
Speaker 7: Lynette was kind of his right hand woman.
Speaker 13: Lynette's education was especially helpful to Manson.
Speaker 7: She was smart, and then I don't think he read well.
Speaker 7: I think he might have even been on the spectrum
Speaker 7: of autism because he had incredible auditory recall, but he
Speaker 7: could not and he hadn't really been to school. He'd
Speaker 7: always been you know, the bad boy at school and
Speaker 7: reform school in prison, and so Lynette did all any
Speaker 7: reading to him. I think that he and Lynette were
Speaker 7: closer than any of the girls, and she was.
Speaker 8: Also very, very dedicated to him.
Speaker 13: And as often happens, the relative isolation and lack of
Speaker 13: restraints led Manson to increasingly unhinged theories.
Speaker 7: But he got kind of frenzied. And I remember one
Speaker 7: time at the ranch on the saloon, he'd gotten all
Speaker 7: these like forest service maps and he taped them all together,
Speaker 7: and he was looking for a pathway to the desert
Speaker 7: because we had got introduced to Barker Ranch through one
Speaker 7: of the girls that joined the family.
Speaker 13: The Manson family lived at two ranches, starting in nineteen
Speaker 13: sixty eight and continuing after the nineteen sixty nine murders
Speaker 13: into the early seventies. In addition to Spawn Ranch and
Speaker 13: Laurel Canyon, they also lived at the far more remote
Speaker 13: Barker Ranch in Death Valley.
Speaker 7: He was looking for a path from there up to
Speaker 7: Barker Ranch, or you know that part of the Death
Speaker 7: Valley on these you know, topographical forestry maps, and he
Speaker 7: just there was this frenzy to get money and supplies gas.
Speaker 7: He talked about digging a huge trench and then hijacking
Speaker 7: a gas tanker and burying it so that we would
Speaker 7: have like, you know, lots of gas.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so that he could be independent.
Speaker 7: But it just it just escalated.
Speaker 9: It was in and it was crazy.
Speaker 7: And then he heard about the bottomless pit, and so
Speaker 7: we're looking for the bottomless pit because he thinks this
Speaker 7: war is going to happen and we need a place
Speaker 7: to hide, and you know that the winner's not going
Speaker 7: to be able to rule.
Speaker 13: The entrance to this bottomless pit was supposed to be
Speaker 13: somewhere in the desert. In his book Helter Skelter, Vincent
Speaker 13: Bugliosi quotes Manson as saying about this pit.
Speaker 2: Every tuned in tribe of people that's ever lived has
Speaker 2: escaped the destruction of their race by going underground, literally,
Speaker 2: And they're all living in a golden city where there's
Speaker 2: a river that runs through it of milk and honey,
Speaker 2: and a tree that bears twelve kinds of fruit.
Speaker 13: You get the picture. All of this that Diane just
Speaker 13: talked about. The money, the gas, the trench, the pit
Speaker 13: were connected to Manson's theory about the helter Skelter race war.
Speaker 13: He believed that the war would be won by blacks,
Speaker 13: but that they would for some reason look to Manson
Speaker 13: to lead them.
Speaker 7: And so then they're going to come and ask the family,
Speaker 7: you know, to I guess, repopulate the world and rule.
Speaker 7: It just made it makes me crazy to even say it,
Speaker 7: but that's what I heard from him.
Speaker 13: And then there were the strange and unnerving, creepy Crawley missions.
Speaker 7: I never was asked to do that, but it was like,
Speaker 7: you know, they'd dressed in black, and they'd go and
Speaker 7: sneak into people's houses and move the furniture and eat
Speaker 7: some food. And as far as I know, they weren't
Speaker 7: stealing anything. But I don't know.
Speaker 13: In retrospect, this may have been conditioning Manson getting his
Speaker 13: followers used to committing weird and transgressive acts at his whim,
Speaker 13: a prelude to the murders that would follow.
Speaker 7: He'd always been talking about the Black White race war,
Speaker 7: kind of like you know, apocalyptic moment in time that
Speaker 7: he'd been hearing about in the jail, and then when
Speaker 7: the Beatles White Album came out, that's when it got
Speaker 7: coined as Helter Skelter, he really thought the Beatles were
Speaker 7: sending him a message about Helter Skelter.
Speaker 10: Helter Skelter is a Beatles song written by Paul McCartney.
Speaker 10: Mostly nonsense lyrics, rockets, instrumentation and screamed vocals.
Speaker 3: All is coming down in the past, but don't want
Speaker 3: to break you.
Speaker 10: The phrase helter skelter means chaos, but also a tall
Speaker 10: spiral slide found at English fairgrounds.
Speaker 12: Tell Me, tell Me, tell me the answers it maybe
Speaker 12: be in love, but you make no dances.
Speaker 3: You goward Aileen to kill with skills.
Speaker 10: District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi's theory of the murders wasn't constructed
Speaker 10: of whole cloth. Charlie preached that the song Helter Skelter
Speaker 10: was a coded message about his race war prophecy. The
Speaker 10: violence of the music pointed to something as well. To
Speaker 10: people looking for signs the Bliss of nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 10: and Penny Lane had been supplanted by the Disorder of
Speaker 10: nineteen sixty eight. Helter Skelter his followers felt that Charlie
Speaker 10: believed it, and maybe he did. The song has become
Speaker 10: associated with Manson largely because of Bugliosi's book of the
Speaker 10: same name in the subsequent movie. In October, two months
Speaker 10: after the Tate LaBianca murders, the arrests came. First. Charlie
Speaker 10: was picked up for leading an auto theft ring. He
Speaker 10: was found hiding in a cabinet beneath the bathroom sink.
Speaker 10: He was kept incarcerated on the new murder charges and
Speaker 10: was never again outside the penal system. His absence left
Speaker 10: a void in the Manson family. Author Jess Braven, you.
Speaker 15: Know, the Manson family didn't have bylaws. You know, it
Speaker 15: was not a formally organized institution. And when Manson, who
Speaker 15: was complete paramount, absolute leader of the group, was removed
Speaker 15: by being arrested, there was no succession plan. Lynette essentially
Speaker 15: emerged as the you know, recognized leader of the group
Speaker 15: for a few reasons, that Charlie trusted her, that she
Speaker 15: was known as someone who kept things running during what
Speaker 15: would pass for more normal times for that commune, and
Speaker 15: then that the news media recognized her or put her
Speaker 15: on TV or put her in the newspapers because she
Speaker 15: was fairly facile at dealing with the press.
Speaker 10: Here, for instance, is Lynette being interviewed by NBC news.
Speaker 9: Good person, a very good person.
Speaker 12: Was he out there all the time?
Speaker 14: I don't even know you know who took off over
Speaker 14: now that.
Speaker 11: He was anybody stealing anything out there?
Speaker 14: Let's see everyone in a ball and a daughter. Do
Speaker 14: you know all we want to do is do.
Speaker 10: And again? Talking with kse cr Sacramento's NBC station, what about.
Speaker 8: People running around naked out there?
Speaker 14: Well, I took up my clothes whenever I gas Champ.
Speaker 11: It was hot.
Speaker 10: But with Manson's arrest and the exodus of many of
Speaker 10: his followers, things changed for those who.
Speaker 15: Remained without Manson there, You know what is it? It
Speaker 15: becomes a sort of cult surrounding the idea of Manson
Speaker 15: more than Manson himself.
Speaker 10: And Lynette was the most prominent of those that remained.
Speaker 10: This new reality would lead her to a new phase
Speaker 10: of her life, one marked by her continued devotion to
Speaker 10: Manson and by violence. Next time on Rip.
Speaker 1: Current Rip Current was created and written by Toby Ball
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Speaker 17: And it is a perfect. This is really it and
Speaker 17: it is all perfect. This is really it and it
Speaker 17: is all perfect. This is really it and it is
Speaker 17: all perfect. This is really it and it is all perfect.
Speaker 17: This is really it and it is all perfect. This
Speaker 17: is really it and it is all perfect. This is
Speaker 17: really it and it is all perfect. This is really it.