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Speaker 3: In February of twenty twenty three, I spoke with Diane Lake,
Speaker 3: who joined the Charles Manson Family cult when she was fourteen,
Speaker 3: and author Deborah Herman. The two collaborated on the book
Speaker 3: Member of the Family, My Story of Charles Manson, Life
Speaker 3: Inside his Cult and the Darkness that Ended the Sixties,
Speaker 3: about Diane's experience with the Manson family. We talked about
Speaker 3: Diane's time with the Manson family and Lynette From's role
Speaker 3: in the group.
Speaker 4: I'm Debora Herman. I'm an author and an indie publisher.
Speaker 4: My specialty has become memoir, especially true crime memoir, and
Speaker 4: I was fortunate enough to collaborate with Diane Lake, formerly
Speaker 4: known as Snake, who was the youngest member of the
Speaker 4: Manson Family cult. I Do Want to Save up Front.
Speaker 4: Diane was fourteen when she joined the cult, did not
Speaker 4: participate in the crimes, but everyone confessed to her, so
Speaker 4: she became the unwitting confessor as she's stuck in the
Speaker 4: desert with them and eventually testified against them.
Speaker 2: I'm Diane Lake, former member of the family. I'm now
Speaker 2: going to be seventy.
Speaker 4: Which I can't believe. We started this journey what six
Speaker 4: years ago? Yeah, when we first connected with one another
Speaker 4: to do this book. And it was after Diane had
Speaker 4: kept her secret for many years?
Speaker 2: How many years? Forty seven? Pretty much nobody her children
Speaker 2: didn't even know.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting. How did you manage to maintain that?
Speaker 2: I just didn't talk about it. I told a couple
Speaker 2: of pastors that I had, and I told a couple
Speaker 2: of close friends, but it didn't always go well, and
Speaker 2: so I eventually just didn't say anything. I just didn't
Speaker 2: talk about it. I didn't want to be associated with it.
Speaker 4: People have a very visceral reaction about just the name Manson.
Speaker 4: People don't realize what the times were like, and so
Speaker 4: they're looking at the circumstances of Diane's early life and
Speaker 4: how she wound up with Manson through the lens of
Speaker 4: the second decade of the two thousands. The nineteen sixties,
Speaker 4: especially mid to late sixties, were a time of tremendous
Speaker 4: change culturally. We had so many different movements going on
Speaker 4: that were either peaceful they ultimately many of them became violent.
Speaker 2: Later.
Speaker 4: We had the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the
Speaker 4: protests against the war, and we also had the psychedelic movement,
Speaker 4: where people were experimenting with alternative ways of consciousness. It's
Speaker 4: not the kind of recreational drugs we see today for
Speaker 4: the most part. In Diane'll talk more about this, it
Speaker 4: was like a sacrament. They were looking to expand their
Speaker 4: consciousness and see the world in an alternative way. I
Speaker 4: really think people need to look at the times, and
Speaker 4: Diane was a witness.
Speaker 3: With that being said, how did the initial meeting with
Speaker 3: Charles Manson occur?
Speaker 2: That's a yeah, that multifaceted question or answer. The quick
Speaker 2: story is my my parents had got turned on and
Speaker 2: they tuned in and my dad kind of bought into
Speaker 2: Timothy Leary's you know philosophy and so we which was
Speaker 2: that that the world was going to be a better
Speaker 2: place if everybody took acid base exactly. He was an intellectual,
Speaker 2: always been into Alan Ginsberg and Buckminster Fuller and you
Speaker 2: know all these people. But he was also an artist,
Speaker 2: and so he got into the psychedelic when he got
Speaker 2: turned on, he started doing psychedelic day glow, you know,
Speaker 2: neon posters and and he got involved with the Oracle
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: It was an underground newspaper for the psychedelic movement, and
Speaker 4: they were also a commune, and they wound up.
Speaker 2: Moving into their home. They lost their lease. I think
Speaker 2: they only did like nine or ten issues. And my
Speaker 2: dad was one of the art directors and he provided
Speaker 2: some of the posters that were free. So they lost
Speaker 2: their lease and a lot of them moved in with
Speaker 2: us in Santa Monica, and my dad and one of
Speaker 2: the other guys decided that they were going to drop out,
Speaker 2: and so they bought bread trucks converted them to campers.
Speaker 2: We sold all our stuff, we moved into the camper,
Speaker 2: went on down to will Rogers Beach in California. The
Speaker 2: police moved us on after two weeks. Went to Zuma
Speaker 2: Hippie Lifestyle. Met a couple with a young child and
Speaker 2: they invited us to come and stay with them in
Speaker 2: his mother's house while she was on vacation and on
Speaker 2: an acid trip, I heard God say it's time for
Speaker 2: me to leave home. So I talked to my parents.
Speaker 2: They gave me a note, because I'm fourteen that they
Speaker 2: gave me a note, you know, giving me permission to
Speaker 2: live with this other couple and to be on my
Speaker 2: basically emancipated. They continued on, went to Grand Canyon or something,
Speaker 2: and I lived with this couple for a while.
Speaker 4: Diane was really part of what was happening in the sixties.
Speaker 4: From there she went to hate Ashbury, which was, you know,
Speaker 4: one of the ground zero areas for the Flower Child movement.
Speaker 3: Hate Ashbury was a neighborhood in San Francisco that, in
Speaker 3: the mid to late sixties was a kind of geographical
Speaker 3: and symbolic center for the counterculture before.
Speaker 4: It became violent. That's where people were, you know, make
Speaker 4: love not war. They were giving flowers to the soldiers.
Speaker 4: There were free clinics. It really was the heart of
Speaker 4: the sixties. It was until it wasn't. And so Diane
Speaker 4: went to look for her parents, who had moved on
Speaker 4: and where were they now. They were at the Hog Farm,
Speaker 4: which another iconic commune in the foothills of Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: I wasn't really welcome there.
Speaker 2: The leader of that commune, Hugh Romney, who later became
Speaker 2: Wavy Gravy at Woodstock, is when he really came into prominence. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it was BB King gave him that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Gray Wavy Gravy.
Speaker 3: Hugh Romney aka Wavy Gravy was a counterculture figure known
Speaker 3: for his prominent role at Woodstock and for founding the
Speaker 3: Hog Farm Collective, a commune that included musicians and artists.
Speaker 2: But I wasn't really welcome there because they had a
Speaker 2: conversation with me that I was jailbait because I was
Speaker 2: a sexually active underage female and they had young guys
Speaker 2: coming up, and the police were you know, the neighbors
Speaker 2: weren't happy. They posted guards, the police would come up
Speaker 2: on occasion. Yeah, So Hugh Romney was basically protecting his commune. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was not happy with the possibility that they were
Speaker 2: going to get heat and visibility because they were doing
Speaker 2: things that were probably against the law. A few days later,
Speaker 2: I think this other couple came up and asked me
Speaker 2: if I'd like to live with them. So I went
Speaker 2: and lived with them, and they lived in another part
Speaker 2: of Los Angeles, and they said, oh, we're going to
Speaker 2: go to a party. You know, we want you to
Speaker 2: meet this groovy guy and his girls. Okay, so fine.
Speaker 2: So I went with them and it was Charlie. So
Speaker 2: I walked up the stairs of this of the house
Speaker 2: into Penga Canyon called the Spiral Staircase House, and I'd
Speaker 2: actually lived there with that couple previously, so I knew
Speaker 2: the house. And when I walked in, everybody knew me.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I was just flabbergasted. It's like, Charlie,
Speaker 2: Diane's here. It is like what? And he got up
Speaker 2: from the circle they were in a circle, he was
Speaker 2: playing the guitar, they were singing, and offered me some
Speaker 2: of his root beer and said, oh, so this is
Speaker 2: our Diane. And I'm just like, I'm just what. How
Speaker 2: did they know me? I hadn't. I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 2: know him anyway, so uh, typical love bomb. Yeah. They
Speaker 2: just showered me and I felt so at home, but
Speaker 2: I didn't totally move in at that point. It wasn't
Speaker 2: until they were talking about taking the bus and going
Speaker 2: to New Mexico and Arizona. You know, I had to
Speaker 2: make a decision, and I really wasn't welcome at the
Speaker 2: hog Farm and I had to sleep in the attic,
Speaker 2: and so I had I just felt so loved and
Speaker 2: I felt like I belonged there. So I went with
Speaker 2: them and the rest is history. So you know, we moved.
Speaker 2: We obviously, we came back from Arizona and New Mexico.
Speaker 2: I was just like, I don't know what he was doing.
Speaker 2: Had he knew people there. I think that he'd been
Speaker 2: in jail with But we came back, lived different places
Speaker 2: in Topanga Canyon. Then we found the Spawn Ranch and
Speaker 2: you know, George was the blind owner and it was
Speaker 2: like an old movie set up in the hills of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley, and he, you know,
Speaker 2: loved the place and we George didn't really know everything
Speaker 2: that was going on. Squeaky was in charge of kind
Speaker 2: of taking care of George and making him happy, and
Speaker 2: the rest of we mucked out stalls and we rented
Speaker 2: horses because at that point, you know, it was an
Speaker 2: old movie set. It still could be used as that,
Speaker 2: but it was now basically being used to rent horses.
Speaker 2: Everything was at that time, I'm idyllic.
Speaker 4: They were this group of hippies and they loved each
Speaker 4: other and they were living from they were manifesting.
Speaker 2: Everything they needed.
Speaker 4: They would go dumpster diving for food or people would
Speaker 4: give them things. And Charlie was always saying that he was.
Speaker 2: What did he call it, He was manifesting it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he called postulating.
Speaker 4: He was postulating for things and then somehow they would happen. Now,
Speaker 4: of course he may have been scheming, and he may
Speaker 4: have been bargaining. People need to remember he had learned
Speaker 4: to be a pimp, so he may have actually been
Speaker 4: trading some of the women for some of the things
Speaker 4: that they all needed. You know, you've got several sides
Speaker 4: to what was happening. But the side he was presenting
Speaker 4: to the women was one of a guru and a
Speaker 4: musician and their lover.
Speaker 2: And he just had this uncanny a bit to read
Speaker 2: people and then use it, you know, for his survival
Speaker 2: or his you know, forward movement. It's called cognitive empathy.
Speaker 2: It could be from the bomb to the airline pilot.
Speaker 4: It's cognitive empathy that is very common in psychopaths, where
Speaker 4: they have the ability to mimic empathy but they really
Speaker 4: don't have it. It's very It's a very interesting perspective
Speaker 4: because he could make some he could make someone feel
Speaker 4: that they were the only person in the world, but
Speaker 4: yet he was still thinking what he needed.
Speaker 3: What do you think he saw in you that he
Speaker 3: was able to use to build a relationship with you?
Speaker 2: I guess well as the reason that he knew me
Speaker 2: and I didn't know him, the reason he knew me,
Speaker 2: it was because he had gone to the hog farm,
Speaker 2: called him Blackbust Charlie back then, and he'd gone to
Speaker 2: the hog farm and before Diane got there, before parents
Speaker 2: were there. Yeah, before I knew him. Before I went
Speaker 2: to the hog farm and met my parents and they
Speaker 2: all went on a road trip out to the Mojave
Speaker 2: Desert together and my mom, I was in San Francisco
Speaker 2: at that point. My mom gave him my picture because
Speaker 2: they were going to be going to San Francisco, Charlie
Speaker 2: and the girls. She doesn't exactly remember what it was,
Speaker 2: but like, either you know, find my daughter and bring
Speaker 2: her back, or you know, here's a picture my daughter,
Speaker 2: say hi. My mom thought he and the girls were great,
Speaker 2: you know. And back then there were lots of communes,
Speaker 2: there were lots of guru varieties. You know, and he
Speaker 2: kind of pawned himself off as this wise philosopher through
Speaker 2: his music. He played the guitar, the songs were fun.
Speaker 2: The girls of door him. I adored the girls. I
Speaker 2: got along great with you know, most of the girls
Speaker 2: in the early days, and it was like any other commune.
Speaker 2: But they accepted me, you know, and I felt love
Speaker 2: by them. And so that's why I because I didn't
Speaker 2: really know where to go, you know, my parents had
Speaker 2: chosen this commune that I wasn't welcome and I didn't
Speaker 2: feel comfortable in. So where am I going to go?
Speaker 2: I'm sure he saw me that I was. I was
Speaker 2: a valuable commodity that he could he could use for
Speaker 2: favors or whatever, you know, attracting other men to the
Speaker 2: to the group. I'm not, you know, at its very
Speaker 2: basic level.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a form of trafficking at its very
Speaker 4: basic level.
Speaker 2: But I don't even know if he thought of it
Speaker 2: that way at the time. No, I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: think he did, because maybe I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know he he worked. He did things so
Speaker 4: much on instinct of how to survive, based on a
Speaker 4: lifetime of being in penal and and.
Speaker 2: This was a whole new I mean, he came out
Speaker 2: of jail. He'd had lessons on how to be a pimp,
Speaker 2: a successful pimp, because he'd been out before and tried
Speaker 2: it and failed, and so you know, he'd gotten more lessons,
Speaker 2: and so he came out in the middle of them, the.
Speaker 5: Summer of the Love, you know, where it's like free
Speaker 5: love and free sex and free drives. You know, I'm
Speaker 5: sure that he was just like wow. And so he
Speaker 5: morphed into head of the commune guru.
Speaker 2: And that's what he was. He was good at becoming
Speaker 2: whatever we needed, you know, whatever each person individually needed,
Speaker 2: whether it was a father figure, a lover, a husband,
Speaker 2: you know, an uncle or brother or whatever. He was
Speaker 2: really good at with you. He excused some violent behavior
Speaker 2: as saying you need the discipline, as being kind of
Speaker 2: a father figure who's going to show her the ropes.
Speaker 2: He used me as an example to discipline others, right,
Speaker 2: a couple of twos, they use beatings. Yeah, I was
Speaker 2: not beat on a regular basis, but there were a
Speaker 2: few moments when memorable moments he chose to, you know,
Speaker 2: beat me with the cord a chair leg once.
Speaker 3: And yeah, you said before like you got along with
Speaker 3: most of the other girls at the beginning. I assume
Speaker 3: you were the youngest of the group. So was it
Speaker 3: like having a whole bunch of older sisters or how
Speaker 3: did that all kind of go?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were like sisters. They were like older. We
Speaker 2: were like you know, the sister wives, you know, because
Speaker 2: we were all having sex with him and sometimes with
Speaker 2: each other with him. But it was, you know, it
Speaker 2: was like a family. I mean, we did the cooking,
Speaker 2: the cleaning, got ready, you know, had meals read, We
Speaker 2: played music, you know, sang learned Charlie songs and sang them. Basically,
Speaker 2: we had to learn how to take care of ourselves,
Speaker 2: you know, get food. It's not like anybody really had
Speaker 2: a job, so, you know, finding housing that was free
Speaker 2: and finding food. We went dumpster diving behind the grocery
Speaker 2: stores and panhandled for money. So however you could eke
Speaker 2: out an existence, That's what we did. And then we
Speaker 2: you know, we moved to the Spawn ranch. Found that
Speaker 2: and ended up moving to the back house of the ranch.
Speaker 2: More and more people were coming and going. Paul Watkins
Speaker 2: and then Text joined us, and Leslie Sandy those people
Speaker 2: came later when I came it was Susan Atkins, Mary Brunner,
Speaker 2: Squeaky Fron. There was another girl, Bailey. So anyway, he'd
Speaker 2: always been talking about a black white race war, kind
Speaker 2: of like apocalyptic moment in time that he'd been hearing
Speaker 2: about in the jail, and then when the Beatles White
Speaker 2: Album came out, that's when it got coined as Helter
Speaker 2: Skelter because he thought that he really thought the Beatles
Speaker 2: were sending him a message about helter skelter.
Speaker 3: Helter Skelter was the term that Manton used to describe
Speaker 3: his theory about what he saw as the upcoming race
Speaker 3: war in the US and the part that the Manson
Speaker 3: family would play in ruling the country in its aftermath.
Speaker 3: You can hear more about helter Skelter in episode two
Speaker 3: Don't Want Out and You're Free.
Speaker 2: But he got kind of frenzied, and I remember one
Speaker 2: time at the ranch on the saloon, he'd gotten all
Speaker 2: these Forest Service maps and he taped them all together,
Speaker 2: and he was looking for a pathway to the desert
Speaker 2: because we had got introduced to Barker Ranch through one
Speaker 2: of the girls that joined the family, and he was
Speaker 2: looking for a path from there up to Barker Ranch
Speaker 2: or that part of the Death Valley on these topographical
Speaker 2: forestry maps, and he just there was this frenzy to
Speaker 2: get money and supplies gas. He talked about digging a
Speaker 2: huge trench and then hijacking a gas tanker and burying
Speaker 2: it so that we would have lots of gas. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that he could be independent. But it just it
Speaker 2: just escalated. It was in and it was crazy. And
Speaker 2: then he heard about the Bottomless Pit and so we're
Speaker 2: looking for the Bottomless Pit because he thinks this war
Speaker 2: is going to happen and we need a place to hide,
Speaker 2: and you know that the Winter's not going to be
Speaker 2: able to rule, and so then they're going to come
Speaker 2: and ask the family, you know, to I guess repopulate
Speaker 2: the world and rule. It makes me c to even
Speaker 2: say it, but that's what I heard from him. So anyway,
Speaker 2: it just it just went from crazy to crazy. And
Speaker 2: then he was having the girls do these creepy crawley missions.
Speaker 2: I never was asked to do that, but it was like,
Speaker 2: you know, they'd dressed in black and they'd go and
Speaker 2: sneak into people's houses and move the furniture and eat
Speaker 2: some food and as far as I know, they weren't
Speaker 2: stealing anything, but I don't know, and it was all
Speaker 2: dry run or just a control thing. He wanted to
Speaker 2: see how much he could control them. And then a
Speaker 2: drug deal went bad with Gary Hinman, and Gary Hinman
Speaker 2: ended up getting killed and Bobby got caught in his car.
Speaker 3: Manson thought that Hinman had ripped him off in a
Speaker 3: drug deal in ordered Bobby Bosle to kill him. Bosle
Speaker 3: murdered Hinman and wrote political piggies and drew a pawprint
Speaker 3: in Himan's blood attempt to throw suspicion on the Black Panthers.
Speaker 3: The murders at Charon Tate's house on Cielo Drive occurred
Speaker 3: just hours after Bosola's arrests for Hinman's murder was reported
Speaker 3: in the news.
Speaker 2: I think really that the two murder nights were trying
Speaker 2: to be a cover up, a copycat and twofold. It's
Speaker 2: like Helter Skelter wasn't coming fast enough for Charlie, so
Speaker 2: he was going to start it. So I think that was,
Speaker 2: you know, that's what kind of triggered those two murderous nights.
Speaker 2: I was at the ranch and I got whisked off,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know what had happened. I got whisked
Speaker 2: off the next day to the gateway to the Death Valley,
Speaker 2: which we'd waited there before in Atlantia, and tex was
Speaker 2: there and I ended up getting picked up as a
Speaker 2: vagrant or runaway, you know, on three ninety five. I
Speaker 2: was in the local jail for twenty four hours and
Speaker 2: then they just determined that, you know, that I wasn't underage,
Speaker 2: which I was, but anyway, so they took me back
Speaker 2: back to Milanta, and Text was frantic and he had
Speaker 2: a newspaper in his hand about the murders, you know,
Speaker 2: these horrible Hollywood murders.
Speaker 3: She is talking here about the Tate and LaBianca murders.
Speaker 2: He slaps the paper and he says, I did this,
Speaker 2: Charlie told me to. I was just in shock from
Speaker 2: then on and stuck with them. Well, I didn't where
Speaker 2: could I go? You couldn't go anywhere.
Speaker 4: When we were researching the book together, after we were
Speaker 4: under contract, we took a trip together with my husband
Speaker 4: up into Death Valley to Barker Ranch, and in many
Speaker 4: ways it's exactly as it was. Some of the buildings
Speaker 4: have fun in, but there was enough there to basically
Speaker 4: support everything Diane had been telling us about what it
Speaker 4: was like to live there. There was even a remnant
Speaker 4: of decorating that Diane had done when she was up there.
Speaker 4: She had been up there by herself for a while
Speaker 4: and with just two other people and decorating with stones
Speaker 4: to make it look pretty, and it was all still there,
Speaker 4: but it is remote. Manson did not want them to
Speaker 4: be found. They were going to hide out in this
Speaker 4: remote place until everything was over, but that didn't happen
Speaker 4: that way.
Speaker 3: No, What was it like, just like on a day
Speaker 3: to day basis when you were at Spawn Ranch? What
Speaker 3: did you do personally?
Speaker 2: You know, I walked a lot in the hills. I
Speaker 2: did a lot of fasting on lemon and lemon juice
Speaker 2: and honey. Seemed like we always. I think somebody gave
Speaker 2: us like a five gallon ten of honey at some point, so,
Speaker 2: you know, and Charlie at one point, you know, he's, oh,
Speaker 2: you don't really need food, and you know there is
Speaker 2: no such thing as pain, you know, he always was
Speaker 2: playing these mind games. But I remember just enjoying nature.
Speaker 2: When I go buy Spawn Ranch a lot, or not
Speaker 2: necessarily the ranch itself, but that area the Santa Susana pass.
Speaker 2: I go there, you know, probably once a week, and
Speaker 2: I don't really have bad memories because that nature, the
Speaker 2: nature was the overriding thing. Yes, bad things happened there,
Speaker 2: but the overriding thing was the beauty of that whole area.
Speaker 2: At that time, your days were fairly routine, cleaning, making food,
Speaker 2: taking care of babies that you know, a couple of
Speaker 2: the ladies had babies, and so you know, we would
Speaker 2: take care of them. We took care of George, we
Speaker 2: took care of Charlie. We washed clothes in the river.
Speaker 2: You know. People said that we were, you know, like dirty.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that in some ways we were. I did
Speaker 2: end up with Impanago, but it was a horse rental
Speaker 2: place and flies. It's you know, you couldn't get away
Speaker 2: from it.
Speaker 4: But you guys, we were just living a life as
Speaker 4: a commune. You ate food, I mean you gathered it
Speaker 4: in kind of different ways than the typical.
Speaker 2: But you still had to provide, you know, I mean
Speaker 2: that it was basically survival. You've got to feed twenty
Speaker 2: people every night, and then you played music. We played music,
Speaker 2: and we smoked and smoked marijuana and we got high
Speaker 2: on LSD. You know, probably once a week, and we
Speaker 2: helped rent out the horses and mock the stalls, and
Speaker 2: there seems like there was always a lot to do that.
Speaker 2: And you listen to Charlie pontificate every night, didn't you?
Speaker 2: Pretty much? Yeah, I've had some philosophy in part.
Speaker 3: Was there like a hierarchy amongst the girls there or
Speaker 3: was it just basically everybody was sort of equal?
Speaker 2: At one point, you know, I felt like I was
Speaker 2: part of the inner circle, which was like Susan Lynette,
Speaker 2: Me and Mary Brunner. But then other girls came and
Speaker 2: I wasn't the most obedient. Apparently I wasn't the most
Speaker 2: obedient girl. And then when we went up to Barker
Speaker 2: Ranch and he'd left me up there with a couple
Speaker 2: of other people, and I felt abandoned. And Bobby Bosselet
Speaker 2: came up and he wanted some girls to help him
Speaker 2: panhandle money, and so I volunteered and we ended up
Speaker 2: going back to not Spawn Ranch now but Gresham Street,
Speaker 2: and Charlie was furious with me and he said, I'm
Speaker 2: taking you back to your parents, and he did find
Speaker 2: my parents, but I felt crazy there. I had too
Speaker 2: much Charlie indoctrination at that point. And so then he
Speaker 2: took me to Gary Hinman's and I stayed with Gary
Speaker 2: Hinman for a week, and then I went to the
Speaker 2: There was another commune now at the Spawn Ranch, and
Speaker 2: I went there, but eventually I got wound up back
Speaker 2: with Charlie.
Speaker 3: As mentioned earlier, Hinman was a Manson associate who was
Speaker 3: murdered by Bobby Bouselet.
Speaker 2: I was like a hangar honor at that point.
Speaker 4: Well, you have to remember too, if things were becoming
Speaker 4: more sinister and he was making plans, it wouldn't have
Speaker 4: been to his advantage to trust them to someone who
Speaker 4: was not completely under his control and who would have
Speaker 4: been a little bit of.
Speaker 2: A loose cannon. Yeah, so I would say not even
Speaker 2: by her choice. I would say that Lynette, and you
Speaker 2: know Susan Atkins and Patty Krenwinkle. Oh, that's right. Patty
Speaker 2: Kreenminkle was part of the group when I joined as well.
Speaker 2: Those girls they continued, I think to be his main
Speaker 2: especially Lynette. I always felt like Lynette was kind of
Speaker 2: his right hand woman.
Speaker 3: And why do you think that was?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. Well, she was smart, and then
Speaker 2: I don't think he read well. I think he might
Speaker 2: have even been on the spectrum of autism because he
Speaker 2: had an incredible auditory recall and he hadn't really been
Speaker 2: to school. He'd always been the bad boy at school
Speaker 2: and reform school in prison, and he so Lynette did
Speaker 2: all any reading to him, so they confided. I think
Speaker 2: that he and Lynette were closer than any of the girls,
Speaker 2: and she was also very, very dedicated to him. Oh,
Speaker 2: it still is, It still is.
Speaker 3: Did Sandy have an particular role? I know, have you
Speaker 3: read Jess Braven's book about Lynette? He feels, you know,
Speaker 3: in the book it sort of comes across that that,
Speaker 3: especially after the Manson days, that Sandra Good would sort
Speaker 3: of wind Lynette up, and that the periods in which
Speaker 3: they were separated, Lynette had a much sort of calmer existence,
Speaker 3: and then Sandra would show up again and things would
Speaker 3: sort of go off the rails.
Speaker 2: That would make sense. Well, and Lynette spent what thirty
Speaker 2: some years in prison for trying to shoot Gerald Ford.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's part of the podcast that I'm doing, is
Speaker 3: that that event. What do you think when you heard
Speaker 3: about that?
Speaker 2: It didn't make sense at all? Sandy lived. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Within five miles. I think of the prison, the two
Speaker 2: of them were pretty pretty close and very devoted. I
Speaker 2: think they were really working hard to change his image,
Speaker 2: you know, from this because they proclaimed as innocence forever.
Speaker 2: Then they got on this the kick about saving the
Speaker 2: environment and animals and all that, and I think that
Speaker 2: they were really trying to like change his image. After
Speaker 2: the trial, I was in Europe for almost three years
Speaker 2: and I wrote my mom like twenty some letters and
Speaker 2: I in those and she saved them and I've been
Speaker 2: able to read them, you know, within the last five years.
Speaker 2: And she I never mentioned I never referred to or
Speaker 2: mentioned being in the Madson family. So it was it
Speaker 2: was way in my rear view mire. I did not
Speaker 2: want to read anything about these people or know what
Speaker 2: was happening, other than you know, had come across the
Speaker 2: TV that so and so, you know, was up for
Speaker 2: parole and they'd been denied. But that shooting. I couldn't
Speaker 2: believe that that it's like what she tried to shoot somebody,
Speaker 2: the president. I mean, it's just crazy.
Speaker 3: The decision that you made to testify against Manson and
Speaker 3: other members of the family. What was that like?
Speaker 2: It was hard, I mean, I at that point I
Speaker 2: was seventeen and Jack Gardner, who had been the arresting
Speaker 2: officer up at Barker Ranch, he took me in as
Speaker 2: his foster child, and I lived with him and his
Speaker 2: family until I was eighteen, and he helped me through
Speaker 2: the trial. I thank God for him coming into my life,
Speaker 2: because it would have been really hard and dangerous because
Speaker 2: I didn't at that point, I didn't realize that the
Speaker 2: Manson family had gotten back together or stayed together, you know,
Speaker 2: during the trial and after the trial, other than the
Speaker 2: girls putting xes on their heads and crawling through the streets,
Speaker 2: and I didn't realize that the family had actually gotten
Speaker 2: back together at Spawn Ranch.
Speaker 4: And at the time, for about nine months, Diane was
Speaker 4: in a mental hospital, not only to deprogram her and
Speaker 4: to help the person who was running the program specialized
Speaker 4: in helping people who had been on LSD, but it
Speaker 4: was also for her safety. And what we do know
Speaker 4: is that some of the members of the Manson family
Speaker 4: tried to meet her while she was in the hospital.
Speaker 4: They were prevented, but it was really for her safety
Speaker 4: to be there. And I think you say in the
Speaker 4: book about your concern when you would have to face
Speaker 4: Manson in court.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I was very worried because for a while I
Speaker 2: heard his voice in my head, you know, telling me
Speaker 2: to flip the switch, flip the light switch on. I mean,
Speaker 2: just stupid stuff, but it was still like his voice,
Speaker 2: and so I was really worried that when I was
Speaker 2: going to testify against him that I would I would
Speaker 2: hear his voice and he'd tell me to do something weird.
Speaker 2: And I had lied at the grand jury, and so
Speaker 2: they threatened me with perjury and I met with attorneys
Speaker 2: and all that. In the end, no, I just want
Speaker 2: to tell the truth as I know it, and that's
Speaker 2: what I did. I just thought, and if I go
Speaker 2: to jail for that, you know, that just didn't make sense.
Speaker 2: I was really trusting that I was doing the right thing,
Speaker 2: that I was doing the godly thing.
Speaker 4: Diane was not only concerned about you know, repercussions and
Speaker 4: Manson and his control, but also feelings because at one
Speaker 4: point she loved this man, so you know, she wasn't
Speaker 4: sure whether seeing him in that environment was going to
Speaker 4: bring back those feelings.
Speaker 2: One of the very first questions that I was asked
Speaker 2: by the attorney was did I love Charles Manson, and
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I guess so, because I mean, were
Speaker 2: they asking me if I still loved him or that
Speaker 2: I had loved him? And I had loved him at
Speaker 2: one point, but I barely got the words out, and
Speaker 2: Charlie jumps in with, don't pin it all on, mister Manson.
Speaker 2: She loved everybody, and so it just made me realize
Speaker 2: that he was just a clown on the stage and
Speaker 2: that was a great relief. So I was able to
Speaker 2: answer the questions, you know, truthfully, and Jack was by
Speaker 2: my side, and they took me into the courtroom through
Speaker 2: the backways and so I didn't really have to pass
Speaker 2: by the girl.
Speaker 3: It's a lot for a sixteen or seventeen year old,
Speaker 3: much less anybody else.
Speaker 2: I didn't tell them how old I was for real,
Speaker 2: or my name until I was at Los Angeles Jail
Speaker 2: in front of the grand jury and the bailiff asked
Speaker 2: me my name and my birthday and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And it was the first time I felt safe enough.
Speaker 2: And that was like in December, and we were arrested
Speaker 2: in October, so i'd been, you know, in jail from
Speaker 2: October to sometime in December, in a cell with all
Speaker 2: the gools. They had us all together in the same
Speaker 2: cell in Inyo County. All the girls were in one
Speaker 2: cell and all the guys were in another. But anyway,
Speaker 2: so I told the bailiffs and I'm dying Lake, I'm sixteen,
Speaker 2: and I want my mommy, you know. Just that was
Speaker 2: the first time I had felt sane enough and safe
Speaker 2: enough because I'd been in jail for what three months,
Speaker 2: no drugs and good food, you know, and I'd been
Speaker 2: reading and so you know, it was good. They quickly
Speaker 2: sequestered me and got me out of the women's channel.
Speaker 3: So let me just ask you a quick follow up question.
Speaker 3: When you were talking about how some of the girls
Speaker 3: tried to meet you at the hospital, was squeaky from
Speaker 3: one of the people who was in that group or
Speaker 3: do you know for sure one way or the other.
Speaker 2: I don't know, or I don't remember who it was that.
Speaker 2: I don't think you ever knew. Yeah, I think it
Speaker 2: was just it was later that I found out that
Speaker 2: they did try and when I wasn't a foster in
Speaker 2: foster care anymore, and Jack helped me get into Glendale
Speaker 2: College and I was staying with a friend of my mom's.
Speaker 2: Some scruffy looking guys come to the door. We're looking
Speaker 2: for Diane Lake. And one of the guys at the
Speaker 2: house said, what do you wanter for?
Speaker 5: Get out?
Speaker 2: Get out of here. Don't ever come back and close
Speaker 2: the door. And he says, you're hot to get out
Speaker 2: of here. You know, you've got to get out of
Speaker 2: out of la And because I just it just never
Speaker 2: occurred to me that they would be looking for me
Speaker 2: and that they would be staying together and continuing as
Speaker 2: the so called Manson family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what do you think about this sort of continued interest?
Speaker 2: How could this little imp of a man right not
Speaker 2: commit the murders but convince or manipulate these girls, you
Speaker 2: know and texts which it just was shocking to me
Speaker 2: that they were even capable of doing that. I mean,
Speaker 2: how can you kill somebody without anger or passion or
Speaker 2: some really deep I don't know, I think that is
Speaker 2: that's the true mystery is like how could this? How
Speaker 2: could this have happened? I want to know myself. But
Speaker 2: it was part of the times. I really think that
Speaker 2: it was part of I mean LSD had a big
Speaker 2: thing to do with it. LSD and marijuana and just
Speaker 2: the summer of love and it's just like he was
Speaker 2: the antithesis of all of that. I mean, really, he
Speaker 2: killed the sixties the way that I knew them, the
Speaker 2: way my parents knew the sixties. I mean, people in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: they got the stores ran out of guns, that they
Speaker 2: guard dogs or you're unable to get a guard dog.
Speaker 2: I mean, it scared that a crap out of people.
Speaker 3: Thank you to author Deborah Herman and Diane Lake, the
Speaker 3: youngest member of the Manton Family cult. They co authored
Speaker 3: the book Member of the Family, My Story of Charles
Speaker 3: Manson life inside his cult and the Darkness that ended
Speaker 3: the Sixties. I'm Toby Ball. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 3: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 3: to your favorite show. For more information on rip Current,
Speaker 3: visit the show website at ripcurrentpod dot com.