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Charles Manson Fan Club
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Claire Watkins Wins Dylan Thomas Award
It has been a treat to follow Claire Vaye Watkins become a respected author who has been honored by her peers over the past year. In March of this year Claire won the $10,000 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award and the $20,000 Story Prize Award. Well, she has done it again! On November 7 Claire bested six others, in the eyes of the judges, to win the prestigious Dylan Thomas Prize and $48,000. Not bad for a girl from the desert whose father, Paul Watkins, was touted in the press as a major player in the "Manson Family".
Judges said she was an "exceptional" writer and described her collection Battleborn as "infectious".
The California-born 29-year-old was one of seven writers aged under 30 shortlisted for the prize.
The prize, based in Thomas's birthplace of Swansea, is one of the largest literary cash awards in the world.
Read the whole story- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-24855534
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Judges said she was an "exceptional" writer and described her collection Battleborn as "infectious".
The California-born 29-year-old was one of seven writers aged under 30 shortlisted for the prize.
The prize, based in Thomas's birthplace of Swansea, is one of the largest literary cash awards in the world.
Read the whole story- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-24855534
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Haunting Charles Manson Trailer
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A Slice of Charles Manson Cheese, Please!
Well, Charlie, that is something that just might happen, especially if that grilled cheese sammy was made with this cheese!
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See? Head, hands and feet...
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September 1975 President Ford Just Couldn't Catch A Break
We all know about the two well publicized assassination attempts on President Ford's life in September 1975. Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore made national headlines for months, then and in the intervening years. Did you know that there were two other assassination scares for Ford that month? I am not certain what prompted all of these attempted attacks on Ford, the Vietnam war had been declared over in April 1975.
Squeaky's arrest on September 5, 1975 kicked off the public's knowledge of the attempts. Fromme was duly tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. She was granted parole July 2008 but had to serve a little extra time for her 1987 prison escape. On August 14, 2009 she was released on parole.
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Coincidently there had been another assassination planned on the very same day as Squeaky's attempt. Gary Steven DeSure, 32, and Preston Michael Mayo, 24, were arrested Aug. 26, 1975 in Santa Barbara CA for stealing a television from a motel. The day after that arrest DeSure told investigating officers about the assassination plot. DeSure was an escaped patient from a Warm Springs MT mental hospital. He had been committed there due to threats made against the President during a court appearance for forgery and credit card theft the previous year.
DeSure and Mayo's plans were to place a bomb in the sewer system near where the President was to speak. When the bomb went off and every one was distracted Mayo would fire the kill shot at the President. On March 1, 1976 DeSure and Mayo were sentenced in federal court. DeSure was given a five year sentence and a recommendation of psychiatric help. Mayo was given a six year sentence to be served at the federal prison in Lompoc CA.
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On September 22, 1975 along came Sara Jane Moore, who in front of the St.Francis Hotel in San Francisco actually fired off a shot at President Ford. She, too, was duly tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Like Squeaky, Sara also chalked up one prison escape. Sara and another woman, Marlene Martino, escaped from Alderson Federal Prison the evening of February 5, 1979. They were captured while hitchhiking a few hours after the escape.
On December 31, 2007 Sara Jane Moore was released from prison on parole. She was 77 years old.
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Squeaky's arrest on September 5, 1975 kicked off the public's knowledge of the attempts. Fromme was duly tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. She was granted parole July 2008 but had to serve a little extra time for her 1987 prison escape. On August 14, 2009 she was released on parole.
Coincidently there had been another assassination planned on the very same day as Squeaky's attempt. Gary Steven DeSure, 32, and Preston Michael Mayo, 24, were arrested Aug. 26, 1975 in Santa Barbara CA for stealing a television from a motel. The day after that arrest DeSure told investigating officers about the assassination plot. DeSure was an escaped patient from a Warm Springs MT mental hospital. He had been committed there due to threats made against the President during a court appearance for forgery and credit card theft the previous year.
DeSure and Mayo's plans were to place a bomb in the sewer system near where the President was to speak. When the bomb went off and every one was distracted Mayo would fire the kill shot at the President. On March 1, 1976 DeSure and Mayo were sentenced in federal court. DeSure was given a five year sentence and a recommendation of psychiatric help. Mayo was given a six year sentence to be served at the federal prison in Lompoc CA.
On September 22, 1975 along came Sara Jane Moore, who in front of the St.Francis Hotel in San Francisco actually fired off a shot at President Ford. She, too, was duly tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Like Squeaky, Sara also chalked up one prison escape. Sara and another woman, Marlene Martino, escaped from Alderson Federal Prison the evening of February 5, 1979. They were captured while hitchhiking a few hours after the escape.
On December 31, 2007 Sara Jane Moore was released from prison on parole. She was 77 years old.
The assassination attempt of DeSure and Mayo did merit a couple of newspaper stories and it's probably not entirely foreign to the hard core Manson researchers. This next story, however, did not generate any newspaper stories that I could find. I was looking through declassified documents at the National Archives website when I found it.
This document says that the release of Charles Manson from prison was the purpose for the assassination of not only Ford but also Emperor Hirohito who, along with his wife, was visiting in the United States and scheduled to attend a state dinner with President and Mrs. Ford on October 2, 1975. The information was gathered by Canadian authorities on September 30, 1975 and disseminated to US authorities the next day.
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Michele Morgan
Michele Morgan, a French film actress, who was a leading lady for three decades, commissioned the house at 10050 Cielo Dr. We were introduced to Michele Morgan by AustinAnn in THIS POST.
During WWII. Upon the invasion of France in 1940 by the Germans, Morgan left for the United States and Hollywood where she was contracted to RKO Pictures. Her career there proved rather disappointing, apart from Joan of Paris opposite Paul Henreid in 1942, Higher and Higher opposite Frank Sinatra in 1943. She was tested and strongly considered for the female lead in Casablanca but RKO would not release her for the amount of money that Warner Bros. offered. Morgan did work for Warners in Passage to Marseille opposite Humphrey Bogart in 1944. Nothing major came her way.
Michele Morgan still lives and is 93 years of age. She has six grandchildren and ten great grand grandchildren.
George E. Smith's videos have been featured on this blog before. He has been a collector on Sharon Tate and Cielo Drive since 1972. He has also taken many photos of the Cielo Drive property since 1975.
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Marilyn Manson
Thanks to William Marshall for the find.
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Ella Jo Bailey
Ella Today
Ella 1969 (used with permission cielodrive.com)
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Life Magazine March 1987
A. The D.A. put the word "family" on it to make me a leader and bring me into the conspiracy. They've never really been my family or my followers. We were together in a dream, man.
Q. You stay in touch?
A. I know everything they're thinking. They won't think nothing in the next 20 years I don't know. I answer their letters before they write them. If you got all of those people, and you put them in this room, everything would be just like it was. We'd sit around and sing. The family circle can never be broken. We're still together. There's no taking us apart.
Q. How did this group get started?
A. I get out of the penitentiary - a man can understand this- and I haven't been with a broad in a long time. So I meet a broad on a street corner. She's real young. So I ask if she could stay with this other broad (Mary Brunner). So we meet another chick didn't have no place to stay. That was Squeaky (Fromme). Then we meet Patty (Krenwinkel)- and Patty's got a credit card! So we're just going to have a little vacation trip, so we get a bus. We're just tripping. And Susie (Atkins) wants to freeload, see? So I look up and I'm sitting on a beach with 12 girls. They're lighting my cigarettes, spoiling me, and actually it's a pretty nice little trip I've got going.
Q. Why did it go bad?
A. The troubles came when the guys came. Every guy that came had troubles. And everybody that comes in that circle, I gotta go though all their changes.
Q. The troubles weren't your fault?
A. I'm not saying I didn't influence- I did influence. But no more than I've been influenced. It's hard to explain 20 years of a running psychotic episode. It has no logic, no good, no evil; it all runs in insanity. You put 30 people in a circle, and you've got a vortex of everybody's thought and will, and it reflects off into one head, and that head goes off into madness. I was stuck in a psychotic episode.
Q. Are you psychotic?
A. I can go in and out of it.
Q. Do you ever heard from these people now, like Squeaky?
A. She's in the joint doing life.
Q. Do you write her?
A. Back and forth. She's me.
Q. Do you hear from Sandra Good, who was jailed for writing death threats to corporate executives?
A. Yeah. She got out.
Q. She's the one in Vermont?
A. She's your blue socks.
Q. How about Mary Brunner?
A. Mary Snitch.
Q. Is she in jail?
A. No, she snitched. When she had (my) baby, I held the baby up and I held a knife on it and I said, "if the cops come and say, 'Tell, or we'll kill this baby,' what are you going to do?" She said, "I won't tell. I won't tell."
Q. Is Susan Atkins, who boasted of the killings, still in jail?
A. If they let her out tomorrow, she's still going to be in jail. She's imprisoned herself. She's playing Jesus for parole. They say, "If you accept Jesus as your savior, we'll let you out." So she says, "O.K." I got nothing against Susie. I love her. But I wouldn't want her around me.
Q. Do you regret that those people are not free and happy today?
A. Don't you realize what those people have done for you people? What do you think would have happened if the Manson family hadn't did what they did? You seen the Vietnam war stop, didn't you?
Q. Because of what you did?
A. No. Because of what those kids did. You forgot? It was the peak of the revolution. (Singing) "You say you want a revolution...."
Q. Are you saying that the murders were a political act?
A. Why was people killed? There was $250,000 worth of gold coins laying by the dead body, by LaBianca. Why didn't they pick it up? You think we weren't in the peace movement?
Q. Are you at peace with yourself?
A. Sure. How do you think I've survived all this madness? By not having a mother and father.
Q. You think your early suffering absolved you from later deeds?
A. Yeah, yeah. Later deeds? I've done nothing I'm ashamed of. Nothing I couldn't face God with. I wouldn't kill a bug.
Q. But you'd kill a person?
A. I'd probably kill all of them if I could - is that what you've been waiting to hear? Hey, time and circumstance made me into this Manson guy. Satan. Society wanted to buy this evil, mass murderer-devil-fiend. I'm nobody. I'm the last hobo in line. Give me a bottle of wine and put me on a train.
Q. You said you live in darkness.
A. I do. It's away from the light. I don't fit in the world that you guys live in, so I live over here in the shadows of it.
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Sandy was in a Psychiatric Hospital in La Jolla
A lurker writes:
Way back, I read that Sandy spent time in in a Psychiatric Hospital in La Jolla when she was in High School. I think it was in that thing her sister wrote. I researched the possible places this could have been it during the 60's. This would have been the place. Scripps Hospital in La Jolla. I made a mental note to get a pic next time I drove by the place.
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Lower Topanga Slideshows
If you've ever been to the Snake Pit you'll recognize some of this...
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Significance of crime scene/morgue photos
What is the significance of posting crime scene/morgue photos of the Tate/LaBianca victims? Do you think it is disrespectful to post such photos on blogs, websites & forums, or is it necessary for people that continue to study these cases? Some people have asked "why study a case that was solved over 40 years ago?" Was it truly solved? Do we really know what happened? I started thinking about this in great detail, and came to the conclusion that these awful, morbid, sickening photos MUST exist for several reasons, and morbid curiosity is not one of them. If anything, the reason these photos are on the Internet for the world to see is so people don't forget the brutality of these murders. Also, matching up evidence seen in the crime scene photos with witness/perpetrator accounts can help researchers have a better understanding of the sequence of events. What do you think, dear readers? Should the crime scene/morgue photos be on the Internet, or should they be taken down? We'd love to hear your opinions on the matter!
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Origins of Manson's Devil's Hole Beliefs
An adherent of a variety of occult doctrines, Manson somehow believed that Devil's Hole, a deep, water-filled cavern on Death Valley's Nevada side, was the portal to an underground world where he and his followers could wait out the apocalypse, re-emerging as leaders of a purified world. But he was arrested before he could figure out how to get his band through several hundred feet of hot, salty water that had drowned two skin divers just a few years earlier.Manson may have learned of the underground world from the story of Tom Wilson, a Cahroc Indian who was a Death Valley guide in the 1920s. Wilson said that when he was a boy, his grandfather told him that he had found a tunnel that extended for miles beneath the valley. Walking its length, the man ended up in an underground chamber where a race of fair-skinned people dwelt.
Welcomed by these subterranean humanoids, Wilson's grandfather lived with them for a while. The people spoke a strange foreign language, wore clothes made of a leather-like substance, and illuminated their home with a pale greenish-yellow light of unknown origin.
The Indian eventually resurfaced and returned to his people, who were understandably skeptical about his adventure. But Tom Wilson believed that the old man hadn't lied, and he spent the rest of his life searching for the entry to this underground world, convinced until his death in 1968 that it actually existed somewhere underneath Death Valley.
At one point Wilson teamed up with a prospector named White, who claimed that he too had found strange underground dwellings in Death Valley. White had been exploring an abandoned mine in Wingate Pass when he fell into a hidden tunnel that led to a series of rooms.
The rooms were filled with leather-clad human mummies. Gold bars and other fabulous treasures were stacked in piles around them. There was a passageway leading beyond the rooms as well, lit by an eerie greenish-yellow light. But White dared not explore any further, fearful of what might lie beyond.
White visited the rooms three more times, once with his wife and once with another prospector. But he was unable to locate the cavern later when accompanied by Wilson and a group of archeologists, although they did find a curious dead-end tunnel into the solid rock. The area around Wingate Pass was eventually absorbed into the China Lake Naval Weapons Center, and is now closed to the public.
Taken from weirdus.com
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Why We Are Not Covering The Rolling Stone Article
Some have asked, "Why aren't you covering the Manson Rolling Stone Article"? The answer is simple: the media and social platforms are saturated with the story and there's nothing more to be gained by us regurgitating it here.
What's a way more interesting topic to be contemplated here is the implication the article gives us into social context of prisoner's rights in California. As one gay blogger wrote:
On another note, if Manson did exercise his right to marry in California should we all be letting out a sigh of relief and gratitude that there will never be any chance of more Little Charlies being born due to victims advocates like Doris and Patricia Tate who succeeded in their lobby to end conjugal visits for lifers in California?
So, you see, this is why we did not post a link to the Rolling Stone article; there are so many more interesting things to contemplate than the drivel of a confused young woman and her hero.
What's a way more interesting topic to be contemplated here is the implication the article gives us into social context of prisoner's rights in California. As one gay blogger wrote:
So..I cannot be legally married in 33 out of 50 States, but the mass murderer Charles Manson can legally marry some blushing little thing called STAR; while serving life in prison!!!??? Thank Almighty God that the Republican Party has worked so hard to preserve the sanctity of traditional marriage!!!
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| mansondirect.com |
So, you see, this is why we did not post a link to the Rolling Stone article; there are so many more interesting things to contemplate than the drivel of a confused young woman and her hero.
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LESLIE VAN HOUTEN, Political Prisoner
This article was sent to mansonblog.com by Jude Camillone, a freelance writer. We are grateful for his generous input. Camillone is a native of New Rochelle, NY. He attended Florida Atlantic University on a full academic scholarship. He graduated with full academic honors, BA in Communication (specialty Print Journalism) then an MA in Communication.
He was a newspaper journalist for South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Orlando Sentinel for total of 9 years. He is followed by Freelance Journalist for national magazines. His most recent articles are published in Palm Springs Life.
His views are his own and not necessarily shared by the authors of mansonblog.com
I know of a woman who, as an underage girl, ran away from home. She joined a cult led by an evil manipulative man. This man was twice her age. He brainwashed her with daily doses of LSD. This twisted, demented cult leader manipulated her, exploited her and eventually coerced her into “joining in” on the second of two nights of cult violence and mayhem. This girl at this time was 19. More than two years of brainwashing had its effect, sadly. Although this girl participated the very least of any of the older cultists who committed far more heinous mayhem, she received the same exact death sentence as the others.
She was tried and tried again in her early 20s, but has essentially been in jail for the past 40 years. Her name is Leslie Van Houten. She is nearly 65 years old. And although she has apologized a million times over, and has worked as a mentor to prisoners who were released decades ago – for committing far worse crimes – Leslie Van Houten remains incarcerated. For the past decade she has most definitely been what is only defined as a POLITICAL PRISONER of the State of California. And Leslie Van Houten must be paroled.
Leslie Van Houten cannot escape the name of the evil, sick cult leader she is sadly forever associated with. His name is Manson and I despise him. I must say this: Occasionally a stranger or a friend will write me or ask me, “Oh, you must be ‘into’ Manson then?”
This query makes my skin crawl whenever I hear an uninformed person ask such a question. These are my thoughts on that awful man: He was and IS still a crazed megalomaniacal dangerous manipulative pedophile who preyed on the most vulnerable of teens and in the worst possible ways. I write many things here about unfairness of our justice system, etc., but I have to blame that utter egomaniac. His awful name is the anchor, the albatross, the true “jailer” which Leslie must forever be associated.
Every single time that awful manson, that subhuman excuse for a person, spouts his gibberish for the world to hear, it keeps Leslie Van Houten behind bars for another year or so. I wonder, had that awful man simply perished in his sleep say, oh, two or three decades ago when he was 60 0r 50, perhaps LVH would today be free. It is unfair to Leslie that the Bearded Idiot continues to be given a forum. HE is keeping Leslie in jail. As much as anything or anyone else. Lest we forget, Leslie was a child, half the age of that awful Manson who essentially put her in jail, and put her in jail again. And again. Time and time again, he keeps her in jail. So NO, I am not “into” Manson. Any more than I would be “into” sending any of our daughters to go live with him on his sick twisted ranch. And that is the battle Leslie fights daily, and I am fighting on her behalf too, trying to explain to many people that we are not “into” Manson. I hate that man, and I wish he would have “gone away” many decades ago, before the Geraldo Riveras of the world made him a sick star. I hate Manson, because of what he did to this girl especially. he has made her suffer the most. and that is where I stand on that.
And now I shall reprint the comments of ANOTHER of Leslie van Houten’s other advocates and supporters, film director John Waters. I certainly agree with John’s words:
“I have a really good friend who was convicted of killing two innocent people when she was nineteen years old on a horrible night of 1969 cult madness. Her name is Leslie Van Houten and I think you would like her as much as I do. She was one of those notorious “Manson girls” who shaved their heads, carved X’s in their foreheads and laughed, joked, and sang their way through the courthouse straight to death row forty years ago. Leslie is hardly a “Manson girl” today.
Now 65 years old, she looks back from prison on her involvement in the La Bianca murders (the night after the Tate massacre) in utter horror, shame, and guilt and takes full responsibility for her part in the crimes. I think it’s time to parole her.
In 1985 I was doing some journalistic pieces for Rolling Stone and they asked me to interview Manson. I had little curiosity and was still much more interested in the followers who had come to their senses and were now definitely ex-followers. Leslie Van Houten always seemed the one that could have somehow ended up making movies with us instead of running with the killer dune-buggy crowd. She was pretty, out of her mind, rebellious, with fashion-daring, a good haircut…just like the girls in my movies. If Leslie had met me instead of Charlie, could she have gone to the Cannes Film Festival instead of the California Institute for Women? Actually, I think if Leslie hadn’t met either of us she might have ended up as a studio executive in the movie business in Los Angeles. A good one, too.
So I pleaded with Jann Wenner, the editor of Rolling Stone, to let me interview Leslie, “the only one who has a chance of ever getting out”, the one I could tell from press reports had broken from Manson’s control and was beginning to see that the apocalyptical scenario Manson had preached was complete bullshit.
In 1972, Leslie’s death sentence (and those of her co-defendants) had been abolished by the California State Supreme Court and like all death penalty prisoners at the time, her sentence had been changed to life in prison. Not life without parole. The two other female death-penalty cases at the time besides the three “Manson girls”, also murderesses with very serious cases, were paroled eight or nine years later with little fanfare or outrage.
In 1976, Leslie’s original conviction was thrown out due to “ineffectual counsel” (her original lawyer drowned in the middle of her trial and was replaced) and she was given a new trial in 1977. This time, she was all by herself as a defendant in the courtroom. Remorse had started to creep in soon after she was imprisoned away from Manson. Locked away forever, Leslie, Susan, and Patricia were of no further use to Charlie and he dropped them quickly. The outsider voices of reason from the prison social workers started to seep in and Leslie began to see the holes in Manson’s brainwashing. “When I’d be questioned,” she later told author Karlene Faith for her very insightful and intelligent but little known book The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten, “I’d go blank and become frustrated like when a machine jams and just sits there making noise. In my head nothing was functioning. I was trying to understand, breaking down stiff little slogans that had been drilled into me.” When two other “Manson girls”, Mary Brunner and Catherine Shaw, were sent to jail and placed with Leslie, Susan and Patricia, Leslie grew tired of listening to their Manson talk and confided to Patricia that “I’ve changed. I’m not into this.” “It took three years to understand” and five or six years of therapy to “take responsibility” for the terrible crime she had helped commit.
Leslie finally had a good lawyer for her second trial. Taking the witness stand truthfully for the first time, she tried to explain her state of mind through the Manson madness and his control techniques. And the jury listened, too. After about twenty-five days of deliberation there was a hung jury; seven voted for guilty of first-degree murder, and five for manslaughter due to her cult domination and uncertain mental health at the time of the crime.
Refusing to offer a plea bargain, the prosecutor took her to trial for a third time in 1978 and added a felony robbery motive (clothes, a wallet and a few coins had been taken from the La Bianca home), a crime that now couldn’t legally be excused by state of mind. But this time Leslie made bail and was released from prison. She found employment as a law clerk and lived in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles. She was free for six months and lived quietly, unnoticed by the press. When a few of her new neighbors found out who she really was, after they already thought they knew her, all were “supportive” and “protective” of her anonymity.
When Leslie’s third trial finally began, she came to court every day on her own. Long gone was the shaved head, and the X on her forehead was covered by bangs. No more trippy little riot-on-Sunset-Strip, satin miniskirt outfits either, like the ones she and her female co-defendants wore to the first trial. This time she was dressed tastefully and looked lovely, something that obviously didn’t sit well with Stephen Kay, the prosecutor who had inherited all the Manson-related cases from Vincent Bugliosi. “All dolled up”, Mr. Kay cracked to the press, giving Leslie one of her first, but definitely not last, opinionated fashion reviews. When she was finally convicted of first-degree murder at the end of the trial, life imprisonment suddenly became very real.
Rolling Stone gave me the go-ahead to pursue the Leslie Van Houten interview so, in 1985, seven years after her final conviction, I wrote to “The Friends of Leslie”, a now-disbanded, loose-knit support group made up of Leslie’s real family (Mom, Dad, brothers, sisters — all glad to have her back from Manson even if it was in prison) and her jail-house teachers and counselors who had seen how this teenage girl had been completely dominated by one of the most notorious madmen of our time.” (Excerpted from the book Role Models by John Waters.)
John Waters said it, and I will say it: It is time to FREE LESLIE VAN HOUTEN. And for the record, I utterly despise Manson. Leslie is NOT that evil man, who brainwashed her when she was a mere child. Free Leslie. She is nearly 65, and has been incarcerated for 45 years for a crime she committed as a child. Let her go and let her be free.
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Clyda Warren Ussery Dulaney
Sometimes, just sometimes all of this blogging stuff is worth it...
During October of 2012 we began a series of posts on the Witches of Mendocino chapter of the Manson tale, culminating with contacting and speaking with Johnny Usserythe not quite 8 year old son of Clyda Dulaney who woke up one morning in 1968 to find both his 24 year old mother, and his 64 year old grandmother, lying within a short proximity of each other, lifeless as a result of a horrific attack.
Several members of the Manson Family had been in the area around the time of the attacks. In fact, a few had been previously arrested nearby in the infamous "Witches of Mendocino" bust. The similarities between the savagery in the Ukiah case and that of Cielo/Waverly made some wonder if the fact that family members were so close to the Ukiah tragedy timing/geographically-wise, in combination with the eerily similar traits of the brutal slayings, was more than just coincidence.
As a result of researching that piece of history, we were able to make contact with Johnny and speak to him about what he remembered. Then this past weekend we were contacted by Ginger Launder, a childhood friend of Johnny's. The two hadn't seen or spoken to each other in almost 40 years. Ginger had in her family's possession pictures of Johnny's mother that he had not seen - ever. Well, long story short the two are now in touch and are talking about old times and about this cold case that needs attention, AND NOW the Ussery boys finally have some clear photos of their mother.
It's Miller time...
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During October of 2012 we began a series of posts on the Witches of Mendocino chapter of the Manson tale, culminating with contacting and speaking with Johnny Usserythe not quite 8 year old son of Clyda Dulaney who woke up one morning in 1968 to find both his 24 year old mother, and his 64 year old grandmother, lying within a short proximity of each other, lifeless as a result of a horrific attack.
Several members of the Manson Family had been in the area around the time of the attacks. In fact, a few had been previously arrested nearby in the infamous "Witches of Mendocino" bust. The similarities between the savagery in the Ukiah case and that of Cielo/Waverly made some wonder if the fact that family members were so close to the Ukiah tragedy timing/geographically-wise, in combination with the eerily similar traits of the brutal slayings, was more than just coincidence.
As a result of researching that piece of history, we were able to make contact with Johnny and speak to him about what he remembered. Then this past weekend we were contacted by Ginger Launder, a childhood friend of Johnny's. The two hadn't seen or spoken to each other in almost 40 years. Ginger had in her family's possession pictures of Johnny's mother that he had not seen - ever. Well, long story short the two are now in touch and are talking about old times and about this cold case that needs attention, AND NOW the Ussery boys finally have some clear photos of their mother.
It's Miller time...
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| Clyda and Johnny |
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The Enlightenment of Charles Manson
ByonMay 8, 2013inNews
I was listening to the clip Matt Staggs posted on here the other day of Alan Watts expounding on the Buddhist concept of “No Self” so I clicked on it in YouTube to see what else came up, and there I found this little clip of Charles Manson answering the question of “Who are you?”
After listening to Watts, Manson’s answer struck me as profound. “I am nobody”, was his answer, basically. It struck me that Manson is a Zen Master.
I had seen other Manson interviews. He completely dominates all his interviewers, running circles around them. Interviewers always come at Manson in a hostile way, seeking to pass judgement and not listen at all. Manson takes these as an opportunity for dharmic battle, and he destroys. He is a master. It seemed to me that Manson was answering all of the questions in little Koans, dropping gems of wisdom completely missed by his interviewer.
I particularly like the one with Geraldo Rivera. Rivera Seemed to think he was going to shame Manson and get him to cry tears of contrition and apologize to the American people or some ridiculous thing, or at least those are the wheels I saw turning in Rivera’s well -oiffed head. He didn’t have a chance: Manson completely owned him. No amount of creative editing in the world could give a contrary impression.
I clicked on some more links and discovered an interview of Manson being interviewed by Charlie Rose, one I hadn’t seen before. Not surprisingly my impression of Charlie Rose was that of a more dignified, serious journalist, but he gets dominated as well. Its interesting that these men both seem to want to set out to shame Manson. They come at him from the perspective of representing the establishment and all that is good. In that sense it’s not a normal interview in that they’re not asking probing questions to get Manson to open up and share about themselves.
I am struck by how confidently Manson, who appears to be just over 5 feet tall, walks into the room in comparison to the three enormous correctional officers who accompany him, all ow home appear to be slightly nervous to be on TV. Apparently he had just come out of solitary confinement and apologizes for being a little out of it. If Manson was out of sorts at the start of the interview, within 30 seconds he appears to be perfectly at ease and in complete control. It is Charlie Rose who appears stiff and awkward, and once the interview is underway Manson immediately starts dropping gems!
Rose immediately cuts him off, asking him to instead explain why he makes little origami scorpions. Rose seems to think most people would consider scorpions creepy and wants to keep the conversation focused on lurid spectacle, but Manson once again steers the conversation back again back to the spiritual dimension, talking about shamanism and the difference between what Manson calls “spiritualism” and organized religion.
Rose continues to attempt to paint a preconceived picture of Manson, who refuses to play along and answers in metaphors and analogies. Rose considers these as an attempt at obfuscation, in the process completely missing the profundity Manson is offering him. Rose asks Mansonabout his mother and father, feigning pity that Manson never knew his father. Manson asserts that he does know his own father, but that he considers his father to be every man (everyman?) and that his mother is the ice box, meaning the penitentiary. When Rose scoffs, Manson elaborates that the generation of men returning from WWII raised the generation of boys living in the penitentiary. Manson then recounts one of his earliest memories of visiting his mother in prison.
When Rose asks if he has any happy memories, Manson once again lays it for for him, Bodhisattva style:
Manson expounds on non-attachment, explaining that he was merely “pass(ing) through” the scene at Haight and Ashbury street. Rose asks why these young hippies were drawn to him, and Manson responds that he stands on his own two feet. He says that a the time he didn’t realize how rare that was and how weak most other people are. He relates the killings to a holy war, but one that he wanted no part of.
At one point in the interview he explains love as the ground of being and the role Manson plays as establishment scapegoat:
Rose is so invested in making him out to be a monster; that he “ordered the murders” and that he deserves life in prison. He is so invested in this that he misses absolutely everything Manson is saying. Rose seems to get that Manson is defending his innocence but catches not much else.
When asked if he will ever get out of prison, Manson ends the interview with:
I was listening to the clip Matt Staggs posted on here the other day of Alan Watts expounding on the Buddhist concept of “No Self” so I clicked on it in YouTube to see what else came up, and there I found this little clip of Charles Manson answering the question of “Who are you?”
After listening to Watts, Manson’s answer struck me as profound. “I am nobody”, was his answer, basically. It struck me that Manson is a Zen Master.
I had seen other Manson interviews. He completely dominates all his interviewers, running circles around them. Interviewers always come at Manson in a hostile way, seeking to pass judgement and not listen at all. Manson takes these as an opportunity for dharmic battle, and he destroys. He is a master. It seemed to me that Manson was answering all of the questions in little Koans, dropping gems of wisdom completely missed by his interviewer.
I particularly like the one with Geraldo Rivera. Rivera Seemed to think he was going to shame Manson and get him to cry tears of contrition and apologize to the American people or some ridiculous thing, or at least those are the wheels I saw turning in Rivera’s well -oiffed head. He didn’t have a chance: Manson completely owned him. No amount of creative editing in the world could give a contrary impression.
I clicked on some more links and discovered an interview of Manson being interviewed by Charlie Rose, one I hadn’t seen before. Not surprisingly my impression of Charlie Rose was that of a more dignified, serious journalist, but he gets dominated as well. Its interesting that these men both seem to want to set out to shame Manson. They come at him from the perspective of representing the establishment and all that is good. In that sense it’s not a normal interview in that they’re not asking probing questions to get Manson to open up and share about themselves.
I am struck by how confidently Manson, who appears to be just over 5 feet tall, walks into the room in comparison to the three enormous correctional officers who accompany him, all ow home appear to be slightly nervous to be on TV. Apparently he had just come out of solitary confinement and apologizes for being a little out of it. If Manson was out of sorts at the start of the interview, within 30 seconds he appears to be perfectly at ease and in complete control. It is Charlie Rose who appears stiff and awkward, and once the interview is underway Manson immediately starts dropping gems!
Rose: Do you have friends you can talk to?Rose seems to establish early on a pattern of steering the conversation continually from the interesting to the banal:
Manson: I am friend to everything I see, everything I know, everything I feel
Rose:“what about other inmates?”This statement is a theme that Manson revisits later in the interview. Rose asks him about his fan mail and then Manson opens up about “the Rainbow”: His explanation of what the spiritual aspect of the sixties was about and where it originated, using an analogy of a tree growing up from a seed underneath the ground and how a similar process can occur in the mind.
Manson:“I am brother in these hallways for 40 years. With no snitching on my jacket, no asking for nobody to protect me, and walking on my own two feet.”
Rose immediately cuts him off, asking him to instead explain why he makes little origami scorpions. Rose seems to think most people would consider scorpions creepy and wants to keep the conversation focused on lurid spectacle, but Manson once again steers the conversation back again back to the spiritual dimension, talking about shamanism and the difference between what Manson calls “spiritualism” and organized religion.
Rose continues to attempt to paint a preconceived picture of Manson, who refuses to play along and answers in metaphors and analogies. Rose considers these as an attempt at obfuscation, in the process completely missing the profundity Manson is offering him. Rose asks Mansonabout his mother and father, feigning pity that Manson never knew his father. Manson asserts that he does know his own father, but that he considers his father to be every man (everyman?) and that his mother is the ice box, meaning the penitentiary. When Rose scoffs, Manson elaborates that the generation of men returning from WWII raised the generation of boys living in the penitentiary. Manson then recounts one of his earliest memories of visiting his mother in prison.
When Rose asks if he has any happy memories, Manson once again lays it for for him, Bodhisattva style:
Manson: I…I don’t have that.
Rose: You don’t have that?”
Manson: I don’t have that yin and yang that you people do.
Rose: Is that ying yang?” (rose seems to take “ying yang” as a phrase connoting nonsense)
Manson: yeah, in other words, you can’t make me unhappy
Rose: Are there sad memories, though, growing up?
Manson: I don’t have all that. (smiling)
Rose: You do have it. You are an individual; You have an experience. You are one human being with experience.
Manson raises his eye brows back in forth quizzically but with good humor, amused at Rose’s attempt to put words in his mouth, responding:
Manson: When you leave go get a big rock and set it on the table.
Rose: Yeah?
Manson: I am that big rock on the table.This was a pretty straight-forward Zen object lesson. Was it completely lost on Rose?
Manson expounds on non-attachment, explaining that he was merely “pass(ing) through” the scene at Haight and Ashbury street. Rose asks why these young hippies were drawn to him, and Manson responds that he stands on his own two feet. He says that a the time he didn’t realize how rare that was and how weak most other people are. He relates the killings to a holy war, but one that he wanted no part of.
At one point in the interview he explains love as the ground of being and the role Manson plays as establishment scapegoat:
Manson: Everything is love, there’s nothing that isn’t love, even the confusion is love in one form or another, it’s misguided. Love is a word to supplement for God. I would rather use the word intelligence. If you’re going to use the word love, use the word intelligence because love is misunderstood in so many different ways and fashions.
Rose: Do you need to be loved?
Manson: Loved… I am loved, I am love
Rose: By whom? Are you loved
Manson: I am love
Rose: Are you loved?
Manson: All the way and around the world with it, didn’t you see it? Two hundred and fifteen times taking it in the fire with it man
Rose: Meaning what
Manson: Me? Meaning I’m taking up all the slack for you assholes. I’m carrying you around. Nixon. I still got you… Reagan, hey Ronny! … I’m intertwined in your very soul man.Rose, being firmly on the side of established authority(demiurge?), isn’t going to go along with Manson’s idea of himself as a scapegoat., instead continuing to paint a picture of Manson as psychopath/criminal/schizophrenic. He couches his words in the implication that others see him that way:
Rose:… and what do you say of those people who say ‘monster’?
Manson: What you see is what you get. Man, they have to live with it. I don’t. You have to live with your judgement. I live with mine. (Smiling)
Rose: You don’t think of yourself…
Manson: That is right. I don’t think of myself.Rose continues to paint the picture of how “most people” see Manson:
Manson: I don’t think you guys have seen me.
Rose: No? What don’t we understand?
Manson: You don’t understand yourselves.
Rose: No but what don’t we understand about you? Granted we don’t understand ourselves, but what don’t we understand about you?
Manson: Just what I said…I am inside of you man. I live inside of you. I am inside every one of you.They go back and forth for a while.
Rose is so invested in making him out to be a monster; that he “ordered the murders” and that he deserves life in prison. He is so invested in this that he misses absolutely everything Manson is saying. Rose seems to get that Manson is defending his innocence but catches not much else.
When asked if he will ever get out of prison, Manson ends the interview with:
Manson: Prison? I left prison in ’67. I got out of jail.
Rose: Yeah, but you are back.
Manson: Can’t you see that I am out, man? Can’t you see that I am free?”Somewhere along the line, Manson found liberation. Rose, captive to his own judgments, a man of the establishment, remains in prison.
Original Article HERE
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Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers!
There really is a place called Manson, WA. The school Thanksgiving Lunch:
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Was The Hawthorne Shootout a Copycat Action Too?
Contributed by Dooger
The Manson case has an enormous amount of parallels and interesting little happenings that have kept us talking about it for nearly 45 years. It seems that we all can find interesting little facts on the case that can lead us to an investigation "eureka!. " but usually these little things that we find are merely coincidences.
Charles Manson and his gang didn't always have the most original ideas. One can argue that his entire "Family" was merely an idea taken from Krishna Venta and the Fountain of the World. One can go even further and say that the entire Helter Skelter theory was stolen from Krishna Venta.
However, this interesting little tidbit that I found came when I was checking out dates on the case timeline. What struck me was when I later picked up the August 21, 1970 issue of Life Magazine that had a huge article on the Family titled "Just Waiting for Charlie."
Since I am fascinated with the Black Panthers, I also realized that article right before this one was the story of the Marin County Court House shootings. These shootings happened August 7, 1970 and were masterminded by seventeen-year-old Joshua Jackson, little bother of Black Panther George Jackson who was at trial for murder.
Joshua Jackson and others stormed the court room armed with assault rifles in an attempt to liberate their "brothers" who were on trial for murder. Joshua and his three accomplices took Judge Haley, the District Attorney Gary Thomas and three jurors hostage. This lead to a shootout that left Judge Haley and two of the jurors dead and Thomas barely clinging onto life. Joshua Jackson was also killed.
George Jackson was found guilty and was sent to San Quentin Prison.
August 21, 1971--exactly one year later--Catherine Share, Kenneth Como, Mary Brunner, Larry Bailey, Dennis Rice, and a "sixth suspect that fled on foot (Charles Lovett) drove a van to Hawthorne, California to the Western Surplus Store in an attempt to rob the store and acquire firearms. The firearm heist is foiled by a silent alarm, followed by police cars and a shootout leaving Brunner, Share, and Bailey with gun shot wounds.
Motives for this heist include the guns being used in a hijacking of an aircraft where passengers would be held hostage and shot every hour until Charles Manson was freed. I highly doubt this was the true motive.
Another motive--and probably the more accurate motive--was that they were planning on raiding the court room and freeing Charles Manson while he was on trial for the Gary Hinman and Shorty Shea murders. This motive makes more sense and would have been a mirror image of the Marin County Courtroom incident.
The parallels do not end here.
On this same day, Black Panther George Jackson met with his attorney Stephen Bingham to discuss a lawsuit against the prison. On Jackson's way back to his cell, guards noticed a 9mm handgun wedged in his afro. This eventually lead to a hostage-shootout leaving 4 guards and 2 inmates dead. Jackson was shot by a guard and killed.
This was planned as Jackson had written a will and manifesto.
Nearly six years later in Folsom Prison, June of 1977, Kenneth Como was involved in a similar incident with inmate Bobby Davis. The two had a 9mm handgun in their possession and planned to kill guards, members of the Aryan Brotherhood--who they were fighting with--and then escape. A shake down of the cell block came back with as many as 16 armed inmates ready to riot and a CB radio used to communicate with the outside.
Something tells me that when Life Magazine ran the August 21, 1970 Family story, that someone from the Family possibly could have read the article and read the article on the Marin County Court House shootout, giving them an idea to do something similar.
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Anthony DiMaria's Response to Rolling Stone story on Manson
Below is a letter that Jay Sebring's nephew, Anthony DiMaria, sent in response to Rolling Stone story on Manson. It is republished with permission from Restless Souls.
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| mansondirect.com |
On June 15, 1970 Rolling Stone featured Charles Manson on it's magazine cover. Sadly, the narrative following the massacres on the nights of August 8th and 10th, 1969 holds firm approaching four and a half decades- Manson and his clan are sensationalized, glamorized as anti establishment pop celebrity icons, while their eleven victims remain trivialized and vilified to fit the sexy packaged formula of good old true crime mass murder. The Tate - LaBianca killings have become a massive source of interest and profit for countless news/tabloid organizations, books, TV/film companies, TIME, LIFE and prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi.
It is painful and disturbing to see that the Rolling Stone piece by Erik Hedegaard (December 5, 2013) is yet another example of how horribly the victims are disregarded, even slandered ( "Sharon Tate wasn't a movie star. Even now, nobody's ever really heard of her, even though she was supposedly killed by Charlie Manson, the most famous guy in the world. And that's the only reason anybody knows who she is. And still nobody knows who the fuck she is") while Mr. Hedegaard presents Charles Manson in a reverent, mystical light, "I will never know or understand why when Manson rested his hand on my arm it felt so good, not passively good, but actively... it's a presence."
Apparently, Mr. Manson has the same impact on Mr. Hedegaard as he had on Vincent Bugliosi's wrist watch when it stopped suddenly upon Manson's telepathic powers as depicted in Bugliosi's 1974 television version of "Helter Skelter".
It is curious that Mr. Hedegaard would omit from Manson's interview what the interviewee said he would do to a random baby ("he says something truly awful about what you could do to that baby, worse than you could imagine"), yet the author printed Manson's abhorrent slander of one of his victim's ( Sharon Tate's) character, " She compromised her body for everything she did. And if she was such a beautiful thing, what was she doing in the bed of another man [Jay Sebring] when that thing jumped off? What kind of shit is that?"
So the narrative continues and everyone wins. Charles Manson is back in the spotlight as mystical boogeyman, fascinated consumers satiate their appetites- while an author and his employers line their pockets with cash.
But for eleven people who lie in their graves, the blood letting continues... this time at the hands of Erik Hedegaard and Rolling Stone magazine.
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