(gritty rock music) - '69 was my year (chuckling). You know, I thought
everything was gonna shift. I was gonna become this
incredibly powerful, creative, gifted, brilliant person (laughing). We all felt that way. - There was the Sunset Strip, you can go to the Whisky, you could, you know you could party. A lot of drugs, a lot of
drinking, a lot of fun, and free love was all over the place. It was a great place to live. - Really felt like the
most magical place to live, and anything could happen
there. We all thought, "Wow, we're gonna make "a huge difference in this world. "We are going to inspire
and uplift those squares." That's what it was like. - And it really was a perfect storm. I mean, all those things
that coming together, wanting to leave the '50s behind. And the drugs and the music,
and then the influence of the drugs had on the music, we really thought we had
discovered something new. We really thought we had
discovered the answer, drugs. But sorry, that isn't
the answer, we
found out. But we really thought that was, really, wait a minute, we really believed, for a while anyway, that
that was the answer. - You're young, and you think you know what the hell's going on, and that's exactly what we felt in 1969. But we didn't know. And it can turn ugly really fast. - Charlie was a really sharp little man coming out of prison and jail. And so if you can survive
there in those institutions, imagine what you can do on the street where everybody's peace, love,
and tie dyin
g, and stoned. Charlie must have been in
heaven, I can only imagine, 'cause he went right to the Haight, you know, right to San Francisco. Charlie was the fox, was in the hen house. Dracula was in charge of the blood vein. - He found all of these
crazy kids running around, zonked out, believing in
peace and love and brotherhood and sleeping with one another. He collected girls because
he prostituted them. That's one of the ways that he survived. They took care of him. - He would tell them that
t
hey had father issues and talk about the damage
their father had done to them, so he kinda sucked 'em in. - They all would have had normal lives had they not met Charlie. Patricia Krenwinkel is
probably the most interesting because she was already
working when she met Manson. She was working at an insurance company. She met him at a house
in Malibu, at a party where he was singing, so it was a man with a guitar, singing. And he saw her and he said,
asked her to come with him. He took her into th
e bedroom. Patricia Krenwinkel was truly homely. She had this hormonal imbalance that caused hair to
grow all over her body. She was very insecure, to say the least. And he took her in this room and he said, "Take off all your clothes, "and look in the mirror. "I want you to see how beautiful you are." And she left with him, left
her paycheck in her car, and never came back. That to me is the key to Manson. He said, "I told people "what they wanted to
hear about themselves." ♪ Hey for livin' ♪ ♪
The time keeps on flyin' ♪ ♪ Think your lovin' baby ♪ ♪ And all you're doin' is cryin' ♪ ♪ Can you feel ♪ - When Manson came down to Los Angeles from the Haight in San Francisco, and Mary Brunner and
Sadie or Susan Atkins, and I don't know if
anybody else was with 'em. They ended up sort of living around, and Charlie was trying to
get into the music scene. - Charlie could sit down and play a guitar with three chords with flies, and sing a song about
the flies landing on him. He did have a talen
t. In fact, if you tried to
describe Charlie's music, it kind of was rap music. It was just kind of a conscious flow. ♪ Just to say love's not enough ♪ ♪ If you can't be true ♪ ♪ You can tell those lies, baby ♪ ♪ But you're only fooling you ♪ - [Sandi] He ran across Dennis Wilson, and Dennis was, of course,
with the Beach Boys, and he was intrigued by Charlie. - Dennis called me up, said, "Hey, Greg, you've gotta
come down and meet this guy." He called him The Wizard at the time. He was very int
erested in becoming part of the music scene. This was what Charlie had his eye on. That's why Dennis, The Beach Boys, and then Terry Melcher, producer, more than anything, that
was one of his main desires. - Manson met Dennis Wilson
and discovered this, "Oh, wow, this palace here," and some of his followers
started living there. Manson and the family
would have parties there, and they kind of trashed the place. - The Beach Boys were going on the road, so Dennis had to go out on the road. He says
, "Greg, man," he says. "Can you get me out of here?" So I was, "Yeah," I went to
the office, I hired movers. We moved out, like, in one day. - So Dennis Wilson is deeply
connected to the commune. And I think most people know that The Beach Boys recorded
one of Charlie's compositions that was originally
called "Cease to Exist" on their 1968 album "20/20." But Dennis Wilson rearranged the song and changed the lyrics
to "Cease to Resist" rather than "Cease to Exist" and turned it into a ordinary l
ove song. - See, Charlie wasn't sophisticated enough when it comes to the music business to know what he gave away. So Dennis paid him for it, but I don't think Charlie
realized what he was doing. He was giving an
intellectual property away that could earn money. And that was one of the things Charlie went after Dennis for, and Dennis was saying, you know, "Come on, Charlie, you
know, play the game." - I mean, as a kid, those lyrics, 'cause we covered the song in '81, and I don't think I really
paid much attention-- - Well, they're very simple,
- to the lyrics. - so they can be taken many ways. Like "Cease to Exist," it's
like, is kind of a love song-- - Well, "submission is a gift." - Yeah, yeah, it's kind
of like, yeah, yeah, "Love is free, come to your brother. "Make love to me."
- Well, there's a-- - "Make love to them."
- There's a lyric, "Submission is a gift, "come on, give it to your brother." - I think it was, he was trying to exploit the free love movement at
the time for his
own benefit. (psychedelic rock music) ♪ Give up your world ♪ ♪ Come on, you can be ♪ ♪ I'm your kind ♪ - "Cease to Exist" is saying, you know, stop being, let me tell you what you are. - Endless love.
- I hear it now, it's pure 100% unadulterated brainwashing to drugged-out teenagers. ♪ Give up your world ♪ ♪ Come on, you can be ♪ ♪ I'm your kind ♪ - Charlie was really counting on Melcher to do something with him,
take him into the studio. And Terry, I know, gave him
the old producer's speech.
He told Charlie, you
know, "Charlie, I really, "your music is really good,
it's really different. "I really like your music, "but I don't, it's just not my cup of tea. "I don't know what to do
with you in the studio." And I think that really put Charlie into a really downhill mood.
♪ I can see ♪ ♪ You walk on, walk on ♪ ♪ I love you, pretty girl ♪ ♪ My life is yours ♪ - He found a chord in young people because he told them
what they wanted to hear. He's a con man. He conned people all of his lif
e. He had to to survive. - We all know that he had
some sort of mind control. He probably learned it in prison, and he focused it on these women that he carefully chose
because they, you know, didn't have much self-esteem. - And he said he loved them. I don't think he did, but
he slept with a lot of 'em. He indoctrinated them into this idea that he was God. - I think those young women
were looking for someone who was sort of a father figure. He was older, he was quite
a bit older than they were.
- The basic core of it
was a group marriage. It was not a cult. You had Charles Manson gets out of prison with a very high libido
in the Summer of Love and sees that free love and orgiastic sex is now the accepted thing, and he went for it. And his relationship with these women is what it was about. - One of the things he said to me is, "My name's Manson, I'm the son of man." Well, he tried to turn that into a thing that he was Jesus returned. - You look at these girls, and they look like the c
ute
and, like, unapproachable, you know, girls at the--
- Older sisters. - Older sisters,
- Yeah. - or the foxy girl at the beach. - And they were sweet, they were nice, they were nice girls. I had a crush on Ruth Ann Moorehouse. I suppose a lot of
people did, like anyway. And Charlie used to dangle her around because, anyway, just one of the girls. They were nice, and they were
very, very loyal to Charlie. I mean, he was the, he was the boss, he was the man. He ran the show. - Every one of the
followers, in a way, was a victim of Charlie. Charlie was the evil genius. - During the trial, as I said, all of the family members who testified testified that they believed
what Charlie was feeding them was the absolute, honest-to-God gospel, that Charlie was a messiah, that was going to save them, that they would go to the desert, that they would find a bottomless pit, that they would hide there. And after the race war, they would come out, and Charlie
would be king of the world. - Charlie lo
ved The Beatles, and he thought they were talkin' to him. And so "Helter Skelter"
became his watchword, and they were gonna go out to the desert, the black men and the white people were gonna have this war, and they were gonna
hide out in the desert. I mean, it was so bizarre to me that I didn't really pay
a lot of attention to it because once again, it was the '60s, and people were getting stoned, and so on. So "Okay, Charlie," you know. - Manson's whole ethos was that somehow he was part of th
e pop culture business. He was like, he wrote a song
for The Beach Boys, right? So he thought he was
part of the whole scene. He was convinced he was important. And that's, I think, why
he picked "Helter Skelter," you know, a Beatles song,
to be his kind of motto. Oh, it's very L.A.-centric, too. He's a striver, trying to
get into the music business. He's surrounded by kind
of Hollywood drifters. - They were at a place on
Gresham Street in Canoga Park where it started. And they would spend hours
listening to The Beatles' "White Album"
while they were on LSD. And what they determined was that The Beatles weren't
really The Beatles. The Beatles were the locusts written about in Revelation 9 of the Bible. The locusts were gonna fly
out of the bottomless pit and start Armageddon. And through "The White Album," The Beatles or the locusts were
sending messages to blacks to rise up and start the revolution. "The White Album" plays
a key role in this case. So you have "Helter Skelter," you hav
e a song in there called "Piggies." "Piggies out with their piggy wives, "clutching their forks and
knives to eat their bacon. "What they need is a damn good whacking." - I put my soul into the sound. That's in my music, see. But that's what they won't let me get out. And then every time they
keep that music out, then all of the kids rise up, and they kill a bunch of people. And then they say, "Oh, you're, up." Well, why are we, up? Who is it that says that
you can put your music up over my musi
c, you dig what I'm sayin'? (introspective electronic music) - I received a telephone call
very early in the morning and said, "My God, Rona, "you have to over to Sharon Tate's house." And I immediately threw on
some clothes and got in my car and drove around until I got to Cielo. I think I was the first journalist that was up there. (suspenseful electronic music) They had a driveway that
was kind of, a little steep. And so I started to walk up the hill. I could see there were a couple of bodies
up on this next level. The police were all around, and the detectives were there, and they said, "Miss
Barrett, you've got to move. "You've got to go out." I said, "Just tell me,
is Sharon Tate inside?" "I can't say anything, I
do not know, just move." So I started to walk down the hill. A very dear friend of
mine who was an agent named Bill Tennant, I yelled out, "Bill, just tell me, is she inside, "is she inside?" And he looked at me and went, that's it, just a little nod of the head. And I j
ust like, I couldn't believe it. And she was murdered. The baby was dead, and everybody else who might
have been there were dead. - Sharon Tate and her friends
were killed in Los Angeles, and it was the biggest story
that had hit L.A. in years. - Sharon Tate was the
last to get murdered, and she was begging and
pleading with Susan Atkins not to kill her. And Susan Atkins said she
looked at her in the eyes, and she said, "Look, bitch,
I don't care about you "or your baby. "You're gonna die, and y
ou'd
better be ready for it, "and I don't feel a thing about it." Voytek Frykowski was
Abigail Folger's boyfriend, very close friends with Roman Polanski. Frykowski was asleep on the front sofa, and Watson pointed the
gun at him, woke him up, and said, "I'm the devil
here to do the devil's work." Abigail Folger was the heiress
to the Folger coffee fortune. And Steven Parent, talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Parent came up apparently to
try and sell a clock radio. Watson wen
t up to the car,
pointing the gun at Parent, and Parent begged for his life. He said, "Please don't shoot me. "I won't say anything. "I'm just on my way out,
I won't tell anybody." And Watson shot him four
times at point blank range. And then went on from there. - [Rona] When the
LaBiancas had been killed, and I remember saying, "Oh
my God, it's happened again." - When Leno's body was discovered, he had a pillowcase over his head, and he had a carving fork in his abdomen. And Krenwinkel had carv
ed in large letters the word war. When Leno was taken to
the coroner's office and the pillowcase was taken off, they found that he had a knife with the handle sticking out of one side and the blade traversing his neck, partly sticking out of the other side. - That really set off the chain of fear that spread all over the area because people felt that maybe there were these serial killers at large who were just killing people, or maybe it was a copycat
killing from the night before. Whatever it w
as, it terrified Los Angeles. - I think everyone went
crazy for a moment. Everyone was scared. No one wanted to go out. Everyone wanted protection. You know, anything could happen to anyone. That's what I recall, including myself. There emerged this list
of people that Manson had, and I was subject to some death threats or the letters that said, "You are next." I'll never be able to say that the threats were really linked to the
Manson, Sharon Tate murder, but I can't say that they were not. (so
mber piano music) - There were all sorts of
rumors that went around. And it wasn't until Susan Atkins, who was arrested with some other people in an unrelated crime, was in the Sybil Brand Institute and decided to confess to her cellmates. Chaos, it was insanity. And in those days, they
allowed camera crews in the hallways outside the courtroom. And the court hallway was
so jammed with cameras you could barely move. When Manson finally was led in, he was this little teeny character with scraggly
hair and a buckskin jacket and obviously was
enjoying the whole scene. There were all kinds of
crazy things going on. The Manson women were camped
on the sidewalk outside. They were threatening
to immolate themselves if Manson was convicted. And then the ultimate was
when Manson got upset, and he propelled himself
across the counsel table at the judge with a pencil in his hand, screaming, "Someone should
cut your head off, old man." The first day of trial, Charlie had carved an X into his head,
and he issued a statement
through his girls on the corner that he had X'd himself out of the world. And I believe the next day the women defendants had X's also. I believed that Charlie
sent Tex and the others out the first night for two reasons. One was to put the fear
of God into Terry Melcher because Melcher used to live
where Sharon Tate lived. But the other was to actually
have a copycat murder to get Bobby Beausoleil out of jail. - I met Bobby Beausoleil in San Francisco, and I had a huge
crush on
him, like most girls did. He was gorgeous. His nickname was Cupid, that's how, I mean, he had the most
beautiful mouth and everything. He was just slightly
manipulative with the girls, but I would never have imagined he could have committed
such crimes (laughs). (suspenseful electronic music) - I had 20 minutes. I interviewed Manson. He did try his staring tricks, of course, and so I'm a pretty good starer, too. And it was only 20 minutes, so we just stared at each
other for 20 minutes
. The Manson family decided
to hold a press conference at Spahn Movie Ranch. They wanted to sell Manson's rock album, and they thought they'd make some money. And the girls invited us into the trailer. So being young and thinking nothing could possibly happen to us, we went in the trailer,
and we all sat around, and we had this little baby named Elf. And he was quite filthy, but we passed, he was being passed around among all the women. And we took our turns holding Elf. And we talked about amaz
ing things like chocolate chip cookie recipes. It was just like girl talk. - [Jean] What's your
relationship with Elf? It's really different from any other baby I've ever seen before (laughing). - [Lynette] Yeah, well
we all take care of him. In other words, we're all his mother. You know, we all treat
him as our own, you know. And actually, we belong to him, you know, because that's how it is with babies. They're very aware, you know, and they get your
attention any way they can. So actually, t
hey own you. But like, we follow him.
(baby crying) He's our leader, really,
because he'll show us, babies can show you a lot 'cause they're totally
at peace with themselves, and you can get a lot of peace from 'em if you can sit down--
- Were you talking-- - and be with 'em for long periods of time. - The girls were insistent that I must buy a copy of the record, and I kept, I mean, I
was making $120 a week for Radio News West. And five dollars for a
record was outrageous, especially one that I
didn't know that I would have any interest in. So they said, "That's okay, we know you. "You're running around
downtown all the time. "We see you pass by us when we're sitting "on the sidewalk there. "Every time you go past
us, give us a quarter." So I agreed to do that. So I have the record, and (laughing), this is the record. And then even after they
carved X's in their foreheads and were crawling down the streets, I paid them a quarter. - There was so much weird
going on, so much weird. It w
as the ultimate trial of the '60s. It was a trial of the whole era. (somber electronic music) You're never gonna think of Los Angeles as the major crime city the way they did with the Manson murder. - Life Magazine published the photograph of Charles Manson on the cover, and he looked wild and crazy. And I think people in the United States seemed to like horror pictures. They go to the movies and they see the "Halloween" movies and everything. Well here, the people
had a real, live monster who c
ould convince young people
to commit murder for him. - After "The Manson File" came out, and that was really the first book that ever even presented Charles Manson not only in a sympathetic way but merely presented him as a human being. So it created quite a stir, and I said on national TV that Vincent Bugliosi had
conducted a show trial, that what he presented as
the narrative of the crimes, this whole "Helter Skelter"
race war Beatles theory was not true. - There had never been a cult like thi
s, and there never was again. It had so many facets to it, the preying on young people, the ability of a single leader to use drugs, sex, and rock and roll to get people to follow
him was unprecedented. And it resonated. He is famous forever. - It's a persona that now
has a life of its own. - I remember when "Helter
Skelter" came out. That was, like, the second wave. That's when I first learned about it. And it was just, you
know, it was horrifying. It's so much more complex because the patholog
y of the people who committed these murders weren't like your
one-in-a-billion serial killer, lone wolf, you know. It's like these people
who look like The Beatles. Charles Manson was kind of
like an act of rebellion to us, and I have to say,
there was never any kind of worship philosophy of Charles Manson. I wonder if the Manson
thing would have lived on so many decades had there not been the connection between The Beatles' "White Album." Because The Beatles' "White
Album," yeah, of course, lik
e The Beatles have had longevity through all these years. So anytime a person
discovers "The White Album," they always, "Oh yeah, this is that album "that the Charles Manson," and it kind of feeds off of itself. So I think that--
- Is it the fanning the flames?
- The Beatles have really helped. Young people discover "The
White Album" every generation-- - Yeah, yeah.
- and all of the baggage connected to it,
- It's all-- - the mystique connected to it. - It's ultimate PR, amen.
- I think without
the soundtrack of The Beatles, I don't know if they would have had, if the Manson thing would
have had the longevity. - The change came because, I think, people saw a crazy side of drugs that they had not seen before. I mean, I covered a lot of love-ins, and everybody was dancing
around and waving beads and clanging things and hugging
and kissing and all that. But they weren't killing each other. - Peace, love, and the
drugs and everything. And it was a nice illusion, and it went poof, it
was go
ne, really gone. And it was so definitive, the ax had fallen, the door had closed, you know, literally. And Charlie brought the '60s to an end. - And I think that any
naivete that remained about the Summer of Love and about hippies and about counterculture
was wiped out by it. Now it was a much more hard-edged society. - It was scary to think about, and then of course when it
was hippies, it was like, "Oh, no, this is gonna be a
scourge on us all" (laughs). And of course it was because we were s
een, the hippie movement, the free love, all that, drugs, was seen as a negative thing
after Manson did what he did because he was a hippie,
but of course, he was not. He grew his hair, that's all. That's the only kind of hippie he was. - I do think that the
Tate LaBianca murders have made a big impact on this whole area because he's become some
kind of a folk hero, which is scary. - This whole attention thing, I don't need nobody's
attention about nothin'. I can do what I do by myself. I don't
need nobody. I ain't lookin' for no followers. I'm lookin' to survive. - I mean, if you think
the persona of evil, media-wise and public-wise, they really, I mean, if you ask people, they would say, "Yeah, well, there's
Hitler and there's Manson." "Really, that's it, huh?" - But Manson had a streak of pure evil. I guess the story is that
it persists 'til now, that he's dead finally, and yet it's as if the
curse has not disappeared. And it hangs over everyone who
was ever involved with him. ♪ But
I know we all get our turn ♪ ♪ And I love you ♪ ♪ Never learn not to love you ♪ ♪ Never learn not to love you ♪ ♪ Never learn not to love you ♪
Comments