Monday, June 8, 2015

The Files: The Charles Watson Biography

Many of you will remember the website It was a fantastic library of Manson/TLB facts runned by a young man named Bret who lived in Iceland. He prematurely passed away in 2010 and with him went the website.

But now, due to the dilligence of an unnamed blog reader, the biographies that Bret had compiled on four of the killers (Bruce Davis, Patricia Krenwinkel, Charles Watson and Susan Atkins) have been recovered. If memory serves me correctly Bret was working on Leslie's bio when he met his untimely demise.

The bios are long, dense and full of great info. Given the length of each, we will present one per week beginning with Bruce Davis.

Rest in peace, Bret. You are sorely missed...


Charles Denton Watson Biography

Charles Denton Watson was born on December 2nd, 1945 in Dallas, Texas. (Sharon Tate was born in 1943, in Dallas, Texas.) He was raised in the small town of Copeville in rural Texas. At the time the population of Copeville was 150 people. Charles was the third child born to Denton and Elizabeth Watson. His sister, Jeanne Laurice Watson was the oldest, born in 1935 and then came his brother James Melvin Watson who was the middle child, born in 1941. Charles was the youngest.

Charles' parents were very religious and took him and his siblings to the Copeville Methodist Church every Sunday. Early on he would get straight A's and B's in school and was very much a model child. He always looked up to his older brother James who was the High School football hero. Charles wanted to follow in his footsteps and went out for football and basketball. Charles's sister Jeanne got married very young in the Copeville Methodist church and moved with her husband to Dallas.

In the Watson family, his mother Elizabeth was the boss. She was very dominating and Charles never went against her wishes and always did what she wanted, without question. Tex later said, "She expected to be good – the best." His mother selected his clothes, his collage major and later on even his girlfriends. She was very strict and always kept Charles and his brother in line.

Tex's father was a quiet, somewhat passive man who owned and operated a combination grocery store and gas station. Charles spent a lot of time with his father and he often worked at the store. His father taught him to fish, build models and fix automobiles. They often drank beer together but made sure his mother never found out.

As a boy Charles was a boy-scout and was very involved in Sunday school activities. He attended Farmersville High School. In eight grade he entered the track meet and took home many prices. Charles really shone in track and his mother started collecting clippings from the sport papers of the local papers.

As a teenager, Charles worked as a gas station attendant at his father's gas station, and part-time at the local onion-packing plant during the summers. He spent his spare time building models and hot rods. Things like sex were never discussed at the home, it was considered bad, not only by his mother but by the church. Like any young man, Charles was interested in the opposite sex and wanted to get away from his mother and experience life. He felt his mother was holding him down.

Charles Watson graduated with honours Farmersville High and in 1964 he moved to Denton, Texas to attend North Texas State University. It meant freedom, fraternities, beer-drinking and free-wheeling. He became more interested in partying and drinking than his school work. In his junior year he was introduced to Dexedrine which they used while drinking. They would drive to Dallas with fake ID's and go to bars. His grades slowly went downhill and he lost motivation.

At this time the important thing was being cool. He let his hair grow a little and adopted the Ivy League look and started buying new clothes, wide ties, button down shirts and camel hair blazer's. He lived with a room mate in a student resident hall near campus. He soon became bored with school and wanted to try something different.

Through a roommate, Charles got a job as a baggage boy for Braniff International Airlines. He would get free flights and would take girls with him to Hawaii for the weekend. It was around this period when he began smoking Marijuana and experimenting with other drugs. During his senior year in 1967, one of his fraternity brothers had moved to California and he decided to Take advantage of employee passes and go visit his friend in California. He had never been out of Texas before and was very impressed with Los Angeles. Charles came back to Texas only to tell his parents he was moving out west to attend another college. His parents were worried but went along with his plan.

Once in Los Angeles he got a job as a wig salesman and enrolled in a California state college. To keep a promise to his parents to finish college he began attending classes at Cal State in business administration. His cherished frat clothes were tossed away for the cooler hippie look and his preferred "high" switched from alcohol to marijuana. Watson enjoyed becoming part of the group who separated themselves from the establishment and they accepted him.

Though he made some sales, the wig job didn't pay very much. The pressure to earn a living and now pay rent required him to work too many hours to allow time to study and attend classes. After only a few months in school, Charles dropped out. It was at this time when Charles became heavily involved with LSD, amphetamines, marijuana, hashish and cocaine.

He moved to Silverlake, West Hollywood then to Laurel Canyon in a house behind the strip. His mother came to visit him just one time after he was hurt in a serious car accident. Unimpressed with his life style, she begged him to return to Texas and although a part of him wanted to return to his hometown, pride kept him from going. He would not see her again until after he was on the run for killing seven people. . He messed up his knee in a car accident in the Canyon, which kept him out of the Army.

After dropping out of school, he moved to Malibu and opened a wig shop with his roommate. The store was called Love Locks, and it turned out to be a disaster; closing after only a few months. To pay the rent, Watson began dealing pot full time to pay for their new Malibu beach home. His desires to earn money soon dissipated to wanting to get high, go to rock concerts and lay on the beach. He finally evolved into what he thought was a full-time hippie and he felt he had found his place in the world.

Watson's life changed forever after picking up a hitchhiker who was Dennis Wilson, a member of the rock-group the Beach Boys. After arriving at Wilson's Pacific Palisades' mansion, Wilson invited Watson up to see the house and meets the people hanging out there. He was introduced to various people, including Dean Moorehouse, an ex-Methodist minister and Charlie Manson. Wilson invited Watson to return to the mansion anytime to hang out and swim in the Olympic-sized pool.

The mansion was filled with dropouts who hung out doing drugs and listening to music. Watson eventually moved into the mansion where he mingled with rock musicians, actors, and children of stars, Hollywood producers, Charlie Manson and members of the Manson "Love Family." He was impressed with himself, the boy from Texas - rubbing elbows with the famous and he was drawn to Manson and his family, drawn to Manson's prophesizing and to the relationship his family members seemed to have with one another.

Watson began doing heavy hallucinogens regularly and became consumed by a new drug-induced perspective in which he believed love and deep bonds to others were formed. He described it as a "kind of connection even deeper and better than sex." His friendship with Dean had deepened as well as with many of Manson's "girls," both of whom encouraged Watson to rid himself from his ego, and join the Manson family.

Wilson began to pull away from the regulars who were living in his mansion after complaints of sexual child abuse circulated. His manager told Dean, Watson and others living there that they would have to move. Manson and the girls had cleaned out some of his belongings and Wilson paid for everything from dope to dental work. With nowhere to go, Dean and Watson turned to Charlie Manson. Acceptance wasn't immediate, but in time Watson's name changed from Charles to "Tex", he turned over all of his possessions to Charlie and moved in with the family.

For more in-dept information about Charles's life with Charlie and the girls and his participation in the Tate-LaBianca murders can be found in his autobiography. So much has been written about those events that I feel it unnecessary to repeat them here. I will focus more on exclusive information not available anywhere else

In November 1968 Tex left the Mason family and moved to Hollywood with his girlfriend, Luella. The two were financially comfortable drug peddlers and Tex changed his dirty hippie image for a more stylish Hollywood look. As the couple's relationship fell apart, Tex's desire to reunite with the Manson family grew. By March 1969, he was back at Spahn Ranch and back in the inner Manson circle. But the family focus had changed into something sinister - something the family called "Helter Skelter."

Charles Watson was the main killer on those two nights of murder, causing over 85 percent of the stab wounds and all gun shot wounds. Watson maintains to this day that it was him alone that stabbed pregnant Sharon Tate to death while Atkins stood by and watched. Watson has owned up to his share in the crime and been very honest about his brutal participation. Unlike some of the others who try to minimize and put blame on others.

Through the years there have been rumours that Sharon Tate was hung while she was still alive. Watson has been asked about this and his account has been consistent. A rope was placed around the necks of Sharon, Jay and Abigail and went over the rafters in the ceiling. Watson pulled the rope in an attempt to keep them from fleeing. As a result they had to stand on their toes to prevent themselves from being choked. I believe that's where the rope burns on Sharon's neck came from.

Not many people know that Watson participated in one additional murder, that of movie stunt man and ranch hand Donald "Shorty" O' Shae. Both Bruce Davis and Steven Grogan have consistently testified that Watson was the main participant in the murder.

Bruce Davis was in the back seat and Watson was in the front passenger seat holding a knife to Shorty, who was driving. When they stopped the car Watson stabbed Shorty in the car. At that time Charles Manson and Steven Grogan came driving in another car and Grogan hit Shorty in the head with a steel pipe. Then they dragged him down to a river bank and stabbed him to death.

Charles Watson was never charged, tried or convicted for participating in that murder. It was selective prosecution in that sense, like Grogan was never tried for the LaBianca murders although he was in the car with Susan Atkins. But Susan Atkins was charged with the LaBianca murders although she was just in the car with Steve Grogan. It is also common knowledge that Catherine Share and other female family members helped clean up the crime scene and dispose of Shorty's body.

Watson stayed with the Manson family until the first of October then decided to return to Texas. But the dramatic change from when he first left home in 1964 to who he was five years later made it difficult to stay. He decided to go to Mexico but felt the strong pull to go back to Charlie and his real family. He then flew to L.A. and made his way close to where the family was staying, but stopped short because of the realization that if he did return, Charlie would surely kill him

Watson returned to his family in Texas, only this time he cut his hair and began trying to blend into his unfamiliar family world. He reunited with an old girlfriend and his drug use became minimal. The future began to show an inch of promise with parts of his old life returning. All of that stopped on November 30, 1969, after he was arrested for the Tate and LaBianca murders and charged with seven counts of murder, charges his mother took years to accept and believe.

Some of the members of the Manson family had provided the D.A.'s office in Los Angeles with what they heard around the ranch the days following the murders, but it was Susan (Sadie) Atkins who couldn't resist bragging about the Manson family and the murders while in Sybil Brand Institute for Women in Los Angeles. Later she told the same story to the grand jury and described Watson's involvement in the murders. It was not long after that Tex was located in Texas and arrested.

After fighting for extradition back to California for nine months he was finally returned on September 11, 1970. By this time Manson, Sadie, Katie, and Leslie were in their third month of trial. The extradition process prevented Watson from being tried with the group. It also allowed Tex the opportunity to find out who was being blamed for what crimes so when it came time for his trial he knew what to admit to and what was already being blamed on the others.

Once in California, Watson began suffering from acute paranoia and regressed to a fetal state, stopped eating and reached 55 pounds before being sent to Atascadero State Hospital for a 90-day evaluation period to see if he was fit to stand trial. It was not until August 2, 1971, that Charles Tex Watson would finally go on trial for his brutal murders.

District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi had successfully prosecuted the others involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders and now began the trial of the last, and most culpable of all parties involved. Dressed in a suit and holding the Bible, Watson plead not guilty by reason of insanity yet was sane enough to admit on the stand only those crimes which he knew the prosecution was already aware. He failed to admit to killing Sharon Tate or being with Charlie when the LaBiancas were first taken captive and bound.

After two and a half hours of deliberation, Charles "Tex" Watson was found sane during the murders at the Tate and LaBianca homes. For his crimes he received the death penalty.

Tex spent from November 1971 until September 1972 on death row at San Quentin. After California outlawed the death penalty for a short time, he was moved to California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo. There he met Chaplain Raymond Hoekstra and became a born-again Christian. Charles Watson, five years after merciless murdering seven people, was teaching Bible studies which eventually led to his forming his own prison ministry - Abounding Love Ministries.

Watson met his former wife Kristin Joan Svege. An attractive half Norwegian woman from New Jersey. Watson met Kristin after carrying on a long affair with a beautiful young German woman who had pursued him since the beginning of his multiple murder trial. She was the most prominent of a phalanx of group­ies, who smiled, nodded, and fawned over him during the grim proceeding.

Soon the cameras of the news media were recording their exchanged smiles and waves. When the multiple killers' dark-haired admirer wrote to him at the Los Angeles County Jail where he was being held during the trial, he wrote back. That was the beginning of an ex­change of letters between the couple.

Although she returned to Germany for awhile after his conviction, they continued their correspondence. She mailed him photographs and clippings, and wrote of her plans to return to the United States so she could visit with him. Soon after she obtained a new American visa she began visiting him at San Quentin.

The visits didn't end until a couple of years after Wat­son was transferred to the California Men's Colony. The German woman had rented an apartment in Los Angeles, and hitchhiked the roughly four-hundred-mile round-trip between the city and the prison for weekend visits. But she didn't share Watson's growing interest in born-again Christianity, and eventually returned to Germany.

In Will You Die For Me?, a book Watson wrote with Ray Hoekstra, a prison ministry chaplain, the convicted killer said his German admirer had obtained a lifetime American visa and was talking about marrying him be­fore the falling-out. Then Kristin read Watson's book, which was filled with accounts of his return to Christianity and his new­found spirituality. She was living in the southwest when she wrote to him at the prison. He invited her to visit, put her on his visitors' list, and she hurried to San Luis Obispo for her first meeting with the man she was to eventually marry.

When Kristin struck out for California to meet Wat­son, she left a boyfriend behind. He followed her to San Luis Obispo and in an emotional confrontation in front of the house where she was renting an apartment made a desperate last-minute plea to salvage their old romance. She turned him down. Seven years after he was moved off Death Row, he married Kristin. The bride wore an ankle-length gown in traditional white, with matching white shoes, and car­ried a bouquet and a Bible for the ceremony.

The happy couple honeymooned in a trailer after their marriage in the prison chapel on September 7, 1979. A clergyman from the Assemblies of God, the Rev. John S. Milton, performed the ceremony. Watson was a few weeks shy of his thirty-fourth birth­day when he was married. He listed his occupation on his marriage registration certificate as minister and his place of business as the prison chapel.

Kristin was twenty and listed her latest job as employ­ment at a home for the handicapped in San Luis Obispo. Spokesmen at the home told reporters, however, that she was no longer employed there and had held the job only a short time.

They set up a mail-order prison outreach they call Abounding Love Ministries. Established as a nonprofit corporation, the ministry has the appropriate acronym, ALMS.

According to Bill Nelson; with the assistance of loyal friends, the industrious couple has turned the program into a thriving enterprise that has enabled them to collect thousands of dollars. ALMS has operated with a mailing list of five hundred names, and accepts donations for tapes of Watson's ser­mons, and religious songs sung by Kristin.

Kristin also helps to keep interest in the family and the ministry high by appearing at area churches and on ra­dio shows to talk about her husband's life behind bars and to give Christian testimony. The couple also pub­lished an occasional report on their communal activities, which they labeled The Watson Family Newsletter.

Referring to themselves and the children as "bears" and "cubs;' the authors fill the newsletter with chatty tid­bits about such things as family visits with "Papa Bear," in one of the prison trailers. In one newsletter, a typical visit was described as in­cluding family time spent with "Daddy Bear" who busied himself cooking, washing dishes, cleaning crumbs and fussing over "Mrs. Bear" and the "Cubs." Time was also made however for talks, Bible studies and prayer, read­ers were assured.

Some of the items mention "Hiromi Bear." A young woman of Japanese descent, Hiromi Higashi moved into Kristin's home in San Luis Obispo in 1989, and quickly began helping with everything from child care and errands to stamping mailings for the newsletter and for ALMS. By the early 1990s she was listed on ALMS mailings as "secretary." Tex was president, and his wife vice president-treasurer.

A couple of years before her death early in 1992, Sharon Tate's grieving mother, Doris Tate, talked about the revulsion she felt at the knowledge that Watson was permitted to father children. "He took my daughter and her unborn son, and now he has three babies of his own," she complained. "It's not fair to anyone. The kids don't have a full-time father and the father they have is a killer."

Before her death, Mrs. Tate faithfully attended each of Watson's parole hearings, to voice her opposition to his release. At a hearing in 1987 she criticized his use of ALMS to peddle tapes of his sermons and his book. "Not only was my daughter murdered by you, Mr. Watson, but I have to live with the fact that you make money out of the tortures you have inflicted on her," Mrs. Tate told him. That appeal for parole, like earlier ap­peals, was turned down.

Although Kristin and members of Watson's family and friends, where he grew up in the small north Texas town of Copeville, are his most loyal supporters, he has also attracted a sympathetic following through his mail-order ministry. Some of his correspondents and donors write to the California Parole Board pleading for his re­lease so that he can talk to young people about the evils of drugs.

Watson's reputed potential as an evangelist and fighter against drug abuse are subjects frequently re­ferred to in the newsletter and in ALMS mailings. In a letter to the board from Kristin, she wrote: "I feel the state of California and this nation needs to hear from Charles on the issue of drugs. What better example of the fruit of drug abuse do we have?"

Watson reportedly hopes to eventually return to Texas and become a television evangelist.

Despite his generally good behavior in prison, how­ever, the savagery and grisly nature of his crimes have worked against him. Soon after his transfer to the Men's Colony he began working as a chaplain's assistant, help­ing at the chapel, teaching Bible classes and delivering sermons.

But he and Bruce MacGregor Davis lost their jobs at the chapel a few years ago after newspaper reports that other inmates complained the former Manson Family pals were misusing their position and intimidating other convicts. Watson was reassigned to a job cleaning cells.

And late in 1991 Watson and his wife both wound up with explaining to do, when authorities obtained search warrants and seized financial records for the couple's business from his cell at the prison and from her house in Laguna Lakes. Bill Nelson had tipped authorities off that he believed Kristin was violating Medi-Cal regulations, and provided documents showing she had given conflict­ing answers to different agencies about her personal in­come and income from the nonprofit ministry.

State investigators told reporters that they believed Kristin had failed to report income from the nonprofit business she and her husband ran, according to Medi­cal regulations. Investigators said in court documents that she was an officer of the corporation and received an annual salary of twelve thousand dollars. But that income was not reported on a Medi-Cal status report or on a Medi-Cal renewal questionnaire, as required, investi­gators stated in court documents. A little more than four thousand dollars in benefits was at issue.

Sales of Christian tapes and other merchandise through the ministry reportedly generated between five hundred dollars and two thousand dollars per month. Nothing substantial came of the investigation although it received a lot of publicity in the media and charges were eventually dropped.

In 1988, Charles received a letter from a woman who had become born-again also. She was working with prisoners and wanted to come and visit.  The woman did reveal her true identity at first but wanted to get to know him. They corresponded for several months and became close friends. At her second visit to the prison she decided to tell Charles that she was the daughter of Rosemary LaBianca. Watson was stunned and couldn't believe it at first. After they both became emotional and cried, they were able to talk things through. Her name was Susan LaBerge. LaBerge was a name she took from her real father. She was Rosemary's daughter from a prior marriage.

Suzan started working with Kristin and wrote articles for their Christian newsletter. The women became best friends and their children would play together, and together they would all go and visit Charles at the prison regularly. This friendship enraged Doris Tate. A few months earlier, Watson had sent Doris a letter asking her forgiveness. Doris was outraged, especially when Suzan appeared at Watson's May 4, 1990 parole hearing to lobby for his release. Doris walked out of the board room when Suzan began to testify on Watson's behalf. After the hearing, Doris confronted her on the prison parking lot where they exchanged harsh words and Doris called her a "stupid b****."

In 1990, the Board of Prison Terms wanted Watson to be transferred to another institution. They thought he had become too attached to Men's Colony and didn't even consider himself a prisoner anymore. He had complete use of the warden's office, a business in town and had many special privileges. The Board wasn't happy about the situation and recommended that he be transferred.

Manson author and researcher, Bill Nelson also worked very hard to expose Watson's ministry and to have him removed from the Men's Colony. For years he hounded Watson and his wife. He stalked his family and photographed them. He video taped them and sold the footage to various television stations. He worked hard with the media and constantly fed them information about the ministry tax fraud. In 1991, Drew Griffin who was working for KCBS at the time, received an Emmy award for his story on Watson

In April of 1993 Charles Watson was transferred to Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California. The transition was very difficult for Watson because of the visibility of his case and he ran into some troubles at first with other inmates and was attacked several times but he eventually settled in. Kristin and the children had been living in the beautiful town of San Luis Obispo but had to move to Ione to be closer to Charles. However, soon after they moved, California voters put a stop to conjugal visits for life term prisoners. Now Kristin and the children were only able to see Charles during regular, no-contact visits.

At Mule Creek Prison, Charles has been working in the prison chapel, spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ and baptizing other inmates. His institutional assignment for a while was repairing vocational office machines, a tier tender and he works as a prison janitor, sweeping floors, picking up trash and cleaning windows. Counselors say he's able to maintain a positive outlook and maintain a good attitude and demeanor. He has taken many classes in vocational training and done well in various institutional programs. Although the parole board has often encouraged him to participate in AA and NA he has not done so, claiming "it had a low priority" for him. He spends most of his time following energetic religious pursuits. However, in recent years he has started attending Christian Twelve Step group, a Christian oriented sobriety self-help group which uses similar principles as Alcoholics Anonymous.

Until the mid-to-late 80's, Watson shunned all psychiatric intervention in the belief that Christianity and psychotherapy were diametrically incompatible. His mandatory psychiatric reports from the early 80's were not good. In 1982 he was described as "a walking time bomb." and in the 90's psychiatrist said he still had a lot of repressed hostility and his violence potential was unpredictable.

His psychiatric diagnosis in 1990 was "Axis one; polydrug abuse by history. Axis two; mixed personality disorder with narcissistic, histrionic and borderline features." and in 1995 his axis two diagnosis was "personality disorder with passive-dependent, passive-aggressive, and antisocial features."

Psychiatrists and counselors have described him as having a defensive posture at all times and described similar to PC or what they call protective custody mentality. Watson is very well aware of his unpopularity inside and outside of prison.

Watson claims he wants to become a television evangelic minister on regional TV in Texas once released from prison.

Watson appeared before the parole board on May 10, 1995. There he faced Patti Tate for the first time. She took over her mother's campaign to keep Watson and the other killers in prison after Doris died from a brain tumor in 1992. Since 1984, Sharon's parents, Doris and Paul Tate had attended his hearings to oppose his release.

Patti accompanied Steven Kay to Ione and delivered an hour long tearful statement to the board. For the first time since 1981, there were no television cameras inside the room. Bill Nelson however, worked very hard to get the LA based media to participate and tape the proceedings but with no luck. Watson was denied parole and received a harsh five year denial. He had never been denied for so many years before but it has since then become his standard denial.

In 1996, Charles and Kristin Watson designed a website for their Abounding Love Ministries. Both would write articles and communicated with their supporters. Kristin would do all the input and maintain the site until they divorced. Today, a woman in Texas manages his site. Charles writes monthly columns about his experiences with the Lord. Charles talks very openly about the crimes on his website and with people who ask him questions. Different from the three women who are very careful about what they say and who they communicate with.

At Mule Creek State Prison, Watson's classification score is zero and has been that way since 1987. His current custody level is medium A. His only serious CDC 115 prison violation was in 1973 when authorities found some food and incense that he hadn't signed for and was considered contraband. He did however receive a counseling chrono, CDC 128-B after he arrived at Mule Creek for playing the radio too loud. That is the extent of his prison violations.

Watson was scheduled to appear before the parole board in March of 2000. But in December of 1999, Watson stipulated and requested that he be found unsuitable for parole and declined to appear. His hearing was moved to October 10th of 2001. By that time, the September 11 terrorist attacks were fresh on everybody's mind which is reflected in the record of his 2001 parole hearing.

At that hearing, he was denied parole for 4 years. In a report dated July 10, 2001, his prison counselor states that Watson poses an unpredictable degree of threat to the public. The psychiatrist who examined him wrote a somewhat favorable report. In the report he stated Watson blamed the Devil for his criminal behavior. Debra Tate accompanied Steven Kay to the hearing and read a very long letter that detailed Watson's sadistic participation in the murders. After she read the letter she told him, "My job here is not to forgive; my job is to make sure that you stay here until you take your last breath." Steven Parent's sister, Janet sent a letter to the board which was read into the record. She didn't feel safe to fly after the terrorist attacks that had happened the previous month.

In 2001, Kristin Watson left Charles for another man. Kristin had always hoped Watson would eventually be released from prison but as the years went by and politicians got tougher on crime and punishment she saw that it was a lost cause and he might never get out. She fell in love with another man through her church and decided her marriage to Charles was over and she filed for divorce. They remain good friends.*

Today, Charles remains at Mule Creek State Prison. He is very close to his children whom he has a great relationship with. He claims he is content in his life in Christ and holds no hope of ever being released from prison. His children however encourage him to attend his parole hearings because they want their dad to come home. His older son Josh is in the marines and recently married a fellow marine. His other son Ben (21) lives in Santa Barbara where he attends a Christian college and is in the army reserves. His parents both past away some time ago but Charles is in good contact with his siblings.*

Charles works daily from 06.AM - 01.PM as a janitor where he sweeps, mops and cleans the showers at his unit. Mule Creek is not a high security prison, although it is a prison and very secure. He is allowed to walk around the prison grounds within certain units.*

Charles was denied parole for the 13th time on November 27th, 2006. He did not attend his hearing and didn't send anyone to represent him. The hearing lasted about one and a half hours and the two Board members voted unanimously to deny parole for five years. Patrick Sequeira represented the DA's office and Debra Tate spoke out on behalf of the victims. Jay Sebring's nephew and sister were scheduled to appear but were stuck at the airport due to plane problems.Charles Watson will be able to apply for parole again in 2011.



Charles Watson - Will You Die For Me
Clifford L. Linedecker - Prison Groupies
Bill Nelson -Tex Watson: The Man, The Madness, The Manipulation
Dominic Bosco – Alone With The Devil
Charles Watson 1990 Parole Hearing Transcript
Charles Watson 1995 Parole Hearing Transcript
Charles Watson 2001 Parole Hearing Transcript
* Charles Watson – personal correspondence in 2005.