Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Life Magazine March 1987

Q. What was the Manson Family?
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.


Robert Hendrickson said...

Let's see IF I got this right !

Rich kid (on mucho pain killers) from the Hamptons buys the Presidentcy (with his daddy's money) and declares WAR on the "commies" - cause they don't love Jesus. Eventually, the Devil wakes up (from a deep sleep in Hell) and desides to get into the act - by brainwashing poor kids to kill "piggies" - thus ENDING the Vietnam War. Sounds like we got a new MOVIE !!!

P.S. Deb does it again.

Matt said...

The interviewer just couldn't help baiting him, and he have them what they wanted...

leary7 said...

the Kennedys had nothing to do with the Hamptons, Robert. They were Cape Cod folk, Hyannis. Minor point obviously, but Boston folk hate the Hamptons, it is full of Yankee fans - New Yorkers.

I love this interview because it is in synch with my "idiots run amuck" belief. In it you have Charlie himself talking about being "stuck in a psychotic episode". Many bloggers are still trying to apply logic and reason or some dark cause and effect to the TLB story. It just ain't there, or so it seems.

Robert Hendrickson said...

YOU Mr. leary, asked that I never respond to YOUR comments- again, BUT YOU are personally baiting ME- again! Why?

JFK was "born" in Brookline, Massachusetts, thus WE are both WRONG. Maybe WE both have diverse understandings of the word "from." Like was Charles Manson "from" prison or did he just hang-out there? The Kennedys "hung-out" in the Hamptons and JFK even targeted a younger "Jackie O." there. BUT the significant issue here is: What did YOU "teachers" teach the young'ns about JFK and his initiating the Vietnam War?

We know that HE was wired on the same drugs that the dirty-smelly hippies were later doing and HE even had his own "Dr. Feelgood," who put him to sleep at nite, just like Michael Jackson, BUT why did HE think HE needed to do battle with the socialist Commies? AND why didn't ANYONE step-up and voice concerns about a possible beginning of WWIII?

After two years in the US Army (1967) I attended college and NO professor (teacher) even mentioned the word Vietnam. Did "teachers" NOT have a clue as to what was happening in America? Did they just cash their pay checks and turn a blind eye to current events OR were they ordered NOT to mention the Vietnam Conflict.

YOU Mr. Leary, NOW have a unique opportunity to be of a some value to this "Manson-blog" discussion. Please tell us all -- what was going on (behind the scenes) in the great "Halls of American Education." in 1969 when the END to the 1960s and the Vietnam War was finally sparked by the Tate/LaBianca massacre

leary7 said...

sorry, Robert, but you misunderstood. I never asked you that, it was the Frost guy I asked and have no interest in exchanging dialogue with. Even though I disagree with many of your theories I do respect you and the work you have done.

The Kennedy Compound, as it is known, is in fact in Hyannis Mass on Cape Cod.

And sorry, no disrespect, but there is no way in hell I could or ever would link TLB with the escalation of the Vietnam War. That's just way to "out there" for me. It's like linking the JFK assassination with the break-up of the Beatles.

Panamint Patty said...

Leary, it is relevant. People were pissed off that their government lied to them. Revolution was in the air. Down with the pigs, up with the people! Some took that sentiment a bit too far. TLB did not happen in a vacuum, it was in part a product of the times. A lot of these kids' parents were involved in military endeavors which made it even more titillating for teenagers rebelling against their parents. Love u

Robert Hendrickson said...

NOW we're getting somewhere. There is NO link between TLB and Vietnam War,

BUT: Is there ANY link between The Vietnam War - Sex - Drugs and JFK?
Is there ANY link between the Black & White race War - Sex - Drugs and Charles Manson?

AND was there ANY link between the Vietnam War and the Black & White race War?
OR was neither War ever mentioned in the context of institutionalized "Education."

In short, was the Vietnam War even discussed in the "public" or "for profit" education system?
Put another way: Was there ANY link between "teachers' getting paid $$$ for educationing young Americans about the wonder of traveling thousands of miles to a God-forsaken land in order to 'save' America from the evil socialists?

Panamint Patty said...


leary7 said...

Robert...I see your points but I have to say I wonder if your argument isn't moot. You're right, the Vietnam War was not taught correctly back in the day, but then most everything taught was skewed to some degree.
But now...but now...with internet access anyone, even a six year old kid, can get alternative views galore on the internet. If a kid, or anyone for that matter, is truly interested in a subject - be it TLB or JFK or cold fusion - they can learn about it from twenty different angles on the net.
So, again, no offense, but bitching about how things were education-wise back in the 60's and 70's just seems like tilting at windmills. (is that right?). I'm just not into assigning blame for the past. I'd rather deal with the now and the road ahead.

Robert Hendrickson said...

Leary, we're NOW on the same page, but when YOU conclude with: "I'm just not into assigning blame for the past," we must part ways: I was "taught" just like you, but one day in Jr. High School our class was sent to the school's library to study. Being the rebel, I instead started looking through the "coffee table" books for some pictures to enjoy during what seemed like a laborious hour.

I inadvertently selected a big book on WWII and Nazi Germany and brought it back to a reading table. From the first page, I was had. Never was I ever exposed - in public school - to this kind of TRUTH. In fact, how the fuck this book was ever allowed to hide on the shelves of any public library, in the 50s, is still beyond my imagination. BUT it was there and I did go through it, and it did change my thought process FOREVER!!!

Don't bother to "assign blame" to Adolf Hitler for the Holocoust - YOU obviously were NEVER a history teacher and I suspect NEVER any "teacher" at all.

Don't "assign blame" to JFK (the WWII hero) for giving physical birth to the WAR against Communism - where 57 thousand young boys shed their blood for thee. OK - but can I, at least, blame the puppet (LBJ) from Texas?

leary7 said...

ah, Robert...personal insults? I thought you were better than that. grown-ups should be able to disagree without casting aspersions. you may not like what I say but I don't recall insulting you personally or purposefully. Let's just move on.

Robert Hendrickson said...

I may have been a little too passionate, BUT JFKs WAR on Communision / Vietnam has bothered me forever -- I lost some good friends, who were his victims. AND now those who worship him, are pushing for America to be the world's new symbol of Socialism. Wow, am I ever confused.

IF YOU join the eviliz tour in 2014 (and I hope YOU do) I will buy you a beer.