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