The Manson Family Murders Part I

we take LSD before every episode. Sure, I mean the slogan of our show is wow, He's Alie. Yeah, so c o A. For those of you who did not see the title, Uh, if you're listening to your kids about the Manson family murders out of c o A, then you need a parenting c o A. Yeah for real. But there are lots of grizzly details in this, so obviously you may want to skip this one. With a on a on a family picnic, Yeah, it might kind

of bring it down a couple of degrees. Might be a drag, you know, probably so Uh, speaking of drags, Chuck, I'll tell you who is a drag Charles Manson. He was. He was so like, there's this, there's this reputed legend that Charles Manson tried out for the Monkeys. It was rejected, and that was ultimately why he um ordered these these grizzly murders. Um of what that will definitely get into. But it turns out that's absolutely false. Yeah, that that I've heard that and it always sounded to me like

an urban legend. Well, so the thing is, it's got like all sorts of interesting facets to it, though right, it's demonstrably false. He was in prison at the time the Monkeys tryouts were held. But it kind of coincides with this larger part of Charles Manson's life that not everybody is fully aware of, which is that he wanted to be a star. He wanted to be a musical

recording star, and he actually had. He made some inroads into that career, and I have read theories that it is possible that these murders were ordered as a means of venting Manson's frustration that his music career wasn't going as well as he thought it should, and sending a message to some people in the music industry that he made contact with to basically say, hey, I can't kill you because I need you, but I can kill other people to get you going and and get my music

career off the ground. What's the hold up? Which is just like the Manson family murders on their face, as they're largely understood, is nuts. But if that's the real thing behind all of this, that's just the depths of pravity, of human depravity that people are capable of. I bet that's not like the sole reason. But but you know, like if you really strip reasons down, like what are motivations for things? Like is it really you know, to bring on Helter Skelter? Is it because he was a

frustrated musician? You know? Like you can say the same thing about Hitler, like was there a kernel of Hitler's rejection from the art world and from people at large that drove him to to order the horrible things that he ordered the Nazis to do? Like it makes you wonder, like what is the motivation but behind world changing events when you break them down to a personal level. Yeah, I mean, well, Manson, to be fair, was had mental illness in a lifetime of rejection, so this could all

affector in for sure. Yeah. But so I mean you you you asked for this article to be written, didn't you. Was this your jam? Yeah? We yeah. At the Grabster we can sort of petition him to write articles at times, and this was definitely one of them. Yeah. So did you know a lot about the Manson family murders and the family themselves and all that stuff already? Yeah? So you this was this is probably still part of like the cultural zeitgeist when you were becoming like aware of

the world as a kid. Huh. Yeah. Like I definitely remember the book Helter Skelter being a huge, huge thing. Um. And I remember a time before, like media was so robust when the idea of Charles Manson was just so terrifying to me. I do too, uh. And then I got older and saw interviews and I was like, oh, he's just a little tiny redneck. Yeah, like it all vanished. I was like, oh my god, he's just he's just

a little redneck. Yeah. I think that's what. There were two things that kids of the eighties went through as far as awakenings. Were concerned that the Soviet people were not murder all of us, and that Charles Manson was not actually scary. He was just a dumb redneck behind bars. Yeah, I mean he what he did was horrific to be sure,

so I'm not like minimizing that. But as far as the person, he was this larger than life, scary as crap dude to me, until you know, interviews started coming out and sit down with like Diane Sawyer was like,

this guy's a joke. But for a little while there he was legitimately America's worst nightmare because at the time, like a lot of people say, when the Manson family committed these murders and it it came out, you know, a couple of months later, that's some depraved acid head hippies had actually committed these gruesome crimes that had captured the nation's attention. It suddenly gave the establishment, who had been looking for anything to lay on two hippies to say, see, see,

we told you you can't be trusted. Your whole piece love um free stuff like that doesn't work. You can't do that, because this is the outcome of it. Manson was that personified and for a lot of for that reason, a lot of people say, this guy, these murders ended the the summer of love and the era of hippies and ushered in the seventies. Yeah, for sure. I mean

timing wise, Uh, it just seems very natural. And and Ed even points out like even during the trial that narrative was being laid down, it wasn't like years later people look back and said this. Um. And he also, I thought it was really interesting. I never really put it into context like Ed did. But Um, the moon landing, the very first moon landing that is, happened two weeks uh before the Manson family murders, and then a week after the murders was Woodstock. So that was a that

was a nutty month, it really was in America. And and again, these murders when they took place, they were just no one had any idea who the Manson family was except for a handful of people out in l A and some cops that had run ins with them. But they were not famous, and no one realized that the Manson family had been responsible for these murders. They were just these gruesome, unsolved murders. In between the moon

landing and Woodstock. Yeah, so a lot of people let's start at the what a lot of people consider the beginning, which is the night of August nine, um in a house at one zero zero five zero C Yellow Drive, which is in Beverly Hills, up in the hills, right, yeah, I kind of looked up like three different places how to pronounce that, and they all said yellow except for Diane Sawyer said cello. And I'm like, man, is dians what You're wrong? No about anything? No? Whatever? She says,

it's absolutely right. She could make turtlenecks, right. I used to love turtlenecks. They had, They had a real heyday. For sure. You don't see him anymore. I used to wear him on. Don't be dumb, but it was kind of a gag. I think I could still pull one off, maybe, especially with the beard. Yeah. The beard would definitely help, you know, because you could you could turn a certain way and be like regular shirt turtleneck, regular shirt turtleneck, just by just by moving your head and your beard

out of the way. Yeah. And of course in the eighties I would rock the mock turtleneck regularly. Did you I never really did. Did you wear them with Ze cavaricis No? No, no, no, it wasn't. You didn't dress like a c Slater. No, it was sort of um, believe it or not, that was like a post preppy thing where the mock turtleneck was acceptable and not cheesy. Really in a preppy sense. I got you because I was sort of a prep before I became a human monster. I could see that did you did you wear the

La cost alligator and stuff? We couldn't afford that stuff, So a word, the knockoffs or if I had the lacost the alligator was like accidentally sewing onto the collar. So oh yeah, yeah, we've had this conversation. Yeah, all that good stuff factory seconds. Yep, that's Jory Remnant's nice. So on this night on August nine, are we going with Ciello or Diane Sawyer's cello? Just let's just say that the house that Satan built, right, it's at there anymore?

By the way, No, they they tore it down, but not before Trent Risner went in and recorded at nine inch Nail's album There. Why not, um so at this at this house at one zero zero five zero Ciello drive, that's not there any longer. There's a knock at the door in the night of August nine, around midnight. So I don't know if that makes August nine or ten. I couldn't get a definitive answer. But the door was answered by a guy named Voitech fried Kowski, who was

known as a Polish playboy. He was friends of the director Roman Polanski. Uh, and he was there because inside that house was Roman Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant with their I believe their first child. Um. I don't think they had any other children. Sharon type was pretty young at the time, but um. Also inside was Abigail Folger, who was the heiress to the Folger

Coffee fortune. And um, I think. Oh, one other guy, J C. Brin, who was a stylist who was known as the guy who introduced hair styling two men, So he was pretty well off and pretty well known as far as ELI went. And they're just kind of this hip industry party crowd inside this this residence. And there was a knock at the door and this guy was there at on the other side of the door, and he had a mustache and he was tall, kind of

a natural athlete type type from Texas. And he said, I'm the devil and I'm here to do the devil's business. And that was Texas Watson, and he entered the house and this massacre of everybody inside began. Yeah, so what had happened previous to that knock was Texas Watson climbed up a telephone pole, cut the phone line, and then climbed the fence with a couple of other people, one Susan Atkins and one Patricia krin Winkle, all Manson family members.

And we'll get into the whole family thing in a minute. Uh. And so they climbed over the fence, went in. There was a kid, a teenager named Steve Parent who was leaving in his car already and he did not make it out. Um. He was shot five times. He was slashed and shot five times by tex Watson before he could get down the driveway. So one murder had already been committed on that property by the time they even

got to the house. Yeah. And if any of these people, which you can definitely make the case all of them were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stephen Parent was just doubly so he was visiting the caretaker of the house. So he had nothing to do with the the um, the Hollywood jet set people inside, or the Manson family. He was just friends with somebody who was like a worker at the house and he was

leaving at the time time too. Yeah, he would have been friends with what was the guy's name from the o j oh oh man. He would have been friends with Kat o'kalin, which is Yeah, that would have been a bad, bad thing to be I think talk about a mock turtle neck, yeah, I think he has one permanently tattooed on his neck. Uh. There was also a third of Manson family member, Linda Kasabian, who was not

in the house, but she waited. Essentially was the getaway driver, right and she'd just come into the family like a month before. And apparently the reason she was out with them was because she was the only one with the valid driver's license out of that group. So Lenny Cassabian sitting outside, tex Watson, Patricia Krannwinkel, and Um Susan Atkins all entered the house and they just start killing everybody. Um. Apparently Texas is the only one with a gun, but

all three of them had knives. Patricia Cranwinkle found Abigail Folder reading in bed and started to kill her. Um. I believe Sharon Tate and J. C. Bring were in the living room together and they were both um killed there in the living room, um voytech fried Kowski made it out of the house, but he was killed in the front lawn. Abigail Folder, I think, made it out

the back and she died on the back lawn. And one of the things about this is like the reason the word massacres like such a an apt description like these were. These were just basically like I don't know how old text was. He was a little bit older, but these are basically like seventeen eighteen, nineteen year old girls, um, who had never done anything like this before, and we're really not very good at it while they were doing it this first time, um, And it was just bad

for everybody. Apparently, it's very brutal. There's a lot of fear and terror and a lot of pain and torment among everybody who was being killed in this house. It wasn't easy clean. You would characterize it as like a hit. It was a it was a massacre. Yeah. Abigail Folger herself was stabbed twenty eight times. Uh, and then see bringing Furkowski in addition to being stabbed, were also shot and obviously Sharon Tate's unborn child was you know, killed

in this process as well. Uh. And supposedly and this is a direct quote apparently, I guess from the trial, um, the directive from Charles Manson. And if you don't know this, I guess we should go ahead and say Charles Manson um. Even though later on other people said that Tex Watson was more acting on his own and misunderstood Manson's directive. But Charles Manson ordered these killings, um, which we'll get into. But he told Watson supposedly totally destroy everyone in that

house as gruesome as you can. So in addition to the to the mutilation of the bodies um, and like post mortem stab wounds, there was stuff written on the wall and their blood like pig and uh, well I think pig was the only thing written on the wall at this one, right on the front door, which is a obviously was a reference to cops at the time, right, and they wrote it and Sharon takes blood, right, So pig is on the door and blood. Um. The perpetrators

got away, the Manson family got away. They made it back to I think the Spawn Ranch, which is one of the places they were staying. So then two nights later Manson orders the family to go do it again. He's he actually said that they according to texts and and the rest of them, he actually said that they'd done it wrong. They had created panic and fear in these people, and they needed to do it right this time.

But to go go out and butcher another family. And he took him to a house and it was a house next door to this house that the Manson family used to party at. Um it was a friend of one of Manson's record producer friends. And next door was just a normal, unassuming couple who had, from what I understand, no interaction with the Manson's at any point in time. Um it was this couple named Leno and Rosemary Labianka, and they were just about his middle class, upper middle

class America establishment as you could get. Yeah, he was actually lived less than two miles from this house. It was in uh the Lows Fieless neighborhood, and just the night before they had had a party at this news house who And the reason he didn't want to go back to that house is because he thought maybe it could be tied back to him in some way because he was there the night before. So they just randomly

picked the neighbor. Uh. And there was six of the followers there, the original four from the Tate House plus Leslie van Houghton and Clem Grogan I think it was his name. Uh, And yeah it was. It was talking about wrong place, wrong time. They were just in there, joining their evening, and um Manson did break. He was, actually, like you said, there for this one, whereas he wasn't even there for the Tate one. And he took part in the tying up. Uh. But then he left, which

very cowardly left. And this whole thing just reeks of cowardice, like, go do my dirty work for me, kind of in most of these cases. Right. So they tie up the la Bianca's um. They murdered them brutally again. Um. They carved war in Mr la Bianca's stomach um with a knife. They left of the knife sticking out of his neck. They left a fork sticking out of his stomach. It was just another really gruesome scene. And then again in blood they wrote they wrote things around the house like, um,

they wrote political No, they wrote um pigs again. Yeah, they were death to pigs. They wrote they misspelled it. They wrote helter skelter, which we'll get into that was

a Beatles song, which factor is in pretty heavily. Uh. And then there wrote Rise and the whole notion here and we'll cover this in detail more later too, was that Manson was trying to, or at least he says, he was trying to ignite a race war and have it um appear that black people and and maybe even black panthers had killed these white people, which would and

then turn spark a race war. They would all kill each other and the Manson And the reason I'm laughing is because it's just so ridiculously impulse implausible, and that then the Manson family would be the only people left and they could rule the world. Yeah, that was supposedly the whole thing behind Helterskelter. So the cops in l A, the the Sheriff's Department and the l A cops have um two different murder scenes that are obviously related, but

early on they didn't they didn't connect them yet. It took it took a minute, but once they did, these two murders came to be known as the Tate la Bianca murders. Before anyone knew who the Manson family was, and it was a big deal. Um, but you have to go back even further to understand what's going on and to understand the eventual prosecution of the Manson family to another murder, and we will dive into that one

after this. Okay, Chuck. So everybody knows about the Tate La Bianca murders, so much so that they're frequently called the Manson family murders. But it turns out that the Manson family was already involved in another previous murder um a couple of weeks before the Tate and La Bianca murders happened. I think in like late July of nineteen sixty nine, right, yeah, I mean there was one other murder and an attempted murder and then and not quite

attempted murder also right. Uh. So that the one you're talking about, I think is probably Gary Henman, who uh he was, Well, why don't you go and explain how he fit into this whole thing? Okay? So Gary Henman was a music teacher, um who was a friend of

the Manson family. I don't think he ever was considered like a Manson family member, but he was a buddy of them, um and he either had a trust fund coming or there was a rumor that he he had access to a trust fund of like twenty thousand dollars, and so the Manson family went over to rob him. I think Bobby Bosley was the leader of that um,

and they went over to rob him. Or he had supply the Manson family with a bunch of mescal and that they in turn sold to a motorcycle gang that was not happy that when it turned out the mescaline was bad who wanted their money back. So the Manson family had gone to go get their money back from this guy, and apparently he had said, like, I don't have any money, but here, I'll sign over the title

of my cars to you. Here are the keys um And at this point they had him tied up and I'm not entirely certain why, but Charles Manson, and this is widely agreed upon, I think even by Manson himself, that Manson came over to the house to basically assist in in like getting this guy to cough up his money. Maybe that's what it was. And he took a sword and chopped off part of the guy's ear. Yeah, and depending on who you believe, some say Manson actually ended

up killing him. Other people say that Bobby Bosliel ended up stabbing him to death. Uh, Manson was on the scene for this one though, which was different than the other murders, and uh guess it just depends on who you believe it was. Bussola was eventually arrested while driving that car of Henman's, so um him instead Busy Little's in jail. And uh, you have to actually go back even further to find the first at least attempted murder by the Manson family, um earlier in July, on July one.

This is just a bad jam if you really start thinking about, like all these dates are so compressed, and you think about the Manson family just being in this crazy like murderous kill spree and it really only went for like a month basically, you know, four or five weeks um. But they did a lot of damage in that time. But the whole thing started, and you can make the case and a lot of people do that.

The whole thing, everything else that followed actually started on July one, when Charles Manson went to the apartment of a syndicate drug dealer, like a big time drug dealer named um Bernard. Lots of Papa Crow right. Yeah, and uh, the Manson thought that he might have been a black panther. I don't think that was ever confirmed. I read a lot of articles kind of going back and forth. But um, regardless,

Manson thought he was a black panther. There was a double crossing deal that went on, and they went over and Manson actually shot Crow and thought he had killed him, but he did not die. And he did not go to the cops because he you know, what do you do go to the cops and say, hey, a double crossed these weirdo rednecks hippies. No, they double crossed him. They double crossed him. Oh see I read that he

double cross them. No, that's why no, Tex Watson, Well, either way, he would not go to the cops, uh, in his condition, and so that's why it was never reported. But he was interviewed. Uh. The transcript is pretty interesting to listen to. Yeah. Um, but yeah, and he wouldn't go to the cops because he would just handle it himself.

And that's basically what he vowed to do. So there's this guy who Manson shot in the gut and left for dead, who now wants to kill Manson and the whole family and that Manson is convinced as a black panther, which suddenly makes sense as to why you would have found something like political piggies and a Paul print in blood at Gary Heman's murder scene, right, because this is about the time that this whole helter skelter thing is happening starting out and um, the whole idea that that

there is a race war coming and that the Manson family might be able to nudge it along by framing um, the black community or black panthers for these murders of white people. Uh, is the basis of this idea of what was behind the Manson family murders as far as

the prosecution is concerned. Yeah, so I mentioned an almost um attempted murder jumping back forward again the very night of the The idea of the night of the Lobbianca murders was to have two separate murders on the same night, and Manson ordered a few I think different followers, including Linda Kasabian, to murder this um kind of little known Lebanese actor named Saladine Nadar, and Kasabian basically got there, didn't want to do this and so intentionally knocked on

the wrong door of the apartment, um, basically giving her an excuse to get out of there. So um. Weirdly, Saladine and Nadir was never it was a near victim of the Manson family. So that's talk about it. Talk about a close call, yeah for real, you know, yeah, uh. And I looked him up. He he basically was a famous actor by that time, and then just didn't do much after that. So I wonder if that had if that like just broke his brain or something, you know, I don't know. I think it would have done that

to me. Alright, So I think it's about time for another ad break. Let's do it, all right, we'll be right back after this, all right, Chuck, we're back. Should we talk about Charles Manson a little bit? Yeah? Less so, like, well, let's recap real quick, Okay. Manson has shot um lots of Papa Crow in his stomach, lots of pop Crow, has vowed to kill the whole Man's of family. Bobby Bosle killed Gary Henman, tried to frame the Black Panthers by writing political piggies and blood on the wall. Bobby

bos Is arrested Um. The Manson family supposedly trying to make it look like somebody besides Bobby bos might have killed Gary Henman. Um, kill the people at the Tate Residents, kill the people at the La Bianca Residents, right, things like political piggis and rise and pig in blood on the walls there, and and that's where we've left off so far. The Manson family hasn't been caught yet. Let's

talk about Charles Manson, all right. So Manson, UM, it's sort of mixed up on what you want to believe because a lot of the information about his life came from him, and anyone who knows anything about Charles Manson knows that he had a tendency to overstate things and uh certainly lie about things. But what we do know is that he was born in nineteen thirty four to a to a teen mom and dad, and the dad basically um would not assume any fraternity or responsibility, sort

of split. His name was colonel, his actual name was colonel, and he convinced people that he was an army colonel even though he was not. So he was just never on the scene at all. And um he ended up taking the name Manson from his stepfather who you know. His his mom married, She was an alcoholic, may have been a prostitute. She was in and out of jail for most of her life and uh or most of his young life. And it was just, you know, a

truly bad scene for a young Charles Manson. So he he actually um went and lived with relatives while she was in jail for a five year stretch. She got out, they reunited, he said. He apparently said that reuniting with there was one of the few truly joyful moments in his life. But in very short order, she basically was like,

I can't take care of you. I don't really want this responsibility and handed him over to the state, which begun, which began a just basically a string of institutionalization that

would that would keep going for basic basically his whole life. Yeah, I mean by the time he was eventually sent to federal prison, I think he was thirty two years old when he was released in sixty seven, and they calculated that he had spent half of his life uh in and out of institutions, whether it would be orphanages or um juvie or real deal prison in jail, right, And that was just the first part of his life, So he was out for two years before they got him

again after these murders. By the time he died in prison at ag A d three this past November two seventeen, he had spent from my calculations, only thirteen years of his life as a freeman, thirteen out of eighty three years outside of institutions. So he had a lot of the deck stacked against him. But you can also go back to I think March nineteen sixty seven when he was released on parole um from federal prison, where he was given a choice like, hey man, here you go.

You're out. You can decide what to do with your life. Do you want to go straight, do you want to go have a nice family, Do you want to just be a productive member of society, or are you going to go the exact opposite direction. And as we know in hindsight, Charlie Manson chose the exact opposite direction. It's I don't know if he was ever officially diagnosed um, but I did see that that doctors over the years and mental health professionals say that he was probably schizophrenic.

Uh suffered from schizophrenia and had a paranoid delusional disorder at the very least, I hadn't heard the schizophrenia thing. Paranoid delusional disorder totally buy Yeah, so he was. He was a troubled dude. UM of course, not excusing anything, but it was clearly a case of um mental illness combined with rejection and institutionalization. UM really led to like the man that he would eventually become right. So he gets out of prison right and he um is basically

released into San Francisco seven. So it's like Hippie Dum, the Kingdom of Hippie Dum, where he shows up and there's you know, at the time, everybody's looking for like something new, something different, something that's an alternative to the

establishment of the mainstream or anything different. And so Charles Manson says like, oh I can, I can totally exploit a lot of these people Um, and that he starts out by meeting a girl, a librarian named Mary Bruner, and he moves into her apartment and she apparently was very fascinated with him because she had led a fairly

straight laced life. She went to college again, she was a librarian, and all of a sudden there's this wild like X con who is preaching this kind of gospel of love and no materials, um, and apparently before November night, which will explain what happened then before that time, Um, Charles Manson supposedly did pretty closely resemble an actual hippie like he did. He he felt like he could take anything of yours that he wanted, but you could also

take anything of his. And he apparently walked the walk when it came to stuff like that, And there are plenty of stories of him just giving up whatever um material possessions, saying they didn't matter, um, before things really took a dark turn. So there's if you really kind of dive in, it becomes clear how he could have amassed some of these early followers. And the first one

was was Mary Bruner. Yeah. I get the feeling that, um, this probably would not have happened in any other era other than this generation when um, you know we talked about in our Brainwashing in our Cults episodes, where this time it was just it's just a weird time in America and people were really um, I don't know about prone, but at least ripe for the picking when it comes to falling into uh situations, like this and believing these what looked like crack pots to us now, but at

the time everyone was. It was very anti establishment. People were taking tons of drugs and rejecting rejecting mainstream society and embracing the counterculture, and they were just really open to all kinds of weird stuff. So he again, he just kind of figured out that he could he could work this to his own means. So there's a couple of things that there's there's two basic things that you needed to know about Charles Manson from from everything I've seen.

One was that his main goal was to become a recording artist, a very successful star of a recording artist. And two that he could he had a good ability to manipulate people into giving him what he wanted um and mostly that that amounted to sex and drugs um. And he used that ability to get other people to do what he wanted. So, for example, when he started to a mass like a substantial amount of girls in the Manson family, um, it was it was just a

free love commune the whole time. So the guys who came in all of a sudden had access to these the women, and in return um for Charlie granting them access to them. They would basically do his bidding or offer him physical protection because he wasn't a big guy. He's kind of a shrimpy dude. Um. But they're everything from from If you look at it from an outsider's perspective, every relationship be had was one of extraction. He was taking something from everyone around him. It wasn't just a

normal friendship or a normal relationship. It was it was what can you do for me? And what can I use from you to to get something out of other people. Yeah, and if if you've never seen an interview with him, I encourage you to check some of them out. He does have a very um stream of consciousness, circular sort of talks NonStop and doesn't make a lot of sense, but um. One thing that's often said about him is that he can be mesmerizing um with the way he

does that. And I imagine in the late sixties, if you've got a headful of acid and there's this guy that has the ability to like almost rebreathe like a trumpet player and talk for minutes and minutes and hours on end, they could be kind of you know, they would fall under this weird spell. So I definitely don't get it because now when I watch him on again, tiny weird redneck. Um, but when you you know, when you see him doing a thing, even with like Diane Sawyer,

who doesn't fall for it. By the way, she she clearly is just like very it's a great interview. She's pro and she stays very on point, basically kind of like you're not gonna get me to like fall through your charms. Uh, but but it's pretty interesting. Um. So he's got Mary Bruner is this first girlfriend. Then he said, hey, what do you think about a triad? Or rather, what do you think about a triad? That's how he sounded.

And um, Mary Brunner, from what I understand, wasn't super into it, but she was under his spell, so she said sure. Uh so Squeaky from Lynette Squeaky from came into the picture, and um, they you know, they lived as a as a threson that traveled together up and down the coast out there, and he just sort of started accumulating mostly women along the way to this sort of traveling party is probably how he framed it, and

people were hipped to it. There were men though, um, besides Tex Watson and Bobby Busslil those guy named Danny de Carlo who were kind of early men who joined up. And by all accounts, most of those men who joined up were there because Manson was said, you know, you can have these women. You've got plenty of drugs. And so before you know it, the Manson family was born and they were just kind of this weirdo hippie group that um used to commit burglary. These Manson there has

long been um. It's long been said that he beat a lot of the women in the group and would prostitute them to for cash to pay for things for the family, like rent um. They they ate a lot of their food from like going through dumpsters behind grocery stores and stuff like that. And they just basically hung out and did drugs and had sex all day. That

was basically their aim and their goal. And then at night they would have bonfires out in the desert and um, they'd all just take a bunch of acid and listen to Charles Manson do his mesmerizing thing. Um. And again at first it was it was weird. There's a lot of like ideas that Manson was this reincarnation of Jesus Christ, or that he was not even the reincarnated Jesus Christ. He was the same Jesus Christ who had been alive

for you know, almost two thousand years um. And just like all the stuff you would find in the desert among hippies in the late sixties, On I said, at night around a bonfire, right but when when um, by this time, like by the time they're out in the desert, Manson had had this really amazing chance encounter that you just would never have and the fact that it did happen is just totally mind blowing. But become a recording artist.

To help ensure his success of becoming a recording artst he moved the family from San Francisco down to Los Angeles to be closer to the center of the recording industry. And it just so happened that one night in nineteen UM, a couple of Manson family girls were hitch hiking on Sunset Boulevard and we're picked up by none other than Dennis will And Wilson, one of the co founders of the Beach Boys. That's right, it was sixty nine, but

same same deal. All those years just ran together back then. Uh, and Dennis Wilson was, Um, he was a party, party dude and liked his ladies. Because it sounds very weird to say that he picked up a cup of hitchhikers and basically brought them home. But um, it was a different time, and uh, he was, like I said, he was a party dude. So they ended up being Ella,

Joe Bailey and the aforementioned Patricia Crinwinkle. So they move in basically, and he goes to the studio, comes home and the Manson family had moved in, which again it sounds really strange, but at the time he I mean Ed says he was frightened at I get the feeling. He was more like, you know, what trip are you on? Not like, oh my god, I need to call the cops. Yeah, he um, because they lived there for a while, like he let them live there. Yeah. I think the party

it was partially out of fear. I saw and I read an interview with Charles Manson. He was talking about Dennis Wilson, and he was like, you know, I'd say whatever, he just lay his weirdo trip on Dennis Wilson, and Dennis is responsibly like, yeah, man, that's cool. Listen, look, I gotta go, I really gotta go do this thing. Just always trying to get away from Charles man Inson. So maybe he was afraid that he was they were

going to kill him. Maybe he liked having access to like all this free love from all the Manson family women um, or maybe he just felt like he couldn't get out of it. But he uh, he did let them live there for a few months. It wasn't like they crashed there for a weekend. They moved in, they wrecked his ferrari um, they they met a bunch of his friends. It was it was a big It was a big deal that that Dennis Wilson came into Charles Manson's life because it really bolstered this idea that, yes,

he is going to become a recording artist. Because not only did he hang out with Dennis Wilson, he hung out with a guy named Terry Melcher who was a record producer, hung out with another guy named Phil Kaufman who was a record producer, and he met all these people in the industry who were in a position to

get Charles Manson's career off of the ground. And when when there's you're dealing with this this crazy little ticking time bomb like Charles Manson, who wants you to do something like get his musical career off the ground, but you don't think his music is good enough to actually launch. Um, you've got a problem on your hands. And Dennis Wilson and his buddies all knew this, yes, And uh, two quick things here. One big shout out to Dennis Wilson's

only solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue. Is it good? And I think it's great. I gotta check that out. And I love the Beach Boys. I mean he Dennis Wilson was was clearly not the the brains or voice behind the Beach Boys as the drummer, but U and he was always sort of, um, I think, kind of picked on a little bit for not being the most talented dude. And he was just in the band because he was handsome and related. But um, I think Pacific Ocean Blue is like one of the great lost classics. Let's check

it out. It's very good. He was supposedly also the only true surfer in the band. Yeah, exactly. Uh. And the other thing was that Terry Melcher, that producer that you mentioned. The reason he factors in so heavily is because he actually lived at the Tate House in Beverly Hills before Tate and then moved in, So that was sort of the connection there. Um, I guess Manson was going to kill him right now. So here is what

a lot of people think. They think that again, he was sending a message to Terry Melcher saying, I can't kill you, but I can get close to you. And I know you're gonna hear about this because this happened at the house you were living in a month or so before. I'm just gonna go in and have my people indiscriminately slaughter whoever is there. But this is this

is you, this is what's going on. He he supposedly was well aware that Terry Melcher didn't live there any longer, because he'd spoken to the guy who actually owned the house and was asking him where Terry Melcher went, and all the guy would tell him was Malibu, So he knew it wasn't Melcher in that house. And alright, so they eventually leave Dennis Wilson's house. Dennis Wilson's like, you guys are great and all the ladies are nice. The acid is decent, but it's time for you to go.

So they live. Uh they leave in night still and um he uh they go to Spawn Ranch, which you mentioned earlier s P A h N. And this was a it's kind of weird that they ended up living here, but it was. It was out in kind of the outskirts of l A. There are lots of ranches like the Disney Ranch at the Universal Ranch where they shoot a lot of stuff, and they have old sets that are still there, whether it's uh Mash or Planet of

the Apes or um, just an old West set. And Spawn Ranch was one of these that had closed down, and it was an old West set and they actually, um it's a state park now. But they did have permission to live there. They didn't just uh squat there. They uh sort of had a little agreement to do a little maintenance work, uh and they were allowed to stay.

So some of them are there, some of them are at places like at a camp in Death Valley, and then just scattered all over l A as far as Manson family members and just random houses in a artments.

But the main place that that Manson in the Inner Circle was it Spawn Ranch, and they would go on what they called creepy crawls, which where these little crimes Freeze would like you said, they would go out and burgle cars or robbed people and um, just to kind of keep the money and the drugs flowing, right um. And so Spawn Ranch was almost like a little more legit. They were in much closer contact with other people out

in Death Valley at the Barker Ranch. That was far more secluded, way out in the desert, way more disconnected from society, and that was the place where they expected to wait out helter skelter while the the um everybody else in the country killed one another. That's right. So, um, you've got this whole, this whole weirdo family there. They're criminals, they're engaged in prostitution. There's violence, you know, there's physical violence.

But ultimately there they kind of resemble hippies. Here they're super counter culture. Um. But things turned dark, and they turned dark after this seminal thing that happened to the rest of the world but really really spoke to Charles Manson in particular, and that was the November twenty two release of the Beatles White album all Right, you know what this is gonna be a two parter. It's pretty clear. Uh, so let's go ahead and in this one on a

cliffhanger featuring the Beatles. Right, does that sound good? Yeah? It does. Um pick back up part two with a white album. Let's do it all right? All right? Well, in the meantime, while you guys are chewing over what Chuck just said, uh, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast or on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and as always, joined us at at home on the

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