Manson myth growing stronger

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33817, 14 April 1975, Page 7

Manson myth growing stronger

(By

CHARLES FOLEY,

of the Observer Foreign Heirs Service I

The old Spahn Movie Ranch# a make-believe 1 world from which Charles Manson’s “Family” went out night after night on their only-too-real killing sprees, has been bulldozed into oblivion. The crumbling sets near Los Angeles i where Tom Mix and William S. Hart once churned out Westerns I have been totally erased, as if an attempt to wipe out the memory of the horrors that occurred or were planned out there in the desert. Yet the Manson myth seems, if anything, to be growing stronger. Perhaps it was inevitable — given the American passion for cult-objects — that i Manson, the sft 2inches I mass murderer now serving la “life” sentence in a California gaol, should ascend to . the status of a folk hero. The irresistible rise of Manson as Rasputin-Svengali, Master of Mindless Maenads who copie screaming from the desert for vengeance on Middle-America, was taken a step further recently by Norman Mailer, the novelist. I “Obviously,” says Mailer in an interview with “Rolling Stone,” “Manson was , bne of the more incandescent personalities of our time. . . He had bold ideas and he carried them out. If Manson had become an intellectual he would have been most interesting.” LAWYER’S BOOK i The author of “Armies of 'the Night,” “An American I Dream” and many other (famous, works sees little Charlie as a symbolic, Dostoevskian figure who stirs an American desire to escape today’s cosseted, everyone - has - a - right - to - life society, and return to a society built on killing, on the eradication of all those |who were a drain on the mood, the energy and the j sustenance of other people. I “So the horror that Manson j inspires, at bottom, is that everybody's heart leaps up I at the thought of him doing I all that killing. He is the I robber bridegroom of Amerijcan dream life.” It is not a view that would greatly appeal to Vincent Bugliosi, the Los Angeles district attorney who (prosecuted the Manson case, and who has now published I his own exhaustive account i of the crime: “Helter Skel(ter: The True Story of the iManson Murders,”’ written •with Curt Gentry. Bugliosi (supplied the substance, Gentry the lucid style. Sharon Tate, the film ac(tress, and her four socialite • friends murdered in a Los •Angeles house one hot night (in August, 1969. were far |from being the only victims of the Manson Family. Bug(liosi speculates that the gang may have killed up to 35 or 40 people, usually ■with orgiastic sadism — one 'young girl was stabbed 157 times, a man was beheaded. Yet if Tate had not been a beautiful screen-goddess, and her husband had not been Roman Polanski, director of such macabre films as •“Rosemary’s Baby” and “Respulsion.'' one wonders if Charlie Vlanson would have quite the fascination he has for us all. INCOMPETENCE Bugliosi has little time for attempts to elevate Manson to mystic status. His book does much to demythicise a luride case, and to explain’ how Manson and his giggly' female disciples got that i way. It is also bound to be

controversial in its revelations of police bungling and incompetence in the sixmonth long investigation which finally ended because Manson and his leading harpy, Susan Atkins, couldn’t stop boasting about their killings, A bloody fingerprint on an electric push button at the Tate house was obliterated by one officer. Other evidence was scattered about by an army of investigators who tramped their own footprints through the gore, and failed to link a remarkably similar murder of a Los Angeles couple 24 hours later, with the case. A police search was initiated across America for the gun used on three of the victims: three months later it was realised that the murder weapon had been filed away at a local station, unexamined. Against Bugliosi’s wishes, and before he had gathered a fraction of the evidence needed to prove his case in court, the Los Angeles police chief, Ed Davis, summoned the world press to announce that his department had “solved” the murders. The most fascinating aspect of the volume, however, lies in the detail amassed about Manson’s mind, motives, background and his phenomenal powers of manipulating other people — skills learnt during a lifetime of nettv crime which

included 17 years in gaol, (“the only home I ever had,” (as he often put it. CRIME AT 13 Manson, who turned 40 last November, is the illegitimate son of a 16-year-old ; girl (father unknown). She was a promiscuous drunk who eventually served time herself for trying to rob a filling station with one of her many men friends. Young Charlie lived with strictly religious relatives until she got out, whereupon she promptly abandoned him in a boys’ home. After some (months, he fled and began I robbing grocery stores to [live. His first armed robbery (came when he was 13-years-(old. From that time on his record is a long catalogue of escapes, car thefts, cheque forgery, pimping, mail theft, use of stolen credit cards, and other assorted crimes. The many psychiatrists ’ who examined him in prison reported dutifully on his “aggressive anti-social tendencies” and his lust to; dominate others which in! gaol expressed itself on sev-l eral occasions by way of| homosexual rape, with a razor at the victim’s throat. ( They noted, too, that he; was an accomplished con-: artist of high intelligence, who could charm before he struck, and who dabbled' eclectically in various religious philosophies such as! Scientology and Buddhism.; He also learnt to play the! guitar well, and wrote songs. MESSIANIC Paroled in 1967. he headed for San Francisco’s HaightAshbury district, then in the : throes of the flower-children period. There the Family; was born, as Manson sur-(. rounded himself with girls and boys who, Bugliosi ob-i serves, all had one thing in; common: a deep hostility to-| wards society and all it; stands for. Manson chose his! followers astutely from therunaways, the doped-out teen-agers who begged on; street corners, the lost refu- . gees from communes and crash pads across the, country. That was Charlie Manson, , freed by collapsing social restraints in the chaotic. 1960 sto mould human mat- : erial to his will as the Mes- : sianic leader of a cult that.i

borrowed from everything that ever captured his power-hungry imagination. The Beatles, the Book of; Revelation, an occult group called the Process — all went into the cooking pot of yet another end-of-the-world theory, that staple of so (many cranky Californian (sects. I The Family, isolated from(society in the fantasylands of the Spahn Ranch or the. Barker farm in Death Vai-' ley, their minds blown by drugs, sex. music, whatever' would heighten suggestibility; (there were no clocks, no newspapers at Spahn), were; Totally brainwashed. Naive, impressionable they heard from Manson what they: wanted to hear: that society,; not their little outcast band., was sick. They believed ( literally in Manson’s bizarre vision of Armageddon, a war between blacks and whites, which would leave Charlie,; also known as “Jesus Christ”, “Satan” and “God”' leader of the world. HITLER When he decided to stimu-i late this holocaust with a ■ series of savage slayings for which whites would blame; blacks, the Family went out; to do his bidding, any idea; of guilt already expiated by l their redeemer, Manson. He was. Bugliosi points out, a small-time Hitler with an in-; nate sense of how to exploit] human weakness. “Hitler ] had the best answer to. everything,” Manson once ■ said. Especially racial questions. Manson hated “nig-; , gers”, as he called them, and; although they would win World War 111 they would ( ( prove too incompetent to run what they had conquered. Racism was not the only • thing he had in common with Hitler: both men were; failed artists engrossed in; the occult; both believed ini the inferiority of women;' t both had eyes which their I followers called “hypnotic”,; ] and an extraordinary power: to influence others by pin-; pointing their obsessive fears and weaknesses; both had grand designs to conquer their worlds through • murder. Hitler had his Eva; the; one girl to whom Manson showed any kind of lasting affection was of German extraction. He described her to; a friend as “the result of; 2000 vears of perfect breeding.” ’ And both men had an unexpected appeal to in-; jtellectuals of the extremist] (variety, before they dis-' (covered his racism. Underground newspapers por-( ; trayed Manson as a revolt!- ( itiohary martyr. Jerry Rubini (declared: “His words and’ (courage inspired us”; Bernadine Dohrn, fugitive leader of the Weathermen, topped them all: "Offing those rich pigs with their own knives; (and forks, and then sitting; down to eat a meal in the same room — far out!” For (a time you could buy “Free; Manson" buttons. The Family is believed to have had upwards of 60 members, and many of them are still around in California today. Bugliosi is convinced • That they killed several (times to prevent evidence (coming out at Manson’s; 'trial, or in revenge on ; “squealers”. Although two; (schemes to help Manson' (break out of prison have already failed (one when Family members were caught robbing a gun store, the other when letters he was ■ smuggling out to women followers were intercepted), his. (devotees still hope to free I ■their leader. Manson comes; up for parole in 1978. but; (for once a “life sentence") may turn out to be just that.. ;(0.F.N.5.-Copyright). I