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The Manson Family Murders Part I · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:14
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
0:17
Speaker 1: and we make up the Stuff you Should Know family,
0:21
Speaker 1: the peace loving, acid loving, no murdering nice family. Did
0:30
Speaker 1: I say acid loving in there? You did? Oh? We
0:34
Speaker 1: just meant peace loving, non murdering family. Yeah. And you
0:38
Speaker 1: know what, hopefully there are no kids listening to this
0:41
Speaker 1: one anyway, so we can let everyone else know that
0:43
Speaker 1: we take LSD before every episode. Sure, I mean the
0:48
Speaker 1: slogan of our show is wow, He's Alie. Yeah, so
0:52
Speaker 1: c o A. For those of you who did not
0:54
Speaker 1: see the title, Uh, if you're listening to your kids
0:57
Speaker 1: about the Manson family murders out of c o A,
1:00
Speaker 1: then you need a parenting c o A. Yeah for real.
1:04
Speaker 1: But there are lots of grizzly details in this, so
1:06
Speaker 1: obviously you may want to skip this one. With a
1:09
Speaker 1: on a on a family picnic, Yeah, it might kind
1:13
Speaker 1: of bring it down a couple of degrees. Might be
1:16
Speaker 1: a drag, you know, probably so Uh, speaking of drags, Chuck,
1:20
Speaker 1: I'll tell you who is a drag Charles Manson. He was.
1:26
Speaker 1: He was so like, there's this, there's this reputed legend
1:29
Speaker 1: that Charles Manson tried out for the Monkeys. It was rejected,
1:33
Speaker 1: and that was ultimately why he um ordered these these
1:37
Speaker 1: grizzly murders. Um of what that will definitely get into.
1:41
Speaker 1: But it turns out that's absolutely false. Yeah, that that
1:45
Speaker 1: I've heard that and it always sounded to me like
1:47
Speaker 1: an urban legend. Well, so the thing is, it's got
1:50
Speaker 1: like all sorts of interesting facets to it, though right,
1:53
Speaker 1: it's demonstrably false. He was in prison at the time
1:56
Speaker 1: the Monkeys tryouts were held. But it kind of coincides
2:01
Speaker 1: with this larger part of Charles Manson's life that not
2:04
Speaker 1: everybody is fully aware of, which is that he wanted
2:07
Speaker 1: to be a star. He wanted to be a musical
2:11
Speaker 1: recording star, and he actually had. He made some inroads
2:17
Speaker 1: into that career, and I have read theories that it
2:20
Speaker 1: is possible that these murders were ordered as a means
2:24
Speaker 1: of venting Manson's frustration that his music career wasn't going
2:29
Speaker 1: as well as he thought it should, and sending a
2:32
Speaker 1: message to some people in the music industry that he
2:35
Speaker 1: made contact with to basically say, hey, I can't kill
2:38
Speaker 1: you because I need you, but I can kill other
2:40
Speaker 1: people to get you going and and get my music
2:44
Speaker 1: career off the ground. What's the hold up? Which is
2:47
Speaker 1: just like the Manson family murders on their face, as
2:50
Speaker 1: they're largely understood, is nuts. But if that's the real
2:56
Speaker 1: thing behind all of this, that's just the depths of pravity,
3:00
Speaker 1: of human depravity that people are capable of. I bet
3:04
Speaker 1: that's not like the sole reason. But but you know,
3:07
Speaker 1: like if you really strip reasons down, like what are
3:11
Speaker 1: motivations for things? Like is it really you know, to
3:14
Speaker 1: bring on Helter Skelter? Is it because he was a
3:16
Speaker 1: frustrated musician? You know? Like you can say the same
3:19
Speaker 1: thing about Hitler, like was there a kernel of Hitler's
3:23
Speaker 1: rejection from the art world and from people at large
3:26
Speaker 1: that drove him to to order the horrible things that
3:30
Speaker 1: he ordered the Nazis to do? Like it makes you wonder,
3:33
Speaker 1: like what is the motivation but behind world changing events
3:37
Speaker 1: when you break them down to a personal level. Yeah,
3:40
Speaker 1: I mean, well, Manson, to be fair, was had mental
3:44
Speaker 1: illness in a lifetime of rejection, so this could all
3:48
Speaker 1: affector in for sure. Yeah. But so I mean you
3:51
Speaker 1: you you asked for this article to be written, didn't you.
3:54
Speaker 1: Was this your jam? Yeah? We yeah. At the Grabster
3:58
Speaker 1: we can sort of petition him to write articles at times,
4:02
Speaker 1: and this was definitely one of them. Yeah. So did
4:04
Speaker 1: you know a lot about the Manson family murders and
4:07
Speaker 1: the family themselves and all that stuff already? Yeah? So
4:12
Speaker 1: you this was this is probably still part of like
4:15
Speaker 1: the cultural zeitgeist when you were becoming like aware of
4:18
Speaker 1: the world as a kid. Huh. Yeah. Like I definitely
4:21
Speaker 1: remember the book Helter Skelter being a huge, huge thing. Um.
4:26
Speaker 1: And I remember a time before, like media was so
4:30
Speaker 1: robust when the idea of Charles Manson was just so
4:34
Speaker 1: terrifying to me. I do too, uh. And then I
4:37
Speaker 1: got older and saw interviews and I was like, oh,
4:41
Speaker 1: he's just a little tiny redneck. Yeah, like it all vanished.
4:46
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, he's just he's just
4:49
Speaker 1: a little redneck. Yeah. I think that's what. There were
4:53
Speaker 1: two things that kids of the eighties went through as
4:55
Speaker 1: far as awakenings. Were concerned that the Soviet people were
4:59
Speaker 1: not murder all of us, and that Charles Manson was
5:03
Speaker 1: not actually scary. He was just a dumb redneck behind bars. Yeah,
5:06
Speaker 1: I mean he what he did was horrific to be sure,
5:09
Speaker 1: so I'm not like minimizing that. But as far as
5:12
Speaker 1: the person, he was this larger than life, scary as
5:16
Speaker 1: crap dude to me, until you know, interviews started coming
5:20
Speaker 1: out and sit down with like Diane Sawyer was like,
5:23
Speaker 1: this guy's a joke. But for a little while there
5:25
Speaker 1: he was legitimately America's worst nightmare because at the time,
5:30
Speaker 1: like a lot of people say, when the Manson family
5:32
Speaker 1: committed these murders and it it came out, you know,
5:35
Speaker 1: a couple of months later, that's some depraved acid head
5:40
Speaker 1: hippies had actually committed these gruesome crimes that had captured
5:43
Speaker 1: the nation's attention. It suddenly gave the establishment, who had
5:48
Speaker 1: been looking for anything to lay on two hippies to say, see, see,
5:52
Speaker 1: we told you you can't be trusted. Your whole piece
5:55
Speaker 1: love um free stuff like that doesn't work. You can't
5:59
Speaker 1: do that, because this is the outcome of it. Manson
6:02
Speaker 1: was that personified and for a lot of for that reason,
6:05
Speaker 1: a lot of people say, this guy, these murders ended
6:08
Speaker 1: the the summer of love and the era of hippies
6:11
Speaker 1: and ushered in the seventies. Yeah, for sure. I mean
6:14
Speaker 1: timing wise, Uh, it just seems very natural. And and
6:18
Speaker 1: Ed even points out like even during the trial that
6:21
Speaker 1: narrative was being laid down, it wasn't like years later
6:24
Speaker 1: people look back and said this. Um. And he also,
6:27
Speaker 1: I thought it was really interesting. I never really put
6:29
Speaker 1: it into context like Ed did. But Um, the moon landing,
6:33
Speaker 1: the very first moon landing that is, happened two weeks
6:38
Speaker 1: uh before the Manson family murders, and then a week
6:42
Speaker 1: after the murders was Woodstock. So that was a that
6:46
Speaker 1: was a nutty month, it really was in America. And
6:50
Speaker 1: and again, these murders when they took place, they were
6:52
Speaker 1: just no one had any idea who the Manson family
6:55
Speaker 1: was except for a handful of people out in l
6:57
Speaker 1: A and some cops that had run ins with them.
6:59
Speaker 1: But they were not famous, and no one realized that
7:02
Speaker 1: the Manson family had been responsible for these murders. They
7:04
Speaker 1: were just these gruesome, unsolved murders. In between the moon
7:08
Speaker 1: landing and Woodstock. Yeah, so a lot of people let's
7:14
Speaker 1: start at the what a lot of people consider the beginning,
7:16
Speaker 1: which is the night of August nine, um in a
7:19
Speaker 1: house at one zero zero five zero C Yellow Drive,
7:23
Speaker 1: which is in Beverly Hills, up in the hills, right, yeah,
7:28
Speaker 1: I kind of looked up like three different places how
7:31
Speaker 1: to pronounce that, and they all said yellow except for
7:34
Speaker 1: Diane Sawyer said cello. And I'm like, man, is dians
7:39
Speaker 1: what You're wrong? No about anything? No? Whatever? She says,
7:44
Speaker 1: it's absolutely right. She could make turtlenecks, right. I used
7:48
Speaker 1: to love turtlenecks. They had, They had a real heyday.
7:52
Speaker 1: For sure. You don't see him anymore. I used to
7:55
Speaker 1: wear him on. Don't be dumb, but it was kind
7:56
Speaker 1: of a gag. I think I could still pull one off, maybe,
7:59
Speaker 1: especially with the beard. Yeah. The beard would definitely help,
8:02
Speaker 1: you know, because you could you could turn a certain
8:04
Speaker 1: way and be like regular shirt turtleneck, regular shirt turtleneck,
8:08
Speaker 1: just by just by moving your head and your beard
8:10
Speaker 1: out of the way. Yeah. And of course in the
8:12
Speaker 1: eighties I would rock the mock turtleneck regularly. Did you
8:16
Speaker 1: I never really did. Did you wear them with Ze
8:18
Speaker 1: cavaricis No? No, no, no, it wasn't. You didn't dress
8:22
Speaker 1: like a c Slater. No, it was sort of um,
8:25
Speaker 1: believe it or not, that was like a post preppy
8:28
Speaker 1: thing where the mock turtleneck was acceptable and not cheesy.
8:32
Speaker 1: Really in a preppy sense. I got you because I
8:36
Speaker 1: was sort of a prep before I became a human monster.
8:39
Speaker 1: I could see that did you did you wear the
8:43
Speaker 1: La cost alligator and stuff? We couldn't afford that stuff,
8:46
Speaker 1: So a word, the knockoffs or if I had the
8:50
Speaker 1: lacost the alligator was like accidentally sewing onto the collar.
8:53
Speaker 1: So oh yeah, yeah, we've had this conversation. Yeah, all
8:57
Speaker 1: that good stuff factory seconds. Yep, that's Jory Remnant's nice.
9:02
Speaker 1: So on this night on August nine, are we going
9:04
Speaker 1: with Ciello or Diane Sawyer's cello? Just let's just say
9:08
Speaker 1: that the house that Satan built, right, it's at there anymore?
9:13
Speaker 1: By the way, No, they they tore it down, but
9:18
Speaker 1: not before Trent Risner went in and recorded at nine
9:21
Speaker 1: inch Nail's album There. Why not, um so at this
9:26
Speaker 1: at this house at one zero zero five zero Ciello drive,
9:28
Speaker 1: that's not there any longer. There's a knock at the
9:31
Speaker 1: door in the night of August nine, around midnight. So
9:34
Speaker 1: I don't know if that makes August nine or ten.
9:36
Speaker 1: I couldn't get a definitive answer. But the door was
9:39
Speaker 1: answered by a guy named Voitech fried Kowski, who was
9:43
Speaker 1: known as a Polish playboy. He was friends of the
9:46
Speaker 1: director Roman Polanski. Uh, and he was there because inside
9:51
Speaker 1: that house was Roman Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate, who was
9:55
Speaker 1: eight months pregnant with their I believe their first child. Um.
10:00
Speaker 1: I don't think they had any other children. Sharon type
10:02
Speaker 1: was pretty young at the time, but um. Also inside
10:05
Speaker 1: was Abigail Folger, who was the heiress to the Folger
10:08
Speaker 1: Coffee fortune. And um, I think. Oh, one other guy,
10:12
Speaker 1: J C. Brin, who was a stylist who was known
10:15
Speaker 1: as the guy who introduced hair styling two men, So
10:21
Speaker 1: he was pretty well off and pretty well known as
10:24
Speaker 1: far as ELI went. And they're just kind of this
10:26
Speaker 1: hip industry party crowd inside this this residence. And there
10:31
Speaker 1: was a knock at the door and this guy was
10:32
Speaker 1: there at on the other side of the door, and
10:34
Speaker 1: he had a mustache and he was tall, kind of
10:37
Speaker 1: a natural athlete type type from Texas. And he said,
10:42
Speaker 1: I'm the devil and I'm here to do the devil's business.
10:45
Speaker 1: And that was Texas Watson, and he entered the house
10:48
Speaker 1: and this massacre of everybody inside began. Yeah, so what
10:53
Speaker 1: had happened previous to that knock was Texas Watson climbed
10:56
Speaker 1: up a telephone pole, cut the phone line, and then
11:00
Speaker 1: climbed the fence with a couple of other people, one
11:04
Speaker 1: Susan Atkins and one Patricia krin Winkle, all Manson family members.
11:09
Speaker 1: And we'll get into the whole family thing in a minute. Uh.
11:12
Speaker 1: And so they climbed over the fence, went in. There
11:15
Speaker 1: was a kid, a teenager named Steve Parent who was
11:19
Speaker 1: leaving in his car already and he did not make
11:22
Speaker 1: it out. Um. He was shot five times. He was
11:25
Speaker 1: slashed and shot five times by tex Watson before he
11:29
Speaker 1: could get down the driveway. So one murder had already
11:33
Speaker 1: been committed on that property by the time they even
11:35
Speaker 1: got to the house. Yeah. And if any of these people,
11:37
Speaker 1: which you can definitely make the case all of them
11:40
Speaker 1: were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stephen
11:43
Speaker 1: Parent was just doubly so he was visiting the caretaker
11:47
Speaker 1: of the house. So he had nothing to do with
11:49
Speaker 1: the the um, the Hollywood jet set people inside, or
11:53
Speaker 1: the Manson family. He was just friends with somebody who
11:56
Speaker 1: was like a worker at the house and he was
11:59
Speaker 1: leaving at the time time too. Yeah, he would have
12:02
Speaker 1: been friends with what was the guy's name from the
12:06
Speaker 1: o j oh oh man. He would have been friends
12:10
Speaker 1: with Kat o'kalin, which is Yeah, that would have been
12:14
Speaker 1: a bad, bad thing to be I think talk about
12:16
Speaker 1: a mock turtle neck, yeah, I think he has one
12:19
Speaker 1: permanently tattooed on his neck. Uh. There was also a
12:24
Speaker 1: third of Manson family member, Linda Kasabian, who was not
12:28
Speaker 1: in the house, but she waited. Essentially was the getaway driver,
12:32
Speaker 1: right and she'd just come into the family like a
12:35
Speaker 1: month before. And apparently the reason she was out with
12:38
Speaker 1: them was because she was the only one with the
12:39
Speaker 1: valid driver's license out of that group. So Lenny Cassabian
12:43
Speaker 1: sitting outside, tex Watson, Patricia Krannwinkel, and Um Susan Atkins
12:49
Speaker 1: all entered the house and they just start killing everybody. Um.
12:53
Speaker 1: Apparently Texas is the only one with a gun, but
12:56
Speaker 1: all three of them had knives. Patricia Cranwinkle found Abigail
13:00
Speaker 1: Folder reading in bed and started to kill her. Um.
13:05
Speaker 1: I believe Sharon Tate and J. C. Bring were in
13:07
Speaker 1: the living room together and they were both um killed
13:11
Speaker 1: there in the living room, um voytech fried Kowski made
13:15
Speaker 1: it out of the house, but he was killed in
13:17
Speaker 1: the front lawn. Abigail Folder, I think, made it out
13:19
Speaker 1: the back and she died on the back lawn. And
13:23
Speaker 1: one of the things about this is like the reason
13:25
Speaker 1: the word massacres like such a an apt description like
13:30
Speaker 1: these were. These were just basically like I don't know
13:33
Speaker 1: how old text was. He was a little bit older,
13:35
Speaker 1: but these are basically like seventeen eighteen, nineteen year old girls, um,
13:39
Speaker 1: who had never done anything like this before, and we're
13:43
Speaker 1: really not very good at it while they were doing
13:45
Speaker 1: it this first time, um, And it was just bad
13:49
Speaker 1: for everybody. Apparently, it's very brutal. There's a lot of
13:52
Speaker 1: fear and terror and a lot of pain and torment
13:55
Speaker 1: among everybody who was being killed in this house. It
13:58
Speaker 1: wasn't easy clean. You would characterize it as like a hit.
14:01
Speaker 1: It was a it was a massacre. Yeah. Abigail Folger
14:05
Speaker 1: herself was stabbed twenty eight times. Uh, and then see
14:09
Speaker 1: bringing Furkowski in addition to being stabbed, were also shot
14:12
Speaker 1: and obviously Sharon Tate's unborn child was you know, killed
14:17
Speaker 1: in this process as well. Uh. And supposedly and this
14:21
Speaker 1: is a direct quote apparently, I guess from the trial, um,
14:25
Speaker 1: the directive from Charles Manson. And if you don't know this,
14:28
Speaker 1: I guess we should go ahead and say Charles Manson um.
14:32
Speaker 1: Even though later on other people said that Tex Watson
14:34
Speaker 1: was more acting on his own and misunderstood Manson's directive.
14:39
Speaker 1: But Charles Manson ordered these killings, um, which we'll get into.
14:42
Speaker 1: But he told Watson supposedly totally destroy everyone in that
14:47
Speaker 1: house as gruesome as you can. So in addition to
14:51
Speaker 1: the to the mutilation of the bodies um, and like
14:55
Speaker 1: post mortem stab wounds, there was stuff written on the
14:59
Speaker 1: wall and their blood like pig and uh, well I
15:04
Speaker 1: think pig was the only thing written on the wall
15:05
Speaker 1: at this one, right on the front door, which is
15:08
Speaker 1: a obviously was a reference to cops at the time, right,
15:12
Speaker 1: and they wrote it and Sharon takes blood, right, So
15:15
Speaker 1: pig is on the door and blood. Um. The perpetrators
15:19
Speaker 1: got away, the Manson family got away. They made it
15:21
Speaker 1: back to I think the Spawn Ranch, which is one
15:24
Speaker 1: of the places they were staying. So then two nights
15:27
Speaker 1: later Manson orders the family to go do it again.
15:31
Speaker 1: He's he actually said that they according to texts and
15:34
Speaker 1: and the rest of them, he actually said that they'd
15:37
Speaker 1: done it wrong. They had created panic and fear in
15:40
Speaker 1: these people, and they needed to do it right this time.
15:43
Speaker 1: But to go go out and butcher another family. And
15:45
Speaker 1: he took him to a house and it was a
15:47
Speaker 1: house next door to this house that the Manson family
15:50
Speaker 1: used to party at. Um it was a friend of
15:54
Speaker 1: one of Manson's record producer friends. And next door was
15:59
Speaker 1: just a normal, unassuming couple who had, from what I understand,
16:03
Speaker 1: no interaction with the Manson's at any point in time.
16:07
Speaker 1: Um it was this couple named Leno and Rosemary Labianka,
16:12
Speaker 1: and they were just about his middle class, upper middle
16:16
Speaker 1: class America establishment as you could get. Yeah, he was
16:21
Speaker 1: actually lived less than two miles from this house. It
16:24
Speaker 1: was in uh the Lows Fieless neighborhood, and just the
16:28
Speaker 1: night before they had had a party at this news
16:30
Speaker 1: house who And the reason he didn't want to go
16:33
Speaker 1: back to that house is because he thought maybe it
16:35
Speaker 1: could be tied back to him in some way because
16:37
Speaker 1: he was there the night before. So they just randomly
16:39
Speaker 1: picked the neighbor. Uh. And there was six of the
16:42
Speaker 1: followers there, the original four from the Tate House plus
16:47
Speaker 1: Leslie van Houghton and Clem Grogan I think it was
16:50
Speaker 1: his name. Uh, And yeah it was. It was talking
16:54
Speaker 1: about wrong place, wrong time. They were just in there,
16:56
Speaker 1: joining their evening, and um Manson did break. He was, actually,
17:01
Speaker 1: like you said, there for this one, whereas he wasn't
17:04
Speaker 1: even there for the Tate one. And he took part
17:07
Speaker 1: in the tying up. Uh. But then he left, which
17:12
Speaker 1: very cowardly left. And this whole thing just reeks of cowardice, like,
17:17
Speaker 1: go do my dirty work for me, kind of in
17:20
Speaker 1: most of these cases. Right. So they tie up the
17:23
Speaker 1: la Bianca's um. They murdered them brutally again. Um. They
17:28
Speaker 1: carved war in Mr la Bianca's stomach um with a knife.
17:32
Speaker 1: They left of the knife sticking out of his neck.
17:35
Speaker 1: They left a fork sticking out of his stomach. It
17:38
Speaker 1: was just another really gruesome scene. And then again in
17:41
Speaker 1: blood they wrote they wrote things around the house like, um,
17:46
Speaker 1: they wrote political No, they wrote um pigs again. Yeah,
17:51
Speaker 1: they were death to pigs. They wrote they misspelled it.
17:54
Speaker 1: They wrote helter skelter, which we'll get into that was
17:57
Speaker 1: a Beatles song, which factor is in pretty heavily. Uh.
18:01
Speaker 1: And then there wrote Rise and the whole notion here
18:05
Speaker 1: and we'll cover this in detail more later too, was
18:07
Speaker 1: that Manson was trying to, or at least he says,
18:10
Speaker 1: he was trying to ignite a race war and have
18:14
Speaker 1: it um appear that black people and and maybe even
18:17
Speaker 1: black panthers had killed these white people, which would and
18:20
Speaker 1: then turn spark a race war. They would all kill
18:23
Speaker 1: each other and the Manson And the reason I'm laughing
18:26
Speaker 1: is because it's just so ridiculously impulse implausible, and that
18:29
Speaker 1: then the Manson family would be the only people left
18:32
Speaker 1: and they could rule the world. Yeah, that was supposedly
18:35
Speaker 1: the whole thing behind Helterskelter. So the cops in l A,
18:41
Speaker 1: the the Sheriff's Department and the l A cops have
18:44
Speaker 1: um two different murder scenes that are obviously related, but
18:48
Speaker 1: early on they didn't they didn't connect them yet. It
18:52
Speaker 1: took it took a minute, but once they did, these
18:54
Speaker 1: two murders came to be known as the Tate la
18:57
Speaker 1: Bianca murders. Before anyone knew who the Manson family was,
19:01
Speaker 1: and it was a big deal. Um, but you have
19:04
Speaker 1: to go back even further to understand what's going on
19:07
Speaker 1: and to understand the eventual prosecution of the Manson family
19:11
Speaker 1: to another murder, and we will dive into that one
19:15
Speaker 1: after this. Okay, Chuck. So everybody knows about the Tate
19:45
Speaker 1: La Bianca murders, so much so that they're frequently called
19:49
Speaker 1: the Manson family murders. But it turns out that the
19:51
Speaker 1: Manson family was already involved in another previous murder um
19:55
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks before the Tate and La Bianca
19:59
Speaker 1: murders happened. I think in like late July of nineteen
20:02
Speaker 1: sixty nine, right, yeah, I mean there was one other
20:06
Speaker 1: murder and an attempted murder and then and not quite
20:11
Speaker 1: attempted murder also right. Uh. So that the one you're
20:16
Speaker 1: talking about, I think is probably Gary Henman, who uh
20:20
Speaker 1: he was, Well, why don't you go and explain how
20:25
Speaker 1: he fit into this whole thing? Okay? So Gary Henman
20:28
Speaker 1: was a music teacher, um who was a friend of
20:32
Speaker 1: the Manson family. I don't think he ever was considered
20:34
Speaker 1: like a Manson family member, but he was a buddy
20:37
Speaker 1: of them, um and he either had a trust fund
20:42
Speaker 1: coming or there was a rumor that he he had
20:44
Speaker 1: access to a trust fund of like twenty thousand dollars,
20:47
Speaker 1: and so the Manson family went over to rob him.
20:51
Speaker 1: I think Bobby Bosley was the leader of that um,
20:55
Speaker 1: and they went over to rob him. Or he had
20:59
Speaker 1: supply the Manson family with a bunch of mescal and
21:02
Speaker 1: that they in turn sold to a motorcycle gang that
21:05
Speaker 1: was not happy that when it turned out the mescaline
21:07
Speaker 1: was bad who wanted their money back. So the Manson
21:10
Speaker 1: family had gone to go get their money back from
21:12
Speaker 1: this guy, and apparently he had said, like, I don't
21:15
Speaker 1: have any money, but here, I'll sign over the title
21:17
Speaker 1: of my cars to you. Here are the keys um
21:20
Speaker 1: And at this point they had him tied up and
21:23
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely certain why, but Charles Manson, and this
21:26
Speaker 1: is widely agreed upon, I think even by Manson himself,
21:30
Speaker 1: that Manson came over to the house to basically assist
21:36
Speaker 1: in in like getting this guy to cough up his money.
21:39
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what it was. And he took a sword
21:41
Speaker 1: and chopped off part of the guy's ear. Yeah, and
21:45
Speaker 1: depending on who you believe, some say Manson actually ended
21:48
Speaker 1: up killing him. Other people say that Bobby Bosliel ended
21:52
Speaker 1: up stabbing him to death. Uh, Manson was on the
21:56
Speaker 1: scene for this one though, which was different than the
21:57
Speaker 1: other murders, and uh guess it just depends on who
22:01
Speaker 1: you believe it was. Bussola was eventually arrested while driving
22:04
Speaker 1: that car of Henman's, so um him instead Busy Little's
22:10
Speaker 1: in jail. And uh, you have to actually go back
22:13
Speaker 1: even further to find the first at least attempted murder
22:18
Speaker 1: by the Manson family, um earlier in July, on July one.
22:22
Speaker 1: This is just a bad jam if you really start
22:24
Speaker 1: thinking about, like all these dates are so compressed, and
22:27
Speaker 1: you think about the Manson family just being in this
22:29
Speaker 1: crazy like murderous kill spree and it really only went
22:32
Speaker 1: for like a month basically, you know, four or five
22:35
Speaker 1: weeks um. But they did a lot of damage in
22:37
Speaker 1: that time. But the whole thing started, and you can
22:41
Speaker 1: make the case and a lot of people do that.
22:43
Speaker 1: The whole thing, everything else that followed actually started on
22:47
Speaker 1: July one, when Charles Manson went to the apartment of
22:51
Speaker 1: a syndicate drug dealer, like a big time drug dealer
22:54
Speaker 1: named um Bernard. Lots of Papa Crow right. Yeah, and uh,
23:02
Speaker 1: the Manson thought that he might have been a black panther.
23:04
Speaker 1: I don't think that was ever confirmed. I read a
23:06
Speaker 1: lot of articles kind of going back and forth. But um, regardless,
23:11
Speaker 1: Manson thought he was a black panther. There was a
23:14
Speaker 1: double crossing deal that went on, and they went over
23:17
Speaker 1: and Manson actually shot Crow and thought he had killed him,
23:22
Speaker 1: but he did not die. And he did not go
23:24
Speaker 1: to the cops because he you know, what do you
23:27
Speaker 1: do go to the cops and say, hey, a double
23:29
Speaker 1: crossed these weirdo rednecks hippies. No, they double crossed him.
23:34
Speaker 1: They double crossed him. Oh see I read that he
23:37
Speaker 1: double cross them. No, that's why no, Tex Watson, Well,
23:41
Speaker 1: either way, he would not go to the cops, uh,
23:44
Speaker 1: in his condition, and so that's why it was never reported.
23:47
Speaker 1: But he was interviewed. Uh. The transcript is pretty interesting
23:50
Speaker 1: to listen to. Yeah. Um, but yeah, and he wouldn't
23:53
Speaker 1: go to the cops because he would just handle it himself.
23:55
Speaker 1: And that's basically what he vowed to do. So there's
23:58
Speaker 1: this guy who Manson shot in the gut and left
24:00
Speaker 1: for dead, who now wants to kill Manson and the
24:02
Speaker 1: whole family and that Manson is convinced as a black panther,
24:06
Speaker 1: which suddenly makes sense as to why you would have
24:09
Speaker 1: found something like political piggies and a Paul print in
24:13
Speaker 1: blood at Gary Heman's murder scene, right, because this is
24:18
Speaker 1: about the time that this whole helter skelter thing is
24:20
Speaker 1: happening starting out and um, the whole idea that that
24:26
Speaker 1: there is a race war coming and that the Manson
24:28
Speaker 1: family might be able to nudge it along by framing um,
24:32
Speaker 1: the black community or black panthers for these murders of
24:35
Speaker 1: white people. Uh, is the basis of this idea of
24:38
Speaker 1: what was behind the Manson family murders as far as
24:41
Speaker 1: the prosecution is concerned. Yeah, so I mentioned an almost
24:46
Speaker 1: um attempted murder jumping back forward again the very night
24:50
Speaker 1: of the The idea of the night of the Lobbianca
24:53
Speaker 1: murders was to have two separate murders on the same night,
24:57
Speaker 1: and Manson ordered a few I think different followers, including
25:02
Speaker 1: Linda Kasabian, to murder this um kind of little known
25:06
Speaker 1: Lebanese actor named Saladine Nadar, and Kasabian basically got there,
25:12
Speaker 1: didn't want to do this and so intentionally knocked on
25:15
Speaker 1: the wrong door of the apartment, um, basically giving her
25:19
Speaker 1: an excuse to get out of there. So um. Weirdly,
25:22
Speaker 1: Saladine and Nadir was never it was a near victim
25:26
Speaker 1: of the Manson family. So that's talk about it. Talk
25:30
Speaker 1: about a close call, yeah for real, you know, yeah, uh.
25:34
Speaker 1: And I looked him up. He he basically was a
25:36
Speaker 1: famous actor by that time, and then just didn't do
25:38
Speaker 1: much after that. So I wonder if that had if
25:41
Speaker 1: that like just broke his brain or something, you know,
25:44
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it would have done that
25:46
Speaker 1: to me. Alright, So I think it's about time for
25:48
Speaker 1: another ad break. Let's do it, all right, we'll be
25:51
Speaker 1: right back after this, all right, Chuck, we're back. Should
26:20
Speaker 1: we talk about Charles Manson a little bit? Yeah? Less so, like, well,
26:23
Speaker 1: let's recap real quick, Okay. Manson has shot um lots
26:27
Speaker 1: of Papa Crow in his stomach, lots of pop Crow,
26:30
Speaker 1: has vowed to kill the whole Man's of family. Bobby
26:33
Speaker 1: Bosle killed Gary Henman, tried to frame the Black Panthers
26:37
Speaker 1: by writing political piggies and blood on the wall. Bobby
26:40
Speaker 1: bos Is arrested Um. The Manson family supposedly trying to
26:45
Speaker 1: make it look like somebody besides Bobby bos might have
26:49
Speaker 1: killed Gary Henman. Um, kill the people at the Tate Residents,
26:53
Speaker 1: kill the people at the La Bianca Residents, right, things
26:56
Speaker 1: like political piggis and rise and pig in blood on
27:00
Speaker 1: the walls there, and and that's where we've left off
27:03
Speaker 1: so far. The Manson family hasn't been caught yet. Let's
27:07
Speaker 1: talk about Charles Manson, all right. So Manson, UM, it's
27:12
Speaker 1: sort of mixed up on what you want to believe
27:14
Speaker 1: because a lot of the information about his life came
27:16
Speaker 1: from him, and anyone who knows anything about Charles Manson
27:19
Speaker 1: knows that he had a tendency to overstate things and
27:23
Speaker 1: uh certainly lie about things. But what we do know
27:27
Speaker 1: is that he was born in nineteen thirty four to
27:30
Speaker 1: a to a teen mom and dad, and the dad
27:34
Speaker 1: basically um would not assume any fraternity or responsibility, sort
27:39
Speaker 1: of split. His name was colonel, his actual name was colonel,
27:42
Speaker 1: and he convinced people that he was an army colonel
27:46
Speaker 1: even though he was not. So he was just never
27:48
Speaker 1: on the scene at all. And um he ended up
27:52
Speaker 1: taking the name Manson from his stepfather who you know.
27:55
Speaker 1: His his mom married, She was an alcoholic, may have
27:59
Speaker 1: been a prostitute. She was in and out of jail
28:02
Speaker 1: for most of her life and uh or most of
28:04
Speaker 1: his young life. And it was just, you know, a
28:08
Speaker 1: truly bad scene for a young Charles Manson. So he
28:12
Speaker 1: he actually um went and lived with relatives while she
28:16
Speaker 1: was in jail for a five year stretch. She got out,
28:19
Speaker 1: they reunited, he said. He apparently said that reuniting with
28:23
Speaker 1: there was one of the few truly joyful moments in
28:26
Speaker 1: his life. But in very short order, she basically was like,
28:30
Speaker 1: I can't take care of you. I don't really want
28:32
Speaker 1: this responsibility and handed him over to the state, which begun,
28:36
Speaker 1: which began a just basically a string of institutionalization that
28:41
Speaker 1: would that would keep going for basic basically his whole life. Yeah,
28:46
Speaker 1: I mean by the time he was eventually sent to
28:48
Speaker 1: federal prison, I think he was thirty two years old
28:51
Speaker 1: when he was released in sixty seven, and they calculated
28:54
Speaker 1: that he had spent half of his life uh in
28:57
Speaker 1: and out of institutions, whether it would be orphanages or
29:02
Speaker 1: um juvie or real deal prison in jail, right, And
29:06
Speaker 1: that was just the first part of his life, So
29:08
Speaker 1: he was out for two years before they got him
29:10
Speaker 1: again after these murders. By the time he died in
29:13
Speaker 1: prison at ag A d three this past November two seventeen,
29:17
Speaker 1: he had spent from my calculations, only thirteen years of
29:21
Speaker 1: his life as a freeman, thirteen out of eighty three
29:24
Speaker 1: years outside of institutions. So he had a lot of
29:29
Speaker 1: the deck stacked against him. But you can also go
29:32
Speaker 1: back to I think March nineteen sixty seven when he
29:35
Speaker 1: was released on parole um from federal prison, where he
29:40
Speaker 1: was given a choice like, hey man, here you go.
29:43
Speaker 1: You're out. You can decide what to do with your life.
29:46
Speaker 1: Do you want to go straight, do you want to
29:48
Speaker 1: go have a nice family, Do you want to just
29:50
Speaker 1: be a productive member of society, or are you going
29:53
Speaker 1: to go the exact opposite direction. And as we know
29:55
Speaker 1: in hindsight, Charlie Manson chose the exact opposite direction. It's
30:00
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was ever officially diagnosed um,
30:04
Speaker 1: but I did see that that doctors over the years
30:06
Speaker 1: and mental health professionals say that he was probably schizophrenic.
30:11
Speaker 1: Uh suffered from schizophrenia and had a paranoid delusional disorder
30:16
Speaker 1: at the very least, I hadn't heard the schizophrenia thing.
30:19
Speaker 1: Paranoid delusional disorder totally buy Yeah, so he was. He
30:25
Speaker 1: was a troubled dude. UM of course, not excusing anything,
30:27
Speaker 1: but it was clearly a case of um mental illness
30:32
Speaker 1: combined with rejection and institutionalization. UM really led to like
30:39
Speaker 1: the man that he would eventually become right. So he
30:43
Speaker 1: gets out of prison right and he um is basically
30:46
Speaker 1: released into San Francisco seven. So it's like Hippie Dum,
30:52
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of Hippie Dum, where he shows up and
30:56
Speaker 1: there's you know, at the time, everybody's looking for like
30:58
Speaker 1: something new, something different, something that's an alternative to the
31:04
Speaker 1: establishment of the mainstream or anything different. And so Charles
31:08
Speaker 1: Manson says like, oh I can, I can totally exploit
31:10
Speaker 1: a lot of these people Um, and that he starts
31:14
Speaker 1: out by meeting a girl, a librarian named Mary Bruner,
31:18
Speaker 1: and he moves into her apartment and she apparently was
31:21
Speaker 1: very fascinated with him because she had led a fairly
31:24
Speaker 1: straight laced life. She went to college again, she was
31:27
Speaker 1: a librarian, and all of a sudden there's this wild
31:29
Speaker 1: like X con who is preaching this kind of gospel
31:33
Speaker 1: of love and no materials, um, and apparently before November night,
31:41
Speaker 1: which will explain what happened then before that time, Um,
31:45
Speaker 1: Charles Manson supposedly did pretty closely resemble an actual hippie
31:50
Speaker 1: like he did. He he felt like he could take
31:54
Speaker 1: anything of yours that he wanted, but you could also
31:57
Speaker 1: take anything of his. And he apparently walked the walk
32:00
Speaker 1: when it came to stuff like that, And there are
32:02
Speaker 1: plenty of stories of him just giving up whatever um
32:05
Speaker 1: material possessions, saying they didn't matter, um, before things really
32:10
Speaker 1: took a dark turn. So there's if you really kind
32:13
Speaker 1: of dive in, it becomes clear how he could have
32:16
Speaker 1: amassed some of these early followers. And the first one
32:20
Speaker 1: was was Mary Bruner. Yeah. I get the feeling that, um,
32:25
Speaker 1: this probably would not have happened in any other era
32:29
Speaker 1: other than this generation when um, you know we talked
32:33
Speaker 1: about in our Brainwashing in our Cults episodes, where this
32:37
Speaker 1: time it was just it's just a weird time in
32:40
Speaker 1: America and people were really um, I don't know about prone,
32:44
Speaker 1: but at least ripe for the picking when it comes
32:47
Speaker 1: to falling into uh situations, like this and believing these
32:52
Speaker 1: what looked like crack pots to us now, but at
32:55
Speaker 1: the time everyone was. It was very anti establishment. People
32:58
Speaker 1: were taking tons of drugs and rejecting rejecting mainstream society
33:03
Speaker 1: and embracing the counterculture, and they were just really open
33:07
Speaker 1: to all kinds of weird stuff. So he again, he
33:11
Speaker 1: just kind of figured out that he could he could
33:14
Speaker 1: work this to his own means. So there's a couple
33:17
Speaker 1: of things that there's there's two basic things that you
33:21
Speaker 1: needed to know about Charles Manson from from everything I've seen.
33:25
Speaker 1: One was that his main goal was to become a
33:29
Speaker 1: recording artist, a very successful star of a recording artist.
33:34
Speaker 1: And two that he could he had a good ability
33:38
Speaker 1: to manipulate people into giving him what he wanted um
33:41
Speaker 1: and mostly that that amounted to sex and drugs um.
33:46
Speaker 1: And he used that ability to get other people to
33:52
Speaker 1: do what he wanted. So, for example, when he started
33:54
Speaker 1: to a mass like a substantial amount of girls in
33:58
Speaker 1: the Manson family, um, it was it was just a
34:01
Speaker 1: free love commune the whole time. So the guys who
34:04
Speaker 1: came in all of a sudden had access to these
34:08
Speaker 1: the women, and in return um for Charlie granting them
34:13
Speaker 1: access to them. They would basically do his bidding or
34:17
Speaker 1: offer him physical protection because he wasn't a big guy.
34:20
Speaker 1: He's kind of a shrimpy dude. Um. But they're everything
34:25
Speaker 1: from from If you look at it from an outsider's perspective,
34:28
Speaker 1: every relationship be had was one of extraction. He was
34:31
Speaker 1: taking something from everyone around him. It wasn't just a
34:36
Speaker 1: normal friendship or a normal relationship. It was it was
34:40
Speaker 1: what can you do for me? And what can I
34:42
Speaker 1: use from you to to get something out of other people. Yeah,
34:46
Speaker 1: and if if you've never seen an interview with him,
34:47
Speaker 1: I encourage you to check some of them out. He
34:49
Speaker 1: does have a very um stream of consciousness, circular sort
34:55
Speaker 1: of talks NonStop and doesn't make a lot of sense,
34:58
Speaker 1: but um. One thing that's often said about him is
35:01
Speaker 1: that he can be mesmerizing um with the way he
35:05
Speaker 1: does that. And I imagine in the late sixties, if
35:08
Speaker 1: you've got a headful of acid and there's this guy
35:11
Speaker 1: that has the ability to like almost rebreathe like a
35:14
Speaker 1: trumpet player and talk for minutes and minutes and hours
35:18
Speaker 1: on end, they could be kind of you know, they
35:21
Speaker 1: would fall under this weird spell. So I definitely don't
35:25
Speaker 1: get it because now when I watch him on again,
35:27
Speaker 1: tiny weird redneck. Um, but when you you know, when
35:31
Speaker 1: you see him doing a thing, even with like Diane Sawyer,
35:34
Speaker 1: who doesn't fall for it. By the way, she she
35:36
Speaker 1: clearly is just like very it's a great interview. She's
35:40
Speaker 1: pro and she stays very on point, basically kind of
35:42
Speaker 1: like you're not gonna get me to like fall through
35:45
Speaker 1: your charms. Uh, but but it's pretty interesting. Um. So
35:50
Speaker 1: he's got Mary Bruner is this first girlfriend. Then he said, hey,
35:54
Speaker 1: what do you think about a triad? Or rather, what
35:57
Speaker 1: do you think about a triad? That's how he sounded.
36:02
Speaker 1: And um, Mary Brunner, from what I understand, wasn't super
36:06
Speaker 1: into it, but she was under his spell, so she
36:08
Speaker 1: said sure. Uh so Squeaky from Lynette Squeaky from came
36:12
Speaker 1: into the picture, and um, they you know, they lived
36:17
Speaker 1: as a as a threson that traveled together up and
36:19
Speaker 1: down the coast out there, and he just sort of
36:23
Speaker 1: started accumulating mostly women along the way to this sort
36:28
Speaker 1: of traveling party is probably how he framed it, and
36:32
Speaker 1: people were hipped to it. There were men though, um,
36:36
Speaker 1: besides Tex Watson and Bobby Busslil those guy named Danny
36:39
Speaker 1: de Carlo who were kind of early men who joined up.
36:42
Speaker 1: And by all accounts, most of those men who joined
36:44
Speaker 1: up were there because Manson was said, you know, you
36:47
Speaker 1: can have these women. You've got plenty of drugs. And
36:50
Speaker 1: so before you know it, the Manson family was born
36:54
Speaker 1: and they were just kind of this weirdo hippie group
36:57
Speaker 1: that um used to commit burglary. These Manson there has
37:02
Speaker 1: long been um. It's long been said that he beat
37:06
Speaker 1: a lot of the women in the group and would
37:09
Speaker 1: prostitute them to for cash to pay for things for
37:12
Speaker 1: the family, like rent um. They they ate a lot
37:16
Speaker 1: of their food from like going through dumpsters behind grocery
37:19
Speaker 1: stores and stuff like that. And they just basically hung
37:21
Speaker 1: out and did drugs and had sex all day. That
37:25
Speaker 1: was basically their aim and their goal. And then at
37:27
Speaker 1: night they would have bonfires out in the desert and um,
37:31
Speaker 1: they'd all just take a bunch of acid and listen
37:33
Speaker 1: to Charles Manson do his mesmerizing thing. Um. And again
37:37
Speaker 1: at first it was it was weird. There's a lot
37:40
Speaker 1: of like ideas that Manson was this reincarnation of Jesus Christ,
37:45
Speaker 1: or that he was not even the reincarnated Jesus Christ.
37:48
Speaker 1: He was the same Jesus Christ who had been alive
37:50
Speaker 1: for you know, almost two thousand years um. And just
37:55
Speaker 1: like all the stuff you would find in the desert
37:57
Speaker 1: among hippies in the late sixties, On I said, at
38:00
Speaker 1: night around a bonfire, right but when when um, by
38:06
Speaker 1: this time, like by the time they're out in the desert,
38:09
Speaker 1: Manson had had this really amazing chance encounter that you
38:13
Speaker 1: just would never have and the fact that it did
38:15
Speaker 1: happen is just totally mind blowing. But become a recording artist.
38:20
Speaker 1: To help ensure his success of becoming a recording artst
38:22
Speaker 1: he moved the family from San Francisco down to Los
38:25
Speaker 1: Angeles to be closer to the center of the recording industry.
38:29
Speaker 1: And it just so happened that one night in nineteen UM,
38:33
Speaker 1: a couple of Manson family girls were hitch hiking on
38:37
Speaker 1: Sunset Boulevard and we're picked up by none other than
38:40
Speaker 1: Dennis will And Wilson, one of the co founders of
38:43
Speaker 1: the Beach Boys. That's right, it was sixty nine, but
38:46
Speaker 1: same same deal. All those years just ran together back then. Uh,
38:50
Speaker 1: and Dennis Wilson was, Um, he was a party, party
38:54
Speaker 1: dude and liked his ladies. Because it sounds very weird
38:58
Speaker 1: to say that he picked up a cup of hitchhikers
39:00
Speaker 1: and basically brought them home. But um, it was a
39:03
Speaker 1: different time, and uh, he was, like I said, he
39:06
Speaker 1: was a party dude. So they ended up being Ella,
39:09
Speaker 1: Joe Bailey and the aforementioned Patricia Crinwinkle. So they move
39:13
Speaker 1: in basically, and he goes to the studio, comes home
39:19
Speaker 1: and the Manson family had moved in, which again it
39:23
Speaker 1: sounds really strange, but at the time he I mean
39:27
Speaker 1: Ed says he was frightened at I get the feeling.
39:30
Speaker 1: He was more like, you know, what trip are you on?
39:34
Speaker 1: Not like, oh my god, I need to call the cops. Yeah,
39:37
Speaker 1: he um, because they lived there for a while, like
39:40
Speaker 1: he let them live there. Yeah. I think the party
39:42
Speaker 1: it was partially out of fear. I saw and I
39:45
Speaker 1: read an interview with Charles Manson. He was talking about
39:47
Speaker 1: Dennis Wilson, and he was like, you know, I'd say whatever,
39:50
Speaker 1: he just lay his weirdo trip on Dennis Wilson, and
39:52
Speaker 1: Dennis is responsibly like, yeah, man, that's cool. Listen, look,
39:55
Speaker 1: I gotta go, I really gotta go do this thing.
39:57
Speaker 1: Just always trying to get away from Charles man Inson.
40:00
Speaker 1: So maybe he was afraid that he was they were
40:02
Speaker 1: going to kill him. Maybe he liked having access to
40:05
Speaker 1: like all this free love from all the Manson family
40:08
Speaker 1: women um, or maybe he just felt like he couldn't
40:11
Speaker 1: get out of it. But he uh, he did let
40:15
Speaker 1: them live there for a few months. It wasn't like
40:16
Speaker 1: they crashed there for a weekend. They moved in, they
40:19
Speaker 1: wrecked his ferrari um, they they met a bunch of
40:24
Speaker 1: his friends. It was it was a big It was
40:26
Speaker 1: a big deal that that Dennis Wilson came into Charles
40:29
Speaker 1: Manson's life because it really bolstered this idea that, yes,
40:33
Speaker 1: he is going to become a recording artist. Because not
40:35
Speaker 1: only did he hang out with Dennis Wilson, he hung
40:37
Speaker 1: out with a guy named Terry Melcher who was a
40:40
Speaker 1: record producer, hung out with another guy named Phil Kaufman
40:43
Speaker 1: who was a record producer, and he met all these
40:45
Speaker 1: people in the industry who were in a position to
40:47
Speaker 1: get Charles Manson's career off of the ground. And when
40:51
Speaker 1: when there's you're dealing with this this crazy little ticking
40:54
Speaker 1: time bomb like Charles Manson, who wants you to do
40:58
Speaker 1: something like get his musical career off the ground, but
41:00
Speaker 1: you don't think his music is good enough to actually launch. Um,
41:04
Speaker 1: you've got a problem on your hands. And Dennis Wilson
41:07
Speaker 1: and his buddies all knew this, yes, And uh, two
41:10
Speaker 1: quick things here. One big shout out to Dennis Wilson's
41:14
Speaker 1: only solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue. Is it good? And
41:17
Speaker 1: I think it's great. I gotta check that out. And
41:20
Speaker 1: I love the Beach Boys. I mean he Dennis Wilson
41:22
Speaker 1: was was clearly not the the brains or voice behind
41:27
Speaker 1: the Beach Boys as the drummer, but U and he
41:29
Speaker 1: was always sort of, um, I think, kind of picked
41:33
Speaker 1: on a little bit for not being the most talented dude.
41:36
Speaker 1: And he was just in the band because he was
41:37
Speaker 1: handsome and related. But um, I think Pacific Ocean Blue
41:42
Speaker 1: is like one of the great lost classics. Let's check
41:44
Speaker 1: it out. It's very good. He was supposedly also the
41:47
Speaker 1: only true surfer in the band. Yeah, exactly. Uh. And
41:52
Speaker 1: the other thing was that Terry Melcher, that producer that
41:55
Speaker 1: you mentioned. The reason he factors in so heavily is
41:58
Speaker 1: because he actually lived at the Tate House in Beverly
42:02
Speaker 1: Hills before Tate and then moved in, So that was
42:07
Speaker 1: sort of the connection there. Um, I guess Manson was
42:10
Speaker 1: going to kill him right now. So here is what
42:14
Speaker 1: a lot of people think. They think that again, he
42:17
Speaker 1: was sending a message to Terry Melcher saying, I can't
42:20
Speaker 1: kill you, but I can get close to you. And
42:22
Speaker 1: I know you're gonna hear about this because this happened
42:25
Speaker 1: at the house you were living in a month or
42:26
Speaker 1: so before. I'm just gonna go in and have my
42:29
Speaker 1: people indiscriminately slaughter whoever is there. But this is this
42:33
Speaker 1: is you, this is what's going on. He he supposedly
42:36
Speaker 1: was well aware that Terry Melcher didn't live there any longer,
42:39
Speaker 1: because he'd spoken to the guy who actually owned the
42:41
Speaker 1: house and was asking him where Terry Melcher went, and
42:44
Speaker 1: all the guy would tell him was Malibu, So he
42:46
Speaker 1: knew it wasn't Melcher in that house. And alright, so
42:51
Speaker 1: they eventually leave Dennis Wilson's house. Dennis Wilson's like, you
42:54
Speaker 1: guys are great and all the ladies are nice. The
42:58
Speaker 1: acid is decent, but it's time for you to go.
43:01
Speaker 1: So they live. Uh they leave in night still and
43:05
Speaker 1: um he uh they go to Spawn Ranch, which you
43:11
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier s P A h N. And this was
43:13
Speaker 1: a it's kind of weird that they ended up living here,
43:15
Speaker 1: but it was. It was out in kind of the
43:17
Speaker 1: outskirts of l A. There are lots of ranches like
43:20
Speaker 1: the Disney Ranch at the Universal Ranch where they shoot
43:23
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, and they have old sets that
43:26
Speaker 1: are still there, whether it's uh Mash or Planet of
43:29
Speaker 1: the Apes or um, just an old West set. And
43:33
Speaker 1: Spawn Ranch was one of these that had closed down,
43:36
Speaker 1: and it was an old West set and they actually,
43:38
Speaker 1: um it's a state park now. But they did have
43:40
Speaker 1: permission to live there. They didn't just uh squat there.
43:44
Speaker 1: They uh sort of had a little agreement to do
43:46
Speaker 1: a little maintenance work, uh and they were allowed to stay.
43:49
Speaker 1: So some of them are there, some of them are
43:52
Speaker 1: at places like at a camp in Death Valley, and
43:54
Speaker 1: then just scattered all over l A as far as
43:57
Speaker 1: Manson family members and just random houses in a artments.
44:00
Speaker 1: But the main place that that Manson in the Inner
44:04
Speaker 1: Circle was it Spawn Ranch, and they would go on
44:07
Speaker 1: what they called creepy crawls, which where these little crimes
44:10
Speaker 1: Freeze would like you said, they would go out and
44:13
Speaker 1: burgle cars or robbed people and um, just to kind
44:17
Speaker 1: of keep the money and the drugs flowing, right um.
44:20
Speaker 1: And so Spawn Ranch was almost like a little more legit.
44:24
Speaker 1: They were in much closer contact with other people out
44:27
Speaker 1: in Death Valley at the Barker Ranch. That was far
44:30
Speaker 1: more secluded, way out in the desert, way more disconnected
44:33
Speaker 1: from society, and that was the place where they expected
44:36
Speaker 1: to wait out helter skelter while the the um everybody
44:41
Speaker 1: else in the country killed one another. That's right. So, um,
44:47
Speaker 1: you've got this whole, this whole weirdo family there. They're criminals,
44:51
Speaker 1: they're engaged in prostitution. There's violence, you know, there's physical violence.
44:55
Speaker 1: But ultimately there they kind of resemble hippies. Here they're
44:59
Speaker 1: super counter culture. Um. But things turned dark, and they
45:04
Speaker 1: turned dark after this seminal thing that happened to the
45:07
Speaker 1: rest of the world but really really spoke to Charles
45:12
Speaker 1: Manson in particular, and that was the November twenty two
45:17
Speaker 1: release of the Beatles White album all Right, you know
45:20
Speaker 1: what this is gonna be a two parter. It's pretty clear. Uh,
45:24
Speaker 1: so let's go ahead and in this one on a
45:26
Speaker 1: cliffhanger featuring the Beatles. Right, does that sound good? Yeah?
45:32
Speaker 1: It does. Um pick back up part two with a
45:34
Speaker 1: white album. Let's do it all right? All right? Well,
45:38
Speaker 1: in the meantime, while you guys are chewing over what
45:40
Speaker 1: Chuck just said, uh, you can tweet to us at
45:43
Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast or on Facebook dot com
45:46
Speaker 1: slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
45:48
Speaker 1: email the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com
45:51
Speaker 1: and as always, joined us at at home on the
45:53
Speaker 1: web Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on
45:59
Speaker 1: this thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
46:09
Speaker 1: M hm hm