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I Tracked Down the Manson Family_ What Happened After Manson · Luke's English Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I've spent the last decade tracking down the Manson family.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: That search has taken me across America to undisclosed locations,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: uneasy meetings, long drives to nowhere towns.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Be careful with this sating, with this phone call, and
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: don't choose it to cause any more persecution to my
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: friend family.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I've had conversations with people who still lower their voices
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: when Charles Manson's name comes up.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: I lived with him for almost a month.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: The Manson family came together in nineteen sixty nine, a
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: loose collection of drifters, true believers, runaways and lost kids,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: ordering a man who promised them meaning within two years,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: they would commit the most infamous murders in the history
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of Los Angeles, the killing of Sharon Tate, a pregnant
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: movie star, and eight others, crimes so brutal they rewired
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the American Psyche and effectively close the door on the sixties.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: You know, people told each other their deepest, darkest secrets
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: and thoughts because they were giving up their egos.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: Nobody says, like, where should we doing his armies, Charlie right,
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: no question, unquestionable.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: They would and they would did what they did.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: But that's not the question that keeps pulling me back.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: The murders have been dissected, the trial televised, the mythology monetized.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: The questions that still linger are simpler and more unsettling.
• 1:33
  Speaker 5: To understand what this whole episode is about, you'd have
• 1:38
  Speaker 5: to talk to Charles Manson.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Today we track down the surviving members of the Manson family.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: We'll hear from them directly and unpack how a loose
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: commune became one of the most infamous cults in American history.
• 1:53
  Speaker 5: Every few months they'll make another documentary and take their
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: money to the bank, and Charlie just sits there suffering
• 1:59
  Speaker 5: it for all.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I'm James Buddy Day. This is unmarked.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: You had a prepaid call from.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: No When I interviewed Charles Manson throughout the final year
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: of his life, I had no idea those conversations would
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: become the foundation of a decade of work.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Quite alife in the underworld.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: At the time, they were just calls, long, erratic, sometimes lucid,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: sometimes circular conversations, all with a man who had spent
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: nearly fifty years shaping his own mythology from behind prison walls.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Do you find a lot of people are afraid of you.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Well, well yeah, yet what it meant?
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: So after his death I went back back to the
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: first hand witnesses and that research is collected in my
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: book Charles Manson The Last Words. And it's a lot
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: because the Manson story isn't just infamous, it's layered, it's contested,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: and in many ways it's still misunderstood.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Never told you was about me. No one ever told
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: on me. They were pushed.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: So today I'm building on that research because if we
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: really want to understand what happened, how a drifter with
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: a guitar convinced young people to kill, we have to
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: shift lenses. We have to look at the people who
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: said yes, the followers, the young women and men who
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: became the Manson family. Now, most reports reduce the Manson
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: family to a single reductive word cult. It's a convenient label.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: It keeps things tidy. But what we're really talking about
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: is a group of roughly twenty people, mostly young women,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: who came together in nineteen sixty seven, at the height
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: of the counterculture. They were runaways, drifters, idealists, some barely
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: out of high school, others thirteen or fourteen, and they
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: didn't begin as killers. They became violent in the summer
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty nine. After two years.
• 4:14
  Speaker 6: Together, were only one family.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: That word family. It's doing a lot of work here
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: because what they built wasn't a formal organization. There were
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: no membership cards, no doctrine carved in stone. It was
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: bound together by loyalty, first to each other and ultimately
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: to Manson. Where the story begins is still a matter
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: of dispute. The standard version places the origin of the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Manson family in hay at Ashbury in nineteen sixty seven,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: and it's characterized as a deliberate attempt by Charles Manson
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: to form a cult centered entirely around himself. At trial,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: lead prosecutor Vincent Buliosi described it this way. The family
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: was nothing more than a closely knit band of vegabond
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: robots who were slavishly obedient to one man, and one
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: man only, their master, their leader, their god, Charles Manson.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Within his domain, his authority and power were unlimited. He
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: was the doctoral Maharajah, if you will, of a tribe
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of boot licking slaves who are only too happy to
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: do his bidding for him. End quote. It's a powerful
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: image it's also a prosecutor's argument.
• 5:39
  Speaker 7: It's not true on the level that it was presented.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: I would argue the family begins months before Hayde Ashbury
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: in the spring of nineteen sixty seven in Venice Beach,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: and the person who sets it in motion isn't Manson.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: It's a teenager named Lynette From.
• 5:57
  Speaker 8: We did not have sex orgies and drug orgies or
• 6:03
  Speaker 8: cult meetings.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: That's From often called Squeaky, speaking in nineteen seventy five
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: during a psychological evaluation. When I spoke to Manson near
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: the end of his life, he wasn't allowed to communicate
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: with Squeaky, who he called Red, not just because of
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: her hair, but because he used a color system to
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: categorize the women closest to him red, blue, green, silver,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: through people still in his orbit. I was eventually connected
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: to Lynette. We spoke for hours by phone, and in
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen we arranged to meet at a studio in
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: a small town near her residence. I won't disclose where,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: but the terms of her parole restrict her travel. By then,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Squeaky had already lived several lives. In nineteen seventy five,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: she would attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford by pressing
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: a forty five I have caliber pistol toward his head
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: in Sacramento. She said it was about the Redwoods. Prosecutors
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: saw something else. So you're in your apartment and you
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: see for it, and you're like, okay. So if I
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: can get his attention or do something, I can get
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: my friends.
• 7:16
  Speaker 9: Back in a corporate Initially I was gonna talk to
• 7:19
  Speaker 9: him about the Redwoods.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: I thought, well, maybe I'll bring a gun.
• 7:26
  Speaker 9: And then I said to myself, are you gonna shoot him?
• 7:31
  Speaker 9: And I said, I'm gonna go see what's necessary.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: She received a life sentence, escaped briefly in nineteen eighty seven,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: and was eventually parlled in two thousand and nine. But
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, she isn't squeaky yet. Lynette from
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: is just a lonely teenager in Venice Beach, disconnected from
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: her family and searching. After meeting Manson, accompanies him to
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: an apartment where to connect with another young woman, Patricia Crenwinkle.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Crenwinkle is also adrift. Her parents divorced when she was fifteen.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: She moved from school to school. She was using marijuana.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Then Ben's a dream at the time, and soon Manson, Crenwinkle,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: and from are roaming around southern California together.
• 8:24
  Speaker 8: We did a lot of traveling around. They did a
• 8:26
  Speaker 8: lot of meeting people. We found dozens of young people
• 8:31
  Speaker 8: out in the streets.
• 8:34
  Speaker 10: Some of them weren't taking care of themselves fine, others
• 8:37
  Speaker 10: of them were being abused, and it was my feeling
• 8:44
  Speaker 10: too off of these people a place to stay.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: From Venice, they head north to hit Ashbury. There they're
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: joined by Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: I lived with him for almost a month.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: That's the voice of Phil Kaufman. He first met Manson
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: in Terminal Island Prison before finding the Manson family in
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight years later, we found him in Tennessee
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: and flew him back to California to sit with us
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: in Venice Beach. And when he describes what he saw,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: it's not hypnosis, it's not supernatural control. It's something simpler.
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: Thereink of a love and Charlie was you know schilling
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: at wholesale. You know, come home and bebe you know
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: you'll get loved. Yeah, we'll love you to death.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: This insight is significant because when you speak with former
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: members it becomes clear they were drawn to Manson for
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: different reasons. For Lynette from he was a guru. For
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Patricia Crenwinkle a father figure. Manson has the ability to
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: be what each person needs. That's what really creates the family,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: and soon Squeaky Manson Crenwinkle. They're joined by two more,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Mary Bruner and Susan Atkins. Mary Brunner is a disillusioned
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: clerk at the university library. She sees Manson as a lover,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: and for Susan Atkins, Manson represents something she's long been denied, stability.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: It's a common story for all the women. When Susan
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Atkins was fourteen, her mother died of cancer. The medical
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: bills bankrupted the family, and Susan was essentially abandoned by
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: her father. Later, she would go on to participate in
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: the murders actively and stand trial alongside Charles Manson and
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the others. And it was Susan who first blew the
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: case wide open.
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: Susan Atkins blew the whole cover off and everything ragging.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: That was her, I.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: Mean, that was very much her.
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: Jolly would have been better killing her, and he probably
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: would have gotten away with it a little bit longer now.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I was never able to speak with Susan. She died
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: of brain cancer on September twenty fourth, two thousand and nine.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: In her later years, she rejected Manson and wrote her
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: own book, The Myth of Helter Skelter, pushing back against
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the prosecution's narrative of her motivations. But back in nineteen
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: sixty seven, none of this has happened yet. From Krenwinkle
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Brunner Atkins Manson, they aren't a cult at this point.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: They're barely a commune.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: What most people don't understand is that it wasn't Charlie's
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: so much Charlie's charisma that attracted more women. It was
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: once he had two women together, the women attracted the women.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: That's the voice of Bobby Bouselet. He remains incarcerated in
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: California for his role in the violence, despite receiving parole
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: recommendations multiple times. I first connected with Bobby through another
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: journalist and have spoken to him for years.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Women who liked a community of women, and that was
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: the attraction in that group, and then you know he's
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: having a patriarch there is helpful.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Within roughly ten months, the group has swelled to about
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: fifteen people. They're now a family, but it's a small
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: f and they squat in abandoned houses, most notably when
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: they call the Spiral Staircase House in Tepega Canyon and
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: a second called the Gresham Street House in Canoga Park.
• 12:30
  Speaker 8: Young people would come to our house and say can
• 12:33
  Speaker 8: I stay here? And would say, you can stay here.
• 12:37
  Speaker 7: But.
• 12:39
  Speaker 8: You know you're going to have to be quiet. You're
• 12:42
  Speaker 8: going to have to respect the place, and you're and
• 12:46
  Speaker 8: if you just want attention for your parents, and if
• 12:49
  Speaker 8: you're going to take drugs, then you can't be here.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Among the newcomers is seventeen year old Barbara Hoyt.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: My dad and I didn't get along very well with
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: my older brother. They ended up running away. My dad
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: was pretty mean to us.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Barbara passed away in twenty and seventeen. I met her
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: years earlier in Idaho, where she had built a quiet
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: life after retiring from a decorated nursing career. She had
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: rejected Manson, testified for the state, and became an advocate
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: for the victims.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: I was walking up Santa Susannah Road and then two
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: girls came by and they took me to the Gresham
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Street House where where they were living.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Do you remember who the girl?
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: Stephanie Shram And she was the daughter of Angela Lansbury
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: and Deirdre.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Stephanie Shram another of many peripheral members of the group.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: She first met Manson at seventeen in Big sur Afterward
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: she drove back to Los Angeles with him in an
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: old bakery truck he briefly a vehicle later immortalized in
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Tram has
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: said little publicly. I've never been able to get much
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: on the record about her. Those I've spoken to remember
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: her as not involved in the violence.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: The other one was.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: Oh God, murder. She wrote that TV series Deirdre Lands.
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah shit. We used to pick her up at school
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: and take she go out with her credit card and
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: by bias things.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Deirdre Lansbury was indeed the daughter of Angela Lansbury. How
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: long she remained around the group is still debated, but
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: a twenty twenty four social media post revived an old
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: claim that Angela Lansbury moved her family to Ireland to
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: distance her daughter from the scene. Whether that's precisely true
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: or not, The point is the circle was expanding.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: Squeaky taught me how. She was very friendly, and we
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: went and climbed a tree and sat in it and
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: talked about the hypocrisies of life and things like that.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like a cult. It sounds like teenagers.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: But here's where something shifts. The group becomes increasingly socially isolated. Now,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: isolation doesn't always feel like isolation from the inside. In fact,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: it often feels like belonging. When you pull away from
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the outside world and replace it with constant reinforcement from
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: a small circle, you create an echo chamber.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: They made me feel very welcome, unaccepted.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Inside the group. People are sharing their deepest secrets, trauma, shame, fear,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: under the guise of shedding ego.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: You know, people told each other their deepest, darkest secrets
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: and thoughts because they were giving up their egos. Looks
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: like a zen thing or something anyway, And I had
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: never heard the word cult. I never heard that so
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: and I didn't hear it there either. It was from TV.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: I can relate to this because Manson often spoke about
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: shedding ego learning to sit with the mind.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: You don't spend thirty years from prison and not learned
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: a lot.
• 16:29
  Speaker 11: You learned the mind you learned the day.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: They had again at the gift for the day.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: At first it comes across as a benign message of mindfulness,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: but in the context of the family, it encourages the
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: women to confess vulnerabilities. They feel seen bonded and now
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: they're invested. Another member of the family, Catherine Cher, better
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: known as Gypsy, She wants to quote, you didn't think
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: you were being told what to do.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: One thing about Charlie. Charlie was very unipule.
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: If he'd make you think that you had thought of
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: something and they say, yes, weiky just said that.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: We should do this.
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: So you know, he kind of directed mind traffic.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: That phrase directed mind traffic. That's so perfect. Manson didn't
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: bark orders. He reframed thoughts.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: I remember him telling a girl to do something, some
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: little trivial thing, and she said I can't, and he
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: said you can't, and he said, well you can't, can't,
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: and she he had her repeat after him, I can't, can't,
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: and I can't can and they can't. They kept going
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: like that, and so she decided, well, instead of I can't,
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: I can't, so whatever it was she decided she could,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: and she did.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: The shift is visible. The family begins to shed their
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: old idea identities. Their names change. Lynette from becomes Squeaky,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Patricia Crenwinkle becomes Katie. Susan Atkins becomes Sadie.
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: There was a guy in prison with us who was
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: a forger, and I met Charlie and this forger, and
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: he was making the only phony driver's license for the girls.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Changing her names isn't cosmetic, it's assimilation. It signals rebirth
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: inside the group.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: Suzan Atkins Jajor n inter city Glutz. It's a very
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: unromantic name.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: By the spring of nineteen sixty nine, the group's isolation
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: intensifies when they move to Spawn Ranch, a rundown former
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: movie ranch in the hills above Chatsworth, once used for westerns,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: now little more than collapsing sets, dusty trails, and abandoned buildings.
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: When I went to the Rants, I felt it was
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: just a most mellow place I'd ever been, and there
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: was no ambitions. People were just living their lives.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: That's the voice of Gray Wolf, another family member who
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: found the group in nineteen sixty nine and remained loyal
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: to Manson. Until his death. I was introduced to him
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: by Charles Manson himself.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: He realized that you are for you wolf, Forwolf. You
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: understand that.
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: People say, well welcome. He was so attractive to people.
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: Will he was quote married to the truth.
• 19:39
  Speaker 10: Uh.
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: He that's where he lives his life. He's not into
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: your business, and he's not necessarily right if you get
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: into his.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty nine, most of the group lived scattered
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: across the ranches dilapidated buildings, except for Squeaky, who was
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: tasked with caring for the ranches elderly nearly blind owner
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: George Spahn.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: I guess Charlie told Squeaky to, you know, take care
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: of George so that they could stay at the ranch,
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: and she did. I think he wanted George to wheel
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: the ranch to Squeaky. That's what I think.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: It's just weeks before the family undergoes its most extreme transformation,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: before paranoia hardens and becomes violence. But for now, the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: days are mundane.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: We went on garbage runs, you know, we went and
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: we get fresh stuff out of the garbage behind stores.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Those were fun. And you get in there and shuffle
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: through the produce and all that stuff and sometimes they'd
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: throw out, you know, bins of candy. Everybody loved candy.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: They call them zuzus. We'd sing after dinner. We pass
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: around a joiner too. Money.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Money was it even in involved in it? That you
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: didn't have to earn a livy Yet Carol's going out
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: and get them food. Here's having sex. If you're playing
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: his music, you know life was good for him.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: By now others have joined. There's Nancy Pittman. She takes
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the name Brenda, entering Manson's inner circle after being introduced
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: through Deirdre Lansbury. I managed to track down Nancy through
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: publicly available property records. I won't say where she lives.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: She has renounced her past. She told me she had
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: quote drunk the kool aid and survived. There's also Diane Lake,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: just fourteen, raised by hedonistic parents who encouraged her to
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: live at the ranch with Manson. I've met Diane several times,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: most notably when we appeared together on The Today Show
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine. She's known as Snake. But there's
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: also Catherine Gillies, also fourteen, a runaway before she passed
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: away in twenty eighteen, I spoke with her at length.
• 22:06
  Speaker 7: He wasn't the call to begin with, and because I
• 22:09
  Speaker 7: get there were tons of them communites called whatever they
• 22:13
  Speaker 7: want to call them, It just didn't you know what
• 22:15
  Speaker 7: I mean. But people situated to put something in the box.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: But people could leave right.
• 22:21
  Speaker 7: Yeah, you do anything you wanted.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Then there are the women affiliated with Bobby Boseole, including
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Leslie van Hout, who eventually lands at Spawn Ranch as well.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Leslie went on her own. I did meet these girls
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: before they got involved with the family, but I think
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: it's really calling it that because that's not what it
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: was called.
• 22:47
  Speaker 10: The group.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the group, the communic you know, l Charlie's people.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: And of course there's Charles tex Watson, who met Manson
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: through his loose connection to the Beach Boys.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Text was a very happy, go lucky guy, not a
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: care in the world. He would do a lot of
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: work on doom buggies and I guess we're stealing doom
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: buggies at the time, And as time went on.
• 23:11
  Speaker 10: I.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: Know they were stealing doom buggies and he would modify them.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Texan Manson form something like a subunit inside the group,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: according to multiple people I've spoken with. Text responds to
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: the group's social isolation much differently, becoming less attached to
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the women and more attached to Charles Manson himself.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: That relationship was so strange because it creached me out.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: I didn't like it. That's one of the reasons that
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: I didn't live at the ranch.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: In a nineteen seventy one psychiatric evaluation, text often describes
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the women as quote Manson's girls, displaying the fact that
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: he views himself as separate from the family of Manson.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: He says, quote, for the first time in my life,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I felt like somebody this entire document is a fascinating read,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and I'll post it on our research platform unmarked case files.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: There are certain things I didn't like it, and the
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: way he had kind of worked on context to destroy
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: his ego, you know, to annihilate his ego so that
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: he was, you know, just someone that Charlie could use
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: to serve whatever purpose that he might have for him
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: to serve. And for what purpose no one knew at
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: that time.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: It's just, you know, it was in July nineteen sixty nine,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: this relationship dynamic becomes the catalyst Manson and Texts become
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: involved in the shooting of a drug dealer named Bernard Crow,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: who they believe is connected to the Black Panther party.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Do you inside the group understand the full details.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: I did not know anything about bernand Currow until the
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: trial when the district attorney told me about him.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: And this is the tipping point because inside the ranch,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: the mood changes, the isolation peaks, and this is where
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: the cult truly forms, because now there's an enemy. When
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: a group defines itself against an external threat, real imagined
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: cohesion titans, it becomes reactive.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: I heard the Black Panthers were coming and that Charlie
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: was recruiting the Straight Satans through Danny and to be guards.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: But he was very worried about the Black Panthers attacking
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: the ranch. I didn't know why.
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: What did he say.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: That the branch remember all they have is each other.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Another member of the group I've spent time with is
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: nameamed Sandra Good, whom Manson referred to by the color blue.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: She once told me the ranch didn't have newspapers, books,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: or even clocks, making the family completely reliant on each
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: other for information. This again is Catherine Gillies and what.
• 26:18
  Speaker 7: Was happening is Barred Crow is shoting these people to
• 26:21
  Speaker 7: the ranch and threatening at I mean we were up
• 26:23
  Speaker 7: all night, like, in different positions to make sure because
• 26:26
  Speaker 7: they were going to burn down the pile the girls.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean the day she's talking about.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter who they are, what they believe, whether
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: they truly are coming, it's all irrelevant. What matters is
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: this the group believes they are under threat.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: It did switch and got so intense, so fearful. Uh
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: makes me nervous just talk about it.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Researchers don't define a cult by what people believe. They
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: define it by how power works inside the group. It's
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: something the group evolves into and for the family, the
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: evolution is almost complete.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: That's transition from love and peace. And you know, even
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: though he even though he's a manipulative, they weren't violent.
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: But then all of a sudden, I mean not just violence,
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: I mean it was just just terrible, terrible.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: The group is no longer a loose commune. It becomes
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: recognizable as what history will call the Manson family.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Love all that.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: This is the voice of Sherry Cooper, who is just fourteen.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: At the time.
• 27:47
  Speaker 6: It was like, you know, like a commune type thing.
• 27:51
  Speaker 11: Yeah, and then he just started, you know, going crazy.
• 28:00
  Speaker 11: I'd been crazy, you know for the person. Uh, I
• 28:04
  Speaker 11: been there.
• 28:05
  Speaker 6: Sixteen months and then then he just you know, godbout
• 28:13
  Speaker 6: cop blah blah, you know, kill, kill the world, you know,
• 28:20
  Speaker 6: things like that.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I spoke with Sherry several times by phone after locating
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: her through public records. We've since lost touch, but in
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, she's at the ranch caring for the
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: horses the people believe. That's why I was wondering when
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: he was saying stuff like that, did you believe him
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: or you were you just like, oh, Charlie's being crazy.
• 28:43
  Speaker 6: No, I believed him because he was getting you know,
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: she just changed, you know, yeah, he just changed.
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 28:56
  Speaker 11: At first, you know, hippie freaking blah blah.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: We were armed, and one time we were at the
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: back house and we were hiding because the police were
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: coming down, and we had field phones from the front
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: of the ranch to the back of the ranch and
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: we all went out in the out in the trees
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: and had rifles aimed at this poor policeman who had
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: no idea and he just left and you know, ugh.
• 29:26
  Speaker 10: That.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Could have been wayworth spa.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: Oh my god.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: On July twenty seventh, nineteen sixty nine, Bobby Bosle, Mary Brunner,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: and Susan Atkins kill an acquaintance named Gary Hinman. Bobby
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: is arrested days later, found in Hinman's vehicle.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: I had heard about it, and I heard he got
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: arrested for murder, and I thought that was funny because
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: you know that the police just made it up.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: That reaction is critical when the outside world accused is
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: one of your own and you reflexively rejected. The bond deepens.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: A week later, on August eighth, nineteen sixty nine, members
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: of the Manson family carry out a home invasion on
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Colo Drive after.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: The dinner in the back house, and I remember Charlie
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: and Text talking off in a corner and it was
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: like there was black around them, and.
• 30:25
  Speaker 7: That was.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: I had no idea what they were talking about, but
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: I think they were talking about the murders, and it
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: was just like evil around them.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Barbara's account of that night is fragmented, and that fragmentation matters.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Most people at the ranch don't fully understand what's actually happening.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: They have different pieces of information, different assumptions, different incentives.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: This again is gray wolf.
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: To understand what this whole episode is about. You'd have
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: to talk to Charlie Man and everybody that's been involved
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: in one way or another. You know, we're we just
• 31:09
  Speaker 5: get our personal takes on it and do what we
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: do in a personal way.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: I went to the back of the ranch and I
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: got closed, for Charlie had told me to take all
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: the young ones and myself included to the wikiup, and
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: I had never been to the wiki up, so I
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: guess they knew where it was. But then Sadie called
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: from a field phone and asked me for three sets
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: of dark clothes, and so I went up there with
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: the three sets of dark clothes, and Charlie asked me
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: pretty angrily, what was I doing there when you know
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: he told me to do something else, and I told
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: him Sadie had asked me for three sets dark clothes,
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: and he told me they already left. So Charlie told
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: me go back, and I did.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: On August eighth, nineteen sixty nine, five people are murdered
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Voicheck Fraikowski, and Stephen Parent.
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: I mean, he says, I go out and do this,
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: and then you're all in the car together, go Okay,
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: we're gonna do it. Nobody says, like, where we should
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: we be doing this? Horror mean's Charlie right, no question unquestionable.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: They wouldn't. They would did what they did.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: When they returned, the horror begins to circulate in whispers.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: I heard Sadie say, and Sharon Tate was so beautiful,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: and she was and Charlie would have loved her. Told
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: Charlie you will loved her. And she was the last
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: to die because she had to watch the others die first.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: Really got my attention. She described how Abigail Folger had
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: run from the house and Katie had caught up with
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: her and was stabbing her and yelled for text for
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: help because text was out on the lawn killing VOI
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: check Gradkowski and that text ran over and so I
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: knew text was.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: The next day is subdued because now everyone is holding
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: two realities in their hands at the same time. On
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: one side, garbage runs singing after dinner, passing a joint
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: around the fire. On the other, five people dead in
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: a house in Los Angeles. That kind of contradiction doesn't
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: resolve easily. It creates cognitive dissonance, the psychological strain that
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: happens when your self image and your actions just don't
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: line up. It's truly difficult to understand. But when I
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: asked Sandra Good how they understood it at the time,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: she didn't hesitate. The family saw themselves as soldiers in
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: a time of war. If you believe you're in a war,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: especially a war that feels existential, then the ordinary moral
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: rules they bend. Civilians become enemies, Fear becomes proof that
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: you're right. Violence becomes your strategy. For the Manson family,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: they're not killers, they're combatants.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: Fati came in and told Order to be to switch
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: channels to the news, and I did, and told me
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: to call Texan. They put on the news and the
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: first story was about the tape murders, and they laughed.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: On August tenth, nineteen sixty nine, they strike again, the
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: home invasion on Waverley Drive in Los Feles, killing Lino
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: LaBianca and Rosemary LaBianca.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: It was a place that they knew they'd been to
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: her house, which is right next door.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty nine. Harold True is a friend and
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: former roommate of Phil Kaufman.
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: I took the family up to his house and next
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: to the Lobianca's house, and they had had a little
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: pet togular party, I hear, and that's where they came back.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: That's where the night they went there.
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: I had a feeling that they were looking for me,
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: because that's you know, that's the last Saturday storm, That's
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: where I was actually living.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: On August tenth, nineteen sixty nine. That familiarity becomes lethal.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Late that night, Lino LaBianca and Rosemary Lobianca are confronted
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: inside their own home by Manson and text. They're then
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: murdered by tex Crean Winkle and Leslie Van Houghton.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: The next night. I didn't see them leave, but the
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: next day after that, Leslie was had a bunch of
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: coins on the bed at these and I guess they
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: belonged to missus LaBianca.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: This time, the crime carries a different texture. The violence
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: is not impulsive, it's methodical. The scene is more arranged.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: They're trying to communicate something larger than the act itself.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: If the previous night was chaos, this feels like escalation.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: And in the aftermath of the murders, the Manson family
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: flees to Death Valley.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Was up there in the desert that I found out
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: of the murders.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Geography matters in cult dynamics. The further you get from civilization,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: from neighbors, police, media, or skeptical friends, the more reality
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: becomes internal information narrows, and the leader's voice fills that silence.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: When I overheard about the Tape murders, Sadie was ragging
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: about him to Ruth Morehouse, and she was telling her
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: basically about the murders of the females, and that's when
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: I connected that they had done it.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: It's in Death Valley that the arrests finally come. In
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: October of nineteen sixty nine, law enforcement raids Barker Ranch,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: initially on stolen vehicle charges. At first, the connection to
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: the Tate LaBianca murders is not fully understood. The arrest
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: is procedural, but by November and December of nineteen sixty nine,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: as investigators connect an unprovoked jailhouse confession by Susan Atkins
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: to the evidence in Los Angeles, everything changes. On December first,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, Charles Manson is formally charged in the
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Tate murders and that's when the media machine ignites. This
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: is when the name the Manson family it hardens. Not
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: a loose commune, not a drifting group of runaways. The
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Manson family capital f the headlines, the courtroom, theatrics, the
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: shaved heads, the carved foreheads, all of it crystallizes the image.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: What had evolved slowly over two years is suddenly packaged, labeled,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: and it's broadcast to the world. In a strange way,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: the Manson family is fully born only once it's exposed.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: But something else happens at the same time. Without Manson
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: physically present, the structure that depends so heavily on him
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: begins to destabilize.
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: When Charlie was not in jail, everybody knew what to
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: do because Charlie knew what to do, so they knew
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: what to do.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: But soon as Charlie went to jail, it became fragmented.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: That's the paradox. When Charles Manson is physically present, the
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: group coheres around him. When he's removed, it fractures.
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: I was summoned to the child, but I was never called.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: Now I can see Charlie you wave at me, you know,
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: uh from behind a glass store next to the next
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: to the judge's bench. There you talked to Charlie about
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: the murders, and he talks about the trees and water
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: and uh, you know the earth. I said, well, Charlie,
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: you just murdered you know these people. Yeah, but what
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: about the earth? It's you know this, you know this
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: one here. Look, they don't match.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: That's it. You didn't you're not. You're asking one question
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: and he's answered another.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: During the trial, Barbara Hoyt turned state witness, but before
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: she can testify, she accepts an offer from the Manson
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: family to reconsider in Hawaii with another member named Ruth Morehouse.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: Squeaky and Gypsy. They talked me into going to Hawaii,
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: and Ruth and I went to Hawaii and uh we
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: stayed in the Hilton on the top floor and uh
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: went out. We were there about a week. We went
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: to the airport and she got a hamburger. She disappeared.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: She told me to pay for it. She disappeared, came back,
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: gave me the hamburger. Go ahead and eat the hamburger.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: I ate the hamburger, and she told me just go
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: back to Waikiki and lie on the beach. And that's
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: what I was gonna do.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Before Ruth leaves Barbara, she makes a seemingly offhanded comment.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: She says, quote, can you imagine if there were ten
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: tabs of acid on there?
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: I was starting to feel a little high, and I
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: got on the bus and I was just going higher
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: and higher and higher, and I kept hearing in my head,
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: just imagine if there were ten tabs acid on that.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: I got really high, and all of a sudden I
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: realized there were ten tabs of Acidly, I was wandering
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: down the streets of Honolulu. This is downtown Honolulu, and
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: apparently I stumbled onto Red Cross Building, and as it happened,
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: a social worker went up the stairs. I had a
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: respiratory arrest, and I think they're about to code me.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: But when I regained consciousness, it's like I died and
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: got thrown back. My mom came the next morning and
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: I jumped up and I told my mom they tried
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: to murder me.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: The event is the last straw for Barbara, who testifies
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: for the prosecution and rejects her involvement with the Manson
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: family altogether. But not everybody follows suit. It takes years
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: before women like Patricia Crenwinkle, Susan Atkins, and Leslie Van
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Houghton publicly distanced themselves from Manson. That delay is not unusual.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: When someone joins a cult. They don't just adopt ideas.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: They restructure their entire identity around the group. Names change,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: moral frameworks change, and when the leader is removed, members
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: aren't just losing a person, they're losing the architecture of
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: who they are for some distance. Eventually comes time, therapy, aging,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: exposure to alternative viewpoints. These slowly reintroduce that autonomy, but
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: for others it never does. Let it from Standra Good, Cappy,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Gray Wolf, others they're no longer living at the ranch,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: but in other ways they're still there.
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: Every few months they'll make another documentary and take their
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: money to the bank, and Charlie just sits there, suffering
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: it for all of us.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: This follows a recognizable pattern. When a cult collapses structurally,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: the belief can survive relationally. The leader becomes symbolic, mythic,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: a cause rather than a commander.
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: They saw Charlie and they just could know all that
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: love and beauty that you saw that actually it was
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: a trick.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: He was evil the whole time.
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: He was just trying to get into those little girls
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: that he had, and he was controlling those women. He
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: controlled them with how to control them? What do you
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: mean to control? He hypnotized them, this hypnotism like maybe
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: a media that repeats the same lie over and over
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: and over and over and over and over and runs
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: the bank with the millions of dollars.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: In the end, what we call the Manson family wasn't
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: just a group of people. It was a system of belief, loyalty,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: and fear that reshape lives long after the name Charles
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Manson became infamous.
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: Charlie hadn't madllion money off this. The DA made a
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: lot of money. DA made a lot of money, like
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: millions and millions and millions. We could talk about that
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: all night.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: If you've stayed with this episode, you know this case
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: is more complicated than the headlines. The full primary source
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: research is now available in the new edition of my book,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Charles Manson, The Last Words. This episode of Unmarked was
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: produced by John Dedoe and edited by Dave Alderson. Our
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: additional producer is Jesse Demiray. If you're looking for the
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: documents or extended calls or ad free versions, of these episodes.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: They're all available inside unmarked case files link in the
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: description