returning. He must. You don’t assign five sheriff’s deputies to an arson suspect. If he didn’t know now, he would soon enough, when the jail grapevine repeated some of the questions we’d been asking.
Before leaving Independence, I gave Frank Fowles both my home and office numbers. If there were any developments, I wanted to be notified, whatever the hour. Manson had pleaded not guilty to the arson charge, and his bail had been set at $25,000. If anyone attempted to meet it, I wanted to know immediately, so we could move fast on the murder charges. It might mean revealing our case before we were ready to do so, but the alternative was worse. Aware that he was suspected of murder, once free Manson would probably split. And with Manson at large it would be extremely difficult to get anyone to talk.
NOVEMBER 22–23, 1969
That weekend I went through LAPD’s files on the Tate-LaBianca murders; the Inyo County files; LASO’s reports on the Spahn Ranch raid and other contacts with the Family; and numerous rap sheets. LAPD had conducted over 450 interviews on Tate alone; although they had netted less than had a ten-cent phone call from an ex-hooker, I had to familiarize myself with what had and hadn’t been done. I was especially interested in seeing if I could find any link between the Tate-LaBianca victims and the Manson clan. Also, I was looking for some clue as to the motive behind the slayings.
Occasionally writers refer to “motiveless crimes.” I’ve never encountered such an animal, and I’m convinced that none such exists. It may be unconventional; it may be apparent only to the killer or killers; it may even be largely unconscious—but every crime is committed for a reason. The problem, especially in this case, was finding it.
After listening to the seven-hour taped interview with Daniel DeCarlo, I began studying the criminal record of one Manson, Charles M.
I wanted to get to know the man I would be up against.
Charles Manson was born “no name Maddox” on November 12, 1934, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the illegitimate son of a sixteen-year-old girl named Kathleen Maddox.[30]
Though Manson himself would later state that his mother was a teenage prostitute, other relatives say she was simply “loose.” One remarked, “She ran around a lot, drank, got in trouble.” Whatever the case, she lived with a succession of men. One, a much older man named William Manson, whom she married, was around just long enough to provide a surname for the youth.
The identity of Charles Manson’s father was something of a mystery. In 1936 Kathleen filed a bastardy suit in Boyd County, Kentucky, against one “Colonel Scott,”[31] a resident of Ashland, Kentucky. On April 19, 1937, the court awarded her a judgment of $25, plus $5 a month for the support of “Charles Milles Manson.” Though it was an “agreed judgment,” Colonel Scott apparently didn’t honor it, for as late as 1940 Kathleen was attempting to file an attachment on his wages. Most accounts state that Colonel Scott died in 1954; though this has never been officially verified, Manson himself apparently believed it. He also stated on numerous occasions that he never met his father.
According to her own relatives, Kathleen would leave the child with obliging neighbors for an hour, then disappear for days or weeks. Usually his grandmother or maternal aunt would have to claim him. Most of his early years were spent with one or the other, in West Virginia, Kentucky, or Ohio.
In 1939 Kathleen and her brother Luther robbed a Charleston, West Virginia, service station, knocking out the attendant with Coke bottles. They were sentenced to five years in the state penitentiary for armed robbery. While his mother was in prison, Manson lived with his aunt and uncle in McMechen, West Virginia. Manson would later tell his counselor at the National Training School for Boys that his uncle and aunt had “some marital difficulty until they became interested in religion and became very extreme.”
A very strict aunt, who thought all pleasures sinful but who gave him love. A promiscuous mother, who let him do anything he wanted, just so long as he didn’t bother her. The youth was caught in a tug-of-war between the two.
Paroled in 1942, Kathleen reclaimed Charles, then eight. The next several years were a blur of run-down hotel rooms and newly introduced “uncles,” most of whom, like his mother, drank heavily. In 1947 she tried to have him put in a foster home, but, none being available, the court sent him to the Gibault School for Boys, a caretaking institution in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was twelve years old.
According to school records, he made a “poor institutional adjustment” and “his attitude toward schooling was at best only fair.” Though “during the short lapses when Charles was pleasant and feeling happy he presented a likable boy,” he had “a tendency toward moodiness and a persecution complex…” He remained at Gibault ten months, then ran away, returning to his mother.
She didn’t want him, and he ran away again. Burglarizing a grocery store, he stole enough money to rent a room. He then broke into several other stores, stealing, among other things, a bicycle. Caught during a burglary, he was placed in the juvenile center in Indianapolis. He escaped the next day. When he was apprehended, the court— erroneously informed that he was Catholic—made arrangements through a local priest to have him accepted at Father Flanagan’s Boys Town.
He didn’t make its distinguished alumni list. Four days after his arrival, he and another boy, Blackie Nielson, stole a car and fled to the home of Blackie’s uncle in Peoria, Illinois. En route they committed two armed robberies—one a grocery store, the other a gambling casino. Among criminals, as in the law itself, a distinction is made between non-violent and violent crimes. Manson had “graduated,” committing his first armed robbery at age thirteen.
The uncle was glad to see them. Both boys were small enough to slip through skylights. A week after their arrival in Peoria, the pair broke into a grocery store and stole $1,500. For their efforts, the uncle gave them $150. Two weeks later they tried a repeat, but this time they were caught. Both talked, implicating the uncle. Still only thirteen, Charles Manson was sent to the Indiana School for Boys at Plainfield.
He remained there three years, running away a total of eighteen times. According to his teachers, “He professed no trust in anyone” and “did good work only for those from whom he figured he could obtain something.”
In February 1951, Charles Manson and two other sixteen-year-olds escaped and headed for California. For transportation they stole cars. For support they burglarized gas stations—Manson would later estimate they hit fifteen or twenty—before, just outside Beaver, Utah, a roadblock set up for a robbery suspect netted them instead.
In taking a stolen vehicle across a state line, the youths had broken a federal law, the Dyer Act. This was the beginning of a pattern for Charles Manson of committing federal crimes, which carry far stiffer sentences than local or state offenses.
On March 9, 1951, Manson was ordered confined to the National Training School for Boys, in Washington, D.C., until reaching his majority.
Detailed records were kept on Charles Manson during the time he was there.[32] On arrival, he was given a battery of aptitude and intelligence tests. Manson’s IQ was 109. Though he had completed four years of school, he remained illiterate. Intelligence, mechanical aptitude, manual dexterity: all average. Subject liked best: music. Observed his first case worker, with considerable understatement, “Charles is a sixteen-year-old boy who has had an unfavorable family life, if it can be called family life at all.” He was, the case worker concluded, aggressively antisocial.
One month after his arrival: “This boy tries to give the impression that he is trying hard to adjust although he actually is not putting forth any effort in this respect…I feel in time he will try to be a wheel in the cottage.”
After three months: “Manson has become somewhat of an ‘institution politician.’ He does just enough work to get by on…Restless and moody most of the time, the boy would rather spend his class time entertaining his friends.” The report concluded: “It appears that this boy is a very emotionally upset youth who is definitely in need of some psychiatric orientation.”
Manson was anxious to be transferred to Natural Bridge Honor Camp, a minimum security institution.
