Charles Manson has been denied parole eleven times. His last denial came in April 2007. His next parole hearing is scheduled for 2012, when Manson will be 77. The following is a transcript of his 1992 parole hearing--his eighth.
Transcript of 1992 Parole Hearing:
PAROLE CONSIDERATION HEARING
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
BOARD OF PRISON TERMS
In The Matter of The Life Term Parole Consideration Hearing of:
CHARLES MANSON
CDC NUMBER B - 33920
CALIFORNIA STATE PRISON
CORCORAN, CALIFORNIA
TUESDAY
APRIL 21, 1992
1332 HOURS
MEMBERS PRESENT
Ron Koenig, Board Comissioner, Presiding
Joseph Aceto, Board Commissioner
Cleo Brown, Deputy Board Commissioner
ALSO PRESENT
Charles Manson, Inmate
Stephen Kay, Deputy District Attorney County of Los Angeles
P R O C E E D I N G S
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: These hearings are
being taped, Mr. Manson, so if you would answer up so that it will
be recorded, please.
This is a subsequent parole consideration hearing for Charles
Manson, B-33920. Received California Department of Corrections on
April the 22nd, 1971 pursuant to Penal Code Section 1168 for
violation of Section 187; California Penal Code, first degree murder,
counts one through seven and 182.1/187, conspiracy to commit
murder, count eight, stayed; Los Angeles County case number
A-252156.
On February the 2nd, 1977, this sentence was changed being case
number A-252156 from death to life pursuant to Court of Appeal.
The prisoner was additionally received on December the 13th, 1971
for violation of P.C. 187, first degree murder, concurrent with prior
term, Los Angeles County case number 8267861, count one.
Counts two and three of case number A-267861 for violation of
P.C. 182.1/187/211 and 187, conspiracy to commit murder and
robbery and first degree murder were stayed.
The controlling minimum eligible parole date is December - was
December 13th, 1978.
Today's date is April the 22nd, 1971 [sic]. The time is now 1332
hours and we are at the Corcoran State Prison.
For purposes - participants in today's hearing are Commissioners
Koenig and Aceto and Deputy Commissioner Brown. Representing -
the prisoner has declined an attorney, a state- represented
attorney or an attorney of his own. Representing the people of the
County of Los Angeles is Stephen Kay. We also have several
members of the news media attending the hearing today and the
CNPR and assistant CNPR, and we have an observer in the room.
For purposes of identification we're going to go around the room,
state our first name, last name and why we are here. I want only
participants in the hearing to participate in this.
I am Ron Koenig. I'll start and I'll go to my right. Mr. Manson, when
we come to you would you also give your C.D.C. number. Okay.
I am Ron Koenig, K - O - E - N - I - G. and I'm Commissioner for the
Board of Prison Terms.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Good afternoon. Joe Aceto, A - C -
E - T - O. Commissioner, Board of Prison Terms.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Cleo Brown, B- R - O - W
- N. Deputy Commissioner, Board of Prison Terms.
MR. KAY: Okay. I'm Stephen Kay, Deputy District Attorney of Los
Angeles County.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson?
INMATE MANSON: Charles Manson, inmate, B-33920.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Would you spell your
last name please?
INMATE MANSON: M - A - N - S - U - N.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Thank you. Today, Mr.
Manson, the panel from the Board of Prison Terms that you see
before you will once again consider your suitability for parole,
Certain things we have to go through, so let me go through this, if
you will please.
INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh,
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: And we have a
procedure that we follow, If you follow that it will make it much
easier on all of us.
The - you've had nine prior hearings. Let me explain the process so
you know what's going on, The hearing is basically broken down
into three areas. The first area is the instant offense and I'll
incorporate that instant offense.
And then I'll give you - and read the instant offense - and then I'll
give you the opportunity to make corrections or additions to the
instant offense, Then I'll talk about your prior criminality -
INMATE MANSON: I don't understand instant defense.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Instant. That's the
offense that you're in here for, The murders -
INMATE MANSON: Instant?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes.
INMATE MANSON: Offense?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes. Offenses that
you're in here for. We'll then go to your social factors and your
prior criminality and then we'll go to the second part of the hearing
which is your post-conviction factors and your psychiatric
evaluation. That will be handled by Deputy Commissioner Brown on
my far right.
The third area of the hearing are your parole plans and
Commissioner Aceto will handle your parole plans.
From there we go to questions by any one of the Commissioners
regarding any part of the hearing, and then questions by the
District Attorney. The District Attorney will pose the questions to
the panel and when you answer his questions would you please
answer the panel.
Do you understand what's going on here so far?
INMATE MANSON: Yes. I have a couple questions.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. It's alright. Let
me finish and then you can ask. We'll then go to closing
statements. The first closing statement will be by the District
Attorney and then you'll have the opportunity for the final closing
statement. We will then recess. We'll make a decision and call you
back. Everybody will clear the room when we recess, make a
decision. We'll call you back and we'll read into the record that
decision.
There are certain rights you are afforded, Mr. Manson. You were
notified of the hearing. I saw where you were notified, however
you refused to sign the notification. Also, you had an opportunity
to review your central file and I don't know whether you did or not.
Did you review your central file?
INMATE MANSON: I've been checking this thing out that I'm sent
here.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. All right, good.
You also have a right to appeal the decision within ninety days of
receiving that decision.
You have a right to an impartial panel, Mr. Manson. Do you have
any problems with the three representatives from the Board of
Prison Terms you see before you today?
INMATE MANSON: No, not at all.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Thank you. You'll
receive a tentative written decision today. The decision will be
effective in approximately sixty days after the Board of Prison
Terms' review process has taken place.
You are not required, Mr. Manson, to discuss the matter with the
panel if you do not wish to. But you must keep in mind that the
Board of Prison Terms' panel accepts as true the Court findings in
the case, the fact that you are guilty of these murders. Are you
going to talk to the panel today and answer questions?
INMATE MANSON: Yes. Yes, sir.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Would you raise your
right hand as best as possible. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that
the testimony you give today will be the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth?
INMATE MANSON: Yes, sir.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Thank you. Okay, at
this time I'm going to incorporate the instant offense from the
decision held on December the 1st, 1982, pages two through six.
INMATE MANSON: I don't have that.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. I'm going to read
it to you so you can - if you would listen to- and then I'll give you
opportunity to make corrections or additions to the instant offense.
INMATE MANSON: I'm a little nervous.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Just settle down
because it's very informal and we want you to relax as we go
through this. Are you still - you're nervous?
INMATE MANSON: Yes. Yes, yes, very. I've been a long time sitting
in that cell -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Well, we have a lot of
people who -
INMATE MANSON: - I'm not used to people that much.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Let me read the
instant offense. If you'll listen please -
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Mr. Chairman? Mr.
Chairman?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: we need to make a
correction. The date is the -- April 21st.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Excuse me, The date
today is April the 21st, 1992. Thank you.
Shortly before midnight on August - I'm reading from the second -
third page - second page of the Board report dated 12/01/82.
Shortly before midnight on August 8, 1969 the prisoner informed his
crime partners that now is the time for helter skelter. The crime
partners were directed to accompany Charles Watson to carry out
the orders given by the prisoner. The crime partners at the time
were Linda Cabastian
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Kasabian.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Kasabian, Susan Atkins
and Patricia Krenwinkel. As the crime partners were in the car
getting ready to leave the area, the prisoner informed them, "you
girls know what I mean," something to which he instructed them to
leave a sign. Crime partner Watson drove directly to 10050 Selio -
Selio [phonetic spelling] Drive where he stopped the car. Linda
Kasabian held three knives and one gun during the trip. Watson
then cut the overhead telephone wires at the scene and parked
the vehicle.
INMATE MANSON: Excuse me. Where we getting this from?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: This is from the Board
report dated 12/01/82. Do you have a copy of that?
INMATE MANSON: No, I don't. Who - whose signature's on the end
of that?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: This is a Board report.
This is the hearing that was held at that particular time -
INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: - and this was the
reading of the instant offense at that particular time.
INMATE MANSON: That sounds like a book.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Well, if you'll listen and
then you can make corrections.
INMATE MANSON: Yes. Okay.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay?
INMATE MANSON: Yes.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. Crime partner
Atkins and Krenwinkel had been in the back seat with Linda
Kasabian, the passenger in the right front seat. Watson then
carried some [inaudible] over the hill and to the outer premises of
10050 Selio Drive.
The vehicle containing victim Stephen Parent [phonetic spelling]
approached the gate opening into the street. Watson stopped him
at gunpoint and Parent stated, "please don't hurt me, I won't say
anything.' Watson shot Parent five times and turned off the ignition
of his car.
All of the crime partners then proceeded to the house where
Watson cut a window screen. Linda Kasabian acted as a lookout
while another female crime partner entered the residence through
an open window and admitted the other crime partners.
Within the residence the prisoner's crime partners, without
provocation, logic or reason, murdered Abigail Anne Folger by
inflicting a total of 28 multiple stab wounds on her body. Victim
Wachezski - excuse me - victim -
MR. KAY: Voitek [phonetic spelling]
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Voitek, count two, was
killed by multiple stab wounds. A gunshot wound to his left back
and multiple forced trauma of blunt nature to the head. Victim
Sharon Tate Polanski was killed with multiple stab wounds. Victim
Jay Sebring was killed by multiple stab wounds.
On August the 10th, 1969, the prisoner drove his crime partners to
a location near the residence of victim Leo and Rosemary LaBanca
- LaBianca. The prisoner entered the LaBianca home alone at
gunpoint and tied up the victims.
He impressed them with the statement that they would not be
harmed and that a robbery was taking place. He then returned to
the vehicle containing his crime partners and then directed them to
enter that residence and kill the occupants. He informed them not
to notify the victims that they would be killed.
Crime partner Charles Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van
Houten, then entered the residence and the prisoner drove away
from the scene. The crime partners entered the residence and in a
callous manner killed Leo LaBianca by inflicting multiple stab wounds
to his neck and abdomen. Rosemary LaBianca was killed by multiple
stab wounds which were inflicted to the neck and trunk.
The crime partners carved the wood war - the word war on the Leo
LaBianca's stomach with the use of a carving fork. At both of the
above murder scenes, the prisoner's crime partners used blood of
their victims to write the words.
Under case number A-267861, the prisoner was received into the
institution on December 13th, 1971 for violation of first degree
murder concurrent with prior term. The pistol, knives and swords
were used in the following crimes which the prisoner committed
with crime partners Bira Alstea- how do you pronounce that?
MR. KAY: Beausoleil.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Beausoleil, and Atkins
and Grogan and Davis. The prisoner directed the crime partners to
go to the home of victim Gary Allen Highman -
MR. KAY: Hinman.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: - and have him sign
over his property. The crime partners followed the prisoner's
directions and on July 26th, 1969 they contacted the prisoner from
the Hinman residence. Prisoner and Davis then went to the Hinman
home and the prisoner struck Hinman with a sword severing a part
of the right ear and causing a laceration to the left side of his face
from his ear to his mouth. The prisoner and Davis then drove away
from the crime scene in Hinman's automobile.
On July 27th, 1969 after suffering three days of tortuous
treatment, Hinman was killed by a stab wound through the heart
which was inflicted by Beausoleil.
When Hinman was found in the Topanga Canyon home on July 31st,
1969 he had been stabbed through the heart in addition to
suffering a stab wound in the chest, a gash on the top of his head,
a gash behind the right ear, and a laceration on the left side of his
face which cut his ear and cheek.
This concludes the reading of the instant offense. Do you have any
additions or corrections, Mr. Manson, to the-
INMATE MANSON: I'd like to know who signed that, who put their
name on it.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Nobody put their name
on it. This was a hearing conducted in 1982. Your hearing was
conducted at that particular time and that's the reading of the
instant offense as taken from the probation officeris report at the
time of the trial that you had. Do you have any corrections or
additions to that?
INMATE MANSON: No. We could correct the whole thing because
it's basically hearsay.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Do you remember
what I said at the beginning of the hearing?
INMATE MANSON: Yes.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: I said that we accept
as true the court findings in the case. The fact that you were
found guilty and you are guilty of those particular murders. If
there's any change or anything you wanted to say about -
INMATE MANSON: So all that is reality to you?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes. Yes, we accept it
as true -
INMATE MANSON: And that - and either - even it never happened
it's still reality to you?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes, because you were
found guilty by a court of law.
INMATE MANSON: And - okay - and all the things that in that
courtroom that went through that courtroom is reality to you?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes. Okay. We accept
as true -
INMATE MANSON: Now let me - let me just say one thing.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay.
INMATE MANSON: Nine black Muslims and three Mexicans signed a
writ that said I was Jesus Christ. Is that reality to you as well?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: I didn't read that in the
Board report.
INMATE MANSON: Oh, well it's in the record. I mean, you know.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Well, we've read - we
have your C-file and all the reports were made available to us.
INMATE MANSON: Okay.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: And I think we know
most about, but that's the reason for the hearing, Mr. Manson -
INMATE MANSON: Okay, okay.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: - that you can bring
these things out if you wish.
INMATE MANSON: I think if you'll look in your own minds for every
point, there's a counterpoint. For every red, there's a black. For
every black, there's a red.
In other words t what you're making me into in your reports so that
you can write your books and do your Rambo trips and make your
movies for public entertainment, is not really what happened and
what happened could have been explained but if you will allow me
to call a witness?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No. We do not allow
witnesses in here -
INMATE MANSON: I mean, it's within the panel. I'd like to question
that man in front of the panel.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No. We do not allow
that, Mr. Manson. We have a procedure that we follow.
INMATE MANSON: Okay. All right.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Now, if you want to tell
about the crime -
INMATE MANSON: Okay.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: - then go ahead and
tell about the crime. Otherwise [inaudible] -
INMATE MANSON: Then I will say it and then if it isn't true, he can
interrupt it through you, and then we can talk through you. Is that
legal?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: You may- you may -
[inaudible]
INMATE MANSON: It says here that I can call witnesses on this
paper here.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No.
INMATE MANSON: This says I got these rights to do that.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No, you do not. If you
would please respond to me there - any additions or corrections to
the instant offense that I just read?
INMATE MANSON: Yes. I didn't tie anybody up.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay.
INMATE MANSON: I was never on the scene where anyone was
killed. I think the law says you can only keep me 17 years or 18
years if I was never on the scene when anyone was killed. I was
never on the crime scene of anything.
The closest I came to the crime scene is I cut Hinman's ear off in a
fight over some money because the Frenchman - he wouldn't pay
the Frenchman and I told him, why don't he be a man about himself
and pay his debts? And we had a fight.
So to - in order to hook me up to that they say well, they tortured
the dude three days. I was gone from that scene of that crime for
three days. I was never on the scene of any crime. I never told
anyone directly to do - to go anywhere and do anything.
I always said - and mostly it come from the witness stand - I said
like, you know what to do, you have a brain of your own, don't ask
me what to do, I've just got out of prison, I don't know what's
going on out here. I hadn't been out of jail long enough to really
get a perspective of what was happening.
I just was released from McNeil Island and I was in Mexico City
prison before that and I was in Terminal Island before that. So I
really wasn't up on the sixties as much as you all make me out to
be. I had just got out of prison.
Most of those people, I - like Kasabian, I knew her two weeks. I
had seen her two or three times around the ranch. I had never
even been with the broad, man, that much, you know. People came
around me because I played a lot of music and I was fairly free and
open because I really didn't know, honestly.
Everyone says that I was the leader of those people, but I was
actually the follower of the children because, like I never grew up.
I've been in jail most of this time, so I stayed in the minds of the
children. And I'm pretty much a street person so violence is no new
thing to me. And people getting hurt around me is no new thing.
I've lived in prison all my life. That happens all the time. I've always
walked on a line. In Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, all across this
country. Cook County jail, Chicago, it's always about fighting.
That's part of everyday life where I live, you know.
So, a lot of the things that people were doing were just their own
little episodes that they get involved in and they looked at me like I
was something like a friend or a brother or a father or someone
that understood because I learned in prison that you can't really
tell any one anything because everybody's got their own
perspective. And all you can do is reflect people back at
themselves and let them make up their own mind about things.
So, when Beausoleil come to me with, could I be a brother? I told
him certainly, you know. So we were like in a little brotherhood
together, like we didn't lie to each other. And whatever he said do,
I would do. And whatever I said do, he would do.
But as far as lining up someone for some kind of helter skelter trip,
you know, that's the District Attorney's motive. That's the only
thing he could find for a motive to throw up on top of all that
confusion he had.There was no such thing in my mind as helter
skelter. Helter skelter was a song and it was a nightclub - we
opened up a little after-hours nightclub to make some money and
play some music and do some dancing and singing and play some
stuff to make some money for dune buggies to go out in the
desert.
And we called the club Helter Skelter. It was a helter skelter club
because we would be there and when the cops would come, we'd
all melt into other dimensions because it wasn't licensed to be
anything in particular. And that was kind of like a speakeasy back
in the moonshine days behind the movie set.
And I'm an outlaw. That's - they're right there, you know, and I'm a
gangster and I'm bad and I'm all the things that I want to be. I'm
pretty free within myself. I cut people and I shoot them and I do
whatever I have to do to survive in the world I live in. But that has
nothing to do with me breaking the line.
Let me explain something about the penitentiary in my mind. I came
to Gilbault in Terre Haute, Indiana overlooking the federal
penitentiary in Indiana. And I was raised by a bunch of monks that
taught us how to tell the truth and how to play handball and how
to box in a boxing ring.
So, I learned to fight early and I ran off and stole a bicycle and
then I went to reform school for that. And I ran off from reform
school. And all my life I've been in prison. I've been in jail running
off. I never went to school. I've never grown up. I've never
accepted the system. I've always accepted the ole man, the ole
winos and I accepted the retired veterans that were guards at the
prisons and county supervisors and such.
But there's a line that man walks. All men walk a line. And I walk
that line in prison. I don't tell on other people. I don't carry tales
about other people. If someone's going to kill themselves, I feel
obligated by Christian ethics to tell him don't do that, your life is
worth more than that. But if he continues to go on a
self-destructive path, I step from his way. I get out of his way.
I've learnt that in prison.
Someone's got a knife and they're going to do something, I say
don't do that. And they say I'm going to do it, I say I'm gone. It's
got nothing to do with me. So they call me on the phone and said
the guy's got a gun, what do I do? I said, well if he's got a gun he
must be afraid of something.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Hold on a minute. I think
he's kind of straying away from what you had going -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay.
INMATE MANSON: I 'm right there in Beausoleil's murder
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes. I think he's talking
- that's alright. [inaudible]
INMATE MANSON: I'm right there on the telephone where he called
and asked me what to do, This is the point where I got convicted.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Go ahead, Mr. Manson.
INMATE MANSON: It would come from the witness stand that when
on the telephone the only thing that ever connected me with
Hinman's murder was Beausoleil called me and asked me what to do
and I told him, you know what to do. I didn't tell him like, [raising
voice] you know what to do. I told him, man, you're a man, grow
up juvenile. Don't ask me what to do. Stand on your own two feet.
Be responsible for your own actions. Don't ask me what to do. I
just got out of prison. I don't want to go back to jail.
I know what walking that line is. It's a straight razor in the barber
shop in McNeil Island. I've worked in a straight razor, I've worked in
the barber shop in the McNeil Island. I was with all the ole men
that came out a Alcatraz. I don't break the law. The old man tells
me, if you don't break the law, you don't have to go to jail. You
break the law, you're putting yourself in jail. The law is there and
the will of God. You break that law, you're breaking the will of God
and you're going to go to jail. When I got out, that was my symbol.
Everybody else was doing this and this and different symbols. I
would do that. And they'd say, what is that symbol? I'd say, that
symbol is, I got one positive thought. I'm in a rebirth movement. I
just come out a prison. I got a chance to start over. And I'm
starting over and I'm not breaking no laws. So don't come around
me with no- nothing. I don't want no money. I'll eat out of garbage
cans. I'll stay on the complete bottom. I'm underneath this snake
here. I'm not breaking no law.
So a lot a people came to me from the underworld and in the
outlaw world and run away from the war, from the Vietnam War.
That was - what's his name - them guys that testified for you on
them motorcycles. Them Italian kids that came off of that Venice,
California. They took the witness stand and they said everything
they could get away with to get their cases dropped. There wasn't
a witness that took that witness stand -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. I don't want to
go into the hearing, Mr. Manson. Just talk about the crime. Any
changes from what I read which is -
INMATE MANSON: Well, that's what made that- that's what wrote
that down is what all these people said to you guys, you know.
They told you all these trips about what I said, and when I said it,
and how in the hell -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: But any more
INMATE MANSON: - could you possibly know what I said to
somebody 25 years ago in the corner of - when we were only
talking to ourselves and I couldn't even remember what that - what
I said. I may have said just anything, but I know what I would say
now and I don't lie, so I know what I would say then, you know.
And I certainly wouldn't tell nobody to go in and do nothing to
anybody that I wouldn't want done to me.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay.
INMATE MANSON: Listen, listen. I got enough sense to know that if
I spit on you, that you - that gives you the God-given right to spit
on me back. Anything I do to you got the right to do right back to
me. And I'm not going get caught up in that. I've been in jail long
enough to know if you go over on the other side of that yard and
you beat somebody up and you walk that lines, pretty sooner or
later somebody's going beat you up.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Let me go on a
little bit, okay, and talk about your prior criminality. You've covered
it pretty well. It says here that you started your criminal history
when you were very young, is that right? Back in '48 you went to
Terre Haute, Indiana Boys School because of a burglary of a
grocery store. And then you went AWOL from the school and was
placed in Indiana State Reformatory -
INMATE MANSON: Before you get into that, before you rush me off
into that.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay.
INMATE MANSON: Every time I go to these committees
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Uh-huh.
INMATE MANSON: - I'll wait two or three years for you and I'll sit in
the cell and stare at the wall for two or three years just waiting for
you people. And then when you get here you can't even give me
five minutes.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No -
INMATE MANSON: You're in such a rush, you know, you know.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. Then what I -
INMATE MANSON: You have to slow down with my mind and to - to
see where your mind is.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. All right.
You're right.
INMATE MANSON: Let me say this. The courtroom- Charles Older
would not been sitting on that bench had I not went in the
courtroom. So, we're kind a like married in this thought together,
like we're together whether we want to be here together or not,
you know, we're stuck in this madness, you know.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Right.
INMATE MANSON: I don't want this job. I'm not getting paid very
much, you know.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No, that's true.
INMATE MANSON: And you're certainly going to get paid if you take
your time, so give me time to finish what I was trying to do, will
you, please?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Is it on the crime, Mr.
Manson?
INMATE MANSON: Yes sir, it is.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Then -
INMATE MANSON: Yes, sir. It's the very same thing that you read.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay.
INMATE MANSON: You know, I kind of anticipated what you were
going to say because you've been saying the same thing for 20
years.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right.
INMATE MANSON: This has grown so much that the people living in
my life have moved in with uniforms and penitentiaries. They built
whole penitentiaries in the fear that they generated off of this
case. So the public can feel safe against this monster, we're going
to charge you 200 million dollars to build another set of
penitentiaries.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson -
INMATE MANSON: so people living in my life, they don't care
whether I broke the law or not. They'll make up a lot a things and
sell a lot a books, 58 of them to be exact, and billions of dollars has
been made. And it's okay if I have to spend my life in prison - let
me finish - just to hold me because I've shown you some strong
strength and I haven't surrendered to - to this by - by copping out
to you or telling tales on someone else or playing weak. You've
medicated me, you've burnt me, you've beat me, you've stabbed
me, you've done everything you can do to me and I'm still here.
And you're still going have to face the truth about this case sooner
or later. If not here -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: [inaudible]
INMATE MANSON: - in the street.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right, Mr. Manson.
I'm going to give you an opportunity to give a closing statement
and you can read that or talk about that at that particular time.
We're going to now talk about your prior criminality. I said before,
and I think you stated that you were placed in a boys school at an
early age, in 1948, for burglary. You tried to escape from there or
run away, whatever it was, and you were placed in Indiana State
Reformatory.
Again went AWOL in February of '51. You stole an automobile, went
to Utah. You were arrested there and you were convicted of the
Dyer Act and sentenced to the National Training School for Boys in
Washington, D.C.
Your adult convictions there are one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight or nine adult convictions beginning in 1955 and ending
in 1969. They've consisted of the Dyer Act - you were sentenced
to three years in federal prison for that, attempted escape, five
years probation; forgery, mail theft, ten years suspended; Los
Angeles probation violation; ten years federal prison, McNeil Island,
Washington; South Ukiah, interfering with an officer, three years
probation; and in Ventura possession of a drivers license and in Los
Angeles, was the instant offense of murders.
Now you said you also spent time in Mexico in a prison.
INMATE MANSON: Yes, I was in Mexico for -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: In prison down there?
INMATE MANSON: In Mexico City, prison, yes. Immigration prison.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: What was that for?
INMATE MANSON: I had been accused of killing some French people
and a couple dudes in Acapulco.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: And how long were you
in prison down there?
INMATE MANSON: I was there a couple different times.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: A couple times?
INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: I have here under your
personal factors, Mr. Manson, that you were born on - in 1934 in
Cincinnati, Ohio. Your mother was Kathy Maddox, who never - and
you never saw your natural father.
INMATE MANSON: That's not true.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: It's not true?
INMATE MANSON: No. My father's name was William Manson.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: William?
INMATE MANSON: Yes.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: And did you live with
him for a while?
INMATE MANSON: No. You know, it's one of those divorce trips
where you see a guy walk by and he's your father and you really
don't - you know, I remember his boots -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes.
INMATE MANSON: - and I remember him when he went to the war.
I remember when he - his uniform, but I don't remember what he
really looked like.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Your mother was
arrested shortly after the birth and sentenced to prison for assault
and robbery?
INMATE MANSON: Yes.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: And you lived with your
maternal grandparents in West Virginia. You don't have a southern
accent, do you?
INMATE MANSON: When I need it.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes, when you need it.
you later resided in foster homes until you were made a ward of the
court in '47. The rest of your juvenile life was spent in various
informatories, reformatories and boys schools in Pennsylvania and
Indiana. You dropped out of school at the age of 9 in the third
grade. You married Rosealie Willis in 1954. The marriage ended in
divorce in 1956. You have one son, Charles, Jr. which resulted from
this marriage, but you have not seen your son since the divorce. Is
that correct, Mr. Manson?
INMATE MANSON: I don't know.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. It says here, no
military service. You used L.S.D. extensively, mescaline,
amphetamines and barbiturates, but no alcohol. Is that correct?
INMATE MANSON: No.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No? Enlighten me.
INMATE MANSON: I've taken a few tabs of acid, I smoked grass, I
smoked a little hash. I don't mess with drugs, per se. I don't do
anything self destructive. I like the cactus buds. They're a spiritual
experience, and I -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Peyote?
INMATE MANSON: And mushrooms are okay.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes.
INMATE MANSON: I drink scotch whiskey. I like scotch whiskey and
I drink beer occasionally. I'm not much of a wine drinker, but now
and then some wine with meals is alright.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: You get any of that in
here?
INMATE MANSON: No, no, no.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. We're going to
- remember I said there was three areas of the hearing. The
second area is your post-conviction factors. We may come back to
this. I told you one area we have questions.
INMATE MANSON: Do I get to say anything about that?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Oh, yes. We're going to
do that in just a little bit. We're going to go to your
post-conviction factors and your psychiatric factors and your
psychiatric evaluation. Now, that's everything that's happened to
you since your last hearing, and also the evaluation and Deputy
Commissioner Brown will handle that on my far right.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Thank you, Mr. Koenig.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: You're welcome.
INMATE MANSON: Do I get a minute here - in between there?
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Why do you want a
minute?
INMATE MANSON: To respond to just what that record that you
laid out there?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: We'll go back to that.
You -
INMATE MANSON: There's just no way my mind can handle that.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right-
INMATE MANSON: In other words, I don't have the papers you
have and I can't refer to what you're referring to, you know.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Yes. You may respond
to this right now, if you wish. Go ahead.
INMATE MANSON: Okay, okay. What that whole first 11 years being
locked up in was trying to get away. You've got a juvenile. You
lock him up in juvenile hall, you don't know anything. He's got no
parents. He's got nobody telling him the truth. Everybody's lying to
him. So the only thing he can do is run away.
So that's all I did. I ran away. And everytime I ran away, they just
got me and put me in a harder place to get away. So everytime I
would run away, they would take me and put me in a more difficult
place to run away until I got to the federal prison system.
I ran through Indiana and I ran through Illinois and I ran through
Ohio. And then when they put me in Washington, D.C., Dr. Hartman
put me in Virginia, Natural Bridge Camp with a [inaudible] and that
was in 1952 - '51. Then I went to Petersburg - Camp Petersburg,
Virginia where they got the military academy.
And then I went to Pennsylvania, then I went to Ohio, and then in
1954 I got out and I [inaudible] knew what I was doing. I'm still
nine years old in third grade in my mind. I couldn't very well know
what was going on, you know, I never had any help from anyone.
No one ever done anything for me.
So what I did was I married the first girl I came to and stole a car
and came to California because that's where she wanted to come
and I just followed her around like a blind guy because I really don't
- California was a -you know, I didn't know what California was.
you know, I'm this dumb hillbilly. I thought the pigeons were sea
gulls and the sea gulls were pigeons. I didn't know the difference,
you know.
So when I got to California, it was all about fighting in the county
jail. I wasn't out there on the street but what, maybe two or three
weeks before they had me in the jail back in Terminal Island.
So I went through the lieutenant there and they brought the guys
- the lieutenants and the men that were in the uniforms from the
dentist office and all the Navy and the doctors from Dr. Hartman,
they brought them from back East, they brought them to Terminal
Island with a lot of the old time gangsters that were being
released. They're going to Needles, California and out in the desert,
to doing different things in the - in the Mafia world, in that old
underworld, where they made all that moonshine stuff.
So I learned all the things they learned. So this - I'm picking up all
these things from all these older men. So they're laying out to me
what's right and what's wrong, and I don't really know what's right
and what's wrong, because people that say what's right and
wrong, they're not doing what they say. They're doing something
different than what they say, you know. So I had to find all this
out for myself.
So then when you keep calling me a criminal and keep calling me a
bad guy, then I got to be all the things that you think in your mind
that I am, which is - that's not really what I am. you got me being
a bastard, you got me being a dope fiend. You got me being
everything's bad. I'm only five foot tall. I was five-seven, then I
went to five-six, now I'm down to five-two. I figure about another
20 years, I'll be about four feet tall, because everybody's just
constantly pushing it over on me, like they got permission to get
away with doing anything they want to do to me, because I don't
have no parents, because I don't have no money, because I don't
have no education.
You've got to have some education or some parents or you're not
smart. You've got to be stupid if you don't read and write, you
know. You've got to be all the things that are bad if you ain't got
nobody to protect you, because you find out in that cell, the only
person that loves you, Jesus Christ.
And that rebirth movement in 1967 was mine. Now you can tell
Carter and all them other people that have been stealing my life
everyday and living in my reality, you know, that they can read
Corinthians 13, chapter verse, you know. And that'll handle that
part of it. That's the end of what I got to say then.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. You did a good
job there. We're going to go to the second area of the hearing
now. Mr. Brown will handle your post- convictions.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: I want to start right in
with your C.D.C. 115s. You have about 60 of them. And it doesn't
appear that you have been doing very much to change them. I
won't go all the way back past 1981. As a matter of fact, I'll start
in '83. Your last time you appeared before the Board was 1981, and
I'm sure that that panel reviewed all of those 115s with you prior to
that time.
There are 60 of them starting from that time. Disrespect towards
staff, possession of hacksaw blade. Do you have a copy of those?
INMATE MANSON: No.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: [Inaudible] violence,
dangerous properties?
INMATE MANSON: No. No, I know what all those are though.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: I want you - I'm going to
read a couple this year that you had. March 14th, 1992 threatening
staff. [reading] on 03/14/92 at approximately 1510 hours while
conducting my duties as floor officer, I was sweeping up a tier
[inaudible] when Inmate Manson, B-33920 verbally demanded I go
out to the S.H.U. yard and clear the showers now - clean the
showers now because in my - in his opinion they're dirty. I informed
Inmate Manson that I didn't have time to clean them today. Inmate
Manson began to call me a liar and treacherous bitch. Inmate
Manson also stated, I would like to break all the bones in your body
starting with your elbow working down to your knees. Then Inmate
Manson stated, tell that man up there, the patrol group operator to
open his cell door and let me beat you into submission so that you'll
be under my power. [end reading]
Do you recall that?
INMATE MANSON: Yes.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Threatening staff -
INMATE MANSON: Do I get to explain it?
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: You want to explain that?
INMATE MANSON: Yes.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: You got it. Go ahead.
INMATE MANSON: Prison is a treacherous place to live in. you miss
one move, and you get stabbed. You've got to be aware of
everything that goes on. There's nothing that you can overlook.
You've got to be aware of your air and ventilator that you breath,
because if you've got emphysema and a Ninja warrior gets in your
air, he can stop your air.
So I'm in the shower area. They got some rust that's coming out of
the pipes, and this rust is building up and it looks just exactly like
instant coffee. If you take a spoonful of that rust and you mix it in
with instant coffee and you give somebody a cup of coffee, you
can burn their kidneys out, you can kill them.
So there's a deadly substance out in the yard that needs cleaned
up, because if I'm aware of this substance, when someone else
comes out they see this substance, they may pick some of it up
and put it in my coffee. So I try to be aware of everything.
So I asked the woman when she came to work - I said, would you
take the hose that you've been watering me down with and
squirting me with when no one's looking and go out there and squirt
down that yard and clean up that mess out there, to where - and
she says, well, no, she wasn't going to do that. I said, well,
somebody needs to do that because it's a danger, you know. So
she said she didn't want to do it and she called me a liar so I called
her a liar back.
Now, whether you want to accept this or not, the deer in the
woods - there's a doe and there's a buck. And the buck comes up
to doe and scares the doe and the doe turns around and backs
up to the buck. That's a matriarch and a patriarch. I live in a
patriarch. You live in a matriarch. You back up to your women. I
don't back up to my women. I don't take no lip from my women. I
don't give them none, but I don't take none either.
If they disrespect me, I'll disrespect them back. If they hit me, I'll
hit them back.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: I 'm going to interrupt
you. I'm going to read these other two, because they're along the
same line. You keep your thought, and I'll let you continue to go in
that vein for a short while longer, but I'm not going to allow you to
ramble all day.
INMATE MANSON: You got it.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: The second one, February
the 1st, 1992, written by an officer by the name of Bass and you
told her Bass you're a fucking punk. She attempted to counsel. You
stated, open this - Bass open this fucking door and I'll take that
stick away from you and beat your ass with it.
You got another one, February the 10th, i992, officer by the name
of Moony. You became verbally abusive saying, get your nose out
of my ass, you bitch. When I attempted to proceed with the C.D.C.
115, Manson exposed his penis, and said, suck my dick, you white
bitch, you're nothing but a witch. Manson then proceeded to spit
on me.
You may go ahead with your - conclude your statement that you
were making about why this kind of behavior keeps going on, as far
as you're concerned.
INMATE MANSON: Prison is a place where they keep men. They
chew tobacco, they spit, they cuss, they do bad things. They ride
horses, they fall down. It's not a place where women should be
working.
Women come in here and we're sitting on the toilet. We have to
bare down and take our clothes off and bend over and show our
private parts and they stand there and gawk. And it's not a place
for a woman. I wouldn't want my mother working in a prison, if I
had one. I wouldn't want my sisters, I wouldn't want my old ladies
working in a prison.
Prison and the authoritative type jobs kind of- they like certain
kinds of jobs. Some women that don't like men, they like these kind
of jobs. They can get over on some men and they feel really good
about that, because they didn't like their father and they don't like
men anyway. Well, I don't particularly like men either, whatever
men is. Or whatever that is to them, it's got nothing to do with
what it is to me.
So what it is to me is like - I say a lot of words they say are bad
words. To me, they're just words. I don't see good words or bad
words. Good and bad is up to the individual to decide whatever he
feels likes goods words.
So when you're talking to a man, you say, hey, you old dirty
[unintelligible]. You're saying things that you're rapping, what they
call the dozens, you're rapping back and forwards. Then you got a
guy and you're sitting there rapping and you let a stinker, and
there's two guys in the room and (sniff-sniff] one of them smells it
and looks at the other one, says wasn't me. I mean, there's only
two of you there. It could - you know, I mean, how are you going
to lie to yourself, you know.
So me and this man is standing there and we're rapping and
man-talking back and forwards and this woman come around the
corner like I was talking to her. I wasn't talking to her to start with.
I was talking to the guy.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: You have enough sense to
understand that when you accumulated this many disciplinaries,
that somewhere along the line, somebody's saying that you're doing
it wrong. And somewhere in your mind, you need to make some kind
of decision that you're going to make a choice to stop.
INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Now you can sit up and
you can rationalize and you can come up with all of the rhetoric
that you want to, but it isn't going to get you out of the hole.
You're just going to continue to dig yourself in deeper.
INMATE MANSON: Okay. Can I explain that?
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Go ahead.
INMATE MANSON: The turnaround, it comes to push, push comes
to shove, shove comes looking around to see where you're up
above or down below, where you're at and how it turns. Something
that says good, says bad, that's good, say what it is, what it is,
that's cool.
So when you catch cool you got some fool coming through the
door, you don't know what he's doing about what. He just come
and fell out of the water like a fish on the floor. And he don't know
what he's doing, he got no idea where he's at and he's coming into
other people's lives talking about words he don't even know nothing
about it.
He comes in to my world, my life, and tells me roo- roo-rah, some
old punk ass mother fucker shit that's going to get me killed if I
don't put up some force fields in his mind to get his ding-dong ass
off of me. So I tell him, get off of me. If you don't get off of me, I'll
teach you how to get off of me. And he learns that, and he turns
that around and he tells the inmate, you get up against that wall
and shake down.
And then he learns his man from getting the man and when they
feel real secure, then they have to get them 115s in before I get
to parole, because they want to get them 115s in because they
don't want to ever let me go, because if they let me go they lose
the best thing they've got because they feel secure as long as
they got me locked up in a cell. And they feel like - yeah, they feel
like they got the man right there in the box where they can go
back and say what's what to who and says where, and you
represent and who in what part or whose courtroom, see.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: All right.
INMATE MANSON: Here's the thing - let me say this to you Chief
Thomas [sic]. When we -
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Hold up, hold up just a
minute. My name -
INMATE MANSON: Brown - excuse me, Mr. Brown.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: My name is written right
there and don't you ever call me anything but that name right
there. Do you understand?
INMATE MANSON: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Now proceed.
INMATE MANSON: Sure. So it comes to this, it's like, I'm not going
to try to kid you. I'm not going to try playing nothing with you.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: And I'm not going to play
with you and let me tell you something else -
INMATE MANSON: Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute
-
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: No, no, no. you wait.
INMATE MANSON: Oh, you want to kick me out of here and
[inaudible] go home.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: No, I'm not going to kick
you out of here. No way I'm going to kick you out-
INMATE MANSON: Well, I just don't - you know, like the words you
like -
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Hold up. Will you
INMATE MANSON: - what do you want to prove here?
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: And I'm not going to tell
Corrections what to do with you, but we're going to follow some
kind of decorum and procedure in this hearing room.
INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: I'm going to let you go
just a little bit longer on this that you're talking about, then we're
going to move to your psych reports. Now go ahead.
INMATE MANSON: I reflect the procedure back to stay alive, man,
and I've got to get nasty sometimes, because everybody you
sending here working over me is not a nice guy, you know. I think if
any of you have any experience in jail, you know that jail is not a
very nice place to be.
And you have all kinds of different people in all kinds of different
levels and I have to deal with all those levels. I have to deal with
every kind of psychotic maniac you got in the world trying to burn
me up, trying to beat me up, trying to get some attention to get
me in any kind of direction he can. And I have to propose a certain
image and keep a certain kind of guy stuck up there to keep those
bullies off of me. Because if I show any weakness, if I fall down in
any perspective, I get ate up because I run with a pack of wolves
and I've got to be a wolf.
And when it reflects back to you that I'm a no good so and so and
so forth, I'm reflecting a procedure that's reflected on to me. If I
don't have any other choice but to get a 115 to stay out of
something more dangerous or more terrible, rather than stand -
rather than stay out of my cell and fight this big old ugly guy, I'm
going to call him a bunch of names so he'll put it on paper. And
then when he puts it on paper, I say, whew, boy, I didn't have
togo with that physically, then I could do it mentally.
As long as I run my jaw mentally and I get it put on the paper,
then physically I can walk around all the violence and I can stay in
peace and harmony.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Are you saying that you're
deliberately keeping yourself placed in a security holding unit?
INMATE MANSON: No, I'm saying that we're all doing this. We all
only use each other in different perspectives all the time. If the
song's saying, love won't let you go - it ain't got nothing to do
with, love won't let you go. It's people who need you that they
don't want to let you go.
They need you for different reasons. They need you to feel secure
in - because if they got guys they're afraid of, you got two or
three dudes over there that are bad and you're afraid of them and
you're a correctional officer, but yet you got a guy over here that
ain't afraid of you. It's like this woman come to work and she goes
over to this guy and tells him, turn your radio down, and he tells
her, shove it right up your ass [inaudible], run her off.
So she comes over to my cell and because she sees that he's
afraid of me, so she takes my radio away and looks back at him and
says, hmnph. So then she uses me to stand up over you, because
in the darkness on the yard out there, you do what I tell you to do.
When you're on that committee, I'll do what you tell me to do. I'm
the man in here. And that's a fact.
[OFF THE RECORD]
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: This is Tape 2 in the case
of Charles Manson, April the 21st, 1992, California State Prison,
Corcoran, California.
We're going to proceed to your psychiatric evaluations. You don't
have one. Well, you had one for this year, but you didn't have one
completed for the Board of Prison Terms specifically.
Bruce T. Reed, Ph.D., Clinic Psychologist, went over to see you on
February the l9th and you refused to be evaluated. Any reason
why?
INMATE MANSON: Yes, I had two other doctors trying to evaluate
me at the same time. I couldn't - I can't write that many books.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: What doctors were trying
to interview you at that time?
INMATE MANSON: Well, see the front side, you see the doctor
coming to me to give me help. The back side, he get his
information, he'll go to Turkey. He's over in France writing books
about the psychotherapy or [inaudible] therapy-
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Which doctors came to
visit you at the time Dr. Reed tried to get in?
INMATE MANSON: Dr. Christopherson, Dr. White.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Where are they from?
INMATE MANSON: Right here. Since then, I think Christopherson's
been fired for ethics violation of some sort. Then there's Willis - Dr.
Willis.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Willis came over to see
you this -
INMATE MANSON: Willis has been my psychiatrist. We went through
- if you'll check the record, we went through two sessions. He said
I was okay for level 3. He said that I was alright for level 3.
What this latest doctor wants is a - what's happening out of 'Frisco
is this law firm is coming up with new psych evaluation with the
prisoners union. The prisoner's union in San Quentin, they got a
bunch of inmates to sign a suit for better psychiatric treatment.
What that means is more political power because they're using the
psychiatric base to get their doctors in here so they can get
doctors up over the uniform, so they can hold the reality up over
the courts and the minds of the people that live inside the prisons.
Because when they can do that, then they can do Vacaville.
See when I left Vacaville, there was 12 dead doctors there of heart
attacks. Dr. Morgan was the last doctor that they found dead in
the parking lot with his brains blown out. I went to doctors -
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Dr. Christopherson saw
you on January the 24th of this year.
INMATE MANSON: Yes, sir.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: And in his report of that
date, states that he went over to see you because you were not
eating. Staff was concerned.
INMATE MANSON: Yes, he came to see me two or three times
about that.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: But he didn't appear to be
concerned because he said you were eating something, either
candy bars or canteen or -
INMATE MANSON: Yes, I fast a lot.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: - or whatever, but he
wasn't concerned about your not eating. He talked about your
paranoid delusional disorder at that time in his report.
INMATE MANSON: Perspective.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: He prescribed a plan for
you and that was to put you on [inaudible] and said this will have
two affects. One, they will support or deny the fact that he is on
hunger strike, and they will also give the inmate a chance to get
out of his cell on occasions as a form of environmental stimulation.
On the same vein, one, will have more frequent visit to the
psychiatrist. This too will monitor signs and symptoms of active
psychosis versus malingering; three, if indeed he's on a hunger
strike, he should be considered for the M.O.U. What's M.O.U.?
INMATE MANSON: It's some kind of -
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Memorandum of
Understanding? If he does refuse psychotropic -
INMATE MANSON: Medical observation unit.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Medical observation unit.
INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: If indeed he's on a - if he
does refuse psychotropic medications, we may ask him [inaudible]
our decision, which is adjudged ordered involuntary medication. It
should also be noted that we should have a careful monitoring of
his intake and output including material from the canteen.
So he's suggesting that you were kind of faking things a little bit.
INMATE MANSON: Whenever you do something beyond someone
else's understanding, and they don't want to understand it, they -
they'll hate it and look at it as being bad. It doesn't really - it isn't
really bad. I fast. I fast to tighten my stomach up. It makes me
healthy. It's a spiritual experience. Sometimes I go ten, 15, 30
days. Sometimes I go longer than that. I fast until I can get my
mind straightened around.
Whenever - when a bad circumstance comes to me and I have to
deal with the mental situation all around me, I'm surrounded by
inmates and officers and all kinds of things beyond your
comprehension, I have to sit and I have to balance all those things
in my mind.
So what I do is I quit eating, and when I quit eating, what happens
is that everything trusts, and trust is going one way, but trust it
goes the other way too. I'm your economy. If I don't eat, then you
don't know whether I'm trusting you, because the only way you
know if I trust you is if I eat from your hands.
So I hold all the trust with the food and when I don't eat, then
everybody gets scared and they start going through - they're not
sure and then I'm paranoid, because anything around me is going to
be my fault because I'm the last chicken in line.
One chicken - the dogs bark at the chickens and the chickens get
to pecking on each other and then you get the last chicken in line
and they just peck him till he's either gone, or they get it
straightened around, you know.
And like, being the last chicken in line, I have to take up the slack,
so I - what I do is I quit eating. And then all the fat people that
can't quit eating, they start going through a lot of changes when I
show them I'm about ten times stronger then they ever thought
about dreaming about.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Let me ask you something,
now that you got the fat joke out. What have you done in all the
years that you've been on prison that this panel or anybody could
look at that would indicate that there's been a change in Charles
Manson?
INMATE MANSON: I change all the time, sir. Everyday I'm going to
change.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Well, I can't measure that.
you have to tell me.
INMATE MANSON: Can I ask you a couple questions? What did you
do before this - so I know what foundation in your mind where I
can speak to you from? You got any juris prudence? You got any
correctional officer experience or policeman or what?
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: I don't think you need to
know that. All you need to know is -
INMATE MANSON: Can I ask you?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Just answer the
question.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: All you need to know is
that I'm sitting on this panel today.
INMATE MANSON: Okay. Well, we'll go the judge. The judge sets on
the bench and he takes in his mind the crime. It comes to him for
judgment. If it goes through his understanding and he watches it,
judge itself. The judge really doesn't judge it. He judges - he lets
the district attorney and it passes through his understanding.
He does this six hours a day, seven days a week, five days a week.
He retires 65 years old. He's done that for 8000 hours. I've done
the same thing all my life, 24 hours a day, so I'm about 15 street
poor judges in my mind. In other words, I know more about law
than anybody in the world. I know more about courts and
procedures and criminology and penalogy and procedure than any
card shark dealing devils off the bench in Monte Carlo.
I know more about the economy, more about money, more about
the government than any ten presidents you got. you know, in
other words, I've sit in solitary confinement and I've watched
everything you guys do, and the truth is you're all lying to
yourselves, you know. And like -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson, you're not
answering Mr. Brown's question.
INMATE MANSON: I'm not?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No. He asked you what
have you done in the institution to show the Board of Prison Terms
and society that you've changed?
INMATE MANSON: I'm real with you. I don't pretend. I'm not
bringing you a bunch of phony garbage. I'm not trying to tell you
that I'm a good guy. I'm just myself, whatever that is. I believe in
God and I do the best I can everyday by everybody I can, you
know. When something bad comes up, I react bad to it, you know.
I can fight. I can't read and write too good, but boy I can fight.
You wouldn't believe how I could fight because I've been fighting ail
my life to survive, and I live right on that edge of survival, you
know. I just survive.
I play a little music when I'm allowed to. I draw real good, but they
took my pencils. Everything I do, if I can do it real good, they'll
take it away from me. I used to do- make little dolls of strings,
then he come took the string. So I'm not allowed to do anything. I
don't have any clothes. I haven't combed my hair in two, three
years, you know, I can't comb my hair. I can't do that.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Have you been involved in
any psychiatric intervention?
INMATE MANSON: Yes, yes. I've seen more doctors than doctors
have seen inmates. I was with Dr. Nichol there in the back alley
over there in Vacaville with [inaudible].
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Was this in a therapy
setting?
INMATE MANSON: Well, I guess you could call it the therapy
setting. I was handling all the crazy people and taking care of the
kids in the visiting room and [inaudible] in the garden and chapel.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Was anybody doing
anything with you?
INMATE MANSON: No, everybody was doing what I told them.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: No, no. Were any of the
therapists doing anything to assist you in your life?
INMATE MANSON: No. It was me doing it for them. I had to look
out for the veterans just came back from the war and all the
wheelchairs and all the doctors. They had a lot of Vietnamese
doctors come in, couldn't speak English, so I had to get the
medication all straightened around for that, you know, because my
life at the bottom, I got to look out for everybody else's life too or
I can't get on through what I'm trying to do.
I like to play music, but they took my music away and they took
my guitar away. That's the only thing I do. I play a little music. But
they're scared of that. Anything I do, they get afraid of and then
they'll run and tell the cops that they're afraid of whatever I'm
doing and they run, take it away from me and I'm not allowed to do
anything. So I just sit in a cell, you know. I don't really need to do
anything because I'm doing everything all the way anyway. And my
radio -
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Now you keep talking
about not being able to read and write.
INMATE MANSON: Not that well. I read and write [inaudible].
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: You have an I.Q. that's up
well over a 100 points.
INMATE MANSON: Yes, I am pretty smart.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: And you've been in prison
all these years. Have you done anything at all to improve your
grades?
INMATE MANSON: Grades for what? What am I doing?
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Well, you keep harping on
the fact that you cannot read very well, nor can you write very
well.
INMATE MANSON: No, I just - I'm not harping. I'm just explaining
that that's -
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: You keep saying it.
INMATE MANSON: - that's where I'm at.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Have you done anything
to improve your reading and writing skills?
INMATE MANSON: Yes, I read a book. I read a book. It was kind of
boring, man. you know, I can think better things than I can read. I
mean, reading is kind of like slowing down and people only love
each other in books. You can't love each other in reality, because
you're all trapped in books, locked up in wars. You're all locked up
in the Second World War, man. You're still fighting wars over there,
you know.
I was trying to unlock that war. That's what was over there trying
to unlock the wars. Bob Arondis [phonetic spelling] came from India
and the Dr. Hyler [phonetic spelling] used to come over and tell me
what Bob Arondis had to say about, you know, the lovey love
center there in Berkeley where they've had to hire minds of the
religious perspective there.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: And so you haven't done
any of those kinds of things?
INMATE MANSON: Well, what I'm trying to explain to you without a
lot of - I don't want to appear like I'm somebody, but I'm on top of
everything. I'm the smartest guy in the world, you know. I can't - I
don't think there's anyone in the world - there's no subject I can't
tell you everything you want to know about it, you know. I've even
fixed a Harley Davidson motorcycle. I'm short change, I know how
to deal off the bottom. I've learned everything that you taught me
dad.
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Okay -
INMATE MANSON: Yes, yes, yes, uh-huh, well [inaudible] -
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: Return to the Chair.
PRESIDING BOMB COMISSIOND KOENIG: Thank you. Okay. Mr.
Manson, we're going to the third area of the hearing now, parole
plans. Mr. Aceto [background noise/inaudible].
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Thank you. We have to talk about
your parole plans. Do you know the statement that you made to
your Counselors
INMATE MANSON: No.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You stated that you had no plans
for the future. You also stated that you were not interested in
paroling and that you would be lost in our society. His main concern
at this time is to be released to a general population setting in
order to program.
INMATE MANSON: Makes sense to me.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: That's a good statement, if it's
yours, It doesn't sound like you.
INMATE MANSON: Well -
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Was that your statement?
INMATE MANSON: Yes, basically I said that to that broad, yes, but
I might've said something else to somebody else in a different
perspective. I generally say to people what they want to hear.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Hold it. What broad are you talking
about?
INMATE MANSON: Some caseworker woman. Name was Virginia. I
think her name was Virginia.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Correctional counselor?
INMATE MANSON: Yes, who was it?
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: I'm not going to tell you. It's your
counselor, you should know
INMATE MANSON: Well, yes, I have - there's all kinds of
counselors, man -
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Talk too loud [inaudible].
INMATE MANSON: There's all kinds of counselors, they turn over all
the time. They come and go like - I can't keep track of those.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Montero [phonetic Spelling].
INMATE MANSON: [inaudible]
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Montero.
INMATE MANSON: Montero I think that's a woman.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: It's not a broad. It's a woman.
INMATE MANSON: I should say woman, okay.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. That's good enough.
INMATE MANSON: Let me explain something.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: I didn't ask you nothing yet. I just
want to get the statement out of the way. Is that your statement?
INMATE MANSON: Partly.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Partly.
INMATE MANSON: To that person on that level. I've got other legs.
Cockroach got eight legs [inaudible] got six.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You said that you would be lost in
society today.
INMATE MANSON: My position is taken.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You're safe in here without society.
INMATE MANSON: No. It's got nothing to do with safety. I'm not in
that [inaudible]. The position that I should be holding is taken by
someone else.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: All right. Let me tell you what
you've got here. You may have seen them yourself. You had 45,
what your counselor call, fearful letters. Fearful letters opposing
your parole. That right?
INMATE MANSON: I've got a bunch of them, but I think they're all
from one person, aren't they?
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Well, it would appear that they're
written by different people at a certain time, except for a few. And
it's all based on some rumor you let out of this joint that you were
going to be paroled and that you would be accepting a hide out
place and money in the bank and that's what you put out as a
rumor. Did you do that?
INMATE MANSON: Can't say for real.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Can't say for real?
INMATE MANSON: No. There's a lot of rumors that go in and out of
different things I've been doing. That's what hard about this whole
thing. They put so much pressure on you that everything I say or
do goes - gets twisted around to what people want it to be, want
they wanted to have said. It hasn't really got anything to do with
what it really is. It's what other people need it to be.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: This appeared in an article in the
paper, I know that. Here it is. Charlie Manson should never return
to society. It was written because the news media said that
Charlie Manson, masterminded through his claim, the outrageous
murder of Sharon Tate, da-da-da-da-da, according to them
[background noise/inaudible] admitted [inaudible] put fear into the
system. Now the system may be putting fear into us. That the
witness protection program [inaudible] program to release Charlie
Manson.
INMATE MANSON: Yes, they offered me a place in Valachi
[phonetic spelling].
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Who was they?
INMATE MANSON: F.B.I.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: What do you got to do with the
F.B.I.? You don't have nothing to do with the F.B.I.
INMATE MANSON: Yes, I do. I was a barber in the federal
penitentiary for 20 years.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Were you a snitch?
INMATE MANSON: Nope. That's the reason I didn't take the
program.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Well, anyway -
INMATE HANSON: If had been a snitch, I'd been gone for Virginia.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: There was a [inaudible] there in
l990 that almost got out of hand for you.
INMATE MANSON: Well, they come to me two or three times and
they wanted me to work and do different - draw profiles for new
criminal types. And that Mexican - New Mexico thing jumped off the
- they asked for some help. I'm not really a - I'm not a - an
informant type guy.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. Now, you're talking what's
[inaudible] when you get home, mom and dad? You got a mom and
dad? [inaudible] Sir?
INMATE MANSON: I 'd like to explain. I really would.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You don't have to. I mean, it's -
INMATE MANSON: But I mean, I really want to. I really want to.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: The question is, do you have folks
to rely on?
INMATE MANSON: But you don't understand. Each one of you is
somebody. I ain't nobody. I'm nothing. I'm now [inaudible] now
[inaudible]. My mother went to prison. She left me. And
everybody's lied to me. A few old men in the Second World war
were honest with me, you know. The older dudes were, you know -
I was used to working the hospital [inaudible] you know.
I've always run with the - I've always run a main line with the guys
that were truthful and honest. And like, the reason I haven't been
- you haven't been able to kill me is you haven't been able to find
me, because everytime you send somebody after me they can't
find me because I'm not really there in your minds.
Just like you draw a line across the desert and I'm sitting there and
you come and draw a line, you say, you can't get out of there. I
say, I'm aware. You say, you're locked up. I say, locked up in
what? He say, well, you're locked up and we're free. And I say, oh
yeah? And then you walk back and forth and you play important
with my life as if you've got something that I want, you know.
Like you got out and I'm supposed to be in, but yet I'm everywhere
and I'm out and in and I'm all around, down to San Diego Zoo, and
I'm riding a motorcycle and I'm your children and I'm the trees and
I'm your -
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. Hold it. Hold it up. Hold it up.
INMATE MANSON: I'm crazy and you got to get another doctor.
Yes, sir.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: I get the point.
INMATE MANSON: In other words, like you won't find them on here,
man. Not [inaudible] -
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You do have some letters on your
behalf. Okay? Let me find it here. Support letters. Sharon Quimbley
- Sharon Quimbley, Cindy White. Do you know a Cindy White?
INMATE MANSON: No. I know Squeaky. She's doing time. she wrote
a letter to the president.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Margaret Ramone- Ransom? You
don't know that person?
INMATE MANSON: No, I don't know them.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: These are your supporters I'm
talking about.
INMATE MANSON: Well, I didn't know I had any supporters. I didn't
really need any supporters actually. I thought I was my supporter.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: George Stinson from Cincinnati,
Ohio.
INMATE MANSON: Simpson. Yes. George - St. George. Yes, he's a
good man. He's an orthodox religious kind of guy. He's got a very
good - very good mind.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: A relative of yours?
INMATE MANSON: Huh?
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Is he a relative?
INMATE MANSON: No, no. Spiritually we're allies. I'm allied spiritually
with a lot of things.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. He wrote a two page letter
for you. Cindy White, again, she has -
INMATE MANSON: I never really applied for this, or asked my
friends for any support.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Well, I know that but you do have
some people out there that are interested in you
INMATE MANSON: But you realize where most of those letters come
from, don't you?
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Don't have an idea.
INMATE MANSON: Ulterior motive. I think the doctor sent you one
of them, but he sent it to you and he didn't sign his name. He sent
it from Sacramento. They hoodwink their own paperwork, and then
when it comes back, then he can keep me here and then he can
build a medical association with me.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You talking about Dr. White?
INMATE MANSON: Yes. He - yes, Dr. White and Christopherson.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Did you want to show us something
here? The pictures?
INMATE MANSON: Oh, no. I had some pictures here. No, no. These
are just - I'm working on a zoo project for the ecology. I've got
frogs and I've got hawks and turtles, lizards and I'm working on the
backside of this game, trying to get C.C. camps. We was trying to
start C.C. camps when I was in Folsom with Governor Brown. That's
when Squeaky and Red and Blue and Gold was out. That's when we
were running colors out.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. One last thing I have.
Somewhere I read that you were getting $500 for an autograph
picture on the outside.
INMATE MANSON: Uh-huh.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Is that correct?
INMATE MANSON: Yes.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: How is that done?
INMATE MANSON: Well, you see I live in the under world. You live
in the over world. I do a lot of things under world that you guys
don't see. I made about 75 albums in Vacaville and I bootlegged
about three times more music than the Beatles put out.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Music?
INMATE MANSON: Yes. I had the surfboard of the Beach Boys but I
didn't sell it because everytime I would go to the music, they'd
want to change the music. So rather than change the music, I
went into the subculture with it. I got in an old nuclear submarine
that I had from the Navy when I was Section 8 in Leavenworth,
Kansas with brother Dynamite and the Mafia coming off of Frankie
Costello and the Horseshoe Pits in Pennsylvania in 1952. And it was
like, I'm an awful big fellow. I'm really big. I've got a great big body,
because my body's underground.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Tell me about the albums.
INMATE MANSON: This is music about the ecology, the air
[inaudible].
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: The pictures - the autograph were
on the albums. Is that what you're saying?
INMATE MANSON: No, no. That's just a backlash of the younger
generations, like -
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: You got me mixed up then.
INMATE MANSON: Remember the old movie where the piper - the
pied piper, they said you play all the rats into the river and that
they would pay you. And then the people never paid the piper so
they always kept losing their children. Well, you've lost six
generations of children to me, because you won't pay me what you
owe me. Because I didn't break no law. I didn't kill nobody. I didn't
tell nobody to get killed.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay.
INMATE MANSON: I didn't get no trial, you know.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Okay. Okay, Mr. Manson.
INMATE MANSON: We don't want to hear none of that, see -
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: That's it. I don't have anything -
INMATE MANSON: we don't want to mention anything up in the
truth.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: We're back to me. I'm
the Chairman.
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: I 'm all done.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. And this is time
for questions by any one of the panel members and the District
Attorney. I have a couple questions. Do you feel any responsibility
for the murders?
INMATE MANSON: Sure.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Could you
elaborate briefly?
INMATE MANSON: I influenced a lot of people, unbeknownst to my
own understanding of it. I didn't understand the fears of the people
outside. I didn't understand the insecurities of people outside. I
didn't understand people outside.
And a lot of things that I said and did effected a lot of people in a
lot of different directions. It wasn't intentional and it definitely
wasn't with malice or aforethought.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG; Okay. You answered it.
Do you have remorse, Mr. Manson? Do you feel any remorse for the
victims whatsoever?
INMATE MANSON: Now, we've reached an impasse here, man.
We're in pawn four, bishop 4 and seven - let's see. How do I
finesse that? You say in your minds that I'm guilty of everything
that you've got on paper. So therefore, it would run logic that I
would need to have remorse for what you think is reality, and if
that be true, then all the oceans' contents, if it were my tears,
there would not be enough to express the remorse that I have for
the sadness of that world that you people live in.
But I don't have - on the other side of that, I ask you back the
same thing, you know. You've been using me ever since I was ten
years old. You used to beat me with leather straps, you know. It's
like, does anyone have any remorse that I've spent 23 years in a
solitary cell and even on Devils Island, you didn't keep anyone over
five years. You broke every record that they've ever set in the
planet Earth. You only kept Christ on the cross three days.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson, I think you
answered the question. Do you have a - still have a family, per se,
that is, the type of family you had at the time of the crimes? Do
you still have a family?
INMATE MANSON: Family?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Uh-huh.
INMATE MANSON: That's another one of the District Attorney's -
see, when they set that case into the paper were to make it real,
they had to get - catch a little words so they could turn all that
into - make it into a reality. Hippie cult leader, is a word that they
used, leader, family.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Well, I believe I read in
the reports where you yourself mentioned your family [inaudible] -
INMATE MANSON: Yes, well, you -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: [inaudible] [inaudible] -
INMATE MANSON: - you keep driving that on me, and then I have
to refer to what's already on me.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: My simple question is,
do you still have a family as existed at that particular time?
INMATE MANSON: Well, I can't - I can't answer that in just a - you
know, it would take more time than you want to listen to me -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Well, yes or no? You
either have a family [inaudible] -
INMATE MANSON: Well, there's no yes or no [unintelligible].
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. All right.
INMATE MANSON: Yes, no or [unintelligible] you know, like you is
stuck in yes or no, yes, all right.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. Mr. Brown, do
you have any other questiens?
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: I have no further
questions. Thank you.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Aceto?
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: No.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. Mr. Kay, we're
going to go to questions by the District Attorney on something that
has not been covered, anything that has not been covered or
something that he would like to emphasize. He will pose the
questions to the panel and when you answer the panel - the
questions, Mr. Manson, would you answer the panel, please.
INMATE MANSON: All right.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Go ahead, Mr.
Kay. Do you have any questions?
INMATE MANSON: And do we get to do this back the other way?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No.
INMATE MANSON: Oh, yes, yes. Now what do all you people think
about that? Yes, yes. We have fair play, huh?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: This is - [inaudible] -
INMATE MANSON: [inaudible] -
BOARD COMMISSIONER ACETO: Don't look at the camera. Look at
the panel.
INMATE MANSON: Yes, I know, yes, I know [inaudible].
MR. KAY: Thank you. I think the interesting thing for the Board to
do here is to question Mr. Manson about the ninth murder he was
convicted of. He doesn't mind talking about the Tate-LaBianca
murders and Hinman murder because he's never accepted the law
of conspiracy and aiding and abetting in California. And he always
thought that if he didn't physically do the murder himself, that he
wouldn't be guilty. His followers would be guilty, but he didn't really
care about that.
But the one murder that he doesn't like to talk about because the
evidence came out in court that he personally stabbed Shorty Shea
to death. He stabbed him, Bruce Davis stabbed him, Tex Watson
stabbed him.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Excuse me, Mr. Kay.
MR. KAY: Yes.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: This is time for
questions.
MR KAY: Yes.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Do you have any
questions?
MR. KAY: Yes. That's the question I would like you to ask Mr.
Manson, what he did to Shorty Shea and how Shorty Shea died.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG; Okay. You heard the
question, Mr. Manson. Would you answer - face the panel and
answer, please?
INMATE MANSON: Shorty Shea was not short. He was a great big
guy and he's very tough. He had everybody bullied, he had
everybody buffaloed and there was a whole bunch of guys around.
And he was pushing on Steve and he was pushing on someone else
and I moved in and I said, if you go into combat with someone you
don't hesitate, and I'm going to show you kids how to do this one
time and then don't invoke me to no violence any more.
And I moved on Shorty and I put him in a - in a situation where he
couldn't move. And then I said, now can you understand what I'm
saying to you? And he said, yeah. I stepped up on the highway and
hitchhiked a ride. And about three or four minutes later, somebody
stabbed him and he was stabbed to death and he was killed.
Now wait a minute -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Go ahead.
INMATE MANSON: Anybody that knows anything about combat
knows that when you go into a combat situation and you're on a
line with something, that line can mean your life or your death. If
you're on the line of life and death and you're gone and you're up
on another line, that other reality's a completely different reality. It
hasn't got anything do with the other side of that line.
I was on that side of the line and it was a violent situation and I
did deal with it and I put it into where it was - let me say this -
there's only one way I can explain it. Duke in the joint is a guy that
can fight with his fists.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Kay -
INMATE MANSON: Wait a minute, let me explain this.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right.
INMATE MANSON: This will explain it. The count is somebody who
don't fight with his fists. He fights with his mind. He sits up on top
of the count. When the count is clear, he runs the radio and the
duke does all the physical things, like the first cop does his level,
then the sergeant -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson, just a
second.
INMATE MANSON: I can't explain it to you, man.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Now, wait a minute.
INNATE MANSON: Don't have a yes or no.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: The question was, did
you kill Shorty Shea?
INMATE MANSON: No, no, I didn't have -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: You didn't personally kill
Shorty Shea?
INMATE MANSON: Not personally, no.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Did you order him to be
killed?
INMATE MANSON: I know there was a fight, man -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Did you order him to be
killed?
INMATE MANSON: No.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. Another
question, please?
MR. KAY: All right. The last question, because I don't want to take
up a lot of the Board's time, but I'd like the Board to ask Mr.
Manson whether on the night of the Tate murders at the Tate
house, after the murders were committed, did he go to the
residence to see what had been done? And if so, what did he do
when he was there?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: You heard the
question, Mr. Manson. Answer -
INMATE MANSON: I had a traffic ticket in San Diego, but ask him
why the District Attorney moved the highway patrolman to the
East Coast along with the traffic ticket.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson, did you go
to the residence afterwards?
INMATE MANSON: No, no. Let me - let me explain that to the
Board. The reason they want to say that is because they should've
let me out of here three years ago because if I'm not on any scene
of the crime, he can only keep me 18 years. You've already had me
23, so I can sue you for Hearst Castle, probably.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Did that answer
your question?
MR. KAY: Yes, thank you.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Are there any other
questions you have Mr. Kay?
MR. KAY: No.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Thank you.
INMATE MANSON: Thank you.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Now, this time we're
going to have closing statements. First by the District Attorney and
then you'll have the opportunity for the final closing statement
before we recess. Okay, Mr. Kay.
MR. KAY: Thank you very much. Penal Code Section 3041.5(b)(2),
subsection © empowers the Board to deny a life prisoner a new
parole hearing for five years if you find three things: (1) that the
prisoner is unsuitable for parole, (2) that he has been convicted for
more than two murders, and (3) it would not be likely that he would
be suitable for parole during the period of five year denial.
Charles Manson, through his actions and [inaudible] to the murders
of nine innocent people, plus the attitudes and actions that he has
shown while in person for those murders. By those actions and
attitudes, he has demonstrated unquestionably that he is deserving
of a unanimous finding of unsuitability by the Board and the
maximum five year denial.
Charles Manson attained his status as America's most famous and
feared criminal by his powerful ability to control his followers. And
from July 25th, 1969 through and including August 28th, 1969 led
them on a month long murderous rampage.
That murderous rampage started at Gary Hinman's residence on
July 25th. Mr. Hinman was not killed until the 27th, but he was
tortured over a three day period, and then went to the Tate hour
where Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski
and Stephen Parent were killed on August 9th. Then on August
10th, Leno and Rosemary La Bianca, and on August 28th, Donald
Shea - and I should repeat that the evidence was clear in his trial
that Mr. Manson did stab Mr. Shea.
The first three murders involving eight victims were all tied into Mr.
Manson's desire to ferment or take advantage of black-white race
war. The murder of Shorty Shea was caused by Mr. Manson
wanting to get revenge against him.
The enormity and cruelty of these murders almost defies belief. The
motive for the Tate and La Bianca murders is enough in and of itself
for the Board to deny Mr. Manson parole and Mr. Watson and the
three girls parole forever.
Helter skelter, what was this and how did it start? Well it started
by Manson, who was the guru on L.S.D. trips leading his family
members through the trips. They would listen to the Beatles white
album. And Mr. Manson and the others - and it wasn't just Mr.
Manson alone, because they would kind of feed on each other -
and they determined, listening to the White album, with songs like
Helter Skelter, Revolution 9, Black Bird, Piggies, Sexy Sadie, Back in
the U.S.S.R., that the Beatles were the prophets.
It talked about in Revelations 9 and 10 of the Bible - Mr. Manson I
heard even is still quoting the Bible. He could quote the Bible very
well, but twist it to mean what he wanted it to mean.
INMATE MANSON: [Inaudible]
MR. KAY: Mr. Manson felt that there was going to be this
black-white revolution and the family was going to be the
beneficiaries because the blacks were going to kill all of the whites,
except for Manson and the family. And Manson and the family were
going to escape to the bottomless pit talked about in Revelations 9
and 10 of the Bible. And they would live in this bottomless pit for
50 to 100 years in miniaturized form and then they would've grown
to the size of 144,000, the 12 tribes if Israel.
And at the end of this 50 to 100 year period, Manson and the
family would come out of the bottomless pit and there would only
be blacks left - black president, black senators, black congressmen.
But Manson, who is a real racist, thought that blacks were too
stupid to maintain power. And as soon as he and the family came
out of the bottomless pit, the blacks would rush up to him and turn
over all power. Now it was never clear whether he was going to
rule the world, but at least he was going to rule the United States.
Now I know this sounds bizarre, but the problem is that Manson
and his followers believed in this motive enough to kill innocent
people. At the trial we showed that Manson was so serious about
this that he went to a sporting goods store in Santa Monica and
bought expensive golden rope that he was going to lower himself
into the bottomless pit. He rented scuba equipment because he
thought the entrance to the bottomless pit was under some
underground river in Death Valley and he was looking for the
entrance.
He brought topographical maps because he felt that he and the
family were going to have to fight their way out of L.A. from the
Spahn Ranch to Death Valley to get to the bottomless pit. He got
an alliance with the Straight Satan's motorcycle gang in Venice
that they were going to help protect him and lead him to the
bottomless pit. He had one of the Straight Satan's members, Danny
OeCarlo, who ran a gun room out in Spahn Ranch where he had
machine guns and other armaments and DeCarlo would pack bullets.
Now there are four separate occasions of murder here. The first
occasion of murder, the Hinman murder, was tied into Manson
preparing for war. He needed money because he was buying
armaments. He was buying dune buggies. He had his own dune
buggy. He had a machine gun mounted on the dune buggy and he
had a sheath for his sword that he kept on the side.
Well, he met Gary Hinman, who was a rock musician. He met him at
Dennis Wilson's house, the same place he met Tex Watson. Dennis
Wilson was the drummer for the Beach Boys. Manson thought that
Hinman had come into an inheritance and he wanted his money and
his property and he wanted Hinman to join the family.
So he sent Beausoleil, Atkins and Brunner to Hinman ' s house to
get the property. Hinman was not interested in doing this. He
hadn't come into an inheritance and he didn't want to join the
family.
When he wasn't cooperating, Beausoleil called first Bruce Davis -
and I know there's been some misconception here about who was
Manson's chief lieutenant. Make no mistake about it. Bruce Davis
was Manson's chief lieutenant, not Tex Watson. Tex Watson was
certainly the major killer here, but when Manson was not at the
family -at the ranch in charge, Bruce Davis was the one in charge.
When Manson wanted somebody to study scientology more -
because that's how he used that a lot to control people to get into
their minds - he sent Bruce Davis to London to the scientology
headquarters to study scientology.
Anyway, Manson and Davis then went the second day to Hinman's
house and tried to force him to turn over his property and when he
wouldn't cooperate, Manson sliced his ear off with Davis holding a
gun on him. And then they left and let Beausoleil know, get the
property or else, and of course it turned into, or else, with
Beausoleil killing him on the third day and Atkins holding a pillow
over his nose so he - and his mouth - so he couldn't breathe while
he was dying from the stab wounds.
Now Manson always felt that the blacks were going to start the
revolution. And when they didn't, he was very impatient. And finally
on the evening of August 8th, he told his family members, the only
thing blackie knows what to do is what whitey shows him and I'm -
that's a quote - and so we're going to have to show blackie how to
do it. Now is the time for helter skelter.
And so he told Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Kasablan to go to
the residence. Now the motive for the murders, make no doubt
about it, was helter skelter, but Manson had an ulterior motive. He
was very mad at the prior residents of the Tate house. He had
been there before. He knew the layout. He and Watson had both
been to a party there. But he was very mad at Terry Melcher who
- Doris Day's son and his girlfriend Candice Bergen, because Manson
wanted a recording contract from Melcher and Melcher auditioned
him and wouldn't give him the contact.
So the reason that this particular residence was picked out was
because Manson wanted to send a message to Melcher and Bergen
that there but for the grace of God go you. And he knew that they
moved out. He knew that somebody else lived there at the time. He
didn't know who they were. He didn't know any of these people at
the residence. He knew that somebody famous lived there.
And he told his followers that he wanted some gruesome murders.
He even talked at one point about gouging eyeballs out and
smashing them against the wall. And when they left the ranch, he
told the girls - he said, do what Watson tells you to do because he
knows the layout of the place and leave a sign, something witchy.
Well, they followed his instructions because the victims at the Tate
house suffered 102 stab wounds. Sharon Tate, who was eight and
a half months pregnant was hung while she was still alive. And I
should tell you that Watson took a long rope in there because
Watson and Manson both knew the living room had high beam
ceilings that you could throw a rope over and hang somebody. So
that was planned from the very beginning. Susan Atkins wrote in
Sharon Tate's blood on the front door, pig, the letters P - I - G.
Now this wasn't good enough for Mr. Manson.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Excuse me, Mr. Kay.
MR. KAY: Yes.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: We're retrying the case
is actually what you're doing. We should be talking about suitability
on parole.
MR. KAY: Right. Yes.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: we know he killed the
people and we accept that -
MR. KAY: Right.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: - the findings of the
court. So I would like you to speak to suitability, if you would,
please.
MR. KAY: I will. I'm just about finished with this area, but this goes
to suitability, what he did in the life crimes. That's a part of it,
that's a part of your hearing, and I just don't want people to forget
what he did, what he's responsible for. I'm not going blow-by-blow
like I would in the Watson hearing and in Van Houten. I mean, I
would do that, blow-by-blow there. I'm not doing it here. But I'm
telling about his directions.
On the La Biancas, he met in the bunkhouse on the ranch and he
scolded the people who were there at the Tate murder and told
them they had been too messy and that he was going to show
them how to do it this night.
And so they went - he led them on a four hour trip around the
County of Los Angeles, at one point even stopping at a
congregational church in South Pasadena and knocking on the door
trying to find the minister so that he could kill the minister and
hang the minister upside down to the cross in front of the church.
Now in the La Bianca house, he went in by himself, got the drop on
Mr. and Mrs. La Bianca with a gun, tied them up, tied their hands,
assured them they were going to be okay, that it was only a
robbery.
He took one thing from the house when he went outside. He took
Mrs. La Bianca's wallet. And the reason that he did this, because
he had it later planted in what he felt was a black area, because
he wanted a black person to find the wallet and to use the credit
cards, Mrs. La Bianca's credit cards, so that the blacks would get
blamed for these murders and that would start the revolution.
On the Shea murder, Shea was a ranch hand at Spahn Ranch and
knew that Manson and the family were up to no good, but he knew
that Mr. Spahn, who was 80 years old, was too old to do anything
about kicking Manson off. And so Mr. Shea conspired with a
neighboring rancher to kick Manson off the ranch. That, and the
fact that Mr. Shea who was white was married to a black woman
when Manson just couldn't understand that. For those two
reasons, he decided to take care of Mr. Shea.
Now six of the nine victims who were murdered were murdered in
the supposed sanctity of their own homes, and seven were
complete strangers. Now what has Mr. Manson learned in the 23,
almost 23 years, that he has been in prison for these murders? I
thought Mr. Brown really hit the nail on the head here.
In my estimation, Mr. Manson has learned nothing. Other than
physically aging, and Mr. Manson's going to be 58 this year, Mr.
Manson is exactly the same person he was when he was arrested
at Barker Ranch in Death Valley on October 12th, 1969. He has no
respect for authority, he has no respect for society or desire to be
part of it, and he has no remorse for directing the murder of any of
these nine victims.
His adjustment in prison has been horrible. His record is replete with
assaulting prison guards and staff, including punching them, spitting
in their face, throwing hot coffee. And I thought Mr. Manson's talk
here about spitting on the guard, you would think listening to him
that this was some man that he spit on. It was a woman, that he
spit in her face.
Mr. Manson doesn't like women. I think that's pretty clear. His
record's also replete with threatening staff and guards, either that
he's going to kill them or he's going to have somebody else kill
them.
His record is - also has in his possession of contraband, he had
L.S.D. in his cell in Vacaville and tried to smuggle in a hacksaw
blade when he was transferred to San Quentin, and he was caught
with escape plans when he was in Vacaville.
Now, Mr. Brown said that he had 60 C.D.C. 115s. I counted 571 but
that's pretty close. But one of the important things is that he has
nine since his last hearing. And at the last hearing, the Board
directed him that one of the things they wanted to see him do was
to be disciplinary free. And yet, what has he done? He's picked up
nine C.D.C. 115s, the same type of violations that he's had since
he's been in prison. He hasn't changed one iota.
What else has he done? He refused to cooperate with the schedule
of psychological evaluation and he refused to appear at his 1982
and '89 parole hearing. I think that we have to face the fact that
based on Mr. Manson's words and actions that he's really not
serious about being paroled.
In 1981, he said that he did want to be paroled, but since he hated
people, he wanted to be paroled to Death Valley so that he could
live with his friends, the spiders and the snakes or in the
alternative, be paroled to space. Here this time he told Correctional
Counselor . . .
[OFF THE RECORD]
DEPUTY BOARD COMMISSIONER BROWN: This is Tape No. 3 in the
hearing for Charles Manson 04/21/92, California State Prison,
Corcorcan. Proceed.
MR. KAY: This year in the Board report, he told Correctional
Counselor Montero - and I'd like to say about that that this Board
report by Correctional Counselor Montero- - this is the forty-fourth
parole hearing I've been to for Manson, Watson, Atkins, Van
Houten and Krenwinkel -is the best Board report I've ever read.
This is a cracker jack Board report.
Anyway, he told Correctional Counselor Montero that, "he has no
plans for the future, that he was not interested in paroling and that
he would be lost in our society." Well, I can tell Mr. Manson that
our society feels the same way about him. We don't want him
back. The Board has received over the years over 352,000 cards,
letters, petitions signed by individuals, all directed and sent to the
Board in Sacramento asking you members of the Board not to
parole Mr. Manson or the other four defendants convicted of the
Tate-La Bianca murders.
Charles Manson told his followers that Adolf Hitler was his hero and
he tried to emulate him. We can see even today he still has a
swastika on his forehead. Can we ever risk setting a man like
Charles Manson free in society, a man who, in essence, tried to
destroy our society? I think not.
I would respectfully ask the Board to find Mr. Manson unsuitable for
parole and to give him the maximum five year denial. Thank you
very much.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Thank you, Mr. Kay.
Mr. Manson, would you speak to your suitability for parole, please?
INMATE MANSON: Is there any way that we could take a recess
where I could use the restroom?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Certainly. We'll recess
at this time. The time is now 1507 hours.
[OFF THE RECORD]
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: We've reconvened the
panel hearing on Charles Manson after a brief break as requested
by the prisoner. All participants are present now who were present
prior to the recess. The time is 1515 hours. Go ahead Mr. Manson
with your closing statement regarding suitability.
INMATE MANSON: You're going to limit me to suitability?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: I'll let you ramble a
little bit, but I'd like you to stick to suitability.
INMATE MANSON: Is that what you call it, rambling, huh?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Well, no, I didn't mean
it that way. I will allow you to talk about what you would like to
talk about, as long as you don't stray too far from suitability,
please.
INMATE MANSON: As long as I don't say anything, it's okay if I
talk?
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: No. I'll allow you to say
-
INMATE MANSON: You see nine dead people. That's just - that's
not even the tip of it. That just set one little blaze to this thing
that you call helter skelter that you created for Rambos movies, so
all the Italians can move over from New York and move into the
District Attorney's office and this anglo-Christian girl don't seem to
know which whorehouse is - got the red light on it.
The law in my perspective is a [inaudible] like the - there's a court
on the inside, like an inmate court. We've always held a court in
the inner sanctum of the prison. Peace officers are servants to the
will of everyone, the Bible, the church has a chapel and a preacher
in it and we abide by the rules and regulations. It goes into the
courtroom to do the same. If I abide by the rules and regulations I
can walk in harmony with God. If I don't abide by the rules and
regulations, sooner or later I have to fall short and go through a lot
of changes.
It's best you look into my mind now while you got a chance while
I'm still here. I know a lot about law. I know the judge's bench. I
know crime and school and doctors and reports and I know bad and
good and money and the economy and gambling, prostitution. I see
the world from the underworld up .
So I go out in the desert when I get out in '54 and I see birds and I
see bees and bugs and trees and then I get locked up. Well, when
I get back out again, all these bugs and birds and trees are gone.
There shopping malls where the lake used to be. You're using up all
the water. The creeks is over there where the freeway is and you
can't swim there anymore, there's no more fish there. And
civilization has moved out and it's choking all the life off the earth.
So it's none of my affair. I just got out of jail. I don't know that
much about it. A couple of old men I met in Mexico City, we used
to deal mushrooms and talk about the planet and the earth and the
balance of the earth, and all these kids come around me and I'm
playing music. And they ask me, how do I know these things, and
where do these things come from? And I said, well, the only thing I
know is what I learned in jail, man, you know. My brother's in jail
[inaudible] you know, my brother's like, he's God, you know, he
lives in jail, you know. And that's all I know is what I've done, you
know.
I said, but I'll tell you, if you don't stop cutting them trees down,
there's going to be nothing of them left, you know. And a lot of the
kids never met anybody that told them the truth. They never had
anybody that was truthful to them, you know. They never had
anybody that wouldn't lie or snake on them or play old fake games.
So I did was I was honest with a bunch of kids and they used to
come to me and say, we ain't got no place to stay and I said, well,
I ain't got no place to stay either. And they say, well, can we stay
with you? I said, can you stay with me? They'd say, well, we want
to be a family. I said, don't put no tags on my toes, man. Don't
give them people nothing to identify them with. If they can come
back and put me back in the penitentiary with.
I know what conspiracy is. I got an intelligence, I'm not that
stupid. I can understand that bugs communicate. I can understand
that trees can hear you. I understand that there are other life
forms on this planet besides myself, you know. And conspiracy, I
understand the law.
And a lot of things that people have said in the court is [inaudible]
the game that they're gaming whether I'm suitable for this planet
earth or not probably will outlast what the court's doing for money,
because my principle is not locked up in a bank and my soul is not
locked up in a government. And my life is not locked up in a
penitentiary. You've got my body in a cell, but that's only today,
you know. That don't count for no eternity. I'm walking in forever,
man.
And this little game that we're playing here on this level, there is
more things that are important to you than my parole and there's a
whole lot more important to me than my parole. If you want to give
me a parole, I might consider taking that and letting you live in my
world. If you deny my parole, you go off in your world. Don't come
back at mine. If I can get some trees growing over here and C.C.
camp and I can work with these guys in a uniform and I can work
and do a job in here like I don't get paid for the job that I do in
here. But if I'm honest with what I do in here, maybe the preacher
will let me out and hoe in your garden again.
And I was helping the kids over there in the visiting room in
Vacaville and then people wanted to use me again and play some
more politics and tell some more lies, because they wanted to bring
Bingham back from France, because he's responsible for killing six
people over there when San Quentin came down from death row
and Jackson got killed. But we'll cover that up. We won't look at
that because he's got the money to get away with things like that.
So we got the juvenile running wild and we're saying, where does
the juvenile come from and where does he get his principle from,
the old winos that live in the county jail or the retired veterans
that were outcasts? And we dig into their hearts and we see how
real they are and how comes they got up on the railroad train
because they couldn't even get the dog in the house, because she
wouldn't let him do anything except what the Queen of England
said, and she's fighting against Spain and that's still going into
languages and it's so abstract that someone has to carry insanity.
Someone's got to be insane. Someone's got to be the bad guy.
How can we be good guys?
There's another letter in there that you didn't read about how
Manson was burned up and how people threw fire at him, they
should've killed him. They didn't tell you that they tried to kill me at
least 30 or 40 times. But they hadn't been able to kill me, because
you ain't got nobody bad enough to kill me, [inaudible] handcuffed.
No two or three of you. Because I'm right with my God and I'm right
with myself. And I didn't break the law. I didn't break God's law and
I didn't break man's law.
What you're doing in the political arena with Hollywood to make
your Rambo movies with my machine gun, the machine gun was a
World War II relic. It would only shoot one bullet at a time. It
wouldn't even go pop, pop, pop because it was all worn out, it was
so old.
But I liked it because I liked World War I, because that was my
father. I didn't worship Hitler any more than I liked MacArthur.
MacArthur and Truman was the same father figure to me like the
kids look up to Vietnam veterans as their father figure, so I looked
up to my grandfather in the first World War and my father in the
second World War.
And wherever there is a man, I am there also. In the truth, I walk
with all men. I'm bad. I'm as bad as I got to be when it comes
down. I deal. And I can deal from the bottom, just as easy as I can
deal from the top and I'd cheat if it comes to where I need to
cheat. And I steal if I need to steal if I'm too hungry and I can't
feel it any other way, I'll do whatever I can do to survive, just like
I've always done. And if I have to pick up steel and roll it down to -
do whatever I got to do, that's what I got to do and that's what I'll
do.
I seen this, and this is the reality. The air in L.A. basin is dying.
Where there used to bees, the bees can't live. Where there used
to be butterflies, the butterflies can't fly. I said to Blue - I said, girl
I'm going to call you Blue. I said, you see that sky? I said, that's
sky's dying. If we don't do something about that sky, nobody
cares. If you don't care, there's going to be no life left on this
planet. I said, do you see that water over there? I said, they're
dumping tons of junk in that water. So you're Blue for the sky and
the water and I -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. -
INMATE MANSON: Now wait - I set those people's minds, like he
said, I set their minds back on the track with Jesus on a rebirth
movement. I set it with a guy called Frank Costello in the
Horseshoe Pits. I set it with the Pope in the Vatican. I set it with
the Mafia and the gangsters. I set it with every man I'd ever met in
my life all the way back to Creepy Carpis when he did the Ma Baker
gang with J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I. Because wherever's
there's been a man walking in the underworld from Cook County jail
in Chicago to the super chief that rides to L.A., from Leavenworth,
Kansas to [inaudible] Section 8, the Navy down to the Coast
Guard, wherever there's one walking, I've been walking there with
it.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson, talk about
suitability, please.
INMATE MANSON: I don't know what else I could be if I couldn't be
suitable to be your leader, I ain't nothing.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right.
INMATE MANSON: I 'm your president at least three times. That's
through Reagan up through [inaudible]. [Inaudible] was only his
appointee and he only got there because he was riding on me. That
was my horse, that was my divorce court to come back from Nixon,
and the only reason J.R. got up out of Texas was because I went
across to Africa with two [inaudible] from [inaudible] in 1960.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Mr. Manson- - Mr.
Manson, excuse me. Would you please talk as to why you should
be paroled? If you have nothing to say in that area, then we're
going to recess and we're going to deliberate.
INMATE MANSON: Okay. If I'm not -
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: [Inaudible]-
INMATE MANSON: - if I'm not paroled, and I don't get a chance to
get back up on top of this dream, you're going to lose all your
money, your farms ain't going to produce, you're going to win helter
skelter. You're going to win your reality. You're going to get
everything that you want right from the pages of that court. That's
going to be your reality and you're coming. You're growing up and
you're going to be there, just like you want him to be there, that's
where he's coming because that's what you're making for
yourselves.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right. We're going to
recess for deliberation. We'll call you back after we make a
decision. The time is now 1525 hours. The prisoner will leave
please.
INMATE MANSON: I don't need those papers.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: All right.
R E C E S S
D E C I S I O N
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: We've reconvened the
panel's hearing on Charles Manson. All participants are present who
were present prior to the recess and the time is 1545 hours.
The panel reviewed all the information received and relies on the
following circumstances in concluding that the prisoner is not
suitable for parole and would pose an unreasonable risk of danger
to society if released at this time.
The [inaudible] offense was carried out in an especially heinous,
atrocious and cruel manner. The offense was carried out in a
manner which exhibits a callous disregard for the life and suffering
of another. Multiple victims were attacked, injured and killed in the
same and separate incidents. The victims were abused and defiled
and mutilated in the offense.
These conclusions are drawn from the Statement of Facts wherein
the prisoner [inaudible] participated in the torture, mutilation and
killing of nine victims. Seven of the victims were strangers who
were selected by the prisoner at random. The murders were
senseless, brutal, directed by the prisoner to satisfy his idealistic
vision of a race war.
The prisoner has a record of violent and assaultive behavior, an
escalating habit of criminal conduct and violence. He had an
unstable social history. He's failed to profit from society's previous
attempts to correct his criminality. These included juvenile
probation, juvenile camps, C.Y.A. commitment, three prior prison
terms and county jail and parole violation.
As to the unstable social history, the prior criminality included
beginning criminal conduct at an early age, sent to juvenile boys
school as a juvenile involved in burglary, stealing vehicles,
convicted of the Dyer Act and sent to the National Training School
in Washington, D.C. Adult convictions included G.T.A., forgery,
theft, interfering with a peace officer, attempted escape from
prison - attempted escapes from prison, three prior prison terms,
probation and parole violation, extensive involvement in drugs and
was under federal parole at the time of the instant offenses.
The prisoner has programmed in a limited manner while
incarcerated. He's failed to develop a marketable skill that can be
put to use upon release. He's failed to upgrade educationally and
vocationally as previously recommended by the Board and he's not
participated to any extent - has not participated in beneficial self
help and therapy programming.
He failed to demonstrate any evidence of positive change.
Misconduct while incarcerated included 60 115s from 1971 to 1992,
nine 115s since his last hearing, many for threatening staff, the
latest was on 2/11/92 where he received three of a serious nature
for spitting on a correctional officer, threatening staff and resisting
staff. The psychiatric report authored - dated January of 1992
authored by Christopherson is unfavorable. He also refused to
attend a 1992 appointment for a psych evaluation.
The panel makes the following finding: that the prisoner needs
therapy in order to face, discuss, understand and cope with stress
in a nondestructive manner. Until progress is made, the prisoner
continues to be unpredictable and a threat to others. Also therapy,
although the panel feels that therapy is needed, we question
motivation and amenability.
In view of the prisoner's criminal history, continued negative
behavior and lack of program participation, there is no indication
that the prisoner would behave differently -
INMATE MANSON: How can I participate? You've got me locked in a
hole, man.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Okay. Listen to me -
INMATE MANSON: You guys get trapped up in all that illusion and it
keeps building up and making it worst.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Please listen to what
[inaudible].
INMATE MANSON: You've got to live in it.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: The prisoner - the
hearing panel, according to Section 3041.5© of the Penal Code,
the hearing panel finds that it is not reasonable to expect that
parole would be granted at a hearing during the following five
years.
The specific reasons for these findings are as follows: No. 1, the
crime itself. The prisoner committed the offense in an especially
heinous, atrocious and cruel manner and that he participated in the
killing of nine victims, most victims selected at random to fulfill his
idealistic dream of helter skelter. As a result a longer period of
observation and evaluation is required before the Board should set
a parole date.
No. 2, the prisoner has a prior criminal record and spent most of his
life prior to the instant offense in and out of correctional facilities.
No. 3, a longer period of time is required to evaluate his suitability.
In view of the prisoner's long history of criminality and misconduct,
these include 60 serious 115s, nine since his last hearing and three
serious within the last year.
No. 4, a recent psychiatric report dated January of 1992, authored
by Christopherson, indicates a need for a longer period of
observation and evaluation.
And No. 5, the prisoner has not completed the necessary
programming which is essential to his adjustment and needs
additional time to gain such programming.
Recommendations to you, Mr. Manson, that you become disciplinary
free, that you work to reduce your custody level so that the
program opportunities will become more available, that you upgrade
when - and that's when you can, upgrade vocationally and
educationally and you participate in self help and therapy
programming.
This concludes the panel hearing. The time is now 1552 hours. The
prisoner may leave. Good luck to you, Mr. Manson.
INMATE MANSON: Good bye.
PRESIDING BOARD COMMISSIONER KOENIG: Here's a copy
[inaudible].
PAROLE DENIED 5 YEARS.