The Sheila Variations

Throw away the key

The conversation began over at Emily's. The topic?

Leslie Van Houten, Manson murderess, was just denied parole again for the 15th time. Good. Throw away the key on that one. She should never be let out. None of them should.

When Diane Sawyer interviewed Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houton in 1994 - Leslie Van Houten (to my mind) was the one who put on the best show of "rehabilitation".

Obviously, Manson is a lunatic, he jibbered at Diane about God and the DA and Satan, and "his girls" and how he "never told them to do nothing", he said something about how good Diane Sawyer smelled, he was sniffing her ... He's insane.

Susan Atkins (who is now a born-again Christian, and also says that she wants to be considered a "political prisoner" - what a freak) refused to be interviewed. The following anecdote from Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders is what haunts me about Susan Atkins. While she was on the stand, she was shown the photo of the dead Steven Parent in his car - whom she had seen on her way out of the Tate house, after killing everyone inside. She said, "Yes. That is the thing I saw in the car." To her, human beings were "things".

Patricia Krenwinkel (who, you will remember, stabbed Abigail Folger something like 70 times?? Okay? Imagine doing that. Imagine. The cops who found Folger thought that she was wearing a red dress.) Judging from the interview with Sawyer, Krenwinkel, to my untrained eye, has realized the horror of what she has done. She is a woman whose soul writhes in torment. She has a look on her face of realization - she REALIZES what she did. I'm not saying she should be set free, or shown any mercy. I think she should be locked up forever, all I am saying is - in comparison to what I perceived in Leslie Van Houten - Krenwinkel is a woman who can FEEL the flames of hell licking at her heels. She will never be forgiven, she knows that. She can never forgive herself. As she shouldn't.

But Van Houten, who looked like a cheerleader at the time of the murders - and was quite gorgeous, actually - like a pin-up - was very calm in the interview, very sensitive, very understanding: "Of course the Tate family hate me ... I can completely understand that ..." she said all the right things, everything that we (and her next parole board) would want to hear. "I think about Mrs. LaBianca every day ... I think of Sharon Tate's baby ... I beg their forgiveness..." But she said all of this with absolutely dry eyes. It rang hollow for me. Not that tears mean anything. I wouldn't shed a tear of sympathy for Leslie Van Houten - that's not what I'm saying - and Krenwinkel's tears could be crocodile tears - I'm not really interested in debating that. I'm just giving you my impression. Leslie Van Houten SCARED me. Much more than Krenwinkel frightened me, although she scared me as well. There was something MISSING in Leslie Van Houten. A lack of ... something. Patricia Krenwinkel, while most definitely a monster, who did monstrous things, has woken up to what she did, and literally will not have a moment's rest until the day she dies. Good. It's just punishment for what she did. If you see a picture of Patricia Krenwinkle now, you can SEE the horror there. Etched in deep lines across her face. Van Houten is still cool, still beautiful ... she looks like an aging Julianne Moore. But I got the feeling, watching her interview with Diane Sawyer: This woman, although now elderly, is STILL a threat to society. If she got out of prison, and met some compelling Jim Jones-type who appealed to her on some level, who made her feel beautiful, special, she would follow him to the ends of the earth. She would do ANYTHING for him. There is something missing in this woman, there is no real understanding of what she did.

She said to Diane Sawyer at one point, "You weren't there. You don't know how magnetic Manson was. You can't say that you wouldn't have done just what I did." And Diane Sawyer said, "Yes, I can Leslie. I could not plunge a knife into someone. I could not do it." Van Houten shook her head knowingly, "You don't know - unless you were there, you don't know." Uh - that's not quite true, Miss Leslie. Some of us have what is known as a moral compass, which keeps us from crossing certain lines. You do NOT have that moral compass. I know it's hard for you to understand, then, those of us that do - but trust me: there ARE people on this planet who could resist Charles Manson's overwhelming charms. (First of all ... huh?? Charms?)

Van Houten reminded me of the monstrous Cathy from Steinbeck's East of Eden. The one who was born bad. Born missing whatever it is that makes us human.

I don't really believe that - that certain people are born BAD - I think it's a mix of nature and nurture - but I also think Steinbeck was really onto something when he created Cathy. She freaking terrified me when I read that book in high school - it scared me to think of a person who had no sense of good or bad, people who stood in her way had to be removed - even if they were her parents. She was evil. Steinbeck uses that term very specifically. I do believe in evil. But in people being born evil? Perhaps there are certain people who are born lacking certain things. Like humanity. Like compassion for others. Maybe it's more of a mixture of environment and body chemistry. As infants, we all have the possibility of adding light to the world, as opposed to adding darkness. I don't believe in bad seeds. Maybe some people have more of a predilection for violence than others, but it is only when that predilection is also paired with a terrible home life, or a violent upbringing - that a Leslie Van Houten can occur. But I just don't know.

In talking about all of this, and in trying to understand Leslie Van Houten, I am not forgetting what she did. I do not think she should ever be granted parole, whether she is "rehabilitated" or not. She gave up her chance to live in this society when she did what she did. Sorry. You blew it.

And a lot of people's knee-jerk reactions to questions like this is: WHO CARES? SHE'S EVIL - who cares WHY? Well, I think the "why" part is where the conversation begins. This is the side of me fascinated with human psychology, with aberrations in human development ... I will forever be interested in the question: what is it that makes a Leslie Van Houten?

Was she right when she said to Diane Sawyer: "You don't know. Unless you had been there, you don't know what you would do."

I'm with Diane, instinctively. I resist the interpretation that we ALL are capable of EVERYTHING. Unless you were THERE, you can't say what what you would and wouldn't do. I don't buy that. But I do question it, and wonder about it. I'm not CERTAIN about it. Examples like Patty Hearst ... how did that happen? Could I be turned into a Patty Hearst? Is my Sheila-ness up for debate? Or is it not? This goes back to that interesting conversation we had here a while back, when I was reading Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. What IS the self? Is the self a changeable thing? Can it be imprinted upon? Brainwashed? What is that? What is the self? Can your "real" self vanish, and can it be replaced with someone else's idea (Manson, Jim Jones, Koresh) of the self? Or ... is it different for different people?

Is it upbringing? Circumstance? Brain-wiring?

Standing in defiance of all of Leslie Van Houten's cool and reasonable explanations ("How do you know what you would do? You could have been me!") is hippie-girl Linda Kasabian, who became the primary witness for the prosecution. She was a member of the Manson family. She sat in the car during the murders in the Tate house. She was supposed to be a member of the murder-squad, but at the last minute she said, "No. I can't do it." When she was on the stand, she looked right at Charlie Manson and said, "I'm not like you, Charlie. I couldn't kill anybody."

Linda Kasabian, a messed-up kid no doubt, still had that moral compass operating. In the end, when push came to shove, she knew what she could and couldn't do. She was not swept away by the brainwashing (at least not to the point where she could savagely murder people). In the end, there was a core in her - an indelible line: Over this line, I must never cross.

Are some people just born without that line?

I know that Sharon Tate's family (her sister, primarily) show up at all these parole hearings, and hold up the gruesome murder photos throughout the entire proceeding. As reminders. Of what these now "sweet little old ladies" did.

Good. It should never be forgotten. These women are beyond the pale. It doesn't matter how long it has been since 1969, or how old they are now, or how repentant they seem.

Think of the victims. Think of all the victims - born and not-yet-born. What could they have been? What could they have accomplished? Who might they have become?

Throw away the key.

Posted by sheila