I wondered why this old post of mine was suddenly receiving 90% of all of my traffic today. I knew something must be going on in that world – another parole board hearing perhaps – and yes, that’s why: Leslie van Houten was just denied parole, yet again.
Good.
She can cry all she wants. I have another interpretation of her tears. Leslie van Houten is vacant. She would “follow the leader” even now. I think Van Houten is a sociopath who needs to rehearse how to be a human being.
Any time I have seen her in interviews crying about the remorse she feels about the LaBiancas – I remember this:
And I remember this photo which has always made my blood run cold:
She’s a monster. She’s always reminded me of Steinbeck’s Cathy – a point I made in that post that’s getting so much traffic today. Crocodile tears. There is something MISSING there. And what is missing is capacity for fellow human feeling. She doesn’t “get it”. At all. So she can say platitudes, like “I don’t know how to make it okay” – but to that I would say: Make it okay? Do you have any sense of what you have done? Of how horrible you really are? Of how beyond the pale your behavior really was? How dare you pretend to be a human being and expect us to swallow it whole? You do NOT make such a horrible murder “okay”. The only recourse we have is to keep you in prison forever. But still: even that does not undo your actions. If we executed you it would not undo your actions. Keeping you in prison for life does not give the LaBiancas breath in their lungs again. But it does deprive you of your freedom, because you abdicated your human rights when you chose to act like a monster.
That’s the deal.
Throw away the key.
On Bobby Beausoleil’s website that I guess his wife maintains for him, he’s argued that Leslie should be let out because people that have committed similar crimes have served far less sentences than her and the media circus around the Manson “family” is what keeps all of them locked up.
Um, Bobby…what similar crimes? Can you name any incident that involved a bunch of smiling young women laughing and singing as they were led to court on charges of collectively chopping seven people to pieces? Can you think of any other cases where the defendants sat in court and giggled, doodled and yawned while the details of their horrific crimes were being given in testimony? Are there other murders where people celebrated what they’d done afterwards and the only regret they expressed was that their hand ached from when the knife would hit bone?
Sure, there’s a media circus…completely and totally created by the murderers themselves.
However, that being said, the Tate-LaBianca murdering scuzzbuckets should take a lesson from Beausoleil. He is the ONLY person involved in that mess that I think should be paroled. He wasn’t a part of that trial. He was arrested for killing Gary Hinman before the whole “Helter Skelter” thing happened. His wife relays e-mails to him through his website and he answers them honestly and accepts full responsibility for what he did. He even responds to mail that is rude and abusive in a calm, rational manner and pretty much says he deserves all the scorn that he gets for what he’s done. He is genuinely contrite and doesn’t try and fake “seeing the light” or finding Jesus or saying stupid shit like “I can’t take it back, so you should just let me go.” It’s not about what you can take back. It’s precisely because you can’t that you are going to die in prison.
That’s a great point about Bobby Beausoleil. I know I’ve asked you this – but have you read Truman Capote’s interview with Bobby? It’s chilling.
Also – have you seen interviews with Krenwinkle? The famous one that Diane Sawyer did with all of them? Krenwinkle was almost painful to listen to – because her horror at what she did, and her remorse went so deep. Do you know what I mean? Not that she should be let out because of this – I’m just saying I feel like she actually went thru the process of truly realizing what she did. She didn’t take the easy way out and become a Jesus freak (sorry Jesus freaks who read me – but too many people HIDE behind that Bible shit instead of actually doing the work on themselves that needs to be done – They bypass actually being and “give it up to God”. I am so skeptical of the Jesus freak crowd – especially if they chopped up innocent people and their immediate response to the murders were: “I was so hungry we had to stop for burgers on the way home.”) … but anyway: Krenwinkle didn’t take the easy way out – she seems to live with it. She lives with what she did.
But Leslie was cool as a cuke. She’s got the tears, she’s got the remorseful words – but I don’t buy a word of it.
Yeah, I read that interview. I think that was probably what changed my mind about Beausoleil, who has a completely different attitude than that jerk-off Susan Atkins, who actually lists her Grand Jury testimony as one of her “accomplishments” while in prison, without even mentioning that she later withdrew it, making it inadmissable in court. Stupid so-and-so.
I haven’t seen the Diane Sawyer interviews, though (I wonder if I can find them on Youtube?). I’ve read people defending her on the web and it makes me sick. Oh, she only stabbed Leno LaBianca once after he was already dead. So what? Did she run to the police right away and tell them what happened? Did she snap in any way and decide to leave Charlie and his little band of merry murdering hippies? Did she fess up in court and cooperate? NOPE. Screw her. Screw her in jail.
I had someone not too long ago write me because she found an old post I wrote about this mess and urging me to feel “forgiveness” for these people. Whatever. Sure, I’ll forgive them. And they can accept or decline that forgiveness…from their jail cells.
Another thing that people also forget and a big reason why they should rot in prison until their beloved Jesus comes for them – what they did on those two nights threw the entire city of Los Angeles into a total panic. People bought guns and security systems. They lost sleep over every little thing that went bump in the night. Some even packed up and moved completely. The victims and their loved ones were not the only ones that suffered. Millions of people had their lives interrupted because of the anarchy and fear that gripped the city after what they did. They stole the sense of safety from an entire city and I don’t think that people should forget that too easily.
Yeah – see if you can find it on Youtube. There was a moment when Crazy Charlie sniffed Diane Sawyer. But you know, whatever, he’s insane – I was more fascinated by the women. Leslie, especially. I’d be curious to hear your response to her personality and behavior – her cool calm “I am sorry for what I did” demeanor.
Oh and Joan Didion wrote a fanTAStic essay about what happened in LA in the wake of those murders – she’s a born and bred Californian – I think the essay is called “The day the sixties ended”. I’ll see if I can find it – it’s terrifying because like you said – you could feel the panic in the town, the feeling that ANYone could be next.
Found ’em all here, in case you’re interested in re-watching them yourself. I don’t have the time right now – I’ll have to do it later, but I will.
I would LOVE to read the Joan Didion essay, if you can find it. That sounds really interesting.
I know it’s in her collection called The White Album – I’ll hunt it up tonight.
And totally gonna watch those clips. God bless You Tube.
I remember being absolutely terrified to even sleep some nights when the news about the Tate-LaBianca murders came out. I was 9 at the time, and even though I was in northern California, it just dominated the headlines for what seemed like months. In particular I remember obsessing about a LIFE Magazine article to the point where my mom finally hid it from me.
It’s funny – I’ve been thinking about this for about a week now, since you posted a music meme and mentioned “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” because ever since I read “Helter Skelter” I’ve never been able to listen to any of the songs off the White Album without thinking of the murders and Bugliosi’s book – absolutely ruined them for me.
And I’m with both of you. Throw away the key.
Jeff – According to Patricia Krenwinkle, it was actually HEALter Skelter.
Moron.
And i know – to think that they heard Paul McCartney, in that album, calling to them DIRECTLY to start a race war so that “whitey” could eventually win … what????
The song “little piggies” is truly chilling in this context. You’re right – no matter how many times I hear that song, I think of the stabbed bodies.
Jeff,
I once saw an interview – I think it was with Sandra and Squeaky – where they were waving around knives and singing that line from “Baby, You’re A Rich Man” that went “How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people.”
This was AFTER the Tate-LaBianca murders. That song has given me the chills ever since then. Sick, sick bitches.
The first time I read Helter Skelter I was about fifteen or so and while I was reading it, a friend of mine and I drove up to Cottonwood to stay with her mom, who lived in a trailer in a very remote area. It was during the summer and was very hot, so her and her mom wanted to sleep with the trailer doors and windows open. I remember being really freaked out about that. “But, but…the Manson family might get us…”
First line of Helter Skelter:
“It was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon.”
I’ve sometimes wondered…about those people who heard stuff that night – the Boy Scout leader who heard the gunshot and the neighbors with barking dogs who thought about investigating but didn’t. Can you imagine the sheer HORROR they must have felt the next day when they heard the news? What an awful memory to have to live with.
Horrifying. One of the scariest images for me, Emily, is of Abigail Folger sitting in her bed, looking up, and seeing Susan Atkins walk by – and she just said “Hi” to her, casually – thinking she was another guest?? And Susan, being the insane bloodthirsty little witch that she was, said “Hi!” back – before moving on to get Sharon.
It’s just such a casual moment – “Hi!” “Hi!” and Susan moves on … Abigail not knowing that these will be her last moments on earth. That that smiling girl who walked by her room is actually the Angel of Death come to get her … right now.
OK, you two – it’s a good thing that it’s cooled down out here in California, because I can see right now I won’t be sleeping with the windows open tonight.
I remember in the movie version (the one where Steve Railsback played Manson, great performance but pretty much typecast him forever) they began with a scene of a cocktail party and hearing the gunshot. It was pretty effective, as I recall…
Or how about when they all made themselves a friggin’ snack in the LaBianca’s kitchen after killing them? I don’t like it when human beings are called “animals” because that suggests they were acting on instinct and not by deliberate choice, but in the case of these people, I think the term applies.
Animals.
I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday morning.
I’m all about forgiveness. I’m all about giving people another chance. Lord knows I’ve done some awful, awful things to a lot of people in my life. I’ve also known people that have done some awful, awful things to other people in their lives. But there is nothing, nothing in the nistoy books that even comes close to comparing what these maniacs accomplished that night in LA.
Nothing.
There’s such a thing as redemption. And there’s such a thing as punishment. She can be redeemed until the cows come home, in order for her to continue on her path of righteousness and being a model prisoner, she should continue to do just that:
In Jail.
Sharon Tate, in her underwear, 8 months pregnant, on her knees, begging for the life of her baby. Susan Atkins laughs in her face and says, “Bitch, don’t you get it? I don’t care about you or your baby.”
I think one of the reasons this particular crime has taken such a hold in my brain (and obviously I’m not alone) is the COLD-ness of it.
Not that a murder in a moment of passion is “better” – of course not – but for whatever reason, I can at least understand it. I have WANTED to kill people because I’m so mad. I obviously do NOT … but I understand being in a rage.
But coldness and … not just coldness – but … glee? Glee in the face of someone begging for her life and the life of her unborn child?
I can’t get my brain around that. It haunts me.
There’s one thing I’m worried about…her next parole hearing was bumped down to one year instead of the usual two. I don’t think that’s a very good sign.
Alex – exactly. I really got (and please – take whatever I say with a grain of salt – this is just my impression) that Patricia Krenwinkle will repent for her actions eveyr moment of every day until she dies. She does not deserve to be free – she gave up that right when she stabbed Abigail Folger, what, 30 times???
Imagine the COMMITMENT it takes to stab someone 30 times. I’m serious. That takes work, a will, and commitment to your action. It’s horrifying.
Leslie, though, really has some fans – people who lobby for her release – because she is such a “model prisoner”, etc.
I have a more sinister theory about why Leslie has fans and Patricia does not:
Leslie is good-looking. She was a babe then – and she is still strikingly beautiful. Patricia Krenwinkle was not attractive – and all the guys in Manson’s crowd who were notorious for fucking ANYTHING hated to fuck her because they thought she was ugly.
I think people project “goodness” onto Leslie because of her beauty.
But the devil wears a pleasing shape, etc.
Just a theory.
Emily – I wonder if Sharon Tate’s sister was at the parole hearing holding up the photos of her murdered sister?? They didn’t mention it in the piece I linked to.
There used to be a site out there that had the actual autopsy photos from the Tate murders. I found it through FindADeath a while ago, and I think it’s finally been taken down due to too much interest from people who IDOLIZE Charles Manson.
I’m morbid as hell, so OF COURSE I looked at the pictures. I realize most people would be freaked out by seeing them, but they really bring home the brutality of the crimes much more than the whited-out bodies in the photos in the book.
Abigail Folger’s body looked almost polka-dotted, it had so many stab wounds. Horrible, horrible.
Sheila,
I totally agree with you. I think her looks do have a lot to do with it. Though I do have to make it very clear that what I wrote about thinking Bobby Beausoleil should be considered for parole has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I think he was kind of a babe when he was younger.
Exactly Sheila!!!!!!! Exactly.
Being a hot chick had a price in that cult. And I say cult because the only difference between what Manson did and what Hubbard did was the dug use. That allowed Charlie to take full and ultimate control.
Although, the other Hollywood cult isn’t far behind.
By the way, here’s the full Diane Sawyer interview in all 4 parts. I’m watching it now. It’s fascinating as hell.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=leslie+van+houten&search=Search
Lisa – oh man, I couldn’t help myself and I looked at those photos too. The book blanks them out of course – and you’re right. The memory of one of the cops who was on the scene first was that he thought Abigail Folger was wearing a red nightgown – but it actually was white.
Her last words were something like, “Okay. You’ve got me.”
She gave over.
I can’t even imagine.
Alex –
If you read some of the “family’s” first-person accounts of why they followed Manson – and what their first encounter with him was like – it seems like he was definitely using a kind of suggestive hypnotic technique – and he coudl also hone in on exactly the thing that the girl wanted to hear. To get her hooked. If she had daddy issues, then he’d be her daddy. If she felt like a little slut, he’d make her feel pure and beautiful. Blah blah. And naturally – it seems like these girls (EXCEPT for Leslie – and maybe Mary Brunner – who was the first one to join up with Manson) were lost already, fringe dwellers, strippers, runaways. Leslie, though, was living a mainstream life, student, cheerleader, affluent. I’m tellin’ ya – there is something OFF about that woman. Always was.
I’ve been lurking on this because it all happened before I was born – it’s hard to deal with the utter horror and grotesquery of the crimes, and especially the attitudes. But I do want to add that, for the two cents’ it’s worth, that you’re spot-on about forgiveness here. Asking to be let out while waving the bible is not a request for forgiveness – not repentence at all – it’s asking to be excused, as if God Himself were just standing in the sky saying “There there, it’s OK.” NO, IT ISN’T. If it were OK then repenting would be easy, and forgiveness would be cheap.
And even in a genuine conversion we have every right to say, with Emily, “We forgive you, but stay in jail, thank you.” One can be forgiven and still punished – in fact, just because I as a Christian have a moral consideration does not mean that I as a citizen am absolved of my civic duties. It’s perfectly consistent to render unto Caesar with jail time while rendering undo God with mercy.
Sheila,
Folger said something to the effect of “why are you still stabbing me? I’m already dead.”
God, how AWFUL. Just awful.
Lisa,
The pictures are everywhere now and they’re terrible. Sandra Good, the nutjob, has the one of Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring on her site above a paragraph insisting that they deserved what they got. I know this sounds disgusting, but there’s a small part of me that really hopes that woman dies a violent death.
Now SHE is a complete and utter wackjob. I think even Bugliosi admitted to being freaked out by Sandra. A true believer. Would do anything for her Charlie.
The frightening thing is that she still would. Her and Squeaky are still totally devoted…after 40 years! Good even moves around so she can live near whatever prison Charlie is being kept at.
I think Squeaky was interviewed by Diane Sawyer as well – I seem to recall that. And yeah – she was still completely under the thrall of that man. Who honestly could not give a shit about any of them.
She still follows him and loves him. She had a website but I think it’s gone now. She has something to do with saving the trees or some such shit.
Freaking nutcases.
I believe, too, that her husband was found in a random London hotel room with his throat slit.
Emily, please confirm.
That woman’s eyes are freakin’ SCARY.
Alex,
It’s archived here and is abso-friggin’-lutely INSANE.
There was an interview I read with her once where she said something along the lines that she didn’t understand how governments can kill in war, yet the whole family was so persecuted for just killing a movie star. She honestly sees no difference between people dying during war and randomly walking into somebody’s house and stabbing them 57 times. NUT.
I haven’t read anything about her husband, but when she lived in Sacramento, two of her housemates died under strange circumstances within a couple of days of each other. She was questioned but never charged.
Ladies:
Can we please just have a moment of reminsicing about the 3 of us sitting in Alex’s car outside the Western Surplus store – staring thru the front door like lunatics?? As though we could see the ghosts of the Family right before us.
Sandra writes:
//We appreciate any comments or criticisms.//
Oh really? Do you really, Sandra?
Hahahaha. And Alex wanting to go inside and ask the people that worked there if they knew what happened at the place.
I have my picture of the blacked-over signage!
You know what? I was wrong about Good and the murdered housemates. That was Squeaky.
And when I looked up some stuff about the Hawthorne shoot out a short time ago, it turns out we were in the wrong place! The store in 1971 was located up the street, on the other side of El Segundo Boulevard. It moved to that location in 1975. Oops. At least we were on the right street, just wrong block. I guess you’ll have to come back so we can go to the right spot.
So basically I have a photo of just some random store – not the place where a major shootout occurred??
hahahahahaha
Can you imagine if Alex DID barge in and say to the minimum wage cashier, “Do you have any idea what happened here??”
Oh and Emily – I’m home now. The Joan Didion essay is called The White Album. I had forgotten – she basically befriended Linda Kasabian during the whole trial. Let me get some excerpts for you Its a genius essay. Didion, while of the age where she should be doing drugs and living in Haight Ashbury and keeping it real, was more of a strict person, a straight and narrow (except for drinking and for her crashing depressions) – so her insights into “the 60s” (at least the late 60s) are FAScinating. She didn’t buy it – but she found it very very interesting.
Excerpt:
I did meet one of the principals in another Los Angeles County murder trial during those years: Linda Kasabian, star witness for the prosecution in what was commonly known as the Manson trial. I once asked Linda what she thought about the apparently chance sequence of events which had brought her first to the Spahn Movie Ranch and then to the Sybil Brand Institute for Women on charges, later dropped, of murdering Sharon Tate Polanski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, Steven Parent and Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. “Everything was to teach me something,” Linda said. Linda did not beleve that chance was without pattern. Linda operated on what I later recognized as dice theory, and so, during the years I am talking about, did I.
Excerpt (although it’s an amazing essay in its entirety – where she hangs out with the Doors, she interviews Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver – she was trying to get a line on that crazy crazy time):
I spent a number of evenings talking to her there [in the prison, with her lawyer Gary Fleischman]. Of these evenings I remember mainly my dread at entering the prison, at leaving for even an hour the infinite possibilities I suddenly perceived in the summer twilight. I remember driving downtown on the Hollywood Freeway in Gary Fleischman’s Cadillac convertible with the top down. I remember watching a rabbit graze on the grass by the gate as Gary Fleischman signed the prison register. Each of the half-dozen doors that locked behind us as we entered Sybil Brand was a little death, and I would emerge after the interview like Persephon from the underworld, euphoric, elated. One home I would have two drinks and make myself a hamburger and eat it ravenously.
“Dig it,” Gary Fleischman was always saying. One night when we were driving back to Hollywood from Sybil Brand in the Cadillac convertible with the top down he demanded that I tell him the populatino of India. I said that I did not know the population of India. “Take a guess,” he pompted. I made a guess, absurdly low, and he was disgusted. He had asked the same question of his niece (“a college girl”), of Linda, and now of me, and none of us had known. It seemed to confirm some idea he had of women, their essential ineducability, their similarity under the skin. Gary Fleischman was someone of a type I met only rarely, a comic realist in a porkpie hat, a business traveler on the far frontiers of the period, a man who knew his way around the courthouse and Sybil Brand and remained cheerful, even jaunty, in the face of the awesome and impenetravel mystery at the center of what he called “the case”. In fact we never talked about “the case”, and referred to its central events only as “Cielo Drive” and “LaBianca”. We talked instead about Linda’s childhood pastimes and disappointments, her high-school romances and her concrn for her children. This particular juxtaposition of the spoken and the unspeakable was eerie and unsettling, and made my notebook a litany of little ironies so obvious as to be of interest only to dedicated absurdists. An example: Linda dreamed of opening a combination restaurant-boutique and pet shop.
Excerpt
On July 27, 1970, I went to the Magnin-Hi Shop on the third floor of I.Magnin in Beverly Hills and picked out, at Linda Kasabian’s request, the dress in which she began her testimony about the murders at Sharon Tate Polanski’s house on Cielo Drive. “Size 9 Petite,” her instructions read. “Mini but not extremely mini. In velvet if possible. Emerald green or gold. Or: A Mexican peasantstyle dress, smocked or embroidered.” She needed a dress that morning because the district attorney, Vincent Bugliosi, had expressed doubts about the dress she had planned to wear, a long white homespun shift. “Long is for evening,” he had advised Linda. Long was for evening and white was for brides. At her own wedding in 1965 Linda Kasabian ahd worn a white brocade suit. Time passed, times changed. Everything was to teach us something. At 11:20 on that July morning in 1970 I delivered the dress in which shewould testify to Gary Fleischman, who was waiting in front of his office on Rodeo Drive in BeverlyHills. He was wearing his porkpie hat and he was standing with Linda;s second husband, Bob Kasabian and their friend Charlie Melton, both of whom were wearing long white robes. Long was for Bob and Charlie, the dress in the I. Magnin box was for Linda. The three of them took the I. Magnin box and got into Gary Fleischmans Cadillac convertible with the top down and drove off in the sunlight toward the freeway downtown, waving back at me.
Excerpt:
Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.
Thanks, Sheila. What a stunning writer. Maybe I’ll just go and pick up a copy of her book myself. It sounds like I’d enjoy it.
I think I learned more about the murders here than I ever have before… part of the reason i love coming here… ya never know what you’ll learn. :)
Had a bit of a brush with the beastmaster Manson myself in the 70s. I was a distribution clerk in the post office which handled mail for the San Mateo County Courthouse. As I’m flicking letters into the case, I come across a postcard addressed to Patty Hearst, who was jailed in San Mateo County at that time. Who was it from? Yes. Charles Manson reaching out from prison. It was just a ‘Hang in there, girl’ note. Yeeccchh, my hands held something touched by that guy.
“Hang in there, girl”? Wow – that is fucked up.
A friend of mine works for TV Guide and after some documentary about him they received a 6 page hand-written letter from Manson – railing about how they got it all wrong – but he’s so insane that none of it made sense (yes, she let me read it – I actually think she had a photocopy of the letter MESSENGERED to me – because she knew I would want to read it)
It was an unbelievablly inarticulate rambling psychotic letter. It was quite chilling to see his handwriting. In my untrained eyes, he had the handwriting of a 9 year old.