Squeaky's Book

People wonder what happened to the book Squeaky wrote.  Here is an explanation given by Ed Sanders in an article that he wrote for Oui magazine March 1976.  Is it true?  Who knows, but it sounds plausible. 

" Squeaky kept busy completing a book about the Family that the Family had been writing for about three years.  The book wasn't just another paperback.  It included writings and illustrations by various Family members, and numerous photos.  Each page featured intricate drawings.  Squeaky wanted the whole thing printed in four colors.  About 600 pages long, the book would have been inordinately expensive to produce.  According to a lawyer who knows every aspect of the case, Squeaky sent the book to just about every published in America.  A number of editors apparently led Squeaky and Sandy on with promises, but always backed off in the end.  One problem was that the text was vague.  One Family man sent word to Squeaky to "make it more clear," but, like the Watergate White House, Squeaky knew full well the danger of clarity.  She remarked in a letter: "To make things clear is to lay them out for the Attorney General and his buddies."  And so another manuscript hit the closet."

The Charles Manson Juror Stare Down

This is an excerpt from an article written about the jury members after the Tate LaBianca trial was finished.  The juror mostly featured in the article is Jean Roseland.  The complete article was written by Robert Kistler for the Los Angeles Times and syndicated to other newspapers.  My copy of it is from the Saturday April 17, 1971 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle as is the picture.

It seems the Charlie amused himself during the trial by competing with individual jurors in a stare down.  This is Juror Roseland's description and feelings about that event.

"Well, today's my day with Charlie."  Jean Roseland laughed as she and the other jurors prepared to go to lunch.  During the past five months, it had become a standing joke among them, and this morning had been Mrs. Roseland's turn to try to stare down Manson.

"He has those eyes of his on me all morning," she said to a colleague.  "He just sat there staring at me."  The other juror smiled, then shrugged, and the group went to lunch.  In truth, this habit of Manson's wasn't that funny.  Frankly, Jean thought, it was unnerving and she wished he'd stop.

Later, after the trial was over, she would try to explain her uneasiness about Manson.  "I wasn't ever able to stare him down," she said.  "I always turned my eyes away first.  Some of the other jurors said they got him to look away once or twice, but I never managed it.  "I still don't know why I couldn't.  I certainly found no magnetism, or anything, in his eyes.  It was always the same blank expression, the same expression they all had in their eyes.  Maybe, it was the LSD and other drugs they had been taking for so long..."

Mrs. Roseland and the others never heard Manson speak, except for his periodic outbursts that usually got him removed from the courtroom.  She is convinced, however, that his apparent ability to manipulate others came not from within himself, but "from the voids within the minds and souls of his followers."