Apparently, Herman Messmore hid out as a carny and was captured two years later. I wonder if all of these guys were habitual getting-the-FBI-on-your-assers.
Kokomo Tribune, October 3, 1952.
"A holiday visit with homefolks led to the arrest of Herman Messmore, 20, Monday night, almost three years after his escape from the Indiana Boy's School at Plainfield. George D. King, FBI special agent in Indianapolis, said Messmore decided to revisit Shelbyville while a carnival with which he was working was showing at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis. The FBI entered the case after Messmore was accused of registering under a false name with a draft board in Orlando, Florida."
Thanks for the follow up on Messmore Senor Robert! Charlie seemed to have the "escape" part down having taken unauthorized leave from the school at least five or six times according to these articles but he sure didn't have the not getting caught again part down. It's as if he just wanted to say he could get out any time he wanted but preferred the three hots and a cot to actually supporting himself on the outside.
There was a movie made at the school in 1949, "Johnny Holiday" about a juvenile delinquent, of course. I haven't seen it but it probably has some good images of the school at the time Charlie was there.
I just realized something very significant. Last night I watched a Nazi Death Camp documentary and it dawned on me. Nothing significant has really changed in the last 70 years. Man's inhumanity to man still prevails.
Then today I realized it's TAX deadline day. So I asked myself again: "What's significant that has changed ?
Then it dawned on me. Two thousand years ago a man had to travel by donkey ride to town to PAY his TAXES. BUT today, we can just e-file via computer to PAY the government. Now that's progress. Of course we don't NEED donkey's anymore.
Then I thought: Hey, what about that guy Joe and his woman Mary and their newborn ?
Well - As the story goes - the ROMAN "governent" had Joe and Mary's son executed for HIS far-out religious beliefs and THEN eventually adopted HIS religion to be THEIR own.
I guess, from cradle to grave it's simply a matter of "same old, same old. Nothing NEW - just money due - to make the same old "stew."
THEN I remembered, there actually was a very important significant "change" in Man's history. It happened many thousands of years ago - the PRESSERVATION of "meat" and CRIME was born. Which, in turn, provided for the need and creation of civilization.
So IF the Jews had had "many" bad-ass KILLERS among their own - it may have been the Nazi's who would have done most of the dying !
If memory serves, Nuel Emmonds said Charlie's a$$ was beaten bloody after escaping from Plainfield and being returned. Charley called the place Painfield.
Hendrickson, here's some fodder for your thoughts. I'm European. Some of my relatives tried to flee from the Nazi occupation, but were reported on by a "snitch" in the guise of a Christian priest. What do we make of that?
Robert, a couple of years ago I visited with my Polish wife the town of Oswiecim - or, to give it its more famous Germanicized name, Auschwitz. We spent the day under increasingly dark clouds, and came away struck by... the simplicity of the place, the modernity of the materials, the economy and efficiency of the design, the terrible scale.
And what lodged in my mind was a sense that however 'decent' and 'normal' a majority of people may be in any civilization, the line between such terrible events happening and not happening is nevertheless far, far more fragile than most of us care to acknowledge.
But one thing I feel compelled to take issue with: you seem to mention Ancient Rome and the Third Reich as virtual equivalents quite often, and I don't think that's fair. The Third Reich was a regime founded purposely and expressly upon hatred and death, designed merely to bring death and destruction to its enemies, offering nothing in the way of civilization and culture. Rome, however, was not what Hollywood shows us - a mere war machine populated by insane tyrants and a stolid knuckle-headed soldiery. Rome was a genuine and great civilization, for better or for worse. In movies it is only ever shown at war: in reality there was a period of peace, the Pax Romana that lasted no less than two hundred years - something previously unimaginable in that region, and however great Rome was in war, it was even greater in peace; its culture, technology, architecture, literature, its innovations in every field of human endeavor mark it out as being totally undeserving of comparison with the hate-filled imitation, Germania, that Hitler had planned.
(That said, people do tend to focus on the deviant murderous lunatic Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, because they were frankly bat-shit crazy and highly entertaining.)
I forgot to mention Manson. My apologies. Please don't ban me!
I was thinking what Jenn and Orwhut said in their comments, too. Whatever my opinion of Manson now (& it's not necessarily all black and white, as I like to look at most people and most situations from all angles anyway - except animal abusers, I would be glad to put a bullet in their heads myself - anyway, the human condition is more complicated and I'm not a believer in one-size-fits-all... sh*t, what the hell was I saying?...); I don't think in a million years that he deserved the hell of those reform schools, particularly Plainfield. The kid who killed the guy, maybe. Manson, no. Not at that point in time. I know a few posts back that I woofed about the "Kathleen is mean" song, b/c "Trilby"'s government name may or may not be Kathleen, but maybe if she had been a little more devoted to raising her kid... who knows? He really did have a shot at the music business in the 60s. If he had agreed to be a part of the whole pop machinery thing, I think "Look At Your Game, Girl" could have been a hit. But I also think by the time reform school was done with him, a lifetime of petty crime was his fate. I wonder if they have guidance counselors in reform schools? Like, telling them, "OK, kid, you could probably go straight & be a welder/cook/etc.", "You, kid, stick to knocking over gas stations", & "You, kid, ya gots potential. You could be a hit man.". I mean, after all, the biggest crooks of all go to work every day dressed in a suit and tie, in banks and on Wall Street.
Trilby. With all due respect, I doubt Manson could have ever had success in the music business. He lacked the focus and discipline to hone his music into something marketable. That's the pop machinery thing. It wasn't in him. Not saying he didn't have some talent. But... compulsively avoiding real work and discipline defined Manson's personality structure from early on. For all the perks of being a rock star, there's a whole lot of work and discipline involved in getting there and staying there. Manson hit his ceiling with the connections he had. And the he moved on to other "ventures".
I also doubt having a decent guidance counselor early on would have changed Manson. He was who he was and, I think, always looking to avoid any real responsibilities.
mrgroove - re Manson and musical success, I absolutely agree with that. He was good at escaping but not at staying free. He was ok at writing songs but generally shambolic in the studio. Even when it came to murder he was good at starting things off but always let others finish them. He must have been in some respect bewildered to have ended up behind bars for Tate-LaBianca when in his mind it was likely just one more thing he had failed to fully commit to personally...
Perhaps it is in this sense - as a walking advert for unfocused half-measures and wasted potential - that he is indeed the most dangerous man in America etc.
And that wasn't even meant as a criticism. It's not always easy to find a meaningful path through life, even for people whose childhoods have not been as cripplingly unfair as his was.
Michael: I only mentioned "Nazi" because that is where my head was at after watching Death Camp Doc AND I only mentioned ROMAN because TAX day made me think of ROMAN Taxes 2,000 years ago under Mary and Joesph - parents of Jesus Christ. BUT now YOU make me think of the nasty similarities.
IE: The ROMANS and the NAZIS both got their rocks off by fucking with the JEWS. The story of the ROMANS killing Jesus and destroying the sacred Jewish Temple AND the NAZIS killing so many Jews and destroying their very existence are probably the TWO most significantly remembered events in world history.
Because the ROMANS invented "cement" and the Nazis invented the VW and Jet propulsion is, of course, to be held in high esteem when discussing "civilization."
AND my point still is: Without any "bad" guys - there can be NO "good" guys. AND without any WAR, the word PEACE does NOT exist. Without HATE, there is NO LOVE. IF half of the 6,000,000 Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis were instead outlaws like Charlie Manson, we wouldn't be talking about Nazis commiting atrocities today.
I think the deal with Manson is that he's a very good instigator but tends to back off once he has led others to do his bidding for him. He plants seeds in a way that in his mind he did not tell people what to do but whatever act they performed was their own idea, not his. We have certainly seen this with the Tate LaBianca murders. He personally did not kill so he can absolve himself of responsibility and then he assumes the role of a martyred soul who carries the burden of the guilt of others.
I do think he is very comfortable in prison. It provides him the only structure that he is able to cope with and that is why he has never been out of prison or reform school for very long.
Robert, I love your comments. But nevertheless....
Without any "bad" guys - there can be NO "good" guys. AND without any WAR, the word PEACE does NOT exist. Without HATE, there is NO LOVE. IF half of the 6,000,000 Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis were instead outlaws like Charlie Manson, we wouldn't be talking about Nazis commiting atrocities today.
I don't agree with any of that. Good guys aren't merely guys who don't do bad things, they're guys who do good things. Good and bad have meanings in themselves beyond being the opposite of the other. This reminds me of Charlie's insistence that he is both Jesus and Satan, a fashionable conceit based on a lazily-deduced duality at the heart of everything, including God. But it's too easy and comfortable. It's actually far harder to make sense of the universe and of mankind if we believe that the essential reality of God (and therefore of the universe) is that 'God is love'. That's more genuinely difficult and challenging than any of the fashionable 'duality' stuff Charlie relied on. Because it's not based on some abstract balance and it doesn't allow us to fall-back onto the couch and refuse to commit to anything, it is outrageously specific and one-sided, and it is a daunting, terrifying challenge to the stupidity and malice we create in the world.
The more I read your words, (which I always appreciate and enjoy, and by which I am always challenged and made to think,) the more I think you actually believe that almost all human interaction is literally a satanic conspiracy.
Michael. I like your comment about Manson failing to commit because I think it really gets to the essence of the guy. To truly commit to something means taking responsibility in oneself to see it through, whether it succeeds or fails. His musical career is a perfect example. He hung out in his prison cell before his 1967 release and learned to play rudimentary guitar and pleasantly ape some of the crooners he'd heard on the radio of his youth. Then upon his release, he integrated the 60's youth zeitgeist into his pseudo-hippy bard act and intrigued a few young record industry contacts and impressed a bunch of outcast kids. And that was it. Though he had the small audience thing down, he never fully committed, in any practical sense, to being a professional gigging/recording musician. By this I mean studio craft, songwriting craft, microphone and amplification use, etc. For successful (and many unsuccessful musicians), trial and error is integral to the process. For Manson, he had zero interest in any of that. Why? Because it involves a lot of process, and constructive criticism, and self criticism (aka work), all things Manson couldn't stomach. In fact, based on the recordings, I think the studio and recording engineers terrified the living crap out of him because they had a job to do, were committed to it and saw right through his limited act and professional weaknesses. And he froze up when he knew they were onto him after a few minutes with him in front of a microphone with the tape rolling.
For his musical career, he reached his ceiling because no one with any money and resources would commit to a singing slacker like Manson.
Manson's greatest asset was as a manipulator and user. He actually reminds me of successful CEO's in that if his plans fail, it's someone else's fault. And if they succeed, well then, he looks brilliant. But then he would have had to commit to that and, back to square one.
AWESOME find, Deb!
ReplyDeleteIndianapolis, then no home address. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteA 14 year old sentenced to "school" for KILLING a man ! Don't you just know a "RE- Education Camp" would have to be involved in a 1950s solution.
ReplyDeleteThey walked out through an unlocked door? I'd hardly call it an escape. More like they were mislaid.
ReplyDeleteCharlie was the first (or only) one to be recaptured. Seems like the guy had bad luck in his life!
ReplyDeleteVery nice articles Deb!
Apparently, Herman Messmore hid out as a carny and was captured two years later. I wonder if all of these guys were habitual getting-the-FBI-on-your-assers.
ReplyDeleteKokomo Tribune, October 3, 1952.
"A holiday visit with homefolks led to the arrest of Herman Messmore, 20, Monday night, almost three years after his escape from the Indiana Boy's School at Plainfield. George D. King, FBI special agent in Indianapolis, said Messmore decided to revisit Shelbyville while a carnival with which he was working was showing at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis. The FBI entered the case after Messmore was accused of registering under a false name with a draft board in Orlando, Florida."
Thanks for the follow up on Messmore Senor Robert! Charlie seemed to have the "escape" part down having taken unauthorized leave from the school at least five or six times according to these articles but he sure didn't have the not getting caught again part down. It's as if he just wanted to say he could get out any time he wanted but preferred the three hots and a cot to actually supporting himself on the outside.
ReplyDeleteThere was a movie made at the school in 1949, "Johnny Holiday" about a juvenile delinquent, of course. I haven't seen it but it probably has some good images of the school at the time Charlie was there.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041528/
I just realized something very significant. Last night I watched a Nazi Death Camp documentary and it dawned on me. Nothing significant has really changed in the last 70 years. Man's inhumanity to man still prevails.
ReplyDeleteThen today I realized it's TAX deadline day. So I asked myself again: "What's significant that has changed ?
Then it dawned on me. Two thousand years ago a man had to travel by donkey ride to town to PAY his TAXES. BUT today, we can just e-file via computer to PAY the government. Now that's progress. Of course we don't NEED donkey's anymore.
Then I thought: Hey, what about that guy Joe and his woman Mary and their newborn ?
Well - As the story goes - the ROMAN "governent" had Joe and Mary's son executed for HIS far-out religious beliefs and THEN eventually adopted HIS religion to be THEIR own.
I guess, from cradle to grave it's simply a matter of "same old, same old. Nothing NEW - just money due -
to make the same old "stew."
THEN I remembered, there actually was a very important significant "change" in Man's history. It happened many thousands of years ago - the PRESSERVATION of "meat" and CRIME was born. Which, in turn, provided for the need and creation of civilization.
So IF the Jews had had "many" bad-ass KILLERS among their own - it may have been the Nazi's who would have done most of the dying !
The more that I learn, the more I believe that Manson is either, A. Bad at being a criminal, or B. A person who wants to be incarcerated.
ReplyDeleteIf memory serves, Nuel Emmonds said Charlie's a$$ was beaten bloody after escaping from Plainfield and being returned. Charley called the place Painfield.
ReplyDeleteHendrickson, here's some fodder for your thoughts. I'm European. Some of my relatives tried to flee from the Nazi occupation, but were reported on by a "snitch" in the guise of a Christian priest. What do we make of that?
ReplyDeleteRobert, a couple of years ago I visited with my Polish wife the town of Oswiecim - or, to give it its more famous Germanicized name, Auschwitz. We spent the day under increasingly dark clouds, and came away struck by... the simplicity of the place, the modernity of the materials, the economy and efficiency of the design, the terrible scale.
ReplyDeleteAnd what lodged in my mind was a sense that however 'decent' and 'normal' a majority of people may be in any civilization, the line between such terrible events happening and not happening is nevertheless far, far more fragile than most of us care to acknowledge.
But one thing I feel compelled to take issue with: you seem to mention Ancient Rome and the Third Reich as virtual equivalents quite often, and I don't think that's fair. The Third Reich was a regime founded purposely and expressly upon hatred and death, designed merely to bring death and destruction to its enemies, offering nothing in the way of civilization and culture. Rome, however, was not what Hollywood shows us - a mere war machine populated by insane tyrants and a stolid knuckle-headed soldiery. Rome was a genuine and great civilization, for better or for worse. In movies it is only ever shown at war: in reality there was a period of peace, the Pax Romana that lasted no less than two hundred years - something previously unimaginable in that region, and however great Rome was in war, it was even greater in peace; its culture, technology, architecture, literature, its innovations in every field of human endeavor mark it out as being totally undeserving of comparison with the hate-filled imitation, Germania, that Hitler had planned.
(That said, people do tend to focus on the deviant murderous lunatic Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, because they were frankly bat-shit crazy and highly entertaining.)
I forgot to mention Manson. My apologies. Please don't ban me!
I was thinking what Jenn and Orwhut said in their comments, too. Whatever my opinion of Manson now (& it's not necessarily all black and white, as I like to look at most people and most situations from all angles anyway - except animal abusers, I would be glad to put a bullet in their heads myself - anyway, the human condition is more complicated and I'm not a believer in one-size-fits-all... sh*t, what the hell was I saying?...); I don't think in a million years that he deserved the hell of those reform schools, particularly Plainfield. The kid who killed the guy, maybe. Manson, no. Not at that point in time. I know a few posts back that I woofed about the "Kathleen is mean" song, b/c "Trilby"'s government name may or may not be Kathleen, but maybe if she had been a little more devoted to raising her kid... who knows? He really did have a shot at the music business in the 60s. If he had agreed to be a part of the whole pop machinery thing, I think "Look At Your Game, Girl" could have been a hit. But I also think by the time reform school was done with him, a lifetime of petty crime was his fate. I wonder if they have guidance counselors in reform schools? Like, telling them, "OK, kid, you could probably go straight & be a welder/cook/etc.", "You, kid, stick to knocking over gas stations", & "You, kid, ya gots potential. You could be a hit man.". I mean, after all, the biggest crooks of all go to work every day dressed in a suit and tie, in banks and on Wall Street.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Michael!
ReplyDeleteTrilby. With all due respect, I doubt Manson could have ever had success in the music business. He lacked the focus and discipline to hone his music into something marketable. That's the pop machinery thing. It wasn't in him. Not saying he didn't have some talent. But... compulsively avoiding real work and discipline defined Manson's personality structure from early on. For all the perks of being a rock star, there's a whole lot of work and discipline involved in getting there and staying there. Manson hit his ceiling with the connections he had. And the he moved on to other "ventures".
ReplyDeleteI also doubt having a decent guidance counselor early on would have changed Manson. He was who he was and, I think, always looking to avoid any real responsibilities.
Hey this is pretty cool-the articles and the postings. Thanks Deb.
ReplyDeletemrgroove - re Manson and musical success, I absolutely agree with that. He was good at escaping but not at staying free. He was ok at writing songs but generally shambolic in the studio. Even when it came to murder he was good at starting things off but always let others finish them. He must have been in some respect bewildered to have ended up behind bars for Tate-LaBianca when in his mind it was likely just one more thing he had failed to fully commit to personally...
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is in this sense - as a walking advert for unfocused half-measures and wasted potential - that he is indeed the most dangerous man in America etc.
And that wasn't even meant as a criticism. It's not always easy to find a meaningful path through life, even for people whose childhoods have not been as cripplingly unfair as his was.
ReplyDeleteDeb, you ARE good. I never get tired of your posts.....
ReplyDeleteMichael: I only mentioned "Nazi" because that is where my head was at after watching Death Camp Doc AND I only mentioned ROMAN because TAX day made me think of ROMAN Taxes 2,000 years ago under Mary and Joesph - parents of Jesus Christ. BUT now YOU make me think of the nasty similarities.
ReplyDeleteIE: The ROMANS and the NAZIS both got their rocks off by fucking with the JEWS.
The story of the ROMANS killing Jesus and destroying the sacred Jewish Temple AND the NAZIS killing
so many Jews and destroying their very existence are probably the TWO most significantly remembered
events in world history.
Because the ROMANS invented "cement" and the Nazis invented the VW and Jet propulsion is, of course, to be held in high esteem when discussing "civilization."
AND my point still is: Without any "bad" guys - there can be NO "good" guys. AND without any WAR, the word PEACE does NOT exist. Without HATE, there is NO LOVE. IF half of the 6,000,000 Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis were instead outlaws like Charlie Manson, we wouldn't be talking about Nazis commiting atrocities today.
I think the deal with Manson is that he's a very good instigator but tends to back off once he has led others to do his bidding for him. He plants seeds in a way that in his mind he did not tell people what to do but whatever act they performed was their own idea, not his. We have certainly seen this with the Tate LaBianca murders. He personally did not kill so he can absolve himself of responsibility and then he assumes the role of a martyred soul who carries the burden of the guilt of others.
ReplyDeleteI do think he is very comfortable in prison. It provides him the only structure that he is able to cope with and that is why he has never been out of prison or reform school for very long.
Robert, I love your comments. But nevertheless....
ReplyDeleteWithout any "bad" guys - there can be NO "good" guys. AND without any WAR, the word PEACE does NOT exist. Without HATE, there is NO LOVE. IF half of the 6,000,000 Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis were instead outlaws like Charlie Manson, we wouldn't be talking about Nazis commiting atrocities today.
I don't agree with any of that. Good guys aren't merely guys who don't do bad things, they're guys who do good things. Good and bad have meanings in themselves beyond being the opposite of the other. This reminds me of Charlie's insistence that he is both Jesus and Satan, a fashionable conceit based on a lazily-deduced duality at the heart of everything, including God. But it's too easy and comfortable. It's actually far harder to make sense of the universe and of mankind if we believe that the essential reality of God (and therefore of the universe) is that 'God is love'. That's more genuinely difficult and challenging than any of the fashionable 'duality' stuff Charlie relied on. Because it's not based on some abstract balance and it doesn't allow us to fall-back onto the couch and refuse to commit to anything, it is outrageously specific and one-sided, and it is a daunting, terrifying challenge to the stupidity and malice we create in the world.
The more I read your words, (which I always appreciate and enjoy, and by which I am always challenged and made to think,) the more I think you actually believe that almost all human interaction is literally a satanic conspiracy.
Michael. I like your comment about Manson failing to commit because I think it really gets to the essence of the guy. To truly commit to something means taking responsibility in oneself to see it through, whether it succeeds or fails. His musical career is a perfect example. He hung out in his prison cell before his 1967 release and learned to play rudimentary guitar and pleasantly ape some of the crooners he'd heard on the radio of his youth. Then upon his release, he integrated the 60's youth zeitgeist into his pseudo-hippy bard act and intrigued a few young record industry contacts and impressed a bunch of outcast kids. And that was it. Though he had the small audience thing down, he never fully committed, in any practical sense, to being a professional gigging/recording musician. By this I mean studio craft, songwriting craft, microphone and amplification use, etc. For successful (and many unsuccessful musicians), trial and error is integral to the process. For Manson, he had zero interest in any of that. Why? Because it involves a lot of process, and constructive criticism, and self criticism (aka work), all things Manson couldn't stomach. In fact, based on the recordings, I think the studio and recording engineers terrified the living crap out of him because they had a job to do, were committed to it and saw right through his limited act and professional weaknesses. And he froze up when he knew they were onto him after a few minutes with him in front of a microphone with the tape rolling.
ReplyDeleteFor his musical career, he reached his ceiling because no one with any money and resources would commit to a singing slacker like Manson.
Manson's greatest asset was as a manipulator and user. He actually reminds me of successful CEO's in that if his plans fail, it's someone else's fault. And if they succeed, well then, he looks brilliant. But then he would have had to commit to that and, back to square one.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDEB and Mr.Groove: VERY perceptive !
ReplyDeleteMichael: If I make YOU "think" and YOU, in turn, make ME "think" - who is "using" who ?
Many, many years ago, I was taught by a wise man - it doesn't get much better than that and NOW I know just HOW wise HE really was.