Circa 1992:
Susan Atkins --
"The people you helped and gave to will keep you to use you. The people you let help you you keep and used them and it's all a circle. There is no one. There never was. I knew that when I let you walk behind me. My me was gone before you were born. I did 22 years before you were reborn. Off the ranch they are not for you and never will be."
Patricia Krenwinkel --
"My mom ran from home at 14, had me at 15, went to the prison at 17 and I visited her in 1937. Divorce court in 1938. Spent a lot of time inside, got out in 1967, started a rebirth movement and I knew there was no one. Yous will wake up. The people who use you will keep you to use you up."
Leslie Van Houten --
"You reached to change the world and let it change you. You let them use you. You went for they wanted to help you count some money. Apart [crossed-out "we"] you all die in prison. Together we make change."
Wow, how interesting that Charlie would write what he did to each of the girls. Were the cards actually sent to and received by them? I was under the impression that Susan, Pat and Leslie could not receive mail from Charlie.
ReplyDeleteWell, it wouldn't be the first time in history, or even the last for that matter, that a woman with an otherwise good head on her shoulders, would throw it all away on some asshole that promised her Utopia.
ReplyDeleteUtopia is not out there. Donald Trump can't give you that. Nobody can.
You're best bet is to trudge thru the muck, just like everybody else.
Stephen Kay from his mother.
ReplyDeleteHi Deb, yes, the cards were sent and received.
ReplyDeleteMr Stimson, anything mailed out to his male co-defendants for Hinman-Shea? How about Tex?
ReplyDeleteCreepy-"You all die in prison."
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAhh ... UTOPIA - the place where YOU have a reason to get up in the morning.
ReplyDeleteAND that's as good as it gets !
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ReplyDeletechristopher butche,
ReplyDeleteWe were forwarding some material to Bruce Davis but he asked us not to so we stopped.
So George based on what you just said would it be fair to make the guess that these were forwarded to the girls but not accepted, resulting in you eventually coming into possession of them because they were returned by the post office?
ReplyDeleteSuze,
ReplyDeleteNo, they were forwarded to the girls and presumably accepted, because I know that they accepted letters we sent. Also, mail refused by inmates is returned to sender. We never got them back. I copied them before we sent them.
I think I remember Leslie saying in the Turning Point interview (1994?) that she turned over mail from Manson to prison officials.
ReplyDeleteMr. Stimson, YOU can STOP right there.
ReplyDeleteIF Charles Manson (Commander in Chief) of the gobal Black vs White Race WAR was able to send and receive messages to and from his "soldiers" -facilitated by the U.S. prison system - then either Helter Skelter was nothing more than a farcical theory fabricated by a RACIST prosecutor OR the U.S. Prison system and the F.B.I. and the C.I.A are nothing nore than a bunch poop-butts living off of a "glorified welfare" system.
Can't it be both, Robert?
ReplyDeleteRobert, never ascribe to conspiracy what can be more easily explained by good ole incompetence! Poop-butts indeed.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, that is surely one more piece of circumstantial evidence suggesting that Helter Skelter and its infinitely cunning, manipulative mastermind were never taken too seriously. If he were the brainwashing guru he was described as being in the media, one combination of words in a letter could've triggered an implanted instruction in the minions' unconscious. Like something from The Manchurian Candidate. Or Zoolander. But while that was the headline fodder, in truth even Bugliosi knew better. He's quite clear in Helter Skelter: they weren't brainwashed. Manson merely led them where they were willing to go. Each and any of them could've refused. Bugliosi is clear on that.
My chief problem with the idea of Helter Skelter as the explicit motive for the killings is this: only idiots could've imagined it would've worked. Manson wasn't an idiot.
Was Tex? Was Sadie? I don't know.
Having said that, putting the Helter Skelter theory to one side, anyone who believed that TLB might see Bobby cleared of Hinman's murder must have been an idiot on some level also.
I mean, these guys were too cryptic. Pig? Arise? Healter Skelter? No mention of whites at all? Give the media something idiot-proof, something unambiguous. Never underestimate the stupidity of the American media. As someone mentioned here recently, it's actually the Hinman killing that seems to carry more HS connotations than TLB. I used to buy it, I don't anymore. This was something else.
MHN,
ReplyDeleteIncompetence is actually the most convenient cover for conspiracy.
The real 'evil doers' of this world perpetuate the incompetence theory just as much as they do the coincidence theory.
There actually are a lot of GOOD but compartmentalized (Low level) people in the FBI and CIA who seek to do the right thing...but their hands are tied by ridiculous policies and career-threatening gag orders implemented and handed down by the upper echelons of such agencies (the shadows).
The results lead to the appearance of incompetence.
If you approach it from that angle, you can easily conclude that there is an obvious conspiracy to keep the incompetence theory at the top of list of convenient plausible denials.
Max. Unfalsifiable.
ReplyDeleteRE: Whoever posted about the crimes weren't coherent enough to point towards Black Revolution. The Family did not operate in a vacuum.
ReplyDeleteIt should be borne in mind that the Oakland chapter of the Black Panthers by 1967 were involved in the murder of a policeman (Huey Newton), by 1968 they had ambushed Oakland police officers (Cleaver). By 1968 the LA chapter were involved in a shootout with police (three Panthers killed), and later in the year again in LA another Panther was killed in a shootout with police. By January 1969 (with help from the FBI counter-intelligence program operating to sow discontent between groups and to discredit them) the Panthers had a shootout with a rival organisation in LA (on UCLA campus) resulting in the deaths of two Panthers. By April 1969 21 NY Panthers were arrested and charged with a bombing conspiracy. By May 1969 another Panther was killed in a shootout in LA and another was killed by the New Haven group after being tortured as a suspected informant. By July 1969 another gun battle with police took place in Chicago.
On top of this was the ongoing Free Huey (Newton) campaign, and the person who founded the LA Panthers was the leader of a street gang. As well as the FBI's ongoing effort to promote the organisation as violent. The Panthers arming themselves in public from 1967 onwards and patrolling areas where the public had asked them for protection against the police.
"The Revolution has come, it's time to pick up the gun. Off the pigs!", was apparently a chant from 1967.
George and Michael:
ReplyDeletePlease give me some time to fully absorb this recent revelation. The trigger for ME was I looked at Charlie's handwriting on the post cards and thought: "This guy is barely literate and the "establishment" thinks HE is some kind of WAR like "mastermind."?
What would they do IF a REAL military type "mastermind" was floating around ? Drop their guns and bow to the sun ?
The HIGH court in Italy just rendered a decision that the "prosecution" in the Amanda Knox case was basically practicing Voodoo - that the standard of "reasonable doubt" was NOT met with EVIDENCE.
Anyone who has followed that case cannot help but realize it's comparison to the Manson case - as far as Charles Manson was concerned. Evil, witchcraft, etc, IT was all there also.
Christopher - useful information. Thank you. But I guess the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The cops had no suspects for quite some time after the TLB nights, and yet in that time the chief avenues of public/media speculation were drugs, orgies, the occult, and general decadence - (basically a list of my hobbies.)If anybody seriously bought the implication of the race-war 'clues' then I've never seen much evidence of that. When Bugliosi introduced the idea of Helter Skelter as a motive it's not as if the people of LA all nodded and said they had deduced that already from the crime-scene evidence... People more or less knew the details of what had happened, what had been written on the walls and doors, and yet when the race war motive was revealed the general reaction was essentially WTF?!
ReplyDeleteIn other words, regardless of context, if the plan was to make white people afraid of black people and provoke an escalation of racial conflict, it was a total dud, to the extent that if that was the plan then every single person involved in the planning and execution was a certifiable imbecile. Christopher Butche - in the social and historical context you describe, any one of us could've planned and carried off something more likely to provoke racial conflict than those killings.
If, however, the plan was to add to the general feeling of panic and things-falling-apart craziness, mission accomplished.
Robert: "what if" the establishment actually thought: "This guy is a barely-literate but highly charismatic small-time cult leader who wrongly thinks he is some kind of WAR-like mastermind, whereas he's really a rambling grab-bag of miscellaneous psycho-spiritual gleanings whose devoted followers have just murdered seven people"?
ReplyDeleteLet's not get started on Amanda Knox. Except... Guede's bootprints leave the murder room, and head straight out of the cottage - straight out. Whereas SOMEONE locked Meredith's door, SOMEONE left half a very bloody naked footprint on the shower mat but cleaned up the rest of the trail. The Italians now say there was no physical trace of Knox or her knife-obsessed, knife-collecting boyfriend in Meredith's room. Independent forensic investigators in the UK are adamant that Sollecito's DNA on the clasp of the bra strap is strong evidence, and that DNA does not fly around, that no likely scenario explaining 'contamination' has been offered, merely the possibility of contamination. And crucially - crazily - a lost hair. A long blonde hair, clutched in the fingers of Meredith Kercher's dead hand. It was lost by investigators. They lost it. You can see photos of it in-situ and read accounts of its discovery, but it's useless as evidence because... they lost it....
Legally I think they had to acquit. Was she involved as an accessory at the very least? I believe so. I picture a fight, hair-pulling, some sexual bullying, and then Guede takes it further than anyone was ready for. I imagine they were shell-shocked and did what they could to clear up any evidence of their own involvement.
I think the acquittal was legally and technically the right thing. But I think they were involved on some level and have got away with it.
This is the wrong blog, isn't it. Sorry folks. But Robert introduced the issue so I think your honour I'm allowed to raise the matter in cross examination, right?
Well, George, Max, Chris and Michael: IF I had said "AND" instead of "OR" would you have been as diligent in articulating YOUR "intelligent" responses ? Probably NOT as much - AND even I need food for thought. YOU guys are fantanic cooks.
ReplyDeleteGeorge got it immediately.
It's taken MAX - seems like - forever to finally articulate the "conspiracy" theory CIA THING - so that WE all can understand just what the Hell HE means. He also just explained Ms Clinton's email affair TOTALLY.
THANKS Max, I needed that.
Chris YOU are DEAD on point !
Michael: YOU know I respect EVERY word you say, BUT this IS the blog to speak of the KNOX case. OR any case where similarities arise. Of course CM was involved, BUT to the extent HE was GUILTY of being the "mastermind" who "brainwashed" OUR WWW II HERO'S children to commit mass murder atrocities ?
Maybe the "establishment" has to perpetuate ALL these "fables," cause IF we eliminate "entertainment" there's nothing left but FOOD and WE all know how much Michelle HATES overeating.
So don't stop now - keep the TRUTH a coming and I'll reciprocate.
I was struck by Leslie's explanation of helter skelter in the part interview from winter 1969: "...and so white man would kill white man for their beliefs. If they didn’t believe the same, they’re going to knock each other off. And then black man would be there to sort of help them."
ReplyDeleteShe says it twice, not so much black against white, but white versus white (initially). So the racist angle may be over-played.
I remember that too, Chris! It has stuck with me as well!
ReplyDeleteOoh. Christopher I never came across that. That's damn interesting.
ReplyDeleteRobert, all I know is that I've read about many murder cases down the years, and the legal system is rarely more than a construct of contemporary culture at any given moment. Of course some might argue that that's exactly what it should be. Heck, if you can have elected police chiefs why not elected juries or elected judges? Or elected verdicts...?
BTW Michael: DNA can NOT conclusively determine that one is a MATCH - only that one is NOT a match.
ReplyDeleteAND "fingerprint" reading (matching) is ONLY a guesstimation at best. There is absolutely NO conclusive way to determine a MATCH. NOR is there ANY "evidence" proving that there is ONLY one person in the world who has a distinct and separate fingerprint. ALL "evidence" is subjective, at best.
AND every "judicial" system ever created by MAN, since time began, is subject to "incompetant" / "corrupt" administration. So are WE merely spinning the gears so delicately positioned in OUR clever little brains ?
NO - cause WE function somewhere ABOVE the animal level - OR so we THINK.
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ReplyDelete@ MNH - Yes, Italy has quite the justice system over there, no stone left unturned - six years prison each for geologists who fail to predict earthquakes. That was also recently overturned for the six geologists.
ReplyDeleteSame country that continues to build new homes at the foot of Vesuvius.
ReplyDeleteCome on Matt, it could be entire days before that thing blows again.
ReplyDeleteMichael, ever been to Naples? It's a big slum. Wooden shanties everywhere. When that thing blows I bet fires from those structures kills more people than the eruption itself. It's gonna be horrible.
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ReplyDeleteMatt I have, last year. You're right - after a day at the ruins of Pompeii I walked around Naples and couldn't see much difference between the two. No, in all honesty it's my favourite European city - it's crazy. Tiny old streets, the maze of the old town, lunatics, beggars, nuns, demented mopeds and tiny Fiats hurtling through dark alleys at breakneck speed, you really feel as though you've stepped back into the 16th Century. I imagine Caravaggio felt quite at home. I felt quite at home. and the tomb of Virgil on the hill above. As well as Capri - home to some fantastically demented orgies during the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
ReplyDeleteYou're right of course about Vesuvius. It hangs over the city like an ominous god ready to pass judgment. There's a remarkable knife-edge balance between the beauty of the Bay of Naples and the knowledge that destruction is hanging over it waiting to erupt.
Logically you're right. But do I blame them? If I were single and unencumbered I might honestly be tempted to join them and enjoy it while it lasts.
Amanda Knox - Italian travelogue - I'm really losing the plot here. I'm going to shut up before someone slaps me.
Another thing to consider is how slowly Vesuvius tends to destroy anything. Even during the famous AD79 eruption at least half the population of Pompeii vacated the city and saved themselves. The number of bodies left at the city is a very small proportion of the estimated population. Many were able to take almost all their worldly possessions with them, and it's thought that a number of those who perished were those who came back to get more just before the ash column collapsed and the pyroclastic surge swept down and cooked everyone instantly.
ReplyDeleteThey were cooked, their brains boiled and skulls exploded. It was more witchy than anything the Family cooked up...
Pompeii looks like it was the Vegas of the Empire. I bet that burg rocked.
ReplyDeleteRobert, I explained very little actually...
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/8y06NSBBRtY
I live about 40 miles from Mt. St. Helens and she gave us a lot warnings before she blew a 1/3 of herself up.
ReplyDeleteMHN, Yes, Leslie gave the impression in the 1969 interview that "general craziness" was the order of the day for kick-starting the revolution, her answer to the question of how to start it "By doing a murder that had no sense behind it, and by putting words that would make people scared. Because the more fearful the people get, the more frantic it will get, and the faster it will happen."
ReplyDeleteGetting the fear .
Christopher, thank you for sharing that. It's really no less crazy than Helter Skelter, but it's more believable.
ReplyDeleteBut can we credit what Leslie said there and still hang onto the end-times hole-in-the-desert lunacy that I love? I would miss it.
MHN, I sure hope so. Let's face it, the insane details of this entire story seemingly go on forever, not to mention the Hollywood connections. Other stories (with the JFK story in a very distant second) pale in comparison.
ReplyDeleteWell said Suze.
ReplyDeleteLast night I was reading Restless Souls, and am struck again by how almost nobody thought that the TLB killings were revolutionary crimes committed by blacks against whites.
I have a theory. Helter Skelter as outlined by Bugliosi is absolutely 100% true in every respec;, but it failed in its intended effect so abysmally that the Family became embarrassed to admit race war had been the aim, hence a quarter century of competing alternative explanations from the perps. All the contradictions, all the changes of story, all the lies - sheer embarrassment, Embarrassment that their plan was so imbecilic and their execution of it even worse. Like some Y2K cult who, mortified by the failure of the mothership to appear and scoop them up at midnight, subsequently claim that they never expected any such thing, that everything they said has been misreported or distorted etc etc.
Now, I don't believe a word I just wrote, not for one moment. But I'm going to sit on the roof and try. Free coffee for anyone who joins me.
Restless Souls was an amazing book to me. Facts of the case and possible errors aside- it told the story from the Tates point of view, and for the first time it made me really understand the brutality of the crimes to the family versus my fascination of the "freaky" element of the people who committed them. Doris Tate becomes a Hero in this book versus some other people who seemed to become pseudo- "celebrities" from the attention they got in other books- and what is wrong with that?
ReplyDeleteLulu has said point blank in parole hearings that she turns over all correspondence she gets from Charlie to her attorneys. That started when he was contacting her regarding his new "order of rainbow" - or whatever he called it- when he was trying to assign her a color.
Hey- I was up late last nite watching TV and a special came on some news channel about a mysterious thing that happens in Death Valley. Maybe some of you were aware of this, but I wasn't. It appears huge rocks seem to slide across the dessert from time to time- 700 pound rocks. I ggogled it and this is what It said:
it's once again the time of year when big rocks, known as sailing stones, appear to move across the flat desert in Death Valley, California, without any help from humans or animals.
The mysterious moving rocks, which can weigh up to 700 pounds, leave behind trails that can extend for several hundred feet and may not necessarily move in a straight line.
No one is exactly sure what causes these rocks to scuttle across the 3-mile-long swath of sun-baked terrain known as Racetrack Playa. The phenomenon has not been observed anywhere else.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/sailing-stones-in-death-valley-california-2012-12#ixzz3lFblbxXd
YES Michael,
ReplyDeleteThe lunacy of Helter Skelter is what makes it so attractive for entertainment purposes. I remember how after the trial, we went through years of bloody "horror" upon "horror" movies - until they were nicknamed "slasher" flicks. Bugliosi missed his true calling, by NOT continuing on the entertainment band wagon. Of course, I missed it also.
Chris: YOU made me recall: Paul Watkins (Bugliosi's right hand HS man) also mentioned "liberal" whites verses other whites. In "MANSON" the narrator mentions "HIS revolution" meaning Charlie's - which had sprinkeles of the HS ingredient, BUT the judicial "brand" of HS was strickly Bugliosi's - including "Whitie FEAR the Blacks"
Charlie was actually encouraging the down-trodden Blacks to RISE-up and be counted. In all these years since the historic EVENT, I've NEVER had one Black person say anything negative to ME about Charles Manson. BUR they sure had negative comments for the "establishment."
MAX: I'm probably YOUR biggest fan. Before I was 21, I began writing a story of the 12 people who REALLY control America. I didn't SEE the Kennedy assassination as a conspiracy, BUT a neccessity for the preservation of these United States. AND I was NOT alone in MY deductive reasoning.
VIETNAM - CIA ? You have to understand the times, they were a changing - NOT unlike the world situation NOW. It is OUT of CONTROL, or is IT ? That is the question.
Because it took something like MANSON and Helter Skelter to put the brakes on the 1960's revolution and the insane Vietnam WAR - I can only imagine that "something" just as crazy, is going to erupt anytime soon.
I read more that it can be caused by wind and maybe thats it...
ReplyDeletebut...
in my one trip there we went through a wind storm. It was very brief, but it was so bad we couldn't see out of the window, and had to come to a full stop. while this was going on we had someone in the back of the truck filming the trip out of the area, and he never got out.
so if the wind that day I was there- blowing that hard- was not enough to unsettle a 150 pound man, how hard would it have to blow to move a 700 pound rock a hundred feet or so in a zig-zag pattern???
what a really strange place lol
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ReplyDeleteSt, that’s funny because I read something about Death Valley yesterday too that I wasn’t aware of. When I was a teen I read the entire series of books by Carlos Castaneda. Fascinating shit for a young guy who liked to dabble in hallucinogens a bit.
ReplyDeleteFrom Castaneda’s Wikipedia page:
After Castaneda stepped away from public view in 1973, he bought a large house in Los Angeles which he shared with some of his female companions. The women broke off relationships with friends and family when they joined Castaneda's group. They also refused to be photographed and took new names: Regina Thal became Florinda Donner-Grau, Maryann Simko became Taisha Abelar and Kathleen Pohlman became Carol Tiggs. Another disciple, Patricia Partin, was renamed Blue Scout by Castaneda.
Shortly after Castaneda died in April 1998, his companions Donner-Grau, Abelar and Patricia Partin disappeared. Amalia Marquez (also known as Talia Bey) and Tensegrity instructor Kylie Lundahl had their phones disconnected and also disappeared. Weeks later, Partin’s red Ford Escort was found abandoned in Death Valley.
Because the women in question had cut all ties with family and friends, it was some time before people noticed they were missing. There has been no official investigation into the disappearances of Donner-Grau, Simko and Lundahl. Luis Marquez, the brother of Talia Bey, went to police in 1999 over his sister's disappearance, but was unable to convince them that it merited investigation.
In 2006, Partin's sun-bleached skeleton was discovered by a pair of hikers in Death Valley's Panamint Dunes area and was identified by DNA testing. The investigating authorities ruled Partin's death as undetermined.
By my calculations that’s not far from the Family’s former stomping grounds. I’m not in any way saying there’s a connection. There isn’t. It just caught my attention.
Strange stuff indeed...
ReplyDeleteST. - you do realize YOUR father being "cop" says more about YOU than ALL your combined previous writings reveal.
ReplyDeleteAND that makes ME think that "Helter Skelter" says more about Vincent Bugliosi than HE ever otherwise revealed about himself.
"Helter Skelter" was supposed to be the MOTIVE for the "Manson Murders" which Bugliosi claimed was NOT even necessary to mention at trial. So the ONE element that was NOT necessary to PROVE - becomes the specific TITLE of HIS book about the CASE. What am I missing here ?
Mr. H, maybe Curt Gentry himself fabricated the Helter Skelter motive...
ReplyDeleteMHN, you should check out the Leslie interview from 1969 over on Cielodrive. It has some great descriptions of the life they expected to live once they were underground. Them being tiny compared to the giant pearls. It's the interview Part submitted to the TLB judge to convince him Leslie was unfit to dismiss Part as her attorney as she was so crazy it was almost science fiction. The audio is fascinating.
ReplyDeleteMr Hendrickson, I'd be interested to read your thoughts on why the revolution didn't happen.
I am quite sure that what my dad did for a living tells you nothing about what kind of person he was or I am...
ReplyDeletequite sure.
That's why I deleted that comment. This is not the post or blog to talk about cops, my family, or politics. At least not for me. sorry- I went there, so it was my fault- but I took it down because none of these are topics I want to argue about with anyone
:)
Glad you're back, Saint!
ReplyDeleteThanks Suze :)
DeleteMatt:
ReplyDeleteI've wondered about that also. AND the 1974 copyright declares BOTH Curt Gentry and Vincent Bugliosi as JOINT authors.
AND I'm sure Bugliosi had already presented the Helter Skelter motive in court.
It's also possible that "MANSON" which Bugliosi saw in 1972 had an effect on HIS writing the book Helter Skelter. Especially, where HE speaks of the Black and White RACE WAR.
I don't know if it's true or not Robert, but someone mentioned on here sometime fairly recently that Gentry was in the courtroom.
ReplyDeletechristopher butche - I've been listening to it, it's fascinating stuff, and thanks of course to cielodrive for making so much good stuff accessible.
ReplyDeleteAmazing really. It does broadly chime with Bugliosi. And I was interested she said someone on the Cielo Drive murder squad had told her the killings were messy and lasted around 20 minutes. That's fast work.
Also 'And “Pig” was the white — the white businessman who hated his neighbor, couldn’t look at his neighbor with love, who was going to get it in the end.'
His literal neighbor, do we think, or his abstract neighbor? A specific incident, or a general sense that business is the opposite of loving your neighbour?
ST. I am sorry that you didn't take MY "cop" comment in a positive way.
ReplyDeleteIn our society there are ONLY "cops" and "law breakers." So IF we exclude "cops" from the conversation, it's like singing in the shower.
Grimreaper: YOU always seem to have a valid POINT. IF you would share some of what it's like to FEEL black and especially at the time in the 1960's, I and I'm sure others would greatly appreciate some of YOUR knowledge.
WE are all gathered HERE to learn about that which WE don't fully understand. Otherwise, it's ALL just about "What the Fuck Chuck" ?
Matt, Gentry is a player in his own book. From memory he supplies information he overheard from the family to the authorities, possibly about Hawthorne shootout or a planned jailbreak or some such, but something late in the day 1971 or 1972. Check out the index to Helter Skelter.
ReplyDeleteChris & Matt: I can't find anything about Gentry in an OLD copy of HS.
ReplyDeleteSeems IF he did have ANY contact with the Family or Courtroom it would be mentioned in HS. I mean, the CO-author Bugliosi is mentioned EVERYWHERE, why NOT mention Gentry ?
Gentry died last year, so with BOTH authors dead, WHO got the HS copyright ?
AND who assumes liability ?
MORE interesting - Absolutely NO body is NOW left alive to dispute the LEAGAL theory that "Helter Skelter" was a Prosecutor's manipulation of witnesses to GET one Charles Manson.
IF Joan Huntington is still alive, maybe SHE could finally tell the TRUTH about Mr. Bugliosi. OR if any of the LAPD officers who REUSED to 'conspire'
with the Prosecutor are still alive and want to go to Heaven, maybe THEY will come forward.
Mr Hendrickson, on your behalf on a Friday evening after several beers I have delved into Helter Skelter page by page to find you: epilogue a shared madness: in late july of 1971 my co-author learned from a family member in the San Francisco Bay Area that the family was planning to break out manson sometime within the next month. Though he was not told how they would accomplish this he was given some additional details: the family was stockpiling arms and ammunition; they had secretly rented a house in South Los Angeles and were hiding an escaped convict there; and with manson's escape "helter skelter will really start; the revolution will be on."
ReplyDeleteBugliosi then says he passed info on to LAPD and mentions manson had called Kenneth Como during his hinman-shea trial. Mr Hendrickson probably not mentioned in index as Gentry not referred to by name.
MHN said...
ReplyDelete"My chief problem with the idea of Helter Skelter as the explicit motive for the killings is this: only idiots could've imagined it would've worked. Manson wasn't an idiot"
I disagree that only idiots could've imagined it would've worked . Firstly though, to clear up, HS was never presented as the explicit or only motive by the prosecution. It was one of the motives. I think there were a number of things in the wind at the time, that went into those murders, igniting HS being one of them. It seems to have been the classic killing of several birds with one stone.
When you genuinely believe something, even if no one else can see it or everyone else doubts it, you believe it. It doesn't make one an idiot. I bet people thought Ghandi was an idiot back in India in the 40s. It's often when something fails that we tend to look back and say 'that was so stupid ! How could anyone have gone along with that?' The Vietnam war looks like that in retrospect. But it seemed to someone like a good idea at the time.
MHN said...
"anyone who believed that TLB might see Bobby cleared of Hinman's murder must have been an idiot on some level also"
That was a daft idea for a number of reasons. I gave the benefit of the doubt on it for a while but I don't believe it was a sole motive either.
I was surprised when I read that Schreck had moved away from it though. But every motive presented has things that seem to support it and things that pull that support platform away.
MHN said...
"I mean, these guys were too cryptic. Pig? Arise? Healter Skelter? No mention of whites at all?"
It reminds me of the phone conversations my kids would have with various aunts and grandparents when they were 2,3& 4. When asked what they had been up to, they'd relay all this info, complete with names and references to characters found in games, films, TV programmes etc, stuff that the asker couldn't possibly know. I used to explain to them that they needed to give a little something of an explanation to whoever they were talking to so that the person had some kind of idea what they were talking about.
But I notice a lot of people do that. It doesn't occur to them that people may not be into what they're into or may not be familiar with the terms they might use or may not use the technology that they happen to be acquainted with so they go on in their own sweet way, meanwhile, they rarely note, let alone comprehend, the blank stares. You could argue that the family were so far up their own backsides and so far away from where anyone else was at in the straight society that they'd rejected that no one stopped to consider giving a message that was clear enough to speak to whoever read it.
That's improvisation for you. It either hits big and dramatically {"I am the Devil and I'm here to do the Devil's business !"} or it misses big and everyone spends the rest of their lives in jail.
christopher butche said...
ReplyDelete"She says it twice, not so much black against white, but white versus white (initially). So the racist angle may be over-played"
The racist angle is in the conclusion and aftermath.
christopher butche said...
"Leslie gave the impression in the 1969 interview that "general craziness" was the order of the day for kick-starting the revolution
MHN said...
"It's really no less crazy than Helter Skelter, but it's more believable"
Quite a lot seems to have been involved in HS. All of the things mentioned were part and parcel of the overall picture.
MHN said...
"Last night I was reading Restless Souls, and am struck again by how almost nobody thought that the TLB killings were revolutionary crimes committed by blacks against whites"
Who was the 'almost' ?
Robert Hendrickson said...
"Charlie was actually encouraging the down-trodden Blacks to RISE-up and be counted"
Not really. And if he was, it was only to the extent that it fitted his purpose. Because as he states in George's book, "if they (black people) was on the top spot, we (white people) probably wouldn't even be here."
Robert Hendrickson said...
"In all these years since the historic EVENT, I've NEVER had one Black person say anything negative to ME about Charles Manson"
To be honest, Charles Manson doesn't particularly loom large in the Black consciousness, either American, British, West Indian or African, although ironically, it was in Nigeria that I first read HS. To the extent that he might get a nod in his direction, it'll be because he hit out at the American establishment and had spent time in jail and lived on the outside of the law. But his presence in the larger American story didn't improve things for Black people. Hippies got rousted before and after Charles Manson. Black people got rousted before and after.....well, before and after !
Personally, I've dug him from when I first read "Helter Skelter." As a Christian, there's no such thing to me as the most dangerous or evil man alive. I certainly think he's in the right place and guilty but then, I think that LBJ, Nixon and other 'heroes' will face a side of God that would shock many who think in terms of "God bless America !" and who don't see the other side of the equation.
I look at Charlie Manson the way I look at the rest of us ~ hopelessly human. Flawed to the max but fortunately, with hope.
Robert Hendrickson said...
"BUT they sure had negative comments for the 'establishment'."
Of course. As did the counterculture. Various permutations of 'establishment' all over this planet have a lot to answer for. But that's only one side of the equation. It's not as black and white as it is sometimes made out to be {no pun intended !}.