The Manson family vs. the West family

Thurston Moore on Snub TV - "Punk rock is Sharon Tate's dead baby" or somesuch nonsense.

HOUSTON - The Charles Manson follower convicted of attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford is set to be released from a federal prison in Texas later this month after serving more than 30 years behind bars.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was a 26-year-old disciple of the cult murderer Manson when she aimed a semiautomatic .45- caliber pistol at Ford in September 1975 in Sacramento, Calif. Secret Service agents grabbed her and Ford was unhurt.

Fromme, now 60, is scheduled to be released on parole from the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth on Aug. 16, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the court-appointed attorney who represented her at trial.

Fromme, who got a life term, became the first person sentenced under a special federal law covering assaults on U.S. presidents, a statute enacted after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Ford was walking to the California State Capitol from his hotel when Fromme pushed through the crowd, drew the pistol from a holster on her thigh and pointed it at the president as he shook hands with well-wishers. She was restrained by Secret Service agents who wrested the gun away from her and led the president to safety.

Less than two weeks later, another would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, fired at Ford in San Francisco but missed.

It was unclear why Fromme was at Carswell, a facility that specializes in providing medical and mental health services to female offenders. A spokeswoman for the bureau of prisons did not immediately return a phone call Wednesday seeking comment.

"I knew some day she would be released," said John Virga, the Sacramento attorney who handled her trial.

Fromme served time in at least two other facilities before Carswell.

She escaped from a female prison in Alderson, W.Va., on Dec. 23, 1987, and was recaptured about two miles away on Christmas Day after a massive search. She was sentenced to an additional 15 months in prison for the escape.

Fromme had said she escaped from prison to be closer to Manson.

Yeesh.

i saw a manson interview in the 90s where he was shown some recent footage of the imprisoned manson family girls and he said, 'ew, they got old' and then he laughed horribly.

Maybe Waters has a touch of ESP. This week, in excerpts from an upcoming book, he calls for parole for another "Manson girl." As he writes in the first of several dispatches for Huffington Post: "I have a really good friend who was convicted of killing two innocent people when she was nineteen years old on a horrible night of 1969 cult madness. Her name is Leslie Van Houten and I think you would like her as much as I do. She was one of those notorious "Manson girls" who shaved their heads, carved X's in their foreheads and laughed, joked, and sang their way through the courthouse straight to death row without the slightest trace of remorse forty years ago. Leslie is hardly a "Manson girl" today. Sixty years old, she looks back from prison on her involvement in the La Bianca murders (the night after the Tate massacre) in utter horror, shame, and guilt and takes full responsibility for her part in the crimes. I think it's time to parole her."

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/books/blog/2009/08/lynette_squeaky_fromme_of_mans.html

John Waters has a new book coming out?!

yeah he was on NPR about this last night. I expected to hate what he said, because the whole romanticizing-dangerous-pop-icons thing is fine as far as it goes but I thought "you know, it's one thing to think she looks cool on a t-shirt [nb this is a pretty arguable point], but another to argue for her parole." but then I heard what he had to say and it wasn't icon-worship at all - it was sober, fair reasoning about whether justice and/or the public good is served by keeping Van Houten in prison.

they should release susan atikins; what she did was awful, but she has brain cancer and doesn't even know what's going on. it can't be cheap to have her in prison.

The thing is, the families of the victims get distressed when people show too much sympathy for these monsters, these people get very much attention. I cannot say I blame the families.

I can say I blame morons like you who use the word "monster" so freely.

http://www.celebagents.co.uk/images/pics/erichall1.jpg

u s steel, yesterday

Whatever happened to and who cares etc

FREE AT LAST!
http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2009/08/05/image5217504x.jpg

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-squeaky-fromme15-2009aug15,0,7496498.story

http://odio.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/charles-manson-family-members.jpg

Wish it had stayed like this moment forever.

Everyone looks so healthy!

Everyone looks so creepy! Although I like Squeaky's Albanian look.

"The cast of Jesus Christ Superstar relaxes after turning in their 100th performance."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm9cjrwBIdM

Wonder what Linda Kasabian thinks of the band named after her. I see her really digging their psychadelic rock vibes but I fear she may accuse them of ripping off the Stone Roses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-fJGxTfeqI

castingtherunes (8 hours ago) Show Hide 0 Marked as spam Reply

She's hott and she's a little charmer. I think I have a new girlfriend. Squeaky Fromme.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/no-compassionate-release-for-manson-follower/?hp

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26388459-401,00.html

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/catalinamack/mansonson.jpg

“He sends me weird stuff and always signs it with his swastika,” Mr Roberts said.

ugh, daaaaaaaad

Despite his adoptive father telling him “nothing good” would come of discovering who his real parents were, Mr Roberts used a social services agency to locate his mother, Terry.

She confirmed Mr Roberts was adopted and told him his birth name was Lawrence Alexander but would not reveal the last name.

Eventually Terry relented and revealed that Mr Roberts' father was Manson, who she claims raped her in 1967 after she had succumbed to his manic charisma.

"She even said, 'You look just like him', Mr Roberts said recalling the shocking revelation.

Oh man that would be the worst thing to hear right after that! "You got made when I was raped by CHarles Manson...and you look just like him, honey." ;_;

yeah it sucks too that if i walked by that guy on the street i would think "hey lol that guy looks like charles manson." he must get that a lot.

After all the "peaceful dude" talk, this

"If I did talk to Charlie on the phone, I would say, 'I truly understand what it's like to be you, more than anyone could ever imagine on so many levels,'” Mr Roberts said.

struck me as a little weird.

dude's secretly thrilled to have an excuse for past and future drama

The man who married Susan Atkins. (fascinating article. worth checking out)

Charles Manson had a cellphone? California prisons fight inmate cellphone proliferation

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prison-cellphones-20101203,0,1731644.story

Who is (was?) the West Family? Was this some popular TV show circa 2002?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_West

Yeah but not like you mean

http://ringtonetrue.com/downloadmp3ringtone/Beatles/Helter_Skelter.html

Okay--I do remember that story after all.

imagne charlie with a nextel chirp

http://www.releasecharlesmansonnow.blogspot.com/

Notorious killer Charles Manson was denied parole today after a California parole board noted that he recently bragged to a prison psychologist, "I am a very dangerous man."

http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/ap_charles_manson_dm_120405_wg.jpg

have felt for ages that the continued imprisonment of manson is a v weird & wrong thing

why would he want to be free? prison is his home.

Why is it weird and wrong for Charlie to be locked up?

he probly wouldn't kill anybody now, throw the dice i say

from what i can tell, he hasn't been a real threat to anyone for ages. he's just a crazy old man, imprisoned more than anything (it seems to me) for the general "sins" of the 1960s, fear of messianic hippie terror. should have been put in a proper mental hospital ages ago. has anyone ever served more hard time without having actually/directly killed anyone, or committed treason?

no one's ever served time for committing treason

really? i don't mean just in the US.

oh I dunno about other countries

but if yr including other countries then there have without question people who were held for longer for less

he is the kind of patient who, on a regular ward, will fuck up the weaker patients in a hurry - I have no doubt whatsoever of that. putting a guy like this on a ward with a bunch of dudes who don't know which way is up is a baaaaaaad idea.

John Gotti got life without parole
pretty sure there are a number of people who got the death penalty for being involved in a murder without actually committing it
Louisiana has people on death row for sexual assault on children IIRC

manson apologists are the world's most disgusting savages iirc.

He should turn his tattoo into the Microsoft Windows logo just to update his look a bit imo.

imprisoned more than anything (it seems to me) for the general "sins" of the 1960s, fear of messianic hippie terror

^^^^ hard truths

but if yr including other countries then there have without question people who were held for longer for less

generally for vague "crimes against the state", though, right? for belonging to the wrong party or publishing a questionable pamphlet or w/e.

where crimes of violence are concerned (and that's all the tate/labianca murders really were), manson seems to stand alone in terms of time served and general public horror accrued for murders one didn't even commit firsthand.

gotti, if we're honest about it, is in prison for running a vast criminal empire for years. includes many, many crimes, not just the fact that he ordered murders. and sexual assault of children seems on par w murder to me, so no surprise there.

Manson is imprisoned more than anything because he convinced a bunch of impressionable people to commit what, five murders?

Nine murders, iirc. Possibly more.

Why should the law make a distinction between murders committed first-hand and murders committed to order? It's pretty common for people to hire hitmen to off their spouses. They're quite rightly treated the same as they would be had they done it themselves.

Manson is imprisoned more than anything because he convinced a bunch of impressionable people to commit what, five murders?

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Wednesday, April 11, 2012 3:46 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there were seven murders, so far as i know know. that's a terrible crime, no argument. otoh, he was and still is very clearly insane. the fact that he's still seen as some hitler-level supermonster is bizarre to me.

Tate, Senring, Parent, Folger, Frykowsky, and the LoBiancos make seven. I think those are the only ones he was ever tried for.

first-hand vs. murder to order is a fair question. i'm not saying that charlie should have gotten off easier than his gang. he shouldn't. but i've always seen him primarily as an obvious case of mental illness, not of criminality a la gotti. and there's something weird to me about the holy dread in which he's held.

generally for vague "crimes against the state", though, right? for belonging to the wrong party or publishing a questionable pamphlet or w/e.

nah other countries (say, Iran) have much MUCH stiffer penalties for various crimes, and the burden of proof is way lower.

Manson's in jail for conspiracy to commit murder (seven murders iirc)

tbh, at present, i'm not sure how much of the Hitler-level-supermonster stuff is coming from the dudes who want to see him punished eternally and how much is coming from the ones who find him cool / fascinating.

if there were a ward he could be placed on where both he & his fellow patients would be safe, they'd probably do it. 77-year-old men who grew up in homes & prisons & are sociopaths are still quite capable of murdering the 78-year-old man who shares a room with them, and of doing so over some really minor shit. Jail is the right place for him. It is sad that jail is the right place for him, you wish there were something else to be done. But there isn't, I don't think.

Is he more insane than your headline-making serial killers? Seems pretty academic anyway - he'd be kept in solitary confinement in prison or in a facility.

yeah, good point. i was talking primarily about the US, originally, but threw in "treason" to account for all the reasons that people might receive more severe sentences. got off course trying to defend the claim. stupid to forget just how draconian "criminal justice" systems can be.

anyway, within the US, though manson did orchestrate a conspiracy to murder, his obvious mental illness (and attendant reduced moral capacity) and the fact that he didn't directly participate (and thus, given reduced capacity, can be claimed not have fully understood the consequences of his commands) seem to make him much less a "monster" than a great many other individuals who attract less condemnatory horror and dread. mob bosses like gotti, for instance. like, there's something special about the "evil" we attach to uncle charlie.

can be claimed not have fully understood the consequences of his commands)

uh...

He's seen as a monster because he convinced people to commit evil acts of their own volition.
Gotti paid people to kill. Which makes him no less monstrous, but it's an act that the average person can understand.

If Jim Jones or David Koresh had survived, they'd be seen as monsters too.

it may be true that prison is the only place suited to him, i dunno.

If Jim Jones or David Koresh had survived, they'd be seen as monsters too.

jones, yes. the body count was staggering. koresh, i'm not so sure about. suspect he'd be half a monster, half a folk hero. which may describe manson, too...

he was and still is very clearly insane

Agreed.

Some forms of insanity are more dangerous to society than others and Charlie's fantasy life is almost certainly capable of emerging in nasty ways if he were allowed free access to society. Better for him and for the rest of us to have him in a very closely controlled setting. Being old doesn't make him impotent to do harm to others.

uh...

yeah, i know, but from everything i've seen and read, he's been completely nuts since well before the murders. he's smart, articulate, occasionally quite lucid, but obviously out to lunch. the way i see things, that makes him less a criminal than a person with a disease. the fact that other people chose to do his bidding isn't something i really see as his fault, even if he intentionally "seduced" them or w/e. i'm big on the insanity defense.

aimless otm

and thus, given reduced capacity, can be claimed not have fully understood the consequences of his commands)

"Go to Terry Melcher's old house and kill everyone there" is pretty fucking clear, dude.

And he helped tie up both of the LoBiancas, so he certainly "participated" to the extent of choosing the victims, entering the house, incapacitating them, robbing them and ordering their deaths.

Seriously, what is your deal?

I mean I know seeing-all-the-angles is kinda your schtick, but do you really want to play Captain Save-A-Manson?

contie, what do you think should happen to sociopaths who are murderers?

aerosmith otm.

prison's not ideal, but he's not just a kindly old man who did a bad thing once a long time ago. it's not like he's magically cured of all the shit in his head after sitting alone in a cell for 5 decades. He knows how to live within the prison system but that doesn't mean he can function out in the world. I'm no stan for prison, but there's some situations where it's the safest place, not just for us but for him.

I mean, how fucked up would it be to get out of prison now after 50 years. A week out in the world would probably send him off the deep end.

Manson does not appear to have not understood that murder was wrong - one of the murders was about money and attempted to cover up the crimes with political sloganeering, etc..

I don't doubt that he's insane - but so are pretty much all serial and mass killers. That doesn't mean they meet the legal standards for not being responsible for their own actions.

i don't have any strong desire to punish mentally ill people for the things they do, even when those things are awful. mostly, i think they should get help, and that they should be treated in such a way as to reduce the likelihood that they'll harm anyone else. in some cases, this may mean long-term segregation from the rest of society. but manson's essentially spent his entire life in solitary confinement. it seems strange to me, though it's obviously for his safety as much as anything else.

with all of the above in mind, i do think that the feelings of victim's families are important in cases like this, and on that level, i sympathize with the desire to simply lock certain criminals up for life.

nolo contenderize

Is he more insane than your headline-making serial killers? Seems pretty academic anyway - he'd be kept in solitary confinement in prison or in a facility.

there's no such thing as solitary in hopitals, it's against the law. in California a doctor has to renew the order for seclusion every two hours. this is a good law, btw, it means I can't keep you locked in a room because it's inconvenient for my nursing staff to deal with you. but it's why a criminally insane person belongs in a prison, where the rules are different.

note that in my years of absence from the game I've elevated myself from floor staff to charge nurse, suck it haters

congrats placenta

http://neil-paton.tripod.com/abb0008.jpg

Aero, I've showered Mr. Manson and Mr. Koresh, passed all of the ice, collected all of the trays, and gotten sexually harassed by the guy in 7C, can I go to lunch now?

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4u82nj0cS1qb2ssvo1_500.jpg

clem grogan was convicted of murder and released on parole in '85

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6Z_JEL2HOo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaAcnSnI-fI

this edit of this response succeeds in scaring the shit out of me every time. the longer edit is also scary but I feel like there's a biblical callback in "nobody" though I can't find the biblical source so it could be a pop-culture thing like an exorcism movie. either way this has always scared the hell out of me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2oZWpqtNi4

manson needs to be let out and given his own talk show, this is for the good of society

ATP curated by Charles Manson

'do something witchhousey'

I feel like there's a biblical callback in "nobody"

are you sure you aren't thinking of Homer

maybe but I think in some 70s exorcism thing, maybe in the Exorcist itself, a demon when interrogated responds "I'm no-one"

Homer's a pretty glaring weak spot for me, I read it in English a loooong time ago & did like the first 200 lines in Gk in lol college but I'm less familiar w/the important stuff in it than I oughta be

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!"

-Emily Dickinson's

He kind of looks like George Carlin in that short clip, when he's mugging.

there's no such thing as solitary in hopitals, it's against the law. in California a doctor has to renew the order for seclusion every two hours. this is a good law, btw, it means I can't keep you locked in a room because it's inconvenient for my nursing staff to deal with you. but it's why a criminally insane person belongs in a prison, where the rules are different.

Do you have anything similar to Broadmoor in the US? It's a hospital run with the same kind of security as a prison? The patients aren't in solitary confinement but there are more restrictions and lots of the staff are former prison officers?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadmoor_Hospital

Arkham Asylum. Tho' the security is pretty lax iirc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I0v2bVX8j4

finally getting around to reading Helter Skelter

I read that when I was like 13 years old and it scared the living bejeebus out of me. I slept with the lights on for a week.

manson family vs. danson family

http://www.bittenandbound.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Ted-Danson-and-Mary-Steenburgen-with-their-blended-family.jpg

vs. the Hanson family.

http://www.hansonplace.blogger.com.br/00248.jpg

Phil, I also read that way too young

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1Fxoub89XFM/SSOCnRQJfHI/AAAAAAAAAEc/SpuBHquVOw4/s320/sanders.jpg

Yeah, I think I read H/S when I was 12 or 13

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown has about a month to decide whether to release a former follower of notorious killer Charles Manson from prison.

Bruce Davis, 70, has been behind bars since 1970, convicted with Manson of the murder of a musician and a stuntman. He was not involved in the Manson family's infamous 1969 slayings of Sharon Tate and four others in a Benedict Canyon home.

Davis is incarcerated at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, where he has a clean record and is active in prison ministries, his lawyer told the parole officials. A prisons panel first granted him parole in 2010, citing his record and his completion of rehabilitation programs.

Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reversed the decision. Davis won a legal challenge to the reversal but lost last year on appeal.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey has urged Brown not to release Davis. In a three-page letter to the governor Jan. 24, she described Davis as Manson's "right-hand man" and said he poses an "unreasonable risk of danger to society."

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1410809.1374971616!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/image-1-1410809.jpg

New Manson book out. Far more information on his early pre-Manson Family life. From the NY Times review:

On the evidence of “Manson,” a lot of the mystical aura surrounding Mr. Manson was less real than imagined by a terrified populace and titillated press corps. But Mr. Guinn doesn’t buy any cultist mumbo-jumbo. The cover of “Manson” pointedly features a photo of its subject not as Crazy Charlie, as he sometimes called himself, but as a smiling, suit-wearing, precocious little crook in his pimply years.

Mr. Guinn’s main thesis is that Charlie Manson was a lifelong social predator: “There was nothing mystical or heroic about Charlie — he was an opportunistic sociopath.” And in 1967, when he walked out of prison at 32 and began trolling for acolytes in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, the culture of national upheaval “made it possible for him to bloom in full, malignant flower.”

Among the sources for Mr. Guinn’s account are Mr. Manson’s sister and his first cousin, whose anonymity he takes care to preserve. He has even found a schoolmate to describe the abusive teacher who treated Charlie harshly in the first grade. By that point, he had already seen his willful teenage mother sent to prison for her role in a robbery (the assault weapon: a ketchup bottle); she had singled out the victim, she said, because he “had too much money for one man.” Were the seeds of the Manson Family’s savage Tate-LaBianca murders sown this early? Mr. Guinn thinks so. His punchy style renders the mother’s first crime as “an impetuous decision that would affect — and cost — lives over the next three-quarters of a century.”

His mother’s first conviction steered her young son toward a string of reform schools and prisons, places that shaped his education. He listened to pimps explain how to control women. He read the brand-new teachings of Scientology. And, in the kind of touch that keeps “Manson” steadily surprising, Mr. Guinn points straight to a link between Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” to Mr. Manson’s methods of persuasion. Among one of Mr. Carnegie’s lesser-known statements: “Everything you or I do springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to be great.” Mr. Manson clearly took that and “Begin in a friendly way” to heart.

manson is an abusive sociopath, which alone is not illegal, but, yeah, if you prove that you can manifest that pathology in a way that ends with innocent people being horribly slaughtered then you should be isolated from society forever. he gets 3 hots and a cot and slavering fanpeople for the rest of his days, plus interviews. if a free man he would probably be waving a cardboard sign under a bridge at this point. as mentioned already, he's managed to make his last name more notorious and ruined than anyone besides genocidal dictators. he def knows how to charm. i hate prisons but would not feel a twinge if he died there.

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/is-charles-manson-getting-married-20131120

Rolling Stone again, long piece on Manson today:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/charles-manson-today-the-final-confessions-of-a-psychopath-20131121

Didn't realize until I came across it in a store last week that Ed Sanders put out a book on Sharon Tate last year.

the best thing that could happen to that narcissist is if everybody stopped paying attention to him

Him and Trump, of course. Re the ending of 2013 piece reposted on Stone, saw recently that the marriage license has expired.

something about the reporter in that rs piece turned me off

As that Rolling Stone article proves, Charlie's not even that interesting to read about. The continuing fascination with him is based on his status as an icon of evil, based on the legend built up by his prosecutor during the trial, not because he says or does stuff worth paying attention to. He touches the reporter on the nose unexpectedly and plays up his rep as a dangerous killer. He eagerly eats a candy bar. He talks wistfully about having sex with many young women almost half a century ago. In other words, he's a lot like any other long time inmate.

yeah exactly

he's not *actually* interesting at all

Still haven't read the RS piece, but as Jeff Guinn frames him in the book pictured above, I think Manson can be very interesting to read about. Trump: when I read the RS subheading, "He's nearly 80 and his Family is smaller, but darkness still surrounds America's most notorious criminal," the darkness part made me think of Trump's concession speech! (There seems to be no end to Trump's family, though.)

I was downtown today with no book and time to kill, so I bought Ed Sanders' Sharon Tate book.

weeeell given that i've read most of what there is to read on manson you could say i find him interesting.

it just bugs me that that that article affords him far too much thrall when so much of him is base, mundane & manipulative.

i liked that guinn approached him in a mundane, ordinary light. he's like a violent resentful PT Barnum who just wants to get over on any and every weak person who crosses paths with him.

Low-grade con man, no argument. I guess what I find so interesting myself--and I think it's there in Guinn's book, at least implicitly--is that his particular con was so perfectly suited to the time and the place that he accidentally found himself thrust into when he was released from prison roundabout 1964.

(Which doesn't explain why people like "Star" gravitate towards him today, although there's a different dynamic there--no less perverse--involving celebrity and such.)

yeah he has popularity working for him now, which he for sure didnt have back then. which i guess is where the interest lies. reeling in wilson & melcher, as well as the girls & tex et al through sheer manipulation

Trump's concession speech!

Freudian slip, wishful thinking, something like that.

thread title takes on a whole new meaning in the kanye/kim era

...or does it?

*steeples fingers, raises one eyebrow*

Is anyone watching the NBC series Aquarius, with David Duchovny, which is about an LAPD detective investigating Manson (and other things) in the months before the murders? It's pretty watchable, though it does try to cover too many bases, I think.

thread title takes on a whole new meaning in the kanye/kim era

lol I assumed this was who it was about before I saw the thread date

have no idea who this other "West" family is

it's pretty grim reading, to say the least

yr a dad Shakey. do not read about the other West family.

Sound advice.

The West family were more Texas Chainsaw Massacre than Manson.

I'm capable of sort of understanding how something like the Manson Family happens - drugs, impressionability, cult mindset, etc.. The West family, I just can't wrap my head around.

I'm reading this Sharon Tate biography, and something that had never occurred to me until tonight: how close I was geographically and on a timeline to the murders. We took a family trip to Disneyland in July of '69 (I was seven). I know we saw a baseball game at Anaheim Stadium, and I'm pretty sure Reggie Jackson (visiting) hit a home run. I checked the game logs, and that would mean the game was either July 19 or 20. The murders were August 9.

http://la.curbed.com/maps/mapping-13-key-locations-in-the-1969-manson-family-murders

Spahn Ranch is about 60 miles from the Disneyland area. I don't know how many days before and after the game we were there, but about an hour away they were planning and preparing for some awful stuff. (I guess I was just too young to hear anything about what happened when we got back to Toronto...I don't recollect knowing anything about the story until I started high school a few years later.)

that's gotta be an eerie feeling...

Big news!

BREAKING: Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten granted parole by California board.

— The Associated Press (@AP) September 6, 2017

Had missed she was granted it last year and Jerry Brown reversed it. Wonder if it'll happen again?

damn

I doubt Jerry's changed his mind

Brown's reversed Bruce Davis's parole four times.

just finished The Life and Times of Charles Manson

def feels pretty definitive
the whole story is just so unreal
the most telling detail for me was the one thing he always returned to, after having taken a course in prison, was How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

^ ding

yeah that made so many aspects of his behaviour click together

About 30 pages into Jeffrey Melnick's Creepy Crawling: Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America's Most Infamous Family. Same idea as Dead Elvis and Unshackled: The Dustbin of Donald Trump: Manson is everywhere.

https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-5wx3mh9/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/237/1931/denied_stamp_180604__66005.1528149761.gif?c=2
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/03/us/leslie-van-houten-manson-family-parole/index.html

"I'm gonna run for president one day and I'll be damned if I give them any ammo against me!"

Are we including the Kardashians?

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten walked out of a California prison Tuesday after serving more than 50 years of a life sentence for her participation in two infamous murders.

Van Houten “was released to parole supervision,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement.

Is she the only one to gain release?

nevermind, I see that Squeaky walked years ago

Missed this...I think she's the first directly responsible for the murders.

interesting article from a few years back about the ongoing rehabilitation of Van Houten, Kremwinkle & Atkins on behalf of a feminist coalition at the Santa Cruz prison project

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/keeping-faith-with-the-manson-women

i carry this info about her rehabilitation alongside the brutality of the LaBianca murders & I don’t really know where I land on it exactly

but i think prison is fucked & people deserve a second chance which also sounds naive of me idk

Not sure how I feel either, other than surprised--I thought the Tate family was vigilant (and convincing) about no one ever getting parole.

yeah - I think Sharon’s sister Debra was even representing on behalf of the LaBiancas. So I dunno.

I’d be interested to read what about this appeal turned things around.

I just finished another Mad Men rewatch last night. Everyone remembers Meredith's great line to Harry about the Manson Brothers, but I'd forgotten Don's follow-up as he pulls in to the office: "Are they coming in?"