William met Manson on September 23, 2006. “I can remember waiting, looking around the room, at the microwave, and then the back door popped open and in he walked with his cane. He held up his hands like Jesus Christ and stuck his tongue out, then he gave me a nice, firm Indian handshake; we hugged, sat down, and just started talking.”
William couldn’t recall the specifics ofthat initial conversation, only that it was “light-hearted, nothing too serious.” It was an introduction of sorts. “I was checking everything out,” William said, “looking at his hands, his hair, the Swastika tattoo.” Manson liked it when he found out William had done two years in a state prison and told him, “Most of the people that I’ve partnered up
with, they may have done a little county jail time, but they never did state jail time like you.” Charlie felt William could understand him better than most of his other outside connections could.
When I asked William about his stint in prison, he was a little reluctant to explain. “You see, most people don’t know that about me,” he frowned. William said he had gotten involved with drugs a long time ago and, well, “shit happens.” When pressed, he explained further, “I’ve been to prison and I’ve been called a bad guy. People have told me, ‘You’re not going to make it.’“ William cited the strength of his family’s support as the reason he was able to escape the sort of situations that land a man on death row. “It could be any of us really; there are people who just get drunk, get in a fight, take someone to the back of the bar and beat them to death.” William insisted a sheer lapse in judgment could earn a life sentence in California “real quick,” at a facility where you’d be stripped naked, abused, and deprived of your possessions. “That was so long ago,” William sighed. He took a moment to reflect before he continued, “It might sound pretty cliche, but I’m pretty much a fine, upstanding citizen these days. I mean I don’t even eat meat.”
I asked William to explain more about his connection to Satanism, and he jumped at the chance to set the record straight. “Satanism isn’t about devil worship and all of that; it is very much aligned with environmental themes.” It angers him to think that some people who call themselves Satanists are not simultaneously vegetarian. William was not only determined to align Satanism with positive and loving values, but he also had criticism for Christianity and other theisms that have misconstrued the essence of Satanism through time. Christianity, William
confirmed, is the exact opposite of Satanism, but not in the way most people think. William believes that, while Satanism is “life loving” and “earth loving,” Christianity is about “giving people domain over the Earth, and telling people, ‘Oh, there is nothing to worry about because God has a plan.’“ He told me that Earth isn’t happy under people’s negative influence, that it will go on without us, that, regrettably, the planet would be a better place without humans around. I asked William what kind of being he believed the devil to be. He laughed, “If the devil lived on Earth, I think he’d be living just like I am. I think he’d be wanting to eat good food, I think he’d be wanting to fuck cute girls; he and I would really get along. He’d have good taste in art, in music.”
William explained that, when he eventually began listening to Charlie’s ideas, he realized that a lot of his philosophy aligns with Satanism almost perfectly. Though William had been a practicing Satanist for years, he says Charlie really kicked his lifestyle into gear. “The more I became aware of myself, and the more I listened to Charlie, it just kind ofhit me: I didn’t really care about animals and I didn’t really care about the Earth. I mean, I thought I did, but I didn’t.” At the time, William was eating meat and subconsciously craving a reason to realize his beliefs to their full extent. “I’d had these feelings all along; I just really had to be exposed to them in someone else.”
“We play a lot of chess,” William said ofhis visits with Charlie. “Charlie likes playing chess. He’s whupped me a few times; I’ve whupped him back. We talk about girls. I use to ask him about the girls on the ranch, how they had sex, and which one he liked best. I always thought Leslie Van Houten was kind of cute. He’d tell me, ‘Oh, she was a little bit wild.’“ William has a Salvator
Asian, an extraordinarily huge species of lizard. Charlie always checks up on the reptile and routinely encourages William to rent a helicopter and fly his pet out into the wild where, Manson says, it belongs.
William’s descriptions of the Charles Manson he visits paint a picture of someone that’s part man, part mystic. Most times, they will engage in commonplace conversations about things like jail and women, while they distract themselves with games everyone knows how to play, such as chess. Sometimes, though, Charlie will act as though he’s in on information no one else knows. Once, as William was getting ready to leave, Charlie nudged him and said, “You know, we could just walk right out of here.” William protested that the point of jail was to ensure prisoners stayed put, and there was no way the guards would just let Charlie free. “Sure they will,” Charlie smiled. “Nobody will stop us; let’s go.” William continued to deny the opportunity and Charlie just laughed.
William drew an interesting distinction: “The day Charlie went in, time kind of stopped. When I did my time and got out, it felt like two years was nothing. You don’t progress; there’s no conversation. It’s the same thing all day long. With Charlie though, he has always had interaction. There have always been people bringing him the news. They are intelligent people; he picks them. Charlie is a good judge of character because he knows who is going to get stuff done, who is going to be able to help. He’s been burnt a million times, so he knows whom to trust, and in that respect, I think he’s been around, and exposed to a lot of intelligent, and influential people in and of themselves. He made it really clear that he does favors for other people. He says that people come to him; he doesn’t go to them.”
William doesn’t take notes from his visits with Charlie and he records only a few of their phone calls. Theirs is an organic relationship that exists outside of artificial means of documentation.
William told me it was hard to endure Charlie’s presence and a hangover at the same time. During his talks with William, Manson would rave about the Spanish Captain, the Pope, and his five snakes. “He’d get into these rants, and, keep in mind, it would be nine or ten in the morning. I’d have been drinking until one in the morning the night before, I’d be kind of hurt that day.” When Manson goes off, William is just as speechless as I am. “Once he said to me, ‘You think Richard Ramirez is bad? The Night Stalker? I’m as bad as they come; they don’t make them more vicious or rotten than me.’“
I asked William how Manson regards the high demand for his paintings, his signature, everything he has ever owned or created, right down to the tube of toothpaste sitting on the sink in his prison cell. “He was telling me this today,” William said. “He sent me a painting, and when I told him I’d received it he said, ‘I just want you to know, William, I’m a terrible artist; I’m embarrassed to send this stuff out.’“ William reminded Manson of the masses of people waiting in line to buy his artwork. “Well, that’s just because I’m famous,” Manson retorted. “They just want my signature.” William told me he truly enjoys Charlie’s creations, especially the pentagram necklace he treasures above the other items in his collection. But Manson dismisses his ability to create art out of toiletries as proficiency in mere “hobby craft.” William, however, is adamant that Charlie’s artistic talent, the way he breathes new life into the thread he unravels from his standard-issue
prison clothes, is truly a gift. “The string art pieces he makes are unreal because of the conditions under which they’re made. They are next to impossible to get, because it’s so hard for him to make that stuff.” William told me about a series of ship sculptures Charlie used to make. “These ships, they were something else. I’ve never been able to find one. I’ve only seen them in pictures.” Manson makes dolls and sculpts scorpions, spiders-anything delicate, intricate, and small scale.
William told me he was scheduled next to visit with Tommy Lynn Sells, “The Coast-to-Coast Killer,” convicted of six sexually motivated killings and suspected of dozens more. According to William, “He’s a real rough one, a non-discriminatory ‘man, women, and child killer,’ the kind of madman who would walk into a house, get everyone together, and start killing them.” Sells was a drifter who rode trains and stole cars as he traveled across the entire United States. He claims he committed his first murder at age sixteen, while employed as a ride operator for a traveling carnival. Sells insists he killed “at least” seventy people between the years of 1985 and 1999. He accomplished one of his most horrific attacks in the fall of 1987, when he murdered an entire family in rural Illinois. Sells shot the husband in the head and left him to die in a field. He then made his way into the family’s mobile home, where he beat the man’s pregnant wife and three-year-old son to death with a baseball bat. The fetus of a baby girl was pulled from her mother’s womb sometime during or after the beating. Authorities revealed that the mother had been raped with the same baseball bat used to murder her family. Sells is currently on death row in Texas.
As I talked to William, I was overcome with ethical questions
about his relationships. I wanted to know how he got past the reality of what his friends had done, enough to carry on normal conversations. Because looking past a person’s irrational anger, hatred, and brutality is something with which I routinely struggle in my work every day. Some of the people I work with are, for the most part, people that society sees as dirt bags. And if it weren’t my
job
to look past my patients’ shortcomings, I might view them in the same, negative light. Some patients-pedophiles, sex offenders, psychopaths-have hurt others so horrifically that it’s difficult for me to overcome my initial impressions of them as people, enough to put myself in a position to help. You truly have to “get past” what disturbs you, suspend judgment, and work with the presenting problem. Conquering the tendency, the temptation to dismiss a person based on his or her behavior is an individual process, so I asked William how he was able to generate empathy for the inmates he has befriended. How, I wanted to know, did he show compassion to someone who has none?
William said that question was tough and the answer uncertain. He recognized the connection between abuse endured as a child and violent crime committed as an adult, but he couldn’t understand why the two conditions are directly and not inversely related. “I know Sells was molested when he was younger. It doesn’t make sense: If you were abused, how could you go and murder children?” I asked if he’d ever confronted Sells about the issue. “I’m going to ask,” William said, then hesitated. “I’ve got to be careful ‘cause he gets angry and starts bashing his head into the glass if you piss him off.” William told
we all are, because serial killers commit the kind ofviolent crimes we all are, because serial killers commit the kind ofviolent crimes that happen everywhere, everyday. “If I saw someone beating a dog, I’d get up and try to put a stop to it. But sometimes things happen, and I just accept them, because there is nothing I can do about it. Right now wars are happening, buildings are being blown up, whole families are being destroyed. It’s just the way it is. People have always killed each other.”
By the end of our conversation, William had explained to me that, ultimately, his interest in dark art stems from his own stint in prison. “I’d been in prison,” he shrugged, “so I had an interest in serial killers and crime and collecting was just a natural thing for me to get into.” If there was an incident that incited his hobby, William said, it would have to be the first time he saw Ramirez’s work, twelve color illustrations hanging side by side in an art gallery. “I just wanted one of those,” he told me. “I wanted it so bad.” William immediately went on the Internet to find more art by famous inmates and, when he discovered a wealth of beautiful hobby crafts pouring out of the state prison system, he said to himself, “I want to collect these.”
“Very few people want these items, but the people who do will pay for them.” William is part of a small circle of collectors, people few and far between, from vastly different backgrounds: former FBI agents, musicians, attorneys, and paralegals. The group convenes on Murderauction.com, the largest murder memorabilia auction site in the world, one William designates as “the melting pot where everyone meets.” In addition to the feeling of community it contributes to his life, William’s collecting is something he uses to “keep out of trouble.” He spends a great deal of time writing and receiving letters, and because of his friends’
rather unpredictable personalities each day brings something new and unusual. “When I go to the P.O box, I never know what’s going to be in there. It’s really exciting going to get the mail every day.”
William reinforced the mostly benevolent nature of his friendships with those behind bars. “I know it sounds crazy, but I have best friends in prison all over the USA. And I know some of those I consider my friends might, if given the chance, rob, rape, or kill me. But they are in a controlled setting, one in which they couldn’t kill me, even if they wanted to.” Despite this disturbing reality, William seems to hold a high degree of importance in the lives of many of his incarcerated friends. Some who have been executed sent William their personal effects. He has been named next-of-kin on the lists of those still waiting on death row. William stressed what a huge responsibility it is to handle an inmate’s final arrangements. “It ain’t cheap, either,” he grimaced. “In Texas, it costs eighteen hundred dollars to pick up a cremated body.”
Though he doubts that many of his prison friends would remain friendly on the outside, William is unwavering in his belief that Charlie would remain loyal under any set of circumstances. “If Charlie got out today, I would have him over at my mother’s for dinner. I wouldn’t worry about him ordering people to kill me, or any such nonsense. If I had a baby, I would want Charlie to see him or her, to see the love and happiness I would have found. I would want him to rejoice in that happiness with me.”