We finished our meal and Stanton offered to show me his personal picture archive. I saw shots from his childhood: his family, his grandfather and grandmother. There were pictures of Susan Atkins and Bobby Beausoleil before they knew Manson. At one point, Stanton stumbled across a photo of Marilyn Manson and scowled, grumbling, “This fuckin’ poser extraordinaire, this guy, this clown-I got wise and realized that this guy is selling my identity for millions of dollars.” Stanton lamented what he sees as human beings’ limited capacity to make connections. He told me
people lack more than imagination; they are completely devoid of basic curiosity. “Things were bad when chivalry died and God went with it. Then things got worse when love died and hate did too. There goes romance; good-bye, revolution.”
I asked Stanton about the future, where he believed things were headed, how he thought all of this would play out. “I know what things are leading up to,” he said, “and it’s fuckin’ big, really big.” He told me there is a large satanic undercurrent brewing: a lot of rituals, sacrificial murders, and satanic ceremonies occurring constantly.
Stanton held little back: “There are definitely other people inside the planet. I also believe there’s a governing system to this entire thing, and we really are all some sort of an ant farm. I’ve got dirt that goes all the way through and all the way throughout; it comes right out on the other side and I mean it’s like one steady stream. All of this, all the people involved, everything-it’s one big, grand, orchestrated, fuckin’ satanic ritual, the whole fuckin’ thing, man. That’s why they don’t want me talking to you, or anybody. But, at the same time, they can rely on the fact that everyone thinks I’m about ninety percent crazy.”
I had no idea who “they” could be. I didn’t press for details.
“There’s a helicopter overhead, everywhere I go,” Stanton insisted. “They follow me around. There’s always a helicopter over me - I kid you fucking not.”
Dennis Wilson
The drummer of the Beach Boys was in my band, The Milky Way. He comes from my heart there in Santa Claus and One Horse Open Sleigh. The sleigh is on a butcher man like a red on a suit. We were cutting an album when he changed the words to the songs and stuff, and I told him he shouldn’t do that, but he had an Italian business manager and he had, like, 17 or 13, 14 million dollars he was playing with like that. He wouldn’t pay that, he wouldn’t pay what he owed. He changed. I couldn’t get my money so someone grabbed both his legs and pulled him under the ocean. You remember that? Do you remember how Dennis Wilson died down in the water and somebody had grabbed his legs and he couldn’t come up and he disappeared under the water.
A Bug
Look in the phonebook. You see all them people? All those people have the same person inside of them that you do. There is no they, they and them are we and us. We and us are not at all. We died a thousand years ago. There is only God, and God is not a religion. God is a bug, ‘cause if the bugs don’t survive, we don’t survive, and the bugs are smarter than we are. I discovered that in solitary confinement, living with a cockroach for fifteen years. I found out that guy was ten times more intelligent than I, and he could count the stars, and I couldn’t even begin to think about counting the stars. That’s how smart that bug was. He was a Pharaoh at one time, a scarab, and he was on a ring on the Pharaoh’s finger. The Pharaoh could see in his mind, and he could see in the Pharaoh’s mind, because the Pharaoh was God, and still is God. There is no death, there never was death. Death is love’s breath. If you’re dead, you’re alive. Alive is dead. There is only one, and you’re breathing it, and not only are you breathing it, you’re destroying it. You’re destroying it as fast as you can, because you won’t destroy the people, if you don’t destroy the people you’re going to destroy everything, because people are destroying everything. I don’t think you are really here, I think you’re trying to find it, but I don’t think you found it yet. When you find it you gotta get right here, right now, that’s all there is. Now take a breath, are you breathing? That’s what we’re working for, right there.
The Self
I don’t think it’s normal, it’s normal to have a self. Ifyou don’t have a self then you don’t have any problems, but you become everything around you. In other words, if you’re out in the woods or you’re up in a cabin like that, somewhere like that, and you don’t have no external self programming…like TV or radio or friends, or you know something like that, you just automatically pick up everything. You know where the dogs [are] at all the time. You know where the birds are. Everything becomes a part of you, man. When everything becomes a part of you, you become a part of everything. You really wake up the God that’s inside of you.
Do you know how much we’re brainwashed? I don’t think you do. You know if I put you in cell 51 and I give you a TV for a year, then I take you out of that cell and put you in a cell without a TV…youll have withdrawal symptoms. Television is a narcotic. It’s worse than speed. In other words, you go dangerously in jeopardy of losing your life with withdrawals of TV, and same thing with radio. Back on radio we had these guys who would lay up in their cells for ten, fifteen years, listening to the radio. You take that radio away from them, they get dangerous. They really get dangerous.
More Fear
What makes it real, you know? Kill a thousand people. Still doesn’t mean it’s real. It’s only real in fear. Does fear make it real? And what’s the difference between fear and love, man. How you going to say, well, I love you but I don’t fear you. When you become totally fearless you realize. I see an old man lying in a bed and every time the cops would come in and scare him, so I said, “Old man, what you got to be afraid of them cops for?” He said, “You got to show them fear, boy, or they’ll kill you.” I said, “Well, you don’t have to be afraid. Don’t you believe in Jesus Christ?” He said, “I am Jesus Christ, you stupid fuckin’ juvenile.” He said, “I’m not showing them my fear, I’m showing them their fear.” And I found out that night that’s what’s real. Ifyou don’t show somebody fear, they don’t know how to be afraid. They drive right on over everything you say, man, so you got to show them a little fear. And here’s another one. Because he realizes people ain’t no good and they’ll use it against you. You show them kindness and they’ll take it as weakness. You show them decency and honor and they’ll think they tricked you. They’ll come back and foreclose, take your money, and leave you on the street corner waiting for a bus that doesn’t run there no more.
I’m Safe Here
The safest place on Earth is right where I’m at. I got a prison built around me, man. Got a bunch of dumb people who think that this is their house. They’re working to protect their slave masters. They’re slaves, man. More locked up than we are. So should the associate warden or program administrator who can’t do anything. He can’t not do anything. All he does is come back and get a cup of coffee and a piece of paper and walks around with it all day. So he can take his paycheck back to his wife, who is his warden, she tells him what to do. The whole thing is locked up in mother. It’s not really loving, there’s no one there, just how much is that doggie in the window. You keep the dog in the window, like that’s supposed to be me, that’s my reality; everybody’s pissing on me and everything’s okay. As long as they pee on me it’s all right. I could tell you that a flash of blue light’s gonna come across the sky, and a flash of blue light will come across the sky and you wouldn’t say Charlie said that. You’d say Al Gore said it. You’re afraid of who you’re kowtowing to, and I don’t have enough of your fear. In other words, I need more fear. I need enough fear to bow you down. That’s the only way you’re going to do it. You ain’t going to do it standing up. You’re too proud. The world has a prison body. And I’ve been in the prison body of the world since the ‘40s.
Civilizations
Well, the kind of mind I have is I was making little paper balls and hanging them in my cell from string off of the ceiling. And somebody come by and said you know that’s the exact configuration ofthe galaxy, da, da, da. Whatever I’ve been trying to figure out the Stonehengefor a long time, man, and I tell my mind if in my mind I was there, and I’m a part of this forever, I should know how that was done and I figured out how it was done. There could be no such thing as personality. You’ve got to give that up. All that personal thing. You know, that’s why that Stonehenge, it was put there by everybody. Everybody did that. Everybody at that time. Everybody had a part in that, a place in that. That’s why it was done; it was done by a group effort. It had to be. There’s no way in hell they could have done it any other way. It’s the same thing with the problem that we have with the world today. If it’s not everybody, it will not work. It’s got to be everyone, and if it isn’t everyone one way, it should be everyone the other way, and I feel that the intelligent life forms should probably, all the people that won’t go to work, go somewhere else, another world somewhere, fly them on a rocket ship.
It’s the only way it could have been done. We got a civilization of ego maniacs, you know, those type of individuals didn’t have all that ego, they were more like ants. You know, look at an ant. If we were as powerful as an ant, look at what an ant can pick up. The same thing with a mouse, a little tiny mouse. I was in a cage with a mouse for a long time and that goddamn mouse is tough. I mean he could do things that if I had his strength and power I could tear the door off the fucking cell, you dig? There’s only one thing that matters. The air right now. That’s it. Without that, the rest of it don’t mean a shit. There’s only one way to do it. There’s only one way to do it. And it’s got nothing to do with personalities.
And every son of a bitch has been doing all this shit that they’ve been doing. They have no idea what the devil’s going to be like. None. Ifyou tell them, they’re going to want to take it out on somebody else.
Go down and look at the museums of Mexico and you see a whole different perspective towards the sun God. They was up on the orbit of the sun long before NASA. Those guys weren’t stupid, and you look at some of the stuff they built down there and some of the stones they were just shoveling around like nobody’s business. They’re moving 3200-ton stones without cables or ropes, without wheels, you know, and it was, like, that was a pretty strong-minded people. See these people that are stuck in this time mode, that’s going back and forwards with hypothesis of who built the Stonehenge. I told them I built it, and they said, “How couldyou?”I said, “I used my dog, T-Rex. He carried the stones around for me. Because I had the brain over his just like I have the brain over yours.” Ifyou don’t want to accept that, then fuck it, I don’t give a fuck. Do what you want to do but just get the fuck out of my way, because if you’re in my way and you’re doing what you think you’re doing, you’re not doing anything because I’m not doing anything. The weather’s doing it.
XI
NEW RISING SON
I learned about Matthew Roberts the way I learned about most people linked to Charlie: a frantic phone call from Kenny.
One evening, Kenny called to inform me that Charlie was “flipping out”; he’d received a letter from an editor at Details magazine, inquiring about his DNA. Kenny told me he didn’t have all the details, but he’d learned there was “some rock star” somewhere trying to prove he was Charlie’s son. Kenny gave me the name and phone number of the editor and asked me to call him. I didn’t, even though I’d grown accustomed to Kenny calling with names and contact information for me to investigate. He has referred me to countless people: prison staff, authors, researchers, friends of his. I often explain to Kenny that I hardly have time to keep in touch with my own friends.
At that point I had no idea if Charlie even had any children. The thought that he could have children out living and functioning with the rest of society had never even occurred to me. Charlie is sensitive and protective when he feels he needs to be. I find it extremely uncomfortable to bring up issues such as this when we’re talking, and have learned it’s much easier to let Charlie bring up the personal stuff. I asked Kenny what he knew of Charlie’s alleged children. He told me about one of Manson’s sons, Charles Manson Jr., who had hung himself in Texas when he was in his thirties. Kenny then cryptically dispensed a number for “Candy,” a woman he said could tell me more of the story.
Intrigued, I called Candy right away and introduced myself as a friend of Kenny’s. Candy spoke with a strong, comforting
southern accent in a voice that was warm and inviting. She told me she’d heard all about my friendship with Charlie and laughed as she explained her unusual name. Charlie, it seems, could never remember Candy’s real name. So, because she’d once worked at the Kraft candy factory and Charlie loves caramels, he initiated a new nickname. Candy’s words were lively, and Kenny had told me she strongly resembled Liza Minnelli, so I could almost put a face to the voice I heard over the phone.
Candy said she hadn’t known much about Charlie before she reached out to him in a letter. She was far more interested in Charlie as a personality, she said, than in Charlie as a criminal. Two years before, she’d extended her first thoughts to Manson in a simple note. “I just told him I do not feel that anyone who behaves so bizarrely is really that nuts. I said he had a pretty good act going on. I wanted to know why the act was there.” Candy doesn’t think Charles Manson is really the character he portrays. She professed a love for psychology and figuring people out. “I’m sixty-five years old. I can remember seeing him on TV for the first time, and the more I’d see of him, the more I’d wanted to talk to him because I knew there was a deeper story there. Never, in a million years, did I ever dream that would happen.”
Candy didn’t think Manson would even read her letter, but a week after she sent it, she received a reply. Since then Manson has called her over seventy-five times. “It’s kind of a mixed bag of emotions whenever you have a conversation with him; you don’t know which one is going to rear its ugly head.” Candy told me sometimes Manson is funny and happy. Other times he is the kind of man with whom she’d never want to be in the same room. And yet other times he is confounding, perplexing, preaching
and proposing the sort of ideas that make her question, “Wow, where did that come from?” No matter which side of himself Charlie reveals during any given conversation, he is never, Candy believes, the Charles Manson the world sees. “He’s asked me a hundred times if I’m recording our conversations, and I always say, ‘Why on Earth would I ever do that?’ He’s told me, ‘Well, you are talking to history.’“ Though she feels creating actual voice recordings would violate the trust she shares with Charlie, Candy does keep a journal in which she documents the discussions and writes about the feelings they arouse. Assessing her inventory of conversations, she can see absolutely no comparison between the Charles Manson that does interviews on TV and the Charles Manson that talks to friends on the phone.