Since I had some extra time in my itinerary, I tried to get in touch with Szandora and Stanton LaVey. My band had approached Szandora about doing an album cover and had been completely thrilled when she accepted. At the time, she was one of the top fetish models in the world. Certain people have an energy that runs a lot deeper than beauty and Szandora is one of those people. Stanton LaVey, then her husband, is the grandson ofAnton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan and author of the Satanic Bible.
I was able to get in touch with Stanton first, and he told me that everything was messed up, that he and Szandora were going through a divorce. We met for drinks at El Coyote in Los Angeles, a landmark Mexican restaurant that’s been around since the ‘30s. As we sat down, Stanton told me this was the restaurant where Sharon Tate ate her last meal. He explained that, every year on the evening of “the murders,” he and his friends gathered there. The tradition had become a holiday of sorts.
I couldn’t get past how much Stanton looked like his grandfather. Like most kids who were into heavy metal, I was introduced to Anton’s philosophy and the Satanic Bible in high school. Stanton told me he was “born into evil.” I got the impression that he was a complex character, very intense. I could philosophize with the guy for hours on end about pop culture,
music, and art. We hit it off. He had very strong opinions and he was passionate about his beliefs. I liked that. Stanton had a confidence about him, his own unique brand of charisma. He told me that the three most influential people in pop culture were Anton LaVey, William Burroughs, and Charles Manson. Anton LaVey and Charles Manson had been friends. Stanton told me that one day he would share their secrets with me.
Death Row
When you’re on death row, there’s a bell in the chapel that rings every day, and after you’re there for a couple of years, you begin to realize the bell you hear every day never ends. Nothing begins and nothing ends, it goes on forever. It’s like a big sound wave going out into the universe. It’s really weird, everybody wanted me dead, isn’t that far out? They were lined up spitting on me, going through all my things. I went to death row. Do you know what they told me? “We don’t want you out here, don’t come out here, don’t come on the row.” I said, “What do you mean we, are you pregnant? I only see one of you. Are you telling me you don’t want me on the tier, I’ll deal with you.” See, when he said “we” that puts me one down right, so I come out on the tier and there’s three of them, and they are moving on me. This is serious business, and they’ve got their reasons for what they are doing, that I don’t see.
Then, somebody stands up with me and says, “I can’t let this happen on my tier.” And the three said, “What do you mean?” He said, “If I let you gang up on this guy, then you’re going to be ganging up on me,” and he said, “I’m not going to let you gang up on anyone around me.” Then another guy on the other side of the tier stood up and said, “I’m standing with that too, I don’t want you ganging up on nobody on my tier. If you got one thing you want to say to this man stand forward, other than that we’re not going to let you gang up on him.” So, that’s what saved me right there, man.
One guy stepped forward and I said, “What’s your problem, man?” He said, “We don’t allow snitches on this tier,” and I said, “Man, snitching ain’t never been on the front page of the paper, my whole life has been right there, if I would’ve ever snitched on anybody, it would have been right there in the open. My word is my bond, my life. I don’t snitch on nobody, dig?” He said, “Well, we were told.” I said, “You take it back to wherever you got it, ‘cause whoever is giving you that garbage is trying to front your life off.”
So, we went on down the road, and I was left with that lesson, and two or three times in my life on this tier that I’m on, things have happened where I could have ganged up on somebody, but I held down, stood down from that. I don’t do that because my life was given to me by someone, so I try to pass that on in my life, as being a part of my life. I don’t think we should gang up on people. That’s why we got courts, that’s why we got laws, rules, and regulations for our survival. Any time that you don’t give the laws, and the rules, and the regulations to the most low-life fucking Manson in the world, then what you got is something coming from the will of God ‘cause the laws are made for survival. That’s why all those men died on all those battlefields to make those traditions. We live in the shadows of those traditions. That’s what I tried to explain. I was on the witness program, the State of California should of never bothered me. They should have stood down off of me. I didn’t have anything to do with that, that wasn’t my play. I’m not saying that I’m a good man, that I’m not a crook. I’m not saying that I haven’t buried a few people. That doesn’t have anything to do with what happened there. What happened there wasn’t my play, it wasn’t in my lane.
I’m not saying I’m not worse than that. I’m probably a thousand times worse. Tex [Watson] was a child, you know. Whenever I do something, I don’t ever get caught. People don’t know what I do. I don’t let them know what I do. If I let you know what I do then I can’t do it. I’m the sons of liberty in the graveyard. That’s my gang. My gang is crooks. That’s my family, that’s my cult. That’s what we were convicted for. You just seen a little bit of it. You didn’t see what was really going on. See, with what really goes on I don’t need to break the law. The law’s kind of stupid actually. You know, I’m not conspiring with nobody to do anything.
Can you imagine the Pharaoh conspiring with somebody to put a prick in the pyramid. He put his brick in the pyramid with his mind. Conspire? Tex wrote in his book, “I think that’s what he wanted me to do.” He was right. He was a good soldier. He did exactly what he was supposed to do, and did it well, man. Yeah. He did one mistake, they say, and I don’t believe he made a mistake. They say he left one fingerprint. I don’t believe it. He was too perfect under my guidance, man, to leave a fingerprint, and they said he left a fingerprint and I said I don’t believe that. He didn’t make a mistake. Tex did not make a mistake. There’s no such thing in my kingdom.
IV
HOW IT ALL STARTED
When we returned home, Buck received inquiries from various tabloids about Donald. We booked Donald on more radio shows and his story took off exponentially with each interview he gave. But we were still stuck on how adamantly Donald had declined a lie detector test on the Howard Stern Show, so we gave him an ultimatum: Do the test, or we’re done. He complied.
Kendall Shull is arguably the world’s leading polygraph expert. Shull served with the FBI as a special agent for twenty-five years, and was chief of the entire FB polygraph program when he retired. If anyone can tell if you are lying, Shull can. We contacted Shull and he agreed to test Donald at his personal facility in Knoxville, Tennessee. Donald was very quiet on the drive to Knoxville; it was obvious that the looming lie-detector test was getting to him. In desperation, he tried to talk us out of the whole idea. “How many other authors have to go through this?” he demanded indignantly. I explained to Donald that he really had nothing to fear, that this was a formality that had to be dealt with sooner or later.
When we arrived at our destination, Shull greeted us, explained the entire process, then asked to be alone with Donald so that he could conduct the test. The polygraph test took four hours, and centered mostly on the question, “Did you have sex with Elvis Presley?” In short, it soon became very apparent that I had driven two thousand miles and strapped a seventy-two- year-old man to a polygraph machine to determine if he had indeed blown Elvis when, with almost completely certainty, he had not.
Donald pretended to sleep for the entire duration of the long ride home.
Things were finished with Donald. There was no longer any reason to believe the rest of his story. Yet, I still felt there had been a legitimate connection between Donald and Manson. I looked over the stack of correspondence again and couldn’t convince myself that the letters weren’t legitimate. It was clear that Manson’s letters were intended for Donald; they addressed Donald’s questions and communicated an intimacy that seemed specific to a certain sort of relationship. Each letter was addressed to Donald in the same child-like scrawl and stamped with the postmark from Corcoran Prison.
To stay sane after such a letdown, I began journaling and even started to piece together the beginnings of a book. I wanted to write about people’s connections to one another, how important those connections are, and how their dissolution directly influences depression. Because it’s been my experience that the pain a person experiences during depression is really the ache of being separated from the whole -life, love, God, whatever you want to call it. I was heavily influenced by the uncompromising truth of writers like Tony Parsons, Karl Renz, Leo Hartong, and was very drawn to they’re teachings. They were able to speak from a depth that really resonated within me. I knew I had to meet these people. So, I planned a six week trip to Europe. My time in Europe changed me; I had never before spent so much time both alone and in the company of so many wonderful people. Tony, Karl, and Leo met with me, and with brutal honesty were able to help me see the simplicity of life. Away from everything, I was able to confront myself and my feelings. Never in my life
had I cried so hard or felt so humble, so alive, so thankful. I was worried about returning to Canada. I thought my old, less self-assured mindset might come creeping back, and I’d end up depressed again. But I didn’t.
One Friday afternoon after my return, I received an unexpected letter from Corcoran Prison. An inmate named Kenny Calihan, who claimed to be a friend of Donald Taylor’s, had written to me in order “to introduce” himself. Kenny said that he got my address from Donald, who had filled him in on the adventures we’d had while promoting One Gay Man. Kenny knew about the letters exchanged between Donald and Manson. He told me that several of the inmates at Corcoran had read Donald’s letters at some point; he assured me that most everyone found them to be “hilarious.” He explained that the prisoners routinely pass around each other’s mail and retrieve old messages from the garbage. And, because no other inmate in the history of the American prison system has ever received as much mail as has Charles Manson, his letters are both most coveted and most easily attained. Kenny said that he has been friends with Charles Manson since 1992. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
I immediately called Donald and asked him why the hell he’d given my address out to inmates. Donald answered, calmly, that he didn’t think I would mind. He had been writing to Kenny for a few months and had determined Kenny was a pretty good guy. Donald told me that Manson was serving a year’s sentence in the hole for something related to getting caught with a knife, a very serious offense. Donald had become acquainted with Kenny through a letter Manson himself hadn’t been able to read. Kenny handled much of Manson’s mail, as would a secretary of sorts.
Two weeks later, another unsolicited letter from Kenny arrived in my mailbox. Enclosed was an autographed photo of Charles Manson. Kenny apologized for writing, but said that he couldn’t resist, since Donald had written so extensively to him about me, and Kenny had gotten the impression I would be a cool guy to talk to. Kenny would write one more time before I made the decision to write back. He asked for my phone number, because he promised he could get Manson to call me as soon as Manson got out of the hole. It took a few days of serious introspection before I decided to send along my phone number. It had been at least fifteen years since I’d participated in any meaningful conversation through letters. It made more sense to talk on the phone.
It was incredible to think I might have scored the opportunity to talk to Charles Manson. I began to go through his letters once more and decided it would be fascinating to include some of Manson’s more mystical ideas in my book. The aim would be to assist people in feeling a sort of connectedness to all people, even those they find evil or repulsive. I wanted to collect a few of his more insightful quotations and list them anonymously, hiding the author’s identity until the reader turned the page to find that the man who’d harvested his or her empathy was really Charles Manson. Of course I highly doubted that Manson would ever call me; I wasn’t even sure this Kenny character knew Manson.
Kenny called. And called, and called. The first phone bill was shocking, because inmates have to call collect, and it can cost upwards of twenty-five dollars each time they do. It does not take long for those charges to add up. To a prisoner, a phone number is a precious lifeline. Some inmates are meticulous in negotiating
their real world relationships and are usually very careful not to “burn up” a phone number. Kenny, on the other hand, would call constantly, sometimes ten, fifteen times a day. I’d deliberately give Kenny my work schedule to ward off some of his excessive phone calls, but he would call me anyway, even when he knew I wasn’t home. I think he did this in order to look important in his prison unit, as if he were doing business, as if he had people to talk to. Once, he called at an hour he expected me to be out, and when I picked up the phone, he asked, “What are you doing home?” I doubt Kenny has any idea what it’s like to pay rent and manage responsibilities. And it is impossible to reason with him. I’m sure he struggles with some obsessive-compulsive behaviors and he has no attention span. For all of these reasons, he can be a bit exhausting. But, and this is a big but, I think he means well.
Kenny’s criminal history is, remarkably, pretty unremarkable. He started out serving time in the California Youth Authority around the age oftwelve for petty crimes like theft. After spending most of his adolescence bouncing in and out of jail, he joined the Marine Corp in an attempt to turn his life around. But after his time in the service ended, he fell right back into his old life and discovered methamphetamine, his drug of choice. Kenny also got into cocaine and a “little bit” of heroin. In 1988, Kenny ended up in the San Bernardino County Jail, sentenced to eight years for three counts of burglary. After his release from San Bernardino County Jail, Kenny ended up in Nevada, where he got caught up in a suspicious death investigation. According to Kenny, he had gone to a girl’s house to hang out, not knowing there was a dead body in the building. The girl had been responsible for the care of an elderly lady, who eventually died from neglect and whose
corpse sat in the home, untouched, for twenty-one days. When the girl got busted, Kenny got taken away too. Since Kenny was an informant against the Mexican Mafia, and had a contract out on his life, he made his new home in Soledad California Prison on the PHU (Protective Housing Unit). But, due to California prison budget cuts, the Soledad PHU eventually closed, and Kenny was transferred to Corcoran PHU, where he’s been ever since. Kenny told me several stories about the celebrity prisoners he’s hung with during his time at Corcoran: “I use to hang out with Juan Corona. I’ve known him since 1990. I’d kick it with Sirhan Sirhan, but he didn’t talk much, kept to himself. Pat Kearney, the “trash bag” killer, was cool though; he was a mathematician, a really smart guy.”