I’d become accustomed to Gacy’s long, rambling, detailed letters, so by contrast, Manson’s replies seemed even more stark
and enigmatic. His next communication came almost immediately. It was just one line long but included a reading list of authors
and books he wanted me to become familiar with. He was going to be my tutor and I his student. He wanted me to start with
Kahlil Gibran’s
The Prophet
and a few others I’d never heard of.
He also included the name and address of another follower of his who could supply me with more material. Now,
that
got me a little worried. Since I was using my real address (just as I had with Gacy, knowing that a post office box would
be immediately suspect), it wouldn’t be that difficult for one of Manson’s family members on the outside to come by and check
me out. It occurred to me that Manson must have lots of crazed followers willing to do his bidding. If he’d been able to get
someone to attempt an assassination of the president of the United States, he certainly wouldn’t find it much of a challenge
to dispatch someone to my house to see if I was all I said I was. My parents were somewhat tolerant, but I figured they’d
draw the line if I told them I’d invited a few friends over for dinner—but, not to worry, “we’re all part of Charles Manson’s
family.”
In what was in retrospect one of my more ill-considered acts, I actually contacted the individual Manson had referred me to,
and the disciple supplied me with an array of reading materials, religious books, Manson videos, and others to contact in
my own area who had similar views. The mailings had a comic aspect. I half expected to be recruited for a “get out the vote
for Manson” drive come the next election.
The disciple told me he was really busy, so I only received three packages from him. Last Christmas, though, he sent me a
letter telling me he’d moved, and he was there if I needed him. I passed along all of this information to the local office
of the FBI, although I have no idea what they did with it.
O
nce Manson started to trust me, he began lecturing and teaching me about dozens of different topics that seemed randomly chosen.
Sometimes, for no apparent reason, he’d become enraged; at other times he’d be very gentle and sensitive. I never knew what
to expect.
I repeatedly tried to reassure him that I was safe, that I could be trusted with his innermost thoughts and feelings. To him,
though, the very fact that I’d brought up trust as an issue meant I planned to be deceitful toward him. I was also giving
him the runaround regarding those magazines he wanted.
After corresponding with Manson for only a short time, however, my interest in him diminished. He was not a “real” serial
killer to me, but more of a cult leader who got others to do his killing for him. Further, I’d come to realize that he wasn’t
ever going to be able to communicate on the level I desired, and the constant rambling in his letters began to grow tiresome
and confusing. He was also very paranoid, often accusing me of betraying him. In one letter, he became very irate and frustrated
because I hadn’t yet sent him some stuff he’d ordered.
“First I got no books,” Manson complained, “and its clear by your words that you were razed & taught how to bullshit your
own thoughts & pay rent to live in your old life. Your a gamer & start out hiding behind your own words about what you think
is all yourself.”
Of course, he had reason to be paranoid. I
was
being deceitful and dishonest with him. It was sensible of him to mistrust my motives.
In particular, it really seemed to bother him that I was a student, because that meant I aspired to be part of the establishment.
He raged on and on, incoherently screaming at me in his letters that I wasn’t worthy of his trust. “I know a hole system of
people like you,” he wrote, “who hide in books & schools & live on paper computing banks & past. I already got some books
thanks—How long you been working in the mail room unless you make the rules in the mail room.”
In referring to me as working in the mail room, he was voicing his suspicion that I was working him “from the inside,” meaning
within the prison itself. It might seem as if he’d caught on to me, but that wasn’t the case at all. He was merely testing
me. If he truly believed what he said, then he wouldn’t have written back at all. Some weeks, he received over ten pounds
of mail. Consequently, he was very selective in his replies.
I hoped that by being aggressive toward him, by letting him know that I wasn’t in awe of his notoriety, I’d prompt him to
reevaluate me. And sure enough, when I began pushing him more instead of acting apologetic, he responded more authentically,
even sending me poems that, while I couldn’t exactly understand them, did have a certain eerie power. Written on his personal
stationery, with a watermark of his eyes staring at me in the background, the lines of gibberish ran down the page: “Be Bop,
Boot & Shoe ding dong the bell has been rang.”
The combination of his words and those eyes looking at me disturbed me greatly. Even though it was impossible to impose any
meaning on the gibberish, it still felt like
something
was coming across. In occasional moments of self-awareness, I realized I was becoming polluted by Manson’s evil, crazy thoughts.
Therapists have reported that when they allow themselves to get close to very disturbed people, they sometimes experience
some of their despair, hopelessness, and destructive urges. This applied to me, because after I read some of Manson’s letters,
even more so than after reading Gacy’s, I felt like I needed to take a shower to cleanse myself of the weirdness.
I wondered if Manson was consciously aware of all the things he did to manipulate and control others. So in one of my letters
I decided to get the answer to this question indirectly by asking him how I should spread his word to others.
As usual, I didn’t understand his response. He seemed to be telling me that you can’t really teach anyone anything: “They
TEACH you one world but when you go to LIVE what you forget you learn that people has been BULL shiting you—you cant find
your self in any one else—you are your own experiences & they cant teach you your life.”
It was frustrating to deal with a person who communicated so strangely, even in response to direct questions. I tend to be
hyperlogical, so Manson was an especially difficult challenge for me. I kept asking him about how I could survive in the world,
how I should follow his teachings, how I could bring others under my/his control, and his responses were all over the map.
He seemed to have the attention span of a gnat.
He kept sending me songs, poems, lectures, and scraps of his philosophy, even if I could understand very little of what he
was driving at. Perhaps a trained forensic psychologist could venture some informed guesses about what Manson was referring
to, or what he was trying to say, but, to me, most of it was the ramblings of a lost soul.
In writing back to him, I acted on the assumption that he made sense to himself at least. Accordingly, I tried to quote some
of his more intelligible sayings so he’d know I was listening to him and that we used the same language. I hoped he’d think
that I understood how he felt. For the most part, though, I was operating in the dark.
There was one aspect to our correspondence that I found particularly intriguing: almost all of his letters were written on
the back of others that had been sent to him. At first, I wondered if he was short of paper but then I learned that he had
his own special stationery. It seemed like he was mocking those who’d written to him, and sharing his disdain with me. For
example, on the back of one note he sent was the following letter that was fairly typical of those he received:
Dear Mr. Manson,
I am a criminal psychology major at CSU, Long Beach and I am currently working on my thesis paper. I was wondering if I could
ask you a big favor. I thought it would be good to include a section on the current Judicial System and its laws. Do you think
you could write a short commentary on this subject for me to include as an example I could cite from? It would mean a lot
to me and I would really appreciate it.
The naiveté of this approach surprised me. Couldn’t this student see that he was presenting himself as the figure Manson hated
the most, the elite “man” who was responsible for putting society in the position it was in? It was no surprise that Manson
ran his illegible script over the back of the young man’s words.
In one instance, Manson actually referred directly to one of the letters written on the back. The letter read as follows:
Dear Mr. Manson,
After two years in prison, I know you have been contacted by every person under the sun. I am writing due to the fact I collect
notorious people’s signatures. I have read your book several times and feel your signature would be one of the best in the
collection. I have no opinion on why you are in prison, but because you are there is the only reason I’m writing. So Sir,
if you want to write back it would be great. If not I understand but either way I just want your signature. Thank you.
It astounded me that someone would believe any incarcerated person, let alone the sought-after Charles Manson, would respond
to such a request. You’d think people would do a minimum of research to increase the odds of a response.
Apparently, Manson agreed. “It’s hard for me to understand how smart people can be so dum,” he wrote on this note, “none of
them books have been by or for me—you think there is law & maybe for the rich there is. But when your unschooled people do
what makes money. That book is total and complete BUNKUM I never gave no one permission for any books.”
This statement showed another side of Manson. It demonstrated that he felt manipulated, that he experienced emotional pain.
I found it interesting that he was willing to share these feelings of hurt and betrayal with me in a way that Gacy would never
do. Although I never forgot for a moment what a frightening monster Manson was, at times he seemed awfully pathetic and vulnerable.
In my next letter to him, I asked if he encountered any demons or monsters after he fell asleep. I didn’t really know where
I was going with this, but it seemed like an interesting area to explore. “Here is a card of a monster,” Manson replied, “so
bad it will eat the hearts of all who put themselves between me & my lone soul self world.”
I interpreted Manson’s comment about being a “lone soul” as a reference to his earlier days when he believed he was the son
of God. He set himself apart from others by creating a mission for himself. In prison this belief only seemed to be reinforced
by all the people writing him for guidance.
Once I’d concluded I’d learned all I could about Manson from his letters, I began contemplating visiting him in prison. I
planned to drive to the California State Prison during my summer vacation. That would give me enough time, I figured, to gradually
let him know how young I was.
Although my assumption was that a visit to Gacy would be low-risk, I expected Manson to be wild, spontaneous— even terrifying.
In video footage I’d watched of him, I’d seen him jumping on tables or throwing things at people. Although I suspected he
behaved that way partly to enhance his mystique, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t behave the same way with me.
With all the research I was doing, and all the success I was encountering, my hopes increased that someday the FBI might want
to hire me as a psychologist and serial killer profiler. What had begun as a whim—writing letters to the people I’d read about
in my true-crime books—had evolved into a methodology for winning the trust of some of the most murderous human beings ever.
And the risks involved were slight—or so I believed.
After striking pay dirt with Gacy and Manson, I couldn’t help wondering whom else I could get to.
“A
thousand dollars for just one of Charles Manson’s signatures? You’ve got to be kidding!”
I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t believe that anyone would pay that kind of money for a mere envelope Manson had once addressed.
“Yeah,” the owner of the autograph store said, sneering. “So what’s it to you?”
I didn’t like this guy. He was a small man, but cocky for someone who looked so young and frail. He had a wispy mustache that
made him seem even younger than his thirty-odd years. He’d started out with a small personal collection of autographs and
somehow built it into a business. Now he owned stores all over the country.
I didn’t ordinarily frequent such establishments, especially in this upscale area of Vegas that catered largely to wealthy
tourists who had extra time and money on their hands. While their husbands played blackjack or craps at the neighboring casinos,
the wives could be seen roaming the high-priced boutiques with a frantic determination to spend their own share of the family
income.
The small autograph store specialized in celebrity artifacts. In the window was a guitar once played by Jimi Hendrix, a baseball
bat signed by Joe DiMaggio, and an assortment of documents bearing the signatures of famous politicians, athletes, and movie
stars. I’d heard that the collection included some serial killer autographs as well, which is why I’d made a point of stopping
by.
“Excuse me, sir,” I’d begun with as much restraint as I could muster, “but I was just wondering what the market is like for
letters and stuff from famous killers.”
The owner sighed. But it was a slow day. And I was his only customer. “It all depends on what you’ve got.”
I nodded. I was the eager student, attentive and polite.
“You see,” he explained, “you’ve got your basic killers. They’re not worth much because there’s so much of their stuff around.”
Almost in spite of himself, he seemed to warm to the subject.
“What about Gacy?” I interrupted.