Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars (19 page)

“That day I came back,… the girls began throwing my own shit back at me, how we were all one and had to stay together through thick and thin. They appealed to me not as their leader, but as one of the Family. Man, I was trapped.”

At this point, I had strong doubts about the veracity of Charlie’s account. I couldn’t buy him as the innocent bystander type. He was too strong and commanding. On the other hand, group psychology is a fascinating and unpredictable phenomenon. I’d experienced it in prisons among both the guards and the cons. An idea takes hold, and people start doing things they’d never have the courage to do by themselves. Hell, we’d just been through that with the stampeding guards. Hard as he had tried, Rinker couldn’t stop his own soldiers. That was it! This must have been what Charlie had picked up on, why he was all of a sudden finally telling me this seemingly unrelated story that cut to the heart of his existence. Charlie was trying to tell me that even the most dominating, iron-fisted ruler can lose control of his forces when chaos sets in. I listened with new interest as he continued.

“I was going to let things cool off and talk the girls out of their stupid plan, but then something happened that made me furious. Mary [Brunner] and Sandy [Good] were arrested for using stolen credit cards. I was angry that the Family was being ripped apart, and in my anger, I just let them do what they desired. If the kids wanted to scare the hell out of the world because of the way they’d been used all their lives, then who was I to stop them?… People say I sent them to Terry Melcher’s house because I was upset over my music career. That’s such bullshit, man. First of all, I knew Melcher didn’t live there anymore, dig? Second, Melcher was cool … There was still a chance we’d get together and do some recording. The door wasn’t closed. So why did I want to kill him? The kids made that decision because they knew the house.

“After it was over, the kids all seemed to just forget about it. If anything, they were proud and puffed up. I wasn’t. The vibes were bad from that moment on. I knew it was going to get laid on us, one way or another. But it took longer than I expected. I mean, the cops were so stupid. The kids did it the same way at all three scenes. Wrote the same words in blood on the walls. They were trying to make it look the same so they could spring Bobby, but the dumb-ass cops didn’t get it. They didn’t link the incidents for months. Even the Bug [Bugliosi] jumped on their asses for that. I mean, they were the same people doing it the same way bending over backward to leave identical clues, and still the cops had no clue.

“For a while, I thought we were off the hook. Then some of the bikers and their girls got busted and started snitching. Sadie took a fall and ran her mouth to her cellmates, bragging about what she’d done. That was it. The end.”

“You were destroyed from within?”

“That’s the way it was headed all along. The group was too large. Too hard to control. It was only a matter of time before I’d be back here. Inside. Locked up like an animal again. The one thing the girls promised me wouldn’t happen, happened. They not only included me, I became this fuckin’ all-powerful, godlike ringleader. A guy who could stop watches and spin clocks with a glance. The demonic leader of ‘Charlie’s Angels,’ only my girls were no angels. It was them all along, not me, man. Dig? Can you dig that?”

Not really. But as I walked away, I almost felt sorry for him—almost.

*   *   *

San Quentin Village is a residential community the state built on the north and west sides of the prison and up a hill to the east. The hundred-plus homes were considered a perk for the employees as the rents were dirt cheap and the commute to work was a breeze. The homes on the hill were called “Executive Row,” and included the warden’s mansion with a grand garden and portico overlooking the bay. The village was so popular that there was a waiting list to get in. That struck me as odd. I couldn’t imagine settling there. Bedding down every night a few hundred yards from Charles Manson and five thousand of his closest friends wasn’t my idea of a relaxing domestic environment. Beth probably would have left me, with the children a few steps behind.

Aside from the obvious dangers of riots, escapees, and kidnappings, a major downside to such a community was rampant gossip. When you work and live in the same small area, the gossip can become debilitating. My friend Dr. Sutton had always been hot fodder on the San Quentin tongue-wagging circuit. Many of the men—and their wives—couldn’t understand why an attractive, educated woman like her chose to work in such a dismal place. Unless, of course, she was some kind of nymphomaniac who liked the attentions of five thousand sex-crazed maniacs. Whispers like that made Dr. Sutton’s already difficult job even harder. But, as always, she held her head high and went about her business. She was more concerned about trying to heal men like Charles Manson than worrying about what some pea brain guard’s wife was saying about her.

Among Dr. Sutton’s patients was a mainline con named Red, a mean, sick sex offender with a long history of violence against women, including two brutal stabbing murders. Red first noticed Dr. Sutton eating with her four stepchildren in the employees’ dining room, where he worked as a waiter. He started flirting with her and began chatting her up like a single woman on a barstool. When she cooled to his attentions, he took a different tack. Claiming to need help, he begged to see her professionally. She relented, but quickly discovered that he viewed the sessions as little more than a chance to get close to her. He quickly developed an obsessive attachment which she believed was detrimental to his therapy. When he began making crude advances, she terminated contact. Enraged, he reacted by telling her that when he was paroled, he would kill her children one by one, then hunt her down and make her pay. The threats ruffled the normally unflappable shrink. Red was scheduled for release within a few months, and Dr. Sutton knew better than anyone that obsessive psychos like him were likely to carry out their threats.

To make matters worse, obsessive jerks like Red were unlikely to bide their time. Red played right into the profile. He spread the rumor from one end of San Quentin to the other that he and Dr. Sutton were lovers, and she was pregnant with his child. A moderately attractive Irishman who could play sane when it benefited him, he arranged an official meeting with an officer and explained in great, lurid detail how he and Dr. Sutton carried out their passionate affair in a closet near the employees’ dining room. I checked the place out. It was a stale, dingy room a few feet from the cafeteria where Red worked. In order for his story to be true, Dr. Sutton would have had to sneak by both staff and prisoners in a heavily trafficked hallway, and dart inside a tiny, suffocating rathole to get it on with a certified sexual maniac. Yet the more Red blabbed, the more the story took hold. To my shock, he was succeeding in his campaign to turn a classy, dignified doctor, who truly cared about the men, into a cheap whore with an insatiable appetite for sleazy sex.

“She’s carrying my baby,” he wailed like a drumbeat. “I want something done about it!”

Dr. Sutton was indeed pregnant, but the child was the result of a liaison with her husband, a well-known real estate speculator, not some sordid sex with a vicious con. She had miscarried her first child and, before the rumors, had been especially excited about this one.

The situation with Dr. Sutton troubled, disgusted, and worried me, all for different reasons. I was troubled by how the rumors were affecting my friend and breaking her spirit. I was disgusted by the way the corrections community believed the gossip and eagerly spread it. The bizarre part was that the inmates knew the story was bullshit, yet it was the staff and their families who embraced the destructive nonsense. And lastly, I was worried about how the inmates would react. Dr. Sutton had many supporters among the men, and they weren’t going to take her humiliation and forced departure lightly.

Charles Manson numbered himself among her supporters. She was working with him, listening to him, and had earned his respect. This was one time when I half wished Manson would intervene. For once in his miserable life, he could show some compassion, some sense of doing what was right, by using his considerable influence to shut Red down—regardless of how he accomplished it. I considered bringing the issue to him, but fought it. I couldn’t let my anger send him signals. Knowing Manson, he’d have Red hit, and then say I told him to do it. No, I had to be extremely careful. I had to let fate take its course.

As the weeks passed, the course fate took was increasingly infuriating. Red bitched and moaned all the way up the chain of command. Dr. Sutton was repeatedly interrogated by a series of administrators, including her direct supervisor. She denied everything, but the official interrogations only fueled the fires. It reached the point where Dr. Sutton was being stared at and whispered about everywhere she went.

A good part of the blame for this travesty was simple sexism. Most male correctional officers resent women in their midst and anxiously wait for them to screw up. The general feeling among this dinosaur set is that only a slut would work in a prison, and sooner or later this quality will reveal itself. Adding to the resentment was Dr. Sutton’s liberal, caring attitude, and the way she’d pushed for reforms and tried innovative techniques like the yoga program.

The situation with Dr. Sutton became such an issue that it was eventually termed a “security problem.” A high-level administration meeting was called to discuss it. These were comparatively educated men with clear heads, so Dr. Sutton would finally have her day in court. Imagine my shock, and anger, when the captains and lieutenants began expressing the same smirking doubts as the rank and file.

“I don’t know why Red would lie,” a lieutenant said. “He’s got nothing to gain.”

“Have you got your head up your ass?” I railed. “How can you side with Red? He’s a creep. Check his jacket. He hates women. He cuts them up. He stabbed one woman more than a hundred times! Doesn’t that mean anything to you guys? He’s getting out on parole in a couple of weeks and he’s threatened to kill her. She’s really afraid.”

“Says who?” another officer questioned. “She hasn’t filed anything.”

“She doesn’t want to violate her doctor-patient relationship, but she’s scared to death. Take my word for it.”

“That’s her problem. She came here. Nobody forced her. She knew what she was getting into.”

“Bullshit!” I screamed. “She’s one of us. We should back her.”

“She’s not one of mine,” the gooner squad lieutenant cracked.

“No, she’s not a Neanderthal asshole like your men—”

Deputy Warden Fudge cut in and ended the debate. That was it for Dr. Sutton. Nothing was going to be done about the rumors. At least, not by the good guys.

“I don’t know if I can take this anymore,” she confided to me tearfully after hearing the bad news. “I lost my last baby. I don’t want to lose this one. Even the chief psychiatrist doesn’t seem to trust me anymore. I’m sorry, Ed, but I’m going to have to resign. My husband wants me out of here.”

“That’s okay. I don’t blame him.”

She reached out and touched my hand. “Will you explain to the men?”

“Sure,” I said. “Don’t worry. They’ll understand.”

They would, but I sure didn’t. I remained furious over what was happening. I again considered spilling my guts to a certain inmate, but held off. What would he care, anyway? He didn’t care about anybody but himself. And even if he did, how could I take advantage of a monster like him to push my own agenda? It was unthinkable—almost as unthinkable as what was happening to Dr. Sutton.

A week before Red’s parole, Dr. Sutton was walking alone across the yard toward a large rotunda near the entrance of the prison’s hospital. Waiting in the shadows was Red. The perverted con was clutching a large shank in his right hand. Apparently, he no longer had the patience to wait until he was set free before he carved up the good doctor. However, to Red’s shock, there was a second person lurking in the shadows that afternoon. As Red watched Dr. Sutton approach, fiendishly gripping his weapon, the uninvited guest materialized behind him.

“I know why you’re here, Red,” an eerie voice stated. “I’m not going to let you do this.” Furious, Red raised his weapon and lunged at the man who’d had the audacity to interrupt his heinous plot. The man caught his wrist, twisted it, and disarmed him. At the same time, the mystery protector dug his own shank deep into Red’s side. Screaming in pain, Red fell to the floor as the attacker disappeared.

Alarms sounded. The guards swarmed in and rushed Red to the hospital. The gooners embarked upon a thorough search of the prison, scouring the place for clues. I left them alone, but stayed close to Manson’s cell. I wanted to believe that Charlie had somehow read my mind and had arranged or performed the counterhit. In return, I was ready to come to his rescue the instant the gooners found some evidence.

After a thorough search, the guards turned up a suspect. It wasn’t Charlie. The prison’s yard sweeper, a strange con known as Crazy John, had missed his work assignment that morning. A spot of blood was found on his shirtsleeve in his cell.

Following the cons’ law, Red refused to finger Crazy John as the assailant. No one else came forward. Still, the circumstantial evidence was clear.

Crazy John was a puzzling choice for an assassin. He was like the town drunk without the alcohol, an image he seemed to purposefully perpetuate. He wore dark shades, a black knit cap pulled down over his ears even on the warmest summer day, an oversized black cotton jacket, and faded blue jeans two sizes too big that dragged on the ground. He was aloof and distant, sweeping, observing, seemingly traveling in his own universe. After refusing to say anything to his interrogators, Crazy John asked to see me. The inmates told him I could be trusted, and he guessed that I might be sympathetic to what he had to say. Speaking off the record, he told me the story. Dr. Sutton had showed him unusual kindness, helping him purge the haunting memories of his abused childhood and teaching him how to control his violent temper. Crazy John loved Dr. Sutton the way the Hunchback of Notre Dame loves Esmeralda, the maiden who gives him a drink of water after he is flogged and humiliated in the town square. Dr. Sutton gave Crazy John the courage to go on when his life was hopeless. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her. “She’s the only person who ever cared about me,” he said.