The Manson Family

BY: PROVOKR Editors

Susan Atkins, murderer and devout follower of Charles Manson said in hindsight, “People are obsessed with what they can not understand.” That is no doubt true, but which of us could understand the cult of Charles Manson and the heinous crimes carried out by him and his young mostly female followers. Susan Atkins wrote her own story, Child of Satan, Child of God, primarily to take the mystery away from young people who still besieged her in admiration of what she had done. Now as a born again Christian, she found it frightening. Hard to believe that she was frightened of anything but she was.

The collection of books we have chosen represents the closest we can come to what happened to the other victims of the murderous spree and sinister cult of Manson. Not the murdered, we know what happened to most of them and we still mourn them all, even the many murdered whose murders were not charged to The Family and in some cases the bodies never found. It is the followers of Charles Manson who were also victims. They were mostly young underage insecure women without strong ties to any family. Perfectly poised to become true disciples of Manson. Even Tex Watson, chief murderer and right hand man to Manson, wrote a book to explain what happened to turn him into a slave to Manson who would die for Charlie and kill for him. His book, Will you Die for Me?, chronicles his downward spiral into insanity and murder.

We felt that Dianne Lake’s book, Member of the Family, revealed in what is a very believable story how Manson took her mind and soul. She was the youngest family member to join at 13 with a written note of permission from her druggie, hippie parents. This is the closest we can come to the reality of being one of the members of The Family. She shares a story of abuse, rape, brainwashing, beatings and frequent LSD orgies all orchestrated by Charlie. Dianne, aka Snake, became the star witness to secure the guilty verdict for Charles Manson, Leslie Van Houten, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Tex Watson.

Charlie Says, written by the counselor and teacher, Karlene Faith, who treated the three girls on death row, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Van Houten in their first years in prison. Faith became the teacher who tried to bring them slowly out of their trance. Her main focus is her treatment of Leslie Van Houten and how Leslie finally realized that she had been used and abused by Manson. Leslie had begged Charlie to go with Katie, Tex and Linda to kill the LaBiancas.

The book title itself refers to the preface the girls would always say before they offered any response or opinion to her questions and probing…….”Charlie says”, they would alway respond. That was just it they had no other thinking left only Charlie’s thoughts. He had stripped them little by little of any reality of self.

Patricia Krenwinkel in the book Manson Girl about her experiences said,” It is countless how many lives were shattered by the path of destruction I was a part of, and it all comes from such a simple thing as just wanting to be loved.” She had been terribly bullied as an overweight kid and had a medical condition that made her body particularly hairy. Charlie was the first person who told her she was beautiful, loved and promptly had sex with her on the first day they met. She also became the most murderous of any of Charlie’s girls.

It is the first hand accounts from the notorious girls of Charlie Manson’s Family that are unnerving and somehow horrifying understandable. Also recommended is the brutal telling of Helter Skelter by prosecuting DA Vincent Bugliosi and the shockingly detailed history of The Family by Ed Sanders.