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With 'Manson,' Jeff Guinn takes on an American monster

Jocelyn McClurg
USA TODAY
  • New book looks at Tate-LaBianca murders in context of the times
  • Jeff Guinn spoke with Manson%27s cousin and sister
  • Author says writing the book gave him nightmares
Jeff Guinn's 'Manson' looks at the Tate-LaBianca murders in the context of the times.

Over two bloody nights in Los Angeles in August 1969, followers of Charles Manson, on his orders, committed the savage "Tate-LaBianca" murders, crimes that live in infamy. Pregnant actress Sharon Tate, wife of director Roman Polanski, was one of the victims. Manson, a would-be messiah who hoped to incite a race war called "Helter Skelter," is now 78 and remains imprisoned. Author Jeff Guinn looks back at Manson's life and crimes in the new book Manson (Simon & Schuster, 399 pp., on sale Aug. 6). Guinn, 62, spoke to USA TODAY's Jocelyn McClurg from Fort Worth.

Q: Where would you rank the Manson family murders in the pantheon of 20th-century crimes?

A: In terms of cultural iconoclasm, they remain probably the most famous murders in American history -- most of that having to do with the fact that Charlie Manson is such a master manipulator of not just people but media. The Tate-LaBianca murders came at a turning point in our cultural history where they resonated in all sorts of different ways. And because Charlie wasn't executed as he was originally sentenced to be, that meant he was hanging around. That gave him the opportunity to embellish the mythology, until we lose track of the real person.

Q: You were 18 at the time. What do you remember of the crimes?

A: Nobody could understand who did this kind of thing. It was horrific and there was a movie star involved. It literally had everything: sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. We were all fascinated by it in the same way you're fascinated when you drive by a car crash. There was this wild edginess about it. I wanted to be a journalist and I was sorry I was in Austin (he was a student at the University of Texas) sitting around and drinking coffee and arguing about it. I wanted to be out there in California writing about it. It only took me what, 45 years?

Q: There have been other famous books written about the Tate-LaBianca murders, most notably Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. What made you want to revisit the case?

A: What I do with all my books is to write about an era in American history, and to get readers interested I usually try to pick an iconic individual event. History doesn't happen in a vacuum. And I wanted to find out with Manson: If he's so terrible how did we grow such a monster? He didn't just emerge full blown running around in Los Angeles directing followers to kill people.

I started at the beginning with his childhood, went to the places he had lived and found a lot of people who'd never talked before including his sister and his cousin, and I was able to build my story from there. There's nothing mystical or magical about Charles Manson. He's a gifted psychopath who's a talented liar who's lied about just about everything.

Q: In many ways this is a biography of Manson. Was it frustrating not to be able to interview him?

A: What I was able to do was talk to people who'd known him at all the different stages of his life, so we could see how he progressed, if progress is the right word. He didn't have many visiting privileges while I was working on the book. He knew I was writing it and he gave me permission to use some of his prison artwork in the book.

Q: What did you learn from his cousin and his sister that we didn't know?

A:From Charlie's adopted sister, Nancy, for the first time we get Charlie's mother's side of things. His cousin Jo Ann gave me examples that were confirmed by other people about Manson's violent and psychopathic tendencies even as a small child. One of the first stories I heard from Jo Ann was about Charlie getting in trouble in the first grade. He would get girls in his class to beat up boys he didn't like and then when the principal and teacher confronted him, he would always say the girls were doing what they wanted to do, it wasn't his responsibility. And he's doing that when he was 6 years old! And that's the exact same defense he uses for Tate-LaBianca. I'm hearing that and the hair on my arms is standing up.

Q: You view Manson as a sociopath and a master con man and indicate that "Crazy Charlie" was an act. Is he not truly insane?

While he is still alive and incarcerated, Jeff Guinn was not able to interview Charles Manson.

A:I don't think he was ever insane. I do think he was always selfish, self-absorbed and deliberately manipulative. It is also possible having kept up the "Crazy Charlie" act for so long, that this has become more of his persona than the old calculating Charlie. There's no way to know. I don't think he would know. But I do think much of what we've seen is a deliberate act. He knows how to get attention, he knows how to hold attention. Let's face it, he's done that now for going on a half a century. He's a performer.

Q: Can you summarize your feelings about him at this point?

A: I recognize Manson as an intelligent man. He's uneducated but he's not stupid, but from his childhood he's been a violent con artist; that has never changed. But I do not consider him in any way insane. Which makes what he did even more horrifying.

Q: You interviewed his followers Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten in prison. How do they feel after all these years? Are they remorseful?

A: Both of them certainly are sorry for what they did and they're very resentful of Manson, who still sends them notes to tell them they wanted to change the world but they let the world change them.

Q: The fact that he was a frustrated musician who thought he could be bigger than The Beatles is fascinating. It reminded me of Adolf Hitler as a failed painter.

A: Adolf Hitler subverted and led an entire nation. Charlie Manson was never going to do that. The best he could do was a couple dozen scruffy, partly broken kids who were desperately wandering around hoping someone would tell them what to do. But I think it does Charlie a dubious sort of honor that all sorts of intelligent people reading his life story almost always automatically equate him to Hitler. That just shows what kind of a grip he's got on our imagination.

Q: You spend quite a bit of time talking about the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. Why was context so important to telling this story?

A: If Charlie had been born in any other time, if he'd been in any other place, none of this would have happened. If Charlie's imprisoned in Nebraska and gets paroled and goes to Omaha and tries to pull half this stuff, he would have been impaled on a pitchfork and left in a field as a scarecrow. In the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, Charlie Manson was always the wrong man in the right place at the right time. He was always in the right time and place to subvert things that were meant to be good. Everything from religion to Dale Carnegie to great music. Everything he touched he turned to some evil purpose, deliberately.

Q: Did you worry that your portrayal of Manson might in any way create sympathy for him?

Jeff Guinn says he had nightmares while researching for the book.

A: One of the things I was afraid of was being accused of writing a book that somehow glorifies Charles Manson. I think if anything this book is the demystification of him. Maybe if we understand him better and who he really was, we can finally lose some of our obsession with him.

Q: How did it feel to spend two years of your life writing about such a horrific case?

A: It was hard. I had nightmares a lot of the time. I remember once I'd been out at the prison talking to Patricia Krenwinkel, and she had told me she would describe what happened that night when Sharon Tate and four others died, and she did and she didn't leave anything out. And as she talked she began to cry and she finally blurted, "I know I was wrong, I shouldn't have done it but I was scared and I did it to save myself." And she was grabbing on to my hand and crying and telling me about these deaths. And you're not allowed to take in a tape recorder or paper or pencil when you interview these folks, so I had to go back to my motel room and transcribe everything. It was about 2 in the morning when I was transcribing that and I had to turn out the lights and try to go to sleep. I have to admit I'm going to be real glad to have Charlie Manson out of my head soon.

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