Other Miscellaneous Quotes About Manson and/or the Case

“They say he beat the girls at the ranch. He never beat them girls, that’s all in the cops’ heads. They say he went in and tied up the people in the LaBianca house. That doesn’t sound like Charlie. If something like that happened, I don’t think he’d like to be present for it. If Charlie were a murderer, he would have done a lot better job than these people who did the Tate thing. It wasn’t done right. It was a straight dumb senseless murder. That’s why I don’t think he was in on it.”

- Legendary Band Manager Phil Kaufman, 1971

“I don’t think there are 12 people in the world who would convict Charles Manson, if Charles Manson is talking for himself.”

- Phil Kaufman

“Though I’m grateful for Vincent Bugliosi’s helter-skelter motive and the convictions it brought, I don’t buy into it for a second.  There’s something more, some deeper motive for the killings.  Even though Manson talks in riddles, he seldom lies.  So I watch and wait for that morsel of truth that might slip from his lips, revealing the true motive.”

- Doris Tate, mother of Sharon Tate   (Source: Restless Souls)

"This man was not guilty of murdering my daughter.  Ok?  Of all the seven murders that I know of, he did not commit one of them.  Alright?  I feel that he has taken the blame for all of them, and the ones that should be blamed for [them] is Tex Watson, and Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, all of the girls."

- Doris Tate, mother of Sharon Tate  (Source: Ron Reagan Show, 1991)

Danny DeCarlo on Charles Manson: When I first went to the ranch I brought my whole arsenal up. He [Manson] said what are we going to do with a machine gun? I said that’s protection. He said man, we don’t need nothing like that. I show him how to use a gun. Then he started getting into it. Then we brought him an M1 and he’d just fire it into the sky as long as he could hear a lot of noise and see dirt kick up, it made him feel good. We had fun shooting guns.

Charles Manson on Danny DeCarlo: He said that I hate black men, and he said that we thought alike, that him and I was a lot alike in our thinking. But actually all I ever did with Danny DeCarlo or any other human being was reflect himself back at himself. I just listened to him and I would react to his statement. So consequently he would drink another beer and walk off and pat me on the back and he would say to himself, “Charlie thinks like I do.” But actually he does not know how Charlie thinks because Charlie has never projected himself.

“They were actually wonderful people. They were artists and musicians, they were singers and they had wonderful personalities. Each and every one of them. They never quarreled and never caused or caused any trouble. They did everything we asked them to do. They did the dishes, the cooking and they took care of our cowboy clothes. They did the washing and little chores all around the ranch. They even helped with the horses.”

- Spahn Ranch caretaker Ruby Pearl on The Manson Family, 1970    (Source: NBC)

“All Charlie Manson ever told those people at any time is, “Do what you think is right.” Now when you tell a person who’s mentally deranged to do what is ‘right’, you have killing of Jews, you have killing of Palestinians, you have the elimination of Indians.  You know, that’s what you do when you apply human thought and logic and reason to people who are crazy; because it doesn’t come out the way you figured it would.”

- Harold True (met Manson when released from prison in 1967, knew Manson and friends)

“Privately, the person Charles is very different from the Manson act he puts on for the media. If he hadn’t been dragged into a series of Tex Watson’s drug robbery scams, Manson would be revered today as a religious teacher and as a force for positive change instead of being doomed to his current status as a media monster. That’s one of the many tragedies of this case.”

- Nikolas Shreck, 2011

Alvin “Kreepy” Karpis, last known FBI Public Enemy #1, who was definitely a legal expert on criminals and murderers, had this to say when asked by a reporter about Manson after the infamous murders of 1969:

“Charlie Manson was the very last guy I would have expected to get into the mass murder business.”

- Alvin Karpis

Everyone ever asked that knew Manson before, said the same thing. He was not someone they would have thought would do the things he was convicted of. If Manson could have defended himself in court, I’m sure he would have called on those people to testify.

“Charlie told me that when he was on trial he kept hearing the word “cult”, and he had to ask someone what it meant.  You can’t hypnotize anyone to do anything that they would not normally do.  The guy who actually committed all of the murders, “Tex” Watson, was a well-known drug addict.  From my experience, you can hardly get an addict to do anything; they’re primary focus is drugs, that is all they care about.  The guy I met [Manson] has no desire to control anyone, for the most part he just wants to be left alone.”

- Marlin Marynick, author of ‘Manson Now’

"I remember one time there were kittens all over the place. The mother cat had stopped cleaning up after them. They had messed in the kitchen. And Charlie got down on his hands and knees and cleaned the kitchen floor. He cleaned up after the kittens. He picked them up and put them inside his shirt and went and sat by the fire and warmed the kittens and played mother cat. 

I remember him looking up and saying, “I now understand the pain of too much tenderness, because it hurts not to hug them. But if I were to hug them I would hurt them." It was those kinds of things. He showed himself or acted like a very, very gentle man that would never hurt anything.  

I did see him cry; things got really out of hand. I mean really royally. People were hitting each other. The place was literally destroyed. I remember Little Paul Watkins hit me that night. There was pandemonium. And Charlie came in to get a pair of shoes and he said to me, “I can’t stay here, because there’s no love here anymore." He said, “Tomorrow you have to tell them that they drove me away." And the tears were just flowing down on his face. I asked him to stay, and he said no, he couldn’t stay. He said that the animal had come out in them and that love had fled."

- Juanita Wildbush, unknown date     (Source: Win McCormack)

If Charlie had come up twenty years later, with MTV, he would have been a natural.  He was a magic man, and in those days magic was allowed. Hanging out with him was an event, though you could only take so much of him, because he was always on, always on the move.  I remember – and this is one of very few more-or-less conventional nights – we ended up on the Strip, at the Whiskey, with Dennis, Charlie, and a huge entourage, some big show going on.  Charlie hit the dance floor, and it wasn’t but a minute till he’d cleared it.  Don’t forget, this is the Whiskey A-Go-Go in ’68, and a pretty hardcore place.  It’s loud, it’s happening, and nobody gives a shit about anything.  But there’s too much electricity coming off him.  He’s just humming, shooting sparks out of his eyes and his head.

Was it good dancing?

Well, of course, good doesn’t mean much to Charlie.  It was total freedom, and he was moving to the music, and if you’d want to define dance from the bottom up, that’s not a bad place to start.

What was it like talking with him?

Exactly the same, and his rap was solid.  He had this charm of throwing ten things at you, and while you’re still working on number three, he’s at seven, and getting physical about it.  He’d bend down, pick up a handful of rocks, and throw them in the air.  They’d all come back to him, and he’d look at you and say, ‘Throw it all away, and it’ll come back to you.’  See, there wasn’t a thing Charlie wouldn’t interpret for you.  One time, he was telling me about the end of everything, and I was saying, ‘You’re full of shit, but we oughta film you and make some music.’ He took me for a ride up to that end of the Valley where they were building three hundred new houses.  We drove up, new homes, new streets, new lights, not a soul there.  And he stopped.  Silence. He says, ‘Where are we at?  What does this make you think of?’  It was like a graveyard.  He said, ‘Exactly, that’s where we’re heading.  This is the future.’

Did you ever anticipate him getting violent?

No.  Though I remember once he held a gun to my head and said, ‘What would you do if I pulled the trigger?’  I said, ‘Well, I guess I’d die.’  He really liked that, and just put it back in his belt.

Weren’t you afraid?

No, I really wasn’t. And if I was and tried to fake it, Charlie would’ve seen through it immediately.  See, Charlie really believed what he believed in, he never faked it.  His reality was bizarre, but so is prison and that’s where Charlie came from.  He was true to his conditioning:  Observe from a distance, through a glass wall, above barbed wire, and what comes out is strong ideology.  He never learned that reality and ideology are two different things, and he was one of the few who can live with those two as one – like the Maharishi, Mother Teresa. And one thing is for sure: Wherever you have a Mother Teresa, you’ll also have a Charles Manson.  I love them both.  She brings tears to my eyes, and strange as it sounds, I loved Charlie for pointing that gun at my head.

- Gregg Jakobson, Beach Boys producer and songwriter   (Source: 1992, Esquire Magazine)

Q: Were they talking about Helter Skelter at that point?  Were they talking about the…

A: They were just telling me what they had been going through.

Q: So, no mention of Helter Skelter the motive?

A: None!

[...]

Q: ... a lot of people don’t realize how impactful your testimony was in that trial, in helping Vince Bugliosi get that Helter Skelter conviction. 

A: I didn’t do anything, all I did was tell the state that I would see to it that Brooks and Paul testified. 

Q: Now, do you recall what your testimony consisted of?

A: A bunch of crap.

- Paul Crockett, one of Bugliosi's key "helter skelter" motive witnesses  (Source: interview by StarCityRadio.com)