Charles "Tex" Watson

aka "Crazy Charlie", "Mad Charlie" - aka "the guy who killed Sharon Tate"

“A lot of guys in the prison think they’re bad. Some of them are, but when it comes to being bad in every sense of the word, I have been bad before and I can play the role pretty good. When I killed those people, they didn’t exactly stand there and not do anything. I stabbed that guy [Frykowski] fifty-one times in the chest. I stabbed him so many times in the chest that my hand was sinking into it up to my elbow. I stabbed him so hard that the handle of the knife broke off. These people don’t know what bad is. I wrote the book on bad and I did it more than once.”

— Charles “Tex” Watson, 1978    (Source: Headquarters Detective)

“She was pleading to me and pleading to me, but I didn’t even have a moment of hesitation. I took a knife and just slit a big slit across her face. And I just kept cutting her and carving on the body and started stabbing her in the chest— I’d say maybe 15 cuts and stabs. She was crying and saying, “Oh mother, oh mother.” She said, “Just let my baby live. You can kill me, but let my baby live.” I was actually the executioner.

- Charles “Tex” Watson, 1978    (Source: The Times)

“[Van Houten] should be allowed to go free. She didn’t kill anyone. I was standing over this woman and I noticed Leslie down on the floor. She was terrified! I saw her knife lying beside her and there wasn’t a drop of blood on it. But I was dripping blood all over the place and some got on the handle of her knife. I didn’t want to leave without everyone having at least stuck a knife in the body of one of the victims. I told her to do her part. She was like a wet rag. I pushed her towards this lady sprawled out face down on the floor. The lady was dead. I pushed Leslie down beside her. She shook her head. I turned her face up towards me. I had blood all the way up my arms and I had a knife in my hand. She was one scared girl.”

- Charles “Tex” Watson, 1978    (Source: Headquarters Detective)

“I feel Manson was possessed by demons and I think I was possessed by the same spirit that Charles Manson was possessed by. The psychiatrists called it shared madness. That is, we were all in one devil and we did what the devil said do. I am not blaming what I did on him, or evil spirits. I yielded myself to it, so I take the blame.”

- Charles “Tex” Watson, 1978    (Source: Ellensburg Daily Record)

Just like Sharon Tate and the LaBiancas, and after the families were killed— children, animals, anything that breathed.

[We] shouldn’t have been caught for the crimes [we] committed. Let’s say we could have shocked the nation with out tests.

In widespread areas we could have killed infants, holding them by their ankles and smashing them against fireplaces. Wives and loved ones were to be hung by the rafters.

Dogs and cats and any living things were to be brutally and viciously beaten to death. And the blood of the victims would be used to inscribe messages of sadistic humor on the walls.

And a warning would be issued to expect more of the same. It would have worked, too. It would have happened!

- Charles “Tex” Watson, 1978    (Source: Headquarters Detective)

“Self-preservation won out in court and I admitted only what I felt I had to, what the prosecution already knew. I admitted shooting or stabbing everyone at the Tate house except Sharon. I denied killing her since Bugliosi and a previous jury were convinced Susan Atkins had done it. I claimed that Linda had driven to 10050 Cielo Drive, and tried to lay all the evidence of premeditation on Charlie or one of the girls. Also, since all the other witnesses to the events outside the LaBianca house had said that Charlie went in alone to tie up the victims, I went along with that story, figuring it made me look that much less responsible.”

- Charles “Tex” Watson, 1978    (Source: Will You Die For Me?)

“After the crime, we reported to Manson in the bunk house, very low-key with him not happy, and there was no celebration by the family in front of a television.”

- Tex Watson   (Source: Aboundinglove.org)

‘It was fun tearing up the Tate house, OK. You should have seen it, people were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.’

- Charles “Tex” Watson, 1971    (Source: 1971 Psychiatric Evaluation)

It was an easy life that Luella and I fell into. Combining her contacts with mine, we found we could sell a lot more dope than she’d been doing on her own. We charged $15 a lid on grass that we bought from our vending-machine friend in $95 kilos (2.2 lbs.) and then broke up into 36 lids. We discovered affluence: a new stereo system and records (one of the first albums we bought was the Beatles’ White Album, and we played it over and over until I knew it by heart), expensive clothes, clubs and restaurants where you laid down five bucks just for a beer.

- Tex Watson, in Chapter 10 of his book

Charles Manson’s self-proclaimed right-hand man Charles “Tex” Watson, and murderer of at least 8, talks about the errors in Helter Skelter:

I felt Vincent Bugliosi’s book, “Helter Skelter”, written in 1974, was about 85% accurate in its portrayal of what it covered. Roles were overplayed, especially Susan Atkins, and there were factual errors. For instance: ID’s were not all put in one box. Dogs did not eat before the family did. No spotlights were at the ranch. The $5000 was given to me by Linda, and I gave it to Manson. There were no girls kissing one another, and there were no orgies as depicted. I don’t remember Manson ever physically abusing the girls. No one enjoyed what they were doing, like the girls were portrayed as doing.There was no celebration by the family in front of a television.

Strange as it may seem, I never heard Manson mention Nietzsche or Hitler. I do remember in the book, Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi had a shocking parallel between Hitler and Manson. He wrote that both men were influenced by Nietsche, had similar statures and wounded pasts, and were illegitimate children. With their charismatic and hypnotic eyes, Hitler and Manson could easily influence others. I find it hard to believe that Manson was emulating Hitler without my knowing it.

In the “Helter Skelter ” 1 chapter of my book, Will You Die For Me?, I share other motives, those being: a copycat murder to free Bobby Beausoleil from jail, a connection the prosecution failed to acknowledge at first; and to obtain money to finance “Helter Skelter” and to pay Mary Brunner’s bail.

- Charles "Tex" Watson    (Source: AboundingLove.org)