Vincent Bugliosi - Helter Skelter

Squeaky has served most of her life sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution at Alderson, West Virginia. She is presently at the Federal Correctional Institution at Marianna, Florida, transferred there from Alderson on March 3, 1989. Some time back the Associated Press reported her saying that “the curtain is about to come down on all of us, and if we don’t turn everything over to Charlie immediately, it’s going to be too late.” In a 1977 unpublished manuscript about her life with Manson, Squeaky wrote: “People said that I was Manson’s main woman…[but Manson’s] main woman is the truth. She comes before anyone or anything, and he’s with her always in life or death.” When Squeaky learned, on December 23, 1987, that Manson had written to some friends in Ava, Missouri, that he had testicular cancer, [100] Manson’s personal medical records being confidential, the California Department of Corrections said they cannot confirm whether Manson in fact had, or presently has, the cancer. she escaped within hours from Alderson to come to him, but was apprehended a few days later only two miles away. In a letter to a friend earlier that month, she wrote: “I only live and feel alive when I think of him.”

Sandra Good served ten years (five of which, from 1980 to 1985, she spent with Squeaky at Alderson) of her fifteen-year sentence. She now lives in Hanford, California, a town near Manson’s prison at Corcoran. Though she does not have visiting privileges, she is content to be geographically close to Manson, and has become the main spokesperson and cheerleader for him on the outside, telling whoever will listen, including national television audiences, that Manson is innocent of the Tate-LaBianca murders, and would be a “fantastic” person for the country to follow, one who would “give the children back to themselves.” Good’s boyfriend, George Simpson, does have visiting privileges, and reportedly is an intermediary for Manson.

Good is believed to be the proud guardian of the vest Manson frequently wore during the Family’s heyday, embroidered by “Charlie’s girls” through the years with the images of devils, witches, goblins, and other symbols of black magic and demonology. Also sewn into the vest is the hair of those girls who shaved their heads while conducting their round-the-clock vigil for Manson outside the Hall of Justice during his trial.

As to those who were once members of Manson’s flock, or associated with the Family, they have scattered to the four winds and are very protective of their privacy from the media. Because the Manson Family has become synonymous with terror, like those in the Bible’s Revelation 9 whose identifying seal on their foreheads their leader often spoke about, all of its former members (even those who, as far as we know, did not participate in any of the execrable crimes committed by the Family) are marked for life. Since they know that few who are aware of their background can ever feel serene in their presence, nearly all of them keep their history a secret in their new lives.

My latest information is that Linda Kasabian moved from New Hampshire and is now living under an assumed name in the Pacific Southwest with her husband and three children. A friend of Linda’s when she lived in Milford, New Hampshire, told a reporter that Linda “led a normal life. She drove her kids to school, participated in the PTA, that sort of thing.” Barbara Hoyt, whom I was happy to help get into nursing school, is now a registered nurse in the Northwest. Barbara is divorced and living with her daughter in a townhouse she just purchased. She leads a very active life “camping, fishing, painting, and playing volleyball.”

Contrary to other reports, Dianne Lake never became a corporate executive or vice-president of a bank. She worked as a bank teller for years, and describes herself today as a “happily married, well adjusted and committed Christian living with my husband and three children in the western part of the United States.” Kitty Lutesinger is divorced and raising her two children in California. Steve Grogan is not, as has been reported, working as a house painter in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Someone very close to him informed me that his occupation (undisclosed) takes him to various states and “he is doing exceptionally well, better than anyone could have anticipated.”

Mary Brunner, the first female member of the Family, who was an assistant librarian at the University of California at Berkeley when she joined Manson, served six and one-half years for her participation in the Western Surplus Store robbery in Hawthorne, California. She is presently living in the Midwest under an assumed name, is single, and is doing clerical work.

Catherine Share served five years for her conviction in the Hawthorne robbery. She now lives in a Southwest state with her second husband and a twenty-three-year-old son who is a senior in college. After divorcing Manson Family associate Kenneth Como in 1981, she says she completely separated herself from the Family. Like Dianne Lake, she says she is “happily married, and a Christian very active in church affairs.” Share, who was born in Paris to a Hungarian violinist father and German-Jewish refugee mother, both of whom were members of the anti-Nazi underground French resistance during the Second World War, describes her life today as so clean she hasn’t “gotten a traffic ticket in ten years.” And like Patricia Krenwinkel and other former Family members, she is deeply concerned about the many young people today who look up to Manson and want to follow him. Because of this, she is in the process of working on a book ( She Was a Gypsy Woman ) with a Texas-based writer which will “tell the truth” to these youths about “who Charles Manson really is.”

During the penalty phase of the Tate-LaBianca trial, Share had testified that the motive for the murders was not Helter Skelter—which I had tied firmly to Manson—but the so-called copycat motive, which had nothing to do with Manson. In a conversation with her in early April of 1994, she acknowledged to me what I had already known (of the text): that her testimony was untruthful. She said the copycat motive story (as well, of course, as her testimony that Linda Kasabian, not Manson, had been behind the murders) was a fabrication to save Manson from the gas chamber, and that she had testified to it under his explicit direction.

Catherine Gillies is divorced and living on welfare with her four children near Death Valley. She is very proud of the fact that her twin teenage daughters are both honor students. No one seems to know what became of Stephanie Schram. Nancy Pitman married Michael Monfort, a former member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a group Manson allegedly had a loose, arms-length relationship with in the mid-’70s. She served one year for her accessory-after-the-fact conviction in the murder of Lauren Willett, a homicide Monfort pled guilty to. Pitman divorced Monfort in 1990. She is now single, employed, and living with her four children in the Pacific Northwest. Her main concern these days, she says, “is to protect my children” from any harm brought about by her having once belonged to the Manson Family.

Little Paul Watkins, the intelligent and articulate youth who provided me with the missing link for Manson’s motive of Helter Skelter, died in 1990 from leukemia. Paul and his second wife, Martha, had two girls and lived in Tecopa, a small desert town at the southernmost edge of Death Valley. Paul was the founder and first president of the Death Valley Chamber of Commerce and the unofficial mayor of Tecopa. He and his wife mined rocks in the area and sold them in their Tecopa jewelry store. Paul also lectured extensively on the psychology of cults and the pernicious effects of substance abuse. His book, My Life with Charles Manson , was published in 1979.