What Led Me to Writing No Journey’s End: My Tragic
Romance with ex-Manson Girl, Leslie Van Houten
Peter Chiaramonte, PhD.
On August 5th 1977, after 25 days of deliberations in the Leslie Van Houten retrial for the first-degree murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in 1969 Los Angeles—committed the night after the killing of Sharon Tate Polanski and four others—the jury reported to Judge Hinz that they were “hopelessly deadlocked.”
One of the jurors, Alphonzo Miller, told reporters that he changed his vote to “manslaughter” on the final ballot, split 7 (murder) to 5 (manslaughter).
“It was impossible for us to unanimously decide on whether she [Leslie] actually was responsible for her actions, and I doubt if you will ever find a jury that could.” I was there in court when the judge declared a mistrial.
That was over 37 years ago. Leslie Van Houten had already served almost eight years for her crime. By the time of her twenty-first parole hearing in 2018, Leslie—who was the youngest woman in the history of California to be sentenced to the gas chamber—will be about to turn 69.
She will have served all but the six months she was temporarily free on bond in 1978 in prison. Longer than Nazi war criminal (and close Hitler confidant) Rudolf Hess. (In 1987, Hess took an extension cord from one of the lamps in the Spandau Prison reading room, strung it over a window latch, and hanged himself at the age of 93.)
I knew Leslie since the time her original conviction was overturned in 1976, throughout her second and third trials for murder, and in the aftermath of the only freedom she was granted since first arrested and charged when she was just 20.
Having Mixed Emotions Writing About Somebody as Infamous as Leslie Van Houten
Looking back now after decades—as a professor who has been kicked in and out of some of what are arguably the best and worst universities coast-to-coast in Canada, the U.S., Europe, and as far east as Bangkok, Thailand—right from the start, I had this eerie sense that the space I had entered into by writing this memoir had more than a single dimension.
In order to tell a coherent, credible, and compelling story, I couldn’t pull any punches, or let the murders get in the way of my story. Nor do I try to revive Van Houten’s image or minimize her role in these crimes. (I get hate mail from both Tate/LaBianca bloggers and “high energy” attack dog lawyers on both sides.)
Striking a Deal With the Devil
Stroking his beard like Mephistopheles tutoring Herr Doktor Professor Faust, a colleague of mine recently remarked that “Books are much more than things to the author, they are a piece of your being, your soul.”
I’d been complaining about having to hawk my book now that it’s written, when all I really want to do is get back to writing the novel I’d already started—when the spark that led me to write No Journey’s End caught fire and took over.
Having surrendered my third green card to armed Homeland Security officers at the U.S. border in 2012 just happened to coincide with my daughter Mia discovering hundreds of pages of letters from Leslie to me. As well as some from Manson to Leslie. And with me suddenly having time on my hands to see how his mind works, I put my first novel and academic career work aside, and the months turned into years.
Déjà Vu
Reflections on criminal justice issues put in brackets for the moment— I’d like to go on record by saying that Leslie knew nothing about my writing this story until it was finished. I sent her a copy of the manuscript last September. I have no hidden or metaphorical axes to grind. All I wanted to do was write the best damned creative nonfiction, romantic adventure I could engender.
Mine is a true love story based on real people and actual events. The names of some secondary characters have been changed, some of who are, in fact, composites.
Then other in-synch events also conspired against and seduced me. Among them: Bennett Miller’s film Capote, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role, which I didn’t see until years afterwards. I immediately identified with Truman Capote’s compelling fascination with “something happening beyond and about me,” he said, “and I can do nothing about it.”
That impulse led him to write his classic nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood: A True Account of Multiple Murder and Its Consequences.
That poignantly pricked my emotions and, in due course, led me to this juncture. I felt the same way myself when I turned to page A-13 of the Toronto Star on December 28th 1976. Printed above the caption headed: “EX-MANSON GIRL RETURNS TO COURT WITH NEW IMAGE” were “then and now” photographs of Leslie Van Houten. I found the picture of the now Leslie alluring.
I had the distinct, hedonic sense that I was about to seduce somebody famous.
Who could resist writing about what happened next, and forever since?
Dr. Peter Chiaramonte 
Hey Doc,
Me again from TOTLB. Over there I’ m Denim blue 747. Just wanted to thank you for the depth of insight you share. I think you are brilliant and I’m very appreciative of your insight . Sometimes I think I’m more like the Charlie clan than the TOTLB clan in that Im a little more self learned . love , Denumblue
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Hey Greg,
I so much appreciate your saying so. You have been patient with me and I appreciate that also. You kept an open mind and gave me the space I need to put things in frameworks and contexts by which we can see the whole story completely. Most people give themselves away by bias and seem to be asking questions to confirm their prior prejudices. But you, as I, are self-taught and open. I think it is astute of you to recognize–so few on these sites ever do or ever will for exactly the same reason–that rather than attributing motive behaviour exclusively to individuals, we might do better to take a much closer look at the dynamic social contexts in which individuals find themselves situated.
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