Manson: Mind Control Methods
of a Con Artist Extraordinaire
Peter Chiaramonte, PhD
www.facebook.com/p.chiaramonte
www.adler.academia.edu/peterchiaramonte
I mentioned last time in “Putting the Tate-LaBianca Killings & Other of Manson’s Victims, In Context” how, in his opening statement in the first of Leslie’s three trials for first-degree murder, deputy DA Bugliosi is quoted as saying, “Manson’s total domination over the Family will be offered as circumstantial evidence that on the two nights in question it was he and he alone who ordered these seven murders” (Italics mine). Former Manson Family members such as Leslie Van Houten were nothing more than Charlie Manson’s “pawns,” Bugliosi reported.
Christ, you know it ain’t easy…
Witnesses from each of Leslie’s three trials corroborated the effect Manson had on each of his followers. Most agreed he was like “some kind of hypnotist” who savored the role. During the first trial, Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi confirmed these facts, whenever it suited him, but vehemently objected to the same points when reiterated by the defense team in their counter-arguments.
Later on in his book, he wrote: “Somewhere along the line, I wasn’t sure how or where or when—Manson developed a control over his followers so all-encompassing that he could ask them to violate the ultimate taboo—say, ‘Kill,’ and they would do it.”
Bugliosi rightly and convincingly reduced the co-conspirators to “zombies” and “pawns of Charlie Manson”—having no will of their own. But then, the fashionably, yet also metaphorically balding grand inquisitor was equally intent on reconstructing Leslie as a mindful, capable individual acting out of her own volition? Bugliosi seemed as nuts as the rest of them. Or as Martin Bijaux once put it (though I edited it out of the novel) “He always seemed up to his nuts in squirrels.”
That’s Why They’re Called Con-Artists
When Manson first met the pretty brunette Bobby Beausoleil brought with him to Spahn Ranch in the late 1960s, Charlie immediately dropped what he was doing to study her closely. Charlie had plenty of experience handling run- away teenaged girls like Leslie before. First, he tacitly implied he possessed insight into all of her lonely disaffections. For example, he used a common theatrical device to mirror her moods. By copying each changing expression or gesture Leslie made, Manson intended to show how well he could identify what she was thinking and feeling.
Leslie’s childhood clan was soon forgotten. She may have been lost, but she wasn’t alone. There were plenty of kids on drugs looking for a way out of the juggernaut. Nothing new seemed unappealing.
Manson also famously used sex, drugs, music, and isolation to gain power over the others. That is no secret. The scores of acid trips Leslie took with Manson were his deliberate treatment exercises for total mind control, which must have amused him. Besides, it was vital for erasing an individual’s previous conditioning and replacing it with the contagious mantras he compelled his followers to repeat. (“I would die for you. Would you die for me?”) And no one could play any music but Manson’s, The Beatles or The Moody Blues. Everyone had to be of one mind, and that mind belonged to Charlie.
Given the profound isolation at Spahn, no one knew about, nor could debate, things such as student anti-war protests or the crisis in black and white America. Even the sex treatment was playacting and taking on various roles—just like Charlie’s customary reenactment of Christ’s crucifixion. On the surface, the orgies were just innocent fun, but, underneath, Manson used it like magic to make time and ego disappear. If you’ve ever done real and pure MDA or LSD in a group, you can imagine how readily someone like Manson could replace the sense of self a person normally has.
With the drug-induced sureness of oneness that comes with that experience, the victim comes to associate with the persona of one Charles M. Manson.
Timing is Everything, Believe It
When Charlie was released from prison in 1967, he must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven. The times were just ripe for his con. He’d learned how to size up these hippies in an instant. He knew of his or her desperation for someone older and seemingly wiser that cared, so he put that costume on and grabbed his guitar.
Manson may have been anti-social deep down, but he and his bandwagoneering sure put on a show of support for the new “hippie” generation of which Les and I were a part. He was, by all accounts, quite the enticing procurer of very young women.
Manson’s chief procurement agent at Spahn Ranch at the time was Paul Watkins. ‘Little Paul,’ as he was neighly called, described the orgies that took place—usually once or twice a week—saying they would always start out with peyote or acid. Charlie would dispense doses of drugs according to how much he wanted each person to take.
“Everything was done at Charlie’s direction,” Watkins told Vince Bugliosi.
Several witnesses to these goings-on at Spahn Ranch testified in court as to Manson’s canny ability to capitalize on an individual’s hang-ups or desires. Some were there searching for sexual freedom and romantic adventure. Everybody wants something wicked sometime. Just ask Roman Polanski.
When asked how Manson would usually go about “programming” someone, former Family member Brooks Poston said, “With a girl, it would usually start out with sex.” Charlie might persuade a plain-featured girl that she was beautiful. Or, if she had a father fixation, have her imagine that he was her father. If a guy or girl was looking for a leader, he might imply that he was the second coming of Christ. When a man first joined the group, Poston added, Manson would take him on an LSD trip, ostensibly “to open his mind up.” Then, while he was in such a highly credulous state, Charlie would talk about how he had to “surrender to love.” How only by ceasing to exist as an individual “ego” could he become one with all things everlasting.
That wasn’t all. If you stayed for the extravaganza, you might get to see Charlie Manson reveal himself to you as the second coming of Jesus Christ.
A seventeen-year-old Poston testified at the first trial that Manson’s claim to divine status wasn’t so much stated as implied. Charlie claimed to have lived two thousand years before and often referred to himself as both “God and the Devil.” Furthermore, Manson was fond of having himself strapped to a faux crucifix with ropes. All the while, a young girl playing Mary Magdalene knelt and cried at his feet, as he routinely acted out the passion play of Christ on the cross.
Tex Watson described Manson as a chameleon. “And with each change he could be born anew…Hollywood slicker, jail tough, rock star, guru, child, tramp, angel, devil, son of God,” Watson wrote in his book, Will You Die For Me? This was a powerful question under any circumstances but especially if the right Beatles song happened to play just as you were peaking on acid.
Prison as Grad School for Manson
In prison, this natural-born con man extraordinaire, Charles M. Manson was admitted into criminal graduate studies. He had advanced tutorials in pimping, guns, drugs, knives, racism, fascism, violence, different ways to rob banks and how to survive in the desert. Charlie befriended Alvin ‘Creepy’ Karpis, a former member of Ma Barker’s “Bloody Barkers’ Gang”—one of the most notorious and formidable criminal gangs in American history. ‘Creepy’ was ‘Creepier’s mentor and senior thesis advisor.
Other concentrations Manson studied in prison, besides The Beatles and the Bible, were L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, Robert Heinlein’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. These books taught him a lot and gave him plenty to play with. For example, one of Dale Carnegie’s basic tenets was to “Let the other fellow feel that the idea is his.” That way, for instance, Charlie was able to get Tex to do something to get their brother, Bobby Beausoleil, off for having killed Hinman.
Looking back on all of this decades later, and watching the news on TV every day, I’m amazed at how little we’ve learned as a culture. The whole “Manson Murders “ saga should have taught us how to anticipate and prevent some of what we now refer to as “homegrown terror” techniques. People would have less trouble understanding how terrorist groups—whether they be in Afghanistan, Alberta, Syria, or Syracuse—are able brainwash teenaged suicide bombers into stamping their tickets to heaven. Yet parole boards and the public at large still do not seem to comprehend what happened to Leslie Van Houten when she was just a kid—being fed large doses of Helter Skelter BS and LSD in a cult all at the same time. That’s what’s so puzzling. The rest is easy. The same stuff the Terrorists and the CIA all use—the trifecta of mind control—sodium pentothal, deep hypnosis, and profound isolation.
NEXT UP: HOW THE REAL MOTIVE FOR MANSON’S FAUX-HELTER SKELTER HAD TO DO WITH MUSIC, MELCHER, MALICE & COVER-UPS…not what you might have imagined.
Dr. Peter Chiaramonte 