Read Online Charles Manson Behind Bars by Mark Hewitt - Free Book Online Page A

journey to Corcoran State prison from Vacaville. “How did you end up coming here from CFA?” I asked.
    “They had me sign some papers,” Charlie explained, “telling me I was getting out of Vacaville and they brought me here. I was thinking I was gonna get out, but I never did. They lied to me.
    “They gave me a job planting grass and flowers when I got here,” Charlie continued. “Juan Corona built a garden along the side of Building One and Building Two. We had watermelons, honey dew melons, strawberries, carrots, chilies, and bell peppers of all colors. We even had cilantro tomatoes. The guards took some of our produce home with them.”
    Charlie was not done talking about his early days in Corcoran. “I used to pass out rubber gloves to the tower guards in all the buildings,” he explained, “until this black dude told the guards that I had marijuana. They sent me to Pelican Bay Prison. My heart started giving me trouble there so they brought me back here.”
    “They never should have sent you there in the first place,” I commented. “This is your home. You opened this prison.”
    “I sure did,” Charlie agreed, and then his tone turned melancholy as he recalled his first days in Corcoran. “They told me I was getting out.”
    Charlie also told me that around the time he arrived, the skinheads sent him a letter with the unusual phrase, “88 is Charlie’s Gate.” The Skinheads thought Charlie was going to be paroled in 1988. Since “H” is the eighth letter in the alphabet, “88” meant “HH” or “heil Hitler.” The Skinheads hoped that upon his release, Manson would send them some money for their cause. When he told me this, I suggested that he might get out in “08” meaning 2008, during the thirty-seventh anniversary of his conviction. Anniversaries always generated more Manson interest. Perhaps that attention could be turned into some sympathy.
    His behavior shouldn’t keep him in jail, I thought. He was usually cooperative and obedient. The guards treated him favorably for his cooperation. They would give him extra lunches, which he would promptly give to anyone on the tier who might be hungry.
    Many people, because of sensationalized media coverage, only know Charlie from the dark video clips on television. They know him for his female followers who shaved their heads and crawled on their knees several blocks to the Los Angeles Courthouse for his trial. However, the girls didn’t enact those crazy antics only for the benefit of Charlie. My friend made it very clear to me that what they did, they did to protest all injustice: that done to him, but also all injustice done to anyone.
    Charlie told me that during his trial, he was never allowed to have witnesses speak on his behalf. Only the prosecution was allowed to have witnesses speak about him and the Manson family, he explained to me. He wanted me to see him as much more than the media “boogeyman” or the face of evil that he had been made out to be.
    I asked him numerous times whether he was Jesus or Satan. My questioning was usually prompted by an unusual statement from Charlie in which he implied that he was one or the other of the two (sometimes even both). He had this way of implying it, without actually saying it, in his stories and in his words. In response to each of my queries, he would always reply, “That’s who people say I am.” I came to hear that response from Charlie again and again, “That’s who people say I am.”
    I have come to see him as intelligent, creative, and God-only-knows-how patient. He has endured a lot of ridicule for the crimes, the murder of seven people. I never believed that he committed them. Even though he has never denounced the slayings done those two fateful nights, I didn’t think that they should be held against him. Refusing to denounce doesn’t make him guilty. The law states that he has the right to remain silent.
    He has chosen to hold his peace even as society made him the