The Dichotomy of Evil:
The Manson Girl Who Got Away

(continued)

WM: Was that really going on, what Helter Skelter describes as the mental preparation and buildup for the murders—playing the songs “Helter Skelter,” “Piggies,” “Revolution 9,” and “Blackbird” from that album over and over? The line in “Blackbird” that goes, “All your life, you have only waited for this moment to arise,” which supposedly referred to the rising up of the blacks?

 

J: All of that was going on.

 

WM: When did you first go to the desert, or, more specifically, to the Barker Ranch in Death Valley?

 

J: Sometime in October. Halloween weekend of 1968, I think, was when we first went to the desert. Then, in February of ’69, everyone went back to Spahn Ranch except for me and Brooks Poston, who had been one of the stable-hands at Spahn’s, who always wanted to join the Family, but Charlie had never truly accepted him.

So Brooks and I stayed at Barker. They were supposed to get us in ten days, but nobody had ever come back from Spahn’s. We were there alone when Paul Crockett and [his partner] showed up. They came on March 10 or 11. They had pulled up to the farmhouse and it was difficult for us to either invite them in or send them away. We couldn’t do either. And Paul said that was his first clue [that we were under the influence of mind control]. We didn’t know how to think for ourselves or make decisions for ourselves at all. We came out and told them that the place was taken. But Paul just said, Well, it’s night, code of the desert, and all that sort of stuff. He and [his partner] had food, and we had very little. [Editor’s note: Juanita later married Paul Crockett’s partner, whose name is being withheld here for purposes of anonymity.]

 

WM: What were they doing up in the desert?

 

J: Prospecting for gold. Paul Crockett had studied with one of the early, early people who were of Ron Hubbard’s ilk—one of the first five people that L. Ron Hubbard, later the founder of Scientology, had studied with himself. This man had known Ron Hubbard when he used to say things like, “Well, you know how to really make it in this world is to start your own religion. Nobody can touch you, and you can really do it. Maybe I ought to take this stuff and can it.” And that man had told Paul the reason he wasn’t a Scientologist was that he didn’t like the amount of control that was happening in that organization.

 

WM: In other words, Paul Crockett knew a thing or two about cults and brainwashing. And also deprogramming?

 

J: Paul essentially deprogrammed Brooks and me, and later Paul Watkins, Charlie’s sometime right-hand man. One of the things that he talked about was the way Charlie got control over everybody by getting people to agree that he was something spectacular, and agree to his other self-serving ideas. He said that agreements are much more powerful than people realize they are, and that implied agreements are more powerful than overt agreements. It was those implied agreements that were making it very difficult for us to break away from him. Paul and Brooks and I used to stay up until one, two, three o’clock in the morning just talking. Doing what were early Scientology experiments. I don’t know whether they’re still done. I don’t know anything about Scientology now at all, other than the fact that Paul has warned me not to get involved with them, because they are as hard to get away from as Charlie was. [Editor’s note: According to Bugliosi, Manson went through Scientology training while in prison in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and claimed to have achieved Scientology’s highest level, “Theta Clear.” Bugliosi also claims that Manson often used the phrase “cease to exist,” a Scientology exhortation.]

 

WM: So how did you finally extricate yourself from the Family?

 

J: Well, one day Paul Watkins showed up from Spahn with a woman named Barbara. They were very interested in Brooks and me and what had happened to us, because it was very clear to them that we were alive again. It was also very clear to us that they weren’t alive. Barbara—Bo—was somebody that always fought Charlie. She just wouldn’t give up, she just wouldn’t give in. And he worked on her and worked on her and worked on her. One time she was stoned and we were all sitting with the fire going and sort of chanting and I remember her really freaking out and saying, “You’re all evil, this is hell,” and Charlie saying, “Well, of course it’s hell. Remember everything that Mommy ever taught you is wrong. Where you want to be is hell. And we’re all devils.” I remember Barbara standing there and screaming at him, “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to give myself away to you.” Yet she stayed.

The word was that they had been sent up to get us and to bring us home, to bring us back down. And we told them we weren’t going. And they stayed for several days, ostensibly to talk us into going. But it was very, very clear that they really wanted to find out what had happened. And Bo in particular just kept saying, “You’re really staying here, and you’re happy?” And I kept saying, “Yeah, I am.” Paul Crocket gave them just enough to make them interested in breaking away and getting some sense of individuality again. But Paul Watkins said, “No, I’ve got to go back and see Charlie. We’re not looking forward to telling him that Brooks and Juanita aren’t coming back.”

 

WM: How did you leave it with Charlie?

 

J: Brooks and I asked Paul [Watkins] to do something very specific. We asked him to wait until the whole Family was together at night, when everybody was there, and to say that we wanted Charlie to release us from any agreements we had made with him, and that we in turn would release him from any agreements he had made with us. We asked him to do it in front of everybody because Charlie couldn’t turn down requests in front of everybody, because he was the servant and not the leader, according to his teaching. He said, “Of course. They’re released. Nobody has any agreements to us, to me.” He said, “I don’t have any holds on anybody.” And so Watkins said, “Well, then, do you release me from any agreements with you?” And Charlie said, “Of course.” And Barbara said, “And me?” And Charlie said, “Yeah.” And Paul looked around the room at the rest of the Family members—this is the way he told the story—and said, “And what about them?” And Charlie said, “Enough of this shit about agreements,” and wouldn’t release anybody else.

Paul came back up in June, escaped, and never went back to Manson. I never saw or heard of Bo again. It was at Barker Ranch, by the way, that Charlie was arrested.

 

WM: You and your future husband left Barker Ranch in June of 1969 and the sensational murders took place that August. When did you hear about them and what was your reaction?

 

J: My future husband and I went off to some place out near Baker, California, to look for turquoise, and then to Kingman, Arizona, where his brother lived, to stay for a while and work. And that’s where we were the August weekend that the murders happened. I’m watching the TV and the news broadcaster is saying how bizarre the murders were, and that there was a place on this door where the word pig had been written. And I looked at that and said, “It doesn’t say ‘pig,’ it says ‘die.’” [Editor’s note: It did in fact say “pig.” The word was written in Sharon Tate’s blood.] I just somehow knew it was them. It had been at least since February since I had seen any of them, other than Paul and Barbara, or had any contact with any of them, except for one phone call. It was intuitive, because it didn’t make sense. It was totally incongruous to what they said and how they lived when I was there. But at the same time, I looked at that. I was sure it didn’t say “pig,” that it said “die.” And that was a big part of it—there was this whole thing of you had to die and be reborn. Until you could let your old ego die and be reborn, you couldn’t be free. There was this whole thing of dropping acid and experiencing death. And I remember these people writhing on the floor, and Charlie saying, “Die, let yourself go. Die.” Standing there and looking at them: “Die, die.”

I remember that experience. I’m a very quick study. That’s how he got my money so fast. But I remember being back at Spahn’s Ranch, way back, the first couple of weeks I was there—when Charlie was telling me to die. And he said, “All you have to do is just go with me and I’ll take you, because I’ve already died. I’m not afraid.” He just stared at me. And I just stared at him. The intensity of that man’s eyes. I had literally given myself away to him by then.

 

WM: You never saw a sadistic or brutal or psychopathic side to Manson?

 

J: No. It’s one of the things that’s scariest of all. The person that I saw was, for all outward appearances, everything he said he was. He’d give you the shirt off his back, literally. He got down on his hands and knees and cleaned up cat shit. I never saw this other side of him.

 

WM: The whole thing must be haunting for you.

 

J: Have you ever read anything about the Vietnam vet survivor-guilt business? I have survivor guilt. Real survivor guilt. Leslie and Sadie are in prison and I’m living a relatively nice lifestyle. I mean, why me? How did I get out? Why did I get out? Why did they get caught? I don’t know that either.

 

WM: Did you ever see Charlie again, on television?

 

J: I saw him during the trial, on television. And it was real scary for me. He was angry and intense. Very different than I had seen him. If anybody had said to me in July of that year that these murders would happen, I would have told them that they were full of it. I would have told them that it was impossible.

 

WM: What if you’d been there? What if you hadn’t been deprogrammed? Do you think that you would have been involved in the murders?

 

J: My fear is that if I were there I’d be in jail now too. Because I pretty well did whatever he told me to do. I mean, for me to walk forty miles, as I did one time—I had blisters on the soles of my feet that were two and a half inches in diameter . . . because Charlie wanted me to go somewhere and I didn’t have a car, so I walked. The basic programming was that you had to die to be freed anyway, so death was not something to be afraid of. That we were all members of one greater consciousness. But the other thing was that if Charlie said, “Jump,” my only question would be: “How high?”

 

 

 

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