All language subtitles for Chaos.The.Manson.Murders.2025.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH

So, the
original assignment is…

"It's the 30th anniversary
of the… Manson murders, Tom."

"We'd love you to write
a story about it."

It was a very vague assignment.

It's one of the scariest
true stories out there

about an eight-and-a-half-month pregnant,
beautiful woman getting stabbed to death

while she pleads for
the life of her baby.

Her last breath, she's
calling out for her mother.

And that's separate from what happened
to the other victims that night

and the next night.

Pretty brutal murders.

Massacre.

One of the biggest
mysteries about this case

is how Manson was able to
gain control of his followers

to the degree that he could get
them to go out and kill on command,

without remorse, without
hesitation, complete strangers.

Don't you think
you could do that?

I
couldn't. Could you?

Shoot Bobby, Raymond.
Through the forehead.

Yes, ma'am.

So, a mystery.

A mystery, yeah.

♪ I am a
mechanical man ♪

♪ A mechanical man And
I do the best I can ♪

♪ Because I have my family ♪ˆ

♪ I hope you… ♪

♪ I am a mechanical boy ♪

♪ I am my mother's toy ♪

♪ And I play in the
backyard sometimes ♪

♪ I am a mechanical boy ♪

What's
the magnetism of you?

Music. Motion.

Um…

Generating, uh…

…attention.

Reality.

I know.

When you know…

…you
just simply know.

As one of the
prosecutors of Charles Manson,

why do you think that
this case never dies?

Why are people still
totally obsessed with it?

People in the United States
like to be scared sometimes.

They like horror movies.

When Life magazine put
Charles Manson on the cover,

he was a real-life Svengali.

The fact that he could get
other people to do his bidding,

to kill innocent people,
to start a race war,

I mean, what more base
motive could you have?

Are you rolling?

- Rolling.
- Go ahead.

At 8:30 this morning, an employee
came to work at 10050 Cielo…

and found several bodies in the house,
and immediately the police were notified.

The tentative identification
of the persons are as follows.

Sharon Polanski…

Jay Sebring…

Abigail Folger…

Wojciech Frykowski…

and another man who is unknown.

Is there anything scrawled
on the front door of that house in blood?

I can't
answer that question.

Where were the
bodies found? All in one room?

No. Two of the bodies
were found inside the house,

one in the vehicle,

and two on the front lawn.

Wasn't there a body covered
by a hood with a rope around its neck?

These are things that I can't give
you too much information on at this time.

Is this case more complicated
than other cases you can't comment on?

Well, how many cases and
how many times do you have

five persons found
murdered at the same time?

Los Angeles police
are saying little at this time

about possible progress in solving
the murders of actress Sharon Tate

and four others.

The bodies were removed from the
home of Ms. Tate and her husband,

screen director Roman Polanski,

under several blankets
and a veil of mystery.

Ms. Tate, who starred
in Valley of the Dolls,

was eight months pregnant and was
found in a bikini-type nightgown

with a rope around her neck
attached to the body of a man.

When police arrived, they found the
telephones and electricity lines cut.

The bodies had been
dead about 12 hours.

One officer summed up
the murders when he said,

"In all my years, I have never
seen anything like this before."

While the police admitted they had
no suspects in the Bel Air massacre,

there were two more murders 15 miles away
in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles.

Market owner Leno LaBianca
and his wife, Rosemary,

were found by their children
stabbed and mutilated.

There were parallels between
this and the Bel Air murders.

The word "war" was carved
into LaBianca's chest,

and "death to pigs" was
smeared on a refrigerator door

in the blood of
one of the victims.

The word "pig" had been scrawled in
blood on the door of the Bel Air mansion

where actress Sharon Tate
and four others were slain.

But police said, despite the similarities,
they do not believe the crimes are linked.

You can bust your ass
forever as I've been doing

and really chase this stuff.

It's like right there, like the carrot
at the end of the stick in front of me

and I'm getting close, but
you could do it forever.

Frankly, I still don't
know what happened.

But I know that what we were
told isn't what happened.

I'm not copping out here.

This is the hardest thing to do
without giving the background.

Because then I sound
crazy if I say,

"Well, there were these
research scientists

who were working secretly
for the government

who were trying to do exactly
what Manson did with the girls,

create people who would kill
without regret or remorse on command

and not really recalling
how or why they did it.

And these research scientists
came into contact with him

during this pivotal time that he
was turning into Charles Manson,

guru, cult leader of these obedient
slaves who would do whatever he said.

Give your
evil soul…

…to yourself.

And open your eyes and be
rather than seem to be.

So, I did a FOIA
to the Bureau of Prisons

to get his federal parole file.

Manson gets out of Terminal Island
two years before the Tate murders.

He begged not to be released.

He said, "This is my home.
I want to stay here."

They wouldn't let him. He's released
to Los Angeles for his parole.

But he immediately
violates his parole

and goes to the Northern District,
San Francisco, and shows up there.

He doesn't have permission.

Officers up there are stupefied.
"Who does he think he is?"

He's been in prison for
seven or eight years.

Most of 1967, he
was in San Francisco

at the height of the explosion
of the Summer of Love.

In the Haight-Ashbury
District, the heartland of hippie country,

they predict an influx of
100,000 young people this summer,

all eager to try the
hippie way of life.

And all of a
sudden, his group grew,

and they became known as
Charlie and his girls.

By the end of the year,
he had six or seven women

who would follow him through
the streets of the Haight,

not say a word unless
he spoke to them.

They were completely
subservient.

He'd order them around, and
he was screwing them all.

They were his wives.

I play music.

I get out of jail, and
these kids come around me.

Yeah.

They say, "You have
the voice of God."

And I say…

…"There's a whole
penitentiary of guys like me."

You know, I'm nothing.
I'm just a messenger.

I'm a witness, that's all.

I'm just a poop butt that
dropped out of the penitentiary.

And they seen something
in me I didn't see in me.

- What'd they see?
- They seen a nice guy.

And I'm not a nice guy,
but they seen that.

So I said, "Well, as long
as they seen a nice guy,

I'll reflect a nice guy. I'll
be the nice guy to them."

And I looked out for everybody,
and I gave them places to stay,

and I kept all the other
not-so-nice guys off of them.

Because I liked the kids, because
I can identify with the kids,

because they didn't have nobody
like I didn't have nobody.

The Haight Ashbury Free
Medical Clinic was opening

in June of '67.

Manson became a
character at the clinic.

He was bringing the girls
there for medical treatment

because they had all kinds
of venereal diseases,

and they were getting pregnant.

Everybody at that clinic was
fascinated by the Manson group.

They all had stories to tell.

He was a huge presence.

He'd been out of jail for
approximately a year at that time.

Had a school bus, a big black school bus.

He had, oh, at least a
dozen girls around him.

He had a number of guys.

Just had a way with people. He
was a very charismatic individual.

I guess some people
would call it magnetic,

and some people said that
they were hypnotized.

In one of my first interviews with
doctors who worked at the clinic,

he said, "Do you
know Jolly West?"

He was a famous expert on
hypnosis and brainwashing.

He was a scientist who was using the
Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic

to recruit subjects for
his study of LSD in youth.

Jolly called it a laboratory
disguised as "a hippie crash pad."

He got six or seven graduate students to
grow their hair long, dress as hippies,

spend the summer trying to lure
youth in there to be studied.

That was his project, and then he
wrote a few papers about it after

and lectured about it.

When I realized how many runaway kids
were coming to the Haight-Ashbury

and how rapidly the attitudes
that were being promulgated there

were spreading to other
parts of the country,

I finally decided that
really the only way to tell

what was going on in the Haight-Ashbury
would be to live there oneself.

I have a pad in the
Haight-Ashbury now.

It has been occupied all summer
long by a team of people.

Now, I can't, today, go into
all the findings of our group.

All I can tell you is that
we have learned so much.

West came into the picture more than
a year after I'd begun the research

when I started suspecting
there was a possibility of

MKUltra involvement
in this case.

When I found out that he'd been at
the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic

working with these people
who had contact with Manson

during the time Manson became exactly
what the CIA was trying to create,

programmed assassins.

Super-secret
project MKUltra

was carried out by the
CIA from 1953 to 1964.

It proved to be one of the most
bizarre episodes in CIA history.

A 20-year, $15
million project on mind control

that involved experiments
at some of America's

most distinguished universities
and research centers,

some of which had no idea
they were working for the CIA.

Investigators found
the CIA had been testing the drug LSD

on unsuspecting humans.

One man given the drug
committed suicide.

The committee was never able to
determine the full scope of the program

since the program's records were
destroyed in 1973 to avoid embarrassment.

These are all the documents
showing that Jolly worked for the CIA

for about 15 years
and lied about it.

Describing not only how they're
gonna conduct these experiments

but how they're gonna hide them.

And they described pretty
horrific experiments.

Until his death, Jolly repeatedly
said he hadn't done any of that stuff.

And he got very upset when
people accused him of it.

How exactly do you imagine
that this mind control worked

in that clinic in
Haight-Ashbury?

I don't want to say that I
know that it happened in that clinic.

I can only say that that was
not only where Manson went

to get his medical treatment,

but when Roger Smith, his parole
officer, opened an office there,

he directed Manson to come to the clinic
for his parole meetings once a week.

And for one year, while he
was Manson's parole officer,

Manson was arrested a half dozen
times, and every time he was arrested,

instead of revoking his parole,

Smith would write
him a letter saying

he was behaving well, he
was doing great, he's fine.

And Roger Smith is
someone you interviewed?

Yeah, I interviewed
just about everybody.

I met
Charlie in Berkeley.

Basically, when he was in the Bay Area,
he was in my office every… every week.

- Mm-hmm.
- I saw him a lot.

Because he came
in with his girls.

He was very odd.
He was a hippie.

- He was very manipulative.
- Mm-hmm.

But was he highly dangerous?

Didn't see it.

I remember really wanting
him to find something.

- He was a songwriter.
- Mm-hmm.

It seems to me like the
only thing he could have done

was to play music.

At some point, I had requested

that supervision
officially be transferred.

To LA?

I don't know that a parole
officer even picked him up in LA.

Global Tel Link,
you have a prepaid call from…

Bobby.

…an inmate at the California Medical
Facility, Vacaville, California.

This call and your telephone number
will be monitored and recorded.

You wanted to
know how I met Charlie.

I did, yes.

There's not really much to
tell. I played music with Charlie.

Tried to help him get
a recording contract…

…by helping him to record
some good quality demos.

Uh, I was in that music
community in Los Angeles.

I was friends with Dennis
Wilson of the Beach Boys.

Charlie had some talent.

People thought that
he should be able to

get his songs out
there in the world.

- Let's see.
- Do what you feel like.

Yeah.

Just groove.

Tell us when you wanna start.
We'll turn the machine on.

Okay. Can't you just
turn it on and let it go?

Gregg Jakobson,
Dennis Wilson, and I…

were interested in getting
Charlie to settle down,

come into a studio,
just him and his guitar,

play and sing his songs.

And let's see if we can get a
decent recording to use as a demo.

♪ There's
a time for living ♪

♪ The time keeps on flying ♪

♪ Think you're loving, baby
And all you do is crying ♪

♪ Can you feel? Are
those feelings real? ♪

♪ Look at your game, girl ♪

♪ Look at your game, girl ♪

♪ What a mad delusion
Living in that confusion ♪

♪ Frustration and doubt ♪

♪ Can you ever live
without the game? ♪

♪ The sad, sad game ♪

Dennis, the
drummer in the Beach Boys,

had rented a hunting lodge.

If you could make a mansion out
of a log cabin, this was it.

Dennis is driving, there's
a couple girls hitchhiking,

and of course Dennis slams on
his brakes, and they jump in.

Dennis drives the girls into the
big driveway at the old log cabin.

They're both two
of Charlie's girls.

♪ Always is
always forever… ♪

An arrangement
made in heaven, right?

♪ Inside yourself
For your father… ♪

Two days later, Dennis came
home, got out of his car

and was walking down the
walkway, and the door flew open.

This little guy came running out, and
he introduced himself, "I'm Charlie."

"These are my girls."

You should get a job
making people nervous.

Dennis loved his girls.

He thought this was
the greatest thing in the world.

Unlimited girls.

Dennis was in heaven.

Can you tell me what the
scene was like at this house?

Oh man. Really? You want to…
You really want to know that?

I won't say the person's name
because she's a real person.

She's on the diving board,
going up and down, and she said,

"Fuck me, feed me,
and keep me high."

And she dove in the pool. That
was what was going on there.

The women
were told that any male

that wants to have sex with
you, you have sex with them.

I can't imagine the diseases
that those women have.

I know that the Beach
Boys were very upset

about all the money

that Dennis Wilson was spending
on venereal disease treatment.

♪ Pretty,
pretty girl… ♪

The Beach Boys actually
recorded one of Manson's songs.

♪ Cease to exist Just
come and say you love me ♪

Even though
it was Manson's song,

it's credited to Dennis Wilson.

♪ Cease to resist
Come on, say you love me ♪

♪ Give up your world
Come on and be with me ♪

♪ I'm your kind I'm
your kind, and I see ♪

Dennis paid him outright,
probably 300 bucks or something.

Dennis should know better because
that isn't the way things work.

Things get published, then
you have lifetime rights.

That's one of the things,
probably, that made Dennis

finally close down
the hunting lodge.

Charlie took it
really personally.

When Brother Recording
Company from The Beach Boys

was taking music that was coming
out of the penitentiary and singing…

♪ In my room ♪

♪ I'm putting on
good vibrations ♪

…then you come up on the set
and say, "Where's my money?"

They say, "Oh, you don't
have any money coming."

I said, "What do you mean, I
don't have any money coming?"

"You'll pay me. Give
me what I got coming."

"Don't give me no more of what I got
coming, but pay me what I got due."

They won't give me my dues.

I say, "Okay, you don't give
me my due, I'll call New York."

"I'll call New York."

Because I'm ice
picking New York.

They still had their
main camp at the Spahn Ranch.

You know, I wanted to film
out at the Spahn Ranch.

The girls and the horses.

God, if you scripted it,
nobody would believe it.

It'd be science fiction.

These girls were sleeping on
the floor in the old movie sets.

It wasn't a real building.

It might not have had
a roof on it and stuff.

That's why I went to Melcher.

Terry Melcher was capable
of putting that together.

I said, "Terry, we
gotta film this guy."

I had a friend who
I employed as a talent scout

who called me, and he said,

"There's a potential here for a
very interesting musical documentary

on the hippie
subculture in America."

And he said, "It's
this Manson Family."

"They live out in an
old Western dude ranch."

"And they live there,
and it's a real commune,

and everyone shares everything."

"And it would be a great
musical documentary."

And I was in the TV business
at the time with CBS

and in the record business
with Columbia Records.

Terry Melcher is who?

He's Doris Day's son.

He was a very successful,
very young record producer.

He was a big deal.

Terry lived in the house that Roman
and Sharon lived in before they did.

Presumably, Charlie
wanted Melcher to sign him.

That would be a
gift from heaven to Charlie.

Manson was sharp enough to know

that Terry Melcher was
way a cut above Dennis

when it came to making
a deal with the label.

Dennis was a rock and roll star,

but that's not the same as
being a successful producer.

He'd finally gotten Terry Melcher
to come out to the Spahn Ranch.

And now you have to convince
him that he should sign you.

That's a tough one.

I arrived,
and they played,

I don't know, a dozen songs.
It was a big campfire.

Manson played the guitar,

and all the girls sang
parts and harmonies.

Who knew that half of them were
wanted by some law enforcement agency?

The last thing that would've ever
occurred to me as I was sitting out there

with one other guy in the
middle of these 30 or 40 people

who were about to commit some
of the most heinous crimes

in our part of the world.

They looked like everyone
on Sunset Boulevard.

Terry did the classic
music producer speech.

"You really got talent. You're
good. I… I like you a lot, Charlie."

"But I'm a producer, and I have
to know what to do in the studio."

"That's my job."

And he said, "I don't
know what to do with you."

In Charlie's mind, I think
that was his biggest shot.

Finally, he… he was really
close. He was close.

And that's as close
as he got, you know.

He was really close?

He was close.

That was probably the
beginning of the end.

It was getting more and
more heavier out there,

all the drug dealing going on.

I think there was a lot of money
starting to change hands too.

Drugs are expensive.

Drugs was a big part of the…
the monetary balance out there,

keeping things going and
keeping everybody happy.

That's big business,
big business.

Drugs is big business, and they're very
involved in that… that aspect of it.

Everybody knows that. I
mean, it's on television.

This call and
your telephone number

will be monitored and recorded.

I showed up at Spahn
Ranch just for a visit.

Charlie pulled me aside, and he told
me that he had killed a Black Panther.

His name is Bernard Crowe. He was a
low-rent drug dealer in Los Angeles.

He was not a Black Panther.

He looked the part

because it was fashionable
in those days to be that.

Charlie assumed, wrongly,
that he had killed the guy.

He thought that he had
killed a Black Panther.

He said that he was expecting a
retaliation from the Black Panthers.

He asked me if I
would stay and help

because there were not
enough men at the ranch.

That was part of my downfall.

I've been told
that Charlie Manson shot you.

Is that true?

Mmm.

Could be.

Well, let's not
kid each other around now.

It's either true
or it isn't true.

Did he shoot you, and
if so, when and where?

Uh, yes, he shot me, yes.

Everybody was on the lookout
for a carload of Black Panthers.

Every car that came
up was being examined.

Meanwhile, there just
wasn't much going on,

and there were bikers
hanging out there.

I was building a motorcycle at that
time, so I sort of idolized these bikers.

And I got involved in
a drug deal with them.

I had a friend in Topanga
Canyon, Gary Hinman,

who had a batch of encapsulated
mescaline that he was selling.

The next day, the bikers came
back and wanted their money back.

The reason was that they
said they all got sick on it,

and they probably didn't
like the hallucinations.

They threatened me and
held a knife to my throat.

The only option

was to see if Gary would
give me the money back.

I pulled the gun on him.

And he said, "I don't
have it anymore."

I said, "Look, Gary, I just need
something to get the bikers off my back."

He said, "You can have my cars."

Suddenly, Manson
shows up at the door.

Gary says, "Hi, Charlie!"

Charlie steps in and
slashes him across the face.

Why did he do that?

My exact words.
"Charlie, why did you do that?"

I cut the dude's ear off because
he was fucking over Bobby.

And Bobby was a youngster and
didn't know what he was doing.

And he was a kid,

and he never had no man
show him nothing, see?

Realizing his mistake,
Manson left me with the problem.

So I sat with Gary for a day,

trying to smooth
everything over.

I used dental floss and a
needle to sew up his ear.

But it should have been
stitched. There's no question.

But if I took him to
an emergency room,

I knew that he was gonna
tell what happened.

It was gonna bring the whole
world down on top of me.

I called Charlie.

I said, "This is your problem."

"You need to come and take
care of what you created."

His response was I knew what
to do as well as he did.

And hung up the phone.

And I made this decision.

I had to kill him
and get out of there.

I just ran at him,
stabbed him twice.

He went down, and he died.

Why did you think
you had to kill him?

That's what puzzles me.

Because he
would tell on me.

I don't remember who put the paw
print "political piggy" on the wall.

I remember that everybody had it in
their minds about the Black Panthers.

We'd been kind of absorbed
in that for a couple of weeks

since the Bernard
Crowe shooting,

and what Charlie had said, that the
Black Panthers were the enemies.

There was an idea

to make it seem that the Black Panthers
were responsible for killing Gary.

Hence, the panther
paw on the wall.

Hinman's body was
discovered about a week later.

It was really pretty terrible.
Bloated, insect-infested.

I read somewhere that they
could hear the maggots eating him.

I told my
wife, "When I go,

please just cremate me and
scatter my ashes in the forest."

Bobby left in one of
Gary's cars and went up north.

He pulled over on
the side of the road.

There was a warrant out for his
car, so the state police spotted it

and woke him up
and arrested him.

He had the murder
weapon in his trunk.

He was brought back
to Los Angeles.

The next day, the
Tate murders occurred.

One thing that
always has puzzled me

is this chronology.

You get arrested, you're booked,

and then the next day
is the Tate murders.

Was it the next day?

I don't really think that had
a lot to do with what happened.

To understand what happened,

you have to go back to the
Bernard Crowe shooting.

Remember, Charlie thought
he had killed him.

He was afraid somebody was
going to snitch on him.

The person that he was afraid
of the most was Tex Watson.

He was part of Charlie's
Family living at Spahn Ranch.

Tex Watson was a
disciple of Charlie.

He was worshipful.

Watson had orchestrated the drug deal
with Bernard Crowe that backfired

and put Charlie in the position
of having to kill Crowe.

He really didn't know the guy.

He just decided he was
going to save the day,

get in the middle of something
that Tex Watson had created.

So Tex has a little problem. He has
a little problem, gives me a gun.

He can't deal with it. I have
to go deal with his problem.

Which is?

I have to go shoot somebody for him
because he's too much of a coward,

and he's laying up
underneath the bed with it.

- Who'd you shoot?
- Lotsapoppa.

- Who?
- Some guy down in the drug world.

I had to go down and take care of some
business that was not my business.

Charlie's way of
protecting himself from Watson

was the typical convict
way of insurance.

If someone is a
potential snitch,

then you make that person
complicit in illegal activity.

You have something on them just
as they have something on you.

So Tex owed me one.

So when I come back and I say,
"See? You got me in trouble."

Every time I stand up for you, brother,
I got to face your life and your death.

You dig? I'm tired of
carrying you on my back.

And I threw the gun. I
said, "Now, you owe me one."

And if you don't pay me when you owe me,
then I'm going to pay you what you owe me.

Manson had known you had
killed Hinman and was in jail.

I don't know if he
knew that I was in jail.

There's no evidence of that.

So then when my brother
gets busted and my brother's in jail,

then I tell Tex, "Pay
him what you owe me."

I said, "Don't tell me nothing.
I don't want to hear nothing."

"I'm not part of no conspiracy.
I'm not breaking no laws."

You dig what I'm saying? "I'm
not getting involved in nothing."

- "However you do it, you do it."
- That's not what they say.

- Who's "they"?
- Susie Atkins.

No, Susan Atkins never
said I'd said do anything

except do what Tex said.

And I did say that.

I said, "Susie, you owe
me?" She said, "Yeah."

"Remember that other dude I
cut his ears off for you?"

She said, "Yeah." I said, "Pay that
to Tex. Don't bother me with it."

What happened that night
you all went to Sharon Tate's house?

What really happened?

Tex and I had our own special
little stash of cocaine.

I mean, I think it was cocaine or
methedrine. I'm not sure which.

We both snorted some
speed and got in the car.

We were very, very wired.

Hmm.

And we drove to the
house with instructions

to kill everyone in the house.

- From Charlie?
- Yeah.

Watson was driving.

Kasabian was in the car.

Atkins and Krenwinkel
were in the back seat.

They had three knives and a gun.

When they got there, they saw some
headlights coming towards them.

Parent had met the
caretaker for the property.

And Parent had come to visit him to
supposedly sell him a clock radio.

On the way out, Watson came
up, pointed the gun at him.

Parent begged for his life.

He said, "I'm just leaving.
I won't tell anybody."

Watson fired four times
at point-blank range…

…killing him.

Talk about being in the wrong
place at the wrong time.

Watson climbed
through the window

and opened the front door
for Atkins and Krenwinkel.

He told Kasabian
to stay outside.

Wojciech Frykowski was
asleep on the sofa.

Watson woke him up at
gunpoint…

…and told Frykowski
that he, Watson,

was the devil there to
do the devil's work.

Who do we
know this from?

Watson.

He's admitted that
that's what he said.

The people at the time of
the crimes were just wobs.

They weren't individuals.

They meant nothing to me.
I didn't know the people.

I was so high on speed that

I understood what I was doing,

but… it just didn't
make any difference.

Atkins and Krenwinkel
went through the house.

I guess there were so many
visitors to the house,

Abigail Folger waved at them.

Sharon Tate, she was in bed,

and Jay Sebring was sitting
on the foot of her bed.

Krenwinkel and
Atkins had knives.

They got Sharon Tate out of bed,

and they got Sebring and brought
him to the front of the house.

Wojciech Frykowski, I
believe is his name.

I had tied his
hands with a towel

and then was
instructed to kill him.

And I raised the knife
that I had in my hand,

and I couldn't put
the knife down.

I couldn't… I couldn't
bring it down.

It was just as though there was
a force there that held my wrist.

I couldn't move.

Watson told
Sharon Tate to sit down.

Sebring said, "She's
eight-and-a-half-months pregnant."

Watson shot him.

Then… panic was rampant.

Frykowski tried to run.

He got out to the front.

Watson followed
and pounced on him.

Abigail Folger

ran out of the
back of the house.

Krenwinkel followed her.

I ran after her with
an upraised knife,

and we went out
through a back door.

I ran her down, and
I began to stab her.

I remember her saying,
"I'm already dead."

And I was left sitting with Sharon
Tate, and she was talking to me and…

I remember that
I… I felt nothing.

I felt absolutely
nothing for her

um, as she begged…

for her life and for
the life of her baby.

And, uh…

Jesus.

Susan Atkins said to her,

"Look, bitch, I don't care
about you or your baby."

"You're gonna die, and I
don't feel a thing about it."

Atkins proceeded to stab
her a number of times.

Watson came in,
also stabbed her.

If you can imagine that,

stabbing an eight-and-a-half-month
pregnant woman.

On the way out, Susan
Atkins wrote the word "pig"

with a towel dipped in
Sharon Tate's blood.

When I got
back to the ranch,

I got out of the car.

Charlie came up and asked
everybody how it went.

But that was the first
time I looked at him,

and I said, "Charlie,
they were so young."

Yet the next night
you were there again.

Yeah, Charlie definitely
had me go the second night.

And you knew
what was coming again?

Yes.

You didn't say "no"?

No. And at that point,

I felt so dead inside,
it really didn't matter.

On the evening
of the LaBianca murders,

Manson gathered some of his
followers at Spahn Ranch.

He told them that last
night had been too messy.

"I'm going to go along tonight
and show you how to do it."

Kasabian was driving.

Manson was in between
Kasabian and Steve Grogan.

And in the back were Watson, Atkins,
Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten.

He asked me, "Do you
believe enough in what I say

to know that this is something
that has to be done?"

Or something to that effect.
And I said, "Yes, I do."

I didn't walk right up
and say, "May I go?"

But I think everything
on my face said that.

They drove around
for about four and a half hours

looking for people to kill.

But then, Manson gave
specific instructions,

and they ended up at Leno and
Rosemary LaBianca's house.

Manson got in, and he
got the drop on them.

He assured them that
it was just a robbery,

that he wasn't gonna hurt them.

He tied their hands behind
their backs with rawhide.

Then he said, "If you don't
move, you'll be okay."

"If you move, you're
gonna be in trouble."

And so the LaBiancas
stayed there.

Manson then went out to the car.

He got Watson, Krenwinkel,
and Van Houten out of the car.

Manson, Kasabian,
Grogan, and Atkins left.

Watson went in.

He had a knife.

Krenwinkel immediately went to the
kitchen and got a knife for herself

and a knife for Van Houten.

Watson asked the LaBiancas
if they had any money.

Rosemary said she had a
box with some change in it.

Turned out that it had
eight dollars in change.

He told Van Houten and Krenwinkel to
go to the back bedroom with Rosemary.

They got into the back bedroom.

Van Houten pushed
Rosemary down on the bed.

At this point, Rosemary
could hear Leno

getting stabbed to death
in the living room.

The sounds of Mr. LaBianca
dying came into the bedroom.

Horrible, guttural sounds.

She started calling out to
him and yelling for him.

And, um… at that moment,

for a brief moment…

I… I realized, you know…

these are people
that love each other.

Rosemary had this sudden
surge of energy and bolted up.

She swung the lamp in
Van Houten's direction.

Van Houten knocked the
lamp out of her hands

and wrestled her
down to the bed.

Krenwinkel, with a knife,
stabbed her as hard as she could

but hit her shoulder
blade, and the knife bent.

Tex came in and…

…killed her.

And then Tex turned me around

and handed me the knife,
and he said, "Do something,"

because Manson had told him to make
sure that all of us got our hands dirty.

And, um,

I stabbed Mrs. LaBianca
in the lower back

about 16 times.

And
there was no pity?

No mercy, no. No.

It had
been said by Charlie

to make sure that there
was all these witchy signs.

I went, and Mr. LaBianca
was already dead.

And I had gotten a fork,

and I stabbed him
with a fork repeatedly

and eventually left
the fork in him.

Krenwinkel went
into the living room,

and in Leno's blood wrote "death
to pigs" on the living room wall,

"rise" above the front door,

and the words "helter skelter"
on the refrigerator door.

It's been 72 hours
now since actress Sharon Tate

and her four friends were murdered
in a rented home near Bel-Air,

and many questions
still remain unanswered.

Tonight, the
city of Los Angeles is uneasy

after two strange murders
have left seven dead

and no clues to the killers.

I felt that the police knew
who did the murders really quickly,

but they didn't pursue
them for two months.

The Family left a trail
of evidence everywhere,

but the cops don't do anything.

The cops say that the LaBianca
and Tate murders aren't connected.

They knew they were connected.

The next day, these two
sheriffs go into the autopsy

and say, "We have a similar
murder, Gary Hinman,

same mode of killing, same
blood writing on the wall."

"We know it's these people at the
Spahn Ranch who did these murders."

The LAPD says, "No, no, we're on to
another lead, narcotics traffickers."

How did he know they weren't part
of the narcotics traffickers?

Nobody went to the Spahn
Ranch to interview anyone

except there was this huge raid…

where they're all picked up
on a bunch of other charges.

They had stolen guns,

stolen vehicles…

…underage runaway girls.

Charlie had stolen credit
cards in his pocket.

They were all released
three days later.

And Manson's parole
wasn't violated.

Somebody wanted this
group out there.

Every single probation and
parole person I talked to,

they all said the same thing.

Not all of them went as far as
saying they were informants,

but they said there's
something missing.

So I was looking into the
possibility of MKUltra

and Jolly West being
involved in these murders.

Where else does
Jolly West's name show up?

Most famous is the
Kennedy assassination.

Madness and
hate erupt anew in Dallas

as President Kennedy's accused
assassin is shot down himself

during a jail transfer.

There is Lee Oswald.

He's been shot.

Jack Ruby was the
killer of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Jolly went to examine Ruby

a few weeks before Ruby was gonna
testify as to why he shot Oswald.

He didn't testify
at his own trial.

He never spoke publicly,

so he was going to testify
to the Warren Commission.

Jolly West flies into Dallas,

goes to the county jail, spends a
couple hours talking to Jack Ruby,

and he comes out
after his examination

and says, in the preceding 24 hours,
Jack Ruby has had a break with reality.

It's that I find him to be

uh, mentally ill at this time,

and I think a mentally ill
person should be in a hospital.

Just as simple as that.

Any possibility that he
might have just been faking?

Not in my opinion.

So in other words,
in the day of that meeting,

Jack Ruby lost his mind.

Well, this is what Jolly West
had been doing for ten years.

Learning how to induce insanity with
someone without their knowledge.

It was the CIA
objective of MKUltra.

One of the biggest problems
is I've never been able to put

West and Manson
in the same room.

I don't have one person that can
say they ever saw them together.

I mean, Manson emerged from
the Haight at the end of 1967,

the same time that West left,

as exactly what they
were trying to create.

Well, it was his girls.

You know, people who would kill,
on command, without remorse,

who would do whatever
they were told to do.

That group left and went down
to LA, and then a year later

committed these horrific crimes.

A wandering band of
members of a so-called "religious cult"

with a leader they call Jesus

has had three of its
followers arrested

in the investigation of the murder
of Sharon Tate and six others.

The first information they had
that pointed towards the Manson Family

came from Susan Atkins.

She met Charlie in the Haight.

By the mid to end of '67,
she was a hardcore follower.

The
Family left the caves

they'd been living in
on the Spahn Movie Ranch

in the early fall,
after the Tate murders.

The Family set up another camp
in the desert, near Death Valley.

Five members are now in
jail on other charges

in the desert town
of Independence.

The Family's leader, Charles
Manson, is jailed here.

It is expected that he will be
charged in the Tate murders.

So Susan Atkins got picked
up with a group at Barker Ranch.

She was brought back to LA.

They only had her on
the Gary Hinman murder

'cause she had participated
with Bobby Beausoleil in that.

They hadn't connected her yet to
Tate, LaBianca, although they had.

They just weren't saying it.

They took Susan out of
custody in Death Valley,

brought her to Sybil Brand, and
then in the course of a week…

Starts blabbing
away to her cellmate.

Two cellmates, Virginia
Graham and Ronnie Howard.

Who I believe were
planted in her cell.

They were both married
to the same man.

They both had been semi-prostitutes.
Virginia Graham's a friend of mine.

I really like her. She's never
admitted this to me, but…

How can you
be a semi-prostitute?

I don't even know what that is.

Well, I mean, because Virginia Graham
resents it when I call her a prostitute.

She said, "No, no, no, I just enjoyed
the generosity of the men I dated."

They were also
writing bad checks,

false prescriptions for drugs,

and they were in and out of jail, but
they were both picked up the same week

and put into jail.

And that's when they
solicited Atkins's story.

He calls himself
Jesus sometimes, Satan others.

"Charles Manson"
is his real name.

Manson was the leader of
the hippie cult, or Family,

accused of killing Sharon
Tate and perhaps 12 others.

Manson reportedly was
miffed at Terry Melcher,

son of singer Doris Day,

for refusing to help Manson
get a recording contract.

Melcher was a former
tenant of the Tate house.

The house apparently became a
symbol of rejection to Manson,

and, according to a cult member,

the leader ordered all
in the house killed.

Manson is said to have a
hypnotic effect over his cult.

They needed
Atkins to testify

to indict Manson, Watson,

Van Houten, Krenwinkel,
and Kasabian.

So they got Atkins
away from her lawyer,

who had been court appointed and who
would have defended her properly,

and get a new attorney.

And I have the memos. They
had a meeting, and they said,

"Who do we have… that would
have more control over her

and get from her what we need?"

So they get her Dick Caballero,

immediately make a deal for her
to testify at the grand jury

for limited immunity, which is
she won't get the death penalty.

But she also has to testify at the trial,
and she can't go back to Charles Manson.

She can't recant, or
she loses her deal.

They all knew that
she was gonna recant.

They were basically all
working for the prosecution.

The grand jury hearing,

Atkins testified under the influence
of the people who were prosecuting her,

not with the defense
attorney protecting her.

Susan. Susan, how have
you been treated since your arrest?

Same way as all other
inmates are treated.

It took the
grand jury just 20 minutes

to agree that six members
of the hippie tribe

should be indicted in
the Sharon Tate murders

and those of a supermarket
owner and his wife.

When a story did start to
emerge, it was managed very carefully.

It was managed and manipulated.

And what was the story?

Exactly what we think of now
when we think of the Manson murders,

that these kids went
out and became corrupted

by the freedoms of the '60s
movement and turned into monsters.

So in other words, don't
let your kids do drugs,

don't let them join communes, don't
let them march against the war

because they're all gonna
turn into these crazed killers

who have no respect for life.

If you want to get into
COINTELPRO and CHAOS,

it served their purposes to have
the world finally turn against

this… left-wing
anti-war movement,

which a lot of people
conflated with hippies.

Secret FBI
memos made public today

show that the late
J. Edgar Hoover

ordered a nationwide campaign to
disrupt the activities of the New Left.

He ordered his agents not
only to expose New Left groups

but to take action against
them to neutralize them.

COINTELPRO was
started in 1967 by the FBI.

CHAOS was started
in 1967 by the CIA.

Those two programs were designed
to infiltrate left-wing groups,

especially the Panthers,
and neutralize them.

That's what their
own documents say.

Do whatever it took to basically

make them ineffective,
wipe them out.

The powers
that be in 1969,

they all believed that there
was going to be a civil war

because of this
left-wing movement.

There's celebrities that
were supporting the Panthers,

having fundraisers for them.

There's a memo from
November of '68,

so that's less than a year
before the Tate-LaBianca murders.

The COINTELPRO memo said,

"When the revolution
finally happens,

we have to make the
celebrities understand

that they're gonna be lined up
against the wall with everyone else."

And what happens? Eight
or nine months later,

Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring,

two of the biggest
jet-setters in that world,

are slaughtered at
the Cielo house,

a house with a
very high profile.

It's hard for me to believe
that this is being orchestrated

by the federal government.

I would never go that far
to say it was orchestrated.

Orchestrated sounds like
it's planned in advance,

executed, and then covered up.

It could've been just
that Manson had, you know,

leeway to do whatever
he wanted for two years.

Maybe that was all it was.

Kind of ironic, if nothing else,
that before we knew about COINTELPRO

and the FBI setting
up the Panthers,

Manson's plan was to pin
these murders on the Panthers.

Well, the things that
just keep coming back to me

that I wonder about,

one was, of course, that
close chronological connection

between the time of your
arrest and the murders.

And the other is the writing
on the wall in blood,

how it got repeated three times.

First with Hinman, and
then again, Cielo Drive,

and then with the LaBiancas.

I can see
where you would have

thoughts about the
correlations of those things.

I think it's important

that the story be stripped
down to the bare bones.

The bare bones of the thing.

There's no doubt in my mind what
the motivation was. None. Zero.

Charlie had gotten
paranoid of his own people.

He wanted to bind them to him
through their committing bad crimes.

That was the true motive.

So he sent Tex Watson

to kill Terry.

Terry lived at Cielo Drive.

All the time that Charlie knew
him, he lived at Cielo Drive.

He didn't know that
Terry had moved.

Watson asked, "What if
there's somebody else there?"

Charlie just told him
to kill whoever's there.

The ignorance of not knowing that
Terry had left that residence

meant that five other
people got murdered.

The trial of Charles
Manson and three young women

charged with the murder of Sharon
Tate and six other persons last summer

finally began today
in Los Angeles.

I can't
emphasize enough

the importance of what
happened in the courtroom.

If there was any doubt
in a juror's mind

about whether or not Manson was the
Svengali leader over these women,

that was dispelled
in the courtroom…

because every time
he did something,

like he jumped up and
would yell at the judge,

the three women would
do the same thing.

He came in one day with
an X on his forehead

that he'd cut in
with razor blades,

and the next day, the three women
carved X's into their foreheads.

It was just clear to
everybody in the courtroom

that Manson was
calling the shots

and had these women
completely under his control.

The case has
since become a bizarre national

and international sensation,

attracting the attention of
everyone from President Nixon

to the curious people
who sit in the courtroom

where the case is being heard.

It's all a play, isn't it?

Something else this trial
has done is gather together again

those members of Manson's
Family who are not in jail.

News accounts depicted them as living
a life filled with drugs and sex

and a kind of religion preached
by one man who ruled this Family

with an unusual
power of persuasion.

The only reason that there's still
a cultural obsession with this case

isn't because a famous
director's actress wife

was murdered in
such a horrific way.

It wasn't that so many
people were killed.

People are fascinated

by the fact that this
little ex-convict

had so mesmerized these people.

He took all their possessions.
He changed their names.

There were no clocks allowed
on the ranch, no newspapers,

no contact with
the outside world.

And then he would give them LSD.

They would take LSD for
days and nights at a time

during which he would preach to them
and induct them into his philosophies.

- Morning. Sun's shining this morning.
- Morning.

- It is.
- Yes.

What do you
expect to do in there today?

- Uh, they won't let me do anything.
- I see.

- They're doing it all.
- What are your plans?

I have none.

- I'm going to the desert. Yeah.
- The desert?

He had a very
magnetic personality.

When he walked in a room,

you could almost feel the
electricity pouring off of him.

He was a very bright guy.

He could quote the
Bible almost verbatim.

He could twist it into what he
wanted it to mean, like the murders.

Revelation 9 of the
Bible, Manson said

the locusts that were gonna
fly out of the bottomless pit

weren't really locusts.
They were The Beatles.

And they had breastplates of armor.
Well, that was their musical instruments.

This is The
"Beatles" Beatles?

Yes, The
"Beatles" Beatles.

When they flew out of the bottomless
pit, they were gonna start Armageddon.

The Family members would listen
to The White Album on LSD.

Manson said, "Well, the song 'Blackbird,
' the blackbirds were the Black men."

♪ Blackbird fly… ♪

They'd been waiting
for this moment to arise.

In the LaBianca house, above
the front door on the inside

was written the word "rise."

♪ You were only
waiting For this moment to arise ♪

There was a
song called "Piggies."

♪ Have you seen The
little piggies crawling in the dirt? ♪

Pigs for
Manson and the Family,

they were upper-class,
upper-middle-class whites.

♪ In their eyes
There's something lacking ♪

♪ What they need's a
damn good whacking ♪

There was another song in
the album called "Helter Skelter."

That's where Manson got the
name for the revolution.

♪ Look
out, helter skelter ♪

♪ She's coming down fast ♪

♪ Yes ♪

I know Tom O'Neill
has a different take.

I firmly believe that Manson
wanted to start a race war.

That was the… the
motive for the murders.

He was just obsessed
with this race war idea.

And Helter Skelter.

Well, the
headlines are reading now

Manson wanted to
start a race war.

Do you want to put that a
little more in perspective?

Well, I guess you could
capsulize it by saying that

in Manson's mind, the
term Helter Skelter meant

the Black man rising up
against the white establishment

and murdering the
entire white race

with the exception of, uh…
of him and his followers

who intended to escape
from Helter Skelter

by going to the desert and
living in the bottomless pit.

At least that's what he
told his… his Family.

Uh, he got much of
this from Revelation 9,

which is the last book
in the New Testament.

He got some of his other
philosophies from The Beatles.

Uh, he was an avid
follower of The Beatles.

Now, admittedly, this
is far-out and bizarre,

but these murders were
exceptionally strange

and exceptionally bizarre also.

You're not likely to find a
garden-variety type of motive

for murders as strange
and bizarre as these.

You have to realize that.

Are you saying that the
whole Helter Skelter narrative

from Vince Bugliosi is false?

How can you make that argument?

Oh, just 'cause I
don't believe it.

In the beginning, I believed it.

I read Helter Skelter for the first
time after it was a magazine assignment.

The
best-selling book

that revealed every
true and bloody detail.

I couldn't wait
to meet Bugliosi.

I couldn't believe he was
giving me so much of his time.

Our first meeting
was about six hours.

It wasn't until weeks
and months later

that I started finding
holes in his narrative,

and I'd go back to him and say,
"Vince, I don't understand this

or that or the other thing."

He knew that the more
sensational a case he presented,

the better sales
the book would have.

Why couldn't they
believe this nonsense?

I think the girls might
have believed in Helter Skelter.

They might've been doing it because
that's what Charlie told them.

If that's the case,

then he successfully brainwashed
them into believing it.

But I don't believe
that's why Charlie did it.

I believe there was another
motive, another reason,

and I was trying
to find out why.

Bugliosi knew what the
truth was but didn't reveal it.

It was not to start a race war,
which was Bugliosi's theory.

He knew what the truth was.

He knew that Manson talked
about that kind of shit.

Stories told around the campfire
that really were just that.

But it had nothing to
do with the murders.

His intention from the get-go

was to do exactly what he did.

Write a book, make a bazillion
dollars on that book,

and live on it for
the rest of his life

and sell the movie rights,

which is what he did.

His writer was sitting
in the courtroom

taking notes for the book
that they were already writing

while he was trying Charlie
and those three girls.

He had to get a conviction.

He wanted to portray
himself in this book

as the white knight protecting
all the people of America.

"Helter Skelter"
simply means confusion.

All we wanted to do to start
with was tell the truth,

but the lawyers wouldn't let us
because they wanted to sell it.

We just wanted to tell the truth, but
they didn't want the truth to come out

because you couldn't write
books with the truth.

Couldn't make big money.
Couldn't sell all this madness,

all the fear and the
vicarious thrill for somebody.

♪ My world
is a sad world ♪

♪ Often wonder if
there's blame ♪

♪ Such a fool in
a mad, mad world ♪

♪ With no picture in my frame ♪

♪ Everyone says crazy fool ♪

♪ You're always
gazing at the night ♪

♪ With my arms around a tree ♪

Manson and the three women
didn't put on a defense at the trial.

Manson testified for an hour
out of the presence of the jury.

The judge asked him, "Do you wanna
testify in front of the jury?"

And Manson said, "No, I've
said what I have to say."

It took 42 and
one-half hours of deliberating

before the jury sent out word that
it had indeed reached a verdict.

The three girls on trial, Susan
Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel,

and Leslie Van Houten, grinned
and talked among themselves.

Charles Manson smiled
and stroked his beard.

Then the verdicts were read.

For the murders of Sharon
Tate and Jay Sebring,

the accused were all found
guilty in the first degree.

For the murders of Abigail
Folger and Wojciech Frykowski,

guilty in the first degree.

For the murder of Steven Parent,
guilty in the first degree.

The clerk continued.

For the murders of
Rosemary and Leno LaBianca,

guilty in the first degree.

Manson shouted at the
jurors, "You're all guilty."

"We are still not allowed
to put on a defense."

Would you like to go
through this kind of a trial again?

Well, I'm kind of a
courtroom battler.

I, uh… I like a trial.

I like the
excitement, the drama.

Uh, I was very honored
that my office selected me

to handle a trial
of this magnitude.

I think, in retrospect, I
would have accepted again,

although the trial did create
problems that I never anticipated.

Well, that was a trial.

Eight months of
prosecution testimony.

Uh, they've convicted these
people, and you are next.

- All of you. Listen.
- What are you gonna do?

There's a revolution
coming very soon.

What would you do next now?
What are you gonna do right now?

We're gonna stay here
until Charlie's out.

- Looks like that will be never.
- He'll be out. All the people will be out.

There's a revolution coming.
You've all judged yourselves.

How did he learn how
to brainwash those kids?

Really in under a year.

Yeah, he was a con artist, but
everybody who knew him in prison

and everybody who knew him
prior to becoming Charlie Manson

said he was a joke to everybody.
Nobody took him seriously.

He somehow got help.

Where'd that come from?

Well, you're
suggesting Manson was a puppet.

I'm suggesting
that's a possibility, yeah.

He was being used by the state.

And then you have that
whole COINTELPRO, CHAOS,

MKUltra angle to it.

Ironically, Vince was the
one who put me on that path.

He actually writes, "Was it
something he learned in prison?"

"Was it something he picked
up outside of prison?"

"What intangible
quality did he find

to take control of the
minds of these people

and turn them into monsters?"

He had at least 30 people who
would do anything he said.

He also learned how to find

some trigger in their unconscious
that made them capable of murdering.

"They might never have killed," he
said, "if they had never met Manson."

♪ …is one is one ♪

♪ In this valley
you'll find me ♪

♪ Only perfection you'll bring ♪

So do you have your own
theories of how Manson got Tex Watson

and these women to
commit these crimes?

Manson was really
into mind control.

He was fascinated
with Scientology.

He wanted to learn how to

not only control his own
mind but control others.

Drugs played the biggest part.

Opening up their
mind to suggestion.

Manson just… preaching
all the time.

After dinner every night,
he would give these sermons

about race wars.

Helter Skelter.

Murder was okay.

These people were isolated.

They didn't have, like,
normal people to talk to

to tell them that this
was crazy.

Now, correct
me if I'm wrong,

but suddenly, LSD becomes a
possible way of explaining

really bizarre behavior.

For me, it's even
less the behavior.

It's the change of
thought, of personality,

how the people in the group that we're
talking about didn't just act weird.

They completely shifted in the
way they looked at the world

and they viewed the world.

Manson got these girls to completely
abandon their sense of morality

and their code of ethics and to believe
that there was no such thing as evil.

It stuck. It became
fixed for years.

Once they were out of
Manson's sphere and in prison,

the ones that were convicted
and served prison terms,

it took them years to be de-patterned
or deprogrammed and to renounce Manson.

Susan Atkins, she said, "I still
can't get him out of my head."

"I can't get him
out of my head."

"His thoughts are my thoughts."

"I try so hard, and I can't
get Charlie out of my head."

It's so alive in me,
even just recalling it,

I remember that I had gone so far,
and there was no turning back.

Even if I had wanted to run, even if
I had wanted to leave, I couldn't.

It was like I was caught in
something that I had no control over.

I had absolutely no say-so as
to what was happening there.

I was just like a tool
in the hands of the devil

is the only way I can put it.

Manson used LSD to create
personality change and make it fixed,

make it last after the
LSD trips had ended,

which is in all of the
LSD research objectives

for the MKUltra scientists.

- Hey, Sarge, cut it out. What…?
- Tut-tut. Quiet, Ed, please.

Now, you just sit there
quietly and cooperate.

Yes, ma'am.

MKUltra, I don't
even know what to make of it.

It seems to me that they wanted
to achieve certain objectives,

the idea of creating a Manchurian
candidate is this dream.

Mm-hmm.

But were they ever able to come
even close to creating that?

I somehow don't think so.

I have Jolly
West's report to the CIA

that he had successfully
learned how to replace

true memories with
false memories.

And he used LSD, hypnosis,
and other unnamed drugs,

so that's a success.

If true.

It's important enough a document

that when the CIA was forced to
turn over what little they had,

they summarized it
and they took out

that he had successfully, um,
planted false memories in people

without their awareness.

So, if they took that stuff out,

a very important milestone
for the MKUltra objectives,

replacing true memories
with false memories,

then what else did they withhold
from us? We'll never know.

He could have been lying,

but he kept getting financed by the
CIA through at least the early '60s.

What does it all mean? I'm
very honest about not knowing.

How can I control your
mind? Can I make a robot out of you?

Can you control mine or
make a robot out of me?

People had Leslie Van Houten
long before I had her.

Her mother had her first.

Her dad had her. Her parents
had her. Her school had her.

The TV had her.
The movies had her.

And then you come up and say,
"Well, you had influence over her."

Certainly I had influence over her. I
have influence over everybody I meet.

But that doesn't mean that I
directed her to be herself.

I didn't set your house on fire.

Don't blame me
for your children.

You raised your children,
you programmed your children,

and you made your children.

The reason
people watch drama,

they want to find the
truth behind the surface.

Otherwise, they're
bored out of their mind.

You know, what secret
has that protagonist got,

or what really happened?

But in fiction
you can always jigger it

in such a way that
there is a resolution,

whereas in real life…

Yeah, no.

…you can't.

That's why the book's
called Chaos, kind of.

- Yes.
- It's chaotic.

There's so much, you
know, so many threads.

The problem with
this story in particular

is that people are
very fond of their…

fantasy.

They don't want to hear how
mundane the story actually is,

how not a mastermind
Charlie actually was.

In his paranoid delusions,

in his miscalculations…

it was just

blunder after blunder
after blunder.

If you only knew what
I know now in terms of

the criminal mindset.

People
love conspiracies.

Yeah, they do.

They want it to be more
complicated than it is,

and it's so hard to disabuse
people from those fantasies.

Now.

Is there any decency
in you at all?

- Charlie, there's a lot of decency.
- Okay, is there any respect in you at all?

For you, Charlie?

- You can't ask me to respect you.
- I just made a nice film for you, man.

- And what does that do to you? Does that...
- It lets people see you.

So you still don't
see me as anybody

but what you need me to
be in your mind as a what?

- When you kill nine people...
- When I kill nine people?

You can't come back.

I was never convicted
for killing nine people.

Would they be dead
if it wasn't for you?

What do you mean? The world wouldn't
be here if it wasn't for me.

If it wasn't for me,
you'd all be gone.

♪ People say I'm no good ♪

♪ But they never,
never do they say ♪

♪ Why their world
is so mixed up ♪

♪ Or how it got that way ♪

♪ They all look at
me and they frown ♪

♪ Do I really look so strange? ♪

♪ If they really
dug themselves ♪

♪ I know they'd want to change ♪

♪ Everybody says
you're no good ♪

♪ 'Cause you don't do Like
they think you should ♪

♪ Do you expect them ♪

♪ An' do you expect
you to act like them ♪

♪ Look at them, man ♪

♪ Look at the fix they're in ♪

♪ I don't care I don't
care what they say ♪

♪ Just let 'em sit
there and burn ♪

♪ The young might not
be So dumb after all ♪

♪ An' from the young
You might even learn ♪

♪ Everybody says
you're no good ♪

♪ 'Cause, Charles, you don't do You
don't do like they think you should ♪

♪ Do you expect them
to act like you? ♪

♪ Do you expect them To
expect you to act like them? ♪

♪ Do you expect to see ♪

♪ Do you expect the fool To
see what a fix he's in? ♪

♪ Do you expect the fool To
see what a fix he's in? ♪

♪ In your cardboard houses ♪

♪ An' your tin-can cars ♪

♪ You sit there and you wonder ♪

♪ You wonder where you are ♪

♪ Those diamond rings ♪

♪ They're obscene ♪

♪ You sit there and you wonder ♪

♪ And you say who's to blame ♪

♪ Take a look at yourself ♪

♪ Take yourself off the shelf ♪

♪ You can't belong to nobody ♪

♪ With your
can't-cough medicine ♪

♪ And your wonder drug ♪

♪ You got more sickness ♪

♪ Than you got cures of ♪