Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes

In 1969, I was assigned to West Los Angeles as a patrol officer.

I can't remember a day

that I would wake up and not want to go to work.

- 184… -184, roger.

It was about nine o'clock in the morning.

The call came in as a man-down call.

Could be a drunk, medical emergency, a homicide, could be anything.

And so I rolled on it.

The address was on the borderline of Beverly Hills.

A low-crime area, very expensive homes.

Well, the last one on the end of the block

was the 10050 Cielo Drive.

When I arrived at the location, the maid was, um, hysterical.

She could barely say her name.

She kept saying the word muerto, I remember.

And I knew what that meant.

I went in through the gate,

and I saw a car.

It was parked kind of in a funny position in the driveway.

And I looked into the car,

and I saw a human being laying there in the seat with blood all over him.

We walked around to the front of the house and saw two more bodies on the front lawn.

The body closest to the front door was a male,

and he appeared to have been shot and stabbed.

The woman was laying on her back with her eyes open.

She had knife wounds in both of her hands.

These people were fighting for their life.

And then I turned around and saw the word "pig"

written in blood on the front door.

I was so full of adrenaline that my heart was coming out of my chest.

There was blood everywhere.

We went from one room to the next room.

And when we finally got to the living room,

we saw two more bodies.

It was a…

Sorry.

It was a beautiful woman, pregnant and dead.

And she was laying there with a rope around her neck.

It was a very thick white rope.

It went over the beam in the ceiling,

and it went to a man that was laying next to her.

And the rope was wrapped around his neck.

It was horrendous. It was a slaughterhouse of people.

It was horrific.

After 50-some years,

it's something that you… you don't forget.

- -

I don't let no people know who I am.

I don't let other people know what I'm doing so they can stop me.

So I'm the underworld. I'm that son of a bitch.

I'm that dirty, low-down motherfucker that you never see.

But I ain't done a goddamn thing, man.

All I did was I played the mistakes of other people.

That's always what the devil does.

He puts on your face and plays you back to yourself.

He'll never let you know what he's thinking.

In a scene described by one investigator

as reminiscent of a weird religious rite…

…five persons, including actress Sharon Tate,

were found dead at the home of Miss Tate and her husband,

screen director Roman Polanski.

Miss Tate, who starred in Valley of the Dolls,

was eight months pregnant.

Was there a party? What was going on last night? Any idea?

At this point, you must realize we only have tentative

and very meager amount of information.

Are the bodies badly mutilated?

Uh… this I'd rather not discuss.

Sharon Tate was the elite of Hollywood.

She was rich, beautiful, famous.

Her husband was internationally famous.

Among the other victims were Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring

and coffee heiress Abigail Folger.

Nobody really knew what was going on. It was a puzzle.

Why Sharon Tate? Why Roman Polanski's house?

Why Abigail Folger? What did they ever do to anybody?

Twenty-four hours later,

there's another murder about 15 miles from the Cielo Drive murders.

The same circumstances and the brutality,

but involving people who were not celebrities.

Market owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary

were found by their children stabbed and mutilated.

The word "War" was carved into LaBianca's chest.

"Death to pigs" was smeared in the blood of one of the victims.

There was panic in L.A.

People felt like there might be a mass murderer out there

targeting rich people.

And it shocked this town like nothing had ever shocked it before.

People were buying guard dogs. They were buying guns.

People were locking down, keeping their windows closed.

They felt like they were under attack.

Tonight, the city of Los Angeles is uneasy

after two strange murders have left seven dead and no clues to the killers.

For four months, the police were clueless.

They didn't know who had done these murders.

And then they found the bogeyman.

The sheriff says you're not to ask this man any questions.

Not even his name. You're to stay at least five feet away from him.

I was a special correspondent with the Associated Press

assigned to the case.

The hallway was filled with photographers and cameramen.

Everybody was elbow to elbow trying to get pictures.

It was bedlam.

The first time I saw Charles Manson,

I was sort of surprised he was of small stature.

He was somebody that you would ignore.

And he looked malnourished and very thin and had this long beard.

These murders were so violent.

Everybody thought that this was committed by men.

The horror of Sharon Tate being killed when she was pregnant,

it seemed like no woman could ever do that.

As it turned out, more of the killers were women than men.

But the girls were kind of pitiful.

They were so obviously under Manson's control,

and they became known as the Manson Family.

All the elements are present

for one of the most sensational murder trials in American history.

Young girls supposedly under the spell of a bearded Svengali

who allegedly masterminded the seven murders.

One girl implicated in the murders said she had been hypnotized by Manson.

"If Charlie said it was right, then it was right."

These were flower people gone bad,

and it scared the hell out of people.

- Are you sane? -Sane?

- Yes. -That's relative.

Here was this man who somehow got all these followers.

And some of them committed horrendous murders.

I was a member of the family.

It's a real enigma, you know, even for me.

Even for me, it's like,

how did that all come to pass?

You say there's no mind control. That's bullshit.

I'm an expert in mind control.

You can control anybody you want to control

if you decide you want to control them.

It's hard to talk to people about, you know, my childhood.

My parents weren't cruel.

They were just part of this counterculture.

My dad was an artist, and he got this idea.

"Hey, let's drop out."

So drop out meant, you know, you sell all your stuff,

and you move into a truck, and you go down the road.

So my parents became hippies,

and we ended up living at a famous commune

right on the outskirts of Los Angeles called the Hog Farm.

Within the commune, I wasn't their daughter anymore.

I was just another person in the commune.

I was not happy in this situation.

I was super happy back in our Santa Monica home,

going to junior high,

then I was gonna be going into high school.

They took that away from me.

One day I went to a party.

This couple that we met said,

"We want you to meet this groovy guy and his girls."

I was greeted by the first girl.

"Charlie, Dianne is here!"

Charlie was like this playful, impish kind of guy with a guitar.

And he gives me a loving hug.

And the girls are all smiling. They're all happy to see me.

And it was just this magical moment that I did not want to let go of.

Charlie seduces me.

And it was wonderful.

I'd never had someone really, like, make love to me.

He made me feel like a really beautiful woman,

not just a child.

I mean, I was just overwhelmed

with love and the feeling of acceptance.

It wasn't me like, "Oh, can I go with you?" No.

They wanted me to go with them.

I was 14 when I met Charlie,

and I was 16 when I got out.

The best description I heard of Charlie Manson,

and I talked to hundreds of people who interacted with him over the years,

was that he was a chameleon.

He could be whoever the person he was talking to wanted him to be.

But we cannot understand Charles Manson

and the things that happened

without understanding the 1960s themselves.

The Summer of Love in '67 in San Francisco

is the height of the hippie movement.

There's this true belief that love could change it all.

Young people flock into Haight-Ashbury.

They had tours. "Come and see the hippies."

It's the first and only foreign tour within the continental United States.