I was little when this happened. 7 years old, but I remember.... I don't know what to think of her. Sad, but how could I be?
My Life After Manson | New York Times - Yahoo Screen
My Life After Manson | New York Times - Yahoo Screen
Manson. The name is hard to even type
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The true end of the 1960's, I was still feeling the echoes of the Manson murders throughout my whole childhood. This is when "stranger danger" really started to hit home.
Working and staying at the month-long Bavarian Festival in ’74, a former member of the “Family” had joined up with the Warlock motorcycle gang. They camped next to our trailer there for about a week. She took a shine to me for some reason. Crazy as they come, and she scared the bejeezus out of me. The other guys in my trailer though it was funny, and even make it a sport of sorts with her when I was around. I avoided the trailer as much as I could that week, as the whole thing made me uncomfortable beyond belief.
Quite frightening DiO'Bolic ! I was "kind of" friends with someone who grew up to commit a gruesome murder. I'd like to wash my knowledge of him from my mind. I hate that I was breathing the same air in the same room with him. He was scary to be around too.
It was 40 years ago and I’ve forgotten it or driven it from my mind. It was some cosmic or cartoony type of thing if I recall. The one thing that I remember from her that sticks in my mind was her telling me that Charlie has lots of kids running around.
Oh my , that's quite frightening as well.
I remember hearing the news about it, but it washes out in some of the other horrific-ness of the time, the anarchy on campuses and the occasional mowing down of students, the 200+ dead Americans per week in Vietnam at some points, the race riots, the Richard Speck murders. It was another dot of horror on a crazy sea.
I really became familiar with it with Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, an arguably self-serving but, I thought, well-written work. You certainly got an idea of the darkness-infused brains crawling with spiders that we got to know as "the Family."
To my view, prison time serves one or more of three purposes:
1. Rehabilitation.
2. Removal of the miscreant from society and reducing the harm.
3. Punishment. The victims and/or society get their pound of flesh and the perpetrator suffers a balancing of the cosmic scales, as it were.
If the subject of the documentary is rehabilitated and no longer a threat to society, you could very well argue Nos. 1 and 2 are fulfilled. No reason, from those standpoints, not to let her out.
I guess I'm colder. Depending on the nature of the crime, I can easily adopt No. 3 as well. In this case, she helped carve up seven living human beings, including an eight-month-old pregnant victim, like they were piled up in a butcher shop, for no other reason than she and the others were told, and wanted, to kill. It's as cold-blooded and brutal and horrible as you can get. The higher the burden you take on, the more you're going to pay. Let her rot in there. If she wants to do good for the rest of society, she can do it from where she is.
I really became familiar with it with Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, an arguably self-serving but, I thought, well-written work. You certainly got an idea of the darkness-infused brains crawling with spiders that we got to know as "the Family."
To my view, prison time serves one or more of three purposes:
1. Rehabilitation.
2. Removal of the miscreant from society and reducing the harm.
3. Punishment. The victims and/or society get their pound of flesh and the perpetrator suffers a balancing of the cosmic scales, as it were.
If the subject of the documentary is rehabilitated and no longer a threat to society, you could very well argue Nos. 1 and 2 are fulfilled. No reason, from those standpoints, not to let her out.
I guess I'm colder. Depending on the nature of the crime, I can easily adopt No. 3 as well. In this case, she helped carve up seven living human beings, including an eight-month-old pregnant victim, like they were piled up in a butcher shop, for no other reason than she and the others were told, and wanted, to kill. It's as cold-blooded and brutal and horrible as you can get. The higher the burden you take on, the more you're going to pay. Let her rot in there. If she wants to do good for the rest of society, she can do it from where she is.
I am conflicted on her and Vanhoutten. Part of me says, you did the crime and you are where you are supposed to be. But in viewing many video interviews of the two of them over the years, I do believe they are different people and I want to let them out. We let other murderers out in much less time, why keep them for so long? Is it the celebrity of it?
For me, it's the number of people and the brutality. It's not a armed robbery turned wrong and the guy at the counter got shot dead and we'll let the perp out in 20. It's not a gang thing where a rival member gets shot and now the gang member that did it has had an epiphany.
It's seven innocent people (you could even say eight, although these kindhearted assailants did discuss cutting the viable baby out of Tate's body) who got sliced up for no other reason than these lunatics wanted to kill random people.
We're all going to draw the lines different places. If, say, Hitler had lived and had recanted and repented, assuming he hadn't been executed, would we let him out early? I don't think so. Even Manson. No one reasonably sees him being granted parole no matter what he would say or do.
So where's the line? Your mileage may vary. But to me, joy-stabbing seven people to death is worth life in prison.
After 45 years, I would think she is so institutionalized she wouldn't be able to cope outside. I've seen it first hand with someone who was hospitalized for a much shorter time. When he was released, without the strict structure he was lost. He paced all night long. He felt unsafe without the nurses all around (not due to health, he didn't need a nurse, he needed the sound of people walking and working).
I think some crimes gain notoriety such that popular sentiment dictates things about them which it doesn't in the cases of other crimes, and consequently that the release of certain prisoners is far more unlikely despite everything else about those cases being the same as others. Society learns to forgive at speeds unfortunately varied by political correctness.
I don't feel sorry for them....not one tiny bit. I've stopped watching any interviews with any of the Manson family....they all seem so very scripted.
Their crimes were heinous to the nth degree. They don't deserve my compassion or trust.....and they certainly don't deserve to be set free.
Their crimes were heinous to the nth degree. They don't deserve my compassion or trust.....and they certainly don't deserve to be set free.
...indeed, being "down" that long-you'll never re-adjust to "the street"....
Stories like this make me wonder why so many people are against the death penalty. If you gave me the choice of spending the next 50 years in the same damn building, or taking a needle and rolling the dice on what's next, it wouldn't take me very long to make a decision. At least in death your going on to something else. I did 3 weeks in county jail and wanted to hang myself from the boredom. I can't even imagine half a century.
If you ask me, this woman right here got the maximum sentence. Death would have been mercy.
If you ask me, this woman right here got the maximum sentence. Death would have been mercy.
I think the main objection people have with the death penalty is the idea that it's not justice but murder; an idea which of course is arguably a matter of opinion. I think the next objection is that sometimes innocent people are nonetheless convicted, and so their execution is the highest form of injustice.
She was on death row at first. I guess she didn't want to die and fought it. As do most people that find themselves there.
It's always easier to say you would prefer death! but when actually faced with it, people fight for survival. Although, when you've done whatever you've done to get the death penalty maybe you know where you're going and want the time to repent.
Not everybody fights it, Gary Gilmore went to court and fought for his right to be executed when they tried to commute his sentence to life. It's all hypothetical anyway, I'll never be in the position.
Some people are actually suicidal. The vast majority of people in all circumstances will do whatever possible, no matter how desperate, to continue living.
How can we let her out on the 'street' when there are still people out in the world who still hold onto the same beliefs and ideals that the Manson clan did? Charlie still has people come and visit him to this day! Some numb skull wants to marry him (this was on the news some months back and she was about 20 years old!)! Sorry, but it's just crazy to even think about letting these 'people' walk free. What's really frightening is that if those murders were to happen today, Charlie would be free. He didn't actually kill anyone (none that he was put on trial for anyway!!!!) and there's no way any prosecution would have been able to get a guilty verdict for him. Come on, think about it- he talked his 'followers' into committing murders, he never actually did them. He'd be a free man........