The devil's business

The trial was drama, farce, horror show. This was 1970, summer.  Charles Manson and his disciples Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Leslie van Houton faced seven counts of murder. And prosecutors found themselves arguing one of the strangest motives in the history of American jurisprudence.

Helter Skelter:  the title of a song-- the words -- misspelled -- written in blood on Rosemary Labianca's  refrigerator. The Beatles had recorded Helter Skelter on their white album.  The song was, frankly, innocuous, the title, the lyrics, referred to an English carnival ride. For Manson, prosecutors said, that song was the apocalyptic answer to all the world's mystery.

Bugliosi: He used it to describe a war between blacks and whites, which he was going to ignite by these murders.

It was the coming Helter Skelter that kept the Manson tribe returning to the Barker ranch out on the edge of the Mojave Desert. In Manson's crackpot cosmology, Death Valley was a sacred place and any student of religious history would recognize the kind of fraud perpetrated many times over the centuries. The prophet messiah who leads his ragtag band of followers to the desert to await the coming of the new age.  Down there in the cabin, Manson told his followers a story that nearby here was a kind of hole in the universe and they, the elect, would enter it to a subterranean world fed by a life-giving spring, a new Eden for the family.

Steve Kay: And they were gonna live in the bottomless pit for 50 to 100 years.  And by that time, they would've grown to 144,000 like the 12 tribes of Israel. 

Keith Morrison: They took this physically, seriously.  It wasn't just--

Steve Kay: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.  And they bought gold rope at a sporting goods store in Santa Monica.  Because they thought you had to be lowered into the bottomless pit by golden rope.

But Manson's version of apocalypse was truly diabolical. Helter Skelter, his version of tribulation, and the bizarre motive for all those ghastly murders. The writing in blood, the mutilation and extraordinary violence ... Was intended to incite a war between blacks and whites.

Steve Kay: Manson wanted to blame these murders on blacks so that white people would start killing blacks indiscriminately.  And Manson and the family felt that the-- the blacks would win this race war.

Manson was telling his followers, said co-prosecutor Steve Kay, that they'd be safe in their underground Eden ... While blacks took over the country.

Steve Kay: Manson being a racist thought that the blacks would immediately run up to him and turn over power.

Keith Morrison: He would be the messiah?

Steve Kay: He would be the king-- and-- and the messiah, yes, 'cause he said he was Jesus.  And-- but this time, he was coming as the devil.

Manson in his twisted mind perceived the Beatles as the fulfillment of bible prophecy.  Imagine that.

There's a story that Charlie would sit in the bathtub and because he wasn't much of a reader himself, he'd have his girls read to him from the Bible. His favorite book was Revelation, he liked Chapter 9.   "And he opened the bottomless pit and there came out of the smoke, locusts upon the earth, and they had long hair like women".  Aha! thought Charlie, long-haired locusts? Must be the Beatles.

That white album was, to Charles Manson, a new revelation.

Bugliosi: There's another song in that White Album called Piggies.

To Manson, Piggies meant the white establishment.  And the Beatles are sayin' that the piggies need a damn good whacking.  And he spoke about wealthy husband and wives eating out at fancy restaurants at night clutching their forks and knives, and the killers left a knife and fork protruding from the body of Leno Labianca.

The jury bought the prosecutors' Helter Skelter motive and in January 1971, Manson, Atkins, Krenwinkel and van Houten were convicted of the murders.

Marie Mesmer, Juror: In my verdict I wanted to protect the society, after all this is the United States of America and we have a heritage and this is something we must protect and something for a lot of people to think about.

Reporter: Have you talked with Charlie himself recently? Have you gotten any feedback from him?

Sandra Good: He feels good, he always feels good.

Charles Tex Watson would be convicted in a separate trial. 

Bugliosi: Gentlemen in view of the incredible brutality of these savage nightmarish, murders the death penalty unquestionably the proper verdict in this case.

By now, mostly likely, they'd all be long dead.  Except... How curious fate can be.

Garrick Utley, NBC newscast: "The California Supreme Court ruled today that the death penalty is unconstitutional.”

And just like that, their sentences were reduced to life. Manson was interviewed just after he learned he'd evaded the gas chamber.

Reporter David Burrington: Should there be a supreme penalty for committing a crime?

Manson: What do you think?

Burrington: I'm the one that’s asking you.

Manson: Yeah, but if I don’t give the answer that you want.

Burrington: It doesn't matter to me, it's your opinion.

Manson: I don't have the authority to say anything like that.

Burrington: You have the authority to believe.

Manson: I believe what I'm told to believe, don't you?

For the prosecutors, it was like a defeat.

Steve Kay: He always said that he wanted to spend the rest of his life in-- in prison.

Manson: I said, I can't handle the maniacs outside, let me back in.

But - as Manson from his prison cell taunted the outside world the secrets festered,  and out in the desert, the story grew and in some quarters began to harden into belief. What else might the Manson family have done?

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