Helter Skelter: Interview with "Jenny" of Charles Manson Family

This is Matt Walsh for KUNM News. This morning we're talking with Jenny, a girl from California, who lived for some three months at the ranch near Los Angeles with the Charles Manson family. Jenny, what were your impressions of the people you met at the ranch? I like them. They're my family too, as much as I'm theirs. There's different people out there, and my opinion is probably different than somebody else's to what I feel about them. I love them. And the hard to say is to why everything just is, and I accept it as being that way. Do they all seem to get on pretty well? Yeah, I was out there three months, and I never saw anybody quarreling. It was kind of unusual. When I left the next day I saw two teenagers arguing over one of the girl's brothers and told the other girl

not to play his trumpet, and she was blowing on the mouthpiece, but not actually playing the trumpet, and they were arguing over it. And it's something that really hit me because I hadn't seen any arguing out there in three months. Like, if somebody tells you something has to be done, you just accept it, because you know that has to be done, or they wouldn't have bothered to say it in the first place. You've met Charles Manson, and talked to them a couple of times. What did you think of him when you met him? The first time I met him was very unusual for me. I'd never seen him before. I'd heard the other girls and the rest of the family talk about him, and I'd become concerned about him, but I'd never met him. I walked into the attorney room with an attorney and one of the other girls. And I first saw him, and I just smiled, and I couldn't stop. I was just so happy to see him. It was like seeing an old friend. I hadn't seen for a long time, but I forgot what he looked like,

but that was him. I knew him. And I was really happy, and he smiled right back at me, and he just didn't stop looking me, and I couldn't stop looking him. It was actually a feeling of knowing him before I'd met him. And some of the other girls have described the same feeling of having known him before they met him. It's been mentioned several times that are theorized, I guess, that he has some sort of hypnotic power, I guess you'd call it, over the people and the family. No. There's an article coming out in an Augustine magazine about a guy who says that Charlie kind of hypnotized him to giving up everything he had. Well, I can say that's not true of me, because I kind of gave the family my car and said, here it is, it's yours before I ever met Charlie. I knew they needed it, and I knew they were in a jam, and I didn't need it, and that that's the way it was going

to be. And I just said, here it is, take it, and they did. And I ended up moving out with them not a week or two later, and I've made it legal. I signed the car over to them before I left. And I'm going back, I'm going to go do everything I want to do, and then I'm going back to the wrench so I won't ever have to leave again. I won't decide, well, I want to go off doing this, or I want to go off doing that, because I'm going to settle down with them. All right, now you're traveling around. I will line you way to the East Coast, stopping off the places and telling people about the family and about the record here. I want to turn as many people onto this record as I can. It's a totally different person you see in Charlie's singing than what you read in the paper. When I first heard one of his songs, it was, your home is where you're happy, I heard it Christmas day, and I said, well this just isn't the person I read about in the paper, and people don't realize they're getting a one-sided view.

People have read something at Newseys people even have read something in the paper, go out to do their own interview and say, well, I've got to slam it this way because this is what they believe, and nobody's going to believe the other side. The Charlie is just a beautiful person. There's a text of an interview on the back of this album was made by Steve Alexander Tuesday's child and newspaper, and shortly after the interview, Manson's telephone privileges were suspended by the court. I'd like to read this now because I think it gives somewhat of an insight into Charles Manson's personality, what he's like. Manson starts out by saying, when you look at things in a positive manner, everything can work out

perfect. You know, like as fast as man can go, he is destroying everything he can destroy. The pace that he's picked up and sawing the trees down, killing the animals and shooting everything. You know, I go look out in the desert and I see a lot of madness. I see big fat people coming around with guns, shooting lizards, spiders, birds, anything they can get their hands on. Just killing and killing. They're all programmed to kill. You know, there's one thing I flashed on the other day. A policeman took me over and down his helmet, you know, right on his forehead, there's a beast, a bear, a bear beast on his forehead. And I say, well, can't the people see the mark of the beast? You know, it's not, it's not a hard thing to see. Is there anything you want to know that I could tell you? The next question is, what's your birth sign? Manson says Scorpio. Do you know your rising sign? You know, you wake up every morning and there's another rising sign. You know, maybe I can tell you where I'm from. Everybody is always telling where I'm from

and where I developed my philosophy and what I think and all this and none of this is the things I've always said. I'm from juvenile hall. I'm from the line of people nobody wants. I'm from the street. I'm from the alley. Mainly I'm from solitary confinement. You spend 20 years in institutions and you forget what the free world is. You don't know how the free world works. And then you come out and you live it in it and you say, wow, I've been locked up for 20 years, but my mind has been free. And I come outside and I see everybody's got their minds locked up and their bodies are free. You know, I'll give it to you just like this. All my life, I felt all the bad people were in jail and all the good people were on the outside. Then I would get out of jail and I would find out that the people on the outside smiled and pretended like they were good. But there wasn't too many of them, you know. And then I'd go back to jail. I think my longest time out in the last 22 years have been maybe six or eight months. And I was out two, let's see three different times. One time

for six months, one time for eight months, and then the last time I've been out for three years. Well, when I get out the last time, I didn't want out. I told the man, I said, I can't adjust the society and I'm content to walk around the yard playing my guitar doing things you're doing a penitentiary. So when I got out, I met a 16 year old boy. I was living in Berkeley and I asked him where he lived. And he said, well, I live out in my sleeping bag. I said, well, don't you work? And he told me, hell no, nobody works. You don't have to work. I said, well, how do you eat? And he said, well, I eat at the diggers. And I said, well, how can you live that way? And he said, come on. He put his arm around me. And like I was his brother, he showed me love. He took me to hate ashberry. And we slept in the park and sleeping bags. And we lived down the streets and my hair got a little longer. And I started playing music people. Music and people like my music. And people smiled at me and put their arms around me and hugged me. I didn't know how to act. It just took me away. It grabbed me up. Man, that there was people that are real.

You know, I just didn't think there were such real people. There were people with birds and we smoked grass. And like I had never been involved with dope with what you called dope. Except when I got out, I took some LSD which enlightened my awareness. But mainly it was the people. It was the young people walking up and down the street, trading shirts with each other and throwing flowers and being happy. And I just fell in love. You know, and I still am in love. I love everything. But the worst thing is I have seen how the hate was going. Because being in jail for so long has left my awareness pretty well open. So I've seen the bad things that were coming into hate. The wild problems and the people getting harassed in the doorways. And the policemen coming with the sticks and they were running up and down the street. So I got a school bus and I asked anybody. Anybody wants to go can go in the school bus. The school bus is not mine. It doesn't belong to anyone. We'll put this pink slip in the bug compartment and the school bus belongs to itself. And we all turned our minds off and we just

went around looking for a place to get away from the man. We went to Seattle, Washington. The man was there. Everywhere we went. We went to Texas. The man was there. We went to New Mexico. The man was there. Everywhere we went. And like it was just a trip, we were going nowhere, coming from nowhere and just grieving on the road because the road seemed to be the only place where you can be free when you're moving from one spot to another. You seem to have freedom in your movement to take a breath, to take a breath from the city, to take a breath from the oppression from the madness of the city. And then we went and got out into the desert. We found a whole world out in the desert. Then I got to see that the animals were smarter than the people. You know, like I've never been around many animals in jail. There are hardly any animals around. Then I got to looking at the coyotes. And I got to looking at dogs and snakes and rabbits and cats and goats and mules. And we walked around for weeks following the animals for weeks and just see

what they do. And there's a lot of love there. That's where most of the love is in the young people and in the animals. And that's where my love is. You know, I don't have any philosophy. My philosophy is don't think. You know, you just don't think. If you think, you are divided in your mind. You know, one in one is one in two parts. Like I don't have any thought in my mind, hardly any at all. It is all love. If you love everything, you don't have to think about things. You just love it. Whatever circumstances hand to you, whatever dealer deals you, whatever hand you get handed to you. Just love the hand you got. You know, and make it best you can. And that's what I've always done. And like there was never, there has never been any thought. I've never had much schooling. No mother, no father, in and out of orphanages and foster homes. And then to boy school and reform schools, like it's always been like my head is empty. I have no opinion. I know the truth. The truth is in no word form. It just is. And everything is the way it is because that's the way love says so.

And when you tune in with love, you tune in with yourself. You know, that's not really a philosophy. That's a fact. And everybody who's got love in their hearts knows that. Okay. Question. If you've got anything else to say, just keep talking. Yeah. Okay. If anybody wants to listen, I realize everybody who's got their own message dig. But I can't tell anybody nothing. They don't already know. But I can sing for them. And I got some music that says what I like to say. If I ever had anything to say, do you think this is a good picture of the real Charles Manson? Now, the one on the back of the album, I think is my favorite picture of the mothers and seeing him personally. The one on the front of the album was taken from the live magazine. And I for two stories about this picture, one that some photographer caught him from when he was hiding into the sink, when there was a raid at the ranch. And another one that he was pulling a face two years ago. From the length of his hair, I'd more inclined to think it was the one taken two years ago when

they were making faces in front of the camera. There's one other thing I'd like to read in the back of the album. It's all right. I'm not sure who wrote the top part, but it goes, he is your brother. And we are him. He shown us the door to the love within each one of us. And now we are all keys. It's in you. Pass it on. And then below, Gypsy wrote this, she's one of the girls at the ranch. The family, Shucks. I fell in love with Bob. Bob was already in love with Squeaky. In the meantime, I fell in love with Paul. Paul was in love with Brenda and Snake. And no, wait a minute. Bruce fell in love with Sue. Sue fell in love with Clem. Clem was in love with. And it just goes on, because that's actually how it is at the ranch. And she goes on. Charlie was in love with all of us before he even met us. We've been in, we're in love. So why choose one when there's only one? There's only one man, one woman. And I think that says just about how it is. Do you think that the interview on the back of that album cover describes Manson pretty well?

I can't say. I'm not Charlie. Charlie gave the interview. And so I'd say it's his feelings to speak. I think it's pretty well true. When we visited Charlie and Jail, you also met Susan Atkins and Patricia Crenwinkle, unless we met Howard and we're also arrested in connection with this case. What were your impressions of them? Well, I love them. I can give one example of Katie. Paul went to see her one time after she came up with this story and said, Sadie, what are you doing? And this is Susan Atkins. And she said, it's a play and I'm the star. And she was having a lot of fun. And that's where it's all shown in games. It is with everybody, I guess. You just have to kind of roll with the punches that they deliver to us. But when I saw the three of them together,

I was with Kathy when we had the girls in the ranch and their attorneys. And we were smuggling candy bars to the window of the table because they not allowed to have candy bars in jail. And we were just talking about what was going on at the ranch, how the horses were, how George was, different people saying hello for everybody. And just joking and giggling. And that's the only attitude I've seen, so I've only met these girls one. And I love them. Well, what do you think the situation is now in regards to the trial? When I left Judge Keene, it just qualified himself. That's Judge. I'm rather glad about that myself. I remember hearing something similar to him saying, this is my court and my law of one time. I'm not sure I'm quoting him correctly, I may not be. But that was my understanding of what he had said. He had taken Charlie's privilege as a way for him to defend himself. And he had originally judged

Charlie quite able to defend himself. And he changed his mind about it. He then gave Charlie a attorney, court appointed, who immediately set out to see if Charlie could go on like the other thing, and see if he could be not guilty for that reason. And not that time Charlie asked for his own attorney. And he asked for Ron Hughes, who was a good friend. This is how it stands right now. Ron Hughes is his attorney. Day Shin, who's been working with the family on music representing family jam to get the record out, is now through the neck and the attorney. I've met two of the other attorneys, Al Reiner. I think he's either Leslie's attorney or Keene's attorney in that show which, and Paul Fitzgerald.

This record here was, is it recorded entirely by Charlie? No, it isn't. There's one song. I'll never say never to always. It's recorded just by the girl. And in the background you can hear around one of the babies crying. Some of the babies have been taken away from the girls. And they threatening them with them saying, if you don't stand up in court and say what we want you to say, you're not going to see your child again. And we've taken precautions with the one that we have left to make sure they didn't do this to the other girl. The girl just saying this and you can't hear the baby in the back ground. He was a parent time of the recording. Well, where was this recorded? That was recorded by Phil Kaufman. Most of them were recorded when Charlie was out of jail over the last three years, put on tape, and the tapes were transferred over to the record which filled it.

And I think he did a pretty good job of it. They're all Charlie's songs, but he sings almost all of them. Was there any trouble producing the record? Yes, a lot. Because of it. But it was wanted and it is selling now. We went to the major record companies and they said that they didn't want to handle it. There was too much bad publicity. They didn't share about them letting Daniel it sell, but he was going to put a bad name on their company. I like to plug it if it's okay. Anybody who wants to write for the record is four and a quarter and a quarter hand link text. The address is a joint venture box 4657 North Hollywood, California. The zip code is 91607. About the ranch again. What was the ranch itself like? About how big is it? Well, if you count our three donkeys and our ponies, we've got about 60 henapourses out there.

The ranch belongs to a man who is 81 years old and blind. His name is George Spawn. We have an agreement with him that if we do our share of the workout there, we can stay. As far as food goes, we supply our own food. As far as mattresses and bedding, we supply that too. We just kind of worked out there to stay together. It's important to us. I have to say I'm speaking mostly my own feelings. It's important to me. The ranch is just a really beautiful place. It's an old ghost town set for movies. It's got a salon. It's not front. It's got inside all the buildings. We have dogs, ducks, chickens, a lot of different animals out there. We heard horses during the week. We'll have three people heard them. Some would have stayed and couldn't get the meals and take care of George. One thing we always, Charlie's always seen, because if somebody was there with George,

when they took us to the desert, Wiki, one of the girls spent an entire year at the ranch by herself, while the gang moves off in the desert, because somebody had to be with George. Gypsy one time spent, I think, two months at the ranch by herself. A lot of, I heard somebody go out there a few days back looking for his son, letting him run away to the ranch and asked about to the man that Charlie gave all the trouble to, talking to George. And George told him, no, Charlie never gave me any trouble. And that's how it was. The papers are reported one way, but if you talk to the people, you're going to get another story. George hasn't paid his taxes on the ranch for two years, because he hasn't had the money. And I asked him about it, and he said the last time he paid taxes, was when Charlie gave him the money for it. And I got curious, I was wondering if I'd misunderstood him in a couple days later, I asked him if that was so, and he said yes. Okay, well, I guess that's about all the time we have right now. I want to thank you

for coming in, giving us this interview today, and I'd like to wish you good luck with your hitchhiking. Thank you. I'd like to see this record out if you can ever get it on your station. I'd appreciate it. Thank you very much for letting me be here. Okay, and thank you. This has been Matt Walsh for KU&M News.