1969: Spahn Ranch
under the trap of his rap
Charles manson was a knife freak. Everybody
used to throw knives at the haystack. after all,
the police could hear gunfire for miles in the
desert, but blades would be silent. and shrieks
melt easily in the distant air.
machete chauvinism was one of manson’s
ultimate devices, unless the story was true that
the family was connected to those who were
into filming the killing of human victims.
Charlie had an old sixteen-inch army-
surplus machete, and he was the only one who
could throw it. Charlie could throw it fifty
feet, the family claims, and stick the target.
He used to put girls up against the haystack
and see how close he could throw the
machete to them.
in his universe, women had no
soul. They were to be slaves of man.
The girls were required instantly
to submit to the men manson slated
to be on the grope list. anytime, any-
where. The girls supposedly were not
allowed to ask for sex but had to wait,
though they could smile alluringly if
they wanted. Sounds like the Protes-
tant ethic.
manson is known to blame women
for the institution of capital punishment,
for jails and for practically all repression.
“We live in a woman’s thought,
this world is hers. But men were meant
to be above, on top of women.”
Under the trap of his rap, he hat-
ed women. “i am a mechanical boy,/i
am my mother’s boy,” went one of his
songs.
manson decreed that only the
men could talk to the babies. The
women, though they still cared for
them, could only speak gibberish to
the children. There was rebellion on
this. mary Brunner told linda Kasa-
bian that she didn’t care what Charlie
said, she was going to love and talk to
Pooh Bear, her baby.
The women were not allowed to
discipline the children in any way. af-
ter all, the child was the perfect state.
He gave the girls lessons in knife throwing,
and later that year he actually got into lessons in
throat slitting and skull boiling—evidently having in mind adorning the Barker Ranch with human skulls.
