How unreasonable was Helter Skelter ? Part 1 of 3

While it should always be stressed that the prosecution, as part of their opening argument, stated that they believed there to be more than one motive for the Tate/LaBianca murders, the Helter Skelter motive tends to be the one that most people remonstrate over. I find that most contributors to the various TLB blogs over the past few years have tended to doubt it, while many of the significant authors of Manson related books {among them Robert Hendrickson, George Stimson and Nicholas Shreck}, as well as certain past family members, have pretty much dismissed it altogether. Even members past & present of the DA’s office that successfully prosecuted the killers {Aaron Stovitz, Jeffrey Jonas and Vincent Bugliosi} have expressed doubt and skepticism.

To be frank, it’s a very easy motive to dismiss. The motive itself, if there was one, could only exist in the context of the surrounding philosophy. I’ve found that most who dismiss the motive, do so alongside a dismissal of the surrounding philosophy because it just does not seem credible that anyone could seriously take on board the tenets that went into what was presented to the world as Helter Skelter. The other side of the coin however, is that some did believe it, were of the mind that Charles Manson also believed it and that number was only found in the Family. When I first read “Helter Skelter” I thought the very notion of a civil war between the White race, sparked off by White revenge on Blacks for some heinous murders the Blacks had committed which then led to the Blacks massacring the Whites that were left over after the civil war only for them to hand over the power of rule to the Family that had been hiding out in the desert in some underground paradise, was ridiculous. I still think it’s ridiculous.

Yet, as I’ve gotten older and more experienced and learned more and passed through belief structures and systems myself, as well as understanding others, I find that to various states of mind, there’s nothing really unusual or unreasonable about Helter skelter. If one takes into account the 1960s, the revolution in the air, the quest for civil rights, the racial tension that exploded into riots in the cities in the USA, the psychedelic drugs, the lyrical messages in much of the music, the on going search for meaning, the taking on board of new religious philosophies accompanying the rejection of established ones, the emergence of young people as a force to be reckoned with and the serious insightful questioning of authority, then a package like Helter Skelter actually makes sense.

When looked at through the lens of religion, it is no more unbelievable than that which millions of people believed then, before that and now. It’s package contains nothing intrinsically more unusual or unbelievable than what you will find among the beliefs of someone who genuinely believes in horoscopes or astro analysis. It’s no weirder in principle than the belief in the virgin birth of Christ, the parting of the Red Sea on behalf of the Israelites on the run from the Egyptians, Noah and his family escaping the great flood in a huge boat with every type of animal on the earth or Muhammed receiving the Qur’an verbatim from the angel Gabriel. Mormons happily believe that their founder, Joseph Smith translated the book of Mormon from some golden plates after an angel showed him where they were buried. Reincarnation is one of the central tenets of Hinduism, while rebirth forms a major part of Buddhist philosophy. Purgatory, spiritual beings, hell, a returning Messiah, a Messiah that has yet to come....these and so many more are things that ordinary people all over the world believe. You may be one of them, you may know some of them, you may be related to or in love with one or some of them. The point is that all manner of beliefs that cannot be actually proven exist. So why should Helter Skelter be dismissed as any less believable ? 

As will be shown in part two, psychedelic drugs {in particular LSD} were a crucial component in the acceptance of Helter Skelter but people have long accepted all manner of philosophies and ideas without the assistance of drugs. Not all those that fell in with religious cults did so on the back of a drug befuddled mind. And we went on to see in the 70s and beyond with Jonestown, the Branch Davidians at Waco, the Solar Temple and Heaven’s Gate that when people believe something, no matter how crazy it may seem, they believe with their lives.

It was reported that some of the girls in the Family believed that Charlie got the school bus they travelled in to fly over parts of Golar Wash because the terrain was too difficult to drive up. Others reportedly believed that he brought a dead bird back to life by breathing on it. These stories seem utterly mad until one considers that Linda Kasabian, Charles Watson, Susan Atkins, Brooks Poston, Catherine Share, Nancy Pitman, Paul Watkins, Leslie Van Houten and others {judging by some of their statements, you’d possibly include Sandy, Squeaky and Ouisch in that number} all believed that Charles Manson was Jesus Christ. In fact, long before there was ever any connection between the Family and TLB, indeed, while the Tate autopsies were in progress, officers from LASO went to see officers from LAPD and told them about the finding of Gary Hinman’s body. When they explained about having arrested a suspect that had given Spahn Ranch as his address, they went on to explain that the group living there were an odd bunch whose leader Charlie had apparently convinced them that he was Christ. And when the Family were arrested at Barker later in October, Manson was booked as “Manson, Charles, aka Jesus Christ, God.” It seems that even Manson believed at times that he was Jesus but again, this is not as out of the way as it initially seems. It was something that actually was known to happen to people that were tripping on LSD or had tripped for a while. British rocker Vince Taylor was one of the first acid casualties and he thought for a while that he was the Son of God. Beatle John Lennon, one of the most renowned of the 60s trippers, at one point gathered the band and their entourage together to announce to them that he was the Messiah come again. Timothy Leary was not only convinced that the Beatles were sent by God, he himself took on a prophetic fervour after he became a regular tripper. During his psilocybin experiments with prisoners, many started “getting religion” with Leary joking “let’s see if we can turn the criminals into Buddhas.”

Jay Stevens in his book “Storming Heaven ~ LSD and the American dream” states “to discover in the recesses of the mind, something that felt a lot like God was not a situation that either organized science or organized religion wished to contemplate.”

The relevance of this in relation to the Family is simply this; If Charlie implies he is Christ {“do you know who I am ?”} and is showing you a different way of being and if you believe Charlie is Christ or someone Christ like, then you believe what he tells you. And if he shows you biblical back up for what he tells you, then who’s not to believe ? It is no coincidence that virtually all the Family had come from ‘Christian’ backgrounds in which the reality of Christ the person who led the way, through the Holy Spirit, had become secondary to formulated “Christian culture” in which ritual and rules had become uppermost. An actual minister of the church, Dean Moorehouse, was blown away by the combination of Charlie and acid. Both the young and not so young were looking for real meaning and experiences which explains the number of people that followed pop and rock artists and by extension, what they did or said. There was much looking at and following religious philosophies from the East and many prominent and much loved artists, musicians, actors and writers influenced countless thousands by advocating various gurus as well as looking at more esoteric ideas like Satanism. A section of the Black population in the USA had already embraced “The Nation of Islam” by the late 60s. One of the chief beliefs of the nation was that the White race had been created by an evil Black scientist. At one point, Malcolm X believed that. Muhammed Ali {even while he was still Cassius Clay} believed that. In the UK and West Indies, the Rastafarian movement made great steps in the 60s, foremost among their beliefs that Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was the returned messiah, God in human form, that Babylon {the Western world, in effect} was falling and that the Black race would be led back to Africa. Many still passionately follow both the Nation of Islam and Rastafari to this day.

There was also a resurgence of experiential Christianity as the Jesus movement  attracted many disillusioned Hippies. This is important because not only did Jesus come alive to many thousands of people who had been searching for spiritual experiences, the notion of reading the bible, interpreting it for one’s own self and being able to share and teach among small bands of converts {despite being part of a larger church} became de rigeur and into this way of thinking, Charles Manson fit perfectly. Like Christ, he was an outsider. Like Christ, he was hounded by the authorities of his day and was seen as a law breaker. Like Christ he was supported by a number of females of substance and appeared to not ‘work’. Like Christ, he was charismatic and could hold large numbers of people in his sway. Like Christ, he could evade capture from the searching authorities while moving freely about. Like Christ, he espoused a wisdom and understanding that seemed to transcend his years and limited upbringing and experience. Like Christ he could not only explain the scriptures, but could infuse new meaning into old words. It’s understandable why so many young searchers, disillusioned with the staid expression of ‘church’ from their lives, thought he was Christ.

In a changing world, as yet unsure what it might actually be changing to, Helter Skelter made sense. It made at least as much sense as following a guru like Meher Baba that said he was God in human form and who maintained a vow of silence from the mid 1920s to his death in 1969. Pete Towshend {The Who}, Melanie Safka and Ronnie Lane {Small Faces, The Faces}, Billy Nicholls, Donald Mahler and Loren “Tex” Hightower among others were not thought mad for following Meher. The Beatles weren’t thought mad for following the Maharishi and so on.....

Later we shall see how there were a number of other parallels and factors at the time the Family were together that made Helter Skelter at the very least, plausible.

*Written by Grim Traveller