Charlie is a person of great interest to me because he was able to coerce a legion of followers into believing he was God, not only winning their undying devotion, but breaking them into submission in the most literal sense of the word. His "family" not only readily accepted, but whole-heartedly believed everything he told them, from his belief that The Beatles were speaking to him through their music, to his crazy idea that there would be a great race war - Helter Skelter - which would force them to live in the bottomless pit under a body of water in the Mojave desert until the black man was ready to have whitey on top again; and when that happened, since all the other whites would be dead, Charlie and his followers would rule the world. Anyone reading this knows as well as I do that this is a most preposterous idea, and yet he convinced many people that it was absolute truth. What fascinates me is how he was able to do this.
All in all, Charlie only had between 2 and 5 truly devoted male followers at any given time, and, as they have stated, Charlie wanted them around to keep the girls there, as Charlie was not exactly a well-endowed man. Other men, mostly bikers, would come and go because they had the opportunity to have sex with any of the girls at any time they chose, but those of them that weren't scared away by the VD they contracted from the girls saw how dangerously crazy Charlie was and stopped coming back. I can only assume that his last 2 devoted male followers undoubtedly had murder in their hearts. The girls, on the other hand, were easier for Charlie to manipulate. He always chose girls that were drifting, running away from home, and dealing with "daddy issues". He would have one-on-one time with each of them, sitting them at a table across from him, telling them to mirror every move he made. This helped to break them down, and invariably made it easier for him to control them over time. It was a way for him to insert himself into the minds of these girls, so they literally would not make a move without first considering what Charlie would think, and whether or not he would approve. During these one-on-one visits, he would also help them to deal with their issues of inadequacy and inferiority, all the while making damn sure they knew that they were inferior to him.
After the mimicking and therapy sessions, he would preach on and on about loss of ego, which is a beautiful thing when done the right way, but by removing ego from these girls, it was even simpler to mold them into his little slaves. His idea of ridding them of ego was to deprogram and reprogram them to think as he thought and believe what he wanted them to believe. They would readily cook for him, clean for him, dumpster dive for food, and steal money to give to him. They were under the impression that it was all in the name of love, and maybe to them it was, but Charlie always made it very clear that he believed women to be nothing more than man's soulless servants, good for nothing more than sex and household chores.
As a group, he manipulated them into mindless killers by cutting them off from the rest of the world and playing "cowboy and Indian" games where they would play-kill one another. All the world's a stage, right? By doing this, he eventually disassociated them from reality, making it possible for them to actually stab someone to death as if it were nothing more than a game, with no feelings about it whatsoever. No regrets, no sympathy toward their victims, even as they stabbed a pregnant woman sixteen times. Another of Charlie's tactics, and probably the most influential, was to dose everyone with LSD and reenact the crucifixion. I don't care who you are, that would be a powerful thing to witness under the influence of acid. Not only that, but he would orchestrate large orgies while everyone was frying, telling them who they were to have sex with, and always tried, and failed, to bring everyone to orgasm simultaneously. This was another way to rid them of ego. He could tell any of them to perform oral sex on another in front of the entire group and new visitors, and they would do it without question. He probably could have told any one of them to defecate in front of a crowd and they would have happily done so.
For a man of nothing more than reform school education and seventeen years of incarceration in his background, this was a pretty big accomplishment. I know of many incredibly well-educated and intelligent people that certainly do not have the kind of power and influence it requires to establish a cult following. But Charlie did so with the greatest of ease. His followers could not question him, because to them, Charlie was love. Charlie was father. Charlie was God. He was in such complete control that he could tell his most loyal followers to kill for him, and they would do it without a second thought. And they did. It is speculated that the Manson family was responsible for some 35 murders, though only eight of them have been proven. Who knows how many skeletal remains one might find buried deep beneath the earth surrounding the old Spahn Ranch....
And one must remember, Charlie never killed anyone, at least as far as we can prove. He threatened several people at knife-point, as Charlie was turned on by fear, but he never took another human's physical life; he only robbed them of their ability to think for themselves, and convinced them to take the lives of "political piggies". Charlie was a terrifying person not because he committed heinous crimes, such as Richard Speck or Andrei Chikatilo, but because he makes you see the monster inside yourself, brooding deep beneath the surface. If he could coerce once-harmless choir girls into brutally killing eight innocent people, imagine what you might be capable of with the right influence....
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