Charles Manson

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
$14.95
WARNING- This Book might trigger a long term fascination/obsession with this case.

Helter Skelter is an absolutely brilliant and engrossing True Crime book that reads as smoothly as a novel while exploring the countless aspects and characters in this case in an organized easy to follow fashion.

In my opinion the Manson Family phenomenom and the Tate/La Bianca murderers are the most interesting criminal case in American History.

This case encompasses not only the actual crimes but the worlds of Hollywood, the music business, the counter culture youth movement of the 60's with a little apocalypse christianity and white/black relations as well.

Truly amazing stuff and this book depicts it better than any before or since.

CHARLES MANSON: Music From The Maniac [CD on Demand]
$15.00
Charles is one of the most gifted, talented and creative musicians. You'll love this folk CD. The only thing I didnt like was the title some dumba** gave this CD, previously entitled "Lie", the Terry Melcher sessions. Manson is NOT a maniac.
Free Manson!

ATWA!

Sings
$18.98
I bought this one in 1971 (sold it on Ebay for 100 years ago) and I'm glad to see it reissued with bonus tracks. The amazing thing is his CHARM, which of course is how he got people to do stuff they wouldn't have done. I've found that murderers usually do not sound as creepy as you think they would. They sure don't sound like "Marilyn Manson". Only the people who would never actually kill sound like they want to...real murderers are way cleverer than that. This album is a good example. It's sort of perverse to get, I know, and when I first bought it (which was back when some of the money went to his defense fund) the clerk gave me a real dirty look. But this guy did have a musical sense. Too bad he had none of the other type. If you read about his life, you can see why. A real curio, this one.

CHARLES MANSON'S BLOOD LETTERS: --dueling with the devil
$13.95
At the end of 'Charles Manson's Blood Letters' Richard Rubacher, the author, has written several pages of histrionic puffs for his next volume, an autobiographical memoir of his time as the teenage sex-slave of a local black gang in a rough part of New York. He is, I think, a strange fellow. This - self-published - book is rather frustrating. The text of it is only about 84 pages long, the rest being made up of the index, an excerpt of Manson being interviewed on Geraldo, a brief chronology of the Manson Family which anyone reading this book will be familiar with, and about ten pages of photographs, most of which are the envelopes and pages of several letters from Manson to the author. It includes a page of Timothy Leary's autobiography quoted with the laconic note, 'permission [to reproduce] pending'.

Rubacher had a protracted correspondence with Manson but only prints two of Manson's letters in full. They are rambling and tiring to read, often descending into (at best) opacity & (at worst) nonsense. The rest of the correspondence is described in a series of extremely brief synopses, to which Rubacher appends psychological commentaries. As so often with self-published work, alas, proof-reading is not thorough, & at quite a few points the reader simply can't tell whether a thought is Manson's or Rubacher's. The psychological insights aren't particularly penetrating, unfortunately. The structure loops back on itself creating a repetitious feel.

In a nutshell, Rubacher wrote to Manson after seeing him on Geraldo. Soon he was telling Charlie he wanted to write a book about him. After visiting Manson (probably the most interesting part of the book) in jail, Charlie sent Rubacher several boxes of the fan-mail & Family correspondence he'd been sent up till then (this was 1976). As is so often the way the two fell out, Manson feeling Rubacher was stringing him along. Manson demanded the return of the letters. Rubacher, for reasons that he fails to make clear, refused. Manson sent 'Elf' (Dennis Rice) to reclaim them, but Rubacher, using, as he's proud to proclaim, Manson's mind-manipulation techniques, managed to send Elf away - & managed to forestall another of Charlie's potential killers some time later in a similar fashion. The correspondence between Manson & Rubacher fizzled out in the Nineties with no book having been written & the letters unreturned.

Really this book needed to be six times longer, and filled with verbatim quotations from Manson's letters, Rubacher's letters & the fan letters, & a more considered analysis. As it stands it adds very little to the body of Manson literature, & is a rather melodramatic take on 'Mind Control Charlie'. I didn't feel that Rubacher was being quite honest about why he was fascinated by Manson. He claims it was because of his interest in uncovering Manson's mind-control techniques, but none of his interaction with Manson seems directed towards exploring them. He ends with a ten-point list of Manson's usual techniques but it's extremely facile and obvious, and rather refutes what I believe this book is really about: a claim for its author's special sensitivity & perceptiveness.