i n t e r v i e w Dk tHe dichotoMy of evil The Manson Girl Who Got Away Wi N McCOrmack She could have been a stone-cold killer A house on Romero Canyon Road, in the that time of director Roman Pola ´nski and Montecito section of santa Barbara, Cali- his wife, actress sharon Tate. When the fornia, the evening of saturday, August , police arrived that morning, they found, 1. There were five of us present: four in the living room of the mansion, the of us—myself, Richard, Jan, and Ruth (my bodies of sharon Tate and Jay sebring, girlfriend that summer)—were Junior Fel- an internationally known hair designer lows at the Center for the study of Demo- who was Tate’s former lover and now a cratic institutions in santa Barbara, and friend to both her and Pola ´nski, and on there was Jan’s wife, Barbara. We were all the front lawn the bodies of Abigail Fol- in our early to mid-twenties. As dusk fell ger, a Folger-coffee heiress, and her lover, over the eucalyptus and lemon trees sur- Wojciech Frykowski, a playboy and friend rounding the house, we dropped acid. As it of Pola ´nski from his filmmaking days in turned out, this was not the right night for Poland. Two of these victims—sebring this group of people to do that. and Frykowski—had been shot. All four All afternoon the news had been filled of them had been stabbed multiple times. with reports of a grisly and bizarre quin- Frykowski had also been struck on the tuple murder that had taken place after head with a blunt instrument. The police midnight in a mansion at 10050 Cielo found another victim as well, a young man Drive off Benedict Canyon in Bel-Air, an named steven Parent, who had been vis- exclusive residential area of Los Angeles iting the grounds caretaker in his nearby about eighty-five miles southeast of santa cottage, slumped over the wheel of a car Barbara. The mansion was the residence at near the gate to the property. He had been 11 Blood was everywhere—throughout the house, on the front porch, on the lawn. Witnesses described the scene as a “battlefield” and a “human slaughterhouse.” shot four times. someone had climbed the the number of people in our house, five, telephone pole, with a pair of wire clip- was the exact number as had been mur- pers, and cut all four telephone wires to dered at the Pola ´nski residence. He went the house. on the front door the word on about all this at some length, until we PIG was written in blood that, after anal- finally told him to shut up. ysis, proved to be sharon Tate’s. Blood even had we not been stoned on LsD, was everywhere—throughout the house, this kind of talk, under the psychological on the front porch, on the lawn. Witnesses conditions prevailing in southern Califor- described the sanguinary scene as a “bat- nia that night, would have induced para- tlefield” and a “human slaughterhouse.” noia in the rest of us. We stood up and since it was the midst of summer, it went to the windows and looked out. of did not get dark until fairly late that night course, if you look out the window of a of August . By the time darkness had brightly lit house into the darkness, you consumed the house on Romero Can- don’t see much of anything. Romero Can- yon Road, Richard, Jan, Barbara, Ruth, yon was an extremely quiet area, but there and i were fairly well stoned. suddenly are always noises and, in the night, they Jan, a philosophy graduate of Reed Col- tend to be mysterious ones. We drew all lege with a strong penchant for getting the curtains on three sides of the living caught up in twisted and protracted flights room and in the dining room. We locked of fancy, started talking about the mur- the doors. Then we went around the house ders in Bel-Air. He alluded to some of and made sure all the windows were closed, the details of the murder scene and to the and pulled down all the window shades. names of some of the victims. Then he said We turned out as many lights as we could that even as we sat there, the murderers and still find our way around the house, could be in our vicinity; in fact, they could and then huddled around the dining room be right outside the house at that very table for a feeling of solidarity. every once moment. He emphasized the fact that the in a while one of us got up and pulled aside murders the night before had taken place a curtain a fraction and peered out to check in a canyon, and we were in a canyon, and on things. i don’t think any of us got any the two canyons were not that far from sleep that night. each other; we could easily be reached by But besides the definite feeling of men- car, just as the victims the night before ace, there was a feeling of being menaced must have been. He also pointed out that specifically by evil, an almost palpable evil. 12 Win McCormack of course, we were not the only ones in a the seat of Wasco County, with salmo- state of fear in southern California that nella, and the attempted poisonings of night. And as it happened, that fear was two Wasco County commissioners, in a justified. Just after midnight, Rosemary plot to gain control of the Wasco County and Leno LaBianca were brutally slaugh- Commission so that the incorporation of tered in their home at 3301 Waverly Drive the city Rajneeshpuram, which Rajneesh in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, near megalomaniacally aspired to build, would Griffith Park. They too were killed with be approved. examining the history and multiple knife wounds. The police found behavior of Rajneesh honed my sense that a fork protruding from Leno’s stomach evil and an evil path in life are, at least and a knife still piercing his throat. on a in key cases, deliberately and consciously wall of the La Biancas’ house was written, chosen. in their blood, DEATH TO PIGS and RISE Rajneesh mesmerized his followers with and HEALTER SKELTER (so misspelled). a stupefying amalgam of eastern mysti- This was the news Ruth and i woke up to cal mumbo jumbo (Rajneesh, like Charles on Monday, after our LsD trip had wound Manson, talked frequently about the need down and we had caught up on our sleep. to “lose” or “give up” the ego) and the lan- guage and techniques of the then-preva- 8* lent humanistic psychology and human years later, in the ’0s, when i was study- potential movements. nathaniel Brandon, ing and writing about the indian guru a humanistic psychologist of the era, after Bhagwan shree Rajneesh and his aggres- reading some of Rajneesh’s literature in sive cult in central oregon for Oregon Maga- 1, noted that Rajneesh “explains and zine, i had another, more direct encounter justifies the slaughter of Jews throughout with the existence and palpability of real history,” and wrote that “almost from the evil. At his ashram in india, before he came beginning i have had the feeling that this to oregon, Rajneesh had involved his fol- is a man who is deeply, deeply evil—evil lowers in prostitution throughout Asia, on a scale almost outside the limits of the international drug smuggling, and vio- human imagination.” Rajneesh adherent lent-encounter groups in which occurred shannon Jo Ryan, whose father, Con- numerous rapes (in the name of sexual lib- gressman Leo Ryan, was gunned down at eration) as well as physical abuse resulting Jonestown, once stated: “i’ve heard other in at least one death. Rajneesh forced his people say that if [Rajneesh] asked them women followers into abortions and ster- to kill themselves, they would do it. if ilizations (he didn’t countenance child- [Rajneesh] asked them to kill someone bearing). in oregon, Rajneesh followers else, they would do it . i don’t know were eventually implicated in the poison- if my trust in him is that total. i would ing of restaurant patrons in The Dalles, like it to be.” Rajneesh himself said the The Dichotomy of Evil 13 following: “When you surrender, you have we wanted to.” This therapist added: “Hitler surrendered all possibility of saying no. did that, you know.” Whatsoever the situation, you will not say one of the revelations during the Cen- no.” ter’s breakup was that Richard Corriere My sense of evil as a consciously chosen had been lecturing his therapy group on path had originated, however, in my famil- the virtues of Adolph Hitler. Among other iarity with the Center for Feeling Therapy, statements Corriere had made was this: “if a purported “therapeutic community” that Hitler had won World War ii, he would flourished in Los Angeles in the ’0s. Cen- have eventually done good for the world, ter “therapists,” led by head “therapist” because all human beings, deep down, want and leader Richard “Riggs” Corriere (who to do good.” Rajneesh had also alluded to did not countenance childbearing among Hitler (in the book The Mustard Seed, which his followers either), employed a combina- Brandon referenced), claiming, “Jews are tion of abreactive/regressive psychological always in search of their Adolph Hitlers, techniques, which they had learned from someone who can kill them—then they Primal Therapy guru Arthur Janov, and feel at ease.” And Charles Manson, the coercive social techniques of group therapy evil mind behind what came to be called to gain control of their patients’ psyches the “Tate-LaBianca killings,” according to and lives.