Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship, Part 2 of 5
Read Part 1 of "Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship" here.
By now I certainly knew that what Leslie had done was anything but "art". Her participation in the La Bianca murders was a very real atrocity that she could never make go away like a bad hairdo or a dose of the hippy-clap. This was no youthful recklessness that today some baby boomer might turn into a nostalgic tattoo. No, this was fucking awful. I used to joke that "we've all had bad nights", well, Leslie really had a horrible one! But of course the La Bianca's night was much, much worse.
I wrote to Leslie to let her know I sympathized about the terrible predicament she must be in now that she realized that the ludicrous truth she once believed in was a complete sham. Leslie was left holding a bag so terrible that few of us could imagine the weight. I hoped in some tiny way to help her carry it by imagining it myself.
Leslie wrote back guardedly. She didn't know my films, of course; she had been on death row when Pink Flamingos had been released and even I know my trash epics were certainly not shown in prison during those years. She admitted my letter did not "put her off" as I had worried, but added she was "not certain of my intentions". "But if you are in a hurry," she warned, our friendship could never happen.
So I took it slowly. I wrote to her of my frustration in trying to get the sequel to Pink Flamingos made and she wrote me back about, what else? Prison. Living in a cell "the size of an average bathroom with another person". Leslie never complained but called jail "a big tragedy. All those broken souls desperately seeking a way to leave themselves." What I soon realized was that Leslie was trying to do the exact opposite -- seeking a way to get back to who she would have been if she had never met Manson. I knew that jail-house manners dictated the prisoner, not the visitor, is allowed to bring up the crime and if mentioned ("Manson is a pathetic, disgusting, worthless, old man") you are allowed maybe one or two follow-up questions. When Leslie finally wrote, "I'd enjoy meeting you", I still hoped to interview her and hopped on a plane.
I have now visited Leslie in the same visiting room in California Institute for Women in Frontera, California, (without freeway traffic problems about an hour's drive east of Hollywood) for the last twenty-four years. The only real change in the cafeteria-style space is the cheesily cheerful, country-style backdrop you can pose in front of with your convict friend, and for five dollars get your Polaroid picture snapped by the in-house prison photographer. The "green screen" of prison happiness has changed three times in my years there -- first a yellow-tinged country scene, then a blue floral motif, and finally a green and blue skyline. When friends look at the pictures of Leslie and me through the years that I have privately displayed on my office bulletin board in my Baltimore house, they often wonder who is the woman with me in front of the misleadingly generic tableaux? "Is that your sister?" many ask. "High school reunion?" others assume. When I trust someone enough to tell the truth they are shocked at "how nice she looks". How "like one of our friends" she appears.
On our first visit, Leslie, who looked then, and still does, very much like actress Hilary Swank, explained that she had no interest in being in Rolling Stone because of what she had done. She was ashamed of it, not proud, and hoped that one day the terrible notoriety would fade. Little did either of us know that this wretched infamy would not only never fade away, it would become stronger through the years as Manson became the great American tabloid boogeyman.
Leslie and I continued to correspond and I was flattered that she grew to trust me. After several more visits she wrote in 1987, "I feel good about you because I do not believe you would harm me. You make me feel good about myself... I need that... not to feel like a freak. I'd like to propose that this year we become closer friends. You inspire me to do something with myself." Leslie inspired me, too. Inspired me to believe that if you wait long enough and work hard enough on your damaged psyche you can eventually come out of it with some kind of self-respect and mental health. I never again asked Leslie to be interviewed until 2007 and by then she knew I wanted to write about her recovery, something she could finally feel good about.
Will there ever be a "fair" answer to how Leslie should pay for these crimes? Can you ever recover from being called "a human mutant" or a "monster" by the government, especially when you know that they were right at one time in your life? How can you feel optimistic about your own rehabilitation when you see yourself reproduced as a bald-headed dummy with an X carved in your head in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum? How do you begin to deal with the pain of the victims' relatives when the world has turned your former image into a Halloween costume?
With patience. God knows, Leslie Van Houten has patience. Patience to not find religious fanaticism that would forgive her instantly and take away her responsibilities for her actions. Patience to know and accept that she can't take back the defiant and deluded things she was programmed to say at her first trial: "Sorry is only a five-letter word. It can't bring back anything." Or her rantings to the jury on hearing all the defendants, including herself, being sentenced to death, "You blind stupid people. Your own children will turn against you". Or the terrible thoughts she admitted to prison psychologists at the time, about how she "felt kind of bad" she didn't get to go the first night (when Sharon Tate, her unborn baby, and four other victims were brutally murdered). Or how she was "hoping if we did it again, I would get to go". Or worse. After "Tex" Watson stabbed both Leno and Rosemary La Bianca he told Leslie to "do something" and "feeling like a shark" or "a primitive animal, a wildcat who had just caught a deer" Leslie remembered, she stabbed Mrs. La Bianca sixteen times with a knife in the lower back.
Decades later, when a parole officer had reviewed eleven different favorable psychiatric reports, all concluding that Leslie was suitable for parole and no longer a danger to the community, he listened to her sadly try to explain her addled thought process at the time of the murders and her shame for "the girl I was at nineteen. The best way to show remorse is to be the best person I can be today". He told her sympathetically but unforgivingly, "You've dug yourself quite a hole and it's going to take a little time to get out of it". It sure has.
Can you ever dig your way out of that hole by trying to explain LSD to a parole board whose members have never taken a trip? Could they understand Leslie's plea that at the time of the murders "it was a constant exercise to try and not come down" as she remembered in Connie Turner's excellent, but as yet unpublished Van Houten book, Straight Up? "We spoke to each other in the nonsensical space the drug induces," Leslie struggled to explain. "I became saturated in acid and had no sense of where those who were not part of the psychedelic reality came from. I had no perspective or sense that I was no longer in control of my mind." Could a parole board ever fathom that Leslie actually believed she was an elf "three inches high" who would "grow fairy wings" at the time of Helter Skelter as she remembered to Michael Farquhar in The Washington Post in 1994? Apparently she was not a lone elf. The Family women "would try to find elves hiding up in the trees and sitting quietly, so they might show themselves". Leslie's Dad backs her up, too, remembering in Connie's book how he visited Leslie "in county jail right after they had been picked up. Leslie told me she didn't know if she should cut holes in the back of her blouse to hold her wings or to put little pockets". Great. What does society do with a killer elf who decades later is now all better? Who could understand?
I could. I took a lot of LSD myself when I was young. From 1964 to about 1969, I took acid many, many times and never once had a bad trip. LSD quickly gave me confidence in my lunacy. "Don't tell young people that!" my mother always begs; but it's true. I remember tripping my brains out and dangerously crawling around the roof of the Marlboro Apartments in Baltimore after an LSD party and suddenly realizing I could make these crazy movies I had been dreaming up. My friends and I cemented our relationship with LSD, and became a parody of a movie studio and together our celluloid madness began to strengthen and grow. We had a "family", too.
But as nuts and angry as we were, would we have committed the atrocious crimes of my movies in real life if we hadn't had the outlet of underground filmmaking? Well, who knows? We certainly never met one of the most notorious con-men of the century, Charles Manson. And we were never looking for a spiritual leader the way Leslie was. I guess I was our gang's leader. My parents never blamed the crowd I ran with; they knew I was the bad egg. "We're not your puppets!" David Lochary used to yell at me when I went overboard on directing or thinking up stunts to film like Divine shooting-up liquid eyeliner for real. My "family" knew how to say "no" to me. Why couldn't Leslie do the same in her distorted world?
Could I have gone off the deep end with my cinematic "orders"? I had planned a raid on the Maryland State Board of Censors where the actors from Desperate Living would "home invade" the offices, chain themselves to the furniture, and refuse to leave until the anticipated cuts from our film were restored. Some of the actors (including 300-pound Jean Hill) had actually agreed to this photo-op if I'd pay the bail but luckily I didn't have to test their dedication to movie cult-madness because right before our Censor Board screening, Governor Harry Hughes took office and disbanded the Censor Board on his first days of power. And even though Divine's character in Female Trouble asks his audience, "Who wants to die for art?" and then shoots a fan who yells "Yes!" (played by Vincent Peranio, my long-time friend and production designer), I don't think any of my movie gang would have killed for cinema.
I never told Leslie this, but off camera I had killed somebody, too. Accidentally. Completely accidentally. In 1970 Mink Stole and I were driving up Broadway, a Baltimore thoroughfare that is divided by a safety island. It was Sunday early afternoon, we were not on drugs or liquor, and an elderly man, without looking, stepped off the curb right in front of my car. His body flipped up and landed on the hood with his face pressed towards mine through the driver side's windshield. This image so horrified me that I have used it over and over in my later films (Tab Hunter run over in Polyester, the school teacher killed by Kathleen Turner in her car in Serial Mom, the "Fidget" character's near-death as he falls off the drive-in marquee and lands on his parents' car windshield in Cecil B. Demented). As I pulled over to the side of the road in shock, the man's body slid off the hood of my car to the street leaving indentation marks that reminded me of the "snow angels" you made as a child by lying down in snow drifts and waving your arms. "He's okay," Mink mumbled in hope. "No, he isn't," I said realistically as I heard his death rattle. A crowd gathered around the car and luckily, oh so luckily, a cop approached and said, "I saw it all happen and it wasn't your fault." What a miracle. I had long oily hair and was dressed in my usual thrift-shop-pimp-meets-hillbilly outfit and Mink was still in her "religious whore" period -- wearing all black clothing with tons of rosaries around her neck way before Goth. We looked like complete lunatics. I called my Dad to get our insurance information and he was immediately nervous -- "Is anybody hurt?" he asked. "...Well, yes... the man died," I had to admit. "Oh, my God!" I heard my poor father moan, "Now this!"
But did I feel guilty? Even when I heard the "victim" was the beloved "peanut man" from the nearby Broadway Market? I didn't know him but some of my friends did. I felt no guilt because I knew the accident wasn't my fault but I certainly felt horrified. When my grandmother called later that night she said, "I'm praying for that man's soul". I honestly replied, "Can't you ask God why he picked my car to walk out in front of?"
If any deaths result from a car accident, you have to go to court no matter whose fault it was. As my "manslaughter" trial began my parents sat next to me in support, worried that, because of my hair and my already notorious cinematic reputation, I'd get convicted. It was a great relief to see that the deceased had no survivors or at least they didn't come to trial. The whole hearing was over in three minutes after the cop testified to seeing the unfortunate man just walk into oncoming traffic without looking. This awful experience will never leave me but it hardly qualifies me as a murderer. I can't begin to imagine what Leslie feels today when it was her fault. All I could do was try to warn future jaywalkers of the dangers with dialogue in my movies. Patricia Hearst, playing a school crossing guard, tells Johnny Depp as he exits school in Cry-Baby, "Look right. Look left. Then walk!"
Excerpted from the book Role Models by John Waters, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2010. Role Models is a self- portrait told through intimate literary profiles of his favorite personalities; some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some alarmingly middle of the road.
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Leslie's sentence was 7 years to life. She was out on bail for six months in 1977-78. She is no longer a threat to society. In my opinion she is a victim of Manson as well as the people who died.
I agree, it's Manson's noteriety that is keeping all of them in jail.
I know that I am going to catch much hell for what I am about to say, but not only do I think that Leslie should be paroled, but that prison sentences in the United States are way too long. We should follow the Canadian model (18 years for murder and a focus on rehabilitation), or better yet, the Finnish model.
If you look for any correlation between the severity of punishment, which the United States is one of the worst countries, and crime rates and recidivism, you will see that though we punish more harshly, we have MUCH MORE crime and many people returning to prison (revolving door). So punishing harshly does not help in the big picture, it hurts us as a society.
BUT, people in the US released after serving sentences for murder do not usually come back thorugh the revolving door. It's the petty crimes, drugs, car theft, assaults. Poeple who make claims otherwise should do their research instead of making generalities which have become tough on crime cliches.
We have way too many people in prison and they serve sentences that are way too long. Though Charles Manson is one of the very rare cases: he should NEVER be paroled, but should stay in a hospital for the criminally insane.
It is nice that John Waters can be friends with her. No one can ever be friends with Rosemary LaBianca, the woman Leslie Van Houten stabbed over 15 times.
One wonders what all the people murdered by the Manson "family" would have gone on to do. She should be in prison because that is what should happen when anyone takes a life.
George W Bush and people in his administration are responsible for the deaths of at least 100,000 Iraqis and 4,000 Americans. In fact, Vincent Bugliosi, who incidentally prosecuted the Manson "Family" has written a book, "The Trial of George W. Bush for Murder". In this book, he lays out his entire case for prosecuting Bush, how it can be done, who can do it (it could be done in all fifty states as there are soldiers in all fifty states who have died) and points to the fact that there are no statute of limitations for murder.
Bemoaning the Manson "Family" who have paid with 40 years of their lives, is frankly, wasted energy. let them all out, except Manson himself. Mrs. LaBianca's daughter has been advocating for Tex Watson's release for years now. Let's put the criminals of the Bush administration behind bars.
George W Bush and people in his administration are responsible for the deaths of at least 100,000 Iraqis and 4,000 Americans. In fact, Vincent Bugliosi, who incidentally prosecuted the Manson "Family" has written a book, "The Trial of George W. Bush for Murder". In this book, he lays out his entire case for prosecuting Bush, how it can be done, who can do it (it could be done in all fifty states as there are soldiers in all fifty states who have died) and points to the fact that there are no statute of limitations for murder. Bemoaning the Manson "Family" who have paid with 40 years of their lives, is frankly, wasted energy. let them all out, except Manson himself. Mrs. LaBianca's daughter has been advocating for Tex Watson's release for years now. Let's put the criminals of the Bush administration behind bars.
some very bad people did a very bad thing
While never a big acid eater myself, I've lived around its being freely and frequently used and I've enjoyed it (and other similar compounds) enoughI see where you're coming from in its regards and fully appreciate the reality that an LSD soaked world creates. It's really an impossible, but at the time thoroughly persuasive reality.
That LVH had entered a realm where she was not thinking as a sane human is obvious. That she's lost her freedom for life is the consequence. My sympathies start and stop with honestly hoping that prison is applied not as a punishment so much as a space for a most terrible kind of reflection as in fact modern prisons were initially conceived at the dawn of the age of reason..hence the terms "penitentiary" and "cell", as in monk's quarters. that her's would be a particularly unpleasant one, whether in a modern prison or one of her own making, is a sign remorse has entered,, something she didn't have when mentally incompetent and something necessary if we are going to have that all important sense that we are past it and will be better, safer and wiser.
Onward.
I have heard but can not speak with any authority that the post war European models of incarceration, rehabilitation, and parole are radically different from the largely unreformed pre-war American models.
Before pouncing on this comment, please note that I am not expressing any opinion on the early release of Leslie Van Houten.
It would be illuminating if Mr. Waters or one of our posters introduced some data on the success and/or failure of the European models. Perhaps there are some analogous stories across the pond that make or break the case for early release.
It's interesting that the only Manson nut to display any remorse, Patricia Krenwinkel, is never mentioned as a potential parolee and has not accumulated much of a "fanbase." Just her bad luck not to look like Hilary Swank. Too bad they didn't all meet their appointments with the executioner years ago.
No.
Whatever it is you're trying to sell here Mr. Waters - probably with good intentions - stop.
I saw the crime scene photos.
She dropped out of society to open herself up to brainwashing and chose to take the LSD. From that moment, like a person drinking knowing their going to drive home and risking that their car will become a weapon, Leslie risked turning herself into a weapon.
She did the unthinkable. If she's truly sorry, she needs to stay right where she is so the rest of us can feel a little safer in an already unsafe world.
She was a minor at the time of the murder. She neither led nor planned any of the murders. She participated, and has been punished more than any of us can imagine. She was under the sway of a very persuasive group of adults with her judgment diminished by LSD. I think she deserves parole.
it is really a shame that we cannot have a logical discussion about this in the United States without all of the emotionalism and cliched "tough on crime" rhetoric. Leslie being in jail will not make anyone safer, in fact, our current, harsh criminal justice system makes us all unsafer, see my post above.
I wish you all would be as irate about the Marines and the Blackwater goons who have tortured and blown apart little kids in Iraq. And check out what they did in Panama under Poppy's direction. No acid there, just good military strategy.
I *am* as irate about our history of killing innocent people around the world...I also think it's possible to discuss other topics....
John,
I agree with you completely, but this is a conservative country and I do not hold much hope that Leslie will be released.
Please, people, stop comparing humans to animals, who really do not murder.
But, come to think of it, what about the huge heinous murders committed at My Lai and in Iraq [rape, killing and burning of a 14 year old girl and her family, for instance--on booze] and on and on [see the Blackwater story today]?
The Manson thing is petty compared to what US have done and are still doing. Seen any photos of what has happened in Gaza and Pakistan?
Leslie and the rest of the animals in the Manson Family showed NO REMORSE when they went to trial. The contempt and disrespect they displayed during their trials toward the vitctims, the victim's families, and society was appalling. The judge finally tired of the daily disruptions and banned them from the courtroom.
I was a kid when Leslie was out murdering people. My sister and I were afraid that someone would break into our house and kill us. We were happy when they were arrested and hoped they'd never let them out of jail.
We've all done stupid things when we were kids. The thought of killing someone never entered my mind. My sympathies still lie with the victims. Their deaths were horrific. Nothing Leslie says or does will ever change that.
"The contempt and disrespect they displayed during their trials... was appalling."
It was appalling--the laughing, the singing, the swastikas--it was in fact so appalling it was clear that they were mad as hatters.
Completely off their nuts insane. Leslie did so much acid she worried how her "elf wings" would fit with her prison garb.
That should count for something 40 years later. (40 years!--and PS she was out on bail during her third trial and worked quietly as a secretary.)
Vengenance is not justice. She's done her time, as has Patricia Krenwinkel. (Susan Atkins still seems a wee bit nuts, and Watson has been cleansed by "Jesus" instead of taking responsibility.)
My theory is that the libertarianism, counterculture and search for individual autonomy and rights in that era somehow opened the door to what followed--30 years of Reaganism, free market capitalism and a Second Gilded Age that is only ending now.
To be sure, their distrust of the bureaucracy, the government and its Cold War foreign policy was well-founded. Vietnam was probably the worst mass atrocity of that era, but by no means the only one. Vietnam and Watergate thoroughly discredited the federal government, and rightfully so, but the Revolution did not come--unless it was a Revolution from the Right, fueled in part by the backlash against the 1960s protest movements.
Even so, I would still argue that the general alienation and distrust of government from that whole period--and decades afterward--also opened the door to the deregulated, cutthroat capitalism of the last 30 years. There was no one to control it, and hardly any will to do so from either major parties.
The 1960s ended badly, but the era that followed was dismal, and ended in another Great Depression.
You said it! People react to today's events w/collective on-to-the-next-thing, as if past events left no unfinished business on the national psyche, yet they'll spend years in therapy to figure out their personal history. That whole Reagan era...just, UGH. And we won't fully feel how awful the Bush years were for a long time.
These comments have nothing to do with the topic at hand. They are vaguely about politics. And the term libertarianism is completely misunderstood. Of course, it was the neo-cons that have caused this misunderstanding, but please, either connect it to the Manson girls, whether they should be let out or not, or post on a political site.
I believe you mean libertinism, not libertarianism, or perhaps you are conflating the two sets of ideas. I disagree with your thesis, though. The New Right, if you read Viguerie's book, had its roots in the defeat of Goldwater in '64, before the rise of the hippies. Also, the right had been seeking, since Hoover's defeat in '32, to overturn what they called "the socialist New Deal policies."
I agree that the social upheaval of the 60s counterculture movement frightened the mass of traditionalist society, not only the members of Nixon's "silent majority," but also many of the unionist Democrats. These people reacted by supporting increased penalties for drugs and crime, programs to prevent children from joining the counterculture (including holding the counterculture up to ridicule as something despicable), and increasing the use of psychiatry as a means of controlling their children.
These changes, along with changes in the economic structure (as labor jobs were exported and the growth of the computer industry domestically, entre alles), combined with the social engineering work of the reactionaries, made the subsequent generations more venal and money-success oriented.
Excellent point--Manson's group helped kill the positive potential of the 60's-70's revolution.
For that alone they should rot in prison forever. /snark
It's hard to believe that these horrible murders happened over 40 years ago as much as they're still portrayed in the media. I have mixed feelings about the parole issue. For one thing, if CA hadn't abolished the death penalty, LVH would likely be dead by now. As for her state of being at 60, I'm sure she's a completely different person than she was at 19. It's great to see her trying to make the best out of her situation and owning up to her responsibility in all of this madness. I am just thinking about the LaBianca's, and if I had been their daughter, I sure wouldn't want one of my parents' killers paroled. Sometimes I think it's just a convenient excuse to use the drug culture of the 60's to somehow eradicate the butchering that went on with the Manson Family. Plenty of kids LVH's age used drugs and they didn't get caught up in a murderous crowd. While I'm sure she's completely reppenant, someone's family WAS murdered at her hands, regardless of how she sees it today.
John, this is a very interesting continuation of your 5 part series on Leslie Van Houten.
As I said in part 1 of your series, you've had me thinking about my 3 years of almost daily acid trips and wondering at what point do you cross the line from "groovy" to...well, what Leslie did.
And then I realized it didn't matter. Your article finally got through to me.
While what she did was so very wrong, unarguably. Howver she is paying, maybe has already, paid her price. If her sentence was in fact for 10 years (I read this above) then she should not still be in prison. You do your time, and then hopefully you move on. You don't do an extra 17 years because it was a highly publicized case. 10 year sentence = 10 year sentence.
However, if she was given the death penalty, or a life sentence, then she should be judged as any other prisoner should who was given this sentence. Perhaps that does mean she will spend her life in jail. She deserves to be treated as any other prisoner would who commited the same crime.
I think what I find the saddest, is that her parents didn't come looking for her and save her from Charlie. Gave her the rock to cling to when the inner turmoil threatened to take over and change her life for the worse.
How fitting, I think the Labianca's ended up in parts too - eventually. I don't mean to be macabre but that's the reality of these crimes - not a movie where the character's can go home after the director yells "cut!." I do hope she can spend her life as a force for rehabilitation of others in Prison on drug offenses that should not be in prison for Non-Violent Crimes. Free non-violent criminals.
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