Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship, Part 3 of 5
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of "Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship".
Attorney Paul Fitzgerald, after many years' involvement defending the Manson women at various trials, said to The Los Angeles Times, "If Leslie Van Houten had never existed, the La Biancas still would be dead." But Leslie won't let herself off that easily. "I blame myself," she answered. "I'm part of what made him [Manson] a leader. If he didn't have followers, he wouldn't be a leader," and she later told Karlene Faith, "A follower is as responsible [as a leader] for allowing a leader to lead them foully."
As much as the sex angle was built up in the press, the truth was surprising to some. Leslie slept with Manson "maybe three times," she testified in court, and only "in the first month" she was with the group. Leslie would never admit this but she had better taste in Manson men. Bobby Beausoleil, a.k.a. "Cupid", was the most traditionally handsome of Charlie's boys and had starred in Kenneth Anger's movie Lucifer Rising and was Leslie's first boyfriend inside the Family. Even Charlie was a little in love with Bobby, and Leslie remembers being shocked at seeing Bobby orally service Charlie during one of their group sex evenings. "I didn't 'sleep with the devil,'" Leslie told Karlene Faith, "I slept with an ex-con who had an extensive record of pimping and abusing women. But I didn't know that." "The ranch," she remembers to Connie Turner, "was set up and run the same way as a stable of hookers although none of us realized it at the time."
"Are you crazy enough to believe in me?" Charlie asked Leslie and after months of LSD trips, isolation in the desert, and hours and hours of his continuous insane political rantings, Leslie, like most of the other "girl" converts, was. "'Bow like sheep,' Manson would order us," Leslie remembered in 1983. "We wore Bowie knives on belts around our waists and were only [dressed] in our underwear, I think, unless it got cold," she told Connie Turner. "We'd sit around on our feet and grunt...we were seeing how long we could go without drinking water...I was carrying a twenty-pound backpack filled with rice. We were building roads from nowhere to nowhere by moving rocks around...it was hard." Susan Atkins, Leslie's co-defendant, said in one of her parole hearings that they "were three young women clearly not in our right minds who lived in slavish obedience to a madman." Catherine Share, an early Manson Family member who finally managed to break free after serving time for the gun robbery, remembers Manson "just stealing everyone's soul." "Thinking is stinking," he used to say. And while Gypsy never killed for Charlie she understood the state of mind of the ones who did. "The killers couldn't even form a thought," she sadly remembered from her own experience. "Tex" Watson's psychological-reports doctor stated that "Tex" "had confusion as to who or what he was. Sometimes he 'felt like a monkey.' He actually believed that the victims were imaginary people." "Tex" told the shrink that he looked in the mirror at the Tate house, trying to figure out who he was. "I wasn't anyone," he remembered, "I wasn't Charles Watson, I was an animal. The end of the world was then. I was the living death..."
Seeing Leslie today in the visiting room, it's hard to imagine her with this past. The X on her forehead has almost faded away and she looks like an upscale intelligent woman I would definitely come across in my life in New York or Los Angeles. She could be seated next to you at any dinner party of professional people and it would never dawn on you that this woman has been in prison for four decades. She even went to the Oscars with a female friend in 1978 when she was out on bail and nobody recognized her! "But what did you talk about to the people you met that night?" I wondered, knowing she had been released from death row not that long before, not exactly a center of industry screenings or "For Your Consideration" Oscar campaigns. "If someone brought up one of the nominees," she shrugged, "I'd just say 'No, I missed that one' or 'I was away when that was playing.'"
Leslie and I have gotten older together in that visiting room and I've seen the prison rules constantly change. I used to be able to buy her three packs of cigarettes to take back to her cell but now it's illegal to smoke anywhere in jail in California. What used to feel so old-school-Women Behind Bars-cigarettes-as-money is gone forever. Now I get to buy her three cans of Pepsi! Stylistically, it's just not the same thing. Worse yet, about five years ago suddenly none of the women in Leslie's jail were allowed to use any kind of hair coloring.
Overnight the entire prison population aged ten years in appearance and on my first visit since the ban, I knew something was wrong but it took me several minutes to realize that everybody had two inch gray roots. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment!
Leslie and I have shared good times and bad times. And yes, Leslie does have good times. She's taught illiterate women to read in prison classes, she's stitched a portion of the AIDS quilt, made bedding for the homeless, recorded books on tape for the blind. She has clerked for the administrators, the nurses, the associate warden, the head of education, the kitchen, and the priest. And it's not that she jumps from job to job -- rules restrict inmates from working longer than two years in the same position. She can be lighthearted, too. She even sang "Santa Baby" at the prison Christmas show one year.
Yet somehow Leslie continues to live through the bad times without despair and inspires others to do the same. When Divine died suddenly in1988, Leslie was one of the first to console me by letter. "I'm so sad and wish I could be closer for you. I know you loved him and enjoyed in the success of his life and helped him through his hard times... I am sorry I will not get to know him."
She counseled me on a personal level, too. After a relationship of mine ended, Leslie was a good shoulder to lean on and I hope I've given her good advice, too, when she's had crushes from prison on men in the outside world. I've met two of her longest-lasting roommates: Becky the bank-robber whom I adored and is now free, and another inmate I called "Little Miss Manslaughter" because she was so bubbly and was an actual fan of my movies before she was sentenced.
Since no cable TV is available in jail, Leslie has seen few of my movies but did finally get to see my version of Hairspray and it was nice to get her good review. "I loved it," she wrote to me, "I was really into the public dances and all that. I lived to go to the Harmony Ballroom in Anaheim. I bought my shoes by how well they slid on the wood floor. I'm telling you it was my life!" It was her life. From Mashed Potatoes to Manson's Monster Mash in just a few short years. Luckily for her, Leslie still has a sense of humor. She even joked about my role in Hairspray as an evil psychiatrist who uses a ridiculous optical medical tool to hypnotize a teenage white girl into never dating black boys. "I never had one of those spinning wheels flashed in front of my face," Leslie admitted after decades of therapy, "Do you think it would help?"
I've always secretly wondered if Leslie ever felt "cool" when she was with the Manson gang and I finally got up the nerve to ask. She looked at me in confusion. "Cool? We had no concept by then of any such possible word!" she answered. And now the "celebrity" was even more unfathomable. "There's nothing sadder than to be asked for an autograph because of infamy," she once wrote to me, "I've had to explain I'm not proud of what I have done or why they [people] are aware of me. It's an awful feeling. The 'unwilling star'" And when her autograph or letters are sold on murder memorabilia sites it makes her feel worse because someone she has written to has betrayed her, and she's not sure who -- "So creepy. All disgusting and distasteful."
We've always discussed current events, how paralyzed she was with sadness over the Waco tragedy and how similar David Koresh was to Manson -- even more so than Jim Jones. Or how she understands the mind-set of kamikaze suicide bombers because this is how she was trained by Manson to feel and act once. And when the riots broke out in L.A. in 1992, after the Rodney King beating, an event Manson loyalists likened to Helter Skelter finally happening for real, Leslie was so far away from the Manson ideology that the comparison never even occurred to her. "This has been a really emotional time for me," she wrote that week, "First there was the first execution in nearly half a century in California," (Robert Alton Harris who was strapped into the gas chamber for thirteen minutes, released due to appeals, and then put back in the same day and executed) "and then the days L.A. went mad. I sat watching on TV images usually seen in other countries. John, it was so frightening -- to think of what is supposed to be safe as totally out of control."
I've tried to be her "agent" in the world of Hollywood. She agonized with me whether to co-operate and be interviewed for the TV news magazine show Turning Point but after meeting Diane Sawyer, Leslie agreed this news correspondent was "a class act". After seeing the completed show, Leslie admits she "had been treated better than I ever have." When the distressing news came in 2003 that CBS was remaking Helter Skelter again as a new TV movie, I called the director John Gray, whom I didn't know, at his home. Probably wondering why I was calling, or worse yet, thinking I was happy about the news, he took my call and listened quietly as I begged him to realize what a terrible unfair effect this project would have on Leslie's parole chances, how she was ashamed and horrified about the crimes, how further notoriety on the case would only please Manson and hurt the privacy of victims' families. I think my call may have worked a little because when I saw the finished project, Leslie's character was minimal and her part in the crime was truthfully shown to have been ordered by a vengeful Manson. A year or two later, my hunch was proven correct. In Los Angeles, in a restaurant to meet my agent and five minutes early, I was shown to my table alone and the waitress approached me with an odd expression. "Can I ask you something personal?" she shyly requested. "Sure," I replied, realizing she recognized me but never expecting what was coming next, "Are you the head of that 'Friends of Leslie' organization?" "No, there is no 'head' and that group has been disbanded officially, but there are many people who support her parole chances," I answered. "Because I played Leslie in the newest Helter Skelter," she revealed. Only in L.A.! Her name was Catherine Wadkins and I suddenly felt bad realizing I might have contributed to making an actress' part smaller. "Yes, you did," she confided after I told her the story of my call to her director, which she already knew about. "That's okay," Catherine smiled. "I think Leslie should get out and I tried to play the part in a way to show how brainwashed she was."
Leslie never asked me for money or material goods over the years. I've sent her books I loved and together we've discussed James Purdy, Mary McGarry Morris, Michael Cunningham, and Anne Tyler novels. After maybe one too many of my intense choices, Leslie started requesting her own titles, many of which had to do with the history and plight of the Native American Indian and I was happy to oblige. The only reading material I sent her that was rejected by the mailroom was, oddly enough, an issue of Paper Magazine that contained a fashion shoot that must have contained a little too much nudity. Once I offered to buy Leslie a TV for her cell but she declined. My kind of gal.
I was lucky enough to meet some of Leslie's friends on the outside, too. She has a support group that is tireless and relentless. "I like that several people close to me are also now friends of yours," Leslie wrote me after years of visiting. The most dedicated is Linda Grippi, a friend of Leslie's since high school who began visiting her not long after she was convicted and has never stopped. Linda is practically a nun in the religion of Leslie's rehabilitation and the firmest believer that Leslie should be paroled. Linda has dedicated her life to the cause of Leslie's freedom. She is a kind but convincing, level-headed pit bull who goes after anyone who believes otherwise with a reasoned defense. If Linda could testify at Leslie's parole hearing as "support" the way the victims' families can, I think Leslie might have already received a release date.
But Leslie meeting my friends was more problematic because of the East Coast locations and the strict rules about visiting high profile prisoners like her. I am afraid I have betrayed Leslie, too. A long time ago she mentioned to me that she "hoped I never 'used' our friendship or her plight for freedom" as dinner party conversation in my travels around the world. And I am embarrassed to admit, in my enthusiasm for her rehabilitation and my pride in our friendship, I have. Leslie Van Houten is quite a name to drop and famous people are eager to hear her story. When we were filming Cry-Baby, Johnny Depp heard my pleas concerning Leslie's parole and offered to visit her. Leslie, like everyone else in the world, had great respect for Johnny Depp and was moved that he, as my buddy, cared about her case. But we must have been nuts! Can you imagine the press if they found out? Think of the headlines -- "Johnny Depp joins Manson Family". Luckily for all of us, Johnny's visiting form was turned down because of an "impending assault charge", probably a hot-headed reaction to paparazzi.
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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This series is fascinating, but quotes like this make me wonder about Mr. Water's priorities and motives:
"Leslie Van Houten is quite a name to drop and famous people are eager to hear her story."
Ditto Part 2's opening sentence about him finally realizing that the Manson family rampage was not "art."
To even entertain such a thought is deeply disturbing.
These are wonderful articles. Clear headed, honest, and persuasive. I do hope she is freed.
My heart goes out to all victims but I have to believe there is some hope for the process of rehabilitation.
Otherwise we as a society are never going to figure out how to stop the vicious cycles of violence and old testament retribution.
Sorry John, but you need to let grownups make the decisions about how to handle fire and machines and things that can hurt people. You have a valuable role in our society writing stuff that makes us laugh and cry. You can go visit Leslie all you want and bring her Pepsi but you can't take her home.
I took Leno and Rosemary Labianca to the Oscars, and they had such a wonderful time meeting all the celelbrities.
Leno and I both love to read, so we'd exchange books of our favorite authors.
Rosemary was quite a character, and reminded of my mother.
I bought them their first VCR, so I could let them watch some of my favorite movies.
Yes, I love looking back on all the wonderful years I've shared with these special people, befriending and getting to know the Labiancas, except...
There's one little problem.
I never actually got to know them, or become part of their lives, because they were brutally murdered in 1969.
Well said, RepugsOuto8.
Charles Manson was a sad case.
Leslie stays in the slammer while Squeaky goes free! ! !
"She even went to the Oscars with a female friend in 1978 when she was out on bail..."! This sentence is so gross I don't even know where to begin. I'm not sure whether John Waters' enthusiastic endorsement of LVH's public "presentability" or LVH's own willingness to parade herself at such an inappropriate venue is worse. I really can't fathom how the LaBianca family members must have felt upon hearing that. After reading these articles, it just seems clearer with each one that he is truly intrigued with her notoriety and is able to somehow compartmentalize the deeds that led to her conviction, blaming it on drugs/youth/evil influences, etc. I don't know anyone who hasn't made bad choices (myself included) while under the influence of alcohol, drugs and/or manipulative people. But never in a million years would anyone or anything persuade me to participate in the torture and death of someone. Can't he imagine the fear the LaBiancas felt when their home was invaded by these maniacs? Or Rosemary LaBianca's despair and terror, hearing her husband being murdered and knowing she was next?
No kidding. The victims have largely been forgotten amidst the sick carnival of Manson and his followers.
In the film "Kind Hearts and Coronets" there is a curious twist to a famous adage......"revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold."
These comments have shown just how true this bon mot is. The usual thoughtful commentary has been replaced by the kind of visceral SHOUTING one expects from Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. When the response to Mr. Waters position is to deflect the subject back to the victims or their grieving families to avoid confronting the issue at hand, I realize that this is the facade of the thinking liberal crumbling as I read. How can anyone not sympathise with the LaBiancas and how can you possibly continue a reasonable discussion when lobbing these emotional grenades?
The sentence included parole which has been repeatedly denied her based on the horrific nature of her crimes. The nature of the crime will never change, nor the unimaginable grief of the victims families. The victims will never return to life. To then base her worthiness for parole on these unchangable factors is the height of hypocrisy. So to is it hypocritical to call one's self a reasonable, thinking and dare I say it "liberal" human being without having all of the facts and taking the time to consider an alternative point of view before shooting from the hip. But then, after a steady diet of all those cowboy movies and alien invasion films we grew up with, isn't that just the American way?
you are simply wrong- as a disbarred attorney I can try to help you overcome your glib, flawed logic.
In the third trial LVH was convicted of two counts of murder and SEVEN counts of conspiracy to commit murder. She was given the ajudicated penalty of life with the possibility of parole.
That means she is eligible for a parole hearing. She has chosen to accept these over twenty times (because she obviously doesn't think she belongs in jail, hence no remorse) . The panel is allowed to make a judgement based on remorse, behavior in prison, plans for after prison, and the nature of the crimes themselves. Parole is POSSIBLE, not mandatory.
I'm sure you'll disagree, but over 20 parole boards have decided that going into a house and slaughtering strangers for fun is so heinous you are not eligible for parole.
There are some crimes we don't forgive. The Tate LaBianca slaughter is one of them.
You can go on YouTube and see many of her parole hearings.
I can't help but wonder how all this might have been different if Polanski had been home that first night--his biggest regret, so he's said. 5 on 4, 3 if you discount Kasabian hiding outside in shock. Enough displacement of events and maybe that 2nd night wouldn't have been ordered.
Not that I disagree or agree with your main point, but I don't agree with your logic that she has no remorse simply because she continues to apply for parole. She may feel that, although there is nothing one can do to reverse the result of a murder, one can still do more to atone for their crimes of they have a broader freedom than allowed in confinement. This may not be her true motivation, and perhaps she has been cleverly paying lip service to the theme of atonement all these years with no better motive than her own self interest. But we don't know that, and we certainly don't know that from her simple act of applying for parole. In other words, your assumption is a cynical one, albeit understandably so.
Earth to ColScott:
Logic lesson # 1
A parole seeker wants to get out of jail, ergo doesn't believe they belong in jail any longer.
Legal lesson # 1
CA Superior Court Judge Bob Krug wrote: "she is effectively serving a life sentence without parole, a sentence unauthorized by law. Other than the finding as to the gravity of the offense, there is a complete lack of any evidence to support the decision of the board. The board failed to make a finding that [Van Houten's] institutional behavior was a factor tending to show her suitability for parole. To fail to do so is an arbitrary and capricious consideration."
Civics lesson # 1
We live in a Democracy, governed by laws, not a Ochlocracy, or mob rule.
Man, that's one COLD and moldy dish of revenge you are still chewing on after 40 years.
Thanks for your response. We are a nation that seeks and takes great pleasure in revenge.
You make it sound as though it was a bad thing.
certainly at 19 i was capable of being brainwashed, especially with the help of hallucinogenic drugs, into doing things i would never do now - as are millions of people. have some compassion.
except she wasn't brain washed- this is after the fact spin. NOBODY forced her to stab an innocent woman. I may have my own issues with Linda Kasabian but trust me, she went both nights and didn't cut anybody because SHE DIDN'T WANT TO!
thats because Kasabian had only been in the Family four weeks, was older and more mature than Leslie, and brainwashing does exist, its alive and well today. Anything supporting Leslie's position is after-the-fact spin to you, nothing is actually how it happened. You can't expect to win an argument like you did when you were six years old. Nuh uh, nuh uh, nuh uh
You must be a rarity, for the vast majority of 19 year olds are more than capable of distinguishing right from wrong.
Wright from wrong? Such simple analysis. When groups of adults were screaming "Kill him" about Obama at Palin ralies they thought they were right. When religious nuts elicit the same in children in radical "Christian" groups, and as evidenced by young people in "Islamic" groups they think they are right. Your black and white world is a myth. But sticking with that theme, is forgiveness right or wrong?
I am definitely not a fan and also not making any money off of any of these articles on her. I do think that if she was offered parole and has no record of prison offenses in her history then she should be given parole.I think she has died more than one time since her stay in prison began. Forty years in prison is the same as death.
After that much time in lock up freedom will scare her to death. $40,000 a year to confine her is a lot of money.It would be much better if she were gainfully employed paying taxes.
Soon they will be letting worse than her out on parole if she is in a California prison.
At one point years ago she married an ex-convict that was found with a womans prison uniform. I don't remember the whole story, but it was very fishy. Then she divorced him. So, she hasn't had a perfect record. It amazes me these people have all been married and had conjugal visits. Tex is married has three children and that's why he thinks he should get out on parole. Why in the hell are we making little Tex's?????????? I'm pretty liberal, but I think this is going too far.
I am definitely not a fan and also not making any money off of any of these articles on her. I do think that if she was offered parole and has no record of prison offenses in her history then she should be given parole.I think she has died more than one time since her stay in prison began. Forty years in prison is the same as death.
After that much time in lock up freedom will scare her to death. $40,000 a year to confine her is a lot of money.It would be much better if she were gainfully employed paying taxes.Soon they will be letting worse than her out on parole if she is in a California prison.
she was never offered parole only the possibility of it
If her sentence included the possibility of parole then she should be given the possibility of parole. So far she has not. Each parole hearing has been a fait accompli as the board has repeatedly stated that the nature of the crimes were too heinous to grant her parole request despite California laws to the contrary regarding the procedure.
This is not justice it is revenge and politics.
For anyone to pretend otherwise is a fraud.
There but for fortune go I. I lived in the Haight-Ashbury at that time and Manson's family was up there from time to time. I might have passed some of the people involved on the street. Sure, I met mind-trippers and scam artists around and I caught on to their games pretty quickly. I'd like to think that I wouldn't have fallen under his spell, but I'll never know.
except there was no spell. Paul Watkins, Brooks Posten, Linda Kasabian, many many members of the Family didnt kill anyone
were you there?
because they werent sent on a mission to kill for Charlie, duh. Minus Kasabian, who we already know hadnt made it completely through her indoctrination at the time of the murders. Had Mary Brunner not been in jail at the time, Kasabian wouldnt have been picked to go that night as a driver. Dont forget there are others that killed for the Family also, Cupid, Clem,etc.
I wrote a reply too long to get published that sort of made the same point.
Due to being the exact age of the Manson Girls (women)...I do sort of identify with their original circumstances. i can understand how they got there, though i did not.
Why didn't I?
Lucky? Just elsewhere?
Basically not a joiner is probably the real reason, but I can imagine how they got there.
I'm afraid Mr. Waters' interest in Van Houton is a perfect example of looks-ism in action. People always seem so willing to overlook major flaws in a person's character if that person, especially a woman, is good-looking (Palin is another example). Maybe Van Houton is rehabilitated, maybe not. What I find interesting is that people are so interested in her. What about the other Manson followers? Why has no one jumped on their bandwagons? Is it that they're not rehabilitated or are they simply too unattractive?
So you're saying if Leslie were less attractive than she is John Waters would have absolutely no interest in her case? Why is Cupid sitting in jail as we speak it your "looks-ism" theory is true?
John Waters has admitted on occasion his fascination for celebrity or it's mechanisms. However, any casual perusal of his work will show that he in particular is not interested in someone because they are physically attractive, quite the opposite in fact.
It's so strange this 5 part series about Leslie Van Houten is taking place the same week that it's announced Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme will be paroled. If anyone out of the Manson gang is still a questionable threat to society, it's definitely Squeaky. At least the Tate/LaBianca murderers have all denounced Manson as their savior. Squeaky, however, seems hopelessly and insanely devoted to that piece of trash.
Have you seen any interviews with that kook who just got released on the other attempted Ford assassination? Still crazy and illogical, much like Squeaky.
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