The Damage Done Podcast with Michael Thompson: Episode #24 - The Truth About Charles Manson

back to the damage done uh mason here mike thompson here new friend of the show bruce gray hello everybody bruce gray up in here uh for most of you that have been following us for long enough the typical format is more of the the murder the redemption things of that nature but now that we are we are doing things with mike um we're going to add some we're going to add some more flavor and interest as as we roll forward with some of the murder and redemption angles uh and something that mike and i briefly talked about uh is the interest with charles manson correct mike yes and yeah as it pertains to you well yeah you know the thing i've had um a number of um requests that i appear on uh different shows i think um charlie's son has one show and one of his representatives has been kind of following the various interviews i've been doing where i mentioned charlie and he'd like me to come on uh his podcast and talk about charlie but one of the things that um i think i want to clarify from the very beginning is i have no interest whatsoever in um furthering the myth of charlie manson it uh perpetuating you know that that uh image if you will that um um [Music] media created so you know really when we're talking about charlie we're talking about the real deal uh is what it comes down to right and um it's based on you know the 10 years that i spent with him and um you know i've openly made reference to charlie as being a punk correct um you know you know it doesn't really need um clarification but the issue is is that i mean that literally and so i'm using i guess prison jargon um to make reference to charlie in in that capacity um you know but he was more than that he was um also a pedophile and um while i don't have um any issue with the former uh the latter does cause me concern of course you know you know one of the experiences that um um i had with uh charlie was the extraordinary amount of mail that he received and um he received a lot of that mail from youngsters and um he didn't take it upon himself to respond to any of that mail [Music] but i did particularly when he would bring mail to me from youngsters that um were susceptible and so i would um i would write letters back to him um on charlie's behalf i mean i tell them who i was right so how did you get how did you get in that position to you how did you form that relationship to a point where he's starting to bring you started to bring you as male and you're writing back on behalf of him so you were you're in the know with the type of uh what's it called the mail that he was receiving yeah the thing about um charlie was he had um a learning disability um just as i do i'm dyslexic um so his problem was comprehension you know a lot of people credit a lot of what charlie had to say with um just thoughts that were off the top of his head but the thing about charlie was that pretty much particularly when he was addressing a camera or a microphone um everything that he said was choreographed he had like um skits or various themes that he used they actually practiced for a given scenario so if you look at any of the interviews with charlie you don't really see any spontaneous thought you see a lot of gibber-jabber and abstraction and that was the reason for that was because um he didn't really have a lot of original thoughts he would set and he would think things out relative to how he was going to address um someone that was interviewing him in the media but go back and look at those interviews and it's very rare that you get a direct answer from charlie on any question that is germane to the question being asked [Music] and pretty much everybody just accepted that as charlie but um you know the relationship that we developed and it probably goes a lot deeper than people might imagine um simply because i didn't like charlie didn't mean that um i didn't treat him as a human being i did um [Music] you know i helped him set up a nonprofit that dealt with um environmental issues um you know there were a lot of things he was interested in native ceremonies so you know never in all my years of walking the red road have i denied anyone access to [Music] that spirituality that connection to the earth or great mystery or whatever it may have been and um that included charlie we did quite a few ceremonies together um whether or not he was able to take them in um is anyone's guess you know that's not for me to assess or for me to judge really but um what years were you with what years were you around charlie when he was locked up well our initial um passing and it really was nothing more than a passing was in the 70s at all folsom um but when we started actually living in the same unit together that was in 1992. gotcha and we spent uh 10 years together in that unit and uh as a matter of fact he he he died in that unit he passed over while he was still in that unit and this is corcoran yes okay because i'm from bakersfield i know he had gotten transported to bakersfield whenever he did die right okay well then you know that uh um what's corkburn about um two hours from there oh yeah if if that it's all those prisons there's a few of them up there between bakersfield and fresno little no man's land type area i was curious what you had because you had said about the uh kind of everything you did is a little bit more planned out and premeditated cause that's why i was curious about what the years you were locked up with him was because he didn't do any interviews for something like 12 15 years whenever he was first arrested so do you think that that was like a choice on the media a choice on him or do you think that was him trying to kind of i guess or lack a better word develop the character more no i think it actually had a lot to do with the department of corrections policy on interviews under pete wilson the department was not allowed to conduct interviews with inmates unless it was for a specific purpose in other words whereas charlie had been interviewed one-on-one by the media uh when pete wilson enacted that particular law uh it was no longer pre permitted so i think the the law that you're talking about had more to do with the change in the law as it relates to the interview of inmates they made exceptions and those exceptions occurred usually like i did a national geographic piece back in 2007 and you know that had to be approved through headquarters in sacramento specifically because of that rule um so you didn't see interviews occurring for that reason do you think was that law did that have anything to do with him because he was i guess one of the more high profile people at the time and they saw him i mean kind of as a danger because like you're saying all these kids who are writing you letters they're going to tune in and be like oh i want to be you know tex watson or linda kasabian into these dummies right yeah i actually think it did have a lot to do with uh with charlie and others um so it was the notoriety associated with these individuals and i think the influence the objection was that um the prisoners were being given a form um you know that was certainly true in the case of charlie um and so far as their philosophy or their their specific views so what the new law um allowed for was um it had to be specifically related to something that the department would approve uh whether it be gangs or you know something along prison reform something going on with the pretty legislature stuff actually but um that's why they did that and i didn't answer your question bruce i do think that it had a lot to do with charlie and others in his situation but i can't think of another prisoner that had the notoriety that charlie did perhaps other than sir hand and sirhan sarhan was there with us as was juan corona and you know the trash bag killer and a few others but i think the problem was you know he had the son of sam law that was um introduced at one point in time i mean it was the first one was overturned and so the legislature reenacted uh what they now call son of sam law two and uh the idea is is to prevent uh prisoners from profiting from the crimes and um that's still in effect so um you know charlie and others in his situation but particularly charlie made astronomical amounts of money um through selling memorabilia and um at one point i think even is closed so and we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars i can remember him receiving um what was it 1099s is that the independent contractor yeah i can remember him receiving um tax receipts in excess of a hundred thousand dollars for memorabilia and uh other things photographs that he would autograph um it was big money um who was facilitating all of this was it like just kind of like squeaky from or somebody like that that kind of one of the people who well squeaky was locked up in i think florida at the time and and uh you know he would talk to her on the phone and i talked to her myself and but so she most of his dealings had to do with sandra good at that time sandra goode moved to hanford which is very near corcoran and so while she herself i believe at one point was not allowed to visit charlie what she would do is she would recruit um individuals that would come in and visit charlie and then there were other people that were brought into his um family setting [Music] and as long as they were able to pass the um the background check then they were allowed to come in and visit him so he did receive visits uh photographs were taken um on the yard um and then he would autograph those send those out and those would be sold uh so his memorabilia um brought in a lot of money did you find him coherent like like was there a difference between him on camera and him off camera as far as the the like logic of his sentences yeah being able to put a sentence together and not yeah in other words was he lucid yes lucid that's exactly what i was looking for yeah he had he had moments of being lucid um but sometimes i think he would just get caught up i mean he was very big into his hashish and his marijuana and his hallucinogenics and he had all of those in the unit and but his music was very important to him um what did you think of his music personally well i didn't care for it i mean it's not something that i would go out and buy yeah he fancied himself a musician then a singer and um i don't i don't i don't think it's i've talked to brian about this before i don't think it's the worst music i've ever heard in my life but it is everything about him from his like slang the way he talks all of his music because he was in jail pretty much his entire childhood it's all like 15 20 years behind so by the time he got out he's still making like a bob uh bob dylan ripoff kind of music and everyone else has already moved on to uh you know candy or whoever they were listening to at the time yeah he was stuck in a specific era yeah as it relates to zeke and and the lyrics associated with that those uh the music you know the songs but um like i said i'm not um a musician um and certainly don't qualify as a critic of what is good and what isn't uh i think the um the public makes that determination but um i was never impressed by his um his music there's a lot of tangents i'm trying not to derail this podcast with but it's okay uh with sirhan sirhan and charles manson being in the same prison it's a hell of a handball team yeah first of all i have questions about sirhan sirhan but my more pressing question is i'm familiar with adx florence and that being the super max prison where all the like like el chapo's there 911 terrorists are there and all that stuff it seems like that's where manson and and sirhan sarhan would be so what does it take to get into florence it's probably more great well i think yeah you're talking about uh with the individuals you're talking about um that's an entirely different level of prisoner um by way of intelligence by way of the capacity and the ability for violence uh to control situations and circumstances i mean when you're talking about sirhan or charlie you're not talking about individuals who were in control of their environment were in control really of the resources outside of their environment right that makes so i could have figured that out yeah you know the individuals you're talking about are um what i would consider uh forces to be reckoned with and neither charlie nor sir hen um fit that bill at all um did you find sirhan sirhan to be lucid what's that did you find sarhan sarhan to be lucid because i know that you know there's a lot of conspiracy theories about him being like in the mkultra program and all that kind of stuff um well yeah i understand that uh there's talk about um the onset of dementia as it relates to him and and um you know how that works perhaps in in in later years i mean i had um many conversations with sir hen where he was quite lucid and um quite articulate in so far as his beliefs philosophically and otherwise um as a matter of fact i i think sir hand actually fancied himself um an intellectual um i would uh place him in that category so you were when you saying by the time that you because you said you guys had kind of passing in the 70s by the time that you got to be around charlie on a more regular basis was there more like was he kind of uh i guess settled down more in a sense or was there any moment where you had to tell him like hey your heebie gb mind control [ __ ] isn't gonna work on me so don't try to talk backwards to me or whatever you're trying to do that was that was never an issue to give you an example they moved uh i was in the restricted housing unit there was only six of us there and we were all um former gang leaders and uh so they removed the restricted housing unit from to hatchby it was the only unit of its kind in the state of california it was actually in the penal code um so that for instance they took my name from me and i was occupying e now i still had my b number um as did the other individuals in the unit but all of us were classified occupant and i was occupancy so when i went to the unit at corcoran it opened in 1992 charlie and sarahan were both living in soledad they had a protective housing unit there and you know there was actually two units there were that many people but only uh charlie sir hence thor turhan juan corona and a few other individuals were actually transferred to the new unit in corcoran along with those of us that came from the restricted housing unit so in total maybe 10 11 12 maximum in the unit itself um so um it was a specialized unit and i was there before well no i wasn't i'll take that back charlie and the others were there before we were transferred they shut down the restricted housing unit the idea was to consolidate and there was only one unit like this of its kind in the state of california so um there was a vetting process that had to occur so when i did arrive i remember that they assigned me a cell and charlie was just a few cells down from me and so i was standing in the doorway of my cell and charlie came out of his cell and he walked over to me and he just walked up to me and he laid his head on my chest um and that was a form of submission uh yeah especially in jail i feel like if you do that you're you're really giving it up yeah so clearly he knew who you were before you arrived there right yes got it yeah and and obviously you know who he was so what was your initial reaction and feeling when that when that occurred it just walked up into your cell a little funky no that's not a typical typical thing i was standing you know now i was standing in the cell doorway okay got it the frame the cell door was open and he saw me and walked over and and um like i said placed his head on on my chest and i recognized it for what it was um you know um didn't really make anything of it other than to acknowledge it and to simply tell charlie that it was all right you know there's a lot of talk about charlie being under the protection of the aryan brotherhood and um you know there's some truth to that uh not a lot because he was in the the coal at folsom with the brand and i hear a lot of talk about kenny cuomo as if kenny como was aryan brotherhood um he wasn't right um but i see a lot of people putting that out there that you know kenny como did have a stable of girls that ran fraudulent credit cards for him and i remember that kenny cuomo and charlie got into a what i referred to as a slap fest on the the yard in old folsom uh because the sure as hell wasn't a fight neither knew anything about fighting how big is it how big is this uh how big is the como guy because charlie's about four feet tall yeah he he wasn't much bigger than charlie um featherweight match average average size you know charlie was actually smaller than the average man um but kenny wasn't much bigger i think oftentimes what happens is that people in general confuse kenny coleman with kenny wilkes kenny wilkes was a member of the brand and he was at old folsom and we called them old folks and he eventually did parole and died on the streets but at any rate um so kenny and and uh charlie got involved in this slap fest and this was over the fact that kenny had recruited some of charlie's girls and was using them um in this um credit card fraud the issue really wasn't so much that kenny was using his girls it was that charlie didn't feel that he was getting his cut um from the proceeds from that so uh you know coming from that um two years later seeing charlie at corcoran there really was no change there i never did consider charlie very assertive right in his perspective it's interesting it's interesting uh hearing all this about at the beginning of the episode what i took uh as to what you said was i want to kind of smash the the narrative or the the the perception or myth of charlie manson and bruce bruce is up in here i feel like he knows he's here in front of the show and also because he knows much more than me about this topic and the way what what i'm curious to know what what your perspective is because i want to i want to hear what his perspective on who he is and i want i want to attack those types of things like who charlie yeah like before walking into this interview like in your mind who is he to you tim i think he's like he's not not that he's not a smart guy even though he is very dumb he got arrested for a like he got 10 years in prison for like trying to cash like a fake 42 dollar treasury check like he's a really stupid guy i like think he's done like he also that's why i was interested earlier whenever you said that he had was lsd in his uh uh cell because my opinion was that he would was good at finding these people that were most of them i guess missing a father figure but also missing a lot of other [ __ ] in their life and he's just kind of dosing them up with lsd and he's starts out as this thing is like we're playing pretend well he's not really doing any lsd but it's like if you gather 10 people who are all you know on acid you can kind of tell them what to do for the most part like that so like even when they go out to the movie ranch and they're all just really playing pretend and acting out like they're making old westerns like doing all this stuff and then ended up whenever he got caught it was because there was one of the people that was involved in the thing and the murders was just talking about it too much in jail it wasn't like they went straight to him he was they were in jail for stealing cars and going out in death valley but i think he was just uh kind of i mean he's a guy who was born you know his mom was like a 16 year old prostitute didn't have a name for like the first two months of his literally on his birth certificate i'm pretty sure it said no name right honest thing so like he was kind of in trouble from the beginning a little bit but he's real especially being in la and being in the entertainment industry and meeting these people he's just kind of a bitter guy that's toward i mean really just seems like he's a bitter guy that his shitty music never got made yeah and so he's like well let me you know enact this whole thing like uh his whole race war idea was just far-fetched and probably some [ __ ] he made up on the spot that people on acid believed i don't think he believed any of it i think he just wanted towards it by the end of it he was just bitter that his music didn't get made and it seemed like nothing was going to happen so he's like let's do something right and it's interesting you say that and then limited knowledge that i have of him he seems like he's apparently this fascinating influential controlling manipu like master manipulative type of individual and so now to get the context here starting off saying that he's a punk and he's a pedophile and things like that it's things that you don't typically hear how how how i guess going to if if your first interaction back to you with him is is him with the act of submission you're i think you're a pretty smart dude how long did it take you to figure out that hey there might be i'm not even saying sure you did figure this out i'm just assuming here because this is what i would do figure out i gotta hustle here i can i can really get something out of this how long did it take you to figure out that i could i can run some run run some sort of game to improve my my i mean i think you already had a good stature but maybe your financial situation make some money off these charlie manson t-shirts yeah yeah most people actually think that way you know with that there are consequences even in the joint and so you know you're looking at more and i looked at it this way relative to charlie's resources as opposed to making bank off of his memorabilia or anything else associated with that sure what was far more valuable um were his resources and he had those you know you want to remember that when you talk about hallucinogenics and lysergic acid particularly you know you go back to the 60s and you know the the mindset if you will and the type of lysergic acid that was available then you know timothy leary who was around um same time down at woodland canyon drive um you know when you went to if you did at all went to see uh timothy at um his place on woodland canyon drive you walked into his house and he had a glass bowl of um uh thousands of hits of lysergic acid and um you know people would just walk in and lick their finger and stick it in the bowl and lick it off and you know there's only you can only get so loaded from lysergic acid it has its limits relative to that um but my point in mentioning that is that charlie was of that era you know the utilization of uh hallucigenics towards the manipulation of people um not to suggest that timothy was doing that his focus was something entirely different actually a brilliant man but in charlie's case you know he hooked up with teenagers primarily women who had their own problems and he utilized hallucigenics essentially to control you know what they thought and how they thought it and that had more to do with his storytelling uh than anything else i mean um was he a manipulator of course he was master manipulator i don't put him in that category right i've i've known a few master manipulators in my time and he doesn't qualify so um i would imagine a master manipulator wouldn't require drugs to manipulate well that's my thinking also bruce is that if you are a master manipulator then you're not using in any capacity because of you know what it does to um alter not only your consciousness but your your perception of reality um you know i've never used drugs myself for that reason and um i can i can remember when the um idea of myself being a mastermind manipulator started you know it goes back many years and it's not something that you're really ever able to shake um in any capacity so it depends on your your motives as it relates to manipulation you know manipulation is a two-way sword it slices both ways if if your intent is to infringe upon the rights of others as it relates to their humanity then that should be perceived as negative but you know one of my favorite um psychotherapists milton erickson who wrote a book called and my voice will go with you um he was very fond of saying that we all manipulate even as children we manipulate our parents and so on um and so we're all manipulators the difference is is that um and you know i run a nonprofit so i'm constantly attempting to persuade people to uh contribute uh to become a part of to volunteer and that's a form of manipulations so politicians do it all the time um but point is is that it's your intent if um you're attempting to persuade with the intent of infringing upon another human being's uh rights then i i believe that should be negative manipulation and that was the case with charlie he knew what he was doing and he knew how he was doing it and he knew the effect that it was having and he knew the control that he had you know he was a petty thief um you know i'm not even sure that he would qualify as a convict back in back in the day um no he's like yeah a check forger and a car thief and like a low level yeah very much so yeah he took his skill set that he learned in prison and gave that application to naive really innocent girls who in if you think about the error of the 60s and and that's easy for me to do because i was there in the 60s you see how they wanted something different there was a lot of upheaval in our society back in the 60s not the least of which was the vietnam war and um you know you had the hippie generation and uh you know peace love spare change hate ashbury and uh you know charlie fit right into that um he did and um but um [Music] he used it essentially he used the image of it he used the um the drugs that were available at the time particularly the hallucinogenics um to control a group of youngsters that really didn't have the mind development up to that point the maturation if you will the life experience to combat it so it's no different to me than you know the uh jim jones situation um you know the cult um scenario where you have a what the followers perceive to be a dynamic leader and i don't doubt that um charlie's family perceived him as a dynamic leader they had to they killed him for sure right right right he's charismatic really more than anything it's just those people and not not all of them were even like i don't think any of them were as uh i mean as far as their life goes was as we're as [ __ ] up as him because his life from the beginning was messed up a lot of these people in the thing like if you start looking into their backgrounds or reading about them it's like tex watson was like a all-american football player from texas like a lot of these people were like had pretty normal upbringings they were all just very sheltered it was like that you know late 40s through the 50s early 60s like sheltered family life where and then you know their family parents divorce whatever so they come out here or they're already out here and they're looking for something or somebody and the first guy who it is is charlie and he's loading you up with lsd and mixing it with speed and telling you all kinds of other fun stuff you're like oh this is acceptance yeah new ideas yeah a little a little wild these people are sheltered having sex for the first time [ __ ] like that yeah i wouldn't even call him charismatic that's something i've learned like through comedy and the entertainment industry is that a lot of people who are just comfortable being weird or shucking norms societal norms no matter how incoherent or like what people just are gravitating they gravitate towards that but i when i watch him i don't see any charisma yeah that's what trips me out because it's how did how does this man to this day it's like he influences pop culture and and then then you hear the and then you hear this side of the coin here yeah and he's like he's a pedophile you said something he said primarily he messed with young women so that means on the secondary nature he like to mess with young boys as well that's what i took by you saying that you could clear that up what he did was he would take the children the offspring if you will of those women when they had offspring and they were actually very young when they did and then it was their offspring um that he molested and um you know i i say that not from speculation or conjecture on my part but i walked into the visiting room one day and actually caught him in the act and um took it upon myself to terminate his visit um but you know you make some really good points here about you know the charisma no he was not in any way charismatic um uh in the normal sense of the word um again it goes back to the times you know if you stop and think about the very thing that we're we are talking about right now as it relates to cults and in the ability uh through um really hatred you go back to the hippie air and it was all supposed to be about uh peace love and spare change but that's not what charlie was advocating he was actually advocating hatred um and so you know you fast forward to present day you know many decades later and we're actually seeing the same thing reoccur through the influence of these youngsters via the internet or via these groups and uh you know they're going out and they're doing the bidding of these individuals um like these recent shootings um you know we're individuals going to a church and they they essentially execute 10 people and they do that because in my opinion they've been brainwashed and you know that brainwashing the source of that brainwashing is hatred right um so i think it's important to make that distinction particularly as it relates to charlie he was not peace love spare change hippie that was advocating love free love um or love ends he was advocating hatred and isolation and he isolated his group for that reason and um so you know the idea of propaganda you know i've referred to charlie in the past as being a jaw jacker right and um he was a jaw jacker but you know so was hitler hitler was the quintessential jaw-jacker but it's that jaw-jacking via hatred that gives them their form and so you know the real issue is and i think as a society what we need to look at is you know how does this happen and why does it happen right and i think a lot more emphasis needs to be placed on that we can use charlie as an example in going back to the 60s and the influence that he had over these youngsters and how that facilitated his agenda his personal agenda his if you will narcissistic agenda but um it has real application by way of a pattern that appears to be constantly repeated in our society by individuals charlie only being one of them to where we are today in so far as the challenge that faces our society relative to these hate groups and how they're influencing at-risk youth to do their bidding um it's nothing short of cowardly and that also applies to charlie right you see he was a coward he was a coward with all that being said was there i guess prior you were initially arrested after he was initially arrested and put away for that crime is that correct is that timeline correct yes so was there at any point in time ever some sort of allure that you had uh kind of similar to how i say general pop culture sees there's a certain alert to him a certain idea of him before you started having your perspective change and if so and you did at what point in time did that perspective change in regards to the way you saw and thought about him yeah it's a great question mason but it really doesn't have application to my own journey you know i never gave [Music] back in the 60s it isn't to say that i didn't have occasional contact with hippies or with individuals who were using hallucinogenics or were into the drug scene in the dropout scene like i said i met timothy larry a number of times but that was only because where he was staying was on the borderline of our ranch so when i would take the cattle over the mountain into the lower pasture i'd ride it down a little bit and and you know you run across a lot of folks good folks and uh by my estimation timothy was one of them but you know if you keep going you get down into laguna beach and laguna beach was a haven if you will for um some amazingly talented artists um and so you know it's it's being able to separate if you will um segments of our society toward understanding what was going on with them and why in my case um you know i was writing the rodeo circuit bull riding working on a horse ranch um so i had no construct in my head about charlie or anybody else of that ilk right so that in coming to prison that remained so i didn't watch tv so in the course of my life i mean first time i watched really tv was my last year of incarceration after 45 years and you know so um what'd you get into i tell that the bachelor what's that i said whenever you finally turned it on what'd you get into oh well actually i did you know my wife bought me the television because she insisted that uh i learned something about what reality was in society and um so i turned it on and um i remember being most touched by a commercial i don't even remember the commercial i just remembered that it was touching to me but the so-called reality shows and all this it just seemed um like nonsense there must have been a lot to process man yeah absolutely well it is yeah it and still is uh truth be told um when you said that my biggest oh i'm sorry please go on no no that's all right sorry thank you it can be hard i was i was curious because you said that whenever you would have contact with some of the uh the hippie folks back then from what i've read is that charlie kind of caught this tail end of all that of like because he was in jail for like i have some eight or nine years for that we were talking about that check 42 check that he got locked up for did you see the turn in kind of the peace and love thing switching over because a lot of people have said that once kind of speed got introduced into the picture that a lot of these hippies had kind of like turned evil a little bit towards like the end of the 60s and so like even though not saying that charlie brought all this on but like these crimes happening was kind of the personification of the whole thing of like this was about peace and love but now these people are you know even though they're spelling some of the words wrong writing and blood on the wall right i think charlie was an opportunist and he saw an opportunity in what was going on to further his own gain and goals i mean not the least of which was his music and you know his singing and we all know the story about the beach boys and how that didn't bode well with brian wilson and uh brian wilson wasn't impressed from what i understand and um on a personal level nor was i but i'm no i'm no certainly no brian wilson so i don't have the discernment you know to make that distinction i just simply didn't like his singing but um yeah i think you know going back to the idea of him being an opportunist and the times again uh there was a lot of up people there was a lot of change occurring you know when you when you come up out of the 50s it was a different america in the 50s and then you know we hit the 60s and you can see the change gradually occurring and you know you know a lot of that had to do with advancements in technology not the least of which was television and radio and you know everything that goes along with it i mean somebody who was it um it was one of the uh deputy sheriffs i knew in los angeles um great guy uh he worked as a um detective with homicide and i remember well it's been a few decades now but um i had someone get in touch with him and so he got back to me and he was talking about his pager and that he couldn't live without his pager and i didn't know what the hell the pager was um nor did i care but um it just goes to show you that as technology evolved and it evolved very very quickly you know it started to change the very makeup of our society and i'm i'm not a ludite i i have a great appreciation for technology and it's its value um towards particularly education point is is that you know charlie came up as you correctly point out he missed a lot of that but he was an opportunist so he took advantage of it and uh unfortunately he took advantage of it very effectively um you know if you just stop and think about the the crime associated with uh sharon tate right you know cutting her child out of her belly um you know it doesn't get any more atrocious than that they strung her up on the ceiling like a pinata i don't know all that i i have a question because i i luckily my experience with prison in jail is like you know one night uh three different times that's a blessing yes you didn't get any tv in there either no so 100 agree respect your time dude but with one of the i don't know if i want to say cliche stereotypes whatever one of the things that uh your i was fed was that um like people who do what like charlie's doing to kids in prison they get handled uh or or killed or whatever that's like kind of the what you're told out here uh you learned that in one night no no that's saying that that i have no experience with jack that was i was my qualifier so everything i know is from the outside uh or i not know what i assume or what i've been told right so like i i mean knowing this about him and knowing like what the stereotype of prison is like was he not uh put into like a special popul well i guess you already were in one how was it handled i guess is my question i'm sorry that took me a long time okay yeah you're talking about in his case sirhan's case juan corona's case the perception of the atrocity of their crimes meant that they typically would not survive in prison in a general population right so in fact i you know you just people know just for murder because i mean specifically the kid like yeah the kids molesting the child molesters like people always talk about like child molesters get killed in prison yes that's true it is um yes and remains true um so it depends on where you're at and you know what people will tolerate uh based on what's coming your way if um you've got a bag man and charlie was a bag man in other words he had connections so he he held the bag he held drugs so you have people who use drugs so they're willing to overlook um his crime interests so it's not as principled as i've been told they had a praise yeah yeah it's see that's really what it comes down to is if if there's something in it for them then they're willing to overlook that and you know i'm i'm guilty of that myself um you know insofar as talking about well you know charlie's got these resources so i'll use these resources toward the benefit of the brand and that was actually done i did that right but it's in his best interest to keep that [ __ ] coming or else if not you're if that [ __ ] runs out he's you know probably not going to be in a good spot you know it's like anything else i mean you have to ascertain the value of whatever you're dealing with particularly within a controlled environment because resources are scarce and so that if your effort is to control those resources then you're going to compromise um even the perception of your integrity um you know you can you can project this idea that you're a warrior society and that um you know what you're about has um a code of ethics and uh even honor you know associated with it um you know based on your your various uh confrontations within the prison setting but all that goes out the window when you use the example i just gave relative to utilizing charlie's resources to the benefit of the group um so there's something you mentioned before and you keep mentioning the resources i wanted to bring up i got a giggle out of it the first time you saw it but i you you said it but it's still it's very interesting you said i took his girls i said i i took trial when you were in prison with him you took his girls this is this is correct what type of resource were they and how did you end up uh obtaining that resource from charles manson well it was just really by way of introduction it um much of what i did um at the time my alma maters berkeley and um you know that was after i taught myself to read and write but um most of these girls these resources i'm talking about were students at berkeley and um very intelligent young women but they were also associated with another organization called tribal thumb which was very radical very militant and um so what what they were after however because you want to remember we were still in the 70s here as they were after a commune they they embraced an egalitarian type um social structure um one of equality between men and women and that um i won't go too deep into the egalitarian aspects but they were they were really interested in creating a commune and um there were different things that they wanted to build on that commune that um i had experience in so it was really in exchange they wanted something and i wanted something so we set up a meeting and they came to old folsom to see me and um you know i tapped into that militancy you know on their part and anti-establishment on their part um and that was very big at that time you know amongst the black panthers the bgf the the um sybanese liberation army and i was with all them at folsom all the leaders of those specific groups were at folsom with me at that time so i tapped into that with these girls relative to what i wanted what i wanted was them to smuggle weapons into the institution for me and so we had meetings and um i had to figure out how to beat metal detection detectors first and i did and so but i had them test those for me at san francisco airport so once we did that then i had them smuggle buck knives into old folsom for me and they did that and if you stop and think about it that that took um a lot of courage on their part yeah yeah i'm going to agree left that out of the song johnny cash but i mean it and and again you know that too you know i've i've um i've ragged on charlie for you know manipulating people and being an opportunist but you know i fit that category also you know relative to what we're talking about here in the context of of using they wanted something for me i wanted something from them so there was an exchange a trade-off and uh i was willing to engage that to get what i needed inside prison which was superior weaponry for the purposes of violence right and you know i did that they i taught them how to smuggle them in they did bring them in i brought them in and i used them against um you know my opponents my enemies in prison see that goes far beyond anything that charlie ever imagined doing um that wasn't his get down ever in any capacity um but in so far as intelligence goes the women were by my estimation far more intelligent than than charlie ever thought about being um particularly when they came into their own and by that i mean when they began to mature and understand um what was happening and why it was happening um i'm a little jumbled charlie what are you doing i'm jumbled on the timeline when was this when was the weapon smuggling because i remember in an earlier episode i think you had spent a significant amount of time in prison non-violently right right you swore off violence yeah you want to remember ryan that um prison is violence in and of itself being incarcerated any time that you take a human being and put him in a cage and you've had that experience that's perpetrating violence upon that person no matter how you slice it so um the time frame here is the uh 70s the latter part latter part of that decade i mean i think i was transferred from old folsom to san quentin in 78 it could have been the next year but i do believe it was 78 and i was transferred primarily because of my violent violent activities um but we were all engaged in that and by all i mean all the groups um you know we hear about a lot about racism in other words but it had nothing to do with racism had nothing to do with white supremacy any more than the black guerrero family or the black panthers were interested in black supremacy or the mexican mafia was interested in in mexican supremacy it was about controlling your resources you lived in a controlled environment it was under the most oppressive circumstances that anyone could possibly imagine and so you were doing everything that you could to improve your status within that environment by wayne being able to live the function um let alone the idea of humanity let that go that becomes irrelevant the sense of one's humanity i mean the compromise as to one's sense of humanity um is constantly forfeited as a result of being incarcerated so um so you gave yourself quite the advantage and and improved the quality of life by utilizing as women if they're bringing you buck knives and they have prison shanks i'm sure they obviously other than you knowing how to fight and being a large individual that certainly improved things correct well you need to understand that violence is currency and so the better able you are to facilitate and affect that violence the greater your standing your power base if you will and that's what you're all striving for is an economic power base and the currency associated with that is violence so the possession if you will of street knives buck knives folding buck knives and of course you beat the metal detectors so now you're key stirring these and so you're carrying them everywhere you go i think um you know one of the write-ups i did yeah that's right i did in san quentin i was busted with a buck knife only because i made the journey up from chino to san quentin in the bus ride and so while i would would have been normally able to beat the x-ray machine i wasn't able to budget stamp thing so they caught me with it and you know that comes with the territory but um i'm kind of getting off track here and i don't really want to do that okay no that's all right it's all right i mean because i i think it was an important question the timeline itself but what's important about it is that it was still the 70s and there was still a lot of up people going on you know it was just a year before that that george jackson had taken over the adjustment center in san quentin taking guards hostage white inmates hostage uh cut their throats um and uh you know george jackson was killed but he smuggled a gun into the prison so you know a lot of a lot of up people this may be difficult for some of the viewers to even comprehend um you know how these things would happen in within the realm of their experience this would seem to them absurd um but i'm here to tell you that it wasn't you know these things right i i understand like uh yeah it's like it's hard to understand because like when you told the story of catching charlie manson in the act of that in my mind i initially right away i judged you for not uh for not just killing him right there on the spot and i think a lot of viewers are going to that's why i'm saying it out loud fair um and and i don't blame them you see what they need to know is you know again you're dealing with the circumstances so what i did do is i walked in i snatched charlie up literally bodily snatched him up lifted him up walked him back out through the the holding area that i just come through and there was a closet there and there was hooks along the wall and i hung him on one of those hooks and uh i walked back in and i told the guard his visit's over um what was the guard was the guard fine with that or oh yes yes yeah yeah he was fine with that and um you know but you know the you know i've to take that a step further as a as a counselor and i am an alcohol and drug counselor as well as a life coach certified in that and so you know i used to run groups before i was paroled and i worked for the department of corrections as an alcoholic drug counselor now they called him mentors but i was actually certified as a counselor and so i would run groups and i can remember that you know the administration came to me because of my work on on behalf of others and asked me if i would run a group of child molesters sex offenders but child molesters and i had a lot of misgivings about that but the idea here is is that if i'm going to stay true to um my own spiritual walk and you know my evolution in my humanity and that which i advocate in that regard then you know the only answer i could give them was yes i'll attempt to run the group no promises so i did you know i brought these these men together and in truth i didn't last long [Music] you know and i came away with that with the belief personal belief not professional belief but personal belief that it's a disease of the brain that is incurable and i was recently asked on another program what i felt about um sterilization chemical steroid sterilization as it relates to child molesters and you know and you know these are these are heavy subjects right um but you know i really wasn't prepared for the question that was asked but nonetheless i answered it to the best of my ability and i said i don't think chemical sterilization goes far enough um because what people don't understand about um molestation of children is that it's not always about sex it's about power and control and oftentimes the same way that they were controlled and power was imposed upon them now that certainly isn't making excuses for them right and that's not my intent here saying that but this is an extremely complex issue when you're talking about child molesters but my own evolution in my humanity again was that i was not going to be judged jury and executioner as it relates to these individuals i don't have that right so the best i could do was remove charlie from that situation and i did right um and then to openly talk about that as i'm doing now now i understand what you were saying brian when you said that your people would be offended that that i didn't do that um and i'm sure there are a lot of people out there that that would have done something physical but no value in it you know unless you're prepared to kill the individual then where's the value in the violence you remove the person from the situation you make staff aware of what's going on so that it doesn't occur again right and perhaps that's been one of my hardest lessons is understanding that we have a system in place that attempts to address this it doesn't always do so effectively um in my opinion but um the idea here is that you know we have a dialogue as it relates to um whether it be child molesters or these hate groups that have been spawned by um in my opinion what comes down to is a um mutation in the human condition as it relates to what it is to be a human being that's not an accusation it's not a judgment on my part it's an observation based on my own sense of what it is to be human um so you know and that goes directly to the idea of of uh elitism and privilege and a vast array of other factors that um i think in the future that we should talk about you know in these programs and you know ask people to weigh in these are when we talk about the damage done we're talking about patterns we're talking about where does addiction come from it comes from trauma for the most part right so let's talk let's talk about those issues and you know child lusters are no different in that capacity so you know it we can't exclude them from the conversation you see because then it's not a holistic conversation it's a linear conversation we're only talking about what we want to talk about because it's comfortable yeah it's hard for people to wrap their head around that and it's hard for people to want to to help people that have caused uh damage so to speak in that regards um and i struggle with that as well i think i think everyone uh that's why i want to do this show is is everyone can redeem themselves and sometimes i pause and think damn do even the child molesters do that i go back and forth i understand in times they're very sick individuals and then i understand a time saying that from the perspective of someone people that i know that have have been on the receiving end of the molestation and what it's done to the families and it's hard for me to say oh i want those people to have help it's a very difficult subject and it's interesting to bring up i hope people do see this too too uh as it pertains back to the the subject we were talking about this and at the beginning to smash the perspective or perspective perception there we go perception of who charles manson was instead of this phenomenon by your estimation and based on what you've told me he's a he's a very very small man in many regards not just literally but uh and and a no good individual wants to take advantage of some kids and it's interesting the amount of people that i know uh that are absolutely fascinated and if he was alive today they they they want to be with him he's a free manager i don't know i'd love to send him the video of him on that hook anybody oh yeah this is looking up to him surveillance on that hook that would destroy a little bit of the myth right away him just squirming on a thing well it should yeah i mean because what you're really talking about is that um you know unfortunately many of our youth globally um idolize it and you know for most of us that's beyond our comprehension you know it's it's not just because i have personal knowledge of him or because i know him or and i have the experience of having spent many years with him had i not done that you know i would still take issue with the idea that youth idolize him for what they believe he stood for and it's a little hard to discern in that what that might have been right you know what it is that they think he stood for anti-establishment you seem i mean i think that's where the you know the idea of the um race work came from and and um you know his failure to have his music produced and so really what he's doing is re repeating that same pattern uh i have a question i just i don't remember if you had answered that or answered this earlier on it's kind of a maybe a complex question might require kind of a complex answer just mentioning the race war thing because you had said earlier i don't remember what your answer was to whether or not he whenever he was locked up was kind of under the uh uh protection of aryan brotherhood but it is was there ever kind of a i don't know if there was more of a threat of violence because or if you had said you were locked up with panthers or if there was panthers around him because if you know you believe the helter skelter theory that you know he was gonna frame the black panthers and start this race war and then come back and take over the world because he thought the blacks were too dumb to run the world like was that something that he do you think he actually believed or was there threats of violence against him from like uh i guess a black panther um contingency yeah no no i don't believe that for a second you know the thing about charlie is that um he loved black men pure and simple and he loved having sex with him had sex with him quite often um it was not unusual to see him in the shower uh enjoying himself sexually with black men so no you know this idea of uh you know manipulating blacks and race war and this and that um simply stated is utter nonsense um and has no foundation or basis in reality um and again i'm talking from experience yeah um you know in that context uh it's not something that he said it's his actions what he did how he interacted um you know those all all have value it's it's it's a heightened form of a body language if you will taken to the extreme so um it's just him not believing any of the things he said and kind of going back to the thing is like he's a dumb opportunist who's came up with a lot of people say also this could have been a vince bulgios bull of ghosts but can't remember how to say his last name kind of one of his theories of what was going on but my kind of what i had said in the beginning i think this all comes down to him being bitter about his you know his music not getting made and so he you know here's what we can do yeah let's frame blacks and we'll kill these you know these people that live in the house that uh just coincidentally the beach boys producer used to live in and we're not even sure if he still lives there and then kind of random with a grocery store couple i think one of the lessons to learn here is is charlie's a failed artist and hitler's a failed artist we should just support all artists just to keep them off the trail of destruction yeah yeah right yeah i think that comes down to in yeah next terrible painting i'm seeing i'm buying i'm buying rights right right well that has value it does just being supportive um what's it called as we're we'll wrap up the episode here is there something a couple more things you want to touch on a couple more things you wanted to touch on in regards no uh i feel um verified in my opinion coming into this hearing that uh more people agree with me who have actual experience very well and mike is there some things that you you'd like to add that weren't that weren't added in regards to kind of giving the full picture of your personal experience with charles manson yeah it it again i've said it and um but it bears repeating you know this is not an individual in my opinion that should be idolized this is this is someone that should be pitied um you know he uh you know if we fancy ourselves humans within the construct of what that really means right then he he is deserving of our pity but only that um you know nothing about charlie exemplifies um anything that um i would want to see become a mainstay right within our society there's no example there that facilitates um what it is to be a better human being and that's really what the damage done is about right is to talk about you know those of us who have been damaged why we've been damaged and how we master that adversity so mastering adversity is really the key and uh you know how we do that we do that sorry let's say there's no rejection story with charles manson there's none there it's just it's just empty and hollow in my opinion it's like with anything i think he believed the hype right of himself i agree i agree i mean you know it's you know if people and i'll say this um about charlie if people have legitimate questions that they really want to know about the man the individual then ask them and i'll do my best to answer them because i did spend 10 years with them and there's a lot there again i am not going to perpetuate the myth of uh you know this was some um hell of a guy yeah um no i think the only the only interesting part about your experience with him is just the fact that he's like such a huge part of the fabric of american culture just with because he symbolizes the downfall of the hippie so his his place in history is way more interesting than him like i don't give a [ __ ] about him as a he he can rot in hell for fly care right right um but yeah it's more about just like he's he's just an important part of american history uh in a bat in a terrible way so i think that's just the interesting part and i don't think anybody here us three really wanted he wanted to make build him up whatsoever absolutely no no no that wasn't my impression in coming into this i i you know we had an opportunity here to um shed some light um on some very personal issues and you know how people take that um is really their prerogative yeah i've given up people on the internet they'll they'll take it however they want no matter what we say they they yeah that's what i'm saying at the beginning they're gonna say not nice things about this episode just like they typically do and that's okay it's uh even when they say terrible things they're still fans because they're working so it's okay um these are the same things yes you're right mike it is what's that said isn't that the blessing of the country it's the blessing of the country man free speech i get enjoyment out of it it's a great marketing tool when they comment and say how terrible i am how terrible you are but the reality is i'm still sober you're still free and we're doing this because we like to do it and it helps some people and this and this this episode was a little different like as i said this was some this was some it was like it was an interest piece and with that being said uh in the next week or two we have a lineup of other lifers with some incredible stories coming out here and so so people are gonna actually get a chance to see you interview some people instead of being interviewed because now people are getting used to seeing you being interviewed but you're going to be doing the damn interviewing i'm kind of excited about that [ __ ] yeah they'll be doing the damage you'll be doing the damage you'll be doing the damage and i'm excited about that because there's some really cool people coming from the anti-recidivism coalition that are coming on here people have spent time in pelican bay shoe all that type of stuff coming out changing people's lives those are some cool redemption stories and i look forward to doing that and i'm going forward i'm sure we'll have conversations things will pop up maybe we'll get emails messages good and bad about more context for this maybe we'll revisit this in the context of something else we do but this is uh we're trying something a little different i'm glad we did um glad you came yeah this is fun i appreciate it i'm glad you came i'm always glad that brian's here he he doesn't want to be on camera man one time earlier he was real bummed mike you called him bruce when he said i wasn't bummed you were bummed i didn't [Laughter] but i appreciate everyone that uh will tune in on the audio platforms all the people that say the good and bad things on youtube and uh guess what we're gonna just keep pumping out content because we can and want to the ways we want to and that's that's also a beautiful thing just like you guys can say any any terrible thing you want but the reality is we enjoy this and it does help people and um and it does interest people and that's cool to be able to do some [ __ ] that has that sort of value and uh that's my piece on it you got you got anything else to add i did oh good well mike uh we'll be in touch of course yeah yeah happy we did this i'll let you know when it comes out and thanks for watching we'll go from there yeah and let's uh not forget to thank the listeners always always thank the listeners we're giving the haters too much attention i thought i did i thought i did but it's hot in here so i could be losing some brain cells i don't know i can't call it uh yeah but truly thank the listeners because there's a lot more there's a lot more support than negative it's just uh yeah just gotta talk about it because i wanted to i guess yeah yeah yeah well let's just let's just say to them weigh in and tell us where you want us to go very well my friend we'll talk soon you

Channel: The Damage Done Podcast

Views: 16,251

Keywords: aryan brotherhood, the brand, the ab, ab, prison, prison gangs, notorious prison gangs, murder, podcasts, the damage done, damage done, damage done podcast, podcast, prison gang, white supremacy, redemption, spirituality, 12 step recovery, the aryan brotherhood, true crime, true crime stories, true crime podcast, drug addiction, heroin addiction, inside the aryan brotherhood, Michael Thompson, mike thompson, Charles Manson, Manson family, Charlie Manson, mike thompson interview

Id: FBpT6SYQFdY

Length: 79min 33sec (4773 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 13 2022