The Manson Women and Me: Monsters, Morality, and Murder

by Nikki Meredith

Overview

The Manson Women and Me

  In the summer of 1969, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel carried out horrific acts of butchery on the orders of the charismatic cult leader Charles Manson. But to anyone who knew them growing up, they were bright, promising girls, seemingly incapable of such an unfathomable crime.
 
Award-winning journalist Nikki Meredith began visiting Van Houten and Krenwinkel in prison to discover how they had changed during their incarceration. The more Meredith got to know them, the more she was lured into a deeper dilemma: What compels “normal” people to do unspeakable things?
 
The author’s relationship with her subjects provides a chilling lens through which we gain insight into a particular kind of woman capable of a particular kind of brutality. Through their stories, Nikki Meredith takes readers on a dark journey into the very heart of evil.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806538594
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	02/26/2019
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	657,880
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Nikki Meredith is an award-winning journalist, a licensed clinical social worker, and a former probation officer. She has been a feature reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, the Marin Independent Journal, and the Pacific Sun. Her work has appeared in Parenting, Psychology Today, Health, USA Today, and Utne Reader. She lives near San Francisco. Visit her at www.nikkimeredith.com.

Read an Excerpt

When the killers were ultimately identified, the dread only intensified. Manson, the mastermind of the carnage, was scary. But the young women he controlled didn’t look like anyone’s idea of cold-blooded murderers. They looked like our sisters, our daughters, our friends—ourselves—and yet their bloodthirsty behavior was something out of a horror movie.

Twenty years ago, I began visiting Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel in prison. I wanted to know if these women were radically different from the young women who carried out Charles Manson’s barbaric orders in 1969. If they were different, how did they understand what happened?

In grappling with the brutality of the events, I learned a great deal about human behavior, much of it disheartening, but some of it proof of our capacity as humans to transform ourselves, even those of us who have committed unspeakable acts.

Table of Contents

Foreword Caitlin Meredith xi

Introduction 1

1 The Formosa Café 9

2 Abigail Folger's Smile 16

3 "Healter Skelter" 21

4 Banned-Tools of the Trade 25

5 Unfathomable Remorse 27

6 Wallet on the Beach 33

7 Mrs. Tate's Fury 37

8 Living Without Hope 40

9 Orphaned by the Holocaust 44

10 Mondo Video A-Go-Go 55

11 Disordered Thoughts and Demented Machinations 61

12 "I Felt Like a Predator" 66

13 Folie à famille 69

14 Falling in Love with Anne Frank 74

15 Everybody Can Be a Killer 82

16 "Is There Anything Worse Than Dying in Terror?" 88

17 The Empathic Brain 91

18 Unforgetting Retribution 96

19 Dues-Paying Member of the Little Wildlife Society 98

20 "They Were on a Tear" 104

21 Dreaming of Hitler 107

22 The Need for a Scapegoat 109

23 An Abiding Friend to Families of Victims 114

24 The Agony of Mothers 117

25 Homecoming Princess 122

26 A Good Soldier 126

27 Searching for a Cessna 133

28 The Metaphorical Microscope 142

29 Decoding Manson 151

30 Broken Empathy Circuit 154

31 "Leslie Is My Daughter" 160

32 Ich bin ein Jude 164

33 Bad Apples or Bad Barrel? 169

34 A Psychedelic City-State 173

35 "Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo" 182

36 Micheltorena Hill 188

37 Mule Creek Prison 192

38 Every Facet of Her Mothering 202

39 A Lethal Convergence 209

40 "You Couldn't Find a Nicer Group of People" 212

41 Pat's Anger 215

42 Scapegoats-The Need to Blame 220

43 "She Did Appeal to My Humanity but I Had None to Give Her" 229

44 The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang 232

45 Heaven's Gate 238

46 A Different Pat 241

47 The Terror of Being Excluded 243

48 Hatred More Powerful Than a Mother's Love 245

49 The Shade Trees of Hollywood High 251

50 Fused Identities 255

51 A Drop of Jewish Blood 258

52 A Make-Believe Dodge 270

53 "A Damn Good Whacking" 275

54 The Swastika 278

55 Yes, She Would Kill for Him 280

56 Insatiable and Warped Need for Love 282

57 The Ultimatum 284

58 The Truth Is, the Truth Doesn't Matter 288

59 Not That Kind of Girl 299

60 We Are All Rwandan 311

61 "You Took God Away from Me" 314

62 Unforgetting, Unforgiving 320

63 "I'd Be Nice to a Stray Dog If It Needed Help" 326

64 The Mothers Who Poisoned Their Babies at Jonestown Haunt Her 331

65 Starlight Ballroom 336

Epilogue 341

Acknowledgments 349

Editorial Reviews

Praise for THE MANSON WOMEN AND ME
 
“A fascinating study of human behavior motivated by evil. . . . deeply poignant and revelatory… Meredith's passionate discussions of psychological influence and cult control are fascinating, and she ties these themes into her own history of growing up Jewish and facing the ever-present specter of anti-Semitism.”
—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Meredith delves into the lives of two young women who participated in one of the most infamous murder sprees in American history.”
—Susan Kelly, author of The Boston Stranglers
 
“A fully dimensional view of the Manson–led killings that we have not seen before.”
—Michael Krasny, author of Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life
 
“Thought-provoking . . . combines a compassionate memoir with meticulous journalism.”
—Julie Smith, author of the Skip Langdon mysteries
 
“Utterly absorbing and engaging.”
—Sue Russell, author of Lethal Intent
 
“A must-read book . . . a disturbing reflection of America today."
—Suzy Spencer, author of Wasted
 
“Meredith asks the questions that have nagged many of us for years—how does this happen? Why them, and why not me?"
—Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

2018-01-23
A personal and professional fascination informs this inquiry into various members of Charles Manson's family.In 1996, journalist and social worker Meredith wrote letters of interest to murderers Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel, and their responses sparked a 20-year acquaintanceship that has given the author unprecedented access to these two "Manson Women." Lively Van Houten, now 68, and a consistently dour, cheerless Krenwinkel, 70, both contributed hours of conversation as the author probed the hijacked psyche of each by a cunning Manson, their sinister detachment from the 1969 murders, and their personal methods of deprogramming from their cult affiliation. Meredith broadens her scope with the inclusion of associated analysis and interviews with Stephen Kay, a prosecutor on the Manson trial, and profiles of followers like Catherine Share, Manson's core recruiter of young women. (Ironically, both Kay and Share were fellow classmates of Meredith's in high school). The author's field research yields mixed results. Her accounts of afternoons spent with Van Houten's permanently scarred mother are deeply poignant and revelatory, while an encounter with "startlingly manicured" family member Susan Atkins, a baffling visit to Krenwinkel's dementia-addled father in an Idaho nursing home, or her trek across Death Valley to scrutinize Manson's former desert outpost are largely unremarkable. More impressive are Meredith's passionate discussions of psychological influence and cult control, and she ties these themes into her own history of growing up Jewish and facing the ever present specter of anti-Semitism. She also discusses the plight of her brother, who committed armed robbery as a youth and was imprisoned—not far from the women's facility where Van Houten and Krenwinkel remain today. The author also cogently deliberates on the complicated nature of remorse and how organized religion's "automatic redemption" still prevents Krenwinkel (and many other wrongdoers) from truly acknowledging their culpability and their loss of humanity.An overlong and uneven but intermittently fascinating study of human behavior motivated by evil.

Kirkus Reviews