Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover Read online

  William Manson quickly had enough of his errant wife. On April 30, 1937, the court ruled on his request for divorce after less than two and a half years of marriage. He charged Kathleen with “gross neglect of duty,” a catchall phrase used to describe infidelity, drunkenness, abandonment, or some combination of those or other marital transgressions. She did not come to court to contest the divorce, or to defend herself. The court granted William his divorce, and the decree pointedly noted that “there were no children the issue of this marriage.” William was not legally obligated and so wouldn’t pay Kathleen a penny of support for Charlie. All the little boy got from William was a last name. Kathleen went back to calling herself Maddox.

  Kathleen didn’t wait for William Manson’s rejection of her and her child. Two weeks before her divorce from Manson was finalized in Ohio, Kathleen went to court in Kentucky and filed a “bastardy suit” against Colonel Scott. She’d somehow tracked him down and even though she no longer had starry-eyed expectations that he would marry her, Kathleen was determined that he would at least take some financial responsibility for Charlie.

  Scott, under oath, didn’t deny that he was Charlie’s father, and the court ruled in Kathleen’s favor. Charlie may have met his biological father for the first time during the bastardy hearing; Kathleen would recall that Scott came to visit the toddler a few times afterward. But what Colonel Scott didn’t do was pay Kathleen the $5 a month child support mandated by the judge. Kathleen banked an initial judgment of $25, but never received another cent from her former lover. She implored the court to garnishee Scott’s wages from the local mill where he was currently employed, but no such order was issued. Kathleen pursued the matter until it eventually became the least of her legal concerns.

  Over the next sixteen months Kathleen and Charlie sometimes stayed with Nancy in Ashland. They also moved in occasionally with Glenna, Bill, and their daughter, Jo Ann, in North Charleston. The Thomas house on Dunbar Line, in a lower-middle-class neighborhood known as Dogtown, must have been crowded, because Luther and his girlfriend Julia Vickers frequently stayed there, too. There is no record of Kathleen finding employment, but she did go out and actively look for another husband. On October 2, 1938, the Charleston Gazette reported that Ada Kathleen Maddox of State Street—she apparently had her own place in town for a while—was engaged to James Lewis Robey. Kathleen’s knack for choosing the wrong man was intact; Robey had a string of convictions for bootlegging and minor theft. The couple never progressed beyond a brief engagement. When Kathleen’s name was next in the newspaper ten months later, there was no mention of Robey, though his checkered past may have provided Kathleen with some unfortunate inspiration.

  On the afternoon of August 1, 1939, Kathleen and Julia Vickers wandered around Charleston, idly killing time window-shopping and chatting. Charlie, now almost five, was left either with Glenna or some acquaintance of his mother. Kathleen was no longer a naive girl who just wanted to dance and have a little fun. At age twenty she was a divorced woman with a small child and no income; she resented what she considered to be her unfair lot in life. During these tough, disillusioned times, Kathleen developed a hard-bitten attitude; she wanted something better and meant to have it. On this day, the opportunity to acquire some money through crime presented itself, and Kathleen succumbed to temptation.

  It was an impetuous decision that would affect—and cost—lives over the next three-quarters of a century.

  Sometime during the early evening, Kathleen and Julia met a stranger named Frank Martin, who attracted them with his friendly personality and even more with his gray Packard convertible coupé. Martin escorted Kathleen and Julia to the Valley Bell Dairy, where he treated them to some cheese. Kathleen thought that Martin might leave them there, but he accepted her invitation to extend the evening. The trio drove on to Dan’s Beer Parlor, where Martin flashed a roll of bills and treated his new lady friends to refreshing brews until 11:30 P.M. This was exactly the sort of scenario Nancy had long cautioned Kathleen against; a man with alcohol in his system and in a bar with a young woman was likely to have inappropriate intentions. Maybe Martin did, but so did Kathleen. Hers just weren’t sexual. She invited Julia to join her in the ladies’ room and observed how awful it was that people like Martin seemed to have all the money. Kathleen said she wanted some of Martin’s bankroll, and Julia laughed and said that she felt “like reaching out.” The two women returned to the table where Martin waited and mentioned how nice it would be to rent a room somewhere. Martin took the hint and asked how much such a room would cost. Kathleen suggested $4.50 but added that she didn’t have that much money. Martin forked over three one-dollar bills and two quarters, not the entire sum but enough to convince Kathleen that her hook was properly set. She excused herself and used the bar’s pay phone to call Luther at the Thomases’. Kathleen told her brother that she and Julia were with someone who had too much money for one man. Luther knew exactly what his sister was suggesting, and said she should arrange for the three of them to meet him in a few minutes at Littlepage Service Station.

  Martin, expecting to rush to some rented room where he could romp with two lively young women, must have been puzzled by Kathleen’s directions to a gas station, and even more so when he discovered that they were being joined there by another man. Luther introduced himself as John Ellis. The foursome then went on in Martin’s Packard to the Blue Moon Beer Parlor. Martin was apparently ready to settle for a night of partying that might not include sexual frolics after all. Everyone had some beer and danced. Luther took his sister aside and asked if Martin really had much money. She assured him that Martin did, and Luther joked, “Well, I guess I’ll have to count it.” Julia stayed behind at the Blue Moon while Martin, Kathleen, and Luther got back in the Packard and drove away.

  When they were just beyond town, Luther told Martin to stop the car and get out. Martin laughed, and Luther insisted, “I mean it.” Kathleen watched as the two men walked to the side of the road. She couldn’t hear what Luther said next, but she saw very clearly what he did.

  Luther had with him a ketchup bottle filled with salt. He stuck the neck of the bottle into Martin’s back and said that he was holding a gun. Martin didn’t believe him. Luther cracked Martin over the head with the bottle, which broke, and his victim, stunned but conscious, fell to the ground. Luther relieved him of his wallet, and he and Kathleen drove off in the Packard. When they looked in the wallet they discovered their haul totaled $27. Luther and Kathleen picked up Julia back at the Blue Moon Beer Parlor; they ditched the car on a nearby street. Luther called a cab, and the trio holed up in a rented room at the Daniel Boone Bar B Q in nearby Snow Hill. Later Kathleen and Julia took another cab back to Bill and Glenna’s house on Dunbar Line. Luther stayed at the rented room, sleeping in.

  The assault and robbery case was solved within hours. There was no real challenge for the investigators because the perpetrators were so inept. Beyond using a false name to introduce her brother to Martin, Kathleen and Luther had not done anything to conceal their identities or to cover their tracks. As soon as Martin regained his senses, he stumbled back into town and called the Charleston police. By 1 A.M. the stolen Packard had been recovered and witnesses at Dan’s Beer Parlor confirmed that Martin had been there with two women named Kathleen and Judy or Julia. The women were regular patrons at Dan’s; someone there recalled that they said they lived in North Charleston. As soon as the North Charleston Post Office opened in the morning, Postmaster J. E. Akers informed the cops that Kathleen Maddox and someone calling herself Judy Bryant both received mail at an address he furnished on Dunbar Line. Several policemen, with Martin in tow, arrived at the Thomas house. Martin identified Kathleen and Julia, who were arrested. Charlie, not yet five, probably saw his mother taken away in handcuffs. Kathleen denied knowing where Luther was, but Julia mentioned that she and Kathleen had spent the night with him in a room at the Boone Bar B Q. The police found Luther there and arrested him, too.

  After th
eir arrests, Luther, Kathleen, and Julia all provided the police with statements about what they’d done. In his, Luther gallantly attested that the two women had no idea that he planned to rob Martin, so “I hereby acknowledge all responsibility for the commission of this crime. I do hereby exonerate all others implicated in it.” But Kathleen and Julia both confessed their roles, though Julia made it clear that she was left behind when Luther and Kathleen drove off with Martin as a prelude to robbing him. As a result, she faced minor counts of aiding and abetting, but her partners were brought to court on sterner charges.

  Stories in the Charleston Daily Mail mocked the “Ketchup Bottle Holdup” and the bumblers involved in it, but Judge D. Jackson Savage found nothing funny about the crime. In a brief trial seven weeks later, Savage found Luther Maddox guilty of armed robbery and sentenced him to ten years in prison. Since she stayed in the car while her brother poked, then struck, Martin with the ketchup bottle, Kathleen’s sentence from Judge Savage was five years for unarmed robbery. When she learned of the verdicts, Nancy Maddox pulled her granddaughter, Jo Ann, aside and whispered, “Life is like always living under a big rock. Always look at it and pray that it won’t fall on you.” Nancy felt as though she had been buried under an avalanche. She’d tried so hard to raise her children properly, and somehow God in His wisdom had still permitted things to come to this. When time allowed, Nancy would pray about it and try to understand how to salvage the souls of her wayward son and daughter. For now, Luther and Kathleen were taken away in chains from Charleston to serve their lengthy sentences at the West Virginia state prison in Moundsville. (Luther was allowed to marry Julia just before he left; the marriage didn’t last.) Since the prison was widely reputed to be a hellhole, Nancy was justifiably terrified about what might befall her children there. But Nancy had an even more pressing concern, a four-and-a-half-year-old grandson who for some time had had no father and now for five years would have no mother. What was to become of little Charlie?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Moundsville and McMechen

  Soon after Kathleen was taken away to Moundsville, Grandmother Nancy and probably Aunt Glenna took Charlie aside to explain that his mother had to go away for a while. How much Charlie was told or understood about the crime Kathleen had committed isn’t known. It was surely explained that while he would be able to visit her sometimes, he might not live with her for five years, which to a little boy must have seemed like forever.

  Ideally during Kathleen’s incarceration, Charlie would have lived with Nancy in Ashland. Nancy doted on the child and she certainly wanted to expose him to positive religious influence during this traumatic time in his young life. But Ashland was too far away from the federal prison; Moundsville nestled along the Ohio River on the north boundary of West Virginia, just across from Ohio and more than two hundred miles north of Ashland. Everyone agreed the little boy should visit his mother as often as possible. Bill Thomas’s job with the railroad conveniently required him to relocate to the West Virginia town of McMechen, which was about five miles south of the big city of Wheeling and just five miles north of Moundsville. That made the solution obvious—Charlie would move in with his Uncle Bill, Aunt Glenna, and eight-year-old cousin, Jo Ann.

  McMechen, with a population of around 4,000, was a quintessential blue-collar town. Virtually every family living there was headed by a father who worked for one of the local mines or mills or the railroad. There was little differentiation in income; everyone was lower-middle-class. One side of town was bordered by the Ohio River, a half mile wide at that point and attractively lined with trees—silver maple, river birch, and sycamore. On the other side were high hills thick with forest and studded with mine works. The houses in between were mostly utilitarian. There were also grocery stores, small department stores, and other businesses. There was a doctor, dentist, and a shoe repair shop. The front rooms of several houses served as neighborhood candy stores. McMechenites rarely went all the way to Wheeling or Moundsville to shop. Buses provided whatever transportation was necessary—very few residents owned cars. Townspeople were proud that almost a dozen churches flourished within town limits, and bragged not at all about maintaining the same number of bars. Segregation didn’t need to be enforced because only white people lived in McMechen. Gender and generational roles there were immutable. Men worked hard at their jobs during the week, drank hard at the town bars after work and on Saturdays, owned guns and hunted, and never showed much if any emotion. Women stayed home, raised children, herded their families to church on Sunday, and deferred to their husbands as head of the family. Children minded their parents, didn’t swim in the dangerous Ohio River, and addressed all grown-ups as “sir” or “ma’am.” Boys roughhoused with their buddies, learned how to handle guns, and never cried. When they were old enough, they took jobs at the same companies where their fathers worked. Girls learned how to cook, sew, and other skills required by good wives and mothers. Everyone knew and trusted their neighbors; nobody locked their doors when they went out or at night. Above all, McMechen was self-contained. Little that happened in the outside world mattered. So long as the mills and the mines stayed open and the railroad continued to run, McMechen remained unchanged from one generation to the next.

  The Thomases fit perfectly into their new community. Bill worked hard for the B&O, owned a few guns, and was clearly the master of his household. He also liked to drink; even by the bibulous standards of McMechen some of his neighbors thought Bill did too much imbibing. Eventually he realized it, too, and got the problem under control. Glenna kept a nice house and was active in church. Jo Ann went to the local elementary school (the one for Protestant children; Catholic kids had their own) and made excellent grades. Then they added Charlie to the mix, and he didn’t fit at all.

  Little Charlie Manson was a disagreeable child. Beyond his doting grandmother, who still recognized his many faults, few who knew him then or in his ensuing teenage years found much to admire about him beyond his looks. Charlie’s dimpled smile could light up rooms, and his eyes were dark and expressive. It was possible to pity the boy—he didn’t have a father, and now his unreliable mother was in jail—and Charlie was so small that he was closer in stature to toddlers than to other kids just turning five and about to enter school. But even at such a young age he lied about everything and, when he got in trouble for telling fibs or breaking things or any of the other innumerable misdeeds he committed on a daily basis, Charlie always blamed somebody else for his actions. The child was also obsessed with being the center of attention. If he couldn’t get noticed for doing something right, he was just as willing to attract attention by misbehaving. You couldn’t ever relax when Charlie was around. It was only a matter of time before he got up to something bad.

  Uncle Bill, Aunt Glenna, and Cousin Jo Ann were already aware of Charlie’s irritating ways before he joined them in McMechen late in 1939. They didn’t want responsibility for him, but family obligations trumped personal preference. Perhaps the boy’s behavior would improve now that he was in a stable environment. Jo Ann didn’t think so. Her opinion of her cousin at the time he moved in was that “there was never anything happy about him. He never did anything that was good.” Before Charlie arrived, Bill and Glenna made it clear to their eight-year-old daughter that, so far as they were concerned, she was now the five-year-old’s big sister. This meant that she had to supervise him whenever her parents weren’t around, and otherwise shepherd him around McMechen, walking him with her to and from elementary school, protecting him from bullies, and generally looking out for his well-being. Bill and Glenna made sure that Charlie understood better behavior was now expected of him. They tried to demonstrate some affection by calling him Chuckie, but the name didn’t stick. He was too exasperating; mostly the Thomases found themselves addressing the boy as “Charles,” using his first full name as part of the daily dressings-down they administered.

  As soon as Charlie arrived, two immediate actions were required. He should visit his moth
er at the prison in Moundsville, and he had to start school. Neither experience went well.

  • • •

  Everything about the six-acre West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville was intended to intimidate. Dominating the south part of town, the prison was designed to resemble a Gothic castle, not a shining symbol of hope like Camelot but instead a brooding hulk ruled by some cruel, domineering black knight. Its outer stone walls were four feet thick, twenty-four feet high, and topped with barbed wire and turrets manned by armed guards. Entry past the walls to the inner buildings was permitted only through heavy barred doors; standing outside, one could easily imagine the screams of victims being tortured in subterranean dungeons, which was in fact close to the truth. Prisoners judged guilty of serious infractions were taken away to dark, dank punishment rooms, stripped naked, and bent over a low platform called the Kicking Jenny with their feet and hands tied to rings on the floor. Then a hulking guard tore apart their bare backs with a water-soaked leather whip until his arms grew too tired or his victim seemed near death.