VACAVILLE, Dec. 10 — Charles Manson, mentor and friend of Perry “Red” Warthan, says the accused Oroville killer will have to face the charges without any support from him.

“I’m not going to write him. I’m not going to be responsible for him. I’m not holding him up. He has to hold himself up just like I had to hold myself up” said Manson, who is serving a life sentence in the California Medical Facility for the 1969 killings of actress Sharon Tate and six others.

Manson made the statements during a recent exclusive interview with the Enterprise-Record.

Despite saying Warthan has to “hold himself up,” Manson said, “I love him irregardless. I respect him and I love him.”

Warthan, who heads a handful of Nazi sympathizers in the Oroville area was arrested in connection with the Sept. 30 slaying of Joseph Eugene Hoover, 17, of Oroville. Hoover, identified as a prospective recruit for the Nazi group, was found near the Thermalito Afterbay west of Oroville. He had been shot numerous times in the back of the head.

Warthan is scheduled to stand trial Feb. 7.

Before being charged in the killing, Warthan boasted he was Manson’s only “spokesman” in Butte County.

Manson agreed he and the self-styled neo-Nazi leader are close.

“We’re good friends. He doesn’t lie to me and I don’t lie to him. We have a pretty good relationship, based on a good foundation,” said the slightly built, bearded convict.

Manson explained the two were brought together by James Mason of Chillicothe, Ohio.

Manson and Mason have known each other since Manson was a prisoner in a federal reformatory where Mason’s father was a guard — long before the Tate killings.

The Ohio man, who Manson calls a “saint,” claims to be the main public spokesman for the Manson-inspired political party-cum-religious sect called the Universal Order.

In a telephone interview with the E-R, Mason — who like Warthan is an ousted member of the Nazi National Socialists White People’s Party — explained he had been in regular correspondence with Manson.

However, earlier this year he decided the organization, which he claims has about 200 members, needed a physical contact with Manson.

Some other Nazi friends of Mason’s, who knew Warthan through the party, suggested the Oroville man might be a good person to do the job.

Mason said he contacted Warthan, who was at first hesitant to visit Manson. Finally, however, he agreed and eventually became close friends with the cult leader.

Prison records show Warthan visited Manson four times before his own arrest.

Manson speaks warmly of the Oroville man, referring to him as “The Reverend Red.”

“He is reverend in the respect that he loves the world he lives in. He takes responsibility for the thoughts that he has. I see no bad in the man.

“All the man wants to do is survive in a world of people that push him in a thousand directions and use him and misuse him,” said Manson.

The Universal Order expounded by Manson foresees a time when the earth will come under a single world government. It also anticipates the eventual mental and spiritual union of all adherents to the order, both living and dead.

Manson also talks of an ultimate judicial system within the order, called the “international justice court.”

“We got minds and brains in this particular arm of the world court, the fourth world, that could put so much order in this world so fast, that it would make a lot of people dead,” said Manson.

Warthan is accused of killing Hoover because the teen allegedly informed police about Warthan distributing Nazi literature at Oroville’s Central School.

When Manson was asked if the Universal Order would condone the killing of an informer, he said: “The Reverend Red took responsibility for that. He picked that cross up for himself, to deal with it. That’s up to him to know, to understand, to be responsible for as he sees to do it for the world he lives in. It hasn’t got anything to do with the world I live in.

During the interview, conducted just inside the secured section of the Vacaville facility, Manson said, “As another man I would walk miles and miles from any conflict with him, in any direction.

“At the same time, he has no conflict with me. He understands where I’m at and he understands that I would do the same thing to him that he would do to me.”

Manson, chain smoking and periodically pacing back and forth in the small, bare interview room, also praised Warthan’s dietary habits.

“Red eats properly. He don’t like to eat a bunch of chemicals. He don’t like to eat a bunch of junk. He wants to survive, just like we wanted to survive in the ’60s,” he said.

After his arrest, Warthan talked about a ranch somewhere in the north state where he would take young Nazi recruits for outings.

Manson said Warthan had discussed the ranch with him.

“Yeah, he was trying to get away from the madness. I told him it wouldn’t work to get away from it.

“I had a 40-acre farm, too. Then they came out and arrested me for seven counts of murder.

Manson was referring to the Southern California commune-like retreat where he and his “family” of followers lived before the 1969 killing, spree.

“There’s no dream on this earth for anybody until everybody gets their dream on this earth.”

Manson refused to say where the Warthan retreat is located.

“No. I couldn’t divulge that anyway because it would involve somebody else in something else. See I can’t break into Red’s circle ’cause Red has to do what he has to do for himself.”

While Manson appreciates Warthan, he has doubts about the Nazi movement.

“Do you know a lot of time the Nazis, the people that call themselves Nazis, draw more attention and cause more conflict in their own circles than they do good, sometimes, because hate don’t see things clearly … in hate, you see things distorted. You don’t see them clearly. You see them as you want them to be, rather than as they are.

“First you have to see things the way they are before you can deal with them and you can’t come in with storm troopers in the world today, when the world is already set against storm troopers.

“But you can probably come in as space cadets from another planet and they wouldn’t have anything to identify with to fight against you.”

By ROGER AYLWORTH