Jan. 18 – “Manson in His Own Words,” as told to Nuel Emmons. Grove Press, $16.95.

Nuel Emmons and Charles Manson were fellow prisoners 30 years ago. Emmons, now a photojournalist, was doing time on auto theft and drug charges. Manson, now serving life in prison for master-minding California’s infamous Helter Skelter murders in 1969, met Emmons while serving time for a lesser offense.

Emmons says that when he read about the murders, “I was astonished — not because he was involved but because this man supposed to have powers to manipulate others into carrying out his every whim bore little resemblance to the man I remembered.”

As Emmons tells the story, he renewed his contact with Manson in 1979 and eventually won enough of his trust to get Manson to tell his life story. This book is the result.

While it is written in the first person, as if Manson were actually putting down the words, Emmons says he “tried to convey his meaning as he presented it to me in his own words.”

There’s no reason not to believe this is the way Manson would have told his life story were he as literate as Emmons. But then we also thought the Hitler diaries were genuine.

Emmons emphasizes that Manson will receive no royalties or other remuneration from this book.

The story is that of a boy born to a teen-ageing mother who was working, at least part ime, as a prostitute, and who placed him in relatives’ homes until he was sent to a variety of institutions. He was a difficult child, hardened by the rigor and unfairness of those home, and drifted easily into a life of crime that resulted in spending half of his first 30-or-so years in prison.

During one of his periods of freedom, Manson drifted into the drug-and-sex environment of California’s flower children and soon discovered his powers to attract and keep the attention of young women. Soon his growing Manson Family numbered 35 men, women and girls.

Says Manson, “The dope, the sex and all the avenues we traveled were nothing more than rebellion against a world that preached one thing but failed to provide an example of it. The whole trip in the ’60s — all the protests, the drop-outs, the runaways, the flower children, the hippies, the drug addicts and, yes, the murdering outlaws — was the product of a society that spoke lies and denied their children something or someone to respect. And unfortunately, society remains the same.”

Manson maintains that the more he hated the world the kids came from, the more he began to like himself. “I started believing I had some of the right answers in my head. But believe me, none of the answers that filled my head included murder.”

As Manson discusses the events that preceded the murders of Sharon Tate Polanski, her friends and the LaBiancas, he becomes less and less credible. A wish to disparage his own influence on his disciples’ gory and fatal activities might be the reason he agreed to talk to
Emmons.

One does come away convinced that Manson thought he alone had the right answers to all of the world’s problems and saw himself, perhaps not as a savior, but as someone who knew how to run the world. If the killing of human beings suited his purpose, he doubtlessly did not think anything was wrong with that.

The recent look at Manson provided in two articles in the News-Journal papers shows that this messianic complex has not changed. It does not matter if his bizarre prison behavior is deliberate and studied or symptomatic of a severely mentally ill person. He deserves to remain in prison the rest of his life, because one can have no confidence that he will ever abide by the temporal and spiritual laws that govern the lives of other human beings.

“Manson in His Own Words” is an often intriguing, sometimes deliberately shocking but generally believable biography of one of this century’s most notorious men.

By HARRY F. THEMAL