The Helter Skelter scenario is an apocalyptic vision that was supposedly embraced by Charles Manson and members of his so-called Family. At the trial of Manson and three others for the Tate–LaBianca murders, the prosecution presented it as motivating the crimes and as an aspect of the case for conspiracy. Via interviews and autobiographies, former Family members related what they had witnessed and experienced of it. In both the trial and his subsequent (1974) book, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi presented evidence that, in a period that preceded the murders, Manson prophesied what he called Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war that would arise from racial tensions between black and white people. The prophecy involved reference to the New Testament's Book of Revelation and to the Beatles' music, particularly songs from their 1968 White Album. A major part of the evidence was the testimony of Paul Watkins, a Family member who was not involved in the crimes and who presented the vision in full form. Though the defendants were convicted on all charges of conspiracy and murder, various parties have argued for other motives of the murders. Writers, police detectives, attorneys involved with the case, and perpetrators have contended that the crimes were copycat killings, revenge for a bad drug deal, or a combination thereof.

Background

As assembled by Bugliosi, the evidence of the vision indicated that Manson had been predicting racial conflict for some time before he used the term Helter Skelter. According to Paul Watkins, he first used the term at a gathering of the Family on New Year's Eve 1968 at Myers Ranch, near California's Death Valley. The apocalyptic scenario had Manson as the war's ultimate beneficiary and its musical cause. With the Family, Manson would create an album whose songs would bear messages as subtle as those he had heard in songs of the Beatles. These would draw the "love"—the hippies in Haight-Ashbury— to join the family. In the vision's logic, black men would thus be deprived of the white women whom the political changes of the 1960s had made sexually available to them; they would lash out in violent crimes against whites. Manson, according to Family member Brooks Poston, "said a group of real blacks would come out of the ghettos and do an atrocious crime in the richer sections of Los Angeles and other cities. They would do an atrocious murder with stabbing, killing, cutting bodies to pieces, smearing blood on the walls, writing 'pigs' on the walls... in the victims' own blood." When frightened whites, according to Watkins and Tex Watson, would retaliate with a murderous rampage, militant blacks would exploit it to provoke a war of near-extermination between racist and non-racist whites over the treatment of blacks. In the wake of that, black militants would arise to finish off the few white survivors and to kill off all non-blacks. In this holocaust, as Watkins went on to explain, the members of the enlarged Family would have little to fear; they would wait out the war in a secret city underneath Death Valley, a city they'd reach through a hole in the ground. Upon the war's conclusion, they would be the only remaining whites. Emerging from underground, they would rule the blacks, who, having "completed the white man's karma", would want no longer to kill. Proving, as Watkins explained, incapable of running the world, blacks would go to Manson, who'd "scratch [the black man's] fuzzy head and kick him in the butt and tell him to go pick the cotton and go be a good nigger." The term Helter Skelter was taken from the Beatles' song of the same name, which Manson purportedly interpreted as concerned with the war. The song was on the band's self-titled double album, also known as the "White Album", which Manson heard within a month or so of its November 1968 release. Appearing in a 2009 documentary, former Manson follower Catherine Share said the following:"When the Beatles' White Album came out, Charlie listened to it over and over and over and over again. He was quite certain that the Beatles had tapped in to his spirit, the truth—that everything was gonna come down and the black man was going to rise. It wasn't that Charlie listened to the White Album and started following what he thought the Beatles were saying. It was the other way around. He thought that the Beatles were talking about what he had been expounding for years. Every single song on the White Album, he felt that they were singing about us. The song 'Helter Skelter'—he was interpreting that to mean the blacks were gonna go up and the whites were gonna go down." According to Paul Watkins, Manson and his followers began preparing for Helter Skelter in the months before they committed the murders. They worked on songs for the hoped-for album, which they anticipated would set off everything. They prepared vehicles and other items for escape from their Los Angeles base to Death Valley, when the days of violence would arrive. They pored over maps to plot a route that would bypass highways and get them to the desert safely. Manson, according to Tex Watson, "used ... parts of the song ["Helter Skelter"] to plot out [the] escape route to the desert."

Tate–LaBianca murders

On the night of August 9–10, 1969, Manson and several Family members drove to the Los Angeles home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, who were murdered. In trial testimony, an interview with the Los Angeles Times, or autobiography, Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, and Tex Watson, who were in the party, stated that Manson guided the group to the home, directed the tying-up of the LaBiancas or said he'd tied them up, or gave instruction as to the killings. In LaBianca blood, one or more female Family members wrote "Healter [sic] Skelter" on the refrigerator and "Rise" and "Death to Pigs" on walls. On the previous night, August 8–9, Tex Watson and three female Family members had driven to 10050 Cielo Drive, in Beverly Hills, where pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four other persons were murdered. In trial testimony, an interview with the Los Angeles Times, or autobiography, Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, and Tex Watson, who were in the party, stated that Manson assembled the group, whom he instructed to get weapons and changes of clothes; gave an instruction to "Go with Tex and do whatever Tex tells you to do"; and/or instructed Watson to go to the house and kill everyone in it. Using Tate's blood, Atkins wrote "Pig" on the door. Earlier that day, Kasabian would testify, Manson told the Family, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter." Upon the group's return from the Tate–Polanski residence, stated Watson, in his autobiography, Manson asked him, "Was it really Helter Skelter?" Replied Watson, "Yeah, it was sure Helter Skelter." On October 12, 1969, during the arrests that led to the charges in the murders, California Highway Patrol officer James Pursell found Manson at Barker Ranch. According to Pursell, "Charlie told us that his group was out there looking for a place to hide because there was an impending race war. He told us that the blacks were going to win. He told us that because we were number one, cops, and number two, white, we should stop right there, let them loose, and flee for our lives." In early 1969, Paul Watkins told Bugliosi, Manson had told him Helter Skelter would start that summer. In May or June, months after he had been frustrated in his efforts to make the album, he told Watkins Helter Skelter was "ready to happen." "Blackie never did anything without whitey showin' him how," Watkins would recount Manson's saying. "Helter Skelter is coming down. But it looks like we're gonna have to show blackie how to do it."

References to the Beatles and the Book of Revelation

In Helter Skelter, Bugliosi writes that Manson told "numerous people", including former Barker gang member Alvin Karpis, that "given the chance, he could be much bigger than the Beatles." In My Life with Charles Manson, Watkins said Manson delivered the Helter Skelter prophecy around a campfire at Myers Ranch. As Family members listened to the White Album repeatedly over the following days, they believed it:"At that point Charlie's credibility seemed indisputable. For weeks he had been talking of revolution, prophesying it. We had listened to him rap; we were geared for it—making music to program the young love. Then, from across the Atlantic, the hottest music group in the world substantiates Charlie with an album which is almost blood-curdling in its depiction of violence. It was uncanny."Watkins said, too, that Manson "spent hours quoting and interpreting Revelation to the Family, particularly verses from chapter 9". Watson wrote that the Bible had "absolutely no meaning in our life in the Family" apart from Revelation chapter 9. Manson lived with an aunt and uncle for a period in his childhood when his mother was in prison. He later told a counselor that the aunt and uncle had "some marital difficulty until they became interested in religion and became very extreme".

Beatles songs, as interpreted in the vision

The following summarizes Bugliosi's account of statements made to him by Family members Paul Watkins and Brooks Poston and talent scout Gregg Jakobson. It also includes statements from Tex Watson's autobiography, published years after the Tate–LaBianca murders, and statements of Manson himself to David Dalton. Years later Tex Watson tied the prophecy to one more White Album song, "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey", though he changed monkey to monkeys. While on LSD at a party in late March 1969, Watson states in his autobiography, he and two Manson girls realized they themselves were "the monkeys ... just bright-eyed, free little animals, totally uninhibited," as they started "bouncing around the apartment, throwing food against the walls, and laughing hysterically".

Book of Revelation, as interpreted in the vision

Chapter 7: Chapter 9: Chapter 10: Chapter 21: Chapter 22: In relating how Manson would discourse in early 1969, while the Family was in the house in Canoga Park, Paul Watkins would report Manson's words as follows: "Look at [the Beatles'] songs: songs sung all over the world by the young love; it ain't nothin' new.... It's written in... Revelation, all about the four angels programming the holocaust...the four angels looking for the fifth angel to lead the people into the pit of fire...right out to Death Valley.... It's all in black and white, in The White Album—white, so there ain't no mistakin' the color..." In March 1969, Tex Watson, who'd separated himself from the Family after Manson and he first heard the White Album, rejoined the group. By that time, as he would recount in his autobiography, Helter Skelter had captured the group's imagination: "Although I got it in bits and pieces, some from the women and some from Manson himself, it turned out to be a remarkably complicated yet consistent thing that he [Manson] had discovered and developed in the three months we'd been apart.... It was exciting, amazing stuff Charlie was teaching, and we'd sit around him for hours as he told us about the land of milk and honey we'd find underneath the desert and enjoy while the world above us was soaked in blood."

Abbey Road

Abbey Road was released in the United Kingdom in late September 1969 after the murders. By that time, most of the Family was at the group's camp in the Death Valley area searching for the Bottomless Pit. Three Family members arrived at the camp around October 1 with an advance copy of the album, which the group played on a battery-operated machine. Law officers raided the desert locations in the second week of October, found the Family with stolen vehicles, and arrested Manson and several others. By mid-November, Manson had become a suspect in the Tate–LaBianca murders, but Family members made their way back to Spahn Ranch after being released from jail. The LAPD confiscated a door on November 25 on which someone had written "Helter Scelter is coming down fast." A photograph shows that the confiscated door was also inscribed with "1, 2 3 4 5 6 7 — ALL GOOD CHILDREN (Go to Heaven?)". This children's rhyme is heard in "You Never Give Me Your Money" on Abbey Road. In October 1970, the prosecution offered testimony about the door during Manson's trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders, but only the "Helter Skelter" inscription seems to have been noted. Tex Watson had left the desert camp and gone on to separate himself from the Family. By his own account, he bought a cassette recording of Abbey Road and played it continuously while walking for miles across the desert, to rejoin the group; he was hoping to see what The Beatles might have to tell him. He turned back at the last moment, and an old prospector informed him that the arrests had taken place. Three people were attacked on the beach near Santa Barbara, California in late July 1970 while Manson was on trial, two of them fatally. One of the Manson girls spoke of this incident as "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", an Abbey Road song about homicidal madness. In an interview with her court-appointed attorney, on December 29, 1969, Leslie Van Houten cited Come Together, the song with which Abbey Road opens: "So because Charles is the type of person he is, like he's out front with people, and a lot of people had a hard time seeing him, or looking at him. And that's another line that the Beatles set up: 'He's got to be good-looking 'cause he's so hard to see,' because so many people couldn't even look at him."

Timeline

1969

Manson's testimony

Manson was permitted to testify at his 1970 trial for the Tate–LaBianca murders, after the defendants' attorneys had attempted to rest their cases, without calling a single witness. Because of concerns related to California's People v. Aranda (1965), having to do with a defendant's statements that might implicate co-defendants, it was decided that Manson would first testify without the jury in the courtroom. Manson spoke for over an hour. As to Helter Skelter, he said the following: "It means confusion, literally. It doesn't mean any war with anyone. It doesn't mean that some people are going to kill other people. Helter Skelter is confusion. Confusion is coming down around you fast. If you can't see the confusion coming down around you fast, you can call it what you wish." When Manson was asked by Bugliosi, after the testimony, whether he'd be willing to testify in the same manner in the presence of the jury, the defense objected. When the judge asked Manson if he wanted to testify in front of the jury, Manson said he had relieved all the pressure he had. Manson has dismissed the Helter Skelter conspiracy as an invention by the trial prosecutor to tie him to the murders. "Is it a conspiracy that the music is telling the youth to rise up against the establishment because the establishment is rapidly destroying things? Is that a conspiracy? The music speaks to you every day, but you are too deaf, dumb, and blind to even listen to the music.... It is not my conspiracy. It is not my music. I hear what it relates. It says 'Rise', it says 'Kill'. Why blame it on me? I didn't write the music. ... As far as lining up someone for some kind of helter skelter trip, you know, that's the District Attorney's motive. That's the only thing he could find for a motive to throw up on top of all that confusion he had. There was no such thing in my mind as helter skelter."

Statements by Van Houten

On December 29, 1969, Leslie Van Houten, who'd been charged with the LaBianca murders, was interviewed at Sybil Brand Institute. The interviewer was Marvin Part, who'd been appointed her attorney of record on December 19. Van Houten said the following: Later, Van Houten speaks as follows: In the penalty phase of the trial, Van Houten testified as follows: Interviewed in 1977, by Barbara Walters, Van Houten said the following: