The Family

The Family, by Ed Sanders

No month stated, 1971  E.P. Dutton

Years ago I went on a short-lived Charles Manson kick and picked up this first edition of The Family, courtesy author-poet Ed Sanders, founding member of the group The Fugs and also the author of the surreal Shards Of God, which I keep meaning to re-read some day. Given how much I enjoyed that novel I decided I’d read Sanders’ nonfiction study of the Manson cult, and specifically this first edition, as it contains material that was expurgated in all subsequent editions. 

At 400+ pages, The Family is certainly comprehensive, perhaps too much so, as it almost pedantically details the day-by-day events of the Manson “family” (Sanders never capitalizes the term, by the way, and nor will I), to the extent that the reader gets exhausted. And Manson and cohorts aren’t the most enjoyable people to spend over 400 pages with. Sanders’ unusual prose style is a huge help in making the mundane stuff entertaining; he routinely doles out memorable, oddball phrases, and he writes the book in a sort of New Journalism style that isn’t too far off from what Tom Wolfe was doing at the time. With the caveat that Sanders, unlike Wolfe, is deadly serious throughout, and indeed his hatred for Manson and his ilk is palpable. 

Consider my surprise, then, when I accessed my Rolling Stone Cover To Cover CD-Rom and pulled up the review of Sanders’s book, from the November 25, 1971 issue. Reviewer Ed McClanahan spends three columns of small print bashing the book, mostly due to Ed Sanders’s “aggressively moralizing” tone. For some reason the Rolling Stone reviewer is surprised that Sanders comes out against sacrifice, muder, and blood-drinking; in particular McClanahan is shocked that Sanders ends the book with the plea that California must be purged of freaks like Manson. Also, McClanahan disparages the “bad writing” of The Family, noting Sanders’s frequent subpar phrases and outright mistakes, though he theorizes that such things might be “intentional…[as if] Sanders had cunningly planted them throughout the book as a kind of peculiar comic relief.” (Somehow though McClanahan, when giving examples of Sanders’s “bad writing,” fails to note the most egregious example – both of bad writing and an indication that it was intentional for comedic effect – when at one point Sanders actually writes the phrase “allegedly alleged.” You don’t write a phrase like that accidentally.) 

Indeed, McClanahan caps off his Rolling Stone review with “The Family…is the very best bad book I’ve ever read,” as if this were the book equivalent of cinema turkeys like The Valley Of The Dolls…which, of course, featured Manson victim Sharon Tate. Personally I enjoyed Sanders’s writing here; he has a definite gift for those aforementioned oddball phrases and description, though it must be acknowledged that sometimes his narrative becomes rather flat in its wearying documentation of every single day’s events. He also often undercuts his own tension with asides that quickly become grating, like narratorial versions of eye-rolling (ie, mocking certain Manson banalities with the phrase “ooo-eee-ooo”). I also got annoyed with Sanders’ apparent obsession with the word “oozing,” which is used so frequently that one could make a drinking game out of it. 

Now, as to this first edition from E.P. Dutton. It features an entire chapter removed from all ensuing editions, focusing as it does on ‘60s subcult The Process. In addition to this chapter, it appears that all references to The Process throughout the book have been removed from later editions of The Family. This must make for a bumpy read, as Sanders refers to The Process a helluva lot in this first edition of the book, and he makes a grand case that Charles Manson was heavily influenced by them. (Later editions of the book lacked all this material because The Process successfully sued E.P. Dutton and Ed Sanders, but it appears the UK editions remained unscathed.) Several years ago I read Maury Terry’s phenomenal ‘80s True Crime classic The Ultimate Evil, which is where I learned of Ed Sanders’ book in the first place; Terry refers often to Sanders’ Process connection, building up an argument that Manson was actually part of a sort of Satanic crime syndicate. 

Ed Sanders doesn’t go to such theories in The Family; for the most part he sticks to the narrative prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi used to get Manson and his assassins on Death Row – and speaking of which, I so enjoyed The Family that immediately after finishing it I ordered myself a copy of Bugliosi’s bestseller Helter Skelter. The title of Bugliosi’s book refers to Manson’s supposed doctrine: that a race war would take over America and Manson and his followers would hide out in a magical city beneath Death Valley (one with friggin’ chocolate fountains), to eventually come out and be accepted as the leaders of the victorious blacks – who, per Manson’s warped ideology, would be unable to govern themselves. 

The Process was just one of the “sleazo inputs” Sanders says Manson was inspired by; there was also a Satanic cult that drank dog blood that was running around in Southern California at the time, and also Manson was really into the biker cults of the day, particularly the Straight Satans. Not to mention the Esalen Institute. And of course there was Manson’s years and years in prison, where he learned about Scientology, another belief system that Manson pillaged from to make his own. Sanders relegates the book to the years 1955 through 1969, opening with Manson getting married and having a child but regularly – almost addictively – getting in trouble with the law and going to jail, until ultimately he spends the majority of the early to mid ‘60s in Federal prison…which he reportedly begged to stay in, because he didn’t understand straight society. 

What makes this curious is the multiple times Manson will manage to escape custody once he’s out; Sanders, clearly in disbelief himself, documents time and again how Manson escapes prison, even after commiting rape, murder, theft, possession, and a host of other infractions. Regardless, Charles Manson certainly picked up on the vibe of the times, going around like a sleazier version of Ken Kesey and putting together his own not-so-Merry Pranksters. Sanders documents all of this; there are a host of characters in The Family, and it becomes difficult at times for the reader to remember who is who, particularly given that so many of the family members have several names. Sanders keeps it all straight, yet at the same time one can’t help but wonder how accurate a lot of this is – even down to random mistakes that cast doubt on the entirety. By this I mean Sanders’s statemement, midway through the book, that Manson shoots a drug dealer in the stomach on July 1…and then notes later that the guy gets out of the hospital on June 14. And this is all the same year, 1969. (A mistake McClanahan also notes in his review.) 

Otherwise The Family was very informative, as I must admit I only knew the general story of Manson and his followers. Having read the book I can’t say my perceptions were greatly changed; it just added more detail to the chaos and suffering they caused. As mentioned I got exhausted at times; the family was nothing if not peripatetic, constantly traveling around California until ultimately holing up at the infamous Spahn Ranch and later in Death Valley. It must’ve been a serious amount of work to keep track of all this, not to mention trying to make sense of what happened. But then, the argument is made, even today, that Sanders’ narrative – which appears to have had its genesis with Vincent Bugliosi – might not be the whole story. In other words, the tale of the hippie killer cult might be more a product of the prosecuting attorney than what really happened. 

What’s curious is that I figured there would be no mysteries left…but I frequently found myself going down rabbit holes during my reading of The Family, only to find that, 50+ years later, there are still no answers to many of the questions posed by Sanders. For example, throughout the later half Sanders recounts random murders that occurred in California when family members were in the vicinity, implicating of course that this could be their work. I looked up the unfortunate victims, only to find that the cases were still cold. Sanders also wonders how in the hell William Garretson, the young long-haired caretaker on Sharon Tate’s property, could have “slept through” the murders that were occuring mere yards away from his cottage, complete with screams in the night that would have echoed through the valley. It seems that there never was a sufficient answer for this (Garretson himself died in 2016, and in the late ‘80s he gave one interview where he said he did see two women chasing each other that night), and Sanders speculates that Garretson might have been “hypnotized” by the family. My guess is that the dude was probably high on acid or whatever (hey, it was L.A. in 1969) and didn’t want to tell the cops that when they interrogated him. 

Another rabbit hole is the missing videotape Sanders almost obsessively refers to in the book. In another of those random flukes that seemed to bless the early family, Manson et al were able to get hold of an NBC camera and proceeded to make videotapes of themselves. According to Sanders, some of these depicted the drugged-out family doing dances that recounted the Tate murders, or another tape showing them drinking blood, or another one depicting a Satanic orgy, and on and on – but, according to Sanders, the tapes have disappeared. Doesn’t look like they’ve been found yet, that is if they ever existed. Some years ago I recall watching a program on the Fox network titled Manson: The Lost Tapes, or something like that, but as I recall the “newly-discovered footage” was innocuous stuff like the family members at the Spahn Ranch talking about how great Charlie was. Another mythical film Sanders notes is the one the LAPD supposedly found in the Tate residence, depicting big-name Hollywood elite indulging in an orgy and other kinky affairs; none of this has ever come to light, over 50 years later. 

The biggest question of course is why the Tate residence? Or, more importantly, why the LaBianca residence? Another mystery still unsolved all these years later. Manson never elaborated, plus years later he claimed the killings weren’t even his idea, they were Tex Watson’s (who indeed did the majority of the killing for the family). Thus we are left with all these weird coincidences that are unexplained. Like speaking of Tex Watson, Sanders notes when Watson is introduced to the text that Watson had a successful wig shop in Laurel Canyon…and, many pages later, we will see that one of Watson’s victims is Jay Sebring, a famous hairstylist who worked in Laurel Canyon at the same time that Watson had his wig shop. How could these two not have known of each other? And yet it would appear they didn’t, as one of the main stories recounted by all the family members in the Tate home that night was that Sebring asked Watson who he was, leading to the infamous “I’m the devil” response from Watson. 

Ed Sanders doesn’t even speculate on this; as McClanahan notes in his Rolling Stone review, The Family is filled with “red herrings” and “unfinished subplots” that Sanders never explains. One also suspects that Sanders basically put into the book everything he was fed about Manson, which ultimately does make Manson seem more myth than man, which certainly wasn’t Sanders’ intention. What else are we to make of the random story recounted by some nameless family member that once upon a time Charlie was getting a b.j. from a nervous female new to the family, who accidentally bit Manson’s dick “in twain,” yet with the power of his own will Charlie was able to make himself whole again? 

Or, in another howler that McClanahan also notes, what are we to make of the story that, months after the Tate-LaBianca murders, the cops infiltrated Manson’s desert hideout, wanting to bring him in on charges of dune buggy theft (it took months for the killings to be pinned on the family), and Charlie motioned into the darkened hills and told the cops he had family members out there with guns trained on them…and the cops ran away? I mean, Manson’s followers were acid-fried teens who thought Charlie was Jesus Christ, and otherwise Manson’s compatriots were bikers and other social outcasts, so perhaps all this is testament to the type of informant Ed Sanders came across: they were willing to believe anything. 

Speaking of which, Sanders provides an entertaining intro where he notes the type of sicko freaks he encountered while reseaching The Family, even stating how he went undercover at one point. All of this would have made for fine material, but Sanders doesn’t go much into it, for the most part keeping himself out of the narrative. But what really bummed me was that Sanders also noted the “thousands” of photos he took in the course of his investigation…yet there is not a single photo reproduced in The Family. Indeed, one gets the impression it was rushed straight from the galleys to the printing press, so as to be the first “major” book on Charles Manson. This would also explain the occasional gaffe in Sanders’ reporting…and also why the trial material is completely skipped over, Sanders ending his book with Manson finally being arrested. 

The murders are documented clinically, but obviously Sanders has relied on those trials for this material, as all of what happened at the Tate and LaBianca homes was only known to the killers. For some reason I was under the impression that the victims at the Tate home were mutilated, but so far as Sanders has it, they were just killed – I realize of course I’m getting into a “Hamas didn’t behead any babies, they just murdered them!” argument, but still. Sanders does allude to this when he notes that someone in the coroner’s office gave out misleading info that made the murders sound even more horrific. More interestingly is Sanders’s argument that Manson and someone else (Sanders speculates that it might’ve been family member Clem) came back to the Tate home after the killings and moved the bodies around, as none of them were found in the positions the murderers left them in. It’s my understanding Manson admitted to this in a book published decades later, but still never divulged who went with him to the murder house. 

I’ve kind of jumped around in the review, but my assumption is practically everyone is familiar with this subject. It’s curious though that, in our modern age of mass shooters and other atrocities, the Manson family still holds such interest. In that regard I’d say the old saw that the Manson families tarnished the Woodstock era might be accurate. Anyway, Sanders spends the first quarter of The Family on Manson’s early days in various jails and then getting out in the late ‘60s and basically collecting runaway, easily-molded girls and driving around Southern California in a school bus that was painted black. Around late 1968 the rot sets in; another mystery is what exactly pushed the Manson family into death and killing in 1969. This could be another indication of later editions of The Family being a bumpy read, what with all those Process mentions removed; here in the first edition, Sanders notes the “coincidence” that the Process moved into death and swastikas right before Manson did. 

The last quarter-plus is devoted to the killings, with the most “famous” of the lot, the Tate murders, getting the most spotlight. Again, the question is how this particular residence was chosen, but of course Sanders notes the connection with producer Terry Melcher, whom Manson had been chasing for months for a movie and album deal. A curious thing here is Sanders keeps using the phrase “genuine Roebucks” when describing the black jeans the killers wear on the killing missions…the same garb worn the following night, on the LaBianca murders. “Genuine Roebucks,” over and over. I mean were those jeans really that special? I mean they just bought them at Sears, right?? “Look out, everyone, I’ve got on my genuine Penneys tonight!” (I used to work at the J.C. Penney corporate office, btw – only the old-timers still called the place “Penneys.”) 

Sanders does his best to make sense out of insanity. Like for example the LaBianca kill. It starts with Charlie wanting to show his “kids” how it’s done, riding around in a car with them and then “randomly” picking out a house…which, again “coincidentally,” happens to be across from a house familiar to the family. Then he “creepy-crawls” into the house, gets the spring on the middle-aged man and woman inside, ties them up, and sends in his killers to off them. This, Sanders and Bugliosi claim, was Manson’s way to start up “helter skelter,” his race war idea that was gleaned from one of the best Beatles songs – though, as Sanders notes, it’s regrettable that Manson was unaware that a “helter skelter” was an amusement park ride in England. But if a race war, why Manson’s direction for the girls to put something “witchy” on the walls after the murders? 

Maury Terry picked up this ball in The Ultimate Evil, and now it’s pretty much a given that I’ll re-read that book. In fact I think Sanders might’ve even been one of Terry’s sources; it was from Terry’s book that I learned the first edition of The Family had the cut Process material. Terry in particular took note of a claim made by Dennis Hopper, which first appeared here in Ed Sanders’s book, that the occupents of Ciello Drive (ie the Sharon Tate residence) were into kinky freak scenes and had filmed the ritual whipping of someone who had “burned” them in a drug deal. Sanders does focus a little on the “drug burn” angle, but if anything his behind-the-scenes intimation is that Manson was perhaps working for some other cult in the killings. Maury Terry sort of extrapolates on that, picking up on the Process connection and brining in a sort of Satanic Mafia angle. 

One thing I can say though is that this is one of those books where I wished I could magically transport myself into the text so I could kick hippie ass. Surely this was some of the impetus behind Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (the novelization of which I’ll probably now get around to reading). I mean Pitt and DiCaprio – the actors themselves, not just the characters they played – could’ve probably taken out Manson and his followers without breaking a sweat. I mean Manson was like a hundred pounds soaking wet, as the saying goes – and also surely I can’t be the only one who sees the resemblance between him and The Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin? Yet for some reason Manson was able to scare people. Well, he did have a gun on the LaBiancas, and I read elsewhere that Tex Watson also creepy-crawled into the house with him, something I don’t think Sanders notes here. 

Speaking of creepy-crawling, I wonder also if Manson, or maybe even this book, was an influence on Joseph DiAngelo, the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker/Golden State Killer. “Creepy-crawling” was Manson’s term for breaking into homes at night and slipping around inside while the owners were asleep, stealing minor things or even messing with the owners in some psychological way. DiAngelo started his crime career around this time, also in Southern California, as the Visalia Cat Burglar, and given the time and place I wonder if he wasn’t somehow inspired by reading this book. Who knows – another mystery. If The Family makes anything clear it’s that a ton of weird shit was going on in Southern California in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. 

Overall I was certainly entertained by The Family, even though it probably wasn’t the best book to be reading during the Christmas season. It also had me hitting Google for searches that likely put me on various FBI watch lists. But I must mention that at times I found myself a little bored with the sometimes flat and clinical reportage; again, the impression I got was that the book was rushed to meet a deadline. I did learn a lot from it, though; I had no idea that it wasn’t for a few months that the August 1969 murders were pinned on the Manson family. Nor did I know about the dune buggy army thing Manson had in mind, a “Rommeloid” vision of him and his family ripping through Death Valley and pillaging towns. Sanders’ writing, when not going for the clinical angle, is inventive and really gives a feeling for the era. But if anything I found The Family to be like an appetizer for Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, which was published a few years later and would go on to become the bestselling True Crime book ever. 

Speaking of which, I’ve added a “True Crime” tag here on the blog, so will be reviewing Helter Skelter here once I’ve read it, along with other true crime paperbacks (not just Manson-related) I’ve picked up over the years. But sticking to the Manson topic, if interested you can also check out my review from a few years back for the obscure Manson cash-in novel The Cult Of Killers. 

Oh and speaking of the Xmas break, apologies for the two-week delay in posts. I might have to go to a single review per week schedule for the time being, as I’m reading pretty long books at the moment (one of them a literal doorstep at 1200 pages!), so I need to actually finish the books before I can review them!