>>Manson was duly sworn. His rambling, disjointed one hour and twenty-minute narrative presented the listener with an accurate, though perhaps unintentional, delineation of a not unintelligent but dissociatted individual attemping to grope his way through a maze of half-conceived ideas without bringing about his own destruction.

He was, by turn, humble: "I never went to school, so I never growed up in the respect to learn to read and write too good, so I have stayed in jail and I have stayed stupid, and I have stayed a child..." and arrogant: "If I could get angry at you I would try to kill every one of you. If thatīs guilt I accept it." Most interestingly, he twice came close to laying all the murders off on the girl defendants, who he referred to as his "children."

"These children that come at you with knifes," he said, "they are your children. You taught them. I didn`t teach them. These children everything they have done, they have done for love of their brother."

And again: "Yes, these children there were finding themselves. Whatever they did, if they did whatever they did, or whatever they did is up to them. They will have to explain to you that. I`m just explaining to you what I am explaining to you."

As to the murders: "I have killed no one and I have ordered no one to be killed. I don`t place myself in the seat of judgement.I may have implied on several occacions that I may have been Jesus Christ, but I haven`t decided yet who I am or what I am. I was given a name and a number and I was put in a cell, and I have lived in a cell with a name and a number."

"I don`t know who I am."

"I am whoever you make me, but what you want is a fiend; you want a sadistic fiend because that is what you are."

About Linda Kasabian: "You set this woman up there to testify against me. And she tells you a sad story, how she has only taken every narcotic that is possible to take. She has only stolen, lied, cheated and done everything you have got there in the book."

"But it is okay. She is telling the truth now. She is telling the truth know. She wouldn`t have any ulterior motive like it immunity for seven counts of murder. And then, comical as it may seem, you look at me and say `you threatened to kill the person if they snitch."

"Well, that is the law where I am from. Where I am from, if you snitch, you leave yourself to be killed."

Charlie`s voice took on an edge as he talked about killing people who snitch. But with that same instinct that had guided him through many a lesser tight spot he sensed that he was comming on up-tight and got off the subject. He talked of Helter Skelter:

"Like Helter Skelter is a nightclub. Helter Skelter means confusion, literally. It doesn`t mean that those people are going to kill other people. It only means what it means."

"Helter Skelter is confusion. Confusion is coming down fast. If you can`t see the confusion coming around you fast, you can call it what you wish. It is not conspiracy. It is not my music. I hear what it relates. It says, `Rise,` it says, `Kill.` Why blame it on me? I didnt write the music."

He addressed himself to the evidence. "The rope, the gun, the clothes. It was really convenient that Mr.Baggot (King Baggot, television cameraman) found those clothes. I imagine he got a little of taste of money for that. I imagine that it just so happens, out of all that territory up there, Mulholland Drive, he just turned the corner and pop, he happens to see those clothes. Isn`t that marvellous?"

"And the bloodstains. Well they are not exactly bloodstains, they are Benzidine reactions." (A Benzidine test is a standart test to determine the presence of blood.) "What is a Benzidine reaction? We got into semantics. It is not a bloodstain. It is not a bloodstain. It is not a bloodstain. I call it a Benzidine reaction. That is somewhere in another courtroom."

About the Buttomless Pitt: "I found a hole in the desert that goes down into a river that runs north underground, and I call it a Butomless Pit because where could a river be going north underground?"

About truth: "Now the girls were talking about testifying. If the girls come up here to testify and they said anything good about me, you would have to reserve it and say that it was bad. You would have to say,`Well, he put the girls up to saying that. He put the girls to not telling the truth.` "Then you say the truth is as I am saying it, but then when it is gone, tomorrow it is gone, it changes, it`s another day and it is a new truth, as it constantly moves thousands of miles an hour through space."

"Hippie cult leader, actually, hippie cult leader that is your words. I am a dumb country boy who never grew up. I went to jail when I was eight years old and I got out when I was thirty- two. I have never adjusted to your free world. I am still that stupid , corn-picking country boy that I have always been." "If you tend to compliment a contradiction about yourself, you can live in that confusion. To me it`s all simple right here, right now, and each of us knew what he did, and I know what I did, and I know what I`m going to do, and what you do is up to you."

"You see, you can send me to the penitentiary; it`s not a big thing. I`ve been there all my life anyway. What about your children, just a few, there is many, many more coming in the same direction; they are running in the streets and they are coming right at you."<<