The Testimony of Charles Manson
The Court: Do you have anything to say? 
Yes, I do. 
There has been a lot of charges and a lot of things said about me and brought  against me and brought against the co-defendants in this case, of which a lot  could be cleared up and clarified to where everyone could understand exactly what the family was supposed to have been, what the philosophies in regards to the families were, and whether or not there was any conspiracy to commit murder, to commit crimes, and to explain to you who think with your minds. It is hard for you to conceive of a philosophy of someone that may not think. 
I have spent my life in jail, and without parents. I have looked up to the strongest father-figure, and I have always looked to the people in the free world as being the good people, and the people in the inside of the jail as being the bad people. 
I never went to school, so I never growed up in the respect to learn to read and write so good, so I have stayed in jail and I have stayed stupid, I have stayed a child while I have watched your world grow up, and then I look at the things that you do and I don't understand. 
I don't understand the courts, and I don't understand a lot of things that are brought against me. 
Your write things about my mother in the newspaper that hasn't got anything to do with anything in particular. 
You invent stories, and everybody thinks what they do, and then they project it from the witness stand on the defendant as if that is what he did. 
For example, with Danny DeCarlo's testimony. He said that I hate black men, and he said that we thought alike, that him and I was a lot alike in our thinking. 
But actually all I ever did with Danny DeCarlo or any other human being was reflect himself back at himself. 
If he said he did not like the black man, I would say, "Okay." I had better sense than tell him I did not dislike the black man. I just listened to him and I would react to his statement. So consequently he would drink another beer and walk off and pat me on the back and he would say to himself, "Charlie thinks like I do." 
But actually he does not know how Charlie thinks because Charlie has never projected himself. 
But maybe the girls and women in your world outside ... Being by yourself for such a long time when you do get out you appreciate things that people don't even see, you walk over them every day. 
Like in jail you have a whole new attitude or a whole different way of thinking. 
I don't think like you people. You people put importance on your lives. 
Well, my life has never been important to anyone, not even in the understanding of the way you fear the things that you fear, and the things you do. 
I know that the only person I can judge is me. 
I judge what I have done and I judge what I do and I look and live with myself every day. 
I am content with myself. 
If you put me in the penitentiary, that means nothing because you kicked me out of the last one. I didn't ask to get released. I liked it in there because I like myself. 
I like being with myself. 
But in your world it's hard because your understanding and your values are different. 
These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up. 
Most of the people at the ranch that you call The Family were just people that you did not want, people that were alongside the road, that their parents had kicked them out or they did not want to go to Juvenile Hall, so I did the best I could and I took them up on my garbage dump and I told them this that in love there is no wrong. 
I don't care. I have one law and I learned it when I was a kid in reform school. It's don't snitch. And I have never snitched, And I told them that anything they do for their brothers and sisters is good, if they do it with a good thought. 
It is not my responsibility. It is your responsibility. It is the responsibility you have towards your own children who you are neglecting, and then you want to put the blame on me again and again and again. 
Over and over you put me in your penitentiary. I did not build the penitentiary. I would not lock one of you up. I could not see locking another human being up. 
You eat meat with your teeth and you kill things that are better than you are, and in the same respect you say how bad and even killers that your children are. You make your children what they are. I am just a reflection of every one of you. 
I have never learned anything wrong. In the penitentiary, I have never found a bad man. Every man in the penitentiary has always showed me his good side, and circumstances put him where he was. He would not be there, he is good, human, just like the policeman that arrested him is a good human. 
I have nothing against none of you. I can't judge any of you. But I think it is high time that you all started looking at yourselves, and judging the lie that you live in. I sit 
Читать далее...