“Manson Behind the Scenes” reviewed

“Manson Behind The Scenes” by Bill Nelson, who has previously written a book about Charles “Tex” Watson called “Tex Watson The Man The Madness The Manipulation,” gives updates on all the major players in this tragedy and points out many loose ends in the quarter-century old case.

William Garretson, the groundskeeper who was inexplicably missed by the murderers–he lived in a cottage on the property just a small distance from the Tate house–talks to the media for the first time ever in his interview with Nelson. Garretson’s recollections are chilling, for if he is remembering correctly, his was a close call indeed.

“Manson Behind The Scenes” overdoses on exclamation points which gives it an overheated and breathless feel. It is marred by many errors of spelling and punctuation. Bill Nelson seems to think that “bazaar” means the same thing as “bizarre” and that “clever” is spelled “cleaver.” On one occasion, a misspelling seems blackly comical, as when he writes about murderer Susan Atkins and her “cleaver” mind.

The chapter devoted to Suzan LaBerge, the daughter of the murdered Rosemary LaBianca, strikes this reviewer as rather unfortunate. Ms. LaBerge has taken the unusual–though by no means unique–step of publicly “forgiving” her mother’s murderers and of communicating with Tex Watson and calling for his parole. In an unnecessary effort to discredit her–no parole board with any sense would release Tex Watson–Nelson rakes over LaBerge’s troubled family history and even suggests that LaBerge, a Born Again Christian, is involved with “the powers of darkness” as exemplified by her supposed “demonic laugh.”

An exciting chapter of the book is devoted to the Hawthorne shoot-out, a Tate-LaBianca aftershock which, if Nelson describes it accurately, has gotten surprisingly short shrift in most accounts. Females from the “Manson” group linked up with several male criminals to rob a gun store. Had they gotten away with the loot, they would have had enough weapons for a battalion. Though no one was killed, the exchange of fire was enough to make one of the engaged police officers say that “I was in several fire fights in Vietnam, and this battle ranked among the top 3 or 4 battles that I lived through!”

Nelson’s most controversial assertion is the possible connection he sees between Bruce Davis, a Manson associate convicted of two murders, and the notorious, never-apprehended Zodiac. Nelson’s assertions are two-fold: he believes an unsolved murder which the police do not call a Zodiac slaying was one, and he believes that Davis had the opportunity to commit that murder and two that have always been assigned to Zodiac.

On neither count is the evidence overwhelming–but it is there and those who are interested in the Zodiac case, as well as hard-core Manson buffs, may wish to peruse “Manson Behind The Scenes.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 10:44 am and is filed under Book Review, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 157 views | Trackback | Print this page |

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