Lynette Fromme was 18,
depressed and living
homeless on Venice Beach,
Los Angeles, when she first met
Charles Manson. She fell for him
immediately, particularly when
he talked charismatically about
protecting the environment.
Fifty-two years later she still
feels the same way. “There’s just
life in some people that attracts,”
she says, “his being, his anima-
tion, his personality. You know,
Al Gore is saying the right
things, but he’s not as attractive
as Charlie. People say [Manson]
was evil, but I never saw evil in
him. He said he was both – good
and bad – and was free to do as
he wanted because of it.”
In 1969, two years after
Manson met Fromme, his fol-
lowers broke into two homes in
Los Angeles and murdered seven
people, including the actor Sharon
Tate. The bloody deaths marked
the end of the utopian promise
of the Summer Of Love and are
back in the public consciousness
this month thanks to Quentin
Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time
In Hollywood, in which Margot
Robbie plays Tate. Meanwhile,
Manson himself continues to
attract a grim fascination. His
interviews have racked up mil-
lions of views on YouTube and
each year 2,500 people take the
“Helter Skelter” tour of the Los
Angeles murder sites. For some,
however, Manson is more than a
perverse curiosity – even in death,
he remains a leader. Those who
follow him don’t call themselves
the Manson Family, as the media
once did. Instead, they call them-
selves “Atwa”, an acronym that
stands for both “Air Trees Water
Animals” and “All The Way Alive”.
They stay in touch through a
website, mansondirect.com, and
a number of Facebook groups.The largest, Atwa (Official), has
more than 10,000 followers.
These followers see Manson as
a victim of injustice and wish to
keep his environmental campaign
alive. “I love Charlie. He has been
done wrong,” writes Dreama, a
mother from Kentucky, on the
group’s Facebook page. “Charles
is a loving, spiritual god and I will
forever love and support him,”
adds Melinda from Brooklyn.
The most extreme example of
Manson fandom came in 2014
when a 26-year-old woman
named Afton Burton went so far
as to become engaged to him. She
had been writing to him in prison
since she was a teenager.
The courts were unequivocal
about Manson’s wrongdoing:
he was convicted of first-degree
murder and conspiracy to
commit murder. However, his
supporters continue to claim, as
he did, that he never ordered the
Tate murders. Sandra Good, a
former girlfriend who was part of
the original commune, says mur-
derers Tex Watson, Susan Atkins
and Patricia Krenwinkel came up
with the plan on their own. “There
was a brother, Bobby Beausoleil,
who was in jail for killing a man,”
she says. “Charlie had favours
owed to him by Tex and Susan. He
said: ‘You guys owe me. Get the
brother out. I don’t care what youInside the weird world of theCHARLES MANSON truthersdo.’ They thought a way to get
Bobby out would be to do copycat
killings.” Fromme adds, chillingly,
that in an era when young men
were being sent to kill and die in
Vietnam, violence could be justi-
fied – she perversely viewed it as
a strike against consumer society.
“The way I looked at it was as a
war,” she says.
“Michael Atwa”, as he has
asked to be named, helps run the
Atwa (Official) page and didn’t
know Manson personally, but has
also come to believe he was inno-
cent. So what’s the group’s larger
ambition: is it to clear Manson’s
name? “I’ll say this: ‘Three things
cannot be long hidden: the sun,
the moon and the truth.’”Michael first became fas-
cinated with Manson
after seeing him inter-
viewed by CBS News anchor
Charlie Rose in 1986. “I was imme-
diately drawn to him,” he says.
“Manson was a pioneer in the field
of ecological thought.” He has no
interest in Once Upon A Time In
Hollywood, however. “Hollywood
is intentionally poisoning the
mass mind in the same way big
pharma has intentionally poisoned
the citizenry for years,” he says.
“The whole world is interested in
Manson and I think Tarantino is
banking on that, quite literally.”
In an age when the evidence
of climate change is all around
us, it’s hard to dispute some of
what Atwa says about the need to
protect the environment. What’s
much harder to understand is why
they continue to idolise Manson
the convicted murderer. Michael
is not shy about this, saying that
Manson’s words and music make
him “an oracle of sorts, an endless
source of wisdom and inspiration”.
Dr Bryanna Fox is a crimi-
nal psychologist and former FBIspecial agent who believes she
has gained some insight into the
mentality of those who still find
themselves drawn to Manson.
“It’s the same reason we like going
on roller-coasters,” she says.
“We like feeling we’re close to
danger without actually being
in danger. Another part of it is
that Manson was a celebrity. In
the early days he did have some
celebrity connections, such as
Dennis Wilson of The Beach
Boys, but, of course, after the
murders he garnered his own
celebrity status and that’s attrac-
tive to some people. Even though
he was horrific, he’s still the
Charles Manson.”
As for Manson’s professed
environmental beliefs, Fox argues
that these are simply manipula-
tion tactics. “With every good
lie there’s an element of truth,”
she says. “He wasn’t selling total
hogwash. Having a community
of like-minded people celebrating
the land is comforting, but when
it gets to inciting murder I’m not
sure how many people would still
want to go along with it.”
Manson continued to receive
fan mail right up until his death,
while still incarcerated, in
November 2017 at the age of 83.
At one point, it was claimed he
was receiving a staggering 60,000
letters a year. The current online
Atwa community is in some ways
merely the latest example of how
his dark mythology attracts people
so alienated by society that even
murder seems justifiable. Manson
understood his appeal as well as
anyone. In 1989, interviewer
Penny Daniels asked him why
he thought so many disaffected
kids wrote to him. He answered,
“Because I am those kids.”Story by Kevin PerryAs a new film set in Manson-era Hollywood releases, an investigation...ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
IS OUT ON 15 AUGUST.‘ There was lifein [Manson]that attracted,his being, hisanimation...’09-19DetailsManson.indd 54 04/07/2019 08:38
60 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2019