Interview with Charles Manson

From San Quentin Prison. A look into the mind of Charles Manson.

NARRATOR: Gamesinsane.com. Can you handle us?

HOST: So Manson's sentence was commuted to life in prison. Now there's a book, Manson, In His Own Words, as told to Nuel Emmons. Emmons is an ex-con who first met Manson while serving a short term in prison for car theft. And true to the unwritten code of the underworld, Manson cooperated on the book because he owed Emmons a favor.

Today correspondent, Heidi Schulman, went to talk with Manson to find out after all these years, is there any remorse? Is he sorry? Does he feel guilty? Well then we here on the Today Show staff debated among ourselves whether to air his answers. Half of our staff said absolutely not. Even though Manson doesn't make a cent off this book, let's not give him any publicity. But another half said yes, believing that some of you are as curious as some of us are.

Well, at any rate, here is what Manson had to say.

HEIDI SCHULMAN: Charles Manson is serving his life sentence for murder in San Quentin Prison. That is where we talked with him, and with Nuel Emmons, author of Charles Manson, In His Own Words. Our conversation lasted an hour and a half, during which Manson was sometimes lucid, sometimes incoherent, and frequently manipulative.

From your words, as Mr. Emmons quotes him in this book, it's clear that you were guilty of murder, and yet he says in all his conversations with you, he never heard you express remorse. Have you never felt it?

CHARLES MANSON: Remorse for what? You people have done everything in the world to me. Doesn't that give me equal right? I can do anything I want to you people at any time I want to. Because that's what you've done to me. If you spit in my face, and smack me in the mouth, and throw me in solitary confinement for nothing, what do you think's going to happen when I get out of here?

Guilty, hm. I wouldn't do anything that I felt guilty about.

HEIDI SCHULMAN: You don't feel guilty at all?

CHARLES MANSON: There's no need to feel guilty. I haven't done anything I'm ashamed of. Maybe I haven't done enough. I might be ashamed of that, for not doing enough. For not giving enough. For not being more perceptive. For not being aware enough. For not understanding. For being stupid.

Maybe I should have killed 400-500 people, then I would have felt better. Then when I felt like I've really offered society something.

You know if I wanted to kill somebody, I'd take this book and beat you to death with it, and I wouldn't feel a thing. It'd be just like walking to the drugstore.

Do you feel blame? Are you mad? Do you feel like-- [GIBBERISH]

HEIDI SCHULMAN: Nuel Emmons is an ex-convict to first met Manson in prison in the 50s. He claims he wrote the Manson book after seven years of conversation with Manson to show that he's no leader, no guru, but just a loser.

Why should anyone care to read this book?

NUEL EMMONS: My purpose when I first started, was virtually to destroy the myth. I show that he's not as complex or as the occult leader, et cetera that he's been projected as being.

CHARLES MANSON: I don't fit in society, and I am incompetent. I'm definitely incompetent.

HEIDI SCHULMAN: That's not what I said.

CHARLES MANSON: Well, I say that. I say that. There's nothing wrong with being incompetent because you don't have to do as much. If you're competent, then you've got a lot to do. But there's another aspect of it, too.

I've learned to reflect. I just reflect back. I know I don't know. I know I'm stupid. I admit. I'm a pity, whatever. I never been a success at anything. I even got to the point where I didn't want to be a success at anything. What would being a success, what does that mean? Money? I've had all the money in the world three times and had to give it back. That's a stupid little game.

My awareness and my consciousness is not the same as somebody that goes to school and has a mom and dad. See, not having parents have left me in a another dimension, so to say. I don't have no bad going for nothing. I don't judge. I hardly even think about too much. It's hard for me to remember breakfast. In fact, if I didn't have two or three girls to help me, I would pretty much be the lost, and I wouldn't know what the hell I'm doing.

HEIDI SCHULMAN: You write that in all your conversations with Charles Manson, he never expressed remorse.

NUEL EMMONS: Have you seen any today? I mean, perhaps, he believes totally in his own mind that he's not guilty.

CHARLES MANSON: You guy's got this stuff in your head that I've murdered somebody. You've got it stuck in your brain that I've murdered somebody.

What do you want to call me a murderer for? I've never kill anyone. I don't need to kill anyone. I think it. I have it here.

HEIDI SCHULMAN: Who is this man you've been talking to for seven years?

NUEL EMMONS: Well, to me, he is a convict that was a failure. He's the person that is not capable. And I still lay it to the way the book reads, it wasn't to start cleaning the earth or anything. There was a drug burn that initiated the first one. And the black guy, the first tone of violence that surfaced, anyway. And then the death of Gary Hinman. There, again, it was dope related.

And it just kept feeding from there. And so it had no spiritual aspects at all. It was just a bunch of guys out there, kids out there, that was living, doing their own thing. And it used to be party time and play time. And then through drugs and the whole bit, well, it started getting a little bit nasty. A little bit meaner. And the first thing you know, there's murders.

CHARLES MANSON: In my whole life, I've burglarized a grocery store. Stole some nickels and dimes. Busted open a stamp machine. Stolen a few automobiles. And cashed a couple of checks. I'm a petty car thief. I've been with prostitutes and bums winos all my life. The street is my world. I don't pretend to go uptown and be anything fancy. I can, but I find more real in the world that I mean than I do the tinsel. And the real world is the one I have to deal with every day.

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