#and it officially states that murder is ok if the victim is a Bad Person

[hedge-rambles]

Once again reminding people that a lot of their ideas for justice in their utopian anarchist society are literally just lynch mobs.

And like, for those who aren't aware: there's a decent hypothesis that when a society uses capital punishment, the message people take home from that is less "well I'd better not murder anyone", and more along the lines of "sometimes murder is totally ok".

Hey bro/ster I'm super sorry to have to be the one to break this to you, but uh sometimes being a socialist means, you know, putting your dreams of terrorism down for a minute and talking about public policy and how your proposed form of government would like, uhhhhh................ work.

[blufox234isadumbname]

Why does no one ever talk about the abuse C!Tommy did to Dream? Tommy ruined everything C!Dream worked for when he first entered the world. He found it funny to break the rules and to drive C!Dream down a dark path. And then he hated it when c!Dream finally did something back. C!Tommy also murdered Dream twice. With every intention to kill him the third and final time… c!Dream isn’t perfect but c!Tommy practically caused his downfall but it doesn’t get talked about.

ok imma just- roll up my c!tommy apologist sleeves *ahem*

here's my response to this:

(All mention of members of the Dream SMP are characters, not the actual content creators behind them unless stated otherwise with the cc! tag, this is all within Minecraft roleplay and not reflective of the actual people

This also mentions the Exile Arc, which has themes of suicide and abusive relationships. If the subject is of discomfort, please scroll away)

I'm assuming that the first part is in reference to the early stages of the Dream SMP era, like in the same-ish month-long period when cc!Tommy joined (and officially when Tommy emerged to be a part of the slowly forming story at that point). This era of the Dream SMP is a little hard to gauge in terms of morals since the distinction of what's canon and non-canon just don't exist. At this point, it was before fully fleshed out characters were introduced, just the CCs as themselves messing around in a Minecraft server. Hence, a lot of the aspects, such as violence and psychological effects, of current DSMP lore aren't seen in the same serious regard during this era. It is still a part of lore but it's not to be really seen as "serious" - not unimportant but not exactly the most grounded in logic. Though, the word "abuse" is incredibly harsh to describe the early stages of the Dream SMP. It just implies Tommy deliberately causing trouble out of pure malice. The things that Tommy was at fault for don't refelct that kind of intention, most were the result of the first Disc War - which was instigated by Dream stealing the discs first. Other things were harmless pranks, not really meant to break someone's psyche. There was the conflict that occurred reflect the burning of Ponk's lemon tree but again no actual mind-breaking stuff happened on either Dream's end, just annoyance

Later on in the L'manburg era, again no sort of malice is shown. Dream was the one insistent on starting a war over L'Manburg's independence, Tommy has just pulled along and stood with Wilbur during the confrontations. The most consistent thing in the early eras of Dream SMP lore and early L'manburg is that Dream is seen to be the bad guy, though not as the malevolent force in more recent Dream SMP lore. He was more like a bully if anything, starting conflict to get what he needs and keep things under his control. Post-War and such had Dream be less of a threat and more of that one begrudging chaperone that hates a certain group of kids, also known as the L'manburgians. Dream was more cartoon villain than the careless monster he is presented during the more recent storylines.

So to say Tommy to be the reason for Dream's turn into a genuine and serious threat is false. If anything, Dream's own downfall through the storyline was mostly his own doing rather than someone else's. Again, the Disc War was started by Dream himself stealing the discs and holding them as leverage and the war for L'manburg's independence was caused by Dream's own insistence otherwise. No other force beckoned him to do so, just his own want to control the happenings on the SMP. Around Manburg's and Pogtopia's formation, Dream was acting out of interest of the SMP that he has power over, which included siding for the act of chaos and subsequent power that comes from it. Again, all out of his own volition, not a single person convinced him to not chase the promise of control. He could've just declined the Revival Book from Schlatt yet he accepted the bribe anyway. Same with letting Wilbur having the TNT and dethroning Eret.

It's already established during Tommy's Exile arc that Dream was already becoming a vile person, pushing away any close alliance aside from hiring Punz - even then, it was only a business relationship rather than one forged in close bond. All the things that led to Dream's descent into a more immoral person were his own choice. That included deliberately secluding and messing with Tommy during his exile. The entire arc was about the growing abusive relationship with Dream as the manipulator and Tommy as the victim. From destroying any armour and items Tommy had in order to prevent any way for retaliation, feigning friendliness to gain Tommy's trust and cutting off Tommy from any other source of support, Dream made the entirety of Exile a traumatic experience filled with conflicting feelings and depression. Even near the beginning, with the scene of Tommy looking down at lava in the Nether, Tommy already showed signs of decline in mental health. That was only further proven by the scene where Tommy attempted to jump off the dirt pillar.

Tommy had gone through hell yet managed to pull through, realised what he had experienced was abuse and headed off towards Technoblade's home in search of a better place of shelter. His leave from exile was healthy but doesn't diminish the sense of anger he had towards Dream. Even when his stance on Dream at the time was conflicting, still regressing back to the same belief Dream was his friend, he still held a hatred for Dream. That was further strengthened when he was able to overcome fears that stemmed from Exile, such as heights and Logstedshire itself. The finale to the Disc War began and Tommy was back to being played around by Dream, being threatened and forced to give up his items all over again. All the build-up then leads to almost everyone on the server entering through the Nether portal and Tommy finally getting revenge.

The scene where Dream was being killed until his last and final life wasn't just Tommy getting revenge, everyone else was backing him up. Most people on the server were fed up with Dream's doings, they all wanted Dream gone. It was only because Dream held something of importance, the Revival Book, that they wanted to spare him. Tommy's want to kill his abuser and enemy wasn't out of his own desire, it was fueled by everyone else's anger towards Dream too - which was further reinforced by the wall of important attachments that Dream intended to use against everyone else.

Moral ethics of whether death is justified in a Minecraft roleplay aside, Dream's death was simply akin to the downfall of any other villain. He was made within the story of that season to be unempathetic, with the lack of a perspective to see his side of things. It was a quality that made Dream a good villain in the first place, a villain you couldn't understand. A villain whose inner machinations were a mystery and thus made him much less like a pitiful human. To say that it was Tommy's fault that he became a villain is undercutting the purpose of Dream as a villain during that storyline of the season. It undervalues why he is a villain and genuine fear amongst others in the SMP. Additionally, saying Tommy was wrong for wanting to kill Dream undermines what he went through in exile. Disregarding the most important arc of the character just leaves an incomplete hole in him.

Hence, the reason that no one talks about Tommy being the downfall to Dream in becoming a villain is that it is untrue and completely devaluing to either character of what made them what they are in the story.

[babymetaldoll]

So happy together II (Spencer Reid / Reader)

Requested: Yes

Warnings: Frustration and cursing.

Category: Fluff

Summary: After years in the making, Spencer finally asked Reader out, just to bump into reality. They work at the BAU, and psychopaths don’t have a schedule.

Pairing: Spencer Reid / Reader

Word count: 2,1K

A/N: Seriously guys, thank you for all the nice comments 🖤  and thank you for requesting part two!!

Part 1

Masterlist

.Here’s the thing about the BAU. It’s a great job, with amazing people, that helps saving lives across the country.

But it doesn’t let you have an everyday life. And less, having dates. Including the date you’ve been waiting for years.

- We’ve got a case

Spencer was on his way to pick up (Y/N) for dinner when he got the text and nearly smashed the phone against the ground.

He knew it wasn’t Penelope’s fault to ruin his evening. She had no idea what she had gotten in the middle of. If she had known, it was most likely she would have caught the unsub by herself, just to let Reid and (Y/N) have their first date in peace.

But no.

Spencer felt a weird mix of anger, frustration, and… relief. Sure, he wanted to go out on a date with the girl he had been in love with for years. Years. What kind of person loves someone for years and never acts on it because of the deepest fear of rejection? Spencer Walter Reid.

But after he asked her out, and after miraculously she said yes, Spencer had no idea what was going to happen. And that was killing him. Statistically, he knew 76% of friendships could end up in a relationship, and 29% of those, in marriage. But he also knew just 51% got their best friend back when things went sour.

That was what scared him the most. Losing his best friend.

Besides, there was something else bothering him. He had no idea what he was doing. He had never been into a relationship. A real one. He had had one girlfriend for a few months when he was in college, and that was it. He didn’t need statistics to know he was most likely to fuck things up. Sure, he had been out on dates in the latest years, but none of those counted as a relationship.

Spencer Reid was looking for reasons to freak out. And he had plenty. He held his phone tight for a few seconds. There was no other way. He had to go to the BAU. 

- “Fuck you!!”- (Y/N) yelled as soon as she read the text from work. She was walking out of the bathroom, ready to go out on the date she had waited for years. And a psychopath had to ruin it all.

Of all days, of all nights, did it have to be that one?

(Y/N) had barely slept the night before. That’s how excited she was about her date with Reid. She even got a new dress. Sure, she was scared things wouldn’t work out, she had been afraid of that for years, but since (Y/N) heard him say “Doyouwannagooutwithme,” she couldn’t wait.

There was so much she wanted to do with Reid. Hold his hand, kiss him until her lips were numb, spend a whole day naked in bed with him. Wrap her arms around him and feel him doing the same as she buried her face against his chest. There was too much love in her heart, and she needed to express it once for all.

That until a psychopath decided it was time to make her life a little worse.

- “Raincheck?”- Spencer texted her, and she just sighed. It was sweet that he texted though she knew he hated it. 

- “We are doomed” 

.

- “There’s been a double homicide and child abduction in Wichita”- Aaron announced, but Reid wasn’t actually listening. His eyes were analyzing (Y/N) ’s face across the table. She looked different that day. Maybe it was his imagination, but he swore she had never looked more beautiful. And her beauty was now a magnet for him.

- “Reid?”- Aaron asked and forced him to wake up from his thoughts- “When we get there, I need you and (Y/N) to go talk with the forensic. We need to know everything you can get from the last victim’s body.”

Reid nodded and immediately met her eyes. She just cut him a small smile and blushed. At least they were going to spend some time together.

.

- “Hey”- (Y/N) whispered and sat next to Reid in the jet- How are you?

- “Good, you?”

- “Sleepy…”

- “Do you want me to go get you some coffee?”- it was impossible not to melt at those words. She smiled sweetly at him and shook her head.

- “I’m ok. Do you wanna go through the case files with me?”- that isn’t an exciting invitation: reading about dead people, crime scenes, and police records, except when it’s an invitation made by the one person you love.

Spencer smiled and (Y/N) moved a little closer to him. Closer, so his leg touched hers, and he felt the warmth of her bared skin. Maybe she had worn a skirt on purpose. His hands started sweating in a second. It was weird how he felt he couldn’t control himself around her anymore after just asking her out. They hadn’t been out yet, and now all he could think of was holding her and kiss her.

(Y/N) had problems concentrating, but she knew she had to. All she could see were Spencer’s lips parting, and the way he ran his tongue through them was probably illegal in many states. Besides, the way he raised his eyes to her each time he finished reading a page… he couldn’t look so good for someone who was reading about two men decapitated.

- “Reid?”- Morgan kept chuckling, as he noticed the moment between Spencer and (Y/N)- “Hey! kid!”  

- “Sorry, what?”- Derek shook his head, and Spencer knew right away what his friend was thinking- “So? no random fact about decapitation?”

- “Well… contrary to popular belief, decapitation is not that easy”- Derek asked for random, and random is what he got, ‘cos that was the first and only thing Spencer could come up with at that moment.

- “You don’t often hear “popular” and “decapitation” in the same sentence”- Rossi added and continued reading the files.

.

Despite the fact they were dealing with a hard case and that their heads were focused entirely on it, (Y/N) and Spencer managed to spend a little time together the three days they spent in Wichita. They would get coffee together in the morning and bring cupcakes to the team. 

Hotch was nice enough to set them together most of the time. They had no idea it was Aaron’s way to push them together. They even walked back to the hotel together once, just talking about all the silly random things they would always talk about. Just that now they would just stare in silence every once in a while. Both of them thinking about how it would feel to kiss. It was like their lips were calling each other.

And all just from one “Doyouwanngooutwithme”

.

The case was finally solved - luckily, it only took three days, for a moment (Y/N) thought it was going to take forever- and they were all on the jet again, ready to go back home.

Everybody was exhausted and in silence, most of them sleeping. (Y/N) made herself a cup of tea and sat alone at the back of the plane. It was hard each time they closed a case, ‘cos taking their minds off from all the darkness and murder wasn’t easy. Every time they traveled back home, she had a list of things to think about. All the things that made her happy. Her cat, her little nephew, to walk Lizzy with Reid, talk with Reid, laugh with Reid, watch movies with Reid.

It was time to face it: Reid was her list. He was the one person that could always make her happy.

- “Hey, what are you thinking?”- and speak of the devil, Reid sat next to her and smiled sweetly.

- “I was just… trying not to think about the case anymore”- technically, she wasn’t lying- “And you? what are you reading?”

Spencer sighed and showed her “The complete fiction of HP Lovecraft,” the book she had given him a few weeks ago, out of the blue, just because she loved the author and… and Reid.

- “Nice, how many times have you read it in these few days”

- “Five…”

There were many, many things Spencer could have added to that simple word. But he couldn’t, his brain shut off. There they were, the lips he wanted to kiss (and bite), smiling back at him. He couldn’t think. 

- “So… too bad we couldn’t go out for dinner”- (Y/N) felt a little embarrassed to bring it up. Still, someone had to do it anyway. They had danced around the subject those days, just smiling and blushing when they were together.

- “Yeah… too bad… I had reservations at this amazing place”- Reid felt like a dork after hearing himself, but he couldn’t just unsay it.

- “Yeah, well… anyway…”- and so, again, they just stared.

- “Doyouwannagofordinnerwithmewhenwegethome?”- and though he was whispering and slurring at the same time, (Y/N) managed to hear and understand what he was trying to say.

- “Now?”

- “Yeah… I know it’s late, but I know this great place...”

- “We are not eating chicken tandoori again”- she answered immediately- “You’ve dragged me to that place twenty-two times in the latest years… and before you ask, no, I didn’t count them, I’m just trying to make a point”

He smiled and nodded. There had been sixteen times, he knew it, but for once, he thought it wasn’t necessary to add that fact.

.

Paperwork was done and ready around ten. And though they were exhausted, both (Y/N) and Spencer were excited about their date. Only one detail. Spencer was nowhere to be seen.

- “Are you coming, (Y/N)?”- Prentiss asked as she walked to the elevator

- “Yeah, in a second, I just have to... “- and the phone on her desk rang

- “See you tomorrow, I guess!”- Emily waved and disappeared.

- “Hello?”

- “S.S.A. (Y/N) (Y/L/N), there’s someone here looking for you”- the call was coming from the front desk.

- “Who?”- that was new

- “Doctor Spencer Reid, he says he is here to pick you up for your date”- (Y/N) just giggled nervously and said she’ll be right there. She was drained after the case, and she didn’t look half as hot as she did on the dress she had gotten for their official date, but she was going to go out with Spencer, and that was what really mattered.

The elevator didn’t take her to the first floor fast enough, and she would have run over if she hadn’t felt her knees weaken.

Spencer Reid felt like a dork, but he was a happy dork. He had managed to call a florist’s, and they delivered a dedicated bouquet of (Y/N) ’s favorite flowers just on time. He was waiting for her standing in the middle of the lobby, smiling and looking straight at the elevator door. His heart just skipped a beat when he saw her walking over, slower than usual. She wanted to run to him, but she didn’t trust her legs. She had never been more nervous on a date before. 

- “Hi”- she whispered and giggled as she stood in front of him

- “Hi”- both of them let out a sigh and smiled at each other

- “The call was a nice touch”- (Y/N) said and turned to the front desk. The receptionist smiled and waved.

- “I had to make it an official date, even when we are here, which reminds me, these are for you”- Spencer was smoother than he realized, ‘cos (Y/N) was nearly melting at each one of his words.

- “Thank you”

- “So, ready to go?”- she nodded and held his arm as they walked- “Wait, there is just one thing I need to do before we leave”- Spencer stopped walking suddenly and (Y/N) looked a little confused

- “Did you forget something back at your desk?”

- “No, I just”- but he didn’t say another word. He just cupped her face with both hands and sweetly kissed her. (Y/N) held her breath in shock. Spencer was kissing her. Spencer Reid was kissing her. It was actually happening. 

His lips rubbed hers slowly as she reciprocated the kiss. It felt sweet and warm and tender, though slowly, as the kiss deepened, they could feel the passion hidden in them.

Despite the fact neither of them wanted to, they slowly moved apart and sighed. Reid rested his forehead on hers and closed his eyes for a second, trying to put himself together. That kiss got him higher than Dilaudid had ever done.

- “I didn’t see that coming”- she whispered and giggled

- “I’m sorry”- he whispered, feeling embarrassed

- “Don’t be”

- “I just knew I wasn’t going to focus on anything else but kissing you for the rest of the night… so I thought it was better to do it right now”

- “It was a good idea, I was going to do the same… so… dinner”- (Y/N) smiled at Spencer and held his hand tight. He nodded and started walking. But she stooped him

- “What is it?”- but instead of talking, she just kissed him again, and this time, she wrapped his arms around her tight.

- “Ok, now I’m ready.”

Taglist:

@shilohpug

[loudlytransparenttrash]

Yesterday marked the 8th anniversary of the death of Trayvon Martin. Oak Park and River Forest High School students walked out of class and marched down the street wearing ‘We are Trayvon’ hoodies before returning to the school where they blocked the main hall’s entrance, chanting they will not leave until their “racial equity” demands were met by the mayor, which included removing police officers from schools and to mark February 26 a day for black victims of police violence. “We don’t need more police or a new police station. We need more resources for the youth of color here. We demand resources go to us.” 

Black activist groups and figures such as the The King Center, Black Lives Matter, The Breakfast Club, BET, Common, Kerry Washington, Al Sharpton, along with numerous politicians joined to remind everyone on Twitter that Trayvon Martin was murdered for being black. It blows my mind that even after eight years, nobody seems concerned with the actual facts or the law. It’s obvious how content they are to combine misinformation to reach their own ridiculous conclusion, which is then used to justify their own racism and hatred.

From the very beginning, it was obvious the media and activists were setting up a bad situation by portraying the incident as racially motivated, once that seed was planted, all reasoning was gone. George Zimmerman was already guilty no matter what the evidence showed. Trayvon was black, Zimmerman wasn’t, therefore it just had to be racism and anything that goes against that assertion is further proof of racism. I would bet anything that those high school students and every other race baiting activist using Trayvon’s death as a racial political play haven’t heard the facts that make up their entire misleading narratives. Here they are, make up your own minds.

The Hoodie Narrative

In trying to turn the case into a racial narrative, the initial burst of publicity and activism turned on Trayvon wearing a hoodie. The Hoodie has become the symbol of protests, based on the assertion that Zimmerman found Martin suspicious because he was wearing a hoodie. But transcripts of the 911 call shows Zimmerman mentions a hoodie only once, and only in response to a question by the operator as to what the person was wearing. The dispatcher asks, “Did you see what he was wearing?” which Zimmerman replies, “Yeah a grey hoodie, either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes.” That’s it. 

That didn’t stop Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm wearing a hoodie, the “Million Hoodie March,” Harvard law students wearing hoodies with a sign “Do we look suspicious?,” Congressman Bobby Rush appearing on the House floor in a hoodie, the Hoodie March in Washington, the Miami Heat in hoodies. The hoodie has come to symbolize alleged racial profiling by Zimmerman, yet the narrative is not based on any known facts connected to the shooting. While Martin was wearing a hoodie that night, there is only assumption that Martin was considered suspicious by Zimmerman for that reason. 

Even if he was, that’s not racial profiling, unless only black people wear hoodies? There had been eight recent burglaries within the gated community and residents reported dozens more attempted break-ins. It was at night and Zimmerman told 911 that Trayvon was acting suspiciously walking around looking at all the houses. Considering a search of Trayvon’s backpack at his school showed it to contain a dozen pieces of women’s jewelry, including silver wedding rings and earrings with diamonds, as well as a screwdriver, why can’t we even consider the possibility that Trayvon was acting suspiciously and the Neighborhood Watch leader was just doing his job?

The Racial Narrative

The only narrative we ever hear from activists is Trayvon was followed and shot because he was black. That’s as far as their logic meter expands. It’s based on multiple falsehoods, most particularly the NBC News doctoring of police audio in which it falsely made it seem as though Zimmerman said he was following Trayvon because Trayvon was black. But that’s not what happened. Zimmerman only mentioned race when the police operator asked about race. The dispatcher asked “Is he white, black or Hispanic?” and Zimmerman replies, “He looks black.” This is the only mention of race.

There also was the claim that Zimmerman used the term “f**king coons” on the police tape. The activists have used the alleged racial epithet endlessly to paint this as a racially motivated hate crime. CNN had to backtrack after the audio was enhanced and experts gave their analysis after CNN originally stated that Zimmerman said “f**king coons.” In the official affidavit by State of Florida investigators, they concluded Zimmerman used the term “f**king punks” when referring to the recent break-ins by teenagers. 

The biggest thing that nobody wants to talk about is the FBI investigation that found no history of racism in Zimmerman’s past. Zimmerman had earlier angrily spoken out against the beating of a black homeless man and started a local initiative to help him. Zimmerman and his wife had tutored black children, he was a registered Democrat and voted for Obama. To further push the ‘white supremacy’ narrative, Zimmerman is persistently portrayed as white, even though he’s listed as Hispanic in his voter registration and he’s very clearly Hispanic, have they even seen him? Yet, he is painted as a white supremacist who assassinated an innocent black male for no reason other than Trayvon was black, it’s this myth that's generating all the hate, violence and division. 

Oh, and there was also widespread claims in the media that neo-Nazis were patrolling the neighborhood where the shooting took place, but of course Sanford Police ruled this story out immediately. 

Zimmerman Disobeyed Police Instructions Narrative

They say George Zimmerman supposedly was told by the police dispatcher not to leave his car, but did so against police instructions. This allegation is used to claim that the entire confrontation was Zimmerman’s fault, and had he merely followed police instructions, nothing would have happened. Zimmerman was not in the car at the time of the comment “we don’t need you to do that.” The 911 transcript proves at no time was Zimmerman ever told to stay in his car. Trayvon had become aware that he was under observation and started circling Zimmerman’s car while Zimmerman was inside talking to the police. At about the two minute mark, Trayvon runs. When Zimmerman did exit the vehicle it was in direct response to the dispatcher asking him the direction of Trayvon’s travel.

When the dispatcher asked if Zimmerman was still following the direction that Trayvon ran, Zimmerman said yes, the dispatcher said, “we don’t need you to do that” and Zimmerman replied, “OK.” There is not a single piece of evidence, none, that Zimmerman continued to follow Trayvon after this point. In fact, in the audio, he continues calmly talking to the dispatcher, telling him his phone number and even saying, “I want to get out of here, I don’t know where this kid is,” all without any sign he was chasing after Trayvon. Trayvon had more than enough time to achieve the safety of his father’s girlfriend’s condo had he truly been fleeing from a frightening Zimmerman. Instead, it was found that Trayvon launched an attack on Zimmerman from behind as Zimmerman was waiting for the police to arrive. 

Stand Your Ground Narrative

Despite constant outrage over Florida’s Stand Your Ground law being used in the trial, calling it a “license to kill,” it was never used by Zimmerman’s defense. It made sense for Zimmerman not to rely on SYG, because Stand Your Ground would only be relevant if Zimmerman had a route of exit, but the shooting took place while Zimmerman was on his back on the grass, his head having been pounded on the pavement and being beaten relentlessly by Trayvon. Witnesses say exactly the same thing. Trayvon was on top of Zimmerman, beating his head into the ground as Zimmerman was screaming for help. Activists claim that it was Trayvon calling for help, but it’s been long confirmed that it was indeed Zimmerman crying for help. Zimmerman had a broken nose, two black eyes and cuts to the back of his head where Trayvon slammed Zimmerman’s head repeatedly into the ground. Zimmerman’s back was also wet and covered in soil. Activists argue ‘but Trayvon was just a kid and Zimmerman was an adult,’ that’s why they only ever use photos of Trayvon as a kid, they don’t want you to know that Trayvon (6’2″) was much larger than Zimmerman (5’8″) and was in far better physical shape and condition. 

Forensic analysis demonstrated that the trajectory of the single shot fired and burns on Trayvon’s sweatshirt were consistent with Zimmerman being on his back with Trayvon hovering over him at the time of the shot. Since Zimmerman was pinned to the ground, he didn’t need to invoke Stand Your Ground because there was no reasonable means of avoidance. While the jury instructions did contain language similar, the SYG statutory protection itself was never invoked.

Bottom Line - The Jury Got It Right

Every piece of material and evidence was considered in court including crime scene evidence, witness statements, cell phone data, reconstruction analysis, ballistics reports, medical and autopsy reports and depositions. The verdict came as no surprise to those actually following the evidence. It came as a shock to those who bought into the racially charged false narratives, evident by the eruption on social media, the mass rioting, the outbreak of violence and the eventual beginnings of Black Lives Matter who carried these fabrications and deceit into the Michael Brown case and have since continued to glorify and martyr criminals in their efforts to whip up hate against the police, whites and America. At least it takes the attention off the staggering rates of crime and black lives being murdered that activists can’t blame anyone else for. (1, 2)

It’s sad that cases like Trayvon’s is used to teach black children that they must live in fear and anger because racism and white supremacy is everywhere and that at any point they can be killed, all because they’re black. It’s child abuse. Of course we can mourn Trayvon and remember him, but let’s not use him as a radical race movement’s martyr. Protesting against myths ruins the legitimacy and integrity of any future protest against real racism. If we need to keep fabricating and twisting stories to prove that we’re being hunted and oppressed, shouldn’t that be evidence of the opposite? Shouldn’t it be a good thing that Trayvon wasn’t actually killed for being black? Unfortunately, too many will say no, which perfectly sums up the mental imprisonment and why nothing will ever change. 

[jessiewre]

Day 22

Sun 26th Jan 💜

It’s been a year to the day since we lost Nanny. That’s mad isn’t it. Miss that legend.

Woke up at about 5am because we’d gone to bed too early, but managed to power through and stay in bed till 7am. Phil got up and continued researching his new obsession - a half marathon near Kilimanjaro - and I joined him at 8:30am for Spanish omelette breakfast included in our 25$ a night room. Good deal that init. People say that in London you’re never further than like 5 meters away from a rat. Well thats like me and good deals, there’s always one close by for me to sniff out. Maybe I’m more like one of those pigs and the deals are truffles.

I digress...

The hostel manager was now wearing a chefs coat and I realised he was now the chef. What a multi-talented chap he was. I threw him into a frenzy by asking for salt, pepper, ketchup and chilli sauce, and eventually went into the kitchen myself to assist.

The ketchup was in a huge bucket bottle in the fridge and he gracefully glugged it out into a plastic squeezey bottle that he couldn’t find the lid for. Yum.

Shout out to Stella and Helen who will surely boke at that description of keptchup.

We got bodas to the Woman’s Centre for the recommended walking tour starting at 10am - but there was a big bike race on believe it or not, and so road blocks meant we had to walk the last kilometre. Phil was loving the bike race, I could see his legs twitching like he was imagining himself on a bike that moment, but I soon snapped him back to reality by power-walking ahead to avoid us being super late to the walk.

The sky was rapidly turning a dark shade of grey but Phil assured me that the weather report he’d checked stated that there would be no rain until midday or later.

You may be able to sense where this is going.

We arrived at the Centre and sat in the sofa area for the introduction, and the exact moment the woman began to talk and tell us about the community, the rain began to thunder on the metal roof and no one could hear a word she said. After 10 minutes, the intro finished and the rain actually calmed down a little, but then it went totally crazy again and me and Phil looked at each other like...hmm should we just not do this walking tour.

Another English girl there was thinking the same thing and the 3 of us decided to ditch the tour and head back the next day, while the 3 older people and a young American woman went off in the torrential rain with umbrellas. Umbrella’s are all good and well but I couldn’t see another soul on the streets so I seriously doubted how good a community walking tour would be in this weather. We chatted to the English girl, Esther, and she was ending a weeks work doing research for the Princes Trust who she works for. In a nutshell, she creates programmes for local groups in different countries to integrate technology into their lives to improve their prospects and quality of life. Really interesting! Phil mentioned that she should hang at our hostel later if she wanted as we were planning on trying out the bowling alley on site, and she was really up for that, especially considering she was in Kigali on her own and it was her last night.

The rain eventually calmed down enough for us to jump on a boda and we decided that considering the rain, it would be appropriate to visit the Genocide Museum at this point. We knew we were going to visit it at some point so made sense to be inside during the rain.

We were really hungry though and didn’t want to rush through the museum, so thankfully there was a cafe on site where we had a vege burger and vege panini, both with chips. We decided we’d try and lay off the chips for a while after that meal, it was the chip that broke the camels back.

The Rwandan Genocide museum was a harrowing and necessary visit.

The below information is upsetting, I’ll warn you now.

genocide

noun

noun: genocide; plural noun: genocides

1. the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.

To briefly summarise, the problems began when the country was ‘colonised’ - or should we say if we’re being honest, when the country was invaded against its will. The Germans were first in 1899 then the Belgians in 1916 and then the Belgian’s decided to split the country into three different groups. Ultimately this created a sort of competition between the groups of people that had never existed before and this was what they say sparked the issues in the country. Fast forward to 1994, and the genocide officially began, over a period of 100 days - neighbours were murdering neighbours, friends were murdering friends. Relatives even betrayed each other. By turning people against each other, the ringleaders were able to sit back and watch the killings happen for them.

Being in the country now, its very difficult to imagine it happening, as it feels vibrant, friendly and safe. But the images in the museum leave you under no illusions. People were mindlessly slaughtered, no one was spared - children, pregnant women and men. It was absolutely mind-blowingly horrendous.

The museum talks a lot about how the international community sat back and let it happen, like Rwanda was on another planet that no one cared about. There is obviously a lot of pain from that which was difficult to read about.

But there were also a number of people who put themselves on the line by hiding people in their houses and gardens, saving many lives. Unfortunately, there were not enough of those people and over a million people were killed. They are still uncovering mass graves today.

There were videos playing with interviews from survivors talking about the guilt they feel from being the only member of their family who survived. But incredibly, they spoke about forgiveness and said they would like to forgive the perpetrators if they were willing to ask for forgiveness. They spoke about moving forward with only peace in mind, as this was what would move Rwanda forward in a peaceful way. By seeking revenge, the violence and pain would continue, they said. It’s unbelievable to hear that from someone who watched their innocent young siblings and mother murdered by machete in front of their very eyes. You can’t even imagine what this person has gone through.

One of the most difficult parts of the museum was The Children’s Room. This section had beautiful photos of child victims printed in large portraits displayed around the room, with a small plaque underneath each one with bullet points of information about the child, like:

Name

Age

Favourite Snack

Best Friend


Then the final point for every child was

Cause of death

The descriptions here were detailed and distressing.

Obviously there is a huge amount of detail missing from this account of the genocide and I urge you to have a read about it if you have time and are interested.

We left there after a few hours taking it all in and went to find the Inema Art gallery, as we’d read about it being a really cool artists space that has had a lot of international interest.

It was different to what I expected, as there wasn’t actually a lot of pieces in there - more like a few extremely large pieces, each priced around $5000. So obviously, we bought two and headed off.

Well anyway, some of the artists were there stood near their art in smart clothes and were hoping for a super rich muzungu coming in and buying everything. That was not going to be us, so we thanked them and headed to the cafe for a little coffee.

Not before I asked them if there were any female artists there.

One guy said No, the women in Rwanda seem to stick to the craft-making and THEN he said that even though many are good at art, he thinks they are lacking in passion.

I said Hmm perhaps you means Confidence, not passion.

He was like Oh yeah, maybe that.

Yeah MAYBE THAT mate.

We boda’d back to the hostel and Phil donned up in his gear for a run. Just before heading off, he finally booked himself a spot onto the Kilimanjaro half marathon in Moshi, Tanzania on 1st March. FFS. Better get practicing on my excited supportive girlfriend look then.

Meanwhile I sat in the hostel garden watching videos on how to use Procreate on the iPad. Suddenly realised Phil had been gone AGES and then he rocked up having run like 10 MILES and then said Oh also, I may have tripped over and potentially broken my toe.

He’d taken out his phone to check the map and ended up kicking a bit of metal sticking out of the group, and then he’d fallen over and made a few new cracks on his phone screen (to join the 5 that were already there).

Wicked.

Phil had a quick shower and change while hobbling around on his bad foot (I hear broken toes are brilliant for half marathons), and Esther arrived at the hostel, so we went searching for a restaurant open on a Sunday. After a few fails, we eventually stumbled across a place called Afrika Bite and negotiated the 10k per person meaty Rwandan platter down to 5k each for a vegetarian version for all of us. It was so good! Garlic potatoes, peanut sauce, rice, vegetables, fried banana, salad, plus some ‘fish fingers’ ordered as an extra. Such a welcome relief to eat something local and delicious. Shout out to those who are reading this blog mainly for the food descriptions.

We went back to the hostel to play in East Africa’s 2nd bowling alley (the only other one is in Nairobi!) and Esther made sure she mentioned she had a ‘bad neck’. That would explain her unbelievably bad scoring thats for sure. Ok now to be fair, Phil the physio also advised that she use the heaviest ball available which turned out to be truly awful advise and after a stagnant run of about 2 points in 6 goes, she tried a really light ball - and actually hit some pins! Go Esther.

Can I also mention that this bowling alley had a system where a bloke hidden at the end would organise the pins and reset them for us manually using a kind of lever system. He always managed to move his hands out of the way before the ball struck the pins of course.

Esther headed back to her hotel and we ended up playing basketball on the two hoops game with Desire the manager. Our quick game of ‘How many can you score in 1 minute’ managed to take over our lives for over an hour. My record was 23, Phil’s 24 (he’s taller init) and Desire managed 33 (well, he works there so ya know). Was addictive and super fun and I got the impression Desire will spend the next year working on his pb.

[hazbinextgeneration]

(To spite a hateful anon on tumblr Warning: Also possible trigger warning of abuse in the bio) Name: Amalfia (her mortal name was Dorothy but only her husband knows this) Nicknames: Fuzzy(by most of the staff), Mally, Pony, Flower(By Lou) Gender: female Died: Late 1920s Cause of death: murder Occupation: PA of a casino owner Demon type: Anthro unicorn (not sure if this counts as a demon) Likes: flowers, her husband's flirting(though she won't admit it), chocolate, making small stain glass figures, sometimes dancing Dislikes: fake abuse victims, caramel, perfume(it smells awful), Charles, too revealing clothes Personality:a little skittish but has learnt to stand up over time, can come off a shy or a easy target, friendly and loyal once you get to know her personally, but stubborn and protective towards those she loves Former Life: Amalfia was born to a wealthy loving mother and a neglectful father known as the Johnsons in the earlier 1900s. She doesn't know or remember much of her mother after her parents divorced shortly after her birth which left her to be raise by numerious nannies growing up. While her father wasn't abusive, he was very neglectful with his business job and treated her more like an object than a person. Which left her a little lost growing up. Which ultimately lead her to be forced into an arranged marriage by her father and another family. Her fiancé was a very controlling and...violent person, but also very errogant. He took delight in the many trophies of rare animals his hunts brought him. It was on one of these trips that he made the fatal mistake of taking a prized possession of a God. In pure rage for the crime, the God cursed the man's life. Including him being disowned from his family, and being killed in an earthquake along with his fiancé.  General Bio: Now Dead, She would go on to be cursed to replace the very thing that caused the God's anger and sent straight to hell by the god. Amalfia received the two scars on her body from the impact she received descending into hell, things would proceed to get worse when she was picked up by scavengers in her panicked and hurt state and sold to one of Hell's wealthiest at the time as a new 'attraction'. It wasn't until th building she was living in was attacked by exterminators was she able to leave.  Now years later, Amalfia is in a better place with two children and a husband of her own working as her husband's personal assistant. Because of her unusual appearance and magic in hell, you'll barely see her without Cyber or Lou outside the casino. On first glance, she could come off as weak or shy, but will lash out if someone gets too close. Amalfia suffers from slight social anxiety and doesn't take too kindly to strangers touching due to some things that happened to her in life. When not on the casino floor, you'll often find her talking with some of the staff, usually Rouge or Cyber and sometimes Disease, or chasing after her two young children. It's not easy being a mother of two mischevious twins with a father who constantly spoils them. And when he's not he's usually doing something just to turn her face red. She has met her previous partner one last time in death before he was violently dismembered by her now husband Amalfia doesn't really know fully of Charlie's Happy Hotel. She knows of the princess running a hotel, but hasn't really paid attention to the 'rumors' her husband complains about. And that's the way Lou likes it. They both have gotten some attention because of what she is and how well known Lou is, but nothing too bad has happened yet. Relationships: Lou: The man she calls the love of her life and the one to mark her, Mally puts more trust into her melodramatic husband than one would think. It was an him who approached her first who a job offer and made the first move but she can and will tease him about his embarrassed face. The two have a fairly healthy relationship, but she doesn't know about a lot of his 'other business' outside the casino with his stash of souls and black market dealings. Overall, she dislikes it when he makes it a big deal about something which can lead to fights, and she threatens to lock him out of their room,but he always manages to lift her spirits......And by that I mean he would literally pick her up and hold her hostage until she gives in. She does like it when he flirts with her and calls her flower. She tried calling him Plant Daddy ounce to flirt back....but it only ended up with him latching onto her tighter than chains. Cyber: The best friend one could ask for and the one she shared the full extent of her past. If there was something bothering her or she needed help convincing Lou into doing something, Cyber would be her go to person. She's been dealing with Lou's antics way longer than she has. The two have a pretty good friendship and work partnership as far as they go and Cyber would usually be the one to push Mally into trying new things. Mostly drinks or some of the newer clothes and games Lou installed in the casino. Sometimes she would ask Cyber to watch the children or help keep Lou off her back when she needs a break or whenever something comes up. Disease: The snake demon in her words is pretty strange and very open about his likes. (I'm referencing the picture Palette did with Mally interacting with the gang) And quite honestly she's pretty weirded out by him. Don't get her wrong, he's a great father to Noodle and pretty good at his job, but he could make his.....admiration for the female body less known. On VERY rare occasions if Cyber's not around, she'd ask him to watch the twins or sometimes ask for advice from him since he was already a parent and had more experience. Luckily he has been able to stop a rampaging Midnight whenever the twins do something to one of her potions. Midnight: The two ladies are on...ok-ish terms. They're both well aware of Lou's past affection for Midnight and while Midnight is thankful she doesn't have to deal with a lovesick weed, their hellspawn are nothing but trouble. If Fern hasn't booby-trapped one of her potions, then Rosie is acting like she owns the whole place. One more than one occasion, she'd have to chase after the two little thieves for stealing something or causing another explosion. She has sense gotten a heavy duty lock to her lab.  Noodle: Mally is unsure of what kind of relationship she has with the young girl. They don't interact much to be honest, but when they do she acts a lot like Disease in a way and can sometimes be found casing trouble with the twins. To show some kindness towards Midnight, he treats Noodle with kindness and tries to keep her out of trouble if she can. Rouge: Has been officially deemed Fuzzy by the bug demon and laughs at the original nickname. Rouge's very upbeat manner and forward ways makes her fun to be around and Mally doesn't mind trying some of the more exotic drinks the barlady comes up with. She is sure Rita and her have something going on but she's not 100% sure yet. She accidentally walked in on the two having a flirt battle? and hasn't talked about it in case she is mistaken. But is greatful to Rouge for slipping her the plant fertilizer when she was pregnant with the twins without Lou knowing. Rita: She is very unsure of what to say about the strange woman. The two don't really talk or see much of each other outside of Rita's business meetings with Lou or the one time she accidentally walked in on one of her visits to Rouge. That was awkward. She hasn't really said anything and Rita never brings it up so I guess they came to a silent agreement to forget about that. Her frenemy relationship with Lou is something she questions. Charles: The two have only met once by chance when the twins were very young and she'd rather not meet again. He acted pretty rude once he found out who she was and who the kids are. Amalfia doesn't appreciate what Lou did to Charles, but she also doesn't appreciate the comments towards her or her children. Or the fact that Rubix broke Lou's nose, but that one'son him. Rosie and Fern: She loves her children to death and would die for them if need be. But she really doesn't appreciate how they act because of how much Lou lets them get away with and how much he spoils them. Granted she never had children before so she still wonders on what she should or shouldn't do as a mother, but these two seem to take after their father very easily. (Charles, Rita, Cyber, Lou, Disease, Noodle, and Midnight belongs to @palettepainter  Fern and Rosie belongs to both of us.)

[douxreviews]

Jessica Jones - ‘A.K.A. Sorry Face’ Review

"I’ll come down when you’re ready for my official statement. 'Til then, I’ll be drunk."

Man, this season is really clipping along now that things are moving.

I have to admit, I expected Erik's rescue to take longer. Like, at least until next episode. And yet we clipped right through it here and landed soundly on the moral dilemma on the other side.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, let's start at the beginning.

When last we saw our hero, she and Trish had tracked down Sallinger's 'big tanker of body parts.' Jessica had prudently gotten Trish out of the area in order to preserve her anonymity vis a vis the local serial killer set. This all works, and I'm really enjoying how they're playing things as regards Jessica being the voice of reason who understands what portions of the system you have to work with versus Trish being chock full of newly-empowered vigilante enthusiasm. That's a thread which continues throughout this episode and I suspect is going to develop in a lot of big and unexpected ways over the rest of the season. (No spoilers, I haven't watched anything past 'Sorry Face' for the sake of not influencing my review.)

I do, however, have some questions about the logistics of the setup. Does Sallinger's family own the railyard or something? Because otherwise it's a little unusual that a tanker car in that good of condition is just hanging out uninspected and full of clever traps for the passing superhero. Those things aren't cheap, and generally aren't left unaccounted for where the general public can get to them.

Speaking of Sallinger, we got a lot of answers this episode regarding what his deal is. Apparently he has some sort of profound inferiority complex regarding his deceased brother and views anyone with super powers as having 'cheated' at becoming a better person, whereas he views himself as having 'earned' being seen as a superior person due to his intellect and all of the degrees he's worked for. OK, I'll buy that, and is anyone not assuming that he killed his brother himself? What is a little vague at this stage is what his game plan with victims typically is when they aren't superpowered. Clearly he doesn't exclusively hunt people with super powers, since Erik's having them was genuinely a surprise to him. Prior to finding that out his stated goal was to photograph 'the moment (Erik) realized his true worth,' whatever on Earth that might mean.

Is it just about demeaning people and making them feel worthless in order to feel superior about himself? Are the photographs a reminder of how bad his victims felt about themselves at that moment? Why does he appear to keep both the photographs and the body parts as trophies in separate locations? That's a little unusual for a serial killer. There are still a lot of questions about Sallinger waiting to be answered.

And I adored the detail that it was Chef Casper kissing him that freaked him out enough to leave without finishing that particular kill. That was a fascinating and humanizing detail.

Jessica once again proves that she's actually a really good PI by tracking down Erik in a completely believable way, allowing for the usual comic book plotting level of coincidence curve. But the moments when I realized why I love this character so much were three specific instances where she had absolutely no time for playing games. First when she was straightforward with Malcolm about Erik reading him as about a three on the evil scale. She didn't attempt to control his choices or how he responded to that information, but she was shooting straight from the hip on the 'you're headed down a dark path and you should be aware of that' conversation.

The second instance was of course when she had absolutely zero spare seconds for trying to help Trish hide the fact that she has super powers from her mother. Throwing her out of the window was a little on the extreme side, but it certainly brought everybody up to the same point in the conversation very, very quickly. Nice touch that Trish was wearing the traditional Hellcat color scheme for the conversation by the way; someone in wardrobe has a puckish sense of humor.

And third and lastly is the moment in the opening voiceover where Jessica admits to herself, just for a moment, that she wants to be a hero. That finding the bodies isn't just what her mother would want, it's what a hero would want. She's slowly allowing herself to view herself as heroic, and that's a big step.

Other things that were great about this one include how right Malcolm was about the correct way to handle Berry. He was absolutely right that if she didn't choose to come on her own that she would never stay. He then loses points for taking the beating of Gor way too far and then cheating on Zaya.  Berry is a fairly toxic person. There's no chance that 'causing chaos in Malcolm's relationship' wasn't at least a part of why she propositioned him.

And hey, speaking of toxic relationship interference, everything about the exchange between Jeri and Kith's son Laurent was riveting and I love how complicated and ugly the show allowed both of them to be while still keeping both of them totally relatable and pitiable.

So, Sallinger is going to be released from custody and Erik won't testify against him because that would involve a year in prison, which considering his superpower is a non-starter option. That's not un-understandable, if that's a word. Couldn't Trish testify, though? Or Chef Casper? I hope they address those questions.

Bits and Pieces:

- I used to maintain at least a small amount of empathy for Dorothy, controlling though she was. That's all gone now after the completely toxic way she responded to Trish having powers. She made it all about herself in the most damaging and hurtful way possible, and I honestly hope that she's Sallinger's next victim.

- We're all wondering how much Zaya had to do with Rand Corp leaving Jeri's firm, right? We saw her on her way to go and deal with them and the next thing we hear Rand has jumped ship. That can't be a coincidence.

- How nice to see Benowitz again and see how well he's doing now that he's out of the closet. His secret excursions to 'The Chocolate Bar' were part of the episode 'A.K.A. Ain't We Got Fun,' which was the one I reviewed during last season's round robin reviews. As a result, I'm feeling a little proprietorial about Benowitz.

- The last couple of reviews have mentioned a little uncertainty about what Jeri wants from Kith, exactly. It seems pretty clear to me that what she wants is to not die alone and she doesn't have enough time to start from scratch with a new relationship so she's taking whatever steps she has to to re-establish her relationship with Kith as the quickest route to having someone with her. This sort of implies A: that Jeri is a sociopath, and B: I may be as well.

- Sallinger's father stabbed him in the chest at a funeral luncheon? You know we're going to get more of that story.

- Jessica's reaction when Dorothy made the crack about there being better lesbians out there for Trish was priceless.

- I'm sorry, Casper, you seem like a nice guy and a decent chef. But serving a steak medium well is totally valid grounds for violent murder.

- Erik and Trish have a surprisingly fun dynamic. I hope we get more of them together.

- Jeri's interest has been piqued regarding the trainyard bodies. I wonder where that's going.

- Sallinger said 'Do you see?' to Erik at one point in the torture. That was clearly a Red Dragon shout out, right?

Quotes:

Malcolm: "A serial killer kidnapped your brother." Berry: "What?" Malcolm: "Erik might already be dead. Guess who’s next."

Jessica: "You should be scared. And worried. And pessimistic."

Dorothy: "There are much better lesbians out there."

Jessica: "I assumed that you had facial recognition software, being that you’re so well funded these days."

Dorothy: "My problem with Jessica isn’t her powers, it’s that she’s rude, violent and ungrateful."

Sallinger: "It’s me. You’re allergic to me."

A super fun episode that really got the plot clipping along at a nice pace and ended somewhere different from where I expected.

Eight out of ten reasons to be scared. And worried. And pessimistic.

---

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

[kokina-kizoku]

Noblesse fic: His last wish -Chapter 1-

His last wish, by Kokina-Kizoku

Summary: Raizel disappeared, leaving his servant devastated by loneliness and mourning, slowly sinking into madness. But it seems that someone in this world still wants Frankenstein to get up. (Rating: K+. Relationship of friendship between Frankenstein and Ragar Kertia.)

Author’s note: Here is the first chapter! I recommend going to read the prologue before for a better understanding. It can be found here:https://kokina-kizoku.tumblr.com/post/174870899004/noblesse-fic-his-last-wish-prologue The prologue takes place in the past, and this chapter in the '' present '', after the fight with the First Old and before the one with Crombell. I thank @foggymagic for correcting my horrible English grammar. I am really grateful!

The laboratory was plunged into darkness, with a few lights flashing faintly on experimental machines. Stifled murmurs and muffled entreaties were heard  in the other room as M-21, Tao, and Takeo cautiously advanced in his direction. 

"Please, let me live, I won't ask for anything else, just my life... argh! Please!" A shiver ran down the spines of the modified humans. The scary atmosphere and the piercing shouts  were more than enough to call forward horrible, bloody memories. Frankenstein had decided to investigate in this abandoned Union base, see if he could find data on Doctor Crombell and the experiments he had led here. The'd chosen to follow him discreetly at the last moment, just in case he met with some ill-intentioned enemies. The scientist was in no condition to fight after his duel with the former First Elder, they all knew, but no one dared say this aloud.

They had mentally prepared for this anxiety, especially M-21. However, they had forgotten the extent. Atrocious, the feeling of suffocation pressing on them, rooms stagnant and putrid, filled with corpses of subjects…. He had seen enough to chill his soul there and the three friends looked at one another anxiously, trying to reassure each other.

"Ha ha, I expected it." Said Tao, laughing nervously. "I can't believe, all the same, that we were able to spend most of our lives in a place so horrifying. We've gotten used to living in a bright and reassuring house now…."  "It's true," answered Takeo, peeking though the cracked door where the shouts came from. "Frankenstein can handle himself, but it is strange that he so strongly insisted on coming alone.... We did well to follow him. Apparently this laboratory is still used by the Union."  M-21 steeled himself, moving towards the door and opened it with a hesitant push, entering the room, followed by his two companions. Nothing would have been able to prepare them for what waited for them inside. Walls were splashed with fresh blood, the smell of death floated in the air, and Frankenstein stood, his expression terrifying and glinting with hatred, his white fingers squeezed around the throat of an unfortunate scientist who begged for his life, the face contorted with fear. He tried to speak, but the more he attempted, the more the blond man tightened his hand, his jaw clenched and mauve flashes of lightning radiated off his body. "I beg you, just let me live!"  "What? Live? What makes you think you deserve it? WHY WOULD A PERSON LIKE YOU DESERVE TO LIVE?"  M-21, Tao and Takeo were paralyzed with horror and bewilderment. They knew that Frankenstein tended to be wild and impulsive, but never they had seen him act... so cruel.  Finally, M-21 leaped forward and grabbed his arm, ignoring his instincts roaring at him to run away as fast as possible. It was Frankenstein, he would not hurt him, right? The man tensed when he touched him, without looking him. All his attention was concentrated towards the object of his hatred. "STOP THAT!" Shouted M-21. Frankenstein's eyes widened upon hearing the voice of the modified human. His fingers relaxed slightly around the neck of his victim. "You are a good person." He pursued in a lower voice, "You cannot become like them…. Stop, please, this man is clearly weaker than you." The scientist released him with abrupt movement, letting his arm fall along his body. He turned the head slowly and looked at M-21. The murderous light in his blue eyes vacillated then disappeared. "What are you doing here?" "We... we followed you. We wanted to be certain that you would be safe." Frankenstein did not answer. He his eyes blankly stared into space, his tightened fists trembling with frustration. There was no more anger in his eyes, only despair. "Are you OK?" Asked M-21 as he slowly approached. "Someone told you bad news?" "Yes," he murmured. Another moment of silence followed, broken only by the moaned of the Union scientist who crawled as far as possible away from Frankenstein. He spared the scientist a contemptuous glance, then turned around by throwing to the trio. "There is somebody whom I have to go save. Leave, and warn master that I shall not return home before sundown." "But," tried to object Tao, still worried about him, "we should not..." "No. Leave me alone." "... Good. Come on, guys." The three modified humans left the room after a last look at Frankenstein. "I have never seen him so upset. What do you think is going on? Who does he have to rescue?" Questioned M-21, quickly walking to leave the base as fast as possible. "I don't know." Retorted Takeo. "Normally, for him to lose control of himself so much, it'd be because his master is in danger or something of the like... Let's hurry to warn Raizel-nim, I have a bad feeling about this." They left the base and flew away in the setting sun, in the direction of Seoul. Remaining in the laboratory, Frankenstein did his best to calm down. He had seen well that his attitude had shocked his children. Under normal circumstances, he would have explained to them what was happening, but nothing was normal, exactly. He squeezed the USB key Lunark had given him a few hours ago in his hand. "Frankenstein, it is very important that you are alone when you view its contents", she had said. "I advise you to go to the Union laboratory in the Seoul suburbs, because the message it contains is bound to it. You can take advantage of it to research Crombell." He had followed the instructions of the she-wolf, reluctantly. She had strongly insisted that it was important that he see the contents of the key alone, and he had understood why from the first minute of the video. As he thought about it again, he felt the hate coming back to goad him and he had to restrain himself so as not to attack the Union scientist who writhed on the floor in a corner of the room again.

Frankenstein entered the USB key the reader of the computer and opened the only file which it contained. The face of Lunark appeared to the screen by sizzling. The she-wolf seemed disturbed, and when she began to speak, it was in a trembling tone that he had never heard from her before. "Hello. I preferred to tell you this information by video, it will be easier at the same time for you and for me... I... I would have probably had to speak you about it earlier but it was not the right time, he would have been too dangerous for you to try to invade a Union base while they were still active." Lunark closed eyes a few moments and continued slowly, as if she planned that the next sentence would change everything: "I learnt that you... had been the friend of Ragar Kertia." From those words, dozens of questions, some crazier than others flooded the mind of the fair haired human. How had she known? Why mention it now? It seemed completely absurd that Lunark appeared so distressed simply talking about a person of the past… "A person of the past?" He realized the thought with a pang in his heart. "Since when do I consider him like that?" "When I was in the Union," continued Lunark, "I had access to certain secret information. This is the way I discovered that the former Leader of the Kertia Clan had not entered eternal sleep as everybody had believed..." Frankenstein's hands began to tremble."It's not possible, it can't ..." "I made certain searches on this matter. Apparently, he would have asked to the Previous Lord for permission to stay in this world... because..." He stopped breathing when she kept silent, camera showing her eyes clearly downcast.  "Because what?" And the recorded, mechanical voice of the she-wolf, started again, sending his emotions into turmoil. "...because he worried about you. He was afraid that you would do something out of desperation after your master departed... He abandoned his Soul Weapon and decided to exile himself some time before going to meet you." "Why? Why didn't you ever come? What happened, Ragar?''  "And that is when the Union came into play." A chilling and crawling fear began to sneak like poison Frankenstein's mind. He had already felt it before, this human feeling that he normally characterized as weakness. The terror of losing his master, of seeing his die. The paralysis which seizes our senses when we are afraid for somebody that we care for. He began to glimpse the truth between Lunark's awkward sentences and it was abominable. "Frankenstein, I am sincerely sorry... they... beat him easily given that he did not have his weapon. You can probably suspect that happened...they looked long time for a noble to conduct experiments on and... finally, he should be in here somewhere, in this base. Officially, it's been abandoned, but Crombell wanted to keep the secret on this particular case, I found out accidentally by searching archives. He is still alive, I'm absolutely certain, but who knows in what state…. You should hurry. Goodbye, and good luck." The saddened face of the she-wolf flashed on the screen then disappeared. The next moment, the experimental machines, medical instruments and the laboratory's windows flew into pieces, electric purple flashes of lightning radiating everywhere. No scream in the world would have known how to describe the extent of the hatred which burned Frankenstein's heart. His imagination ran wild, images, growing ever horrifying, following one after another in his head. Ragar's thin body attached to a torture chair, blood flowing from his mouth and wounds, a severe pain glittering in his eyes which had formerly looked at him with so much friendship. His desperate roarings resounding between the walls of a laboratory, Ragar twisting in suffering, humiliated and used as an object, calling him, cursing him…. "I curse you, Frankenstein! All this is of your fault!" Frankenstein dug his nails into his palms, a crazed expression etched into his face. He did not feel physical pain anymore. His anguish had become too powerful. "I curse you... We curse you! Frankenstein, why is a monster like you is alive?" "ENOUGH!" He fell on his knees, his throat tightening. Dangerous. He began to hyperventilate... Suddenly, the door opened with crash and a scientist penetrated the room. "Hey! Who are you? What are you here for... URGH!" Frankenstein's eyes glowed purple as he squeezed the throat of the man, murmuring in a choked, rabid voice: "What did you do with my friend?" Frankenstein slid the USB key in his pocket. He had lived difficult times in his life, but this one was terrible and destabilizing. Ragar, whom he had always assumed as having entered eternal sleep had suffered for centuries... "Is it my fault?" He wondered, an even more potent sadness invading him. "Not, it's not me," he decided. "It's are them. Fortunately, M-21 had stopped me, or I probably would have killed this wretch without giving him time to explain where Ragar is."  "Where is he?" He asked with an semblance of calm. "The noble you've been using for your experiments," he added after receiving a confused and terrified look.

"In...in room B-71...the cellar…."

He hid his face in his hands when Frankenstein advanced slowly towards him, but he only crossed and left through the door which led to the cellar, much to his relief. The blond human went down the stairs, descending them as quickly as possible. He met nobody on his way and reached the room B-71, breaking the lock with his foot. The wall cracked when he entered, slowly this time, afraid of what he was going to discover. That Ragar lived sent him into a whirlwind of avenging fury. The walls of the room and the lights disappeared from his vision, the only still clear thing which he could see was a tank filled with medicinal water, where the body of his friend floated. His hair, fine, fair, and loose, tousled around his slightly tilted forwards head and caught on an oxygen mask. Lacerations in the process to healing over stretched across his torso and arms. His eyes were closed, and his face was peaceful, as if he slept. It had been years since Frankenstein had seen him and he stopped, shocked. He still looked like the Ragar he remembered, but his body was clearly in poor condition. As for his mind, he preferred not to think of it…. He had seen people lose their sanity and become seriously traumatized due to undergoing experiments.  "Ragar is stronger than that," he tried to reassure himself. "He will be fine, but his wounds are deep. How dare they use him like that…." He squeezed his fists before releasing them, feeling powerless. Getting angry would be of no use, and the murderous desire abandoned him completely, leaving only sadness, a heavy and oppressive sorrow.

He rested his hand on the glass and slowly, his shoulders sagged and he fell to his knees. The words of Lunark resounded in his head. ''He remained in this world because he worried about you.''

Frankenstein recovered with a jump, breaking the glass all at once with a single punch. Flashes of blue light ignited at the bottom of the tank, an alarm probably, and the glass crumbled off in a deafening crackle, water rushing between cracks. It splashed the human in passage, taking the body of the former clan leader into arms of his friend with its steam. Without paying attention to the unpleasant coolness of the medicinal water, he stooped gently, supporting Ragar on the floor and holding him with one hand.

Frankenstein took the Ragar's wrist to verify his pulse. His hand fell limp and his body was motionless, but a beating remained, in the big relief of the scientist which removed carefully the oxygen mask of the face of the noble. His head fell again against Frankenstein's shoulder a jerky breath shaking him. His body twitched and he caught the his friend's arm with surprising strength. "Who ...?" The syllable springs from his lips only to be interrupted by a groan of pain. The human removed his jacket in a fast movement, covering Ragar's shoulders, his fingers trembling slightly. "You are... Fran...ken...stein?" He murmured, hoarse and low. "Yes. Try to breathe slowly, you are safe." "Are you... real?" Frankenstein choked on his words seeing his friend's broken look. "I am here." He answered, masking his concern. "I'll find you something to wear, don't move." He set Ragar slowly down on the ground and got ready to leave when he felt a hand grabbing his wrist. "Do not leave... not…. You seem so real this time. You are not still going to leave again..." He felt his heart tighten. His friend was clearly delusional. His whole body trembled, his breath shaky from cramps of pain and he clung on to him with the strength of a drowning man. To see the proud head of the family reduced to this condition ached and incited fury and once again, Frankenstein silently curses the Union for all the atrocities which they had made Ragar Kertia endure. "I stay, I promise it to you. I'm only going to get clothes. I will take you away from this place. Do you understand?" He nodded as a sign of approval and released Frankenstein's wrist, who went to a cupboard to try to find something to dress him. His sight fell on a bundle of papers and he frowned. The series of figures and notations seemed familiarity him... His breath halted when he figured out why. "This is... my data." He murmured, his lips bloodless. "They used my experimental data for..." He lowered his head abruptly and forced back the violent emotions forming in his stomach. Guilt, hatred, sadness. It was not the moment let feelings overcome him. He moved on with an air of indifference, he withdrew a spotless scientist's coat. He returned to Ragar and helped him dress in it, then he wrapped an arm around his waist and another one around his shoulders. "If you are too weak to walk, let yourself be carried, it's nothing. I... know it's embarrassing, but it'll be over soon... Ragar?" The noble didn't react. His front was slowly tilted against the shoulder of Frankenstein and his entire body was relaxed. "He fainted," Realized the human with concern. "I will have to move fast." He lifted him in his arms, careful not to touch his wounds and rushed outside the laboratory, leaving the base as fast as he could. As soon as they were outside, the fresh air and the intoxicating sensation of freedom partially calmed his restless spirit. The night was dark and the wild wind rustled leaves of the tall trees that surrounded the isolated building. The lights of the city shone far off and Frankenstein flew away in its direction, carrying the inanimate body of his dearest friend. To be continued...

[corellian-smuggler]

you must never have been a victim of abuse or neglect if you don't feel sympathy for ben who was neglected by his parents. do you know what it would be like as a child to know you ALWAYS came second to your parent's cause? just because Han and Leia were good heroes in the movies doesn't mean they would have been good parents. Leia by her own admission always put duty first above everything and Ben knew that she prioritized the New Republic over him. Han couldn't sit still and resented settling

down and prioritized his restless spirt and wanderlust over Ben and wasn’t around most of the year but was wandering around the galaxy (Bloodline). Carrie even admits Han and Leia neglected Ben. I don’t know how anyone could watch the original trilogy and think Han and Leia would be a good couple or good parents. They’re not bad people just much too different with different priorities, even Carrie admits this. Leia can’t stop fighting for the cause and Han couldn’t sit still. Their relationship was dysfunctional with having to spend months apart because they fought too much when Han was home (Bloodline) that isn’t healthy? They fought all the time in front of Ben and then Han would leave and storm off (No matter how much we fought I always hated seeing you leave) and wouldn’t come back for weeks. This had a terrible impact on poor Ben. BELIEVE the victims when they tell you their parents were abusive. Believe Ben, or you’re prejudiced against abuse victims.

Ok. Three things, here:1. The fact that you sent me these messages on anon indicates to me that you don’t have the conviction, courage, or integrity to put your own name to your words and accusations. I also think you knew this was way out of line and exemplary problematic behavior, otherwise you wouldn’t have been compelled to send it anonymously. 

2. You know literally nothing about my life or experiences, and then you have the nerve to accuse me of “prejudice against abuse victims”? I don’t advertise my personal situation on my blog because it’s private and because I shouldn’t have to justify my opinions about a fictional character with personal trauma in my own life. Believe it or not, you don’t have to be an abuse survivor to watch a movie and identify an evil shithead. However, for the sake of proving you wrong, I’ll have you know that it is precisely BECAUSE I know the reality of parental abuse and neglect that I am so entirely unsympathetic to this bullshit character. Guess what, anon? I suffered through 2 decades of neglect, verbal abuse, and emotional abuse. I feared for my safety in my own home as a child. You want to talk about neglect? You want to talk about a five year old alone in a house at night with no adult supervision because her so-called guardian was passed out drunk with a lit cigarette in hand? You want to talk about being a victim of violent rage? Because guess what, I lived through that and I’m not a murderer. I lived through that and I didn’t decide to stab my father in cold blood or join a fascist terrorist organization or kill BILLIONS of people just because I had a terrible childhood. The notion that Ben Solo committed genocide and patricide, in addition to countless other unspeakable crimes, all because his parents supposedly fought when he was young and were “busy” running the galaxy is the least sympathetic scenario on earth. Neglect does not explain or excuse mass murder. Child abuse is a terrible thing and my heart goes out to any suffering children, but everyone has something scarring in their past. It’s not a free pass for mass murder, and Kylo Ren gave up his chance for my sympathy when he displayed a complete lack of morality and empathy, when he demonstrated a tolerance for slavery and an approval for oppression, when he actively sought out the Dark Side, when he joined a fascist organization building a superweapon designed to obliterate billions of people at a time, when he participated in a genocide, when he destroyed the entire Jedi Order, when he murdered an entire village of civilians, when he abducted and tortured a civilian girl, and when he killed his father who was trying to help him all because he wanted to be like Darth Vader. He lost any chance of sympathy from me when he–a grown man–threw literal temper tantrums over not getting his way, when he spat in the face of forgiveness and redemption and love, and when he acted throughout the entire first film of the new franchise out of hatred, greed, selfishness, and ugly entitlement. That is not sympathetic to my mind. 

3. I have to admit I don’t think you understand the difference between reality and fantasy. Where in the new canon does it say that Kylo Ren was neglected or abused? Please provide a direct quote from a book, comic, or movie that states explicitly that Han or Leia abused or neglected their son. Because last time I checked, Han having a job that required him to travel does not mean that he was neglectful or unable to settle down. Leia having a career in politics does not mean she didn’t pay enough attention to her son. Does that mean that from your perspective, any parent that is in the military and must spend time away from their family, or who has a political career, or goes on business trips, or a cause that they’re fighting for is neglectful of their child? 

“Leia by her own admission always put duty first above everything” Where is this admission? Where in the new canon movies, comics, or books does it state that Leia put her duty above her family? Please provide the full citation.

“Ben knew that she prioritized the New Republic over him.” Please provide the direct quote from a movie, book, or comic–including publication, and page number where applicable, that states Kylo Ren felt Leia prioritized the New Republic over him and that that’s why he’s an unrepentant killer.

“Han couldn’t sit still and resented settling down and prioritized his restless spirt and wanderlust over Ben.” Oh, really? He resented settling down? Please provide the direct canon quote from an official canon installation that explicitly proves this. Please provide the evidence that says he “prioritized his wanderlust” over his son (reminder, in case you forgot: having a job that requires travel doesn’t mean you’re abusing your child…..)

“Carrie even admits Han and Leia neglected Ben.” Last time I checked Carrie Fisher was an actress and not an authority over the canon, and her words or interpretations of the situation do not make them “true”. She also called Kylo Ren Hitler, so…. are you sure you want to stand by her opinions? Or perhaps you’re also a Hitler sympathizer, like you are a Kylo Ren sympathizer? 

“Their relationship was dysfunctional with having to spend months apart because they fought too much when Han was home.” Hi, yes, I’d like the receipt for this one, too please. Where does it state in the canon that Han and Leia frequently spent months apart because they were fighting?

“They fought all the time in front of Ben and then Han would leave and storm off and wouldn’t come back for weeks.” ??????????? Please produce this imaginary scene from a book or comic wherein Han and Leia argued in front of Ben and then Han left for weeks afterwards.

“BELIEVE the victims when they tell you their parents were abusive”. First of all, where in the new canon does Kylo Ren claim his parents abused him? Please provide the objective and indisputable evidence. Second of all, you do realize that Kylo Ren is not real, don’t you? This isn’t a real-life case of someone claiming they were abused. This is a work of fiction, and in this work of fiction it quite frankly does not state that Kylo Ren was abused, and therefore his abuse is not a canon fact. 

And finally, I’d just like to ask you what movies you watched and thought were the original trilogy, because it doesn’t seem to have been episodes IV-VI. Last time I checked, the success of Han and Leia’s love story is one of the three major triumphs of the original, completed saga. And beyond the fact that Han and Leia demonstrated a million times over that they could and did commit to each other, that they put their loved ones above EVERYTHING else, that they were willing to put each other’s happiness above their own, that they were willing to sacrifice for one another and for others, that they believed in each other, that they trusted each other, and that they supported each other–AKA, they were a good couple who loved and cared for each other– they ALSO proved again and again and again that they weren’t just good heroes, they were good PEOPLE. The entire point of the original trilogy was that Han, Luke, and Leia were GOOD PEOPLE. And good people don’t abuse children.

[bbreferencearchive]

Final Words

Documentary Film (for Reelz network)

Title: Charles Manson: The Final Words

Written by: James Buddy Day

Produced by Pyramid Productions, Calgary, Canada

 FINAL EDIT SCRIPT, September 9th 2017

EXT. CALIFORNIA STATE PRISON – DAY

 AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have a collect call from ‘Charles’ an inmate in California State Prison, Corcoran, CA, to accept say or dial 5 now. BEEP. 

CHARLES MANSON

Hello.

CHARLES MANSON

They’re still sending me naked pictures of Sharon Tate all stabbed up saying “There’s blood on your hands” and “you did this and you did that.” There’s a lot of ways of crucifying somebody without hanging them on a cross --

AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have sixty seconds remaining.  

CHARLES MANSON

You being a producer it’s like, you kind of got get in the heads of everybody. Have you ever trusted anyone? 

PRODUCER  

Have you? 

CHARLES MANSON

That’s what I’m doing in here.

(laughs)

NARRATOR  

This began a year ago when Charles Manson, a man thought to be the embodiment of evil, started calling. 

CHARLES MANSON

If you can find a way to get me a cell phone where I can use it and call. (yeah). Let me get in the game and you can find a way where we can do what you want to do. But as soon as you get there you’re gonna have 15,000 people who are covering up what they’ve already been stealing and doing. 

NARRATOR  

What do you say to one of the most infamous mass murderers of all time when given the chance? We asked for his story in his own words.   

CHARLES MANSON

I don’t give a fuck about telling my story. My story has already been all over the world, 1,000 times, 1,000 times. You are for you, right. Right on, as long as we understand that, this is not based on friendship, not based on brotherhood, it’s based on guns and knives, it’s based on revolution and war, politics and governments. Survival. 

NARRATOR  

Though decades have passed since his conviction, the obsessive interest has never waned. Manson, of all people, appreciates his notoriety.

CHARLES MANSON

I’m the most famous human being not only that is alive, but the most famous human being that ever lived. And, I’m not even dead yet. – What do you think the fuck is going to happen when I die?

STEPHEN KAY

The problem is Manson is famous. The kids nowadays, they don’t look behind to see what it is he did.

 BLACK.

BOARD – THE CRIMES OF CHARLES MANSON  

NARRATOR  

In the late sixties, Charles Manson was convicted for the brutal murder of actress Sharon Tate and eight others. He was sentenced to death for all of them. When the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in nineteen seventy-two his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

CHARLES MANSON

The reality of it is, beyond the bullshit, is on death row. I’ve already done that been there. The people that haven’t done it and haven’t been there, they don’t understand it, you know, they have no respect for it. I got respect man.

NARRATOR  

Manson’s murder spree took place in the summer of nineteen sixty-nine. It was the peak of the Vietnam war, and a time of civil unrest. It’s said that Charles Manson was the leader of a cult called The Manson Family. They lived outside of society indulging in a constant stream of drugs and sex.  

CHARLES MANSON

We went where nobody had ever went before, not thinking about it, it just, it just happened man. I wasn’t nobody’s leader.

CHARLES MANSON (CONT’D)

All I was doing was fucking everybody I could. The sexual revolution everybody was doing I, was just getting my share that’s all.

NARRATOR  

The first murder took place in July of nineteen sixty-nine. Manson was convicted of ordering three of his disciples to kill an associate in a plot to extort money. After they stabbed the victim to death Manson’s followers wrote on the walls in his blood.

NARRATOR  

A month later the murders escalated.  The official account from the Los Angeles District Attorney is this; Charles Manson sent out more cult members to an isolated house in Beverly Hills with orders to kill everyone inside. It was the home of a beautiful and pregnant movie star named Sharon Tate who was spending the evening with friends.

PHIL KAUFMAN

 (Lived with Manson Family)

How could they drive up to that house, get out and know what their gonna do, nobody was going to leave that house alive. It boggles the mind. He says alright go out and do this and then you’re all in the car together going ok we’re going to do it, nobody says, man should we be doing this? Is Charlie right? They did what they did.

 NARRATOR  

At Charles Manson’s trial the prosecution stated:

 “On the evening of August, the eighth, nineteen sixty-nine, Charles Manson sent his robots out on a mission of murder. There is no evidence that he actually personally killed any of the victims in this case”. 

CHARLES MANSON

If you had to get up and hunt and kill your food every day, you’d be a hell of a warrior man.

NARRATOR

Before they left one of the killers wrote on a door, this time using Sharon Tate’s blood.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

They wanted to - shock - the public

NEWS FOOTAGE(OS)

In a scene described by investigators as reminiscent of a weird religious ritual, five persons including actress Sharon Tate were found dead. Among the other victims we’re Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring. One officer summed up the murders when he said “In all my years I have never seen anything like this before”.

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

I was in the kitchen and the phone rang. He said they think Jay and Sharon have just been murdered. I remember just sinking down, I was standing next to the sink and I just sank down to the floor, like I’m melting, I’m melting just, I was stunned. I was shocked, I was in hysterics.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

  (Manson Family Attorney)

When the murders took place, people were buying Gatling guns. The whole town bought guns they we’re frightened to death for months.

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

But for someone to hang up the phone on their boyfriend and the next morning hear that he’s been brutally murdered with three of his friends, it’s horrifying.

NARRATOR

Manson’s crime spree wasn’t finished. The day after the murder of Sharon Tate and others, Charles Manson took members of his group out again. This time they went to the home to an affluent couple named Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Allegedly, Manson ordered three of his followers to butcher the couple, leaving more messages written in blood.  

CHARLES MANSON

They never lied about me. all the broads said is “I THINK he said go in there and kill those people”. Well she can think a pink elephant, that’s hear-say.

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

It’s like a horror movie, like those movies where you wonder who’s going to be next.

CHARLES MANSON

People will put the bad mouth on somebody, for all kinds of psychological reasons. Jealousy is a big reason people maneuver.

NARRATOR

When Charles Manson and his family were arrested, and charged, it became the longest and most expensive trial in the history of Los Angeles.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

  (Manson Family Attorney)

The fright in the town was so gigantic and he looked like the devil sitting in court. That trial was like a circus. I mean it was insanity. 

NARRATOR

During in the trial, Manson carved an "X" in his forehead, which he later turned it into a swastika and shaved off all his hair. He says to symbolize his desire to be discarded from society. His followers all did the same.

CHARLES MANSON

They don’t realize that the X on their heads means the head is gone, man. You know, they still think that person’s there because they got a head, you dig? But I took the head. I got it on my belt.  

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

Every time I went to court, everyday they’d be out there singing ‘Charlie, Charlie’ with the swastikas on their head, shaving their hair. You know that’s not normal, you know looney tunes right there.

NARRATOR

For half a century, Charles Manson’s bizarre behavior has continued, and speculation over his unspeakable crimes has only intensified. But the question has always remained, how did Charles Manson get these people to kill for him?

BLACK.

BOARD – HELTER SKELTER  

CHARLES MANSON

That’s what that stupid -fuckin’ district attorney did, convicted me for the fuckin’ ‘Helter Skelter’ thing that he was thinking. And it took me 40 years to figure out what a cult was.

NARRATOR

When speaking to Charles Manson the topic of Helter Skelter comes up and frequently, and Manson’s answer is always the same. He maintains that Helter Skelter was invented by the prosecution. The Manson Family’s prosecutions were led by Vincent Bugliosi who wrote the book Helter Skelter which became the best-selling true crime book of all time. According to Bugliosi, Helter Skelter, was the name Charles Manson gave to his own bizarre philosophy which he derived from the name of a Beatles Song. 

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

One of their favorite things to do is they would sit around on acid and listen to the Beatles White album. They determined that what the Beatles were doing is they were sending messages to blacks to rise up and start a revolution.

NARRATOR

Manson allegedly convinced his followers that he foresaw the race war prophesized by the Beatles and told them they needed to slaughter white affluent victims to further inspire the black revolution.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative reporter)  

Helter Skelter, a social uprising between the blacks and the whites. The start of a race war. The apocalyptic end, if you will. Charlie and the family will hide underground. They will be the remaining ones left.

NARRATOR

The prosecution claimed that Charles Manson and his followers planned to hide in a secret cave located in Death Valley and wait out the war. When the dust settled, they would emerge and Charles Manson believed he would rebuild of the world.   

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

To say that it was an unusual motive is an understatement. But I can tell you that was the motive. 

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST.JOHN

  (Jay Sebring’s girlfriend)

Nothing could have been more horrendous than what happened that night to innocent people who didn’t even know their murderers.  And the reasons that this maniac orchestrated this whole thing was just looney tunes.  

CHARLES MANSON

I mean goddamn, this is not what I wanted to be. It doesn’t matter what I wanted.

NARRATOR

Manson insists that he’s been misjudged. He says Helter Skelter is a myth and that the true story behind the murders is one that remains untold.

CHARLES MANSON

And I’ve been deep in thought for almost 40 years, thinking what the hell does all this mean, how does that work? And the stuff that I’ve come up with, it’s just unbelievable, it’s fucking totally unbelievable.

NARRATOR

When speaking to Charles Manson, the most famous mind controlling mass murderer of all time, you have to be careful not to take him at his word. But after months of conversations, questions began to emerge.

CHARLES MANSON

The precious point is that the Helter Skelter that the DA made into what he was doing was wrong basically, when they lose control, they don’t admit that they lost control. They just lost face and they make another movie, like you’re doing. 

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

People who have looked into the case, beyond just a superficial level of reading of Helter Skelter, don’t believe any of that stuff. In fact, most of the media do believe he was trying to start a race war called Helter Skelter, and the whole thing. 

NARRATOR

We spoke with authors, researchers and people who know Manson directly. Charles Manson personally put us in contact with people who know him, others we found on our own. We sought to speak to anyone who was there when the crimes took place, all to unravel what actual happened.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative reporter)  

Back in 1969, we didn’t have access to the police reports, we didn’t have access to autopsy or the FBI files so we’re more inclined to believe the official narrative.

CHARLES MANSON

You’ll find out man. Have a good day, brother man.

BLACK.

BOARD – A CONVERSATION WITH BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

AUTOMATED RECORDING

This is Global Tel Link you have a pre-paid call from ‘Bobby’ an inmate at the California medical Facility, Vacaville California, this call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Hello.

BOARD – BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL, SERVING LIFE SENTENCE FOR FIRST “MANSON FAMILY” MURDER

NARRATOR

Bobby Beausoleil was the first person arrested and accused of being member of the Manson Family. He’s been in prison since nineteen sixty-nine.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It is extremely important that people understand what happened. We don’t want the same things to happen again we have to understand them and we can’t understand them in the context of Vincent Bugliosi’s little horror story. He did more to victimize Sharon Tate than Charlie Manson ever did.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It’s the same regurgitated Helter Skelter nonsense. That is so far away from the truth. I don’t care, I won’t say that, I will never, to get a parole, say that what Bugliosi said was true. Never…I’d rather die in prison than get out on a lie.

Part of it was the times and the desperation that had set in, in 1969. The events got out of hand. A lot of his attitudes and beliefs that he had been engendered while he was in prison became expressed. And again, I’m not defending him, he was a sociopath for sure. Not genetic, but something that had been developed - you know his compassion and empathy had been beaten out of him by the system that he grew up, in which was the juvenile justice and criminal justice system. 

NARRATOR

Manson’s told many people many stories about his childhood but certain aspects of his upbringing are irrefutable. His birth certificate from nineteen thirty-four identifies his mother as Kathleen Maddox. A fifteen-year-old single mother who struggled with alcoholism and was often arrested. 

CHARLES MANSON

My mother and my uncle did time. She was a throw away. 

NARRATOR

Sometime around nineteen forty-four, When Kathleen couldn’t care for her son or when she was arrested, Manson began what would become a lifetime in prison. Michael Channels has known Manson personally for twenty-five years and has quite possibly spent more time face-to-face with him than anyone else. 

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

If there is a “Charlie Manson”, Charlie Manson was probably created the first time he went into those boys homes. That kid went through some hell in there, and some of the things that he told me. He would never admit to being raped by men or anything like that. That’s just one thing he just don’t do, he don’t.

CHARLES MANSON

In Boys Town, you’re a juvenile. You go in when you’re ten years old and you play ping pong and if someone beats you, you gotta give the table up to them unless you want to fight ‘em. 

CHARLES MANSON

Everything is about fight. If you don’t fight they’ll fuck you in the ass.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

He’ll tell you about being taken down in the basement and put on the table and they make him get naked and then beat him with a strap. That’ll turn you into something that your starting to think ok…

CHARLES MANSON

They’ll take everything you got. And you’re raised up like that. So, you learn how to box and you learn how to fight. And then some guy gets a dagger or a knife or an ice pick and it’s a different kind of fight. You graduate and you grow up.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

That puts you in a whole different mindset. It’s about life or death where’s he’s at.

CHARLES MANSON

I’d only been outside a couple years when I caught this case here. You figure that if you get locked up in reform school when your nine years old and you don’t get out until your twenty, in your brain you’re still nine years old on the outside. Can you see that?

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Supporter)

He don’t trust nobody. He doesn’t even trust me. As long as I’ve known him as a pen pal, visited him in jail, talked to him all the telephone for some twenty-five years now. He doesn’t trust me as far he can spit.

CHARLES MANSON

Anybody that helps me is helping themselves, and I don’t get much help because their ‘aint nobody there. You see it. So, it’s like, everybody that’s using me, they’re not helping me, they’re just riding on me. 

NARRATOR

Police records reflect that by the time Charles Manson was twenty-four years-old, he’d been arrested more than thirty times. Among his numerous offenses he’d been caught driving stolen cars across state lines, broken his probation, escaped from a federal prison, was convicted of check forgery, mail theft and even pimping.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

The first time I visited him and he walked out of the back, prison was just radiating off of him. He’s from prison. He’s not from your world and my normal world out here.

NARRATOR

Those like George Stimson who’ve spent time visiting Charles Manson in person insist that his view of the world is defined by his life in prison.

CHARLES MANSON

Prison is a mind. The mind is prison. That’s why they haven’t been able to break me because there’s no such thing. They’re in a fantasy. They don’t have a reality. Had I not done 22 years in prison before I got arrested this time, I would not have survived. The only reason I survived is, I’ve been through everything in prison ever since I was nine years old.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It’s hard to understand. I mean, unless you really kind of have an understating of how things operate in prison and how selfish people tend to think when they’re in that environment.

NARRATOR

Leading up to the summer of nineteen sixty-seven, Charles Manson was in Los Angeles serving time for check forgery in a federal prison called Terminal Island

BLACK.

BOARD – TERMINAL ISLAND PRISON

NARRATOR

Two years before the murder spree Phil Kaufman was arrested trying to smuggle Marijuana into the U.S. from Mexico. He ended up in prison alongside Charles Manson.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

I got arrested in Tucson, Arizona. I got to terminal Island. I had just gone through the A&O, admission and orientation, before I was allowed out in the yard. There’s this guy with a guitar. Being in prison you gotta be careful who you associate with, and Charlie was a good guy to hang out with because he did give a fuck and he played music.

NARRATOR

Phil Kaufman knew Manson on the inside before anyone ever associated the name “Charles Manson” with the devil incarnate. Kaufman recalls the man he called “Charlie” as a laid-back inmate fully comfortable in prison life, to the point that he was completely unwilling to reform.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

If you get five years in a federal penitentiary and they don’t give you any incentive, you’ll just do five years and your uncontrollable. But when you’re sentenced they give you good time so a five-year sentence may be only forty months… But Charlie didn’t do that, he did all the time. He didn’t program. You know he got five years, Charlie did five years.

NARRATOR

According to prison records Charles Manson has received countless reprimands. He once described a prison confrontation in the sixties when a common punishment was for the guards to have the inmates ‘give in’ by putting their “nose to the wall”.

CHARLES MANSON

We fought for 48 days and 48 nights trying to make me put my nose on the wall. I told him “I ain’t putting my goddamn nose on that wall, fuck you”. And they’d come in and rush me and throw me up against the wall, like it or not. Then I’d slide down the wall. Next day they’d come, say, “Get up against the wall”. I’d say “No way”. Here we go again. Yeah, they can beat me but that can’t eat me.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

He was playing his guitar and so a guard comes up to him and said “Manson, you ‘aint never gonna get outta here”, and Charlie just kept playing his guitar and said “outta where man”, and just kept going.

CHARLES MANSON

I was a federal prisoner, DEAD, I got out of Terminal Island. Can you understand that? You know it’s like, I had played that game and won every pocket.

NARRATOR

Manson’s release paperwork from Terminal Island is dated March twenty first, nineteen sixty-seven. Vietnam was at the forefront of the American consciousness and a large segment of the male population was either at school or war. Many of the women left behind were embracing what would become known as the summer of love.   

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with Manson Family)

There was a lot of runaways at the time and a lot of people disenchanted with the status quo and they were easy marks, especially up in San Francisco.

The acid you know the pot and everything, they we’re looking for love and Charlie was selling it whole sale.

NARRATOR

This is when it’s been reported that Charles Manson formed a cult called The Manson Family. How did he transition from a chronic petty criminal to a psychotic villain capable of mind control? Until this point in his life, he’d never been charged with a violent crime and no one had ever described him as a guru or spiritual leader so something had to change in the summer of nineteen sixty-seven.

BLACK.

BOARD - THE MANSON FAMILY 

CHARLES MANSON

You see in they call it. In prison, they call it a run. When I get out of prison I run until I’m back in prison again.

NARRATOR

According to Manson, right after prison he spent the first year going back and forth between Haight Ashbury in San Francisco and Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. 

CHARLES MANSON

I went to ‘Frisco and I was talking to this supposedly great holy guy. You dig? And he’s telling me when you can sit and be comfortable and at peace with yourself that you’re just in harmony, you dig? Now check this out. I figured a lot of things out. I figured this out. I figured it would be easier not to understand anything and keep your mind open and never make your mind up about nothing.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson’s mix of sixties culture and prison jargon attracted young women. Communes were abundant in California in nineteen sixty-seven. This is when Manson met the first two members of what would become known as the “Manson Family”; Mary Brunner who later gave birth to his child, and Lynette Fromme better known as “Squeaky”.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Remember these weren’t ordinary people. And I get upset with the historians that refer to this group as hippies. They weren’t hippies. Hippies were flower children, they believed in “Make love, not war.” The Family referred to themselves as ‘Slippies.’ They said they were going to slip under the awareness of society. They were very violent. It was a religious cult.

NARRATOR

At trial the prosecution stated the family was nothing more than a closely-knit band of vagabond robots who were slavishly obedient to one man and one man only, their master, their leader, their god Charles Manson. One member of the group was Catherine Gillies. She adopted the nickname “Capistrano” or “Cappi” for short after fell in with Manson in the spring of nineteen sixty-eight.

CAPPI

I mean none of that shit was real, ok. We we’re trying to step out of society is what we we’re trying to do. We didn’t have stabbing practice on Saturday and hang Charlie from a cross on Sunday. I mean none of those things are real. We didn’t call ourselves ‘The Manson Family’, okay. That was, that was the press. We called ourselves a family but we meant that because we were brothers and sisters not because we were ‘The Family’ we were ‘A’ family.

NARRATOR

Another member named Sandra Good collaborated on a book with her partner George Stimson in which he talked about life inside the so-called Manson Family.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter’)

A lot of people do that when you’re young and you’re living like a family, but you know, it doesn’t have the connotation that Manson Family does, capital M, capital F.

NARRATOR

This contention appears to be supported by the trial transcripts. In many instances Vincent Bugliosi says clearly that the group called themselves “the family” but no one ever refers to them as “The Manson Family” the label often reported, which according to George Stimson is significant.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter’)

The thought that he was actively recruiting people to set up some kind of organization to carry out his homicidal aims is just ridiculous.

NARRATOR

But the reality is that they did commit homicidal acts, however, according to several individuals who were part of the group, the label THE MANSON FAMILY was only used by the press and not consistent with how they interacted or viewed themselves at that time.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

You know most of them we’re inexperienced with communes prior to joining that one. So, their only experience with communes would have been with Charlie.

AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have sixty seconds remaining.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

They were always free to leave.

CHARLES MANSON

You know it’s weird man, it’s like you see a bunch of people and their coming along in your life and they’re doing what you’ve already done. I noticed this about people when they think I’m a hippie cult leader.

NARRATOR

The group was made up primarily of young women. Contrary to the common picture of Manson being a master manipulator who recruited them and controlled their minds, Bobby Beausoleil related that they came together much differently.  

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

What most people don’t understand is that it wasn’t Charlie’s charisma that attracted more women. It was once he had the two women together, the women attracted the women. Women who like a community of women, and that was the attraction in that group.

NARRATOR

How they came together and viewed themselves genuinely matters because it’s the first part of understanding whether Manson and the others were a hippy commune or a religious cult. The Helter Skelter theory is dependent on Charles Manson being a brainwashing cult leader, but people who were part of the group deny that dynamic. Is there another explanation for their heinous acts other than Manson dictating that they murder on his behalf?

CHARLES MANSON

I never ordered nobody to do anything but other than what the fuck they wanted to do. Do what you want, if you’re with me you’re free like me. I do what I want to do. You do what you want to do. Be careful with this phone call and don’t use it cause any more persecution to my friends, my family. Peace, I gotta go. My phone time’s up.  

BLACK.

BOARD - THE MANSON GIRLS

NARRATOR

The media has characterized the women who participated in the murders as middle-class and virtuous. They’ve been described as girl scouts, or good students, or Sunday school teachers, that Manson transformed into serial killers. Why would young women with good backgrounds leave their homes to live with an ex-convict who just wanted sex and death?  

Leslie Van Houten was nineteen when she met Charles Manson. The following summer she joined two others in the slaughter of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

RICH PFEIFFER

  (Leslie Van Houten’s Lawyer)

The problem people have is how can you go from a homecoming queen to being a Manson follower? Her childhood was really good until her parents got divorced. Back then it was very different than it is now. It was a big social stigma. She ended up with the druggie kids and the less desirables and she ended up doing drugs at that time. She got pregnant. Her parents pretty much pressured her into having an illegal abortion in the home, and they buried the fetus in the back yard, and that’s something she couldn’t get away from. After that the drug use escalated.

PETER CHIARAMONTE

   (Leslie Van Houten’s former  

  Boyfriend).

She was looking for a spiritual leader and she had home already left home and went out on the road. Bobby takes her to meet Charlie. I think it might have bothered him – that she would challenge him, she and Pat were really the only two that would.

NARRATOR

Patricia Krenwinkel, nicknamed Katie, was with Leslie Van Houten the night they killed the LaBiancas. Krenwinkel also participated in the Sharon Tate murders. At parole hearings, she’s described that her sister was a drug addict who died from an overdose at the age of twenty-nine. Before her death she introduced Patricia to drinking, drugs and alcohol. When Krenwinkel met Manson, she was nineteen. She’d left home to live with her heroin addicted sister in Venice, California.

One of the most infamous murders was Susan Atkins who took the nickname Sadie. She brutally murdered Sharon Tate and used her blood to write PIG on a door. 

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Susan Atkins had a terrible childhood she was abandoned by her parents, she was molested. 

NARRATOR

When Susan Atkins was fifteen her mother died from cancer, sending her home life into a spiral. When Atkins met Charles Manson she’d already worked as a topless dancer, been arrested for car theft, stolen property, and was a heavy drug user.

SUSAN ATKINS

I used to think you came down off an acid trip after 12 hours. Every time you drop acid you get a little bit further away from reality.

CHARLES MANSON

Susan’s pretty, she’s me actually. You see me is all there is, there’s nobody but you.

SUSAN ATKINS

I took so much acid that I was what I would term spaced, and it took me many years to, what I would term now, re-enter, and that was just through not having any acid and having to deal with reality every day.  

NARRATOR

If these were not perfect young women, plucked from society and corrupted solely by Charles Manson, did he actually brainwash them or were they working alongside him in a common motive? What was life like inside the so-called family the year leading up to the murders?

BLACK.

BOARD - THE SUMMER OF ’68  

NARRATOR

When you ask Charles Manson about life in the group before the murders, he talks about sex.

CHARLES MANSON

Everybody walked around naked. We’d all get together and just have a big bang man.

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with “Manson Family”)

I lived with them for almost a month. He’d say you know everybody has to make love. Love. It’s love, spread the love, you know. It was like sex on demand.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter’)

When you’re inside you have nothing, and all of a sudden he’s out and, you know, he said it was a prisoner’s dream come true.

NARRATOR

Another member of the group was Barbara Hoyt who like many of the others was seventeen when she ran away from home after an argument with her father. 

BARBRA HOYT

I met Squeaky. Sandy was pregnant. Sadie, we talked about the hypocrisies of life.

CHARLES MANSON

Nobody’s been able to get women together with each other. They’re jealous creatures, it’s hard to get two women together. And here comes along a nobody from prison who ‘aint even been out of prison long enough to spell his name right. He’s got thirty-five women up and doing whatever, you dig? 

NARRATOR

If Manson had found the dream life of an ex-convict, why would he indoctrinate them to murder people?

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative reporter)  

These murders did not happen because there was not going to be an apocalyptic race war, that’s not why this happened, the victims weren’t chosen at random.

NARRATOR

Brian Davis has spent more than a decade speaking to anyone involved in the events surrounding the murders on his online radio show. From his viewpoint, the key to understanding what happened is Charles “TEX” Watson because he was the person that actually led the murder parties on both nights, and killed more than anyone else.

CHARLES MANSON

Tex was perfect. A solider, a solider who’s in service is righteous and real. There’s no in between.  

NARRATOR

At trial the Vincent Bugliosi said Manson had “total and complete domination over his family including the actual killer Tex Watson”. How did Tex Watson come to be with Manson and perhaps fall under his control?  Brian Davis recounts that in nineteen sixty-seven, Watson left Northern Texas to live with a friend in Los Angeles, finding a part-time job at a Hollywood wig shop. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

I talked with the guy that worked with Tex. He said Tex was an all-American boy. After about a year, Tex started to hang out at parties and smoke marijuana, grew his hair out a little bit and at that point he said Tex started to turn. So, all this was going on leading up before Tex ever met Charlie.

NARRATOR

Tex Watson met Charles Manson when he was invited to a never-ending party that was being held at a Pacific Palisades mansion. The house was owned by the drummer of the Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson.

 BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

Charlie crosses over into that because of the girls, Pat and Ella Joe Bailey we’re out hitchhiking and Dennis Wilson picked them up.

NARRATOR

The Beach Boys fifteenth studio album Twenty-Twenty, features a song co-written by Charles Manson called “Never Learn Not to Love”. During that time Manson befriended a record producer through Dennis Wilson named Terry Melcher.

Leslie Van Houten interviewed by LAPD, November 26th, 1969

LAPD: Tell me about Terry Melcher. Remember him?

LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: Terry Marshmallow?

LAPD: Mel- Melcher. Terry Melcher.

LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: I call him Terry Marshmallow.

LAPD: Oh, is that what you call him.

LESLIE VAN HOUTEN: I don’t know really. I knew that he said he could get us recorded and that he had known one of the Beach Boys.

NARRATOR

When he met Charles Manson, Terry Melcher lived on Cielo Drive in the same house that was later rented to film director Roman Polanski and his movie star wife Sharon Tate, after Melcher moved out. This is a direct connection between Manson and the Sharon Tate murders. Prosecutors claimed that Manson was an ambitious musician who aspired to be like The Beatles and The Beach Boys, so Dennis Wilson introduced him to Terry Melcher, but Melcher rejected him.  When Manson decided to begin a race war by killing random white people, he chose Terry Melchers house. According to the prosecution the residence was symbolic to Charles Manson and particularly the establishment’s rejection of him. Phil Kaufman worked in the music industry and recorded Charles Manson shortly before the murders took place. This is an audio recording from nineteen seventy made as part of the investigation.

Phil Kaufman interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970.

Up to this point he had recorded at various studios, and being as transient as he was, he never stayed around long enough, you know, to consummate a record deal. So, every time he recorded no one could ever release his music because he never signed any contracts. 

PHIL KAUFMAN

  (Lived with “Manson Family”)

‘Cause he had a good thing going for him, you know. Money wasn’t even involved in anything. He didn’t have to earn a living, he had girls going out and getting him food, he was having sex, playing his music you know. Life was good for him.

CHARLES MANSON

I could have been a rock and roll star. I could have been a movie star. That’s a slowdown. I don’t want a fuckin’ job. I’d rather have a vine of wine on the beach and be free as a dog looking for a place to sleep under the bridge rather than go to work. I was trying to get away from civilization.

NARRATOR

If Manson wasn’t rejected by the music industry, and Melcher’s house didn’t represent the establishment to him, then what was the real reason for Tex Watson taking three women over to Terry Melcher’s house and killing five people?

We put this question to Charles Manson directly.

CHARLES MANSON

Tex wasn’t wrong, you understand what I’m saying? Tex had to do what he had to do, and he said that. He didn’t say I told him to do a damn thing. They said the girls said it but the girls didn’t say it. She said, “Charlie told me to go do what Tex said.” You know why the District Attorney put the race war on me?

AUTOMATED RECORDING

You have thirty seconds remaining.

CHARLES MANSON

You got the whole damn fuckin planet against me.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson’s answers are not always straightforward, and he denies involvement in the Sharon Tate murders, but the missing factor may be the song Charles Manson contributed to the Beach Boys.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie was told that he would be compensated for the use of the song, and the amount he was told was $5000. Now he didn’t care so much about the money. If you’re in prison and you owe somebody and you give your word and you don’t keep your word, that’s a justification for, you know, being killed. So, he sent Tex to kill Terry. Not a house full of five people. See that’s what’s so critical here. He wasn’t picking a house full of innocent people, he was picking Terry Melcher. The people that were there are the ones that took the brunt of what Tex Watson brought there that night.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson seeking retaliation on Terry Melcher for breaking his word, contradicts the motive laid out by the prosecution because it changes Manson’s intent from starting a race war to vengeance. According to the Helter Skelter Theory, Charles Manson planned to inspire a race war by killing affluent whites, so he sent his follower to Terry Melcher’s house. During the war, Manson would hide with his followers in a secret cave located in Death Valley. Afterwards, they would emerge and Manson would lead the victorious black army.   

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

When members joined the Family, he was telling them how Adolph Hitler was his hero for what Hitler did to Jews in World War II. He was a follower of Nietzsche. You know, just sick stuff.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Acquaintance)

They say Manson wants to have a race war. He wants the black people – they’re going to rise up and kill all the white people. For a supposed person that hates black people why would he now want to be in charge. The story kind of loses me all over the place.

NARRATOR

Some have proposed that the prosecution made-up the Helter Skelter theory in order to more easily convict Charles Manson through a sensational conspiracy narrative. Another theory exists which some believe can explain the murders without the race war motive.      

Brian Davis

I’m not supporting Charlie Manson at all. I’m supporting more of the truth.

NARRATOR

If the prosecution did construct the Helter Skelter Theory, is convicting a man like Charles Manson so essential that any means of achieving it is acceptable?   

Brian Davis

It’s not about proving Charlie innocent. Even if it’s Charlie Manson. The law has to work for everybody.

CHARLES MANSON

This thing is so vast. I don’t know whether you can accept it. 

BLACK.

BOARD – AN ALTERNATE THEORY   

NARRATOR

Another theory proposes that the murders were the culmination of events centered around Charles Manson. Charles Manson had been released from prison and had formed a commune of lost souls. Several months before the murders the group had moved to a farmstead built as a backdrop for western movies and television shows, called Spahn Ranch.

CHARLES MANSON

I never realized it but the reason the ranch was so cool was that nobody ever lied to each other, man. We all got a long with each other, man. Everybody was straight up, there was no bullshit. We had a pretty nice group of people there. 

GRAY WOLF

  (MANSON SUPPORTER)

When I went to the ranch, I felt it was just the most mellow place I’d ever been. There was no ambitions. It’s a lot different than what the media might portray. 

NARRATOR

The ranch was owned by an eighty-year-old blind man named George Spahn, who lived in the main house which was located here. The ranch burned down in nineteen seventy-one but at the time extended along the Santa Susana Pass, isolated by the hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley.  

CHARLES MANSON

Everybody at the ranch was one. There was only one moving thing on that ranch, that was George Spahn, the old blind man. George was the boss. You know it’s like the horses ruled the ranch. We all served whatever was capable of service. A slave understands it’s master much more than the master understands the slave. 

BARBRA HOYT

Charlie told Squeaky to take care of George so they could stay at the ranch, and she did. 

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

She didn’t like having sex with other men. That’s why she got into that for Charlie. She took care of George and that became her thing. She wanted to only have sex with Charlie, and so she put herself in that position where she wouldn’t have to have sex with anyone else. She was a caretaker. 

BARBRA HOYT

She loved him. I think he wanted George to will the ranch to Squeaky. 

NARRATOR

Records reflect that while living at Spahn Ranch Tex Watson was arrested on a drug charge in April of nineteen sixty-nine, three months before the murders. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

It was business for Tex, you know, he partook and he sold. That’s how he made a lot of his money. You go back before the murders, Tex has got the history for dealing drugs, and making drug deals, you know. That’s what Tex does.

CHARLES MANSON

I said don’t lie on this ranch. Other than that you can do anything you want here. Just don’t hurt nobody. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

This is the connection. This is where it all connects.  

Tex Watson had a dope dealer. Tex Watson describes the drug dealer in his book as a mafia connected guy who owned a vending machine company that he used as a front for his dope business. 

CHARLES MANSON

Episodes like that happen every day in the drug world. 

NARRATOR

On July first, Tex Watson spoke with his vending machine dope dealer who was looking to sell twenty-five kilos of marijuana for two thousand five hundred dollars. Watson didn’t have that kind of money so he called his girlfriend in the city. She introduced him to another drug dealer named Bernard Crowe who was thought to be associated with The Black Panthers political movement. It was then that Watson came up with a scam. He would buy twenty-five kilos from his vending machine dealer for two thousand five hundred dollars, then sell twenty-two kilos to Crowe at a mark-up for two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. That way Watson could buy the drugs from the vending machine dealer, and deliver what he promised to Bernard Crowe, all the while keeping the difference in money and drugs for himself and his girlfriend. To make that work neither of the drug dealers could meet, so Tex Watson planned to have Bernard Crowe pay upfront.

CHARLES MANSON

As the convicts say, if you do all the talking you got to be all the right. Lying’s what gets everything fucked up.

NARRATOR

When the time came, Crowe wouldn’t hand over his money to a hippie he didn’t know, so he kept Tex Watson’s girlfriend as collateral while Watson went to pick up the drugs. When this complication arose, Watson burned them both.  

CHARLES MANSON

He just promised to deal some drugs for them, and took the money and ran. 

CAPPI

What happened was Tex made a deal with him evidently, and then fuckin’ bummed out on the deal. We didn’t get anything out of it, it had nothing to do with us. It was all about Tex, trust me.

NARRATOR  

After that an enraged Bernard Crowe set out to find the man he knew as Charlie Watson. 

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

When Crowe called the ranch, and asked for Charlie, meaning Charles Watson, TJ got Charlie Manson on the phone because he knew Watson as TEX. And when Crowe said I want my money and I’m coming up to the ranch to burn the place down and rape all the girls there Charlie said no you’re not. I’ll come down and talk to you about it.

 CHARLES MANSON

To deal drugs you gotta be real. That’s underworld. Underworld means anybody can take that away from you and there’s nothing the laws going to do about it. Before the cops catch drug dealers, drug dealers catch drug dealers.

CAPPI

He was worried about us getting killed. We had babies there and all kinds of stuff, and all these young people, okay and they we’re trying to kill us. And that’s why Charlie went to Bernard, to stop him before he killed somebody.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

Bernard Crowe had Tex Watson’s girlfriend tied up, and I guess words were exchanged. And Charlie pulled out then gun a shot him.

CHARLES MANSON

Yeah, yeah I shot the Crowe. She said that Bernard was going to kill her. So we went down to help her, and ended up shooting him to help her. 

CAPPI

Bernard Crowe didn’t give him a chance. He had to shoot him or he was going to get shot, and Bernard Crowe just said “You better shoot me now, do it,” you know, and Charlie shot him.

NARRATOR

Bernard Crowe survived this shooting, although as Manson has often detailed, he was unaware of this.

CHARLES MANSON

That’s the difference between the underworld and being righteous with the underworld. In other words you don’t get caught off base or you get tagged out. It’s a simple game.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

He saw all the people he was with as children. They were weak they wouldn’t know how to hold their mud. Rather than try to convince them that they should, he just manipulated them to try to make them so complicit in violent crimes that they would not snitch on him. 

NARRATOR

In the alternate theory, Charles Manson’s shooting of Bernard Crowe left him with two problems. First, he had to be sure no one in the commune would talk to the police. Accordingly, he encouraged them to commit violent crimes for the group just like he had done.

CHARLES MANSON

I play cards. My family’s cards. My family are righteous; They can’t get away. They’re dead. Everyone in my family is dead like me. 

NARRATOR

Manson’s second problem was that he believed the Black Panthers would retaliate for the shooting, something he told members of the group.

 BARBRA HOYT

He was very worried about the black panthers attacking the ranch. It went from happy go lucky fun. It got so intense, so fearful. It makes me nervous just to talk about it.

CHARLES MANSON

We were in trouble with everybody that was against us. Anybody that didn’t like us, we didn’t like them. We we’re fighting all the time man.  

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie, when he had that situation with Crowe and I went out there to hang out, I didn’t know what I had happened. And he told me, he pulled me aside and he said, “Man, you know I don’t have enough guys here, you know. I’m expecting a retaliation from the Black Panthers and I need more guys here”. So, you know, I was a young kid and that sort of appealed to my ego. 

CHARLES MANSON

Everybody likes everybody else dead. Nobody likes anybody.

BARBRA HOYT

I heard Charlie was recruiting the Straight Satan’s to be guards. 

NARRATOR

To protect the commune and himself from the Black Panthers, Manson enlisted a motorcycle club called the Straight Satans. In this audio recording with the L-A-P-D, the Straight Satans former president, Al Springer, described their arrangement.

AL SPRINGER interview with LAPD 11/69

Charlie says, “Now wait a minute”, he says uh, “maybe I can give you a better thing then you got over there.” I goes “What’s that?” He says, “Move up here. You can have all the girls you want, and all the girls”, he says, “are all yours.” 

NARRATOR

Three days after the Bernard Crowe shooting, Linda Kasabian arrived at Spahn Ranch for the first time. 

BARBRA HOYT

Linda was, she was a nice girl who was looking for, I don’t know if she was looking for Jesus or, um, she was just looking for life, and what was real and what wasn’t. 

CHARLES MANSON

You don’t find too many women who will stand up in any kind of fight. 

NARRATOR

Linda Kasabian’s account is critical because she was one of the four directly involved in the Sharon Tate murders. When she was later arrested, Kasabian gave her first statement to her lawyer Gary Fleischman. 

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I heard her version of it the first night they brought her back.

None of it made any sense that’s the problem. It was nonsensical and that’s where Vince came up with the Helter Skelter theory. But I never heard that theory during the period I was representing her, she didn’t know anything about it. 

NARRATOR

Days after the Bernard Crowe shooting Bobby Beausoleil committed the first murder. The prosecution said that Manson “needed money” but the specifics of this motive were never fully explained. The motive was described as generally related Manson’s preparation for the race war.

 STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Manson wanted money. He wanted money because he was preparing for the revolution.

NARRATOR

The prosecution contended that Manson sent Bobby Beausoleil, and two women, Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins, to the home of an acquaintance named Gary Hinman. Their orders were supposedly to retrieve money from Hinman and kill him if he refused. 

CHARLES MANSON

It’s all crap. You don’t have to look it up, you just have to look at it.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Nobody sent me over to recruit Gary to the family. He was as much of the so-called family as I was and I wasn’t a part of the family.

NARRATOR

Bobby Beausoleil contends that in the aftermath of Bernard Crowe shooting, Manson’s arrangement with the biker gang made them a constant presence at the ranch. Two weeks before the Sharon Tate murders, Beausoleil says the Straight Satans were looking for drugs. Beausoleil sold them mescaline he got from his former roommate Gary Hinman. Beausoleil maintains that the day after the drug deal the Straight Satans demanded their money back claiming the drugs were bad.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

I don’t really believe you I think they were trying to get the drugs for free. They were playing me for a sucker. There wasn’t any bad drugs or anything like that.

CHARLES MANSON

Beausoleil was a strong individual. Yeah, he was in trouble with the motorcycle gang. And, we were dealing and wheeling underworld man. That’s what motorcycle gangs do, you know. In other words, the strongest survive. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

There is a property report of Gary Hinman. And in that property, report they list homemade scales with white powder. They didn’t test it for it mescaline, so we don’t know if it was or not. To me that’s evidence.

NARRATOR

With the Straight Satans threat looming, Bobby Beausoleil claims he went to Gary Hinman’s house to retrieve the money from the drug deal and return it to the biker gang.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

I went there for one thing and that was to collect the money. And ‘cause they asked to come along, Mary had a relationship with Gary, and I don’t know why Susan Atkins asked to come along. I didn’t see any problem going there. I figure it was going to be no problem to get the money back and, you know, and come back and give it to ‘em, and it was going to be done.

NARRATOR

As recalled by Bobby Beausoleil, when Gary Hinman refused to return the money the confrontation escalated. Along with Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins, Beausoleil stayed at the house for two days. Beausoleil thought he could reason with Hinman to give up the money. They wrestled over a gun which went off but hit no one. During the confrontation, someone called the Ranch to ask for help. At some point, Bobby Beausoleil gained the upper hand and made Gary Hinman sign over his cars.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

So he had these two old wrecks and they were, I figured between the two of them they were worth maybe a grand. The grand that they were saying I owed them. 

NARRATOR

With the pink slips in hand they prepared to leave. As they were walking out the door Manson unexpectedly rushed in with a sword and cut Gary Hinman across the face.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie had slashed his face and left me with the problem. And I didn’t know how to get out of it, you know, I didn’t know how to get away without getting arrested, unless I killed him.

NARRATOR

After the murder, someone wrote on the walls in Gary Hinman’s blood.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

To be honest with you, I don’t remember a lot that happened immediately after my having killed Gary. That really devastated me. My memories of what happened afterwards have never really been clear.

NARRATOR

A black panther paw print was drawn on the wall along with the words POLITICAL PIGGY.  

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

It was in everyone’s minds. Everyone believed Charlie had killed a black panther, according to what he had told everyone. There was an intent to throw the investigators of the trail.

NARRATOR

From this perspective, Gary Hinman’s murder was directly related to the Bernard Crowe shooting. They staged the crime scene to frame the Black Panthers because they feared retaliation. At the same time, Manson’s intent to make the others complicit had been unexpectedly furthered. This prevented members of the group from telling the police about what Manson had done. According to police records on Wednesday, August sixth, two days before the Sharon Tate murders, Bobby Beausoleil was arrested in one of Gary Hinman’s cars. 

CHARLES MANSON

I was in San Diego when that happened.

BARBRA HOYT

I heard he got arrested for murder. I thought that the police had just made it up. No, I didn’t believe it.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

I think it’s important to look at the timing of this. You’re looking at these murders that happened on Cielo and Waverly are like two days later, and it’s very important that they happened then rather than a month later or two weeks earlier. So, that indicates that they we’re a reaction to Bobby’s arrest and the idea of getting him out of prison by committing copycat murders. 

  NARRATOR

In the alternate theory, two days after Bobby Beausoleil was arrested the group planned to commit another murder. This turned out to be the murders of Sharon Tate and those who were at her home on August eighth. The group planned to stage the crime scene to make it appear as if Gary Hinman’s killer was still on the loose. They reasoned this would compel the police to let Bobby Beausoleil go. Charles Manson admitted that this was their thinking.

CHARLES MANSON

He was in prison. He was in the LA county jail when it happened. See we we’re all in a brotherhood. We were all in one family and we were helping the brother. It happened to be Beausoleil. 

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

He told other people he was trying to send a message to me, and others make the police think that they had the wrong person.  

NARRATOR

According to Bobby Beausoleil this is not the entire picture but reaffirms Manson’s deeper motive. Committing a copycat murder to free Beausoleil would make the others complicit, preventing more members of the group from potentially talking to the police about the Bernard Crowe shooting.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Depending on the orientation of whoever he was talking to he would say things that would support some sort of agenda that he had.

NARRATOR

Manson’s agenda comes full circle when you consider that he still harbored a grudge against Terry Melcher for the song Manson had contributed to the Beach Boys. According to the alternate theory, this is why four members of the commune ventured out to Terry Melcher’s house, two days after Bobby Beausoleil’s arrest, on August eighth, nineteen sixty-nine.

BLACK.

BOARD - LOS ANGELES, AUGUST 8TH, 1969, NIGHT OF THE SHARON TATE MURDERS 

BARBRA HOYT

I remember after dinner in the backhouse, and I remember Charlie and Tex talking in the corner, and it was like there was black around them. It was just like evil around them, a black cloud around them.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

There were people at the ranch who owed Charlie favors, and he said you owe me, I’m collecting. Do something to get Bobby outta jail, I don’t care what you do but do it.

CHARLES MANSON

I gave my life to what I thought was a brother. Every time I do that man I always end up on the short end of everything because I’m, I’m stupid. I can’t do school books stuff. I’m a stupid hillbilly is what it boils down to.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

I know he told Tex Watson, “You either take care of the problem or get on the road.” Tex Watson could have just left the ranch and there wouldn’t have been any “Tate-Labianca” murders.

CHARLES MANSON

Tex didn’t say that I told him to tell him anything. I told him four or five different ways.

MICHAEL CHANNELS

  (Manson Acquaintance)

He don’t tell nobody to do nothing. He don’t tell you to do anything today. He can convince you that that’s your idea, because usually it is your idea.

CHARLES MANSON

You can do what you want to do when you make up your mind and you decide that that’s what you’re going to do.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

What they didn’t volunteer to do was something they didn’t understand which was his need to protect himself. He manipulated them.

SUSAN ATKINS  

I remember when we first went in, one of the people said ‘who are you’ and Tex said, ‘I’m the devil and I’m here to do the devil’s business”. I don’t think Charles Manson’s mind was in control of Tex’s mind that night. Charlie’s human too, and his mental powers are just as limited, maybe not as limited as other humans, but there was an evil force in control of Tex that night.

BARBRA HOYT

They died so horribly, I don’t know if people really think about how. You just how much they suffered. You know, I think about Sharon Tate and she must have been insane with fear by the time they got to her.

PHIL KAUFMAN

What does it take to have somebody tell you to go and kill people, for what reason? I couldn’t conceive what could allow them to be influenced to go down… They didn’t kill people they butchered people, and these are the people that I’d been sleeping with.

NARRATOR

When Susan Atkins used Sharon Tate’s blood to write on a door, it appeared to call back to the murder of Gary Hinman. The police never made this connection. 

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Sherriff’s homicide was handling the Hinman murders and two of the homicide investigators went to the Tate investigators and said look we have this murder of Gary Hinman, blood on the wall, in Hinman’s blood. So they said, look we think these are connected, the LAPD investigators sent them away said, nah, they’re not connected.

 NARRATOR

The prosecution maintained that the events of that summer were not connected. They claimed that Charles Manson led a religious cult and was trying to start a race war called Helter Skelter, inspired by the Beatles.

DIRECTOR (OS)

If they’re trying to frame black people, why aren’t they writing “kill white people” or something very obvious?

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Probably because they didn’t think of it. That of course, you know, people would connect blacks because of the Beatles white album, so some black would figure it out and tell somebody, oh ya know (cough), Beatles, this is part of the murders--

DIRECTOR (OS)  

It just seems like a lot of dots to connect.

 BLACK.

BOARD - LOS ANGELES, SATURDAY - AUGUST 9TH, 1969, NIGHT OF THE LABIANCA MURDERS

NARRATOR

If members of the group killed Sharon Tate and others as a copycat murder in order to free Bobby Beausoleil, then why did  they commit more murders the next night?

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

The second night at the LaBianca’s was to cover up for what he had done the first night, which was kill a house full of people. He didn’t realize it was gonna be this big thing that had unfolded up there at the house on Cielo. He didn’t know that Terry Melcher had rented the place out so it basically turned into a fiasco.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

It was the weekend so, he’s going out the next night because he’s gotta cover up those Tate murders, because that’s going to get out and that’s going to be nasty.

DIRECTOR (VO)

Who did kill those people? 

CHARLES MANSON

The people that told you they killed ‘em. They said on the witness stand, yeah I killed ‘em.

NARRATOR

On the second night, another member of the group became complicit; Nineteen-year-old Leslie Van Houten.

PETER CHIARAMONTE

  (Leslie Van Houten’s former  

  Boyfriend).

Tex was Leslie’s boyfriend, ok, at the time. When Pat is explaining, what happened to Leslie, as I understand it, Pat was shaken by what she’d done but Leslie felt that she had to prove herself now, we’re gonna go out again and this has to be done. She must have been told at that point the line, “We’re doing it for Bobby.”  

NARRATOR

Catherine Gilles, also known as Cappi, recalls seeing Leslie Van Houten get into a car with Patricia Krenwinkel and others.

CAPPI

I had no idea where they were going but Katie and Lulu were the closest people in the universe to me. That girl was my other me and Katie was like our big sister. And they were in the car, and they we’re going somewhere without me, you know, and so I tried to get in the car and they wouldn’t let me. I didn’t know why. They were protecting me.

NARRATOR

Manson often speaks in riddles. This ensured many members of the group were not aware of what was going on.

CHARLES MANSON

What’s real has different levels. You could go on certain levels of reality, that other people don’t really understand at all. And they call it insanity.

NARRATOR

The group drove to Los Feliz and parked near an intersection on Waverly Drive. Inside the home to the west was an affluent couple who owned a chain of grocery stores, named Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

PHIL KAUFMAN

It was a place that they knew. They had been to Harold’s house which is right next door.

NARRATOR

This audio recording from the LA District Attorney shows that the house next door to LaBianca residence was once occupied by a man named Harold True, who knew Manson and the girls.

Harold True interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970:

They called and asked if they could spend the night in the house. And we let them stay the night. At Waverly? Yeah it was a big house, a lot of people stayed there. “Now how did he get your… have your phone number to call?” I don’t know. I guess maybe I gave him a map.

PHIL KAUFMAN

When I skipped the country and the time of my marijuana bust, Harold True gave me his passport. He had never had a passport so I got a passport in Harold’s name. And then when I got out and I went to see Charlie, I took Harold along. Harold was a big old lumpy guy and you know he thought he might get laid.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

They were camping out with the bus there and living at Harold True’s place, and the neighbours called the cops.  They had to leave there because the neighbours called the cops. And the neighbours were the LaBiancas.

BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL

Charlie picked people he had grudges against. He didn’t just pick people at random.

NARRATOR

This adds to the alternate theory that on the second night Manson continued manipulating the others.  It wasn’t because he would rule the world after a race war, instead it was a series of interconnected events. It began with the Bernard Crowe shooting, which led to the Gary Hinman murder and Bobby Beausoliel’s arrest. This culminated in the Sharon Tate and LaBianca murders. A significant amount of the commune became complicit and Manson’s outstanding grudges were satisfied. There is one additional piece that appears to support this theory, Charles Manson’s actions after the LaBianca murders. According to Tex Watson’s account, summarized from numerous public statements, he and Charles Manson went up to the LaBianca house and broke in through the back door. Manson woke up Leno LaBianca and tied him up. They retrieved Rosemary LaBianca from her bedroom and tied her up, before threatening to kill the couple in the living room. Manson disputes Tex Watson’s version of events.

CHARLES MANSON

What has he told you about me? Everything that’s going to help him, right? You are for you. I am for me. I’m for Charlie. I didn’t kill nobody.

NARRATOR

It’s undisputed that Manson drove to the LaBianca house and that he went into the house for some period of time. According to the trial transcripts, Linda Kasabian is asked; Question, how long after he left the car did he return to the car? Answer, I remember we all lit up cigarettes and we smoked about three-quarters of a Pall Mall cigarette, however long that takes.

The question is, what did Charles Manson do once he left the car?  

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

If you’re looking at three quarters of a cigarette, it’s five minutes. When you’re looking at what Tex says, there’s just not enough time.

NARRATOR

Manson and Tex Watson went up to the house. After a few minutes Manson returned, at which point Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten went into the house. Manson then drove away with the others.

Those in the car claim that while in the house Manson had retrieved Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet which police later found twenty miles away in a gas station bathroom located in Sylmar.  

According to the prosecution Manson conspired to plant the wallet in a black neighbourhood, reasoning a black person would use the credit cards and be connected to the murders. This would help spur the impending race war. But this motive is contradicted by the evidence. Census data from the nineteen seventies shows that Sylmar was not a black neighbourhood.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Obviously, he got screwed up. The wallet got planted in the wrong city, I mean there’s no point in planting it in a white area and having a white person use the credit cards. That defeats the whole purpose of blaming the murders on the blacks.

NARRATOR

If framing black people wasn’t Manson’s motive, then what was he trying to achieve in the few minutes that he was in the LaBianca house? And, what was the reason for taking Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet? 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

My theory is, Charlie goes up to the house. Tex Watson says in his book when they get in there Mr. LaBianca says “Hey, what do you all want, you all want money? I can get you money.” Let’s say Charlie did accept the money offer. My Theory is Charlie got the money and then he left, that’s why he left.

 NARRATOR

No one disputes that once Manson left, Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten stayed in the house and murdered the LaBiancas.  

 STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

With Leno LaBianca there was a carving fork protruding out his abdomen and Krenwinkel had written on his abdomen WAR. They found a knife with the handle sticking out of one end the blade traversing his neck, severing a carotid artery and part of the blade sticking out of the other side.

NARRATOR

During the LaBianca murders, all agree that Charles Manson took the rest of the group to Venice. The prosecution insisted that Manson went to Venice to get his followers to commit another murder. Once again, the motive was to frame a black person and fuel the race war. According to trial testimony, Manson allegedly took his followers to the apartment building located here. 

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

The address to that apartment building is, you could literally say a stone’s throw from the Straight Satans clubhouse in Venice. You mean that Straight Satan biker gang that Charlie owed money to? Yeah that biker gang, they were in Venice. 

NARRATOR

In the alternate theory, after Manson shot Bernard Crowe he feared retaliation and enlisted the Straight Satans for protection. Bobby Beausoleil compromised this protection by getting into a conflict with the Straight Satans over a drug deal.  

If Manson took enough money from the LaBianca residence, he could have gone to Venice to settle the debt that Bobby Beausoleil owed the Straight Satan’s from the Gary Hinman drug deal. This would’ve regained their protection from the Black Panthers.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

It’s what, 4 in the morning, 3 or 4 in the morning? They didn’t go back to ranch, they went to Venice. That’s how pressing this was for Charlie. They could wait until Monday to do business. I think they went to Venice to pay off the Straight Satans.

CHARLES MANSON

When you’re in the know with somebody that’s in the know. You don’t play games with them. 

BRIAN DAVIS

That next morning Charlie sent Linda Kasabian down to the jail with a message for Bobby Beausoleil, don’t say anything, everything’s cool. Why all of a sudden is everything cool? By Monday before any court proceedings started they get a message to Bobby, everything’s cool, we’ve taken care of everything. Don’t say a word about nothing. We’ll have you out of there soon. 

NARRATOR

By Monday morning seven people were dead but the string of murders was not finished.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

The neighboring rancher, he didn’t like the Manson family. So, what was going on then is, they we’re trying to get them off the ranch. 

NARRATOR  

It’s been long speculated that the neighboring rancher may have recruited a ranch hand named Donald “Shorty” Shae to rid Spahn Ranch of the group. Manson believed Shae had tipped off the police leading to a raid.

BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

You know there was definitely no love lost between Shorty Shae and Charles Manson as far as I can gather. 

NARRATOR

On August sixteenth, nineteen sixty-nine, twenty-six members of the commune were arrested for suspicion of auto theft. Because of a date error, the search warrant was ruled invalid and all were released. The police had no idea that they were connected to the murders making national news. When they returned to Spahn Ranch, Donald Shae was never seen again.

BARBRA HOYT

I went to sleep in a little trailer. I heard a scream, And then I heard more screaming and it just didn’t end and it was horrific. It was horrible, and it kept going on and on and I recognized Shorty’s voice.

NARRATOR

After Donald Shae’s disappearance, Manson and the commune left Spahn Ranch.  

 BRIAN DAVIS

  (Investigative Reporter)  

Cappi suggested that her grandmother had a place out there in Death Valley, when he was looking for a place to go. They went out there and looked at it. He fell in love with it. And he said this is it. This is it, this is our utopia.

NARRATOR

The land in Death Valley was an isolated mining property owned by Catherine Gilles’ grandmother. After the murders, Charles Manson and the group stayed there until October of nineteen sixty-nine.    

CAPPI

We went to the desert because of me. My favorite place besides the ocean. I was born on the ocean and I lived in the desert, and I love the desert so I offered up the desert.

NARRATOR

Just like authorities had in Los Angeles, Inyo County officers raided the Death Valley ranch on August twelfth, nineteen sixty-nine for suspicion of auto theft.

Twenty-four members of the group we’re arrested and once again police had no idea they were involved in any of the murders. The killers were imprisoned except for Patricia Krenwinkel, who went on both nights, and Tex Watson.  

 GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

After the murders, Pat Krenwinkel went back to Alabama, Tex Watson went back to Texas. Nobody was holding them around. 

NARRATOR

Records show that Linda Kasabian was bailed out by her parents and left California. Before anyone else could arrange for bail, Susan Atkins confessed.  

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

Susan Atkins is the one that broke the case. I mean they didn’t know that it was Charles Manson or Susan Atkins or anything until she blabbed.

PHIL KAUFMAN

That was her, that was very much her. Charlie would have been better killing her and he probably would have gotten away with it a little bit longer.

NARRATOR

While inside the country jail, Susan Atkins told her cellmates that she was involved in the murder of Sharon Tate. One of the first people Atkins confessed to was a call girl named Virginia Graham.  

VIRGINIA GRAHAM

Susan Atkins, she plopped herself down and she sat on the bunk and we started talking, and she presumed to tell me how stupid the police were, and they were dumb. She said to me, “You know those murders up benedict canyon?” She said you know who did it don’t you and I said no, and she said cold as can be “you’re looking her”.  She didn’t say Helter Skelter to me. I found out about, Helter Skelter, later on. But I don’t recall her telling me Helter Skelter.

NARRATOR

Susan Atkins was denied compassionate release in two thousand and eight, and died from brain cancer in prison. However, in nineteen sixty-nine the DA was willing to overlook the brutality of her actions.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

The deal with Susan Atkins, the prosecution was going to let her plead to second degree murder. Sharon was begging for her life. She was being held by Susan Aktins and – she said “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me. I just want to have my baby.”

SUSAN ATKINS

I felt nothing, I felt absolutely nothing for her as she begged for the life of her baby.  

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor) She said “Look bitch, I don’t care about you or your child. You’re going to die and I don’t feel a thing behind it.” Having Susan Atkins as the witness that wouldn’t have gone over to well with the jury.

NARRATOR  

The prosecutor who was working out the deal was the author of HELTER SKELTER, Vincent Bugliosi.

DANIEL SIMONE

Vincent Bugliosi was an outstanding prosecutor. But if one really we’re to dig much deeper, what emerges is he was a womanizer. He loved attention, he was over-ambitious

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

He had a guy sitting in court that I thought was a reporter but it turned out he was Curt Gentry, who Vince had hired to write a book on the case. He didn’t tell me that he was writing a book during the trial. So, yeah, he didn’t tell anybody it. This was gonna make him rich and famous.

CHARLES MANSON

It’s all underworld solider. Who you think the president is? Where you think his office is, in my cell?

NARRATOR

This is the Helter Skelter theory that was presented to the jury in the Charles Manson trials.

NARRATOR

Manson formed a cult of obedient followers who wanted to drop out of society. Their connection to the Bernard Crowe shooting is unknown as the motive and was not explored by the prosecution.  

Manson wanted to be a rock star and was obsessed with the Beatles. He had also met the Beach Boys.

Through the Beach Boys, Manson came to resent Terry Melcher and considered Melcher’s house a representation of the establishment.

Manson believed the Beatles were predicting a race war through hidden messages in their songs, and he needed money to supplement his preparation.

Because of this, Manson further brainwashed his cult to believe in the race war and ordered them to kill Gary Hinman.

Meanwhile, to start the race war, Manson decided to murder white people and frame black people. He indirectly ordered his followers to kill whoever lived at Terry Melcher’s house.

Manson also chose another house at random and ordered its occupants to be killed.

Manson’s plot was to frame black people by having his followers leave indirect references to the Beatles White Album at the crime scenes. Manson believed that both the police and black people would understand these references, and this would lead into the race war.

Once the race war began, Manson and the family would hide in a secret cave in the desert. After the war, Manson would emerge and become the leader of the victorious black army. At that point he would rebuild the world.  

This is the theory that convicted Charles Manson and others, and gained prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi fame, and a best-selling book.  

CHARLES MANSON

That’s what the DA said. Everybody will tell you what they think about me, according to what they want to use me for. All I’m looking for is someone to help me. I’ve always been by myself alone.

Phil Kaufman interviewed by Aaron Stovitz, January 27th, 1970.

Anything on the recordings that you know of whereby he speaks of his philosophy of Helter Skelter, the ruination and damnation of this world? No.

PHIL KAUFMAN

I was really not a friendly witness. I was on parole for one thing, I really didn’t, you know, want to get connected with these people. And this DA comes out to my house and tries to get stuff out of me that wasn’t there.

CHARLES MANSON  

They know how to milk the cow man. And they do it so well the cow don’t even know it.

NARRATOR

The Helter Skelter theory is not only sensational, it establishes the elements of murder and conspiracy under California law. To be found guilty, the defendant must agree to commit a crime as well as commit an overt act in furtherance of that agreement.

GEORGE STIMSON

  (Author – ‘Goodbye Helter    

Skelter)

Without proving the Helter Skelter motive there was no evidence whatsoever that Manson wanted these murders to happen. You have to be a party to it, you can’t just know about it.

 CHARLES MANSON

I didn’t break the law because I’ve been in prison all my life and I know the law. I know what conspiracy is. I’m not going to conspire to do something. That’s kind of stupid isn’t it? I’m not a stupid dude. I’m dumb but I’m not stupid.  

NARRATOR

This is the implication of what Manson is saying. It’s not that he wasn’t involved in the events of the summer of sixty-nine. Manson admits to shooting Bernard Crowe, his involvement with drugs, the Straight Satans, and the motive of getting Bobby out of prison. But when it came to the murders he maintains he purposely kept himself at a distance. 

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I thought it was a horrible case against him. Remember he was not at the scene. He was forty miles away when the murders took place so he was an armchair murderer.

NARRATOR

The Helter Skelter theory was how the prosecution demonstrated that Manson was guilty of conspiracy and murder under the requirements of the law. They described a scenario where he ordered the murders without actually saying the words.

STEPHEN KAY

  (Manson Family Co-Prosecutor)

I mean they all knew about Helter Skelter but we didn’t have any evidence from that specific night that Manson said go out and start Helter Skelter. He just said “Go with Tex and do what Tex tells you to do”. 

CHARLES MANSON

They still won’t admit the truth. They had no evidence against me, none. 

NARRATOR

There was no evidence that Manson himself killed anyone. The prosecution said that Manson was guilty under the rule of “vicarious responsibility”. The notion that Manson’s plot to start a race war made him responsible for all the crimes committed to further it.

BRIAN DAVIS  

Remember, Vince is trying to push the agenda that Charlie just came out of nowhere and said, hey, we gotta start a race war -  Bernard Crowe, drug dealing, grand theft auto, none of that has anything to do with this. If Vince introduces anything outside of that it starts to wash away the Helter Skelter theory. Then you have that reasonable doubt creeping in. Well maybe it has something to do with the drug deal? And Vince doesn’t want you going down that road. 

CHARLES MANSON

People don’t want to look at it from the point of view that brings them to something they don’t like. 

NARRATOR

The prosecution used the race war as the basis of their legal argument. If the alternate theory is correct, might they have ignored the true nature of events to gain a conviction? Whatever Manson’s crimes are, do the ends justify the means?

GARY LAWYER  

I think if he had had a competent lawyer, he would of either walked on the trial or walked on appeal because there just wasn’t sufficient testimony to convict him of anything.

NARRATOR

To convict Manson the prosecution’s entire case depended on one of the murderers corroborating their theory. On December second, nineteen sixty-nine, four months after the death of Sharon Tate, the last of the murderers was captured. Linda Kasabian surrendered in New Mexico and returned to California. She immediately met with her attorney Gary Fleischman.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I talked to her and the only conversation I can tell you, I said keep your mouth shut and keep it shut in that jail. Don’t talk to anybody about this ever. I can’t tell you the conversation I had with her but I was lead to believe that the murders up there started long before the Tate-Labianca case. I can’t describe what she told me but it was scary, the whole thing was scary.

NARRATOR  

At that time, Linda Kasabian had few options because Susan Atkins had already turned state’s witness. According to Gary Fleischman, he had Kasabian sabotage Susan Atkins’s testimony to bolster Kasabian’s bargaining position with prosecutors.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I had Linda pass kites to her, in the jail. A kite is a little letter, saying in Charlie talk, Charlie talk being ‘the DA is your lawyer, Charlie is the DA’. And this Atkins was a little nuts, and she then refused to testify. So now they we’re left with Linda, period – and then negotiations started.

First they offered me murder in the second degree, I said no, then they offered me voluntary manslaughter, I said no.

She was technically guilty of first degree murder before and after the fact.

NARRATOR

Linda Kasabian was one of the four who participated in the Sharon Tate murders and was with Charles Manson the night of the LaBianca murders. Prior to that, she had only been with the group for about thirty days and had spent little time with Manson himself.

CHARLES MANSON

Nobody ratted on me, except, she didn’t rat because she didn’t know anything. What they did was, they got some of the women that didn’t know me. I can’t get in their mind.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

So, we typed up an immunity agreement and the immunity agreement said, Linda Kasabian will receive immunity if she testifies to the truth in the so-called Manson murders. The truth is as follows. I knew exactly what was necessary to convict him, and whether that was true or not it was wasn’t my business to decide. That was Vince’s business. I said Linda if you testify to that you’re going to walk out of that courtroom. 

 NARRATOR

Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Charles “Tex” Watson and Leslie Van Houten were all charged with murder and conspiracy. Tex Watson was arrested in Texas and faced extradition to California. With Linda Kasabian ready to testify, Watson was not brought back in time for Manson’s trial.

BRIAN DAVIS  

Tex sat out a whole year and watched that trial develop. If he had brought Tex in with him there’s no way he would have got that conviction.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

They wanted to get rid of me. I had gone to Stanford. I was really the only lawyer in the place who knew what the hell was going on. We filed a very detailed motion to get the case out of LA county.

It had like a hundred newspaper clippings and I claimed that the bad publicity was instigated by the prosecutors and that’s enough to get the case dismissed at least on appeal.

That case should have never been tried in Los Angeles county. But when we went to make a deal we withdrew the motion.

CAPPI

You should have seen my face when, when I was sitting in the in with the demure act this whole gold cross that she was fingering, and got up on the stand and said “I’m just an angel sent here from Heaven, to tell the world that Charlie’s the devil not Jesus Christ”.

CHARLES MANSON  

Listen and learn. The courtroom shows our justice. The courtroom is the eye of the social consciousness. You’ve got to go along with the courtroom. Right or wrong doesn’t have anything to do with it. I’m a mass murderer in the courtroom. 

DANIEL SIMONE

In this case, Bugliosi was brilliant. He had no rivals. It came down to who the jurors believed and Manson’s own conduct which was absolutely absurd.

CHARLES MANSON

They think they’re stealing me but all they’re doing is stealing what I’ve left for them to steal. In other words, they’re plagiarizing all my dreams but I left those on the bus stop.

BRIAN DAVIS  

It literally branded Charles Manson the most evil, dangerous man in the world.

CHARLES MANSON

There’s no end to my insanity. My insanity is so much genius I’ve got five heads in one hand.

DANIEL SIMONE

None of the defense attorneys challenged that Linda Kasabian’s testimony remained uncorroborated.

CAPPI

I know how involved she was and I won’t say, but she was definitely involved, yes. 

NARRATOR

When the trial wound to a close, those associated began to fear for their lives. Many changed their names in fear of reprisal.  

CHARLES MANSON  

Live and let live. You don’t let me live, you don’t live. That’s all. If you let me live, you live.

I you don’t let me live then you get your own judgment. Everybody gets to judge themselves. I didn’t want the job, you know.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

Charlie went like this to mean, meaning I’m going to cut your throat. And I said to him “Charlie, when you get out of jail I’m going to have a turkey neck and bring you a sharp knife to cut it.” He started laughing.

PHIL KAUFMAN

They came to my house twice to kill me. My neighbor said you know guys have been crawling over your fence.

STEPHEN KAY

One night during the first trial on my way to the parking lot where I had parked, Squeaky and Sandra Good snuck up behind me and said they were going to do to my house what was done at the Tate house. 

NARRATOR

Leslie Van Houten’s attorney, Ronald Hughes, went missing during the trial. Many have speculated about his disappearance.

STEPHEN KAY

I remember we broke for the weekend on a Friday afternoon. Manson pointed directly at Ronald Hughes and said, Attorney, I don’t ever want to see you in this courtroom again.” His body was found six months later but it was so badly decomposed that they couldn’t tell the cause of death.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

I’ll bet your bottom dollar that he said something that got under Charlie’s skin, and Manson had him killed. I mean, he went up to (something) hot springs, and all of sudden he’s dead. I don’t believe it was an accident.

NARRATOR

After the first trial the Manson Family became infamous. Vincent Bugliosi published HELTER SKELTER the best-selling true crime book of all time. This began decades of movies, books, and TV shows, portraying Charles Manson as the incarnation of evil.

BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL  

It’s such an insidiously created book - It’s a curse having to live with it.

CHARLES MANSON

The DA fucked up man. Convicted me in the press, didn’t convict me in court. I got my own media.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson and the rest continued on through the courts. They received additional death sentences for the murder of Donald Shea based primarily on the testimony of Barbara Hoyt.

Tex Watson received a separate trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders and was sentenced to death like the others. The following year, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and all of their sentences were commuted to life in prison.

BRIAN DAVIS

The first trial, everybody was brainwashed, Tex was brainwashed, everybody went and killed for Charlie. But when Tex gets to trial he wasn’t brainwashed, he acted on his own.

NARRATOR

In November of nineteen sixty-nine, Bobby Beausoleil was tried for the murder of Gary Hinman. This was before the DA had labelled Charles Manson as the mastermind. Beausoleil’s first trial ended in a mistrial when the jury could not come to a unanimous verdict. There was no mention of Helter Skelter.

BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL

The first trial was just a quiet little trial in Santa Monica, the Jury was hung 8 to 4. I didn’t even testify because the case was really very weak. 

NARRATOR  

In a second trial, which took place after Manson was charged, Bobby Beausoleil was rebranded as a “member of The Manson Family”. He and Susan Atkins were sentenced to death alongside Manson for the murder of Gary Hinman.

BOBBY BEAUSOLIEL

They brought up this race war thing and all of that. It was horrible, man. They did a lot of insidious things.

NARRATOR  

Many of those convicted for the Tate-LaBianca murders remain in jail. Leslie Van Houten has been granted parole on numerous occasions but because of her association with Charles Manson her parole has been continually overturned.  

STEPHEN KAY

I don’t think that she deserves to get out. They we’re all lucky that they didn’t suffer the death penalty.

RICH PFIEFFER

I’m going to get her out. The DA is not operating fairly. Just follow the law, that’s all I’m asking.

NARRATOR

Lynette Squeaky Fromme served thirty-five years in prison for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Fromme was paroled in two thousand and nine. Vincent Bugliosi died in two thousand and fifteen. His book HELTER SKELTER has become gospel in terms of information on Charles Manson.

NARRATOR

Manson remains in California State Prison, Corcoran, where he will almost certainly live for the remainder of his life.

CHARLES MANSON  

That’s hard for me to believe that all this time has gone by man.

NARRATOR

Charles Manson is not an innocent man but does it matter how we know that? Should those in power be allowed to construct their own truth in the pursuit of justice?

CHARLES MANSON

I see things as they really are in truth. You got a constitution in the United States, and they read and study it in school but they never really understand the validity of it, and how powerful it really is.

GRAY WOLF

I don’t care who it is, if somebody doesn’t get a fair trial then we’re all in trouble.

GARY FLEISCHMAN

Do I think he’s suffered an injustice, not really (laughs), not in my heart of hearts. But as a matter of litigation, yes he did suffer an injustice. Whether morally he suffered an injustice I don’t think so.

NARRATOR

This leaves some to ask, if the prosecution had pursued the alternate theory with its brutal but less sensational elements, would anyone even know who Charles Manson is? And, would he be sitting in jail today? 

MANSON

I believe what I’m told to believe. Don’t you?

THE END

[snarkyowl]

SCP au - A Mix

In which 🅱 continues to write more for this au than me.

A brief report on the disappearance of SCP-3007 By: Dr. Amy Nelson

SCP-3007, a shapeshifting black smog-like gas, escaped the foundation four years ago today. The entity was ranked Keter, due to its hypnotic song and nightmare inducing tendencies. It didn't seem to need to rest or consume anything to keep its form or abilities. It seemed to be able to take any shape, transforming into many animals and even myself.

Its song, however, was the main topic of interest. It was able to coax even the strongest willed to do anything- whether it was to stop breathing or to snap their own neck.

D-[REDACTED] was told to do a variety of things, some sexual in nature, others brutal, humiliating and violent. SCP-3007 seemed to be a sadist, but was surprisingly cooperative to tests, politely thanking the doctors for their time. I remember he once gave me a man’s left arm as a token. Needless to say, young me vomited at the offer.

The entity itself emitted a purple mist, no matter what form it was in. The mist seemed to be nightmare inducing, and a concentrated sample given to D-[REDACTED] caused them to experience hallucinations and have a fatal seizure. Prolonged exposure to a diluted dose will do the same.

Despite these abilities, it was in containment for at least five years before I started working here, and one after I started my job. However, one day, it just vanished. There was no trace left of the entity, and the guards on duty (Daryl Price, Lexi Kidman, Nathan Sharp, and Jack Poolos) reported no motion of the entity and no suspicious activity.

The entity has not been reported or spotted since then. Request to experiment on the left over mist concentration.

Matthew gave me a journal to write in. He said it was ‘for an extra look into that pretty little head of yours’ but I'm guessing it's more of a gift than anything since I've been requesting a journal for days. If anything, it's to clear out my thoughts.

I was caught. I was brought to this hell. I fell in love. And I'm scared it's not real, that it's just Stockholm syndrome or something somehow. I can't ignore how my heart races when we get to spend time together, how nice his voice is and how soft his lips are, now kind he is to me and how he's always so cold so he hogs the blankets when Google buys us the time to sleep together.

I do love him. It's not some disorder, some trick of the mind... I love him. If I ever escape, I'll show that to him. Every day until I die. I wish there was something more for us than this, kisses exchanged on borrowed time, a quick fuck with no time afterwards, something more- But there's no chance.

If we were to escape, they would hunt us down, re-capture me and kill Matthew. As much as I tell myself that won't happen, I can't help but think. He offered to free me. I said no. I love him too much to see him die for me.

-Bim Trimmer

Ethan, I'm sorry for all of this. It's my fault that you're here, I was the one who told them and I didn't know they were... I can't live with the fact that I was the one who…

Ethan, it's my fault we're both going to rot in this hell hole because I fucked up and i can't fix things no matter how much shit we get I can't i can't

Ethan, This is my fault and I'm so sorry for everything please forgive me

Ethan, Ok, I think I'll have enough pears for you to have two, also, what is up with SCP-3013? You mentioned being assigned to clean his containment unit. Your pal, -Tyler.

I'm sorry.

Report number seventy-two. Google Blue Olivier ‘Google’ Blue.

As Dr. Patrick's ‘eye in the sky,’ I find myself being hidden in plain sight, disguised as an intern working the security systems. The phrase ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire.’ Comes to mind. Out of the containment pin and into the grasps of a love-struck maniac.

He has me monitor cameras and hallways, making sure nobody has a clue what he gets up to, warning him of oncoming obstacles and other things of the like. Mostly, though, I am making sure he doesn't get caught cuddling with a mother fucking goddam cannibal I cannot believe him he's supposed to be a scientist Mr. Trimmer, SCP-3038.

It's not all bad, but it is annoying to have to constantly monitor them. this situation is oddly amusing to me. I'm a high-functioning computerized android and yet I've been babysitting two dorks in love. It's sad, but amusing nonetheless.

Dr. Patrick has been staying for longer periods of time each occasion he visits Mr. Trimmer, SCP-3038. It could be cause for concern. Claude would probably think it was, he thinks everything is a cause of concern. Well, he thought.

After observing the cameras, the situations they put themselves in (some involving Dr. Patrick on his knees- or hands and knees (it seems my previous hypothesis was incorrect)) would be scandalous, ruining both of their lives and, in Dr. Patrick's case, his career.

Bim, I suspect, would be put under heavier surveillance. Nothing I couldn't crack, but stronger than before. Dr. Patrick would most likely be reassigned or killed, then expunged from the records.

It is possible, however, the foundation would use hm as a reminder of what happens when emotions and science collides. I, personally, am a living example of that, a supposedly emotionless being plagued by the death of my brothers.

Those two aside, Dr. Nelson seems to have connections to Mark Edward Fischbach, a D-class recently taken in for the murder of an unknown person. The name of the victim seems to be lost.

Either way, Dr. Nelson and Mr. Fischbach seem to have gone to highschool together. --As my brother Oliver used to say, ‘they weren't just together, they were together’ The two of them dated for most of highschool and went to many social events together. Isaac would have liked going to the dances, the football games. With his sunglasses and skateboard, he would fit right in.

Mark and Amy's reunion was bittersweet. I read her digital journal, in which she stated how excited she was to see him, but how distraught she was to see him here of all places. Alan would probably go as far as to call her a romantic- she probably imagined their reunion as much nicer, probably involving flowery words and a long-missed smile. I miss their smiles.

I have decided to pass this information and more to Mr. Scheid and Mr. Nestor, who I have been supplying with information since my escape. Meddling aside, the two of them have accumulated much information for themselves, including the idea that Dr. Patrick aided my vessels escape. They're close to having information they could use to bargain themselves out of this prison- if only they knew what Bim was.

The reason I've supplied this information is simply because Tyler reminds me of Alan. How could I let him rot here the two of them are closest to success. Back to the subject of Dr. Patrick. I have found myself caring more and more for the eccentric man, much to my own chagrin. These human emotions I somehow carry are getting in the way of my life of my goals.

I have mistakenly called Dr. Patrick by Oliver my late brothers name multiple times. He reminds me of him. I am considering performing a minor reprogramming on myself in an attempt to purge myself of human emotions. I am wary of doing so due to the high probability that the reprogramming would cause severe damage to my higher reasoning functions. And if I get them back, what would they think of me? I will continue to document similar occurrences in documents akin to this one until my full escape.

if only I was the brave Theseus. If only I had some golden thread. if only I had saved them. if only I was a hero. if only

Additive: Upon informing Mr. Scheid and Mr. Nestor of Dr. Nelsons relations with Mr. Fischbach, they revealed they already knew. How they figured it out by themselves is beyond my reasoning, as Ethan and Tyler seemed to be preoccupied- Tyler with helping food preparation and Ethan with cleaning up after an experiment of sorts. I have no idea whatsoever how Tyler came across this information. But, hell, I'm in a building where the laws of physics- the laws of anything seem to be null and void. I have officially given up the arduous task of attempting to comprehend the oddities and entities in this building, even the normal humans.

Report pertaining the psychological status of --Jack-- Seán McLoughin By: Nathan Sharp

For the past few weeks, Seán has seemed a little on edge. When I asked him what was troubling him, he just told me he was having some computer problems that were a little troubling to him. I have no clue what computer problems could cause him to panic at the mention of the virus on my computer. As a teammate, I'm worried how this would affect Strike Team Nine Tailed Fox’s effectiveness in the field. As a friend, I'm just worried about him. Maybe it's just a small scare, maybe it's something worse- I just want my friend to be alright.

Nathan, The concern you hold for your friend is heartwarming, so is the loyalty for your team. Thank you for supplying us with this information so I can better understand what is troubling Seán. If you hear anything more, please tell me. The wellbeing of my team is a top priority. -Strike Commander Signe Hansen

[kansascityhappenings]

Mass shootings transform how America talks, prays, prepares

CHICAGO — Pardeep Singh Kaleka has surveyed the landscape of an America scarred by mass shootings.

Seven years ago, a white supremacist invaded a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and killed six worshippers — among them Kaleka’s father, who died clutching a butter knife he’d grabbed in a desperate attempt to stop the shooter. Now, whenever another gunman bloodies another town, Kaleka posts a supportive message on social media. Then later, either by invitation or on his own initiative, he’ll journey to the community to shore up others who share his pain.

He’s been to Newtown, Connecticut. Charleston, South Carolina. Pittsburgh. “We’ve become kind of a family,” Kaleka says.

It’s true. The unending litany of mass shootings in recent years — the latest, on Friday, leaving 12 dead in Virginia Beach, Virginia — has built an unacknowledged community of heartbreak, touching and warping the lives of untold thousands.

All the survivors, none of them unscathed. The loved ones of the living and dead. Their neighbors, relatives and colleagues. The first responders, the health care workers, the elected officials.

The attacks have changed how America talks, prays and prepares for trouble. Today, the phrases “active shooter” and “shelter in place” need no explanation. A house of worship will have a priest, a rabbi or an imam — and maybe, an armed guard. And more schools are holding “lockdown drills” to prepare students for the possibility of a shooter.

Post-traumatic stress disorder was once largely associated with combat-weary veterans; now some police and firefighters tormented by the memories of the carnage they’ve witnessed are seeking professional help. Healing centers have opened to offer survivors therapy and a place to gather. Support groups of survivors of mass shootings have formed.

Mayors, doctors, police and other leaders who’ve endured these crises are paying it forward — offering comfort, mentoring and guidance to the next town that has to wrestle with the nightmare.

Former Oak Creek Mayor Stephen Scaffidi, who’d been on the job just four months at the time of the 2012 Sikh temple attack, remembers a call that night from the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, where 12 people had been fatally shot at a movie theater less than three weeks earlier. “He gave me the best advice I could ever receive in that moment: ‘Be calm. Reassure your community. And only speak to what you know. Don’t speculate, don’t pretend to be an expert on something that you’re not,’” Scaffidi recalls.

Last year, two days after the fatal shooting of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Christine Hunschofsky, mayor of Parkland, Florida, met the mother of a 6-year-old killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School who offered a road map into the future.

“She forewarned me of many of the things that we would encounter,” Hunschofsky recalls. “She said at first it will seem like everyone comes together. Then it seems like a tsunami that hits the community. People become very divided. This is all normal after a mass trauma.”

Three months later, it was Hunschofsky’s turn. She sent a message to the incoming mayor of Santa Fe, Texas, where a school shooting left 10 dead. “She told me this is not going to be the hardest day and harder days are coming,” recalls Mayor Jason Tabor. “‘Prepare for that.’ She was 100 percent right.”

The two mayors have since become fast friends and Hunschofsky visited Santa Fe. “We’re bonded for life,” Tabor says.

Mass shootings account for a tiny percentage of homicides, but their scale sets them apart. In 1999, the Columbine shooting shocked the nation with its unforgettable images of teens running from the school with their hands up — scenes repeated in other similar attacks years later. Today, the public sees and hears about these events as they unfold, through live-streamed video or tweets.

Each tragedy is horrifying, but the sense of it-can’t-happen-here has worn off.

“We’re a desensitized society,” says Jaclyn Schildkraut, a criminologist at the State University of New York at Oswego.

“There is an element of mass shooting fatigue where we’ve gone from ONE MORE,” she says, her voice rising with exasperation, “to add another one to the list. Everybody immediately goes for the gun argument … and maybe throw a little mental health in there, but we really don’t have a consistent, prolonged conversation about these events and how to prevent them.”

Studies have offered some hints of their emotional wallop. The National Center for PTSD estimates 28 percent of people who have witnessed a mass shooting develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and about a third develop acute stress disorder.

Laura Wilson, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia conducted a meta-analysis — an examination of data from 11 studies of PTSD symptoms among more than 8,000 participants who ranged from those who’d witnessed shootings to those who just lived in the communities in a 20-year period. She found the greater the exposure — someone who was at the scene or who lost a friend or family — the greatest risk of developing PTSD. But, in her work, Wilson has found other factors, too, including previous psychological symptoms and a lack of social support, also played a role in increasing the likelihood.

“Mass shootings are a different type of trauma,” Wilson says. “People are confronted with the idea that bad things can happen to good people. … Most people have a hard time reconciling the idea that a young, innocent person made the good decision to go to school, was sitting there, learning and was murdered. That does not make sense to us. … It just rattles us to our core.”

And yet, some people don’t fully appreciate the lasting psychological wounds of those who escaped physical harm.

A study conducted by a University of Nevada-Las Vegas professor after the 2017 Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting that left 58 people dead found PTSD levels for those at the concert remained elevated at least a year later. Most of these people had a friend, family member or co-worker asking — as early as 1½ months after the event — why they were still troubled.

“Almost everyone had someone say, ‘Get over it. Why are you letting this bother you?’” says Stephen Benning, a psychology professor who conducted the research. Those kinds of remarks were associated with increased levels of PTSD, which lasted longer than depression.

April Foreman, a psychologist and board member of the American Association of Suicidology, likens exposure to mass shootings to a flu epidemic that affects the entire community in different ways.

“When we have these mass casualty events it’s like an outbreak of a virus,” she says. “Some people might be immune or not susceptible to that strain. Some people are going to get a little sick, some people are going to be very sick. Some people might have compromised immune systems and if they’re exposed they have a very high risk for life-threatening illness. Suicide is like the extreme outcome.”

In one week in March, two student survivors of the Parkland school shooting killed themselves. Around the same time, the father of a 6-year-old killed girl in Newtown died of an apparent suicide. He had created a foundation in his daughter’s name to support research on violence prevention.

Austin Eubanks, a Columbine student who was shot and watched his best friend die in the school massacre, died last month, possibly of an overdose. He struggled with opioid use after the attack and later became an addiction recovery speaker. A memorial fund established in his name is seeking funds for a trauma-informed program for families and victims of mass violence.

After the Parkland suicides, Hunschofsky says, many people sought mental health help for the first time. “They just told me, ‘I thought I was OK, but after this happened, maybe I’m not. Maybe I do need to talk to someone.’” The community’s wellness center, established after the Parkland shooting, extended its hours.

A similar program, the Resiliency Center of Newtown, is an informal gathering place for those grappling with anxiety, depression and PTSD. Though the school attack occurred 6½ years ago, the center still gets new clients and after every mass shooting, more people stop by.

“Your heart hurts every time a new tragedy happens because you know what those people who are impacted are going to have to go through and what the community is going to go through, and that’s hard,” says Stephanie Cinque, the center’s founder and executive director. “You don’t just get over it and move on.”

In Florida, Orange County Sheriff John Mina, Orlando’s police chief during the 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub, realized that when he reached out to law enforcement peers — former chiefs of Aurora and Newtown — afterward. “‘What do you think I should be doing six months, a year from now?” he asked. “They said, ‘John, you’re not going to be dealing with this a year. You’re going to be dealing with this five or 10 years. That was like a punch in the gut.”

There were some immediate lessons learned, he says. Among them: improved communications with the fire department and better equipment. After the Pulse shooting, officers were given Kevlar helmets and an extra layer of body armor that will stop rifle rounds.

Mental health debriefings were held six months and a year after the shooting rampage for Orlando officers who went to the nightclub that morning.

Some have reached beyond the department to UCF RESTORES, a clinic at the University of Central Florida that helps trauma victims. It was originally designed to serve the military, but has expanded to include first responders and sexual assault victims, among others.

Deborah Beidel, the clinic’s director, says first responders called to mass shootings face trauma similar to those in combat. About 50 firefighters, police and paramedics who were at Parkland and Pulse have been treated, most in a three-week outpatient program that exposes them to the sounds, smells and sights they encountered that caused their PTSD.

For those inside the Pulse, Beidel says, “the sound of cellphones ringing and ringing and ringing and no one answering them became a trigger for many people. Afterward, any time they heard a cellphone, particularly that Marimba ring on the iPhone, they would have a flashback.”

Beidel says the goal isn’t to make workers forget but to “put that memory in a file where it no longer affects every other aspect of their life, so that they no longer are restricted in what they can do because … of flashbacks or panic or whatever they might be experiencing.”

Jimmy Reyes, a 35-year-old Orlando firefighter, enrolled in the program about five months after Pulse. He’d been haunted by the memory of tending to more than two dozen bloody, wounded people carried from the club, sprawled over a parking lot, screaming in agony.

After more than four stressful hours caring for the wounded, not knowing who’d live or die, he returned home. As he and his wife watched the TV news, he began sobbing. She held him. “We did the best that we could,” he told her.

Less than a week later, Reyes had a panic attack while working a second job — he was on a safety team in a jet ski race. “I couldn’t breathe,” he says. “I kept telling myself, ‘You’ll be fine. It’ll pass.’” It didn’t. He dreaded another big call at work.

Firefighters, he says, “kind of bury a lot of stuff. It gets put in a file in the back of your head. That’s what I thought this was going to be.”

But it didn’t stay there. He was short-tempered with his family. He had little interest in doing anything but sitting at home. Finally, Reyes decided to seek help.

For three weeks, he relived his experiences, answering questions from a therapist as he told his Pulse story over and over, recalling everything he saw, including one man talking on his cellphone who’d been shot in the head and another critically wounded who asked, “Am I going to die?” At certain points, the therapist would cue up sounds he’d heard — gunshots from inside the club, the wail of the sirens, an explosion.

At first, he says, he cried. By the end of the sessions, he was dry-eyed and calm.

Reyes is better now and remains a firefighter. He never considered quitting. But he’s changed.

“I felt like I was normal before Pulse,” he says. “I was a very happy guy, no problems, no issues with mental health. Now I still deal with depression. I still deal with anxiety. … I look back at those days. … June 11th, I was normal. Then June 12th happened. I’m a completely different person.”

So is Las Vegas trauma surgeon Dave MacIntyre.

He talks in a rapid-fire, breathless way about the chaos 19 months after the Route 91 shooting. More than 90 severely injured patients in 113 minutes. He repeats that phrase as if it still hasn’t completely sunk in. After 20 years, he’s now a part-time trauma surgeon looking to get out of the operating room completely. MacIntyre enrolled in January in an executive MBA program for doctors, with plans on becoming a consultant for helping hospitals deal with similar challenges. He’s trying meditation, too.

MacIntyre didn’t realize he had PTSD until an MBA program coach picked up on his symptoms — anxiety, stress, short temper, avoidance. His marriage has suffered. His work, too. “I find it very hard to talk to family members and give them bad news … much more so than before,” he says.

After the shootings, his hospital brought in therapy dogs and counselors for the staff but not everyone participated. “As physicians we’re not going to want to show weakness. We’re not going to want to go into an auditorium full of people or get on the floor and pet dogs,” he says. “A lot of physicians internalize. You get to the point where it’s unbearable.”

It was different for Brian Murphy. He says he didn’t have any psychological trauma after the shootings at the Sikh temple.

Murphy, the first officer on the scene, was shot 15 times. His face, hands, arms and legs were riddled with bullets. One bullet remains lodged in his skull; another in his throat after slicing one vocal card and paralyzing the other, leaving him with a permanent rasp.

Medically retired from the Oak Creek police department, Murphy completed the master’s degree in criminal justice administration he’d started before he was injured.

He now works for the company that makes the bulletproof vest that stopped three rounds that struck him that August day. He counsels other wounded officers, talking about something deep in his DNA — resiliency.

Murphy gets injections in his throat every three months to stop scar tissue from tightening and has some trouble swallowing, but he has no complaints, noting he was first told he’d never talk or eat on his own. “Once I knew I wasn’t going to die, everything else was butter,” he says.

He credits his family’s support for rebounding. And he refuses to let the shooting dominate his thoughts.

“It’s not like I wake up and say, ‘I can’t believe this happened.’ It’s just life now. I don’t think there’s a tremendous amount of good that comes from looking behind.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/06/02/mass-shootings-transform-how-america-talks-prays-prepares/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/06/03/mass-shootings-transform-how-america-talks-prays-prepares/

[newagesispage]

                                                        MARCH              2019

 PAGE RIB

***** And the men who hold high places must be the ones to start, to mold a new reality closer to the heart. -RUSH

*****The most heroic word in all languages is revolution. – Eugene Debs

***** Words cannot begin to say how I feel about the death of Peter Tork. To lose another Monkee is heartbreaking. It is the circle of life and all things must pass and all the things we say but this one is hard. As they sang themselves, “you say we’re manufactured, to that we all agree” but that was only the beginning. The Monkees are very special  to me and mine. Oh sure, some make fun of us for our loyalty and some just don’t get it but this band is a thread thru my life like no other. I always call Davy, ‘the gateway Monkee’ because almost everyone loves him first, he draws you in. Davy seemed cute and talented and not at all imposing and we fall for him. Once you know that you are a fan for life, you find your lifetime Monkee and or you just appreciate the non- manufactured parts.  Some of the best memories of my life involve listening to Monkees , from my childhood bedroom to the party residence I had with my teen friends to my child’s childhood bedroom to seeing them LIVE in concert with my son and my sisters. We all understand every reference and we never tired of HEAD, the movie and Micky still makes me swoon.  In my family, our middle sister is into Mike and my baby sister was the Torkee . Go in Peace sweet Pete. You may have played the dummy but you never really were to us.*** Peter died of a rare form of cancer called adenoid cystic carcinoma, cancer of the salivary glands. He and his family asked for donations to be made to the institute for the musical arts in Massachusetts, a non -profit that provides young women with music education, recording and community.

***** Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has announced his budget which includes proposals to legalize recreational marijuana, legalize sports gambling, increase cigarette tax and put taxes in e- cigs and plastic bags.

***** Colin Kaepernick settled with the NFL.**The league will forever have to live with the fact that it was complicit in destroying someone’s career simply because he wished to bring attention to the injustice suffered by his people.- Jemel Hill

***** The new Diane Keaton film, Poms, a definite chick flick ,looks, warm, funny, sad and uplifting. Look for it in May.

***** Looking forward to Larry Charles’ dangerous world of comedy.

***** U.S. Coast Guard officer Chris Hasson has been arrested in an apparent Dem murder plot. No wonder Alec Baldwin is worried, these threats really do exist in this climate.

***** Former Maine Governor Paul LePage spent up to $1,100 a night on stays at Trump hotels with state money. Why do so many politicians think the people’s money is their piggy bank?

***** Amazon pulled out of its NY deal after protests. It seems terrible to me to give big incentives to the richest man in the world but the country needs good jobs. It wasn’t like they were going to just hand cash to Bezos. The 3 billion tax subsidy would have only gone to the company if they produced big revenue. People have the right to have a say in their neighborhoods and the will of the people should be done. In the end the decision was Amazon’s.  Next stop?? Nobody knows.

***** Oil lobbyist David Bernhardt will head the interior department.**The new deputy in the EPA, David Dunlap, former Koch industry official was quietly put in place in October. He helped to decide that we won’t set chemical limits on drinking water.

***** Saw Rich Hall recently on something and he got even hotter.

*****So, This seemed like the worst Super Bowl ever. Can we just say football is over already?

***** Cory Booker is so full of sound bites, I mean he never shuts up. Good ideas or not, I think it would get on our nerves.

***** Ok, Michael Moore, we all know U R awesome but U need to watch when they mike you for talk fests because your chin waddle often hits it and it blunts your message. Also.. Boycott Starbucks to fuck with a former CEO so he won’t run for Pres??? C’mon.. U will mostly be hurting the innocent workers who need those jobs, U R for the little guy and so that is just dumb.** Michael Moore is also one of the subjects on a current Finding your Roots on PBS which involves Quakers and slaves.

***** Mormon David Matheson, known for his masters degree in counseling and guidance that he used for gay conversion therapy has announced that he is gay.

***** Thank you John Roberts and the other liberal Supreme Court justices for blocking a new abortion law in La.

***** So glad to see Dirk Blocker and Joel Mckinnon Miller get bumped to the opening credits on Brooklyn 99. It’s about time. We will miss ya Chelsea.

***** The Directors Guild held their awards soiree and honored Alfonso Cuaron, Bo Burnham, Ben Stiller and Tim Wardle. I was thrilled to see love for Adam Mckay for Succession and Bill Hader for Barry. How fucking awesome is that??

***** Rosanna Arquette is joining the cats of Ratched with Finn Whitrock, Amanda Plummer and Sharon Stone. Sarah Paulson will produce for Netflix.

***** The Scary Clown administration has sold military equipment to the UAE and Saudi Arabia that is now driven by Al Qaeda.

***** Japan nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize that they say was requested by the U.S.

***** The State of the Union came and went with more ridiculous slow teleprompter talk. He seemed delighted when he mentioned jobs for women and ow they got elected. The women cheered as they all wore white to commemorate the suffragettes. He was glad to take credit for all their votes. ** We must thank Patton Oswalt for inventing the phrase ‘fuck you clap’ when he saw the way Nancy Pelosi responded to Trump.** “Best State of the Union speech in my lifetime delivered by the best POTUS since George Washington.”- Jerry Falwell.

***** Adam Schiff has announced new investigations into the Presidents finances. Trump is currently in the middle of 17 investigations. He has also written an open letter to his colleagues. He has asked those in congress to come out of the shadows. He claims that privately they tell him to keep doing what he is doing when he calls out the Pres. but he wants them to get some balls and say this in public.

***** The latest in men and their sexual quirks: Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots was arrested for soliciting prostitutes who are allegedly victims of sexual trafficking. He was next seen at an Oscar party.** A Bishop admitted that the church destroyed loads of files concerning sexual abuse allegations.

***** Get ready for season 2 of At home with Amy Sedaris. Woo Hoo!!

***** You Tube Premium has brought us Weird City which looks great!!

***** A judge in North Carolina voided mandates that required photo ID’s to vote. Hooray, one for the good guys!!

***** Amy Klobuchar is running for President.

***** The Justice Department has opened a probe into the plea deal given to Jeff Epstein for rape that was made by Secretary Acosta.

***** Virginia seems to be in a lot of trouble when it comes to racism, sexual harassment and politics.

***** Subpoena’s show that all parts of Trumps life, business, personal, charity, campaign, are now under investigation.

***** The National debt has topped $22 trillion for the first time.** It is all such a show. This administration is like when I used to go to the Pentecostal church where they speak in tongues or like calling a psychic , believing a televangelist even after there is proof he is stealing their money or reading a National Enquirer. It is a show built to entertain with no substance and filled with lies. The flock holds signs that say’ build the wall’ until he tells them to hold signs that say ‘finish the wall’ and they do. I mean, do they really believe him or do they just love a dictator because they can’t think for themselves?? It is impossible to figure these people out. Scary Clown is easy to figure but the followers?? How do we relate to these people?? He declares a national emergency for something he has screamed about since day one and only now is it bad enough to declare and yet he signs a deal which Rand Paul called, “massive, bloated and secretive.” The deal gave him 1.375 mil for ‘fences’ and an increase in spending for homeland security. His signature does keep the government open. Why didn’t they give him his money when they had the house and the Senate and Paul Ryan was in charge?? It seems he and Mitch would rather throw shade at the Dems and show that he can throw his weight around. It was unforgiveable to see the damage that caused. The Lincoln home national historic site is taking steps to keep the home open next time, just in case. What we have here is a giant smokescreen for all his nefarious wrongdoing.** The true emergency is taking place in his skull. -Stephen Colbert

***** Pelosi warns that a declaration of emergency could start things down a dangerous road. She warns as an example that a Democratic Pres may use it to get guns under control or something. I am sure Mitch and the boys are not worried. They probably think (and perhaps rightly) that Dems wouldn’t go that far because they have a conscious and follow the rules.

***** Of course, it is probably icing on the cake for the wallers but it is fucking with the butterfly habitat. They are already clearing spots to put up this wall and it is messing up the natural butterfly migration.** Ted Cruz says that El Chapo should pay for the wall.

***** GO NON SEQUITUR!!!!!!! Go Wiley Miller!!!

***** Governor Cuomo signed the child victims act into law. Victims of sexual abuse will have until age 55 to file civil lawsuits and seek criminal charges until age 28.

***** Matt Whitaker went to congress to testify. He agreed to talk but only if he weren’t subpoenaed. Whitaker dodged and weaved the whole time.  He did say that he never denied funds to Mueller and that he never spoke to Trump about the investigation.

***** Calling a black POTUS married 25 years to 1 wife with 2 children, no mistresses, affairs or scandals, ‘the antichrist’ but a white POTUS married thrice, 5 kids by 3 women, mistresses, affairs and scandals, “God’s anointed, proves your religion is white supremecy. –Bishop Talbert Swan.

***** Former Fox news talking head, Lea Gabrielle has been appointed special envoy and coordinator of global engagement to counter foreign propaganda disinformation.

***** Andrew McCabe has a new book, The Threat: How the FBI protects America in the age of terror and Trump.

***** Trumps El Paso rally was a bit more raucus than usual. We all know these things are just gonna get worse. BBC photojournalist Ron Sleans was attacked by a man yelling, “enemy of the people.”

***** The latest in sexual harassment news: A report found at least 700 victims of Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers. And people wonder why members are leaving religion.** Ryan Adams is being looked at for sexually inappropriate behavior with a minor that involves skype and texts. Several women have accused him in a Times article. Technology gets ‘em everytime.

***** Illinois is headed toward a $15 minimum wage by 2025. It will kick off with a $1 bump in January.

***** This can’t be right: 1.6 million Americans don’t have indoor plumbing.

***** Oh how I wish the original cast of Cuckoo could all get back together.

***** Check out George Takei’s new graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy. The story is about his experience in the internment camps.

***** Modern Family will end after the 11th season.

***** Jeff Bezos wrote an essay about the despicable way that the Enquirer threatened to blackmail him. He put it right out there like Letterman. It really does show how guys like Trump and Pecker do business. Is this all some elaborate plan by God to weed out all these selfish, soulless fuckers?? I mean why do so many men feel so worthless that they have to assert themselves so forcefully? Why do they bully women and hide their inadequacies?  Why do they impose their beliefs with a vengeance by calling it the will of God or the will of the people?? ** Ronan Farrow and other journalists are coming forward to tell tales of how the Enquirer threatened them as well. Surprise! More bullies!** AMI is broke with a net worth of negative $200 million. Why did it take so long? **Amazon made $11 billion and it seems they don’t have to pay any taxes.

***** The Iowa caucuses are just 1 year away.

***** Candace Payne is a beautiful soul who has now started a whole new movement for the homeless. She bought 30 rooms for the homeless when the cold plunged below zero. The word went out and before it was all over, with the help of others, they assisted 122 people.  It got Candace to thinking that she could use her job in real estate to flip houses to start housing the homeless.

***** I find myself getting excited about the Lion King coming this summer.

***** The house is working on the issues of guns which may get lost in the shuffle of all the other news. Go Go Go!!

***** The Grammys went wild for women this year with a record number of wins. I was so excited to see Jimmy Carter win his third for his audiobook, Faith: A Journey for all. Dave Chapelle and Weird Al both won. Buddy Guy won for best Trad Blues and Willie won for best Trad pop vocal. And hooray for Greta Van Fleet for best rock album. The best song in years to me was awarded Best rap/sung performance to Childish Gambino for This is America.  Joy Villa had a MAGA purse and Rebel wore a Trump jacket.** Best dressed, to me, were Fred Armisen, Angela Aquilal, Saint Heart, Maren Morris, Jameel Jamil, James Blake, Cardi B and Lady Gaga. The WTF goes to Andrea Echeverri .

***** The BAFTA’s happened the same night as the Grammys. Roma wins the top prize and grabs director too. The Favourite won big. Olivia Colman and Rami Malek took home prizes. Black Panther was awarded for visual effects. I was so happy to see Blackkklansman get the nod for adapted screenplay. ** I thought the best dressed were Timothee Chalamet, Regina King, Yalitza Apamcio and Duchess Kate. The WTF goes to Margot Robbie

***** Judd Apatow is producing 2 new projects. We will have a gay rom com with Billy Eichner and a semi -autobiographical comedy from Pete Davidson.

***** Payless Shoe Source will be a thing of the past.

***** So yes, we have 4% unemployment and 69% feel good about the economy but credit card debt is bigger than ever and those making late payments are at a record high.

***** Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has yet to set up a district office.

***** Everyone is talking about a Golden Girls cruise that will set sail next year.

***** CNN has hired Michael Caputo and Corey Lewandowski.

***** Tulsi Gabbard is running for President.

***** Bernie Sanders is running for President.

***** This Jussie Smollett thing gets stranger all the time. He was arrested for his lies and charged with paying people to beat him. He allegedly wanted more pay at Empire and some publicity.  He got the publicity but was written off Empire. We will see how things play out.

***** Studies show that blueberries may be as effective as some meds for high blood pressure.

***** R Kelly was arrested finally. I think Chicago PD is tired of messing around.

***** Insulin prices have more than doubled in the last few years. In the first 2 days of 2019, 286 drug prices went up in price. Bernie Sanders has introduced a bill to cut drug costs by cutting out special interests.

***** The 91st Oscars went off without a host. Queen with Adam Lambert opened the show in probably the best Oscar opening I have ever seen. It seemed to make everybody happy!! My best dressed were Billy Porter, Willem Dafoe, Adam Lambert, Melissa McCarthy, Helen Mirren, Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding, Chadwick Boseman, Kelly Ripa, Jordan Peele, Lay Gaga, Leslie Bibb, Chelsea Peretti, Bette Midler, my Adams, Regina King and Dana Guirira. The WTF was Gemma Chan. I did not think Brian Tyree Henry was all that best dressed but he is so fucking talented and so fucking hot. Give this guy some awards!! Rami Malek won  best actor and fell off the stage. Olivia Colman was the only real surprise. It was great to see Spike Lee win for writing and I am glad he made a statement but what about the other guys with you? I was really pulling for BlacKkKlansman or Black Panther for best pic but it went to Green Book. A lot of people grumbled about that. It really does seem that Tina, Amy and Mia should just host everything, no controversy there.

***** So, Michael Cohen testified 2 days behind closed doors and 1 day for the public. That was a thing! Why did all the southern republicans behave as if we are all idiots and not worth a thought from their fine selves? Besides Trump and his family and cohorts, I never saw humans so righteous, so smug. How dare they call this Cohen testimony a circus after the circus we have all been subject to from this scary clown 45. Carol Miller did not even seem to care that our President is a crook. She just wanted to denigrate Cohen. She was concerned that they couldn’t be looking into real issues like child separation. Are you fucking kidding me? Ya’ll created this problem and now you are concerned?  The weirdest was questioning from Kelly Armstrong, I mean what was wrong with him, he was shaking like he needed a fix or he was on a coke binge. Jamie Raskin called him “frantic and unhinged”. I thought it was just my tv until I heard that. How do we take these people seriously? They actually printed a sign for the occasion that read’ liar, liar, pants on fire.’ They are talking about BIG, REAL problems with our leader. Don’t get me wrong, Cohen is a liar and deserves to go to prison but it should not just be him. There are many complicit in these dastardly deeds. Cohen claims he has threatened people aprox. 500 times for his former boss, Donald J. Trump. Russian collusion was not really cleared up for he did not have any direct info just speculation. Cohen did however feel that Trump would have never hit his wife or had a love child. He looked into it and found nothing to support these claims which, in my mind, made him believable. It also sounds like CFO Allen Weisselberg and the Trump children are just as guilty as Trump himself. It looks like they will now have to testify as well. And how can we believe anything from the President when his ego allows him to fuck with charity money just to jack up the price of his own portrait and manipulates polls so he looks good?  There was much more to see and I suggest you look it all up on C-span if you missed it. There is more to come as Cohen tells us there are many things being investigated that he can’t even comment on. The highlights to me were his opening statement, the financial questioning from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and chairman of the oversight committee’s Elijah Cummings closing. It’s not like we haven’t heard this stuff before. All roads lead to this al making sense. Anybody who paid attention before Trump was President would know his character.** Republican congressman Matt Gaetz tweeted a threat to Michael Cohen about his alleged girlfriend. The President and his thugs sure are open about their intimidation, no shame at all.

***** The prototypes of the wall were demolished. An owl flew out of one of them.

***** Wal Mart is eliminating the greeter position. It was about the only thing I admired about them. The elderly and disabled are fucked out of another job. Way to go.

***** Isreal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being indicted for bribery and fraud.

***** I will never understand this obsession with money.

***** Farmers are finding it tough. They do not want welfare and many of their loans have become delinquent. The tariffs and low crop prices are really hurting our farmers.

***** If you ever watch Seth Meyers, the wrap up of the Oscars from’ Amber says what’ was her best yet. Check it out!

***** Days alert: More Adrienne please, give her a story!**

***** The trailer for Jordan Peele’s new Twilight Zone looks fucking amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

***** R.I.P. Alsa Mashzoub, Kristoff St. John, Julie Adams, Albert Finney, James Ingram, Frank Robinson, John Dingee , the Aurora shooting victims, Lee Radziwill, David Horowitz, Karl Lagerfeld, those lost in the Bangladesh fire, Fred Foster, Stanley Donen, Mark Hollis, Jackie Shane, Peter Tork and Gail Reynolds.

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

[Review] CHARLES MANSON: THE FINAL WORDS Questions Everything

New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/review-charles-manson-final-words-questions-everything/

[Review] CHARLES MANSON: THE FINAL WORDS Questions Everything

Charles Manson has always been surrounded by an aura of mystery for me. I have grown up convinced of his pure evil and scared of what he was able to accomplish in the summer of ’69. Whenever someone brought up his name, a chill would run down my spine and the two most famous words surrounding him would roll off my tongue. Helter Skelter are those two words, and I find it difficult to even read them silently without using a whispered tone. They were used by the prosecution as the basis for their conspiracy case and were instrumental in the conviction of Manson. It has been impossible ever since to separate this term from him and his family. Charles Manson: The Final Words, a new documentary from the Reelz Channel, attempted to shed a light on the theory and it questions the very validity of Manson’s conviction.

According to the District Attorney in charge of trying Charles Manson, Vincent Bugliosi, Helter Skelter was the apocalyptic war between the races that Manson was trying to initiate. The war would see black men rampaging across the country, killing every white person in their way. At the end of the conflict, the white race would be exterminated from the planet and the militant blacks would be satisfied in the outcome. Charles and his family would be in hiding during the war, secreting themselves away in a secret city under Death Valley, California only to rise after the war and lead the world as the only white family left. This is racist garbage, but it was the basis of the prosecution’s conspiracy charge against Manson.

“I never had no followers…”

The State of California could not place Manson at the scene of any of the murders. By all accounts, he had not been directly involved in the killing of the seven people he was being charged with murdering. This is why the state needed that conspiracy charge to stick. They needed to show that the other members of the family were working under his direction and that he was the mastermind behind the entire ordeal. Through his supposed vicarious responsibility, they were able to charge Manson with seven counts of first-degree murder and keep the death penalty on the table. Manson has repeatedly repudiated this theory and has always claimed that it was completely made up by Bugliosi to play on the racial tensions in Los Angeles in the late 1960’s. Reelz’s new documentary, narrated by Rob Zombie, not only showed the holes in the prosecution’s theory of Helter Skelter, but also offered an alternate theory that explains the motives behind the brutal killing spree.

“I wasn’t nobody’s leader…”

The alternate theory posed by the documentary isn’t nearly as sexy as the one Manson has become famous for. It may be convoluted, but it does explain the killing spree in a way that makes a lot more sense than the thought that Manson was able to brainwash and control the minds of his followers. Manson, by his own admission, killed a drug dealer named Bernard Crowe over a dispute involving a member of his family, Bobby Beausoleil. Manson believed that Crowe was a member of the Black Panthers, and he became concerned about retribution from the group. To ensure the safety of the family, Manson enlisted the help of a biker gang called the Straight Satans. He purchased their protection with the women he supposedly loved and cared so much about. Beausoleil and Manson, now owing money to the gang for giving them bad mescaline, ended up in yet another drug altercation, leading Bobby to kill his dealer Gary Hinman. Everything could have stopped right there, except Bobby was arrested driving Hinman’s car and Manson was left wondering what exactly his family member would talk to the authorities about while locked up.

He had to get Bobby out of prison. To ensure his release, Manson wanted to make the authorities think that they had the wrong man behind bars. He enlisted his other family members to commit copycat murders to make sure that the police would let Bobby out. Instead of selecting random people to kill, he sent his family to the home where he believed Terry Melcher lived. Melcher, a record producer, once promised to record Manson but never followed through. As you already know, he no longer lived in the home. It had been was to director Roman Polanski and his pregnant wife Sharon Tate.

The other home Manson sent his family to belonged to Leno and Rosemary Labianca. They weren’t members of the recording industry or drug dealers, they were just successful middle aged people that had once called the police on the family as they stayed in their neighbor’s front lawn. According to the theory, Charles Manson was trying to free his “brother” from prison by creating the appearance of a copycat killer, and also making other members of his family complicit in his crimes to reduce the risk of anyone going to the police. To kill a third bird with the same stone, Manson was also taking revenge on people that he feels had wronged him in some way. Everything can be explained by him committing a crime (he was really good at breaking the law) and wanting to cover it up by committing another and involving those that could testify against him.

“Me is all there is…”

The central theme that the documentary puts forward is that the theory of Helter Skelter used to convict Charles Manson was false. It was a lie created by the prosecution for the sole purpose of convicting Manson. Since the evidence against him was fabricated by the state, the conviction was not valid and should have been thrown out on appeal. At several points in the documentary, the narrator asks whether or not we are OK with the government creating evidence to put someone away that it feels is a danger to society. I do not agree with the host of Manson supporters paraded out to voice their opinion that he is the victim of a huge injustice, but that isn’t the point of the documentary. His innocence in his crimes is not being disputed. What is being disputed, however, is the way in which he was convicted of his crimes. If we claim to care about one person being wrongfully convicted, then it would be hypocritical of us to not care about Charles Manson. The documentary tries a little too hard to convince us that he should not have been convicted for my taste, but it also creates an interesting thought experiment and forces the viewer to examine their own thoughts and beliefs. What I enjoyed the most about the film is that it demystified Charles Manson for a generation of viewers, like myself, that have only known him for his evil legacy.

“I am the most famous man that has ever lived.”

You see, Charles Manson was not the devil. He was not the living embodiment of evil on the Earth. He was not a conjurer able to control the minds and thoughts of those around him. He also wasn’t a genius-free-love-guru that was able to see through the veil that covers the eyes of the rest of us sheep. He was a man. A small, meaningless man who committed heinous crimes in the late 1960’s because that was the only thing he knew how to do. He was not a victim. The world was not against him, as he constantly claimed. He was a narcissistic psychopath who stole the lives of not only his victims, but also those of his followers. Manson was a liar, a thief and a killer that should be no more revered than the worms that litter the sidewalk after a rain storm. This documentary wasn’t perfect, but it was valuable in that it shattered the false aura that had surrounded Manson my whole life. And for that, I will be forever grateful.

Check out the trailer below and catch the documentary on the Reelz Channel. You will not be disappointed. Join our official Facebook Group and let us know what you think. Do you believe that Charles Manson should have been acquitted of the crimes he was charged with?

[oselatra]

NOT ME!

I never groped a woman or did any of those other things that are flashing across the news outlets every day.  True enough, I never had a "real" job, at least not one in an office environment, but the idea of invading a person's privacy in such a manner is just foreign to me.  I mean, it's not like I'm constantly fighting off the urge to grope, like an alcoholic fighting off the urge to knock back a bottle of Schnapps.

NOT ME!

I never groped a woman or did any of those other things that are flashing across the news outlets every day.  True enough, I never had a "real" job, at least not one in an office environment, but the idea of invading a person's privacy in such a manner is just foreign to me.  I mean, it's not like I'm constantly fighting off the urge to grope, like an alcoholic fighting off the urge to knock back a bottle of Schnapps.  

And what about the other men in the workplace, the non-gropers? Why don't they explain to the gropers that what they are doing is just not acceptable?

We need two things here. We need all the non-gropers to stand up and say, "NOT ME." Then we need them to take the gropers aside and enlighten those Neanderthals.

David Rose

Hot Springs

From the web

In response to the Nov. 6 Arkansas Blog post, "Supreme Court refuses to hear Mike Maggio's appeal":

It's a shame he only got 10 years. I wonder what the parole possibilities are? He won't serve enough time, in my opinion, for the incredible abuse of trust given a judge. He's contributed to the downfall of the entire justice system. Here's hoping that his income is attached for the rest of his life to pay off the civil case.

Perplexed

Shouldn't he have to serve extra time for showing what an a-hole he is? Remember geaux tigers?

Maxifer

There is no parole in the federal system, Perplexed, so he will serve all of his time, less a little bit (matter of a few months at most) off of that if he behaves himself. This is what is so great about federal sentencing vis-a-vis state ones. In the federal cases, you know how much time a person is going to serve, whereas in state sentencing, you have to divide the sentence handed down by either one-sixth, one-third, one-half or 70 percent, depending on the severity of the crime.

plainjim

In response to the Nov. 5 Arkansas Blog post, "More than 20 dead in mass shooting in Texas church":

Dear Sutherland, how are those thoughts and prayers working for y'all?

Vanessa

Vanessa, what a heartless comment.

Downtowner

Eagerly anticipating the athleticism from the usual sources as they bend, twist and turn to keep from calling this, like the Vegas massacre, an act of terrorism, yet speak with such rapid assurance when the perp is identified as having one of those funny names.

During the interregnum, before such is revealed, it's "thoughts & prayers" down the line from the blowhards and puffers.

tsallernarng

For those who disliked Vanessa's earlier post, explain to me, precisely, what benefit has ever accrued to the victims, as opposed to the self-indulgently thoughtful and prayerful, from thoughts and prayers.

Silverback66

Ho hum. Just part of the daily price of no coherent gun policy in the good old U.S.A. No amount of prayer will change that reality. Gotta wonder if our elected leaders see such mass shooting events as entertainment because they sure as hell aren't lifting so much as a little finger to do anything to change the status quo.

Damn shame, too. Maybe one of us on this blog will be in the next batch of mass victims. We can call it U.S.A. Roulette, just with more firepower and far more dead and wounded.

Oh, and where were the good guys with the guns we always hear will stop a bad guy with a gun like this? Or did Texas confiscate all the guns, and that news just hasn't percolated across the border yet?

Sound Policy

Just decided to buy a gun this week. Guess this is not the place for a recommendation on what kind to get.

Screen name taken

What makes me most sad about any of the mass shootings is that they even happen to begin with and that none of the perpetrators are being captured alive. The last mass shooting I can remember where the shooter was captured alive was the during the Planned Parenthood murders in Colorado Springs in 2015. Something is deeply wrong in our U.S.A. I believe in the right to bear arms, but I also believe that gun-worship is empowering the mentally ill to commit mass murder. So many hateful paranoid men thinking an assault rifle is going to right all the imaginary wrongs they feel have been done against them.

Artificial Intelligence

In defense of Vanessa, some version of the point she was trying to make has been all over Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere all afternoon and this evening. Maybe she was the first one to "go there" on the blog, but she is definitely not the first to say it. It was out there well before it showed up here. People are tired of hearing "thoughts and prayers" and then that's the end of it. Anyone can say that. It's beginning to ring hollow and I cringe whenever I hear it now. If "thoughts and prayers" help in any way, how could this have happened in the most holy of places?

 Something evil has been unleashed and is running amok in the U.S.A. I have no idea how we are going to find our way back to civilization, but I'm sure it will take more than a catch phrase to fix this mess.

mountaingirl

Thoughts and prayers never solved any crimes. It is just an excuse, a damned cover-up for insensitive politicians who don't want to solve what is one of the biggest — if not the single biggest — dangers of our modern society: the uninhibited access to weapons capable of mass killings. Politicians hide behind their thoughts and prayers while people are being killed. This same thing could happen at my church. We don't take any security measures because everyone should be welcomed to the house of the Lord. Speaking of "thoughts and prayers," how many of us really believe that the politicians are sincere in their offering them up?

plainjim

In response to the Nov. 5 Arkansas Blog post, "Honeymoon's over for Sarah Huckabee Sanders":

Dear Media, please keep it up. Sarah Huckabee upstaging her boss will simply shorten her time in the spotlight, and the administration will have to reach even lower for a spokesperson.

Vanessa

Better yet, Vanessa, if our world ever regains it sanity then maybe she'll never have a decent job again.

wannabee conservative

I notice lately she's taken to occasional attempted humor. Her jokes fall flat just like her dad's ... but without the outhouse flavor.

JB

Do you Kool-Aid drinkers ever get tired of tearing down successful people just because you oppose their political views? Guess they are OK as long as they agree with your views but look out if they do not. What a collective bunch of phonies.

Razorblade

So, the willingness to lie to the nation on a daily basis meets the description of "successful"? The ability to ignore the voice inside yourself that whispers "you're not telling the truth" is admirable? 

Such is the thought process of a party-before-country Republican.  The blog members can expect to be chastised by Mr. Razorblade for criticizing Manafort, Gates, Flynn and Flynn Jr., when their chances to lie in the spotlight come along, soon.

Emersum Biggins

Prediction: Barring total implosion, she keeps this gig up just long enough to declare for Boozman's seat when he formally announces he's not running for re-election.

Pygface

In response to the Nov. 3 Arkansas Blog post "State tourism official warns of economic damage from 'bathroom bill' ":

Unfortunately, the political atmosphere is one reason we've decided to move back to our home state. Won't miss the regression of women's rights, the push for more religion interference in public schools and the narrow-minded views of LGBTQ citizens. What ever happened to the Arkansas of David Pryor and Dale Bumpers? Instead we get Rutledge, Rapert and Mr. Re-Homing Harris. Truly sad.

Irishgirl2012

I just moved back to Arkansas from the bluest city in one of the bluest states in these united. To those of you bemoaning the present political climate in Arkansas, oh, and let me add J. William Fulbright and William J. Clinton, let me offer this nugget of consolation: The people and policies that so bedevil you in the present day will be swept away by the inevitable tide of progress. The past that the others are trying to regain is not coming back. The present, such as it is, will be transformed into the future that is evident in the more progressive societies in our country and world.

Inequities persist, but many of those prejudices of our past have been eroded in ways that may not be appreciated. Mixed race families might be a bit odd in some corners of Arkansas, but are not illegal and for the most part do not attract all that much attention. The public persons who formerly hid in the closet who have come out, well, that does not attract all that much attention, really no big deal, at least if they stick to consenting adults.

Yes, a rational, educated and thoughtful people should not take so long to do the right thing, but if you are smart enough to realize things should be better, you should be smart enough to realize that most of our fellow Americans, perhaps especially Arkansans, are not. Take some solace in the fact that Jeff Sessions, Donny Trump and Harvey Weinstein, among others, are not from Arkansas. We begat Johnny Cash, Jim Jones, Douglas Blackmon and Jeff Nichols. Take some pride in their works, and don't take any crap from others, and surely don't crap all over yourself.

Get to work, register, think and vote. Go get 'em.

deadseasquirrel

In response to a Nov. 1 Arkansas Blog post about Sarah Huckabee Sanders' defense of the weird characterization of the Civil War by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly:

Sarah may be dishonest, but she is not dumb, as many here try to portray her. She is an expert in the mechanics and the machinations of a political campaign. As White House press secretary, she is still running a political campaign. She did a good job managing John Boozman's 2010 campaign for the Senate, as well as her daddy's go-nowhere presidential campaign in 2012. She is politically savvy, and knows that politicians are rarely punished for lying. She also knows how to avoid critics. She simply quit communicating with the Arkansas Times, took the Times off the list of media receiving notices and never returned Max's phone calls, according to what he has posted previously. Politics is a duplicitous game at its best. She knows how to practice duplicity very well.

plainjim

NOT ME!

[nancy-astorga]

A 27-year-old DNC staffer was shot and killed in DC — and his mysterious death led to a lawsuit against Fox News

After Seth Rich was shot and killed in July 2016, a conspiracy theory emerged that his death was connected to the Democratic party’s email scandal.

Fox News wrote and later retracted an article saying that Wheeler talked to WikiLeaks about the DNC’s emails.

A lawsuit by one of the people quoted in the article alleges Fox News published it to draw attention away from President Donald Trump and the Russia investigation.

A lawsuit against Fox News’ coverage of last year’s murder of Seth Rich could shed new light into the media firestorm that the 27-year-old’s tragic death ignited.

On Tuesday, longtime Fox News commentator Rod Wheeler filed a lawsuit against the network. In it, he claims that fabricated quotes from him about Rich’s July 2016 death were used with the intent of connecting it to the DNC and drawing attention away from the investigation into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

While Rich’s mysterious death led to numerous right-wing conspiracy theories, the Fox News lawsuit may finally offer some clarity into what happened to the Democratic National Committee staffer.

Here’s what’s behind the controversy:

Who is Seth Rich?

Last summer, Rich, a 27-year-old DNC staff member, was fatally shot in the back. Though the circumstances surrounding his killing are not entirely clear, local news outlets have reported he was the victim of a botched robbery. Rich was reportedly on the phone at the time and had to quickly hang up. A torn watchband at the scene suggested there was a struggle between Rich and his killer.

It was the first killing of the year in that particular neighborhood. Two more armed robberies happened in the neighborhood within weeks of Rich’s killing, local news outlets reported.

Rich worked at the headquarters of the DNC as the voter-expansion data director. A statement from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was then the DNC chair, called Rich a “dedicated selfless public servant” who “saw the great potential of our nation and believed that, together, we can make the world a better place.”

How Rich’s death became a conspiracy that went viral

On July 22, nearly two weeks after Rich’s death, WikiLeaks dumped thousands of internal emails it said came from the DNC. Following the release, some right-wing media personalities and outlets, including Breitbart News and the Drudge Report, touted a theory that Rich had been in contact with WikiLeaks before he was killed and that he was murdered as part of a cover-up.

Rod Wheeler, a private investigator connected to Rich’s family and a long-time Fox News commentator, was quoted in an article saying there was evidence that proved the alleged contact between Rich and WikiLeaks. Wheeler’s quotes also suggested that the Metropolitan Police Department tried to cover up the nature of Rich’s death on behalf of the DNC, an allegation the police department denied.

Fox News ran the story, also citing a “federal source” who claimed the FBI had examined Rich’s computer and found the emails from WikiLeaks. Other than the unnamed person, Wheeler was the only source named and quoted in the article.

A law-enforcement official told CNN, however, that the FBI was never in possession of Rich’s laptop and that a forensic analysis of it was not conducted. Fox News eventually retracted the story and Wheeler said he had no evidence of a connection between Rich and WikiLeaks.

“I only got that [information] from the reporter at Fox News,” Wheeler told CNN.

Hannity spent several days promoting the conspiracy theory on Twitter and on his Fox News program.

“Congress, investigate Seth Rich Murder,” Hannity tweeted on Sunday. “If Seth was wiki source, no Trump/Russia collusion.”

“Snowflakes with anger issues and impulse control issues. U must believe the ‘robbery’ gone bad story,” another tweet from Hannity said.

Other Fox News personalities helped promote the baseless theory, including Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera, who tweeted, “1) #SethRich shot in back(2)worked for #DNC which, (3)screwed @BernieSanders 4)#WIKILEAKS screwed DNC(5)Did #sethrich leak?(6)is it related?”

Kim Dotcom, a multimillionaire internet mogul who is subject to extradition to the US on charges of copyright infringement, money laundering, and wire fraud, dedicated a large section of his website to the conspiracy.

He called Rich a “hero” and appealed to Robert Mueller — the former FBI director who was named special counsel to lead the FBI investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election — to guarantee “safe passage from New Zealand to the United States and back,” in exchange for evidence he claims to have on the Rich conspiracy.

The fallout

As Hannity continued to spin the conspiratorial web, some staff members at Fox News reportedly grew upset with their prime-time star. The Daily Beast interviewed nearly a dozen employees, including hosts and reporters, who all expressed dismay.

“ARE WE STILL AIRING THAT SH–,” one Fox News political reporter said in a message to The Daily Beast.

“The other reporters I’ve talked to [about this] are similarly pissed about the whole thing,” another Fox News reporter told the publication. “Some find it embarrassing, others downright heartless.”

Members of Rich’s family conveyed frustration over what they described as Wheeler’s “unsubstantiated claims.” The family said there were “no facts” and they had seen “no evidence” that Rich was communicating with WikiLeaks.

“We are a family who is committed to facts, not fake evidence that surfaces every few months to fill the void and distract law enforcement and the general public from finding Seth’s murderers,” a statement from the family said.

Brad Bauman, a representative for the Rich family, rebuked those he said were seeking to politicize Rich’s killing.

“It’s sad but unsurprising that a group of media outlets who have repeatedly lied to the American people would try and manipulate the legacy of a murder victim in order to forward their own political agenda,” Bauman told Business Insider in May. “I think there is a special place in hell for people like that.”

Fox News and Hannity

In May, Fox News removed an article it had published nearly a week earlier on Rich, saying “the article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny.”

“Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed,” Fox News’ statement said, according to CNN. “We will continue to investigate this story and will provide updates as warranted.”

To this effect, Bauman said Rich’s family was grateful.

“The family would like to thank Fox News for their retraction on a story that has caused deep pain and anguish to the family and has done harm to Seth Rich’s legacy,” Bauman said in CNN’s report. “We are hopeful that in the future Fox News will work with the family to ensure the highest degree of professionalism and scrutiny is followed so that only accurate facts are reported serving this case.”

Rich’s brother Aaron wrote a letter to the executive producer of Hannity’s show and urged him to find the “decency and kindness” to reconsider the decision to peddle the conspiracy theory.

“Think about how you would feel losing a son or brother,” the letter said. “And while dealing with this, you had baseless accusations of your lost family member being part of a vast conspiracy.”

Rich’s parents also wrote an op-ed article in The Washington Post that was published May 23:

“Imagine living in a nightmare that you can never wake up from. Imagine having to face every single day knowing that your son was murdered. Imagine you have no answers — that no one has been brought to justice and there are few clues leading to the killer or killers. Imagine that every single day, with every phone call you hope that it’s the police, calling to tell you that there has been a break in the case.

“Imagine that instead, every call that comes in is a reporter asking what you think of a series of lies or conspiracies about the death. That nightmare is what our family goes through every day.”

The op-ed article continued:

“We also know that many people are angry at our government and want to see justice done in some way, somehow. We are asking you to please consider our feelings and words. There are people who are using our beloved Seth’s memory and legacy for their own political goals, and they are using your outrage to perpetuate our nightmare. We ask those purveying falsehoods to give us peace, and to give law enforcement the time and space to do the investigation they need to solve our son’s murder.”

On May 23, Hannity on his show said he would back off on the subject “at this time.”

“I totally and completely understand how upset, how hard this is on this family, especially over the recent coverage of Seth’s death,” Hannity said. “Out of respect for the family’s wishes, for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time.”

Though Hannity expressed his condolences to Rich’s family, at the end of his program that night, Hannity appeared to backpedal on it.

“There are so many issues here, not the least of which is the Democratic push of their Russia narrative … There’s something clearly happening here,” Hannity said. “The ‘destroy-Trump media’ … They have been pushing the Russian tinfoil-hat conspiracy story with zero evidence.”

Hannity tweeted minutes before his show ended Tuesday night: “Ok TO BE CLEAR, I am closer to the TRUTH than ever. Not only am I not stopping, I am working harder. Updates when available. Stay tuned!”

The lawsuit

On August 1, Wheeler brought new light to the story by filing a lawsuit in which he says reporter Malia Zimmerman falsely attributed quotes to him suggesting that Rich had communicated with WikiLeaks before his death. Wheeler alleges that Trump supporter and wealthy investor Butowsky sent text messages and voicemails telling him that Trump “just read the article” and “wants the article out immediately.”

“Mr. Wheeler was subsequently forced to correct the false record and, as a result, lost all credibility in the eyes of the public,” the lawsuit says.

The Democratic National Committee, which has rejected many right-wing conspiracy theories about Rich’s death, said if the allegations were true, “it is beyond vile” that the White House “would use the murder of a young man to distract the public’s attention from their chaotic administration and Trump’s ties to Russia.”

Fox News said it had retracted the article for an internal investigation and denied publishing it to draw attention away from Trump’s alleged Russia ties.

“The accusation that FoxNews.com published Malia Zimmerman’s story to help detract from coverage of the Russia collusion issue is completely erroneous,” Jay Wallace, the network’s president of news, said in a statement on Tuesday.

He added: “The retraction of this story is still being investigated internally and we have no evidence that Rod Wheeler was misquoted by Zimmerman. Additionally, FOX News vehemently denies the race discrimination claims in the lawsuit — the dispute between Zimmerman and Rod Wheeler has nothing to do with race.”

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump “had no knowledge of the story,” and claimed that “it is completely untrue that he or the White House had an involvement in the story,” though former press secretary Sean Spicer himself admitted he met with Butowsky and Wheeler.

In a statement to Business Insider on Tuesday, Rich’s family said it hoped the lawsuit puts an end to the various conspiracy theories swirling around Rich’s death last year.

“While we can’t speak to the evidence that you now have, we are hopeful that this brings an end to what has been the most emotionally difficult time in our lives and an end to conspiracy theories surrounding our beloved Seth,” the family said in the statement.

Maxwell Tani contributed to this report.

SEE ALSO: Fox News retracted its controversial story on slain DNC staffer Seth Rich

DON’T MISS: Lawsuit claims Fox News and Trump supporter created fake story about killing of DNC staffer Seth Rich

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: People on Twitter are loving how baffled Buzz Aldrin appeared by Trump’s ‘space’ talk