LOS ANGELES, Apr. 26 – “They call me a sex-maniac and a murderer. I’m neither one.”

In an exclusive interview with the Independent, Press-Telegram, Charles Manson, the bearded, long-haired leader of the nomadic hippie cult charged with the massacre murder of actress Sharon Tate and seven others, for the first time tells a little of his life as the bastard son of a prostitute.

“To tell the truth,” he says, “I’ve really never had a mother. I’ve been in prisons — one kind or another — from the time I was nine until I was 19. The last time I heard from my mother was when I was 19 and ready to get out of prison.

“She wrote to me and told me to come home now and take care of her. She hadn’t ‘taken care’ of me from the day I was born.”

But, says the soft-spoken accused killer, he went home — because “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Although the 35-year-old leader of the “Manson Family” had nothing good to say about his mother and little good to say about other women — except his ‘girls’ — he speaks with affection of his grandmother.

“She was a Kentucky puritan — a Protestant — and the only person that ever told me the truth. She had the spirit of truth.

“She never read anything except the Bible; never left the house to go to a movie or dancing or anything; never even cut her hair. She just read the Bible — and filled all her kids with so much religion they regurgitated it.

“My mother ran off when she was young, and the rest ended up in prison too. All of them ended up bad, but that goes way back — her grandpa cut off somebody’s head, and her daddy did something else. It was in the family.

“The things that happen to you in the past — your mother and father and their teachings — are what you are.

“Unless,” he adds stroking his beard, “you can break through.”

And this is what Manson intimates he has done.

“My background is rotten, but a diamond develops under pressure.

“A Negro is more aware than a white because of pressure.”

Then he sits silent, smiling, his eyes searching your face, waiting for his words to penetrate.

Although the quick-to-smile hippie leader espouses a “love philosophy” he does admit to one hate:

“I hate people being used — and that’s what wives and mothers do.

“For example: They lead husbands — like making 10 suggestions a day for him to go out and buy a boat. So he goes out and buys a boat finally — thinking its what ‘he’ wants to do and she goes out every weekend and waves to her neighbor: ‘You, hoo, Sara, look what I’ve got’.”

Girls will follow, the almost – frail ex-convict claims, “if you love them enough … think about them and not yourself.”

“Giving is really better than receiving. That’s what most of these ministers say from the pulpit, but they just read it – preach it to the people — but they don’t practice it.

“On the ranch (the Spahn Ranch in Chatsworth where the ‘family’ lived for several years) I tried to show that love is all there is.

“We’d sit around and I’d try to get them to forget the ‘don’ts’ their mothers and fathers taught them.”

Manson, however, is quick to admit that his understanding of both girls and love came “late in life.”

“When I got out of prison the first time I was 19. I didn’t want a big car or money or clothes. All I wanted was a woman and I couldn’t get one.

“I got all dressed up,” he says indicating a tight shirt and tie, something he’s never been seen wearing, “got myself a big car and tried to get myself a girl.

“I couldn’t. So I got fancier clothes and a bigger car. They just shook their heads and walked away.

I didn’t know girls.

I was 19 and still didn’t about love. I finally asked a guy and he kinds showed me off with, ‘Man, it’s the natural thing to do – do what comes naturally’. But I pressed: ‘How do you do it?’

“There are lots of ways.’
“‘Like what?’
“’He never answered, so I never did learn.”

It was a little while later, he claims, that “a woman married me” and it was following her that he ended up in prison again.

“I stole a car and followed her to California. I got caught and went to prison. She left me three years later.”

He refuses to talk about or acknowledge a child born of that union, however.

“I have no son; no child belongs to me. A child belongs to everyone. If one belonged to me I’d try to get it to be like me — reflect me. That’s wrong. It should be itself – reflecting itself.”

Articulate, but admitting to the “mind of an eight-year-old as far as formal education goes,” Manson finds it easier to talk about his years in prison than his son.

“When I was in prison I thought all the good guys were on the outside and all the bad guys inside. I thought, ‘Man, I want to get out of here to join the good guys’. But when I got out, a guy asked to borrow $20 until Friday. He never paid me back.

“The guys in prison always paid me back.

“You know, people have lied to me all my life — just like the guy that borrowed the $20. They started by lying about Santa Claus. They lied about Superman – I thought I could fly for a long time.

“And they made me lie.

“I had to lie when I got out of prison. I had to lie get a job; lie to people about my past so they’d like me; lie to get girls.

“They’ve tried to capture me all my life too,” he says in deadly seriousness. “The Catholics tried by forcing me into their religion classes. (He was sent to Boys’ Town at one point in his youth, but ran away three days later.) The reform schools tried too. The jail tried, and now the judge is trying.

“They won’t make it.

“The last time I got out of prison, I had a real ego collapse. I finally realized that I wasn’t big and strong and handsome. I finally realized I was just me.

“So I went up the road kicking a can and whistling. I had found me. I had no illusions about myself.

“I saw a boy sitting by the side of the road. He had no one. No one wanted him and he had nowhere to go. He asked if he could join me. I said ‘no, join yourself, but if you want, we can walk together’. So we did.

“Then we found another one – a girl who had nowhere to go. A nobody. Somebody nobody wanted. And she walked with us.”

That, claimed Manson, was the beginning of his “following.”

The trio made it to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco and to what Manson describes as “those beautiful people”.

“There was no rejection. There was just plain acceptance of me … as I was … for what I was.

“Instead of smallness, meaness and rejection, I found love. No one cared if my hair was longer than theirs or that I didn’t dress like they did. There was no stigma because of differences. We all loved each other.”

At the Spahn Ranch and during their stay at the Barker Ranch in Inyo County, he says, things were the same, and the people who felt as he did continued to gather.

“We were the nobodies.”

“Sandy came to me when she was 16. Her mother and father had thrown her out. She didn’t have anywhere else to go so I took her in. I told her she probably would want to go dancing on the Strip with the other kids, but if she stayed with me she’d have to sleep in the bushes and she wouldn’t like it. And she’d have to dive for those bushes at 10 p.m. – curfew time – or the Man would get her.”

“We had all kinds of kids hidden in those hills. They had nowhere else to go.

“Her choice would have been Watts. But don’t get me wrong,” he adds quickly, “I don’t dislike black people, but let’s face it – that’s what’s happening. The white man really doesn’t know what’s going on.

“Or,” he says returning to the original subject, “she could have ended up in jail – and that’s all controlled by blacks.”

Her third choice, he claims, was to let him “take care of her”.

Sandy took the third choice, staying with the “family”. Until his privileges were taken away, Sandra Good was Manson’s legal runner.

“You know,” Manson says thoughtfully, stroking his beard, “they call me a leader. But all I did at the ranch was clean out the toilets.

“I started doing things at the ranch,” he explains, “then someone would want to do it too, and pretty soon I had nothing to do. Everybody was doing it for me.”

By MARY NEISWENDER