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Charles "Tex" Watson
Tex Watson during the Tate-La Bianca trial
Born	December 2, 1945 (1945-12-02) (age 64) Dallas, Texas
Penalty	Death, reduced by abolition of death penalty to life in prison
Spouse	Kristin Watson (Divorced 2003)

Charles Denton "Tex" Watson (born December 2, 1945) is a convicted American murderer and former member of the Charles Manson "Family". He was convicted of the murders of Sharon Tate, Steven Parent, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Jay Sebring, which took place in the early hours of August 9, 1969, in the Tate residence in Benedict Canyon, and the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca at the LaBianca residence in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles the following night.^[1]

Tex Watson has been considered by both Manson family prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and Manson Family biographer Ed Sanders^{[citation needed]}, to be Charles Manson's right hand man, the nights of the murders as well as at Spahn Ranch and Barker Ranch where the Manson Family resided.^[2] Watson was found guilty of the murders of eight people.

Early life

Watson's family was strict and religious.^{[citation needed]} His mother was a domineering presence in the home and in her son's life.^{[citation needed]} He was a model child who did well in school, was a star football player and was popular among his peers.

Watson briefly attended college after graduating from high school. This was his first time away from home and the controls of his family. He began to use drugs and lost interest in school. He briefly held a job as a baggage handler for Braniff International Airways, which afforded him travel opportunities. After visiting a friend in California, he decided to move there. He again briefly attended college and worked at a wig shop. He soon dropped out of college and opened his own wig business, which quickly failed. During this time, he also became more involved with drugs as a user and dealer.^{[citation needed]} One night, he picked up Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, who was hitchhiking. Wilson invited him back to his home, where Watson met Charles Manson.^[3]

Lead in to Tate/LaBianca murders

On August 8, 1969, Manson announced, "now is the time for Helter Skelter", a term taken from a Beatles song that Manson believed (or convinced his associates that he believed) meant a revolution prophesied in the Book of Revelation via a race war between blacks and whites.^{[citation needed]} That along with the desire to strike back at the society that had jailed several Family members and possibly create copy-cat crimes that would exonerate Family associate Bobby Beausoleil (arrested in connection with the murder of Gary Hinman), seemed to propel the events of the next two nights.^{[citation needed]} In Susan Atkins's grand jury testimony, she stated that on the night of August 8, 1969, while in the car, Watson told the group they were going to a home to get money from the people who lived there and to kill them.^[4]

Tate murders

Tex Watson held the eight and a half months pregnant Sharon Tate while Susan Atkins stabbed her to death, with Watson also participating^[5] Manson put Watson in charge of the accomplices in the murders, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel.^{[citation needed]} He instructed Watson to go to 10050 Cielo Drive on the evening of August 8, 1969, and kill everyone inside the home, make it look heinous, but most importantly making sure each girl participated.^{[citation needed]} Watson also was responsible for carrying along and using the bolt cutters, the 3/4 rope and the .22 caliber Hi Standard Longhorn revolver that were used in the murders.^[6] Watson alone shot Steven Parent, Jay Sebring and Voytek Frykowski, as well as stabbing the latter two over four dozen times.^{[citation needed]}

LaBianca murders

On the night of August 10, 1969, Manson drove Van Houten, Watson, Krenwinkel, Atkins, Steve Grogan, and Linda Kasabian to an address in Los Feliz, the home of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca.^{[citation needed]} Manson entered the house with Watson and handed him the ropes around his neck; he then left the house, instructing Krenwinkel and Van Houten to go inside and join Watson. The house had previously been cased in a process the family called "creepy-crawling."^{[citation needed]}

Krenwinkel and Van Houten found Rosemary LaBianca in a bedroom, to which she had retired while her husband had fallen asleep while reading in the living room.^{[citation needed]} Van Houten put a pillowcase over Rosemary LaBianca's head, and the two women tied the electrical cord from a lamp around her neck.^{[citation needed]} LaBianca started struggling; meanwhile, her husband, who had been tied up in the living room, started screaming as Watson began stabbing him.^{[citation needed]} Rosemary grabbed the lamp and swung it at Van Houten, who fought with her and knocked the lamp away.^{[citation needed]} Van Houten then held LaBianca down while Krenwinkel tried to stab her in the chest, but the blade bent on LaBianca's collar bone.^{[citation needed]} Van Houten called for assistance from Watson, who entered the bedroom and took charge.^{[citation needed]} Van Houten exited the room and stood in the hallway, staring into an adjacent empty room.^{[citation needed]}

Watson then stabbed Rosemary LaBianca several times, found Van Houten, handed her the knife, and told her to "do something".^[7] Van Houten proceeded to stab Rosemary 16 times in the lower torso.^{[citation needed]} The autopsy showed that several of the wounds had been inflicted post-mortem.^{[citation needed]} The trio then wiped the premises down for fingerprints, showered, changed into LaBianca's clothes, and took food from the refrigerator before leaving the house.^{[citation needed]}

Shorty Shea

On August 16, 1969, just eight days after the Cielo Drive murders, police raided Spahn ranch and rounded up several members on auto theft charges. Manson felt that it had been the 'snitching' of a ranch hand, Donald Shea aka Shorty, who had led the cops to the family.^{[citation needed]} After the raid the family headed for Death Valley, but before doing so, Manson and family members Watson, Steve Grogan, Bill Vance and Larry Bailey tortured and killed ranchhand Donald "Shorty" Shea on or around August 25.^{[citation needed]} His remains were not found until 1977 when the now released family member, Steve aka Clem Grogan, agreed to draw a map for investigators leading them to Shea's remains.^{[citation needed]} Charles Manson, Steve Grogan and Bruce Davis were convicted of Shea's murder but over a dozen witnesses have gone on record to implicate Watson as one of Shea's killers.

Conviction

On October 2, 1969, Charles "Tex" Watson fled the ranch and headed back to his home state of Texas.^{[citation needed]} On November 30, 1969, Watson was arrested in Texas for the Tate-LaBianca murders. He and his lawyers fought the extradition back to California for nine months.^{[citation needed]} Upon returning to California, Watson began regressing to a childlike state.^{[citation needed]} He stopped talking and eating, dropping 55 pounds.^{[citation needed]} He was admitted to Atascadero State Hospital for a 90 day observation period to determine if he was able to stand trial. He stayed there until February 1970 when he was deemed able to stand trial.^[8]

On October 12, 1971, Watson was convicted of seven counts of first degree murder and one count conspiracy to commit murder.^{[citation needed]} A week later, the same jury took only 2 1/2 hours to determined that Watson was sane at the time of the murders.^{[citation needed]} On October 21, Watson was sentenced to the gas chamber.^{[citation needed]} At the time of the Tate murders, he was reported to have responded to questioning from Voytek Frykowski with "I am the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business."^{[citation needed]} In trial testimony, Watson denied making the statement,^{[citation needed]} but later acknowledged the statement in his autobiography.^[9]

He was convicted, and sentenced to death on October 21, 1971. Watson escaped execution when the California Supreme Court's People v. Anderson decision resulted in the invalidation of all death sentences imposed in California prior to 1972.^[10] Watson was found guilty of the murders of eight persons. Having been denied parole 13 times, Watson remains incarcerated in Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) in Ione, California.^{[citation needed]} His last hearing, which he did not attend, was in 2006.^{[citation needed]} He received a maximum five-year denial. His next scheduled parole hearing is in December 2011.^[11] Susan LaBerge, daughter of the LaBiancas, pleaded for Watson's parole at a 1990 parole hearing.^{[citation needed]}

Later years

Will You Die For Me?, Watson's autobiography, as told to "Chaplain Ray" (Ray Hoekstra), was published in 1978.^[12] In 1979, Watson married Kristin Joan Svege.^{[citation needed]} Through conjugal visits they were able to have four children.^{[citation needed]}

Largely through the lobbying of Doris Tate, mother of murder victim Sharon Tate, conjugal visits for imprisoned individuals convicted of murder were banned. Watson separated from and divorced his wife in 2003.^[13]

Watson wrote that he became a Born-again Christian in prison and operates Abounding Love Ministries while remaining incarcerated. He has written about his role in the murders, the sorrow he feels for his involvement, and has made an apology to the family members of his victims on his website, stating that he believes he is "forgiven by God."^{[citation needed]}

Use of "speed"

In Chapter 12 of Will You Die for Me?, Watson states that, for part of the time he was in the Manson Family, he and Family members Bruce Davis and Susan Atkins used "speed". Because Manson, who thought speed "bad for [the] body," was "absolutely against" it, the three kept their use of it secret from him. Eventually, they cached their supply of it in a Gerber baby-food jar "under the porch of one of the buildings" at Spahn Ranch.^[14]

In Chapters 14 and 15 of the book, Watson says he used the speed on the nights of the Tate and LaBianca murders:

While Manson went back to the [Spahn Ranch] movie set to round up Sadie, Katie, and Linda [for the drive to the Tate house], I reeled over to the porch where Sadie and I kept our Gerbers’ jar of speed hidden. ... Despite all we’d been taught [by Manson], I was spinning inside, trembling. I took a couple of deep snorts of speed and went to get the clothes and rope and bolt cutters as Charlie had ordered.

There was a steep, brushy embankment coming down to the right side of the fence [at the entrance of the Tate property], so we tossed the extra clothes over the gate and climbed up the slope, dropping to the other side. On my first try, the speed I’d sniffed before we left threw my balance off and I ended up tumbling down to the pavement.

One of the many effects of speed is to make the intention or thought of an action and that action itself almost inseparable, as if you leap ahead in time and experience your next move before you actually make it. There in [the Tate] living room on the hill, with Charlie’s instructions ticking through my brain, it was as if time telescoped, until one act tripped over the next in sudden bursts of blinding color and motion.^[15]

[B]efore we left [from Spahn Ranch the next night, the night of the LaBianca murders], Charlie gave me a light tab of acid. While people were getting things together, Sadie and I took the opportunity to hit our speed bottle and I gave myself three good snorts in each nostril. I knew now I’d need it for what was to come.^[16]

In October 1969, before police were aware of any connection between the Manson Family and the Tate-LaBianca murders — before any breakthrough had been made in solving the crimes, and while the Los Angeles Police were not yet connecting the two sets of murders — Los Angeles magazine published an article entitled "The New Violence: An Age of 'Freaky' Crime?" Treating, among other things, the Tate murders, it stated:

[Lt. E. E. Kearney of the Los Angeles Police Department believes] the increasing use of amphetamines, "speed," by kids promises some charming new developments on the social landscape. In the words of Dr. Donald B. Louria of Cornell University (interviewed by Gail Sheehy in New York magazine), speed is a drug "taken solely for kicks by a subculture increasingly populated by thrill-seekers, psychopaths, angry sociopaths and young persons incapable of functioning in society." After a few months of use, observes reporter Sheehy, it leads to "depression, weight loss, sexual deviations and finally paranoid psychosis. Speed simply makes people behave as if they were crazy."^[17]

References

External links

• Abounding Love Ministries
• Manson defendants profiles
• Manson murders entry, crimelibrary.com