The kitchen at Barker Ranch, where Charles Manson and his family lived.

Tom Snyder: In southern California, it was important to Charles Manson to be a leader,

Charles Manson: No.

Tom Snyder: to have people follow him.

Charles Manson: Come on district attorney! See you’re full of brainwarsh. That’s the district attorney. I’m nobody’s fucking leader and I’m nobody’s follower. I got a parole officer. I got a sleeping bag and a guitar and I’m standing at old blind man’s ranch and that’s about the extent of it. All this occult and that hocus pocus stuff that you guys are playing, I don’t nothing about all that.

“I don’t think like you people. You people put importance on your lives. Well, my life has never been important to anyone…”

-Charles Manson.

Boyd Rice at a protest for Charles Manson’s release from San Quentin Prison in the 1980s.

“I have ate out of your garbage cans to stay out of jail. I have wore your second-hand clothes… I have done my best to get along in your world and now you want to kill me, and I look at you, and then I say to myself, you want to kill me? Ha! I’m already dead, have been all my life.”

-Charles Manson.

Boyd Rice at a protest for Charles Manson’s release from San Quentin Prison in the 1980s.

“I don’t know all the things you know, but you don’t know the things I know either.  I don’t disrespect you and take your rights! So give me my fucking rights!  You can’t fool me.  You can’t trick me.  I didn’t have nothing to do with killing those people, period.  I’ve told you that all the way down the line.  I wasn’t around anyone when they were killed.  I’m not saying I’m not capable of doing it myself, but I’m just saying this:  I did not DO that!  And I could’ve proved it in a court of law!”

-Charles Manson.

“Its hard for me to realize how people don’t care or think about the pain they push over on others -they don’t care about the confusion they cause pushing what they want.”

-Charles Manson.