Chaos : Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties (9780316529211) by O'Neill Tom; Piepenbring Dan (CON) & Dan Piepenbring

Author:O'Neill, Tom; Piepenbring, Dan (CON) & Dan Piepenbring
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2019-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

Whatever that something was, it had worked to Atkins’s benefit before. A year and a half earlier, an entirely different set of probation officers—in another state—had tried to have her probation revoked, and they met with an almost identical response from a different judge.

Atkins was living in San Francisco then. She’d fallen in with a strange man who promised to change her life, and her probation officers weren’t thrilled about it. Her sudden infatuation with this “Charlie” meant she might backslide into the recklessness that had gotten her arrested in the first place, when she’d been found in a stolen car in Oregon with two ex-cons, one of whom she’d met while working as a stripper. It was the end of a crime spree for the trio. They’d stolen the car in California, driven it across the state line into Oregon, and held up a string of gas stations and convenience stores, with Atkins at the wheel.

When they were apprehended outside Salem, she told the officer she would’ve shot and killed him if he hadn’t caught them by surprise. Then only eighteen, Atkins was convicted of being in possession of stolen goods and a concealed weapon. Her three-year probation sentence was transferred to San Francisco, where she promised to clean up her act. And so she had, until the summer of ’67, when she’d fallen under Manson’s spell.

According to probation records, Atkins phoned her San Francisco probation officer, Mary Yates, that November 10, saying that she’d joined a communal marriage with seven other women. They were all hitched to a “traveling minister” by the name of Charlie, fresh out of federal prison. Atkins and Charlie’s other “wives,” many of them pregnant by him, would soon be leaving San Francisco in a “big yellow bus” bound for Southern California, Florida, and ultimately Mexico.

Yates had been supervising Atkins for a year, and she was surprised by her charge’s sudden change in character. True, Atkins had always been “flighty,” but she’d also been respectful and polite, and she’d never failed to follow the rules. Now she sounded defiant, if also lackadaisical. She didn’t seem to understand, or care, that her behavior would land her in prison.

After that disturbing phone call, Yates wrote to the head office in Sacramento to fill them in. “Charlie,” she wrote, not knowing his last name, “is in love with all of them and they all love each other.” Yates had told Atkins not to leave, but she was “certain she will do as she pleases.” She recommended getting Atkins in court to decide whether her probation should be revoked. She closed her letter with chillingly prophetic words: “Hopefully, she won’t get into further difficulties with Charlie and the other seven girls.”

The phone call had so worried Yates that she got in touch with another probation officer, M. E. Madison, of Oregon, where Atkins had originally been sentenced. Madison, who also kept tabs on Atkins, raised an alarm of his own. He’d spoken to Atkins, too, and he didn’t like what he heard.

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