More or less, here’s Manson’s version of what happened, and it’s far different from Bugliosi’s: Tex Watson was having problems with a drug dealer named Bernard “Lotsapoppa” Crowe, so he called Charlie to come help him out, which Charlie did, by shooting Lotsapoppa. He didn’t kill him, but he thought he did. Now Tex was in his debt, man to man. Then a musician pal, his “brother” Bobby Beausoleil, also known as Cupid, got into a beef with a drug dealer named Gary Hinman, and he too called on Manson for help, which Manson gave, by coming over and slashing the side of Hinman’s face with the sword he used to carry. He took off after that, leaving Beausoleil with an even greater problem than before – what to do with Hinman, who was now wounded and probably ready to go to the police, which would bring the law right to Spahn Ranch. Beausoleil couldn’t let that happen, so he killed Hinman. Then he got arrested. Then someone at the ranch, Manson won’t say who (“I don’t snitch”), had the bright idea to commit some murders that had the same signature elements as the Hinman murder, the idea being that, since Beausoleil couldn’t be in two places at the same time, he would be freed.
“See, I’d saved Tex from the fate he was suffering under, so when the brother has a problem, I pass it on to Tex. He said, ‘Let’s get the brother out of jail. What do I do?’ I said, ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t want to know, man. I know the law. I walk the line all my life. Do whatever the fuck you want to do.’ I knew what Tex was doing. I also knew it was none of my business. He says, ‘I’ll kill everybody!’ I say, ‘Don’t tell me that shit. I don’t want to know!’ They say, ‘Well, we’re going to go murder these people.’ I say, ‘Well, lots of luck.'”
And so off Tex and the girls went, ending up at the house on Cielo Drive that had once been rented to record producer Melcher, who’d come out to the ranch a few times, heard Manson’s music, and apparently decided Manson wasn’t a talent worth pursuing. Although Manson himself told everyone that a recording contract was imminent.
“Yeah, it was Terry Melcher’s house, and he lied to everybody at the ranch, said he was gonna do stuff he didn’t do. He got their hopes up, you dig? Terry was a spoiled brat that had seven automobiles and didn’t have nothing to worry about. I’d cheated him in a card game and won a house. It was part card game, part con, all devil, heh heh. But I won it. He owed me. So, Terry Melcher was part of it. He did a lot of things that wasn’t right. But no one was mad at Terry Melcher. Not really. He was just in somebody’s mind, and when they went by there, it was a familiar place, and they went into a familiar place. Sharon Tate just happened to be there, that’s all. Tex did what he had to do. Good boy. Good soldier. Should have given him a Silver Star.”
Did you go over and try to clean up the mess they made, which some books say you did, but never with proof, and, if true, would put you at the scene of the crime?
“Well, yeah, I had to look out for my horses. I look out for what looks out for me,” he says, although later on he will say he misspoke, that he never went to the Tate house that night.
And the next night, at the LaBiancas’?
“Yeah, I went to the LaBiancas’. I went in there and seen an old man on the couch, and I said, ‘Hey, man, I didn’t know you was in here, sorry. There was nobody here the last time I came.’ I used to go there whenever they had big parties at Harold True’s house next door. It’d be empty. It was the crash camp where everyone would go to fall on girls. I’d live in there for a couple of hours at time, that’s all. Anyway, I turned around to get out. Tex was right behind me. It was his play, not mine.”