Charlie would often tell us that he was Jesus.
He would tell us that his name, Manson,
was significant, man son.
He thought he was the son of God.
One time on acid, Charlie had a crucifixion experience.
Charlie would reenact the crucifixion.
We were doing acid, as well,
so when he talked about looking at the nails
in his hands and feet,
it was very easy to imagine the hands and the feet bleeding.
Well, Dianne Lake says she was a "naive, lonely,
love-starved" 14-year-old girl who felt an attraction
and deep connection to Charles Manson
when she joined what's called his family.
Now, at the time, Dianne says she never thought
the man who oozed self confidence and sex appeal
and convinced her that he was the messiah
would later turn out to be the monster
the world knows today.
Now, Dianne has written about her experience
in a book titled Member of the Family:
My Story of Charles Manson, which is in bookstores now.
You talk about in the book,
and so I'll talk about it some now,
that Charles Manson raped you, beat you,
passed you around to older men for sex.
Did you question any of that at the time,
or were you so pulled into this
that you saw that as your role and your duty?
It was my role, and it was my duty
to do his bidding, and it didn't,
it was, it did happen, but it wasn't,
I didn't feel that it was frequent at the time.
Uh-huh.
You talk about your belief that he was the messiah.
Tell me, tell me about that.
He was a magic maker.
He could postulate, he talked about postulating things.
He had lots of verses, you know, from the Bible,
from Scientology, from very, you know, many disciplines,
and his, you know, he kept reiterating his name, man son.
We believed it.
We came to believe it in a kind of a mind groupthink.
Well, you spoke about it very clearly in the book.
You said, "There have been many false prophets
besides Charlie, but even now, all these years later,
I find it hard to explain what it was like
to actually believe that he was a kind of messiah.
It's an incredible concept, totally impossible
to fathom: that the person you're standing next to
or having sex with is somehow related to God."
Let's, let's just talk about the first time
you became aware of the murders.
What was the first time you learned
that a murder had taken place?
We were getting ready to go up to Death Valley,
and so we were in Atlanta.
I was with Tex, and I came back to the property,
and he had newspapers with the headlines, Tate LaBianca.
And he slapped it with his hand, his fist,
and said, "I, I did this. Charlie told me to."
And that was, that's the first time I even knew that
those murders had existed,
because I didn't watch television,
didn't read newspapers, so it was a double shock.
So you, at first, you didn't know
they had happened, period,
let alone that they had anything to do with
the family.
Correct.
Okay, and so this Tex Watson, slaps his down
and says, "I did this, Charlie told me to do this,
and I did this."
Were you shocked?
Totally shocked, and scared,
and didn't know what, you know, what to do.
Tell me about Leslie Van Houten.
She comes to you shortly after
with regard to the other murders, correct?
Yes.
Tell me about that.
We were, we were out.
We were hiding in the desert,
and one night, she told me, along with Susan Atkins what,
and Patty Krenwinkel, what they're,
what they had experienced, what they had done.
And it was kind of, what struck me was that it was
kind of gleeful.
I mean, it was like, again, they were, you know,
kind of proud of what they had done.