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Book Review: The Manson Women and Me: Monsters, Morality, and Murder

The Manson Women and Me: Monsters, Morality, and Murder by Nikki Meredith
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The Manson Women and Me: Monsters, Morality, and Murder by Nikki Meredith

True Crime

Published: March 27, 2018.

It has been five months since the death of the infamous Charles Manson — the cult leader who was the mastermind behind the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969. Forty-nine years later, people are still left in shock due to the brutality of the murders and the young adults who committed them. Journalist, Nikki Meredith, is one of many who still had questions — except her interest was not focused on Manson himself, but the women who committed these horrendous acts. As Nikki states in her new book, The Manson Women and Me, “They looked like our sisters, our daughters, our friends — ourselves —and yet their blood thirsty behaviour that night was something out of a horror movie.”

The three women who held Nikki’s interest were Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten. While she never got the chance to interview Atkins, Nikki Meredith spent years building a rapport with Krenwinkel and Van Houten in order to gain insight to a question that had been lingering on her mind — “What happened to their humanity those two nights?” She investigated the women’s background and compared it to that of Manson. When Charles Manson was a boy he had no father — Patricia Krenwinkel’s father took her out for Saturday walks as a child. When Manson was eight, his mother was in jail for armed robbery — when Leslie Van Houten was that age, her mom was busy at home baking.

Throughout her book, Nikki Meredith contemplates the question of moral and humanity. Not only with the Tate-LaBianca murders, but she touches on similar subjects from the Holocaust to the Stanford Prison Experiment. Readers will get to learn about her numerous prison visits with Pat and Leslie. Nikki even branches out to interview the women’s family members and other convicted murder Tex Watson, who was present at both killings and took leadership. Another chilling story Nikki shares with us is how she was actually high school friends with Catherine Share — Manson’s chief recruiter who would be known as “Gypsy.”

Overall, Meredith’s interviews with the women were interesting, but the book was difficult for me to get through and I did find myself skimming at times. The author spends much of the book writing about herself and her connections, which are sometimes tenuous, to people involved in the case. The book lacks focus and moves from interviews with the murderers to Meredith’s thoughts about other horrific crimes and even genocide. It is interesting to read about Manson’s manipulation of young women, using similar techniques as other cult leaders.

Kirsten Lowe studies at Athabasca University.