Jeff Melnick
speaker
118 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Jeff Melnick’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
The question of where Manson's born has been debated for quite a while. The more interesting question is how quickly and at what a young age he entered the prison system. By the age of 12, he was already being charged with fairly major crimes. And one of the things I like to kind of frame when we talk about the Manson family is that he is what we call these days an incarcerated personality.
He always said that the jailhouse was my father, and that was like a real rhetorical flourish. But I think it's actually useful for us to think about rather than think about him in traditional sense of where did he grow up? Who was his mother? What was her occupation? And folks love to talk about that. Maybe she was a sex worker. Maybe he was the product of one of her work assignations.
And I think what we really need to focus on with Madsen is that he's raised in jail. He comes of age in prison in the Midwest. and then later on out on the West Coast. And that's where I really like to kind of press the gas, if that makes sense, to sort of say the details of his own early biography are sad and dark, but they don't really tell us that much about who he ended up being.
That story begins when he's about 12 and his prison life begins.
That's right. I mean, there was some talk, and I don't know if this has ever been completely nailed down, that he was in Boys Town for a while, kind of classic orphan or quasi-orphan scenario. So yeah, he's in the Midwest and then makes his way, I think, after his grand theft auto joyride out to California and ends up forging a treasury check and ending up in prison for quite a while.
in california and that's where the manson that we are familiar with really sort of like comes of age comes into being he's in fairly intense penitentiary you know scene in in the 50s and by his own account and this has been you know well confirmed like that's where he starts meeting like the real bad guys who shape him in a number of different ways including quite crucially this guy alvin karpis creepy karpis uh is his nickname who was in jail because he was a member
It's almost, it moves with like the cadence of mythology. He was a member of Ma Barker's gang, you know, and also a guitar player. He taught Manson to play guitar and he also seemed to have taught him a bunch of other things as well. Right. About how to be a more successful criminal.
I mean, Manson always says his other big influence in the fifties besides prison was Dale Carnegie's how to win friends and influence people. Right. And that's where it all sort of seems to come together. You know, that like he's in jail and he, he learns how to be a player. He learns how to control people. He kind of develops his individual talent and charisma.
You know, many years later, Ed Sanders would refer to him as the first performance murderer ever. You know, that like he was always very aware of theatricality, you know, and putting on a good show. And he learns that, I think, in jail in the 50s.
Right, absolutely. He's, I mean, he's a little bit hard to talk about because it plays into some kind of like almost like bullying language, but like he's a little guy. Yeah. He's not physically prepossessing. You know, he, I think figures out how to make it in jail through his wiles and through his personality and through his ability to kind of figure out he's a good reader.
That's the main thing. Like he learns how to read people. Like there's the, some people argue that's the Scientology part two. He learned Scientology and in prison and he's kind of figures out how to read personalities and what people need and how to ingratiate himself. Yeah.
So he's like a, like I want to, if it's okay, put him in the context, like great American tradition of con men, you know, confidence men. He knows how to run the game. Right. He might not be the biggest guy, the strongest guy, the best looking guy, but like he knows how to read people. He knows how to flatter them.
And that, that's like, that's like an amazing moment. Cause he'll always say, I'm not a sixties guy. I'm a fifties guy. You know, like he's like, I'm a, I'm a Bing Crosby guy, you know, like that, like that's like, that's who he grows up listening to thinking about. And then he comes out of prison and it's the summer of love in San Francisco.
Yeah. But let's remind you listeners. And you said that you, you already mentioned his birth date. He's not hippie age, right? He's like in his early mid thirties, right? So he comes out and he's kind of scoping the scene clearly as an outsider, just in terms of, we picture those, you know, all the documentaries we've seen of, you know, Summer of Love, like these are young folks.
And he comes out and he's a wolf. He gets the scene. He quickly ascertains that there's a lot of vulnerable young people, right, who have made their way. And this is something I'm particularly interested in that like, not immediately, but he pretty quickly starts realizing that a lot of the young folks in the Bay Area, California in general, are runaways.
either literally or quasi-runaways, you know, left families that were uncomfortable for them at best or literally abusive at worst as, you know, when he meets Lynette Fromm a little bit later. But he begins this process. It's kind of an amazing moment. He gets to the Bay Area and he's like, it's all opportunity for him, right? He's this, you know, charismatic, talented.
It's hard to say this in respect of that guy who ended up responsible for these murders, but he's He's sensitive. He's like a good listener. And he finds these young women who need a good listener. And he's an older guy, and he's got that appeal on that level. And so he starts meeting people. First, he meets this Berkeley librarian, connects up with her. Then he meets a few other women.
And before long, they're established in the Bay Area. They get studied by the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. Some doctors there who see them as a fascinating example of plural marriage, you know, essentially. And they publish an article. Wow. This is before any of the controversy or the notoriety. They just like to see Manson as kind of one more iteration of new social arrangements.
Again, I always try to be careful about what language I use in talking about him because I don't want to over-credit him or sound like I'm supporting or approving of what he did. He's incredibly savvy. What you just said, Donna, is so right. He is part of this cultural moment of recognizing that there's this new youth culture. Some people are studying it. Some people are trying to sell stuff.
you know to them some people are trying to prosecute them and crack down on them but it's this like intense like who are these young people what are they like why are they wearing clothes like this why do they dance like that why is their music sound like this what are these drugs they're you know and he steps in as like what i want to call like a cultural entrepreneur um he he sees this and he sees this is just like a rich vein of opportunity and he figures it out like in a minute
Showing 1–20 of 118 · page 1 of 6
Next →