Author Archives: Garry Rodgers

About Garry Rodgers

After three decades as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police homicide detective and British Columbia coroner, International Best Selling author and blogger Garry Rodgers has an expertise in death and the craft of writing on it. Now retired, he wants to provoke your thoughts about death and help authors give life to their words.

DEVELOPING THE MILLION-SELLING INDIE AUTHOR MINDSET — WITH ADAM CROFT

Adam Croft is one of the world’s most successful independent authors. As an indie author, Adam is a remarkable example of the mindset required to build and maintain a self-publishing enterprise that’s sold well over a million books. Adam Croft has the distinction of holding the overall best-selling author spot on all of Amazon. That’s regardless of being indie, traditional published or what book genre or category Adam competed with. In fact, on recent charts, Adam Croft was #1. JK Rowling was #2.

Adam Croft predominately writes and publishes profitable crime thrillers and mysteries in the fiction department. Now, Adam’s ventured into non-fiction with his new release The Indie Author Mindset — How Changing Your Way of Thinking Can Transform Your Writing Career. In it, Adam Croft selflessly shares his secrets of what it takes to develop the million-selling author mindset. And, on the DyingWords blog, Adam gives followers his personal insight into The Indie Author Mindset.

Welcome back to DyingWords, Adam. I have to say you’ve made milestones in your indie author career since we met online four years ago. Not to say you weren’t already a successful author back in 2014, but something extradordinary’s happened since. What changed in your life to hurdle you over the million-selling mark?

In 2014, I was successful in that my writing was just about paying the bills. In an industry where the average income for a full-time writer is around $10,000 a year, even covering the bills can rightly be considered successful, as you say.

Mid-2015 I started to get serious about my writing. I’d been just about rumbling along for far too long and was desperate to take the next step and earn more money from my books. I discovered a few good non-fiction books around this time, as well as Mark Dawson’s Ads for Authors course. All of those things, plus my mind being in a good, receptive place to take on these new ideas, meant that everything came together for me at the right time and I had a huge shift in mindset—in the way I thought about my books, and that proved to be a great platform for moving forward in a huge way.

Adam, you open your book The Indie Author Mindset by discussing what self-publishing is and what self-publishing is not. Can you give us a recap on that?

Yeah, that chapter is very different from the rest of the book, but it was something that needed saying. The whole purpose of The Indie Author Mindset was to try and address the base issues that most writers have—or certainly those writers who are struggling to make headway. Although the specific issues and symptoms are different, 95% of the time the actual core problem is mindset.

But there’s the other percentage of authors whose problems aren’t anything to do with that. I regularly get emails from writers who’ve paid someone to publish their books for them (vanity publishing, not self-publishing) and have handed over their rights to a company who, unsurprisingly, have done nothing for them. One writer told me he’d given over £20,000 (around $28,000 US) to a company to publish his book. He was stunned when I told him that a) self-publishing is free, and b) a publisher should be paying HIM £20,000 to publish his book.

There’s just so much misinformation and rubbish out there. A lot of it is fairly harmless and will only result in authors wasting their time and effort—that’s the bulk of what I go into in the book. But there’s an undercurrent of these absolute scamsters who exist solely to exploit authors, and I was keen to get straight to the point on that to help as many writers as possible avoid them. I hate seeing people exploited, especially when it’s something they can easily do themselves for free, or let someone else do and get paid in return for it.

You speak a lot about professionalism. What’s your definition of professionalism, and how does this apply to an indie author’s mindset?

This is a question I ask myself in the book. The Oxford English Dictionary has two definitions: one refers to something being your main paid occupation, and the other states you only have to be competent and capable of doing said thing. Even the OED can’t come to a definition which doesn’t contract itself.

For me, professionalism is less about money and more about attitude—or mindset. Again, everything comes back to mindset. It’s about treating your writing like you would any other job, turning up on time and getting the work done. It’s about giving your books and your career the respect they deserve, and the respect you want your readers and potential readers to give them.

Many writers never cross the line between being hobbyists and dedicated full-time authors. What’s the difference between the mindset of part-timers and those who commit to making their writing a financial success?

It’s the professional mindset you mentioned a moment ago. It’s quite literally a shift in attitude from ‘this is my hobby’ to ‘this is what I do’. Whatever your main job is (or was, if you don’t currently have one), you need to treat your writing in the same way.

People who’ve run small businesses tend to ‘get’ this much more easily. I’m one of them, and I think having that background was a great help to me. It did take me five years to realise that I could—and absolutely should—take that attitude and experience into my writing career, though.

I like your quote in The Indie Author Mindset that says “Being a writer is not something that happens to you. It’s something you make happen.” Can you elaborate on how you made it happen?

As writers, we’re always told to make sure we write in the active, not passive voice. People do things—things don’t happen to them. The same goes for your writing career. You can’t expect success and good fortune to turn up on your doorstep. They won’t.

There’s a famous sportsperson—I don’t remember who—who was being interviewed and the interviewer mentioned the huge amount of luck and good fortune they’ve had in being so successful. Said sportsperson replied along the lines of ‘Yes, the harder I work the luckier I get’. No-one’s hanging around for you. You’ve got to jump on the train or get left behind.

Perfection. Many authors beat themselves to death with writes, re-writes and more re-writes while trying to achieve perfection. Is there such a thing as perfection, or does there come a point where close enough is good enough and you just ship it?

There is absolutely no possible way of attaining perfection in any form of art. Too many people beat themselves up over trying to attain the unattainable.

Objectively speaking, there is no such thing as a good book. Subjectively, of course, we all love some books and hate others. Same with art, TV shows, movies and just about any other form of art or creative endeavour. I hate Star Wars. Does that mean it’s a dreadful film franchise? No. I’m seriously outnumbered. It doesn’t appeal to me, but it clearly does to millions of others. It would be incredibly arrogant of me to call Star Wars objectively bad.

I can’t stand Shakespeare, either. But again, I realise it’s me who’s missing something. I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to assume that everyone who likes Shakespeare is deluded and mad (even though they are).

The point is that for every piece of creative work, there is someone who thinks it’s absolutely perfect, someone who thinks it’s the most dreadful thing ever created and a million other people somewhere on the spectrum between. It’s irrelevant which one you are—you are not the moral arbiter of good art. No-one is. So just get the book written, get it out there, accept that there’ll be a whole spectrum of lovers and haters and move on with the next book. Anything else is self-defeating and likely to eat you up from within.

Production. What’s your process for being productive and proficient in both creativity and business?

I don’t really have much choice. I’ve got a family to feed and an ever-increasing inbox. I’ve just got to sit down and get on with it. No-one else is going to do it for me.

Put it this way: 95% of writers procrastinate, dither and are generally quite unproductive. If you can sit down and bash out a thousand or two thousand words a day, clear your inbox and have a good stab at your to-do list, you’re easily in the top few percent of the industry. Sooner or later that will put you in an extremely fortunate position.

Dealing with doubt. I think all writers—myself for sure—encounter self-doubt with their work. Do you buy into the so-called “imposter syndrome”, and what should a writer do about overcoming self-doubt?

Absolutely I do. I have it myself. The more success I have, the surer I am that at some point someone’s going to find out I’m a massive fraud.

I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the only real way to combat it is to accept that it’s a part of you, but don’t let it win. Like any bully, if you ignore it it’ll go away. Don’t feed the trolls, as they say.

Some of the most successful writers I know are the ones plagued with the most self-doubt. Self-doubt has nothing to do with success, money or achievement. It will ALWAYS be there. So accept it, refuse to give in to it and move forward regardless.

You’ve got a section in The Indie Author Mindset about the power of others. What’s your view on who to listen to, and who not to listen to?

Quite simply, it’s a case of doing a bit of research. There are hundreds of websites, books and resources out there. Lots of people somehow feel qualified to teach others how to write and publish despite having only written one book and sold a few hundred copies.

Personally, I want to learn from people who’ve been there and done it, not from people who are barely any further along the line than me. There are too many people who either follow the old adage of ‘keeping one lesson ahead of the pupil’ or, worse, make things up or hash together strategies based on what they assume should work, rather than experimenting to find out what does work.

As an indie author/self-publisher, you obviously can’t do it all yourself. What work do you personally take on? What do you delegate or sub-out?

The answer to the first part of that question is ‘too much’. My wife works with me and tends to handle the business side of things. She does the bookkeeping, spreadsheet tracking, background stuff for promos and all of the ‘back office’ stuff. Anything front-facing is me. I reply to all reader emails personally, help other authors, participate in online discussions, set up and run my ads and marketing activities—and occasionally get time to write some books.

Do you ever become overwhelmed? With so much on your professional and personal plate, how do you avoid burnout? After all, you have a young family as well as a thriving business.

All the time. But I also realise that won’t do me any good. At the moment I’m two-thirds of the way through my next psychological thriller, which I hope will be even more successful than HER LAST TOMORROW and TELL ME I’M WRONG. I’ve got high hopes for it and am writing 2,000 words a day towards it.

I’m also battling against an inbox which I can’t ever get below 100+ unread emails, producing a weekly podcast, directing a theatre production for November and doing 2-3 podcast or radio interviews a day. 16-hour days are perfectly normal for me at the moment. The only saving grace is that my wife and I both work from home, so I can at least be in the same house as my son, even if I don’t get to spend a fraction of the amount of time with him as I’d like.

I really admire and respect your visionary mindset, Adam. Can you share your views about short-term vs long-term thinking?

Put simply, it’s all about long-term thinking. We’re often blinkered and worried about daily sales or instant impact. Business doesn’t work like that. For instance, I have a couple of books that earn me maybe £5-6 a day. Certainly not life-changing. But they do that every day and have done for eight years or so. That £5-6 a day is now almost £20,000, and they still earn money every day, despite me having done no work on them for eight years.

If you expect instant (or even quick) results in this business, you’re going to be disappointed. There’s no other way of putting it. Even my ‘overnight success’ was my ninth book and my sixth year of publishing.

Let’s talk about the dreaded marketing end of being an indie author. I realize The Indie Author Mindset is really about the mental end of being a commercial writing success rather than the production end, but can you give us a basic formula for what works in today’s book distribution and marketing?

No, because there isn’t one. Different things work for different people. There are far too many variables to say that any one thing will work for everyone. That’s why you need to find an approach which works for you. It’s also why I didn’t go into any specifics about marketing strategies or tactics in The Indie Author Mindset. It would be disingenuous of me to try and sell a book off the back of things which I know won’t work for 90% of authors.

Your big run-away novel was Her Last Tomorrow followed by Only The Truth, In Her Image and Tell Me I’m Wrong. These stories have been huge commercial successes, and I can only imagine what’s coming next. Was there a particular catalyst that sent these books to the top? If so, what was the tipping point?

My two biggest sellers to date are HER LAST TOMORROW and TELL ME I’M WRONG. The latter overtook HER LAST TOMORROW as my biggest-selling book a few weeks ago, after only six months on sale.

Both books are domestic psychological thrillers with extremely compelling hooks (Could you murder your wife to save your daughter?/What if you discovered your husband was a serial killer?). That approach works for me. It won’t work for everyone. I know lots of people have tried to emulate it and use the same strategy, and it doesn’t work for them. Their audience might not respond to that sort of hook. Mine does. I think there’s a more specific recipe and set of reasons behind it, and I’m going to try and replicate it with my next book. If I’m right, that book should be a huge success too. I’m putting my cards on the table here! Fingers crossed…

In The Indie Author Mindset, you talk about three inseparable and crucial parts to commercial writing success—the author, the publisher and the businessperson. Do you mind elaborating on these important parts of mindset?

When you’re an indie author, you need to wear many hats. Those are the main three, but I also find myself having to be a strategist, broadcaster, customer services assistant and many other different roles.

Being flexible and adaptable is key—not only to having to switch between different personas and job titles, but in order to keep up with a fast-moving industry and ensure you’re able to adapt to the changing landscape.

Besides reading, re-reading and making notes on The Indie Author Mindset, I also listened to your interview on Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing podcast. You make an extremely important distinction between business expenses and business investment. Can you talk a bit about this, as well as how you parlay profits into investments?

Too often we think about things as expenses. I hear so many authors saying how they went for a $50 book cover because $400 was too much to spend. They’re missing the point entirely. That $50 cover will be nowhere near as good as the $400 one. Everyone knows that. Even they know that. It might be eight times cheaper, but I can guarantee their sales will be eight times lower than they would be with the better cover. This is an investment, not an expense. Putting the money in now will reap rewards for years to come, and you’ll make your investment back many times over.

Too many authors expect to be able to do things on a shoestring and as cheaply as possible, which shows an extraordinary lack of respect for themselves, their books and their readers. Why should a reader take a chance on a new author and part with their hard-earned money when even the author herself won’t put her money where her mouth is?

You also touch on marketing/advertising, publishing wide and developing multiple income streams in The Indie Author Mindset. I won’t ask you to detail what works for you, Adam. Rather, I urge all authors to read your new book and absorb your wisdom. However, can you say a few words about branding?

This is another aspect of marketing. We get obsessed about needing a direct and measurable profit. But marketing and advertising just don’t work like that. No other industry or business expects to measure a direct ROI on advertising spend. It goes wider than that.

Do you think Coca Cola run a TV ad then look at how many bottles of Coke they sold directly off the back of it? Of course they don’t. It’s about branding, having their name seen rather than their competitors’. It’s about keeping in the minds of their potential customers, so next time they’re ready to buy a bottle of soft drink it’s them they choose.

Just an observation here—even though your new non-fiction release is called The Indie Author Mindset, the mass of information inside seems applicable to traditionally published writers as well. What will traditionally published authors learn?

It will, because the lines are now blurred more than ever. Even traditionally published authors are expected to do their own marketing and PR. No-one’s immune from that, so trad’s no longer the ‘easy’ route it once was. Trust me, I’ve been there.

I think this just highlights the fact that the difference between indie and trad publishing is nowhere near as big as people think. It’s the same machine, the same monster. As an indie author, you aren’t an author without a publisher—you’re an author who IS the publisher. The only difference in trad is that the two are separated a little more, although, as I mentioned above, even that small distinction is quickly disappearing.

I can’t let you go without expanding on how important it is for commercial authors to track sales and distribution data. What do you recommend writers do in order to know how we’re performing and formulate a marketing plan?

Track everything. Use AK Report or Book Report to track your KDP data, get the rest directly from the distributors. Track your advertising spend. Look for trends and interesting stuff in the data. You might be surprised by what works.

Test everything. Again, you’ll be amazed and what works and what doesn’t work. Just because you like a graphic or an image or a piece of copy, your audience won’t necessarily take to it at all. In fact, they almost certainly won’t. My best ads and best-performing graphics have all been ones I’ve hated. The ones I like don’t do well. I clearly have very different tastes from my audience, and that’s the same for most writers. Separate yourself from the work and do what readers want, not what you want. It’s rare the two are the same.

Finally, Adam, over the years you’ve met and interacted with many writers. If you had one piece of advice to leave us with—based on your experience and success—what would it be?

I always give six words in this situation: Arse on chair, fingers on keyboard.

Of all the marketing strategies and techniques, of all the ways you can spend your day trying to boost your book sales, the only thing guaranteed to move your career forward and increase your sales is writing more books.

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My sincere thanks to indie author and million-selling writer Adam Croft for his time and generosity in stopping by DyingWords to talk about his new release, The Indie Author Mindset. This concise and easy-to-absorb book was the kick-in-the-arse motivation I needed at this point in my writing career. It’s re-affirmed that hard work, dedication and positive mindset are the key principles behind making commercial writing lucrative and mentally rewarding. It also helps to have a good heap of talent like Adam Croft has. Here’s my Amazon review of The Indie Author Mindset.

Amazon Description for The Indie Author Mindset

Do you want to sell more books and earn a good living from your fiction?

Discover how to change your way of thinking and revolutionize your writing career.

Are you struggling to take your author career on to the next stage? Do you wish you could sell huge numbers of books and make a good income for you and your family? Before he learned to change his mindset, Adam Croft’s fiction books earned him around $30 a day. But, after developing the indie author mindset, he was earning $3,500 a day within a matter of weeks.

The Indie Author Mindset shows you how simply changing your way of thinking about your writing business can revolutionize your career. Using Adam’s personal experiences and examples, you’ll be able to think differently about the business side of your writing career and lay down the foundations for long-term success.

In The Indie Author Mindset, you’ll discover:

How to decide who to listen to — and who not to listen to

  • How to unlock the power of residuals
  • How to create more than half a dozen income streams from one book
  • Lessons and advice from Bryan Cohen, David Gaughran, Brian Meeks and Mark Dawson
  • Why almost every writer misunderstands profit and is doing advertising wrong
  • And much, much more!

This life-changing book is the motivational kick-up-the-backside all authors need. If you like a non-fiction book with a personal touch, practical tips you can apply every day and all the motivation you need to kick your career on to the next stage, The Indie Author Mindset is for you.

Adam Croft’s Biography

With more than 1.5 million books sold to date, Adam Croft is one of the most successful independently published authors in the world, and one of the biggest selling authors of the past few years.

His 2015 worldwide bestseller Her Last Tomorrow sold more than 150,000 copies across all platforms and became one of the bestselling books of the year, reaching the top 10 in the overall Amazon Kindle chart and peaking at number 12 in the combined paperback fiction and non-fiction chart.

In 2016, the Knight & Culverhouse Box Set reached storewide number 1 in Canada, knocking J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child off the top spot only weeks after Her Last Tomorrow was also number 1 in Canada.

During the summer of 2016, two of Adam’s books hit the USA Today bestseller list only weeks apart, making them two of the most-purchased books in the United States over the summer.

In February 2017, Only The Truth became a worldwide bestseller, reaching storewide number 1 at both Amazon US and Amazon UK, making it the bestselling book in the world at that moment in time. The same day, Amazon’s overall Author Rankings placed Adam as the most widely read author in the world, with J.K. Rowling in second place.

Adam has been featured on BBC television, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, the BBC World Service, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The Bookseller and a number of other news and media outlets.

In March 2018, Adam was conferred as an Honorary Doctor of Arts, the highest academic qualification in the UK, by the University of Bedfordshire in recognition of his achievements.

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Visit Adam Croft’s Website at  AdamCroft.net

Connect with Adam Croft on Facebook

Follow Adam Croft on Twitter

Here are links to two other Adam Croft posts on DyingWords.net:

The Tipping Point For Best Selling Authors

The Mystery Novel And Human Fascination With Death

Update: February 2019 – Adam’s Croft’s sequel to The Indie Author Mindset titled The Indie Author Checklist is now available on all internet book outlets. It’s a must-read for anyone serious about their writing career. Available in Ebook, print & audio. I highly recommend it!

CHARLES MANSON’S REAL MOTIVE FOR HIS CULT MURDERS

When you read the words “cult” and “murders” in the same line, you’ll evoke evil images of Charles Manson motivating his murderous hippie cult to commit Helter Skelter—an apocalyptic race war between blacks and whites. The picture of wild-eyed Manson with a swastika carved in his forehead, and the sight of his head-shaven girls occupying the courthouse steps, seared themselves into American criminal history. Charles Manson is finally dead, but his memory lives on in villainous infamy. However, Charles Manson’s real motive for his cult murders wasn’t Helter Skelter. That’s bullshit. Pure bullshit. But Manson’s true motive always remained shrouded in secrecy—until now.

During the summer of 1969, Charles Manson’s cult of social misfits and rebellious rejects went on a homicidal rampage in the greater Los Angeles area. At least ten innocent victims lost their lives. The high-profile Manson family mass-murders claimed actress Sharon Tate and her celebrity friends who were shot, strangled and stabbed to death. Business people Rosemary and Leno LaBianca fell as well to Manson-ordered, cult-wielding knives. Charles Manson was also directly responsible for three or more individual murders associated with Manson’s criminal enterprise.

Throughout the Manson Family murder trial, district attorney and prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi pleaded a case that Charles Manson masterminded the Tate and LaBianca murders, although Manson wasn’t hands-on during the killings. Bugliosi argued Manson exercised totalitarian mind control over his cult members and convinced them to commit murder on his behalf.

Manson’s motive, Bugliosi offered, was Charles Manson proclaimed he was the reincarnation of a Jesus-like messiah who’d rule the world following an inevitable race war between blacks and whites. Manson called this Helter Skelter. Bugliosi’s case rested on the motive theory that Manson organized the Tate and LaBianca murders to frame the Black Panther movement and start his imaginary race Armageddon.

Bugliosi claimed Manson’s convoluted motive was personal gain and control after Helter Skelter occurred. Helter Skelter was a term Charles Manson adopted from the Beatles White Album that Manson claimed described the race war and its fallout. There’s no doubt from the trial evidence that Manson preached Helter Skelter to his cult, and they took it hook, line and sinker. The Helter Skelter motive theory was enough to convince a jury to convict Manson and six family members of first-degree murder, sending them to death row. Their capital sentences were eventually reduced to life in prison where many still remain.

Now, after nearly 50 years, the theory of Charles Manson’s bizarre Helter Skelter motive no longer stands the sniff test. It’s nonsense, and Manson knew it. As a clever and cunning con man, Manson didn’t believe his own bullshit. He had a much different motive for ordering his followers to carry out the Tate and LaBianca slayings. Charles Manson’s real motive for his cult murders was to cover-up another crime.

Charles Manson’s Criminal Background

If ever there was someone born to be a career criminal, it was Charles Manson. His birth mother was a disturbed teenager from Cincinnati, Ohio. There’s doubt about who Manson’s biological father was, but he took the surname Manson from a man who married his mother while she was still pregnant. The name on his birth certificate was Charles Milles Maddox after his biological mother’s maiden name.

Manson’s mother spent his childhood years revolving in and out of jail. She was a destitute alcoholic, and Manson bounced between her relatives. He relocated to an aunt’s home in Charleston, West Virginia and then to another aunt’s place in Indianapolis. By age ten, Charles Manson was already incorrigible. He was caught breaking into a house and stealing a gun.

At twelve, Manson was incarcerated in a Terre Haute, Indiana juvenile delinquent home. He escaped and survived by living on the streets of Indianapolis. Now Manson graduated from break-ins to stealing cars. By his 14th birthday, Charles Manson was sentenced to five years in a Nebraska prison for armed robbery.

Manson had a rough go in the penitentiary. He was a little man with big little-man syndrome. Even as an adult, Charles Manson only stood 5’ 2” and weighed 125 lbs. Much larger prisoners repeatedly raped and sodomized tiny Manson. He developed a defense mechanism that would be a lifelong trademark. Charles Manson pretended to be crazy, and the act worked for him.

Manson got paroled in 1954 and moved to Ohio. Soon, he was back into stealing cars and took one for a ride to Los Angeles. He supported himself through thefts, break-ins and robberies but found time to get a girl pregnant and marry her. Manson also learned to make extra money by pimping-out his new wife.

In 1956, Charles Manson was back in the federal prison system for another five-year stint. This time he was psychologically evaluated and deemed to aggressively antisocial. His prison IQ test scored 119 with the national average being 100. The shrinks said there was nothing crazy about Charles Manson. In fact, he was quite bright.

Manson conned his way into early parole. He was out by 1958 and practicing a new trade which he’d learned from the pros in prison. Charles Manson began assembling a harem and lived off the avails of prostitution. He’d realized it was easier and safer to get others to commit crimes for him.

But, like other criminal ventures Charles Manson tried, he got caught again when one of the girls turned on him. As well, Manson had been kiting bad checks which was a federal offense. Manson was back in the pen in 1959.—this time for a ten-year sentence.

Manson’s Musical, Scientology and Carnegie Influence

Charles Manson played the prison system well. He used the crazy act when convenient but also took some schooling. Another psychiatric assessment identified Manson’s “tremendous drive to call attention to himself”. By accident or design, Manson was cellmates with the infamous bank robber, Alvin Karpis. It was Karpis who taught Charles Manson to play the guitar.

Manson learned several more skills in prison. He became an astute student of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Manson also studied Scientology. Persuading people and gathering large groups became Charles Manson’s burning desire. His intent upon freedom was to use his musical aptitude, his charm and his con-man conversion skills to gather a female following. Originally, Manson’s game was nothing more than a front for a profitable prostitution ring and a try at building a music audience.

In 1967, Manson made parole again. Now he was in Washington State where he’d been transferred within the federal system. The timing was right for strands of fate to align and begin building Charles Manson’s deadly hippie cult. He moved to San Francisco.

This was the “summer of love” and the peak of the California counter-culture of hippies and freeloaders centered in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Many of the hippies were disenchanted girls from broken homes or strict families. The hippie lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll was uber-attractive to these vulnerable kids. It was the perfect position for a perverted predator like Charles Manson to exploit.

Manson arrived in San Francisco at the height of the hippie movement. Now, he had two distinct and definite purposes. One was to start a prostitution ring. The other was to build a music career. Manson was smart enough to know he needed a following for both goals. He put his guitar, Carnegie and Scientology skills to work and assembled his family.

The Manson Family Cult Members

Today, most of the main Manson Family members are household names. Everyone knows about Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford. And, of course, Susan “Sadie” Atkins is well known. So are Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten, Linda Kasabian, Mary Bruner and Diane Lake.

Although Manson’s intention was to build a female following, there were a few young men who joined the family. Noteworthy were Charles “Tex” Watson, Steve “Clem” Grogan, Bruce Davis and a good-looking young guy by the name of Bobby Beausoleil. All four would eventually go down for murders orchestrated by Charles Manson.

Looking at the Manson Family objectively, it wasn’t Charles Manson’s original intention to build a cult. His big drive was to be famous through music, and he needed a built-in audience to attract a record label. Manson was fascinated by the Beatles’ success and their music. He intended to follow their path. The cult-thing was an accidental by-product of his grandiose delusion of stardom.

A cult can be either destructive or non-destructive. Generally, a cult is an organization of followers with a charismatic leader who preaches false information. Scientology is clearly a cult, but they don’t seem to go around killing people. The Charles Manson Family did. They were about as destructive a cult as you can find.

You’ve got to give Charles Manson some credit for both drive and balls. While in prison with Karpis, Manson got a lead on a Los Angeles record producer named Phil Kaufman who Karpis knew from the outside. Kaufman was business partners with the influential recording producer, Terry Melcher, who was Doris Day’s son. Melcher was also the producer for big names like the Beach Boys, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the Mommas and Poppas.

Charles Manson amassed about 100 followers who he plied with psychedelic drugs and mesmerized their strung-out brains with messiah-like preaching about Beatle song interpretations. He gained his audience in San Francisco but knew the music action was in L.A. In 1969, Manson packed up the family and headed south. He tracked down Terry Melcher and talked his way into Melcher’s home at 10050 Cielo Drive in north Los Angeles. This was the home Sharon Tate was about to occupy.

Terry Melcher wasn’t impressed with Manson’s musical talent, but he took an interest in Manson’s personality. Melcher never outright turned Manson down for a record deal. He encouraged Manson to keep writing, practicing and building an audience. Manson took Melcher’s advice to heart, and did just that.

Manson and the Beach Boys

Charles Manson’s big musical break came by total fluke. Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys picked up two of Manson’s girls who were hitchhiking. Seeing them as an easy sexual mark, Wilson took the girls back to his Los Angeles mansion and had his way. Once the two returned to the family and told Manson about the encounter, Charles Manson saw a tremendous opportunity. He had the audacity to take 20 of his female followers and invade Wilson’s house.

Tempted by unlimited sex, Dennis Wilson let the Manson Family stay until they wore out their welcome a few months later. By then, Manson and his followers sponged tens of thousands of dollars off Wilson and his associates. The Wilson connection gave Manson access to big names like Neil Young who Manson had many jam-sessions with.

In the spring of 1969, Manson was going nowhere in his music world and his grip on his cult was loosening. People dropped off and recruiting was slow now that the counter-culture revolution had run its course. Manson wasn’t interested in retaining men, but he did everything to hang onto women. They were still his bread and butter. That continued to work as long as he supplied them with drugs and continued to make them feel valued.

One thing about running a cult is that it’s hard work. It takes a lot of supplies and energy to keep up the charade. Manson constantly needed to take his game to a higher step to retain control. He did this by preaching Helter Skelter, and it worked.

By now, Charles Manson had convinced his hard-core followers that he was a messiah—the “Son of Man”. He played on their fears and hopes where he predicted a race war between blacks and whites where the blacks would kill all the whites and then turn to the Manson Family for leadership. This was all bullshit, of course, and Manson knew it.

However, this Helter Skelter nonsense acted as glue for the family and they bought it. To buy time while he pursued other music leads, Charles Manson upped his preaching game. He also upped his LSD and methamphetamine supply. For that, they needed money, and this got Manson in a pickle.

The Start of the Manson Family Murders

After Manson and the family left Dennis Wilson’s place they couch surfed, leaching off whoever would tolerate them. One place was next door to 3301 Waverly Drive in north Los Angeles—the home of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. After that brief stay, Manson found an old movie set called the Spahn Ranch in the desert northwest of L.A.

Manson paid his rent to eighty-year-old George Spahn in sexual favors performed by his girls. With this new spot and its remote location, Manson now had more control over who was coming and going in the family. One of the newcomers was a 21-year-old wanna-be musician, Bobby Beausoleil.

Charles Manson was under constant pressure to fund his family. It took money to pay for drugs, food and vehicles that the Manson Family required. Most of their money came from prostitution, drug trafficking and petty theft. From that, they barely scraped by. Charles Manson saw an opportunity and hatched a plan for a big money score.

One of Manson’s musical acquaintances was Gary Hinman who was a quiet and well-educated man. Hinman found Manson and his followers interesting but had no desire to join them. Manson heard a rumor that Hinman recently acquired a large inheritance, so Manson sent Bobby Beausoleil and Susan Atkins to check it out.

Gary Hinman knew Beausoleil and Atkins. He willingly let them in. Both Atkins and Beausoleil were drugged and unstable. When they approached Hinman to join their family, he again declined. The conversation turned to money, and Hinman put his foot down. It turned ugly. The Manson Family members took Hinman hostage and began torturing him.

Beausoleil phoned Manson back at the ranch and told him they weren’t getting anywhere with Hinman. They asked for Manson’s direction. Manson told Atkins and Beausoleil to keep Hinman tied up till he got there. Once Manson arrived, he took over, cutting Hinman’s ear off to set an example.

Hinman still refused to give in. In frustration, Manson took Atkins and left—telling Beausoleil, “You know what to do.” Manson also told Beausoleil to make the scene look like the Black Panthers were involved, reminding Beausoleil of the apocalyptic doom of Helter Skelter.

Bobby Beausoleil took that as a clear signal and authorization from his leader—Charles Manson—to kill Gary Hinman. With Manson gone, Bobby Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death while Hinman stayed tied to a chair. Beausoleil then wrote “Pig” on the front door in Hinman’s blood as well as leaving a bloody paw print which was the Black Panther symbol.

Beausoleil was drugged, fatigued and not thinking straight. He stole Hinman’s car, hid the knife in the trunk and drove from the scene. Within hours, the police found Bobby Beausoleil asleep in Hinman’s stolen car. His clothes were bloody and so was the murder weapon still in the trunk. The police backtracked, found Hinman’s body and charged Bobby Beausoleil with first-degree murder.

Charles Manson Plans the Tate & LaBianca Murders

Beausoleil’s arrest worried Charles Manson. He was concerned—really concerned—that Bobby Beausoleil would crack, squeal and implicate Charles Manson as a murder accomplice. That got the wheels turning in Manson’s head, and his convoluted logic kicked in.

Charles Manson calculated that if similar murders occurred with a modus operandi (MO) like what Beausoleil did to Hinman, then the police would have to conclude the real killers were still out there. Therefore, they’d have to drop the charges, release Bobby Beausoleil and the heat would be off Charles Manson.

Manson figured he’d put his other family members to work by casing out locations and finding suitable murder victims. He knew he could convince his most-trusted lieutenants who accepted his Helter Skelter prophesies. Manson gathered them and said it was now time to start Helter Skelter. He said nothing about covering up the botched Gary Hinman murder.

The first place Manson targeted was 10050 Cielo Drive. Manson knew Terry Melcher moved out. In fact, Manson came face-to-face with Sharon Tate when he went looking for Melcher one day. Manson picked Tate’s residence for two reasons. One was he knew that celebrity murders would get a lot of attention. Secondly, Manson was familiar with the layout.

On the night of August 8, 1969 Charles Manson instructed Tex Watson to take Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian and kill everyone inside 10050 Ceilo Drive. Manson also directed them to make the scene look like a Black Panther attack by writing bloody messages on the walls. He implicitly said this was the start of Helter Skelter and it was their privilege to carry it out.

The drug-fueled cult members bought every word of it. Without going into graphic details, the Manson Family members cold-bloodedly killed Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abagail Folger, Voytec Frykowski and an innocent visitor named Steve Parent.

One mass killing wasn’t good enough for Charles Manson. The next night, Manson accompanied the same murderous group to the LaBianca house on Waverly Drive. This time he took along Leslie Van Houten and Clem Grogan. Again, Manson didn’t get his hands bloody. He picked the LaBianca home simply because he knew the layout and that they were wealthy. Once Manson located the home, he left and the Manson Family cult members went in for the kill.

Bit by bit, Manson’s grip on his cult slipped away. It took a while for the police to connect the Tate and LaBianca murders and find evidence linking the Manson cult to the crimes. Even when the police raided the Spahn Ranch and arrested Manson and his remaining followers on car theft suspicion, they failed to make any connection to the August murder spree. It wasn’t until Susan Atkins opened her mouth in jail that the cat came out of the bag.

Many of the Manson Family members testified at the Tate and LaBianca murder trials. Each one attributed the motive to Charles Manson’s Helter Skelter vision. One can’t blame them for revealing this as the motive because that’s what they honestly believed. Only Charles Manson knew his real motive for his cult killings. That’s a secret Manson took to the grave with him.

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I’m not making up this theory about Charles Manson’s real motive for his cult murders. Vincent Bugliosi is on the record for purporting the Gary Hinman murder connection as the real reason why Manson ordered the Tate and LiBianca “copy-cat” killings. It makes sense when you think about it.

Charles Manson was a psychopath, but he wasn’t psychotic. He was a shrewd little con-man and a calculating criminal. His entire MO was using people to commit criminal acts, and his cult following—which was supposed to be a Beatles-like fan club—got carried away into one of the most notorious murder cases in history. It was all about covering up a crime gone bad.

If you’re interested in a fascinating look at how Charles Manson built and controlled his cult, I suggest reading a 2015 undergraduate honors thesis by Robin Altman of the University of Colorado, Boulder. It’s titled Sympathy for the Devil: Charles Manson’s Exploitation of California’s 1960 Counter-Culture. It also concludes Manson’s motive for the Tate & LaBianca murders was to cover up Bobby Beausoleil’s blotched job and isolate Manson.

HOW COPS HARASS CITIZENS — THE WETASKIWIN, ALBERTA WAY

Police harassment is a serious issue. No one wants to be hassled by the cops. That’s true, but the vast number of contacts between the police and the public are really good. However, there’re rare times where some cops overstep their civil boundaries and exercise questionable behavior when dealing with citizens. Then, there’s time for fun.

Most police harassment complaints are trumped up or leave something out about what started the conflict. Over my years in policing, I can honestly say I never saw a case where an officer intentionally went overboard without there being some sort of provocation on a citizen’s part. Maybe that’s because I’m from Canada where we’ve got polite policing down to a science—especially our red-coated Mounties who start reading suspect rights with a “Sorry”.

I won’t say legitimate police harassment doesn’t happen. But, I will say there’re usually two sides to a story. Speaking of stories, I got a laugh the other day when a friend shipped me a letter from Wetaskiwin’s local newspaper. For those who’ve never heard of Wetaskiwin, it’s a small town 40 miles south of Edmonton, in the Province of Alberta in western Canada. Like so many Canadian prairie towns, Wetaskiwin has the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) maintaining their right.

They’ve also got an RCMP Sergeant with a great sense of humor. Part of the Wetaskiwin, Alberta RCMP detachment’s community service is maintaining a newspaper crime page. This article was so bang-on that I had to steal the content and post it on DyingWords. With no apologies for plagiarism or copyright invasion, here’s how the good Sergeant replied to this reader question:

 “I’d like to know how it’s possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?”

Sergeant Dooright: “First off, let me tell you this—it ain’t easy. In Wetaskiwin and rural surrounding areas, we average one cop for every 505 people. Only about 60 percent of our cops are on general duty (or what you might refer to as “general patrols”). This is where we do most of our harassing.

The rest are in non-harassing units that don’t allow them to contact with day to day innocents. And, at any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60 percent of general patrols are on duty and available for harassing people. The rest are off duty. They don’t want to be bothered harassing people on their own time.

So, roughly, one cop is responsible for regularly harassing about 6000 permanent residents at any given time. When you toss in the commercial business and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you got a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 15,000 people a day. Or maybe even more.

Consider this—your average cop’s eight-hour shift runs 28,800 seconds long. This gives that cop only two-thirds of a second to harass a person. Then they have just another third of a second to sip a Tim Horton’s coffee, scarf a donut, and then find a new person to harass. This isn’t an easy task. Far from it.

To be honest, most cops aren’t up to the challenge day in and day out. It’s just too tiring. What we do is utilize some trade tools to help narrow down those people we can realistically spend time giving quality harassment.

PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. For example, “My neighbor is beating his wife” is a code phrase often used. This means we’ll come out and give somebody some special harassment. Another popular one is, “There’s a guy breaking into a house.” The harassment team is then put into action.

CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars with no insurance, or drivers with no licenses and the like. It’s lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, they are drunk or have an outstanding warrant on file.

LAWS: When we don’t have phones or cars and have nothing better to do, there are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They’re called “Statutes”. These include the Crimes Act, Summary Offences Act, Land Transport Act and a whole bunch of others.

Laws spell out all sorts of things for how you can really mess with people. After you read the law, you can just drive around for a while until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. Just last week, I saw a guy trying to steal a car. Well, the book says that’s not allowed. That meant I had permission to harass this guy.

It is a really cool system we’ve set up, and it works pretty well. We seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because, for the good citizens who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to “harass” some people.

Next time you’re in small-town Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada, give me the old “single finger wave”. That’s another one of those codes. It means, “You can harass me.” It’s one of our favorite harassment go-aheads—and I love getting away with it.”