Member of the Family

A one-time member of the Manson family delivers a dutiful account of her part in that history of mayhem."I had buried my history so well I'd almost forgotten that once I was someone else," writes Lake--called, in Mansonese, "Snake." Rattled out of decades of small-f family life, churchgoing, and good deeds--she testified against Manson and her fellow cultists during the notorious Sharon Tate murder trials and was released to a foster family as a minor, thus avoiding imprisonment--by the news that a corpse dog might have located yet more bodies in the haunt of the Manson family, she turns in a memoir that is courageous in spirit but long on self-justification: if society didn't make her run off and join the cult, then her hippie parents, erstwhile members of the decidedly peaceful Hog Farm commune, certainly didn't help with their endless permissiveness. The Stockholm syndrome is well in play as Lake describes Manson's deft use of psychological tricks--some of them picked up by doing time with pimps on Terminal Island--to undermine the egos of his young followers, especially girls. "The first was to use fear and intimidation, but that didn't always work," she writes, adding, "the final and most important was making the girl feel fully loved." Lake goes on to reveal that in her case, as the youngest member of the family, fear was the strongest operative factor, with Manson often threatening her. The author's portraits of figures such as Tex Watson, Leslie Van Houten, and Susan Atkins will be of interest to Manson completists, although the main outlines are already well-known. Likewise, the author's account of a bewildered, manipulated Dennis Wilson, of Beach Boys fame, makes it clear that Brian wasn't the only brother to have borne mental wounds from childhood abuse--again, no real news there.Though firsthand, a minor addition to the literature surrounding the Manson cult.

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November 13, 2017
In this disturbing, courageous memoir, Lake, a former special education teacher, recounts her dark journey as the youngest member of Charles Manson’s “family.” She was sexually abused by her grandfather as a child. Her hippie parents allowed her to attend concerts and parties on her own at a young age. When she met Charles Manson at age 14 she was easy prey for the charismatic, messianic con man. She writes of the environment in which she lived with many others. In the hothouse atmosphere of isolation and heavy LSD use, few of Manson’s followers balked when his ramblings shifted from talk of “love” and “freedom” to “race war” and “Helter Skelter.” Even after Manson raped Lake and later kicked her out of the group, she remained in his thrall. As the family careens toward the Tate and La Bianca murders, Lake’s story grows vague, as she did not participate in the gruesome event. Until that point, however, Lake never flinches from the grimness of her situation. She also recalls moments of happiness and community she experienced with the other Manson women (“Lynette and a girl named Patty stroked my hair and passed me a joint”), who confessed their crimes to her. Her testimony, at age 17, helped convict Manson. This is a moving, intense insider’s view of the cult of Manson.