The physical and psychological similarities between Waco and Manson are obvious: Proclaiming himself to be the Son of Zember (the God of Fear), Waco and his long-suffering sidekick Whitey jump in their VW bus and split San Francisco for the more happening scene down in LA, where Waco plans to recruit a family of followers while spreading the word of Zember and finding a pure young hippie chick to be his bride (not an easy task in the free-lovin’ LA of 1969). Published by MacFadden-Bartell in 1970 as a paperback original, The Hippy Cult Murders has as its demented saviour a psychotic guru who is somewhat prophetically known as Waco. Ray Stanley’s The Hippy Cult Murders is a paperback that belongs squarely, and quite proudly, in the later category. While mainstream books appeared covering almost every aspect of the Manson case and subsequent trial (and helping to create and define the popular true crime literary genre in the process), the more salubrious publishers preferred to create fictional potboilers which used the news headlines as merely a springboard for an adventure far more raunchy and gaudy. The mass-market paperback industry also gladly fed the fear and paranoia which was being whipped-up amongst not only middle-class America but the rich and famous of Beverly Hills, who started electrifying their fences and arming themselves to the hilt after it was revealed that Mason kept a ‘hit list’ of potential celebrity targets. Low-budget movies like The Love-Thrill Murders (1971), I Drink Your Blood (1971) and The Deathmaster (1972) were clearly inspired by the Manson case and kept audiences in grindhouses and drive-ins entertained with lurid tales of violent, doped-up hippies on a murderous rampage. From skid row film producers to sleazy underground paperback publishers, the sensational aspects of the savage killings committed by members of the Manson Family-from its celebrity victims and the shattering of the ‘peace and love’ illusion to the LSD orgies and charisma of the Family’s leader, Charles Manson-were a potent melting pot of ingredients ripe for exploitation. And he led them on a freaked-out sex-and-blood bath that picked up where the brutal Sharon Tate killings left off.’Īs it does with just about any moment when pop-culture meets sudden tragedy, one of the aspects of the 1969 Tate/LaBianca murders that most fascinates me is the way in which the case was portrayed – in either a quasi-factual or purely exploitational way-by the lowball media. ‘He was a saint to a “family” of potheads.

Dirty Hippies by Scott Paulsen