Helter Skelter (Manson Scenario) - Abbey Road Epilogue

Abbey Road Epilogue

If Manson's interest in and references to Magical Mystery Tour constituted a prologue to his focus on the White Album, there was also a kind of epilogue in the form of Family references to Abbey Road, the Beatle album that came after the White Album.

Abbey Road was released in the United Kingdom in late September 1969, after the murders. By that time, most of the Family was at the group's camp in the Death Valley area, searching for the Bottomless Pit. Around October 1 (the U.S. release date), three Family members arrived at the camp with an advance copy of the album, which the group played on a battery-operated machine.

In the second week of October, the desert redoubts were raided by law officers who found the Family with stolen vehicles, including dune buggies; Manson and several others were arrested. By mid-November, when Manson had become a suspect in the Tate-LaBianca murders, Family members who had been released from jail had made their way back to Spahn Ranch. There, on November 25, 1969, LAPD confiscated a door on which someone had written "Helter Scelter is coming down fast."

A photograph shows the confiscated door was also inscribed with "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 — ALL GOOD CHILDREN (Go to Heaven?)" . This children's rhyme is heard in "You Never Give Me Your Money," a song that appears on Abbey Road. In October 1970, the prosecution offered testimony about the door during Manson's trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders; but only the "Helter Skelter" inscription seems to have been noted.

In late September or early October 1969, before the arrests, Tex Watson had left the desert camp and gone on to separate himself from the Family. Late in the separation, he, too, bought a cassette recording of Abbey Road. Walking for miles across the desert to rejoin the Family in late October, he played his tape continuously to see what The Beatles might have to tell him. When, at the last moment, he turned back, an old prospector informed him the arrests had taken place. Watson returned to his native Texas, where his own arrest, for the Tate-LaBianca murders, occurred a month later.

In late July 1970, while Manson was on trial, three persons were hacked, two fatally, on the beach near Santa Barbara, California. One of the Manson girls spoke of this incident as "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," an Abbey Road song that plainly is about homicidal madness.