Paul Watkins

Paul Alan Watkins (January 25, 1950 – August 3, 1990) was an American man who was a member of Charles Manson's "Family". In the period leading up to Manson's trial for the Tate–LaBianca murders, Watkins provided the prosecution with information that clarified the "Helter Skelter" motive.

Background By his own account, Paul Watkins lived "a pretty standard middle-class American upbringing," After enjoying a candy bar, root beer, marijuana, and a night of group sex, Watkins left.

Watkins remained with the Family and became Manson's chief lieutenant.

Helter Skelter involvement

On New Year's Eve, 1968, Watkins was around the Family campfire at Myers Ranch when Manson delivered the Helter Skelter prophecy. According to Watkins, Manson had been predicting blacks would rise up in rebellion in America's cities. Now, he explained that The Beatles, too, were making that prediction, with the song "Helter Skelter" on the White Album. More than that, the musical group wanted Manson and the Family to create an album of their own, to trigger the predicted events. Manson, according to Watkins, said:

Are you hip to what the Beatles are saying?... Dig it, they're telling it like it is. They know what's happening in the city; blackie is getting ready. They put the revolution to music... it's 'Helter-Skelter.' Helter-Skelter is coming down. Hey, their album is getting the young love [America's youth] ready, man, building up steam. Our album is going to pop the cork right out of the bottle.

Watkins took the prophecy seriously. One day, as he looked out a window of the Canoga Park house, he wondered to himself whether the violence of Helter Skelter would reach the Family.

Desert camps According to Watkins, Manson's remark disturbed Watkins, who had no trouble recognizing it as an indication the Family would be undertaking murders. When Manson instructed him to transport supplies to the desert camps, Watkins embraced the opportunity to get away. At the same time, he was unsure whether to sever himself from the commune; "my insides were tied to Charlie and the Family in ways I hadn't begun to sort out". Returning briefly to Spahn Ranch, Watkins changed his relationship with Manson by using a suggestion by Crockett; he asked that Manson "[release him of all his] agreements."

Within a few days, Watkins had settled in at Barker, with Crockett and the others. About a month later, on August 9, 1969, the group saw a television broadcast while they were in Kingman, Arizona, with plans to do some mining there. The news was of the Tate murders, which had taken place in Los Angeles overnight. "Wouldn't it be somethin' if old Charlie did that," said Crockett, whom Watkins and the others had made aware of Helter Skelter. Though chilled by the remark, Watkins dismissed it as a bad joke.

The next day, in a Las Vegas newspaper report of the LaBianca murders, which had taken place overnight, Watkins saw that police were dismissing a connection between the two sets of murders and that a suspect in the Tate murders was already in custody. (The suspect was William Garretson, a youth who was employed as caretaker of the property where the Tate murders took place and who happened to have been the only person found alive on the premises the morning after the killings. By August 11, having been effectively dismissed as a suspect, he was released from custody.) Manson deployed his women as sexual lures, undertook intimidating visits in which he and others would fire shotguns on the Barker Ranch property, and jousted with Crockett in abstract discussions. A third male Family member came to Crockett's side, while the female Family member he'd influenced had left the area with a friend of his, whom she promptly married.

Watkins continued to vacillate. He played music with the Family, had initially preserved a sexual relationship with one of the Family girls, and declined to dismiss Helter Skelter. But when, for instance, Manson asked him to join the efforts to find the entry to the underground hideaway in which the Family was supposedly to survive the cataclysm, he declined to do so. Even after Watkins helped two of the Family girls leave the area, the relationship with Manson survived, though the incident resulted in Manson's threatening Watkins with a knife and a pistol.

A breaking-point arrived on a night when Manson snuck on his hands and knees into the Barker Ranch bunkhouse. Outside were Bruce Davis and Tex Watson, both of whom would ultimately be convicted of murders they had already committed under Manson's direction. Although Manson was humiliated when Crockett, Watkins, and the two other defectors awoke before he could do anything, the four evidently concluded things were getting even more dangerous than they had been up until then. Watkins and the three others soon left Barker Ranch. Before long, Watkins had joined two of them in the office of the local deputy sheriff.

Choice to testify In the second week of October 1969, right after Watkins left Goler Wash, the ranches were raided by law enforcement. Manson and others were arrested on vehicle theft and other charges that had no apparent connection with the murders. By the middle of November, Manson and Family members had become suspects in the Tate–LaBianca killings. The solving of the case was announced by LAPD at the beginning of December.

Around the end of March 1970, Watkins split with Family members, following a blowup between him and a trio of Manson girls. This occurred at Spahn Ranch, to which the group had returned. The girls had learned of statements that Watkins had made to law officers and that Manson's lawyer had obtained through an inevitable motion for discovery. Told he was a "Judas," Watkins walked out. Later that night, he was badly burned in a fire that broke out in a Volkswagen van in which he was sleeping. He was "unsure of the origin of the blaze," which could have been caused by a candle he'd been using to read or a marijuana cigarette he'd been smoking before he fell asleep. A Family member would later claim to have set the blaze.

In May, after he had healed, Watkins decided he would testify against Manson. His decision was occasioned by a threat delivered from Manson via Family members: "Charlie says when he gets out, you better not be around the desert."

CNN interview and My Life with Charles Manson In 1989, after he had been diagnosed with cancer, Watkins appeared on CNN's Larry King Live. The segment was hosted by Maureen Reagan. During the interview, a woman identifying herself as "Jenny" called in and conversed with Watkins and Reagan. Jenny said she had begun living with the Family "about six months after the murders." Watkins recognized the caller and questioned the direction of her remarks ("I mean where are we going with this?").

In My Life with Charles Manson, the 1979 book Watkins co-authored with Guillermo Soledad, he had spoken of "Ginny". She was a girl new to the Family around February 1970, and with whom, on the suggestion of Family member Squeaky Fromme, he had conspired to slip a dose of LSD to Family member Bruce Davis, during the latter's trial at that time for auto theft. This conspiratorial activity had taken place before the decision by Watkins to testify against Manson.

Death Watkins died in 1990 at age 40, of leukemia. He was the unofficial mayor of Tecopa, a small Death Valley town, where he lived with his second wife and their two daughters, one of whom is writer Claire Vaye Watkins.