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.

He is not to be confused with Tex Watson.

By his own account, Paul Watkins lived "a pretty standard middle-class American upbringing," including being in a Christian family.

His early years were spent in Sidon, Lebanon, where his father worked on a pipeline.

The move to Lebanon took place when Watkins was an infant.

After four years in Lebanon, the family moved to Beaumont, Texas, and then to Thousand Oaks, California.

When Watkins was a child, he enjoyed attending church and hiking in the oak groves near his home.

During adolescence, Watkins became a Bible student and was active in youth organizations and church camps.

At age 13, he became involved in evangelicalism, at first because he enjoyed the music and singing.

By the time he entered high school, his musical interests had become a "passion"; his religious interests had "waned."

Watkins dropped out of high school during his senior year, in which school officials distressed by his use of psychedelic drugs terminated his term as student-body president, a position he held in every grade from first through eleventh.

Having come to find his studies less interesting than music and marijuana, he became, as he would later write, "a fugitive flower child in search of enlightenment and truth."

In the same December 1967 week in which he was put on probation after an arrest for marijuana possession, two friends of his were returned dead from the Vietnam War.

On March 16, 1968, several months after his departure from high school, Watkins met Charles Manson in Los Angeles County’s Topanga Canyon, at a house where Manson and several Family members were squatting.

Watkins had come to the house to visit a friend who turned out no longer to be living there.

After enjoying a candy bar, root beer, marijuana, and a night of group sex, Watkins left.

For Watkins, there followed three-and-a-half months of hippie desultoriness, most of it spent taking care of a farm that was near Big Sur and whose owner had picked up the hitchhiking youth before going on to Hawaii.

Watkins returned to the Los Angeles area, where, at a San Fernando Valley street corner, he was recognized and picked up in a hollowed-out school bus that was painted black, driven by the same two Manson girls, who had greeted him at the door of the Topanga Canyon house.

As the girls took him to the Family's new camp at Spahn Movie Ranch, near Chatsworth, one of them remarked that Manson was Jesus Christ.

It was July 4, 1968.

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

On October 31, he set out with the others in the group's school bus to Golar Wash, near Death Valley.

There, over the next few days, Manson set up additional Family bases at two unused (or little-used) ranches, Myers and Barker.

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:

Before long, Manson had moved the Family to a Canoga Park house where they undertook preparations for Helter Skelter.

They worked on music for their intended album and began preparing dune buggies and other vehicles for their escape to Death Valley, where, according to Watkins, they would survive the America-ravaging war.

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.

His fear that the Family was lingering too long in the soon-to-be-war-torn Los Angeles area prompted him, in late June 1969, to ask Manson when the group would be leaving for the desert.

According to Watkins, Manson assured him Helter Skelter was ready to happen.

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".

At Barker Ranch, Watkins came under the influence of Paul Crockett, a middle-aged prospector who, with metaphysical musings of his own, had begun to influence a male Family member and female Family member who had been left to watch the desert camp.

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.]"