It began one night when I was driving out Sunset Boulevard toward the beach, heading home to Malibu. By then I'd sold my T-Bird and had an old 1935 Dodge pickup. Hitchhikers were pretty common on Sunset, and I pulled over to pick one up. When he told me his name was Dennis Wilson it didn't mean anything to me, but when he said he was one of the Beach Boys I was impressed. I remembered all those surfing songs banging out of my brother's room back in Copeville. I grinned to myself, wondering what he would think if he could see me now with Dennis Wilson taking a ride in my truck and explaining how he'd wrecked his Ferrari and his Rolls Royce so was having to use his thumb.

When we got to his house in Pacific Palisades he invited me in. Rolling up the long driveway to what had once been Will Rogers's mansion, I played with the idea of what it would be like to tell my brother about the time one of the Beach Boys had me in for coffee. When we went inside it was all I could do to keep my mouth closed. I'd never been in a place like this before. It was a long way from a three-bedroom frame house in Texas.

Updated June 2021

This article is accompanied by a chart designed to enhance your understanding. To view the chart, click here.

My irrational thinking caused a chain of destructive emotions and sinful behavior. Beginning with Eve in the Garden, thoughts of not having or being enough, or of missing out on something important, caused the first couple to hide from God in fear, guilt and shame, with feelings of rejection.

Emotions are simply feelings on the inside, caused by pain or pleasure, moving us in a positive or negative direction. When I examined where my fears and sense of inferiority originated, I found what thoughts and feelings caused them to create character defects in my life. I discovered the causative and contributing factors that triggered my criminal behavior, how to address them and create a new life plan. It took a little help from Jesse and others in recovery, so I thought it might help you too.

Helter Skelter 1

Helter Skelter has evolved to mean several things since my first recollection of it.

• In the sixties, The Beatles put a song on The White Album named Helter Skelter that begins with these lyrics:

“When I get to the bottom, I go
back to the top of the side,
Where I stop and I turn,
and I go for a ride,
Till I get to the bottom
and I see you again.”

It was like a breath of fresh air leaving the Los Angeles County Jail in a bus for death row after my conviction.  We headed up the coast to San Quentin, which overlooks the San Francisco bay.

It was like yesterday, November 19, 1971, when an officer took my photo and assigned me an inmate I.D. number.  I was escorted always by two officers, shouting, “Dead man walking”!

“There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12).

It is widely known that terrorists share a similar psychological profile. One trait they commonly share is a faulty belief system. They not only possess radical religious beliefs, but believe that through tactics of fear they can manipulate the will of their enemies, preventing them from accomplishing their goals. Terrorists believe they are justified in using any means to change society into something agreeable with their own radical beliefs.

Terrorism is defined as a "systematic covert warfare to produce terror for political coercion" (Merriam-Webster). It can also be defined as, "the planned, organized use of fear as a weapon." We often believe that the opposite of love is hate, but as seen in terrorist organizations, hate and fear, although different from each other, are both in opposition to love, mercy and forgiveness. Fear and hate are the tools of the devil. Scripture says, "For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darknesws who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realm" (Ephesians 6:12 NLT).

God has provided a remedy to terrorism for Christians who are born-again by the Holy Spirit. "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV). We have the love of God in our lives, which empowers us. "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment, but he who fears has not been made perfect in love" (1 John 4:18 NKJV).

Life was very laid back in the Hollywood scene. The girls went out on garbage runs every day, getting perfectly good food that was tossed out into bins behind Brentwood and Pacific Palisades supermarkets. Eventually I started taking them on the runs in my truck and I found out that before it was wrecked they'd used Dennis' (the drummer of the Beach Boys) Rolls Royce for their foraging trips to the dumpsters.

We listened to a lot of music. The music was always there, always going, singing and making a world -- saying there was something beyond the senses, something brighter, wilder, truer -- saying that love was all that really mattered.

People came and went, a peculiar mix of young dropouts like me, drug dealers, and people in the entertainment business. It was a strange time in Hollywood. It had become chic to play the hippie game, and the children of the big stars partied with gurus like Charlie Manson and listened to them and bought drugs from them and took hippie kids to bed and let them drive their expensive cars and crash in their Bel Air mansions. Everybody felt aware and free. After August 1969, all that would change and those gentle children with flowers in their hair and tabs of acid in their pockets would suddenly seem menacing and dangerous. The Beverly Hills-Hollywood circuit would snap shut like a trap.

The purpose of this Web site is to share the Truth that is found solely in the Good News of Jesus Christ. It has been said, "If you want to know the counterfeit, get to know the real thing." Cashiers in banks are taught how real money feels, not how counterfeit money feels. As they get to know the feel of the real bill, it is easy to spot the counterfeit when it comes along.

A personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the real thing. As we get to know Him through the pages of the Holy Bible, we can easily spot the counterfeit when it comes along. The Gospel of John says, "You are truly my disciples if you keep obeying my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:31,32 NLT).

Those of us who are past members of the Manson cult didn't know the truth found in the Holy Bible. We didn't know the Jesus Christ of the Bible. Those at Jonestown following Jim Jones, at Waco with Koresh, and the recent Heaven's Gate (Higher Source) didn't know the real Jesus Christ of the Bible (who millions of believers follow today). This Jesus is not only a man whom we follow, but the Holy Scriptures bear out that He is God, all God and all man, coming to the Earth to die for the sins of all mankind. This is the God of the Bible.