Fla. woman mines the mind of Manson

Fan mail to Charles Manson rolls in from as far away as Germany, on postcards and stationery and folded notebook paper. In varying modes of legibility, all are seeking a personal audience with arguably the most notorious convict in American history.

A young woman from Louisville, Ky., approaches her 25th birthday with trepidation. "I realize now that I have so little control over my life," she confesses, "and that can be very frightening."

A man who identifies himself as a former police chief wants "to let you know that someone in Pennsylvania is praying for you."

Fifteen such missives have been stashed into a large, white envelope that now rests on the kitchen counter of Heidi Ley, a resident of Palmer Ranch in Sarasota County. It bears the postmark of California's Corcoran State Prison.

Manson has scribbled his name and return address in green felt-tip pen on the outside, and included a brief note on yellow legal paper that ends with a "Happy Mother's Day" wish. He adds, "Looking forward to seeing you. Let me know when."

Ley is on a first-name basis with the man whose image is synonymous with psycho killer.

"Charlie gets so much mail, he usually just scans it and gives it away to other inmates," she said, adding that sometimes he mails it to her. "Kind of wild, isn't it?"

It is so wild that her husband, Alex, doesn't bother to answer their land-line phone these days. He lets Heidi grab it. Because it might be Manson. Again.

Still, the end is in sight for a laid-off financial analyst closing in on her dream of becoming a writer, even as a biographer who thought he was losing his mind during his own Manson odyssey years ago expresses reservations over Ley's zeal. He says, "She's fallen a little bit under his spell, I fear."

Heidi Ley shrugs off that critique. She insists she's in control.

Manson never bloodied his own hands in the residential massacres of Aug. 8 to 9, 1969, which would become known as the Tate-LaBianca murders. But he was convicted in 1971 of murder conspiracy.

For Syracuse University American pop culture critic Robert Thompson, Manson's enduring and cross-generational appeal cannot be explained solely by the brutality of a celebrity murder inspired by the lyrics from "Helter Skelter," off The Beatles' 1968 White Album.

"For one thing," Thompson says, "this guy is accessible. He talks to people. He keeps granting interviews. He stays in the news."

In April, Manson, 77, told a Spanish magazine that President Barack Obama was "a slave of Wall Street," then decried the lack of a concerted effort to fight global warming.

But the real allure, says Thompson, is more insidious.

"I hate to use this word, but there's also a comic aspect to what he says. It's almost like listening to Charlie Sheen. At first it sounds crazy, but if you listen to him long enough, with the lyrical use of metaphors, it's so literate it starts to make a certain kind of sense."

When she was growing up in rural Washington Courthouse, Ohio, Ley and her best friend liked to scare the bejeebers out of each other during sleepovers by watching horror flicks like "The Shining" and all the "Friday the 13th" sequels.

"Heidi was an adventure-seeker, a huge daredevil," recalls Jennifer Swackhamer, who works sales and marketing for a retailer in Ohio.

Ley graduated college with a degree in business administration and crunched numbers for a living.

When she brought that critical eye to bear during a random re-reading of "Helter Skelter," prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's scenario didn't make sense.

During the 1970-71 trial, a handful of commune members testified they were acting on Manson's instructions when they committed the murders. Manson has consistently denied their allegations and said robbery was the motive for the break-ins.

Bugliosi convinced the court that Manson hoped to instigate an apocalyptic race war, called "Helter Skelter," by killing whites and blaming blacks. Jurors were told Manson and his family would ride out the turmoil in a secret city beneath Death Valley.

"It just sounded silly," Ley recalls. "Living in a hole in the desert?"

Bottom line: She's convinced the mystique is overblown.

"I don't think Charlie's a nice guy — he's not," Ley says. "But is he the monster the DA made him out to be? No."

In 2009, she got laid off. She wondered if it might be an opportunity.

"I thought, well, OK, maybe now I can write my book," she said.

She got financial encouragement from her father and her husband, Alex, who works at a Lexus dealership. "She always had a passion to write, and I wanted to be supportive," Alex says.

"George got a little wild and weird there for awhile," Matera says from Chandler, Ariz. "I never even met Manson but felt myself slipping into character during my research. I mean, I started growing my hair long and I grew a beard for the first time in my life."

When, several years ago, Ley approached him for guidance, Matera wondered if she knew the full scope of who she was dealing with.

"I understood where she was coming from. Manson's a Svengali. He's so intense and charismatic, he could've been a rock star or a politician," Matera says.

Ley wanted to get closer. She needed a plan.

Among Charles Manson's inventions is a seed gun, which he calls the Savior. The Savior works like a paintball gun, except it shoots tree seeds instead, encased in pellets of biodegradable material.

Manson's Savior Project is supported by a California environmental group called ATWA (Air Trees Water Animals); the director is a 62-year-old man called Gray Wolf. Ley decided to make her move by volunteering for ATWA.

"Charlie's all about trust," she says. "And he's always been really big on environmental issues."

Ley's primary contribution involved researching what sort of tree seeds are best suited for various regions of the United States.

Last year, Ley was approved for a prison visit.

In August 2010, she drove a rental car north from Bakersfield and wound up at the razor wire fences and guard towers of Corcoran State Prison.

Manson arrived wearing orange prison garb. Nearly eye level with his fabled forehead swastika, Ley was surprised by "this little old guy" with the grey beard and collar-length hair. He asked her "How was the trip?" The meeting was largely uneventful. Manson spoke quietly, mainly with Gray Wolf.

"I told him about the book and he said, 'As long as you get the information about ATWA in there, that's all I care about,' " she said.

Bridge established, Ley would return in November 2010, and again in February. Between visits, he would send letters and dial her up.

Mostly, Manson rambles about the environment.

Ley says her research does nothing to refute Manson's profile as a manipulative misfit. But she maintains he's not a deranged killer. "He's been incarcerated most of his life, so I don't think he should be released from custody," she says. "But I don't think he belongs in prison, either."

Ley says her primary goal is to prove Bugliosi's theory was a frame-up.

Ley has finished her manuscript and is collaborating with connected New York ghostwriter Dan Simone.

But recently, something occurred to her.

The woman who invested years into cultivating Manson's trust had gotten what she needed. And she no longer wanted him in her life.

It was as effortless as clicking the off button on the remote control.

Says Ley, "I don't want to go back."