What If Tex Watson’s Memory Wasn’t Broken — It Was Erased?
How did a “catatonic” breakdown appear on cue, why does it mirror Dr. Louis Jolyon West’s toolkit, and what did that do for the Helter Skelter script?
TL;DR
In Texas, Tex Watson was evaluated as coherent and oriented; the psychotic collapse happened only after he had moved to California in September 1970.
The symptoms that appear—mutism, amnesia, dissociation—line up with drug-induced pseudo-psychosis and suggestibility techniques documented in Dr. Jolly West’s research.
There’s no clean paper trail putting West formally on the case. There doesn’t need to be. The timing, the methods, and the institutional interests all fit.
From Texas to Total Silence
Before extradition, multiple observers described Watson as lucid, responsive, and understanding the proceedings. After arrival in California (September 1970), he goes mute, stops eating, and stares at people—then is deemed unfit to stand trial. Exactly long enough to reset the board.
The obvious question isn’t “was he ever unstable?” People break. The question is why only then, and why those symptoms.
“This is not the same conduct… when he first appeared… he was fully present and did respond.” — Court observation, Sept 28, 1970 (pre-trial hearing)
“Inmate was transferred and remained mute on trip, void on self. Refused to talk to hospital personnel on arrival.” — Psychiatric examiner note, July 10, 1971
“I wouldn’t and couldn’t eat the food he wanted me to eat [at Atascadero]…” — Watson, July 8, 1971
“I can’t handle sugar or greasy things… it comes out by me spitting it up… Mother used to bring me [dried foods and cottage cheese] in jail in Texas.” — Watson, July 9, 1971
“In Texas I was in a cell alone and I got the proper nutrition.” — Watson, July 10, 1971
What the Photos Show (Already Wasting Before California)
Side‑by‑side images tell their own story. Compare Watson’s Texas arrest photos (October 1969), where he even looks a bit overweight, with the extradition‑day shots in September 1970:
Gaunter face, hollowed cheeks, prominent collarbones
Clothing hangs loosely compared to the earlier fit
Overall appearance of pre‑existing weight loss on arrival in California
This visual evidence meshes with the medical record a month later (late October 1970): ~118 lbs, then down to 110 within a week. In other words, by the time California sees him, he already looks depleted—then deteriorates further under custody.
Context note: In Texas he says he managed food by sticking to items he trusted (e.g., dried foods his mother brought). That pattern—selective eating for safety—fits what we see in the photos and what follows in California.
Timeline: Deterioration and Sudden Recovery (Sept 1970–Mar 1971)
Trigger event: Extradition to California (11 September 1970).
12 September 1970 — Speaks normally in court; denies illness.
18 September 1970 — Stands mute; begins refusing food.
25 September 1970 — Abnormal behaviour and self‑harm gestures; placed in full restraints.
First severe behavioural collapse + restraints — plausible window for covert drug administration/conditioning.30 September 1970 — Reported violent and disoriented.
2–14 October 1970 — Weight documented at ~118 lbs; alternating mutism, erratic behaviour, exposing himself, and refusing food.
Mid‑October 1970 — Transferred to Atascadero State Hospital.
Within 48 hours — Communication and eating resume; awareness returns.
An abrupt reversal suggests a reversible, managed state rather than degenerative psychosis.1 March 1971 — Trial resumes with Watson speaking in court.
functional recovery ~four months after Atascadero transfer.
Context & commentary:
This timeline is consistent with reports from Texas: Watson’s girlfriend at the time stated he seemed completely normal before his arrest; while jailed in Texas, he reportedly showed no psychiatric symptoms. If he had intended to feign insanity, we would expect signs of that plan to appear earlier. Instead, the opposite is true — on 12 September, he denied illness and spoke normally in court.
It suggests that his condition deteriorated rapidly after that appearance — possibly because authorities feared he would reveal inconvenient truths in court. The drugging/conditioning may have begun in subtle form on or just after the 12th, with a dramatic escalation marked by self‑harming behaviour and the use of full restraints on 25 September. His transfer to Atascadero and multiple trips to UCLA in the weeks that followed may represent not a therapeutic recovery, but a memory‑erasure and reprogramming phase — the installation of the official narrative he would later adopt.
Watson’s refusal to eat once back in California may also have reflected a rational fear that his food was being drugged or tampered with — a reaction seen in induced dissociation and among prisoners with reason to distrust their captors. This fear may have been grounded in reality: former Family member Barbara Hoyt was drugged with a hamburger laced with LSD in an attempt to silence her testimony; Watson could have learned of this and feared he might be targeted similarly.
Notes
25 September 1970 appears to be the critical turning point in Watson’s collapse: first documented severe behavioural dysregulation, self‑harm gestures, and restraints — strongly suggesting a plausible window of drug administration. Given his concurrent food refusal, one hypothesis is that Watson feared his food was being tampered with, consistent with paranoid reactions or actual covert sedation.
28 September 1970: court transcripts show Watson staring silently at the judge and failing to answer direct questions about legal representation — contrasted in the record with his earlier appearance, when he “was fully present and did respond.” The most extreme shutdowns occurred at high‑pressure procedural moments, suggesting either a trauma response or outside manipulation.
In short, onset tracks custody/setting changes; crisis clusters around the restraint window; recovery aligns with transfer to an institution capable of total‑environment control.
Why Fear of Food Tampering Was Rational (Barbara Hoyt)
On September 9th 1970, Family associate Barbara Hoyt reported being given a hamburger dosed with LSD in Hawaii, after which she was hospitalised. This incident surfaced in court filings and contemporary reporting and was connected to efforts to silence a witness. Regardless of later charge reductions, the core fact remains: food was used as a delivery system for a powerful hallucinogen.
Contemporaneous press record:
“Secret grand jury indictments for criminal conspiracy were returned Friday against members of the Charles Manson ‘family’ in the case of the LSD‑laced Honolulu [hamburger].” — Los Angeles, Dec. 19, 1970 (headline: “3 Manson Women Indicted in LSD Plot on State’s Witness”)
If you’re Watson—already the prime target, moved across jurisdictions, and aware that the Family had used food to drug people—then refusing custody food or accepting only sealed items is not irrational. It is harm‑avoidant behaviour in a context where tampering is a documented tactic.
Yes, severe food refusal can occur in psychosis. Our claim is narrower: the timing, photo‑documented weight loss pre‑arrival, and specific witness‑poisoning precedent make tampering‑fear a credible driver of Watson’s behavior, fully compatible with chemical dissociation and the conditioning methods described in Subproject 43.
Link: Read the contemporaneous report — “3 Manson Women Indicted in LSD Plot on State’s Witness”
Meet the Toolkit (Subproject 43)
Dr. Louis Jolyon West didn’t just study hypnosis; he engineered states: sensory isolation, drug-assisted trance, induced amnesia, and “pseudo-psychosis.” His CIA-linked grant files (MKULTRA Subproject 43) literally set out to deepen trance pharmacologically, increase suggestibility via environmental manipulation, and produce dissociative states.
“Several drugs… are effective in speeding the induction of the hypnotic state, and in deepening the trance.” (Subproject 43, p.9)
“Drugs that provide some degree of immunity to hypnotic influence.” (p.9)
“Experiments involving altered personality function as a result of environmental manipulation (chiefly sensory isolation)… promising leads in suggestibility and trance-like states.” (p.9)
“These altered states can be utilized in the production of increased influence-ability in normal subjects.” (p.10)
This is a lab manual for flipping switches in the human mind. Keep those phrases in your head as you look at Watson’s sudden presentation.
Symptom Match (Receipts)
Watson in California: rapid onset of mutism, refusal to eat, blank affect; declared incompetent; later “recovers” in time for proceedings.
West’s files describe how to create and manage those states:
“Hypnotic suggestions can bring about states of marked psychological stress… with changes in neurophysiological and neuro-endocrinological function.” (p.10)
“Hypnotic methods can protect individuals from psychophysiological reactions to noxious stimulation.” (p.10)
Proposes combined use of hypnotic techniques and autonomic drugs to study stress reactions. (p.10)
Watson’s objective deterioration (on the record):
“In the last week [he] has become listless, flaccid… starting to feed him by nasal tube… weight has dropped from 118 to 110 in one week.” — Dr. Crahan supplemental report, Oct 29–30, 1970
“Serious weight loss… ~118 pounds… currently being fed via a tube… possibility he may expire from malnutrition.” — Sheriff’s report read into the record, Oct 30, 1970
“During the interview [he] remained completely mute and non‑verbal, though he appeared to understand.” — Dr. Pollock, Oct 30, 1970
Read that again, then picture a suddenly silent defendant who won’t eat. That’s chemical dissociation and controlled stress reactivity written down in a proposal, not a spontaneous psychiatric illness.
Full Control of the Environment
If you want to install or erase memories, you don’t just give a pill and hope. You control everything the subject sees, hears, and feels.
A “special chamber, in which all psychologically significant aspects of the environment can be controlled.” (p.11)
Inside, “hypnotic, pharmacologic, and sensory-environmental variables will be manipulated… [with] continuous recordings.” (p.11)
Translation: a turnkey brain lab. West ran this work out of UCLA—minutes from where Watson’s fate was being decided.
Memory “Booby‑Trap” Conditioning
West’s methods weren’t only about erasing memories; they could also lock them behind aversion. In practice, a subject could be:
Pharmacologically primed (e.g., scopolamine, LSD, PCP‑type dissociatives)
Restrained and hypnotised, then given post‑hypnotic suggestions that attempting to remember or speak about specific events would trigger intense pain, terror, or physical collapse
Bombarded with disturbing images and sounds — or plunged into total sensory darkness — to fuse the target memory with fear‑arousal
The result is a fear‑linked memory: the memory itself becomes the trigger, discouraging recall and disclosure. This model neatly explains Watson’s sudden eruptions and periods requiring restraint (around September 28th) reported in custody — behaviour that looks too acute and costly to be simple malingering, and far more consistent with drug‑assisted conditioning of the sort outlined in Subproject 43.
Why You Won’t Find a Neat Paper Trail
Covert clinical work rarely leaves receipts that say “we did X to Subject Y for Case Z.” Subproject 43 even instructs how to communicate to avoid leaving them. This is from the original subproject in 1955, but I imagine similar secrecy would have been used when the methods were later employed.
“Due to circumstances beyond our control, our channel of communication has been changed.” (p.23)
“All communications must be double-enveloped… registered, return receipt requested.” (p.23)
“True or full names must NOT appear… refer by first name and last initial or assigned nom de plume.” (p.23)
Absence of a billing slip isn’t exoneration. It’s standard operating procedure in these kinds of matters.
Why Tex?
“Tex was the weak link: not as ideologically fused as Charlie or the girls, and not as invested in the criminal underworld as Bobby and Bruce and the others all were. He was just a college dropout who wanted to party. Yet things went too far; he was tangled in drug deals, biker circles, and celebrity adjacency. He knew the messy parts the state didn’t want litigated in the open. Watson was actually a clean-cut boy from Texas whose second cousin was the sheriff, with no loyalty to anyone if the death penalty was on the table. He could have taken a lot of other people down with him. He has since been kept in protective custody or placed in the safest prisons, and was allowed to marry and have 4 children before conjugal visits were banned in California in 1996.
If your goal is to narrow the case to a clean “Helter Skelter” motive—and away from drug networks, informants, and psychiatric experiments—you don’t need to understand Tex. You need to neutralise him and install the script.
“But That’s Circumstantial.”
Of course it is. That’s how covert medical work looks in court files. The case becomes persuasive when:
Timing: collapse only after transfer in September 1970
Symptomology: chemical dissociation vs. chronic psychosis
Proximity/Capability: West’s lab, methods, and contracts
Institutional Incentive: avoid drug/celebrity/intelligence mess
…all line up. They do.