Charles Denton “Tex” Watson…The Man Behind The Monster Part One

 
Top to Bottom– Present Day, 1969, High School
Of all the Hinman/Tate-LaBianca killers, “Tex” Watson is one of the most difficult to understand from where old MsBurb is sitting.

He’s not had the traumatic childhood like Sadie, nor the self-conscious and unattractive drawbacks of Katie, nor the baseline intellect of Charlie.

No, for me Tex Watson is more than just an enigma and as such has been so very difficult to study.

I’m sure, if you’ve been following TLB2, you have been wondering when MsBurb would get around to old Tex, and it’s not like I’ve been avoiding the issue, it’s just been because the more I read on this man, the less I know and the more questions for which there seem no clear answers.

Having no idea where to begin with this guy, I decided to begin, not with a true scientific nor psychological approach but to begin with the wholly unscientific definition of the man through, yes, dare I say it, his Natal Astrology Chart!

Sure, heck, why not? I said to myself. Why not begin with something general and work inward from there, like an artist would with a hunk of clay, plopping the unrecognizable blob on a wheel and slowing start carving away until a recognisable shape begins to form. I could have begun with what we all think we know about the man but somehow I thought that would be an unfair, biased view and not one which would answer the many questions I have on this guy. Yes, a slow carving away of what he is not, to reveal what he may be, was as good a place to start as any…

Born December 2, 1945, at 9:05pm, Charles Denton Watson was born under the Sun sign of Sagittarius, his Moon in Scorpio and in Chinese Astrology a Wood Rooster is his animal representation while his numerology number is 6.

What becomes glaringly obvious in his chart is his social, passionate, restless, action-oriented personality traits, a person more akin to doing  than to thinking, and above all possessing a need to be accepted by his peers.

Tex has no problem forming a goal and puts every effort into achieving it, even if that goal is not popular with his friends or relatives. And although his take-action, can-do attitude is commendable, if the choice he makes is a bad one Tex is unlikely to realize his error until after he has made that mistake.

Sound familiar Tex?

Tex also seeks material possession, not necessarily just to possess or for his own pleasure, but to bolster the health and welfare of his home base, his “family”, and if obtaining an item forces him to use others in the process, then so be it.

Right Luella?

But for Tex, although restless by nature, a secure home base is what he ultimately seeks, a “family” not necessarily of the conventional kind but a family nonetheless. So if the one he’s born into doesn’t satisfy his needs, he will look elsewhere to achieve that domestic security.

Tex will seek this base until he finds it, and when he does, there is no end to the energy and enthusiasm he will expend to bolster and protect that home base. And as long as his decisions are sound and safe, he and his family base remain healthy and happy. But Tex’s lack of introspection and self-analysis and his need for bold moves can get him into trouble if the actions he chooses to make are bad ones, as he often cannot discern proper actions from fool-hardy ones until it’s too late.

Oops! Like a Bayonet and a Buntline on a summer’s eve, huh Tex?

And what could be considered one of his greatest Achilles Heels would be his preference for the Known over the Unknown, even if the Known is considered bad or risky. He’d rather spend time with the Devil he knows rather than the Angel he doesn’t!

Oops again! Too bad you didn’t read your astrology chart before you met The Devil in Manson, huh Tex?

Even after a foolish action has been taken by Tex, he has an uncanny ability to demonstrate resilience in the toughest of times and to bounce back from even the most colossal of mistakes by beginning anew, if not in the physical form, then in the mental one. Maybe that’s why Tex was one of the first of the killers to remake his life in prison, and in doing so almost thrive instead of just survive in his newly found caged world.

The only question I have is how he manages to suppress his need for roaming, as his personality chart shows a person in constant need of movement and travel. I suspect that this trait may be the most difficult for Tex to cope with in prison and I have visions of him doing a heck of a lot of walking or running when he spends time in the yard!

I highly doubt that Tex can stay sedentary for long, even in prison. His mind, if not his body, probably hits the ground running as soon as he wakes, and as such, he probably always has a project on the go, to distract his mind from the need his body has to move, to change, and to travel. His lack of introspection, while part of the reason he got himself into such trouble in the first place, undoubtedly is what is keeping him from mentally disintegrating in prison. Tex’s mind probably spends little time on the past but is always engaged with the present and the future, his past life and it’s horrendous decisions neatly washed away and replaced with a new life in prison.

Must be handy to be able to so reinvent oneself, huh Tex?

His chart shows dominant planets in Mars, Jupiter and the Sun…all big, bold, or highly energetic planets which give rise to his big, bold, energetic traits. Actions Tex chooses to make can be wonderful and exciting if they are sound and safe but his personality often acts before it thinks and with an almost fearless enthusiasm, Tex can be in over his head and create damage to himself and others in the process. He seems to lack the ability to check up and properly assess a move before it’s made and before harm is done, as his need to act and react outweighs the need to assess those actions beforehand.

The most dangerous aspect of this can-do attitude is the fine line that divides enthusiasm from feverishness, or even emotional and physical rage if psychological pressure is applied. He often can’t discern between being proactive and being brutal and violent aggression can be the end result.

Just ask the Tate-LaBianca victims!

Tex will often leave the tasks of perfecting and analyzing to others, and that’s all well and good if the person his leaves in the care of those duties is of sound mind himself. But if he partners with a reactionary or violent man, the outcome, as with his choice in Manson, can result in a warrantless warrior, bent on any means to an end at any cost to those around them.

It is this singular trait that may be the clue that Tex, apart from his cohorts, may not be a sociopath. He may have just allowed others to do the thinking for him and when his choice was Manson, his actions became deadly and destructive instead of positive and Life fulfilling. I am jumping the gun as it were on declaring this possibility as there is obviously more to the man that a mere birth chart can declare!

His steadfast will for expansion of his “family’, or home base, at any cost, could get Tex into serious trouble if there isn’t a sound mind in authority to properly assess his actions. Tex is like the human equivalent of a puppy Rottweiler, a great can-do guard dog if he is cared for by responsible people but a deadly weapon or blind warrior if he is not.

He constantly mentions, in his 1978  book (Click Pic To Read The Book!)

that, when times became difficult in Hollywood, damn if he was going back to Texas, “with my tail between my legs”. And it’s this overwhelming pride and a need for dignity at all times which can prevent personalities like Tex to be able to admit mistakes to others even if to do so may save his life or others. To someone like Tex, to go forward, at all costs, is somehow worth the possible cost of total self destruction, and when you mix this fool-hardy way of behaving with drug abuse the result can be deadly in more ways than one.

Tex’s need to please others, to be likeable and to fit in with whatever family base he decides is for him at the time is paramount, whether met with the likes of Manson and The Family or with the likes of his born-again cohorts in prison. He will adopt the persona needed to be accepted by his peers even if that persona has to do a 180 turn from The Devil to Jesus Christ.

His chart also hints at the dominate role a mother figure will play in his life, and to that end, when he relinquished his true Mother and her ways back in Texas, one wonders if Mary Brunner did not take on that role for him as he became part of Charlie’s gang. Mary spent a great deal of time with Tex in the beginning, at Charlie’s insistence I might add, and maybe she reinforced Manson’s doctrine in the Mother role Tex would naturally cling to and trust. Maybe Manson realized this need in Tex and had Mary fit that bill. And maybe for a time, Luella, his non Family girlfriend did the same, her drug-dealing world only being infinitesimally better than Manson’s world.

Whatever the world Tex found himself in, his commendable lack of prejudice in others, instead of serving him well, only served to blind him to the negative influences these people had in his life, accepting their ways as righteous ones, blithely following them all to his demise. His need to be in sync with his peers and role models would be more important than his judgment of their beliefs and actions, ignoring the morals he was raised with for total acceptance from his present-day peers.

Pleasure-seeking is never far from his thoughts as Tex has always been guided by where he thinks he can find it at any given moment. Tex’s personality lives more in the sensory than in the cerebral realm, and  pleasure, be it physical, through sports, sex or drugs and alcohol becomes paramount in the short term, never considering the long term effects along the way. With this trait, it’s no wonder that Tex easily fit in with the California free-love and drug culture and became so quickly addicted to those pleasures wherever he found them.

He didn’t seek those activities to make a social statement or to necessarily go against his parents’ wishes; he did it to be accepted and to feel pure pleasure in the moment, in every waking moment that he could. It was easier to have fun, feel good and get that adrenalin rush of pure joy rather than to assess if the form of pleasure he sought was even deserved or productive in the long term. He probably figured that he would live forever, the epitome of an invincible all American boy, who could go on living only to feel good, life’s responsibilities be damned.

The price, for endless pleasure, he soon found, became total mental and physical annihilation in two years less 19 days, from the first day he stepped on the plane to fly to Los Angeles, to visit his friend Richard Carson on August 28, 1967 to the Tate murders on August 9, 1969. The Mother Of All E Ticket rides to Hell.
The Man Behind The Monster will continue!