Manson tells a story of once shooting a guy in LA, whose house Manson had gone to in response to the guy apparently kidnapping the GF of Manson's pal (Bobby Beausoleil) over a drug debt.
Manson immediately fled back to the desert after shooting him, he says, and the next day it was all over the news that a leader in the Black Panthers was found dead with his body dumped outside of town.
For a while after, Manson was convinced that he'd been the one to kill him and that their hideaway would be attacked by Black Panthers. Wrong guy, though.
My friend who reads GB and is a Manson expert, tells me that a shooting did happen. But the real story is almost surely that, at Manson's demand, Tex Watson set up a fake drug deal and took the guy's money. Watson ran out the back door at an apartment building with a couple of thousand bucks of their cash.
The dude immediately swore revenge, of course. So Charlie went to him to pretend to "sort it out" while the real plan was to kill him before he could organize against the family.
Charlie knelt on the floor before him (as some have said) and held out his opened hands offering his gun to show "good faith" or something... but as soon as the guy reached to grab it, Manson did a flip-of-the-wrist and shot him.
