Hypothesis #5—Charlie Manson and company carried out a scheme of the Solar Lodge of the OTO and the Process Church of the Final Judgment after an emergency situation forced these groups to change their plans at the last minute.

Argument for: The Mayfair-based Process Church, a sect that jointly worshiped Yaweh, Christ and Satan, had a pronounced animosity for African Americans, as articulated by prosecution witnesses in unrelated cases. The Crowlyan Solar Lodge of the OTO took racial hatred to a deeper level by predicting a cataclysmic race war, a civil unrest that would result in the final extermination of all African Americans. Moreover, the Solar Lodge expected this ethnic apocalypse to occur very soon. Their leader, Georgina Brayton, held many properties across southern California. But out of all of them, she gathered her flock into the squalid Quonset huts of their compound in the desert town of Blythe, California, in April of 1969. She believed that the racial conflict would first break out in the inner city.

When months rolled by without hide nor hair of any racial Armageddons, the Solar Lodge started to plan the mother of all race wars. But in the middle of their scheming, police arrested the leaders for their torture of Anthony Gibbons, the six-year-old son of Solar Lodge member Beverly Gibbons. Thinking fast, they ordered their henchmen, led by Charles Manson, to begin the race war earlier than expected by murdering Gary Hinman and framing the Black Panthers for the crime.

The Process, who also had hooks into Charlie’s tribe, helped the OTO in this endeavor. They were at the scene handling the situation with Gary Hinman. They orchestrated the cover-up down to the bloody paw print on the wall.

Ed Sanders found two witnesses, whom he only identified by the first names Jay and Dave. These two both say that women outside of the family were at the scene while the slippies tortured and murdered Hinman. One of them spoke with a British accent over the telephone. Obviously, most of the Mayfair-based Processeans would have spoken with a British accent.

Sanders indicates that Manson’s involvement with both groups might have been deeper than many, including Bugliosi, indicate. Sanders, after all, places Manson within a special meeting to determine the fate of a young male sex-slave identified only by the nickname ‘Pussycat.’ Moreover, Sanders’ anonymous source specifically identified two women within Manson’s inner circle as participants of a filmed dog blood sacrifice, a type of ritual associated with the Process Church. And the description of the group's clothing by the unnamed informant matched that typically worn by Process members.

Also, months before the murders, a pack of Alsatians, the breed preferred by the Processeans, chased and threatened to attack Roman Polanski. If anything, this showed that the order hated Polanski, perhaps because such movies as Rosemary’s Baby treated Satanists like them as the villains.

Argument against: Perhaps if Manson or his followers were in cahoots with the Solar Lodge, he could have ordered his followers to begin the race war by committing the Helter Skelter murders. Since the Process might have had a similar goal in mind, maybe they would silently support what amounted to a covert action.

That’s a big ‘perhaps if,’ and a bigger ‘maybe.’

Anyone arguing that Manson completed a blood ritual on behalf of The Process or the OTO would have to presume that Charlie’s involvement was not only deep, but also subservient. While the evidence strongly indicates that Manson had some contact with both groups, there’s nothing to indicate that these contacts were anything more than superficial, other than second-hand accounts that are unreliable for obvious reasons. True, Manson had adopted some of the philosophies and beliefs of these groups, the Helter Skelter scenario arguably the most important. But Manson was an eclectic borrower from a number of belief systems. In addition to the OTO and the Process, Manson also borrowed freely from Scientology, the counterculture (when it suited him), jailhouse wisdom, occultism, and the Bible. And there’s nothing to indicate that Manson followed orders from these two groups.

And anyone, including the Process, could have animosity towards Polanski. That doesn't mean they'd try to kill him. Besides, if the Process really knew enough about Polanski’s schedule, why not wait for him to come back before having Manson kill everyone? After all, they could have either murdered Polanski after he watched his friends and wife get butchered. Or the killers could have left him alive to witness the carnage helplessly. Perhaps they could have even framed him for it.

What X. Dell really thinks of this hypothesis: The Process Church of the Final Judgment and the Solar Lodge of the OTO undoubtedly had some bearing on Manson’s thoughts throughout 1969, especially since he, like Georgina Brayton, believed that cataclysmic race wars loomed on the immediate horizon. There’s also every reason to believe that Manson spoke about this openly, for there were numerous eyewitness accounts of him discussing the topic. Yet it’s one thing to believe something will happen, another to see yourself as a causal factor of it.

The Helter Skelter motive emerges after Manson’s arrest, and comes first from sources at the fringes of the “family." People outside the group later hone this hypothesis. These sources asserted Manson’s belief in the Helter Skelter scenario. The prosecution subsequently touted this as the motive behind the Tate-LaBianca murders. Those who would later have something to gain by fingering Manson as the man who forced them to do what they did could readily support this as a conclusion. But they have a compelling reason to support this conclusion, for it minimizes their guilt in both a legal and moral sense.

At the same time, no one has offered any evidence that either the Solar Lodge or the Process had any plans to ignite a racial holocaust. So, if this were truly Manson’s motive, then one still cannot connect it to these quasi-Satanic organizations. True, the two strange women at the Hinman house, and the proximity of Hinman’s death to the sheriff’s raid on the Blythe complex raise a legitimate eye. But there’s nothing to keep Susan Atkins from speaking in a faux-English dialect. Furthermore, the cult had people coming and going into it all the time. So the stranger who met door visitors during Hinman’s torture and murder could have been either a new member, or an older member who had recently come back to the group after a prolonged absence. In short, the mystery women could have simply been Charlie’s girls disguised in plain sight.

And here, one can easily chalk up the proximity of events as a coincidence. Unless something more substantial surfaces, my feeling is that the Process and Solar Lodge’s influence over these events was evident, but quite minimal.