Danny Trejo recalls encounter with Charles Manson in LA prison: ‘He could have been a professional hypnotist’

Actor describes Manson as ‘greasy, dirty, scrawny white boy’

Danny Trejo has shared his recollection of an encounter with Charles Manson at a Los Angeles prison.

The actor discusses the time he met Manson in his newly released memoir, Trejo.

According to Trejo, the encounter occurred in 1968, a year before the Manson Family murders.

In his memoir, Trejo doesn’t immediately reveal Manson’s identity, describing him first as “a greasy, dirty, scrawny white boy”.

Manson, he said, told Trejo and his cell mates that he could hypnotise them into thinking they were high on weed and heroin.

“If that white boy wasn’t a career criminal, he could have been a professional hypnotist,” Trejo notes, “someone who went to high schools and state fairs and got people to come onstage and act like cats and stuff.”

Trejo then reveals Manson’s name, adding: “But he was, in fact, a career criminal. He was Charles Manson.”

Manson was convicted in January 1971 of first-degree murder in the killings of seven people, including actor Sharon Tate. He was initially sentenced to death, but that sentence was changed to life in prison after California got rid of the death penalty in 1972.

Manson died of natural causes in 2017.