Danny Trejo Says Charles Manson Once Hypnotized Him in Jail (original) (raw)

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Danny Trejo revealed a bizarre encounter he had with Charles Manson while locked up in jail with the infamous cult leader.

In his new memoir Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood, the Machete star said he met Manson in Los Angeles County Jail in 1961, describing him as “greasy, dirty, scrawny” and “so poor, he didn’t have a belt, and instead used a piece of string to keep his pants up.”

Trejo said in his book that he felt sorry at the time for Manson, who was too small to protect himself. A few days after meeting, the notorious criminal told Trejo and his pals that he had hypnotic powers that “could get us high.”

“It was like a guided meditation,” Trejo wrote, adding that Manson had the group believing they were smoking marijuana and then injecting heroin – using his words alone.

“By the time he described it hitting my bloodstream, I felt the warmth flowing through my body,” recalled Trejo, who was a teenage heroin addict. “If that white boy wasn’t a career criminal, he could have been a professional hypnotist.”

After spending years in and out of prison and battling drug addiction, Trejo turned his life around to become a beloved character actor who has appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows.

Manson, on the other hand, began to accrue cult followers upon his release from jail in 1967. In 1969, his followers – who would become known as the Manson Family – went on brutal murder spree in Los Angeles, killing seven people including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Manson died in prison in 2017 while serving a life sentence behind bars.