“Long story short: Charlie Mason just had gotten arrested and [I’m in] Hawthorne, California, I’m staying at my grandma’s house,” Trujillo recalled, setting the scene for the podcast hosts. “The army surplus shop there around the corner on Hawthorne Boulevard was robbed.”
“Basically, the Manson Family had this grand scheme — you can check it out on the internet — they were gonna rob the gun store and get their ammo and everything, and they were gonna go to LAX,” he explained of the incident. “They were going to go to LAX and their plan was to hijack a 747 and demand that Charlie gets sent to them, and they’re gonna take this plane to God knows where. This is what they were thinking.”
The rocker continued, “Obviously, the plan didn’t work. Cops show up. There’s a shootout.”
The Metallica member then opened about his frightening experience going into hiding. He shared, “We were hearing gunshots, the whole deal. So all of a sudden you get the [police helicopters], and they’re flying around. They’re talking through their intercom, whatever they got going up there: ‘Everybody, take cover’ … And so my dad turns off all the lights. We’re hiding in the shower. And it was really eerie. It was kind of like that scene in Close Encounters [of the Third Kind] where you see the light come through the windows.”
“My dad at one point opened the door to see what was going on — ‘Get the f— back in the house now,’” he added, mimicking his father’s intense tone.
Manson ultimately died in prison in 2017, age 83. As Dennis Miller once joked on Weekend Update in 1985, “Convicted mass murderer Charles Manson was denied parole again this week. Manson arrived at the hearing with a swastika etched in his forehead. And you know, what better way than that to signal the board that you’ve pulled your personal thing together and are ready to hit the streets again, huh?”