Episode 33 Pixie

Pixie Lambert did not think of herself as being a bad person. She had killed her mother’s boyfriend with a knife, but she murdered the bastard in self -defence. She had been aware that her mother and her boyfriend Ronald Mixer had a volatile relationship. This situation troubled Pixie no end but she had made a decision to stay out of the conflict. All that changed on the evening of January 16, 2019. That was the day she snapped. She arrived home from work to hear her mother screaming for help. A bedroom door was open and Pixie witnessed her mom’s boyfriend, Stan hitting her mother several times with 2 x 4 piece of lumber. She saw the black and yellow bruises on her mother’s naked body. Pixie ran out to Stan’s workstation in the garage and grabbed a hammer. She returned to her mother’s bedroom to inflict many severe blows to the back of Stan’s skull until he was rendered bloody and unconscious. Pixie ran to the bathroom to take off her soiled clothes, take a shower, clean herself up a bit and put on some clean clothing. The blows from the hammer splattered blood and pieces of grey brain matter on Pixie’s Def Leopard T-shirt and onto her faded light blue jeans.

After a quick shower and change into clean clothes, Pixie ran out of the house to the bus stop just a few feet from her house. She quickly boarded the bus until it reached the Greyhound bus station in Fargo, North Dakota. When the city bus but stopped in front of the Greyhound bus depot, Pixie got off the bus. At the bus depot she bought a ticket for a Greyhound bus that would soon be departing from Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada.

When Pixie boarded the bus, she spotted one empty seat. Sitting in the other seat was a young man with a stocky build and dirty blond hair that had been spiked up with hair gel. The young man who appeared to be in his twenties was reading a book titled the Life and Times of Charles Manson. He moved slightly closer to the window seat and didn’t acknowledge the young girl sitting to his left.

When Pixie was nervous or agitated, she liked to talk. She turned her head toward the young man to try to strike up a conversation. Is that book about Charlie Manson?” Pixie asked.

He was so engrossed by the book that it took him awhile to become cognizant that he was going to have a partner on his bus trip to Canada.

“I read a lot of true crime looks and watch quite a few true crime TV shows. This Charles Manson guy really fascinates me. Can you believe it? This thirty- year-old ex-con gets released from prison, goes to the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco and starts to attract followers. The next thing you know is that he forms a type of family that will do anything that he tells them to do. Oh, by the way, I should introduce myself. I’m Ricky Kramer from Winnipeg. Who might you be?”

“My name is Pixie. I’m taking the bus to Winnipeg to visit my aunt,” Pixie answered.

By this time Pixie had blocked out the memory of her recent assault of her mother’s boyfriend. I like true crime too. I first heard of Charles Manson about a year ago when I started reading Vincent Bugliosi’s book Helter Skelter,” Pixie said.

“I have some barbecue potato chips and a couple of Pepsis with me. You want to share them?” Ricky asked, pulling down the top of his Metallica hoodie. He rolled up his sleeves to the elbows and Pixie noticed that Ricky had tattoos of other heavy metal bands like Slayer, Black Flag and Motley Crew.

“Oh, thanks, man. I’d love to share some snacks with you. Like I was saying, I know quite a bit about Charles Manson myself. I heard that he just passed away recently,” Pixie said.

“That’s true. I think he was in his eighties when he finally passed away,” he said, as he started sorting through his black and orange back pack. He handed Pixie a plastic bottle of Pepsi and a small bag of Old Dutch barbecue potato chips.

“I’ve been watching a couple of documentaries on Charles Manson. I found them on the Reelz channel. These documentaries are quite fascinating. They explore different theories about the Manson family murders. One of the shows says that Bugliosi’s theory about the whole helter-skelter motive was completely bogus,” Pixie said, as she unscrewed the top Pepsi bottle.