Charles Manson
Charles Manson was a notorious American criminal and cult leader, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1934. Raised in a strict religious environment, he faced an unstable childhood, leading to a life marked by crime and rebellion. After spending years in prison for various offenses, Manson gained infamy in the late 1960s as the leader of a group known as the "Manson Family," comprised largely of young followers who were deeply devoted to him. Manson orchestrated a series of brutal murders in August 1969, including the infamous killings of actress Sharon Tate and several others at her home, which shocked the nation and highlighted the darker side of the 1960s counterculture movement.
Manson’s motivations were complex, rooted in his delusions of starting a race war he called "Helter Skelter." He was arrested and convicted for these murders, receiving a death sentence that was later commuted to life imprisonment. Despite being denied parole multiple times, Manson remained a figure of fascination, receiving thousands of letters from admirers even while incarcerated. He died on November 19, 2017, at the age of 83. Manson's life and crimes continue to be explored in numerous books, documentaries, and films, reflecting the enduring impact of his actions on American society and culture.
Charles Manson
Criminal
- Born: November 12, 1934
- Birthplace: Cincinnati, Ohio
- Died: November 19, 2017
- Place of death: Kern County, California
Also known as: Charles Milles Manson (full name); Charles Milles Maddox (birth name)
Major offense: Murder
Active: August 9–10, 1969
Locale: Los Angeles, California
Sentence: Death penalty; later commuted to life in prison
Early Life
Charles Manson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1934 and was raised primarily by his mother until the age of thirteen. His original name was Charles Maddox, but it was changed to Manson after his stepfather, who separated from Charles and his mother early in Manson’s life. Manson’s mother raised him in a strict religious environment, against which he rebelled, leading her to place him in a foster home. He was then moved to a boys’ school in Indiana and later attempted to return to his mother.
When Manson’s mother rebuffed his contact, he lived on the streets as a transient, supporting himself by committing minor crimes. When the seriousness of his crimes increased, however, Manson spent a substantial period of time in prison; he was eventually released in 1954. He married Rosalie Jean Willis, and the two moved to California in 1955. There, Manson began committing crimes and in 1956 was again placed in prison. Manson’s wife left California with another man, and Manson spent most of his time in prison over the next dozen years for a string of mostly minor crimes. He was released in 1967.
Criminal Career
After being released from prison in 1967, Manson spent time on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, meeting a number of young women whom Manson would soon call his “Family.” These young adults were bound together by their belief in antiestablishment philosophy, drug use, and a strong devotion to Manson. Indeed, many in this group believed that Manson was Jesus Christ. Manson’s Family grew in the late 1960s to include nearly one hundred associated members and between twenty and thirty hard-core members after it had moved back to the Los Angeles area.
On August 9, 1969, Manson instructed four of his most loyal followers to commit murder. At around midnight, Family members Charles Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Linda Kasabian arrived at the home of film director Roman Polanski and his wife, actor Sharon Tate. Manson had given the group orders to kill everyone they found inside, and upon arrival, they immediately cut phone lines and began to approach the house. At about that time, Steven Parent, a friend of a caretaker for the house, was driving out of the main entrance when he was shot and killed by Watson.
After Parent was killed, Kasabian expressed trauma over the killing and was told to remain at the car while the other three proceeded to the house. When inside the house, they gathered all four of the occupants—Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and Tate—into the living room and began to kill them. Tate was the last to be killed, and her blood was used to write the word “pig” on the front door of the house.
The next night, Manson, Watson, Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houton drove to the house of Leon LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary LaBianca, in Los Angeles. Manson entered the house and tied up the couple. He then instructed the three followers to kill the victims. After killing the LaBiancas, the three Family members carved the word “war” into Leon’s flesh and then used the victims’ blood to write “death to the pigs” and “rise” on walls in the house and the misspelled “healther skelter” on the refrigerator.
The murders at the Tate residence created panic within the Hollywood community, and some noted film stars began to carry protection and add security to their homes. Law enforcement originally investigated the possibility of drug involvement in the murders of Tate and her friends and did not believe that these murders were connected to the LaBianca murders.
Legal Action and Outcome
Soon after the murders, Manson and a number of his followers were arrested at the Barker Ranch in the Mojave Desert on charges unrelated to the murders. While in detention, Atkins bragged to another inmate that the Family had been responsible for the Tate and LaBianca murders and that they planned to kill more celebrities in the future. This confession, along with other interviews of Family members, led to the arrest of Manson and five of his followers on charges of murder.
Through interviews with Family members and others associated with Manson, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi (1934–2015) established Manson’s motive for murder as centering on an attempt to begin a race war, which Manson labeled “Helter Skelter” after the Beatles’ song. Manson convinced some Family members that if they could inspire a race war, black Americans would defeat the white Americans but then would have to rely on the Family for guidance on how to run the earth.
Kasabian and Atkins served as the key witnesses against Manson for the prosecution. Manson, along with Watson, Kasabian, Atkins, and Krenwinkel, was convicted and sentenced to death. This sentence was later commuted to life in prison when California temporarily abolished its death penalty in 1972. Although Manson and the other convicted Family members were granted the possibility of parole, as of 2017, those who had applied for parole had been denied. Atkins died in prison in 2009.
While in prison, Manson became engaged to Afton Elaine “Star” Burton. The couple obtained a marriage license in November 2014, but it expired in early February 2015 without being used. Burton, who was more than fifty years younger than Manson and believes that he was innocent, started corresponding with him when she was seventeen. She reportedly wanted to marry him in order to take possession of his body after death so that she could display it as a tourist attraction.
After having been hospitalized in January 2017 reportedly to treat intestinal bleeding, Manson was once again brought to a hospital in Kern County, California, in November. He died on November 19, 2017, at the age of eighty-three. By the time of his death, he had been denied parole twelve times, with the most recent having been in 2012.
Impact
The peculiar nature, habits, and loyalty of his cult members and the notorious crimes that they committed helped make Charles Manson one of the most famous criminal figures in the history of the United States. Incredibly, well into the twenty-first century, Manson was still receiving thousands of letters in prison from fans each year. His crimes remain perhaps the most extreme and shocking occurrence of the 1960s counterculture movement, most significantly for their reflection of the way in which the youthful rebellion and moral outrage of the times could be perverted into pure evil.
After the Manson case concluded, Bugliosi cowrote, along with Curt Gentry, an account of the Manson Family’s crimes. The book, Helter Skelter (1974), won an Edgar Award for best true-crime book of the year and was the basis of a 1976 film and a 2004 made-for-TV movie, each with the same title. As of June 2015, the book had sold more than seven million copies. In addition to Helter Skelter, Manson, his associates, and their crimes have been the subject of several articles, books, documentaries, and films, including a biography, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson (2013), by Jeff Guin, the film House of Manson (2014), and the television series Aquarius (2015–16), starring Gethin Anthony as Manson and David Duchovny as an undercover homicide detective who tracks the Manson Family. As of 2017, it was reported that director Quentin Tarantino was planning to shoot an ensemble film set during the period of the Manson murders to be released on the fiftieth anniversary of the crimes.
Bibliography
Bugliosi, Vincent. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders. W. W. Norton, 1974. Written by the prosecutor in the Manson case, the book provides details of the crimes and chronicles the events of the trial.
Fox, Margalit. "Charles Manson Dies at 83; Wild-Eyed Leader of a Murderous Crew." The New York Times, 20 Nov. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/obituaries/charles-manson-dead.html. Accessed 4 Dec. 2017.
Guin, Jeff. Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson. Simon, 2013.
Koopmans, Andy. Charles Manson. Lucent Books, 2005. Traces Manson’s life from his childhood through the Tate and LaBianca murders and into his years in prison.
Rothman, Lily. “Who Is Charles Manson?” Time, 18 Nov. 2014, time.com/3591949/charles-manson-history/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2015.
Sanders, Ed. The Family. Thunder Mountain Press, 2002. Focuses on the development of Manson’s Family and its inner workings and increasingly strange behavior, which eventually led to mass murder.
Stout, David. “Vincent T. Bugliosi, Manson Prosecutor and True-Crime Author, Dies at 80.” The New York Times, 9 June 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/us/vincent-t-bugliosi-manson-prosecutor-and-true-crime-author-dies-at-80.html. Accessed 23 Sept. 2015.