Charles Manson

• 1. Early Life And First Offenses

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  Charles Milles Manson was born on the 12th of November 1934, in Cincinnati General Hospital to Ada Kathleen Maddox, a 16-year-old woman from Ashland, Kentucky. His biological father appears to have been Colonel Walker Henderson Scott Sr., a man who claimed to be an army officer but was actually just a con artist with a local reputation for deception. Manson never knew his father, as Scott abandoned Maddox when she became pregnant. By August 1939, his mother and uncle were arrested for assault and robbery, leaving young Charles to live with an aunt and uncle in McMechen, West Virginia. He later characterized the weeks after his mother's release as the happiest time in his life, but that period ended quickly when the family moved to Charleston, where he frequently played truant and his mother spent her evenings drinking.

  Manson's criminal record began early. In an interview with Diane Sawyer, he stated that at age 9, he set his school on fire. By 1947, at age 13, he was placed in the Gibault School for Boys in Terre Haute, Indiana, a strict Catholic-run facility where punishment included beatings with wooden paddles or leather straps. He ran away multiple times, sleeping in woods and under bridges. In 1948, he committed his first documented crime by robbing a grocery store to find food, stealing over $100 from a cigar box. He used the money to rent a room on Indianapolis's Skid Row and buy food. He briefly worked for Western Union but soon supplemented his wages through theft. By 1949, a sympathetic judge sent him to Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska, but he escaped after four days with fellow student Blackie Nielson. They stole a car and committed two armed robberies before being arrested in Utah.

  Manson's early years were defined by repeated incarcerations and violent encounters. At the Indiana Boys School, other students allegedly raped him with staff encouragement, and he developed a self-defense technique called the "insane game" to convince aggressors he was mentally unstable. In February 1951, he escaped with two other boys, robbing filling stations while driving stolen cars across state lines until arrested in Utah. He was sent to Washington, D.C.'s National Training School for Boys, where aptitude tests revealed he was illiterate but had an above-average IQ of 109. His case worker deemed him aggressively antisocial. By October 1951, he was transferred to Natural Bridge Honor Camp, a minimum security institution in Virginia, where he was caught raping a boy at knifepoint in January 1952. He was then moved to a maximum security reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio, where he committed eight serious disciplinary offenses, three involving homosexual acts. He was released early in May 1954 after good behavior.

  Manson's life continued to spiral after his release. In January 1955, he married hospital waitress Rosalie "Rosie" Jean Willis. About three months after arriving in Los Angeles in a stolen car, he was charged again with taking the vehicle across state lines. After a psychiatric evaluation, he received five years' probation. His failure to appear at a Los Angeles hearing on an identical charge filed in Florida resulted in his March 1956 arrest in Indianapolis. His probation was revoked, and he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment at Terminal Island in Los Angeles. While Manson was in prison, Rosalie gave birth to their son, Charles Manson Jr., on the 10th of April 1956. Less than two weeks before a scheduled parole hearing, Manson tried to escape by stealing a car. He was given five years' probation and his parole was denied.

  In September 1958, Manson received five years' parole, the same year Rosalie received a divorce decree. By November, he was pimping a 16-year-old girl and receiving support from another woman with wealthy parents. In September 1959, he pleaded guilty to attempting to cash a forged U.S. Treasury check, claiming it was stolen from a mailbox. He received a ten-year suspended sentence and probation after Leona Rae "Candy" Stevens, who had an arrest record for prostitution, made a tearful plea that they were deeply in love and would marry if freed. Before the year's end, Stevens married Manson. Manson took Leona and another woman to New Mexico for purposes of prostitution, resulting in him being held and questioned for violating the Mann Act. Though released, he correctly suspected the investigation had not ended. When he disappeared in violation of his probation, a bench warrant was issued. In April 1960, an indictment for violation of the Mann Act followed. Following the arrest of one of the women for prostitution, Manson was arrested in June in Laredo, Texas, and returned to Los Angeles. For violating his probation on the check-cashing charge, he was ordered to serve his ten-year sentence. He spent a year trying unsuccessfully to appeal the revocation of his probation. In July 1961, he was transferred from the Los Angeles County Jail to the United States Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington. There, he took guitar lessons from Barker, Karpis gang leader Alvin "Creepy" Karpis and obtained contact information for Phil Kaufman, a record producer and tour manager. Among Manson's fellow prisoners during this time was future actor Danny Trejo; the two participated in several hypnosis sessions together. Manson's mother moved to Washington State to be closer to him during his McNeil Island incarceration, working nearby as a waitress. Although the Mann Act charge had been dropped, the attempt to cash the Treasury check was still a federal offense. Manson's September 1961 annual review noted he had a "tremendous drive to call attention to himself," an observation echoed in September 1964. In 1963, Leona was granted a divorce. During the process, she alleged that she and Manson had a son, Charles Luther Manson. By June 1966, Manson was sent for the second time to Terminal Island in preparation for early release. By the time of his release day on the 21st of March 1967, he had spent more than half of his thirty-two years in prisons and other institutions. This was mainly because he had broken federal laws. Federal sentences were, and remain, much more severe than state sentences for many of the same offenses. Telling the authorities that prison had become his home, he requested permission to stay.

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• 2. Counterculture And Cult Formation

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  Less than a month after his 1967 release, Manson moved to Berkeley from Los Angeles, which could have been a probation violation. Instead, after calling the San Francisco probation office upon his arrival, he was transferred to the supervision of criminology doctoral researcher and federal probation officer Roger Smith. Until the spring of 1968, Smith worked at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic (HAFMC), which Manson and his family came to frequent. Roger Smith, as well as the HAFMC's founder David Smith, received funding from the National Institutes of Health, and reportedly the CIA, to study the effects of drugs like LSD and methamphetamine on the counterculture movement in San Francisco's Haight, Ashbury District. The patients at the HAFMC became subjects of their research, including Manson and his expanding group of mostly female followers, who came to see Roger Smith regularly. Manson received permission from Roger Smith to move from Berkeley to the Haight-Ashbury District. He first took LSD and would use it frequently during his time there. David Smith, who had studied the effects of LSD and amphetamines in rodents, wrote that the change in Manson's personality during this time "was the most abrupt Roger Smith had observed in his entire professional career." Manson also read the book Stranger in a Strange Land, a science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein. Inspired by the burgeoning free love philosophy in Haight, Ashbury during the Summer of Love, Manson began preaching his own philosophy based on a mixture of Stranger in a Strange Land, the Bible, Scientology, Dale Carnegie and the Beatles, which quickly earned him a following.

  Manson began studying Scientology while incarcerated with the help of fellow inmate Lanier Rayner, and in July 1961 listed Scientology as his religion. A September 1961 prison report argues that Manson "appears to have developed a certain amount of insight into his problems through his study of this discipline." Another prison report in August 1966 stated that Manson was no longer an advocate of Scientology. Upon his release in 1967, Manson traveled to Los Angeles where he reportedly "met local Scientologists and attended several parties for movie stars." Manson completed 150 hours of auditing. His "right hand man", Bruce Davis, worked at the Church of Scientology headquarters in London from November 1968 to April 1969.

  Shortly after relocating to San Francisco, Manson became acquainted with Mary Brunner, a 23-year-old graduate of University of Wisconsin, Madison. Brunner was working as a library assistant at the University of California, Berkeley, and Manson, until that point making his living by panhandling, moved in with her. Manson then met teenaged runaway Lynette Fromme, later nicknamed "Squeaky", and convinced her to live with him and Brunner. According to a second-hand account, Manson overcame Brunner's initial resistance to him bringing other women in to live with them. Before long, they were sharing Brunner's residence with eighteen other women. Manson targeted individuals for manipulation who were emotionally insecure and social outcasts. Manson established himself as a guru in Haight-Ashbury which, during the Summer of Love, was emerging as the signature hippie locale. Manson soon had the first of his groups of followers, most of them female. They were later dubbed as the "Manson Family" by Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and the media. Manson allegedly taught his followers that they were the reincarnation of the original Christians, and that The Establishment could be characterized as the Romans. Sometime around 1967, Manson began using the alias "Charles Willis Manson".

  Before the end of summer, he and some of his followers began traveling in an old school bus they had adapted, putting colored rugs and pillows in place of the many seats they had removed. They eventually settled in the Los Angeles areas of Topanga Canyon, Malibu and Venice along the coast. In 1967, Brunner became pregnant by Manson. On the 15th of April 1968, she gave birth to their son, whom she named Valentine Michael, in a condemned house where they were living in Topanga Canyon. She was assisted by several of the young women from the fledgling Family. Brunner, like most members of the group, acquired a number of aliases and nicknames, including: "Marioche", "Och", "Mother Mary", "Mary Manson", "Linda Dee Manson" and "Christine Marie Euchts". In his book Love Needs Care about his time at the HAFMC, David Smith claimed that Manson attempted to reprogram his followers' minds to "submit totally to his will" through the use of "LSD and... unconventional sexual practices" that would turn his followers into "empty vessels that would accept anything he poured". Manson Family member Paul Watkins testified that Manson would encourage group LSD trips and take lower doses himself to "keep his wits about him". Watkins stated that "Charlie's trip was to program us all to submit." By the end of his stay in the Haight in April 1968, Manson had attracted twenty or so followers, all under the supervision of Roger Smith and many of the staff at the HAFMC. The core members of Manson's following eventually included: Brunner; Charles "Tex" Watson, a musician and former actor; Bobby Beausoleil, a former musician and actor; Susan Atkins; Patricia Krenwinkel; and Leslie Van Houten.

  Supervised by his ostensible parole officer Roger Smith, Manson grew his family through drug use and prostitution without interference from the authorities. Manson was arrested on the 31st of July 1967, for attempting to prevent the arrest of one of his followers, Ruth Ann Moorehouse. Instead of Manson being sent back to prison, the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor and Manson was given three additional years of probation. He avoided prosecution again in July 1968, when he and the family were arrested while moving to Los Angeles, after his bus crashed into a ditch. Manson and members of his family, including Brunner and Manson's newborn baby, were found sleeping naked by police. Afterwards, he was again arrested and released only a few days later, this time on a drug charge.

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• 3. Musical Connections And Failed Ambitions

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  On the 6th of April 1968, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys was driving through Malibu when he noticed two female hitchhikers, Krenwinkel and Ella Jo Bailey. He picked them up and dropped them off at their destination. On April 11, Wilson noticed the same two girls hitchhiking again and this time took them to his home at 14400 Sunset Boulevard. Wilson later recalled that he "told the girls about our involvement with the Maharishi and they told me they too had a guru, a guy named Charlie Manson who'd recently come out of jail after twelve years." Wilson then went to a recording session. When he returned later that night, he was met in his driveway by Manson, and when Wilson walked into his home, about a dozen people were occupying the premises, most of them young women. By Manson's own account, he had met Wilson on at least one prior occasion: at a friend's San Francisco house where Manson had gone to obtain marijuana. Manson claimed that Wilson invited him to visit his home when Manson came to Los Angeles. Wilson was initially fascinated by Manson and his followers, referring to him as "the Wizard" in a Rave magazine article at the time. The two struck a friendship, and over the next few months members of the Manson Family , mostly women who were treated as servants , were housed in Wilson's residence. This arrangement persisted for about six months.

  Wilson introduced Manson to a few friends in the music business, including the Byrds' producer Terry Melcher. Manson recorded numerous songs at Brian Wilson's home studio, although the recordings remain unheard by the public. Band engineer Stephen Desper said that the Manson sessions were done "for Dennis Wilson and Terry Melcher". In September 1968, Wilson recorded a Manson song for the Beach Boys, originally titled "Cease to Exist", but reworked as "Never Learn Not to Love", as a single B-side released the following December. The writing was credited solely to Wilson. When asked why Manson was not credited, Wilson explained that Manson relinquished his publishing rights in favor of "about a hundred thousand dollars' worth of stuff". Around this time, the Family destroyed two of Wilson's luxury cars. Wilson eventually distanced himself from Manson and moved out of the Sunset Boulevard house, leaving the Family there, and took residence at a basement apartment in Santa Monica. Virtually all of Wilson's household possessions were stolen by the Family. The members were evicted from his home three weeks before the lease was scheduled to expire. When Manson sought further contact, he left a bullet with Wilson's housekeeper to be delivered with a threatening message. Band manager Nick Grillo recalled that Wilson became concerned after Manson had got "into a much heavier drug situation... taking a tremendous amount of acid and Dennis wouldn't tolerate it and asked him to leave. It was difficult for Dennis because he was afraid of Charlie." Writing in his 2016 memoir, Mike Love recalled Wilson saying he had witnessed Manson shooting a black man "in half" with an M16 rifle and hiding the body inside a well. Melcher said that Wilson had been aware that the Family "were killing people" and had been "so freaked out he just didn't want to live anymore. He was afraid, and he thought he should have gone to the authorities, but he didn't, and the rest of it happened."

  Manson established a base for the Family at the Spahn Ranch in August 1968, after their eviction from Wilson's residence. The ranch had been a television and movie set for Westerns, but the buildings had deteriorated by the late-1960s. The ranch then derived revenue primarily from selling horseback rides. Female Family members did chores around the ranch and, occasionally, had sex on Manson's orders with the nearly blind 80-year-old owner, George Spahn; the women also acted as guides for him. In exchange, Spahn allowed Manson and his group to live at the ranch for free.

  The Manson Family evolved into a doomsday cult when Manson became fixated on the idea of an imminent apocalyptic race war between America's Black minority and the larger White population. A white supremacist, Manson told some of the Family that Black people would rise up and kill the entire White population except for Manson and his followers, but they were not intelligent enough to survive on their own. They needed a white man to lead them, and so they would serve Manson as their "master". In late-1968, Manson adopted the term "Helter Skelter", taken from a song on the Beatles' recently released White Album, to refer to this upcoming war.

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• 4. The Hinman And Crowe Killings

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  Tex Watson became involved in drug dealing and robbed a 22-year-old rival named Bernard "Lotsapoppa" Crowe. Crowe allegedly responded with a threat to kill everyone at Spahn Ranch. In response, Manson shot Crowe on the 1st of July 1969, at Manson's Hollywood apartment. Manson's belief that he had killed Crowe was seemingly confirmed by a news report of the discovery of the dumped body of a Black Panther in Los Angeles. Although Crowe was not a member of the Black Panthers, Manson concluded he had been and expected retaliation from the Panthers. He turned Spahn Ranch into a defensive camp, establishing night patrols by armed guards. Watson would later write, "Blackie was trying to get at the chosen ones." Manson brought in members of the Straight Satans Motorcycle Club to act as security.

  34-year-old Gary Alan Hinman, a music teacher and graduate student at UCLA, had previously befriended members of the Family and allowed some to occasionally stay at his home in Topanga Canyon. According to Atkins, Manson believed Hinman was wealthy and sent her, Brunner, and Beausoleil to Hinman's home to convince him to join the Family and turn over the assets Manson thought Hinman had inherited. The three held Hinman hostage for two days in late July 1969, as he denied having any money. During this time, Manson arrived with a sword and slashed his face and ear. After that, Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death, allegedly on Manson's instruction. Before leaving the residence, Beausoleil or one of the women used Hinman's blood to write "political piggy" on the wall and to draw a panther paw, a Black Panther symbol. According to Beausoleil, he came to Hinman's house to recover money paid to Hinman for mescaline provided to the Straight Satans, that had supposedly been bad. Beausoleil added that Brunner and Atkins, unaware of his intent, went along to visit Hinman. Atkins, in her 1977 autobiography, wrote that Manson directed Beausoleil, Brunner and her to go to Hinman's and get the supposed inheritance of $21,000. She said that two days earlier Manson had told her privately that, if she wanted to "do something important", she could kill Hinman and get his money.

  Beausoleil was arrested on the 6th of August 1969, after he was caught driving Hinman's car. Police found the murder weapon in the tire well. The Hinman murder set a precedent for the violence that would follow. Manson's belief that he had killed Crowe and the subsequent discovery of a Black Panther body led him to expect retaliation from the Panthers. He turned Spahn Ranch into a defensive camp, establishing night patrols by armed guards. Watson would later write, "Blackie was trying to get at the chosen ones." Manson brought in members of the Straight Satans Motorcycle Club to act as security. The Hinman murder also established a pattern of using blood to write messages on walls, a practice that would be repeated in the Tate and LaBianca murders.

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• 5. The Tate LaBianca Murders

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  On the night of the 8th of August 1969, Watson took Atkins, Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian to 10050 Cielo Drive. Watson later claimed that Manson had instructed him to go to the house and "totally destroy" everyone in it, and to do it "as gruesome as you can". Manson told the women to do as Watson instructed them. The occupants of the Cielo Drive house that evening were Tate, aged 26, who was 8 months pregnant; her friend and former lover 35-year-old Jay Sebring, a noted celebrity hairstylist; Polanski's friend 32-year-old Wojciech Frykowski; and Frykowski's 25-year-old girlfriend Abigail Anne Folger, heiress to the Folgers coffee fortune and daughter of Peter Folger. Also present on the property were 19-year-old caretaker William Garretson and his friend, 18-year-old Steven Earl Parent. Polanski was in Europe working on a film. Music producer Quincy Jones was a friend of Sebring who had planned to join him that evening before changing his mind.

  Watson and the three women arrived at Cielo Drive just past midnight on August 9. Watson climbed a telephone pole near the entrance gate and cut the phone line to the house. The group then backed their car to the bottom of the hill that led to the estate before walking back up to the house. Thinking that the gate might be electrified or equipped with an alarm, they climbed a brushy embankment to the right of the gate and entered the grounds. Headlights approached the group from within the property, and Watson ordered the women to lie in the bushes. He stepped out and ordered the approaching driver, Parent, to halt. Watson leveled a .22 caliber revolver at Parent, who begged him not to hurt him, claiming that he would not say anything. Watson lunged at Parent with a knife, giving him a defensive slash wound on the palm of his hand that severed tendons and tore the boy's watch off his wrist, then shot him four times in the chest and abdomen, killing him in the front seat of his white 1965 AMC Ambassador coupe. Watson ordered the women to help push the car up the driveway.

  Watson next cut the screen of a window, then told Kasabian to keep watch down by the gate; she walked over to Parent's car and waited. Watson removed the screen, entered through the window and let Atkins and Krenwinkel in through the front door. He whispered to Atkins and awoke Frykowski, who was sleeping on the living room couch. Watson kicked him in the head, and Frykowski asked him who he was and what he was doing there. Watson replied, "I'm the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business." On Watson's direction, Atkins found the house's three other occupants with Krenwinkel's help and forced them to the living room. Watson began to tie Tate and Sebring together by their necks with a long nylon rope which he had brought, then slung it over one of the living room's ceiling beams. Sebring protested the rough treatment of the pregnant Tate, so Watson shot him. Folger was taken momentarily back to her bedroom for her purse, and she gave the murderers $70. Watson then stabbed Sebring seven times. Frykowski's hands had been bound with a towel, but he freed himself and began struggling with Atkins, who stabbed at his legs with a knife. He fought his way out the front door and onto the porch, but Watson caught up with him, struck him over the head with the gun multiple times, stabbed him repeatedly and shot him twice.

  Kasabian had heard "horrifying sounds" and moved toward the house from her position in the driveway. She told Atkins that someone was coming in an attempt to stop the murders. Inside the house, Folger escaped from Krenwinkel and fled out a bedroom door to the pool area. Krenwinkel pursued her and caught her on the front lawn, where she stabbed her and tackled her to the ground. Watson then helped kill her; her assailants stabbed her a total of twenty-eight times. Frykowski struggled across the lawn, but Watson continued to stab him, killing him. Frykowski suffered fifty-one stab wounds, and had also been struck thirteen times in the head with the butt of Watson's gun, that bent the barrel and broke off one side of the gun grip, which was recovered at the scene. In the house, Tate pleaded to be allowed to live long enough to give birth and offered herself as a hostage in an attempt to save the life of her unborn child. Instead both Atkins and Watson stabbed Tate sixteen times, killing her. The coroner's inquest found that Tate was still alive when she was hanged with the nylon rope, although the cause of her death was determined as a "massive hemorrhage", while in Sebring's murder it was found that he was hanged lifeless. According to Watson, Manson had told the women to "leave a sign, something witchy". Atkins wrote "pig" on the front door in Tate's blood. Atkins claims she did this to copycat the Hinman murder scene to get Beausoleil out of jail, who was in custody for that murder.

  The four murderers plus Manson, Leslie Van Houten and Clem Grogan went for a drive the following night. Manson was allegedly displeased with the previous night's murders, so he told Kasabian to drive to a house at 3301 Waverly Drive in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. Located next door to a home where Manson and Family members had attended a party the previous year, it belonged to 44-year-old supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his 43-year-old wife, Rosemary LaBianca, co-owner of a dress shop. According to Atkins and Kasabian, Manson disappeared up the driveway and returned to say that he had tied up the house's occupants. Watson, Krenwinkel and Van Houten entered the property. Watson claims in his autobiography that Manson went up alone, then returned to take him up to the house with him. Manson pointed out a sleeping man through a window, and the two entered through the unlocked back door. Watson claims Manson roused the sleeping Leno LaBianca from the couch at gunpoint and had Watson bind his hands with a leather thong. Rosemary was brought into the living room from the bedroom, and Watson covered the couple's heads with pillowcases which he bound in place with lamp cords. Manson left, and Krenwinkel and Van Houten entered the house.

  Watson had complained to Manson earlier of the inadequacy of the previous night's weapons. Watson sent the women from the kitchen to the bedroom, where Rosemary LaBianca had been returned, while he went to the living room and began stabbing Leno LaBianca with a chrome-plated bayonet. The first thrust went into his throat. Watson heard a scuffle in the bedroom and went in there to discover Rosemary LaBianca keeping the women at bay by swinging the lamp tied to her neck. He stabbed her several times with the bayonet, then returned to the living room and resumed attacking Leno, whom he stabbed a total of twelve times. He then carved the word "WAR" into his abdomen. Watson returned to the bedroom and found Krenwinkel stabbing Rosemary with a knife from the kitchen. Van Houten stabbed her approximately sixteen times in the back and the exposed buttocks. Van Houten claimed at trial that Rosemary LaBianca was already dead during the stabbing. Evidence showed that many of the forty-one stab wounds had, in fact, been inflicted post-mortem. Watson then cleaned off the bayonet and showered, while Krenwinkel wrote "Rise" and "Death to pigs" on the walls and "Healter Skelter" on the refrigerator door, all in LaBianca's blood. She gave Leno LaBianca fourteen puncture wounds with an ivory-handled, two-tined carving fork, which she left jutting out of his stomach. She also planted a steak knife in his throat. Meanwhile, Manson drove the other three Family members who had departed Spahn with him that evening to the Venice home of the Lebanese actor Saladin Nader. Manson left them there and drove back to Spahn Ranch, leaving them and the LaBianca killers to hitchhike home. According to Kasabian, Manson wanted his followers to murder Nader in his apartment, but Kasabian claims she thwarted this murder by deliberately knocking on the wrong apartment door and waking a stranger. The group abandoned the murder plan and left, but Atkins defecated in the stairwell on the way out.

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• 6. Investigation And Apprehension

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  The Tate murders became national news on the 9th of August 1969, after the Polanskis' housekeeper, Winifred Chapman, arrived for work that morning. On August 10, detectives of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which had jurisdiction in the Hinman case, informed Los Angeles Police Department detectives assigned to the Tate case of the bloody writing at the Hinman house. According to Vincent Bugliosi, because detectives believed the Tate murders were a consequence of a drug transaction, the Tate team initially ignored this and other evidence of similarities between the crimes. During the Tate autopsies, detectives working on the Hinman case noticed similarities in the weapons used, the stab wounds, and the writing in blood on the walls. They brought the information to detectives working on the Tate murders. According to Detective Charlie Guenther, "Vince Bugliosi didn't want anything to do with the Hinman case. Hinman was a nothing case. Vince didn't want to prosecute it."

  Held briefly as a Tate suspect, Garretson told police he had neither seen nor heard anything on the murder night. He was released on the 11th of August 1969, after undergoing a polygraph examination that indicated he had not been involved in the crimes. The LaBianca crime scene was discovered at 10:30 p.m. on August 10, approximately nineteen hours after the murders were committed, when 15-year-old Frank Struthers, Rosemary's son from a prior marriage and Leno's stepson, returned from a camping trip. On the 12th of August 1969, the LAPD told the press it had ruled out any connection between the Tate and LaBianca homicides. On August 16, the sheriff's office raided Spahn Ranch and arrested Manson and twenty-five others, as "suspects in a major auto theft ring" that had been stealing Volkswagen Beetles and converting them into dune buggies. Weapons were seized, but because the search warrant had been misdated, the group was released a few days later.

  In a report at the end of August, the LaBianca detectives noted a possible connection between the bloody writings at the LaBianca house and "the singing group the Beatles' most recent album." Still working separately from the Tate team, the LaBianca team checked with the sheriff's office in mid-October about possible similar crimes. They learned of the Hinman case and also learned that the Hinman detectives had spoken with Beausoleil's girlfriend, Kitty Lutesinger. She had been arrested a few days earlier with members of the Manson Family. The arrests, for car thefts, had taken place at the desert ranches to which the Family had moved. A joint force of National Park Service Rangers and officers from the California Highway Patrol and the Inyo County Sheriff's Office: federal, state, and county personnel, had raided both the Myers and Barker ranches after following evidence left when Family members had burned an earthmover owned by Death Valley National Monument. The raiders had found stolen dune buggies and other vehicles, and arrested two dozen people, including Manson. A Highway Patrol officer found Manson hiding in a cabinet beneath Barker's bathroom sink.

  Following up leads a month after they had spoken with Lutesinger, LaBianca detectives contacted members of a motorcycle gang Manson tried to recruit as bodyguards while the Family was at Spahn Ranch. Meanwhile, a dormitory mate of Susan Atkins informed LAPD of the Family's involvement in the crimes. Atkins was booked for the Hinman murder after she told sheriff's detectives that she had been involved in it. Transferred to Sybil Brand Institute, a detention center in Monterey Park, California, she had begun talking to bunkmates Ronnie Howard and Virginia Graham, to whom she gave accounts of the events in which she had been involved.

  On the 1st of December 1969, the LAPD announced warrants for the arrest of Watson, Krenwinkel, and Kasabian in the Tate case; the suspects' involvement in the LaBianca murders was noted. Manson and Atkins, already in custody, were not mentioned. The connection between the LaBianca case and Van Houten, who was also among those arrested near Death Valley, had not yet been recognized. Watson and Krenwinkel were already under arrest, with authorities in McKinney, Texas, and Mobile, Alabama, having picked them up on notice from LAPD. Informed that a warrant was out for her arrest, Kasabian voluntarily surrendered to authorities in Concord, New Hampshire on December 2. Physical evidence such as Krenwinkel's and Watson's fingerprints, which had been collected by LAPD at Cielo Drive, was augmented by evidence recovered by the public. On the 1st of September 1969, the distinctive .22-caliber Hi Standard "Buntline Special" revolver Watson used on Parent, Sebring, and Frykowski had been found and given to the police by Steven Weiss, a 10-year-old who lived near the Tate residence. In mid-December, when the Los Angeles Times published a crime account based on information Susan Atkins had given her attorney, Weiss's father made several phone calls which finally prompted LAPD to locate the gun in its evidence file and connect it with the murders via ballistics tests. Acting on that same newspaper account, a local ABC television crew quickly located and recovered the bloody clothing discarded by the Tate killers. The knives discarded en route from the Tate residence were never recovered, despite a search by some of the same crewmen and by LAPD. A knife found behind the cushion of a chair in the Tate living room was apparently that of Susan Atkins, who lost her knife in the course of the attack.

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• 7. The Trial And Legal Strategy

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  The trial began on the 15th of June 1970. The prosecution's main witness was Kasabian, who, along with Manson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel, had been charged with seven counts of murder and one of conspiracy. Since Kasabian, by all accounts, had not participated in the killings, she was granted immunity in exchange for testimony that detailed the nights of the crimes. Originally, a deal had been made with Atkins in which the prosecution agreed not to seek the death penalty against her in exchange for her grand jury testimony on which the indictments were secured; once Atkins repudiated that testimony, the deal was withdrawn. Because Van Houten had participated only in the LaBianca killings, she was charged with two counts of murder and one of conspiracy. Originally, Judge William Keene had reluctantly granted Manson permission to act as his own attorney. Due to Manson's conduct, including violations of a gag order and submission of "outlandish" and "nonsensical" pretrial motions, the permission was withdrawn before the trial's start. Manson filed an affidavit of prejudice against Keene, who was replaced by Judge Charles Older.

  On Friday, July 24, the first day of testimony, Manson appeared in court with an X carved into his forehead. He issued a statement that he was "considered inadequate and incompetent to speak or defend himself", and had "X'd himself from the establishment's world." Over the following weekend, the female defendants duplicated the mark on their own foreheads, as did most Family members within another day or so. The prosecution argued the triggering of "Helter Skelter" was Manson's main motive. The crime scene's bloody White Album reference, "helter skelter" and the writing of "pigs" was correlated with testimony about Manson predictions that the murders Black people would commit at the outset of Helter Skelter would involve the writing of "pigs" on walls in victims' blood. The defendants testified that the writing in blood on the walls was to copy that of the Hinman murder scene, not an apocalyptic race war. According to Bugliosi, Manson directed Kasabian to hide a wallet taken from the scene in the women's restroom of a service station near a Black neighborhood. However, as co-prosecutor Stephen Kay later pointed out the wallet was left about twenty miles away in a predominantly White neighborhood, Sylmar.

  During the trial, Family members loitered near the entrances and corridors of the courthouse. To keep them out of the courtroom proper, the prosecution subpoenaed them as prospective witnesses, who would not be able to enter while others were testifying. When the group established itself in vigil on the sidewalk, some members wore sheathed hunting knives that, although in plain view, were carried legally. Each of them was also identifiable by the X on their forehead. Some Family members attempted to dissuade witnesses from testifying. Prosecution witnesses Paul Watkins and Juan Flynn were both threatened; Watkins was badly burned in a suspicious fire in his van. Former Family member Barbara Hoyt, who had overheard Susan Atkins describing the Tate murders to Family member Ruth Ann Moorehouse, agreed to accompany the latter to Hawaii. There, Moorehouse allegedly gave her a hamburger spiked with several doses of LSD. Found sprawled on a Honolulu curb in a drugged semi-stupor, Hoyt was taken to the hospital, where she did her best to identify herself as a witness in the Tate, LaBianca murder trial. Before the incident, Hoyt had been a reluctant witness. After the attempt to silence her, her reticence disappeared.

  On August 4, despite precautions taken by the court, Manson flashed the jury a Los Angeles Times front page whose headline was "Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares". This was a reference to a statement made the previous day when U.S. President Richard Nixon had decried what he saw as the media's glamorization of Manson. Voir dired by Judge Charles Older, the jurors contended that the headline had not influenced them. The next day, the female defendants stood up and said in unison that, in light of Nixon's remark, there was no point in going on with the trial. On October 5, Manson was denied the court's permission to question a prosecution witness whom defense attorneys had declined to cross-examine. Leaping over the defense table, Manson attempted to attack the judge. Wrestled to the ground by bailiffs, he was removed from the courtroom with the female defendants, who had subsequently risen and begun chanting in Latin. Thereafter, Older allegedly began wearing a revolver under his robes.

  On November 16, the prosecution rested its case. Three days later, after arguing standard dismissal motions, the defense stunned the court by resting as well, without calling a single witness. Shouting their disapproval, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten demanded their right to testify. In chambers, the women's lawyers told the judge their clients wanted to testify that they had planned and committed the crimes and that Manson had not been involved. By resting their case, the defense lawyers had tried to stop this. Van Houten's attorney, Ronald Hughes, vehemently stated that he would not "push a client out the window". In the prosecutor's view, it was Manson who was advising the women to testify in this way as a means of saving himself. Speaking about the trial in a 1987 documentary, Krenwinkel said, "The entire proceedings were scripted, by Charlie." The next day, Manson testified. The jury was removed from the courtroom. According to Vincent Bugliosi it was to make sure Manson's address did not violate the California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Aranda by making statements implicating his co-defendants. However, Bugliosi argued Manson would use his hypnotic powers to unfairly influence the jury. Speaking for more than an hour, Manson said, among other things, that "the music is telling the youth to rise up against the establishment." He said, "Why blame it on me? I didn't write the music." "To be honest with you," Manson also stated, "I don't recall ever saying 'Get a knife and a change of clothes and go do what Tex says.'" When Maxwell Keith was appointed to represent Van Houten in Hughes' absence, a delay of more than two weeks was required to permit Keith to familiarize himself with the voluminous trial transcripts. No sooner

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• 8. Imprisonment And Death

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  Manson was convicted of seven counts of murder and one of conspiracy for his role in the Tate-LaBianca murders. He was sentenced to death, but the California Supreme Court commuted his sentence to life imprisonment in 1972. He served his time at the California State Prison, Corcoran, and later at the California State Prison, San Quentin. Manson remained a central figure in the Manson Family, even from behind bars. He continued to communicate with his followers through letters and visits, and his influence over the group persisted long after the trials concluded.

  Manson's health began to decline in the 2010s. He was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016. Despite his illness, he remained defiant and continued to make statements about his innocence and the conspiracy against him. On the 19th of November 2017, Manson died from complications of colon cancer at the age of 83. His death marked the end of an era for the Manson Family, but his legacy continued to haunt the public imagination.

  Manson's crimes had a profound impact on American culture and the legal system. The Tate-LaBianca murders were among the most notorious crimes in American history, and Manson's trial was one of the most high-profile criminal trials of the 20th century. The case highlighted the dangers of cult leadership and the power of charismatic figures to manipulate vulnerable individuals. It also raised questions about the role of the media in shaping public perception of crime and criminals.

  Manson's death did not bring closure to the families of his victims. Many of them continued to struggle with the trauma of their losses, and the case remained a subject of intense interest and debate. Manson's legacy as a symbol of evil and chaos continued to inspire fear and fascination in equal measure. His story serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked power and the destructive potential of charismatic leadership.

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