Charles Manson dies, leaving ‘legacy of evil’
Officials implore the public to remember, mourn victims of 1969 cult slayings in L.A.
LOS ANGELES— Charles Manson, the hippie cult leader who became the hypnotic-eyed face of evil across America after orchestrating the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969, died Sunday after nearly a halfcentury in prison. He was 83.
Manson, whose name to this day is synonymous with unspeakable violence and madness, died at 8:13 p.m. of natural causes at a Kern County hospital, according to the California Department of Corrections.
Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, reacted to the death by quoting the late Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor who put Manson behind bars. Bugliosi said: “Manson was an evil, sophisticated con man with twisted and warped moral values.”
“Today, Manson’s victims are the ones who should be remembered and mourned on the occasion of his death,” Hanisee said.
California Corrections spokesperson Vicky Waters said it’s “to be determined” what happens to Manson’s body. Prison officials previously said Manson had no known next of kin and state law says that if no relative or legal representative surfaces within 10 days, then it’s up to the department to determine whether the body is cremated or buried.
It’s not known if Manson requested funeral services of any sort. It’s also unclear what happens to his property. State law says the department must maintain his property for up to a year in anticipation of legal battles over who can make a claim to it.
In and out of jail since childhood, the charismatic, guru-like Manson surrounded himself in the 1960s with runaways and other lost souls and then sent his disciples to butcher some of L.A.’s rich and famous in what prosecutors said was a bid to trigger a race war — an idea he got from a twisted reading of the Beatles song “Helter Skelter.”
The slayings horrified the world and, together with the deadly violence that erupted later in 1969 dur- ing a Rolling Stones concert at California’s Altamont Speedway, exposed the dangerous, drugged-out underside of the counterculture movement and seemed to mark the death of the era of peace and love.
Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Manson maintained during his tumultuous trial in 1970 that he was innocent and that society itself was guilty.
“These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them; I didn’t teach them. I just tried to help them stand up,” he said in a courtroom soliloquy.
Linda Deutsch, the longtime courts reporter for The Associated Press who covered the case, said he “left a legacy of evil and hate and murder.”
The Manson Family, as his followers were called, slaughtered five victims on Aug. 9, 1969, at Tate’s home: the actress, who was pregnant, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, movie director Voityck Frykowski and Steven Parent, a friend of the estate’s caretaker.
The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were stabbed to death in their home across town.
The killers scrawled such phrases as “Pigs” and “Healter Skelter” (sic) in blood at the crime scenes.
Three months later, a Manson follower was jailed on an unrelated charge and told a cellmate about the bloodbath, leading to the cult leader’s arrest. In the annals of American crime, Manson became the embodiment of evil, a short, shaggy-haired, bearded figure with a demonic stare and an “X” — later turned into a swastika — carved into his forehead.
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969,” author Joan Didion wrote in The White Album.
Manson and three followers were found guilty of murder. Another defendant was convicted later. All were spared execution and given life sentences after the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972.