Cult leader Charles Manson dies

LOSANGELES: Charles Manson, the murderer and cult leader, has died in a hospital in California. He was 83.

Manson was convicted, along with four of his followers, of orchestrating the murders in 1969 of the pregnant actor Sharon Tate and six others in two attacks. He was the leader of a cult known as the Manson Family, made up mostly of disaffected young women, some of whom became killers under his tutelage.

The five received the death penalty but were spared when capital punishment was temporarily abolished following a ruling by the supreme court in 1972.

Manson and his cult became notorious due to the brutality of the murder of Tate and the six other victims.

Tate, the wife of film director Roman Polanski, who was out of the country the night of her murder, was eight months pregnant when Manson’s followers broke into her home in Los Angeles and stabbed and shot her and her visitors, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent. The word “Pig” was written in blood on the front door. The next night, a group of followers murdered couple Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

Manson and female followers, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, were convicted of murder and conspiracy to murder and sentenced to death for killings at the two gruesome scenes in the summer of 1969. Another defendant, Charles “Tex” Watson, was convicted later. Although the followers committed the murders, Manson had ordered them, and, at the LaBianca home, tied up the couple before leaving his followers to carry out the killings.