Charles Manson’s helter skelter life
Charles Manson, cult leader and murderer, b November 12, 1934., d November 19, aged 83.
On the 25th anniversary of the mass murders that were committed by Charles Manson’s followers, Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor who secured guilty verdicts, was asked why the case has endured in the public mind for so long. ‘‘The very name ‘Manson’ has become a metaphor for evil, and evil has its allure,’’ he replied.
The brutal murders that Manson ordered were certainly shocking enough to live in the memory. On August 9, 1969, he sent a group of followers from his doomsday cult to a property in a wealthy enclave of Los Angeles with the order to ‘‘totally destroy everyone, as gruesome as you can’’.
The house was the home of the actress Sharon Tate and her husband, the director Roman Polanski, who was in London working on a film. However, it was owned by Terry Melcher, a record producer who had rejected Manson’s overtures for a contract. In 25 minutes of carnage, 102 stab wounds were inflicted as Tate, who was pregnant; Jay Sebring, a celebrity hairstylist; Voytek Frykowski, a screenwriter; and the heiress Abigail Folger were butchered. Steven Parent, an 18-year-old student, was shot dead in the driveway. The next night, Manson dispatched his followers again. This time they went to the home of Leno Labianca, the wealthy owner of a chain of grocery stores, and his wife, Rosemary. They died in a frenzied attack involving 67 stab wounds.
The sense of shock in the era of peace, love and the Woodstock generation was dramatically amplified when Manson and his followers, known as ‘‘the family’’, were arrested. He was a charismatic 34-year-old with shoulder-length hair, pretentions to be a singer-songwriter, and was an integral part of California’s bohemian hippy fringe.
Manson had been able to mingle freely with California’s rock’n’roll aristocracy.
But, if anybody had cared to look, the warning signs were there, however. Manson was a career criminal who had spent more than half his life in prisons of one sort or another. His charge sheet included armed robbery, forging cheques, car theft and pimping.
Charles Milles Manson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1934. His life was dysfunctional from the outset. As a teenager he gained a reputation for criminality and was sent to a reform school.
By the late 1960s, he was living in a commune with 18 women. He began inculcating his ‘‘disciples’’ into a bizarre quasi-religious cult.
By 1968, Manson and his entourage had settled in Los Angeles. The cult’s main base was a ranch in Topanga Canyon. It was from there that Manson sent his followers forth to kill on those fateful nights in August 1969.
By then Manson’s philosophy had taken a more sinister and messianic turn. He began to identify himself as Jesus and became obsessed with the Beatles’ White Album, and in particular the track Helter Skelter. He interpreted the song as a vision of a coming apocalyptic war between blacks and whites in which the Manson Family would emerge as ‘‘the chosen people’’, with him as their leader.
Manson was arrested in the autumn of 1969 after one of his followers bragged about the crimes. He went on trial in June 1970.
Throughout the trial, which lasted nine months, Manson was truculent and unrepentant.
He and the other defendants were condemned to death in April 1971, but their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment when the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty. Manson was subsequently found guilty of two further killings and ordered to serve nine concurrent life sentences.
In jail he proved to be an incorrigible inmate and had no hope of parole. He converted the X on his forehead into a swastika and was charged on numerous occasions with assaulting prison guards and concealing weapons and drugs.
Yet against all logic he continued to attract followers and in 2014 was granted a licence to marry 26-year-old Afton Elaine Burton, who had spent seven years visiting him.
He died of natural causes.