Notorious US cult leader dies behind bars aged 83

Seven perished in assault on the rich and famous of LA

Charles Manson, the hippie cult leader who became the hypnotic-eyed face of evil across America after coordinating the murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969, has died after nearly half a century in prison.

Manson, 83, whose name to this day is synonymous with unspeakable violence and madness, died of natural causes at Kern County hospital, according to a California Department of Corrections statement.

A petty criminal who had been 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 LA’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 during a Rolling Stones concert at California’s Altamont Speedway, exposed the drugged-out underside of the counterculture movement and seemed to mark the end of the era of peace and love.

Despite the evidence against him, Manson maintained during his tumultuous trial in 1970 that he was innocent and that society 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.

The Manson Family, as his followers were called, slaughtered five of its victims on August 9 1969 at Tate’s home: The actress; coffee heiress Abigail Folger; hairdresser Jay Sebring; Polish 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 words “pigs” 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. After a trial that lasted nearly a year, Manson and three followers – Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten – were found guilty of murder. as

Picture: AP. Charles Manson, mastermind behind the deaths of actress Sharon Tate and several others, died on Sunday.