Possible sons op Manson out op estate case
LOS ANGELES — The purported sons of Charles Manson could soon be out of the legal battle over his estate after failing to show up in court Tuesday.
Matthew Lentz, who claims he was fathered by Manson at a 1967 orgy, arrived late at Los Angeles Superior Court looking disheveled and frazzled after a brief hearing in the probate case of the late cult leader. Another supposed son, Michael Brunner, filed papers to drop his claims as an alleged heir to the convicted murderer.
If the two drop out, it would pit a purported grandson against a pen pal who has filed a will that names him as sole beneficiary to the estate.
Purported kin to Manson and so-called murderabilia collectors who befriended the inmate have emerged in the court fight since Manson, 83, died in a hospital in November while serving a life sentence for orchestrating the 1969 killings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and eight others.
Upon learning he had missed the hearing, Lentz, who doesn’t have a lawyer, lamented his late arrival and said he feared he would be out of luck because he had hoped to forge an alliance with Brunner, who has a lawyer.
“I blew it,” he said outside court. “I wasted how many years of my life for this dumb crap? For what?”
Lentz is listed as sole beneficiary in a 2017 will that names memorabilia collector Ben Gurecki as executor. Others have claimed the will is a fraud.
Wearing an inside-out plaid shirt, Lentz clenched a hard plastic case overflowing with the rambling letters from Manson that he hoped would sway a judge to believe he was his son.
“You got the same father I got — a Hobo just left on a midnight train,” one letter said. “Your mom’s father ran me off saying you bad bandit OUTLAW BIKE TRASH — stay out of her life. It’s not that I didn’t care. It was free love and you paid the price.”
Lentz, a musician, said he wasn’t looking for much, maybe the rights to a song Manson said he wrote for him.
The judge gave Lentz until a July 13 hearing to show why he shouldn’t also be dismissed from the case.