Grandson of Manson gets his remains

LOS ANGELES — A grandson of cult leader Charles Manson won the bizarre California court battle Monday over the killer’s body.

Kern County Superior Court Commissioner Alisa Knight ruled that Jason Freeman can retrieve the remains of Manson that have been on ice in the Bakersfield morgue since he died in November.

Manson, 83, had been hospitalized in Bakersfield while serving a life sentence for orchestrating the 1969 killings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and eight others.

The fight over his corpse devolved into a circus of sorts. Friends filed competing wills purportedly signed by the infamous inmate while kin began to come out of the woodwork to stake a claim to the killer’s body and an estate that could include lucrative rights to songs Manson wrote or to license his image and other material.

While the decision clears the way for Manson to be cremated or buried, the battle for the body foreshadows what lies ahead as competing camps wrestle for control of the estate.

The case in Kern County was brought by the coroner’s office, which said it wanted to quickly resolve the matter because bodies were piling up at the morgue from the methamphetamine and opioid epidemics.

The three-way fight for the body involved Freeman, another man who said he was fathered by Manson and a pen pal who was friends with Manson and has filed what he said was the cult leader’s will. Freeman largely won out because of problems with the other petitions.

Knight cited problems with the will submitted by buddy Michael Channels because he was one of the two witnesses while also the sole beneficiary, which is suspect.

Michael Brunner ws fathered by the cult leader, according to his birth certificate, but Knight said Brunner had lost his right to be deemed an heir because he was adopted by his grandparents.

Freeman, a former professional mixed martial arts fighter from Florida, is the son of the late Charles Manson Jr., who was the child of Manson and his first wife.