WHERE ARE THE MANSON FAMILY MEMBERS NOW?
SUSAN ATKINS
ATKINS admitted stabbing Sharon Tate after rejecting her pleas for her unborn child. Atkins reportedly boasted to cellmates that she tasted her blood and used it to write ‘Pig’ on a wall. She became a born-again Christian in prison. After myriad parole requests were rejected, Atkins died of brain cancer in prison, aged 61, in 2009.
PATRICIA KRENWINKEL
KRENWINKEL (pictured below then and now) was a 19-yearold secretary who gave up everything after she met Manson at a family party and fell for him. She admitted catching coffee heiress Abigail Folger at Tate’s home and ‘stabbing her, stabbing and stabbing’. She also helped in the LaBianca killings. Now 69, she has been denied parole 13 times.
LESLIE VAN HOUTEN
THE ex-beauty queen, just 19, wasn’t at the Tate killings, but took part in the following night’s murders, stabbing Rosemary LaBianca 14 times. She says she believed Manson was ‘Jesus Christ’ but later claimed she had been mentally ill and influenced by LSD. She was twice recommended for release this year by a parole board, based on her model behaviour in prison. California governor Jerry Brown has already overturned one parole board decision and is now reconsidering her fate.
‘SQUEAKY’ FROMME
BABY-FACED Lynette Fromme wasn’t implicated, but she attended the trial. However, in 1975, she tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Sentenced to life, she escaped briefly in 1987 but won parole in 2009. She moved to rural New York with a man who had been in prison for murdering his brother-in-law.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
FORMER actor Beausoleil had been arrested for the murder of Gary Hinman, and Manson feared he would inform. He hoped that by making other murders look like the killing of Hinman, police would conclude they had the wrong man. In prison, Beausoleil is a member of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood, and has fathered four children.
BRUCE DAVIS
DAVIS, 75, is serving life for the murders of Gary Hinman, a drug dealer and Donald ‘Shorty’ Shea, a ranch hand. In prison, he has gained a doctoral degree. Parole boards have five times decided that he no longer poses a public safety risk, but have been overruled by California governors.
CHARLES ‘TEX’ WATSON
THE lanky Watson (pictured below then and now), was a one-time high school football star who claimed to have been Manson’s ‘right-hand man’. He fled to Texas and fought extradition so the other killers were tried without him. In jail, Watson, 71, fathered four children from conjugal prison visits and founded his own Christian ministry.
STEVE GROGAN
‘CLEM’ Grogan stayed in the car while the others killed Tate and her guests. He did participate in the murder of ‘Shorty’ Shea. In 1985, he was released from prison after helping the police to find Shea’s body.