Manson: the making of a psychopath
“So, Charles Manson has died, aged 83, of ‘natural causes’,” said James Riley on The Conversation. The con man and failed musician-turned-cult leader had an easier death than any of the seven people whose murders he orchestrated over two days in August 1969. A virulent racist, he hoped that these apparently random killings, of rich white people, would be blamed on black radicals, triggering an apocalyptic race war (his Helter Skelter, named after a Beatles song) from which he’d emerge as the Chosen One. Manson has barely been seen since his conviction, in 1971, yet public fascination with him has not dimmed. He has inspired countless films and books; his face adorns T-shirts; rock stars have covered his songs. Partly, he fascinates because the crimes committed by his hippy devotees were so depraved (the actress Sharon Tate was heavily pregnant when they broke into the Los Angeles home she shared with her husband, Roman Polanski, and butchered her and four others), but they also became – like the Rolling Stones’ fateful concert at Altamont four months later – emblematic of the “end” of the 1960s dream.
Will his influence continue to live on, wondered Suzanne Moore in The Guardian. In interviews from prison, Manson came across as pathetic, bewildered and mentally ill – “these are what people should look at”. Yet even around the time of his blood-soaked crimes, he was almost venerated, with his face on the front of Rolling Stone. “Rock star murderer? The reality was more prosaic and more ugly.” Born in Ohio in 1934 to a teenage prostitute, he was abused as a child, drifted into crime, and spent most of his life in reform schools and jails. Inside, he learned to abuse; he read up on Scientology; and he picked up tips from pimps on how to manipulate women. Released in 1967, he moved to San Francisco – where he began to recruit young drifters, mainly women, with the promise of drugs and free love in his so-called Family.
His original plan was to become a rock star, said David L. Ulin in the LA Times. He befriended the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson, who let the Family live in his mansion for a while. It is a stretch to claim that it was Manson’s failure to cut it as a musician that turned him to murder. But those who blame it on the counterculture are equally misguided. Manson did not so much reflect the dark side of the hippy dream as prey on it. Sure, he liked sex and drugs, and was obsessed with The Beatles, in whose lyrics he found coded messages, but he didn’t believe in “peace and love”. He was a killer and psychopath.