Charles Manson, who turned ‘family’ into killers, dead at 83
Charles Manson, wild-eyed leader of a cult “family” who killed seven people in a bloody rampage in Los Angeles that shocked the nation in 1969, died of natural causes Sunday, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Manson, 83, had struggled with gastrointestinal problems. He had been serving multiple life sentences at California’s Corcoran State Prison.
The ghastly “Tate-LaBianca killings” — a murderous product of 1960s sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll — were carried out over two nights in upscale Los Angeles neighborhoods. Manson did not participate in the killings, but directed them.
The late Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted the Manson case and later wrote a bestselling book, “Helter Skelter,” about the killings, said in 2009 that the “very name ‘Manson’ has become a metaphor for evil,” The Los Angeles Times reported.
Among the victims butchered on Manson’s orders on the first night of carnage, Aug. 8, 1969, were actress Sharon Tate, 26, the pregnant wife of movie director Roman Polanski; coffee heiress Abigail Folger, 25; celebrity hair stylist Jay Sebring, 35; writer Wojciech Frykowski, 32; and Steven Parent, a teenager visiting the house in Benedict Canyon, above Sunset Boulevard.
The Manson “family” killers, including protege Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel, shot their victims and stabbed them more than 100 times.
Manson and the five members of his “family” were convicted in 1971 of firstdegree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
They were all sentenced to death. The verdicts were commuted to life when the death penalty was briefly outlawed the following year.