Charles Manson:
Relatives have 10 days to claim remains of cult leader, who died Sunday.
The next of kin of Charles Manson have until a week from Wednesday to claim the remains of the man who inspired a cult following to commit mass murder.
If they do not, the taxpayers of California — who picked up the tab for Manson for the last 48 years of his life, all of which he spent in prison — will pay once again to have his body returned to dust, most likely by cremation.
Manson, a small-time criminal who enlisted young followers to commit a string of killings in 1969 in Los Angeles, died of natural causes Sunday at age 83. He had been serving a life term at California State Prison in Corcoran for nine murders, and died in a Kern County hospital.
Prison officials said Monday they are not required to reveal whether any relatives of Manson have come forward to claim his body, so they aren’t doing so.
“That’s not releasable information,” said Kristina Khokhobashvili, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections
and Rehabilitation.
Family members have 10 days from the date of death to claim the body, which in Manson’s case sets a deadline of Nov. 29. State law says that if attempts to reach a dead inmate’s relatives are unsuccessful, or if relatives decline to claim the remains, the prison can hire a local undertaker to dispose of the body.
Any of the inmates’ unclaimed possessions are stored for a year, then become state property and may be auctioned. It is unknown what belongings Manson possessed at the time of his death, although he was known to sculpt spiders and scorpions out of string and human hair and to produce abstract, kindergarten-style drawings with crayons.
Their sale could help defray the estimated $2.3 million that California spent to keep Manson behind bars for nearly five decades.