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The Manson Family

Born "no name Maddox" in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 12, 1934, Charles Manson was the illegitimate son of Kathleen Maddox, a 16-year-old prostitute. His surname was derived from one of Kathleen's many lovers, whom she briefly married, but it signified no blood relationship. In 1936, Kathleen filed a paternity suit against one "Colonel Scott" of Ashland, Kentucky, winning the grand monthly sum of five dollars for the support of "Charles Milles Manson." Scott instantly defaulted on the judgement, and he died in 1954 without acknowledging his son.

In 1939, Kathleen and her brother were sentenced to five years in prison for robbing a West Virginia gas station. Charles was packed off to live with a strictly religious aunt and her sadistic husband, who constantly berated the boy as a "sissy," dressing him in girl's clothing for his first day of school in an effort to help Manson "act like a man," Paroled in 1942, Maddox reclaimed her son, bur she was clearly unsuited to motherhood. An alcoholic who brought home lovers of both sexes, Kathleen frequently left Charles with neighbors "for an hour," then disappeared for days or weeks on end, leaving relatives to track the boy down. On one occasion she reportedly gave Charles to a barmaid as payment for a pitcher of beer.

By 1947, Kathleen was seeking a foster home for her son, but none was available. Charles wound up in the Gilbault School for Boys in Terre Haute, Indiana, but fled after 10 months, rejoining his mother. She still didn't want him, so Manson took to living on the streets, making his way by theft. Arrested in Indiana, he escaped from the local juvenile center after one day's confinement. Recaptured and sent to Father Flannigan's Boy's Town, he lasted four days before his next escape, fleeing in a stolen car to visit relatives in Illinois. He pulled more robberies en route and on arrival, leading to another bust at 13. Confined for three year in a reform school at Plainfield, Indiana, Manson recalls sadistic abuse by older boys and guards alike. If we may trust his memory, at least one guard incited other boys to rape and torture Manson, while the officer stood by and masturbated on the sidelines.

In February 1951, Manson and two other inmates escaped from Plainfield "school," fleeing westward in a series of stolen cars. Arrested in Beaver, Utah, Manson was sentenced to federal time for driving hot cars across state lines. Starting off in a minimum-security establishment, Manson assaulted another inmate in January 1952, holding a razor blade to the boy's throat and sodomizing him. Reclassified as "dangerous," Manson was transferred to a tougher lockup, logging eight major disciplinary infractions including three homosexual assaults by August 1952. He was moved to the Chillicothe, Ohio, reformatory a month later and suddenly turned over a new leaf, becoming a "model" prisoner almost overnight. The cunning act was rewarded with parole in May 1954.

Arrested a second time for driving hot cars interstate, in September 1955, Manson got off easy with five years' probation. He celebrated by skipping a court date in florida on pending charges of auto theft, and his probation was promptly revoked. Picked up in Indianapolis on March 14, 1956, he was sent to the federal prison at Terminal Island, California, winning parole on September 30, 1958. Seven months later, on May 1, 1959, he was jailed in Los Angeles on charges of forging and cashing stolen US Treasury checks. Once more, he escaped with probation, swiftly revoked with his April 1960 arrest for pimping and transporting whores interstate. Entering the lockup at McNeil Island, Manson listed his religion as "Scientologist": his IQ was tested at 121. Paroled on March 21, 1967, over his own objections, Manson was drawn to San Francisco and the teeming Haight-Ashbury district.

It was the "Summer of Love," when thousands of young people flocked to the banner of drugs and"flower flower," heeding Timothy Leary's advice to "tune in, turn on, drop out." The streets and crash pads overflowed with teenage runaways and drifters, seeking insight on the world and on themselves. Behind the scenes, a minor army of manipulators, gurus, outlaw bikers, pushers, pimps, and Satanists stood ready to squeeze a grim profit from the age of Aquarius.

In San Francisco, Manson displayed a surprising charisma,attracting young dropouts of both sexes, drawn from all strata of white society. Some, like Mary Brunner, were college graduates. Others, like Susan Atkins and Robert Beausoleil, were involved with satanic cults. Most were hopelessly confused about their lives, adopting Manson as a combination mentor, father figure, Christ incarnate, and the self-styled "God of Fuck." They drifted up and down the state in fluctuating numbers, with the "family" topping 50 members as its peak. From Mendocino and the Haight to Hollywood, Los Angeles, and Death Valley, Manson's nomads followed their leader as the Summer of Love became a nightmare. Along the way, they rubbed shoulders with the church of Satan, the Process Church of Final Judgement (worshipping Satan, Lucifer, ad Jehovah simultaneously), the Circe Order of Dog Blood, and some say the homicidal "Four P Movement." Manson grew obsessed with death and the Beatles song "Helter Skelter," which he interpreted as predicting race war in America. In Manson's view, once "blackie" had been driven to the point of violence, helpless whites would be annihilated, leaving Manson and his family to rule the roost.

On October 13, 1968, two women were found and beaten and strangled to death near Ukiah, California. One, Nancy Warren, was the pregnant wife of a highway patrol officer. The other victim, Clida Delaney, was Warren's 64-year-old grandmother. The murders were realistic in nature, with 36 leather thongs wrapped around each victim's throat. Several members of the Manson "family" including two later convicted of unrelated murders were visiting Ukiah at the time.

Two months later, on December 30, 17-year-old Marina Habe was abducted outside her West Hollywood home; her body was recovered on New Year's Day, with multiple stab wounds in the neck and chest. Investigators learned that Habe was friendly with various "family" members, and police believe her ties to the Manson group led directly to her death.

On May 27, 1969, 64-year-old Darwin Scott the brother of Manson's alleged father was hacked to death in his Ashland, Kentucky, apartment, pinned to the floor by a long butcher knife. Manson was out of touch with his California parole officer between May 22 and June 18, 1969, and an unidentified "LSD preacher from California" set up shop with several young women in nearby Huntington, around the same time.

On July 17, 1969, 16-year-old Mark Walts disappeared while hitchhiking from Chatsworth, California, to the pier at Santa Monica to do some fishing. His battered body, shot three times and possibly run over by a car, was found the next mourning in Topanga Canyon. Walts was a frequent visitor to Manson's commune at Spahn movie ranch, and the dead boy's brother publicly accused Manson of the murder, though no charges were filed.

Around the time of Walt's death, a "Jane Doe" corpse was discovered near Castaic, northeast of the Spahn ranch, tentatively identified from articles of clothing as Susan Scott, a "family" member once arrested with a group of Manson girls in Mendocino. Scott was living at the ranch when she dropped out of sight, and while the Castaic corpse remains technically unidentified, Susan has not been seen again.

In the month between July 27 and August 26, 1969, Manson's tribe slaughtered at least nine persons in southern California. Musician Gary Hinman was the first to die, hacked to death in retaliation for a drug deal gone sour, "political" graffiti scrawled at the scene in his blood, as Manson tried to blame the crime on "blackie." On August 9, a Manson hit team raided the home of movie director Roman Polanski, slaughtering Polanski's wife pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four of her guests: Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, and Steven Parent. The following night, Manson's "creepy crawlers" killed and mutilated another couple, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, in their Los Angeles Home.

An atmosphere of general panic gripped affluent L.A., the grisly crimes demonstrating that no one was safe. On August 16, sheriff's deputies raided the Spahn ranch, arresting Manson and company on various drug related charges, but Charles was back on the street by August 26. That night he directed the murder and dismemberment of movie stunt man Donald ("Shorty") Shea, a hanger-on who "knew too much" and was suspected of discussing family business with police.

Ironically, Manson's downfall came about through a relatively petty crime. On the night pf September 18-19, 1969, members of the family burned a piece of road grading equipment that was "obstructing" one of their desert dune buggy routes. Arson investigators traced the evidence to Manson, and he was arrested again on October 12. A day later, Susan Atkins was picked up in Ontario California, and she soon confided details of the Tate-LaBianca murders to cellmates in Los Angeles. Sweeping indictments followed, but even Manson's removal from circulation could not halt the violence.

On November 5, 1969, family member John Haught aka "Zero" was shot and killed while "playing Russian roulette" in Venice, California. Eleven days later, another "Jane Doe" tentatively identified as family associate Sherry Cooper was found near the site where Marina Habe's body had been discovered in 1968. On November 21, Scientologists James Sharp, 15 and Doreen Gault, 19, were found dead in a Los Angeles alley, stabbed more than 50 times each with a long-bladed knife. Investigators learned that Gaul had been a girlfriend of Bruce Davis, a family member subsequently convicted of first-degree murder in L.A.

And Manson's arm was long. Joel Pugh, husband of Mansonite Sandra Good, flew to London in late 1968, accompanied by Bruce Davis. Their mission included the sale of some rare coins and the establishment of connections with satanic orders in Britain. Davis returned to the United States in April 1969, but Pugh lingered on, and his body was found in a London hotel room on December 1, his throat slit with razor blades, his blood used to inscribe "backwards writing" and "comic book drawings" on a nearby mirror. (Despite the impossible scribbling, his death was ruled a suicide.) Charged with the seven Tate-LaBianca murders, Manson and three of his female disciples Susan Atkins,Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten went to trial in June 1970. The defense rested its case on November 19, and attorney Ronald Hughes disappeared eight days later, after he was driven to Sespe Hot Springs by two family associates called "James" and "Lauren." The lawyer's decomposing corpse was found in Sespe Creek five months later, around the time Manson's death sentence was announced, and positive identification was confirmed through dental X rays.

Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi believes that he has traced the fate of "James" and "Lauren," suspected of guilty knowledge in Hughes's death. On November 8, 1972, hikers found the body of 26-year-old James Willett, shot gunned and decapitated, in a shallow grave near Guerneville, California. Three days later, Willett's station wagon was spotted outside a house in Stockton, and police arrested two members of the Aryan Brotherhood inside, along with three Manson women. Lauren Willett, wife of James, was buried in the basement, and an initial tale of "Russian roulette" was dropped in April 1973 when four suspects pled guilty to murder charges.

Meanwhile, the Manson trials continued in Los Angeles. Triggerman Charles "Tex" Watson was convicted and sentenced to die for the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1971. During August of that year, six family members including original disciple Mary Brunner tried to steal 140 weapons from a Hawthorne gun shop, planning to break Manson out of jail, but they were captured in a shootout with police. All were subsequently convicted, and Brunner was also sentenced for participation in the Hinman murder. Robert Beausoleil and Susan Atkins picked up additional death sentences for that slaying, while Manson, Bruce Davis, and Steve Grogan were convicted in both the Hinman and Shea murders. Various death sentences were overturned by the US Supreme Court's 1972 ruling against Capital Punishment, and all of the family hackers are now technically eligible for parole. In Manson's absence, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme held the family reins, corresponding with Charlie in prison and spreading his gospel on the streets, forging new alliances with sundry cults and racist groups. In September 1975, she tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford, but her pistol misfired and Squeaky was sentenced to life imprisonment .

As for the family patriarch, commutation of his death sentence laughed Manson on a seemingly endless tour of the California prison system from San Quentin to Vacaville, on to Folsom, back to San Quentin, and so on. Wherever he went, the pattern was identical: conflicts with authority and other inmates, various beatings ad murder attempts (to date, he has been poisoned, set on fire, and badly beaten several times), half-hearted hunger strikes, and raving television interviews. In March 1974, Manson was diagnosed as an "acute psychotic"; two months later he assaulted a guard; two months after that, he was caught passing notes about a planned escape attempt. The Aryan Brotherhood, once Manson's de facto prison bodyguard, soon turned against him, one member sexually assaulting him at San Quentin, others beating him up at Folsom, another tea slipping rat poison into his favourite soft drink. Still, there were rumors of Charlie orchestrating payback: one of his AB tormentors was stabbed to death at Folsom, while another was shot gunned by the proverbial persons unknown, shortly after his parole. Both crimes were probably related to the Brotherhood's traffic in drugs or continual feuding with blacks, but Manson was pleased to take credit for the murders with a wink and a grin.

While eligible for parole since 1972, no convicted "family" killer has yet been released. Susan Atkins and Tex Watson claim to have "found god" in prison, Watson founding his own ministry with a small but loyal cadre of disciples in the free world. Krenwinkel and Van Houten insist they have changed, matured, but no public official mindful of his future in elective office is prepared to take them at their word. As for Manson himself, his yearly parole hearings those he deigns to attend have been converted into a theatre of the grotesque, with Manson rambling incoherently, sometimes for hours on end, on topics ranging from the Brazilian rain forest to his "frame-up" by an unjust society. Sometimes he doesn't show at all: in 1979, for example, he passed on the hearing and sent the parole board a "Get Out of Jail Free" card from his Monopoly set.

And there is always more trouble waiting for Manson, wherever he goes. In August 1997, he was sentenced to serve seven months at California's "super-max" Pelican Bay State Prison, after he was convicted of selling drugs to other inmates. He completed that sentence in June 1998 and was transferred to yet another lockup. March 1999 brought a surprise announcement that Manson would assist Professor Robert Beattie of Newman University in teaching a class on the U.S legal system. Sandi Gibbons, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, noted that it was not Manson’s first foray into academia. “He likes to interact with young people,” she said. “He thinks he can pass along something to them.” As Manson told Professor Beattie in a tape-recorded conversation, “I have 50 years of experience in incarceration. I pretty much have a leg up on the law from an underworld perspective.”

At press time for this volume, all parole bids from Manson and his homicidal followers have been rejected by California authorities.

Charles Manson died from cardiac arrest resulting from respiratory failure and colon cancer at the hospital four days later on November 19. Three people stated their intention to claim Manson's estate and body.

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