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shyscyberchamber.com
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BAD PEOPLE |
Date
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Charles
Manson |
February 2003 |
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Bio |
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Full Name |
Charles M Manson |
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Date of Birth |
11th (or 12th) November
1934 |
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Date of Death |
UNKNOWN |
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Known Also As |
Born as 'No Name
Maddox', Jesus Christ, God |
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Hit Count |
8+ |
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Information & Pictures |
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At 8.30pm on 9th August
1969 a middle aged black woman pounded on the front door of 10090
Cielo Drive in the hills above Los Angeles exclusive Bel Air district.
The woman was Winifred Chapman, housekeeper two doors down at the
rented home of film director Roman Polanski and his pregnant wife,
actress Sharon Tate. Mrs Chapman was screaming hysterically: 'Murder,
death, bodies, blood!'
Householder Ray Asin came to the door, and his fifteen year old son,
Jim, made the call to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), and
thus revealed to the world what the state's prosecutor would later
call: 'The most bizarre, savage, nightmarish murder in the recorded
annals of crime.'
When the police arrived at 10050 Cielo Drive, a substantial mansion
set in its own grounds, they found a scene of appalling carnage. In a
car parked in the driveway was the bloody body of a young man slumped
over the wheel. He had been shot four times. On the lawn were the
bodies of a man in his thirties and a young, dark haired woman in a
nightgown. The man had been shot twice, struck over the head thirteen
times and stabbed a total of fifty one times. The woman had twenty
eight stab wounds. Bother were soaked in their own blood.
Fearing the killer might still be around, police entered the house
through a back window. In the living room they found two more bodies.
A young, blonde woman dressed only in a flowered bra and panties, was
lying in a foetal position in front of the fireplace. She was heavily
pregnant. She was soaked in blood. A white nylon rope had been looped
around her neck, over a rafter and then around the neck of a man who
lay four feet away. He had a bloody towel over his face and his hands
were still raised, as if protecting his head. He had been stabbed
seven times and shot once. |
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[ Sharon Tate ]
Sharon Tate, twenty six year old actress and wife of Roman
Polanski, a film director, was eight months pregnant when she and her
guests were murdered by the Manson Family.
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The pregnant woman had a
total of sixteen stab wounds, five of which would have been fatal on
their own. On the lower part of the front door the word PIG had been
roughly printed in what tests would later prove was her blood. The
woman was Sharon Tate.
Before they even knew who the victims were, the police had a suspect.
Approaching the guesthouse on the other side of the swimming pool they
heard a dog barking and a man's voice saying: 'Shhh, be quiet.'
Police burst in and found nineteen year old William Garretson. He was
the caretaker, hired by owner Rudi Altobelli to look after the
guesthouse, while the main house was let. Gerretson said he'd been
there all night, and had heard nothing suspicious. When the police
took him on a tour of the house to show him the mayhem he'd failed to
hear, he was unable to identify any of the bodies. Dissatisfied with
his story, the police placed Garretson under arrest, but within twenty
four hours they were forced to release him after he passed a polygraph
test. |
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[ Jay
Sebring ]
Hollywood Hairstylist, thirty five, supplier of drugs to high
society, ex-lover of Sharon Tate, he remained friends with her and
Roman Polanski. Jay Sebring was known to like tying woman up before
sex and former girlfriends admitted they had been whipped by him. Some
papers suggested that murders had resulted from a sado-masochistic
orgy. |
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The LAPD were left with
the bloodiest of jigsaw puzzles. By now the bodies had been
identified. The man in the living room roped to Sharon Tate was Jay
Sebring, thirty five, and internationally known hairdresser. The
couple on the lawn were Voytek Frykowski, thirty two, Polish born
playboy and friend of Roman Polanski, and Abigail Folger, twenty five,
his girlfriend and heiress to the Folger coffee fortune. The young man
in the car was Steven Earl Parent, eighteen year old delivery boy,
who'd visited Garretson that night to try to sell him a clock radio.
What was missing was a motive for their slaughter. |
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[ Wojiciech 'Vortek'
Frykowski ]
Playboy, thirty two, boyfriend of Abigail Folger; financed one of
Roman Polanski's early films. Vortek Frykowski had fought hard for his
life, but he was outnumbered. He was shot twice, battered over the
head thirteen times with a heavy object and stabbed fifty one times. |
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The press were screaming 'ritual
slaying', after someone got hold of the incorrect idea that the bodies
had been found with hoods over their heads. They also highlighted the
fact that Sharron was found only partially clothed, and that Sebring
was her ex-lover. There were suggestions of a sex orgy that had ended
in death. |
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[ Abigail Folger ]
Socialite, twenty five, heiress to a coffee fortune, former
volunteer social worker, manic depressive, probably cause by taking
drugs. Abigail Folger was found barefoot, wearing nothing but a white
nightdress, saturated with blood. She had made a run for it, but Katie
(Patricia Krenwinkel) caught her and knocked her to the ground. She
then stabbed her twenty eight times. |
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But the police were looking for solid
motives. Robbery seemed unlikely. There were money and valuables lying
around the house in plain view. None of the victims had been sexually
assaulted. But drugs including marijuana, hashish, cocaine and
hallucinogenic MDA were found, and autopsy reports later revealed MDA
in the systems of both Folger and Frykowski. So the police theorised
at this early stage either a drug party 'freak-out' in which someone
had gone crazy and killed, or a drug deal gone wrong. They also
entertained the possibility of 'deaths by hire'. But there were flaws
in all these theories.
Outside the property the phone wires had been carefully cut. If it was
a drug freak-out, this could only have been done after the murders,
which made no sense at all. Also, how could one person create so much
carnage? On the other hand the very savagery of the attacks told
against the idea of a professional killing, so the police were left
with a drug burn. In fact, so convinced were they that this was the
result of an argument over drugs or money or both, that they totally
ignored one lead that could have led them to a solution to the case in
days.
The Los Angeles Sheriff's office (LASO), working quite separately from
the LAPD, had arrested a hippie musician called Bobby Beausoleil on
6th August for the murder of music teacher Gary Hinman. Hinman had
been brutally stabbed to death but, more specifically, the words
POLITICAL PIGGY had been written in blood on the wall of his home.
Beausoleil had been caught driving Hinman's Fiat with the murder
weapon still in the car. |
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[ Charles Manson ] |
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The LASO told the LAPD that their
suspect lived with a whole bunch of other hippies on Spahn Ranch, an
old movie location in Simi Hills outside the LA suburb of Chatsworth.
Their leader, whom they seemed to believe was Jesus Christ, was a man
called Charlie. |
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[ Sharon Tate ]
Sharon Tate starred in films such as Valley of the Dolls and Dance
of the Vampires. |
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But Sergeant Jess Buckles, assigned to
the Tate killings, wasn't interested. 'We know what's behind these
murders,' he told LASO detectives. 'They're part of a big dope
transaction.'
That same night the LAPD would have another horrendous double murder
on their hands. But even the seemingly glaring similarities to the
Tate killings wouldn't be acknowledged for three months. |
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[ Rosemary LaBianca ]
Thirty eight year old owner of a prosperous dress and gift shop in
a shopping mall owned by her husband, speculated in stocks and
commodities. |
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At 8.30pm on Sunday 10th August, the day
after the discovery of the five bodies on Cielo Drive, fifteen year
old Frank Struthers returned from a boating trip to his home at 3301
Waverly Drive near Griffith Park. There appeared to be no one home,
though the blinds were down and his mother and stepfather, Rosemary
and Leno LaBianca, should have been in. He called his sister, Susan,
and together with her boyfriend, Joe Dorgan, they found a spare key
and entered the house.
Leno LaBianca was lying on his back on the living room floor in his
pyjamas with a bloody pillow case over his head. Around his neck was a
flex from a heavy lamp, tied tightly enough to have strangled him. His
hands were tied behind his back with a leather thong. He had been
stabbed repeatedly in the abdomen with a knife, and from his stomach
an ivory handled carving fork still projected. Carved in his flesh was
the word WAR. |
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[ Leno LaBianca ]
Forty four year old stockholder of a supermarket chain started by
his father; a property and race horse owner, he also collected coins.
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When the police arrived they found
Rosemary LaBianca in the bedroom. She was lying in a pool of blood,
her short pink nightdress and a dress she appeared to have put on over
it both bunched above her head. Like her husband she had a pillow case
over her head and a lamp flex tied tightly around her neck. She had
been stabbed forty one times in the back and legs.
In the living room high on one wall was written in blood the words
DEATH TO PIGS. On the opposite wall by the front door was the word
RISE. And on the door of the refrigerator in the kitchen, also in
blood, someone had written HEALTER SKELTER (sic).
But almost immediately police rejected the idea that the same killers
might be behind the Tate and LaBianca murders. If anything they
thought the LaBiancas might be a copycat. When it was found that Leno,
president of a chain of LA supermarkets, had gambling debts they
started to work on the theory that it could have been a Mafia hit. And
still no one was interested in connecting either case to the Hinman
killing. |
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[ Charles Manson ] |
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That Saturday the police did raid Spahn
Ranch, but they weren't looking for murderers, they were running down
an auto-theft gang, who'd been stealing VW's and converting them into
dune buggies. The raid was not a success. All twenty six suspects had
to be release when it was found that warrants had been misdated. Among
those arrested, and then released, was a thirty four year old
ex-conman out on parole. His name was Charles Manson. |
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[ Command Vehicle ]
The Family's 'Command Vehicle' was an armour-plated dune buggy. The
furs covering the rear platform of the buggy were there to conceal a
machine gun mounting from prying eyes. |
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Meanwhile, LAPD's separate
investigations into the Tate and LaBianca murders were making little
progress. They had twenty five unidentified fingerprints inside the
Tate mansion. They had three pieces of a broken gun grip also found at
Cielo Drive, and these were identified as belonging to a Buntline
Special Hi-Standard .22 Longhorn revolver. A description of this quite
unusual weapon was circulated but no information came back. They'd
also found a Buck knife down the back of a chair and a pair of
spectacles. None of these clues had taken them anywhere.
The drug connection was making no progress either. Four drug dealers
who had been frequent visitors to 10050 Ceilo Drive were prime
suspects for a while, but were later eliminated when three proved
alibis and another passed a polygraph. As for the LaBianca detectives,
they simply had no leads at all.
Fear among Hollywood luminaries who had been friends with Sharon Tate
was rife, as they began to think they might be next on the maniacs
list. Frank Sinatra was in hiding. Mia Farrow was too frightened to
attend the funeral. Sales of guard dogs and guns for personal
protection rocketed. |
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[ Commune Life ]
As the young of the time sought out a new freedom, they started
communes where everything was shared - money, food, love and drugs. In
this climate, it was easy for Charles Manson, with the help of
hallucinatory drugs, to influence and convert the young. With long
hair parted in the centre very much a Jesus-like figure, dispensing
tabs of acid as if Christ was giving the sacrament. Add to this the
rituals introduced by Manson (when Mary Brunner gave birth to his son,
his disciples all stood around as she lay squirming on the hot desert
sand) and the result is a commune unlike any other - the slogan for
peace and love was abandoned in the desert and replaced with violence. |
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Then on 10th October 1969 police in
Independence, a town five and a half hours north of LA mounted a raid
on the Barker Ranch in the rugged and desolate Panamint Mountains just
south of Death Valley. They were investigating an arson attack and a
series of car thefts, but local rumour also told stories of orgies,
drug use and a crazed band of hippies called the Manson Family, who
rode round the desert in dun buggies re-enacting Rommel's battles in
North Africa.
The first raid resulted in ten women and three men being arrested. Two
babies, both with severe sunburn, were also discovered. Police
recovered a number of stolen vehicles and a store of arms including a
sub machine gun. |
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[ Manson's Family ]
Some slept with him, some killed for him and some lied to protect
him. Manson, unwittingly or otherwise, had such a hold over his
disciples that they remained loyal - years later, in 1975, Lynette
Fromme, allegedly at Manson's request, tried to shoot President Ford.
Pictured from left to right : John Swartz, Colleen Sinclair
('Tracy'), Mary Schwarn ('Diane'), Laura Sheppard ('Julia') |
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Two days later the police went back and
arrested seven more people. Searching the primitive bathroom at the
back, one officer noticed long, dark hair hanging out of the top of a
tiny cupboard under the wash basin. When challenged, a man dressed in
buckskin came out, cracking a joke about the cramped space. He was
booked in Independence as 'Manson, Charles M. aka Jesus Christ, God'.
Among the young girls picked up in the Barker raid was Kitty
Lutesinger, seventeen, a girlfriend of Bobby Beausoleil who was
already in custody for the Hinman murder. |
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[ Manson's Family ]
Pictured from left to right : Ruth Heuvelhurst ('Moorehouse'),
Sherri Andrews ('Coleene'), Barbara Whyer ('Joanne'), Vern Thompson
('Ray') |
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Kitty was five months pregnant,
frightened and asking for protection. She told police it was Manson
who had sent Beausoleil along with another of his followers, whom he's
christened Sadie Mae Glutz. The plan had been to extort money from
Hinman, an ex-member of the Family. But when he'd refused Bobby
stabbed him.
The police had a hard time working out who was whom after the Barker
raid. All the girls seemed to have a bewildering amount of aliases.
But eventually they established that Sadie Mae Glutz was really Susan
Atkins. She was booked and sent to the Sybil Brand Institute, LA's
Women's Prison. And it was there that she began to tell her bizarre
story to fellow inmates, who were soon calling her Crazy Sadie. |
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[ Manson's Family ]
Pictured from left to right : Bruce Davis ('Mo'), Diane Lake
('Snake'), Lynette Fromme ('Squeeky'), Manon Minette('Gypsy'). |
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Sadie bragged of her sexual exploits and
first degree murder charge to anyone who would listen, but most of all
she talked to two ex-prostitutes, Virginia Graham and Ronnie Howard.
She told them how she had in fact stabbed Hinman while Bobby held him.
But it was her way of telling the tale that astonished the other women
- 'just like it was a perfectly natural thing to do every day of the
week,' Graham would later say.
But Sadie had other, more shocking stories to tell. Soon she was
informing her fellow inmates that she had done the Tate killings as
well, once again on Manson's instructions. The way Sadie told it, two
other girls and a man had also been involved. Virginia Graham's
question was the same on the police asked: 'Why?' |
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[ Manson's Family ]
Pictured from left to right : Ruth Moorehouse ('Rachel'), Laura
Pittman ('Cydette'), Sandra Pugh ('Good'), Catherine Myers ('Rene') |
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They 'wanted to do a crime that would
shock the world,' was Sadie's answer, 'that the world would have to
stand up and take notice.' But that wasn't all. Charlie had told them
the Family was 'chosen' to get out into the world and release randomly
selected people from the Earth. Sadie told Graham: 'You have to have a
real love in your heart to do this for people.'
It was she herself who had stabbed the pregnant Sharon Tate. 'It was
just like going into nothing, going into air,' she told Ronnie Howard.
Sharon had begged for mercy, begged to be allowed to have her baby.
'Look bitch,' Sadie had told her, 'I don't care about you. I don't
care if you're going to have a baby. You're going to die, and I don't
feel anything about it.' And the killing itself? 'It's like a sexual
release,' was Sadie's description. 'Especially when you see the blood
spurting out. It's better than a climax.'
Then Sadie started to tell the story of the next night at the LaBianca
house. It was the Family who'd committed that slaughter, too, this
time with Manson himself in attendance. |
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[ Manson's Family ]
Pictured from left to right : Patricia Krenwinkel ('Katie'),
Charles Watson ('Tex'), Susan Atkins ('Sadie'), Leslie van Houten
('Lulu') |
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Normally the cons' code would have
prevented Graham and Howard from snitching, but this was just too big
and too horrible to keep to themselves. So, after months of fruitless
investigations, LAPD detectives were suddenly handed the whole case on
a plate. From conversation with the other Family girls and a couple of
bikers - members of the Straight Satan gang - whom Manson had tried to
recruit, they were able to piece together the whole story of the two
nights when Manson had started what he called 'Helter Skelter'.
Manson had preached to his Family for two years that a civil war was
imminent in America between blacks and whites. It was this war that he
called Helter Skelter. While Helter Skelter was in progress, the
Family would hide in an underground world to which there was an
entrance in Death Valley. The blacks would be victorious, but when
they found themselves unable to run the country, they would invite
Manson and the Family to take over. |
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[ Charles Manson ] |
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On the afternoon of Friday 8th August,
Manson told the group of selected followers: 'Now is the time for
Helter Skelter.' The war was taking too long to happen. It was up to
him to get it started. The venue Manson had chosen was a house where
record producer Terry Melcher had lived. Manson, who fancied himself
as a singer and guitarist, had nursed hopes that Melcher would give
him a record deal, but the main reasons for selecting the house seem
to have been because it was isolated and because both Manson and his
right hand man Charles 'Tex' Watson, twenty three, knew the layout of
the place, having been there to parties on a number of occasions.
That evening Manson gave a knife and his favourite .22 revolver to
Tex, and told him to go and kill everybody in the house 'as gruesome
as [he] could'. To help him Manson selected Sadie (Susan Atkins) and
Katie (Patricia Krenwinkel), two of his hard-core followers, both just
twenty one years old, and Linda Kasabian, twenty, a newcomer, who was
the only one of the Family with a valid drivers licence. He told them
all to put on dark clothes and carry knives. |
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[ Charles Manson ] |
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'Go with Tex,' he told the girls, 'and
do whatever he tells you to do.'
Apparently they assumed they were going on one of their regular
'creepy crawling' missions, during which they broke into houses at
night and moved things around while the occupants slept.
But as the group was about to drive away in one of the Spahn Ranch
hand's '59 Ford, Manson leaned into the car and added: 'Leave a sign.
You girls know what to write. Something witchy.' It is a measure of
the extraordinary power Manson held over the Family that non of them
thought to question him further.
They drove into Benedict Canyon and parked outside 10050 Ceilo Drive.
Tex climbed a telegraph pole outside the house and cut the phone
wires. Then they left the car at the bottom of the hill and returned
on foot.
The four dark clad figures scaled the fence, and immediately saw
headlights of Steve Parent's Rambler coming down the drive. Tex told
the girls to drop flat. Then he went over, called out 'Halt!' and shot
the driver four times. |
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[ Charles Manson ] |
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Up at the house Tex slit the screen on
one of the windows and climbed in. He opened the front door and let
Sadie and Katie in, too. Linda stayed outside.
In the living room they found a man asleep on the couch. This was
Voytek Frykowski. The man stretched sleepily, and asked: 'What time is
it?' Then he saw the gun Tex was holding in his face.
'Who are you? What are you doing here?' said Frykowski, alarmed now.
'I am the devil,' was Tex's reply, 'and I've come to do the devil's
business.' Then he ordered Sadie to tie the man up.
The girls found the other three occupants of the house and brought
them at knife point to the living room. All were too shocked to offer
any resistance. Tex ordered them to lie face down on the floor. Jay
Sebring complained, pointing out Sharon Tate's condition. |
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[ Charles Manson ] |
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'Can't you see she's pregnant. Let her
sit down.'
Tex shot him.
Then they took the rope Tex had brought, and strung Sharon and Abigail
Folger up to an overhead beam by their necks. 'What are you going to
do with us?' the women demanded.
'You are all going to die,' said Tex.
Frykowski managed to get free from his bonds, and a mad struggle
ensued. Sadie stabbed repeatedly at the man as they fought. The
Frykowski ran for the front door. Tex shot him once, then beat him
over the head repeatedly with the butt of the gun. Standing outside,
Linda saw Tex pursue Frykowski out of the front door, and stab him
many times on the lawn.
Almost simultaneously Abigail Folger, who had also managed to get
free, ran out of the French windows in Sharon's bedroom. She was
bleeding profusely. Katie was after her with knife upraised. She
caught up with Abigail on the lawn, and stabbed her until she lay
still.
In Sadie Mae Glutz's chilling words: 'Sharon was the last to die.' The
young actress pleaded for her life: 'Please don't kill me. I want to
have my baby.' But the killers were without mercy. In the version she
told the jury, Sadie claimed that she held Sharon while Tex stabbed
her. But to her prison mates she said that she herself had stabbed the
pregnant woman, and then tasted the blood. |
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[
Charles Manson ] |
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'Wow, what a trip!' she told Virginia
Graham in the Sybil Brand Institute. 'To taste death and yet give
life... It's warm and sticky and nice.'
Outside Sadie found Tex checking that Abigail and Frykowski were dead.
He told Sadie to go back inside and write 'something that will shock
the world'.
Back in the living room Sadie found the pregnant Sharon still
bleeding. 'I knew there was a living being inside that body, and I
wanted to but I didn't have the courage to go ahead and take it,' she
testified later. Instead Sadie took a towel, dipped it in Sharon
Tate's blood, and wrote PIG on the door. Then they left.
Linda drove while the others changed out of their blood-soaked
clothing. Tex was angry because Sadie had lost her knife. (It was this
that the police found down the back of the chair.) The girls
complained that their heads hurt from having their hair pulled in the
struggle. Katie said her hand was bruised because she kept hitting
bone when she stabbed. |
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[ Charles Manson ]
Aged thirty two, the clean cut Manson of 1967 was release to become
the long haired hippy who cast a spell over his 'Family'. |
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The bloody clothes were thrown down a
hill from Benedict Canyon Road (where the police had failed, a TV crew
found the bundle four months later). The weapons were similarly
disposed of. They stopped on a side street to use a garden hose to
wash off any remaining blood. A man came out and tried to stop them,
but they got away from him. Later Rudolf Weber would come forward to
say it was he who had seen the killers that night. Amazingly he
remembered the licence plate of the '59 Ford Mercury - GYY 435. Then
they drove back to Spahn Ranch to find Manson waiting where they'd
left him.
'What are you doing home so early?' he asked. They told him what
they'd done.
'Boy,' said Tex, 'it sure was helter skelter.'
The next evening the Family watched the TV news about the murders
they'd committed. Afterwards Manson told them they were going out
again, only this time he was coming with them.
'Last night was too messy,; he told them. 'This time I'm going to show
you how to do it.'
Once again they took the '59 Ford. This time seventeen year old Clem
(Steve Grogan) and twenty year old Lulu (Leslie van Houten) came too.
They drove around looking for a suitable house at random. They stopped
in Pasadena, and Manson got out to take a look. A few minutes later he
was back.
'He said he saw pictures of children through the window,' Sadie said
later, 'and he didn't want to do that house.'
Finally they pulled up outside a house where members of the Family,
including Manson, had been to an acid party a year before. Manson told
them to wait. He took a gun and went towards the house next door. |
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[ Charles Manson ]
Just twenty one years old, Manson had already spent most of his
life in institutions. Now he was about to begin a five year stretch
for car theft. |
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'I have the people tied up,' he told the
waiting group when he returned some time later. 'They were very calm'
Manson had used the leather thong he habitually wore around his neck
to tie Leno Labianca's hands.
Clearly Manson had told the Labianca's they would not be harmed if
they co-operated. It had been a cruel lie. Now he told Tex, Katie and
Lulu to go into the house, and 'paint a picture more gruesome than
anybody has ever seen'. Then he drove away with the others, telling
Tex, Katie and Lulu to hitch back to Spahn when they'd finished their
horrific night's work.
Inside Katie and Lulu took Rosemary LaBianca into the bedroom. When
they heard Tex stabbing Leno in the other room, Rosemary started to
scream: 'What are you doing to my husband?' Lulu then held her down,
while Katie stabbed her. The dying woman's last words were still:
'What are you doing to my husband?'
Returning to the living room, Katie took a carving fork from a drawer,
stabbed Leno LaBianca with it several times, then stuck it into his
stomach and watched, fascinated, as it waved back and forth. The she
carved the word WAR into his flesh.
When they'd written in blood on the walls and the fridge, they all
took a shower, calmly ate watermelon and drank chocolate milk in the
kitchen, then left.
Such was the story that state prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi had to tell
the jury, when the trial of Charles Manson and his followers opened in
LA's Hall of Justice on 24th July 1970. Denied access to the court,
other female members of the Family kept a vigil for their Messiah on
the pavement outside, while Manson did his best to disrupt proceedings
inside. |
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[ Charles Manson ]
The many faces of Charles Manson; in court he with a self-inflicted
cross and earlier, scruffy guru. Manson kept changing his appearance,
with variations on shaving and length of hair. |
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The court refused him permission to
conduct his own defence, so he appointed Irving Kanarek, notoriously
the most obstructive and long-winded attorney in California. At times
Manson refused to face the judge and was removed from the court. The
night before he faced the jury for the first time, he carved a bloody
swastika into his forehead, declaring: 'I have X'd myself from your
world.'
Whatever he did, the three girls on trial Sadie, Katie and Lulu,
imitated his every action, thereby proving the prosecution's
contention that they were wholly under the influence of the man they
believed was Christ, and that though he hadn't struck a blow himself,
it was Charles Manson who was chiefly responsible for the Tate and
LaBianca murders.
Initially it was to have been Sadie who would testify to how they
tried to ignite the war between black and white - Helter Skelter. She
had agreed to turn State's evidence in exchange for exemption from the
death penalty. But even from prison, using the other girls as
go-betweens, Manson was able to reach out and draw her back into the
fold. So finally it was Linda Kasabian, who had only driven the car,
who became the prosecution's star witness in exchange for full
immunity.
Without such a deal there is no way the DA's office could of got a
conviction at all. They had several pieces of evidence including an
alleged remark of Manson's to a member of the Straight Satan's that:
'We knocked off five of them just the other night.' They had Tex and
Katie's fingerprints inside the Tate mansion. By now they also had a
gun, and a witness who remembered a number plate. As far as
corroborative evidence was concerned, that was about it. But with
Linda's testimony they had enough to get convictions and death
sentences for all four defendants, though the sentences were later
commuted to life after the gas chamber was banned in California.
Facing the court with newly shaven heads, the girls spat defiance.
'Better lock your doors and watch your own kids,' Sadie told the jury
who had just voted for her death. Manson himself who, according to one
of his disciples, was 'a changeling (who) seemed to change every time
I saw him,' had yet another face for the occasion. His hands trembled
and he seemed close to tears.
'I accept this court as my father,' he said meekly. 'I have always
done my best in life to uphold the laws of my father and I accept my
father's judgement.' |
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[ Manson's Family ]
Often short of cash, the Family collected food thrown out by
supermarkets when it was no longer fresh or had passed its
sell-by-date. The pick up was often made in a Rolls Royce. Sitting in
a garbage bin, Lynette Fromme, Sandra Good, Mary Brunner and Ruth
Moorehouse wait for a delivery from a store. |
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The murderers first became eligible for
parole in 1978, six years after the abolition of the Californian death
penalty (which has since been re-instated). A legal battle has been
fought to make sure they don't come out any sooner than they have to. |
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[ Charles Manson ]
From 1976 to 1982, Charles Manson was kept under constant
supervision in segregated quarters at Vacaville Medical Facility,
where he regularly sought parole. |
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The chances of Manson ever being
released are unlikely. At a 1981 parole hearing he warned that
District Attorney Kay would be killed in the car park afterwards. A
year later Manson was put into a high security cell at Vacaville
Prison after reports that he was planning an escape using a hot air
balloon. Manson has since been transferred to Corcoran Prison,
California. |
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[ Manson Family Photo ]
Lynette 'Squeeky' Fromme (right), Manson's most consistent
disciple, poses with Sandra Good for a Family photo. |
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It is different for Man's accomplices,
however, particularly the three girls, Susan Atkins, Patricia
Krenwinkel and Leslie van Houten. Using skilled lawyers, they have
worked hard to find loopholes that will help towards their release. |
|
 |
[ Manson's Family ]
Three killers leave the court smiling - Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan
Atkins and Leslie van Houten were all found guilty of conspiring to
kill. Van Houten was also found guilty of killing the LaBianca's while
Krenwinkel and Atkins were found guilty on seven counts of murder. |
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The most likely candidate is Leslie van
Houten. She is a model prisoner and has gained a degree in psychology
and literature. This is combined with the fact that her involvement in
the LaBianca murders may have only been secondary, since she stabbed
Rosemary LaBianca after she was already dead. |
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[ Charles Manson ]
In August 1978, Manson began to live his fantasy as a rock
musician, practicing regularly in the prison chapel. |
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The future of Charles 'Tex' Watson,
whose involvement in the murders was the most appalling, remains less
certain. His period as assistant Protestant pastor in prison at San
Luis Obispo ended when DA Kay complained that he was building himself
a power base in prison. |
|
 |

[ Charles Manson ]
Charles Manson is serving nine life sentences for his part in the
murders of 1969. While in Vacaville Prison, in Southern California, he
worked as a gardener in the chapel grounds. He has since been
transferred and is now in Corcoran Prison. |
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|
Steven Grogan has been released after
serving thirteen years of his sentence. He was probably helped by
leading the authorities to the previously undiscovered body of Shorty
Shea. On his release he began working as a house painter in the San
Fernando Valley. |
|
 |
[ Charles Manson ]
Charles Manson in his prison outfit being escorted to the court in
Los Angeles where he would sit on a wooden chair, barefoot, in a yoga
position. It had taken a total of 8,750 hours of police time to
investigate the murders and get Charles Manson and his disciples in
the dock. |
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In 1993, aged thirty eight, Charles
White, Manson's son by his first wife, Rose Willis, shot himself in
Las Vegas, where he word. Proud of his father at first, he later
became sickened by the events of 1969. |
|
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[ Charles Manson ]
Shortly after being discharged from a juvenile home at the age of
fourteen in 1948, Manson spent a brief spell working as a messenger
boy - but he was never able to settle into a normal existence. |
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In August 1994, Bobby Beausoleil claimed
in an interview that he had never been a Family member and had killed
Hinman because Hinman had supplied him with bad mescaline, which led
to his pregnant wife losing her baby. He also claimed that the Tate
murders were committed in order to control the Hollywood drug trade
(both Sebring and Frykowski were known drug dealers). |
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[ Charles Manson ]
Charles Manson is caught at last - the press couldn't get enough of
the man who let his girls go to court and take the rap for murders he
had instigated. |
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In April 1995, in an interview, Roman
Polanksi suggested that the Tate murders had been a case of mistaken
identity - that the target was Terry Melcher, who owned the house and
had refused to give Manson a recording contract. |
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