Charles Manson
On Saturday, August ninth, nineteen
sixty-nine, all hell broke
loose with more than six dozen plunges of a carving
fork and knife, and the
peaceful dyll was shattered. Out of the chaos caused by
the senseless,
horrific murderers, Charles Manson emerged as one of the most
feared
notorious criminals of all time. In the twenty-nine years since the
so-called
"Tate-La Bianca" murders, many people have speculated about
what caused
Charles Manson to become the monster he turned to be. To be able to
fully
comprehend what could cause an innocent child to evolve into a
ruthless
calculating cold- blooded killer, one must completely examine the
events of his
life. Charles Manson was born Charles Milles Maddox, the son of
an unwed mother,
in Cincinnati Ohio on November twelfth, nineteen
thirty-four. His father, he
stated in his autobiography, was a "young
drugstore cowboy", a
transient laborer who abandoned Charles' mother when he
learned that she was
pregnant. Shortly after Charles' birth, Kathleen Maddox
lived with a man named
William Manson, and they eventually got married.
William Manson gave his new
stepson his name, although the marriage dissolved
shortly thereafter. Raised in
a strict, religious home, Kathleen Maddox-
Manson rebelled after the breakup of
her marriage. She reveled in her
newfound freedom by drinking a lot and loving
freely. Like many young
mothers, Kathleen was not yet ready for the
responsibilities that go along
with the raising of a child. She had fled a
stifling home life and rushed
into marriage, and she had a lot of living to do
before she settled down.
Charles was passed from relative to relative to
baby-sitter, and was soon
sold to a waitress in a restaurant in exchange for a
pitcher of beer. An
uncle tracked him down and took him home several days later.
When Charles
was five years old, his mother and a man were convicted of robbing
a service
station in Charlestown, West Virginia. They'd used a Coke bottle to
knock the
attendant unconscious. Caught and sentenced to five years in
Moundsville
Prison, her work assignment was near death row. West Virginia was a
hanging
state at that time, and part of Kathleen's job was to clean the area
that
included the scaffold. One day as she was cleaning, she saw a man
being
escorted to the scaffold. Normally on hanging days, nobody except the
person to
be executed and the prison officials were allowed near the hanging
area, but on
that day, by accident or oversight, the prison officials
neglected to inform
Kathleen of the day's plans. Afraid she might be in
trouble for being in the
vicinity, she hid in a nearby broom closet. When the
trap sprung, the inmate's
weight and sheer velocity caused the rope to sever
his head, and as Kathleen
opened the door to get a glimpse of the hanging, it
promptly rolled to
kathleen's hiding place. She told Charles years later that
mans eyes were still
wide open and death literally stared her in the face.
Twenty-seven years after
that incident, Charles Milles Manson was placed on
Death Row. In his
autobiography, "Manson: In His Own Words", he explained a
sobering
moment."I looked at the gas chamber. The rooms two viewing windows
looked
like two huge eyes of death. Instantly my mind flashed to my mother,
and I had a
vision of her looking into the eyes of death. During that moment,
I understood
more about my mom than any other time in my life". Charles'
mother was
released from prison when he was eight years old, and again he was
either being
passed from relative to relative, or they moved around a lot.
Eventually, when
Charles was twelve years old, his mother found a steady
boyfriend. He soon tired
of having Charles around and gave Kathleen an
ultimatum: him or Charles. Charles
was placed in the Gibault Home for Boys in
Tierre Haute, Indiana. It was a
strict Catholic religious-oriented school,
and the punishment for even the
tiniest infraction was either a wooden
paddle, or a leather strap. Eventually,
living at Gibault got to be too much
for Charles, and he ran away. He slept in
the woods, under bridges, and
wherever else he could find a place. He finally
reached Indianapolis where he
burglarized a grocery store for something to eat.
He found the cash
register change in a cigar box under the counter. It was
slightly over a
hundred dollars, and the first thing he did was rent a room in
Skid Row,
and eat as much as he could possibly handle. A few days later he was
broke
and tired so he'd steal whatever he could to accumulate a little extra
money.
One day he stole a bicycle and was eventually arrested, the police
realized
he was a runaway and located his mother. Unable to provide a stable
home
life, Charles was placed in Father Flanagan's Boy's Town. Four days later,
he
and another boy ran away. They stole a car and wrecked it, followed
by
committing a few robberies resulted in their arrest, and they were placed
in a
juvenile home. Charles' stay there was a repeat of his stay in the
previous
homes, and he was placed in a bonafied reform school. It was at the
Indiana
School for Boys at Plainfield that Charles Manson was beaten and
raped
repeatedly for over three years. He finally escaped successfully when
he was
sixteen years old. Headed towards California, he and a friend stole
cars and
robbed stores along the way. Again he was arrested, and during the
next
thirty-eight months he spent time in four different institutions. In May
of
nineteen fifty-four, at the age of nineteen, he was finally paroled.
Shortly
thereafter he was married. Working at a race track at the time, he
stopped by a
card room and played a few hands of poker. He racked up quite a
pile of winnings
and was surrounded by a group of girls. Paying them no
attention, he caught the
eye of a girl across the room. She was with her
father, a coal-miner. Later,
Charles managed to speak a few words to her.
They started dating, and married
shortly thereafter, in January of nineteen
fifty-five. She became pregnant
almost immediately. Desiring to head to
California but needed a car to take him
there, Charles stole a '51 Mercury.
Predictably, he was caught. He was sent to
the Federal Penitentiary at
Terminal Island, San Pedro. He was, by then,
twenty-one years old. Those
first few months in prison, Charles had a positive
outlook on life, with
thoughts of leading a straight, crime-free life when he
was paroled. Before
the baby-little Charlie-was a year old, Charles' wife
stopped visiting. He
heard from his mother that his wife had left the state with
her new
boyfriend, a trucked. Devastated, he wrote her several letters begging
her to
return, but to no ovail. In his autobiography, Charles Manson states,
"when I
gave up on her, my attitude of wanting to be Mr. Straight left me.
I went
back to being bitter and hating everyone". Shuffled from home to
home as a
child, knowing his prostitute mother never wanted him, being in and
out of
juvenile homes and adult jails, Charles Manson was becoming the
Charles
Manson we've all heard about and feared. He was released from
Terminal Island
and served several years. Paroled in nineteen sixty-seven at
age thirty-two, he
asked if he could stay. "You know what, man, I don't wanna
leave! I don't
have a home out there! Why don't you just take me back inside?
I'm serious man!
I mean it! I don't wanna leave". He did, however, leave
Terminal Island
that day. It was March twenty-first, nineteen sixty-seven,
and the last time
he'd pass through those doors. Charles Manson headed to San
Francisco. Once
there, he liked to hang out at the University of
California-Berkeley campus and
play his guitar. One day, while doing so, he
was sitting on the grass when a dog
started sniffing his feet. He raised his
foot as if to kick it, and it's owner
appeared. Her name was Mary Theresa
Brunner, and she would become the first
member of his "Family". She was tall
and thin, a straight-laced
redhead. Charles convinced her to let him stay
with her, but there was to be no
sex involved. Eventually, however, the
situation changed. Charles somewhat
changed Mary's personality. She let her
guard down and became more open-minded.
She quit her job as the
University of California-Berkeley librarian and she and
Charles stole a
car and traveled. They slept at waysides and such and they'd go
to beaches
where occasionally they would find a homeless girl. The girl would
then join
the group. Thus began the Manson family. The family soon grew to more
than
thirty people. They moved into Spahn's Movie Ranch, just outside
of
Chatsworth California. Few of the Family members actually held jobs,
so they had
to scrounge for food in the dumpsters at local supermarkets.
Their only other
needs or desires were sex and drugs, both of which were
readily available in the
nineteen sixties. Charles Manson and the Family
lived at the ranch until the
arrests and convictions of those hideous crimes
in August of nineteen
sixty-nine. Los Angeles Police Department officers were
called to 10050 Cielo
Drive in Bel Air. They were met with a crime scene
so horrible and bloody that
it might well have come from a Hollywood movie.
There were five victims, all
viciously slain. They were Abigail Folger,
Voytek Frykowski, Jay Sebring, Steven
Parent, and Sharon Tate-Polanski.
On the door to the home where they lost their
lives, a word was written on
the door: PIG. It was later established to be
written in the blood of Sharon
Tate. The Family members physically involved in
the killings were Charles
"Tex" Watson, Patricia "Katie"
Krenwinkle, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van
Hueten, and Linda Kasabian. As the five
about-to-be killers started to walk
up the driveway, they saw headlights. A car
appeared and the killers crouched
down in the shrubbery. When the car stopped,
Tex Wattson approached the
driver, Steven Parent. Watson pulled out his
twenty-two caliber Buntline
revolver and shot Parent. They then pushed the car
back off the driveway.
Assured that the shots fired hadn't alerted neighbors or
authorities, they
entered the house. A man, Voytek Frykowski, had fallen asleep
with the lights
on. Shouting "wake up", Tex Watson approached him and
shot. Susan Atkins,
meanwhile, had been exploring the rest of the home. Tex
ordered her to bring
the rest of the occupants of the house to the living room.
Folger,
Sebring, And Tate herded into the room. Tex ordered Susan Atkins to tie
a
rope around the prisoners' necks, and the Sebring lunged at Watson,
Tex
stabbed her and she fell to the floor. Susan was adding more bonds to
Frykowski
when she was ordered by Tex, "kill him" she stabbed away, while
he
struggled. Somehow he escaped and Watson chased him into the yard,
delivering
the fatal thrusts. Reentering the house, he hit Folger on the head
with his
revolver. Dead she fell to the floor. Sharon Tate was still frozen
with fear and
stupefaction. Remembering her, Tex Watson and Susan Atkins
ignored her pleas for
her unborn child's life and stabbed her to death. The
killers then scribbled
messages such as "HELTER SKELTER" and "PIG"
everywhere,
using their victims blood. The next night, the grisly horror was
repeated at the
home of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca. Leno La Bianca was dead
as a result of
twenty-six stab wounds. A fork protruded from his stomach, and
a knife from his
throat. When his body was discovered, Rosemary La Bianca had
been found stabbed
forty-one times. Again messages were scrawled on the walls
in the victims blood:
"DEATH TO PIGS", "RISE", and "HELTER SKELTER"
A
couple of months later, all of the hands-on killer's, plus Charles Manson
were
arrested. Ultimately tried and convicted, all spent many years in
prison, with
the exception of Linda Kasabian. She became the prosecutions
star witness and
was given immunity in exchange for her testimony. The rest
of the killers were
sentenced to death. Shortly thereafter, however, the
state of California revoked
the death penalty and their sentences were
communed to life. To date, one of the
women has been released, the remaining
two are still in prison, and of course ,
so is Charles Manson. Even now,
twenty-nine years after the terrible tragedies,
people still speculate as to
why Charles Manson turned into such an inhumane
monster. His past speaks for
itself but all I have to say is, parents: take care
of your children. Stand
up for them, lead them, teach them, and don't turn away
from them, maybe that
way, you won't be responsible for what might happen to
them.