Charles Manson
Charles Manson is known as one of the most
sinister and evil criminals of all
time. He organized the murders that
shocked the world and his name still strikes
fear into American hearts.
Manson’s childhood, personality, and uncanny
ability to control people led to
the creation of a family-like cult and
ultimately to the bloody murders of
numerous innocent people. Charles M. Manson
was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on
November 11, 1934. His mother, Kathleen Maddox,
was a teenage prostitute.
Manson’s father walked out on the still pregnant
Maddox, never to be seen
again. In order to give her bastard son a name, Ms.
Maddox married
William Manson. He soon abandoned the both of them. Manson’s
mother often
neglected Charles after her husband left her. She tried to put him
into a
foster home, but the arrangements fell through. As a last resort she
sent
Charles to school in Terre Haute, Indiana. Mrs. Manson failed to
make the
payments for the school and once again Charles was sent back to his
mother’s
abuse. At only fourteen, Manson left his mother and rented a room
for himself.
He supported himself with odd jobs and petty theft. His
mother turned him into
the juvenile authorities, who had him sent to "Boys
Town," a juvenile
detention center, near Omaha, Nebraska. Charles spent a
total of three days in
"Boys Town" before running away. He was arrested
in Peoria, Illinois for
robbing a grocery store and was then sent to the
Indiana Boys School in
Plainfield, Indiana, where he ran away another
eighteen times before he was
caught and sent to the National Training School
for Boys in Washington D.C.
Manson never had a place to call "home" or a
real family. He spent his
childhood being sent from one place to another, and
trouble always seemed to
follow him. His mother’s negligence left Manson
without a home and without
much of a future. Manson turned to crime to
support himself, and he soon became
very good at it. When just a child, he
became a criminal and spent his last
years of childhood in a correctional
facility. After his release from the
training school in 1954, a new period of
Manson’s life began. He went to West
Virginia and soon married a girl
named Rosalie Jean Willis. She became pregnant
and Manson had a child. This
was Manson’s first real family, but he didn’t
stray from the criminal
lifestyle. He started stealing cars to make the money
necessary to support
his new family. By the time the baby was born, Manson was
in prison on Grand
Theft Auto charges. In 1958 Charles was released from prison.
His wife
and child had left him, leaving Charles alone once again. Several
arrests for
car theft and pimping followed; in 1960 Charles was given ten
years
imprisonment for forging government checks. While he was serving his
ten year
sentence at McNeil Penitentiary, he studied philosophy, took up
guitar, and
taught himself sing and compose songs. His newfound musical
skills would later
attract followers. His study of philosophy helped create
some of his outlandish
ideas that later appealed to his would-be followers.
Manson was released in
March, 1967 after serving seven years. By the time
Manson was thirty-two years
old, he had spent seventeen years, more than half
of his life, in prison. This
long stretch of incarceration had left its mark.
"If Charlie has any roots,
they’re in the penal system," 1 said one
acquaintance. "Inside, you have
to be aware of everything, and when he came
out, Charlie was like a cat. Nothing
got by Charlie if something happened
within a hundred miles of him, he made sure
he knew about it. Everytime he
came into a room, he cased it, like an animal.
Where were the windows?
What was the quickest way out? He never sat with his
back to the door." Soon
after his release, Manson traveled to Haight Ashbury,
where the "hippie"
movement was in full force. At this time, hippies were
gentle people,
believing in peace, love, and sharing with others. This was a
perfect
environment for Manson to gain followers. Manson’s probation
officer
remembers he was "shaken" by the friendliness of the hippies, but
before
long, Manson learned how to exploit it. He started to collect a
retinue of
impressionable girls searching for a community of love. With a
guitar, a
pleasant voice, sinuous mannerisms, and sweet talk with empty
promises, Manson
convinced many young-adults to leave their lives and
families to be with him.
The beginnings of his "Family" took shape.
Whenever Manson succeeded in
gaining one of these followers, the first thing
he did was to deprogram both
their ego and their "hang ups," about
conventional society. By "hang
ups," he meant anything he did not like.
Richard DeMargeno, a criminologist,
believed Manson was able to control these
people by replacing their father
figures. "It wasn’t a very difficult
process. He was dealing with lonely
insecure people in need of a father
figure, people who didn’t have much ego to
begin with. What he did, in
effect, was to tear down that ego and substitute
himself, thus gaining
enormous control over his followers." 2 To his girls,
Charles Manson was
a "beautiful man who loved us all totally." Later, a
group of young women
outside of Manson’s murder trial replied, "We’re
waiting for our father to be
set free," when asked why they sat on the
street-side corner. Manson had
obviously replaced these girls’ father figure,
placing himself at the center
of their lives. Manson soon recruited dozens of
girls into his "Family." Yet,
many outsiders found him to be a relentless
recruiter who came on strong with
every girl he met, a cynic who treated his
followers like possessions and
seldom showed any real affection to them. Alan
Springer, a man Manson
once tried to recruit, said, "In away he was very frank
and truthful, but in
away he was very treacherous with words."3 Dr. David
Smith, founder and
director of the free clinic in Haight Ashbury, thought that
these two sides
of Charles Manson were not contradictory: "To take an example,
if you get to
know any paranoid schizophrenics it won’t puzzle you at all.
The
schizophrenic usually believes in a mystical system in which he is right,
and he
can plan in the most calculating and cunning way possible. He himself
does not
really know he is a con man, or whether he really does love the
girls. He
vacillates between one emotion and the other, one of the
characteristics of a
schizoid personality is the inability to sustain one
emotion. It doesn’t
confuse me that he would be able to convey sincere
emotion and carry on in a
very plotting way. Of course, he would hide the
cunning side as much as possible
from those he wanted to involve in his
system." 4 When a new girl came into
Manson’s group, their biggest
conflict was the idea of sex on demand. Charles
could be very brutal when
necessary and any girl that stayed with him accepted
the idea of having sex
with him or anyone else he wanted. He preached that women
should be
submissive to men. Surprisingly, these girls came to believe as he
did.
Obviously, Charles had an unbelievable talent of manipulating
people.
According to Paul Watkins, a one-time follower of Manson, he soon
had almost
complete control over his followers. "I lived with Charlie for
about one year
straight and on and off for two years. I know Charlie. I know
him inside and
out. I became Charlie. Everything I once was, was Charlie.
There was nothing
left of me anymore. And all of the people in the Family,
there’s nothing left
of them anymore, they’re all Charlie too." 5 Charles
packed his crew of
fourteen, consisting of nine girls and five boys, into an
old school bus and
headed south in the spring of 1968. The "Family" settled
at Spahn Ranch in
the Santa Susana Mountains, just north of San Fernando
Valley. The owner of the
Ranch, eighty-five year old George Spahn, was
blind and feeble and allowed the
family to stay with him. Manson ordered one
of his girlsto care for the man so
that the "Family" could might stay there
as long as they wished. Mr. Spahn
soon grew desperately afraid of Manson and
only allowed him to stay because he
enjoyed the attention he got from the
girls who cooked and cleaned for him. It
was at this ranch that Manson
seriously started developing his cult. Manson’s
following grew and many more
people were recruited in the "Family." He
started preaching to his followers
in bizarre ways. He would have the group take
acid trips then listen to him
as he spun twisted stories that put ideas into
their heads. Charles would
reenact the Crucifixion of Christ, trying to instill
upon his follower’s
minds that he was Jesus Christ, that he was a higher power
that they all
needed to follow unquestionably. Manson convinced his followers
that a war of
the races was coming, which he named Helter Skelter. He got the
name from a
Beatles song, and had his followers prepare for the upcoming war
by
collecting guns and other weapons. Manson turned the ranch into a
fortress. He
started to change his following from being a group of freedom
searching people
into an organized army-like force. A prosecution witness in
the later murder
trial said, "..., he [Manson] wants to build up a thing
where he can be leader
of the world. He’s crazy." 6 The men would target
practice and guards were
posted. Escape routes to the desert were planned.
Caches of gasoline and other
necessities were buried all over the Death
Valley area. Then Manson had his
followers start the crimes, then he had them
start the killings. On August 9th,
1969, Manson ordered a party of his
followers to burglarize a residence in the
Los Angeles. All of the people
going knew they were supposed to kill everyone
there, yet they didn’t think
twice about doing it for Manson. Before they
left, Manson told the party, "If
you’re going to do something, leave
something witchy." 7 This order was later
followed to a hideous extent. The
residence targeted by Manson for the
robbery and murders belonged to Roman
Polanski, a movie director, and his
pregnant wife Sharon Tate, an up-and-coming
movie star. Mr. Polanski was in
Europe. His wife had Abigail Folger and Voytek
Frykowski staying with her
until his return. That night, Jay Sebring and Steven
Parent were visiting
Mrs. Tate. Manson’s followers broke into the residence,
and viciously
murdered everyone there. They were very brutal in the slayings,
acting
without remorse or guilt. Manson had them believing there was nothing
wrong
with murdering these people. One of Manson’s girls, Sandra Good,
said,
"Whatever is necessary, you do it. When somebody needs to be
killed, there’s
no wrong. You do it, then you move on." 8 Manson’s followers
mutilated the
bodies, Ms. Folger’s corpse was so bloody that her once white
night gown
appeared to be red. Sharon Tate’s body was no different. She was
covered in
stab wounds and had a rope tied around her neck that ran over a
rafter in the
ceiling and was bound to Mr. Frykowski’s neck. The word ‘PIG’
was scrolled
with blood on the front door of the home, thus Manson’s orders
of leaving
something "witchy" were followed. Susan Atkins, one of Manson’s
followers,
claimed to have almost enjoyed these murders, saying it gave her a
sort of trip.
She had wanted to cut out the baby, Susan said, but there
hadn’t been time.
They wanted to take out the eyes of the people, and
squash them against the
walls, and cut off their fingers. "We were going to
mutilate them, but we
didn’t have a chance to." 9 The next night following
the Tate murders,
Manson and his followers struck again. The target was
the home of Mr. and Mrs.
LaBianca. This time, Manson himself accompanied
his family members to the
residence. After the group broke into the home and
detained the LaBianca’s,
Manson issued orders to kill the couple and then
left. Manson’s followers
stabbed Mrs. LaBianca fourty-one times, stabbed her
husband to death, left a
fork and a knife in his chest, and carved the word
"WAR" into his stomach.
The words "RISE", "HELTER SKELTER", and "DEATH TO
PIGS" were
scribbled on the walls and the refrigerator in the victims’ blood.
These
brutal slayings demonstrate the evil in Manson’s warped mind. He was
able to
convince normal human beings to commit unspeakable acts of violence
the likes of
which the world had never seen. In a sense, Manson molded his
followers’
beliefs and values to represent his own. He had once again ordered
his
"Family" members to slay innocent people in his name and they gladly
did so.
It wasn’t long before Manson and his followers were arrested for
the savage
murders. Manson carved an "X" into his head, that he later turned
into a
swastica, claiming that he "X’d" himself from our world. Many of his
women
quickly followed suit. Even when faced with the death penalty for the
murders,
Manson’s followers still believed in and loved their leader. The
murder trial
attested to Manson’s twisted mind even more. He often burst out
with strange
comments or demands, and freely spoke of his strange ideas in
front of the jury.
It soon became obvious that Manson had some sort of
psychological problam. Yet,
through the whole trial, Manson contested that he
was innocent, that he didn’t
force any of his followers to do anything. This
showed he had no love for his
followers, he didn’t care what happened to
them. Manson said to the
prosecuting attorney, "You know, I only made love to
her [a women follower]
two or three times. After she had her baby and lost
her shape, I couldn’t have
cared less about her."10 The prosecution attorney
did an excellent job of
proving the murderers’ guilt, and all persons
charged, including Manson, were
found guilty. The jury sentenced all of the
murderers to be put to death, but
because the state of California soon after
abolished the death penalty, the
sentences were commuted to life
imprisonment. To this day, Manson and his
followers are still in prison.
Manson is eligible for parole, and has had
several hearings. He still claims
that he wasn’t responsible for the murders
and acts as if the bloody slayings
were of no importance. Manson was a criminal
to the core. In his life he had
committed almost every crime imaginable. His
life of crime developed a warped
mind that he used to sinister ends. His never
having a loving family deadened
him to having any morals or guilty feelings. He
felt no remorse for the
killings and acted as if the people he had killed did
not deserve to live.
His uncanny ability to control people allowed him to gather
the followers he
needed to accomplish his devilish tasks. He was able to
convince these
followers into sharing his beliefs and used these people as
killing machines.
The murders of numerous innocent people were a direct result
of Manson’s
ability to control people and his corrupted childhood that created
created
his criminal mind.
Endnotes
1Steven Roberts, "Charles Manson: One
Man’s Family," New York Times,
January 4, 1970. 2Ibid. 3Eve Babitz, The
Manson Murders, W.W. Norton &
Company Inc., 1974, p. 113. 4Ibid. p.
87 5Vincent Bugliosi, Helter Skelter,
Bantam Books, October 1975, p. 623.
6Ibid. p. 122. 7"The Manson Women: Inside
the Muders," Turning Point, ABC,
New York, November 1994. 8Bugliosi, p. 624.
9Bugliosi, p. 114.
10Bugliosi, p. 415
Bibliography
Babitz, Eve, The Manson Murders,
New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
1974. Bugliosi, Vincent,
Helter Skelter, Bantam Books, October, 1975. Roberts,
Steven, "Charles
Manson: One Man’s Family," New York Times, 45:1-3,
January 4, 1970.
Sanders, Ed, The Family, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1971.
"The
Manson Women: Inside the Murders," Turning Point, New York, ABC,
November
9, 1994. The Internet (Universal Relay Languange Addresses
Available.)
Unknown, "The Power of a Cult," Glamour, 11:160-183, January,
1995.
Encyclopedia of Occultims and Parasychology, Gale Research, Inc.,
1991.