Charles Manson aka Charles Milles Maddox was an infamous criminal and cult leader from the United States, born on November 12, 1934, who died on November 19, 2017. He was the leader of the group, known as Manson Family, which was present in California in the late of 1969. During his leadership, followers of the cult committed several murder Including actress Sharon Tate in 1969. Even though Manson did not take an actual part in the murders, he was recorded as guilty for first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The man who led the cult had periods in jails and even attempted to become a musician in Los Angeles. He only spoke to Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys and after he recorded one of his songs without crediting him. Manson was responsible for some of the things that the cult carried out because he shared ideologies and was manipulative. He also had apocalyptic tendencies, which evolved from how he perceived the Beatles’ music, and encouraged the group’s destructive demeanor further. Manson had a relatively unstable childhood. He was born to teenage mother; he lived in several homes and institutions where he was frequently neglected. He has been an arch-criminal in childhood, fire raising and stealing has been his specialties thus he was always booking into reformative schools. At the age of 24, Manson had been married and a father to a little girl and again and again serving time in prison for thefts and frauds, and not keeping paroles. After his discharge from the penitentiary in 1967, Manson relocated to San Francisco to start embracing disciples. Beside, he took up a countercultural image based on free love movement and used charm, drugs and mind control to dominate his followers. This group which was later called the Manson Family became a hippie commune dedicated to the preaching of Charles Manson that resulted in a series of infamous murders. Manson’s parole officer was Roger Smith who oversaw his broad “family,” which was Idle and proliferating through drugs and pornography, and occasionally pro-AAющими. Manson was arrested on July 31st of 1967 in an effort to stop the arrest of one of his followers, Ruth Ann Moorehouse. Instead of going back to prison he had the charge reduced to a misdemeanor and given an additional three years of probation. For the second time Manson escaped trial in July of 1968 lost in an attempt to transfer to Los Angeles their bus stalled with Manson and his followers arrested sound asleep naked on the bus. Later on, he was arrested for a short time for a drug posession charge. The Manson family members include two hitchhikers that Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys took to his house in April 1968. Others followed suit and eventually, members such as Manson were moving in while Wilson was beginning to familiarize Manson with other people connected with the music industry. It would also, during this period, record some songs that are still unreleased to date. The Beach Boys recorded and released a Manson song but under a different name putting it only on Wilson’s account. When Manson started getting into getting into paranoid and heavy drug abuse, Wilson stopped associating with him, however, Manson gave Wilson a threat call when contact was made. Chronicling the lives of the Manson Family — followers of Charles Manson — the current home was the Spahn Ranch, which they occupied in August of 1968; Manson and the ‘girls’ lived on the ranch and worked for the owner George Spahn in exchange for free rent. At this time Manson had apocalyptic visions of an impending race war that he predicted would occur soon, he called it ‘Helter Skelter’, although this was the name of a Beatles song. He expected the Black people to eliminate the white population and he and his supporters would live through the resulting carnage and become the rulers of the remaining Black population whom he felt could not govern themselves.
This was the beginning of the horrifying series of muders that characterized the Manson cult in July 1969/ Manson went to 10050 Cielo Drive looking for Melcher, who occupied the house up to March 1969 but had moved to another house. Even when Manson was taken to the property’s new tenants and told that Melcher had relocated, he went back later to talk to the owner only to be told that Melcher was no longer residing in the premises. It was later to become the scene of a horrific crime. One of the disciples of Manson, the murderer’s companion – Charles “Tex” Watson, got connected with drug trafficking and ceased the attempts on Bernard “Lotsapoppa” Crowe, for which Manson, fearing the reprisals, shot Crowe. Thinking that Crowe was a member of the Black Panther party, Manson ready his people for assaults, making Spahn Ranch a fortified base. Manson and his followers targeted Gary Hinman in late July 1969, by mistake with the assumption that Hinman was a white, wealthy man. Hinman was kidnapped and finally killed after being told by Manson and the action was then made to look like the Black Panthers were responsible. Soon after, on August 9, 1969, the infamous Tate murders was committed So, to answer the first part fo my research question A recent event linked to both Charles Manson and the of the Tate murders was as follows Not long after, in August 1969, the infamous Tate murders took place. Watson with three women killed the people in the Cielo Drive home including Sharon Tate and her friends and other people who were in the house and the garden. The appalling act, carried out in order to serve the intent of Manson, was horribly murderous with symbolic scribblings for making the message clear at the crime scene. The following day I went out one more time during the night with Charles Manson Leslie Van Houten and Clem Grogan after the Tate murders. As reportedly dissatisfied with previous murders, Manson instructed Linda Kasabian to go to the house 3301 Waverly Drive in Los Feliz district of Los Angeles. The home was of Leno LaBianca, a 44 year old supermarket executive and his wife Rosemary LaBianca, 43, a co-owner of a dress shop. The house was next door to one where mop top and his group of processionaries attended a party one year before.
Manson drove up the drive way alone and came out after he had secured the people inside the house; he then told Watson, Krenwinkel and Van Houten to go in. In his autobiography, Watson says that Manson woke Leno with a firearm and restrained him. Entrance and the Rosemary was then brought from the bedroom, and their heads would be covered with pillow cases only fixed tightly in lamp cords. Watson then got up and went out, leaving Manson and the others for the rest of the day. Starting with a bayonet, Watson proceeded to repeatedly pierce Leno LaBianca finally pronounced dead from being stabbed by a bayonet 12 times and having ‘WAR’ carved on his stom¬¬¬ch. In the bedroom, Rosemary also struggled to defend herself to the best of her abilities by coming at Watson with a lamp around her neck to no avail; Krenwinkel and Van Houten joined in stabbing her; Leslie Van Houten delivered 16 stabs the majority of which were deemed as having been inflicted on a dead body. Then the group written on the wall messages like ‘Rise’, ‘Death to pigs’, ‘Healter [sic] Skelter’ on the refridge. Manson, however, led other members of the Family to the Osborn’s Venice home that belonged to actor Saladin Nader, although a murder in this house was to be stopped by Kasabian. He and the group interrupted the plan and went back to Spahn Ranch instead. Later, on August 26, 1969, Family members killed the Hollywood stuntman Donald “Shorty” Shea. According to Manson, Shea was moved to a part of Spahn Ranch that was far from any dwelling where Manson and his followers would finish him off by beating him to death, stabbing him and torturing him. His body was discovered four years later in 1977, and what killed him were severe blows to the head as well as knife stabs. Together, members of the Manson Family were convicted of nine murders, but it was believed they could be involved in other killings as well. The LAPD estimated that there might be other victims of the Family, the number may range from 6 to 12, based on Manson’s statements and testimonies of investigators and victim’s relatives.
Several of the suspected victims are: Nancy Warren, Clyda Dulaney found strangulated in 1968; Marina Habe, her throat sliced; Manson’s uncle Darwin Scott, stabbed in his apartment; others Mark Walts, shot in 1969. There were other murders of Family members to deaths by other causes such as suicide- by-John-Philip-Haught and stab- by- James-Sharp-and-Doreen-Gaul. Also there were some facts: in 1971 the body of Leslie Van Houten’s attorney, Ronald Hughes was found in Ventura County and there were theories which linked the Family to this event. The other murder to be associated with the Manson family happened when James Willett was shot dead and buried by the family members as they feared that he was going to report the Family’s activities. His wife, Lauren, was also killed along with her children. The Family was accused of being involved in severaldecapitation related crimes, but most of these suspected murders are still unsolved. Tate murders made headline on August 9,1969 when the house help; Winifred Chapman was shocked to what she saw at the Polanski residence. Both the Tate and Hinman case involved bloody writings left at the crime scenes, but the LAPD detectives involved in the Tate case dismissed this as a coincidence, convinced the Tate murder was drug related. During the hunt for the killer, many similarities were noted between the cases of Tate and Hinman; particularly the use of characteristic weapons for the bleeding writings made the detectives exchange information. Nonetheless, Manson was not implicated from the outset in the Tate-LaBianca cases especially because of the confusion that characterized investigations, the raid of Spahn Ranch on August 16, where Manson and company were arrested but released when the police could not serve the search warrant properly.
However, they could not apprehend them, and by December 1, 1969, arrest warrant had been issued against Watson, Krenwinkel and Kasabian. Most were already in custody in other states and Kasabian actually turned himself in. finger prints and distinctive revolver left behind helped in establishing the connection of the suspects to the crime had been done. Due to the arrest of Susan Atkins, she started boasting of the crime she committed that propelled the case forward. The trial began June 15, 1970, with Kasabian being the star witness for the prosecution and receiving an immunities deal in return. While on trial, Manson and those that followed him began performing some of the strangest acts such as carving X’s on their cheeks and faces, as well as interrupting the court proceedings. The prosecution stated that Manson’s purpose was to start a ‘Helter Skelter’ a term from The Beatles song, that was to predict a war between the blacks and the whites. Manson’s bizarre behavior forced Judge Older to dismiss him as his own lawyer, and then he was without one. During the trial, Family members would threaten or try to frighten the witnesses and at one time Manson himself tried to get at the judge. There were some suspension of the trial; defense lawyer, Ronald Hughes disappeared; the defense did not call any witness; the defendants demanded that they be allowed to take the stand arguing that they only acted with the influence and direction of Manson. Still, such proceedings were quite disordered, and Manson testified in the absence of the jury, trying to dislocate himself from direct guilt. The trial ended as often with the Manson and his group being disruptive they were removed from the courtroom. Finally, their guilt was established for the prosecution, the major evidence going to the strategy of the killings and a mesmerizing manson.
Conviction and Penalty Phase
The jury ruled ‘not guilty’ for all counts against the defendants and convicted all the four of them on January 25 1971. As we proceed to fury’s penalty stage, the defense attempted to prove that the murders were “copycat” meant to shift blame from Bobby Beausoleil, who had been jailed for a similar murder. They said this was done by Linda Kasabian and not Charles Manson. But conjunctive evidence of the testimony raised difficulties in their case; the mitigation of Manson was not successful. On March 29, 1971, the jury found all four defendants guilty of first degree murder, and on the same day, the jury sentenced all four defendants to death While on April 19, 1971 Judge Older confirmed the same sentence. Third Imprisonment (1971–2017) 1970s-1980s Manson was sent to the state prison on April 22, 1971, on seven charges of first-degree murders and one charge of conspiracy to commit murder. In 1972 its system of death penalty was declared unconstitutional and this led to the recreation of the death penalty statute and manson’s sentence was changed to life imprisonment. He was also convicted of the two other murders on December 13, 1971. He faced his first parole hearing in 1978 and failed to get parole. Attempted Assassination of President Gerald Ford Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme a member of the “Family” tried to kill President Gerald Ford at Sacramento on September 5, 1975 for which she bought a gun and moved to Sacramento to live closer to Manson, who had been imprisoned there. Fromme was given 15 years to life. She attempted to escape from prison in 1987 to try to get to Manson but was recaptured. 1980s-1990s Since her release from prison in 1984, Manson agreed to four television interviews, including one with Geraldo Rivera during a special investigating Satanism. In 1984 he was badly assaulted by an inmate and was seriously injured when he was scalded with boiling water on over twenty per cent of his body. After 1989 Manson was being kept in the Prison at Corcoran State Prison under the Protective Housing Unit. He was convicted of drug trafficking in prison and was found in 1997.
2000s-2017
In 2009 Manson was caught with a cell phone in prison. He also claimed to be bisexual in an interview in 2013 was engaged to Afton Elaine Burton, however they never got wed. However, in 2012 Manson was released for parole; and in the decision it was made that his case will not be reviewed again until 2027. Scholars then speculated that Manson had never had schizophrenia and must have had bipolar disorder along with psychopathy. Illness and Death On 1 January, 2017, Manson had gastrointestinal bleeding that required him to be hospitalized, and he was again transferred back to prison a few days later. He was admitted back in November and succumbed to Cardiac arrest as a complication of Colon cancer on November 19, 2017. Three persons asserted themselves as heirs of Porter’s property and corpse. As of March the same year, Manson’s grandson, Jason Freeman, won the lawsuit and had Manson’s body cremated. Cultural Impact Many people were shocked by murders committed by the so called Manson Family. Manson made Rolling Stone magazine’s cover in May 1970, and several bands were named after or co-opting the Manson name in the following few years. There was a story about a “neo- Manson cult in Europe, bands playing songs in support of Manson.
