A wild-eyed and aging Charles Manson is asked in an interview who he actually is.
He goofs around a little, playing the madman he’s expected to be, and whispers,
“Nobody.” He goes on, “I'm nobody. I'm a tramp, a bum, a hobo. I'm a boxcar and a jug of wine. And a
straight razor...if you get too close to me.” Who was he?
It’s a good question. He became the embodiment of the American monster, a totemic
ghoul representing the downfall of a decade that changed a country. He was a brutal winter that
followed a summer of love. If you believe the hype, Manson was the evilest man in the world,
the personification of a society gone wrong. He might have been bad, but if he was as evil
and powerful as many people made him out to be is another question. The story of Manson has changed
a lot over the years, especially since a guy named Tom O’Neill published an account of the Manson
murders that took him 20 years to research. That book is called “Chaos: Charles Manson,
the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties” and our indefatigable researchers at the
Infographics Show have read it. The Manson we all knew from earlier books, especially “Helter
Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders” isn’t quite the same guy after reading that.
We won’t go too much into Manson’s upbringing, but we will say that the young Charles Manson
didn’t have the best start in life. He was bruised and broken from a young age. He was
the fallout from the American Dream, and crime became second nature to him,
the petty stuff at least during his younger years. He might also have been the scapegoat that was set
up to be the man that pretty much ended the idealism of the 60s counterculture.
After his crimes came to light, the curtain was drawn on the hippie era, and it was business as
usual in the USA. The final credits rolled over the glare of Manson’s deranged face.
What’s interesting when we talk about how he got caught is how he also got away numerous
times with a lot of crime. O’Neill’s book tells us something we didn’t fully understand about
Manson’s life. That is, he was arrested many times, but for some reason, that doesn’t make
much sense, the cops just kept letting him go. O’Neill suggests that cops released Manson on many
occasions because someone wanted him released. Maybe Manson was part of someone’s bigger plans.
We know for a fact that the CIA back in those days was working on mind control projects using
LSD. We also know that Manson the messiah managed to get the folks who followed him to commit some
terrible crimes. The big question nowadays is did the CIA use Manson as one of its test subjects,
and did Manson employ the same mind control techniques on his “family”?
By the time he was 32, he’d spent more than half of his life in prison. Then in 1967, he violated
his parole by leaving the state he was in and somehow got away with it. He ended up in San
Francisco where he became part of drug experiments at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic.
O’Neill cannot connect Manson with the CIA’s own experiments, but let’s just say the connection is
plausible. In light of his story, we will just say that Manson was certainly a blip on the radar of
the authorities. By the time he was arrested, that blip looked more like a coat of paint.
It was around this time that he started his cult, the Manson Family. It was also around this time
that 10050 Cielo Drive, a house in Benedict Canyon, LA, was frequented by the rich and famous,
the starlets, the freaks, anyone wanting a good time under the influence of a cornucopia of drugs.
That is where up-and-coming actress Sharon Tate lived with her husband,
film director Roman Polanski. It’s where Polanski made videos of her. Let’s just say
some of those shoots were highly unethical. That remained a secret for a long time.
What exactly went down in that house prior to the murders remains partly a mystery,
but we know what happened on August 9, 1969. That was the murder of five people.
Under the orders of Manson, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and Patricia
Krenwinkel went to the house. Polanski was away in Europe making a movie, but Tate,
then eight and a half months pregnant, was at home. Also in the house were Jay Sebring, Abigail
Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent. Watson later testified, “He (Manson) said for me
to take the gun and knife and go up to where Terry Melcher used to live. He said to kill everybody in
the house as gruesome as I could. I believe he said something about movie stars living there.”
Terry Melcher is another story. He was a music producer who’d come to know Manson
through Beach Boy’s star Dennis Wilson. Melcher had once expressed interest in
Manson’s music only to snub him later. Melcher later lied under oath about the
full extent of his relationship with Manson, but let’s just say Manson didn’t like him after
that rebuff of his questionable talents. He also thought he still lived at that house at the time
of the murders, or at least, that’s one story. Manson might have known Melcher didn’t live
there anymore. What seems sure if you believe O’Neill’s compelling research,
is that Melcher knew Manson a whole lot better than he made out in court. It seems Melcher
had been in a relationship with one of the young female Manson family and that Tex Watson knew that
house very well. He’d been there many times before the night of the murders, according to O’Neill.
So, all these people, the hippie freaks, and the stars were somehow mixed up. Manson had
stayed with Wilson for a while before he and his family moved to a place called Spahn Movie Ranch,
an abandoned place no longer used to shoot movies. On the night of the murders, Watson climbed up a
telephone pole and cut the phone line to the house. The women were waiting nearby.
The first of the victims, 18-year old Parent, was the first to die.
He approached Watson and asked what he was doing at the house, which ended with Parent being shot
four times. Parent was only really at the house by accident. He wasn’t part of the so-called scene.
Watson then got into the house through a window and let the girls in through the door. Frykowski,
who was asleep on the couch, was rudely awaken. Surprised, he asked Watson what he was doing in
the house. Watson replied, “I'm the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business.”
One of the girls, Atkins, then got a towel and tied Frykowski’s hands with it. Atkins,
under Watson’s orders, went to see who else was in the house. She found Abigail Folger,
a 25-year old woman heir to a coffee business fortune. She was the girlfriend of Frykowski.
When Atkins walked into the bedroom, Folger was reading a book. This being
a house where many people came and went, Folger just looked up and smiled at Atkins.
Atkins then walked down the hall and looked into another room. There she saw the pregnant Tate,
dressed only in her underwear, chatting with Sebring, a 35-year celebrity hairstylist.
He’d once been the boyfriend of Tate, a young woman who’d just played her biggest
film role in “The Thirteen Chairs.” Tate had been in good spirits,
landing that role, about to have a child, and often being the center of attention of what
she called “The Love House.” She was also married to a man who often demeaned her.
Atkins went back to the living room and told Watson what she’d seen. They both tied Frykowski
again, this time with nylon rope. Atkins then walked back to the bedrooms with a knife in
her hand and ordered everyone to go to the living room. She said to Tate and Sebring,
“Don’t say a word or you’re dead.” Once in the living room, now frightened
out of their lives, they pleaded with the intruders and offered them cash.
All three of them were shoved onto their fronts and placed next to the fireplace. Watson tied a
rope around the necks of Sebring and Tate and tied the same piece of rope to a beam in the ceiling.
Sebring pleaded again, this time telling the intruders that Tate was obviously pregnant
and this was disgusting behavior. Watson shot him on the spot. The others screamed. The rope
tightened around Tate’s neck. Watson then knelt down and repeatedly stabbed Sebring.
He told one of the girls to turn off the lights. Tate screamed, “What are you going to do with us?”
Watson replied, “You’re all going to die.” Frykwoski managed to get out of his binds,
but Atkins was soon on him stabbing him numerous times all over his body. With
blood going everywhere, he tried to run out of the door, but Atkins ran after him. Watson put
two bullets into Frykowski and then broke the butt of the gun after hitting him over the head.
Folger, still in her nightgown, managed to make a run for it. She got as far as the lawn when one of
the other girls, Krenwinkel, caught up with her. Krenwinkel drove that knife into her 28 times. By
the time Watson arrived to do more damage, Folger just said, “I give up. I’m already dead. Take me.”
Tate was now crying in the living room with Atkins standing next to her. Tate pleaded with them.
It didn’t work. She was also stabbed many times. Atkins used some of her blood to
write “PIG” on the wall. Manson had given orders earlier to “Leave a sign...something witchy.”
They all returned to the ranch and went to bed. Atkins later said,
“I could not think about anything. It was almost as if I had passed out, blacked out.
My head was blank. There was nothing in me.” When the media found out about the murders
they called it an orgy of violence. The LA Times wrote, “Ritualistic Slayings.”
This caused widespread panic, especially in an era where more conservative folks
believed those freaks with long hair were destroying the fabric of society.
Some reports even said Sebring had been wearing a black hood, a Satanist’s hood!
Then there was Polanski, a man who’d made the horror movie about Satanists called Rosemary’s
Baby. Some people said Polanski himself was an occultist. There were rumors that he’d been at
a party in London and said, “eeny, meeny miney mo, who will be the next to go?” Then the phone rang,
and he was told about the slayings. That never really happened.
Even with all this hysteria, Manson wasn’t content with the panic. The next night he
and six of the family went out hunting in an old Ford. They drove for three hours and then
pulled up outside a house, 3301 Waverly Drive. They had no idea who lived there.
Manson ordered Watson, Krenwikel and now a new killer-to-be, Leslie “Lu-Lu” Van Houten,
to do the killing. Manson had just snooped around the house, and when he
got back to the car, he told them what to do. Inside the house was the supermarket executive
Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary. Both were stabbed by Watson with a bayonet and Leno was
stabbed by the girls with a knife. The word “WAR” was carved into her belly. Watson took a shower,
and the girls used blood to write “Rise” and “Death to pigs” on the walls.
Krenwinkel also daubed the words “Healter Skelter” on the fridge. She meant to write “Helter Skelter”
the name of a Beatle’s song. She also planted a steak knife in the woman’s neck. At this point,
Manson and the others had already driven away, leaving the killers to make their own way home.
As for Helter Skelter, in Britain, it’s a swirling slide for kids.
According to Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor and
writer of the best-known Manson book “Helter Skelter”, the cult believed in a race war,
related to that name. They killed because they wanted the murders to be blamed on blacks,
which would result in a race war, and they would hide out in the desert as it happened.
When the war was over, they’d return and take power from the winners of the war, the blacks.
This theory is as far-out as the hippies he was talking about. Tom O’Neill doesn’t believe a
word of it. In fact, he has said Bugliosi made a lot up, and lied about a lot more.
For that, Bugliosi threatened to sue O’Neill if he ever published his book.
Manson himself denied there was ever Helter Skelter-focused plan. He once explained why
the term was used, saying, “It means confusion, literally. It doesn't mean any war with anyone.
It doesn't mean that some people are going to kill other people…. Helter Skelter is confusion.”
He also said, “As far as lining up someone for some kind of helter-skelter trip, you know, that's
the District Attorney's motive. That's the only thing he could find for a motive to throw up on
top of all that confusion he had. There was no such thing in my mind as helter-skelter.”
Let’s remember here that Manson didn’t actually kill anyone, so there had to be a conspiracy.
The press went along with it. Manson might not have been a serial killer.
He was portrayed as something even worse. It was said the Manson Family were blood-thirsty
robots controlled by an “evil Pied piper” who followed Manson with blind obedience.
They belonged to a “hippie drug and murder cult”. They were the result of children
taking drugs, growing their hair long, complaining about war and corruption,
and talking too much about freedom. They were what happens when you don’t do what you are told.
That’s why many people think the CIA may have had a hand in creating this kind of chaos.
Ok, back to the main story. At first, the LAPD said there
was no connection between the Tate and LaBianca homicides, although they couldn’t ignore the
similarities and some connection with what they called “the singing group the Beatles.”
According to Bugliosi’s account, the Manson family had left the Spahn
Ranch to go searching for that place in the desert where they would lay low while whites
and blacks fought each other in the race war. It’s true that Manson and some of his followers
had relocated to Death Valley. That’s where they were later picked up by cops, not for murder,
but for car theft. The officers involved had no idea who they had on their hands.
Meanwhile, cops in LA had spoken to bikers who talked about how the family
was linked to the murders. Also, a friend of Atkins had told the cops that she had
been involved in the murders. She was also wanted in connection with another murder.
The victim was Gary Hinman, and he’s been killed prior to the other killings. The
reason was apparently Manson believed he owed money to the family. In this case,
Manson had done some of the dirty work, slashing Hinman and cutting some of his ear off. Still
Hinman was killed by another member of the family. The word “Political piggy” was written on the
wall, although this wasn’t a politically motivated crime. Years later, it was said the killing was
simply over drugs or drug money. The political thing could have been a ruse, because the family
wanted the blame to fall on the Black Panthers, an African-American political organization.
Atkins admitted to police she’d been involved in that murder. While in a detention center, she then
told some inmates that the family was behind the other murders. Now cops went after the family.
They got warrants and arrested Watson and some of the women. Remember Manson and the others were
already in detention for the car theft thing. Now they had most of them rounded up, they used
fingerprint evidence to connect some dots. Police also found the gun used to shoot Parent, but they
didn’t find the knives. They did, however, find bloodied clothes ditched after the Tate murders.
The trial was a media fest if ever there was one. The girls acted the part,
laughing and smiling and generally looking like crazed hippies. No doubt they were crazed hippies,
but they might not have been as demonic as was made out. They were young and stupid if anything,
and also heartless, brutal killers. A member named Linda Kasabian, who hadn’t
killed anyone, had been a lookout on one of the nights. She might also have stopped another set of
murders from happening. It helped the prosecution greatly that she testified against the others.
Charles Manson was eventually convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder
for the Tate-LaBianca crimes. Manson, as well as Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten,
were handed the death penalty but those were commuted to life sentences after the abolishment
of the death penalty in California. People said that was the end of
the 1960s era. Idealism was dead. It is Manson only, really, who has gone down
in history. The girls might also have been his victims was the rationale given by some people.
Manson was the male puppet master, even if Watson had done much of the slaying.
Atkins died in prison in 2009. Krenwinkel, now 73, is still in prison. 72-year old Van Houten
is also in prison right now, as is 75-year old Tex Watson. Manson died in prison in 2017.
He didn’t half rant a lot during the years of his incarceration, coming off for some people
as the “nobody” he once admitted to being. To others, he was the fiend of all fiends.
Why did they really do what they did? It’s doubtful a race war was anything to
do with it. Manson might have been the leader, but if he had some big, grand plan that only
a demi-God could implement, is perhaps a bit overblown. He was an angry man with influence
over impressionable, lost young folks. Like many maniacs, he tried to justify the unjustifiable.
He once said: “These children that come at you with knives,
they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.
Most of the people at the ranch that you call the Family were just people that you did not want.”
As for if the CIA had anything to do with the Manson Family, well,
that will always remain top secret, but so-called “spooks” could well have lived in the shadows.
Now you need to watch “The Most Evil Cults In The History of Mankind.” Or,
have a look at “What Really Happened In Waco, Texas (Story About A Cult)?”