Charles Manson

Charles Milles Manson (Cincinnati, Ohio, November 12, 1934-Bakersfield, California, November 19, 2017) was an American criminal, sectarian, and amateur musician, known for leading what was became known as "The Manson Family", a group of Manson supporters that emerged in the California desert in the late 1960s. In 1971, he was found guilty of conspiring to murder seven people: Actress Sharon Tate and four others at Tate's home in Beverly Hills; and the next day, of a marriage, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca; all carried out by the members of the group, who followed his instructions. Manson was also found guilty of two other murders: those of Gary Hinman and Donald Shorty Shea.

Manson believed in what he himself called Helte sir Skelter, a term he borrowed from The Beatles' song "Helter Skelter." Manson interpreted the song as talking about a hypothetical race war between blacks and whites that he claimed was coming. The song's title was found written in blood at the scene of one of Manson's ordered crimes. He believed that the murders could help precipitate such a race war. In the United States, Charles Manson has been mythologized as an emblem of madness, violence and the macabre. The term Helter Skelter was later used by the prosecutor in the Manson trial, Vincent Bugliosi, as the title of the book he wrote on the Manson murders.

At the time "The Manson Family" began to form, Manson was an ex-convict who had spent half his life in correctional institutions for a variety of crimes. Before the murders, he was an underground musician in Los Angeles, largely thanks to his casual association with Dennis Wilson, drummer and co-founder of The Beach Boys. After Manson was charged with the crimes of which he was subsequently convicted, recordings of songs written and performed by him were released. Several musicians have been inspired by Manson to compose songs or have covered some of his songs, including Guns N & # 39; Roses, White Zombie, Devendra Banhart, System of a Down, Scars on Broadway and Marilyn Manson.

Manson was sentenced to death, but the decision was automatically commuted to life in prison without parole when a 1972 California Supreme Court decision temporarily eliminated the death penalty in the state. Manson was incarcerated in the prison state prison in Corcoran, California, since 1969, and after spending 46 years in prison, he died in 2017 from colon cancer and cardiorespiratory arrest at the age of 83.

Biography

Early Years

Police photo of Manson in 1956.

The son of a 16-year-old prostitute named Kathleen Maddox (1918-1973), Charles Manson was born at Cincinnati General Hospital, Ohio. His full name is Charles Milles Maddox Some time after his birth, his mother, who was briefly married to a laborer named William Manson, gave him this last name. His biological father appears to have been a colonel named Walker Scott, against whom Kathleen Maddox brought a paternity suit that led to a settled judgment in 1937. Charles Manson may never have met his biological father.

Many details about Manson's early years are controversial, due to the variety of different stories that have been offered to the media, many of which have turned out to be untrue. Manson's mother was allegedly an alcoholic. According to Manson, his mother once sold him for a pitcher of beer to a childless waitress, only for his uncle to get the boy back a few days later.

When Manson's mother and brother were sentenced to five years in prison for robbing a gas station in 1939 in Charleston, West Virginia, Manson went to his aunt and uncle's home in McMechen, West Virginia. In 1947, Kathleen Maddox tried to place Manson in an orphanage, but she couldn't because there were no places. The court placed Manson in the "Gibault School for Boys" in Terre Haute, Indiana, a school for homeless children. After ten months, Manson eloped to return to his mother's home, but his mother rejected him.

First arrest

It is known that his first armed robbery was in 1947, at the age of thirteen, and that he held up a grocery store. After this incident, Manson was locked up in a reformatory from which he escaped four days later with another boy. Along the way, Manson and his friend committed two other armed crimes. In 1951, after a series of arrests and escapes, Manson was sent to prison for driving a stolen vehicle. By the end of 1952, there were already eight charges against him. He was transferred to another prison and released in 1954 for good behavior. In 1954, at the age of nineteen, Manson married Rosalie Jean Willis, a seventeen-year-old [nurse]. With her he would have her first child.

Second arrest

He was later arrested again for auto theft. In 1958, he was provisionally released, but was arrested again in 1961 for check forgery. A short time later, already divorced from his first wife, he marries the prostitute Candy & # 34; Leona & # 34; Stevens. From that marriage, Charles Luther Manson, his second known son, was born. Manson had spent most of his adult life in prison, primarily for auto theft and fraud, though he, too, was charged with pimping.

At that time, and again in jail, he began his esoteric training and his interest in oriental philosophy.

The Manson Family

In the late 1960s, Manson formed a group of people in California, later called "The Manson Family". The group was involved in the murder of Gary Hinman in July 1969, later gaining national notoriety after the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others in her home on August 9, 1969, and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the next day. The Tate-LaBianca murders were carried out by Tex Watson and three other members of “The Manson Family”, acting on Manson's specific instructions. They were also responsible for other assaults, robberies, crimes, and the attempted assassination of United States President Gerald Ford in Sacramento.

Trial and imprisonment

Charles Manson Reserve Photo for San Quintin State Prison, California, 1971.

Manson was booked into the Los Angeles County State Prison on April 22, 1971, on seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy, in the deaths of Abigail Ann Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Steven Earl Parent, Sharon Tate Polanski, Jay Sebring, Leno, and Rosemary LaBianca. He was sentenced to death. When the death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 1972, he was re-sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. His original death sentence was modified to life imprisonment on February 2, 1977.

On December 13, 1971, Manson was convicted of first-degree murder in Los Angeles County court for the July 25, 1969 death of musician Gary Hinman. He was also convicted of first-degree murder. degree for the August 1969 death of Donald Jerome "Shorty" Shea.

Post-Trial Period

Manson in 2009.

On September 25, 1984, Jan Holmstron, 36, a parricide, convicted in the same prison as Manson (California Medical Facility, Vacaville), tried to burn him alive by pouring a can of paint thinner on him and setting it on fire. Despite suffering second and third degree burns on 20% of his body, Manson recovered from his injuries.

Even after being locked up for life, Charles Manson's name occasionally found its way into newspapers around the world. From time to time he would allow a journalist or even a television station to visit him in his "involuntary withdrawal from the world", as happened in February 1987 with a large-audience American television network, where he declared that he had nothing what to regret

Manson in June 2011.

In 2012, Manson was denied parole by a board for the twelfth time and, prison officials announced at the time, he might not have another chance to apply until 2027.

In 2013, Manson nearly married a 26-year-old named Afton "Star" Elaine Burton, who was visiting him in prison for over 7 years. However, the license to marry recently expired without this happening.

In November 1969, a bird watcher found the lifeless body of a young woman in some bushes on the famous Mulholland Drive. The woman had been stabbed more than 150 times in different parts of her body. Her name was withheld because when she was found in the bushes, she had no identification and her family never reported her missing. Detectives tried to find her identity, but the techniques at the time were very limited. The victim was identified by authorities at the time as "Jane Doe 59".

In June 2015, a friend of the victim's family found the profile of "Jane Doe 59" on a website. After the family contacted the National System of Missing and Unidentified Persons (NamUs), the authorities decided to reopen the case to carry out new DNA tests, which finally revealed the identity of the woman. Police and the victim's sister confirmed that whoever was registered for decades as "Jane Doe 59" is actually Reet Jurvetson. The murder was perpetrated just 3 days after the murders of Sharon Tate and the LaBianca family. The scene of the crime is also a few meters from said murders. The US authorities are currently working on the case, to find out if "The Manson Family" is guilty or innocent of this crime.

Death

Charles Manson in 2017

On January 1, 2017, Manson was taken to a Bakersfield hospital due to anal bleeding. A source told the Los Angeles Times that Manson was in serious condition. A week later, Manson returned to a central California prison following the medical issue.

On November 15, 2017, a source not authorized to speak for the department of corrections confirmed that Manson had been admitted to a hospital in Bakersfield, although the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation never confirmed this. Manson died in hospital four days later, on November 19, one week after his 83rd birthday. The underlying causes of death were colon cancer and cardiorespiratory arrest.

After a tough legal battle over ownership of his body, Charles Manson would finally be cremated four months after his death in the Californian town of Porterville.

Music by Charles Manson

Charles Manson met Dennis Wilson (drummer for The Beach Boys) in mid-1968. According to his friend and later lyricist, Stanley Shapiro, one day as Dennis was driving down the highway he picked up two girls who were doing hitch-stop to his car who turned out to be members of the Manson clan and kept calling Charlie Manson "the magician".

In 1968, Phil Kaufman, who had known Manson in prison, briefly moved in with Manson and "The Family." Kaufman continually urged Manson to record a few songs. On March 6, 1970, the day the court struck down Manson's request to be his own lawyer at trial, LIE, an album of Charles Manson songs was released,. included on the album was the song 'Cease to Exist', a Manson composition. Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys re-recorded the same song with different lyrics and included it on 20/20. The song is called "Never Learn Not to Love."

Manson even recorded some songs, according to his own account:

I was with Dennis in his brother's recording studio, which was bigger than most commercial studios... we did a session, leaving about ten songs.

Although the group has strongly denied that such recordings exist (even with co-productions by Carl and Brian, and not Dennis as has been claimed so many times), engineer Stephen Desper affirmed that they exist, even saying that the material de Manson was "pretty good... he was musically talented."

Since then, several recordings of Manson's songs and himself speaking have been released. The Family Jams released in 1997, includes two CDs of Manson songs produced by "The Manson Family" in 1970, after Manson and the others had been arrested. Steve Grogan as vocalist and guitarist; in some choirs Lynette Fromme, Sandra Good, Catherine Share participated, among other members.

Leno and Rosemary LaBianca's home was next door to a home a friend of Kaufman's had rented. Manson had gone several times with Kaufman when they were still friends. Kaufman declared that it was a simple coincidence that the house where his friend lived as a tenant happened to be right next to the LaBianca couple's house.

Before the death of Sharon Tate and her friends, Manson and "The Manson Family" had begun the series of murders, including the death of musician Gary Hinman. Family member Mary Brunner testified in court that Bobby Beausoleil killed Hinman because Hinman had refused to join Manson's gang.

Legacy

As is his custom to write songs inspired by murderers, the band Church of Misery drew on him for the song "Spahn Ranch" which appears on their 1998 split albums Born Too Late and Doomsday Recitation.

Boston, Massachusetts hardcore punk band Negative FX used Manson's likeness for the cover of their self-titled album released in 1985.

Singer Marilyn Manson used the name "Marilyn" of Marilyn Monroe and the surname of Charles Manson to create her stage name. In addition, in the song "My Monkey", by Marilyn Manson, he uses some verses from "I'm a mechanical Man" (a song sung by Charles Manson) and uses recordings of his original voice. The band System of a Down used Charles Manson's religious term "ATWA" as the name of a song: "It is the forces of life, the who maintain balance on earth". Neil Young knew Charles Manson, with whom he hung out at his home in Los Angeles. During an interview, the musician remembered those years as "creepy times." "I didn't know what he was," he explained about his "friendship of him." After the Manson Family crimes, Young wrote "Revolution Blues". "We have 25 rifles to keep the population at bay, but we need you now and that's why," he writes at one point in the song. The Ramones signed one of the songs that helped turn Manson's rave into something loaded with glamour. The song trivializes the Manson murders. Go and take a chance on her, with only one bullet in the cylinder. And in a moment of passion he takes glory like Charles Manson," they sing at one point in the song. "I'm going to smile, I'm going to laugh, you're going to have a bloodbath. And in that moment of passion he achieves glory as Charles Manson."

The band Guns 'N Roses covered the song written by Manson titled "Look At Your Game, Girl" as part of their 1993 album, The Spaghetti incident?.

In popular culture

• The popular telecomedia The Simpsons has referred to the mythology associated with Manson in several of his episodes. In the eleventh season an episode appeared entitled "The Mansion Family"making a word game between "mansion" and the name of the sect created by Charles Manson. In addition, in the fourteenth season the screenwriter reverted to Manson in the episode "Helter Shelter", again making a word game between Manson's ideas and the word "shelter" (Refugio), and being, in turn, the two references, parodies of films associated with Manson. In addition, Matt Groening makes a constant reference to what Manson assumed through the character Milhouse Van Houten, for which he deliberately used the surname of one of the best-known followers of the Manson Family, Leslie Van Houten.^{[chuckles]required]}

• Manson appears in the series Mindhunter. The Netflix series led by David Fincher is based on the book by John S. Douglas, an FBI agent of the 70s who was the first to develop serial killer profiles along with his boss Howard Teten, helping out the previous work of psychiatrist James Brussell. In his active years, Douglas interviewed several killers like the Boston strangler or Manson himself.

• However, it is not the first time that the figure of Charles Manson inspires series and films. Helter Skelter (1976), The Manson Family (2003), the chapter of Dexter (American series on serial killers) entitled Helter SkelterSouth Park chapter entitled "Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson!" The series Aquarius or the independent comedy of 2015, Manson Family Vacationin addition to documentaries such as Manson or Life after Mansonamong others.

• Manson appears in the 2019 Quentin Tarantino film Once upon a time... Hollywood, played by Australian actor Damon Herriman. Other family members like Tex also appear in the movie.

• It also has an appearance in the popular Netflix documentary Talks with murderers: Ted Bundy's tapes, because in 1984 he collaborated with the FBI providing information for what at that time would be a database of serial killer profiles.

• In the seventh season of the anthological series of terror American Horror Story: Cult, more specifically in his tenth episode Charles (Manson) in Charge, are narrated the events that occurred during the murder of Sharon Tate. Likewise, Manson's legacy is used as an inspiration for the events that occurred in the series.