Air section of southern California. 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- looded killer, one must completely examine the events of his 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 ere convicted of robbing a service station in Charlestown, West Virginia. They’d used a Coke bottle to knock the 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 rison 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 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 oment. “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 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, nd 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 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 ears 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 Shuffled from home to home as a child, knowing his rostitute 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 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 o 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 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 ineteen 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 ater 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 uthorities, 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 truggled.
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 ead 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 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 hereafter, 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.
