Born With No Name
On November 12th, 1934, “No Name Maddox” came into the world. His mother was unmarried 16-year-old Kathleen Manson-Bower-Cavender and later she would give him the name of Charles Manson. Manson never met his father, Colonel Walker Henderson Scott Sr. because he took off when Kathleen mentioned that she was pregnant with their baby.
Born With No Name
An Absent Mother
During his childhood, Manson’s mother frequently left him at home with a series of babysitters while she went out drinking with friends. On one occasion, she attempted to rob an acquaintance and was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison. During this time, Charles was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in West Virginia.
An Absent Mother
Small Offenses
Young Charles started to steal small things from stores, but his mother didn’t want him to continue on that path. Additionally, she was attending AA meetings to fight her drinking addiction which meant she couldn’t take care of him. Eventually she sent her son to a Catholic-run school for boys, but Manson hated it and returned back home.
Small Offenses
Like Mother Like Son
After seeing his mother stealing and committing crimes, Charles decided that he could do the same thing. It wasn’t long until he started robbing stores in order to support himself and rent a room of his own. After being caught and let off lightly by a compassionate judge, everyone thought he would see the error of his ways and repent, but he didn’t.
Like Mother Like Son
Guns And Cars
Even though the sympathetic judge had sent him to “Boys Town”, a juvenile facility in Nebraska, Manson managed to escape and even get a gun. Along with a friend, he stole a car and then proceeded to use his gun to rob grocery stores, and even a casino. But at the age of 13, during his second grocery store break-in, he was arrested and sent to a a strict reform boys school in Indiana.
Guns And Cars
The Insane Game
His time at the reform school was anything but pleasant. Other students abused him and since he was a small boy he needed a way to defend himself that wasn’t physical. He created a method he called the “insane game” as a deterrent to attackers. He would screech at the top of his lungs and act crazy by flinging his arms wildly so as to ward off any attackers. After many failed attempts, Manson managed to escape the facility in 1951 with two other boys.
The Insane Game
Antisocially Aggressive
On their escape from Indiana in a stolen car, they stopped at and robbed gas stations, before continuing their escape. After many successful robberies, police eventually caught up and arrested them. Authorities later sent him to Washington, D.C.’s National Training School for Boys where tests showed that he had an IQ score of 109, the national average was 100. After Manson’s case worker saw him, he concluded that the teenager was aggressively antisocial.
Antisocially Aggressive
Finding Love
Charles Manson went on a roller-coaster of bad luck, getting into trouble and finding himself in the hands of authorities on many occasions. During his teenage years he had no true parent supervision which meant that he was transferred from institution to institution with the hope that he would turn out fine. During this time though, he turned more violent and aggressive. In 1955 he married a young hospital waitress by the name of Rosalie Jean Willis.
Finding Love
Terminal Island
When Charles and his newly pregnant wife came to Los Angeles in a car that he had stolen, it was the last straw for the police. They arrested him and whisked him away to Terminal Island where he was to serve a 3-year sentence. After his son, Charles Manson Jr. was born, news reached Manson that his wife was living with another man. He desperately tried to escape by stealing a car on the island, only to be caught by guards. Authorities settled on a five-year probation.
Terminal Island
Married Again
When Manson made it out of prison, he married a young prostitute who went by the name of Candy Stevens. Prostitution was against the law and it wasn’t long before the police made their way to Charles Manson once again. This time they arrested him for sending his wife and another woman out onto the streets to find clients. After his actions came to light, Manson went back to Terminal Island as a prisoner.
Married Again
A Passion For Music
One of the passions that Manson had in life was music. He believed that he could become a successful artist with the help of his voice and his guitar. While spending time in prison he took up guitar lessons with another inmate who introduced him to a different inmate who had contacts on the outside. Phil Kaufman was able to give Manson the details of someone at Universal Studios in Hollywood. He became obsessed with music and wrote about 90 songs while in prison in 1966 alone.
A Passion For Music
The Beatles
Manson fell in love with the music of the Beatles. He decided that he was far more talented than the young English rock band and was determined to make a name for himself. One Beatles‘ song in particular stood out for him, and that was “Helter Skelter”. The song would become much more than just a song for him in the future, it would become a prophecy and a lifestyle.
The Beatles
A New World
When Manson was let out of prison in 1967, he couldn’t believe how the world had changed. Not only were youths standing up against social norms through the hippie movement, they were using drugs without concern. He saw this as an opportunity to start his own cult. Through the use of drugs, charisma and a sense of belonging, he was determined to start something influential.
A New World
Starting The Family
At first, Manson approached women as a religious leader who could offer them what they didn’t have. A lot of the women he took on board, felt lost and without purpose, so his charm was quickly grabbed onto. His first family member was Mary Brunner, who quickly became a pivotal part in recruiting both men and women to their family. Even though Manson followed up on all of the music contacts he made in prison, most of them didn’t work out for him.
Starting The Family
Taking Advantage
One of the contacts Manson made was Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. One night Dennis Wilson picked up two female hitchhikers, Ella Jo Bailey and Patricia Krenwinkel who were part of Manson’s clan. After returning home that night from a recording session, Wilson found Manson and all his ‘family’ members in his home. The Manson family would land up staying there for several months and pile up a cost of about $100,000. Manson used the beauty of his women to manipulate most men to do whatever he wanted.
Taking Advantage
The Ranch
Wilson’s manager eventually convinced the musician to send the Manson family packing, which led them to “Spahn Movie Ranch”. The ranch was a popular movie set where many western movies were shot. Charles Manson persuaded the owner of the plot to allow the family to stay there for free by using the women again. The ranch would become the growing home of the Manson family, and eventually their last home.
The Ranch
Drugs And Love
Charles Manson managed to lure women into his family with his charm and hallucinogenic drugs. In turn, the women then aided him in recruiting men by offering drugs and promoting the “free love” ethos. He demanded that his followers surrender their identities to him, making him their leader. Many of the followers he took were looking for a sense of belonging and deeply lacked a sense of purpose in their lives. He provided it for them.
Drugs And Love
Failing To Impress
Despite his best efforts and the support of his ‘family’, Manson was failing to make an impression in the music industry. Manson became very frustrated and took a major blow to his ego. At the same time, the cult leader was convinced that there was a violent and turbulent world change that was coming. He called this change, “Helter Skelter”, based on the song by The Beatles.
Failing To Impress
“Helter Skelter”
Manson was convinced that The Beatles were actually prophets who were trying to send a message to the world. The message of “Helter Skelter” was to warn everyone that the world would be taken over by the black race. His racist notion further suggested that after killing all white people, they wouldn’t know how to control the world and would search for any white survivors. The survivors would be the Manson family, and their leader was him, Charles Manson. He believed that he would become the Messiah of the post-“Helter Skelter” world.
“Helter Skelter”
Starting The War
African-Americans had set up a self-defense organization called the “Black Panthers” in Oakland, California. The group’s job was to protect black communities from police brutality – Manson happened to hate this group. He felt that committing crimes under the guise of the “Black Panther” group would fuel the fire that would eventually start “Helter Skelter”. He would start a race war this way.
Starting The War
The First Murder
On the evening of August 9th, 1969, Manson sent a group led by Charles “Tex” Watson to 10050 Cielo Drive. Manson didn’t know who was living in the house, but he guessed it was someone of the Hollywood elite. He wasn’t wrong – filmmaker Roman Polanski and his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate were renting the house. The group gained access to the house and killed the couple as well as four guests. Upon leaving the house, they drew the “Black Panther’s” logo on the wall.
The First Murder
The Second Murder
The following night, Manson himself led the same women and men to a new murder site. He added two young recruits to their numbers as they headed to the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. The couple was very wealthy, but had no connection to Hollywood as Manson had wished. After violently killing the couple, the group wrote messages on the walls and wrote the chilling words, “Helter Skelter”.
The Second Murder
No Leads
Even though the two massacres took place one after the other, detectives didn’t put the two together. An alarming amount of evidence, like the writings on the wall, the locations and the methods of killing weren’t ever thought to be connected. Police scrambled to find leads, but always turned up with nothing.
No Leads
So Close Yet So Far
In October, 1969, police cars came to a screeching halt at the family’s ranch. Police rushed out to arrest members of the Manson family. Only the reason for their arrests was not what anybody thought. The police arrived to arrest the Manson members for stealing cars that they were keeping on the property.
So Close Yet So Far
Connecting The Dots
During the time that the Manson family members were in custody, police started to connect the two murders. One of the young Manson girls revealed the truth about the murders by bragging about it to another female inmate. Susan Atkins brazenly boasted about killing Sharon Tate and even mentioned the other killers’ names. The names of those involved were, Charles Manson, ‘Tex’ Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten.
Connecting The Dots
Put On Trial
In a widely-followed trial in 1971, Charles Manson was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder. Evidence later surfaced of his involvement in two more killings which added two more counts of murder. He claimed that he hadn’t murdered anyone, and further argued that he didn’t tell anyone to do anything.
Put On Trial
Death Sentences
The “Manson girls” received a much more severe punishment from their leader. The court sentenced each one of them to death for murder. Later the decision would be overturned and they would all spend the rest of their lives in jail. During their trials, Manson carved an ‘X’ into his forehead as a form of protest, and as dedicated followers, the three girls did the same thing.
Death Sentences
A Swastika
What was once an ‘X’ carved into his forehead, changed to become a swastika. The exact reason that Charles Manson first carved and then tattooed a swastika onto his forehead is still not known. Although, during his time in prison, Manson joined the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist group. Years later, he also joined the church of Scientology and reached the highest level of “theta clear”.
A Swastika
Life Behind Bars
Most of Manson’s life was spent in prison, starting from when he was just a boy. On a number of occasions he spoke with journalists and psychologists who wanted to learn more about his mysterious life and motives. Many of his answers were abstract, and others were chilling to the core. To this day there are still many people who admire his unusual views of society.
Life Behind Bars
Engaged
When 29-year-old Afton Burton came onto the scene as Charles Manson’s fiance, the world was shocked. Not only did she claim that she was deeply in love with him, but she also said that she planned to marry him. Rumors started to run wild regarding her intentions with Manson. Some claimed that she only wanted to marry him to make money from showing off his body after he died.
Engaged
The End Of Days
On 19 November, 2017, Charles Manson left the world. He died after having served more than four decades in prison for murders he claimed he never had a hand in. He appealed for parole on 12 different occasions, and each time the judge denied him. Charles Manson wasn’t interested in getting out of prison, though. He often told journalists and judges that prison was his home and he didn’t want to go anywhere else.
The End Of Days
