Charles Manson: Cult leader whose crimes destroyed the hippy era of peace and love

Charles Manson after his arrest over the Sharon Tate murders. Picture: AP

Charles Manson, the hippy cult leader who became the hypnotic-eyed face of evil across America after orchestrating the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969, has died at the age of 83.

Manson, whose name is synonymous with unspeakable violence and madness to this day, died of natural causes.

Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, reacted to the death by quoting the late Vincent Bugliosi, the Los Angeles prosecutor who put Manson behind bars. Bugliosi said: “Manson was an evil, sophisticated con man with twisted and warped moral values.”

Hanisee added: “Today, Manson’s victims are the ones who should be remembered and mourned on the occasion of his death.”

A petty criminal in and out of jail since childhood, the charismatic, guru-like Manson surrounded himself in the 1960s with runaways and other lost souls and then sent his disciples to butcher some of LA’s rich and famous in what prosecutors said was a bid to trigger a race war – an idea he got from a twisted reading of the Beatles song Helter Skelter.

The killings horrified the world and, together with the deadly violence that erupted later in 1969 during a Rolling Stones concert at California’s Altamont Speedway, exposed the dangerous, drugged-out underside of the counterculture movement and seemed to mark the death of the era of peace and love.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Manson maintained during his 10-month trial in 1970 that he was innocent and that society itself was guilty.

“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,” he said in a courtroom soliloquy.

Linda Deutsch, the longtime courts reporter for The Associated Press, who covered the Manson case, said he “left a legacy of evil and hate and murder.” She added: “He was able to take young people who were impressionable and convince them he had the answer to everything and he turned them into killers. It was beyond anything we had ever seen before in this country.”

The Manson Family, as his followers were called, slaughtered five of its victims on August 9, 1969, at Tate’s home – the actress, who was eight months pregnant, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, Polish movie director Voityck Frykowski and Steven Parent, a friend of the estate’s caretaker. Tate’s husband, Rosemary’s Baby director Roman Polanski, was out of the country at the time.

The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were stabbed to death in their home.The killers scrawled phrases as “Pigs” and “Healter Skelter” (sic) in blood at the scenes.

Three months later, a Manson follower was jailed on an unrelated charge and told a cellmate about the bloodbath, leading to the cult leader’s arrest.

In the annals of American crime, Manson became the embodiment of evil, a short, shaggy-haired, bearded figure with a demonic stare and an X – later turned into a swastika – carved into his forehead.

“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969,” author Joan Didion wrote in her 1979 book The White Album.

Manson and three followers – Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten – were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Another defendant, Charles “Tex” Watson, was convicted later. All were spared execution and given life sentences after the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972. Atkins died behind bars in 2009. Krenwinkel, Van Houten and Watson remain in prison.

Another Manson devotee, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, but her gun jammed. She served 34 years in prison.

Manson was born in Cincinnati in 1934, to a teenager, possibly a prostitute, and was in reform school by the time he was eight. After serving ten years for cheque forgery in the 1960s, Manson was said to have pleaded not to be released because he considered prison home.

“My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system,” he would later say in a monologue on the witness stand. “I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you.”

He was set free in San Francisco during the heyday of the hippie movement in the city’s Haight-Ashbury section. Although he was in his mid-30s by then, he began collecting followers – mostly women – who likened him to Jesus. Most were teenagers; many came from good homes but were at odds with their parents.

The “family” established a commune-like base at the Spahn Ranch, a former movie location outside Los Angeles, where Manson manipulated his followers with drugs and orgies and subjected them to bizarre lectures.

He had musical ambitions and befriended rock stars, including Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. He also met Terry Melcher, a music producer who had lived in the house that Polanski and Tate later rented.

By the summer of 1969, Manson had failed to sell his songs, and the rejection was later seen as a trigger for the violence. He complained that Wilson took a Manson song, Cease to Exist, revised it into Never Learn Not To Love and recorded it with the Beach Boys, without giving him credit.

Manson was obsessed with Beatles music, particularly Piggies and Helter Skelter, a song that he interpreted as forecasting the end of the world. He told his followers that “Helter Skelter is coming down” and predicted a race war would destroy the planet.

Manson sent his devotees out on the night of Tate’s murder with instructions to “do something witchy”. The state’s star witness, Linda Kasabian, who was granted immunity, testified that Manson tied up the LaBiancas, then ordered his followers to kill. But Manson insisted: “I have killed no one, and I have ordered no one to be killed.”

His trial was nearly scuttled when President Richard Nixon said Manson was “guilty, directly or indirectly.” Manson held up the front-page headline for jurors to read: Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares. Attorneys demanded a mistrial but were turned down.

Manson was also later convicted of the killings of musician Gary Hinman and stuntman Donald “Shorty” Shea.

Over the decades, Manson and his followers appeared at parole hearings, where their bids for freedom were repeatedly rejected. The women suggested they had been rehabilitated, but Manson himself stopped attending, saying prison had become his home.

The killings inspired movies and TV shows. Macabre shock rocker Marilyn Manson borrowed part of his stage name from the killer.

Criminal justice reporter Theo Wilson wrote in her 1998 memoir, Headline Justice: Inside the Courtroom - The Country’s Most Controversial Trials: “Even people who were not yet born when the murders took place know the name Charles Manson and shudder.”

JOHN ROGERS