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)?”
