Was Charles Manson Born To Kill? | True Crime Story | Real Stories

Charles Manson and his so-called family would become the most infamous killers of the 20th century the victims died in the worst way committing a series of brutal and seemingly senseless crimes that would spell the end of the 1960s hippie dream they were vicious I mean just horrible true killings I mean it's multiple stabbing while people are begging for their lives but what made mensen the man he was he was a very powerful person when he said jump they jumped counted so many young people fall under his spell Charlie would talk about how he was Jesus and the devil all in one and were Manson and his followers born to kill [Music] August 8 1969 I was a Los Angeles police officer worked in West Los Angeles division and I received a radio call at about nine o'clock in the morning a man down at Cielo Drive I wasn't expecting what I saw when I got to that house in a theme described by one investigator as reminiscent of a weird religious right five persons including actress Sharon Tate were found dead at the home of Miss Tate and her husband screen director Roman Polanski mr. Tate was eight months pregnant I was the first one in there what I entered the house saw everybody was dead the word Pig written on the front door and somebody's blood it was very gruesome [Music] Detective Sergeant Mike McGann was assigned the case when I arrived on the scene there was some wires that were cut over a large gate I entered the driveway and found a car parked about set of driveway which contained a Steven parent 18 year-old Steven parent had been leaving after a visit to the properties caretaker and I went inside and I discovered Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring 26 year old Sharon Tate had been renting the Bel Air home celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring had been visiting the eight and a half month pregnant actress Sharon was terribly stabbed and they were tied together with a rope which was tossed over a rafter in the house I continued on through the back door and I found abigail folger 25 year old coffee heiress abigail folger was a houseguest of the Polanski's Abigail even stabbed numerous times she was very bloodied and obviously dead and I also found voytek frykowski Folgers lover for Kowski was a friend of Polanski from Poland Wojcik had also been struck with a gun that they used it was a it was a terrible scene I had been working homicide for a long time so I had seen a lot of scenes but I don't think any quite as bad as this would Polanski was in Europe at the time of course he dashed back when he found out that he's his young pregnant wife had been murdered and held probably one of the most moving news conferences by the way that I've ever attended the man was just a wreck the houses up and now you see lot of blood all over the place travels maybe close and that's all of course the husband can be a suspect and so we wanted to talk to Roman and and he agreed to take a polygraph the next morning at our crime lab and I was there with a polygraph examiner he passed with flying colors there was no question he was not part of the homicide nobody knew who did it nobody had a clue and Hollywood just went nuts dogs oh hell I panicked all these movie stars they were hiring you know guards and off-duty police anybody that could get to the house I mean it was a complete panic in the Hollywood area and the next night the killing continued businessman Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary was stabbed to death in their home again messages were written in blood after the lobby office were murdered that day it really started hot and heavy there was a lot of fear in paranoia here in LA particularly in the movie colony why well not just because the murders were incredibly gruesome total 169 stab wounds but they seemed to be random despite a massive police operation investigators were unable to identify a perpetrator we did everything we do I mean we we had everybody we could possibly have think of working on the case doing every possible thing every lead we had we exhausted then three months after the murders detectives got word that a young California girl had made an extraordinary jailhouse confession a story so strange it was almost unbelievable was a crazy story out there yeah it was very crazy susan was nice especially every one of me talking to her and in that period of time you you would think it was impossible I mean she was just a very nice young lady 21 year old Susan Atkins had claimed two cellmates that she and a group of her friends were responsible for the terrible crimes if these were typical murderer types or robbers your rapists or burglars it would have been quite as shocking but they started looking at the backgrounds of these people most of them came from good middle-class families in December's Leslie Van Houten was a homecoming queen Tex Watson as a star athlete Patricia KRENWINKEL sang in the church choir at one time she want to become a nun these seemingly all-american kids have become unrecognizable to their families she was like a stranger to me controlled by an unlikely but powerful puppet master this Charles Manson this mephistophelian guru type who was very charismatic very intelligent 35 year old ex-convict Charles Manson commanded an unerring devotion from his hippie disciples they would kill seemingly at his whim he did control a minute when he said job they jumped the name Charles Manson would become synonymous with evil but who was this diminutive guru and how was he able to convince his young devotees to commit frenzied bloody murder over two nights in August 1969 actress Sharon Tate and six others had been slain in one of the century's most infamous crimes the killers were a group of young seemingly middle-class flower children acting on behalf of their spiritual leader 35 year old ex-convict Charles Manson [Music] but just who was this powerful guru Manson was to have been born as an unwanted illegitimate child of a young prostitute disowned birth pretty much raised by relatives he grew up it's a very tight situation it's been claimed that Manson's mother once tried to sell her infant son to a childless waitress in return for a pitcher of beer from an early age he was left to his own devices got involved in delinquent / criminal activities when you grow up on the street particularly if you're short and slight like Manson is you have to be able to learn how to read people very very quickly and determine who you can get over on and who you can't and Manson was excellent at that from the mid 1940s onwards a raft of thefts and armed robberies would see the young Manson passed through several institutions where he was said to be sexually brutalized what comes through certainly looking at all the psychiatrist reports and probation reports of Charles Manson that was heaps of potential there but something had happened early in life and this this dogged him the whole time he felt he'd been dealt a bad hand by the 1950s in his rare periods of freedom Manson expanded his criminal repertoire to include pimping young women from a Hollywood apartment the qualities that a pimp has to entrap intimidate extort run the life of their prostitutes rent them out sell them and so forth those are qualities that stood Manson well in his future criminal career incarcerated again in 1960 and facing a lengthy sentence Manson began to study new ways of thinking when he was in Terminal Island there was a Scientologist Manson picked up on this and he did 150 hours of auditing which is the Scientology term for counseling and Mansa started writing songs what he was doing which is quite revolutionary for the time he started imbuing these songs with much of the philosophies that he was picking up from Scientology and also from his observations of human nature so I think certainly Manson at that point he's actually left the persona of the petty criminal and he's coming into his own that fellow convict Phil Kaufman would encounter Manson in early 1967 I was arrested importing smuggling if you will so a little bit of weed from Mexico it's convicted in Arizona and sent to Terminal Island California where my first day of the yard I heard this guy playing guitar and sing and he sounded a little like Frankie laine at the time look at your game girl don't think I was pretty good the hack the guard came up to a Charles and said Manson you can't play your guitar here you got a biscuit our place for playing to get sorry says you know you ain't never gonna get out of here Manson and so they said I had a where man everybody kept on goin playing this guitar part of the mansion that the public came to know was a very institutionalized person who was used to being told what to do and felt more comfortable in a confined or isolated place when you have an individual like Manson who doesn't fear any type of punishment really he's a very dangerous individual if someone beats you with a whip and you love the whip it's heaven right here Jack right here Charles Manson had been imprisoned in 1960 when he was eventually released seven years later the world was a very different place we had just come out of the fifties where teenagers were basically kept on a very tight leash and then all of a sudden this this wonderful subculture erupted and we all became free [Music] the 32 year old guitar-playing ex-con headed to the eye of the storm [Music] there were thousands of young people all up and down this street and this was all the psychedelic scene dr. David Smith founded the neighborhood's famous free medical clinic 1967 was totally crazy the streets would jam people were taking LSD and dancing and music everywhere we had the diggers giving up free food and it was just a total insanity and we were in the middle of it we did a survey of the thousands of kids that came through our clinic and 98% of them had used LSD Charlie it saw a good thing when he realized that if somebody ran around and talked like a guru in that day and age especially up in San Francisco you could gather a group of followers in no time you're taught but you can't they even teach you the word they give you the words take all the words away and don't think it right wrong just think in truth among those to fall under Manson's spell were librarian Mary Brunner disaffected teenager Lynette Fromme and 19 year-old drifter Susan Atkins she had a tough start in life on top of a broken home on top of child abuse Susan Atkins had to suffer the death for mother from cancer and she was compute e pretty wild so wild that her family couldn't contain her and like many others she headed off to San Francisco where she worked variously as a waitress and as a topless go-go dancer she came across Manson quite early on in the in the history of the Manson Family and he was able to assume a fatherly role with her which is a template for what went on with the other girls also joining the group in 1967 would be 20 year old Patricia KRENWINKEL later renamed by Charlie as Katie she had a troubled childhood as much she suffered from overt problem with body hair which as anyone knows has come through the teenage thing that can really screw someone up and her sister was a heavy drug user she would dominate it the family so Patricia really was a forgotten charm Tricia KRENWINKEL talked about meeting Charlie and she met him down at the beach and he took her to an apartment and had her take off all her clothes and look at herself in a full-length mirror and say isn't that that the most beautiful thing you've ever seen cease to exist just come and say and that's it he got her she was his after that come on you can't be like many communal groups of the 60s Manson and his girls got an old school bus and began roaming California on his release from prison Phil Kaufman joined up with the group in Topanga Canyon it was incredible you know it was sex sex sex drugs and rock and roll real sex drugs and rock and roll it was sex on demand it was you know I mean if I get just gotten out of prison you know any pretty girls you just want to get laid that's a good day at the office the music was the seduction he did get the new girl some new girl hood runaway he was good and the girls would all sit and you know and you know play their little instruments and and that usually worked you know that was that was the hook it got a man Phil Kaufman would introduce Manson to a number of music producers including Doris Day's son Terry Melcher Manson hoped to get a major recording contract and introduce his songs to the world remember that a lot of people had not heard this type of music before and Manson was not that savvy to the industry media industry music interesting BS at the time if they said to him Charlie it's brilliant we loved it we'll be in touch he believed they meant it they may award bell-bottom power to families that long hair but they were businessmen and Charlie and the family were hippies and they wanted to do hippie music you know and it was just this total chaos it was just the recording shows were terrible but Charlie always kept pursuing a professional recording as a child Manson had been rejected by his mother now the LA music industry would do the same it became evident to me that you know there was trouble in paradise in 1967 after spending over half his life in institutions thirty-two-year-old petty criminal Charles Manson had been released into a brave new world gathering a small band of admiring followers in San Francisco Manson and the group began roaming the state picking up new recruits along the way in Los Angeles 16 year old Barbara Hoyt was just one of many young people they attracted he was definitely a father figure to everybody I admired him it was very Cruz Matic person everybody gave me lots of attention they're all very nice to me I think the acceptance I felt was very strong draw and I think that was probably one of the main draws to to the cult and probably anybody within a few weeks Barbara would move with her new family to a rundown film set in the hills outside Los Angeles a location that will become infamous oh man it's a heavy feeling here it was just such such evil that came out of here [Music] and such a pretty place my god [Music] I can smell the same smell over those trees I can see where the ranch was down in front of me over there was the Corral and back here was the barn and in front of the barn was the movie set this just seems so surreal [Music] it's almost like it was long ago dream instead of reality at the ranch Barbara Hoyt would live among young men and women that within months would become murderers including 23 year-old Charles Tex Watson and 20 year-old Leslie Van Mountain Leslie Van Houten was from Monrovia and by all accounts just a really all-american type girl she was a homecoming princess at my high school and she come from a family which was affluent that had broken down she had sought solace in drugs she'd also had an affair which end it resulted in in the pregnancy on an abortion like most of Manson's women she was in a vortex in a void Tex was kind of happy go lucky he didn't challenge Charlie for leadership at all he he don't he did what Charlie told him to do he came from a solid family background but something happened and that I believe was drugs it just took him from a path she was leading to a successful professional life onto a completely different way literally free sex and freedom of sexual relationships was quite attractive to him heterosexual relationships to some group orgies always a conspicuous presence would be the young Susan Adkins by then rechristened by Manson as Sadie the first time I met Sadie she's sitting on the floor kind of against the wall and there are people around and she sported right in front of me and cut one whoa she would do stuff for shock well I thought she was great at the time I thought you know wow I have a free person you know at the ranch this child like free spirit was a state of mind the group aspired to the philosophy was that everything you learned was wrong so we're gonna erase your mind and make it childlike but in retrospect you could see the by doing that then you could implant your ideas and philosophy any kind of belief system you had that was considered trash so people worked on disbelieving things that they've been taught unlearning everything you learned in school so that you'd end up basically having no opinions based on what you were brought up with you wouldn't have any more values any more it's that that were given to us by our parents and peers but everything we did was it was our choice you know people gave up their egos willingly whenever people convert to a new political philosophy or a new religion a new way of life it's not because some spend Galli or some powerful evangelists or some powerful malevolent figures such as Manson was so strong in the way they came on and so articulate that they instantly converted people it's always an interactive process they needed him to be a father-like figure a guru and they created that for themselves Manson needed followers Manson needed people to listen to him and so they both got what they each needed from each other but not everyone would find Charles Manson and his philosophies irresistible Charles and I drove up to San Francisco just the two of us it was at that time when the philosophy of the hippies was do your own thing man you know let the man get you do your own thing and I kept saying that Charlie can't sit now and I'm doing your own thing and I yeah man and you're like you know it I was like if he did be at the time you know we said then that he realized that that I wasn't programming and then was he after we got back for awhile and I said Charlie you know I gotta go he says yeah just still think and hurt you and I said yeah I'm still thinking Manson's feelings of power were growing in 1968 dr. David Smith's medical clinic studied the group at spans ranch I really thought that he was delusional and borderline psychotic he did refer to himself as God he just hung his arms out you know and and bow his head and we know what he meant Charlie would talk about how he was Jesus and the devil all in one and all men were but he was more of the epitome of it he certainly said that he who killed me like who and when yelling across 2,000 years ago and didn't do it I think bitter good in the summer of 1969 Manson would take playing God to the ultimate extreme in the isolated ranch in the mountains above Los Angeles surrounded by his band of loyal disciples the man who'd spent more than half his life in jail would begin preaching an Armageddon gospel he called helter skelter he explained to me about helter skelter you know it's a racist philosophy basically but he he explained it to me like would God want all the flowers to be the same color and you know he made it seem like something very pretty helter skelter came out of one of the Beatles songs the words but what it came to mean to Manson and what he was preaching so to speak to his followers was a race war we had Watts Riots and so you know I far as I was concerned he was just saying the saying the obvious anytime the word black who is mentioned he he you know he hackles up because he had been in prison and he saw that you know you know how it was between whites and blacks he said the black man was gonna win this war but he said black yelling those were Whitey's for him to do and they're not gonna be able to handle the reins of power so they're gonna have to turn over the reins for those white people who had survived television I eat Charles Manson his family they said we're gonna come on at the bottom mr. Pitts and will take over the leadership of the world Charlie wanted to have his own twelve tribes of Israel basically out there in the desert and he he planned for a whole civilization so it was quite quite a grand design did Manson believe what he was telling them about the apocalypse coming no he didn't believe that at all III I would be amazed if he actually believed that this was a show this was totally a performance that Manson put on Manson is not mentally ill he's not psychotic he's manipulative and narcissistic and psychopathic but he's not mentally ill and neither were the followers mentally ill the end of the world is a good draw you know a lot of churches preach that by the middle of the year the atmosphere at the ranch began to change significantly the intensity level was noticeable like helter skelter is coming down like now Manson's world was beginning to unravel unknown to Barbara Hoyt in May during a drug deal gone wrong Charles Manson had shot a dealer he believed to be a member of the militant Black Panther girl we started having guards at the ranch you know hiding in the haystack in various places they had field phones laid out between the front of the ranch in the back of the ranch then the Black Panthers were gonna come for us Charlie was getting pretty panicky and intense and high-strung and and frightened at the same time the LA County Sheriff's Department were beginning to take notice of the strange group we are attempted to run some undercover officers in there to try to buy narcotics because they were dealing doing a lot of things never had one bit of success because they just would not accept a stranger Charlie had family members up here on the hill watching the cops watch us yeah so we were all watching each other it was all fun considered it fun we eventually arrested Charlie a couple of his female friends Malibu sheriff's station and book them while we were interviewing Charlie we were notified by des personnel that somebody had come into the station to try to bail him out and I asked who it was and they even gave me a name a name was Gary Hinman didn't mean anything to us when I repeated that name to Charlie you got all squirrely ER with us [Music] detective Salerno could never have known that Gary Hinman would soon become the first murder victim of the Manson family in July 1969 Manson and his followers attempted to extort money and property from Hinman when he refused to cooperate Manson family associate Bobby Beausoleil took action when him and basically said you're nuts I'm not giving anything to you so they killed him they stabbed him and and then they smothered him with a pillow allegedly to play suspicion for the murder on the Black Panther political group slogans were dogged on the wall in blood along with a panther portrait the murder attracted little attention but in less than a month's time the family would commit a crime that would make the world sit up and take notice my own personal feeling is the motive for the killing was a series of events which chipped away at Manson's Dominion there was no record deal people were leaving the family people were questioning Manson's ability to be this self-proclaimed Messiah there was chinks appearing and the last weapon in his armory was helter skelter on August the 8th 1969 Manson launched a series of crimes he hoped would be blamed on the black community I remember the night that he had called Tex and I remember looking at them as they were talking it was almost like a black cloud was around him it was dark and he told me to take the other younger girls to a place called the wickiup and he ordered me to do it he didn't ask me he ordered me [Music] I was good half mile down the road there was a back house way back there and Sadie had called me on the field phone and told me to bring three sets of dark clothes up to the front of the ranch I showed up with the clothes and Charlie snapped at me wanted to know what I was doing at the front of the ranch when he told me to do something else and I told him that Sadie had asked me to bring the three sets of clothes and he told me no they already left Susan Atkins Patricia KRENWINKEL Tex Watson and newcomer Linda Kasabian were headed to the former home of record producer Terry Melcher now being rented by director Roman Polanski and his actress wife Sharon Tate they cut the telephone wires climbed over the fence got in through an open window and it was hell on entry to the property former all-american high school kid Tex Watson was reported to tell its residents I am the devil and I've come to do the devil's business these people I knew and slept with and loved are now heinous murderers they were vicious I mean just horrible killings I mean some multiple stabbing while people are begging for their lives these people who I've known you know made love to or now now they're killing people that way I mean point.but a flip complete flip for Manson he had no empathy or emotional attachment to any of these people the victims died in the worst way for Kowski was beaten over the head numerous times on huge gashes ease and we believe this is a weapon the techs used to kill him Patricia KRENWINKEL chased abigail folger across the lawn and poor abigail was screaming and running for her life this is not a nice way to die Patricia KRENWINKEL her only complaint is that the ninth went down to the bone and started hurting her hand went so far down Susan Atkins told me that Sharon said please let me live so I can have my baby and Susan told Sharon look [ __ ] I don't have the immersion on you you're gonna die so they got rid of all their bloody clothing put on their regular clothing and they threw the bloody clothing over the side of a hill and they went back to the ranch Manson spoke to them she went the back [Music] they slept in everybody slept in the next morning but in the next evening afternoon I went into Johnny swartzes trailer and I was just sitting back and watching the hobo Kelly in the afternoon and Sadie came in and by that was about five or six wanted me to turn the channel to this to the news she told me to call tax and I called tax he came to the trailer and so did a couple other people and and they all sat on Johnny Swartz's couch there and watched the news the first thing that came on was the Sharon Tate murders so now I knew that murders had occurred there I had no idea no clue whatsoever that I was sitting amongst the murderers someone said picked a good one or something like that because it made the first story and then they laughed they thought that was funny and I remember when I watched the TV when I was watching this it scared me you know scared me and I was thinking wow I'm not in that world that's good well you know I had no idea how much in it I was that night the people Barbara Hoyt counted as her friends would go hunting again there was no one safe in this whole county on August the 9th 1969 the so-called Manson family had slain actress Sharon Tate and four others in a bloody terror filled home invasion and the nightmare was not yet over when they went down looking for victims the second night there was no one in LA there was no one in this whole city that was safe they were gonna break into a church and kill the pastor and hang them from the cross in there but the church was locked because it was at night those eventually chosen to die were 44 year-old supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his 38 year old wife Rosemary Manson had driven in the car with them finally picked out this house he told them that last night meaning at the Tate mansion they had botched it by almost letting a couple of them escape and not killing them efficiently so he didn't want that to happen again so he said you wait here I'll go into the house he went in and tied them both up then went back out told him it's okay now you can go in and kill them and then he he drove off the lobby office were trussed up like literally like a couple of hogs at slaughter and then they were slaughtered these were brutal violent terrible murders Leslie Van Houten told Diane Lake that stabbing rosemary LaBianca was fun the more she did it the more she enjoyed it this Fork was the fork that Patricia KRENWINKEL used to carve wore in the abdomen of Leno LaBianca after he was killed and then stuck it into his chest when the body was found it had the this fork sticking out of it I mean it's it's it's it's it's nightmarish it's nightmarish among words written in the victim's blood was the phrase helter skelter hacks told me that they'd gone to a love-in and for me not to mention it and I was kind of jealous because my dad would never let me go to a love-in I wasn't 11 they were killing the LA bianca's yeah the whole thing just makes me shake over the course of two bloody nights Manson's followers had taken the lives of seven unsuspecting victims seemingly without conscience even through their subsequent arrest and trial most of Manson's entourage would remain unswervingly loyal to him everything that Charlie did they did if Charlie said something they would pear at him if Charlie put an X on his forehead they'd come to court the next morning with the next exits on their foreheads if he put his swastika on there by God the swastika was there the next morning only a few including Barbara Hoyt would testify against the man they once thought of as divine so what had driven so many to willfully engage in such brutal and bloody crimes was murder in their nature were Manson and his young followers born to kill I couldn't say that that Manson was born coming out of the womb to kill people but I think that his upbringing and was so bad that I I don't doubt for one minute that it were not conducive to a good life well-rounded life and I guess he maybe he just want to make everybody miserable that's that's the only theory I could ever really come up with I don't even think he was thinking of murder or when he first formed this family but it was a small evolutionary process and I think at some point he saw that he could get them to do anything he wanted them to do and he had this enormous hostility for society I know Charlie was treated horribly as a child you know between the neglect and abuse he suffered I don't think that he attracted kids who were predisposed to kill people I'd hate to think that the whole group of them were natural-born killers I just don't think that's the case do I think these women had they not met Manson would have gone on to kill somebody no I don't believe that there's no indication that that would have happened Manson now is a different story whether he killed somebody in his past or didn't it's really unclear in dispute but he certainly has the capability of doing that but from manses perspective he if he could get you to kill the person for him he much preferred to have you do it because in his mind it's absolving him then of direct criminal responsibility he's always working the system and working other people Manson nothing is by chance it's all planned and he is a highly controlled controlling individual I know when I interviewed Suzan Adkins she said she was in death row for five years before Charlie left a brain and that he had absolute control of her thoughts and they believed he could read their minds I think what you had was delusional leader coupled with psychedelic drugs and alienated population of young people and an environment that reinforced it I describe it as a gradual desensitization and conditioning process and he throughout his life and stolen cars committed robberies and many other state and federal crimes and he had these people had them do do these same kinds of things we all can have the capacity to say no just say no charlie I think he was made into a monster by his upbringing but he still had a choice so I don't think it's just nature versus nurture I think we all have a choice and responsibility to determine our own fates the only thing I can think of this difference between me and those I have some empathy for the victims they didn't seem to care they don't care they need they I've had a real hard time oh here I go getting I had never gotten past with [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Real Stories

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Keywords: charles manson documentary, charles manson film, charles manson cult, sharon tate, helter skelter, crime documentary, psychopath documentary, true crime, real stories, manson family, charles manson, Real Stories, Real Stories Full Documentary, Real Stories Documentary, Full length Documentaries, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, Amazing Stories, Amazing Documentaries, true crime story, full episode, full documentary

Id: pgyLGLwIBeI

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2019