Helter SkelterĪll the while, Manson pursued an ill-fated music career of his own. But all the while, through violence, emotional manipulation and the administration of the drug LSD, Manson sought to instill a belief in his followers that he was a messianic figure.īy the time Manson settled with his followers at the Spahn movie ranch northwest of Los Angeles, he had them firmly in thrall. Eventually, Manson took his following on the road, transforming it into a traveling commune in an old school bus. Manson had learned Carnegie's guidelines in prison, Guinn says, and applied them in distorted fashion on the streets of San Francisco. "Every line he used, almost word for word, comes from a Dale Carnegie textbook in a class, How to Win Friends and Influence People," Guinn told All Things Considered in 2013. Guinn says that oddly enough, Manson cribbed much of his sales pitch from a best-selling motivational book, which was a cornerstone of the era's polite society. "But they've come in search of some guru to be able to tell them what to do and make their lives better. "Haight-Ashbury is overflowing with children who don't know where they're going, what they're going to do, what they're going to eat next," Guinn told Fresh Air in 2014. When he was released from a California prison in 1967, Manson moved to San Francisco, where he began to recruit the first followers who would come to be members of his "family" - mostly young women, many of whom later took part in the 1969 killings.įour young female members of the "Manson Family," with their heads shaved, kept a vigil throughout the trial in which Charles Manson and three women were convicted in 1971. During his time behind bars, he also learned to play the guitar, a skill he would use to draw followers to him. While he left school at an early age, Manson professed admiration for the Utopian science fiction of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Those marriages felt apart amid Manson's regular interval of prison sentences. Manson was also married twice before the age of 30 and had one child from each marriage - both of them named Charles. In fact, he spent much of his life sliding in and out of prison, his criminal record riddled with convictions ranging from auto theft to forgery and pimping. While Manson didn't come to national attention until the 1969 murders, he was no stranger to crime. Seven deputies escort Charles Manson from the courtroom after he and three followers were found guilty of seven murders in the Tate-LaBianca slayings. Instead, Manson and several members of his cult were caught and convicted of first-degree murder - but only after what was one of the longest and most expensive trials in American history. The murders - and the messages left behind - were intended to incite an apocalyptic race war, after which he and his followers would rise up to lead the surviving world. His followers, a cult known as The Family, beat, shot and stabbed their victims to death, scrawling cryptic messages in blood on the walls. The attacks left seven people dead - including actress Sharon Tate, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant. This violent legacy can be traced principally to two late-summer nights in Los Angeles in 1969, when Manson orchestrated a series of gruesome murders. It was the second time this year the mass murderer had been hospitalized.įor nearly five decades, Manson has occupied a unique position in the American cultural imagination - a figure of dystopian fascination and horrifying malice. Manson had been removed from prison in Corcoran, Calif., where he had been serving nine life sentences, and placed in a nearby hospital for a serious illness. Charles Manson (center), seen during a parole hearing in California in 1986.Ĭharles Manson, the cult leader who drew lasting infamy for directing mass killings in 1969, has died at the age of 83.
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