On November 12, 1934, Charles Manson was born to a sixteen-year-old single mother in Cincinnati, Ohio. By all accounts, Manson endured a tumultuous childhood, moving in and out of foster homes and having repeated encounters with the law. At the age of twenty-one, upon release from a juvenile reformatory, Manson moved from Ohio to California.
In California, Manson was arrested for, among other crimes, robbing at gunpoint, forging government checks, and stealing an automobile. In his early thirties, after spending nearly half of his life behind bars, Manson began to develop a cult following comprised primarily of young women. These young followers were said to be mostly from upper-to-middle-class backgrounds. A self-proclaimed messiah, Manson preached that an apocalypse was coming. Manson predicted that he, as well as those who followed him, popularly known as the Manson family, would be the sole survivors. Claiming to have discovered the impending apocalypse while listening to songs on The White Album by the Beatles, Manson asserted that the Beatles were communicating with him through songs such as "Helter Skelter."
The events giving rise to Manson's reputation as a criminal took place on the evenings of August 9, 1969 and August, 10, 1969 in Southern California. On August 9, actress Sharon Tate, who was more than eight months pregnant, was stabbed to death and hung from a rafter in the living room of the Los Angeles estate that she shared with her husband, film director, Roman Polanski. Also killed on that estate were Abigail Folger, the heiress to the Folger coffee fortune, and four others. The crime scene was marked by writings in the victims' blood on the walls, discovered by a maid reporting to work the following morning. The next night, Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, owners of a successful grocery store chain, were brutally stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home. Writings similar to those found at the Tate and Polanski estate were discovered at the LaBianca residence. Approximately three months after these murders officials arrested Manson and members of his cult.
Police were alerted about Manson's involvement when a Manson follower incarcerated in a Los Angeles jail reportedly bragged to her cellmate that the Tate and LaBianca murders were committed by the Manson family. Upon further investigation, officials linked Manson, who was already in police custody for car theft, and three of his followers to the crime. Following a nine-month-long jury trial, Manson and three female followers, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel, were convicted of the murders. In a separate trial at a later date, another Manson follower, Charles "Tex" Watson, was found guilty for his involvement. Manson, Atkins, Van Houten, Krenwinkel, and Watson were all sentenced to the death penalty. In 1972, however, when the California Supreme Court temporarily abolished the use of the death penalty within that state, their sentences were commuted to life in prison. Despite the later reinstatement of the death penalty in California, the sentence of Manson and his four followers remained unchanged. Thus, Manson was ordered to serve the remainder of his sentence in the Corcoran State Prison in California. Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor in the case, wrote Helter Skelter about Manson and his crimes.
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