One of the most notorious criminals in the world and the leader of a sinister cult, Charles Manson recently died in an American prison. The man who bears the scar of a self-carved swastika on his forehead was responsible for the gruesome murders of nine people. Charles Manson, who directed his followers – members of the cult that came to be known as the Manson Family – to go on a killing spree, has spent the majority of his years on earth in prison.
It was the summer of 69 – Charles Manson ordered the members of his quasi-commune to commit a series of nine murders. Those who were killed included the wife of Roman Polanski, actress Sharon Tate who was eight months pregnant at the time. The murders came to be known as the Tate-La Bianca murders.
Before the murders, Manson had led a life of crime. Theft, break-ins, pimping and such crimes meant that by the time he was 32, about half his life had already been spent in prisons and correctional facilities. After his conviction for the 9 murders, he eked out the rest of his days in prison.
Charles Manson had gained a following based on some twisted ideas that he had about a coming apocalypse. He had his followers convinced that they had to kill people and make it look like black militants were responsible so that a race war would be triggered; resulting in the extermination/subjugation of black people.
Manson had sent his cult members to an address under the mistaken impression that the man who had refused him a recording contract lived there. On discovering the mistake and that the house belonged to Roman Polanski, the ‘family’ members decided to go ahead and kill the occupants of the house anyway; by stabbing, hitting, hanging, brutalizing – because they did not want to ‘waste the gas money’. The choice of subsequent victims was quite random as well.
Manson appeared to have a certain personal charisma that made followers out or several people, who were willing to follow his precise instructions for murder, who then went on to leave various messages scrawled at the murder scenes using the victims’ own blood: “PIG”, “HELTER SKELTER”.
In 1975, Manson follower Lynette Alice “Squeaky” Fromme also tried to assassinate the president of the United States, Gerald Ford in Sacramento. She fired from close range but the gun failed to fire.
Manson was seen to have mental health issues fairly early in life. He was aggressively antisocial, schizophrenic and had paranoid delusional disorder. He never showed any regret or remorse for his crimes. He also thought he was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ and had his followers convinced of this as well.
He had about normal intelligence and had also done some schooling but was illiterate. In his drug-fueled imaginings (and those of his followers) he was both God and Satan.
The fact that some of his songs were later covered is not a testament to his musical ability; more to the fact that Manson became an iconic figure representing hate, violence and the macabre. In his early life, he had pretensions to being a musician, and claimed to be the only one to understand the true meaning of the Beatles track Helter Skelter.
In November 2014, Manson's engagement to 26-year-old Afton Elaine "Star" Burton was announced. She claimed he was innocent and that she had been in love with Manson since the age of 16. However reports also claim that she only wanted to marry him because she and a friend supposedly wanted to use the body of Manson as a tourist attraction after his death. If this sounds insane, grisly, bizarre and macabre, this is fitting – pretty much everything about Charles Manson's life was insane, grisly, bizarre and macabre.
Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at [email protected]
