On the morning of November 20, Charles Manson, one of the most famous criminals of the 20th century, died in a California prison, who created a sect that committed murder at his direction. Convicted of nine life sentences, Manson spent his entire adult life behind bars and was brought up, in his own words, criminals and policemen. Manson grew up without a father, and practically did not live with his mother since the age of five, because she herself was convicted of robbery. The son was given to relatives, and then to a foster family.
For the first time Manson was in a correctional facility at the age of 12 - for armed robbery. By the age of 18, he was already considered "dangerous": in one of the correctional schools, Manson raped another prisoner, threatening him with a razor.
“I was raised by the police, I was raised by convicts, I was raised by the [prison] administration. I used to live locked up. It's like a parallel universe, because I have no place among you,”he said in an interview given while serving a life sentence. When, in 1967, his second "adult" term came to an end (for forging a check), Manson asked not to let him go, calling the prison his "only home." By that time, he was 32 years old, 17 of which he spent behind bars.
Contrary to requests, Manson freed himself in 1967 and organized the "Family" - a sect in which he surrounded himself with young girls, telling them about the coming end of the world called Helter Skelter (the phrase translates as "mess"; this is the name of the song The Beatles). Manson's Helter Skelter is an interracial war in which blacks defeat whites, and then turn to the Family for guidance. Manson did not have his own family, although in the intervals between plantings he managed to get married twice, from each marriage he had a son.
Trying to bring the end of the world closer, "Family" in August 1969 killed nine people in two days, including actress Sharon Tate, wife of director Roman Polanski, who was pregnant with his child. Manson was recognized as the organizer of the murders, although he himself did not participate in them. He and four other members of the "Family" were sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment.
Jesus Christ arrived in Los Angeles. The legendary musical group The Beatles is looking for him - British musicians know that a large-scale racial war is coming and want to escape: they are waiting for the son of God to come to London and record a music album where he will tell them everything. This doctrine was preached to his followers by the self-proclaimed American guru Charles Manson.
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He wanted to ignite the fire of the war himself: he planned to lure young white women from Los Angeles into his "Family" - an underground refuge in Death Valley. It was planned that this mass exodus would infuriate blacks who, during the sexual revolution, had become accustomed to the availability of white women. Now they, being unable to find the object of their lust, will begin to rebel against the whites and kill them. Those in response will arrange a large-scale genocide, slaughter thousands of blacks and sign their own death warrant.
The fact is that while African Americans will go under the knife, the "real black race" - here Manson doubted whether it will be Muslims from the "Nation of Islam", or National Socialists from the "Black Panthers" - will prepare for a decisive strike against the whites … And when the real blacks rise up, they will win: the white race will be exterminated. But blacks cannot rule the world without whites. At that moment, members of the Manson Family will emerge from the ground. "Then I'll scratch his kudryavenkuyu head kick under the ass, I say go to pick cotton and be a good nigger" - triumphantly concluded Manson. One snag: the race war did not start in any way, it had to be accelerated. There was one sure-fire method - overkill …
During the trial, Manson became a star. The courthouse was besieged by followers, and his first album of songs, Lie, went on sale; the actions of the "Family" were glorified by the radical left-wing samizdat Weathermen; Rolling Stone magazine called Manson "the most dangerous human being alive." “He became an icon because he ended the swinging sixties. The power of flowers is over. Youth culture has become much darker and more dangerous than previously thought, "- argued professor of criminology David Wilson about the Manson phenomenon.
Attention to Manson only intensified when, after the verdict, in 1975, a member of the "Family" Lynette Fromm tried to shoot US President Gerald Ford (the gun did not work, she was sentenced to life imprisonment; she was released in 2009). Manson's popularity did not fade in the 1990s: his song got on the Guns N 'Roses album (for which Axl Rose had to make excuses), and Marilyn Manson took the name of the killer for a pseudonym in order to create a "balance of good and evil." Both in court and in prison, Manson willingly gave interviews, talking about his views and the "Family". For a conversation with Manson in 1986, CBS journalist Charlie Rose even won an Emmy. At the same time, the convicted person denied any involvement in the killings. Asked by Rose if it worried him that Tate was pregnant when she was killed, Manson replied:"And what does it even mean to 'worry'?"
In 2012, Manson was once again denied parole. He himself did not appear at the hearing, but excerpts from his conversation with the prison psychologist were read there. “I've spent my whole life in prison. I buried five (Manson was convicted of killing nine people, but he did not confess to the murders; what he means here is not completely clear - approx. "Medusa") - I am a very dangerous person ", - said Manson. Juan Flynn, a former worker at the Family ranch, believes that he did not seek freedom: “Charles Manson outwitted everyone. They say: "He is in prison." But Charlie was exactly where he wanted."
California authorities will have to decide whether Manson will be buried or cremated.
Charles was born on November 12, 1934 in a hospital in Cincinnati (Ohio, USA). His mother - 16-year-old Kathleen Maddox, who had escaped from a very strict religious family - could not even think of a name for the baby: at first the boy was called "anonymous Maddox". A few weeks later, the name was finally found: Charles Mills Maddox.
There is no exact information about Kathleen's life, but Charles claimed that her mother earned a living by prostitution and drank deeply. One day she took the baby to a cafe, and the waitress who served them said laughingly that the baby was so good that she would even buy such a wonderful baby. A mug of beer is yours, Kathleen snapped. Then I drank free beer and left. The child stayed in the cafe. The uncle and aunt who learned about this returned Charles to his mother, but they were not destined to live together for a long time: when the boy was four years old, his mother met a man, and it seemed to her that he had a lot of money. He and his brother robbed him. Kathleen was imprisoned for three years, the child was placed in the care of strict uncle and aunt.
When he went to school, one teacher called him the son of a criminal. The boy burst into tears and ran home. Uncle yelled at him, saying that tears are for girls. The next day, Charles went to school in girly clothes for educational purposes. He remembered this humiliation all his life. The boy was hot-tempered and cruel. Classmates recalled that rage could overpower him at one point. Charles lied a lot to get the attention he lacked. When Kathleen got out of prison and saw her son for the first time, she hugged him. Decades later, Manson said that this is his only happy childhood memory.
When Charles was 12, his mother finally realized that she was not able to raise him into a worthy member of society, and the boy was sent to a Catholic school for difficult children. He hated her with all his heart: after ten months he fled home. Mother did not even let him on the threshold - she returned him back to the hated educators. At school, Charles never learned to read and write, but he joined a local gang: teenagers drove stolen cars from one state to another, robbed people and stole bicycles.
Once he was caught and thundered into a colony for teenagers, from where he escaped twice. Charles claimed to have escaped the brutal rape that the inmates of the correctional institution subjected him to. For about ten years, he wandered through prisons, briefly released to be imprisoned again. Manson said that even the most inveterate scoundrels were visited by relatives and friends, he was always alone. Finally, in 1967, 33-year-old Manson was released. He begged to be left behind bars - there was nowhere to go, but he was refused. He had $ 35 in his pocket, and the fate of a mass murderer lay ahead.
The authorities allowed Manson to move to San Francisco. A cellmate helped him with housing, but Charles was forced to beg to feed himself. He met yesterday's student Mary Brunner and moved in with her. Manson quickly subdued his girlfriend. He brought women into the house, setting up a kind of den. She didn't dare to object. In the end, it turned out that he lived with 19 women at the same time.
Thanks to his charisma, he became a real guru, popular among the hippies of the Haight Ashbury area. Borrowing in part the teachings of the Scientology sect he had become acquainted with in prison, Manson told his followers that they were the heirs of the early Christians, and the political establishment was the heirs of the Romans. Charles himself imagined himself to be Christ: he told his "Family" that he often imagined himself nailed to the cross. Manson and his followers found an old school bus, dismantled the seats, laid carpets and cushions inside, turning them into a kind of "hippiemobile", and began to travel around the region. Charles preached: branded materialistic lifestyles and people's attachment to things. One day one of the listeners asked him how such sermons are combined with owning a sufficiently "pumped" bus. Manson threw the keys to him and calmly watched him leave.
He was a gifted psychologist - he knew how to win over people: once, for example, he won the favor of an influential member of a biker group, giving him access to the women of the “Family” and assuring him of his sexual inadequacy. Once this skill saved his life: the father of one of the girls who had escaped to the "Family" came to Manson and pointed a shotgun at him, and he calmly invited the aggressor into the house, which completely discouraged him.
In the spring of 1968, musician Dennis Wilson was driving through Malibu, a pastoral coastal town in California. He saw two women on the road - Patricia Krenwinkel and Ella Joe Bailey - and offered to give them a lift. They happily agreed. History soon repeated itself, but this time Wilson took the women to his home, and he himself went to rehearsal. Returning late at night, he found in his home about a dozen women and an unknown man who introduced himself as Charles Manson. Over time, the entire "Family" moved to Wilson's house, and the musician, fascinated by Manson's personality, actually became a part of it. The men sang and talked, and the women served them.
The content of the "Family", however, cost the musician a pretty penny: he spent more than 100 thousand dollars on food, clothing, cars and treatment of the followers of the guru from gonorrhea. Wilson introduced his friend and mentor to friends, including producer Terry Melcher: in the house he rented, then one of the murders happened. Wilson even recorded the song "Cease to Exist", which Manson himself wrote and performed. The song, however, was written by the Beach Boys and was remade, which caused a conflict. Manson brought a bullet to Wilson with the words: "I want you to look at her every time and think how great it is that your children are safe." Wilson beat Manson in front of his followers. The conflict escalated, and Wilson's manager finally evicted the "Family" from the musician's house.
In August 1968, Manson founded a new hideout for The Family at Spahn's Ranch: it used to be used as a set for filming Westerns, but by the end of the 60s it fell into disrepair. The owner of the site, 80-year-old almost blind, George Spahn, did not take money from the guests: the women helped with the housework, sometimes had sex with him. It was here that Charles first heard the songs from The White Album by The Beatles and found in them confirmation of his theory of an imminent racial war.
He decided that British musicians specially recorded the disc to tell the "Family" about its higher destiny. Finally, race war is named after the song of the Liverpool Four: Helter Skelter. In the UK, helter-skelter is often used to refer to an amusement park roller coaster - Manson apparently didn't know about it. The song contains the words: “When I go down, I will go up the hill again. There I will stop, turn around and rock again. " Manson believed that this symbolized the rise of the "Family" from the ground after killing all whites.
The line "Caution … Helter-skelter … Its end is near" was interpreted by him as a warning of an imminent interracial war. After listening to the famous "Yellow Submarine", the guru ordered his followers to renovate the canary-yellow house in the city of Canoga Park: there, "plunged into oblivion" of the whole world, "Family" could hide in anticipation of a global massacre. In favor of his theory, Manson interpreted more than a dozen songs by The Beatles and the Revelation of John the Divine. In November 1969, the "Family" got another headquarters: two ranches in the Death Valley desert. One of them was provided by the grandmother of a new girl from the "Family", the owner let the cultists on the other, demanding in return to repair the dilapidated buildings. It was there, in the desert, that the members of the "Family" were looking for the entrance to the dungeon, where they had to wait out the coming shocks. But for some reason they did not find it.
Despite the efforts of the "Family", the interracial war did not begin in any way. It was impossible to hesitate: Manson volunteered to show African Americans how to start an interracial war, and instructed followers to collect money. One of the members of the "Family", Tex Watson, acted in a simple way: he deceived the Negro drug dealer Bernard Crowe. He threatened to kill all the inhabitants of the Spahn ranch. Manson chose to be proactive and shot Crowe at his own Hollywood home. Frightened by the revenge of the bandit's accomplices, the guru ordered to turn the ranch into a fortified camp, and his followers to arm themselves and patrol its territory. “Here's proof that the helter skelter is about to start. Chernenky decided to challenge the elite by attacking the elite, "Watson wrote.
In July 1969, Manson sent three wards to collect money inherited by his friend Gary Hinman. Gary was held hostage for two days, Manson personally cut his ear with a sword, and then a member of the "Family" Bobby Beausoleil killed him. In Hinman's blood, they wrote "political pig" on the wall and painted a panther's paw - the symbol of the black National Socialists. When Beausoleil was arrested, Manson said, "It's time for the helter-skelter."
On the night of August 8, 1969, Tex Watson drove three of the Family's girls - Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian and Patricia Krenwinkel - to the house where producer Melcher had previously lived, whom Manson had been introduced to by his host, Wilson. Watson ordered the women to break into the house and kill everyone in the most brutal way possible. Melcher moved out of the house a long time ago, that night there were the wife of film director Roman Polanski, actress Sharon Tate, her friend and former lover, stylist Jay Sebring, Polanski's friend Wojciech Frykowski and his mistress Abigail Folger.
When the killers arrived at the scene, Watson climbed onto a pole and cut the telephone cable coming from the house. The intruders climbed over the wall and tried to approach the house, but saw a car on the site with the headlights on. Watson went to the car and ordered the driver to stop. Steven Parent was driving, visiting a friend. Watson threw himself at him with a knife, and then shot him four times with a revolver. Then he cut the screen on the window, entered the house and opened the door to the accomplices. The first to wake up was Fricowski, who was asleep in the living room. Watson, noticing this, hit him in the head. He asked what they wanted, and Watson replied: "I am the devil, and I came here to do the devil's work."
Meanwhile, Atkins found three other occupants of the house and made them gather in the living room. Watson began tying Tate and Sebring by the neck, throwing a rope over the ceiling beam. Sebring tried to protest the mistreatment of the pregnant Tate, but Watson simply shot him and then stabbed him seven times. Fricowski, whose hands were tied with a towel, attacked Atkins, but she stabbed him in the leg. Watson helped the girl by hitting Fricovsky several times on the head with the handle of a pistol and slashing him with a knife. While this scuffle was going on, Folger ran away from Krenwinkel, who was guarding her, but she caught up with her, threw her onto the lawn and, with the help of Watson, who came to the rescue, stabbed her with a knife.
After killing Folger, Watson noticed that the wounded Fricowski was trying to crawl, approached him and stabbed him several more times. Then doctors will count 51 wounds on his body. The assassins returned to the house. Sharon Tate remained there, she begged for mercy, asked to let her wait for the birth of the child. But the criminals had no time for that - she was stabbed 16 times. Watson later recalled that, dying, she shouted “Mom! Mum!" Leaving the place of the terrible massacre, the women, on Watson's orders, took a towel from the hands of the dead Fricowski and wrote on the front door "Pig" in Tate's blood. On the way home, they changed into clean clothes. Returning to their guru, the killers found Charlie dancing with the girl in the light of the moon, both naked. Manson asked them if they were repentant. The answer was negative.
Manson was not very happy with what had happened: he did not like that the victims made such a mess and did not accept death meekly. He decided to show how to kill, and together with five accomplices went to look for a new target. The choice fell on supermarket manager Leno Labianca and his wife Rosemary, who live in Los Angeles. Having stopped the car at the Labianca house, Manson and Watson left the women waiting and went into the house. They woke up the couple, tied their hands, put pillowcases on their heads and tied knots of wire on them. The woman was left in the living room, the man was taken to the bedroom. Everything was ready: Manson returned to the waiting women and ordered them to kill the "hostages."
Watson was waiting for them at the house. He sent them to the bedroom to kill the woman, and he himself went to deal with her husband. He beat him with a bayonet - the first blow fell in the throat. Suddenly he heard a noise from the bedroom: it turned out that Rosemary Labianca did not want to die and restrained the attacking women by spinning a lamp tied to her neck. He hit her several times with a bayonet and returned to finish off Leno. On his stomach, he carved the word "war" in large letters and stuck a fork into it. Meanwhile, the women, on Watson's instructions, stabbed Rosemary with a kitchen knife. Krenwinkel wrote Rise and Death to Pigs in blood on the walls and Hilter Skelter on the refrigerator door. When the group returned to the car, Manson decided to commit another crime and kill another pig. He ordered Kasabian to go to the city of Venice, to an actor he knew, and finish him off, while he left for the ranch. Kasabian arrived at the scene, deliberately knocked on the wrong door and decided not to kill anyone.
At first, the investigators did not connect the two monstrous crimes, believing that in the first case the case was related to drugs, and the inscriptions were made to distract the attention of the investigation. However, experts investigating the case of the Labianca family spoke with the detectives involved in the murder of Gary Hinman. It turned out that Kitty Lutsinger, the girlfriend of the criminal Bobby Beausoleigh, had told them about the "Family" during interrogation. The police raided a ranch in the desert (the entrance to the dungeon had never been found by that time), found several stolen cars and arrested more than 20 people, including Manson.
Investigators decided to check Lutsinger's testimony that the "Family" tried to hire a gang of bikers to guard. Representatives of the group led the operatives to the idea of the connection between the "Family" and the terrible murders. In addition, Atkins let slip: while awaiting a court decision in the Hinman case, she told her cellmates about her adventures. They handed everything over to the police, and the detectives finally got on the trail. Manson, Kasabian, Atkins and Krenwinkel were put on trial. "Family" tried to interfere with the process: Manson fans crowded around the court and put pressure on witnesses. The guru declared his lack of confidence in the court and carved an X on his forehead, "deleting himself from the world of the establishment." His partners followed his example, and then all the members of the "Family".
Despite Manson's “glamorization” in the media, which even President Richard Nixon condemned at the time, prosecutors were able to prove the guilt of the “Family”. The jury offered the judge to sentence them to death, he agreed with this decision. When the death penalty was banned in California, sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.
