Even in the drug-drenched, hippie 1970s, this massacre shook the United States. A perverted insane maniac who imagines himself to be a prophet, Charles Manson and his rabid followers staged a 2-day "holiday" of villainy, stained with the blood of innocent people.
1969, August - on an old abandoned ranch near Los Angeles, which was crumpled under the bright rays of the sun, a picturesque group of dregs of society and small hooligans sat among dilapidated, dilapidated buildings and listened to the ominous sermons of a small bearded man, in whom many of those present saw the prophet.
The time has come, he announced in a low voice, for the "helter-skelter" to start a war between the black and white races, a war that he, a preacher, had long foreseen, a war that would forever cleanse the land and open for him the path to power over the world, over all planet.
With these gloomy predictions, Charles Manson, a pimp, thief and a failed musician, opened the campaign of terror that is terrifying in our time.
Bloody orgy
By the time the bloody two-day orgy, inaccessible to the normal mind, was over, 7 people, including the beautiful film actress Sharon Tate, who was 9 months pregnant, were brutally killed, their blood was written on the walls and doors of houses in which the tragedy took place.
The money in the house was not touched, despite the apparent wealth of the victims. There were no signs of revenge - just a senseless massacre, the wanton murder of 7 people, whose only "crime", apparently, was that their life was successful. These atrocities have gone down in the history of crime under the name of the Tate-La Bianca murders.
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For many weeks, the police could not find out the killers, despite working out dozens of versions. The truth was revealed only after 5 long months of continuous searches.
It happened by chance: the police detained a woman, on suspicion of another murder, which at first glance had nothing to do with the tragedy of seven.
Susan Atkins, who has long been in the minds of police and whose childish naive appearance hid, according to Manson himself, "the most perverted imagination" of all members of the so-called "family", was arrested in connection with the murder of drug dealer Gary Hinman. This murder was committed 10 days after the massacre at the Tate house.
While waiting for the investigation to be completed and charges brought, Atkins let her tongue in the cell and began to brag to her cellmates of her role in the Tate-La Bianca murders. She even claimed that she tasted the blood of the pregnant actress, and admired the leader of the "family". He was, as she said, a living god who, possessing supernatural power, is able to force any of his followers to do what he, God, needs.
Atkins frankly reveled in her stories, especially when it came to the death of a film actress. Choking on words, she told:
“It was such a wonderful feeling … When I stabbed her for the first time and she screamed, everything inside me turned upside down … I stabbed again. And she stabbed her with a knife until she was silent. It was like sexual gratification. Especially when you see blood. It's even better than orgasm."
Two eyewitnesses of this revelation reported this to the police, who, by coincidence, were already dealing with members of the Manson sect, suspecting them of stealing cars and arson.
A few days later, Atkins relayed her story of this murder to the Los Angeles Times, though she did not mention her role or repeat previous revelations. Just a few hours later, the story of Sharon Tate's murder spread throughout the world. Manson immediately became the most famous of all the criminals who once appeared in the United States.
Son of a prostitute
Charles Manson is the illegitimate son of a careless and indifferent prostitute. He was born in 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Young Charlie, who never knew who his real father was, spent the first years of his life in shelters. At school, the gloomy and naughty boy studied poorly. His transition from childhood to adolescence was marked by a multitude of delinquencies and a stay in several correctional facilities for juvenile delinquents.
1951, March - Charlie is ordered to be sent to a boys' fostering school in Washington DC. The next year, just days before his release, young Manson raped another boy while holding a razor blade at his throat. As a result, he ended up in a correctional colony, where he stayed until May 1954.
Although Manson's sexual tendencies were mostly homosexual in his early years, shortly after his release he met and married Rezali Jean Willis, a 17-year-old waitress.
Together with his pregnant wife, he went to California, but even then he turned out to be true to himself - he stole a car for the trip. As a result, he received three years in prison.
Charles Manson Jr. was born when his dad was behind bars. Rosalie often visited her husband, but in 1957 these visits stopped: she met another man and true love.
The following year, Manson was released, but never ceased to constantly conflict with the law. In between his imprisonment, he managed to marry again and his second son was born.
It was 1964, and Manson, like many young Americans, was influenced by the Beatles. However, unlike millions of other fans of the legendary four, he was not just in love with them. This love has turned into fanaticism.
1967 - Manson, who was already 32 years old, ended his next sentence. Apparently, he was so used to living in prison that he asked permission to stay, but he was refused. And he went to San Francisco. There he met with hippies, "flower children." With only a guitar and a pair of underwear, Manson eventually found his niche in society. He became a wolf among the lambs.
Leader of the Outcast
The shaggy performer of folk songs with his street philosophy turned out to be a revelation for street children and drug addicts, such a messiah. He, in turn, found in this environment what he had been striving for for a long time - a grateful, easily controlled audience.
1969 - Manson and his admirers, mostly young middle-class girls who have cut ties with their families, move south. By chance, they ended up on an abandoned ranch near Los Angeles, where the "family" began.
In speed, other disillusioned teenagers began to join this gathering of ragamuffins.
Together they smoked weed, injected, danced naked under the bright stars over the California desert and eagerly listened to Charles's rambling sermons, in which the Beatles and Bible truths were heaped together, and the frustration with society that pushed him away with contempt …
Charlie, as the participants in these parties later said, proclaimed that the time had come when the "helter-skelter" - a war between races, was about to begin. According to his delusional predictions, the blacks will win this war. They will destroy the white race throughout the land, of course, with the exception of Manson himself and those who follow him.
Then, Charlie argued, blacks would join the "family", which by that time should have grown to 144,000 members (the so-called "chosen ones", the number of which Manson calculated based on the biblical mention of 12 Israeli tribes, each of which had 12,000 tribesmen).
Manson had grandiose plans. He believed that he would one day rule over the entire planet. At the same time, according to Greg Jacobson, a capable guy who knew him well, Charlie was convinced that the Beatles were guiding him towards a brilliant future. Greg said: "Through their songs, they allegedly talked to Charlie, warning him across the ocean what will happen in the near future."
Most often, Manson talked about the so-called "Revolution-9". “It was about her that the Beatles were trying to tell people,” Jacobson broadcast. "This prediction has a direct connection with the biblical Apocalypse." Charles interpreted the biblical revelation about Armageddon as a call to blacks for a cleansing battle on earth.
But at the same time, the blacks, in his opinion, needed "help" to start the racial battle. It is this "help" that he, Manson, and his "family" must provide. They will strike at the very heart of the white establishment, deliberately leaving "strings" - evidence that the crime was committed by black radicals. This is when the helter-skelter will begin.
Angels of death
At dawn on August 9, 1969, Manson dispatched four black-clad "family" members, three of whom were women: Susan Atkins, a former church choir singer; Patricia Crenwinkle, who once worked as a secretary in a firm's office; Linda Kasabian, who later became the main witness for the prosecution, and the only man on this team, Charles Watson, who in the recent past was a good athlete in his Texas.
The four "angels of death" arrived in the prestigious Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles and stopped at the top of the hill, from where there was a good view of the highway and a large mansion. The mansion was rented by the film actress Sharon Tate and her husband, film director Roman Polansky. To prevent the owners from alerting the police, Watson cut the telephone wire.
Having gone downstairs by car, the four cautiously approached the mansion, silently entered. And the massacre began.
Film actress Tate, who was only 26 years old, was expecting the birth of a child from day to day. She was killed after 16 stabs.
Other victims died a terrible death. Beating Wojtek Frykowski, a Polish filmmaker, with a baton, Watson whispered with rapture: "I am the devil and I have come to do a devilish business." When the director lost consciousness, the killer stabbed him with a knife.
Stephen Parent, the 18-year-old guest manager of the mansion, was stabbed 4 times.
Jay Sebring, a Hollywood fashion designer and hairdresser, was shot and stabbed.
Abigail Folger, daughter of a millionaire owner of a coffee company, was stabbed to death on the front lawn when she tried to escape.
Before leaving home, the brutal killers wrote the word "pig" on the front door with the blood of their victims.
Upon learning of this massacre, all of Los Angeles was in shock. And yet Manson decided, without delay, to strike another blow. Now he himself led a gang of raiders.
On another evening, Manson and three of his closest followers broke into the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, the owners of a chain of small shops. Manson himself tied up innocent people and gave them to be torn apart by the "children of the devil" - Watson, Crenwinkle and 17-year-old Leslie Houten, in the recent past the "beauty queen" of one of the colleges.
Later, at the trial, the terrible details of this tragedy were revealed. The victims died a slow and painful death. Three maniacs literally cut off pieces of meat from them with knives and forks. Crenwinkle carved the word "war" into Leno LaBianca's stomach, and then left a fork sticking out in the dead body.
Initially, the police did not associate this heinous crime with the massacre at the Tate mansion. The fact is that both in the mansion itself and around it, during a search, detectives found remains of cocaine and marijuana. The experts concluded that the massacre was the result of excessive drug use by the inhabitants of the mansion themselves. This was a terrible mistake.
The police were so convinced of the "drug cause" of the bloody drama at the Polanski mansion that they ignored one very important circumstance. Shortly after the massacre at this mansion, two detectives working on the murder of a certain Gary Hinman reported to their superiors that at the scene of the crime, as in the case of the Tate house, the killers had left an inscription on the wall in blood.
And a subsequent report from the detectives said that they had arrested a suspect named Bobby Beusoleil. Previously, this same Bobby was seen in a group where a bearded guy named Charlie was in charge.
And yet, the police stubbornly refused to believe that there was a connection between these two cases.
And so it went on until Atkins began to confess to her inmates.
These are your children …
When the killers were caught, information about Manson and his slavishly loyal followers gave the murders an unexpected and previously unknown sound to society. It turned out that rich and famous people were slaughtered by "children of freedom", the very ones who left their wealthy families from the middle class to live in an atmosphere of drugs, unbridled sex and violence.
At the trial, which lasted 9 months, Manson described his entourage very clearly:
“Children who come to your homes with knives in their hands are your children. I didn't teach them this. You taught. Most of those who came to my old ranch, those who can be called "family", are those who were rejected by you … I did everything I could for them, I raised them from the garbage dump, I told them: "There is nothing wrong with love not".
… I am only what lives inside each and every one of you …
I never went to school, I never really learned to read and write, I was in prisons, so I remained undeveloped, remained a child, while your world has matured. And so I looked into what you created, and I could not understand it."
At that moment Manson's eyes became huge, his voice thundered. Those who were present in the hall noticed in all its appearance a raid of madness and at the same time a certain bewitching power of influence on others. Manson went on to broadcast:
“If I could, I would pull out this microphone now and blow your brains out with it. Because this is what you deserve, this is what… Is it a secret that music encourages young people to rise up to fight the establishment? Music speaks to you daily, but you are deaf, dumb and blind, you are not able to perceive it. And much more … Children are running away from you into the streets - and in the end they still run into you!"
Indeed, even during the trial, events showed that Manson was right in many ways. For thousands of disenchanted teenagers, he became a heroic sacrifice in the name of the triumph of a just cause. In the leaflets, he was hailed as an "innocent man" who had come to grips with oppression.
Society's verdict
1971, March 29, Monday - after the longest criminal trial in the United States, the jury found Manson and his thoughtless "death servants" guilty of all the counts against him.
Three weeks after the jury's verdict, Judge Charles Alder sentenced all the accused to death. But in 1972, when the death penalty was abolished in California, the sentence was changed to life imprisonment.
But Charlie is as dangerous today as ever. He receives bags of letters from disillusioned teenagers. Manson spends his days strumming guitar or making scorpions from whatever material is available, which ends up in solitary confinement in a heavily guarded California jail. He co-authored a book with another inmate entitled "Manson About Himself," which was published in 1988.
As for the followers of Manson, the very ones who killed to "fulfill" his prophecies, unlike Charlie, they, apparently, no longer adhere to diabolical beliefs. Susan Atkins, married in prison, returning to the fold of Christianity. Leslie Houten, while in prison, graduated from college and received an art degree. A third woman, Patricia Crenwinkle, applied for a pardon, but in November 1989 the request was denied.
Charles Watson is serving his life sentence in a California male colony. He also returned to Christianity and helps a local priest. Watson is married and has three children.
Linda Kasabian, who was the main prosecution witness at the trial and therefore escaped punishment, now lives in provincial New Hampshire and has four children.
Manson, on the other hand, shows indifference to whether he will ever be released or not. “I want you to know,” he wrote in 1988 from a prison cell, the whole world at my disposal. By the power of my will I am free, I am among you."
