Charlie  Manson:  the  lunatic   they  followed  (Part 1)                             

 

What follows is what I got mostly from the Internet and other written sources.

This article is Part 1 of a two-part series about Charlie Manson, a notorious serial killer. I will describe to you as just how insane this man was and how gullible his followers were. Part 2 will describe the killings that this man and  his followers did under his instructions.  

 

There are so many gullible people in the world so it doesn’t surprise me one bit that many of these naïve fools would follow a mad man like Charles Milles Manson, who is notoriously known in history as a serial killer.

He was born on November 12, 1934 as an American citizen who later became a criminal while being a musician of sorts (he played the guitar) and he led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune of losers that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was later found guilty of conspiracy to commit the murders of Sharon Tate (and others in her home) and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca which were carried out by members of his group at his instruction. He was convicted of the murders through the joint-responsibility rule, which makes each member of a conspiracy guilty of crimes his fellow conspirators commit in furtherance of the conspiracy's objective which applied to Manson even though he didn’t personally participate on the Tate and LaBianca murders.    

Manson believed in what he called Helter Skelter, a catch-phrase he took from the song of the same name by the Beatles. Manson believed Helter Skelter to be an impending apocalyptic race war, which he described in his own version of the lyrics to the Beatles’ song. He believed his murders would help precipitate that war. From the beginning of his notoriety, a pop culture arose around him in which he ultimately became an emblem of insanity, violence and the macabre.

Manson was an unemployed former convict, who had spent half of his life in correctional institutions for a variety of offenses. Before the murders, he was a singer-songwriter on the fringe of the Los Angeles music industry, chiefly through a chance association with Dennis Wilson, a founding member and the drummer of the Beach Boys. After Manson was charged with the crimes of which he was later convicted, recordings of songs written and performed by him were released commercially. Various musicians, including Guns N' Roses, White Zombie and Marilyn Manson, have performed some of his songs.                                                                           

As an aside, Marilyn Manson is a stage name of Brian Hugh Warner who chose the first name of Marilyn Munroe and the last name of Charles Manson as part of his stage name because he knew it would draw attention to him as a musician. His notoriety followed him everywhere including criminal charges and being sued a number of times. However this article isn’t about this fool.

Charlie Manson was a lifelong social predator. There was nothing mystical or heroic about this mad man as he was simply an opportunistic sociopath.

Sociopaths live among us. An estimated 2 million sociopaths live in North America alone, and the most infamous sociopaths have become well-known monsters described in the media. Most sociopaths, however, rarely get the national attention given to extreme sociopaths such as Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Charlie Manson. Like many other types of dangerous predators, sociopaths do not often look like the monsters of our imaginations although Manson certainly did. Further, most sociopaths don’t murder people.

In popular culture, the term psychopath is also often loosely used to reference a sociopath. Sociopaths have a psychological disorder. One of the most common personality characteristics of the sociopath is their grandiose sense of self and entitlement. These sick people also often display a lack of remorse and most have a very manipulative personality covered by superficial charm. Sociopaths often use people as a means to getting what they want. Friendships and romantic partners are often frequently disregarded and replaced when the relationship no longer suits the sociopath’s self-centered needs. A great many sociopaths have troubles with law enforcement and authority and account for the high percentages of sociopaths who fill our prisons.

In 1967, Manson walked out of prison at age 32 and began trolling for devotees in the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco. There he would find losers who were part of the sub culture of Californian society. As poorly prepared for life on the outside as he was, Charlie was nevertheless able to blend in with his guitar into the hippie scene in San Francisco. The high-point of the Haight-Ashbury culture was disappearing and the only ones left were the diehards—the last hippies who hung onto that culture.

Manson’s followers

Manson started to attract a group of followers, many of whom were very young women with troubled emotional lives who were rebelling against their parents and society in general. They were vulnerable to Manson’s attention to them and as such, they were willing to follow him wherever he chose to take them. For the most part, Manson’s followers were weak-willed people who were naïve, gullible and easy to lead.

Manson assembled a destructive, doomsday cult around himself, which the media later called The Family. On October 7, 1968, Manson’s growing family of followers settled at the Spahn Ranch in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California some 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles. At one time, it numbered in excess of 100 individuals at the ranch. Manson was referred to by his followers (mostly young women) as both as God and Satan. As the family's guru, he claimed to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. I don’t think he really believed he was Jesus Christ but some of his followers did.  

His six main followers were Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, Van Houten, Tex Watson, Bobby Beausoleil and Steve Dennis ‘Clem’ Grogan.

Patricia Krenwinkel was born on December 3, 1947. During her time with Manson’s group, she was known as various aliases such as Big Patty, Yellow, Marnie Reeves and Mary Ann Scott, but to Manson’s Family, she was most commonly known as Katie. She met Manson in in 1967 at Manhattan Beach (a beachfront city located southwest of Los Angeles), along with Lynette Fromme (the woman who later attempted to kill President Ford) and Mary Brunner, who were already known as Charlie's Girls. In later interviews, Krenwinkel stated that she had slept with Manson the first night they met, and that he was the first person who told her she was beautiful. Mesmerized by Manson's charisma and starved for attention, she decided to go to San Francisco with him.       

Susan Atkins was born on May 7, 1948 in San Gabriel, California, the second of three children. She grew up in Northern California. According to her, both her parents, Edward John and Jeanette, were alcoholics. In 1967, Atkins met Manson when he played guitar at the house where she was living with several friends. When the house was raided several weeks later by the police and she was left homeless, Manson invited her to join his group, who were embarking on a summer road trip in a converted school bus painted completely black, Atkins later claimed that she really believed that Manson was Jesus.

Leslie Van Houten was born on August 23, 1949. In the summer of 1968, she met Catherine Share and Bobby Beausoleil in San Francisco. It was through them that she heard of Charles Manson and his community. When she met Manson, she was immediately captivated by him and the people associated with him. His way of life intrigued her so she joined his group in September 1968, moving to the Spahn Ranch.  Although Van Houten was devoted to Manson, he was never very interested in her and treated her as if she belonged to Bobby Beausoleil since she had been his girlfriend when she arrived at the ranch in 1968. Manson's indifferent attitude towards her left her with a strong need to prove herself to him and the rest of the family

Tex Watson was born in Dallas, Texas on December 2, 1945 and grew up in Copeville, Texas. In January 1967 he began working at Braniff Airlines as a baggage boy. He used free airline tickets to travel and visited a frat brother in Los Angeles and became interested in the psychedelic lifestyle of the late 1960s. During that time he began dealing marijuana and LSD and was arrested at least twice for distribution. During that period Watson met a man named Charles Manson. Watson spent some time at a compound Manson was living at called the Spahn Ranch with the Manson Family, moving back and forth into Los Angeles to make money through dealing illicit drugs. In March of 1969 he moved back to the Spahn Ranch where Manson was preaching the inevitability of a race war in America and his hope to incite it.

Bobby Beausoleil was born Robert Kenneth Beausoleil on November 6, 1947 to a large, working-class family from Santa Barbara, California. Young Bobby was a good-looking boy with a pronounced musical talent, but his curiosity and rebelliousness got him into minor scrapes with the law so he was sent to a reform school at age 15. Shortly thereafter, Bobby drifted down to Los Angeles, where he played music and became immersed in hippie culture. In 1966, Beausoleil joined a rock band called The Milky Way, and befriended with one of its guitarists who was Manson who by then was an aspiring songwriter. When the band broke up, Bobby moved to San Francisco. A short time later, he and Manson reunited and Beausoleil became a member in good standing as part of Manson’s followers.

Steve Dennis ‘Clem’ Grogan was born on July 13, 1951 and he is an American and a former member of the Manson Family. He was a musician, dropped out of high school and was involved in minor crimes before joining the Manson family at the Spahn Ranch. Like  Manson, he was friends with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. He was often considered dumb, or even retarded by other Family members, earning him the nickname Scramblehead but some felt he was only playing dumb.

Manson’s insanity

The Beatles (a renowned band in the 1960s) released their White Album in 1968. The music included 30 songs ranging from rock ‘n’ roll to a children’s lullaby. It was from some of the words in several of the Beatle’s songs that prompted Manson to convince the members of his family that an apocalyptic war would arise because of the tension over racial relations between blacks and whites in the United States.  He told his followers that they should pay special attention to the word, piggies, blackbird, revolution and helter skelter.  He said that the songs were musical road maps to the immediate future and that the word ‘piggies’ describes the disgusting entitlement enjoyed by those who are rich and powerful and that they deserved a damn good whacking. He said that the word ‘blackbird’ predicted an uprising of the downtrodden blacks and that the word, ‘revolution’ was a call to arms.

He convinced his followers (who were not really that bright) that those interpretations of the words were not just his but that the interpretations of the words were their’s also.  He said, (and they believed him) that not only was the Beatle’s White Album their call to arms to the entire world but it was also a specific call to arms directed to Manson and his followers. He told his followers that in 1969, they would all go to the Parker ranch in Death Valley and that the Beatles would join them there. With his usual assumption of superiority, he presumed that the Beatles would respond favourably to his call to come to him at the Parker ranch. To get the process underway, he sent letters and telegrams to them when they were in England and naturally, the Beatles didn’t respond. That didn’t deter him however. He continued to preach that a black uprising was imminent and not because the Beatles said so but the Bible also prophesized such an uprising in the New Testament. It isn’t there so I don’t know where he got that nonsense other than to say that it had to have been rattling around in his addled brain.  

 For some, Revelations in the New Testament is entirely symbolic and it simply promises that Jesus will return to Earth and to others, it represents the possibility that something else is coming to Earth—horned beasts and other fearsome things.

Manson convinced his followers with their drugged induced addled brains that the Bible (via Revelations) made it clear that there was soon to be an uprising around the world of the oppressed, especially the blacks who had been oppressed far too long. Actually that part of his statement was true. The blacks in the U.S. had been oppressed for far too long up to that time in history.

He said that a terrible event would occur shortly and he referred to it as Helter Skelter. He said that the blacks were going to rise en masse and kill most of the whites and enslave the white survivors. He told his followers that he would lead them to a bottomless pit where they would remain in hiding while the world above them descended into chaos.

Now here comes the lunacy that had been gradually rising to the surface of his brain. He told them that his Family would expand to 144,000 members which would be the equivalent of the 12 tribes of Israel. Meanwhile, the blacks realizing that they lacked organizational skills to run the world, he (Manson) and his followers would rise to the surface of the world and become the rulers of all on Earth and he would be the Jesus everyone expected to return. I think some of his brain matter must have been emerging out of his mouth as he spoke.

Now his followers being addled brained as they were, excepted this lunatic`s ravings as gospel. They were overwhelmed by that stupid revelation spewing from Manson`s mouth. He told them that while they were down in the deep pit, they could change into any creature they wanted to turn into. Some said that they wanted to be winged elves. Manson said that their wishes would be granted and that when the time came near for them to emerge from the pit, they would feel the budding of their wings. He also told them that a terrible fate would await them on the surface if they tried to leave the pit before the appointed time.

There was an unexpected defector in the group. It was Tex Watson. He sneaked away from the Spahn Ranch and stayed in the Los Angeles area selling drugs. Manson finally learned where Watson was through his network of informers but for the time being, he chose to bide his time until he needed Watson to join his Family again to bring about the nefarious plans that was fermenting in his addled brain.

The next article will be The Charlie Manson murders