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    LIFE Manson Family Murders
    LIFE Manson Family Murders
    LIFE Manson Family Murders
    Ebook175 pages1 hour

    LIFE Manson Family Murders

    By The Editors of LIFE

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    August 9, 1969: the hills of Los Angeles were so quiet, as one of the killers would later say, "You could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers" in the famed canyon houses. Those killers, disciples of cult leader Charles Manson, would soon be famous for committing a series of grisly murders at his behest. While Manson's goal was to sow race riots was intentional, his victims were random: a young actress and her friends; a grocer and his wife. Few crimes have been so dramatic, engrossing, and difficult to truly understand. Now, 50 years later, people are still fascinated by the crimes that seemed to mark the end of an era of peace and love, and the editors at LIFE present the special edition, "Manson." Revisit "Manson's World," with the hippies, the forming of the Family, and the man himself. Then, explore the shocking details of "The Manson Murders." Consider "The Aftermath," including the dramatic trial, the cultural shift toward violence and fear, and Manson's life in prison. Filled with rare photographs, including images of Manson's followers living on Spahn Ranch, LIFE's 'Manson' continues to explore, like Quentin Tarantino's new film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the motivations, the magnetism, and the mayhem that possessed the man behind the murders.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLife
    Release dateJul 19, 2019
    ISBN9781547849703
    LIFE Manson Family Murders

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      Book preview

      LIFE Manson Family Murders - The Editors of LIFE

      MATERIAL

      INTRODUCTION

      A NATIONAL OBSESSION

      There have been killers who were as ruthless—and responsible for more slaughter—but Charles Manson stands alone as a symbol of pure evil

      BY DANIEL S. LEVY

      CHARLES MANSON was mobbed by press photographers as he left a courtroom during his trial.

      On the night of August 8, 1969, Charles Manson, leader of a small cult known as the Family, waited patiently at Spahn Ranch, the group’s rural Los Angeles outpost, while four of his followers set out to invade 10050 Cielo Drive in the city’s hills.

      The crew—Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Linda Kasabian—carried with them knives, ropes, bolt cutters, and a gun, but only Watson knew the full scope of their mission: in Manson’s words, to totally destroy everyone in that house, as gruesome as you can. Within minutes of arriving at the Cielo Drive address, the killing began. The first victim was Steven Parent, a teenager on the property by chance, whom Watson encountered and shot four times in the driveway. Then, while Kasabian remained outside to serve as a lookout, Watson, Krenwinkel, and Atkins entered the residence to finish the job, slaughtering actress Sharon Tate, eight months pregnant; her friend Abigail Folger, heiress to the coffee fortune; Folger’s boyfriend, Voytek Frykowski; and Jay Sebring, a celebrity hairdresser. Before leaving, Atkins, following Manson’s directive to do something witchy, dipped a towel in Tate’s blood and wrote Pig on the door. We wanted to do a crime that would shock the world, Atkins boasted to a prison cellmate in 1969.

      It has been 50 years since Manson and his associates in four attacks butchered a total of nine people with the goal of setting off a race war. In that time, Americans have lived through unimaginable mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and other serial killings. Yet even against the background of this carnage, the Manson murders stand apart.

      The spree started in late July 1969 with the murder of Gary Hinman, a part-time musician and drug dealer, who was stabbed to death for refusing to turn over money that Manson thought he possessed. Two weeks later came the Tate slayings, followed the next night by the murders of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, operators of a small grocery chain. The Family’s final victim, in late August, was actor Donald Shea, who was tortured brutally until he died from his wounds.

      In part, it is the savagery of the killings, and the randomness of how the victims were chosen, that is so horrifying. The youth of the perpetrators—ranging from 19 to 23—is also haunting. But the biggest mystery is Manson himself, a would-be rock star with a God complex and an apocalyptic theology. How was he able to bend these middle-class young people to his will?

      God!—it was a rough time, recalled Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, who was friends with Tate and her husband, film director Roman Polanski. It stopped everyone in their tracks because suddenly all this violence came out in the midst of all this love and peace and psychedelia.

      Manson continued to exert his hold on Family members after they were arrested and throughout the murder trial. While prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi laid out the gruesomeness of the crimes, the three female defendants—Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten, who was involved in the LaBianca murders—expressed fealty to their leader by carving X’s into their foreheads, mimicking Manson. They also sang songs as they were led through court hallways, and chanted nonsensically in response to events in the chamber.

      Decades later, some of Manson’s followers were still loyal. Inspired by Manson’s jailhouse embrace of environmentalism, Family member Sandra Good wrote menacing letters to corporate executives for polluting the earth and served 10 years for the threats. When Good was paroled in 1985, she professed her allegiance to Manson. She did so again at his funeral in 2018. This past April, acolyte Lynette Fromme, who in 1975 attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford, said that she still loved Manson: I feel very honored to have met him.

      The public, meanwhile, can’t seem to avert its gaze, whether out of perverse fascination or pure horror. Helter Skelter, Bugliosi’s 1974 account of the murders and trial, has sold more than 7 million copies, making it one of the best-selling true-crime books ever. There are regular explorations of Manson and the Family, as with Jeff Guinn’s 2013 biography, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson. The killer is the subject of an opera, has inspired neo-Nazi groups, and has been featured on South Park, and he figures in Quentin Tarantino’s new film, Once Upon a Time in . . . Hollywood.

      As senseless as the Manson murders were, they at least led to a change in the criminal justice system, thanks largely to Sharon Tate’s mother, Doris. In 1982, Doris helped get the Victims’ Bill of Rights passed in California, which allowed crime victims and their survivors to speak at sentencing hearings; now all 50 states allow such statements. In 1992, when Van Houten gathered 900 signatures backing her parole, Doris rallied 350,000 opponents and blocked the killer’s release. Following Doris’s death in 1992, Patti Tate, Sharon’s sister, took over, and after Patti died, another sister, Debra, assumed the mantle. When Debra heard of the cult leader’s death in prison in 2017, she commented: People are saying this should be some kind of relief. But oddly enough, it really isn’t.

      DORIS TATE, SHARON’S mother, mourned her daughter’s death privately for a decade before becoming a outspoken victims’ rights advocate. Here: At home in Los Angeles with a portrait of Sharon, in 1984.

      Sharon Tate’s mother, Doris, fought for the Victims’ Bill of Rights, allowing victims to speak at sentencing hearings.

      CHAPTER ONE

      MANSON’S WORLD

      It was a decade defined by violence, the counterculture, sexual liberation, drug abuse, and rock music. The cult leader embodied all of it

      POLICE TRIED TO HELP families find their children during 1967’s Summer of Love as runaways flooded into San Francisco.

      WHO WERE THE HIPPIES?

      Like the Beats who came before them, the 1960s flower children questioned the establishment and materialism. They opted out of the workforce and turned to drugs for enlightenment

      BY EILEEN DASPIN

      SAN FRANCISCO COLUMNIST Herb Caen popularized the term hippies for the young people who congregated in the city’s Haight-Ashbury district.

      In perhaps the worst possible way, 1960s hippie culture was an ideal match for Charles Manson.

      Antiestablishment, anti-materialistic free spirits, the hippies of the era were souls, young and old, whose philosophy was embodied by Timothy Leary’s famous dictum, "Turn on, tune in,

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