Charles Manson

Charles Manson (born November 12, 1934, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.—died November 19, 2017, Kern county, California) was an American criminal and cult leader whose followers carried out several notorious murders in the late 1960s. Their crimes inspired the best-selling book Helter Skelter (1974). See also Tate murders.

Manson was born to a 16-year-old girl and a man he would never know. After his mother was imprisoned for armed robbery, he lived with an aunt and uncle in West Virginia. Beginning at age nine, he spent much of his life in juvenile reformatories or in prison for crimes that included petty larceny, armed robbery, burglary, and auto theft.

Following his release from prison in 1967, Manson moved to San Francisco, where he attracted a small but devoted group of followers from among the city’s bohemian youth culture. By 1968 he had become the leader of the “Family,” a communal religious cult dedicated to studying and implementing his eccentric religious teachings, which were drawn from science fiction as well as the occult and fringe psychology. He preached the coming of an apocalyptic race war that would devastate the United States and leave the Family in a position of dominant power.

Manson’s hold over his followers was graphically illustrated in 1969, when the Family carried out several murders on Manson’s orders. The most famous victim was actress Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski, who was killed in her Los Angeles home along with three guests. The ensuing trial of Manson and his followers in 1970 attracted national attention. In 1971 Manson was sentenced to death, but, following the abolition of capital punishment in California in 1972, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He became eligible for parole in 1978 but was denied then as well as in numerous subsequent hearings.

The murders inspired numerous books and movies, both documentary and fiction. In addition to Helter Skelter, which was cowritten by the prosecutor of the murder trial, books included the biography Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson (2013) by Jeff Guinn, and Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties (2017) by Dianne Lake, a former member of Manson’s Family. Film and television adaptations include Helter Skelter (1976) and Quentin Tarantino’s fictional Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019) and the documentaries Manson Speaks: Inside the Mind of a Madman (2017), Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes (2018), and the 2020 miniseries Helter Skelter: An American Myth.