Charles Manson Essay, Research Paper

Air section of southern California. On Saturday, August

ninth, nineteen sixty-nine, all hell broke loose with more than

six dozen plunges of a carving fork and knife, and the

peaceful dyll was shattered. Out of the chaos caused by the

senseless, horrific murderers, Charles Manson emerged as one

of the most feared notorious criminals of all time.

In the twenty-nine years since the so-called “Tate-La

Bianca” murders, many people have speculated about what

caused Charles Manson to become the monster he turned to

be. To be able to fully comprehend what could cause an

innocent child to evolve into a ruthless calculating cold-

blooded killer, one must completely examine the events of his

life.

Charles Manson was born Charles Milles Maddox, the son

of an unwed mother, in Cincinnati Ohio on November twelfth,

nineteen thirty-four. His father, he stated in his

autobiography, was a “young drugstore cowboy”, a transient

laborer who abandoned Charles’ mother when he learned that

she was pregnant. Shortly after Charles’ birth, Kathleen

Maddox lived with a man named William Manson, and they

eventually got married. William Manson gave his new stepson

his name, although the marriage dissolved shortly thereafter.

Raised in a strict, religious home, Kathleen Maddox-

Manson rebelled after the breakup of her marriage. She

reveled in her newfound freedom by drinking a lot and loving

freely. Like many young mothers, Kathleen was not yet ready

for the responsibilities that go along with the raising of a

child. She had fled a stifling home life and rushed into

marriage, and she had a lot of living to do before she settled

down. Charles was passed from relative to relative to

baby-sitter, and was soon sold to a waitress in a restaurant

in exchange for a pitcher of beer. An uncle tracked him down

and took him home several days later.

When Charles was five years old, his mother and a man

were convicted of robbing a service station in Charlestown,

West Virginia. They’d used a Coke bottle to knock the

attendant unconscious.

Caught and sentenced to five years in Moundsville Prison,

her work assignment was near death row. West Virginia was

a hanging state at that time, and part of Kathleen’s job was

to clean the area that included the scaffold. One day as she

was cleaning, she saw a man being escorted to the scaffold.

Normally on hanging days, nobody except the person to be

executed and the prison officials were allowed near the

hanging area, but on that day, by accident or oversight, the

prison officials neglected to inform Kathleen of the day’s

plans. Afraid she might be in trouble for being in the

vicinity, she hid in a nearby broom closet. When the trap

sprung, the inmate’s weight and sheer velocity caused the

rope to sever his head, and as Kathleen opened the door to

get a glimpse of the hanging, it promptly rolled to kathleen’s

hiding place. She told Charles years later that mans eyes

were still wide open and death literally stared her in the

face.

Twenty-seven years after that incident, Charles Milles

Manson was placed on Death Row. In his autobiography,

“Manson: In His Own Words”, he explained a sobering

moment.”I looked at the gas chamber. The rooms two viewing

windows looked like two huge eyes of death. Instantly my

mind flashed to my mother, and I had a vision of her looking

into the eyes of death. During that moment, I understood

more about my mom than any other time in my life”.

Charles’ mother was released from prison when he was

eight years old, and again he was either being passed from

relative to relative, or they moved around a lot. Eventually,

when Charles was twelve years old, his mother found a steady

boyfriend. He soon tired of having Charles around and gave

Kathleen an ultimatum: him or Charles. Charles was placed in

the Gibault Home for Boys in Tierre Haute, Indiana. It was

a strict Catholic religious-oriented school, and the

punishment for even the tiniest infraction was either a

wooden paddle, or a leather strap.

Eventually, living at Gibault got to be too much for

Charles, and he ran away. He slept in the woods, under

bridges, and wherever else he could find a place. He finally

reached Indianapolis where he burglarized a grocery store for

something to eat. He found the cash register change in a

cigar box under the counter. It was slightly over a hundred

dollars, and the first thing he did was rent a room in Skid

Row, and eat as much as he could possibly handle. A few

days later he was broke and tired so he’d steal whatever he

could to accumulate a little extra money.

One day he stole a bicycle and was eventually arrested,

the police realized he was a runaway and located his mother.

Unable to provide a stable home life, Charles was placed in

Father Flanagan’s Boy’s Town. Four days later, he and

another boy ran away. They stole a car and wrecked it,

followed by committing a few robberies resulted in their

arrest, and they were placed in a juvenile home. Charles’

stay there was a repeat of his stay in the previous homes,

and he was placed in a bonafied reform school.

It was at the Indiana School for Boys at Plainfield that

Charles Manson was beaten and raped repeatedly for over

three years. He finally escaped successfully when he was

sixteen years old. Headed towards California, he and a

friend stole cars and robbed stores along the way. Again he

was arrested, and during the next thirty-eight months he

spent time in four different institutions. In May of

nineteen fifty-four, at the age of nineteen, he was finally

paroled. Shortly thereafter he was married. Working at a

race track at the time, he stopped by a card room and played

a few hands of poker. He racked up quite a pile of winnings

and was surrounded by a group of girls. Paying them no

attention, he caught the eye of a girl across the room. She

was with her father, a coal-miner. Later, Charles managed

to speak a few words to her. They started dating, and

married shortly thereafter, in January of nineteen fifty-five.

She became pregnant almost immediately.

Desiring to head to California but needed a car to

take him there, Charles stole a ‘51 Mercury. Predictably, he

was caught. He was sent to the Federal Penitentiary at

Terminal Island, San Pedro. He was, by then, twenty-one

years old. Those first few months in prison, Charles had a

positive outlook on life, with thoughts of leading a straight,

crime-free life when he was paroled.

Before the baby-little Charlie-was a year old, Charles’

wife stopped visiting. He heard from his mother that his wife

had left the state with her new boyfriend, a trucked.

Devastated, he wrote her several letters begging her to

return, but to no ovail. In his autobiography, Charles Manson

states, “when I gave up on her, my attitude of wanting to be

Mr. Straight left me. I went back to being bitter and hating

everyone”.

Shuffled from home to home as a child, knowing his

prostitute mother never wanted him, being in and out of

juvenile homes and adult jails, Charles Manson was becoming

the Charles Manson we’ve all heard about and feared.

He was released from Terminal Island and served several

years. Paroled in nineteen sixty-seven at age thirty-two, he

asked if he could stay. “You know what, man, I don’t wanna

leave! I don’t have a home out there! Why don’t you just

take me back inside? I’m serious man! I mean it! I don’t

wanna leave”.

He did, however, leave Terminal Island that day. It

was March twenty-first, nineteen sixty-seven, and the last

time he’d pass through those doors. Charles Manson headed

to San Francisco. Once there, he liked to hang out at the

University of California-Berkeley campus and play his guitar.

One day, while doing so, he was sitting on the grass

when a dog started sniffing his feet. He raised his foot as if

to kick it, and it’s owner appeared. Her name was Mary

Theresa Brunner, and she would become the first member of

his “Family”. She was tall and thin, a straight-laced

redhead. Charles convinced her to let him stay with her, but

there was to be no sex involved. Eventually, however, the

situation changed.

Charles somewhat changed Mary’s personality. She let

her guard down and became more open-minded. She quit her

job as the University of California-Berkeley librarian and she

and Charles stole a car and traveled. They slept at waysides

and such and they’d go to beaches where occasionally they

would find a homeless girl. The girl would then join the

group. Thus began the Manson family.

The family soon grew to more than thirty people. They

moved into Spahn’s Movie Ranch, just outside of Chatsworth

California. Few of the Family members actually held jobs, so

they had to scrounge for food in the dumpsters at local

supermarkets. Their only other needs or desires were sex

and drugs, both of which were readily available in the

nineteen sixties. Charles Manson and the Family lived at the

ranch until the arrests and convictions of those hideous crimes

in August of nineteen sixty-nine. Los Angeles Police

Department officers were called to 10050 Cielo Drive in Bel

Air. They were met with a crime scene so horrible and

bloody that it might well have come from a Hollywood movie.

There were five victims, all viciously slain. They were Abigail

Folger, Voytek Frykowski, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, and

Sharon Tate-Polanski. On the door to the home where they

lost their lives, a word was written on the door: PIG. It was

later established to be written in the blood of Sharon Tate.

The Family members physically involved in the killings

were Charles “Tex” Watson, Patricia “Katie” Krenwinkle,

Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Hueten, and Linda Kasabian. As the

five about-to-be killers started to walk up the driveway, they

saw headlights. A car appeared and the killers crouched down

in the shrubbery. When the car stopped, Tex Wattson

approached the driver, Steven Parent. Watson pulled out his

twenty-two caliber Buntline revolver and shot Parent. They

then pushed the car back off the driveway.

Assured that the shots fired hadn’t alerted neighbors or

authorities, they entered the house. A man, Voytek

Frykowski, had fallen asleep with the lights on. Shouting

“wake up”, Tex Watson approached him and shot. Susan

Atkins, meanwhile, had been exploring the rest of the home.

Tex ordered her to bring the rest of the occupants of the

house to the living room. Folger, Sebring, And Tate herded

into the room. Tex ordered Susan Atkins to tie a rope

around the prisoners’ necks, and the Sebring lunged at

Watson, Tex stabbed her and she fell to the floor.

Susan was adding more bonds to Frykowski when she

was ordered by Tex, “kill him” she stabbed away, while he

struggled. Somehow he escaped and Watson chased him into

the yard, delivering the fatal thrusts.

Reentering the house, he hit Folger on the head with his

revolver. Dead she fell to the floor. Sharon Tate was still

frozen with fear and stupefaction. Remembering her, Tex

Watson and Susan Atkins ignored her pleas for her unborn

child’s life and stabbed her to death. The killers then

scribbled messages such as “HELTER SKELTER” and “PIG”

everywhere, using their victims blood.

The next night, the grisly horror was repeated at the

home of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca. Leno La Bianca was

dead as a result of twenty-six stab wounds. A fork

protruded from his stomach, and a knife from his throat.

When his body was discovered, Rosemary La Bianca had been

found stabbed forty-one times.

Again messages were scrawled on the walls in the victims

blood: “DEATH TO PIGS”, “RISE”, and “HELTER SKELTER”

A couple of months later, all of the hands-on killer’s,

plus Charles Manson were arrested. Ultimately tried and

convicted, all spent many years in prison, with the exception

of Linda Kasabian. She became the prosecutions star witness

and was given immunity in exchange for her testimony. The

rest of the killers were sentenced to death. Shortly

thereafter, however, the state of California revoked the

death penalty and their sentences were communed to life.

To date, one of the women has been released, the remaining

two are still in prison, and of course , so is Charles Manson.

Even now, twenty-nine years after the terrible

tragedies, people still speculate as to why Charles Manson

turned into such an inhumane monster. His past speaks for

itself but all I have to say is, parents: take care of your

children. Stand up for them, lead them, teach them, and

don’t turn away from them, maybe that way, you won’t be

responsible for what might happen to them.