The Associated Press
John Rogers
LOS ANGELES–Charles Manson, the hippie cult leader who became the hypnotic-eyed face of evil across America after orchestrating the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in L.A. during the summer of 1969, died yesterday after nearly a half-century in prison.
He was 83.
Manson, whose name to this day is synonymous with unspeakable violence and madness, died at 8:13 p.m. of natural causes at a Kern County hospital, according to a California Department of Corrections statement.
Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, reacted to the death by quoting the late Vincent Bugliosi, the L.A. prosecutor who put Manson behind bars.
Bugliosi said: “Manson was an evil, sophisticated con man with twisted and warped moral values.”
“Today, Manson’s victims are the ones who should be remembered and mourned on the occasion of his death,” Hanisee added.
A petty criminal who had been in and out of jail since childhood, the charismatic, guru-like Manson surrounded himself in the 1960s with runaways and other lost souls.
He then sent his disciples to butcher some of L.A.’s rich and famous in what prosecutors said was a bid to trigger a race war–an idea he got from a twisted reading of the Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter.”
The slayings horrified the world and, together with the deadly violence that erupted later in 1969 during a Rolling Stones concert at California’s Altamont Speedway, exposed the dangerous, drugged-out underside of the counterculture movement and seemed to mark the death of the era of peace and love.
Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Manson maintained during his tumultuous trial in 1970 that he was innocent and that society itself was guilty.
Linda Deutsch, the longtime courts reporter for The Associated Press who covered the Manson case, said he “left a legacy of evil and hate and murder.”
“He was able to take young people who were impressionable and convince them he had the answer to everything and he turned them into killers,” she remarked.
“It was beyond anything we had ever seen before in this country.”
The Manson Family, as his followers were called, slaughtered five of its victims on Aug. 9, 1969 at Tate’s home: the actress, who was 8 1/2 months’ pregnant, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, Polish movie director Voityck Frykowski, and Steven Parent, a friend of the estate’s caretaker.
Tate’s husband, “Rosemary’s Baby” director Roman Polanski, was out of the country at the time.
The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were stabbed to death in their home across town.
The killers scrawled such phrases as “Pigs” and “Healter Skelter” (sic) in blood at the crime scenes.
Three months later, a Manson follower was jailed on an unrelated charge and told a cellmate about the bloodbath, leading to the cult leader’s arrest.
After a trial that lasted nearly a year, Manson and three followers–Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten–were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.
Another defendant, Charles “Tex” Watson, was convicted later.
All were spared execution and given life sentences after the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972.
