FREE ESSAY ON CHARLES MANSON

CHARLES MANSON

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.