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What Became of the Manson Family?
What Became of the Manson Family?
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/u...5&kwp_1=892181
Charles Manson in a Los Angeles court in 1971.
Over two nights in August 1969, Charles Manson’s followers savagely murdered seven people through a frenzied combination of shooting, stabbing, beating and hanging.
Their most famous victim was the actress Sharon Tate, the wife of the film director Roman Polanski. She was killed at her house along with four guests. The following night, the gang murdered a wealthy grocer named Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary.
At their trial, members of the so-called Manson family shamelessly admitted their crimes and flaunted their allegiance to a leader whom they said they loved and who was portrayed as controlling their minds.
Most of his followers were young women who had fled middle-class and upper-class homes to live with Mr. Manson at the Spahn Movie Ranch, a mock Old West town near Los Angeles that was once a film set but had fallen into ruin. One sang in her church choir. Another recalled being enchanted by Mr. Manson through what she hoped was a budding romance.
Mr. Manson, who died on Sunday, and four members of his gang were sentenced to death. In 1972, their sentences were reduced to life in prison when capital punishment was outlawed in California. (It was reinstated in 1978.)
Here is a look at what happened to some of his most ardent followers.
Susan Atkins
Ms. Atkins was a quiet middle-class girl who was born in San Gabriel, Calif. She has said that her parents were alcoholics and that she was sexually abused by a male relative. She sang in her school’s glee club and her church choir, but she quit high school and left home when she was 18. She met Mr. Manson soon after, and he gave her a new name, Sadie Mae Glutz.
In 1968, she gave birth to a son. Mr. Manson — who by all accounts was not the father — had her name the child Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. The child was eventually removed from Ms. Atkins’s care and later adopted.
Ms. Atkins was arrested in October 1969 in the murder of Gary Hinman, a friend of Mr. Manson’s, and convicted. At that point, the police did not know who was responsible for the Tate-LaBianca murders. But Ms. Atkins implicated herself in jail, when she is said to have admitted to cellmates that she stabbed Ms. Tate, tasted her blood and used it to write “Pig” on the front door of the house.
Ms. Atkins became a born-again Christian in 1974 while in prison, she wrote in her memoir, “Child of Satan, Child of God” (with Bob Slosser). She denounced Mr. Manson, formed a prison ministry and did charitable work of all kinds. She was routinely denied parole and died at a women’s prison in Chowchilla, Calif., in 2009, at 61, a year after she was found to have brain cancer.
Patricia Krenwinkel
Ms. Krenwinkel was a 19-year-old secretary from Los Angeles when she met Mr. Manson at a party. Three days later, she said, she left everything behind to pursue a romantic relationship with him.
She said during her trial that at Ms. Tate’s home, she chased down Abigail Anne Folger, the heiress of the coffee fortune. “We fought on the grass,” she testified. “I remember stabbing her, stabbing and stabbing.”
She said she also assisted in the killings of the LaBiancas the following night.
Ms. Krenwinkel, now 69, has been in a women’s prison in Corona, Calif., for about 47 years, longer than any other woman in the state. She has been denied parole at least 13 times.
“The saddest part is my definition of love was totally skewed,” she said in a 2014 documentary, “Life After Manson.”
Leslie Van Houten
Ms. Van Houten said she recalled stabbing Mrs. LaBianca in the abdomen 14 to 16 times. She showed little remorse in court as she described wiping away fingerprints and burning her clothing. She said she remembered taking chocolate milk and cheese from the refrigerator before leaving.
Many years later, Ms. Van Houten, calm and articulate, was regarded as a model prisoner at a women’s prison in Corona, Calif. She said that she regretted taking part in the murders and that at the time she had been mentally ill, a condition aggravated by LSD use.
“I believed that he was Jesus Christ,” Ms. Van Houten said of Mr. Manson. “I bought into it lock, stock and barrel.”
Ms. Van Houten, 68, was granted parole in September after she was denied at least 20 times.
Linda Kasabian
Ms. Kasabian, who was 20 at the time of the murders, became the prosecution’s star witness and was given immunity. She said that she kept watch on both nights and that she had not participated in the killings.
She was raised in New Hampshire and moved to Los Angeles to live with the man she married. She said she joined Mr. Manson’s family in July 1969 after feeling rejected by her husband.
In her testimony, she said Mr. Manson was the Devil and that she did not report him to the police because she feared for the safety of her daughter.
After the trial, she returned to New Hampshire. She is 68.
Charles Watson
Known as Tex, Mr. Watson, a lanky former honor student and high school athlete from Dallas, was said to have led the killing spree as Mr. Manson’s assistant after living at the Spahn Ranch for parts of 1968 and 1969.
After the murders, he fled to his native Texas, where he was arrested, and fought extradition for so long that the other members of Mr. Manson’s family were tried without him. When he was finally extradited, he pleaded guilty by reason of insanity from overuse of hallucinogenic drugs, but was deemed fit for trial and convicted of murder.
In recent decades, Mr. Watson, now 71, is said to have fathered four children from conjugal visits in prison, and he has founded a prison-cell ministry. He was denied parole for the 17th time in 2016 and remains at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, Calif.
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