The perpetrators had scratched the word “War” (“War”) into the abdomen of the male corpse, and a carving fork was stuck next to it. The slogans “Death to pigs” and “Rise” were found on the walls of the house, and “Helter Skelter”, the title of a Beatles song, was emblazoned on the refrigerator door. Thus, on August 10, 1969, the investigators of the Los Angeles police department had no choice but to realize that this was a crime that routine alone would not bring them any breakthroughs in solving.
However, the police could not have been aware of the extent of the madness behind the double murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. He was a supermarket owner, she ran a high-end fashion boutique. So the assumption was not far off that an example should be made here for the rich who enjoyed their lives a little too much. But in retrospect, at least, this idea appears naïve in the case of the client Charles Manson and his disciples.
The question of how the man got into a state of mind that made the series of murders in the summer of 1969 seem justified to him will never be answered for one simple reason: people who only have to deal with the usual everyday neuroses don’t have the words for it. And despite all the efforts of brilliant psychiatrists to deduce the actions of people like Manson from their biographies, there will always remain an inexplicable residue. Because no matter how bad it is what these criminals have experienced – there will always be people who had to go through harder things without becoming criminals.
Charles Manson was born on November 12, 1934 in Cincinnati as an illegitimate child to a 16-year-old woman. His father didn’t take care of the alimony, and in 1939 his mother and her brother committed a murder and robbery that earned her five years. Relatives took him in, but in 1947 Charles went to an Indiana home; he fled with a friend to live with his uncle. Along the way, the two committed two robberies – Manson’s next stop was juvenile detention in Plainsville.
There failed 18 escape attempts. Years as a car thief and dodger followed, who repeatedly got into trouble with the law: “I spent so much time in institutions that I never really learned what real life out there actually is,” he said in the mid-50s -years in court. Marriages broke up, he works as a pimp and street musician. Psychiatrists attested to him being deeply affected by the rejection he had suffered.
When Manson went to Berkeley, California, in 1967, he had spent 17 of 32 years in prison. It was the time of a movement whose followers called themselves hippies and claimed they finally wanted to bring peace to the world. Her opponents called her bums. Psychedelic drugs like LSD were everywhere. Manson met librarian Mary Brunner and moved in with her.
For many chroniclers, this is the birth of the “Family”, because as a result more and more people joined and formed a commune. But Manson discovered the effect he had on others. The association soon took on the character of a sect. It stayed that way even after Manson moved to Los Angeles again.
The members of the family were as clear about the rules of the family as they were about the future. Women were fortunate to be servants to men in group sex, while blacks were evolutionarily – if at all – only slightly above pigs. Even so, black people were a danger to the world: they would soon begin slaughtering rich whites—and gaining victory in the civil war that would follow.
A problem arose for the leader. If only a miserable death followed the enforced constant pack bangs in the drug intoxication, that was a rather unfortunate prospect even for hardened sheep. That’s why Manson came up with a real cracker for his family: He preached that there was a cave under Death Valley, the entrance to paradise. There his disciples could hide in the war of the races until Jesus and the Beatles arrived and the Fab Four would lead those present as angels into eternal bliss.
It was probably not least due to the excessive consumption of drugs that Manson’s subjects did not run away in droves. Especially since the boss redesigned his role a little from 1968: Now he himself acted as the ultimate connection between Jesus and Satan on earth. And because the mountain sometimes has to go to the prophets and the blacks absolutely didn’t want to murder it, it was time to take matters into our own hands.
Manson intended to instigate as many brutal murders as possible in the upscale district of Los Angeles so that the racial unrest could begin in this way and the prophecy would be fulfilled: At the end of July 1969, the music teacher Gary Hinman died after a few screwed up drug deals, he himself had previously had members of the “Family “ houses. On the night of August 8-9, disciples butchered pregnant actress Sharon Tate, three of her friends, and a man who happened to be there at the home of Tate’s husband, Roman Polanski.
Susan Atkins used Tate’s blood to write the word “Pig” on the front door. A day later it was the LaBiancas’ turn. Because the police were sloppy, it took them a while to link the crimes together. Stuntman Donald “Shorty” Shea, who Manson felt betrayed, also died. Despite an interim arrest for auto theft, it wasn’t until 1970 that investigators had sufficiently strong suspicions against the leader and three family members, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, to bring them to justice.
Manson seemed to be enjoying the hustle and bustle around his person. Among other things, he tattooed a swastika on his forehead and thus provided a topic for conversation. His female co-defendants also did him the favor of showering themselves with all sorts of self-incriminations and otherwise protesting his innocence. Of course, they didn’t realize that all of their master’s prophecies had turned out to be complete nonsense: there was no sign of a civil war anywhere – and if the Beatles had actually fluttered into a cave to be transported to paradise, as promised, the four of them would have come hardly ever stood trial in L.A.
At the end of the process, not only Manson should die in the gas chamber. The court ordered the maximum sentence for all four defendants. However, the state of California suspended the death penalty soon after the verdict was passed, and all survived. Manson was in various prisons until his death in 2017, and Atkins has also died in the meantime.
But the leader lives on as an icon of evil. Countless films and radio plays deal with him, the musician Brian Warner operates under the stage name Marilyn Manson. Added to this are the millions in sales achieved by merchandise items such as the psychopath’s likeness on T-shirts. The power that Charles Manson has over the souls of some people is far from dead.
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