Charles Manson's release from prison in 1967 aged 32. First Charles gained his followers by manipulating young vulnerable people by learning the art of Avery Larson’s black mail, fortune and murder in prison from his many years spent in there, gathering a list with a total of 50 convictions.
Starting his cult off with as many as 35 hippies, three quarters of them women, made up of Hitchhikers, runaways and lost souls, who were venturing into the drug fueled hippie era of 1960, were the victims of his newly found skills, tricking them into believing his ideologies as a con man and his average skills as a singer song writer. People believed Manson to be a “mystic” quoted from the writer David Dalton who wrote the first long profile of Charles Manson which he wrote about Manson as “if Christ came back as a con man”.
The group had members as young as 16 joining the group, using his words and drugs to lure them into what they believed to be a better life, isolating young women from being consumed by their past lives by “controlling their bodies and minds”. Manson even spoke to the blind members of his family and blinded faith, mocking them “I have tricked all of you. I have tricked you into doing what I want you to do, and I am using you, you are all aware of that now, and it's like I have a bunch of slaves around me” quoted from the book “Charles Manson: the man who murdered the sixties” by David J. Krajicek.
Manson was also known as a man who “always knew what to say at the right time” to please others, as said by a previous member of the family. The members of the family would do anything to please Charles, and I mean everything, even murder, of themselves or others. Anyone who chose to leave the family, Charles would “vow” to kill them for betraying the family, and most importantly him, this was said to an ex member of the family Paul Wallkin who decided to leave after he saw the reality of the family he was a part of.
Whilst settled in the spawn movie ranch, belonging to a blind eighty-year-old man, participating in daily chores of the ranch, the women spent their days doing chores they hated whilest back in normal life, which Manson believed would then draw the “sexual taboos” away from the young women, as he was still indulged in his old gender and racial sensibilities of his Appalachian upbringing. The women sewed and embroidered Charles own ceremonial vest which became as “infamous as the family”, which only he was allowed to wear, it apparently contained years of work and memories, including the time all of when all the women shaved their heads. They then gathered the hair, wove it together and then sewed it onto the vest.
The helter skelter
The Beatles, throughout Manson's seven year prison sentence, became his musical inspiration and also his object of deranged jealousy. Inmates claimed that Manson declared “given the chance, I could be bigger than the Beatles”. A couple of days after the Beatles white album release, Manson listened to all ninety three minutes of the album, getting lost in his own version of musical vision. Manson then obsessively listened to the album for the next four weeks, learning every song word for word, getting deep into the songs, one by McCartney “blackbird”, “rocky racoon”, and “Helter Skelter”.
Mansons ideology was that the Beatles were prophets sent down to speak to him through the lyrics of the song “helter skelter”. Manson's next ideology was that the prophets were getting the Beatles to directly message him a warning that a race war was on the horizon and that his “families” survival was at high risk. The early sixties, 1963 in Birmingham Alabama , was the beginning of the African American uprising, during Manson's prison sentence he overheard conversations of an “impending revolution” where “whites would no longer run things” and the rumors of heavy arms being brought into help the “black panthers supremacy” who at the time were under investigation by the FBI, due to an increase in riots across the country and claiming in court by J.Edgar Hoover standing before the press stating “ the black panther party, without question, represents the greatest threat to the internal security of the country”.
This set off Manson's ideology of the “Helter skelter”, which led to the grooming of his followers into murder, telling them “I'd die for you” and then asked “would you die for me? Would you kill for me?” as they all agreed “Helter skelter” was the way to go. Manson's goals for the “helter skelter” were to, plant the murders of the seven victims to look like they were committed by member of the African American community to then “ignite” the “helter skelter”, to then anger the black community into creating a “black and white civil war”, which Manson saw the black man winning, as he viewed them as stronger than him.
Manson's ideology that once the black community destroyed the white race, leaving only his family standing, as he viewed them as more powerful than anyone outside of the family, and then given the power they desired, they would be unable to handle the responsibility of it all and turn over the power to the whites who survived the “helter skelter”, and live in shelter out in the desert and live off of resources and each other whilst there, in hiding.
Hollywood
August ninth, 1969, 10500 Cielo drive, the murders that shocked America, wrote in the FBI files of the murders “a six man team of police detectives probed a two massacre murder cases with bore startling similarities” “senseless, savage stabbings with almost ritualistic overtones”. This was the night Manson's ideology and fantasy came true, finally launching the “helter skelter”, that night sending out a small group of his most ardent followers, who consisted of Susan Achins, Patricia knenwinkle and Tex Watson, with only a few days before demanding a family member Robert Beauscleel to slaughter his friend Gary Henry, simply because he felt like it. Manson had connections with Dennis Wilson from the band beach boys, through family members, successfully manipulating Wilson allowing him to stay in the house where the mass murders were later committed.
The victims of the Tate residence, simply there at the wrong time, resulting in devastating ending, “the beautiful Sharon Tate” due her first child, renting the house at the time, whilst her husband Roman Polanski was away in London, Abigail Flogger, Wojciech Frykowski, Steven parent and jay Sebring, first committing the La Bianca murders. Both murders accumulated a total of 169 stab wounds and seven gunshot wounds, leaving behind Manson's messages written on the walls and door, in Sharon Tate's blood “pigs”, “death to pigs”, “rise” and “we know glut” believing this would link back to the African American uprising.
Manson had a falling out with Dennis, believing he was still currently living in sunset boulevard, sending his family members up to mercilessly murder him, but shortly realized when they arrived at the residence they had made a slip up, but had to leave no eye witnesses, ending in the murders. The family was then called “heartless bloodthirsty robots sent out from the fires of hell” at the court when they were called out for sentencing, but in my opinion, they weren't far off. These murders are seen to have changed America forever.
In the end Charles Manson got what he always wanted, to make a mark in history, using his radical ideologies and his extreme approaches to achieving these, making the year 1969, but maybe not how he planned, but we can't all get what we want, and that is evident.