Manson murders still rivet America 40 years later (Feature)

US Features

By Andy Goldberg Aug 7, 2009, 2:54 GMT

Los Angeles - It was a murder spree that shocked the world, and 40 years later America is still drawn to the shocking story. The Manson family murders of August 9, 1969, held a morbid fascination for many reasons - the manic charisma of the group's leader, Charles Manson, the Hollywood profiles of some of the victims, the sheer brutality of the crimes and the way that Manson turned innocent, all-American young men and women into unblinking, cold-blooded killers. Author Joan Didion pointed out that the Manson case came after a historic wave of change. 'The '60s ended abruptly on August 9, 1969,' Didion wrote in her memoir of the time, 'ended at the exact moment when word of the murders traveled like brushfire through the community. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.' The horror had its roots in the troubled childhood of Manson. Born to a 16-year-old mother in Ohio, he was repeatedly rejected, shunted in and out of foster homes, juvenile detention centers and prisons. He survived on a life of petty crime. When he was released from a five-year stint in jail in 1966 at age 32, he had spent more than half his life in prisons and other institutions. The next year, Manson moved to San Francisco, and using his charm and charisma with women, and some of the Scientology teaching he had picked up in jail, he established himself as a guru in the epicenter of hippiedom during the Summer of Love, before moving the Manson family to southern California. Manson promoted himself to the Hollywood community as an artist and philosopher. But to his inner group, he preached a dogma of race war, which would see his self-proclaimed 'family' emerge as the rulers of a society rent asunder after blacks had risen up against their oppression. He called these race wars Helter Skelter, after the song on The Beatles' White Album, which he believed predicted the coming apocalypse. On August 8, Manson ordered his right-hand man, Charles 'Tex' Watson, to take three women, Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian and Patricia Krenwinkel, to the house that had been rented out to director Roman Polanski and his eight-months pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate. With one order - 'Now is the time for Helter Skelter' - he told them to 'totally destroy' everyone in the house 'as gruesome as you can.' They were true to his commands, brutally killing the five occupants in the house and using their blood to daub slogans on the walls. Polanski was in London at the time, but Tate was stabbed 16 times until she and her unborn baby died. The killing spree continued the next day, when the four murderers were joined by Manson himself and two others of the Manson clan, Leslie Van Houten and Steve Grogan, in the grizzly murders of supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary. Manson was arrested on August 16 on suspicion of auto theft. Only several months later did authorities piece together the involvement of the leader and his followers in the horrific crimes. The trial only spread the notoriety of the defendants. Manson carved an X and later a swastika on his forehead - and the co-defendants soon copied his lead. He tried to physically attack the judge, his followers drugged prosecution witnesses, and one of the defence attorneys died in mysterious circumstances. The defendants were found guilty and condemned, but their death sentences were automatically reduced to life in prison when the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in 1972. Manson, now 74, has retained his notoriety over the years as America sought to understand how his group could descend into such gratuitous violence. 'These were people whose self-hatred was so strong that they had no way of dealing with it,' says sociology professor Howard Kaplan. 'They associated with other outcasts and formed their own identity. Once they were captured, they seemed to enjoy the media attention, especially Manson, who disrupted the trial many times. From their acts of violence, they found out that they would get attention, and in doing so, they 'mattered' in some strange way.' Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi said the apparent random nature of the crime struck fear throughout Los Angeles and the movie world and fueled a spike in the sale of guns and guard dogs. 'The killings tapped a feeling of dread,' he told Newsweek magazine. 'There was a feeling (the killers) could be our own children.' Manson has never expressed remorse for the killings, but the now ageing people who blindly followed him have apologized. 'I'm appalled (at what I did),' a terminally ill Atkins said just prior to an unsuccessful parole attempt last year. Krenwinkle voiced similar regret: 'I feel terrible about it, but I cannot change it.'

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SP4: meanwhile...Aug 8th, 2009 - 16:12:21

..the libnazi elite in California is preparing to release Lynette Fromm, the assasin who attempted to kill President Gerald Ford....

Another stellar reason for Capital Punishment.

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boring idiot SP4Aug 9th, 2009 - 09:14:17

Would celebrate if she had tried to kill Clinton or Obama.We already know what kind of biased ideas of justice he has.It is meant only for republicans only.

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boring idiot SP4Aug 9th, 2009 - 09:14:56

Would celebrate if she had tried to kill Clinton or Obama.We already know what kind of biased ideas of justice he has.It is meant only for republicans

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SP4: Professor Redundant,Aug 9th, 2009 - 16:09:29

....The conservatives are not the one's who made TWO movies about the supposed assasination of two republican presidents....

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sp'sassAug 10th, 2009 - 19:24:16

You guys think Manson and his clique were bad. Just wait until the son of Satan gets his way with ObamaKKKare. Doctor Death will be knocking at you door if you are 50 or more years old. The death camps in the US will make Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot look saintly in comparison. I believe 10's of millions of ordinary Americans will disappear into the National DeathKare Camps, never to be seen again.

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@ SP4: Professor RedundantAug 11th, 2009 - 00:01:41

'....The conservatives are not the one's who made TWO movies about the supposed assasination of two republican presidents....'

Must bea reason for that huh idiots stick?

Maybe its called Karma?

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sp'sassAug 11th, 2009 - 01:41:12

I had a dream, recently. Some of you might consider it to be a nightmare, but I believe it to be tomorrow's reality. Shortly after the Obama regime's
PC govmint police of the US of Atheists took away all my guns so I could not defend myself, I fell down and broke my wrist, while taking my pregnant wife to the doctor for a routine checkup. Before I knew it, they forced my wife to go to an abortion clinic, just because she was over 40. When I protested, the libnazis took me away. After wrapping me in an American flag, they euthanized me, and then stuffed my body into an incinerator. This is what 'health care' will soon become if the demonrats get their way. You all better believe it, and it don't make me wrong to say it.

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SP'azzAug 13th, 2009 - 02:02:37

...why write fiction when the facts are even better:

Government could reap a wealth of information from its citizens

Every day millions across the country navigate to government webpages, to read pertinent information. Since 2000 that access has been safeguarded, thanks to a prohibition on government websites using cookies or other tracking technology to track users. Agency exceptions could only be granted under cases of 'compelling need'.
Now the Obama administration is looking to overturn that prohibition and potentially begin harvesting a wealth of data on its citizen's activities. Under the plan, the prohibition would be replaced with a set of privacy provisions. Aides say that it would increase government transparency and 'increase public involvement'.
The measure, though, has many opponents. The American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Michael Macleod-Ball commented that the measure would 'allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government website.'
Other opponents dislike that the government may be looking to revoke the protections at the request of search-engine giant Google and other parties. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and Electronic Frontier Foundation, both of which oppose the measure, pointed to a February 19 contract with Google and an unnamed federal agency over an exemption to use the YouTube player.
EPIC retrieved the proposed changes, negotiated by the General Services Administration, through a Freedom of Information Act request and says they 'expressly waive those rules or guidelines as they may apply to Google.' States EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg, 'Our primary concern is that the GSA has failed to protect the privacy rights of U.S. citizens. The expectation is they should be complying with the government regulations, not that the government should change its regulations to accommodate these companies.'
Currently, government content is banned from having tracking cookies, but third-party content, such as YouTube videos on federal websites may have tracking cookies. Google spokeswoman Christine Chen declined to discuss the new rules, but thanked the government for its use of YouTube, stating, '[The use of YouTube] is just one example of how government and citizens communicate more effectively online, and we are proud of having worked closely with the White House to provide privacy protections for users.'
________________________________________

...and not a peep from the left...

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Manson murders still rivet America 40 years later (Feature)

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