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Charles Charles Manson Charles Manson Charles Manson, a man that lived a crucial life has become a cult figure. A devil to some, to others an icon. For prison officials he s an exhibit and to psychologists a subject. Being all these things to so many different kinds of people was a technique Manson honed and used (Dolan 134). The idea of a little band of drug-crazed hippy teenagers breaking into private houses, slaughtering its occupants and smearing slogans on the walls in their victims blood seemed horrible, but that was the work of the Manson family (Dolan 135). The childhood of Charles Manson has been said to be not much of a life.
As a young boy Manson experienced several traumatic situations. According to Manson his grandmother dominated the family. She drove her husband into an insane asylum where he died a psychotic and alcoholic. He never got to know whom his father was, just that he was one of several customers of his prostitute mother.
He got his name from Bill Manson, a man with whom his mother began living with just before he was born (Murphy 45 - 48). At the age of six Manson s mother was arrested and convicted of armed robbery. She was sent to prison in West Virginia and Manson was sent to live with his grandmother. There Manson lived a confusing life where his grandmother Patel 2 bashed the bible and his uncle, who sent him for his first day of school dressed like a girl.
Manson learned to fight and not to give up (Wynd 2). After his mother s release from prison he was handed over to the Gibault Home for boys in Terre Haute. After two days he realized that his mother wasn t coming back for him. Life at Gibault was harsh and Manson broke many rules. By the age of twelve he had run away, lived in a boarding house, stole money, and scraped food from garbage bins (Fillmer 2).
Manson was sent to various juvenile institutions and, finally at fifteen, to the Indiana School for Boys at Plainfield. Here he was brutalized and suffered at the hands of the guards. At sixteen he escaped. He lived his life a little some of it was legal until he was back in prisons (Fillmer 2). Shortly after his release from prison he met seventeen year old, Rosalie Jean Willis, a waitress in the local hospital.
They were married in 1955. In July 1955, accompanied by his wife now pregnant reached California, where he was arrested in less than three months and admitted to Dyer Act Violations. The judge requested a psychiatric report and Manson was examined on Oct. 26, 1955 by Dr. Edwin McNield. Manson was given a battery test where he received average marks in all categories except word meaning where he had a high score. His IQ was now 121 (Dolan 137).
In 1967, having spent more than half of his life behind bars, he was released from California s Terminal Island prison. He asked the authorities to let him stay. This is my only home, he pleaded. He was terrified and nobody could blame him, Patel 3 the world was a hostile place and he was totally unprepared for it. Within 48 hours he was in San Francisco (Dolan 138). Here he found that he was able to con people as well as dominate them.
Manson took a group of these followers in a converted bus San Francisco to Los Angeles, where they settled on the old Spahn Ranch in Simi Valley (Nash 38). Manson and his gang stole Volkswagen's and turned them into dune buggy s. Eventually the highway patrol raided the ranch and found a cache of guns and ammunition. The family was arrested, but soon released due to the warrants wrong date (Dolan 136). Murder, death, bodies, blood! were the words screamed in horror and disbelief by a maid who had come across one the most appalling crime in history.
August 9, 1969, on Cielo Drive in Hollywood Hills at the house of Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate was the scene of the crime. The gruesome crime was more than the maid as well as the investigators could handle (Dolan 134). Those who went to investigate the maid s cries found a white Rambler in the driveway with the body of 18 -year-old Steven Parent slumped over the wheel. He had been shot four time and his neck had been slashed. Nearby, on the lawn lay Abigail Folger, heiress of the Folgers coffee s millions had been stabbed so many times with a bayonet that her blood had soaked into her white nightdress and turned it red.
Vote Frykowski, Abigail s boyfriend, lay near the front door. A writer, producer, and drug dealer, he had been shot in the back, pistol whipped so badly Patel 4 that his head had 13 dents, and stabbed a shocking 51 times (Murphy 56 - 58). In the living room the discovery of Sharon Tate s body, a famous actress was found. She was eight months pregnant. Tate had been strangled, than stabbed with a bayonet no less than 16 times. A rope was tied around her and looped over a beam.
Attached to the other end of the rope, a towel over his head hung Jay Sebring, a hair stylist and Tate s former fiance. On the front door, written in Tate s blood, was the word PIG (Wynd 2). The ghastly sight shocked and appalled the police. Their first action was to arrest the only surviving member if the household, 19 year old William Garrets on. He was unable to account for not paying attention to the dog s barks that night.
He also appeared very shaken and terrified in front of cameras. After two days, following pressure from lawyers, the boy was released without charges (Dolan 3). On August 10, 1969 near Griffith Park another gruesome murder was committed. Multi millionaire Leno La Bianca, president of Gateway Supermarkets and his wife, Rosemary was murdered. The word WAR and a series of crosses had been cut into La Bianca s chest, a carving fork had been rammed into his stomach, and a cloth had been draped over his head to look like a hood. Rosemary had been strangled with a electric cord.
On the living room walls the killers had written in blood, DEATH TO PIGS. On the refrigerator the words HELTER SKELTER (Nash 39). It was three months before the murders were connected. By that time there had been a third killing of music teacher Gary Hinman. This time the police were Patel 5 able to find fingerprints belonging to Bobby Beausoleil. He was found quickly enough to see the blood of Hinman still on his shirt.
Beausoleil was also accompanied by Susan Atkins (Dolan 137). Atkins was one of a group of hippies living at the ranch with Manson. The police arrested 27 people living at the ranch. Most of them were quickly released, but Manson and Atkins remained. Atkins boasted to a prison mate about how she was linked to the murders at Sharon Tate s home and La Bianca s home (Fillmer 3). In Los Angeles five members of the Manson family began a five-day trek to his trial on their knees.
Charged along Manson were Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkle, who often sang en-route to court. The more you do it the better you like it, Susan Atkins. Those were her words on the murder of Sharon Tate. Manson wanted to do a crime that would shock the world and that the world would have to stand up and take notice (Dolan 139). On August 11 th, the Manson family was charged with a life sentence in prison.
All my woman are witches and I m the devil, announced Manson to reporters. He felt that he could do anything he wanted to people at anytime he wanted to, because that s what they ve done to him (Wynd 3). Charles Manson s Great Plan was to murder rich people at random in the most revolting ways imaginable and ensure that black activists were blamed thus fomenting racial hatred (Dolan 141).
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Research essay sample on Sharon Tate Susan Atkins
