CHARLES MANSON
Charles Manson
Born November 12, 1934
Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Charge(s) Murder and conspiracy
Penalty Death, reduced by abolition of death penalty to life in prison
Charles Milles Manson (b. November 12, 1934) is a convict who led the "Manson
Family," a quasi-commune that arose in the U.S. state of California in the later
1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate-LaBianca
murders, which members of the group carried out at his instruction. Through the
joint-responsibility rule of conspiracy, he was convicted of the murders
themselves.
Manson is forever associated with "Helter Skelter", the term he took from the
Beatles song of that name and construed as a race-based conflict that the crimes
were intended to precipitate. This unusual connection with rock music linked him,
from the beginning of his notoriety, with pop culture, in which he became an
emblem of transgression, rebellion, evil, ghoulishness, bloody violence,
homicidal psychosis, and the macabre. Ultimately, the term was used as the title
of the book that prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote about the Manson murders.
At the time the Family began to form, Manson was an unemployed ex-convict, who
had spent half his life in correctional institutions for a variety of offenses.
In the period before the murders, he was a distant fringe member of the Los
Angeles music industry, chiefly via a chance association with Beach Boy Dennis
Wilson. After Manson was charged with the crimes, recordings of songs written
and performed by him were released commercially; a number of artists have
covered his songs in the decades since.
Manson's death sentence was automatically reduced to life imprisonment when a
decision by the Supreme Court of California temporarily eliminated the state's
death penalty. California's eventual reestablishment of capital punishment
did not affect Manson, who is an inmate at Corcoran State Prison.
Charles Manson
Born November 12, 1934
Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Charge(s) Murder and conspiracy
Penalty Death, reduced by abolition of death penalty to life in prison
Charles Milles Manson (b. November 12, 1934) is a convict who led the "Manson
Family," a quasi-commune that arose in the U.S. state of California in the later
1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate-LaBianca
murders, which members of the group carried out at his instruction. Through the
joint-responsibility rule of conspiracy, he was convicted of the murders
themselves.
Manson is forever associated with "Helter Skelter", the term he took from the
Beatles song of that name and construed as a race-based conflict that the crimes
were intended to precipitate. This unusual connection with rock music linked him,
from the beginning of his notoriety, with pop culture, in which he became an
emblem of transgression, rebellion, evil, ghoulishness, bloody violence,
homicidal psychosis, and the macabre. Ultimately, the term was used as the title
of the book that prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote about the Manson murders.
At the time the Family began to form, Manson was an unemployed ex-convict, who
had spent half his life in correctional institutions for a variety of offenses.
In the period before the murders, he was a distant fringe member of the Los
Angeles music industry, chiefly via a chance association with Beach Boy Dennis
Wilson. After Manson was charged with the crimes, recordings of songs written
and performed by him were released commercially; a number of artists have
covered his songs in the decades since.
Manson's death sentence was automatically reduced to life imprisonment when a
decision by the Supreme Court of California temporarily eliminated the state's
death penalty. California's eventual reestablishment of capital punishment
did not affect Manson, who is an inmate at Corcoran State Prison.