Volume 6 Number 064
The Manson Murders – I
Lead: Of the turbulent events that marked the decade of the 1960s, the chilling and notorious Charles Manson murders are clearly among most shocking.
Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.
Content: Charles Manson was born in 1934. He had an unstable childhood and by the age of thirteen was ripening into young man with a decidedly criminal inclination. After being released from a California prison in 1967, he moved to San Francisco, where he began attracting a group of devoted young people who would eventually follow him on a path of violence and destruction. Playing upon sections of the Book of Revelation and drawing inspiration from certain Beatle songs, Manson and his followers began preparing for a racial war in which black and white would annihilate each other. After this war, which Manson called “Helter Skelter,” he and his followers, or as he called them, his “family,” would emerge from a bottomless pit in Death Valley ready to lead a new society.
By August 1969 the “Manson Family” was living in the run-down ranch buildings of an abandoned movie set just outside of Los Angeles, running a crime ring specializing in car thefts and drug sales. Manson, through some type of psychological control, dominated members of “The Family.” He correctly suspected that they would commit murder if he so instructed. On the night of August 9, 1969, on his orders a group of his followers brutally murdered actress Sharon Tate and four others in her Beverly Hills home. The next evening Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, wealthy owners of a grocery chain, were as brutally murdered in their Los Angeles home. Initially, the crimes were not connected, even though victims in both cases had suffered from multiple stab wounds, and the words “pig” and “helter skelter” were written in blood all over both crime scenes. Eventually the Los Angeles police put the two together and went after the Family. Next Time: The Manson Trial.
At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts. Resources
Bardsley, Marilyn. “Charles Manson.” Chatham, GA: Dark Horse Multimedia, Inc., 2000.
Bell and Howell Information and Learning: Great Events: Manson Family Murders 1969-1971 as reported in the New York Times, 2000.
New York Times Index. 1969: 1056-57.
New York Times Index. 1970: 1257-58.
New York Times Index. 1971: 1081-82.
Copyright by Dan Roberts Enterprises, Inc.