This was Sharon Tate in May, 1969, photographed near the Bel-Air home she shared with her husband Roman Polanski. On the night of August 6th of that year, she and her unborn child and several friends were brutally murdered in the house they were relaxing in by intruders. These people were half-a-dozen members of the "Manson Family", including several young women. In a trial that took nine months, and was then most expensive to date in the history of California, all of the perpetrators and their leader, the demonic Charles Manson (who was not at the scene of the murders) were found guilty. All of those sentenced to die had their sentences commuted when the state legislature of California outlawed the death penalty. None of them have ever made parole, nor I gather are they likely to until the end of their lives.
I remember these murders vividly--they were in the news for months. later I read the book "Helter Skelter" by the chief prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. The book gave me a full idea of how Manson operated and the insane notions me affixed in the minds of others. But it didn't answer onw question for me. How to believe in a decent world when innocent people can be killed by such human monsters? What evil force could one man (Manson) possess to dispatch others to follow diabolical instructions and commit bloody rampages with knives and blunt instruments? Not only to kill prominent people, for which some pathological envy could be a motive, but ordinary people as well, like Mr and Mrs Leo & Rosemary LaBianca, who owned a grocery store?
There have, of course, been many other mass murderers, but Charles Manson was somehow different. More of a hippie Caligula than the classic American Lone-Wolf Serial KIller. He served for decades as a kind of human Shock-Wave so powerful that entertainers like Marilyn Manson have used his name to achieve notoriety.
The great tragedy is that he is still alive and someone like Sharon Tate could not live to see where her own destiny would take her, to be a great star or just an ingenue who grew older and became someones grandmother. I cannot say that I would like to see him die in an electric chair, but rather that no human being should be able to gull others to commit crimes. But I've written too much on this man. I thought I'd share this video of the person most remembered for this horrible night 40 years ago in Bel-Air, Los Angeles. She and those she died with deserve to be remembered not as victims but amongst the many decent people who should be remembered for what they already did and what they might have done had they been spared such a cruel fate.
(My thanks to the Ilovemarciabrady site.)
I well remember the fear that swept the city after this happened. It was the time when we all started locking our car doors the minute we got in them. They were shocking and heinous crimes .. and affected us all.
ReplyDeleteWas it ever found that these murderers were on mind altering drugs? It is hard to believe normal people could commit such a crime. Obviously Manson was suffering from some kind of paranoia, where a functional disorder told him to do something terrible, but that doesn't answer why others would join in such an attack. Even delusional persecutory disorder couldn't explain the group attack, whereas mind altering drugs may explain something about the people who slaughtered the innocent. A ghastly, ghastly murder...
ReplyDeleteThat was one of the things I find in the books and articles I came across, Christy--how relaxed things were in most parts of Southern California until this Summer of '69.
ReplyDeleteUp in the Bay Area, I remember how the Zodiac Killings shocked so many people and made us all a bit paranoid.... that killer (assuming it was just one) was never caught. Scary and heinous indeed.
An excellent question Cassandra. Manson's Rasputin-like control over disenfranchised men and women, some "drop-outs" from well-off families, has been well documented, and I can't imagine that hard drugs didn't play a part in this madness and delusional notion of slaughtering people to trigger some kind of crazy race war.
ReplyDeleteIt's something I will research.
If mind altering drugs weren't in use, this would make the murders even more frightening. These victims would have been killed while the people were capable of thinking logically. I am aware there is hysteria to take into account.
ReplyDeleteApparently these days they don't think there is such a thing as a mad person. In the past this was always thought possible. It is worrying that we can all be driving along in our cars and there are some people behind the wheel totally out of it. The car is as dangerous a weapon as a gun or a knife, maybe more so because practically everyone over the age of seventeen owns one!
At the trial, did Manson ever say voices told him to kill? I don't know much about the case, or what the defence were pleading.
The use of LSD by many of the Manson group (including convicted Tate/LaBianca killers Susan Atkins and Lesile Van Houten) apparently did play a major role, Cassandra.
ReplyDeleteThese women--former groupies of Manson's-- blame their drug use as part of the reason for the horrible crimes.
There apparently is medical controversy among psychiatrists as to whether these drugs would have contributed to such dementia that a person would be unable to determine right from wrong. These people all lived on an abandoned ranch isolated from society and former friends, so "brainwashing" and something in Manson's persona has to factor into this.
However, many of Manson's female and male followers continued to support him for years after his capture, even after he was imprisoned and they were free from direct control. One of these "groupies" of the imprisoned madman, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, was not a participant in the murders but was later convicted
of attempting to assassinate US President Gerald Ford in 1975 while he was in California. (The gun, an automatic, luckily was improperly loaded, but Fromme was actually within a few feet of the President as he toured a park outside the California State Capitol. Secret Service agents arrested her. In an odd bit of irony, CNN reports she is being released today after 34 years in custody.)
One of the defense attorneys for a Manson follower (Lesile Van Houton) in the 1970-71 Los Angeles trial, Ronald Hughes, disappeared during the proceedings and was later found murdered in a rural desert area. It is surmised it was under Manson's orders that he was killed, perhaps to discourage anyone from cooperating too closely with the Los Angeles district attorney's office.
This remains for me an unsettling mystery as to how personal moral convictions could be so dismissed, and what combination of factors led to these acts of madness. Common sense seems to suggest some form of mental illness from chemical brain imbalances or child abuse by individual disciples of Manson may also be part of this nightmare.
Yes, outside of the casual recklessness of youthful drivers, I've learned to careful when dealing with drivers. Cars are indeed weapons and some people who might cut your vehicle off or make rude gestures might in fact be a lot more dangerous due to the sense of security a moving vehicle has for someone in a bad mind-set. And, yes, the older I get the higher up I wish the legal driving age was. I remember my own early driving adventures and I must admit that I drove often too fast and hit inanimate objects like a highway sign. Luckily, no one was ever hurt. I never drove drunk or anything. I was just a dumb kid.
ReplyDeleteRe: Manson's defense. He really didn't offer one directly. At first, his defense attorneys simply rested their case without calling a single witness. Three of Manson's female defendants then demanded to testify. (One of the male killers, "Tex" Watson had not be apprehended yet.)
Manson did go on the witness stand to testify and went through a brief cross-examination. The jury was not allowed to be present by the judge. His testimony was a rambling plea for understanding of his long previous prison time (he had spent most of his teen and adult years in jail) coupled with bizarre threats to kill the judge and the prosecutors.
A reasonably brief summation of the events can be found on this website by Douglas Linder below. The first part of the essay concerns the crimes themselves, which are unsettling. The second part covers the trial itself and lays out the course of Manson and his co-defendents erratic behavior in court.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/manson/manson.html
Thee original essay covers the history of the case up to 2002. There are recent updates as well.
I've taken this to read up on. Thank you very much for your time, Doug, I'll get back to you...
ReplyDeleteDoug I recall this as a kid as I was a big Bruce Lee fan around this time and ironically Lee was going over to teach Sharon self defence. He had plans to go there that very day but I think he had something ongoing with his starting his acting career. Things of this nature seemed so tragic at the time and Manson is an issue onto itself and how he started a cult. I think of so many things pertaining to this yet within these times it does seem so "normal" if you will. When I watch the news, so often there are things like this that go on.
ReplyDeleteI saw the newscast with Manson and I was surprised to see that he was even still alive. And yet it goes on within our society. It's a pity but it's a reality as well.
What makes these people tick? Such as Manson, I am not sure probably mental illness due to drugs and so forth.
With the women that had come to there senses over the years I think it comes down to if you do something there a cause and effect. In these types of cases it's something that if you do it, then there is a cost to be paid. No one should nor has the right to take a life from another.
Back then and in these current times.
I agree Jack. I'm not totally surprised about the Bruce Lee/Sharon Tate story--I think he met her on one of those silly Matt Helm movies she did with Dean Martin as I recall-- but its one of those painful ironies.
ReplyDeleteHow people with so little apparent motive other than a cultist leader's wishes could hurt defenseles people--a pregnant woman, even!--astounds me. The control that man Manson had will be speculated about for decades.
Thanks for your comments.
I didn't read the part about the murder itself as I'm a softie. Looking at photos of Manson one can see there is something to fear in the man. Reading his own words, I found him to be a deep thinker for a person who wasn't educated. He was extremely bigoted. I think there is a danger in that alone, a basically intelligent mind with no direction or much learning. If he had some direction in life one wonders if he'd have made a good psychologist. He can take the mind apart in a rather strange way and has many ideas about how he arrived in that courtroom. He didn't seem at all repentant as often happens with many viscous murderers. I assume from that, he considers himself to be a completely normal human being.
ReplyDeleteHe dabbled in evil things with a relish that made him seem totally unreachable to all that was normal.
He had no fear of the judge, like most uneducated people would, feeling the power of someone who upholds the law.
One could say he was conditioned by his childhood, but many children have it tough and are neglected. What makes them rise above it, while others go under? He must have been a schizophrenic because he thought what he did was all for the good. Indeed his mind carried him to many dark places. What a shame he wasn't seen to be a danger until it was too late and he killed those innocent people.
I totally agree, Cassandra. There is definitely an intelligence there, an ability that those who met Manson describe as his uncanny ability at that time to size up people's vulnerable points and exploit them. I thin kin another upbringing he might have made a good therapist perhaps. How strange--I suppose the young Hitler had some of this ability. Can circumstances really make the difference in intellect and personality between a healer and a madman?
ReplyDeleteCalifornia at that time ,especially San Francisco, was filled with young and idealistic teenagers and other runaways, looking for a radical and free lifestyle. The Vietnam War fed the disdain that a lot of young people had in "the Establishment".
Most of those who came to places like San Francisco (where Manson gathered his "family" in 1967) probably never found what they were looking for and eventually went home. Others got into drugs, had run-ins with the police, etc, A couple dozen were lured into this sociopath's orbit. Again, as you say, how sad he wasn't stopped before he could take young minds and mold them into such acts of inhuman depravity.
Thanks for your analysis. I think I'll take a break from blogging "on the dark side" for awhile :-)
They were the lucky ones who decided to go home and let their lives run a normal course. What good fortune to have escaped the dark side of life. I think there is a fine line between someone who heals and another person who uses what he has to control. You are right about Hitler, he had many good ideas and started to put them to work and then he became a control freak and pulled Europe and some of the wider world into unimaginable terror.
ReplyDeleteSo you are surfacing from the dark side, eh Doug? Shall we talk of shoes and ships and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot. And whether pigs have wings?" ;-)
A lovely bit of poetry to round off this portion of the topic, Cassandra. Thanks :-)
ReplyDeleteAnd suffice to say my next blog will not have the words "serial killers" in it.
Thank you, Doug. I'm a great Lewis Carroll fan.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure whatever you blog about it will be a good read!
Sorry to intrude, but I surfed in to read your post. Well written! Thanks for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteNo instrusion at all--I did this one a while ago. Thanks Susan.
ReplyDelete