Manson Family

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The Manson Family was the name given to a group of young women and men around Charles Manson who committed seven murders in Los Angeles on August 9 and 10, 1969 .

Manson used collective drug use , charisma, and sexual violence to subordinate his followers , according to the results of the trial . At the same time was family publicly as racist Hippie - community perceived.

history

Charles Manson had served a seven-year sentence in early 1967 and was paroled . He had learned to play the guitar in prison and after his release toured the United States as a street musician . In the summer of 1967 he came to the capital of the hippie movement , San Francisco . There he gathered several young people around him, mostly runaways with unstable personalities. The group grew and soon Manson's VW bus was too small for the "family". So he bought a school bus painted black and roamed the west coast region of the USA with it.

The size of the group varied; most of the members were between 13 and 28 years old, including a striking number of slim, red-haired women, many of them with problematic family backgrounds. The family also included some children. The group consisted of a solid core (around 20 predominantly female members), which many joined for shorter periods of time or on a regular basis. All group members were given nicknames .

Manson led the group with authoritarian and manipulative methods, he also developed his own worldview, which he founded with elements from song texts, preferably from the albums of the Beatles . This is how Manson's apocalyptic idea of ​​a " Helter Skelter " came about (based on the song of the same name on the so-called White Album ): escalating racial unrest between blacks and whites. The Manson Family committed several murders in the late 1960s, including the film actress Sharon Tate and several friends, as well as the supermarket chain owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary .

The Manson Family was arrested on a ranch in Death Valley, California in 1969 following the Tate LaBianca murders . Five members of the Manson Family were charged with these murders and initially sentenced to the death penalty . A change in the law later changed this sentence to life imprisonment . All of the “lifelong” members of the Manson Family are still fighting for a revision of their sentence or for parole. After Manson's death on November 19, 2017, Charles Watson , Patricia Krenwinkel , Leslie Van Houten , Bobby Beausoleil and Bruce Davis are still in custody (as of November 2019) . So far, only Davis (six since 2010), Van Houten (three since 2016) and Beausoleil (one in 2019) have received discharge recommendations from the parole commission. However, after objections from the respective governors of California , none of them was released. In 1985 Steve Dennis Grogan was the only person to be pardoned . Susan Atkins died of a brain tumor in prison in 2009 at the age of 61 .

Known members

About 100 members of the group and their social environment are known by name to the police. They include the following people, listed in alphabetical order:

  • Charles Manson aka "Jesus Christ", leader of the Manson Family
  • Maria Alonzo alias "Crystal"
  • Susan Atkins aka "Sadie Mae Glutz"
  • Edward Arthur Bailey
  • Ella Jo Bailey aka "Yellerstone"
  • Laurence Edward Bailey aka "Larry Jones"
  • Madaline Joan Cottage aka "Linda Baldwin", "Little Patty"
  • Susan Phyllis Bartell aka "Country Sue"
  • Bobby Beausoleil alias "Cupido"
  • Mary Brunner aka "Mother Mary", "Mary Manson"
  • Priscilla Cooper
  • Sherry Ann Cooper aka "Sherry", "Simi Valley Sherri"
  • James Craig
  • Larry Cravens
  • Bruce Davis aka "Bruce McMillan"
  • Daniel Thomas de Carlo alias "Danny", "Donkey Dan"
  • John Leo Flynn alias "Juan Flynn"
  • Lynette Fromme alias "Squeaky"
  • Catherine Irene Gillies aka "Cappy"
  • Sandra Collins Good alias "Sandy"
  • William Goucher
  • Steven Dennis Grogan aka "Clem", "Tufts"
  • John Philip Haught alias "Zero"
  • Barbara Hoyt alias "Barbara Rosenburg"
  • Linda Kasabian
  • George Knoll alias "86 George"
  • Patricia Krenwinkel aka "Katie", "Big Patty"
  • Dianne Lake aka "Snake"
  • Robert Lane aka "Soupspoon"
  • Charles Allen Lovett
  • Kathryn Lutesinger aka "Kitty"
  • Michael Monfort
  • Dean Moorehouse
  • Ruth Ann Moorehouse aka "Ouish", "Rachel Susan Morse"
  • Nancy Laura Pitman aka "Brenda McCann", "Cydette Perell"
  • Brooks Poston
  • Joel Pugh
  • Dennis Rice
  • Mark Ross
  • Stephanie Schram
  • Suzanne Scott aka "Stephanie Rowe"
  • Catherine Share aka "Gypsy", "Manon Minette"
  • Collie Sinclair aka "Beth Tracy"
  • Claudia Leigh Smith aka "Sherry Andrews"
  • Hugh Rocky Todd aka "Randy Morglea"
  • Harold True
  • Leslie Van Houten aka "LuLu", "Leslie Marie Sankston", "Leslie Owens"
  • Thomas Walleman alias "TJ the Terrible"
  • Paul Alan Watkins
  • Charles Watson aka "Tex", "Charles Montgomery", "Texas Charlie"
  • Joan Wildebush aka "Juanita"

reception

The Manson Family has become a much discussed subject in popular culture and has inspired numerous artistic works. For example, Louis Paul Boon processed the events of the Manson Family in his 1977 novel The Jesses Girls.

Musical pieces inspired by the Manson Family include Neil Young's Revolution Blues on On the Beach (1974), Sonic Youth's Death Valley '69 from 1985, Ozzy Osbourne's song Bloodbath in Paradise on No Rest for the Wicked (1988) and Slipknots 742617000027 on the 1999 Slipknot album .

The 1973 documentary Manson gives an insight into the life of the Manson Family. The crimes of the Manson Family are dealt with in the 1976 TV movie Helter Skelter - Night of the Long Knives . In an episode of the Family Guy series , references to the Manson Family are made.

Quentin Tarantino addresses the Manson Family and their 2019 murders in his film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood .

Footage

Documentaries

  • 1973: Manson
  • 2007: Inside the Manson Gang
  • 2007: Cease to Exist
  • 2009: The Six Degrees of Helter Skelter
  • 2012: Born to Kill - Born a murderer? (Born to Kill?) , Documentary Series, Season 2, Episode 1: The Manson Family
  • 2014: Life After Manson

Feature films / TV series

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ US cult founder and serial killer: Charles Manson is dead. In: spiegel.de. November 20, 2017. Retrieved November 21, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry: Helter Skelter. 2017, pp. 14–19.
  3. ↑ Paul Watkins daughter is the writer Claire Vaye Watkins , born 1984.
  4. ^ A b Roisin O'Connor: Charles Manson dead: How the cult leader was referenced in popular culture. In: The Independent . November 20, 2017. Retrieved October 27, 2018.