Charles Manson

Charles Manson is now 74 years old and has been in state prison for almost 40 years — this time around. Manson had been locked up before he moved to the Haight Ashbury section of San Francisco in 1967 or so and began collecting younger female devotees. He moved to L.A.. and began adding to his "family" — and hanging out with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. In August 1969, Manson sent followers squatting with him at the Spahn Ranch near Chatsworth to carry out the Sharon Tate murders in Benedict Canyon.

Charles Milles Manson (born November 12, 1934) is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s.[1][2][3] 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,[4] he was convicted of the murders themselves.

Manson is associated with "Helter Skelter," the term he took from the Beatles song of that name and construed as an apocalyptic race war the murders were putatively intended to precipitate. This connection with rock music linked him, from the beginning of his notoriety, with pop culture, in which he became an emblem of insanity, violence, and the macabre. Ultimately, the term was used as the title of the book that prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote about the Manson murders.