Voytek was his name. I’m sure I spelled it wrong.
Steve Parent was the 18 year old in the car, truly a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Linda Kasabian had two children Angel Kasabian and Tanya Kasabian. They would be in their fifties today.
I credit Linda for not cashing in with books and interviews. It couldn’t have been easy living with the guilt of the murders. Her testimony was very important in getting convictions of the others.
I am closing in on 60 and did not start reading until about halfway through first grade. No one thought it was odd or unusual. Then I turned into a ginormous bookworm . Still am.
Regarding the fact that younger people haven’t heard of the Manson murders, we might ask ourselves: how many famous murder (or serious crime cases) do YOU know of that occurred before you were born?
Asking myself that question, I come up with:
Charles Starkweather/Caril Fugate murders
Leopold and Loeb
Sam Sheppard
Carl Chessman (red light bandit - rape but not murder)
The “White Devil” (serial murderer at the 1898 Chicago World’s Fair)
…but I’m not sure what that proves. Probably that I have a modest interest in history and crime. With the possible exception of Leopold and Loeb, I don’t think I learned any of that stuff in school.
ETA: Technically speaking, the “In Cold Blood” murders occurred after I was born, but I was only one year old, so not paying much attention to current events. I might expect that to be taught in school, for literary reasons - my son had to read In Cold Blood for one of his English classes in high school.
Oh and Jack the Ripper of course! I wonder if the people who never heard of Manson know that one. Probably.
Why the fuck would someone be expected to know about a crime that took place decades before they were born? Of course it was huge in its time but it isn’t especially relevant to today. If you had told me that they didn’t know about the Vietnam War and the associated civil rights protests, you’d have a very good point. The Manson murders? Come on.
In the 1960s, in the Chicago North Shore suburb where I grew up, reading wasn’t taught until first grade. Kindergarten was for socialization and not much more.
I remember my daughter’s 1st grade teacher (a bit older than I am) lamenting that nowadays (circa 2001), things that children weren’t in the near past taught until 2nd grade were now expected of children in kindergarten and first grades, regardless of whether the kids were ready, and how much of a struggle it was for some of the children. As they say, it’s not a race, it’s a process.
It wasn’t all that long ago I found out something about Steve Parent. In the book Helter Skelter, Bugliosi mentions a witness named Jerrold Friedman, a friend of Steve’s. Jerrold Friedman is better known as the science fiction author David Gerrold, writer of The Trouble with Tribbles, and from hints he’s dropped, it seems that he and Steve may have been an item at the time of his death. He did dedicate one of his novels to Steve.
My Uncle used to get his hair cut by Jay Sebring.
Age is a very big factor in how children perform at the preschool/Kindergarten level (& beyond) – older children are much more likely to read at grade level than younger kids. Some parents start their children in Kindergarten a year late just for this reason… because children who do well in Kindergarten gets lots of positive attention & so they tend to do better in 1st, etc. Also applies in sports.
I know about the Manson murders not from news at the time, but because I read the book Helter Skelter. I don’t know how long after the murders it was published, but it was a best seller, (and a very good book), so it kept the story alive longer than the news cycle. Without the book, and maybe it was made into a movie as well?, I don’t think the story would be as well known.
Interesting. “Helter Skelter” has a picture of Mr. Parent with his senior prom date, who was, of course, a girl. Obviously, in 1969, being an “out” teenager was not an option.
He was leaving the compound, having visited William Garrison, who lived in a “Fonzie apartment” in the backyard, because Garrison had placed a want ad for the sale of a radio, and Parent looked at it and decided not to buy it. IIRC, Garrison later had that radio cranked pretty high and did not hear the murders, and he was so traumatized by his brief time in custody for something he had nothing to do with, he quickly returned to his Midwestern hometown and never gave interviews until recent years.
Garrison did something that millions of other young adults have done before and since - moved to a place where they knew nobody, just because they wanted to have the experience of living in a different area.
Sharon Tate’s mother, Doris, adored Jay Sebring and was a bit disappointed that Sharon married Roman Polanski and not him. She also believed in his barbering methods, and got a cosmetology license and taught the Sebring methods for some years.
I know of Charles Manson, the murders, and Sharon Tate. I have no idea about the names of the others and opened this thread because I was curious about the name.
I have now learned something more about an event that happened before I was born. One if the problems about learning history is how much of it exists, and there’s always more to come.
I didn’t even learn much about the Vietnam war in high school, and I think that was a bit more relevant, especially as many of my parents’ generation were directly affected.
This is the only one in your list that I recognized, but that’s because I read a book on it. I believe it is named, “The Devil in the White City”.
I remember the murders when they happened. I lived in southern California, and my dad was a LEO, so it got a lot of attention in our house. But I also didn’t remember this particular woman’s name.
I didn’t read Helter Skelter, but the movie Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood includes some history of the Manson family. I then read up on the crimes, being particularly interested in the Spahn filming ranch sequence because I’ve recently gotten hooked on old TV westerns from the 50s and 60s. The movie got a lot of those ranch details right. But the movie inaccurately has Kasabian leaving the murder scene entirely and taking the getaway car with her.
TV Miniseries, and you’re right, without the book and movie, I think I would get far more blank stares when I talk about Manson.
As for nearwildheaven’s questions, yes, I am in Chicago, and no, I don’t think my coworker is an immigrant although she is a Latina. Could be a cultural gap thing maybe? I dunno.
I felt the same nonplussed reaction to a lack of comprehension stare when another of my coworkers didn’t know what Monty Python was. It’s a hazard of getting older, people not getting your references.
There’s a theory that perhaps he did hear what was going on, but was so scared that he barricaded himself in his apartment, and only later asserted that he didn’t hear anything on account of a loud radio.
My mom was about 19 at the time, and also lived in Southern California. She said it spooked her - she’d regularly check her phone to make sure the line was working, since the murderers cut the phone lines at the Tate house before entering and killing those inside.
…
Meanwhile, in remembering Linda Kasabian, it’s also worth noting that she saved the life of Saladin Nader: he was a guy she had previously met while hitchhiking (leading to a sexual encounter). After the LaBianca murders, Linda and some of the others were dropped off at his apartment complex with instructions to kill him. But Linda purposely went to the wrong apartment, and they eventually left (although not before Sadie Atkins shit in the stairwell).
I’m not sure it’s been mentioned yet in this thread, but the only reason Kasabian was brought along on the killings is because she had a valid driver’s license.
That’s because the film is about what we might wish had actually happened. It’s a Tarantino thing.