I might add that my mom was completely spooked about hippies and murders for years after that. I was thirteen when the murders happened, and in three or four years started dating or going out with friends without adult supervision. In the mid to late 70s, most guys that we all dated looked a bit like Charles Manson or his male followers. So in my mom’s mind, every one of my dates was a probable mass murderer.
So Manson made it tough to date in the 70s, at least for the daughter of a LEO and his wife.
If the killers weren’t hippies and the victims weren’t the beautiful people, I doubt anybody would be still talking about the murders five years later, let alone five decades later. The only historical relevance is that it puts an ironic coda on the short lived peace and love era (1967-1969 RIP).
It’s the psychology of the cult, where a charismatic leader convinces his followers that his dogma is absolute truth. See Jim Jones, et al. The people he recruited were young men and women who were looking for meaning in their lives and believed they had found it in Manson’s philosophy.
The sheer volume of the carnage makes it memorable, and that it was done by white people to white people also kept it in the news. I think we all know that to Manson, “Helter Skelter” was not really about a British carnival ride, but was instead what he was going to call the resulting race war that he wanted to kickstart with these murders.
Plus, he was REALLY pissed off at Terry Melcher.
p.s. These were cold cases until some of the followers were arrested for stealing dune buggies, and Susan Atkins in particular couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
Not really. That’s what he told followers, but it was mostly about making it look like the killers of Gary Hinman were still on the loose and getting Bobby Beausoleil out of jail before he ratted Manson out.
Because they were one of those “before and after” moments, although I think teaching something like that should be left to the teacher’s discretion. I don’t remember learning about them in school, but a woman I worked with a few years later did, and she had a book that her teacher had never heard of that showed some of the things he talked about in class were incorrect. It’s been a while, so I don’t remember all the details.
As I recall (my knowledge comes from Helter Skelter, a truly great book), Manson would often dose his followers with lots of LSD, while he himself would not take nearly as much. It was during these hallucinogenic episodes that Manson was at his most convincing.
That was my introduction, but further reading convinces me that Bugliosi was talking out his ass when it came to the details of Manson’s motives and the way he controlled his followers. The simplest way to explain Manson is that he was a pimp; using all the methods pimps have always used to get women to do whatever they wanted them to do. He then used those women (girls, really) and a plentiful supply of drugs to get men to do his bidding.
To this day, I am spooked by their weird activity of ‘creepy crawling’ – entering the homes of sleeping strangers to crawl around & rearrange furniture, etc. If I remember correctly, they did this to the LaBianca’s some time before they returned to murder them. I think the theory was that it was practice for the murders, but whatever the reason, it’s just such a bizarre thing to do. Even on drugs, which I’m sure they were.
I grew up in the valley and was 11 when the murders happened. It was shocking and I eventually read Helter Skelter so I’m fairly informed about what went down. Chatsworth Park was my favorite place to go and I eventually figured out that Spahn Ranch was in the vicinity, although I never ventured there.
I remember when Squeaky tried to assassinate President Ford, which just added to the whole craziness of the story. I was hanging out with a buddy in L.A. and he drove me by the LaBianca house for the hell of it. I really wanted to go down to LA during the filming of the Tarantino movie because they dressed up Sunset Blvd. in period 1969. I thought the movie was great, and I had no idea about how it played out going into it.
I didn’t ever hear about the Manson family in school. It was in the news and the culture at the time. What purported to be Manson’s MMPI floated around when I was studying psychology, but we assumed it was a fake.
Because it’s boring and doesn’t help get convictions or sell books. Most cults have a complex theology and dogma created by a smart, charismatic leader. Manson had the charisma but his theology was sloppy and off the cuff. His followers didn’t do his bidding because of some weird apocalyptic fantasy; they did it just because Charlie (their pimp/drug supplier/girl procurer) told them to. A jury needed a better motive than that for such a sensational crime, and Bugliosi found it in some weird bullshit Manson prattled on about when everybody was stoned.