Charles Manson and the Manson Family
Murder!
Quiet and secluded is just what the young movie star wanted. The canyons above Beverly Hills were far enough away from the noisy glitz of Hollywood to afford some privacy and space. Sharon Tate loved this place on Cielo Drive. To her it meant romance romance with the man of her dreams and the father of her child, director Roman Polanski.
Charles Manson
It was cooler up there too, which was especially refreshing on that hot muggy Saturday night, the 9th of August 1969. The beautiful young woman kept herself company with her attractive and sophisticated friends: Abigail Folger, the coffee heiress and her boyfriend Voytek Frykowski, and an internationally known hair stylist Jay Sebring.
Sharon was eight months pregnant and very lonely for her husband who was away in Europe working on a film. Impromptu gatherings like this one on a weekend night were not at all unusual.
The house was deliberately secluded but not completely insecure. Approximately 100 feet from the house was a locked gate and on the property was a guesthouse inhabited by an able-bodied young caretaker.
That night the Kotts, Sharon's nearest neighbors who lived about 100 yards away, thought they heard a few gunshots coming from the direction of Sharon's property sometime between 12:30 and 1 A.M. But since they heard nothing else, they went to bed.
Around the same time, a man supervising a camp-out less than a mile away heard a chilling scream: "Oh, God, no, please don't! Oh, God, no, don't, don't..."
He drove around the area, but found nothing unusual.
Nearby a neighbor's dogs went into a barking frenzy somewhere between 2 and 3 A.M. He got out of bed and looked around, but found nothing amiss and went back to bed.
A private security guard hired by some of the wealthy property owners thought he heard several gunshots a little after 4 A.M. and called his headquarters. Headquarters, in turn, called Los Angeles Police Department to report the disturbance. The LAPD officer said: "I hope we don't have a murder; we just had a woman-screaming call in that area."
The Tate/Polanski House on Cielo Drive
Winifred Chapman, Sharon Tate's housekeeper, got to the main gate of the house a little after 8 A.M. She noticed what looked like a fallen telephone wire hanging over the gate. She pushed the gate control mechanism and it swung open. As she walked up to the house, she saw an unfamiliar white Rambler parked in the driveway.
When she got to the house, she took the housekey from its hiding place and unlocked the back door. Once inside the kitchen, she picked up the telephone and confirmed that it was a telephone wire that had fallen, completely knocking out all phone service. As she made her way toward the living room, she noticed that the front door was open and that there were splashes of red everywhere. Looking out the front door, she saw a couple of pools of blood and what appeared to be a body on the lawn.
She shrieked and ran back through the house and down the driveway, passing close enough to the Rambler to see that there was yet another body inside the car. She ran over to the Kotts and banged on the door, but they were not home, so she ran to the next house and did the same thing, screaming hysterically.
Charles Manson spends most of his time alone
A new photo of Charles Manson shows his gray beard and the swastika tattooed into his forehead.
In his latest mug shot, Charles Manson's wild-eyed stare is gone, as is most of his hair. Except for the swastika he carved into his brow during his murder trial, he could be any gray-bearded senior citizen.
If the photo authorities released early this week is any indication, the leader of a murderous band called "The Family," has mellowed some after almost 40 years in a California state prison.
He has had a lot of alone time.
Manson, 74, is locked away in protective custody, according to Sabrina Johnson, a spokeswoman at Corcoran State Prison in Corcoran, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Manson has his own cell. His exposure to prison neighbors that include mass killer Juan Corona and Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, is very limited, Johnson said.
Manson and four others -- Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Charles "Tex" Watson and Leslie Van Houten -- were convicted of murder and other charges in connection with a two-night rampage that left pregnant actress Sharon Tate and seven others dead.
Manson and the four "family" members' death sentences were overturned during the 1970s, when thedeath penalty laws were ruled unconsitutional. He is quietly serving out his life sentence. Although he once frequently gave bombastic rants on national television, he hasn't granted a media interview in years.
Manson receives a lot of mail, and many requests from people who want to visit him, Johnson said. He still occasionally sees a few people.
"Over the years, he's taken some people off the visitor list and put them back on, " Johnson said. "He has the same rights as any other prisoner."
Manson has been disciplined in the past, losing privileges, but he's now in good standing and good health, Johnson added.
All members of the "Manson family" have been up for parole multiple times over the past four decades, but it has never been granted.
Manson's next parole hearing is in 2010. He did not show up for the last one in 2007.
His mug shot, which instantly made its way around the world over the Internet, was taken as part of a regular update of inmate images at the prison. Its release comes ahead of the 40th anniversary of the "Manson family" killings in August 1969.
Van Houten, who was 19 at the time of the killings, was convicted in the murders of Leno LaBianca, a wealthy grocery store owner, and his wife, Rosemary. Van Houten was accused of stabbing Rosemary LaBianca 14 to 16 times in the back.
Van Houten was also convicted of conspiracy in Tate's death and four others at the actress' Beverly Hills home. Tate was about eight-and-a-half months pregnant, and her baby also died in the attack. Manson, Atkins and Krenwinkel also were convicted for those murders.
Atkins, who has been declared terminally ill, was denied a compassionate release from prison in July 2008. She is believed to have been one of the people who stabbed Tate and scrawled the word "pig" in blood on the door of the home the actress shared with director Roman Polanski.
In May 2008, authorities dug for bodies at the Inyo County, California, ranch where Manson and his followers once lived, after police learned that testing had indicated human remains might be buried there. According to authorities, nothing was found.
No comments:
Post a Comment