Best Known As: Other

Life Facts:  On his release day, Manson requested and was granted permission to move to San Francisco, where, with the help of a prison acquaintance, he moved into an apartment in Berkeley. In prison, he had been taught to play steel guitar by 1930s bank robber Alvin Karpis; now, living mostly by panhandling, he soon got to know Mary Brunner, a twenty-three-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate working as an assistant librarian at UC Berkeley. After moving in with her, according to a second-hand account, he overcame her resistance to his bringing other women in to live with them; before long, they were sharing Brunner's residence with 18 other women.

Manson established himself as a guru in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, which, during 1967's "Summer of Love", was emerging as the signature hippie locale. Expounding a philosophy that included some of the Scientology he had studied in prison, he soon had his first group of young followers, most of them female.

Before the summer was out, Manson and eight or nine of his enthusiasts piled into an old school bus they had re-wrought in hippie style, with colored rugs and pillows in place of the many seats they had removed. They roamed as far north as Washington State, then southward through Los Angeles, Mexico, and the southwest. Returning to the Los Angeles area, they lived in Topanga Canyon, Malibu, and Venice?western parts of the city and county.

In an alternative account, which does not mention the 18 women at Brunner?s residence, Manson, apparently accompanied by Brunner, acquired Family members during some months of travels that were undertaken, in part, in a Volkswagen van; it was November when the school bus set out from San Francisco with the enlarged group.

The next night, six Family members?the four from the Tate murders and also Leslie Van Houten and Steve "Clem" Grogan?rode out at Manson?s instruction. Displeased by the panic of the victims at Cielo Drive, Manson accompanied the six, "to show [them] how to do it." After a few hours? ride, in which he considered a number of murders and even attempted one of them, Located in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles, the LaBianca home was next door to a house at which Manson and Family members had attended a party the previous year.

According to Atkins and Kasabian, Manson returned, after disappearing up the driveway, to say he had tied up the house's occupants; he then sent Watson up with Krenwinkel and Van Houten. In his autobiography, Watson would state that, having gone up alone, Manson returned to take him up to the house with him: when Manson had pointed out a sleeping man through a window, they entered through the unlocked back door. Watson added that, at trial, he "went along with" the women's account, which he figured made him "look that much less responsible."

Rousing the sleeping Leno LaBianca from the couch at gunpoint, as Watson tells it, Manson had Watson bind his hands with a leather thong. After Rosemary LaBianca was brought briefly into the living room from the bedroom, Watson followed Manson?s instructions to cover the couple?s heads with pillowcases, which he bound in place with lamp cords. Manson left, sending Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten into the house with instructions that the couple be killed.

On September 5, 1975, the Family rocketed back to national attention when Squeaky Fromme attempted to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford. The attempt took place in Sacramento, to which she and Manson follower Sandra Good had moved to be near Manson while he was incarcerated at Folsom State Prison. A subsequent search of the apartment shared by Fromme, Good, and a Family recruit turned up evidence that, coupled with later actions on the part of Good, resulted in Good's conviction for conspiring to send threatening communications through the United States mail and transmitting death threats by way of interstate commerce. (The threats that were involved were against corporate executives and US government officials and had to do with supposed environmental dereliction on their part.) which made it a Federal crime to attempt to assassinate the President of the United States.

In 1977, authorities learned the precise location of the remains of Shorty Shea and that, contrary to Family claims, Shea had not been dismembered and buried in several places. Contacting the prosecutor in his case, Steve Grogan told him Shea?s corpse had been buried in one piece; he drew a map that pinpointed the location of the body, which was recovered. Of those convicted of Manson-ordered murders, Grogan would become, in 1985, the first?and, , the only?to be paroled.

In the 1980s, Manson gave three notable interviews. The first, recorded at California Medical Facility and aired June 13, 1981, was by Tom Snyder for NBC's The Tomorrow Show. The second, recorded at San Quentin Prison and aired March 7, 1986, was by Charlie Rose for CBS News Nightwatch; it won the national news Emmy Award for "Best Interview" in 1987. The last, with Geraldo Rivera in 1988, was part of that journalist's prime-time special on Satanism.

On September 25, 1984, while imprisoned at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, Manson was severely burned by a fellow inmate who poured paint thinner on him and set him alight. The other prisoner, Jan Holmstrom, explained that Manson had objected to his Hare Krishna chants and had verbally threatened him. Despite suffering second- and third-degree burns over 20 percent of his body, Manson recovered from his injuries.

In December 1987, Fromme, serving a life sentence for the assassination attempt, escaped briefly from Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia. She was trying to reach Manson, who she had heard had testicular cancer; she was apprehended within days.

* George, Edward and Dary Matera. Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars. St. Martin's Press, 1999. ISBN 0-312-20970-3.

* Gilmore, John. Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family. Amok Books, 2000. ISBN 1-878923-13-7.

* Gilmore, John. The Garbage People. Omega Press, 1971.

* LeBlanc, Jerry and Ivor Davis. 5 to Die. Holloway House Publishing, 1971. ISBN 0-87067-306-8.

* Pellowski, Michael J. The Charles Manson Murder Trial: A Headline Court Case. Enslow Publishers, 2004. ISBN 0-7660-2167-X.

* Rowlett, Curt. Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy, Chapter 10, Charles Manson, Son of Sam and the Process Church of the Final Judgment: Exploring the Alleged Connections. Lulu Press, 2006. ISBN 1-4116-6083-8.

* Schreck, Nikolas. The Manson File Amok Press. 1988. ISBN 0-941693-04-X.

* Udo, Tommy. Charles Manson: Music, Mayhem, Murder. Sanctuary Records, 2002. ISBN 1-86074-388-9.