On the morning of August 9, 1969, three LAPD officers arrived at 10050 CieloDrive (Bugliosi 7). The scene that awaited them was horrendous.
In the driveway, in aparked car, the body of Steven Parent was found. He was shot four times and stabbedonce. Laying about eighteen or twenty feet past the front door of the house, VoytekFrykowski had been shot twice, beaten over the head with a blunt object thirteen times,and stabbed fifty-one times. Also discovered on the lawn was coffee heiress AbigailFolger, stabbed twenty-eight times. Inside the home, in the living room, were the bodiesof Jay Sebring and Sharon Tate. Sebring, a hair stylist, had been stabbed seven times andshot once, dying of exsanguination.
Tate, who was eight months pregnant at the time ofher death, was stabbed sixteen times in the chest and back (Fillmer par. 2). The following evening, in a seemingly unrelated crime, Leno and RosemaryLaBianca were discovered in their home at 3301 Waverly Drive. Rosemary was foundface down in her bedroom, a lamp cord wound around her neck, in a pool of blood; shehad been stabbed forty-one times. Her husband, Leno, had a pillow case over his head, alamp cord tied around his neck, his hands tied behind his back with a leather thong, and anivory-handled, bi-tined carving fork in his stomach; he had been stabbed multiple times andhad the word ?WAR? carved in his flesh (Bugliosi 55-56).
The murderers were members of a group led by Charles Manson called theManson Family. These people were completely controlled by Manson. He had themconvinced that they were the chosen ones and that they were only carrying out the ordersof a man they thought was Jesus Christ incarnate (Watson par. 3). They were willing torisk death and imprisonment to satisfy this man.
Manson used borrowed ideas fromprosperous cults of the 1960’s to achieve a complete control over his followers. In June of 1960, Charles Manson was sent to prison for forgery, mail theft, andpimping (Bugliosi 192-193). There, he became involved with a cult called Scientology(195). Scientology was founded by L. Ron Hubbard (?Cult? par.
45). It teaches that eachhuman has a soul called a ?thetan. ‘scientologists believe that, many years ago, the thetanwas ?god-like? and that people fell from divinity and forgot their origins. People werethen trapped on Earth in ?delusions of mortality (?Scientology? par. 12). ? Hubbardclaimed that he had found the spiritual way to finding the true way to man.
He said thatone must work through many levels of self knowledge and knowledge of past lives to?awaken the primordial deity? until divinity is once again achieved (?Cult? par. 45). The highest level of awareness in Scientology is called ?theta clear. ? Mansonclaims to have reached theta clear while in prison. He supposedly achieved this throughmany ?auditing sessions,? the method that Scientologists use to teach awareness, taughtby his cell mate, Lanier Rayner (Bugliosi 195-196).
Most likely, he picked up many of hismethods of mind control from these sessions, along with ideas such as karma andreincarnation (635). The Process Church of the Final Judgment, labeled a Satanist cult by the media,was founded in 1963 by Robert DeGrimston, a former Scientologist. The basis of thisreligion was the book of Matthew of the New Testament, and it began as a mixture ofZoroastrianism and Scientology. The name ?The Process? refers to the ?changesnecessary to avoid the end of the world with its associated judgment. ? Processeansworship Jehovah, Lucifer, and Satan (?Process? par. 17).
Even though The Process fervently denies that Charles Manson was ever amember, many ideas from his philosophy parallel Process concepts. Both Manson andThe Process taught of a violent and unavoidable Armageddon in which all but the fewchosen ones would be destroyed, and both thought that motorcycle gangs would be the?troops of the last days. ? One Process pamphlet described the second coming of Christas: ? ?Through Love, Christ and Satan have destroyed their enmity and come together forthe End: Christ to Judge, Satan to execute the Judgment. ‘ ? Manson believed that, whenChrist returned, it would be the establishment that ?went up on the cross (Bugliosi 637).
? Manson and The Process shared ideas on fear also; they preached that fear was the samething as awareness, and that the more fear one had, the more awareness and thereforemore love one had (320). There were so many similarities between Manson’s philosophyand The Process that even if he was never a member, The Process must have been a greatinfluence on Charles Manson (638-639). A great many other ideas of Manson’s came from the Beatles and the Bible. Thismay seem like an odd pair, but they fit together surprisingly well in Manson’s mind. Manson had his own unique interpretations of almost every verse from Revelations 9. Hebelieved that the Beatles were the four angels spoken of in the Bible.
When the Bibledescribes locusts emerging from the bottomless pit, he saw it as another reference to theEnglish rockers because locust and ?beetles? were one and the same. The locusts aredescribed as having the faces of men and the hair of women, which only reinforced hisopinion (Bugliosi 322-323). In Verse 15 of Revelations 9, the Bible says, ?So the fourangels were released; this was precisely the hour, the day, the month, and the year forwhich they had been prepared to kill a third of mankind. ? Manson preached that the thirdpart of mankind was the white race that would die in Helter Skelter (Bugliosi 323).
HelterSkelter was the name that Manson had given the race war between the whites and theblacks. He believed that the blacks would win but would be unable to govern and then beforced to turn to the Manson Family for leadership (Bugliosi 329-331). Manson believedthat the Beatles song of the same name was a prediction of this race war (?CharlesManson?). He would often quote whole Beatles’ songs and Revelations 9 to support hisviews (Bugliosi 300). Manson believed that the Beatles were spokesmen contacting himdirectly through their songs. He claimed that the White Album set things up for therevolution and that his album (to be released later) would ?really start things off(324-325).
? Charles Manson had an uncanny ability to sense and use a person’s hangups ordesires (Bugliosi 317). He prayed on young men and women who were vulnerable andlooking for any sense of love or belonging. Many of the members of the Family wereyoung females who had traveled to California in search of God or happiness (343). Heeven attracted a few men with LSD trips to ?open the mind (317).
? What they found wasa man who would convince them of what they desperately wanted to believe: that theywere attractive and desirable, and that he was God. As he pulled in followers, Mansonbegan to preach his philosophy. He claimed to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ and wasknown as both God and Satan. He taught that the United States was on the brink of ablack/white racial war called Helter Skelter. Manson believed that the blacks would beincapable of governing after being the inferior race for so long and would turn to theFamily for leadership (?Family? 2).
He promised his followers that they would soonretreat into the desert to the Bottomless Pit, another concept shared with The Process,where they would live in comfort until they numbered 144,000 (Bugliosi 313). Then, theywould return to the upper world where they would rule (333). When Manson’s followersnumbered twenty or thirty and Helter Skelter had still not begun, he decided to start thespark that would light the fire. The members of the Family had already proven that they were willing to kill andrisk their own lives for him, so Manson ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders. The intent ofthese murders was to cause Helter Skelter; they were supposed to appear as though blackshad committed them. For this purpose, the words ?DEATH TO PIGS? were written onthe living room wall at the LaBianca residence, and ?HEALTER SKELTER [sic]? wasprinted on their refrigerator, both in the blood of the victims.
The word ?PIG? wasprinted on the bottom half of the front door at 10050 Cielo Drive in Sharon Tate’s ownblood (Bugliosi 331-332). After Manson and the Family members who were involved in the Tate-LaBiancamurders were arrested, he continued to reveal his ultimate control over them. SusanAtkins, who was involved in both murders, agreed to testify for the Grand Jury in returnfor immunity. After the criminal trial started, however, and she had one meeting withManson, she repudiated her statement and was once again charged with first degreemurder (?Family? 11). Manson’s followers who were not arrested held a vigil outside theHall of Justice everyday throughout the trials (?Charles Manson?).
During the courtproceedings, when Manson refused to face the judge, the other three defendants did thesame (Fillmer 10). When he carved an X in his forehead, they mimicked him again. Andwhen he changed that X to a swastika, they followed (?Family? 11). The defendantsrepeated all of Manson’s outbursts in court in a ?chant-like manner (Fillmer 10).
? Vincent Bugliosi says of the Family members in his book Helter Skelter, ?Theywere also young, naive, eager to believe, and, perhaps even more important, belong. There were followers aplenty for any self-styled guru. It didn’t take Manson long to sensethis. In the underground milieu into which he’d stumbled, even the fact that he was anex-convict conferred to a certain status. Rapping a line of metaphysical con that borrowedas much from pimping as joint jargon and Scientology, Manson began attracting followers,almost all girls at first, then a few young boys (222). ? Manson used the people’seagerness to implant his philosophy deep into their impressionable young minds.
Hetaught that he was the fifth angel of the Apocalypse, the one that held the key to theBottomless Pit. What Charles Manson didn’t teach his followers was that the translationof the angel’s name — Abbadon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek — is ?destroyer. ? BibliographyBugliosi, Vincent. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders.
New York: Bantam Books, 1975. 7, 54-56, 196, 222, 300, 317, 320, 322, 323, 325, 635, 637-638. ?Charles Manson. ? n.
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com/ccn/cults/fal10. txt Fillmer, Deborah K. ?Forensic Science and the Charles Manson Murders. ? 26 Apr. 1996. Online.
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com/~dfillmer/Manson. html ?Manson Family Murders 1969-1971. ? n. d.
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