Convicted Murderer Who Never Murdered Anyone, Charles Manson

Those are the words of a convicted serial killer who never actually murdered a single person in his life, Charles Manson. Conversely he orchestrated members of the group that became known as the Manson Family to carry the murders out. Manson was born “no name Maddox” on November 12, 1934 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was born to Kathleen Maddox, an unmarried 16-year-old prostitute who frequently drank. His mother married a laborer named William Manson weeks after his birth and was given the name Charles Milles Manson, taking his stepfathers last name.

When Charles was five years old, his mother was sentenced to five years imprisonment for robbing a service station in West Virginia in 1939. Custody was given by the state to his Uncle and Aunt, he lived with them in McMechen, West Virginia. In 1942, Charles Manson was eight years old his mother was paroled and she reclaimed him. They spent the next several years living in cheap hotels with various men. And in 1947 his mother tried having Manson placed in a foster home, but none were available.

At the age of twelve, Manson was taken away from his mother by the court and sent to the Gibault School for Boys in Terre Haute, Indiana. Ten months later he ran away, and turned to crime in order to survive .He was later caught stealing a bike and was sent to a juvenile center in Indianapolis. At the age of thirteen Manson committed his first armed robbery, with another boy at a grocery store. He was caught and sent to Indiana Boys School,where he tried to escape many times and finally did at the age of sixteen with two others in 1951. He continued to rob and steal in order to support himself. He robbed a car and drove it over state boundary, driving a car over a state line is a federal cri...

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...of 1969 and on January 15, 1971 the jury began to deliberate. The Manson Family had issued threats that the day the verdict was rendered would be violent if the verdict was not favorable to the Manson Family. That day the jury brought in a verdict. They found Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten guilty of first degree murder. There was no violence in the courtroom. The penalty phase of the trial now began.

The prosecution proposed and argued for the death penalty. On March 29, 1971 the jury had decided how the guilty parties should be punished. The four killers were handed the most severe penalty of all, the death penalty. Shortly after Tex Watson is also found guilty and is sentenced to death. In 1972 the death penalty is abolished in California. The sentences for all the Manson Family member are now all life in prison.