Charles Manson

On the morning of August 9, 1969, three LAPD officers arrived at 10050 Cielo Drive (Bugliosi 7). The scene that awaited them was horrendous. In the driveway, in a parked car, the body of Steven Parent was found. He was shot four times and stabbed once. Laying about eighteen or twenty feet past the front door of the house, Voytek Frykowski 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 Abigail Folger, stabbed twenty-eight times. Inside the home, in the living room, were the bodies of Jay Sebring and Sharon Tate. Sebring, a hair stylist, had been stabbed seven times and shot once, dying of exsanguination. Tate, who was eight months pregnant at the time of her death, was stabbed sixteen times in the chest and back (Fillmer par. 2). The following evening, in a seemingly unrelated crime, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were discovered in their home at 3301 Waverly Drive. Rosemary was found face down in her bedroom, a lamp cord wound around her neck, in a pool of blood; she had been stabbed forty-one times. Her husband, Leno, had a pillow case over his head, a lamp cord tied around his neck, his hands tied behind his back with a leather thong, and an ivory-handled, bi-tined carving fork in his stomach; he had been stabbed multiple times and had the word “WAR” carved in his flesh (Bugliosi 55-56). The murderers were members of a group led by Charles Manson called the Manson Family. These people were completely controlled by Manson. He had them convinced that they were the chosen ones and that they were only carrying out the orders of a man they thought was Jesus Christ incarnate (Watson par. 3). They were willing to risk death and imprisonment to satisfy this man. Manson used borrowed ideas from prosperous 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, and pimping (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 each human has a soul called a “thetan.” Scientologists believe that, many years ago, the thetan was “god-like” and that people fell from divinity and forgot their origins. People were then trapped on Earth in “delusions of mortality (“Sciento...

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...Bantam Books, 1975. 7, 54-56, 196, 222, 300, 317, 320, 322, 323, 325, 635, 637-638. “Charles Manson.” n.d. Online. AltaVista. Dec. 1997. Available AltaVista: //www-scf.usc.edu/~kmho/O0OO0O00IllIlIIl/mansonbio.html “The Church of Scientology.” n.d. Online. AltaVista. Sept. 1997. Available AltaVista: //www.webzonecom.com/ccn/cults/scien-05.txt “Cult Catalog of the ‘Other’ Jesus.” n.d. Online. AltaVista. Sept. 1997. Available AltaVista: //www.webzonecom.com/ccn/cults/fal10.txt Fillmer, Deborah K. “Forensic Science and the Charles Manson Murders.” 26 Apr. 1996. Online. AltaVista. Oct. 1997. Available AltaVista: //www.cris.com/~dfillmer/ Manson.html “Manson Family Murders 1969-1971.” n.d. Online. AltaVista. 4 Dec 1997. Available AltaVista: //www.umi.com/hp/Support/K12/Great Events/Manson.html The New American Bible. Saint Joseph Edition. New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1970. “The Process - Church of the Final Judgment.” n.d. Online. AltaVista. Dec. 1997. Available AltaVista: //limestone.kosone.com/people/ocrt/process.html Watson, Charles. “helter skelter.” 10 Jan. 1998. Online. AltaVista. 11 Jan. 1998. Available AltaVista: //www.aboundinglove.org/helter.htm

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