The Charles Manson Murders English Literature Essay

Charles Manson was very persuasive but also very much deranged. His claim to fame was that he was able to seduce many women and control them just as well. He knew enough about crime and its intricacies due to the many years he spent in jail and his frequent reappearances therein. He would develop a great amount of knowledge due his inmates’ help. This knowledge, along with his desires to control and annihilate, help his groupies to kill his victims.

Gary Hinman, was a music teacher working on a Ph.D. in Sociology at UCLA. On July 25, 1969, Manson sent the Family members Mary Brunner, Susan Atkins, and Bobby Beausoleil to hustle money from him. There are two different possible reasons for Manson murdering Hinman. The first reason may be related to a bad drug buy. The second reason might have something to do with Hinman possibly inheriting $21,000-the obvious assumption that Manson wanted that money. Whatever the case, Hinman refused to turn over his money. Manson, along with Bruce Davis, joined the other family members who were currently with Hinman to convince him of letting his money go. However, an argument happened and Manson cut off Hinman’s ear with a sword. Manson and Davis left stealing one of Hinman’s cars, along the way. When Manson left he told the other Family members not to let him go till he gives up the money. Hinman was held captive for two days, after which he was stabbed to death. The killing was ordered by Manson, after he found that he was unpliable. To throw the police off their track, the Family devised a way to make it seem as if the Black Panthers killed Hinman. They wrote the words “Political Piggy” on the wall, just above his body, in his blood, along with a bloody paw print. On August 6, 1969, Bobby Beausoleil was arrested for Hinman’s murder after the police had found him driving one of Hinman’s stolen cars. However, due to similarly enacted crimes, by the Family, Beausoleil was released from prison.

On the night of August 8, 1969, Charles Watson, Susan, Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian were told, by Charles Manson, to go to the home of Terry Melcher at 10050 Cielo Drive. His instructions were specific-they were to kill everyone at the house and make it similar to the Hinman murder, with words and symbols written in blood on the walls. The members did what they told and killed Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Sharon Tate, and Sharon Tate’s unborn child.

On August 9, 1969, the next day, Manson, Charles Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Steve Grogan, Leslie Van Houten, and Linda Kasabian went to Leno and Rosemary LaBianca’s home. Charles Manson went with Watson to tie up the couple. Manson then left and told Van Houten and Linda Kasabian to kill the LaBiancas. Watson, Van Houten, and Kasabian separated the couple and murdered them. They then had dinner, showered, and hitchhiked all the way back to Spahn Ranch (the Family’s home base, if you will). Afterwards, Manson, Atkins, Grogan, and Kasabian drove around trying to look for others to kill. They did not, however, and retreated back home.

Charles Manson and his Family were brought in on charges of auto theft. However, they ended up getting released due to an invalid date error on the search warrant. Manson blamed the Family’s arrest on Donald Shea for supposedly snitching. Shorty did want the family off the ranch which was definitely the truth. After their arrest Manson decided to leave Spahn Ranch move to Barker Ranch near Death Valley. Before they left, though, Manson, Bruce Davis, Charles Watson, and Steve Grogan killed Shorty and buried his body behind the Spahn Ranch.

Charles Manson was born into a very tumultuous household. His mother a prostitute he had no one stable household. He never knew his father and his mother cared little for the child she had born out of greed. Manson was thusly placed into foster care where he was to be left on his own for most of his life. His mother, at one point, beat the young Manson for his money. Upon which he beat his own mother back. His mother would frequently have sex with both men and women in front of him. Men were introduced to him as “Uncles.” She would always run from trouble and was always broke. Manson and his mother would stay in run-down hotel rooms without food or proper necessities. Manson hardly went to school, and dropped out by the age of nine. When Manson was placed into foster care his mother promised to visit him but never did. Manson escaped to his mother but she rejected him and promptly brought him back to foster care. He escaped again but instead went to Indianapolis where he rented an apartment and gained employment through sweeping sidewalks, washing windows, cleaning up garbage, and stealing in general. However, that ended when he was arrested in Peoria, Illinois looking for his relatives in a stolen car. Unfortunately, Manson’s life was full arrests and jail-time. The boy was put in Indianapolis Juvenile Center after his mother rejected him once more. All throughout Manson’s young life he would be beaten and raped at the facilities he would attend.

His psychiatric profile reads almost like an open-book. His early childhood a waste, his mother neglectful, and his predilection to crime from a young age point to a seriously disturbed individual. He’s what would be called the LCP (Life Course Persistent) offender, and a Mission-Oriented Killer-believing that a certain person or group of people deserve to be killed. Manson’s early actions seem minor but gradually become much worse-murder/conspiracy. Manson seeks to give the impression he’s trying hard but puts forth no actual effort. Because of Manson’s past he shows rejection, instability, and psychic trauma. He’s always striving for status so as to achieve some form of acceptance from love or affection-his need to sleep with so many women is a result of this insecure attachment to love and the need to be loved by mother. He also has homosexual and assaultive tendencies due to past abuses. Since Manson never knew his father that affected him greatly as well. He replaced his father with a desire to love and feel attached to his mother-the oedipal complex. However, his mother rejected him as both a man and as her son. Manson after being castrated mentally by his mother was left with a complex to constantly consume those around him. This was his attempt to be just like his mother, prostitute out young women-like his mother-get them pregnant and leave them behind. Which Manson successfully did. Three young children bearing his DNA born to him from three different women and all of them will never actually seem him. His need to abandon, just like his unknown father, and want to reject, because of his mother, leads him to become a very disturbed individual.

Manson’s behavior was less than respectful in his childhood to adulthood. He never received any education past the three-grade. He didn’t understand what was right and wrong from an early age. He utilized everything he was taught on the street and was constantly in trouble even when he was young. More than likely, he had a Conduct Disorder because of how often young Manson was in trouble with Law Enforcement officials. He would move from Juvenile facility to Juvenile facility. He was never truly in one place his entire life. He was always wandering around-just like when he was with his mother. He could never settle down in one place for very long. The same is true for his adulthood. The longest place he stayed was at the Saphn Ranch and that was with his cult.

Manson would be considered a sociopath committing crimes in his youth resulting in larger crimes in his adulthood. His inability to come to terms with himself as a person results in these insecurities which culminate in large-scale murders. These murders are a large part of his personality–extensions of his persona. These murders represent in some way all parts of himself and what he hates about himself. His behavior towards that end has been that of anger and frustration of not being able to do anything. So, all he can do his chop away at it. Like those dead bodies leave blood on the wall describing the ways in which he feels about himself and those around him. “Pigs” has meaning in more than just the political sense but also in the way in which he was born. The men which had sex with his mother might all be called “pigs.” Greed rising from that word because of her inability to make money anywhere else but through sex. He was left to watch as these pushed their way onto his mother, but she heartedly accepted it for cash. His tendencies later on life would be to give the same treatment those men had given her to others in jail, institutions, wherever he was around with other men and in the advantage to destroy them sexually. After his repeated rapes in prison, and institutions, his latent homosexual urges thrust themselves onto men whom he was able to take advantage of easily. A psychiatrist determined he was unfit for a standard institution and needed treatment elsewhere. The young Manson didn’t receive anything better where he went. He was still treated harshly only able to understand the reality with which he was taught-to be powerful is the key. He took that to heart when he formed his group. He seduced each one of them with lust and made them understand through coercion that what Manson was doing was right. This caused him grow egotistical and powerful at the same time. He’d gained that power he didn’t have in prison.

At the time of the killings Manson was 35, unemployed, had no income, and was living on a ranch with the so-called “Manson Family.” It was a cult of people who all believed in Manson and his charismatic ideals that he could be Jesus or a supreme ideal figure. They never let him down. They killed for him, had sex with him, and had children with him. They never came to realize how lost they truly were by being seduced by him. However, that is who he preyed upon. Manson was skillful he knew who to touch. Not someone who was full of vigor, and willpower, but someone much like him-beaten, downtrodden, no place left to go, and insecure of attachments. The demographic he chased after was wealthy families whom he perceived as being better than everyone else, receiving more when everyone else had less, and so he in turn killed them and splayed their blood upon the walls in great defiance. Most deaths were of middle-aged males or females. Beyond their wealth and status, which he was trying to achieve by killing them, the demographic were constrained to Los Angeles and the districts therein-Topanga Canyon, Hollywood, Benedict Canyon, and Los Feliz areas. These were the wealthiest districts of Los Angeles, and often provided enough base for him to pick and choose who he wanted to kill. He often did not care for skin color but was especially prejudiced against blacks. He feared that they might come after him. The black panthers would kill him. He thusly had armed patrols around the ranch upon the death of Bernard Crowe. These demographics display what his true intentions were; he did have in mind money, as he was living out of a ranch and not in a well-made house. However, he was more or less trying to achieve that sense of status that comes with being wealthy. He didn’t have it and so by killing others who were wealthy the logic might fit. The status might flow if he could take all the money they own. This never happened and he never received the status he so craved.

This man was so gravely traumatized from such an early stage of life it is no wonder why he murdered so many. His way of never bloodying his hands is another way of escape. Just like he had been doing for most his life and probably will still do. He was never the achiever and will never be. The way he was born into the world will always put him down because of that. He will always feel rejected and hurt and unloved. The only way he can supplement that is through pain and agony and giving it back. Though this man doesn’t stand up against some of the more brutal murderers you come to realize that his psychological profile might very well fit with the rest of them-rejection, insecurity, sexual abuses. Nothing anyone can say could’ve ever helped this child when he was young. The way he was brought up destroyed him inside and afterwards he never knew how to recuperate. His actions thus far have all been deeply rooted in his past, with his mother. The crimes he committed, are also atrocities, killing a woman even an unborn in cold-blood is disturbing. He didn’t do the killing but he may as well have. His cold nature to just simply give an order and do it would be equal to killing that child yourself. However that a part of him, that is the ability to abandon those around him. He can so easily walk away from it all pretending as if nothing really matters because they’re the ones doing it not him. That’s exactly the kind of thing he tried to imply in court as well. That he, in fact, was not all that responsible. That he told them to kill people doesn’t mean they had to. He felt that he wasn’t guilty by association because of what they did. Obviously that didn’t happen as one can still be convicted of murder given conspiracy and guilty parties in connection. One must always realize how deep the roots of your pain can go and where it could lead you.