Young Charlie by Hollywood & Crime Wondery

On the morning of August 9, 1969, the bodies of actress Sharon Tate and four other people were discovered at the sprawling Benedict Canyon home of Miss Tate and her husband, film director Roman Polanski. The victims had all been brutally murdered. The next day, the bodies of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were discovered at their home in Los Feliz. They had been murdered in a similar, gruesome fashion.

In 1939, young Charlie Manson’s mother Kathleen is arrested in Charleston, West Virginia and jailed for robbery. After her release, she is unable to control her son and has him sent to the Gibault School for Boys in Indiana. Charlie runs away after only ten months. Then, after being arrested for burglary, he is given a second chance when a kindly judge sends him to the famous Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska. After just four days, he escapes from there as well.

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By September 1969, police had interviewed over three hundred people and still had no viable suspects in the Tate or LaBianca murders. It didn’t help that the two separate police departments investigating the murders were not sharing information. And no connection had yet been made between those murders and the murder of Gary Hinman in July – or to the auto theft raid at Spahn Ranch near Chatsworth in August.

By 1954, Charlie has spent seven of his nineteen years in six different “institutions.” After being paroled from number six, he meets and marries Rosalie Willis in West Virginia and decides to take his new bride to Los Angeles – in a stolen car.




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In October, 1969, another raid at the Spahn Ranch led to the arrest of a family of hippies tied to a series of crimes. Their leader gave his full name as Manson, Charles M. AKA Jesus Christ, God. One of those arrested, Susan Atkins, told her inmates an unbelievable tale of murder and mayhem. If she were to be believed, “Sexy Sadie,” AKA Sadie Mae Glutz, was one of the Tate, LaBianca and Hinman murderers.

Back in the penitentiary in 1957, Charlie studies Dale Carnegie’s popular self-help book and L. Ron Hubbard’s teachings about Scientology. Charlie will use what he’s learned from them and his fellow inmates in order to become a more successful pimp.

Susan Atkins shared with two inmates the gruesome details of the Tate–LaBianca murders, the murder of Gary Hinman, and her life with cult leader, Charles Manson. One of the inmates decided she had to tell someone and reached to the L.A.P.D.

It’s 1967, and Charlie is right in the middle of San Francisco’s Summer of Love. Just out of prison, he relocates to Haight-Ashbury and starts building his following. His first disciple is the homely Mary Brunner, a lonely librarian from Wisconsin

On December 4, 1969, prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi interviewed Susan Atkins and was convinced he had a case to connect Manson and his followers to all the murders. And though Manson wasn’t present at any of the actual killings, Bugliosi knew that somehow Charlie had manipulated it all.

In November 1967 Charlie’s decides to move his growing family of followers to Los Angeles, so he can become more famous than the Beatles. However, his first audition doesn’t go well. Not to worry. He has a direct line to the music industry. Two of his girls have just met drummer Dennis Wilson. A Beach Boy.

Susan Atkins horrified the Grand Jury on December 5, 1969 with her vivid, gruesome story of the Tate, LaBianca and Hinman murders. Other witnesses, including fellow Manson Family member Linda Kasabian, backed up and added to Atkins’ disturbing testimony.

Charlie now knows for certain that the Beatles with their White Album lyrics are speaking to him directly and guiding his next moves. One thing leads to another – then on Friday night, August 8, 1969, Charlie tells his right hand man, Tex Watson, to take three of the women and head into L.A. Their assignment – “do something witchy.”