Latest news with #CHAOS
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Charles Manson's cult killings fueled by 'perfect storm' as theories get new analysis: criminal profiler
The mystery of Charles Manson's motive in notorious cult killings is getting a fresh look as an FBI criminal profiler reveals a "perfect storm" of factors came together for the infamous murders. Countless theories about how Manson managed to convince a group of young adults to kill for him have been dissected, but director Errol Morris is offering a new perspective into the mind of the notorious cult leader in his Netflix documentary "CHAOS: The Manson Murders." Based on the 2019 book "CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties," authored by Tom O'Neill and Dan Piepenbring, the documentary delves into the theory Manson may have been influenced by an external force when directing his followers. New Charles Manson Murder Admissions Could Point To Even Darker Pattern For Psychopath: Experts "I've found myself trapped in a number of different true-crime stories, and the Manson murders are peculiar," Morris told Netflix's Tudum. "You could encapsulate the mystery in just one question: How is it that Manson managed to convince the people around him that killing was OK?" Netflix and Morris did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Read On The Fox News App Morris explores the widely circulated theory suggesting Manson may have been operating under the influence of the CIA's controversial MK-ULTRA program, leaning into the cultural interest surrounding mind control, a widespread fascination throughout the 1950s and 1960s. However, experts have expressed skepticism about the idea that Manson was acting under government control. Hippie Cult Leader Charles Manson Dead At 83 "[Manson] was influenced by what he wanted to do," former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole told Fox News Digital. "He was influenced by the fact that he wanted to become a very well-known musician at the time, which is why he made friends with the influential people that he did. But was there this outside force that compelled him to do that? I don't believe that there was. There was still his personality that was distinct to him [and] was not created by an outside force." The CIA has also discredited the theory, first explored by O'Neill, in recent years. "The author cannot definitively tie Manson to MK-ULTRA or CHAOS; he can only imply it on circumstantial evidence," the CIA said in a review of O'Neill's book. O'Neill did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Danny Trejo Recalls Meeting Charles Manson Behind Bars In New Memoir: He Was A 'Slick Little Wimp' In 1969, the Manson family carried out the brutal murders of seven people under his watchful eye. Pregnant actress Sharon Tate, Wojciech Frykowski, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent, Abigail Folger and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were massacred by the family in a string of killings. SIGN UP TO GET True Crime Newsletter The group carried out five of its murders inside Tate's home Aug. 9, 1969. One day later, the final victims of the Manson family, the LaBiancas, were fatally stabbed inside their home. Cult Leader Charles Manson Confessed To Additional Murders In Newly Revealed Phone Call "[Manson] met up with a lot of his later-to-be followers in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, which, at that time in the '60s, was known for being a gathering place for people in very formative years," O'Toole told Fox News Digital. "There was the use of drugs and alcohol, and people came together without a lot of external oversight by a parent or a caregiver, so they were very vulnerable at that point. [Then], here comes Charlie Manson, with his personality and his ability to get people — especially young people — to follow him, and that's what I'm talking about in regard to the perfect storm." After the killings, Manson and his "family" moved to Spahn Ranch, located approximately 30 miles north of Los Angeles, where he subjected his followers to outlandish lectures while providing them with drugs and overseeing orgies. Follow The Fox True Crime Team On X Authorities arrested Manson three months later as details of the killings rattled Los Angeles and investigators delved into theories about the murders. During the trial, prosecutors argued Manson was using his status with his all-white followers in an attempt to ignite a race war, citing his supposed misinterpretation of the Beatles' 1968 song, "Helter Skelter." Manson never actually carried out the murders himself, relying entirely on his followers to kill for him. Manson Family Members Speak Out 50 Years Later In Shocking Doc, Recall Meeting Cult Leader: 'I Felt Accepted' "[Manson] really was someone that knew right from wrong," O'Toole said. "He knew the repercussions and the end results of his actions. He took no responsibility for his actions or the actions of his group, and he was very deliberate in his thinking." In 1971, Manson and three followers — Leslie Van Houten, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel — were convicted for their roles in the murders and subsequently sentenced to death. A fourth "family" member, Charles "Tex" Watson, was convicted several months later. The four defendants were resentenced to life in prison after a 1972 ruling from the California Supreme Court abolishing the state's death penalty. California Legal Battle Over Charles Manson's Estate Worth Up To $1M Includes Dna Tests, Signature Comparisons Manson was 83 years old when he died of natural causes Nov. 19, 2017. In 2023, Van Houten walked free after serving more than 50 years in a California prison for the killings of the LaBiancas, making her the only member of the Manson family to be released from prison. While Manson never actually carried out the murders he was imprisoned for, Peacock's 2024 "Making Manson" documentary revealed he may have committed more killings himself. Sharon Tate's Sister Says There Are Unsolved Manson Murders, New Doc Investigates In a teaser clip, Manson can be heard confessing to additional crimes while on a jailhouse phone call. GET REAL-TIME UPDATES DIRECTLY ON THE True Crime Hub "There's a whole part of my life that nobody knows about," Manson can be heard saying. "I lived in Mexico for a while. I went to Acapulco, stole some cars." Manson goes on to reveal more details about the supposed murders. "I just got involved in some stuff over my head, man," he added. "Got involved in a couple of killings. I left my .357 Magnum in Mexico City, and I left some dead people on the beach." "I would never draw the line and say Charlie Manson could manipulate people to do his bidding, but he himself would never do it," O'Toole said. "I would never draw that line. You can't simply say that because Charlie hurting other people was part of his repertoire. So, whether he had somebody else do it or he did it himself is certainly something that has to be explored." Fox News Digital's Ashley Papa and Greg Wehner contributed to this report. Original article source: Charles Manson's cult killings fueled by 'perfect storm' as theories get new analysis: criminal profiler
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What Drove the Manson Family to Commit Its Infamous 1969 Murders
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." On back-to-back nights in August 1969 in Los Angeles, seven people lost their lives: Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Steven Parent, and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. They were killed by members of Charles Manson's quasi-hippie commune, also known as the Manson Family. The 'official narrative' of what happened on those two horrifying nights in those houses near Hollywood was thoroughly and exhaustively laid out in the seminal 1974 book, Helter Skelter. In what is still the best-selling true crime book of all time, Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor in the cases against Charles Manson and his acolytes, laid out the Family's motives and crimes, and how the prosecution secured their convictions. So, why do some skeptics still have questions about the crimes commonly referred to as the Tate-LaBianca Murders? Some call out the holes in Bugliosi's accounting of the crimes, while others say his 'Helter Skelter Theory' came together a little too neatly. Fueling interest in the group and its crimes were how many rich and famous people intersected with the Manson Family during their time in Los Angeles but emerged unscathed. Then there's the broader context in which these events unfolded. Iconic events that supposedly symbolized the end of the 1960s—the Manson murders, the Kent State shooting, Altamont, the death of Fred Hampton, and the disbanding of the Black Panther Party—have all been recolored by revelations about the illegal actions of the U.S. government to deliberately sabotage the counterculture through programs like the FBI's COINTELPRO, the CIA's CHAOS, and the LSD-based mind-control experiment MKUltra. Journalist Tom O'Neill spent 20 years researching what eventually became his 2019 book, CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, the most exhaustive reexamination of the motives of the Manson Family. And in March 2024, Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris, whose groundbreaking 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line led to the exoneration of its subject, adapted O'Neill's book into the Chaos: The Manson Murders, now streaming on Netflix. In CHAOS, O'Neill paints Bugliosi as a man who 'put together the pieces of the Manson murders' by deliberately leaving out anything that didn't fit the story he wanted to tell. In some cases, it's implied that Bugliosi, who died in 2015, had massaged or even outright coerced testimony to cover up certain inconvenient facts about the case. But while O'Neill speculates where some of the loose threads he uncovered might ultimately lead—hinting at links to the mafia, the CIA, and secret Nazis—he doesn't offer a single, definitive explanation that ties everything neatly together. This leaves us in the same place the police and the public were back in the summer of 1969: trying to shape shocking, senseless violence into a coherent narrative. But as we get further away from the conclusion of the tumultuous '60s, new theories about the Manson Family's motives have emerged that reflect both what we've learned in the ensuing decades and how we've come to view ourselves and the country during that seismic decade. The first set of Manson Family murders, which took place at the house on 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon on August 9, 1969, shocked the city of Los Angeles. The victims included Tate, an actor and the wife of filmmaker Roman Polanski; Sebring, the preeminent hairstylist to the stars; and Folger, the heir to the Folgers Coffee Company. The deaths were brutal and possibly even ritualistic, as suggested by the message 'Pig' smeared in blood on the wall. The shocking crime was such a big story in the newspapers the next day that newsstand owner John Fokianos discussed it with one of his regular customers, Leno LaBianca, at around 2 a.m. on August 10. Mere moments after that conversation, Leno and his wife, Rosemary, were murdered in nearly identical fashion. Yet initially, the Los Angeles Police Department didn't think the same killers were responsible for the Tate and LaBianca murders. In fact, the LAPD posited that the LaBianca murders might have been a 'copycat' of the Tate murders, despite the fact that the Tate killers were still unidentified and at large. Los Angeles magazine, reflecting in 2019 on its original October 1969 coverage of the then-unsolved murders, acknowledged it had 'attempted to wrap drugs, youth culture, Woodstock, the Black Panthers, and Rosemary's Baby into the same package,' suggesting the killings were part of a wave of 'freaky crimes.' After investigators found drugs at the Tate crime scene, including 'marijuana, hashish, cocaine and a hallucinogen known as MDA,' per The New York Times, the assumption began to circulate that the murders were the result of a drug deal gone awry. (As O'Neill notes in his book, both Sebring and Frykowski allegedly bought drugs for the many Hollywood parties they hosted or attended.) As such, 'freaky crimes' gave way to a sentiment of 'live freaky, die freaky,' despite the LaBiancas having no such connection to the drug scene. When charges for the murders were brought against Manson and his followers between October and December 1969, however, a new narrative began to emerge: Manson wasn't just a drug pusher—he was also the quasi-guru of a cult of kids living at an old movie ranch. More importantly, he was an ancillary figure in the Hollywood scene, having crossed paths with music luminaries like Neil Young, Mama Cass, The Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson, and music producer Terry Melcher. And while it wasn't officially clear what, exactly, Los Angeles' power players got out of their relationship with Manson, when it came time for prosecutor Bugliosi to make his case, it hinged in part on what Manson had hoped to get out of Melcher: a record deal. Manson fancied himself a rock star, especially after The Beach Boys covered one of his songs without crediting him. Melcher's rejection of Manson, Bugliosi submitted, is why the cult leader had targeted the Cielo Drive home; it had formerly belonged to Melcher, and Manson wanted to send him a message. As for why the Family committed the killings at all, Bugliosi came up with the 'Helter Skelter Theory.' This ascribed motive proposes that Manson preached to his followers of a coming race war between white and Black people, during which he and the Family would go into hiding, emerging when Black people had defeated white people. Manson and his Family would then subjugate the victors of the race war because they possessed 'superior intellects.' As 'proof' of his prophecy, Manson pointed to The Beatles' 1968 album, colloquially referred to as The White Album. Manson suggested that songs like 'Revolution #9,' 'Piggies,' and of course 'Helter Skelter' were all secret messages validating his assertions. The murders, then, were meant to act as a catalyst to incite Manson's prophesied race war, supposedly because they would be attributed to the Black Panthers. Years later, when journalist O'Neill questioned Bugliosi about some of the inconsistencies in his conclusion, O'Neill said the best-selling author wasn't just evasive but downright aggressive. That rebuke led O'Neill to dig deeper and embark upon a 20-year search that uncovered Manson's larger connections, not just to the Hollywood elite, but the covert operations of the federal government. O'Neill discovered Manson and his followers had, on several occasions, been allowed to walk away from prior arrests in a manner that suggested Manson had perhaps been a police informant. O'Neill also found Manson and his female followers frequented the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco, which was operated by Dr. Louis Jolyon 'Jolly' West, a man known for his involvement with the CIA's infamous MKUltra project. O'Neill also picked apart the most seemingly believable elements of Bugliosi's Helter Skelter Theory. If Manson had targeted Cielo Drive to scare Melcher, why was O'Neill able to find previously suppressed testimony that showed Melcher had spent time with Manson after the murders had been committed? The author, meanwhile, who perhaps best answers the Manson motive question doesn't really answer it at all. Joan Didion's famous essay 'The White Album' portrays a late 1960s Los Angeles where 'everything was unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable.' In Didion's essay, most famous for the opening line 'We tell ourselves stories in order to live,' she recalls the first reports of the murders on August 9: 'I remember all of the day's misinformation very clearly, and I also remember this, and wish I did not: I remember that no one was surprised.' The Manson murders, in Didion's view, aren't so much the product of CIA experiments or Beatles-inspired delusions; they are simply an inevitability, something that was bound to happen eventually. You Might Also Like Nicole Richie's Surprising Adoption Story The Story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Her Mother Queen Camilla's Life in Photos
