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Fox News
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
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. "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. 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. "[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. 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. "[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. 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] 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. 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. 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."
CBC
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Errol Morris on Charles Manson, mind control and the CIA
On August 9th and 10th of 1969, a series of brutal murders took place in Los Angeles. Seven people were killed, including actress Sharon Tate, who was married to director Roman Polanski. Members of the Manson family, a kind of cult, were found guilty for the crimes. Manson and four of his followers were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death. The prosecutor at the time said that Manson wanted to start a race war and trigger the end of the world. For decades, that was how the story went. But a new film by legendary documentary filmmaker Errol Morris asks the audience to reconsider that. It's inspired by a book called "CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties" by journalist Tom O'Neill, which makes the case that Manson might have been connected to the CIA's mind control program, MK-Ultra. Errol Morris talks to host Jayme Poisson about "Chaos: The Manson Murders", unpacking the many theories about Charles Manson, and the culture of paranoia from that era of American history. The film is out on Netflix now.
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Chaos: The Manson Murders' Review: Errol Morris' Netflix Documentary Captures The Frustration Of This Ever-Lasting Enigma
In 1999, Tom O'Neill was commissioned by Hollywood-centric film magazine Premiere to investigate exactly what had — by then — happened a mere 30 years earlier, when a small-time criminal, Charles Manson, was unveiled as the mastermind behind one of the most brutal and defining crimes of the 20th century. It must have seemed like an easy job back then, but by the time the title ceased trading in 2007 O'Neill still didn't have a piece for them — as he explains with great honesty in his self-deprecating and far-ranging 2019 book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. That book took all his research — exhaustive and authoritative but frustratingly inconclusive — and threw it all up in the air in exasperation, which is not something many writers are inclined to do. It's also not something that documentary legend Errol Morris is wont to do either, so it's interesting to see what happens when these two minds meet. The result is fascinating, as Morris homes in on the crux of O'Neill's book — that the official narrative of what have now become known as The Manson Murders was a sensationalist plot hatched by prosecuting D.A. Vincent Bugliosi to sell his true-crime book Helter Skelter — and leaves the viewer to, well, as the internet says, let that sink in. More from Deadline Doc Talk Podcast Debates Oscar Results And Travels To The True/False Film Fest 'Separated' Director Errol Morris Says Ultimate Goal Of Trump Border Policy Was Meanness, Not Deterrence – Guest Column Why Netflix Boss Ted Sarandos Is Making Acting Debut On Seth Rogen's 'The Studio' For Apple TV+ To recap, if it's needed, Manson came to notoriety as the hippie cult leader whose followers murdered Roman Polanski's pregnant then-wife Sharon Tate on August 9, 1969, along with three of her friends (hairdresser Jay Sebring, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and screenwriter Voytek Frykowski) plus a random guest (Stephen Parent) of the property's pool boy. The next night they struck again, killing supermarket owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in an even-now shocking display of excessive violence. Nothing of value was taken on either occasion, but at both crime scenes, there were significant words daubed in blood: 'Pig,' 'Death to pigs,' 'Rise' and 'Healter Skelter' (sic). So far, this story has been told and told (and told), but scholars of Mansonology might be pleased to hear that Chaos: The Manson Murders represents something of a reset. Far from being a checklist of Manson Family members — you can play that game yourself with some incredibly good archive footage — Morris' film concentrates on just two people: O'Neill and Manson. Manson comes off as he always did, the cornered shaman who, having been a lifelong inmate, refuses to say what went down a) perhaps because of the drugs he'd taken, so he may not have remembered anyway, and b) because he was never a snitch. This latter point will take you where Morris' film declines to go, but the whole film is an invitation to the giant rabbit hole that is the Tate-LaBianca murders. One can sense that Morris might have hoped to bring the forensic approach that he used so successfully with The Thin Blue Line (1988), but then pivoted to something closer to 2010's underrated Tabloid. It's particularly interesting that Morris skirts all the possible scenarios for the Tate murders; one being that the Manson Family were retaliating after a bad drug deal, another that it was a copycat murder to get Family member Bobby Beausoleil out of jail for the killing of Gary Hinman (the events of which are semi-thoroughly covered), or they simply didn't know who was at home at 10050 Cielo Drive that night (always contentious). And didn't Charles 'Tex' Watson actually kill pretty much everyone that died, so why aren't they called The Watson Murders? Morris' presence is gentle throughout, and it could have been so easy for him to turn his lesser-seen comedic eye (have you seen Tabloid?) on O'Neill as a modern Don Quixote and suggesting that this is his Zodiac. But Morris seems to realize very early on (if he didn't know already — that this is a story that will never end, and he embraces O'Neill's uncertainty. Which brings us to the point. Dotted throughout the film, and more present in the book, are O'Neill's observations about America's fear of the rifts in its society. Morris doesn't indulge in the personality cult of Manson's family — the Sadies, the Blues, the Reds, Texes, the Clems, the Snakes and the Gypsys — which could have turned this stand-alone doc into a miniseries. But he does do very simply, which O'Neill couldn't quite do with his enjoyably digressive book, is to locate all of these events within the possibilities of mind control. Which opens another door… Title: Chaos: The Manson MurdersDistributor: NetflixRelease date: March 7, 2025 (streaming)Director: Errol MorrisRating: TV-MARunning time: 1 hr 36 mins Best of Deadline 2025 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys & More Broadway's 2024-2025 Season: 'Redwood' & All Of Deadline's Reviews New On Prime Video For November 2024: Daily Listings For Streaming TV, Movies & More
