Selects: The Manson Family Murders Part 2

Listen in to this classic episode for the conclusion of the story of the Manson Family Murders.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Chuck here back. I'm still in my spooky
mood from two weeks ago because I'm introducing this episode
from January thirty at twenty eighteen. It's a follow up
to two weeks ago about the Manson Family. It's called
The Manson Family Murders Part Two. What happens? Will Charlie
get away with it?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I doubt it.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry
Rowland over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know
about the Manson Family Part two.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
That's right if you're listening to this one first and
you're doing it wrong, so no need to recap. Just
go listen to part one and we'll pick up with
the Beatles Wide Album, which was a very big deal
in how this figure's in great great album. Obviously as
a Beatles fan, I know you're not super into them,

(01:07):
but I love the White Album arguably their weirdest album,
and it spoke to Charles Manson for sure, because he
really became pretty obsessed with it and diving into deconstructing
the album. It's a very dense long album anyway, and
there's a lot to it. So it's no wonder that

(01:31):
Charles Manson, with a head fallow acid, would think that
the Beatles are speaking to him.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Right, and he definitely did so.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
He apparently had a history already of deconstructing Beatles lyrics,
but before he was deconstructing lyrics, so like Sergent Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band, which compared to the White Album,
is decidedly upbeat and positive, right, So while he was
in prison, he was super into the Beatles. When he
gets out, the Beatles released the White Album, he's already

(01:59):
obsessed with, but now he's on tons and tons of acid.
The White Album is kind of a downer compared to
Sergeant Pepper's and the fact that it's speaking to Charlis
Manson like really made things turn dark, it seems like,
as far as him and the people in his orbit
are concerned.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, so they're hanging out, they're lighting bonfires, they're doing drugs,
they're listening to Charles Manson stomp around with his tiny
feet in his redneck voice talking about Helter Skelter, which
is a great, great Beatles song and basically sort of

(02:39):
sort of renamed his vision for this race war and
impending apocalypse Helter Skelter. He kind of stole that from
the Beatles, as Bono would later go on.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
To say, yeah, he stole from the Beatles, but he
also took it again as like a message that the
Beatles were sending him aside that he needed to prepare
his family for this because they were the chosen ones
basically who should weigh out the race riot in Death Valley.
So there's this whole idea that the all of the

(03:15):
Tate LaBianca murders took place to further this idea of
Helter Skelter to strike strike the match that would set
it off to get things going right. And this idea
apparently is the creation of the prosecutor in the case,
a guy named Vincent Bugliosi, who wrote a book called

(03:36):
Helter Skelter, like a six hundred page book. Basically this
the definitive true crime book on the Manson family and
the Manson family murders. And so most of the most
of what we said in Part one and most of
what everybody knows about the Manson family murders are come
through this lens that was established by Vincent Bugliosi, who

(04:00):
is the lead prosecutor in the case, was privy to
tons of information, to confessions, to interviews, under questioning, to
all this stuff. But he's the one who pieced together
the idea that the Manson family committed these murders to
start helter skelter.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
That was his whole jam.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah. Well, I mean some of the Manson family corroborated, cooberated.
It's in there somewhere corroborated. That's a dark time with
that word corroborated, corroborated. I don't have to say it much, luckily,
because I'm not in a life of crime. No, but
some of them back that up and saying that, you know,

(04:40):
at one point he wanted them to throw a wallet
of a victim in a black neighborhood so that people
would think it was, you know, black panthers that did this. Yeah,
but it's some evidence that that was probably the case.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
If you talk though to Manson and you or if
you've listened to some of the stuff he says. Some
of these ext nations because over the years people have said,
what about this part, what about this part? And have
basically presented him with every aspect of the whole case
against him. You know, a lot of the stuff he
has no explanation for nothing good. But that wallet is
a sterling example of where it becomes obvious that.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Wait, we're basically hearing.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
One point of view about this, and we've never that's
all we've ever heard. Which if you're doing any kind
of reporting, which you and I are not, but if
you were inclined to do any kind of reporting, you
never want to just stick to just one source. And
with the Manson family case, it's basically one source, and
it's Vinsive Bugliosi, the prosecutor. But Manson explains it as

(05:38):
he told I think it was Linda Kasabian to just
get rid of that wallet, that he wasn't in a
predominantly black neighborhood, and that he told her to get
rid of the wallet because it was hot, and she
hid the wallet actually in the tank of a toilet
in a women's bathroom in a gas station, which is
hardly where you'd put it if you wanted a black

(06:00):
person defined it to use the credit cards inside and
to tip off the cops that a black person was
behind the Tate La Bianca murders. So when you when
you kind of dive into stuff like that, you see
that there actually are two competing explanations in some aspects
of this case.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, but I think Kasabian herself said that too, though,
didn't she.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
The thing is that if you are if you look
at Charles Manson, right, I know that's.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
That's the thing is.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
It's a terrible realization when you're like, actually, I'm wait
a minute, I understand what Charles Manson is saying.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Here.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
The with with stuff like that when you look at
the testimony, These were people who were on trial for
murder who had every incentive to go along with the
lead prosecutor's theory that it was all Charles Manson's fault.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
They could have maybe immunity.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
They could have they could have charges dropped against them
that by saying yes, this is the case, or having
their testimony jibe with what Vincent Bugliosi's case was, they
had an incentive to do that.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Whether Charles Manson is right or correct or lying.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
From an objective perspective, the people on Charlfer murder had
an incentive to agree with Vincent Bugliosi all right.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
So the way they got caught was actually pretty interesting.
Unrelated to these murders. Police raided Spawn Ranch because it
was sort of became known that the people were living
there that were out on these creepy crawls doing these crimes,
and so that's why they were originally fingered, as they

(07:46):
say in the biz. And they went there and they
rated Spawn Ranch and a lot of the family were
arrested at that time for like car theft and burglary
and stuff. They were released on its technicality and then
went to Death Valley to that weird ranch. If you
ever been to Death Valley, it's not a place you
want to hang out. No, it's not, especially in the summertime.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Is that where Joshua Tree is? No, that's it Joshua Tree,
But that's not in Death Valley.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
No, those are two different places.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
But is it close by? There is the same type
of terrain kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, I mean I've been to both.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Are they similar?

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Well, I mean Joshua Tree is the desert for sure,
but it is very lovely. Like I don't remember much
about Death Valley that was. I think it was not
very hospitable for me.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
It's appropriately named.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, I think so okay, And of course now people
are going to say Death Valley's the best, you know
what you're talking about, heavy sweater, so they go to
Death Valley. Then there were a bunch of raids at
the Death Valley camp between October tenth and twelfth of
nineteen sixty nine, and eventually they ended up rounding up

(09:02):
the people responsible for these murders without knowing that they
were responsible for these murders, so they were in jail
kind of luckily already in jail when they sort of
decided they could pin, will not pin like legitimately pin
these murders on these people.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
So this being the second time, there's something that I've
ran across in research, Chuck that it never gets talked about,
but is I think really significant. At both of those raids,
the Spawn Ranch raid and the Death Valley rate, the
state took children from this, Like there were kids, babies, toddlers,
little kids running around growing up like at the Spawn

(09:44):
Ranch end at the Barker Ranch, which is extraordinarily troubling,
and some of them have been are thought to have
possibly been Charles Manson's kids, like he may have had.
There's just so much free love going on, and so
many pregnancies that were the results was free love. It
was difficult to say whose kid was whose, but it's

(10:04):
they think that it's possible at least one or two
of those kids was Charles Manson's kids, and they were
taken by the state and later adopted by people. But
it's like, you know, it's one thing to think of
a bunch of hippies just out in the desert taking acid,
just being idiots, you know, and then eventually turning dark
and murderous. But the idea that there were kids around
at any part of this is really I find it

(10:26):
very troubling.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I mean, all those cults
had kids roaming around. They just weren't murderous cults, you know.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
So Susan Atkins, for her part, she agreed to testify
initially against Charles Manson to avoid the death sentence, which
for a few years more was still a thing in California.
I think in nineteen seventy two they reversed that, but
at the time the death sentence was a threat at
the time of the crimes, so she had a grand

(10:59):
jury testimony. It basically led to Manson being arranged for
these murders. In December sixty nine, she recanted that testimony
and the deal was revoked by the prosecutors. It was
kind of too late at that point. Linda Kasabian, who
you might remember was I thinks that getaway driver and
then the one who would not knock on the right

(11:20):
apartment door to kill the actor, so she'd actually didn't
commit any murders at all, was not in any of
the houses. She was granted immunity for testifying, and I
think she was the only one granted immunity.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Right, although I think, yeah, they just took the death
penalty off, like you said, for Susan Atkins. And I
don't know if you said this or not, but Susan
Atkins is the reason the case broke open eventually, when
they'd rounded up all of the Manson family and had
him in jail for the death Valley raids for you know,
burglary and theft and stuff like that. The way that

(11:54):
they found out that the Manson family was responsible for
the Tate LaBianca murders was Susan Atkins bragging about it
and a couple of her cell mates going and telling
the cops and that's originally how the case began against
the Manson family. That's how the authorities originally found out
big mouth.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, I guess so.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
All right, so let's take a break and we'll come
back and talk a little bit about one of the weirdest,
most sensational trials in American history right after this.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
All right, Chuck, So, on December eleventh, nineteen sixty nine,
Charles Manson, who the public had just been acquainted with,
I think just in the last few months, was finally
arraigned for the murders of the Tate Labiyonca murders. And
I think that did they get him for his role

(13:06):
in the Hyndman murder at.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
That point, I'm not actually sure about that.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Definitely the Tate Labyonca murders, which was plenty enough.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
And he.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
It's it's it's kind of an understatement to say that
he did not offer any public contrition.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
He actually went the opposite way.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah, for sure, he was well. The whole trial was chaos,
and he he incited chaos at every turn to make
it just a circus and was quite successful at doing so.
Initially wanted to represent himself and did for a little
while but the judge denied that, Judge William Keane and said,

(13:48):
you have to work with a lawyer because of the
fact that you're just making this into a circus. Basically,
we need this to stay on track. And he actually
was successful, though Manson was getting Judge Keene oustered as
judge and Judge Charles Older eventually would oversee the trial.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, and I read a twenty thirteen interview with Manson,
and the thing that seemed to still get him the
most was that he was denied the ability to represent
himself in court, like he felt like he never got
to have his saying court and that was that was
the thing that got him more than anything else, not
being locked up for his whole life or anything like that.

(14:29):
It was that he didn't get to open his big
mouth in court as much as he wanted to.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
So I guess we could go over some of these
things that happened in court that led to this circus atmosphere.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
And by the way, if you want to see it yourself,
there's a pretty good dramatic recreation in the movie Helter
Skelter that was based on Mugliosi's book.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, nothing better than dramatic recreations. Yeah, lots of yelly
and screaming, lots of shouting and cursing, lots of disrespect
to the judge and the American flag. They threw a
copy of the Constitution in the garbage. At one point,
very famously, Charles Manson carved an X into his forehead,

(15:14):
which later became a swastika, saying that he was exed
out of the world. And then his family members would
do the same, and they would shave their heads and
generally just try and disrupt things at every turn.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
Right, And they did. I mean, they were quite successful.
But the trial kept going on and on, right, I
think it was. It went on for a couple of years,
based on news articles I was reading about it. So
it turns out, though that Richard Nixon supposedly had the
most disruptive effect on the trial by saying while the

(15:48):
trial was going on, quote, here's a man who was
guilty directly or indirectly of eight murders without reason. He
was the sitting US president commenting saying that this guy
was guilty of a trial that was going on, which is,
you just don't do that. It doesn't matter what the
case is, not for any compassion for Charles Manson or

(16:10):
anything like that. But just because even on the other side,
you could have blown the case and and he legitimately
could have created a mistrial there. Yeah, just because the
President said something and everyone reported on it.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
I can't imagine that happening today.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
I totally can't.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
It was a very Trumpian move. So we talked. I
think we covered the helter Skelter thing enough, don't you.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
We did.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
But I think there's a there's a big thing that
all this hinges on. Is that there the prosecution said,
and you said earlier you even had a quote from
Tex Watson that Charles Manson told him to go and
just destroy the people in that house, gruesome as you can.
And the prosecution said that that Charles Manson was trying
to spark the Helter Skelter race war that he believed

(16:55):
was going to happen. Manson's whole thing was this here,
This is Charles manson since explanation for what happened and
why he's innocent. He said, Yeah, I believed in Helter Skelter. Yes,
I believe there's a race war coming. I talked about
it at night around bombfires with everybody on acid. I
also talked about death of the ego and all sorts

(17:15):
of other stuff. And if you ask me, what happened
was my friends just took things and went it, took
it too literally and went too far, and that it
all hinged on this Bobby Bousselay thing, right, And even
before that, there lots of Papa thing. So Tex Watson
rips off Bernard, lots of Papa Crow and he's got

(17:38):
a problem with lots of Papa who wants to kill
him now, and Manson goes over there to help Tex
Watson solve this problem by shooting, shooting lots of Papa.
So now as far as Manson and Text are concerned,
Tex owes Watson a debt, any kind of debt, well
Manson's or Text owns Manson a debt. Now, Manson's friend

(18:00):
Bobby Bousilla, who is one of his tightest family members,
gets arrested for murder, the murder of Gary Hinman, and
Manson says, well, you know, I mean you should do
something to help my brother Bobby Bousola, And you know,
Tex says, well what should I do? And apparently Manson
flew off the handle and said, don't ask me what

(18:22):
you should do, you know what you should do.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
And that was that.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
And the next thing, Manson knows Watson and cren Winkle
and Atkins are over at the at the Tate residence,
carving up Sharon Tate and the rest of the people
in the house. He didn't say anything about going to
kill anybody. He didn't direct him anywhere, he didn't say
anything like that. He just said they took what all

(18:47):
the other stuff that he'd said too far, and that
really what they were doing was trying to cover up
cover for Bobby Boussola to get him out of prison.
That's Manson's explanation for the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Well, yeah, and for the part well, I guess we
should go ahead and say that that all of these
people went to prison, and Susan Atkins, Patricia Crenwinkle, Leslie
Van Houghton, they all were, you know, still so under
his spell that they were fully ready and did take
the blame for these killings. But when it comes to parole,

(19:23):
it was in January nineteen seventy one that they were
all convicted on all accounts murder conspiracy to commit murder.
But years later, as parole hearings would come up for
all these women and Tex Watson and Manson himself the
reason why they were continually denied, even like Tex Watson

(19:45):
became a born again Christian and you know, supposedly turned
his life around, but they none of them would would
take responsibility. All these years later, they would all still
say that it was Manson was Manson. And from what
I understand, a big part of getting your parole approved

(20:06):
is to finally take full responsibility for what you had done,
and none of them would do it, and they were
all all denied over the years. Susan Atkins eventually died
of brain cancer in two thousand and nine, and then
just a few days ago, well, Leslie van Houghton in
September of last year was actually recommended for parole in

(20:28):
just a few days ago as of this recording, the
Governor of California, Jerry Brown, denied that, oh really, and said,
now she still isn't taking responsibility. And I think these
cases are just so loaded still that it would be
really tough even though parole was recommended for the governor
to approve that, you know, So we'll see, they're gonna

(20:52):
apparently they're going to keep pursuing that and I'm not
sure what the next steps are, but they're going to
fight that ruling by Jerry Brown and we'll see where
that go.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
So so I think then Patricia Creenwinkle is still in prison.
And I think now that Susan Atkins died, she is
the longest serving female inmate in California prison system.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah. Oh, and we should say too that Squeaky From
tried to kill Nixon. That's where she gained later fame.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
That was Ford.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Oh what I say, Nixon? Yeah, yeah, Gerald Ford. And
she's she's out of prison. She she lives in upstate
New York and I think the last I've seen of
her was someone took her picture in a Walmart parking
lot and she like smacked the camera down.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
So she she's an interesting case. Squeaky From was out.
She wasn't indicted for any of the murders or any
role in the murders, but she was a number She
was the number two person to join the Manson family. Remember, Yeah,
and she still to this day refuses to denounce Manson.

(21:56):
It's still very much all about Charles Manson, and just
as much as she was before. And she went to
I guess I'm not sure what she was doing with
a gun and Gerald Ford, but she aimed a gun
at Jerald Ford. It was the gun wasn't loaded, but
it still had the effect of sending her to prison

(22:17):
for decades for an assassination attempt on the president.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Right.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
I'm surprised she ever got out.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
I am too, but she was paroled eventually, but she
still she's still never denounced Charles Manson. All of the
other ones denounced Manson. She's the only one who has it.
And supposedly one time she escaped in the eighties because
she heard that Charles Manson was sick, so she broke
her way out of prison to try to get to him.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, she was a Manson family member who tried to
kill the president and escaped from prison and they she
earned parole.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah, hard to believe, but I think it's like you said,
I think those the case that Tate la Bianca murders
were so politically charged and so loaded that the like
it's just didn't they just weren't going to get out
the people who actually committed the murders.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Yeah. Yeah, Manson had an interesting time in prison too.
He had a guy trying and kill him by lighting
him on fire at one point in like I think
like twenty percent of his body was badly burned. And
he had a string of relationships with people from penpals,

(23:27):
which will kind of cover at the end to a
woman that he did he actually marry that woman.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
She was in that twenty thirteen article that I was reading,
and I don't know if they got married.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Man, we should do I don't know what we would
call it, but an episode on generally women who who
marry serial killers.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
We totally should in prison, Let's do that, But first,
let's take a break.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
How about that.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Okay, Okay, Chuck, we're back. We're talking about So Manson's

(24:26):
in prison for a while there. This is just mind
blowing to me. For a good decade. He enjoyed, Actually,
more than that, he enjoyed the limelight. He could get
interviewed by huge names like you said, Diane Sawyer, Charlie Rose,
Heeraldo Rivera very famously did an interview with Charles Manson

(24:46):
where apparently Manson you were saying how much poise Diane
Sawyer showed during her interview.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Supposedly Manson just owned Heraldo during that interview.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
I just totally took control of the whole thing. But
the these were things that were televised like on national
National news, and these these people were giving these networks
were giving Charles Manson a platform to talk about himself,
to talk about his philosophy, to show the world how
crazy he was. Oh yes, to keep him in the public,

(25:19):
in the public eye and the public mind. Until finally
after the Diane Sawyer interview there, they not only pulled
the plug on his interviews, they said for there, you
couldn't televise interviews with any inmates from in California because
of Charles Manson basically. So it's just really strange to me,
especially these days looking back, that he had a platform

(25:41):
for so long to stay that boogeyman. You know that
that just scared the be Jesus out of America.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yeah, I think those last like whatever, like twenty three,
twenty five years in prison with no limelight was that
had to have been like the darkest time of his
life because you know, he wanted he clearly wanted to
be a singing star, and in a weird way, he
ended up kind of getting what he wanted because some

(26:09):
of his music ended up being recorded by you know,
the Guns and Roses and the Lemonheads, and he became
this kind of weird u cult figure and not as
in Jim James cult oh like movie My Morning Jacket
Jim Jones, but like, yeah, like a cult figure and

(26:33):
revered by some people weirdly. It just is so strange
that people would look at him that way, you know.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
So one person who revered him later on in life
was a woman I believe he named Star, And she
moved from her parents' house in Mississippi out to California
to be just down the street from where Manson was held.
And this is she was the woman who was posed

(27:00):
to marry him, and she.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Was a follower of his.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
She said she didn't care anything about nineteen sixty nine.
He so Manson later in life became really interested in
preserving the environment. He came up with a thing called
Atwa air trees water.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
I can't remember the last air.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah air again, that would be awaa right.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
So she became very interested in him.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
For his ecological stance, right, And she moved out to
be close to him and would visit him on weekends
and they became very close, and I guess to kind
of demonstrate to the world that he still had it.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
I still got it world, he.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
Asked her to carve an X in her forehead and
she did so. She was also big time into collecting
and selling Manson memorabilia, and Ed points out in this article.
I think he's referring to her that the whole marriage
thing may have been a ploy to get at Manson memorabilia,
but I don't believe that's the case at all. So

(28:11):
she actually ran a website and still does called mansondirect
dot com, and it's like up to date, So I
think she had not abandoned him after some big, big
score with memorabilia like she seems to have been the
real deal follower, like an early Manson family girl reincarnated.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Huh. Weird. So there were a bunch of other I
saw an article whether at least ten other weird deaths
related to the Manson family that some people say could
have been them or maybe not looked into a few
of them. That was his original or at least this
guy was originally going to represent Manson is an attorney

(28:56):
named Ron Hughes. He ended up representing Think Leslie van Houghton. Yeah,
but she he disappeared while on a There was a
ten day recess in the trial. So he goes camping
with another couple and the couple left and he's like,
I'm gonna stay on here in the woods. He was
never seen again, so that was a little weird. They
never found a body or anything.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
I don't think it wasn't they even though he was
one of their defense attorneys. They had a huge grudge
against him because, like you said earlier, Van Houghton, Krenwinkle,
and Atkins were all or not Atkins, I can't remember
who the third one was. We're all going to incriminate themselves.
So as Leslie Van Houghton's defense attorney, he said, I'm

(29:37):
not he rested after the prosecution wrested. He never presented
a defense, Yeah, because he knew that they were going
to incriminate themselves and he refused to take part in it.
So they had a grudge against him.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
So it's possible.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Possibly there was a spawn ranch worker that disappeared and
he they were actually convicted. Some other family members of
his murdered. His name was Shorty Shae Donald. Shorty say,
there was this one dude Joel Pew who was married
to Sandra Good who was a member, and he he

(30:11):
was found dead in his London hotel. He had It
was ruled a suicide, but his wrist had been slashed
and his throat was slashed twice and there was something
written in blood on the mirror that was erased. You know,
it was one of these shoddy jobs I think by
the London cops. But some say it said Jack and Jill.

(30:32):
Other people say they don't remember what it said. But
that was definitely one of those that was like, hmm,
could he have been killed?

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Right?

Speaker 1 (30:40):
And Manson family member, Yeah, well the list goes on.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
One of those Manson family members who was convicted of
killing Shorty Shay had made a couple of trips to
the UK while Joel Pugh was there. So there's even
there's even more. There's it's definitely weird that he died
like that. Yeah, you know, having your throat slashed in
a London hotel, it's weird no matter what.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
And so like we said, you know, you said at
the beginning, it was definitely the end of the peace
love movement and sort of put a pin on the
what people thought about what a lot of people thought
about the counterculture, and like this is these are the hippies.
They're not peace and love. They can murder people on drugs,

(31:27):
and this is what acid can do to you. So
that was mainstream media. You had other alternative media or
places like Rolling Stone that was still a pretty young
magazine that would would not say things like that, would
not kind of buy into the mainstream media portrayal, but
it captured and still captures a lot of people's imagination.

(31:49):
You know, it was a part of the zeitgeist, but
it just endured for decades after, you know for sure.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
And Rolling Stone actually did a tremendous amount of reporting
on Charles Manson that was really good at the time.
That twenty thirteen article I read was really good. That
was from Rolling Stone. You can get into a Manson
rabbit hole just going onto Rolling Stone's website.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
And that.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
The twenty thirteen article I read chuck that the author,
I think he kind of summed up Charles Manson better
than I've seen it anywhere else. But he said this,
he said, sometimes he can be so transparent, which makes
him look like nothing more than a goofy klutzy small
timer who made some bad decisions that led to more

(32:37):
bad decisions that led to murder, and who then got
caught up in an ambitious DA's dream about a mastermind
saying golly with demonic visions of world domination. Some crook,
some outlaw, some gangster, some desperado, probably the worst ever, but.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
In the end a tiny redneck.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
I mean that definitely falls in there too.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Yeah. So as far as these kids go, it's kind
of hard to get good information because I read a
bunch of different things. But from what I can tell,
he had three sons, for sure. Yeah, one with Candy
Stevens named Charles Luther Manson, one with Mary Brunner named

(33:20):
Valentine or Valentine Michael Manson. Those two guys are impossible
to find anything on. I'm sure they have probably changed
their names. There was a Charles Manson Junior who killed
himself in the I think early nineties.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, ninety three.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
And then there's this dude. Did you see this Matthew
Roberts guy.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
I ran across his name, but I don't know anything
about him.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Well, he claims too that his mother said, you know what,
Charles Manson was your dad? We had sex in an
orgy in samon Go in the late sixties, and I
believe that he is probably your father, although given that
it's an orgy, you know, those things go.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
So that is the last does the last thing you
ever want to hear your mom tell you that whole story. Yeah,
the whole story from beginning to end. It's just bad
news for you, the kid.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, so just look this guy up. And if he
doesn't look like Charles Manson incarnate, then I don't know
what to say. But the dude looks exactly like him.
Here's the deal though, As he ended up, he tried
to get DNA from the prison, tried to smuggle it out,
but it got contaminated, the test didn't work. He ended

(34:42):
up taking a DNA test to match with who we
know was Charles manson junior son, a dude named Jason Freeman,
who was you know, the grandson of Charles Manson, and
there was no match there. But Matthew Roberts says, well,
that doesn't prove anything, because we ever see in the
DNA match from Freeman and Manson. See he's still claiming

(35:05):
to be his son, and I mean, the guy looks
so much like him. It's a little creepy, So it's
hard to not say, you know, why would his mom
make up the story? The guy happens to look just
like him, but who knows. And in the end, his
will and supposedly his estate is worth money. I don't
know how much, but they say, you know, there could

(35:26):
be a lot of dough there. And right now there's
a legal battle going on between Jason Freeman, who is
the grandson, and then this pen pal that Manson had
for like decades named Michael Channels, who he scribbled out
a will to this guy. And he's saying, hey, look,
he wrote this will. He wants me to have this money.

(35:47):
Jason Freeman saying it's mine. For their part, they're both
saying what they want to do. His body's on ice
still is they want to they both want to scatter
his ashes just where no one knows. So there it
doesn't become like some weird trying. Yeah, but uh, the
ongoing legal battle for his will, we'll see what happens there.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
So and that Star lady weighed in saying if anybody
who says he has a will is lying, that he
purposefully said that he was not going to leave a will, right,
But it would just it would be just like Charles
Manson to scribble off a will, deny that he ever
did it, and just leave a big mess behind afterwards,
you know, yeah, just one more mess for everybody to
sort out.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
So strange, so strange, and said absolutely.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
In the sixties there was some I know he talked
about the uh god, who is that one cult that
saw the documentary with Father Zod or whatever? Hm m
I man, that was a crazy documentary. I mean, just
that whole time was so so strange.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
It really was.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
Is people looking for something to belong to or something
some meaning that wasn't their parents meaning, you know, yeah, yeah,
well all right, Chuck, they found it. By the way
they found it. They all became stockbrokers in the eighties.
If you want to know more about the Manson family, well,

(37:07):
like I said, there's rabbit holes all over the internet.
And in the meantime, you can also read this great
article by EDG. Grabanowski by typing the words Manson family
and the search bar at house Stuff Works. And like
I said, it'll bring up this great Grabster article. And
while I said that it's time for listening now, I'm.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Gonna call this Confederate monuments, well not Confederate monuments, but
removal of monuments follow up.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
So we got a lot of great email about that podcast.
I don't know how many of those you read, but
you know, people roundly said we did a good, fair
take on this tricky subject.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah I saw that too, which always.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Makes me feel good and a shout out. This is
not from her, but one of the people who wrote
in was an artist named Kara Kara Walker who just
look up her work. She is amazing. She's I think
the second youngest person ever received a MacArthur Genius Grant
and she does He's great. She does a lot of
stuff and a lot of mediums. But what she's known

(38:13):
for I think of these room sized silhouette like black
cutout silhouettes depicting statements on race and gender and civil rights.
And she's just like a rock star in the New
York arts scene. And she went to my high school.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah I saw that.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Did not know that. She introduced herself. She graduated two
years ahead of me at Ridan, So I wrote back
to her and just told her how proud I was
to be an alum.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
So, anyway, go check out Carl Walker's work. That's a mouthful,
it is, but this is from someone else. Hey, guys,
thanks so much for the podcast. I'm a big fan,
especially enjoyed the Public Monument episode. I'm writing to clarify
small point about the Georgia state flag that Chuck discussed
in that episode. I got this thing wrong, by the way.

(39:01):
You pointed out that Georgia, like some other former Confederate states,
included the familiar Confederate battle flag with the ex pattern
in its state flag from fifty six to two thousand
and one. However, that flag is not the Stars and Bars.
The Stars and Bars was the official national flag of
the Confederacy and is the flag after which the current
Georgia flag is patterned. It turns out that the flag

(39:24):
Georgia use till nineteen fifty six was modeled after the
national Confederate flag, and the state switched to the Confederate
battle flag in fifty six. In other words, while the
most familiar Confederate flag was removed in two thousand and one,
it was replaced with another one.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
That's so Georgia.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
I thought we did the right thing. No, so I
thought you guys wuld be interested. By the way, Mississippi
is the only state that still uses the Confederate battle
flag and its official state flag. Keep up the great work.
And I don't have a name on this one.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
Well, thanks a lot, I don't have a name on
this one. That was some good info. We appreciate that.
And Chuck, that was big of you to say, Hey,
I got it wrong, I got it wrong.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
That's all right, man, that's all right.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
If you want to write in to tell us we
got something wrong, lay it on us.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
That's fine. You can send us all including Jerry an.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and has
always joined us at our home on the web. Stuff
Youshould Know dot com.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.