The Manson Family Murders Part II

Listen in today for the conclusion of the story of the Manson Family Murders.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Roland over there,
and this is Stuff you Should Know about the Manson
Family Part two. And that's right. Uh if you if

(00:23):
you're listening to this one first and you're doing it wrong,
so um, no need to recap. Just go listen to
part one. Yeah, and we'll pick up um with the
Beatles White Album, which was a very big deal and
how this figures in um, great great album Obviously as
a Beatles fan, I know you're not super into them,
but uh, I love the White Album. It's there, um

(00:45):
arguably their weirdest album. Uh. And it spoke to Charles
Manson for sure, because he really became pretty obsessed with
it and diving into deconstructing the album. Uh. It's a
very dense, long album anyway, and there's a lot to it.
So it's no wonder that um, Charles Manson of the

(01:06):
head Fallow Acid would think that the Beatles are speaking
to him, right, and he definitely did. Um. So he
apparently had a history already of deconstructing Beatles lyrics, but
before he was deconstructing lyrics like Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band, which compared to the White Album, is decidedly
upbeat and positive. Right, So, while use in prison, he

(01:30):
was super into the Beatles. When he gets out the
Beatles released the White Album, he's already obsessed with them,
but now he's on tons and tons of acid. The
White Album is kind of a downer compared to Sergeant
Pepper's UM and the fact that it's speaking to Charles
Manson like really made things turn dark, it seems like
as far as him and the people in his orbit

(01:52):
are concerned. Yeah, so they're hanging out their lighting bonfires,
they're doing drugs. Their list thing to Charles Manson stomp
around with his tiny feet uh in his redneck voice
talking about Helter Skelter, which is a great great Beatles song,
um and basically sort of sort of renamed his uh,

(02:17):
his vision for the this race war and impending apocalypse
Helter Skelter. He kind of stole that from the Beatles,
as Bano would later go on to say, yeah, he
stole it from the Beatles, but he also um, took
it again as like a message that the Beatles were
sending him, a sign that he needed to prepare his
family for this because they were the chosen ones basically

(02:40):
who should wait out the race, riot and in death valley.
So there's this whole idea that the all of the
Tate Lobianca murders took place. Um to further this idea
of helter skelter, to strike strike the match that would
set it off to get the is going right. And

(03:02):
this idea apparently is the creation of the prosecutor in
the case, a guy named Vincent Bugliosi, who wrote a
book called Helter Skelter like a six d page book.
Basically this the definitive true crime book on the Manson
family and the Manson family murders. And so most of

(03:22):
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 is the lead prosecutor in the case, was privated
tons of information to to um, confessions, to interviews under questioning,

(03:43):
to all this stuff. But he's the one who pieced
together the idea that the Manson family committed these murders
to to start helter skelter. That was his his whole jam. Yeah. Well,
I mean some of the Manson family coborate, coroborated, corroberated.
It's in there somewhere corroborated. That's a dark time with

(04:05):
that word corroborated, corroborated. I don't have to say it much, luckily,
because I'm not in a life of crime. Uh No.
But some of them back that up um and saying that,
you know, at one point he wanted them to throw
a wallet of a victim in a in a black
neighborhood so so that people would think it was you know,
black panthers that did this. Yeah, but it's some evidence

(04:27):
that that was probably the case. If you talk though
to Manson and you or if you listen to some
of the stuff he says. Some of these explanations 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. He you know,
a lot of the stuff he has no explanation for
nothing good. But that whilet is a sterling example of

(04:49):
where it becomes obvious that wait, we're we're basically hearing
one point of view about this, and we've never that's
all we've ever heard, um, 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, UM,
you never want to just stick to just one source.
And with the Manson family case, it's basically one source,
and it's Vinci Bugliosi, the prosecutor. But Manson explains it

(05:13):
as he told, UM, I think it was Linda Kasabian
to just get rid of that wallet that he was
it wasn't in a predominantly black neighborhood, and then 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

(05:34):
you wanted a black person to find 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. Yeah, but I

(05:54):
think Cassabian herself said that too though, didn't you. Yeah.
The thing is is if you are, if you losableach
Arles Manson, Right, I know that's that's the thing is.
There's a terrible realization when you're like, actually a wait
a minute, I understand what Charles Manson is saying here. Um,
the with with stuff like that when you look at
the testimony. These were people who were on trial for

(06:17):
murder who had every incentive to go along with the
lead prosecutors theory that it was all Charles Manson's fault.
They could have maybe immunity, Um, they could have they
could have charges dropped against them that by saying yes,
this is the case, or having their testimony jibe with

(06:39):
what Vincent Boogliosi's case was. Um, they had an incentive
to do that. Whether Charles Manson is right or correct
or lying from a from a an objective perspective, the
people on trials for murder had a an incentive to
agree with Vincent Boogliosi. All right, So, uh, the way

(07:01):
they got caught was actually pretty interesting. Um. Unrelated to
these murders. Police rated spawn Ranch because um, 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 uh fingered as

(07:21):
they say in the biz Um. And they went there
and they rated Spawn Ranch and a lot of the
family were arrested at that time for like kr theft
and burglary and stuff. Um. They were released on the
technicality and then went to Death Valley to that weird ranch. Um.
If you ever been to Death Valley, it's not a
place you want to hang out. No, it's not, especially

(07:41):
in the summertime. Is that where Joshua Tree is? No,
that's it Joshua Tree, But that's not in Death Valley. No,
they're those are two different places. But is it close by?
Is the same type of terrain kind of thing? Uh? Yeah,
I mean I've been to both. Are they similar? Well,
I mean Joshua Tree is is the desert for sure,

(08:02):
but it's very lovely. Like I don't remember much about
Death Valley that was. Um, I think it was not
very hospitable for me. It's it's appropriately named, yeah, I
think so okay. Um. And of course now people are
gonna say Death Valley is the best. You know what
you're talking about, heavy sweater um, So they go to

(08:24):
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
the people responsible for these murders without knowing that they
were responsible for these murders. So they were they were
in jail, uh kind of luckily already in jail when

(08:48):
they sort of decided they could pin on that pin
like legitimately, um pin these murders on these people. So
this being the second time there's there's something that I've
ran across the research, Chuck. It never gets talked about,
but is I think really significant. At both of those raids,
the Spawn Ranch rate and the Death Valley rate. The
the state took children from this, Like there were kids, babies, toddlers, um,

(09:14):
little kids running around growing up, uh like at the
Spawn Ranch end at the Barker Ranch, which is extraordinarily troubling.
And some of them have been are thought to have
possibly been um Charles Manson's kids, like he may have
had some some there's just so much free love going
on and so many pregnancies that were the results of

(09:35):
this free love. It was difficult to say whose kid
was who's, but it's they think that it's possible at
least one or two of those kids was Charles Manson's kids, UM,
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

(09:57):
there were kids around at any part of this is
really I find it very troubling. Yeah, for sure. I mean,
I mean, all those cults had kids roaming around, UM,
they just weren't murderous cults, you know, yea. Uh so.
Susan Atkins, for her part, she agreed to testify initially
UM against Charles Manson UM to avoid the death sentence UM,

(10:19):
which UM for a few years more, was still a
thing in California. I think in v two they reversed that,
but at the time the death sentence was was a
threat at the time of the crimes, so she had
a grand jury testimony UM. It basically led to Manson
being arraigned for these murders in December sixty nine. Um,

(10:40):
she recanted that testimony, UM, and the deal was revoked
by the prosecutors. It was kind of too late at
that point. UM. Linda Kasabian, who you might remember was
I think the getaway driver and then the one who
um would not knock on the right apartment door to
kill the actor. So she she'd actually didn't commit any
more orders at all, was not in any of the houses.

(11:02):
She was granted immunity immunity for testifying, and I think
she was the only one granted immunity, 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 rounded up all of
the Manson family and had him in jail for um,

(11:23):
the death Valley raids for for you know, um, burglary
and theft and stuff like that. The way that they
found out that the Manson family was responsible for the
Tate Lobbianca 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. Yeah,

(11:45):
I guess so. 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, alright, chuck so Um. On December nine,

(12:24):
Charles Manson, who the public had just been acquainted with, UM,
I think just in the last few months, was finally
arraigned for UM the murders of Tatelbianca murders, and I
think that UM. Did they get him for his role
in the Hinman murder at that point, M I'm not,

(12:44):
I'm not actually sure about that. Definitely the Tatelbianca murders,
which was plenty enough UM and he it's it's it's
kind of an understatement to say that he did not
UM offer any public contrition. He actually went the opposite way. Yeah,
for sure, he was. UM. Well, the whole trial was chaos,

(13:06):
and he UM he incited chaos at every turn, UM
to make it just a circus, and was quite successful
at doing so. Um initially wanted to represent himself and
did for a little while, but the judge Um denied that,
Judge William Keene and said, you have to work with
a lawyer because of the fact that you're just making

(13:27):
this into a circus. Basically, we need this to stay
on track. And Um he actually was successful, though Manson
was getting Judge Keene m Austred as Judge Um and
Judge Charles Older eventually would oversee the trial. Yeah, and
I read a two thousand thirteen interview with Manson, and

(13:48):
the thing that seemed to still get him the most
was that he was denied Um the ability to represent
himself in court, Like he felt like he never got
to have his same court and that was that was
the thing that god him more than anything else, not
being locked up for his whole life or anything like that.
It was that he didn't get to open his big
mouth and court as much as he wanted to. So

(14:11):
I guess we could go over some of these things
that happened in court, Um that that led to this
circus atmosphere. 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 Bugliosi's book
nothing better than dramatic recreations. Yeah, Um, lots of yelling

(14:33):
and screaming, lots of shouting and cursing, lots of disrespect
to the judge and the American flag. Uh. They threw
a copy of the Constitution in the garbage. At one point. Um.
Very famously, Charles Manson carved an X into his forehead,
which later became a swastika, saying that he was exed
out of the world. And then his family members would

(14:55):
do the same, and they would shave their heads and
generally just trying to disrupt things at every turn, 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

(15:18):
most disruptive effect on the trial, um by saying while
the 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 unequivocally that
this guy was guilty of a trial that was going on,

(15:39):
which is, you just don't do that. It doesn't matter
what the case is. Not not for any compassion for
Charles Manson or anything like that, but just because even
on the other side, you could have blown the case
and and and he legitimately could have created a mistrial
there just because the President said something and everyone reported
on it. I can't imagine that happening today. I totally can't.

(16:01):
It was a very Trumpean move. Um. So we we talked.
I think we covered the Helter Skelter thing enough, don't you.
We did. But I think there's a there's a big
thing that all this hinges on is that, um they're
the prosecution said, and you said earlier you even had
a quote from text 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

(16:25):
Charles Manson was trying to spark the Helter Skelter race
war that he believed was going to happen. Manson's whole
thing was this here, this is Charles Manson's 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. Um. I I talked about it at night
around bonfires with everybody on acid. I also talked about

(16:48):
death of the ego and all sorts of other stuff.
Um And if you ask me, what happened was my
friends just took things and went it took it to
who literally and went too far. And that it all
hinged on this Bobby Bosl thing, right, and even even
before that, this lots of Papa thing. So text Watson

(17:10):
rips off Bernard lots of Papa crow and he's got
a problem with lots of Papa who wants to kill him? Now,
and Manson goes over there to help, Um, text Watson
solve this problem by shooting, shooting lots of Papa. So, now,
as far as Manson and Texts are concerned, text os
Watson a debt, any kind of debt? Well, Manson's or

(17:32):
Tex owns Manson a debt. Now, Manson's friend Bobby Boos,
who was one of his tightest family members, gets arrested
for murder, the murder of Gary Hindman, and Manson says, well,
you know, I mean you should do something to help
my brother Bobby bos Al and um, you know, text says,

(17:52):
well what should I do? And apparently Manson flew off
the handle and said, don't ask me what you should do.
You know what you should do. And that was that
at And the next thing, Manson knows Watson and cran
Winkle and Atkins are over at the Tate, the Tate residents,
carving up Sharon Tate and the rest of the people

(18:12):
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
the other stuff that he'd said too far, and that
really what they were doing was trying to cover up
cover for um, Bobby Busy to get him out of prison.
That's Manson's explanation for the whole thing. Well, yeah, and

(18:37):
for and for the part uh, well, I guess we
should go ahead and say that, um, that all of
these people went to prison, um uh and Susan Atkins,
Patricia Cranwinkle, 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. UM. But
when it comes to parole, it was in January one

(19:00):
that they were all convicted on all accounts murder conspiracy
to commit murder. UM. But years later, as parole hearings
would come up for all these women and Texas Watson
and Manson himself, the reason why they were continually denied. UM,
even like tex Watson became a born again Christian and

(19:22):
and you know supposed he 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 is to finally take
full responsibility for what you had done. And none of

(19:46):
them would do it, and they were all all denied
over the years. UM. Susan Atkins eventually died of brain
cancer in two thousand nine. UM. And then just a
few days ago, UM. Well, Leslie van Houghton September of
last year was actually recommended for parole in just a
few days ago. As of this recording, the Governor of California,

(20:06):
Jerry Brown, denied that UM and said, now she's still
isn't taking responsibility. UM. 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 to
approve that. You know. So we'll see they're gonna apparently

(20:27):
they're gonna keep pursuing that, and I'm not sure what
the next steps are, but they're gonna fight that ruling
by Jerry Brown and we'll see where that goes. So um,
so I think, and then Patricia Fenwinkel is still in prison.
And I think now that Susan Atkins died, she is
the longest serving female in may in California prison system. Yeah. Oh,

(20:49):
and we should say too that um Squeaky From tried
to kill Nixon. That's where she gained later fame. Oh
what I say Nixon? Yeah, Gerald Ford and um, she's
she's out of prison. She uh, 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
line and she like smack the camera down. Yeah. So

(21:11):
she she's an interesting case. Squeaky From was out. She
wasn't um indicted for any of the murders or any
role in the murders, but she was a number she
was the number two UH person to join the Manson family. Remember,
and she Um still to this day refuses to denounce Manson.
It's still very much all about Charles Manson and UM

(21:35):
just as much as she was before UM and she
went to I I guess I'm not sure what she
was doing with a gun and gerald Ford, but she
aimed a gun at gerald Ford. It was the gun
wasn't loaded, but it still had the effect of sending
or to prison for decades for an assassination attempt on
the president. Right, I'm surprised she ever got out. I

(21:58):
am too, but she was parole eventually lee, 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 m. Charles Manson was sick, so she
broke her way out of prison to try to get
to him. I guess was a Manson family member who

(22:19):
tried to kill the president and escape from prison, and
they she earned parole. Yeah, hard to believe, but I
think it's like you said, I think those are the
case that Tate La Bianca murders were so politically charged
and so loaded, um that that that like it just
didn't They just weren't going to get out the people
who actually committed the murders. Yeah, Manson had an interesting

(22:45):
time in prison too. He had a you got try
and kill him by lighting him on fire at one point. Uh,
and like I think of, his body was badly burned.
And he had a string of of relationships with people
from pin pals, which will kind of cover at the
end to a to a woman that he did he

(23:06):
actually marry that woman? I don't. I don't know she
was in that two article that I was reading, um,
and I don't know if they got married. Man, we
should do I don't know what we would call it,
but an episode on generally women who who marry serial killers.
We totally should in prison. Let's do that, but first

(23:30):
let's take a break. How about that? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, okay, Chuck,

(23:59):
we're backward talking about. So Manson's in prison for a
while there. This is just mind blowing to me. For
a good decade he enjoyed, uh, actually more than that,
he enjoyed the limelight he he could get. Um, interviewed
by huge names like you said, Diane Sawyer, Charlie Rose,
Haraldo Rivera very famously did an interview with um Charles Manson,

(24:21):
where apparently Manson you were saying how much poise Diane
Sawyer showed during her interview. Supposedly Manson just owned Haraldo
during that interview, just totally took control of the whole thing.
But um, these were things that were televised like on
on national National News, and and these these people were giving,

(24:44):
these networks were giving Charles Manson a platform too, talked
about himself, to talk about his philosophy, to show the
world how crazy he was. Oh yes, to keep him
in the public, in the public eye, in the public mind.
Until finally after the Diane Sawyer interview, they they not
only pulled the plug on his interviews, they said for
there you couldn't televise interviews with any inmates from in

(25:07):
California because of Charles Manson. Basically, So, Um, it's just
really strange to me, especially these days looking back, that
he had a platform for so long to stay that boogeyman.
You know that that just scared the Bejesus out of America. Yeah,
I think those last like whatever, like twenty five years

(25:28):
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 of his music ended
up being recorded by you know, the Guns and Roses

(25:48):
and the lemon Heads and Um. He became this kind
of weird u cult figure and not as in uh,
Jim James cult like like movie type jacket, yeah Jones,
but like, yeah, like a cult figure in uh, revered

(26:08):
by some people weirdly. It just it's so strange that
people would look at him that way, you know. So
one person who revered him later on in life was
a woman I believe he named Star Um. And she
moved from her parents house in Mississippi out to California
to be just down the street from where Manson was held.

(26:31):
And this is she was the woman who was um
supposed to marry him Um, and she was a follower
of his. She said she didn't care anything about nineteen
sixty nine. He so Manson later in life became really
interested in Um preserving the environment. He came up with

(26:53):
a thing called at Wa air trees water. I can't
remember the last a yeah, argon, that would be a right.
So um, she became very interested in him for his
ecological stance. Right, and she moved out to be close
to him and would visit him on weekends. And they

(27:14):
became very close, and I, I I guess to kind of
demonstrate to the world that he he still had it,
I still got it world, he um asked her to
carve an X in her forehead and she did so. Um.
She was also big time into collecting and selling Manson memorabilia,

(27:35):
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 she actually
ran a website and still does called Manson Direct dot
com and it's it's like up to date. So I
think she had not abandoned him after some big, big

(27:59):
score with memorabilia. Like she seems to have been the
real deal follower, like a early Manson family girl reincarnated weird.
So there were a bunch of other uh I saw
an article whether at least ten other weird deaths related
to the Manson family that um some people say could

(28:22):
have been them or maybe not. I looked into a
few of them. That was his original or at least
this guy was originally going to represent Manson, as he
is an attorney named Ron Hughes. He ended up representing
I think Leslie van Houghton, but she uh. He disappeared
while on a There was a ten day recess in
the trial. So he goes camping with another couple and

(28:45):
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. 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, Um,
cren Winkle, and Atkins were all um or not Atkins,
I can't remember who the third one was. We're all

(29:06):
going to to incriminate themselves. So as Leslie van Houten's defense,
her and he he said, I'm not he rested after
the prosecution rested. He never presented a defense because he
knew that they were gonna incriminate themselves and he refused
to take part in it, so they had a grudge
against him. So it's possible. Possibly, Uh, there was a

(29:27):
spawn ranch worker that that disappeared and he would They
were actually convicted. Some other family members of his murdered.
His name was Shorty Shade Donald Shorty Shay. That was
this one dude, Joel Pugh who was married to Sandra
Good who was a member and he uh, he was
found dead in his London hotel. He had um It

(29:50):
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's one of these shoddy jobs I think by the
London cops. But some say it said Jack and Jill.
Other people say they don't remember what it said. But
that was definitely a one of those that was like,

(30:13):
could he have been killed Manson family member? Yeah, well
this goes on one of those um 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 there's definitely weird
that he died like that. Yeah, you know, having your

(30:36):
throat slashed in a London hotel, it's weird no matter what. Uh.
And so like we said, you know, you said at
the beginning, it was definitely the end of the peace
love movement, and UM sort of put a pin on
what the um, what people thought about what a lot
of people thought about the counter culture, and like, hey,
this is these are the hippies. They're not peace and love.

(30:59):
They murder people on drugs and this is what acid
can do to you. So that was mainstream media. You
had other um, alternative media or places like Rolling Stone
that was still a pretty young magazine that would uh
would not say things like that, would not kind of
buy into the mainstream media portrayal. But UM it captured

(31:20):
and still captures a lot of people's um imagination. You know,
it was a part of the zeitgeist. But it just
endured for decades after, you know for sure. And Rolling
Stone actually did a tremendous amount of reporting on UM.
Charles Manson that was really good at the time. That
two thou article I read was really good. That was

(31:41):
from Rolling Stone. You can get into a Manson rabbit
hole just going onto Rolling Stone's website, and that that
two thousand UM article I read Chuck the the author.
Um he I think he kind of summed up Charles
Manson better than I've seen it anywhere else. But he

(32:02):
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 bad decisions that led to murder, and who
then got caught up in an ambitious DA's dream about
a mastermind saying Gali with demonic visions of world domination.
Some crook, some outlaw, some gangster, some desperado, probably the

(32:26):
worst ever, but in the end, a tiny redneck. I
mean that definitely falls in there too. Yeah. So as
far as these kids go, Um, 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

(32:50):
Charles Luther Manson. Uh, one with Mary Brunner named Valentine
or Valentine Michael Manson. Those two guys are impossible to
find anything on. I'm sure they have probably changed their names. Uh.
There was a Charles Manson Jr. Who killed himself in
the I think early nineties. Yeah, and then there's this stude.

(33:15):
Did you see this Matthew Roberts guy. I ran across
his name, but I don't know anything about him. Well,
he claims to UH that his mother said, you know what, Um,
Charles Manson's your dad. We um had sex in an
orgy in San Francisco in the late sixties, and I

(33:37):
believe that he is probably your father. Although given that
it's an orgy, you know, those things go. So that's
the last That's the last thing you ever want to
hear your mom tell you that whole story, the whole story,
from beginning to end. It's just bad news for you,
the kid. Yeah. So just look this guy up. And

(33:57):
if he doesn't look like Charles Manson Incarnate, then I
don't know what to say. But the dude looks exactly
like him. Um. Here's the deal, though, is 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 up taking a DNA test to

(34:19):
match with who we know was Charles Manson Jr. Son
a dude named Jason Freeman, who was you know, the
grandson of Charles Manson, and there was no match there. Um.
But Matthew Roberts says, well, that doesn't prove anything because
we've never seen the DNA match from Freeman and Manson,

(34:40):
so he's still claiming to be his son. And um,
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. Um, but who knows? Um.
And in the end, his will and supposedly his estate
is worth money. Um, and I know how much, but

(35:00):
they say, you know, there could be a lot of
dough there. And right now there's a legal battle going
on between Jason Freeman, who was 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

(35:20):
wants me to have this money. Jason Freeman saying it's mine. Um.
For their part, they're both saying what they want to do.
His body's on ice still as they want to uh,
they both want to scatter his ashes just where no
one knows. So there it doesn't become like some weird shrine. Yeah,
but the the ongoing legal battle first will, well, we'll
see what happens there. So in that star Lady Wade

(35:41):
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
just one more mess for everybody to sort out. So strange,
so strange, and said absolutely in the sixties there was

(36:05):
some I know, he talked about the who was that
one cult that saw the documentary with Father Zod or whatever.
I mean, that was a crazy documentary that I mean,
just that whole time was so so strange. It really
was just people looking for something to belong to, something

(36:25):
some meaning that wasn't their parents, meaning you know, 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,
like I said, there's rabbit holes all over the internet. Um.

(36:47):
And in the meantime, you can also read this great
article by egg Grabanowski by typing the words Manson family
and the search bar how stuff works. And like I said,
he'll bring up this great grabs or article. Uh and wow,
I said that it's time for listener. Now I'm gonna
call this, uh Confederate monuments, well not Confederate monuments, but

(37:11):
removal of monuments up. So we got a lot of
great email about that podcast. Um. I don't know how
many of those you read, but you know, people roundly
said we did a good fare take on this tricky subject. Yeah.
I saw that too, which always makes me feel good.
Uh and a shout out. This is not from her,
but one of the people who wrote in was an

(37:32):
artist named ka Uh Kara Walker who just look up
her work. She is amazing. She she's I think the
second youngest person to 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
for I think of these room sized um silhouette like

(37:52):
black cutout silhouettes depicting like statements on race and gender
and civil rights. And she's just like a rock star
in the New York art scene. And she went to
my high school. Yeah, I saw that. I did not
know that. She introduced herself. She graduated two years ahead
of me at Redan, So uh. I wrote back to
her and just told her proud I was to be

(38:13):
an alum. So anyway, go check out Carl Carl Walker's work.
That's a mouthful, 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.

(38:36):
You pointed out that Georgia, like some other former Confederate states,
included the familiar Confederate battle flag with the ex pattern
and it's state flag from fifty two thousand 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

(38:56):
is patterned. It turns out that the flag Georgia used,
uh TIL was modeled after the national Confederate flag, and
the state switched to the Confederate battle flag in fifty six.
And other words, while the most familiar Confederate flag was
removed in two thousand one, it was replaced with another one.
That's so Georgia. I thought we did the right thing. No,

(39:20):
so I thought you guys to be interested. By the way,
in 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. 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
to say, hey, I got it wrong. I got it wrong.
That's all right, man, that's all right. Uh if you

(39:41):
want to write end to tell us we got something wrong,
lay it on us. That's fine. You can tweet to us.
I'm at josh um Clark. I also have a website
called are You Serious clark dot com. There's also an
official Twitter for Stuff you Should Know called s y
SK podcast. Chuck's on Facebook dot com slash It's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and there's also an official Facebook dot com

(40:02):
slash Stuff you Should Know You can send us all
including Jerry an email to stuff podcasts at how stuff
Works dot com and has always joined us at our
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