Further Reading For Charles Manson
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi
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Few criminals in the history of the world are as notorious as Charles Manson. For many, The Manson Murders signaled the end of the hippie era and ushered in the inky black darkness of 1970’s Americana. For others, he represented the logical endpoint for permissive, liberal values.
In the waning years of the 1960’s, Charles Manson, a career criminal that spent more time in prison than out gathered together a handful of the lost youth of Los Angeles, frustrated middle class kids looking for some kind of deliverance in a decade eating its young alive in Vietnam. Together, they dropped acid and drifted around southern California until they came to settle, like a cult, at the Spahn Ranch, a crumbling movie set used on Hollywood Westerns in the past. There, they engaged in free love and psychedelic drugs, as Manson chased a half-baked dream of being a musician while fucking every woman that he managed to mesmerize with his schmaltzy acid sermons about love and spirituality.
But Manson was a criminal and crime followed him wherever he went. Drug-related murders spun out and spiraled into a spree of violence that ultimately left actress Sharon Tate and friends dead as well as the LaBianca family in a hazy attempt to pin a Family member’s murder charges on someone else. Or maybe the murders were meant to kick off a race war. It’s really unclear. Needless to say, this murder spree and the man who architected the death of the 60’s still captivates the American nightmare to this day. No matter the cult, (Jonestown/Aum Shinrikyo) someone always has to get hurt, man.
Episodes: 147-149
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