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Bruce Davis came to the cult of Manson by way of Scientology, a new religion in which Manson himself had dabbled. Davis met the family when they were in Oregon in 1968, and proceeded to spend the next year or so in England working for the Scientologists before being kicked out for his drug use […]
While she didn't participate in the Tate – La Bianca murders, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a former child performer who was living in Venice Beach when she met Manson, was one of the most consistent presences outside the courthouse during the trials, supporting the family members by camping out there while they were on trial. But […]
Charles "Tex" Watson came, as his name suggests, from Dallas. A former high school football star, he dropped out of the University of North Texas to and made his way to California, where he worked odd jobs and soon found Manson. He lived with the family at the Spahn Ranch, where he earned the name […]
Patricia Krenwinkel is probably best remembered for walking into the courtroom the morning of her sentencing, laughing alongside Susan Atkins and Leslie Van Houten. It was a disturbing scene, particularly in the case of Krenwinkel, who had chased down and killed Abigail Folger as she tried to escape the Tate home, then helped Tex Watson […]
Though Steve “Clem” Grogan stayed in the car while Manson family members massacred Sharon Tate and her friends on August 9th, 1969, he did participate in the murder a few weeks later of Donald “Shorty” Shea. A Hollywood stuntman and Spahn Ranch hand, Shea was was killed and dismembered by the family that summer, but […]
Linda Kasabian was the prosecution's key witness and eventually called Manson the "devil, not this wonderful man that I was led to believe." While she didn't participate in the murders, she did act as lookout on both nights – a vantage point that also allowed her to become the state's primary witness against the family. Kasabian […]
"Woman, I have no mercy for you." That's what Susan "Sadie" Atkins told Sharon Tate as she stabbed the pregnant 26-year-old actress in the stomach, one of six people she and the other family members killed during the early morning hours of August 9th, 1969. When their leader decided it had been too "messy" and […]
Mary Brunner was Manson's first follower, a relatively age-appropriate Wisconsin native who had moved west for a job at the UC Berkeley library. (Born in 1943, she was only nine years younger than the cult leader.) Brunner met Manson in 1967, and took him in. Soon she quit her job and they hit the road […]
Paul Watkins was a high school dropout when he met Charles Manson in the spring of 1968, and quickly became an integral part of the group – as a cute, young man, it was his job to find the teenage girls that Manson, then in his 30s, was too old to attract. He would search […]
Handsome and magnetic, Bobby Beausoleil had been drifting through California as a musician and actor when, in 1968, he appeared in a soft-core porn called The Ramrodder with Catherine "Gypsy" Share, a Manson follower, and soon met the cult leader himself. Before long he became one of his followers, living at the Spahn Ranch, the […]
Leslie Van Houten, one of the youngest of the family, didn't meet Charles Manson until September 1968, less than a year before the murders took place. The two-time homecoming queen soon became one of his most devoted followers, and while she wasn't there for the Tate massacre, she participated the following night, stabbing Rosemary LaBianca […]