Charles Manson

One of the most notorious instances of mass murder in the annals of American criminal justice took place August 9 and 10, 1969 when the so-called Manson family killed a total of six people in savage attacks. The killers left behind slogans scrawled on the walls in their victims' blood. The leader of the group of killers was Charles Manson, who remains to this day a prisoner in San Quentin, subject to periodic review of his eligibility for parole, a parole that is vehemently opposed by the prosecution, the police, and a vast majority of citizens of California. While there are elements in the life story of Manson that might explain his behavior, his warped thinking remains intact, as he demonstrates whenever he gives interviews or comes before the parole board. His involvement with the criminal justice system demonstrates the difficulty in coping with those who are mentally deranged and who, given our present state of knowledge, can never be cured and as a result should never be released.

Charles Manson was born in Kentucky in 1934. He later claimed that his mother was a Flower Child, though this was long before that term existed, but in reality she was a prostitute. When Manson was still a toddler, his other was imprisoned for five years for armed robbery. Manson then grew up in a variety of institutions, which had an adverse effect on his character. At the age of 13 he committed his first crime, an armed robbery, and four years later he committed a homosexual rape.

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ers of the Family, who then ransacked the house. Two nights later he sent another group to a house in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles to the La Bianca house, the home of a grocer and his wife, who were also killed. The case would break when Susan Atkins was arrested for a minor offence and bragged in jail that she had taken part in the killings (Vandome, 1990, 157-158). Manson is valuable as a subject for study and examination because he is an example of a social aberration that has become too common in recent years. Mass killings and serial killings are not new, but they do seem to have accelerated in number in recent years. We need to understand what produces these killers so we can do something about it before they develop, before they are warped so much their minds do not work in ways that are comprehensible to us. We need to understand how to recognize those time bombs waiting to go off so that something can be done to prevent killings of this sort. We need to understand how these individuals fit in our criminal justice system, from the time of arrest through the trial and into the sentencing period, and perhaps most importantly after that to the possibility that they might one day walk the streets again. Manson

Category: People - C