Trek Serial killers

Susan Atkins: Chameleon

2007-09-28T02:29:00.001-07:00

The Manson Family (2004, color) Trailer

2007-09-28T02:23:00.001-07:00

Helter Skelter Theory

2007-09-28T02:21:00.001-07:00

helter skelter -trailer

2007-09-28T02:18:00.000-07:00

manson murder movie scene

2007-09-28T02:15:00.000-07:00

part2

Tom Snyder - Manson interview pt1 "The Helter Skelter Myth"

2007-09-28T01:42:00.000-07:00

Part 2

part 3

part 4

part 5

part 6

part 7

charles manson singer?

2007-09-28T01:41:00.001-07:00

Are the ghosts of manson murder still looking?

2007-09-28T01:37:00.000-07:00

home videos sharon tate

2007-09-28T01:27:00.000-07:00

Hammer man strikes in delhi

2007-09-25T00:48:00.000-07:00

NEW DELHI: Call him Delhi's Jack the Ripper or the Hammer Man. He rips but doesn't rape. Neither does he rob. He just kills unsuspecting women in the wee hours of the morning, tears their clothes and disappears into thin air.

A serial killer is on the prowl in the Baljeet Nagar area of West Delhi. Over the last two months he has attacked five women — allegedly with a hammer — leaving at least two dead and another fighting for her life in Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. His last victim, a former nurse called Sudarshana (45), was found dead in her room in Punjabi Basti on Thursday morning.

Police say that the possibility of a psychopath cannot be ruled out though they have registered cases in only two of the assaults.

"Sudarshana was declared brought dead at Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital. A case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder has been registered at the Anand Parbat police station but the actual cause of death will be known only upon arrival of the autopsy report," said a senior police officer.

Sudarshana's next door neighbour, Pan Kumari, said, "On Thursday morning, we woke up to see that Sudarshana hadn't shut her doors. On stepping inside, we found her dead with only the face covered."

Sudarshana had survived a similar attack on the head a month ago. The police had then claimed that she had fallen off the cot although locals have a different story to tell. "He seems to have accomplished what he had unsuccessfully attempted one month back," Pan Devi said. Police however claimed that Sudarshana's brother had told them that she has been mentally unstable for 17 years.NEW DELHI: Fourteen-year-old Khushboo Gulati has stopped going to school as fear of the "hammerman", who has allegedly killed three women in her neighbourhood in the past two months, keeps her awake at night.

"Even if I go to school, I usually faint and face embarrassment when my parents are called to take me home," says the Class VIII student.

Her mother, Khushboo, like others in her colony at Baljeet Nagar, has lost sleep too ever since their neighbour, Sudarshana Devi, was attacked one and a half months ago. Till a fortnight after the attack, all neighbours kept vigil on the streets.

"Playing cards and gossiping over cups of tea kept fear at bay. But we discontinued this nocturnal vigil when the hammerman moved to other colonies," says Khushboo.

The second attack on Sudarshana on Thursday has left the neighbourhood shaken. And it has brought to light six similar cases of attack on women, three of them fatal, in the past two months.

The injured have been identified as Sheila Devi, Tara Devi and Lalita Devi, who is still in a critical condition at Ram Manohar Lohia hospital, while the deceased have been identified as Seema, Rajni and Sudarshana.

The early morning attacks also bear a resonance to similar assaults that were carried out last year. The victims then -- Renu and Sagina -- luckily survived, making Seema who was attacked in July, the first casualty.

Talking to Times City, Renu (22), whose courage saved her life last March, said, "Hammerman attacked me sometime in March last year when he crept into my room and switched off the lights, before placing a heavy hand over my face. I managed to break free and slash his wrist with a knife, that I always keep tucked under my pillow, and raised an alarm. He pulled me by the hair but fled when I continued to shout. Had he not switched off the lights, I’d have identified him."

Neighbours started keeping vigil on the streets and rooftops from 11 pm to 5 am, in the days that followed.

Sagina Khatun (25), who became the assalaint’s second victim, said, "No one believed me when I told people I’d been attacked, while sleeping in the open. But when I was struck again, this time in my room, I was taken seriously. The first time round I was hit by a blunt object, probably a hammer, on my chest. He hit my stomach the next time, damaging my intestines. This time, we approached the police but no one has been arrested."

Seema (25), who was attacked in July, when she stepped out to relieve herself around 4.30 am, was doomed to be the assalaint’s first casualty.

The victim,the killer in News( sharon tate,charles mansion)

2007-09-22T03:40:00.000-07:00

Charles Manson -A thought or reality

2007-09-22T03:26:00.000-07:00

"You made your children what they are.... These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.... You can project it back at me, but I am only what lives inside each and every one of you. My father is your system.... I am only what you made me. I am a reflection of you. You made your children what they are.... These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.... You can project it back at me, but I am only what lives inside each and every one of you. My father is your system.... I am only what you made me. I am a reflection of you."

....Charles Manson:

Sharon Marie Tate (January 24, 1943 - August 9, 1969)

2007-09-22T03:20:00.000-07:00

Sharon Tate was an American actress.

Sharon Tate was born on January 24th, 1943 in Dallas, Texas. She was the first of three daughters born to Colonel Paul and Doris Tate. Even as a child Sharon was very beautiful. At six months of age Sharon won her first beauty contest; she was crowned Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas Texas. Her very first jobs would include modeling.

While living in Verona, Italy, Sharon met Richard Beymer, who encouraged her to pursue acting and modeling as a full-time career. Richard gave his agent's card to Sharon. She began to take part in the film, Barrabas, as an extra. Making a good impression, whenever there was a film being made there Sharon would always get a call.

Moving back to the United States, Sharon hitchhiked most of the way to Hollywood, and paid a visit to Beymer's agent. She was soon performing in commercials and modeling for famous photographers. In between jobs she performed as a Kelly Kalanki Wine Girl and shared an apartment with fellow actress Sheilah Wells.

After being introduced to Martin Ransohoff, chairmen of Filmways, Sharon was on her way to becoming a star. Her parents, wanting to make Sharon's dreams come true, allowed her to become a ward of the court as she was under 21 years old. After becoming a Filmways client, Sharon was signed on to appear as a secretary on "The Beverley Hillbillies", she also began making appearances on other shows such as "Mr. Ed", "Man from U.N.C.L.E", and was also cast for a short time on "Petticoat Junction".

Determined to make her a star, Ronsohoff paid out over 1 million dollars in training and preparation. She would become known as "Million Dollar Baby," one of the last studio stars. Around this time Sharon began dating Phillippe Forquet, a french actor. Both her parents and Ronsohoff felt he would stand in her way of becoming a star.

There love affair was rocky but intense, and Forquet proposed to Sharon, who accepted. However, their relationship soon ended, with Forquet walking away.

After much pushing for new parts from Sharon, Ronsohoff felt it was time for him to give her bigger parts. She soon was auditioning for the part of Liesel in "The Sound of Music" along with Patty Duke, Mia Farrow, and Lesley Ann Warren. Producers felt Sharon looked too mature for the part, and it was given to another actress. But soon "The Eye of the Devil", or "13", was brought to her.

Sharon around this time had met and fell in love with Jay Sebring, a Hollywood hair stylist, whom Sharon's parents became impressed with. Sharon would spend time at Jay's salon while he worked. The two were inseparable. After filming "Eye of the Devil" in Europe, Sharon was given a part in acclaimed director Roman Polanski's movie "The Fearless Vampire Killers."

At first Sharon did not like Roman, as her was an absolute perfectionist, but soon she began to fall in love with the young Polish director. Not wanting to hurt Jay, but also not wanting to lead him on, she called him from London and broke off their relationship. Not wanting to let go, Jay insisted on meeting Roman so that he would know if she was making the right choice and to see if Roman was truly worthy of her. After meeting Roman in London, Jay decided to let Sharon go. The trio all became friends in the end.

After filming wrapped, Sharon began shooting a movie alongside Tony Curtis, called "Don't Make Waves." In the film Sharon performs her own stunts, something that impressed everyone. Sharon began to hate filming the movie because she was not only separated from Roman, but she felt she was being type-cast as a "blonde sex goddess."

Although she was feeling down, she took the role of Jennifer in the movie "Valley of the Dolls," a role which still type-cast her. She was cast alongside such names as Judy Garland (soon replaced by Susan Hayward), Patty Duke, and Barbara Parkins. Although she hated the book and movie, she went along with it hoping to be noticed so she would be offered better roles.

Filming was hard, mainly because the director enjoyed humiliating Sharon, and because of the bickering that happened between Patty and Barbara.

The movie soon premiered and everyone soon realized, that although the book was very serious, it had become a comedy... and unintentional comedy. But it didn't stop Sharon from willingly talking to the press afterwards, which her costars avoided.

Although Sharon was dating Roman, he did not cast her in his new film "Rosemary's Baby." A film which would become a huge hit. Sharon would, however, visit the New York set and become friends with the movie's star Mia Farrow, who was married to legend Frank Sinatra at the time. When Frank served divorce papers to Mia on the set of the movie (in view of the whole cast and crew) Sharon and Roman took Mia under their wing and brought her into their circle of friends.

While visiting Roman one day, Sharon posed for publicity pictures for Esquire magazine. The session was cutting edge and a lot of publicity for the film "Valley of the Dolls" was created because of it.

This year, 1967, became known as "The Year Sharon Tate Happens."

Sharon and Roman returned to London, and were by this time known as the "Groovy Couple of the Year" in movie magazines. Their home became the "place to be" and they were very candid about everything. In January 1968 Roman proposed to Sharon in London. Making her costar Barbara Parkins her maid of honor. The world press covered the couples January 20th wedding which was very modern.

Although she was married to such a huge director, Sharon never asked to be in any of his films. She ended her contract with Ronsohoff. She was only allowed out of her contract after she agreed to pay out 25% of her earnings in the next 4 years. She agreed, feeling it was the only way she could take charge of her career and the roles she would take.

Her first movie would be "The Wrecking Crew," in which she played alongside legend Dean Martin. In this film she performed her own stunts, and was taught martial arts by none other than Bruce Lee. He and Sharon would become friends and she would get Bruce to go to her and Roman's home, which was being rented from Patty Duke, so he could teach Roman.

By the fall of 1968, Sharon was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Newcomer. She did not win but the nomination meant the world to her. She was also runner-up in the Motion Pictures Herald's poll for "The Star of Tomorrow."

Sharon also found out she was pregnant near the end of 1968. Sharon kept the news to herself in the beginning, as Roman did not want to bring children into the world. Roman grew up in occupied Poland, living in the ghetto and fearing for his life everyday during World War II so becoming a father was not something he'd easily want to do after living through hell as a child. However, became excited at the idea after a shot while and with much reassurance and love from Sharon.

In February 1969 Roman and Sharon, who before moving into Patty Duke's house were living from hotel to hotel, moved into their first official home on Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon. Their home had been used by Terry Melcher and Candice Bergen.

By March of 1969 Sharon was due to leave for Italy to begin working on the film "Twelve Plus One." Although Roman had reservations about her filming a movie during her pregnancy, Sharon reassured him that everything would be okay since she would be finished the film by the time she was too pregnant to continue.

Filming was hard as Sharon had a lot of actions scenes and running around was hard on her swollen feet. Not one to complain, Sharon would rest between takes and had never asked for special treatment.

After filming, Sharon returned to London to be with Roman, who was making preparations for his film "Day of the Dolphin." While there she posed for photographer Terry O'Neil. In the pictures she is holding her stomach on the stairwell of her London home with Roman, she is lying on the floor surrounded by baby clothes, holding a baby sweater in her car, and opening baby shower gifts.

Sharon made her last publicity shoot in London for the movie "Twelve Plus One." Returning from London soon after, Sharon traveled by Queen Elizabeth II due to her pregnancy. Roman was due to return to Cielo Drive for his child's birth after completing his work in London.

According to friends, Sharon spent August 8, 1969, in a funk. She was 2 weeks away from her son's birth and was living in a house with Abigail Folger and her boyfriend, holocaust survivor Wojciech Frykowski, with whom she was growing tired of. She was lonely, but eagerly awaiting the birth of her bundle of joy. The sex of the child was unknown but all that mattered to Sharon was that her and Roman would finally be parents. After napping in the late afternoon, Sharon and her housemates, along with Jay (who lived in the Jean Harlow house, which was haunted) all visited the El Coyote restaurant. After dining they returned home. Wojciech fell asleep on the couch, Abigail retired to her room to read a book, and Jay and Sharon were in her room having a deep conversation.

At around 12:30, Sharon Tate and her friends, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and a teenaged boy named Steven Parent, were killed by members of Charles Manson's "cult", who took the five by surprise.

She is interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California. With her son, Paul Richard Polanski, in her arms.

Charles Manson -thinking

2007-09-22T03:15:00.000-07:00

look down on me you will see a fool....
look up at me and you will see your lord...
look straight at me you will see yourself

Charles Manson

There are many names synonymous with psycho, but none invoke people's emotions more than Charles Manson. Charlie has been the poster child for over 30 years for everything that is sick, and fucked up in society, yet he never killed one person.
For this very reason is why FX celebrates Manson. The ability to control others, have them believe you're jesus fucking christ, and commit rampage killings in your name is the ultimate. Man's Son, still king.

"The music speaks to you every day, but you are too deaf, dumb, and blind to even listen to the music. It is not my conspiracy. It is not my music. I hear what it relates. It says, "Rise!" It says, "Kill!" Why blame it on me? I didn't write the music....."
Charles Manson 1970

What I'm about to get into here may seem far-fetched, and off the wall, but what follows remains a fact until this day.... There are many people that believe that The Beatles, either intentionally or not, was trying to make contact with Jesus Christ through their music, who they believed to be alive, on earth, living somewhere in California. Now, before you start emailing me, telling me how you could read almost anything into any song to get the out come you desire, know that this is not my beliefs. I really don't care much for The Beatles music. (don't email telling me I suck because I don't like the beatles) I have listened to The White Album "looking" for these interpretation's only because Manson himself said the music on these albums told him to kill. A lot of the interpretations could be considered racist. I am NOT a racist. (Don't email me white power or black panther mail.) Again, these are observations thru the eyes of Manson. I am not a christain. At the present time I believe only in myself and what knowledge I have obtained. I don't need email me trying to "save me". I'm not in any trouble that requires me to be saved.
In 1968 The Beatles released an untitled two disc album with nothing on the cover. Just a plain white cover. It contained not only some of their best work, and some of their most bizarre. Half way around the world in California, Charles Manson, a career criminal, who begged to remain locked up in prison, is released back into society. A little over a year later in 1969 seven dead bodies within two nights were found. Five the first night, two the following night. The only clues to go on is the words "Helter Skelter", "death to pigs", "arise", written on the wall in the victims blood. The word "war" was carved into one of the victims. Seven people, over 200 stab wounds, multiple gun shots, and beatings. Overkill in every sense of the word. A crime that shocked the world, and to most, it ended the summer of love on a sick note.

There is a few facts you must understand before we move on. Manson had formed a "family" of people, mostly young female run-aways and drop outs. Through music, drugs, and simply showing attention to a few lost souls Manson was able to build a following of outcast, unhappy, disconnected misfits enjoying being the focus of someone's attention. They were living in the desert on a abandoned movie ranch in Death Valley California. Manson believed himself to be jesus christ, returned to earth to save the chosen ones, The Family. Manson believed that there would be a huge race war between the blacks and the whites, and the only white people to survive this war would be the family (as told in the bible). They then (The Manson Family) would rise up out of the dessert and rule the world because as Manson said, "The black man needs a white man to tell him what to do".

Manson wrote, sung, played guitar on several of his own recordings in the hopes that he could make money and to futher his cause. He even hooked up with Dennis Wilson from the band Beach Boys and recorded a few songs. And in a strange turn of events, Dennis was indirectly responsible for Sharon Tate murder by the Manson Family". The Manson family was familiar with the Polanski house as Dennis had taken them their to visit his buddy Terry Melcher (Doris Day's son). Manson had expected Melcher to be there. However, Melcher had rented the house to Roman Polanski and Polanski 's wife Sharon Tate. On a even stranger note the Beach Boys actually recorded one of Charlie’s songs, on the 20/20 album. Charlie’s version was called Cease To Exist – and the group changed around the lyrics and renamed it Never Learn Not To Love. Dennis was once questioned about the integrity of recording that song, and he responded by saying that Charlie didn't want writing credit – he wanted cash. He’d stolen enough from Dennis that he felt just in recording the song, and not giving Manson any residuals.

With all these things in motion, along comes The Beatles White Album. Charles Manson thinks that The Beatles are talking to him through their music, reinforcing in Manson's mind that the world is about to erupt in a race war between the blacks and the whites. Charilie's music failing, the Family growing inpatient, Manson decides that he should help the race war begin by killing a few upper class white people and dumping some of their belongings in a all black neighborhood.

Wether any of these things are complete truths or not, the White LP, along with Manson believing himself to be Christ, one can't help but listen to the music and on more than a few songs laugh out loud as how Manson must have interpreted what he was hearing. On the following pages, I have all the lyrics to The Beatles White album. The songs appear in black text, and the way Manson would/did interpret them in red. A few of the interpretations was taken from the book Helter Skelter, but most is from me spending many hours listening the the White Album in an altered state.

Crime scene- Sharon tate

2007-09-22T03:00:00.001-07:00

Susan Sadie atkins

2007-09-22T02:54:00.000-07:00

SUSAN DENISE ATKINS
AKA: Sadie Mae Glutz, Sexy Sadie, Donna Kay Powell, Sharon King
DOB: 5.7.48
Order of the Rainbow Color: Violet
Prisoner ID: W08304
Prison: California Institute for Women(at Frontera)
Susan Denise Atkins was born in California on May 7, 1948. Her mother was afflicted with cancer and died when Susan was still in her teens. Constantly fighting with her alcoholic father, Susan decided to hit the road; dropping out of school and moving to San Francisco. She got a job as a telemarketer for a company that sold magazine subscriptions, rented a room and soon found herself poor, lonely, and depressed. She eventually quit her telemarketing job and started waiting tables at a local coffee shop. It was there that she met a couple of escaped convicts and decided to hit the road with them. The three committed several armed robberies up the west coast, and were eventually caught in Oregon. The men were sent to prison, and Susan got probation after she served three months in jail. When she was released, she came back to San Francisco and found work as a topless dancer. It was there she danced in a show called the Witches' Sabbath organized by Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey.

After quitting her job, Susan met Charles Manson. Her experiences with him had a profound effect on her, and she decided to leave San Francisco to travel with the family to Los Angeles. When the family got fake ID's, Manson gave her the name Sadie Glutz. Tex Watson would later say, Susan was one of Charlie's biggest cheerleaders. Sadie seemed to enjoy going on the "Creepy Crawler" missions; dressed in black, family members would sneak into random houses at night, while people were sleeping. Inside they would creep around, rearrange things as well as steal.

Sadie's demands for attention often put her in conflicts with Manson. She was reportedly kicked out of the family for a while, and was often blamed for getting the family contracted with the clap. Susan was among the family members who lived in Mendocino California for a short period of time. The group was arrested after giving LSD to a group of local kids, and at their trial, they were nicknamed the "Witches of Mendocino". In October of 1968, Sadie gave birth to a baby boy, which she named Zezozecee Zadfrack. After the birth of Zadfrack, Atkins spent time recovering at the Fountain Of The World, a nearby religious retreat.

In 1969, Susan was present at both the Hinman and Tate murders. Susan, Mary Brunner, and Bobby Beausoleil, took turns smothering Gary Hinman with a pillow after Beausoleil had stabbed him twice. Weeks later, Atkins took part in the Cielo Drive murders, she stabbed Wojciech Frykowski in the legs about 4 times, and helped Charles "Tex" Watson kill Sharon Tate. On the way out of the house, she wrote "PIG" on the front door, in Tate's blood. When the family was rounded up in Death Valley, Kitty Lutesinger implicated Susan in the Hinman murder. While in jail, Susan bragged about the Tate murders to her cellmates, who later told police, and 6 family members, including Atkins, were indicted on the Tate-Labianca murders.

In December, Susan went before a Los Angeles Grand Jury and told all. In the beginning, she was going to be the prosecution's star witness, hoping to avoid the death penalty. But before the trial started, Susan took back everything she told the Grand Jury and renewed her loyalty to Manson. After a nine-month trial, Susan was convicted of seven counts of first degree murder and one count conspiracy to commit murder. In March of 1971, she and her co-defendants were sentenced to death.

Susan was sent off to the California Institute for Women, where both Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel shunned her for snitching on the family. Meanwhile, a doctor adopted Susan's son Zezozecee Zadfrack, whose name was changed to Paul. In the mid 70's, family member Bruce Davis turned Susan on to Jesus. Atkins claimed that Jesus came into her cell, and she became born-again. In 1977, the year before her first parole hearing, Susan wrote an autobiography with Bob Slosser called Child Of Satan, Child Of God. Since her incarceration in 1971, Susan has only received four minor write-ups. In 1981, she married a Texan named Donald Lee Laisure. She had corresponded with Laisure for years, but he had lied to her the whole time. Laisure, who had previously been married 35 times, claimed to be a millionaire, which he wasn't. When Susan found out, three months after their marriage, she filed for divorced. She married again in 1987, this time to a man named James W. Whitehouse (a law student fifteen years her junior).

Throughout the years, Susan has kept herself busy with her own prison ministry as well as completing an Associates degree through correspondence courses.

CHARLES MILLES MANSON

2007-09-22T02:52:00.001-07:00

CHARLES MILLES MANSON
AKA: Charles Willis Manson, Charles Maddox, the Wizard, Jesus Christ, JC, the Gardener, the Devil
DOB: 11.12.34
Prisoner ID: B33920
Prison: California State Prison(at Corcoran)
fingerprints
rap sheet (Adobe Acrobat required)

Charles Maddox was born "No name" Maddox in Cincinnati, Ohio on November 12, 1934. His mother was a 16-year-old runaway named Kathleen Maddox, and his father, a man named Colonel Scott. Charlie took the surname Manson from William Manson, a man his mother was briefly married to. In 1940, Kathleen was convicted of Strong Armed Robbery and sentenced to 5 years at Moundsville Sate Prison. Young Charlie bounced around from grand parents to aunts and uncles, and those early years were full of mixed messages. He went from living with strict religious grand parents, to an uncle that thought he was a sissy and dressed him in girl's clothes for the first day of school. Charlie also had more rebellious influences; he lived with an uncle, that one day blew himself up in his moonshine still because the law was going to take his land.

Charlie briefly lived with his mother after she was released from jail, but was given up to the state after his mother's boyfriend said he'd didn't like having Charlie around. Manson was sent to the Gibault Home for Boys in Terre Haute, Indiana. After running away and getting arrested on a stolen bike, Charlie was sent to Father Flanagan's Boys Town. He ran away after 4 days, stole a car, and committed several armed robberies. When caught, he was sent to the Indiana School for Boys in Plainfield, Indiana, where he claims he was repeatedly raped. Once again Charlie escaped and stole a car, this time heading towards California. He was arrested in Utah, and because he had taken a stolen car across state lines, Charlie had violated the Dyer Act, a federal law. He spent the next 3 years in 4 different facilities; the National Training School for Boys in Washington, D.C., the Natural Bridge Honor Camp, the Federal Reformatory at Petersburg, VA, and the Federal Reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio.

In January of 1955, Charlie married a 17-year-old girl named Rosalie Jean Willis. The two headed to California in a stolen car, and once again Manson had violated the Dyer Act; he was arrested in Los Angeles 3 months later. Rosalie was pregnant, so a sympathetic judge gave Charlie probation, which he soon broke. He was sentenced to 3 years at Terminal Island Prison. Shortly after Charles Manson Jr. was born, Rosalie left town with a truck diver; Charlie never saw Rosalie or his son again. Manson was released from Terminal Island in September of 1958, and began pimping a few girls in Hollywood. In May of 1959, Manson was arrested for attempting to cash a stolen $37.50 check. Once again he had broken a federal law, because the check was stolen from a mailbox; he was given a ten-year suspended sentence. It was around that time that Manson married a girl named Leona. On June 1, 1960, Charlie was arrested in Laredo, TX for violating the Mann Act (crossing state lines for the purposes of prostitution). Manson was ordered to serve the ten-year suspended sentence he had received for cashing the stolen check.

Charlie was sent to McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington State. While serving his sentence, he learned how to play the guitar and became interested in Scientology. Meanwhile, Leona served Charlie with divorce papers after she gave birth to his second son, Charles Luther Manson. Charlie was transferred to Terminal Island in June of '66, and was finally paroled on March 21, 1967. He requested that they let him stay in jail, but the warden told Charlie he had to leave. Charlie moved up state to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. With his guitar and philosophies, Charlie finally found a place to fit in. It was there that he met Mary Brunner, and the family was born.

Charlie and Mary traveled around California, and the family began to take shape, as more and more people decided to travel with them. Charlie's interest in a music career brought him and the girls to Los Angeles. Through a prison friend, Manson had some contacts at Universal Studios; the family soon found themselves bumping elbows with the rich and famous at posh parties in the Hollywood hills. Charlie quoted the Bible so well that Universal hired him to consult on a film about the second coming of Christ. The executives wanted Christ to come back as a black man, but Charlie didn't see it possible. Whether or not Manson's opinion had any influence on their decision, the executives decided to forget about the project. Although the family took residences in many different locations, the most infamous was Spahn's Movie Ranch in Chatsworth. On April 1, 1968, Charlie became a father for the third time when Mary Brunner gave birth to Valentine Michael Manson. Charlie had named him after the main character in Robert Heinlien's book Stranger In A Strange Land.

While visiting a friend in San Francisco, Charlie met Dennis Wilson, the drummer of The Beach Boys. Wilson became close with Manson, nicknaming him " The Wizard". He let Charlie and the Family stay at his mansion, drive his cars, and take his clothes. Dennis even spent thousands of dollars having the family's teeth fixed. But more importantly to Charlie, Wilson wanted to sign Manson to his record label. Through Wilson, Charlie met Terry Melcher, a record producer and the son of Doris Day. For a period of time, Melcher was interested in recording Manson's music, as well as making a movie about the family. In the summer of 1969, family member Tex Watson stole $2,000 from a black drug dealer named Bernard "lottasapapa" Crowe. Crowe threaten the Family, so Manson met with him and shot him in the stomach. Around the same time, news organizations reported the murder of a Black Panther, and Charlie believed it was Crowe. This increased paranoia among the family, and they started gathering more weapons, fearing retribution from the Panthers. However, Crowe wasn't a Black Panther, and he wasn't dead; he survived the attack but didn't pursue the matter with the police.

In late July of 1969, Mary Brunner, Susan Atkins, and Bobby Beausoleil went to get money from a man named Gary Hinman. When Hinman refused to give it to them, the three called Manson at Spahn's Ranch. Along with Bruce Davis, Charlie immediately came over to Hinman's Topanga Canyon home. Upon arriving, Charlie and Gary began a shouting match, and Manson took out a sword and chopped off Hinman's left ear. Immediately afterward, Manson and Davis left in one of Hinman's cars. Two days later, Beausoleil fatally stabbed Hinman, supposedly under Manson's orders.

On the evening of August 8, 1969, Manson instructed Charles "Tex" Watson to go to the house where Terry Melcher used to live, and kill everybody. Manson then informed Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian to go and do what Tex said. The four drove to 10050 Cielo Drive and killed Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and Sharon Tate. After the four killers came back to Spahn's Ranch, Charlie and an unknown family member went to the Cielo Drive home to see what the others had done. Manson reportedly moved Tate's body, but changed his mind and put it back where it originally was. Charlie also left a pair of eyeglasses at the scene to try and confuse the police. The following day, Manson accompanied Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Steve Grogan, Leslie Van Houten, and Linda Kasabian to 3301 Waverly Drive. Manson and Watson entered the home of Leno and Rosemary Labianca. They informed the couple that they were just being robbed, and wouldn't be hurt. Watson tied the couple up, while Manson left the residence and sent in Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel with orders to kill the Labiancas, and hitchhike back to Spahn's Ranch. Manson, Susan Atkins, Steve Grogan, and Linda Kasabian spent the rest of the night driving around looking for other people to murder.

Charlie and the Family were arrested on August 16, 1969 for suspicion of auto theft, but were released because the search warrant was misdated. Charlie felt that a ranch hand was snitching on him, so he, Bruce Davis, Tex Watson, and Steve Grogan murdered ranch hand Donald "Shorty" Shea, and buried him behind Spahn's Ranch. The Family then moved to the Barker Ranch near Death Valley, and it was there, that the Family was finally apprehended in October of 1969.

During the trial, Manson tried to represent himself, but because of the complexity of the case, he wasn't allowed. Manson has always claimed that he was innocent of ordering the murders; however, the jury felt otherwise. Manson was convicted of 7 counts of First Degree Murder, 1 count of Conspiracy to Commit Murder and subsequently sentenced to death in the gas chamber. Manson was also convicted of 2 more counts of First Degree Murder for the murders of Gary Hinman and Donald "Shorty" Shea, in which he received a sentence of life imprisonment.

Manson was sent to San Quentin to await his death sentence. However, California briefly outlawed the death penalty in 1972, and Charlie's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, making him eligible for parole in 1978. Charlie has bounced around the California prison system throughout the years; from San Quentin, to Folsom State Prison, to the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, back to Folsom, back to San Quentin, back to Vacaville, back to San Quentin, on to the California State Prison at Corcoran, to Pelican Bay State Prison and finally back to Corcoran. Manson spends 23 hours a day in his cell, he is always hand cuffed while being moved throughout the prison, and doesn't get to interact with any other inmates. Manson has been attacked 2 times in jail; once by a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and once by a Hare Krishna. The latter doused Charlie with paint thinner, and set him on fire over an argument the two were having over religion. Manson received 2nd and 3rd degree burns, mostly to his face and scalp. Charles Manson has been repeatedly denied parole; his next hearing will be held in the spring of 2007. He is now 68.

Charles Manson and the Manson Family: Murder! Sharon tate

2007-09-22T02:16:00.000-07:00

Quiet and secluded is just what the young movie star wanted. The canyons above Beverly Hills were far enough away from the noisy glitz of Hollywood to afford some privacy and space. Sharon Tate loved this place on Cielo Drive. To her it meant romance — romance with the man of her dreams and the father of her child, director Roman Polanski.

It was cooler up there too, which was especially refreshing on that hot muggy Saturday night, the 9th of August 1969. The beautiful young woman kept herself company with her attractive and sophisticated friends: Abigail Folger, the coffee heiress and her boyfriend Voytek Frykowski, and an internationally known hair stylist Jay Sebring.
Sharon was eight months pregnant and very lonely for her husband who was away in Europe working on a film. Impromptu gatherings like this one on a weekend night were not at all unusual.

The house was deliberately secluded but not completely insecure. Approximately 100 feet from the house was a locked gate and on the property was a guesthouse inhabited by an able-bodied young caretaker.

That night the Kotts, Sharon's nearest neighbors who lived about 100 yards away, thought they heard a few gunshots coming from the direction of Sharon's property sometime between 12:30 and 1 A.M. But since they heard nothing else, they went to bed.

Around the same time, a man supervising a camp-out less than a mile away heard a chilling scream: "Oh, God, no, please don't! Oh, God, no, don't, don't..."

He drove around the area, but found nothing unusual.

Nearby a neighbor's dogs went into a barking frenzy somewhere between 2 and 3 A.M. He got out of bed and looked around, but found nothing amiss and went back to bed.

A private security guard hired by some of the wealthy property owners thought he heard several gunshots a little after 4 A.M. and called his headquarters. Headquarters, in turn, called Los Angeles Police Department to report the disturbance. The LAPD officer said: "I hope we don't have a murder; we just had a woman-screaming call in that area."
Winifred Chapman, Sharon Tate's housekeeper, got to the main gate of the house a little after 8 A.M. She noticed what looked like a fallen telephone wire hanging over the gate. She pushed the gate control mechanism and it swung open. As she walked up to the house, she saw an unfamiliar white Rambler parked in the driveway.

When she got to the house, she took the housekey from its hiding place and unlocked the back door. Once inside the kitchen, she picked up the telephone and confirmed that it was a telephone wire that had fallen, completely knocking out all phone service. As she made her way toward the living room, she noticed that the front door was open and that there were splashes of red everywhere. Looking out the front door, she saw a couple of pools of blood and what appeared to be a body on the lawn.

She shrieked and ran back through the house and down the driveway, passing close enough to the Rambler to see that there was yet another body inside the car. She ran over to the Kotts and banged on the door, but they were not home, so she ran to the next house and did the same thing, screaming hysterically

The Crime Scene

LAPD Officer Jerry DeRosa arrived first. He walked up to the Rambler and found a young man slumped toward the passenger side, drenched in blood. At this point, Officer William Whisenhunt joined DeRosa. The two officers, with guns drawn searched the other automobiles and the garage, while a third officer Robert Burbridge caught up with them.

There on the beautifully manicured lawn with its magnificent panorama of Los Angeles lay two bodies. One was a white man that appeared to be in his thirties. Someone had battered in his head and face, while savagely puncturing the rest of his body with dozens of wounds.
The other body was that of a young woman with long brown hair lying in a full-length nightgown with multiple stab wounds.

The three officers cautiously approached the house. No telling what or who may be waiting in there for them. It would have been foolhardy for all of them to enter through the front door. However, as they went near the front door, they saw that one of the front window screens had been removed. Whisenhunt found an open window on the side of the house where he and Burbridge made their entry.

Once the other two officers were inside, DeRosa approached the front door. On the lower half of the door, he saw scrawled in blood the word "PIG." In the hallway they found two large steamer trunks, a pair of horned rimmed glasses and pieces of a broken gun grip.

Then when they reached the couch, they were in for a real shock. A young blond woman, very pregnant, was lying on the floor, smeared all over with blood, a rope around her neck that extended over a rafter in the ceiling. The other end of the rope was around the neck of a man lying nearby, also drenched in blood.

As they looked through the rest of the house they heard a man's voice and the sound of a dog. It was William Garretson the caretaker. The officers handcuffed him and put him under arrest.

Later that Saturday night, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca and Susan Struthers, Rosemary's 21-year-old daughter, drove back from vacation trailering their boat. They dropped off Susan at her apartment and drove home to 3301 Waverly Drive in the Los Feliz area of L.A. They stopped to pick up a newspaper between 1 and 2 A.M.

It wasn't until the next day that anybody came to the house to see them. Frank Struthers, Rosemary's son by a previous marriage, got a ride home. Around 8:30 P.M., as he carried his camping equipment up the driveway, he noticed things that worried him. First the speedboat was still in the driveway. It was very unlike his stepfather not to put the boat in the garage. Then Frank noticed that all the window shades were down — something his parents never did.

He knocked on the door, but got no answer, so he went to a pay phone and called, but again with no response. He finally got in touch with his sister, who came with her boyfriend to their parents' house.

Frank and the boyfriend found the back door open. They left Susan in the kitchen until they had a chance to look around. When the two young men walked into the living room, they saw Leno in his pajamas, lying with a pillow over his head and a cord around his neck. Something was sticking out from his stomach

They rushed out of the house, dragging Susan with them and called the police at the neighbors' house.

Soon an ambulance and police cars arrived. Leno was found with a blood-drenched pillowcase over his head and the cord of a large lamp tied tightly around his neck. His hands had been tied behind him with a leather thong. A carving fork protruded from his stomach and the word "WAR" had been carved in his flesh.

In the master bedroom, they found his wife Rosemary lying on the floor, her nightgown up over her head. She too had a pillowcase over her head and a lamp cord tied tightly around her neck.

In three places in the house, there was writing which appeared to be in the victims' blood: on the living room wall, "DEATH TO PIGS;" on another wall in the living room, the single word "RISE;" and in the refrigerator door, "HEALTHER SKELTER," misspelled.

Eventually, all of the victims of the massacre at Sharon Tate's home were identified. The young man in the car was a teenager named Steve Parent who had come to visit Garretson, the caretaker. The two victims found outside the house were Abigail Folger and her lover, Voytek Frykowski. In the living room joined by rope were Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring.

A .22 caliber gun had shot Steve Parent, Jay Sebring and Voytek Frykowski. Of the five victims, all but Steve Parent had been stabbed repeatedly. Sebring had been hit in the face and Frykowski had been repeatedly hit on the head with a blunt object.

The stab wounds suggested that only one knife had been used for the wounds. The nature of the wounds indicated that something like a bayonet was the weapon. A strange knife, a Buck brand clasp-type pocketknife that the housekeeper could not identify was found very close to Sharon Tate's body.

Sharon Tate

Sharon Tate had been a beauty all of her life. Even as a child she had won beauty contests. But her ambition was not to be a model but a movie actress. Finally in 1963 at the age of 22 she found a sponsor in Producer Martin Ransohoff. With Ransohoff's help, she landed parts in the series Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction, and the movies The Americanization of Emily and The Sandpiper.

In 1965, she got her chance at her first feature role in the Eye of the Devil with David Niven and Deborah Kerr. In this movie she played the part of a country girl with special magical powers. While in London in the summer of 1966 for the filming of the movie, she met Roman Polanski, who had just made his mark as a director of the movie Repulsion with Catherine Deneuve and Cul de Sac, which had won many European film awards.

Polanski put Sharon as the lead in his campy film The Fearless Vampire Killers. During this period she became Polanski's lover. This relationship lasted quite a long time and shortly after the filming of Rosemary's Baby, he and Sharon married. In 1969, they rented the house on Cielo Drive from Terry Melcher, Doris Day's son and moved in mid-February.

Sharon's career never skyrocketed the way Polanski's did even with her role as Jennifer in Valley of the Dolls. A good part of the reason her career was going nowhere is that she never had an opportunity to show off whatever acting skills she had. All the roles she had were ones in which all she had to do was look pretty. Her career took a backseat when she became pregnant. The baby and her husband became the center of her life.

She was a unique lady according to most everyone who knew her. In spite of her beauty and remarkable figure, she was a very down-to-earth woman with none of the phoniness normally associated with starlets. She was very sweet and a bit on the naïve side. Everyone seemed to like Sharon even in a jealous, bitchy town like Hollywood.

Sharon's life was ended by five stab wounds in her chest and back, which penetrated her heart, lungs and liver and caused massive internal hemorrhaging. The remaining eleven wounds simply added insult to her savaged body.

Her little boy, Paul Richard Polanski died with her

Abigail Folger, Sharon's friend was twenty-five years old when she died. As heiress to the Folger coffee fortune, she had led a very comfortable life. She made her debut in San Francisco in 1961. She graduated from Radcliffe. Like many wealthy girls, she looked for something meaningful to do with her time and became very involved in social work.
In 1968, she met her lover Voytek Frykowski who introduced her to Sharon and Roman Polanski. She became an investor in Jay Sebring's men's toiletries and hair styling business.

Her social work in the ghettos of Los Angeles was beginning to get to her.

She started to feel that her contribution was futile in combatting the enormous problems of ignorance and poverty. She told her friends that she couldn't get away from her work at the end of the day. "The suffering gets under your skin," she said.

Her relationship with Frykowski was also a source of concern to her. The two of them had become much too dependent upon drugs. Both the frustrations of her social work and her problems with Voytek were the subject of her almost daily conversations with a psychiatrist. She had just about built up enough strength to break off her love affair and try to get her life back on track when twenty-eight stab wounds intervened.

Voytek Frykowski was thirty-two when he died. He had been a long-time friend of Roman's from Poland. He was, according to Polanski, "a man of little talent but immense charm." Always a playboy, he had no visible means of support, essentially living off Abigail's money. While he told people he was a writer, there was no evidence that he was anything but a very charming, extroverted and entertaining "druggie."

However dissipated his life was or charming his personality, it came to an abrupt end with two gunshot wounds, thirteen blows to the head and fifty-one stab wounds.

Jay Sebring was quite the opposite career-wise from Frykowski. He was the top men's hairstylist in the U.S. and was a major force in the development of a market for men's hair products and toiletries. His customers included Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, George Peppard, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. His new company, Sebring International would franchise men's hair styling shops and his line of hair products.

He was known as a ladies man and dated many different women. One of those women had at one time been Sharon Tate, who broke off her relationship with Sebring when she became involved with Polanski.

There was another, darker side to Sebring's exuberant sex life. He would tie up his girlfriends and occasionally whip them before they had sex. In spite of his flashy, successful outward life, there was reason to suspect that the real Jay Sebring was lonley and insecure.

A gunshot wound and seven stab wounds liberated him from his insecuritiesAside from Sharon Tate's baby, the youngest victim was 18-year-old Steven Earl Parent who lived with his father, mother and siblings in El Monte. At around 11:45 P.M. Saturday night, Parent had come onto the estate to visit William Garretson, the caretaker who was living in the guesthouse. Parent's hobby was hi-fi equipment and he wanted to show Garretson a radio he brought with him. Garretson wasn't interested and Parent left the guesthouse around 12:15 A.M.
The young man had just graduated from high school in June and worked several jobs so that he could go to college in the fall.

Instead he got four bullets from a .22 caliber revolver.

Leno LaBianca was a respectable businessman. His father was the founder of State Wholesale Grocery Company and Leno went into the family business right out of college. He was a man who was well liked and did not appear to have any enemies. People described him as a quiet, conservative person.

He died from the multiple stab wounds, twenty-six in all.

Rosemary LaBianca was an attractive 38-year-old woman of Mexican origin. She had been orphaned as a child and later adopted when she was twelve. She had worked as a carhop and a waitress. She met her first husband in the 1940's and had two children. After they were divorced in 1958, she met Leno when she was a waitress at the Los Feliz Inn.

Rosemary had become a very successful businesswoman. Not only did she run the profitable Boutique Carriage, but also her prudent investments in securities and commodities left her with an estate of $2.6 million. Not bad for someone who started life with no advantages and spent most of her career as a waitress and carhop.

She had been stabbed forty-one times, six of which were enough to have caused her death.

On two consecutive nights, seven innocent adults and one unborn child lost their lives in what seemed to be a senseless, motiveless crime.

However one feels about the lifestyles of the wealthy and glamorous, it is hard to imagine any social good coming from these vicious murders. Yet over the years, the perpetrators of these crimes and their persistent followers have tried to suggest that these killings were necessary and desirable.

This author hopes that nobody finishing this story will agree.

In his very thorough book on the case, Helter Skelter, Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi heaps a great deal of fault upon the homicide detectives of the Los Angeles Police Department. One of the examples he provides is the LAPD's slowness to connect the Tate murders with the LaBianca murders the following night and with the murder of Gary Hinman a few days earlier. Some of this fault on the part of the LAPD apparently stemmed from its lack of cooperation with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office.
The LAPD was approached shortly after the Tate-LaBianca murders by two LA Sheriff's Office detectives who told them of the July 31 murder of music teacher Gary Hinman. On the wall of the dead man's living room was written in his own blood "POLITICAL PIGGY," which seemed very similar to the words written at both the Tate and the LaBianca crimes scenes. Also, Hinman had been stabbed to death as had victims at the Tate and LaBianca homes.

Amazingly enough, the LAPD detectives refused to examine any connection between the deaths of Hinman and the people at the Tate house. Furthermore, the LaBianca murders were squarely in the territory of the LA Sheriff's Office and the LAPD had no interest
Had the LAPD detectives bothered to listen to the LA Sheriff's Office detectives, they would have heard that the Sheriff's Office had arrested a Bobby Beausoleil for the Hinman murder. A Beausoleil who had been living with a bunch of hippies led by Charles Manson. But, the LAPD had already decided that the Tate murders were a result of a drug deal gone bad and didn't want to hear about any hippies.

On the other hand, the LAPD had in custody one William Garretson, the caretaker on the Tate estate who claimed that he slept through the entire bloody ordeal. The case against the frightened young man never materialized after he passed a polygraph test.

Officials essentially discounted robbery as a motive for the crimes, even though Rosemary LaBianca's wallet and wristwatch were missing. In the two homes of these affluent victims there were many items of value, which had not been touched by the killers. Small amounts of cash lying around the Tate home were still in evidence and the purses and wallets of the Tate victims were intact.

The LAPD did investigate three alleged dope dealers that had once crashed a party at the Polanski's, but one by one the men were cleared of any involvement.

Likewise, Roman Polanski was interviewed for hours by the police and agreed to a polygraph examination. On August 15, he returned for the first time since the murders to the house on Cielo Drive, accompanied by psychic Peter Hurkos.

Polanski had been devastated by the loss of his wife and son and was enraged at the media circus that he walked into when he got back to the States. He lashed out at the newspapers for suggesting that he and his wife were Satanists, indulging in sex and drug orgies. "Sharon," he said, "was so sweet and so lovely that I didn't believe that people like that existed...She was beautiful without phoniness. She was fantastic. She loved me and the last few years I spent with her were the only time of true happiness in my life..."

He worried to the police that perhaps he was the target not Sharon. "It could be some kind of jealousy or plot or something. It couldn't be Sharon directly." Polanski did not believe that drugs were a motive for the crimes. His wife, although she had experimented with LSD before they met, was not a big drug user. "I can tell you without question," he told the police. "She took no drugs at all, except for pot, and not too much of that. And during her pregnancy there was no question, she was so in love with her pregnancy she would do nothing. I'd pour a glass of wine and she wouldn't touch it."

One month after the murders, Polanski, along with other contributors such as Peter Sellers, Yul Brynner and Warren Beatty, put an ad in the LA area newspapers for a reward:
$25,0000

Roman Polanski and friends of the Polanski family offer to pay a $25,000 reward to the person or persons who furnish information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer or murderers of Sharon Tate, her unborn child, and the other four victims.

It seemed like it was open season on theories. Everybody had a theory. The Mafia did it, the Polish secret police, etc. Sharon's father, Colonel Paul Tate, a former Army intelligence officer, launched his own private investigation. Letting his hair grow long and growing a beard, he started to frequent the hippie joints, the drug markets, hoping that he would get some tidbit of information that would lead to the murderers of his beloved daughter and grandson.

On September 1, 1969, a 10-year-old boy found a gun on his lawn in Sherman Oaks. He carefully took the .22 caliber Hi Standard Longhorn revolver to his father, who immediately called the LAPD. The gun was dirty and rusty and had a broken gun grip.

A couple of weeks earlier, the LAPD forensics experts determined that the .22 caliber revolver with the broken grip used on the Tate victims was none other than a Hi Standard .22 caliber Longhorn revolver, which was relatively unique and rare. Amazingly enough, two weeks later, an identical gun with a broken grip is turned in to the LAPD, tagged, filed away and completely forgotten.
A couple of days later, the LAPD sent out flyers to all personnel describing the murder gun and attaching a photo of the revolver. The flyer was also sent out to other law enforcement agencies around the country and Canada, while all the time, the gun sat in the Property Section of the Van Nuys division.

Three months after the murders, which had been separately pursued by the LAPD and the LA Sheriff's Office, neither group had made any progress. However, the detectives working for the Sheriff's Office were younger and more aggressive than their LAPD counterparts and came to the conclusion that the Tate and LaBianca cases were definitely connected. They had several suspects, one of which was Charles Manson.
Finally in mid-October, the LAPD began to talk to the Sheriff's Office and decided to investigate similarities between the murder of Gary Hinman and the Tate-LaBianca crimes. The investigation lead to the Spahn Ranch, which was the home of a hippie group that called itself the Manson Family.

The Spahn Ranch was in the mountains near Chatsworth. In the 1920's it had been the site for old cowboy movies. Author John Gilmore in his book The Garbage People describes the isolated old movie set:

The façade of the main street, a cluster of rundown movie buildings, had become a ghost town with its Longhorn Saloon, the Rock City Café, some stables, weathered props and old trailers. Millions of moviegoers once viewed this old "Wild West" setting, but the dust had settled. Rusted car parts littered the grounds and few visitors passed by...

Bobby Beausoleil, the man charged with the murder of Gary Hinman, had lived at the Spahn Ranch with the Manson Family.

His 17-year-old girlfriend told police that Manson sent Bobby and a girl named Susan Atkins to Hinman's house to get money from him. When Hinman wouldn't give them the money, they killed him. She also recalled that Susan Atkins mentioned a fight with a man who she stabbed in the legs several times.

When police questioned Susan Atkins, who was still in jail, she admitted that she went with Beausoleil to Hinman's home to get some money he had inherited. When he refused, Beausoleil slashed his face. The two of them kept Hinman prisoner in his home until Beausoleil murdered him a couple of days later.

At that point there did not seem to be any direct connection between Beausoleil and the Tate-LaBianca murders, except for some hearsay that Susan Atkins had stabbed a man in the leg. Gary Hinman had not been stabbed in the leg, but Voytek Frykowski had.

While she was awaiting trial for the murder of Gary Hinman, Susan Atkins was placed in the Sybil Brand Institute, L.A.'s women's house of detention. Her bed was next to that of 31-year-old Ronnie Howard. Another inmate, Virginia Graham, was a close friend of Ronnie's. Susan Atkins was a real talker. She had an almost unbelievable story that Ronnie and Virginia listened to with absolute amazement.
Atkins acted like a nut case: dancing and singing at the oddest times, oblivious to the seriousness of the charges against her and bubbling over with laughter and delight without any apparent reason.

In the course of conversation, Susan told Virginia that she was in for first degree murder.

"Did you do it?" Virginia wanted to know.

"Sure," Susan answered as though it were the most natural response in the world. But, the police thought that she only held Hinman while Bob Beausoleil stabbed him. In reality, Susan said, it was she who stabbed Hinman while Beausoleil held him.

She also told Virginia that her lover Charlie was Jesus Christ and he was going to lead her to a hole in the earth in Death Valley where there was a civilization down there. After hearing that story, Virginia was convinced that Atkins was completely nuts.

Several days later on November 6, Susan was again in a talky mood and mentioned the Sharon Tate murder. "You know who did it don't you?
Virginia said she didn't.

"Well, you're looking at her."
Virginia was horrified and asked why she did such a thing.

"Because we wanted to do a crime that would shock the world, that the world would have to stand up and take notice."

Atkins went on to explain that they selected the Tate house because it was isolated. Susan said they knew who the owner was but they didn't know or care who would be at the house that night.

Susan explained that there were four of them, three girls and a man, all of whom had been given their instructions by Charlie. When they got to the gate, the man cut the telephone wires. Next they shot the teenager four times because he had seen them.

When they got in the house, Susan said that in the living room there was a man on the couch and a woman on the chair reading. Then some of Susan's group stayed in the living room, while Susan went into the bedroom where Sharon was sitting on the bed talking to Jay Sebring. They quickly put nooses over Sharon and Jay's heads so that if they moved they would choke.

Frykowski ran for the door. "He was full of blood," she said and claimed that she had stabbed him three or four times. "He was bleeding and he ran to the front part, and would you believe that he was there hollering 'Help, help, somebody please help me,' and nobody came? Then we finished him off."

"Sharon was the last to die," Susan said with a laugh as she described how Sharon was begging her, " Please don't kill me. Please don't kill me. I don't want to die. I want to live. I want to have my baby. I want to have my baby."

Susan said she just looked at Sharon straight in the eye and said, "Look, bitch, I don't care about you. I don't care if you're going to have a baby. You had better be ready. You're going to die and I don't feel anything about it...In a few minutes I killed her."

Susan said she saw that there was Sharon's blood on her hand and she tasted it. "Wow, what a trip! To taste death, and yet give life."

Flabbergasted, Virginia asked Susan if it didn't bother her to kill a pregnant woman.

"I thought you understood. I loved her, and in order for me to kill her I was killing part of myself when I killed her," Susan explained. She had wanted to cut out Sharon's baby but there wasn't enough time. She had also wanted to take out all the victims' eyes and squash them against the walls and cut off and mutilate all of their fingers, but they didn't have the chance.

Susan told Virginia that after they left the Tate house she realized that she didn't have her knife with her any more. Not only that, she had left her palm print on a desk, "but my spirit was so strong that obviously it didn't even show up or they would have me by now." The four of them drove to a place where they were able to wash their hands and change their clothes.

Susan ended the story with admitting that they killed the LaBianca's the next night. "That's part of the plan," she explained. "And there's more."

This tale of murder had Virginia's head spinning. She told Ronnie Howard, who didn't believe the story. "She's making it all up. She could have gotten it out of the papers," Ronnie reasoned. Virginia came up with a way to test Susan about whether she was telling the truthSome years earlier when the Tate house had been up for lease, Virginia had actually been to see the exterior of the house on Cielo drive. When she saw Susan, she asked her if the house was still decorated in gold and white. Susan said no.

Virginia also picked up some miscellaneous pieces of information that tied Charlie and Susan to that house. It used to belong to Terry Melcher, Doris Day's son. Charlie and Susan were angry with Melcher for some reason that was not clear. She babbled something about Melcher being too interested in money.

Later that day, Susan began to talk again and gave Virginia the list of celebrity targets that were next on their list: Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen and Tom Jones. It was important to select victims that would shock the world.

She had planned to carve the words "helter skelter" on Elizabeth Taylor's face with a red-hot knife and then gouge her eyes out. Then she would castrate Richard Burton and put his penis along with Elizabeth Taylor's eyes in a bottle and mail it to Eddie Fisher.

Sinatra was to be skinned alive, while he listened to his own music. The Family would then make purses out of his skin and sell them in hippie shops. Tom Jones would have his throat slit, but only after being forced to have sex with Susan Atkins.
People who knew them but were not part of the group reported other confessions from Manson and Family members about the same time. On November 12, the L.A. Sheriff's detectives had a chance to interview Al Springer who was a member of the motorcycle gang called the Straight Satans who had been involved with the Manson Family off and on.

The detectives were astonished when Springer told them that a few days after the Tate murders that Manson had bragged to him about killing people: "We knocked off five of them just the other night." Springer stayed clear of Manson after that, but mentioned that Danny DeCarlo, another member of the motorcycle gang lived at the Spahn Ranch with the Family.
In the course of the interview Springer asked if anyone had their refrigerator wrote on? "Charlie said they wrote something on the fucking refrigerator in blood...Something about pigs or niggers or something like that."

When the police finally got to Danny DeCarlo, they really got an earful about Charlie and his Family. Not only did DeCarlo confirm their culpability in Gary Hinman's death, but he implicated them in the death of a 36-year-old ranch hand named Shorty, a nickname for Donald Shea. He was killed because he'd tell the owner of the Spahn Ranch what was really happening on his property. "Shorty was going to tell old man Spahn...and Charlie didn't like snitches," DeCarlo explained.

DeCarlo had been told what they did to his friend Shorty: "they stuck him like carving up a Christmas turkey...Bruce (Davis) said they cut him up in nine pieces. They cut his head off. then they cut his arms off too, so there was no way they could possibly identify him. They were laughing about that."

Another Family member named Clem told DeCarlo with a big grin that "we got five piggies" the day after the Tate murders.

The two detectives shared this information with the detectives at the LAPD, but the latter did nothing with the information. The L.A. Sheriff's detectives, on the other hand, now focused their investigation on the Manson family believing that the hippie cult was somehow tied into both the Tate and LaBianca murder cases.

At some point in mid-November, Susan Atkins told her story to Ronnie Howard. Ronnie Howard felt that she had to tell the police about what Susan had revealed, especially since other people were future targets of the group. She asked for permission to contact LAPD, but was repeatedly denied, even though the woman she asked permission was dating one of the Tate case homicide detectives. Virginia Graham, who had been transferred to another facility, was running into the same kind of difficulty when she tried to tell the authorities about Susan.

Finally on November 17, 1969, two LAPD homicide detectives came to Sybil Brand to interview Ronnie Howard. The message was finally beginning to penetrate the collective intelligence of the LAPD that they had just found a gold mine. After they interviewed her, they had her moved for her safety into an isolation unit.

Just who was this Charlie anyway? Both the LAPD and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office started to dig through the rubble of his heavily documented 36 years. As information came in about him, it was no surprise that he was in trouble. If ever a kid had a miserable start in life Charles Manson was it.

An illegitimate and unplanned child, he was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, November 12, 1934 to Kathleen Maddox, a promiscuous sixteen-year-old who drank too much and got into a lot of trouble. Two years later, Kathleen filed suit against Colonel Scott of Ashland, KY, for child support, which she was awarded, but never received. Kathleen was briefly married to William Manson who gave his name to the boy.

Charles Manson in Nuel Emmons' book Manson in His Own Words describes the Maddox family:

Kathleen was the youngest of three children from the marriage of Nancy and Charles Maddox. Her parents loved her and meant well by her, but they were fanatical in their religious beliefs. Especially Grandma, who dominated the household. She was stern and unwavering in her interpretation of God's Will, and demanded that those within her home abide by her view of God's wishes.

My grandfather worked for the B&O Railroad. He worked long hard hours, a dedicated slave to the company and his bosses...He was not the disciplinarian Grandma was...If he tried to comfort Mom with a display of affection, such as a pat on the knee or an arm around her shoulder, Grandma was quick to insinuate he was vulgar.

For Mom, life was filled with a never-ending list of denials. From awakening in the morning until going to bed at night it was, "No Kathleen, that dress is too short. Braid your hair, don't comb it like some hussy. Come directly home from school, don't let me catch you talking to any boys. No, you can't go to the school dance, we are going to church..." In 1933, at age fifteen, my mother ran away from home.

Other writers have portrayed Mom as a teenage whore...In her search for acceptance she may have fallen in love too easily and too often, but a whore at that time? No!...In later years, because of hard knocks and tough times, she may have sold her body some...

Charlie never knew his father and never had a real father figure. His mother was the kind that children are taken away from and placed in foster homes. Kathleen had a habit of disappearing for days and weeks at a time, leaving Charlie with his grandmother or his aunt. When Kathleen and her brother were both sentenced to the penitentiary for armed robbery, Charlie got sent off to live with his aunt and uncle in McMechen, West Virginia. The aunt was very religious and strict in stark contrast to his mother's permissiveness.

When Kathleen was released from jail, she was not responsible enough to take care of him, preferring her life of promiscuity and hard drinking to any kind of normal lifestyle. There was no continuity in his life: he was always being foisted on someone new; he moved from one dingy rooming house to another; there were only transitory friendships that he made on the streets.

Manson tells the story that circulated within his family: "Mom was in a café one afternoon with me on her lap. The waitress, a would-be mother without a child of her own, jokingly told my Mom she'd buy me from her. Mom replied, 'A pitcher of beer and he's yours.' The waitress set up the beer, Mom stuck around long enough to finish it off and left the place without me. Several days later my uncle had to search the town for the waitress and take me home."

John Gilmore in his insightful book called The Garbage People describes how Charlie adapted to this life of emptiness and violence:

He kept to himself. Though friendless, his young mind bypassed the loneliness of his surroundings. He watched, listened, pretended his imaginative resources knew no limit. And he began to steal, as if to hold onto something that continually flew away. There was a consistency and permanency to the habit of stealing and it became easier. With everything transient, the thefts and goods he carried with him offered a sense of stability, a kind of reward. An object owned gave identity to an owner, an identity that had yet to be acknowledged.

When he was nine, he was caught stealing and sent to reform school and then later when he was twelve, he was caught stealing again and sent to the Gibault School for Boys in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1947. He ran away less than a year later and tried to return to his mother who didn't want him. Living entirely by stealing and burglary, he lived on his own until he was caught. The court arranged for him to go to Father Flanagan's Boys Town.

He didn't last long at Boys Town. A few days after his arrival, thirteen-year-old Charlie and another kid committed two armed robberies. A few more episodes like that landed Charlie in the Indiana School for Boys for three years. His teachers described him as having trust in no one and "did good work only for those from whom he figured he could obtain something."

In 1951, Charlie and two other boys escaped and headed for California living entirely by burglary and auto theft. They got as far as Utah when they were caught. This time he was sent to the National Training School for Boys in Washington, D.C. While he was there they gave him various tests which established that his IQ was 109, that he was illiterate and that his aptitude for everything but music was average.

His keepers said this about him: "Manson has become somewhat of an 'institution politician.' He does just enough work to get by on. Restless and moody most of the time, the boy would rather spend his class time entertaining his friend. It appears that this boy is a very emotionally upset youth who is definitely in need of some psychiatric orientation."

That same year, Dr. Block, a psychiatrist examined him, noting "the marked degree of rejection, instability and psychic trauma." His illegitimacy, small physical size and lack of parental love caused him to constantly strive for status with the other boys. "This could add up to a fairly slick institutionalized youth," Dr. Block concluded, "but one is left with the feeling that behind all this lies an extremely sensitive boy who has not yet given up in terms of securing some kind of love and affection from the world."

For a short time, things started to look up for Charlie. His aunt had agreed to take care of him and his chances for parole were good. Shortly before the parole hearing, Charlie held a razor blade against another boy's throat while he sodomized him. Charlie was transferred to the Federal Reformatory at Petersburg, Virginia, where he was characterized as definitely homosexual, dangerous and safe only under supervision.

In September of 1952, he was sent to a more secure institution in Chillicothe, Ohio. His keepers there saw him as "criminally sophisticated despite his age and grossly unsuited for retention in an open reformatory type institution." For some reason, Manson suddenly changed his attitude. He was more cooperative and genuinely improved educationally so that he was able to read and understand basic math. This improvement lead to his parole in May of 1954 at the age of nineteen.

At first he lived with his aunt and uncle, then his mother for a short period of time. Early in 1955, he married a waitress who bore him a son, Charles Manson, Jr. Charlie worked at various low-paying jobs and augmented his income by stealing cars. One of them he took to Los Angeles with his then pregnant wife. Inevitably, he was caught again and eventually found his way to the prison at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California.

His wife had the good sense to divorce him after he spent three years in jail. In 1958, he was released on parole. This time Manson took up a new occupation — pimping. He supplemented this income by getting money from an unattractive wealthy girl in Pasadena. In 1959, Manson was arrested on two federal charges: stealing a check from a mailbox and attempting to cash a U.S. Treasury check for $37.50

This time Manson was lucky, a young woman pretended she was pregnant and pleaded with the judge to keep him out of jail. The judge believed the story and had pity on him. While he sentenced Charlie to ten years, he then immediately placed him on probation. A couple of months later, he was arrested by the LAPD for stealing cars and using stolen credit cards, but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence.
Near the end of 1959, Manson conned a young woman out of $700 in savings to invest in his nonexistent company. To make matters worse, he got her pregnant and then drugged and raped her roommate. He fled to Texas but was arrested and put in prison to serve out his ten-year sentence. "If there ever was a man who demonstrated himself completely unfit for probation, he is it," the judge said. Eventually at the age of 26 he was sent to the U.S. Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington.

His record there described Charlie as having "a tremendous drive to call attention to himself. Generally he is unable to succeed in positive acts, therefore he often resorts to negative behavior to satisfy this drive. In his efforts to "find" himself, Manson peruses different religious philosophies, e.g. Scientology and Buddhism; however, he never remains long enough with any given teachings to reap meaningful benefits."

By 1964, he hadn't changed much, as least as viewed by prison officials: "His past pattern of employment instability continues...seems to have an intense need to call attention to himself...remains emotionally insecure and tends to involve himself in various fanatical interests."

Whatever those "fanatical" interests were, they included an obsession with the Beatles. Manson's guitar was another obsession. He felt that with the right opportunities he would be much bigger than the Beatles. In prison, he became friends with the aging gangster, Alvin Karpis. The former Public Enemy Number One and sole survivor of the Ma Barker gang taught Charlie how to play the steel guitar. The prison record noted in May of 1966 that "he has been spending most of his free time writing songs, accumulating about 80 or 90 of them during the past year...He also plays the guitar and drums, and is hopeful that he can secure employment as a guitar player or as a drummer or singer."

Karpis had some interesting insights into Charlie's true personality: "There was something unmistakably unusual about Manson. He was a runt of sorts, but found his place as an experienced manipulator of others. I did feel manipulated, and under circumstances where it hadn't been necessary."

On March 21, 1967, Charlie was released from prison and given transportation to San Francisco. He was 32 years old and more than half of his life had been spent in institutions. He protested his freedom. "Oh, no, I can't go outside there...I knew that I couldn't adjust to that world, not after all my life had been spent locked up and where my mind was free. I was content to stay in the penitentiary, just to take my walks around the yard in the sunshine and to play my guitar..." The prison officials ignored his protest and unleashed him on the world again.

As poorly prepared for life on the outside as he was, Charlie was able to blend in with his guitar into the hippie scene in San Francisco. The high-point of the Haight Ashbury culture was past and the only ones left were the diehards and the last ones to the party. Charlie was never impressed by the hippie culture, but he lived off it and it didn't expect much from him. He learned about drugs and how he could use them to influence people.

Charlie started to attract a group of followers, many of whom were very young women with troubled emotional lives who were rebelling against their parents and society in general. He battered down their inhibitions and questioned the validity of their notions of good and evil. For the most part, Charlie's followers were weak-willed people who were naïve, gullible and easy to lead. LSD and amphetamines were additional tools by which Charlie altered their personalities to his needsIn spring of 1968, Manson and his followers left San Francisco in an old school bus and traveled around. Eventually, he and a few of his group moved in with Gary Hinman, a music teacher with a house on the Canyon Road. Through Hinman, Charlie met Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. Manson and his girls starting hanging around Wilson every chance they had. Manson tried to leverage the acquaintance with Dennis Wilson but it didn't go anywhere. Eventually, Wilson became uncomfortable with Manson and his girls and told them to split.

About that time, Manson found George Spahn and conned the old man into letting him and his followers live on the Ranch. Squeaky Fromme, one of Charlie's devotees, made sure that the elderly man's sexual needs were fully satisfied. The Manson Family survived by a combination of stealing and scavenging. Much of their food was taken from what the supermarkets discard each day.

Charlie was still hell-bent to market his music to somebody. Through his contacts with Dennis Wilson and another man in the music business, Charlie met Doris Day's son Terry Melcher. The plan was to interest Melcher in financing a film with Manson's music.

At that time, Melcher owned the house on Cielo Drive that was eventually leased to Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. At various times, Manson had been by the property in a car with Dennis Wilson.

Melcher was asked to listen to Charlie and decide whether or not he wanted to record them. Melcher went out the first time and listened to Charlie sing his own compositions and play the guitar. Some of the girls sang and played tambourines. Melcher went out a second time a week later, but the music was nothing he was interested in recording. What he didn't realize is that Manson had built this recording opportunity with Melcher into something very real in his mind. When nothing came of it, Charlie was plenty angry and blamed Melcher for his disappointment.

Another facet of Charlie, although not nearly as important to him as his music, was his philosophy. To a large extent, this "philosophy" was a con, something he dreamed up to impress his followers, but he probably believed some of it.

The core of this philosophy was a kind of Armageddon. Charlie preached that the black man was going to rise up and start killing the whites and turn the cities in to an inferno of racial revenge. The black man would win this war, but wouldn't be able to hang onto the power he seized because of innate inferiority.

In 1968, Charlie was forecasting racial war when all of a sudden the Beatles released their White Album, which had the song "Helter Skelter." The lyrics fit Charlie's theory to a tee: "Look out helter skelter helter skelter helter skelter/She's coming down fast/ Yes she is/Yes she is." Now, the racial Armageddon had a name. It was Helter Skelter.

Helter Skelter would begin, according to one of Charlie's devotees, "with the black man going into white people's homes and ripping off the white people, physically destroying them. A couple of spades from Watts would come up into the Bel Air and Beverly Hills district...and just really wipe some people out, just cutting bodies up and smearing blood and writing things on the wall in blood...all kinds of super-atrocious crimes that would really make the white man mad...until there was open revolution in the streets, until they finally won and took over. Then the black man would assume the white man's karma. He would then be the establishment..."

Charlie and the Family would survive this racial holocaust because they would be hiding in the desert safe from the turmoil of the cities. He pulled from the Book of Revelations, the concept of a "bottomless pit," the entrance of which, according to Charlie, was a cave underneath Death Valley that led down to a city of gold. This paradise was where Charlie and his Family were going to wait out this war. Afterwards, when the black man failed at keeping power, Charlie's Family, which they estimated would have multiplied to 144,000 by that time, would then take over from the black man and rule the cities.

"It will be our world then," Charlie told his followers. "There would be no one else, except for us and the black servants. He, Charles Willis Manson, the fifth angel, Jesus Christ, would then rule the world. The other four angels were the Beatles.

How did this hokey philosophy result in the blood bath at the Tate and LaBianca houses? Well, Charlie the Prophet had already forecast that the murders would start in the summer of 1969, but as the summer went on, it looked as though the "prophet" was wrong. "The only thing blackie knows is what whitey has told him," he said to one of his followers just before the murders. "I'm going to have to show him how to do it."

After the LaBianca murder, one of Manson's girls, Linda Kasabian, was told to take Rosemary LaBianca's wallet and credit cards and leave them in the ladies room of a gas station in an area heavily populated by blacks. That way, when, theoretically, the credit cards would be used by some black woman, it would appear that blacks were responsible for the LaBianca deaths. However, the credit cards were never used or turned in to the authorities.
On November 18, 1969, 35-year-old Deputy District Attorney Vincent T. Bugliosi was assigned the Tate-LaBianca murder cases. Aaron Stovitz, head of the Trials Division of the District Attorney's Office, was assigned as a co-prosecutor, but was later pulled off for another case.
Bugliosi had an unbelievably difficult job ahead of him. Not only did he need to prove that members of the Manson Family were responsible for the Tate and LaBianca murders, but he had to prove the Charles Manson ordered them to do it. While Manson had sent four Family members to the Cielo Drive massacre, he did not go himself. He did, however, tie up Rosemary and Leno LaBianca and gave three others instructions to kill them.

The prosecutor had to establish Charlie's dominance over the members of his Family and convince a jury that Charlie had sufficient motive to want these seven people dead.

At the beginning, he didn't have much of a case. There was Susan Atkins' story as related to Virginia Graham and the stories that Al Springer and Danny DeCarlo told the police, along with some comments from other people interviewed about Manson and his followers. It wasn't until December 3 that Bugliosi knew for certain who of Manson's Family had actually been involved with the murders. Manson had sent Charles "Tex" Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian to the Tate residence. Accompanying him to the LaBianca home was Watson, Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten. Atkins, Kasabian and Steve "Clem" Grogan waited in the car.

Atkins' testimony was deemed vital to the prosecution, but she was not offered immunity. However, if she cooperated with the prosecution, they would not seek the death penalty against her in any of the three cases: Hinman, Tate and LaBianca. The extent to which she cooperated would affect whether the prosecution would press for first-degree murder, life sentence, etc.

Things started to look up for the prosecution when a fingerprint of Patricia Krenwinkel's was found on a door inside of Sharon Tate's bedroom. This physical evidence was added to the .22 caliber bullets found at the Spahn Ranch (the gun used at the Tate murders was a .22 caliber revolver).

The first order of business for Bugliosi was to get grand jury indictments against Manson and the individuals involved in the murders. When Susan Atkins testified to the grand jury, she gave the same bloodcurdling story to them that she gave to Ronnie Howard and Virginia Graham. She showed absolutely no sign of guilt or remorse for the ghastly things she did. The jurors stared at her in disbelief.

Biker Danny DeCarlo testified that he, Manson, Watson and others had used a .22 caliber Buntline revolver for target practice at the Spahn Ranch.

He also said that the three-strand nylon rope that was used in the Tate murders was identical to the rope used at the ranch.

It only took the grand jury twenty minutes to hand down the indictments Bugliosi sought: Charles Manson, Charles "Tex" Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Linda Kasabian, seven counts of murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder; Leslie van Houten, two counts of murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder.

A few days later, the wallet belonging to Rosemary LaBianca was found in the ladies restroom at the service station where Linda Kasabian left it. The wallet had gotten lodged in the toilet tank. This piece of corroborating evidence was necessary to bolster Susan Atkins' story in case she decided to repudiate her testimony when Charlie started to pressure her.

Another critical piece of evidence was finally "found:" the unusual .22 caliber Hi Standard Longhorn revolver with the broken gun grip which had been found by Bernard Weiss' son and turned over to the police three and a half months earlier. Bernard Weiss after reading about the indictments in the newspaper called LAPD Homicide to see if the revolver he had turned in was the murder weapon.

After being passed around to several people, an officer told Weiss "We don't keep guns that long. We throw them in the ocean after a while."

Weiss said, "I can't believe that you'd throw away what could be the single most important piece of evidence in the Tate case."

"Listen, mister," was the official answer. "We can't check out every citizen report on every gun we find."

Weiss called a newscaster, who in turn, called the LAPD. The gun was "found" where it had been "lost" in the Van Nuys police station. After the tests had been run, there was no doubt that it was the murder weapon. One thing remained to be done — linking Manson to that particular revolver. Eventually Randy Starr provided that link. He once owned the revolver and had given it to Manson.

Another important development occurred when the police were contacted by the man who owned the place that the Tate killers had used to clean up right after the murders. The man had remembered the car and the license plate, which was traced to a Spahn Ranch employee, who had let Manson and his girls borrow his car.

Even though it was not necessary for the prosecution to establish the motive for the crimes, Bugliosi considered motive an important piece of evidence, especially since Manson was not physically present at the Tate murders. Bugliosi set out to establish that the primary motive was Helter Skelter: Manson's belief that he could start a race war and personally gain from it. But certainly, there was the connection between Manson's anger at Terry Melcher and the crimes committed on his former property. To further bolster that motive, it was established that two different people had chased Manson off the property a few months before the murders.
Rudi Altobelli, the man who bought the Cielo Drive property from Melcher, was an important man in the entertainment industry. He represented stars like Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda. Because he traveled so much, he rented out the property to the Polanski's and stayed in the guesthouse when he visited the area.
In March of 1969, Manson went to the house where four of the five murdered people were staying. Charlie said he was looking for Melcher. Sharon's houseguest sent him away in not too friendly terms, but not before he saw Sharon, who wondered what the "creepy looking guy" wanted.

Then Manson went to the guesthouse and told Rudi Altobelli that the people in the main house told him to ask at the guesthouse. Altobelli admonished Manson for bothering his tenants and told him he didn't know where Terry Melcher had moved.

Manson knew the layout of the house and he knew who was living in it. It was quite possible that the "Helter Skelter" crimes were committed at that particular house because Charlie wanted to pay back the residents for rejecting him and scare the daylights out of Melcher for not backing his recording career.

Manson himself became a major player as he appeared frequently in the courtroom. Bugliosi studied him and described the behavior he witnessed:

Though he had little formal schooling, he was fairly articulate, and definitely bright. He picked up little nuances, seemed to consider all of the hidden sides of a question before answering. His moods were mercurial, his facial expressions chameleon-like. Underneath, however, there was a strange intensity. You felt it even when he was joking, which, despite the seriousness of the charges, was often. He frequently played to the always-packed courtroom, not only to the Family faithful but to the press and spectators as well. Spotting a pretty girl, he'd often smile or wink. Usually they appeared more flattered than offended.

The trial officially began in mid-June of 1970. Judge Charles Older presided. He decided that the jury, once selected, would be locked up until the end of the trial — "to protect them from harassment and to prevent their being exposed to trial publicity." Older was given a bodyguard and his home was provided with protection.

The twelve jurors selected were five women and seven men with a range of ages spanning from 25 to 73. While many occupations were represented, one was a retired deputy sheriff.
In his opening statement, Bugliosi characterized Manson as "vagrant wanderer, a frustrated singer-guitarist...who would refer to himself as Jesus Christ...and was a killer who cleverly masqueraded behind the common image of a hippie that of being peace loving...but was a megalomaniac who coupled his insatiable thirst for power with an intense obsession for violent death."

Bugliosi stressed that Manson commanded his followers to commit the murders, but that "the evidence will show that they were very willing participants in these mass murders..."

Manson, who first appeared to the jury with a bloody X that he had carved into his forehead, insisted on defending himself. He was assisted by an older lawyer named Irving Kanarek, who was legendary for his attention to detail (much to the frustration of witnesses, judges and juries) and Ronald Hughes, "the hippie lawyer" who was Leslie Van Houten's attorney.

Critical to Manson's defense was maintaining control of the Family. If his followers testified against him, he was doomed. He had to set up and maintain an effective communications network between himself and the other Family members, particularly those under indictment. He needed the Family members who were not in jail to communicate his wishes to those who were.

Just how sinister this communication would be was evidenced by what happened to Barbara Hoyt. Hoyt was one of the prosecution's witnesses, who was threatened that if she testified at the trial, she and her family would be killed. She was then lured to Honolulu by one of Manson's girls and given a lethal dose of LSD. Fortunately, she got to the hospital in time for doctors to save her.

Manson was able to exert a lot of control over his girls in the courtroom. By then Susan Atkins had repudiated her testimony to the grand jury. They came up with bizarre stories that would implicate themselves but spare their beloved Charlie.

As the evidence was presented, things were looking bad for Charlie and the girls. A pattern was developing, according to Bugliosi: "The more damaging the testimony, the more chance that Manson would create a disturbance, thereby assuring that he — and not the evidence itself — would get the day's headlines. Often these disturbances would result in Judge Older removing them from the courtroom.

The drama hit a high point when Manson got into an argument with Judge Older and jumped towards the judge, yelling, "someone should cut your head off!" Atkins, Krenwinkel and Van Houten stood up and started chanting in Latin.

When Manson and his girls were removed from the court, a shaken Judge Older instructed the jury to disregard what they heard and saw, but the effect was indelible. The jury got a first hand chance to see the real Charles Manson.

After 22 weeks of trial, the Prosecution rested. It was time for the defense attorneys to do their part. Judge Older told the lawyers that were assisting Manson and defending the girls to call their first witness. The defense responded: "Thank you, Your Honor. The defendants rest."

The court was stunned. Then the three girls shouted that they wanted to testify. The judge and everyone else was bewildered. The girls had decided that they would testify that they planned and committed the murders themselves and that Charlie had nothing to do with it.

Ronald Hughes, Leslie Van Houten's "hippie lawyer" objected and stood up against Manson's transparent ploy: "I refuse to take part in any proceeding where I am forced to push a client out the window." A few days later, Ronald Hughes had disappeared. After the trial was over, his body was found wedged between two boulders in Ventura County. One of Manson's followers later admitted that the Manson Family had murdered him.

A new lawyer had to be found immediately to take over the defense. Maxwell Keith was appointed. When the court reconvened, Manson and the girls created a disturbance suggesting that Judge Older "did away with Ronald Hughes," which resulted in them being removed again from the courtroom.

For the most part, the lawyers for the defense put forth a disappointing presentation. Paul Fitzgerald, Patricia Krenwinkel's attorney, spent more time defending Manson than his client. Daye Shinn, Susan Atkins' lawyer made a brief defense for his client. Irving Kanarek went on for days in his rambling style. Finally, Judge Older accused him of filibustering. Manson, apparently also tired of Kanarek's exhausting argument, shouted at him: "Why don't you sit down? You're just making things worse."
On January 15, 1971, seven months after the start of the trial, the jury began to deliberate. Nine days later, it came to a verdict. Security was very tight around the Hall of Justice since a Manson follower had stolen a case of hand grenades from a Marine Base and reportedly had planned a special event on what they were calling "Judgment Day."
The jury had found Charles Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins and Leslie Van Houten each guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Charles "Tex" Watson, because of extradition proceedings and other legal complications did not stand trial until later in the year and was also found guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

On March 29, 1971, the jury completed deliberations on the penalty phase of the trial. Manson and the three female defendants had shaved their heads for the reading of their verdicts.

"We, the jury in the above-entitled action, having found the defendant Charles Manson guilty of murder in the first degree...do now fix the penalty as death."

Patricia Krenwinkel responded: "You have just judged yourselves."

"Better lock your doors and watch your own kids," Susan Atkins said.

All four defendants received the death penalty.

On April 19, 1971, Superior Court Judge Charles H. Older pronounced the judgment: "It is my considered judgment that not only is the death penalty appropriate, but it is almost compelled by the circumstances. I must agree with the prosecutor that if this is not a proper case for the death penalty, what should be?"

The judge shook the hands of each juror. "If it were within the power of a trial judge to award a medal of honor to jurors, believe me, I would bestow an award on each of you."

At a later date, Robert Beausoleil, Charles Manson, Charles Watson, Bruce Davis and Steve Grogan were tried and convicted for the murders of Gary Hinman and Donald (Shorty) Shea.

Bugliosi wrote," it had been the longest murder trial in American history, lasting nine and a half months; the most expensive, costing approximately $1 million; and the most highly publicized; while the jury had been sequestered 225 days, longer than any jury before it. The trial transcript alone ran to 209 volumes, 31,716 pages, approximately eight million words."

In 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in the state and all of the defendants are serving life sentences.

Right after the trial, there were a number of articles written that were favorable to Manson and his followers. For a while, it appeared that he might become some sort of cult hero. That never really materialized, however, and there is very little left of the Manson Family today. However, Manson still receives a large amount of mail, much of it from young people who want to join the Family.

There have been several plays about him, movies and documentaries and even an opera. Charlie's music has been played by the Guns N'Roses rock band.

Why, when other murderers that were responsible for many more deaths than Manson are forgotten by most people, does Manson remain so notorious?

Perhaps because the people they murdered and the ones they planned to murder were celebrities. Also, perhaps because of Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme's failed attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, even though it is unlikely that Manson put her up to it.

Bugliosi believes the notoriety continues because it is the most bizarre and strange, almost unbelievable, murder case in history. He thinks that Manson has become a "metaphor" for evil, catapulting him to near mythological proportions...People worry about this man the way they worry about cancer and earthquakes."

Manson endures, even as a sixty-year old, comparatively passive prisoner, unlikely to ever be paroled. Bugliosi sums up the continued fascination with the more fanatical elements of society: "Today, almost every disaffected and morally twisted group in America, from Satanists to neo-Nazi skinheads, has embraced Manson and the poisons of his virulent philosophy. He has become their spiritual icon, the high priest of anti-establishment hatred."
Charles Mansion

Self-styled guru and one time leader of the Manson family, he is serving a life sentence for murder after his original death penalty was commuted. He is currently being held in California's Corcoran State Prison. Although Manson, who turns 67 in November 2001, has been in prison for the last 33 years, his notoriety has not diminished as he has the dubious distinction of having received more mail than any other prisoner in the United States prison system.
According to a report on the Access Manson website, one of the many such sites dedicated to the subject, Charles Manson is currently under "disciplinary custody" in the prison's Security Housing Unit, known as "The Hole." He has been housed in the unit since February 2000 after he allegedly threatened prison staff. Being housed in the Security Housing Unit means Manson is kept isolated in his cell 23 hours a day, forbidden to interact with other prisoners and kept handcuffed while being moved within the prison.

According to a recent letter Manson sent to the website, he is due to be released from the unit in February 2002.
Manson is no stranger to the harsh conditions of the Security Housing Unit having spent eight stretches there for various offenses. The first was in 1989 when he was transferred to Corcoran from San Quentin State Prison after guards found a bullet in one of his visitor's pockets during a routine search.
During that time his period of detention was extended for "destruction of state property" when he allegedly tore a telephone receiver from the wall unit and "assaulted" a prison officer. The period was later extended to five years after he was accused of plotting to assassinate the President of the United States.

Following his release in May, 1994 he was transferred to the prison's Protective Housing Unit (PHU) and was allowed contact with other inmates and restricted privileges.
Three months later he was returned to "The Hole" pending an investigation of another alleged plot to assassinate the President. No charges were laid and he was released after three weeks.
Manson managed to stay out of trouble until March 1995 when he was charged with narcotics possession. Once again his period of detention was extended for allegedly threatening staff. In June 1995 he returned to the PHU for over a year until he was given a further two weeks detention for threatening a prison staff member with a chair.
In March 1997 he was charged with "conspiracy to distribute narcotics" and transferred to Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California, one of the toughest institutions in the country. During this period the media reported that Manson was the kingpin of a multi-million dollar drug distribution empire. After serving 14 months he was transferred back to PHU at Corcoran.
Also in 1997, Manson's parole hearing was videotaped and broadcast by Court TV. It was his ninth hearing. As before, parole was refused on the grounds that Manson "would pose an unreasonable risk and danger to society and a threat to public safety if released from prison."
In response, Manson stated:

"I accept this decision. That's cool. What I'd like for you to do in your own minds personally, everybody that has a personal mind of their own, could possibly consider that the longer that you let this conviction stand, and this little Helter Skelter scheme of the District Attorney to give his particular reality over into the play, that's going to be the reality that they're perpetuating. That's not the reality that I'm perpetuating. I'm not saying that I wasn't involved. I'm saying that I did not break man's law nor did I break God's law. Consider that in the judgments that you have for yourselves. Good day. Thank you."
Seven months later he was back in "The Hole" once again, charged with further "illegal business dealings" and served another two months.
During the following eight months in PHU, he was placed on "restricted status" for refusing to conform to prison regulations and had his visits and phone calls restricted.

As of August 2002, Manson continues to shuttle back and forth between "The Hole" and the PHU.

Manson's most recent and tenth parole hearing was April 24, 2002. He refused to attend it — allegedly because he insisted upon not attending the hearing shackled and the prison would not allow him to attend without handcuffs. No one was surprised when the board refused to grant him parole. The next hearing will be in 2007.

According to CNN, on June 28, 2002, Van Houten, 52, was denied parole. It was her fourteenth application.

One central issue is that prosecutors claimed that she stabbed Rosemary LaBianca 14-16 times, whereas Van Houten maintains that Rosemary was already dead when the stabbing occurred. Rosemary LaBianca was stabbed 42 times. According to Court TV's John Springer, "after the murders, Van Houten wiped the house clean of fingerprints and changed into a pair of Rosemary LaBianca's shorts. She grabbed cheese and chocolate milk from the couple's refrigerator before the trio hitchhiked back to the ranch where the Manson family lived."

Van Houten told the board, "My heart aches and there seems to be no way to convey the amount of pain I caused. I don't know what else to say."

The parole board suggested that Van Houten needed more therapy "to further understand the enormity of her crime." However, Van Houten's psychiatric evaluations "clearly indicate that she is not a present danger to society and should be found suitable for parole."

Linda Deutsch of Associated Press writes, "Of all the members of Charles Manson's murderous "family," Leslie Van Houten was always seen as the different one — the youngest, the one most vulnerable to Manson's diabolical control."

According to CNN, this latest hearing was supposed to be Van Houten's best chance for winning release because Superior Court Judge Bob Krug said that Van Houten, "has proven to be a model prisoner in the 30 years since her incarceration, completing all available prison programs and assisting other inmates with these programs...She has earned two college degrees and has maintained a clean disciplinary record in prison...she is serving a life sentence without parole, a sentence unauthorized by law."

Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay was present at the hearing to argue against parole for Van Houten: "This is not a garden-variety murder case and it should not be treated as such. I commend her for her good acts in prison and she appears to be a model prisoner. I think she should spend the rest of her life being a model prisoner. I feel because of what she did, she is not entitled to parole."

Judge Krug stated that it was the despicable nature of the crime that is preventing Van Houten from winning parole and gave the board two months to show evidence of why she should not be paroled and what exactly she must do to win parole.

Angela Smaldino and Louis Smaldino, relatives of the LaBiancas, were present at the hearing to voice their opposition to granting Van Houten parole. Also, some 30 letters were received by the parole board urging that parole be denied.

Christie Webb, Van Houten's lawyer, highlighted the fact that Van Houten was under heavy influence of drugs when the LaBianca murders occurred. "All that LSD changed the chemistry of her brain...I certainly have sympathies for the victims' families. But Leslie and her family are also among Charles Manson's victims. We are talking about one horrible night of violence in her life when she was clearly not in her right mind."
Charles "Tex" Watson
Is also serving a life sentence for the Tate/LaBianca murders, and is currently housed in Mule Creek State Prison in Northern California. During his time in prison, Watson has converted to Christianity, written several books, married, fathered four children and trained as a minister of religion. His wife, Kristin and their family live close to the prison where she operates a Web site for their ministry called Abounding Love Ministries, Inc.

On October 10, 2001, Watson was turned down again for parole at his thirteenth parole hearing and was told not to apply for another four years.

The Associated Press stated, "Watson made a personal appeal to the two-member panel of the California Board of Prison Terms, saying he takes full responsibility for his crimes and is now a different person who would never do such things again." However, a prison correctional counselor said that "Watson still poses an unpredictable threat to the community should he be released."

Debra Tate, the sister of the brutally murdered Sharon Tate Polanski, tearfully urged the board to deny Watson's request.

Susan Atkins

Is serving her life sentence at California Institution for Women at Frontera. During her time in prison Atkins has married twice. She was denied parole at her last hearing in February 2000. It was the tenth time she had applied.

During the hearing, Atkins told the parole board,

"I don't have to just make amends to the victims and families, I have to make amends to society. I sinned against God and everything this country stands for."

Sharon Tate's sister Debra also attended the hearing and read from a letter written by her father, Paul:

"Thirty one years ago I sat in a courtroom with a jury and watched with others. I saw a young woman who giggled, snickered and shouted out insults, even while testifying about my daughter's last breath, she laughed. My family was ripped apart. If Susan Atkins is released to rejoin her family, where is the justice?"

Atkins will not be eligible for parole for at least four more years.

Patricia "Katie" Krenwinkel

Is also serving life in prison at California Institution for Women at Frontera. She did not appear at her last parole hearing in 1997. Her next hearing is scheduled for 2002.

Linda Kasabian
Was granted immunity for giving evidence against Manson and other family members. Following the trial she left California. Her present whereabouts are unknown but she is alleged to have committed other criminal offences and served time in prison.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme
Was convicted of attempting to assassinate President Gerald L. Ford in 1975 and sentenced to life in prison. She is currently housed in the Administrative Unit of the Federal Medical Facility at Carswell, Texas. Originally housed in a prison in San Diego, she was later transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution in Pleasanton, California. Since that time she has served time in the Federal Correctional Institution in Alderson, West Virginia, a maximum security prison in Lexington, Kentucky and a maximum security unit at Marianna, Florida.

Sandra Good
Was convicted of "issuing threatening communications through interstate commerce" in 1975 and served ten years at the Federal Correctional Institute, Terminal Island, California. She was later transferred to the Federal Correctional Institute in Pleasanton and later to a prison in Alderson. Following her release, she moved to an area close to Corcoran prison, where Manson is held, and tends his website.

Steve "Clem" Grogan
Convicted and jailed for his part in the murder of Spahn ranch hand, Donald "Shorty" Shea, although Shea's body was never found. In 1979, Grogan agreed to tell authorities the location of the body in exchange for parole. Shea's remains were found and Grogan was paroled in 1986. His present whereabouts are unknown.

Bruce Davis
Is serving a life sentence in the California Men's Colony, San Luis Obispo, for the murders of Gary Hinman and Donald Shea. He attended his twentieth parole hearing in July of 2000. Parole was again refused.

Bobby Beausoleil
Convicted in 1969 for his part in the murder of Gary Hinman, he remains in prison despite numerous appeals and bail applications. He married in 1982 and is currently serving out his time in Oregon after being transferred there in 1993 at his own request.

He has spent his 30-plus years in prison focused on electronic music and video production. He has also cultivated a number of sponsors, which has resulted in the creation of a video production and audio recording studio in the prison. He is now the director of the Los Hermanos video project and has made 9 videos for "at risk" children. He has also made videos that help prisoners develop cognitive skills that will hopefully reduce recidivism.

The Crime Scene
According to an August 1999 Reuters news service report the house at 10050 Cielo Drive, rented by Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate at the time of the murders, was demolished in 1994. An Italian- style mansion has been erected in its place and the street address has been changed. The new mansion was originally priced at $12.5 million in an attempt to cash in on the locations notoriety but no sale was made. Recently, the price was reduced to $7.7 million but the house still remains vacant.

Real estate agents in the area believe that it will probably stay vacant as most agencies refuse to list it.

Spahn Ranch
The original headquarters of the Manson family is also on the market. The 43-acre property at Chatsworth, minus the ranch house, which burnt down some time ago, is selling for $2.7 million.

sharon tate - murder most foul pictures

2007-09-21T04:59:00.000-07:00

Ed gien- inspiration for movie psycho buffalo bull

2007-09-20T02:45:00.000-07:00

On November 17, 1957, police in Plainfield, Wisconsin arrived at the dilapidated farmhouse of Eddie Gein, who was a suspect in the robbery of a local hardware store and disappearance of the owner, Bernice Worden. Gein had been the last customer at the hardware store and had been seen loitering around the premises.

Gein's desolate farmhouse was a study in chaos. Inside, junk and rotting garbage covered the floor and counters. It was almost impossible to walk through the rooms. The smell of filth and decomposition was overwhelming. While the local sheriff, Arthur Schley, inspected the kitchen with his flashlight, he felt something brush against his jacket.

When he looked up to see what it was he ran into, he faced a large, dangling carcass hanging upside down from the beams. The carcass had been decapitated, slit open and gutted. An ugly sight to be sure, but a familiar one in that deer-hunting part of the country, especially during deer season.

It took a few moments to sink in, but soon Schley realized that it wasn't a deer at all, it was the headless butchered body of a woman. Bernice Worden, the fifty-year-old mother of his deputy Frank Worden, had been found.

While the shocked deputies searched through the rubble of Eddie Gein's existence, they realized that the horrible discoveries didn't end at Mrs. Worden's body. They had stumbled into a death farm.

The funny-looking bowl was a top of a human skull. The lampshades and wastebasket were made from human skin.

A ghoulish inventory began to take shape: an armchair made of human skin, female genitalia kept preserved in a shoebox, a belt made of nipples, a human head, four noses and a heart.

The more they looked through the house, the more ghastly trophies they found. Finally a suit made entirely of human skin. Their heads spun as they tried to tally the number of women that may have died at Eddie's hands.

All of this bizarre handicraft made Eddie into a celebrity. Author Robert Bloch was inspired to write a story about Norman Bates, a character based on Eddie, which became the central theme of the Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho.

In 1974, the classic thriller by Tobe Hooper, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, has many Geinian touches, although there is no character that is an exact Eddie Gein model. This movie helped put "Ghastly Gein" back in the spotlight in the mid-1970's.

Years later, Eddie provided inspiration for the character of another serial killer, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Like Eddie, Buffalo Bill treasured women's skin and wore it like clothing in some insane transvestite ritual.

How does a child evolve into an Eddy Gein? A close look at his childhood and home life provides a number of clues.Edward Theodore was born on August 27, 1906, to Augusta and George Gein in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Eddie was the second of two boys born to the couple. The first born was Henry, who was seven years older than Eddie.

Augusta, a fanatically religious woman, was determined to raise the boys according to her strict moral code. Sinners inhabited Augusta's world and she instilled in her boys the teachings of the Bible on a daily basis. She repeatedly warned her sons of the immorality and looseness of women, hoping to discourage any sexual desires the boys might have had, for fear of them being cast down into hell.

Augusta was a domineering and hard woman who believed her views of the world were absolute and true. She had no difficulty forcefully imposing her beliefs on her sons and husband.

George, a weak man and an alcoholic, had no say in the raising of the boys. In fact, Augusta despised him and saw him as a worthless creature not fit to hold down a job, let alone care for their children. She took it upon herself to not only raise the children according to her beliefs but also to provide for the family financially.

She began a grocery business in La Crosse the year Eddie was born, and it brought in a fair amount of money to support the family in a comfortable fashion. She worked hard and saved money so that the family could move to a more rural area away from the immorality of the city and the sinners that inhabited it. In 1914 they moved to Plainfield, Wisconsin to a one-hundred-ninety-five-acre farm, isolated from any evil influences that could disrupt her family. The closest neighbors were almost a quarter of a mile away.

Although Augusta tried diligently to keep her sons away from the outside world, she was not entirely successful because it was necessary for the boys to attend school. Eddie's performance in school was average, although he excelled in reading. It was the reading of adventure books and magazines that stimulated Eddie's imagination and allowed him to momentarily escape into his own world.

His schoolmates shunned Eddie because he was effeminate and shy. He had no friends and when he attempted to make them his mother scolded him. Although his mother's opposition to making friends saddened Eddie, he saw her as the epitome of goodness and followed her rigid orders the best he could.

However, Augusta was rarely pleased with her boys and she often verbally abused them, believing that they were destined to become failures like their father. During their teens and throughout their early adulthood the boys remained detached from people outside of their farmstead and had only the company of each other.

Eddie looked up to his brother Henry and saw him as a hard worker and a man of strong character. After the death of their father in 1940, they took on a series of odd jobs to help financially support the farm and their mother. Eddie tried to emulate his brother's work habits and they both were considered by townspeople to be reliable and trustworthy. They worked as handymen mostly, yet Eddie frequently babysat for neighbors. It was babysitting that Eddie really enjoyed because children were easier for him to relate to than his peers. He was in many ways socially and emotionally retarded.

Henry was worried about Eddie's unhealthy attachment to their mother. On several occasions Henry openly criticized their mother, something that shocked Eddie. Eddie saw his mother as pure goodness and was mortified that his brother did not see her in the same way. It was possibly these incidents that led to the untimely and mysterious death of Henry in 1944.

On May 16th Eddie and Henry were fighting a brush fire that was burning dangerously close to their farm. According to police, the two separated in different directions attempting to put out the blaze. During their struggle, night quickly approached and soon Eddie lost sight of Henry. After the blaze was extinguished, Eddie supposedly became worried about his missing brother and contacted the police.

The police then organized a search party and were surprised upon reaching the farm to have Eddie lead them directly to the "missing" Henry, who was lying dead on the ground. The police were concerned about some of the things surrounding Henry's death. For example, Henry was lying on a piece of earth that was untouched by fire and he had bruises on his head.

Although Henry was found under strange circumstances, police were quick to dismiss foul play. No one could believe shy Eddie was capable of killing anyone, especially his brother. Later the county coroner would list asphyxiation as the cause of death.

The only living person Eddie had left was his mother and that was the only person he needed. However, he would have his mother all to himself for a very brief period.

On December 29th, 1945, Augusta died after a series of strokes. Eddie's foundations were shaken upon her death. Harold Schechter in his book Deviant, explained that Eddie had "lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world."
He remained at the farm after his mother's death and lived off the meager earnings from odd jobs that he performed. Eddie boarded off the rooms his mother used the most, mainly the upstairs floor, the downstairs parlor and living room. He preserved them as a shrine to her and left them untouched for the years to follow. He resided in the lower level of the house making use of the kitchen area and a small room located just off of the kitchen, which he used as a bedroom.

It was in these areas that Eddie would spend his spare time reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories. At other times, Eddie would immerse himself in his bizarre hobbies that included nightly visits to the graveyard.

After the death of his mother, Eddie became increasingly lonely. He spent much of his spare time reading pulp magazines and anatomy books. The rooms he inhabited were full of periodicals about Nazis, South Sea headhunters and shipwrecks. From his readings Eddie learned about the process of shrinking heads, exhuming corpses from graves and the anatomy of the human body. He became obsessed with these weird stories and he would often recount some of them to the children he babysat. Eddie also enjoyed reading the local newspapers. His favorite section was the obituaries.

It was from the obituaries that Eddie would learn of the recent deaths of local women. Having never enjoyed the company of the opposite sex, he would quench his lust by visiting graves at night. Although he later swore to police that he never had sexual intercourse with any of the dead women he had exhumed ("they smelled too bad"), he did take a particular pleasure in peeling their skin from their bodies and wearing it. He was curious to know what it was like to have breasts and a vagina and he often dreamed of being a woman. He was fascinated with women because of the power and hold they had over men.
He acquired quite a collection of body parts, some of which included preserved heads. On one occasion a young boy that he sometimes looked after visited Eddie's farm. He later said that Eddie had showed him human heads that he kept in his bedroom. Eddie claimed the shriveled heads were from the South Seas, relics from headhunters.

When the young boy told people of his experience, his story was quickly dismissed as a figment of the young boy's imagination. Then somewhat later, the boy was vindicated when two other young men paid a visit to Eddie Gein's farm. They too had seen the preserved heads of women but thought them to be just strange Halloween costumes. Rumors began to circulate and soon most of the townspeople were gossiping about the strange objects Eddie supposedly possessed.
However, no one took the stories seriously until Bernice Worden disappeared years later. In fact, people would often joke with Eddie about having shrunken heads and Eddie would just smile or make reference to having them in his room. No one thought he was telling the truth or maybe they just didn't want to believe it was true.
During the late 1940's and 1950's, Wisconsin police began to notice an increase in missing persons cases. There were four cases that particularly baffled police. The first was that of an eight-year-old girl named Georgia Weckler, who had disappeared coming home from school on May 1, 1947. Hundreds of residents and police searched an area of ten square miles of Jefferson, Wisconsin, hoping to find the young girl. Unfortunately, Georgia would never be seen or heard of again. There were no good suspects and the only evidence police had to go on were tire marks found near the place where Georgia was last seen. The tire marks were that of a Ford. The case remained unsolved and wouldn't be opened again until years later when Eddie Gein was convicted of murder.

Another girl disappeared six years later in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Fifteen-year-old Evelyn Hartley had been babysitting at the time she had vanished. Evelyn's father repeatedly tried to phone the girl at the house where she was babysitting and there was no answer.Worried, the girl's father immediately drove to where she was babysitting. Nobody answered the door. When he peered through a window, he could see one of his daughter's shoes and a pair of her eyeglasses on the floor. He tried to enter the house, but all the doors and windows were locked. Except for one -- the back basement window. It was at that window where he discovered bloodstains. Petrified, he entered the house and discovered signs of a struggle.

Immediately he contacted police. When police arrived at the house they found more evidence of a struggle including blood stains on the grass leading away from the house, a bloody hand print on a neighboring house, footprints and the girl's other shoe on the basement floor.

A regional search was conducted but Evelyn was nowhere to be found. A few days later police discovered some bloodied articles of clothing that belonged to Evelyn, near a highway outside of La Crosse. The worst was suspected.

In November of 1952, two men stopped for a drink at a bar in Plainfield, Wisconsin before heading out to hunt deer. Victor Travis and Ray Burgess spent several hours at the bar before leaving. The two men and their car were never to be seen again. A massive search was conducted but there was no trace of them. They had simply vanished.

In the winter of 1954, a Plainfield tavern keeper by the name of Mary Hogan mysteriously disappeared from her place of business. Police suspected foul play when they discovered blood on the tavern floor that trailed into the parking lot.

Police also discovered an empty bullet cartridge on the floor. Police could only speculate about what might have happened to Mary because like the other four missing people, they had no bodies and little useful evidence. The only other common tie among these cases was that all of the disappearances happened around or in Plainfield, Wisconsin.

On November 17, 1957, after the discovery of Bernice Worden's headless corpse and other gruesome artifacts in Eddie's house, police began an exhaustive search of the remaining parts of the farm and surrounding land. They believed Eddie may have been involved in more murders and that the bodies might be buried on his land, possibly those of Georgia Weckler, Victor Travis and Ray Burgess, Evelyn Hartley and Mary Hogan.
While excavations began at the farmstead, Eddie was being interviewed at Wautoma County Jailhouse by investigators. Gein at first did not admit to any of the killings. However, after more then a day of silence he began to tell the horrible story of how he killed Mrs. Worden and where he acquired the body parts that were found in his house. Gein had difficulty remembering every detail, because he claimed he had been in a dazed state at the time leading up to and during the murder. Yet, he recalled dragging Worden's body to his Ford truck, taking the cash register from the store and taking them back to his house. He did not remember shooting her in the head with a .22 caliber gun, which autopsy reports later listed as the cause of death.
When asked where the other body parts came from that were discovered in his house, he said that he had stolen them from local graves. Eddie insisted that he had not killed any of the people whose remains were found in his house, with the exception of Mrs. Worden.

However, after days of intense interrogation he finally admitted to the killing of Mary Hogan. Again, he claimed he was in a dazed state at the time of the murder and he could not remember exact details of what actually happened. The only memory he had was that he had accidentally shot her.

Eddie showed no signs of remorse or emotion during the many hours of interrogation. When he talked about the murders and of his grave robbing escapades he spoke very matter-of-factly, even cheerfully at times. He had no concept of the enormity of his crimes.
Gein's sanity was in question and it was suggested that during trial he plead not guilty, by reason of insanity. Gein underwent a battery of psychological tests, which later concluded that he was indeed emotionally impaired. Psychologists and psychiatrists who interviewed him asserted that he was schizophrenic and a "sexual psychopath."

His condition was attributed to the unhealthy relationship he had with his mother and his upbringing. Gein apparently suffered from conflicting feelings about women, his natural sexual attraction to them and the unnatural attitudes that his mother had instilled in him. This love-hate feeling towards women became exaggerated and eventually developed in to a full-blown psychosis.

While Eddie was undergoing further interrogation and psychological tests, investigators continued to search the land around his farm. Police discovered within Eddie's farmhouse the remains of ten women. Although Eddie swore that the remaining body parts of eight women were those taken from local graveyards, police were skeptical.

They believed that it was highly possible for the remains to have come from women Eddie may have murdered. The only way police could ascertain whether the remains came from women's corpses was to examine the graves that Eddie claimed he had robbed.

After much controversy about the morality of exhuming the bodies, police were finally permitted to dig up the graves of the women Eddie claimed to have desecrated. All of the coffins showed clear signs of tampering. In most cases, the bodies or parts of the bodies were missing.

There would be another discovery on Eddie's land that would again raise the issue of whether Eddie did in fact murder a third person. On November 29th, police unearthed human skeletal remains on the Gein farm. It was suspected that the body was that of Victor Travis, who had disappeared years earlier. The remains were immediately taken to a crime lab and examined. Tests showed that the body was not that of a male but of a large, middle-aged woman, another graveyard souvenir
Try as the police did, they could not implicate Eddie in the disappearance of Victor Travis or the three other people who had vanished years earlier in the Plainfield area. The only murders Eddie could be held responsible for were Bernice Worden and Mary HoganWhen investigators revealed the facts about what was found on Eddie Gein's farm, the news quickly spread. Reporters from all over the world flocked to the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. The town became known worldwide and Eddy Gein reached celebrity-like status. People were repulsed, yet at the same time drawn to the atrocities that took place on Eddie Gein's farm.

Psychologists from all over the world attempted to find out what made Eddie tick. During the 1950's, he gained notoriety as being one of the most famous of documented cases involving a combination of necrophilia, transvestism and fetishism. Even children who knew of the exploits of Eddie began to sing songs about him and make jokes in an effort to, as Harold Schechter suggests in his book Deviant, "exorcise the nightmare with laughter." These distasteful jokes became known as "Geiner's" and were quick to become popular around the world.

Back in Plainfield, residents endured the onslaught of reporters who disrupted their daily life by bombarding them with questions about Eddie. However, many of them eventually became involved in the mania surrounding Eddie and contributed what information they had. Plainfield was now known to the world as the home of infamous Eddie Gein.

Most residents who knew Eddie had only good things to say about him, other than that he was a little peculiar, had a quirky grin and a strange sense of humor. They never suspected him of being capable of committing such ghastly crimes. But the truth was hard to escape. The little shy, quiet man the town thought they knew, was in fact, a murderer who also violated the graves of friends and relatives
After Gein spent a period of thirty days in a mental institution and was evaluated as mentally incompetent, he could no longer be tried for first degree murder. The people of Plainfield immediately voiced their anger that Eddie would not be tried for the death of Bernice Worden. Yet, there was little the community could do to influence the court's decision. Eddie was committed to the Central State Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin. Soon after Eddie was sentenced to the mental institution, his farm went up for auction along with some of his other belongings.

Thousands of curiosity seekers diverged on the small town to see what possessions of Eddie's would be auctioned. Some of the things to be auctioned off were his car, furniture and musical instruments. The company that handled the business of selling Eddie's goods planned to charge a fee of fifty cents to look at Eddie's property. The citizens of Plainfield were outraged. They believed Eddie's home was quickly becoming a "museum for the morbid" and the town demanded something be done to put it to an end. Although the company was later forbidden to charge an entrance fee to the auction, residents were still not satisfied.In the early morning of March 20, 1958 the Plainfield volunteer fire department was called to Eddie's farm. Gein's house was on fire. The house quickly burned to the ground, as onlookers watched in silent relief. Police believed that an arsonist was responsible for the blaze because there was no electrical wiring problems with the house. Although police carried out a thorough investigation, no suspect was ever found.

When Eddie learned of the destruction to his house he simply said, "Just as well."

Although the fire destroyed most of Eddie's belongings, there were still many things that were salvaged. What was left of Eddie's possessions would still be auctioned off, including farm equipment and his car. Eddie's 1949 Ford sedan, which was used to haul dead bodies, caused a bidding war and was eventually sold for seven hundred and sixty dollars. The man who purchased the car later put it on display at a county fair, where thousands paid a quarter to get a peek at the Gein "ghoul car." It seemed to the people of Plainfield that the public's fascination with Eddie would never end.
After spending ten years in the mental institution where he was recovering, the courts finally decided he was competent to stand trial. The proceedings began on January 22, 1968, to determine whether Eddie was guilty or not by reason of insanity, for the murder of Bernice Worden. The actual trial began on November 7, 1968.
Eddie looked on as seven witnesses took to the stand. Several of those who testified were lab technicians who performed the autopsy on Mrs. Worden, a former deputy sheriff and sheriff. Evidence was heavily stacked against Eddie and after only one week the judge reached his verdict. Eddie was found guilty of first-degree murder. However, because Eddie was found to have been insane at the time of the killing, he was later found not guilty by reason of insanity and acquitted. Soon after the trial he was escorted back to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

The families of Bernice Worden, Mary Hogan and the families of those whose graves were robbed would never feel justice was served. They believed Eddie escaped the punishment that was due to him, but there was nothing more they could do to reverse the court's decision.

Eddie would remain at the mental institution for the rest of his life where he spent his days happily and comfortably. Schechter describes him as the model patient:

Eddie was happy at the hospital -- happier, perhaps, than he'd ever been in his life. He got along well enough with the other patients, though for the most part he kept to himself. He was eating three square meals a day (the newsmen were struck by how much heavier Eddie looked since his arrest five years before). He continued to be an avid reader. He like his regular chats with the staff psychologists and enjoyed the handicraft work he was assigned -- stone polishing, rug making, and other forms of occupational therapy. He had even developed an interest in ham radios and had been permitted to use the money he had earned to order an inexpensive receiver.

All in all, he was a perfectly amiable, even docile patient, one of the few in the hospital who never required tranquilizing medications to keep his craziness under control. Indeed, apart from certain peculiarities -- the disconcerting way he would stare fixedly at nurses or any other female staff members who wandered into his line of vision -- it was hard to tell that he was particularly crazy at all

Superintendent Schubert told reporters that Gein was a model patient. 'If all our patients were like him, we'd have no trouble at all.'

On July 26, 1984, he died after a long bout with cancer. He was buried in Plainfield cemetery next to his mother, not far from the graves that he had robbed years earlier

Serial killers in cartoons

2007-09-20T02:02:00.000-07:00

Armin Miewes - Cannibal

2007-09-19T02:22:00.001-07:00

Judith Anne Dull killed by Harvey glatman

2007-09-18T05:26:00.000-07:00

Headlines

2007-09-18T05:17:00.001-07:00

Victim's head - on the table, not the woman

2007-09-18T05:07:00.000-07:00

work of vampire killer

2007-09-18T05:04:00.000-07:00

Chessboard

2007-09-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

Chess board killer

2007-09-17T06:51:00.001-07:00

A police manhunt in a Moscow park where 16 bodies have turned up in the last nine months has ended with the arrest of a man who could turn out to be the most prolific serial killer in Russian history.

The suspect, a 32-year-old shop assistant who lives with his mother, has been nicknamed “the Chessboard Killer” since his self-confessed aim was to murder 64 people, one for every square on a chessboard.

According to his own account, which is being painstakingly checked by the police, he managed to murder “only” 61 people over 15 years, three short of his target.

He was said to be particularly “excited” by the sight of crushed skulls and to have sometimes used a hammer to kill.

Identified only as Aleksander P for legal reasons, the man claims to have been consciously trying to surpass the number of victims notched up by the former Soviet Union’s most infamous serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo.

Chikatilo, known as “the Rostov Ripper” or as “the Russian Hannibal Lecter” raped, mutilated, murdered, and indulged in cannibalism. He is estimated to have killed 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990.

Newspaper cuttings relating to Chikatilo were found in a search of Aleksander P’s flat, as was a chessboard; 61 of its 64 squares were reportedly crossed through, the number of victims he claims to have murdered. Police also found a large stash of pornography, much of it violent, though there is no evidence that he raped his victims.

The shop assistant, an alcoholic loner reported to have never had any friends or girlfriends, has been quoted by the Russian media as telling police he killed for sport.

“It was all the same to me who I killed. I killed for the sake of the process itself. And, for the record, I wanted to kill as many people as possible and to beat Chikatilo’s record.”

He was arrested after a massive police manhunt for a serial killer – 16 bodies have been found in the last nine months in Bitsevsky Park in southwest Moscow.

The killer followed what became a familiar pattern, striking his victims with a heavy object around the back of the head after drinking alcohol with them.

Many of those he killed were elderly men and the murderer did not kill for financial gain, never taking money or belongings.

His calling card was some form of mutilation. He often punctured his victims’ lifeless skulls once or twice with the murder weapon after they were dead.

Police got their big break after finding the body of a 35-year-old woman in a river at Bitsevsky Park earlier this month.

The woman later turned out to have worked in the same shop as Aleksander P. She had suffered several blows to her head and small wooden stakes had been driven through her eyes and into her skull.

It later transpired that she had gone for a stroll in the park with Aleksander P that was to be her last. Crucially, she had left a note for her 15-year-old son beforehand, telling him where she had gone and with whom.

She had even written down Aleksander P’s telephone number which allowed the police to arrest him soon afterwards.

Police say they are 100% sure that he killed the woman but whether Aleksander P really is Russia’s most prolific serial killer remains unclear.

Though the authorities seem sure that he has murdered at least 10 victims they have yet to gather sufficient proof to back up his sensational claim that he has killed 61 people. He has been taken back to Bitsevsky Park where he has successfully pinpointed where he buried some of his victims but the police are nowhere near recovering 61 bodies and in some cases have found only skulls.

There is also a question mark over Aleksander’s sanity, with reports that he has done a stint in a home for the psychologically disturbed.

Under interrogation, he is said to sometimes become “hysterical” and parts of his confession are said to be vague and confusing, stoking police suspicions that he might be deliberately exaggerating the number of people he has killed, for effect

Chessboard killer treis to break record

2007-09-17T06:48:00.000-07:00

Moscow prosecutors yesterday read a grisly list of 49 murder charges to a man accused of being one of Russia's most prolific serial killers: a 33-year-old who allegedly planned to kill one person for every square on a chessboard.

Alexander Pichushkin, was accused by the prosecutors of killing 46 men and three women, throwing his first victim down a drain in 1992 before stepping up his macabre project in 2001 and bludgeoning many of his victims to death with a hammer.

His lawyer said the accused did not dispute the accusations.

However, when asked by the judge, Pichushkin himself refused to offer a plea, citing "unresolved questions of my personal character."

His lawyer later said Pichushkin was awaiting an answer to a request for a more comfortable cell. Prosecutors took two hours to read through the charge sheet, which became progressively more gruesome as details were given of the murders in the sprawling Bitsevsky park on the outskirts of Moscow.

Investigators said that Pichushkin, nicknamed the "Bitsevsky maniac" and "the mad chess player,", aimed to claim more victims than those killed by the infamous Soviet-era serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, who was convicted in 1992 of murdering 52 people.

"Wishing to kill the largest number of people in the southwest region Pichushkin got to know people.... Earning their trust under the pretext of honouring the grave of his dead dog he invited them into Bitsevsky park at various time," Moscow city prosecutor Yury Syomin told the court.

"Offering them hard liquor, he got them into a helpless state, and using the circumstances, killed them by various means."

One of his victims was thrown drunk from a 16-floor balcony.

Work of Aileen Wuornos

2007-09-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

"I'm supposed to die because I'm a prostitute? No, I don't think so. I was out prostituting. And I was dealing with hundreds and hundreds of guys. You got a jerk that's going to come along and try to rape me? I'm going to fight. I believe that everybody has a right to self-defend themselves." ______Aileen Wuornos

Aileen Wuornos Damsel of Death - Heliborne Hitchhiker - Highway Hooker

2007-09-17T06:37:00.000-07:00

"There's no sense in keeping me alive,
This world doesn't mean anything to me."
______Aileen Wuornos

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wuornos, was sentenced to death six times for killing middle-aged men when she worked as a prostitute along the highways of central Florida in 1989 and 1990. She has been on death row for nearly a decade.
Wuornos, the subject of a television movie "Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story" and an opera that recently opened in San Francisco, testified during her 1992 trial that she killed men who assaulted her and made her fear for her life.

She has been heralded in tabloid headlines and on television talk shows as Americas first female serial killer. In fact, Aileen Wuornos was neither the first nor the worst, although she did display a curiously masculine tendency to prey on strangers of the opposite sex. Suspected of at least seven murders, sentenced to die in four of the six cases she confessed to police, Wuornos still maintains that some or all of her admitted killings were performed in self-defense, resisting violent assaults by men whom she solicited while working as a prostitute. Ironically, information uncovered by investigative journalists in November 1992 suggests that in one case, at least, her story may well be true.

Americas future media monster was born Aileen Pittman in Rochester, Michigan, on February 29, 1956. Her teenage parents separated months before she was born, father Leo Pittman moving on to serve time in Kansas and Michigan mental hospitals as a deranged child-molester. Mother Diane recalls Aileen and her older brother Keith as crying, unhappy babies, and their racket prompted her to leave them with her parents in early 1960. On March 18 of that year, maternal grandparents Lauri and Britta Wuornos legally adopted the children as their own.

Aileens childhood showed little improvement from there. At age six, she suffered scarring facial burns while she and Keith were setting fires with lighter fluid. Aileen later told police that she had sex with Keith at an early age, but acquaintances doubt the story and Keith is unable to speak for himself, having died of throat cancer in 1976. At any rate, Aileen was clearly having sex with someone, for she turned up pregnant in her fourteenth year, delivering her son at a Detroit maternity home on March 23, 1971. Grandmother Britta died on July 7, and while her death was blamed on liver failure, Diane Pratt suspected her father of murder, claiming he threatened to kill Aileen and Keith if they were not removed from his home.

In fact, they became wards of the court, Aileen soon dropping out of school to work the streets full-time, earning her way as a teenage hooker, drifting across country as the spirit moved her. In May 1974, using the alias Sandra Kretsch, she was jailed in Jefferson County, Colorado, for disorderly conduct, drunk driving, and firing a .22-caliber pistol from a moving vehicle. Additional charges of failure to appear were filed when she skipped town ahead of her trial. Back in Michigan on July 13, 1976, Aileen was arrested in Antrim County for simple assault and disturbing the peace, after she lobbed a cue ball at a bartenders head. Out-standing warrants from Troy, Michigan, were also served on charges of driving without a license and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle. On August 4, Aileen settled her debt to society with a $105 fine.

The money came, at least indirectly, from her brother. Keiths death, on July 17, 1976, surprised her with a life insurance payment of $10,000, squandered within two months on luxuries including a new car, which Aileen promptly wrecked. In late September, broke again, she hitched a ride to Florida, anxious to sample a warmer climate, hoping to practice her trade in the sun. It was a change of scene, but Aileens attitude was still the same, and she inevitably faced more trouble with the law.

On May 20, 1981, Wuornos was arrested in Edgewater, Florida, for armed robbery of a convenience store. Sentenced to prison on May 4, 1982, she was released thirteen months later, on June 30, 1983. Her next arrest, on May 1, 1984, was for trying to pass forged checks at a bank in Key West. On November 30, 1985, named as a suspect in the theft of a pistol and ammunition in Pasco County, Aileen borrowed the alias Lori Grody from an aunt in Michigan. Eleven days later, the Florida Highway Patrol cited Grody for driving without a valid license. On January 4, 1986, Aileen was arrested in Miami under her own name, charged with auto theft, resisting arrest, and obstruction by false information; police found a .38-caliber revolver and a box of ammunition in the stolen car. On June 2, 1986, Volusia County deputies detained Lori Grody for questioning after a male companion accused her of pulling a gun in his car and demanding $200; in spite of her denials, Aileen was carrying spare ammunition on her person, and a .22 pistol was found beneath the passenger seat she occupied. A week later, using the new alias of Susan Blahovec, she was ticketed for speeding in Jefferson County, Florida. The citation includes a telling observation: Attitude poor. Thinks she is above the law.

A few days after the Jefferson County incident, Aileen met lesbian Tyria Moore in a Daytona gay bar. They soon became lovers, and while the passion faded in a year or so, they remained close friends and traveling companions, more or less inseparable for the next four years. On July 4, 1987, police in Daytona Beach detained Tina Moore and Susan Blahovec for questioning, on suspicion of slugging a man with a beer bottle. Blahovec was alone on December 18, when highway patrolmen cited her for walking on the inter-state and possessing a suspended drivers license. Once again, the citation noted Attitude POOR, and Susan proved it over the next two months, with threatening letters mailed to the circuit court clerk on January 11 and February 9, 1988.

A month later, Wuornos was trying a new approach and a new alias. On March 12, 1988, Cammie Marsh Green accused a Daytona Beach bus driver of assault, claiming he pushed her off the bus following an argument; Tyria Moore was listed as a witness to the incident. On July 23, a Daytona Beach landlord accused Moore and Susan Blahovec of vandalizing their apartment, ripping out carpets and painting the walls dark brown without his permission. In November 1988, Susan Blahovec launched a six-day campaign of threatening calls against a Zephyr Hills supermarket, following an altercation over lottery tickets.

By 1989, Aileens demeanor was increasingly erratic and belligerent. Never one to take an insult lightly, she now went out of her way to provoke confrontations, seldom traveling without a loaded pistol in her purse. She worked the bars and truck stops, thumbing rides to snag a trick when all else failed, supplementing her prostitutes income with theft when she could. Increasingly, with Moore, she talked about the many troubles in her life, a yearning for revenge.

Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old electrician from Palm Harbor, was last seen alive by coworkers on November 30, 1989. His car was found abandoned at Ormond Beach, in Volusia County, the next day, his wallet and personal papers scattered nearby, along with several condoms and a half-empty bottle of vodka. On December 13, his fully-dressed corpse was found in the woods northwest of Daytona Beach, shot three times in the chest with a .22 pistol. Police searching for a motive in the murder learned that Mallory had been divorced five times, earning himself a reputation as a heavy drinker who was very paranoid and very much into porno and the topless-bar scene. A former employee described him as mental, but police came up empty in their search for a criminal record. They could find nothing dirty on the victim, finally concluding he was just paranoid and pussy-crazy.

The investigation was stalled at that point on June 1, 1990, when a nude John Doe victim was found, shot six times with a .22 and dumped in the woods forty miles north of Tampa. By June 7, the corpse had been identified from dental records as 43-year-old David Spears, last seen leaving his Sarasota workplace on May 19. Spears had planned to visit his ex-wife in Orlando that afternoon, but he never made it. Ironically, his boss had spotted the dead mans missing pickup truck on May 25, parked along I-75 south of Gainesville, but there the trail went cold.

By the time Spears was identified, a third victim had already been found. Charles Carskaddon, age forty, was a part-time rodeo worker from Booneville, Missouri, missing since May 31. He had vanished somewhere along I-75, en route from Booneville to meet his fianc饠in Tampa, his naked corpse found thirty miles south of the Spears murder site on June 6. Carskaddon had been shot nine times with a .22-caliber weapon, suggesting a pattern to officers who still resisted the notion of a serial killer at large. On June 7, Carskaddons car was found in Marion County, a .45 automatic and various personal items listed as stolen from the vehicle.

Peter Siems, a 65-year-old merchant seaman turned missionary, was last seen on June 7, 1990, when he left his Jupiter, Florida, home to visit relatives in Arkansas. Siems never arrived, and a missing-person report was filed with police on June 22. No trace of the man had been found by July 4, when his car was wrecked and abandoned in Orange Springs, Florida. Witnesses described the vehicles occupants as two women, one blond and one brunette, providing police sketch artists with a likeness of each. The blond was injured, bleeding, and a bloody palm print was lifted from the vehicles trunk.

Eugene Burress, age fifty, left the Ocala sausage factory where he worked to make his normal delivery rounds on July 30, 1990. A missing-person report was filed when he had not returned by 2:00 A.M. the next day, and his delivery van was found two hours later. On August 4, his fully-dressed body was found by a family picnicking in the Ocala National Forest. Burress had been shot twice with a .22-caliber pistol, in the back and chest. Nearby, police found his credit cards, clipboard, business receipts, and an empty cash bag from a local bank.

Fifty-six-year-old Dick Humphreys was a retired Alabama police chief, lately employed by the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services to investigate child abuse claims in Ocala. His wife reported him missing when he failed to return home from work on the night of September 11, 1990, and Humphreys was found the next day in an undeveloped subdivision, shot seven times with a .22 pistol, his pants pockets turned inside-out. On September 19, his car was found abandoned, stripped of license plates, behind a defunct service station in Live Oak. Impounded on September 25, the car was not traced to Humphreys until October 13, the same day his discarded badge and other personal belongings were found in Lake County, seventy miles southeast of the murder scene.

Victim number seven was 60-year-old Walter Antonio, a truck driver from Merrit Island who doubles as a reserve police officer for Brevard County. Found in the woods northwest of Cross City on November 19, 1990, he had been shot three times in the back and once in the head. Antonio was nude except for socks, his clothes later found in a remote area of neighboring Taylor County. His car, meanwhile, was found back in Brevard County on November 24. Police determined that Antonios killer had stolen a distinctive gold ring, along with his badge, nightstick, handcuffs, and flash-light.

By that time, journalists had noted the obvious pattern detectives were reluctant to accept, and media exposure forced authorities to go public with their suspect sketches on November 30, 1990. Over the next three weeks, police received four calls identifying the nameless women as Tyria Moore and Lee Blahovec. Their movements were traced through motel receipts, detectives learning that Blahovec also liked to call herself Lori Grody and Cammie Marsh Green. Fingerprint comparisons did the rest, naming Blahovec/Grody/Green as Aileen Wuornos, placing her at the scene where Peter Siemss car was wrecked in July, but it still remained for officers to track the women down.

Meanwhile, Cammie Green was busy pawning items stolen from her victims, pocketing some extra cash. On December 6, she pawned Richard Mallorys camera and radar detector in Daytona, moving on to Ormond Beach with a box of tools stolen from Richard Spears. (She also left a thumb print behind in Ormond Beach, identical to that of Lori Grody.) The next day, in Volusia County, Green pawned Walter Antonios ring, later identified by his fianc饠and the jeweler who sized it.

With mug shots and a list of names in hand, it was a relatively simple matter to trace Aileen Wuornos, though her root-less life style delayed the arrest for another month. On January 9, 1991, she was seized at the Last Resort, a biker bar in Harbor Oaks, detained on outstanding warrants for Lori Grody while police finished building their murder case. A day later Tyria Moore was traced to her sisters home in Pennsylvania, where she agreed to help police. Back in Florida, detectives arranged a series of telephone conversations between Moore and Wuornos, Tyria begging Aileen to confess for Moores sake, to spare her from prosecution as an accomplice. One conversation led police to a storage warehouse Aileen had rented, a search revealing tools stolen from David Spears, the nightstick taken from Walter Antonio, another camera and electric razor belonging to Richard Mallory.

On January 16, 1991, Wuornos summoned detectives and confessed six killings, all allegedly performed in self-defense. She denied killing Peter Siems, whose body was still missing, and likewise disclaimed any link to the murder of a John Doe victim shot to death with a .22-caliber weapon in Brooks County, Georgia, found in an advanced state of decay on May 5, 1990. (No charges were filed in that case.) I shot em cause to me it was like a self-defending thing, she told police, because I felt if I didnt shoot em and didnt kill em, first of all ... if they had survived, my ass would be gettin in trouble for attempted murder, so Im up shits creek on that one anyway, and if I didnt kill em, you know, of course, I mean I had to kill em ... or its like retaliation, too. Its like, You bastards, you were going to hurt me.

Within two weeks of her arrest, Aileen and her attorney had sold movie rights to her story. At the same time, three top investigators on her case retained their own lawyer to field offers from Hollywood, cringing with embarrassment when their unseemly haste to profit on the case was publicly revealed. In self-defense, the officers maintained that they were moved to sell their version of the case by pure intentions, planning to put the money in a victims fund. To a man, they denounced exposure of their scheme as the malicious work of brother officers, driven by their jealousy at being cut out of the deal.

A bizarre sideshow to the pending murder trial began in late January 1991, with the appearance of Arlene Pralle as Aileens chief advocate. A 44-year-old ranchers wife and born-again Christian, Pralle advised Wuornos in her first letter to prison that Jesus told me to write you. Soon, they were having daily telephone conversations at Pralles expense, Arlene arranging interviews for Wuornos and herself, becoming a fixture on tabloid talk shows from coast to coast. In Pralles words, their relation-ship was a soul binding. Were like Jonathan and David in the Bible. Its as though part of me is trapped in jail with her. We always know what the other is feeling and thinking. I just wish I was Houdini. I would get her out of there. If there was a way, I would do it, and we could go and be vagabonds forever. Instead, Pralle did the next best thing, legally adopting Wuornos as her daughter.

Aileens trial for the murder of Richard Mallory opened on January 13, 1992. Eleven days later, Wuornos took the stand as the only defense witness, repeating her tale of violent rape and beating at Mallorys hands, insisting that she shot him dead in self-defense, using her pistol only after he threatened her life. With no hard evidence to support her claim, jurors rejected the story, deliberating a mere ninety minutes before they convicted Aileen of first-degree murder on January 27. Im innocent, she shouted when the verdict was announced. I was raped! I hope you get raped! Scumbags of America! The jury recommended death on January 29, and the following day Aileen was formally sentenced to die. In April, she pled guilty to the murders of victims Burress, Humphreys, and Spears, with a second death sentence delivered on May 7, 1992.

Around the same time, Aileen offered to show police where the corpse of Peter Siems was hidden, near Beaufort, South Carolina. Authorities flew her to the Piedmont State, but nothing was found at the designated site, Daytona police insisting that Wuornos created the ruse to get a free vacation from jail. They speculate that Siems was dumped in a swamp near I-95, north of Jacksonville, but his body has never been found.

The Wuornos case took an ironic twist on November 10, 1992, with reporter Michele Gillens revelations on Dateline NBC. Thus far, Aileens defenders and Florida prosecutors alike had failed to unearth any criminal record for Richard Mallory that would substantiate Aileens claim of rape and assault. In the official view, Mallory was clean, if somewhat paranoid and pussy-crazy. Gillen, though had no apparent difficulty finding out that Mallory had served ten years for a violent rape in another state, facts easily obtained by checking his name through the FBIs computer network.

The fascinating part about this, Gillen said, is here is a woman who for the past year has been screaming that she didnt get a fair trial and that everyone was rushing to make a TV movie about her--and in reality that comes true. (The first TV movie depicting Aileen aired on a rival network one week to the day after Gillens report.) Even so, Gillen stopped short of calling for Aileens release. Shes a sick woman who blew those men away, Gillen declared, but thats no reason for the state to say, Shes confessed to killing men, we dont have to do our homework.

On July 20, 2001, in court, Wuornos said she had lied in an attempt to beat the system: "I killed those men in the first degree, robbed and killed them."

She apologized to her victims' families and said there was no point in spending more taxpayers' money on her defense.

I wanted to clear all the lies and let the truth come out," she said. "I have hate crawling through my system."

She said she wanted to fire her state-appointed attorneys and end her appeals because she wants to come clean and make her peace with God. "I'm not scared by it," Wuornos said. "I know what the heck I'm doing."

The end for Wuornos came on October 9, 2002, when she was executed by lethal injection,

Wuornos' last night was spent talking with a friend from Michigan, Dawn Botkins. The pair talked from 9 p.m. to midnight Tuesday, and prison officials said Botkins planned to claim the body.

"She was looking forward to being home with God and getting off this Earth," Botkins told The Associated Press. "She prayed that the [souls of the] guys she killed are saved and that by her dying they will be saved.

"She was more than willing to go. It was what she wanted. Why would she want to fight and spend a life in prison?" said Botkins, who plans to scatter Wuornos' ashes in Michigan, their childhood home.

Officials said Wuornos declined her last meal of barbecued chicken but had a cup of coffee about 12:30 a.m. She went to sleep at 1 a.m., asking to be awakened at 5.

Prison logs show she had been increasingly agitated, sleeping restlessly and even shouting out in her sleep once.

Officials said she was calm Wednesday morning as she was placed on a steel gurney, her arms taped down to wooden paddles. Thick leather straps held her down from the chest to the feet. A white sheet hid the straps but revealed their outlines.

A clear tube wound its way from under the gurney and into a vein in her right arm, just at the soft spot where the inside of the elbow bends.

A female guard stood by her head; a male guard stood at her left side, in front of a curtained closet where an anonymous executioner waited for the warden's order to begin.

When the order was given, Wuornos blinked and swallowed hard.

She lifted her head in apparent surprise, then smiled at the assembled witnesses.

She put her head back and said something to a guard. A microphone carried her last words.

The microphone clicked off at 9:30 a.m. and sodium pentothal entered her bloodstream.

At 9:32 a.m., she made her last visible movement: Her eyelids fluttered, her lips parted as if to form a word.

She did not move again.

For the next 15 minutes, witnesses watched her lips turn an ever-darker blue and her skin a pallid white.

At 9:47, a doctor checked for a pulse and heartbeat. It was announced the death sentence had been carried out.

Wuornos became the third woman ever executed in Florida and the 10th in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Yes, I'd like to say I'm sailing with the rock,
and I'll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus, June 6th,
like in the movie. Big mother ship and all. I'll be back."
______Aileen Wuornos last words

Finger prints of Ed Gein

2007-09-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

Edward T gein aka mad butcher

2007-09-17T06:27:00.000-07:00

"Eating the flesh and drinking the blood? ..... I never felt capable of doin' that.
That's a catholic thing isn't it? I don't think my mother would have approved."
______Edward T. Gein

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name of birth: Edward Theodore Gein
Date of birth: August 27, 1906
Location: Plainfield, Wisconsin, (USA)
Date of dead: July 26, 1984, he died of heart and respiratory failure
Killings: 2 (could be more)
Ed Gein was the second son of Augusta and George Gein. He was born on August 27, 1906, near La Crosse, Wisconsin where he attended school with his brother, Henry. Ed insisted, "My mother is a saint," though every psychologist that interviewed Ed would state that Augusta was actually dominating, inflexible, and abusive. When Ed was eight years old, his family moved to a 195-acre farm just outside of Plainfield, Wisconsin. Ed quit school after the eighth grade to help his family run the farm. In his spare time, he'd perform odd jobs for other townspeople, who described Ed as being "likable, though a little quirky."

Eddie ran the family's 160-acre farm on the outskirts of Plainfield until his brother Henry died in 1944. On May 16, 1944, the brothers started a fire to clear some marsh land on their property, but the fire blazed out of control. They separated in order to contain the combustion but, afterwards, Henry failed to return to the house. Ed asked some men to help search for his brother but they were unsuccessful. However, later that day, Ed was able to lead a second search party (headed by Sheriff Engle) directly to where Henry's body lay. Ed's only explanation was, "Funny how that works." Henry's body was blackened with soot, but unburned. Although the sheriff noticed bruising around Henry's head, the coroner declared asphyxiation as the cause of death and no further investigation was pursued.

Ed and Augusta managed the farm until December 29, 1945, when Augusta died from complications of a series of strokes. Ed blamed her death on the degeneracy of the citizens of Plainfield, whom Augusta constantly complained about. Ed Gein, at the age of 40, was alone for the first time in his life. After sealing off his mother's room from the rest of the house, Ed began his plunge into madness.

Thanks to federal subsidies, Gein no longer needed to farm his land, and he abandoned it to do odd jobs here and there for the Plainfield residents, to earn him a little extra cash. But he remained alone in the enormous farmhouse, haunted by the ghost of his overbearing mother, whose bedroom he kept undisturbed, exactly as it had been when she was alive. He also sealed off the drawing room and five more upstairs rooms, living only in one downstairs room and the kitchen.

"Weird old Eddie", as the local community know him, had begun to develop a deeply unhealthy interest in the intimate anatomy of the female body - and interest that was fed by medical encyclopedias, books on anatomy, pulp horror novels and pornographic magazines. He became particularly interested in the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Second World War and the medical experiments performed on Jews in the concentration camps. Soon he graduated on to the real thing by digging up decaying female corpses by night in far-flung Wisconsin cemeteries. These he would dissect and keep some parts heads, sex organs, livers, hearts and intestines. Then he would flay the skin from the body, draping it over a tailor's dummy or even wearing it himself to dance and cavort around the homestead - a practice that apparently gave him intense gratification. On other occasions, Gein took only the body parts that particularly interested him. He was especially fascinated by the excised female genitalia, which he would fondle and play with, sometimes stuffing them into a pair of women's panties, which he would then wear around the house. Not surprisingly, he quickly became a recluse in the community, discouraging any visitors from coming near his by now neglected and decaying farm.

The beginning of the end for Ed was the disappearance of Mary Hogan. On December 8, 1954, a local farmer discovered her missing when he walked into the tavern she operated and the place was empty, except for a pool of blood and a spent .32 shell on the floor. A neighbor of Ed's had mentioned to him that, "if you'd spent more time courting Mary Hogan, she'd be cooking for you instead of being missing." Ed smiled and said, "She's not missing. She's down at the house now."

Bernice Worden, a woman in her late fifties who ran the local hardware store, disappeared on the 16th November 1957. Worden opened her hardware store early that day. Bernice's first customer was Ed Gein. She sold him some anti-freeze, wrote up his receipt, and watched him leave, forgetting his receipt on the counter. Bernice contemplated going out after him to present him with the receipt, but after a moment Ed returned. He asked Bernice if he could look at the Marlin .22 rifle. He had some shells in his pocket and wanted to see if the rifle could accommodate both the short and long .22 shell.

Mrs. Worden's son Frank was the sheriff's deputy, and upon learning that weird old Eddie Gein had been spotted in town on the day of his mother's disappearance, Frank Worden and the sheriff went to check out the old Gein place. When they arrived at the store they found the lights on, but the doors locked. When entering, they noticed that the cash register was missing and there was a pool of blood on the floor. On the counter still laid the receipt for the sale of anti-freeze to Ed Gein.

That evening, Ed Gein was taken into custody. When he was questioned about his activities for the day, Gein abruptly stated, "Somebody framed me for Mrs. Worden," even though there had been no mention of the crime.

Several officials went to Gein's farmhouse to look for evidence, the gruesome evidence proved that Gein's bizarre obsessions had finally exploded into murder, and much, much worse. In the woodshed of the farm was the naked, headless body of Bernice Worden, hanging upside down from a meat hook and slit open down the front. Her head and intestines were discovered in a box, and her heart on a plate in the dining room. The skins from ten human heads were found preserved, and another skin taken from the upper torso of a woman was rolled up on the floor. There was a belt fashioned from carved-off nipples, a chair upholstered in human skin, the crown of a skull used as a soup-bowl, lampshades covered in flesh pilled taut, a table propped up by a human shinbones, and a refrigerator full of human organs. The four posts on Gein's bed were topped with skulls and a human head hung on the wall alongside nine death-masks - the skinned faces of women - and decorative bracelets made out of human skin. The stunned searchers also uncovered a soup bowls fashioned from skulls, a shoebox full of female genitalia, faces stuffed with newspapers and mounted like hunting trophies on the walls, and a "mammary vest" flayed from the torso of a woman. Gein later confessed that he enjoyed dressing himself in this and other human-skin garments and pretending he was his own mother.

The scattered remains of an estimated fifteen bodies were found at the farmhouse when Gein was eventually arrested, but he could not remember how many murders he had actually committed. The discovery of these Gothic horrors sent shock waves throughout Eisenhower-era America. In Wisconsin itself, Gein quickly entered local folklore. Within weeks of his arrest, macabre Jokes called "Geiners" became a statewide craze. The country as a whole learned about Gein in December 1957, when both Life and Time magazines ran features on his "house of horrors."

After ten years in a mental hospital, Gein was judged competent to stand trial. Although considered fit to stand trial, Eddie was found guilty, but criminally insane. He was first committed to the Central State Hospital at Waupon, and then in 1978 he was moved to the Mendota Mental Health Institute where he died in the geriatric ward in 1984, aged seventy-seven. It is said he was always a model prisoner - gentle, polite and discreet. He died of respiratory and heart failure on 26 July 1984.

By then, however, Gein had already achieved pop immortality, thanks to horror writer Robert Bloch, who had the inspired idea of creating a fictional character based on Gein-a deranged mama's boy named Norman Bates. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock transformed Bloch's pulp chiller, "Psycho", into a cinematic masterpiece. Insofar as "Psycho" initiated the craze for "slasher" movies, Gein is revered by horror buffs as the the prototype of every knife-, axe-, and cleaver-wielding maniac who has stalked America's movie screens for the past thirty years.

There are some obvious similarities between Hitchcock's reclusive Norman Bates and the apparently inoffensive but secretly deranged, mother-fixated Gein. Hitchcock's "Psycho" led on, of course, to a plethora of pale imitators: "Psycho 2", written by Tom Holland and directed by Richard Franklin, "Psycho III" (1986), written by Charles Edward Pogue and directed by Anthony Perkins, and Mick Garris's "Psycho IV: The Beginning" (1990), which was made for cable TV, and went straight to video in Europe. The Gein case also provided a basis for the 1967 monster movie "It", ostensibly based on the mythical Jewish folk demon, the Golem, in which mad curator Roddy McDowall carries on conversations with the rotten corpse of his mother, which he keeps at home in her bed.

"The Texas Chain Saw Massacre... What happened is true! Now the movie that's just as real!", screamed the posters for Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic of independent cinema. Whilst not a literal rendition of the Gein case, the terrible house in Chain Saw, with its bizarre artifacts made out of human detritus - armchairs that bear human arms, lamps made out of human hands - resembles the Gein homestead in many of its particulars, and the crazy Leatherface, who hangs up his victims alive on meat hooks, also sports a grotesque mask fashioned from stitched together pieces of human skin. In Joseph Ellison's 1980 study of psychopathic child-abuse "Don't Go In The House", Donny (Dan Grimaldi) keeps the corpse of his religious fanatic mother in his apartment, and, as a consequence of her nasty habit of burning his arms when he misbehaved as a child, enjoys nothing better than bringing a young woman home and frying her up alive. In William Lustig's "Maniac" (1980), the eponymous Oedipal killer indulges in garroting, deception, shooting and scalping, with the murderer's scalp collection adorning a row of tailor's mannequins.

Gein's fondness for wearing human flesh resurfaced again in 1991 as one inspirations for the character Buffalo Bill in Jonathan Demme's "Silence of the Lambs", the homosexual psycho killer so named because he liked to "skin his humps". Gein was also the inspiration for the psycho-biopic "Deranged", a 1974 offering from American-International Pictures, co-written and co-directed by Alan Ormsby, and the lesser known but equally reverential "Three On A Meathook" (1973), directed by small-time auteur William Girdler and filmed in Louisville, Kentucky. It also seems likely that Jorg Buttgereit, a self-confessed "Geinophile", was influenced by Eddie's predilections whilst making his paeans to necrophilia, "Nekromantik" (1988) and "Nekromantik 2" (1991).

A list of the artifacts found in Geins home after the raid of the local Sherrif:

The headless body of Bernice hanging from a block and tackle in an outdoor lean-to, gutted like a deer.
Human bodies hanging from hooks set in the basement walls.
In a cup in the kitchen where 4 noses
Bracelets made from human skin
Table with shinbone legs
Lips hanging from a string
In pan on stove there was a humanheart (Wordens)
Chair covered in human skin
Hanging human head
A bowl made from the top of the human skull
Refrigirator contained human organs and body organs
Skinned womans faces used as decorative masks
Lampshade covered in human skin
Belt made of nipples
9 salted vulvas contained in a shoebox
A complete suit made from the skin of a female, complete with masks and breasts
Between 1946 and 1958, the areas surrounding Plainfield experienced a series of unexplained disappearances. Eight year old Georgia Weckler disappeared after a babysitter dropped her off in the driveway of her home. Victor Travis, his dog, and a friend never returned from a deerhunting excursion. Fifteen year old Evelyn Hartley was abducted from a house where she was babysitting. None of these bodies, nor others whom had disappeared, were ever found.

It is still not known how many of these Gein had killed or how many he had dug up.

dutch nurse

2007-09-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

A Dutch nurse has been accused of murdering 14 people, according to public prosecutors.

Her victims are said to include babies, young children and elderly patients at four hospitals in The Hague.

Prosecutors have described the woman as a "classic psychopath".

The killings are alleged to have taken place over a four-year period between February 1997 and September 2001.

The nurse, who has also been charged with four attempted murders, is due to go on trial in The Hague in June.

The woman, aged 40, is accused of killing five babies and children and nine elderly people in her care, by giving them a lethal dose of drugs.

"The nurse is suspected of killing the victims by giving them substances such as potassium... and morphine," Hague prosecutors said in a statement.

"In certain cases, the nature of the deadly substance could not be determined."

British nurse Beverley Allitt was jailed for the murder of four babies in her care.

Some of the deaths were said to have occurred in a children's ward and a prison infirmary, but the prosecutors' statement gave no indication of the illnesses suffered by the victims.

hillside serial murderers

2007-09-17T04:28:00.000-07:00

Born to a prostitute mother in Rochester, New York, during May 1951, Ken Bianchi was given up for adoption as an infant. By age eleven, he was falling behind in his school work, given to furious tantrums in class and at home. Married briefly at 18, he would write to a girlfriend two years later, claiming he had killed a local man. She laughed it off, dismissing it as part of Ken's incessant macho posturing, but homicide was preying on Bianchi's mind. By 1973, he was certain police suspected him of involvement in Rochester's brutal "alphabet murders." The case got its popular name from the initials of three young victims, raped and murdered over a two-year period. Carmen Colon, age 11, had been the first to die, in 1971. Walda Walkowicz was next, in 1972, and the killer's victim for 1973 had been 10-year-old Michelle Maenza. In fact, police were not suspicious of Bianchi while he lived in Rochester; it would be six more years before they realized his car resembled one reported near the scene of one "alphabet" slaying.
Kenneth Bianchi - A Youger Man, and As Adult Killer - He Spent A Lot of Time In Court
In January 1976, Bianchi pulled up stakes and moved to Los Angeles, teaming up with his adopted cousin, Angelo Buono, in an amateur white-slave racket. Born at Rochester in October 1934, Buono was a child of divorce, transported across country by his mother at age five. By fourteen, he was stealing cars and displaying a precocious obsession with sodomy. Sentenced for auto theft in 1950, he escaped from the California Youth Authority and was recaptured in December 1951. As a young man, Buono idolized convicted sex offender Caryl Chessman, and in later years he would emulate the so-called "red-light" rapist's method of procuring victims. In the meantime, though, he fathered several children, viciously abusing several wives and girlfriends in the process. Somehow, in defiance of his violent temper and almost simian appearance, he attracted scores of women, dazzling cousin Kenneth with his "harem" and his method of recruiting prostitutes through rape and torture. Two of Buono's favorite hookers managed to escape his clutches during 1977, and Bianchi would later mark their departure as a starting point for L.A.'s reign of terror. In precisely two months time, the so-called "Hillside Stranglers" would abduct and slay ten women, frequently abandoning their naked bodies in a kind of grim display, as if to taunt authorities.

Rejected by the Glendale and Los Angeles police departments, longing for a chance to throw his weight around and show some "real authority," Bianchi fell in line with Angelo's suggestions that they should impersonate policemen, stopping female motorists or nabbing prostitutes, according to their whim. Along the way, they would subject their captives to an ordeal of torture, sexual assault and brutality, inevitably ending with a twist of the garrote. Yolanda Washington, a 19-year-old hooker, was the first to die, murdered on October 17, her nude body discovered the next day near Universal City. Two weeks later, on October 31, police retrieved the corpse of 15-year-old Judith Miller from a flowerbed in La Cresenta. Elissa Kastin, a 21-year-old Hollywood waitress, was abducted and slain November 5, her body discovered next morning on a highway embankment in Glendale. On November 8, Jane King, aspiring actress and model, was kidnapped, raped, and suffocated, her body dumped on an off-ramp of the Golden State Freeway, undiscovered until November 22.
By that time, female residents of Los Angeles were living a nightmare. No less than three victims had been discovered on November 20, including 20-year-old honor student Kristina Wechler, dumped in Highland Park, and two classmates from junior high school, Sonja Johnson and Dolores Cepeda, discovered in Elysian Park a week after their disappearance from a local bus stop. Retrieval of Jane King's body increased local anxiety, and Thanksgiving week climaxed with the death of Lauren Wagner, and 18-year-old student, found in the Glendale hills on November 29. By that time, police knew they were looking for dual suspects, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses including one prospective victim - the daughter of screen star Peter Lorre - who had managed to avoid the stranglers' clutches. On December 9, prostitute Kimberly Martin answered her last out-call in Glendale, turning up nude and dead on an Echo Park hillside next morning. The last to die, at least in California, was Cindy Hudspeth, found in the trunk of her car after it was pushed over a cliff in the Angeles National Forest. Bianchi sensed that it was time to try a change of scene. Moving to Bellingham, Washington, he found work as a security guard, flirting once more with the police work he craved. On January 11, 1979, Diane Wilder and Karen Mandic were raped and murdered in Bellingham, last seen alive when they went to check out a potential house-sitting job. Bianchi had been their contact, and inconsistent answers led police to hold him for further investigation. A search of his home turned up items stolen from sites he was paid to guard, and further evidence finally linked him with the Bellingham murders. Collaboration with L.A. authorities led to Bianchi's indictment in five of the Hillside murders, during June 1979.
In custody, Bianchi first denied everything, then feigned submission to hypnosis, manufacturing multiple personalities in his bid to support an insanity defense. Psychiatrists saw through the ruse, and after his indictment, in Los Angeles, Ken agreed to testify against his cousin. His guilty plea to five new counts of homicide was followed by Buono's arrest, in October 1979, and Angelo was indicted on ten counts of first-degree murder. A ten-month preliminary hearing climaxed in March 1981, with Angelo ordered to stand trial on all counts.
Bianchi, meanwhile, was desperately seeking some way to save himself. In June 1980, he received a letter from Veronica Lynn Compton, a 23-year-old poet, playwright, and aspiring actress, who sought Ken's opinion on her new play (dealing with a female serial killer). Correspondence and conversations revealed her bizarre obsession with murder, mutilation, and necrophilia, encouraging Bianchi to suggest a bizarre defense strategy. Without a second thought, Veronica agreed to visit Bellingham, strangle a woman there, and deposit specimens of Bianchi's sperm at the scene, leading police to believe the "real killer" was still at large. On September 16, 1980, Compton visited Bianchi in prison, receiving a book with part of a rubber glove inside, containing his semen. Flying north to Bellingham, she picked out a female victim but bungled the murder attempt. Arrested in California on October 3, Compton was convicted in Washington during 1981 and sentenced to prison, with no hope of parole before 1994.
In confinement, she soon tired of writing to Bianchi and turned her attentions to serial slayer Douglas Clark, awaiting execution at San Quentin. Their torrid correspondence struck a consistently ghoulish note, as when Compton wrote to Clark, "Our humor is unusual. I wonder why others don't see the necrophiliac aspects of existence as we do."

As Buono's trial date approached, Bianchi began a series of contradictory statements, leading prosecutors to seek dismissal of all charges in July 1981. A courageous judge, Ronald George, refused to postpone the trial, which eventually lasted from November 1981 to November 1983. Convicted on nine counts of murder - excluding Yolanda Washington's - Buono was sentenced to nine terms of life without parole. His cousin was returned to Washington, for completion of two corresponding terms in the Bellingham case. On September 21, 2002, Buono died in prison from "unknown causes." He left behind a wife, Christine Kizoka, whom he married while in jail in 1986.

Ed gien

2007-09-17T04:21:00.000-07:00

Meet America's Psychopath King, Ed Gein. Two movies, precursors to two genres, were made based on his exploits: Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ed once joked that he had a "collection of shrunken heads" at home but no one thought he was dead serious.

As a child Ed grew up under the watch of his dominating mom. Once she died, he masturbated over her cadaver and got busy working on what would turn him into the Van Gogh of Crime. Ed wasn't too sure about his sexuality.

First he considered cutting off his dick, then thought about a sex change operation. Finally he settled on grave robbing and a strange type of transvestite necrophilia. To become a woman he would carve out the genitalia of female cadavers and wear them over his own.
Ed had a knack for fashion and home decorations. In his farm he built The Sistine Chapel from Hell. A devout recycler, he found uses for all parts of the anatomy. He had a belt made out of nipples, a skin vest that he wore on special occasions, mobiles made out of noses, skulls on his bedposts, cranial bowls for soup, drums made out of skin, and the beat goes on. His strangeness was uncovered when police came knocking on his door investigating the disappearance of a store keeper. Although he was only officially linked to two murders, a couple of "fresh" vaginas were found in his house that could not be matched to his known victims or any cemetery records. He was also suspected of killing his brother and two other men who disappeared near his farm. Many have tallied greater numbers than Ed, but few achieved his degree of weirdness

william suff

2007-09-17T04:17:00.000-07:00

William Suff is California's latest serial killer. In 1974 Will and his then wife were convicted of beating their two-month-old daughter to death. Although he was sentenced to seventy years in the Big House he was out on parole by 1984. Too bad for the twelve or more prostitutes he subsequently raped, stabbed, strangled and sometimes mutilated in Riverside County. His alleged killing spree started in 1986. On January 9, 1993, he was arrested after a routine traffic stop.A Doctor Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde type, Suff worked as a government stock clerk who helped deliver the furniture for the task force investigating his killing spree. He liked to impersonate police officers and cooked a mean chili at office picnics. He was also writing a book about dogs that went berserk and started killing people. Furthermore, he enjoyed vanity plates and was an avid volunteer in the county's car-pooling program. All of this perhaps explaining his psychotic behavior. On July 19, 1995, Willie was found guilty of killing 12 prostitutes although police think that he might be responsible for up to 22 deaths. On November 1995, he was condemned to death and will probably car-pool to his execution.

Work of william Suff

2007-09-17T04:08:00.001-07:00

hillside serial murder

2007-09-17T04:02:00.000-07:00

Kindly do not enlarge pic if you find it gruesome .

Ed gien victim gruesome

2007-09-17T03:57:00.000-07:00

Chess board killer

2007-09-17T03:47:00.001-07:00

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Alexander Pichushkin, dubbed the "Chessboard Killer" by Russian media, went on trial on Friday accused of murdering 49 people, many of them by smashing their skulls with a hammer.
The 33-year-old former supermarket porter glared at the floor of his glassed-in dock, known as "the aquarium", while prosecutors took two hours to read out details of the charges against him.
Prosecutors described how Pichushkin killed 46 men and three women over 14 years, many with hammer blows to the head, some by throwing them off a balcony, some by drowning in a sewage pit.
They said Pichushkin had confessed to killing as many as 63 people, first luring them into secluded parts of Moscow's sprawling Bittsevsky Park with an invitation to drink vodka in honour of his dead dog.
Pichushkin's lawyer, Pavel Ivannikov, told the court in his opening statement that Pichushkin had already freely admitted his guilt.
Russian media have taken to calling him the "Bittsevsky Maniac" and the "Chessboard Killer" after police found a chessboard in his apartment with 63 of 64 squares -- one for each victim -- covered with a coin.
If convicted, he would be Russia's most prolific serial killer since Andrei Chikatilo, the "Rostov Ripper", who was convicted in 1992 and executed in 1994 for raping, butchering and in some cases cannibalising as many as 52 people.
Pichushkin, wearing a red and blue track suit with the sleeves pushed up over his forearms and with a short growth of beard under his chin, refused to testify at the opening session in Moscow City Court until what he called some "personal issues" had been resolved.
Ivannikov said Pichushkin wanted to transfer out of a holding cell he occupies in closely guarded isolation at Moscow's Butyrka prison to a smaller cell at a jail closer to the court.
"He said it's more comfortable; he's done time there," Ivannikov told reporters after proceedings adjourned for the day.
The trial, by jury, is expected to be lengthy, with testimony scheduled from at least 41 relatives of the alleged victims and another 98 witnesses. Jury trials are rare in Russia, but Pichushkin's request for one was granted.

Salim querashi - on the loose

2007-09-17T03:43:00.000-07:00

Bhadohi (UP): A serial killer, wanted in connection with 300 criminal cases, today jumped out of a moving train and escaped while he was being brought by police to Varanasi in connection with a court case.Salim Qureshi, who was being brought from Meerut in the Kashi Vishwanath Express train, fled between the Suryavan and Bhadohi railway stations while the three constables escorting him -- Khemchand, Gyanand Singh and Raj Bahadur -- were sleeping.Qureshi removed the handcuff and jumped out of the sleeper class coach to escape, police said.The escort team found Qureshi missing from the coach when the train reached Suryavan station here. An FIR was registered at the Janghai police station in Allahabad district after Suryavan police refused to lodge the case as it was not under their jurisdiction.The three constables were arrested later and a departmental proceeding has been initiated against them for dereliction of duty.A manhunt has been launched in Allahabad, Bhadohi and Varanasi districts to nab Qureshi.He was arrested in Meerut on March eight in connection with several cases of murder, looting and other crimes.

Stone man- Raman Raghav

2007-09-17T03:29:00.000-07:00

A series of brutal murders in the outskirts of Mumbai (then Bombay)rocked the city in August 1968. Pavement and hutment dwellers were bludgeoned to death while they slept. All the murders took place at night and were committed by using a hard and blunt object. The Mumbai police and the media realised that a serial killer was operating in the city. A similar series of murders had taken some years earlier (1965-66) in the Eastern suburbs of Mumbai. In that year, as many as 19 people had been attacked, out of whom 9 victims had died. At the time a suspicious looking man found loitering in the area had been picked up by the police. His name was Raman Raghav, a homeless man, and he was already in police files, having spent 5 years in prison for robbery. However, as no hard evidence could be found against him (none of the survivors had seen this man)the police let him go. When the killer struck again in 1968 the police launched a manhunt for him. Ramakant Kulkarni, then the Deputy Commissioner of Police CID (Crime)took over the investigation and spearheaded a massive combing operation in the city. This time the police not only managed to nab him, they got him to confess. He admitted that he had killed 23 people in 1966 along the GIP (Great Indian Peninsular Railway as Southern Railway was known then) line and almost a dozen in 1968 in the suburbs. However, it is likely that he killed many more. It was his casual approach to killing that led the police to suspect that he did not remember the exact number of people he had killed. During the time Raman Raghav was in operation, there was widespread public anxiety and panic in Mumbai. Inhabitants of slums and apartments dreaded sleeping out in the open or with open windows and balconies.

Arrest
Sub-inspector of police Alex Fialho recognised Raman Raghav from file photographs and descriptions provided by those who had seen him. Fialho detained and searched him in the presence of two respectable witnesses from the area. The suspect gave his name as Raman Raghav, but old records disclosed that he had several aliases like "Sindhi Dalwai", "Talwai", "Anna", "Thambi" and "Veluswami". The suspect carried, on his person, a pair of spectacles, two combs, a pair of scissors, a stand for burning incense, soap, garlic, tea dust and two pieces of paper with some mathematical figures. The bush shirt and khaki shorts which he was wearing had bloodstains and his shoes were full of mud. His fingerprints with those on record confirmed that the suspect was indeed Raman Raghav alias Sindhi Dalwai. He was arrested under section 302 IPC on charge of the murder of two persons, (1) Lalchand Jagannat Yadav and (2) Dular Jaggi Yadav at Chinchawli village, Malad, Greater Bombay.[1] He was described as tall, well-built and dark-complexioned.

Investigation and Trial
The preliminary trial was held in the court of Additional Chief Presidency Magistrate. For a long time, Raghav refused to answer questions. However, he began to answer their questions after the police fulfilled his request for dishes of chicken to eat. He then gave a detailed testimony, describing his weapon, and his modus operandi. After this the case was committed to Sessions court, Mumbai. When the trial started in the court of Additional Session Judge, Mumbai on 2 June 1969, the counsel for defense made an application that the accused was incapable of defending himself on account of unsoundness of mind and he also submitted that even at the time of committing the alleged offenses the accused was of unsound mind and incapable of knowing the nature of his acts or that they were contrary to the law.
The accused was therefore sent to the Police Surgeon, Mumbai, who observed him from 28 June 1969 to 23 July 1969 and opined that, "The accused is neither suffering from psychosis nor mentally retarded. His memory is sound, his intelligence average and is aware of the nature and purpose of his acts. He is able to understand the nature and object of the proceedings against him and not certifiably insane."
With this medical opinion, the trial proceeded. The accused pleaded guilty. During the trial a psychiatrist of Nair Hospital, Mumbai was cited as a defense witness. He had interviewed the accused in Arthur Road Prison on 5 August 1969 and gave evidence that the accused was suffering from Chronic paranoid schizophrenia for a long time and was therefore unable to understand that his actions were contrary to law.
In defense, it was said, "The accused did commit the act of killing with which he is charged. He knew the nature of the act, viz. killing human beings, but did not know, wither it was wrong or contrary to law". The Additional Sessions Judge, Mumbai, Held the accused guilty of the charge of murder and sentenced him to death. Raman declined to appeal.
Before confirming the sentence, the High Court of Mumbai ordered that the Surgeon General, Mumbai, should constitute a Special Medical Board of three psychiatrists to determine whether the accused was of unsound mind, and secondly, whether in consequence of his unsoundness of mind, he was incapable of making his defense.
The members of the Special Medical Board interviewed Raman on five different occasions for about two hours each time. In their final interview when they bade him good bye and attempted to shake hands with him, he refused to do so saying that he was a representative of 'Kanoon' (God) who would not touch people belonging to this wicked world. The examination report was as follows.
Details about childhood history are not available. No reliable history about mental Illness in his family is obtainable. According to the data available, He was always in the habit of stealing ever since he was a child. He hardly had any school education. He was known to be reclusive. Since his return from Pune in 1968 he had been living in jungles outside the suburbs of Mumbai.[2]
X-rays of skull, routine blood examination, serological tests for syphilis, cerebrospinal fluid examination including tests for syphilis, urine and stool examination and EEG examination were non contributory.He was of average intelligence and there is no organic disease to account for his mental condition.
Throughout the five interviews he showed ideas of reference and fixed and systematized delusions of persecution and grandeur. The delusions which the accused experienced were as follows:
That there are two distinct worlds, the world of 'Kanoon' and this world in which he lived.
A fixed and unshakable belief that people were trying to change his sex, but that they are not successful, because he was a representative of 'Kanoon'.
A fixed and unshakable belief that he is a power or 'Shakti'.
A firm belief that other people are trying to put homosexual temptations in his way so that he may succumb and get converted to a woman.
That homosexual intercourse would convert him into a woman.
That he was "101 percent man". He kept on repeating this.
A belief that the government brought him to Mumbai to commit thefts and made him commit criminal acts.
An unshakable belief that there are three governments in the country - the Akbar Government, the British Government, and the Congress Government and that these Governments are trying to persecute him and put temptations before him.
The final verdict Raman Raghav's sentence was reduced to life imprisonment because he was found to be incurably mentally ill. He was lodged at Yerwada jail, Pune, and was under treatment at the Central Institute of Mental Health and Research. When a panel of doctors who examined him at the directive of the High Court found that he would never be cured, the High Court reduced his sentence to life imprisonment in its judgement of 4th August 1987. A few months later Raghav died at Sassoon Hospital. He had been suffering from kidney trouble.

Auto shankar -First indian serial killer?

2007-09-17T03:25:00.000-07:00

Shankar and his gang were found guilty of six murders, committed over a period of two years in 1988-1989.They were tried for the murders of Lalitha, Sudalai, Sampath, Mohan, Govindaraj and Ravi.The bodies of the victims were either burnt or buried inside residential houses.
Trial
Shankar's trial was completed by the chengalpattu sessions court;[1] He was sentenced to death along with two of his associates, Eldin and Shivaji, on May 31, 1991.[1]
During his trial Auto Shankar blamed cinema for "making a devil of him", but a month before his execution, he revealed to reporters a more sinister force. According to his account, he had kidnapped the girls for powerful state politicians, subsequently disposing of them after his patrons had raped them. [citation needed] Auto Shankar was hanged until death in Salem Central Prison on April 27, 1995.[1]

[edit] Associates
In 2002, five persons were sentenced to 6 months of Rigorous Imprisonment after having been found guilty by a Magistrate.[2] The five persons were Shankar's brother, Mohan, Selva alias Selvaraj and the jail warders Kannan, Balan and Rahim Khan.[2] They were found guilty of criminal conspiracy and resistance or obstruction by a person to his lawful apprehension.[2]
Subsequently, Shankar's younger brother Auto Mohan was also found guilty of the six murders and was awarded three life sentences.[1] Mohan had earlier escaped from the Chennai Central Prison in August 1990 and was re-arrested in Pune on June 25, 1992.[1]

Mohinder singh pandher- noida serial killings

2007-09-17T03:20:00.000-07:00

A suspect in the gruesome murders of 17 people, mostly children, near the Indian capital has told investigators he had sex with the dead bodies and ate their organs, a report has said.
The Times of India said Surender Koli admitted to carrying out the crimes alone and that his employer, businessman Moninder Singh Pandher who has also been arrested and charged, was unaware of the killing spree.
The grisly revelations emerged after the two accused were subjected to "narco-analysis" -- including truth drugs, polygraph tests and brain mapping -- at a national forensic laboratory.
Results of the tests are not admissable as evidence in court, but are designed to help police with their investigation.
The two were arrested on December 29 from New Delhi's affluent Noida suburb after an overwhelming stench led to the discovery of carefully chopped-up body parts in a drain next to Pandher's home.
But Pandher was apparently unaware that his servant used sweets and chocolates to lure the victims to the house, before killing them and raping their bodies, the Times of India said.
Koli, who previously worked as a cook in a hotel, narrated how and when he killed his 17 victims with precision. He also remembered the names of 15 victims, the newspaper said, quoting unnamed investigators involved in the tests.
"Sahab (master) did not know," Koli was quoted as telling investigators, adding the murders were committed when Pandher was away.
Asked what he had done with the missing torsos of the victims, Koli disclosed that he ate some of the organs and cut up others and flushed them down the toilet. The dismembered parts were disposed of separately.
Koli said his first victim was a four-year-old girl. He admitted to trying eating the child's liver, but said he vomited immediately.
His co-accused, meanwhile, emerged from the tests as a womaniser who used Koli as a pimp to find him prostitutes.
Pandher's family says reports of the results of the narco-analysis test were a relief.
"I had always thought Surendra (Koli, the servant) was behind all this. My father used to be out of town for long periods on business," Pandher's 23-year-old son, Karan, told the newspaper.

Five of ten most wanted serial killers are indians

2007-09-17T03:17:00.000-07:00

Deadly spine-chilling killing sprees with an Indian connection. The extent to which Indian criminals have spread their tentacles is given a shocking twist by a World Centre of Crime Investigation-compiled rogues' gallery, which lists five Indians/NRIs among the 'top 10 serial killers in history'. John Smith, an Indian, terrorised Seattle by killing men and kidnapping children. Equally notorious is 26-year-old Maheswar Padhi, the youngest psychopathic serial killer in the country. "We are seeking the assistance of the FBI to nab Padhi, who is known as the 'stoneman' and uses rocks to smash the skulls of persons sleeping on pavements," says Berhampur DSP Rakesh Thakuria. Baldev Singh, alias Harbhajan Singh, and Baljinder Singh are alleged to have committed atleast 105 murders each, killing their victims by strangulation. Bhaskar of Tamil Nadu has murdered around 230 persons. "The worst part about these five Indian serial killers is that there is hardly any clue about their whereabouts," informs WCCI director Nigel Peter. WCCI's international hall of shame also includes Pedro Alonso Lopez who, with 300-plus murders against his name and is known as the 'Monster of the Andes'. Diabolical are the ways of Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, who have committed 200 murders between them and are known as the 'Tag Team from Hell'. HH Holmes, who has committed more than 200 murders, started his criminal career by stealing corpses from the University of Michigan and collecting insurance money using fictitious names. Also finding a place among these killers is Harold Shipman, a British doctor who has murdered more than 200 patients. "All these have a common passion for the physical," says Peter. While Pedro, Lucas and Toole are serving life-imprisonment terms, Holmes and Shipman hanged themselves in their prison cells. As for the five desi serial killers on the 'most-wanted list', arrest is imperative. Otherwise, innocents will continue to be a victim of their criminal ways.

Did you know

2007-09-17T03:15:00.000-07:00