Notorious mass murderer Charles Manson has died at the age of 83, ending the infamous saga of the cult leader who manipulated his followers and gained the attention of the masses. “Inmate Charles Manson, 83, died of natural causes at 8:13 p.m. on Sunday, November 19, 2017, at a Kern County hospital,” the prison system revealed.
That has a lot of people wondering who Charles Manson killed. Most people remember his most famous victim: The actress Sharon Tate, who was pregnant when she was gruesomely murdered by the Manson family. Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure how many people Manson was responsible for murdering in all, but the California state prison system released a list of those whose murders for which he was held criminally responsible. There is some dispute over whether Manson ever actually physically killed anyone himself; in most of the cases his followers did so at his direction.
According to The Sun, “The Manson Family was a semi-commune that lived in disused buildings, dilapidated houses and toured the west coast of America during the 1967 ‘Summer of Love’ hippie phenomenon. They moved as a large fluid group, with some fleeting members joining in with Manson’s acid ramblings for days or weeks before moving on. But a core group were devoted to Manson and hung on his every word, believing as he had told them that he was Christ.” Manson and his “family” are suspected in other murders as well.
In 2012, The Los Angeles Police Department said that 12 unsolved murders had ties to the Manson Family. You can see a list of some unsolved murders with Manson Family ties here.
These are the deaths for which Manson was convicted:
Gary Hinman
According to the prison system, “On December 13, 1971, Manson received a first-degree murder conviction from Los Angeles County for the July 25, 1969, death of Gary Hinman.” CieloDrive.com reports of Hinman: “Gary Allen Hinman was born in Colorado on the Christmas Eve of 1934. He graduated school with a degree in chemistry, but continued at UCLA where he was near receiving his Ph.D. in Sociology. He was remembered as having a kind, gentle soul, and for being an intellect.”
Hinman was a music teacher who introduced Charles Manson to Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, according to CNN. “Gary Hinman is killed by Manson follower Bobby Beausoleil, accompanied by Manson Family members Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins. The murder is committed at the behest of Manson,” CNN reported. Biography.com reports that the motive for the slaying remains conflicting, but “it is known that Beausoleil killed Hinman and then wrote ‘Political Piggy’ on the wall in Hinman’s blood afterward.” Beausoleil is serving a life sentence for the crime.
According to Biography.com, “In one version, Manson sent Beausoleil and two other Manson “Family” members to Hinman’s house to collect money he owed them. The other version says that Beausoleil sold some bikers a bad batch of LSD and they wanted their money back. Hinman had allegedly made the drugs, so Beausoleil went to Hinman’s house to get the money in question, and events took an ugly turn.” Accounts also differed as to whether Manson was physically present at the crime scene.
Donald Shea
According to ThoughtCo., “George Spahn, the owner of Spahn’s Movie Ranch, hired Shea to help care for the horses that were kept on the ranch.” Charles Manson and his family eventually moved to the ranch and, there, they ran into conflict with Shea. “As time went on, Shea began to see qualities in Charles Manson that he disliked. For one, Manson voiced his extreme prejudices against black people. Shea’s ex-wife was black and the two had remained friends after their marriage ended. It angered Shea to hear Manson’s prejudice rampages towards blacks and it did not take long before he detested the man,” reports ThoughtCo.
“Sometime around August 28, 1969, family members Charles “Tex” Watson, Bruce Davis, Steve Grogan, Bill Vance, Larry Bailey, and Charles Manson took Donald Shea for a ride. From the backseat Grogan struck Shea with a pipe wrench while Tex Watson began stabbing. The group took Shorty out of the car, brought him down a hill behind Spahn’s Movie Ranch and stabbed him to death. Donald Jerome Shea’s body wasn’t found until December of 1977,” CieloDrive.com reports.
Abigail Ann Folger
According to IMDB, Abigail Folger was “the heiress to the Folger Coffee fortune” who was “dating Voytek Frykowski at the time of her death.” She was “a close friend of Sharon Tate and was staying the weekend at Sharon’s home in Bel Air, along with her boyfriend Voytek Frykowski and Sharon’s ex-fiancé, Jay Sebring, when they were tortured and murdered by the Manson family. Folger briefly escaped the house, but was caught and stabbed to death by Patricia Krenwinkel.”
Folger suffered a gruesome end. “Before her death, she worked as a volunteer social worker for the Los Angeles County Department of Welfare. She was an avid supporter of Tom Bradley, a councilman turned mayoral elect. She received a total of 28 stab wounds, one being to her aorta, which was deemed as the fatal blow. According to reports, her final words were ‘You can stop now. I’m already dead,'” reports the blog, MansonFamilyMurders.
Wojciech Frykowski
According to The New York Times, “Manson’s followers were convicted of stabbing and shooting Mr. Frykowski and four others at a Benedict Canyon house, rented by the director Roman Polanski, in August 1969. Mr. Polanski’s pregnant 26-year-old wife, the actress Sharon Tate, was among the victims. An autopsy found that Mr. Frykowski had been cut 51 times and shot twice.”
Frykowski was dating Abigail Folger at the time he died. According to IMDB, “Of the nine people the so-called ‘Manson Family’ was convicted of killing, Frykowski has the dubious distinction of being the recipient of the most viciousness in his murder. He was stabbed 51 times, shot twice, and bludgeoned over the head over a dozen times with the butt of a revolver.”
Steven Earl Parent
According to LAMag, Steven Parent, “an 18-year-old delivery boy, simply happened to be there” when the murders unfolded. A retired homicide detective told the magazine of approaching the Tate property: “There was a car parked in the middle of the driveway, and there was a body in the car. That was Steven Parent. He was slumped over to the side on the front seat. He’d been shot.”
According to ABC News, Steven Parent was “a teenager who was visiting the home’s caretaker.”
Sharon Tate Polanski and her unborn child
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GettyAmerican film actress Sharon Tate.
Tate was gruesomely murdered while eight months pregnant. LAMag described, quoting a homicide detective who discovered the body, “Sharon was in a bikini-style nightie. She was eight-and-a-half months pregnant, and I could tell she had been stabbed 15-plus times.” According to ABC News, Sharon Tate and her friends were “murdered in August 1969 in the secluded neighborhood of Benedict Canyon, the California home Tate rented with husband Roman Polanski.”
According to Time Magazine, “Tate begged for the life of her unborn child but was told by one of the female assailants, ‘Look b*tch, I don’t care about you. I don’t care if you are having a baby. You are going to die and I don’t feel a thing about it.’ Tate’s blood was used to write the word PIG on the home’s front door.”
Jay Sebring
Jay Sebring was a friend of Sharon Tate’s who was killed in the house with her. She had dated him before marrying Polanski, and he worked as a hairstylist, ABC News reports. Sebring’s nephew Anthony DiMaria told ABC: “He was the creator of men’s hair design, or men’s hair styling, today. He was the personal stylist for Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Junior, Joey Bishop.”
Leno La Bianca and Rosemary La Bianca
The La Biancas were slain the day after the Tate massacre. “The next day supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife were killed in a similar fashion, a fork used to carve the word WAR on his belly left sticking out of his corpse. This time, the leader of the gang took part in the slaughter,” Time Magazine reported.
Manson family members barged into “LaBianca’s house in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles and found Rosemary LaBianca in a bedroom separate from where her husband Leno LaBianca was found. (Leslie) Van Houten held Rosemary down while Patricia Krenwinkel and Tex Watson stabbed Leno,” reported the New York Daily News.