It is no question that Charles Manson was a criminal starting at a very young age. He was in and out of correctional facilities and detention centers for most of his life. After being released, he decided to gain followers, many of whom were young, impressionable girls. He had attained nearly one hundred followers. These followers became known as the infamous hippie cult, ‘The Manson Family.’ Everybody in the family was mesmerized by Manson and truly believed him to be Jesus Christ reincarnated. Of course this was through the persuasion of Manson, himself, who thought he was Christ. Several of his most avid followers came from normal families such as Patricia Krenwickle who was part of her school’s glee club, and Leslie Van Houten who was prom queen. Other prominent members of the family included Susan ‘Sadie’ Atkins, Charles ‘Tex’ Watson, and Linda Kasabian, all of whom took part in the Tate-LaBianca murders. Once the family started, so did the craziness.
In the refuge of Spahn Ranch, the family slowly became detached from the world under the direction of Charles Manson. Several of the members have attested that they completely lost track of time and reality. The real world was a thing of the past. Part of their daily lifestyle included dropping acid. Linda Kasabian once said in an interview that she took LSD at least three hundred times while in the family making it increasingly more difficult to distinguish fantasy from reality. One of Manson’s followers explains that “We were all called Charlie’s girls, but Charlie often told us, in fact everyday he told us, ‘You people do not belong to me, you belong to yourself.’ But I personally thought that I belonged to Charlie. He had sexual intercourse with all of us girls. In the beginning I was jealous until I came to an understanding that he was only making love to the girls for the purpose of love and also to give them back to themselves. We – the girls – had sexual relations with each other. There was no limit to what I’d do for him. I was in love with the reflection and the reflection I speak of is Charles Manson.” Each member claimed their love to Manson in bizarre and twisted ways. Manson also had strange ways of testing the trust of each member, one time even throwing knives at them. The trust of the family took on a whole new level once Manson started asking them to kill. Since they were completely and utterly enthralled with Manson, none of them questioned these odd requests and did everything he ever asked of them.
