Original subtitles

I was a member of the Manson Family

Charlie was permeating my whole being

He was alive

He was manipulating in a way that no one knew

he was manipulating

I don't need to kill anyone

I think it

What was it about Charlie Manson

that made these women give up their names

and their belongings and join his family?

I didn't have any family to speak of

It was pretty torturous, just this loneliness

of not having anybody to ever count on

She's exactly the kind of person ISIS looks for,

because she wanted desperately to be part of something

He made victims of more than just the people that died

There are some people you don't have to forgive

I never saw fulfillment and happiness

in the people I looked up to

I'd say meeting Manson saved my life,

my health, my brain,

my emotional health, my mental health,

my physical health

I'm thankful

I have no idea how you could have been

involved in that family and have continued

to believe what Manson said

You want to talk about immoral and evil,

go to Hollywood

We touched it It needed to be touched

From my perspective, I was looking for a place

to be a part of something bigger than just myself

That's a person who is vulnerable,

and that's why a lot of cult leaders

choose young girls

Dianne was the perfect target

It was hard to live with

I felt this overwhelming guilt,

just guilty by association

It's just been very cathartic for me to realize

that I was a victim of his manipulation

We were all looking for a family

that we related to

Squeaky wanted to rebel

If you've ever been a parent of a child

who's in their teens and they just wanna rebel

and they find the bad boy

Charlie, he had what I wanted

It was amazing to me

I had tried to kill

the leader of the country

I knew that Charlie put her up to it

I've never regretted any of those experiences

I've been out for almost ten years

None of the people should ever be paroled

These people can't be trusted

Are they the same people that they were in 1969?

Everything was about Charlie

It was kill or be killed

Just because a person kills

does not make them evil and bad

War is not murder

That summer and what

Charles Manson and the women did,

I mean, it really took

the innocence away from America

In California, five members of a so-called

religious cult including Charles Manson,

the guru or high priest, have been indicted

in the murder of Sharon Tate and six others

Charlie Manson hadn't actually picked up a knife

and stabbed anybody

He ordered them to go do this, and they did

There's nothing about it that isn't

completely heartrending, disgusting,

scary, vicious

It was meant to be vicious, violent, and vile

It was a very scary thing

to have these band of hippies kill people

The group was broken up last October

when the deputies raided the camp

Some of the women were nude,

and some wore only bikini bottoms

The Manson Family was going to get us

That became the proverbial bogeyman

The women

I don't fear for anybody's testimony

They didn't show any remorse

I mean, they just doubled down,

and they wanted to be there for their leader, for Charlie

I mean, how frightening is that

to the people that are watching this trial?

Female narrator: It was a shocking trial:

Charles Manson and some of his young followers in court

charged with murder and conspiracy

in the brutal deaths of seven people

Manson's influence over these women

was so strong that they believed

what they were doing was the right thing

I was interviewing someone in prison,

and she said every woman she knew was there

because of a man,

either because she did his dirty work for him

or maybe retribution because he cheated on her

But it was mainly that they had been

manipulated by men and had found themselves

in prison as a result

In 1969, Charles Manson convinced

a group of very young women to commit crimes

and murder for him

Why were these women willing to abandon

the lives they had known for a 5'2" ex-con like Manson?

Everything's got to be in the context of the '60s

It was a very different time, yeah

The country sort of just opened up

partly due to different drugs, I guess

500,000 of our brothers are killing and dying

in a jungle 10,000 miles away

There were all kinds of things happening

on different college campuses

Many aspects of society were seeing

the disillusion of the system

My mother said she considered me more of a sister

in, you know, this counterculture movement

than she did, you know, her daughter

It was peace, love

People were exploring alternative lifestyles

I was at that right age

We loved guys who played guitar

We loved the guys who were sort of brooding

and mysterious

Everybody was speaking in psychobabble

narrator: The women who became a part

of Manson's family were between the ages of 13 and 24

They were orphans, runaways, and rebels

But what was it about him that attracted them?

I'll say anything you want me to say

Just, you know, give me some rest, you know?

So everybody's very happy now They got what they wanted

I just can't even watch myself talking about it

It's just horrible

I was born in France

My mother was taken by an officer

and raped

She took her own life after the war,

and then I was adopted by American parents

My mother who adopted me got cancer

and died when I was 16

She took her own life also,

because she thought she might be a burden

And then I was estranged from my stepfather

Basically, I wasn't homeless like under a bridge

or anything like that, but I really didn't have

a place of my own

It was pretty torturous, you know,

just this loneliness of not having anybody

to ever count on

These young women were searching for love

They wanted so desperately to be accepted and to be in

I was totally looking for that acceptance

At the time,

my home life was pretty disorganized

My dad had always been kind of enamored

with this counterculture movement

My mom gave up everything for my dad's dream

of dropping out

We had a big yard sale and moved into a bread truck

Five of us, you know, three kids and two adults,

and we were supposed to be doing it

with these other members of this commune

Then when I got to this commune,

the people that were in charge said they were uncomfortable

with my being there

because I was a sexually active

underaged female

They weren't kicking me out,

but I didn't feel like I belonged

My parents, they had given me emancipation as a minor

I had really gotten lost in the weeds,

and so I was looking for a place

to be a part of something

When my parents dropped out, I was 13

You've got a combination of elements:

someone who wants to be independent,

someone who may even think they can handle independence,

but who is entirely emotionally ill-prepared

That's a person who is vulnerable

I was 18, and then my dad threw me out

We had started to argue

He was he just didn't want

the interaction with me

It wasn't that I was contesting all the time

It was that I wanted to know and he didn't have answers

And he thought he should have all the answers, I guess

I felt like I had to go out and find out myself

My father and I had argued about

just a definition of a word or something,

something really silly

And he said, "You get out of this house

and never come back"

I took him at his word

I did cry, because I just thought,

"Well, that's pretty final"

They were, many of them, in middle-class families

where they just wanted to rebel

And if you've ever been a parent of a child

who's in their teens,

you can understand that to an extent

Lynn's father was an aeronautical engineer

from Southern California

My stepfather was an aeronautical engineer

We had a lot of similarities in my upbringing,

but I'd say I was more upper middle class

I mean, we would be in the society column

at Christmastime, looking pretty and photogenic

Like, "Ooh, beautiful, beautiful American family"

I had so many respiratory things going on,

two tracheotomies by the time I was one

My mother did not want me

to survive the many operations I had

I know that for a fact She conveyed it daily

I was 24 years old,

and I had learning disabilities

I never saw fulfillment and happiness

in, you know, the people I looked up to

None of them were happy

Many of them were alcoholics

Narrator: It was in the fall of 1967

when many of the women met Manson for the first time

We were all looking for a family, I think

We were all looking for a family

that we related to

If you couple the desire for inclusion

with a fear of rejection,

you can get people to do almost anything

And it's a really dangerous thing

when you've got someone who knows how to do that

Charlie held all the cards

I really, truly believed that my survival

was going to be to stay with Charlie

Charlie told me that I had to be willing to kill

It's so hard to believe a woman could have

these up-close, personal, intimate murders

and not feel anything

How can you put the finger at us

and call us evil for doing what needed to be done?

By the time the brutal murders

had occurred, the women had been with Manson

for almost two years

How was Manson able to find all these lost souls

from dysfunctional families and convince them

to give themselves to him?

Charlie was dynamic and charismatic,

and he would play the guitar, and he sang

And it was in that culture

where these young women were searching for love

They were hungry for a connection

He had the ability to pay attention,

which picked up strengths

but, most important, vulnerabilities,

and knew how to manipulate that

I went to Topanga Canyon,

and that's where I first met Charlie

We walked outside, and he looked at my throat

And he traced his finger around my tracheotomy scar

And he said, "Your mother wanted you dead

because she was jealous"

He's whatever a person wants to make of him

He's a mirror, actually

And I thought, "Oh, my God, he is totally in my mind"

And he said, "You're not weak"

His brilliance was permeating my whole being

My mind was pretty much blown

just by his voice, by his demeanor,

by the happiness and the brightness

Narrator: He convinced these women

that he had a unique insight into their beings

And with that, they were hooked

I had a job

I had just boughten a bunch

of scuba diving equipment

I called up my roommate and said,

"You can sell my scuba diving equipment,

"you can sell my skis, and I will call my boss back

and tell her I'm not coming back to work"

There's a new thought arising

We learned that the only truth we've ever heard

comes from Charles

Like Blue, Squeaky met Manson by chance

in Southern California

Squeaky had just left home

after an argument with her father

I was out at the beach

It was dark Nobody was around

I had thought I could find some hippies

Charlie, he had been going somewhere else

I think to Hollywood

And instead, he stopped off in Venice,

walked down the road

He didn't see me until he got close enough,

and then he said,

"So your father kicked you out?"

And it was amazing to me

He was very interested, animated

He was interacting

He was alive That's the main thing

Charlie, he exhibited so much

It was a quiet it was a presence,

and that's probably the thing that's hardest to convey

Narrator: With nowhere else to go

and enamored by their first meeting,

Squeaky joined Manson and met the others

In the beginning, Manson and the women had nothing

They lived off the good nature of others

and ate out of dumpsters when there was nothing else

To get around, they borrowed cars and vans

We traveled in a VW bus

And there were very quickly three of us

and then five of us,

and then we had to get a bigger bus

I mean, he was not recruiting anybody

What it was is,

we were discovering America

Charlie's group was very nomadic

They didn't have anything

He would drive this bus, and he would, you know,

literally drive down the coast and pick up these women

It was happiness, free love,

you know, sort of the hippie culture

Everybody took everybody in during that time,

so it didn't feel like you were homeless

There was all this free love

and people handing people drugs

and, "Yeah, man, I'll give you free food"

We were irreverent human beings,

and we were traveling

They were just feeling lost and vulnerable

to a guy like Manson

Snake celebrated her 14th birthday

all by herself

She was lonely and had been abandoned

by her family

When she was most vulnerable,

she crossed paths with Charles Manson

I'd been on my own for, you know,

quite a few months

And I met these girls, and they made me feel like

just incredibly special

Dianne was making decisions

for where she wanted to be, where she wanted to go

that no 14-year-old should really be doing

Her parents just wrote out a letter and said,

"Okay, you can live on your own"

And they thought it was fine,

and that's when she wound up

being abandoned on her own

Charlie was extremely loving,

and I felt welcome

He took me that night and made love to me

like I'd never experienced before,

in a way that, you know, made me feel like a woman

It was the most magical, you know,

that I had ever encountered

He used his sexuality

as a way of increasing dependence on him

In the '60s, for the first time,

free expression of sexuality was part of the culture,

something Manson used to his advantage

When he first met Snake and had sex with her,

Manson was 34 and she was 14

At the time, they were experimenting

in open relationships and sexuality

But there's an imbalance in the power

and the persuasion,

and that's why we protect young people

from being influenced by people

who are at a different maturity level

I remember thinking that I wanted

Charlie to love only me and marry me

I was disenfranchised

I didn't feel like I really belonged anywhere,

and they invited me to come live with them

So I stayed with them

I think he seduced them on many different levels,

and he was very good at it

narrator: When Manson met Gypsy,

his group was still small

and traveling around Southern California

Gypsy had been homeless

since her adopted mother's suicide

One day, a car drove up,

an old beat-up Chevy with an old cowboy

and four girls in it

And that's how I met Charlie

Squeaky was sitting next to Charlie,

and on the other side of her was Sandy Good

He was the most confident person I had ever run into

He was fun-loving, and everybody seemed

very peaceful and happy

Charlie took me out to talk to me,

and he really came on to me

really, really strong

I felt accepted

It just felt like it was kind of like

a dream come true

I was an orphan, so I was looking for family

So I said, "Well, I'm staying,"

and I never left

Charlie preached about that,

having fun and being open

and giving yourself to the family,

but it came at a price

It came at a price of giving yourself to Charlie

So when it came time for him to want something from them,

when it came to asking them to kill,

they were willing to do that as well

Charlie promised you that you would be all

part of his family, because these women

didn't feel like they were loved enough

in their own family

But by giving up of themselves,

they gave everything to Charlie,

which gave Charlie power

He studied at the foot of the masters

Before Manson started to gather his followers,

he had been in prison

Before he went in,

he had all these abandonment experiences from women

His wife had left him

So when he was in prison,

he was asking, "How do I keep a woman?"

He learned and was expecting

to come out of prison and, "Hey, what am I gonna do?

I'll become a pimp,"

except there was all this free love

In 1969,

Charles Manson was 34 years old,

and he had already spent 22 years in prison,

over half his life

He talked to me like a brother

We were on the same level

We were communicating our feelings to each other

right away

It was life-changing

I've been in jail all my life

Man, I've lived on a handball court

This guy raised me up

All the men in the joint raised me up,

told me what to do, what was right and wrong

If you're looking for Charles Manson

and his values, definitely, they come from prison,

for sure

The outside world programs people

The inside unprograms people to wisdom and understanding

In prison, you have to control

your immediate environment,

because if you don't, you can end up dead

So this is how he was wired

He was manipulating in a way that no one knew

he was manipulating

It was, like, unprogramming us from all the lies

that we were told

and reprogramming us to feel that we were perfect

Charles Manson, he would find the vulnerability

in each of the women that he gathered,

and he would become that

He could look at someone and size them up

almost immediately, know exactly what they need,

and give it to them

One year after Manson met the women,

his group of followers had grown to 20 people

and was still expanding

Traveling around Southern California

had become increasingly difficult

They needed to find a more permanent home

Charlie had to find a place for his nomadic band,

and he brought them to George Spahn's ranch

Narrator: The ranch was perfect

for Manson's growing family

Manson made a deal

with the blind and elderly owner, George Spahn

The women would work the ranch

in exchange for everyone's room and board

The women would take care of the mules

and clean out the stalls and work around the ranch

George gave us all names

He would put his hand on our arm

I kind of went, "Eh,"

and he started calling me Squeaky

I ended up with the nickname Snake,

which I didn't particularly like

I liked being at the ranch

and horses women that I could respect

But mostly, Charlie was the

You know, I wanted to

be with him

narrator: Moving to Spahn Ranch

was a turning point for the women

in Manson's group

The ranch allowed him to isolate them,

brainwashing them even further

They're completely isolated

The only source of information, news

that they have is Charles Manson

There's no television, no newspapers,

no magazines

There was no electricity

There was no books

There were no calendars

There were no intellectual debates in the air

It was just the girls participating

in preparing the meal

The isolation helped Manson He knew that

It wasn't as if he was telling people what to do

and being bossy and commanding

He'd ask questions like

"What do you think about this?"

"Should we do this?" He'd bring you into it

And then if you agreed,

then you were, like, giving your word you would do it

But you didn't think that you were being told what to do

Though the women were providing for Manson,

he convinced them that he was the one

providing for them

By that time, it had been about a year's worth

of absolutely believing that Charlie knew everything

and that my only safety

was to stay with him and everybody

I had to have a feeling of safety

Safety has always been a big issue with me

It was gradual, and by the time it had become

a totalitarian community,

they no longer could challenge him

They had no perspective

narrator: A year after meeting Manson,

the women in the group were completely enthralled,

becoming more and more invested in him

and each other

The lines were blurred

It wasn't like one person's a father;

another person's your brother

It was friend, brother, lover, father, mother

You know, it was just all blurred

We were everything to each other

Narrator: In the fall of 1968,

another woman came into the fold,

19-year-old runaway Leslie Van Houten

Leslie was, you know I remember her being,

like, you know, the prom princess,

California, high school gal

And I had never been to high school at that point

In the '60s, her parents got divorced,

which today doesn't seem like a big deal

But back then, it was

She went from being with the cool kids in school

to being shunned by them

She started using drugs, and she got pregnant

Her mother also recoiled physically from Leslie

when she told her she was pregnant,

and it was devastating

Her mother forced her to have an illegal abortion

They buried the fetus in the backyard

And not surprisingly, drug use escalated,

and then she got involved in the late '60s

in the hippie movement

That's when she met Catherine Share

And I said, "I'm going back to this ranch,"

and I told her where it was

She'd be welcome there anytime

And she came to the ranch by herself three weeks later

narrator: In the spring of 1969,

Charles Manson would have the women take LSD

and then reenact the crucifixion of Christ

with him as the central figure

He had them take LSD trips together,

and that made them even more reliant

on each other and susceptible to him

I had my first LSD trip with Charlie

And that was a mind blow

LSD was an experience

you didn't wanna have too often,

because trying to take it too often

was almost like trying to grab knowledge

It seemed like a shortcut to enlightenment

It felt like you could see the universe

I was already an acidhead

By that time, I took so much

that I lost who I was

I went around picking flowers and gave 'em to everybody,

and I was just in this childlike state

for a long time

Charlie took me up on a big hill

overlooking Los Angeles

And in my first LSD vision,

I saw the whole city in flames,

and I was laughing and laughing

It was a laughter that I've never experienced

before or since

Later I asked Charlie, "What what happened?"

And he said he saw the whole thing

LSD also allowed Manson to create

a growing sense of fear within the group

He often had them take the drug together

to create a communal sense of right and wrong

dictated by him

One of the things to make this kind of thing work

is, the outsiders have to be dangerous

You develop empathy

for your brothers and sisters in the group,

and then there's a threat from outside

Manson was so good at manipulating

that feeling of threat

For a long time, Charlie talked about

more esoteric kind of things

But after a while, he started talking about

the fact that there was going to be a revolution

There were so many different aspects

to American culture then

for what they considered to be the inevitable revolution

There was the war in Vietnam

There was, you know, lots of civil rights issues

It's time now for us to say to these men

that you have been foul with us

Everybody talked about him

I mean, it was in music

We weren't intending to participate

We wanted to get away from the cities

and away from the anarchy

We began to distrust

The police wouldn't protect us

The military wasn't gonna protect us

We had to count on each other

You know, as time went on,

he talked about it more and more,

and he was just saying that it was gonna start

Charles Manson isolated them from outside reality

They only had him to turn to

Manson, he's paranoid and he's losing his grip

He came to me and said,

"They might attack us at any time"

I'm afraid for my life, but on the other hand,

I'm still looking for his approval

If somebody's threatening their master,

they're dangerous

By 1969, the women had spent two years

being brainwashed into total devotion

to their leader

They really had nothing except Charlie

They'd given up their names

They'd given up their families

They'd given up their identity

They'd given up their money

He would say, "You can leave me,

but no one will ever love you like I love you,"

or, "No one will ever love you, period"

In the months leading up to the murders,

Manson took a darker turn

He began to test the limits of his power

Being the youngest, Snake was the most vulnerable

I don't think Dianne, at that time,

would have thought that she was being abused,

and she was living in a hippie cult

I remember wanting Charlie to make love to me

I wanted him to make love to me like he could

and that he had in the past

I think that just like people who get addicted to heroin,

they're always trying to have that first high again,

that's what it was for me

I wanted that initial feeling

of being super special and super loved

and, you know, like in the very beginning

And he took me down, you know, the road

and took me into this little gypsy caravan

and sodomized me, raped me,

left me in tears and bleeding

And he said something to the effect of,

"Well, that's the way we do it in prison"

I don't know

It just was a really ugly it was a really ugly

side of him

I don't know how to describe it

I'm afraid for my life,

but on the other hand,

I'm still looking for his approval

A month before the Manson Family's

infamous murder spree,

his power over the women escalated

He had been using a fear of outsiders

to hold his group together

And on July 1, 1969, things got violent

There was a bad drug deal,

and Charlie shot a black man

So I was cooking one night

He came to me and said,

"The Black Panthers know where we are,

and they might attack us at any time"

The Black Panther Party for Self Defense believes

that the time has come for black people

to arm themselves against this terror,

the terror of the white people, presumably,

before it is too late

narrator: It wasn't politics

that had Manson running scared

It was a drug deal gone wrong

between Manson and a member of the Black Panthers

that had him fearing retaliation

To me, it was, "Well, it's started

The Black Panthers are starting the revolution"

In Los Angeles,

the Black Panthers and the police were killing

each other, I guess

There was all this activity

I really, truly believed

that my survival was going to be to stay with Charlie,

'cause he knew how to maneuver all this

Manson, he's paranoid, and he's losing his grip

That's when Charlie asked Bobby if he would come

and stay at the ranch and just protect the ranch

In order to protect himself

from the Black Panthers, Manson invited

a 21-year-old musician named Bobby Beausoleil

to join the family at Spahn Ranch

To the women, recruiting Bobby was another sign

that Manson was protecting them from a revolution

He was a self-confident kid

He was wearing a top hat and a cape

He had run away when he was young

But he and Charlie were different,

but they liked each other

They got a kick out of each other

Two weeks before the Tate-LaBianca murders,

Bobby Beausoleil killed a man named Gary Hinman

After we entered the home,

we saw signs of a struggle,

and it appeared as though there had been

some degree of violence

Charles Manson and Bobby Beausoleil

held Hinman hostage in a dispute over a drug deal

Beausoleil eventually killed Hinman

and staged the crime scene to look like

the Black Panthers committed the murder

The goal was to point the finger at someone

other than Manson and his family

And since Manson was having a dispute

with the Black Panthers,

it seemed like they were the most obvious choice

They put signs on the walls to indicate

that it was a Black Panther

At the Hinman murder, you have Beausoleil writing

"political piggy" in Hinman's blood

and then putting paw prints

Clearly they were trying

to point suspicion at the Black Panthers

Narrator: Bobby Beausoleil committing

that first murder was a turning point

for the women

Now they had to decide how far they were willing

to go to defend the group

and prove their commitment to Manson

Whenever you have these so-called normal people

doing these extraordinarily brutal things,

it's a threat that has been usually manipulated

Charlie told me that I had to be willing to kill

in order to not be killed

Narrator: When Bobby Beausoleil

was arrested, Manson had everything

he needed to convince the family to kill for him

The women thought the revolution had begun

Their enemy was the Black Panthers,

and now Bobby Beausoleil needed their help

The catalyst for the murders

was Bobby Beausoleil being arrested

for the Hinman murder

Manson had convinced them that they were at war

They planned a mission to kill more people

to frame their enemies and free Bobby Beausoleil

It's not a coincidence that they went out

and committed those murders two days after learning

that Bobby Beausoleil had been arrested

It was a copycat crime designed poorly designed

to make the authorities think that the killer of Gary Hinman

was still at large and that they would thus

release Bobby Beausoleil, which was kind of naive

They were doing a job for Charlie

Pit bulls, they make wonderful, loyal dogs,

and if somebody's threatening their master,

they're dangerous

I think it explains some of what happened

There was this extra energy about "Bobby's been arrested"

I wanted to ask Charlie, "What's going on with Bobby?"

And he said, "He got arrested,"

and I said, "Well, is he in jail?"

He goes, "Yeah, he's in jail,"

and I said, "Well, I'll go visit him

What jail is he in?"

He goes, "I've got this covered

You stay out of it"

narrator: Events had escalated quickly,

and some would say Manson was completely unhinged

It's power and anger

he had at institutions

I think what's more important and more dangerous

and has more implications for our world

is his subjects, and that's scary

Because we'd like to think

they're real different than us, and they aren't

How can you put the finger at us

and call us evil for being good soldiers

and doing what needed to be done?

It's more frightening because it's women

We got stopped and went to jail

It was that night that the murders happened

Sharon Tate was 8 1/2 months pregnant

Manson's influence over these women

was so strong that they believed

what they were doing was the right thing

They had depersonalized the victims

In that moment, a person has a conscious choice

to do something that is so against human nature,

to kill someone

I have very strong feelings about what the women

who committed the murders,

but I also do believe that there's abuse involved

and you act in a certain way

that otherwise you would not act

Narrator: Over the course of two years,

Charles Manson used fear and isolation to convince

his followers that they were in danger

and had to kill in order to defend themselves

The first group of people he chose to commit murder

were family members Tex Watson,

Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins,

and Linda Kasabian

Tex Watson, I mean, he was really the one

who was the ringleader, if you will,

of the most violent, horrendous murders

Tex had come from a very strict

family upbringing back in Texas,

and I think he was happy to be out from under that thumb

And he just felt love,

as he said all these years later,

love from Charlie, acceptance from Charlie

And he was sort of Charlie's wingman,

for lack of better words

Like Tex,

Susan Atkins, nicknamed Sadie,

was blinded by Manson's words of love and acceptance

She had been abandoned by her family

at the age of 18

Susan was quirky

Susan would irritate the hell out of you

I willingly got into something

that completely took control over me

You take away a person's conscience

of right and wrong by telling them

when they're under LSD or any mind-expanding drug,

"There's no such thing as guilt"

Charlie, he would hold our fingers over candle flames

and tell us that it's just you know,

it's all in our head that that hurts

You don't like the feeling of guilt, so it's easy to say,

"Yeah, there's no such thing as guilt

"I'll believe there's no such thing as guilt

Therefore I can do anything and not feel guilty about it"

I've come to the realization that they really

they really believed hook, line, and sinker

that death didn't mean anything

Like many of the other women,

Patricia Krenwinkel, nicknamed Katie,

grew up feeling like an outsider

Patty Krenwinkel, really of all the girls,

I think the most dramatic difference,

that she of all the girls

could have committed murders

Pat was working for an insurance company

She was tired of that

She'd walk along the beach, and she'd imagine

just walking off into the water

Her sister was a heroin addict

Her parents had divorced

She had everything but a feeling of home,

you know

As a child, she was teased

and she wasn't treated well and she just didn't fit in

Linda Kasabian was a young single mother

who was homeless and joined the group

a month before the Tate-LaBianca murders

Linda Kasabian joined the group

She was just lost

I had been on the ranch It was really, really hot

I had just taken a nice cold shower,

and I was like, "I would like to get away from the heat"

In the meantime,

Blue and another woman from the group

had just been arrested for using stolen credit cards

We got stopped and ditched the credit cards

and went to jail

I think it was that night that the murders happened

On the night Sharon Tate and her friends

were murdered,

Manson spoke to Tex, Patricia,

Sadie, and Linda but was careful

not to give them explicit instructions

Charlie said different things to different people

depending on who they were

to get the effect that he wanted

He made each one feel like the special one,

and that was just a manipulation tactic

This is how pimps control their women

Manson did evidently say, "Do what has to be done"

I mean, people think that the murders

were committed by people who were bloodthirsty

They were not

They weren't bloodthirsty

They were doing whatever they had to do

War is not murder

There are many theories as to why the group went

to the Tate estate and that house on that night

A lot of people are convinced it had to do with

Manson's music being rejected by Terry Melcher,

who had lived in that house

I don't believe the women knew that

and I doubt that Manson knew who Sharon Tate was

She was just really pretty, a very talented actress,

and people really loved her

They had Tex as their pseudo-leader

telling them, "Follow through with this,

and I'll be there to help make sure you get it done"

narrator: Steven Parent was a teenager

who happened to be leaving the property

at the same time the killers were walking up the driveway

Watson shot him four times at point-blank range

Steve Parent was absolutely the definition

of the kid in the wrong place at the wrong time,

just assassinated

When they got to the house,

Frykowski was asleep on the front sofa

Narrator: Wojciech Frykowski was

Sharon Tate's houseguest who had fallen asleep

in the living room

Krenwinkel and Atkins went through looking

for other people in the house

They walked past Folger, who was in bed reading

Narrator: Abigail Folger, the heiress

to the Folgers Coffee fortune,

was also staying at the house

Sharon Tate was in bed,

and on the foot of her bed was Jay Sebring

Jay Sebring was a celebrity hairstylist

and Sharon Tate's closest friend

And Sharon Tate was 8 1/2 months pregnant

Watson tied this long rope he had

One end around Sebring's neck

He threw it over the high beam

and tied the other end around Sharon Tate's neck

Watson took his gun

and smashed Sebring in the face

and stabbed him and shot him,

killing him

Abigail Folger ran out of the back of the house,

Krenwinkel chasing her with an upraised knife,

finally catching her on the front lawn

Frykowski got out, Watson chasing him

with a knife and a gun,

catching him in the front yard

Sharon Tate is about to give birth,

and she's faced with this murderer

And all she wants to do is,

"Please save my child"

And she begs, "Just let me have my child

Please let me have my baby"

Atkins said, "Look, bitch,

"I don't care about you or your baby

"You're gonna die, and you better be ready for it,

and I don't feel a thing about it"

It's so hard to believe a woman could have

these up-close, personal, intimate murders

and not feel anything

It must have been so absolutely horrifying

To think Sharon Tate is about to give birth,

and she's faced with this murderer

She's laughed at before she's killed

and that knife is plunged into her belly

I mean, I don't think we can imagine it

I don't think we can put ourselves there

I just don't think we can

The horror that she must have felt

Susan talked about thinking about cutting out

Sharon Tate's baby and saving it

It's just I have no idea

how they could have done that

Atkins got a towel

and dipped it in Sharon Tate's blood

and went out and wrote the word "pig"

on the front door

They felt what they did was right

If I ever had to,

I hoped that I could be that fierce

You want to talk about devils and demonic

and immoral and evil, go to Hollywood

We don't touch the rotten horribleness of that world,

don't even skim it

However, we did skim it

Yeah, yeah, we touched it

touched it

It needed to be touched

Friday night in Los Angeles,

a movie actress and four of her friends were murdered,

and the circumstances were lurid

Narrator: The day after the murders,

the women who had participated kept to themselves

under strict instructions from Manson

not to talk about what happened

I didn't know what really happened,

and Charlie, by that time,

was using his need-to-know basis

You know, you talk to the people

that need to know

and only the people that need to know

Five brutal murders had already occurred,

but the next day, Manson was ready for more

He convinced the group

that the revolution was escalating

and their part was far from over

In this interview from 1969,

Leslie Van Houten explained how Manson primed her to kill

I still cannot believe that, you know,

she allowed Charlie to manipulate her

to that extent that she would actually murder for him

I don't know how she could have gotten

to that point

It was kill or be killed

That was what drove them on

It's that feeling of threat from the outside,

and Manson was so good at manipulating

How do we look at these people

who commit certain types of crimes under this duress

of being undue influence of someone else

In that moment, a person has a choice

to do a good thing or a bad thing

When you are making a conscious choice

to kill someone,

you are faced with consequences

They drove around that night

looking for a house to hit, basically

And Charlie had looked

at a couple of different houses

They went to Waverly Drive,

and some of the girls had been to the house next door before

Narrator: It was time for a second

lethal home invasion

This time, the group broke into the home

of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca

The LaBiancas were really nice people

Leno was a corporate executive,

and Rosemary had been a waitress

And he met her at a restaurant and fell in love with her

Narrator: The three family members

who were chosen to kill the LaBiancas

on the night of August 10th

were Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel,

and, for the first time, Leslie Van Houten

When they went in, Krenwinkel immediately went

to the kitchen to get kitchen knives

for herself and Van Houten

Van Houten and Krenwinkel took Rosemary into the bedroom

And Van Houten unplugged a lamp

that was on the table next to the bed

And put a pillowcase over Rosemary's head

and then wrapped the lamp cord around her neck

Rosemary heard Leno getting stabbed to death

in the living room and she got a sudden burst of energy

and rose up from the bed and screamed out,

"Leno, Leno"

I mean, I've looked at a lot of crime scene photos,

and these are just the most horrific

Krenwinkel wrote "death to pigs"

and on the refrigerator wrote "helter skelter"

Tex, he had newspaper, and he slapped it,

and he said, "I did this Charlie told me to"

I wasn't ready for killing

I hoped that if I needed to, I would

I mean, I've looked at a lot of crime scene photos

as a federal prosecutor,

and these are just the most horrific

And it's hard to imagine that the people

who are responsible for them are these young

sort of flighty young women,

but that's the reality

Those are the murderers right there

On the night of August 10th,

the Manson Family broke into a second affluent home,

this time slaughtering husband and wife

Leno and Rosemary LaBianca

The thing that I have the hardest time with

with the LaBiancas' murders was

Mrs LaBianca hearing her husband being killed

in the next room

Watson came in,

and then Watson and Van Houten proceeded

to stab Rosemary LaBianca to death

It's far more brutal and gratuitous

It's vicious, even almost more vicious

Krenwinkel went into the LaBiancas' living room

She took the tines of a carving fork

and plunged it into his abdomen

and wrote in big letters the word "war,"

W-A-R, etched into his abdomen

Krenwinkel, above the inside part of the front door,

she wrote the wrote the word "rise" in big letters

and on the living room wall

in big letters wrote "death to pigs"

and the refrigerator wrote

"helter skelter," but she misspelled "helter"

Leslie took coins, and when she got back

to the Spahn Ranch, she went to a backhouse

And the first thing that Leslie did was,

she went out and collected firewood

I had woke up to find Leslie burning stuff

She gave me a bag with some coins in it,

you know, for candy

They weren't acting weird

They were just kind of matter of fact

I knew that they'd gone out on some of these

creepy-crawly missions where they dressed in black

and they would sneak into people's homes

and rearrange stuff

And I thought that that was just some stuff

that, you know, she had acquired through that

and what Charlie Manson and the family did

those two nights

really changed American culture

People who didn't have alarm systems

went out and got them

I mean, moms who hadn't before

walked their kids to school

started walking their kids to school

In the days following the murders,

word began to circulate around Spahn Ranch

The women who had been following Charles Manson

learned that their brothers and sisters had committed

brutal acts of violence

Leno LaBianca, supermarket owner,

and his wife had both been stabbed to death

in their home

On the day of the Tate murders,

Blue was arrested

for using stolen credit cards

When she was released a few days later,

she learned that members of the family

had killed seven people

I was in jail for a couple days,

got released

I hitchhiked back from jail by myself,

got an ice cream cone, got off at the ranch

Sadie couldn't wait to spill her story

Just because a person kills

does not make them evil and bad

I knew these were warm, good

I mean, Katie was one of the most warm, gracious,

hospitable people I've ever met

These two crimes this weekend

so grotesquely similar

Tex, he had newspaper in his hand,

and it had the headlines, the Tate-LaBianca murders,

and a big headline, and he slapped it, and he said,

"I did this," and, "Charlie told me to"

And so I think I read a little bit about it,

and it was just, like, shocking

I was totally traumatized from then on and scared

The services for Ms Tate, a remarkably pretty actress

who was about to become a mother,

were held in West Los Angeles

I didn't I didn't feel

bad that these people were dead

I didn't even know they were alive

But as far as killing goes,

I wasn't ready for killing

I hoped that if I needed to, I would

I feel very, very sad for the victims

I can't I can't I was so shut down during that time

that I can't it's just horrible

I mean, just I mean

I just can't imagine

how horrible their family feels and everything

You know, I feel very sad for them

And I also feel sad for the young people

that were turned into murderers

You can't excuse somebody, then, for going into the home

and brutally murdering another human being

You can't excuse it by saying,

"Oh, well, they were brainwashed"

I'm sorry, that doesn't excuse you

They still committed the murder

The women, they didn't show any remorse

I mean, they just doubled down

How frightening is that?

I stood up and said,

"This court is a mockery of justice"

We were afraid that the Manson Family

was going to get us

That was absolutely terrifying

I was holding this huge gun,

and then I said to myself,

"Are you gonna shoot him?"

One month after the Tate and LaBianca murders,

the women of the Manson Family were dealing

with the aftermath, worried that authorities

could find them at any moment

There was this whole different kind of energy,

and it didn't feel good

Manson was now immersed in paranoia

and made the decision to move the family

to an even more isolated ranch

located 200 miles away in Death Valley

There was this frenetic energy

to create supplies and a foundation or whatever

to move us to the desert

We were gathering our last leather clothing

and whatever we needed to live out in the desert

While the women prepared to follow Manson

into further isolation,

Los Angeles authorities were struggling to find the people

responsible for the terrifying crimes

The investigation really was not going anywhere fast

Police searched the premises

They found no evidence of robbery,

no suggestion of motive

The police bungled the case,

completely literally walking over pieces of evidence

It's one of these examples where law enforcement just

one arm wasn't talking to the other arm

A baffling crime and bizarre

And at this point, nobody is interested

in Charles Manson

Not for murder, but authorities did have

their sights on the family

Police stormed the new hideout

and nabbed them for stealing cars

They were arresting us for grand larceny,

which I was in the middle of washing my hair,

and a door blew open

and I've got a gun, you know, pointed at me

The group was broken up last October

after sheriff's deputies investigated

a series of thefts

We're in Inyo County

All the girls were in the same cell together

I was afraid to move I was afraid to talk

I was just I think I was, like,

literally in shock, you know

I just went along

Squeaky, at the time, would just, like,

look at me like, "Shut up"

Four months after the murders,

there was a breakthrough in the case

It wasn't till December

They'd taken Susan Atkins away

'cause she had a warrant out for her arrest,

and that's when she started telling this whole delusion

to her cellmate

Susan Atkins was one of the four

who committed the Tate murders

Susan Atkins just randomly starts speaking

to two of her cellmates about the Tate murders

That was a huge break for the prosecution

when they heard that tip from just a random conversation

heard in lockup

That's really what broke the case

Charles Manson It stopped everything

It had the same impact as earlier that summer

watching the man on the moon

I was Charlie's legal writer in the very beginning,

so I would hitchhike with my baby

to the LA County Jail,

and I would, you know, visit him in the attorney room

narrator: During the Tate-LaBianca

murder trial, some of the women remained

unapologetically devoted to Manson

I didn't feel I could judge them

Now they say that it was Charlie's fault

Was he should he have been responsible for us?

Is he responsible for anything

that happened with us?

I don't feel like that

We weren't raised by him

He wasn't our leader

People are what they are

They brought the rest of us up

to testify in front of the grand jury,

and the bailiff asks, you know, "Name?"

For the first time I say, "Dianne Lake

I'm 16, and I want my mommy"

And I did I was scared

I felt alone and so vulnerable

They quickly make me a ward of the court

and send me off for a 90-day observation

at Patton State Hospital,

which turned into, like, nearly nine months

I was coming out of that psychosis

It took the grand jury just 20 minutes

to agree that six members of the hippie tribe

should be indicted in the Sharon Tate murders

and those of a supermarket owner and his wife

Narrator: Manson and five others

were indicted for murder

and conspiracy to commit murder

And even though Manson didn't hold a weapon

and wasn't on the scene,

he was charged because there was no doubt

in prosecutors' minds as to who was the mastermind

behind these horrific crimes

I stood up and said,

"The court is this court is a mockery of justice"

And another one of the women stood up and said

something else, and another one stood up

and said something else

We might have done a day or two

or three days, maybe four days in jail

for contempt of court

After that, we were banned from the courtroom

We decided to do a vigil on the street corner

Of course, everything was about Charlie on the corner,

so it was about getting Charlie out

He was the person that doesn't mind

who they put under the bus, who gets killed,

who gets blamed as long as he survives

It's just pure self-preservation

Young people starting to stand up for themselves,

and it's always gratifying to me to see it,

because that's us

That's what we were doing

It was clear to everyone in the courtroom

that Manson was calling the shots

Manson would stand up and say something

Then the three girls would stand up

and say the same thing

And Manson put an X on his forehead,

and the next day, the girls had Xs on their forehead

They're hiding the truth

In the name of fair trial

you know, there's no fair trial

We X'd ourselves out of the system

They played right into our hands,

because we were trying to show that he was the mastermind

and that he ordered these murders

I remember the day they were given the death penalty

I didn't think they would be killed,

and I certainly don't think they should be

Do you believe that there should be a death penalty?

A death penalty? Yeah

Aren't we all born to die?

They did something

They gave their lives, really

Prison is not a nice place

I wanted to stay with the girls, with Charlie,

with everybody that was inside

I said, "I don't want out

until my people get a fair trial"

All the death penalty cases had to become life

with the possibility of parole

How would you like to wake up some morning and find out

that Leslie Van Houten is your next-door neighbor?

In the aftermath

of the Tate-LaBianca murder trial,

the women went from being isolated with Manson

to being isolated without him

At the time of an arrest,

why didn't the women say,

"Thank goodness you captured me

I'm out of here I've been in this cult"

They didn't say that

In 1971, Gypsy was convicted

of armed robbery in connection with a raid

on a gun shop followed by a shoot-out with the police

She ended up in prison

with her former family members

the women convicted of the Tate-LaBianca murders

I did five years, and three years was

in the special security housing unit

with Leslie and Patricia and Susan Atkins

Patricia, at that time,

she'd have all the pictures of Charlie up,

and then she'd tear 'em down and just

Like, she was back and forth

Pat would swoon about Charlie

and say the things he said and how he paid attention

This inmate said, "Every pimp who's any good

"says all this stuff

"Manson isn't special

You know, he's just doing what all pimps do and hustlers"

I think, for her, that was one of the steps

Leslie, how she describes dismantling

the hold Manson had on her, it was gradual

Leslie had hoped that they would go through

with the death penalty so it could just be over

Susan Atkins renounced Manson

and became a born-again Christian in prison

Six years after she was sentenced to death,

she began giving interviews, asking for forgiveness

Once in prison,

Gypsy began to reflect on her role as a mother,

finally finding the strength to break free

from Manson's hold

My son is the one that really you know,

I didn't want him to be an orphan

There was somebody besides me that I needed to take care of

He's the one that changed my life

So everything that I did was so that he would be okay

from then on

After being released from the psychiatric hospital,

Snake was plagued by guilt and focused on trying

to live a normal life

I started going to church

I told my pastor just because I felt I felt

this overwhelming, you know, guilt

I confessed that I had been

a member of this murderous family

I really looked to God, you know, for forgiveness

Squeaky and Blue's belief in Manson

has never wavered

After he was incarcerated,

they committed crimes in the hopes of reuniting

with their former family members in prison

Prison is not a nice place,

but I felt a solidarity with the other people

Five years after the Tate-LaBianca trial,

Squeaky was arrested for attempting

to assassinate President Gerald Ford,

who was making a public appearance

where she lived

I heard that Ford was coming, and I thought,

"Oh, I'll go and I'll go and talk to him"

And then I thought, "He isn't gonna talk to you

He's not gonna stop on his way He's not gonna stop"

And then I thought,

"Well, maybe I'll bring a gun"

And I just put the gun out and stuck it in there

A Secret Service agent grabbed it

And they had me on the ground,

and I was telling them, "It's okay

It's okay It didn't go off It's okay"

The guy walked over,

and he picked up my hand,

and I was so relaxed

And then he was talking to me,

and the Secret Service agent said, "Who are you?"

Sandra Good, another member

of the so-called Manson Family,

was picked up by police

We were living together, so they arrested me

And they took me to jail,

and they wanted to ascertain if there was a conspiracy

to assassinate the president of the United States

Narrator: Squeaky was sentenced

to life in prison

with the possibility of parole

I was able to go

to the parole board after ten years

But I didn't go to the parole board

I wanted to stay with the girls, with Charlie,

with everybody that was inside

narrator: After Squeaky's trial,

Blue was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 15 years

for sending death threats to corporate executives

The women were sent to the same federal prison

I didn't snivel and cry and go to the parole board

I did my time

And then I refused to leave

I said, "I don't want out until my people get a fair trial"

They had to basically kick me out

Squeaky was paroled after serving 34 years

I've been out for almost ten years

It's hard to be sorry if you're going by your heart

In the 50 years

since the Tate-LaBianca murders,

members of the Manson Family

have been denied parole over 100 times

They all received the death penalty at trial

But California, a few years later,

overturned the death penalty

That meant that everybody on death row

Manson, Krenwinkel, Watson,

Van Houten, Atkins

they all had their sentences commuted from death to life

All the death penalty cases, then, had to become life

with the possibility of parole

There's no question that the women

who followed Charles Manson suffered all kinds of abuse

Some look back with regret,

and others have never lost their faith in him

And those women who killed on his behalf,

do they ever deserve a second chance?

I just feel like

when someone's gotten their mind back

and they've done everything they could to make up

for a horrible thing they've done when they were kids

that it's just time to do a little forgiving

and let them, you know, not die in prison

They weren't remorseful

Think about that

They were not remorseful at the time

Yeah, you get remorseful in prison

Manson died on November 19, 2017

And Tex Watson remains in prison,

having never been found suitable for parole

Bobby Beausoleil was found suitable for parole in 2019,

but his release was blocked by the governor of California

Three women went to prison for the Tate-LaBianca murders

Susan Atkins died in prison from brain cancer in 2009

Patricia Krenwinkel has been denied parole 14 times

Leslie Van Houten has been found suitable

for parole three times,

but her release has also been blocked

by the governor of California

As a rehabilitated woman, I would like to state

that the insight I have gained

is not meant to excuse any of my acts

How would you like to wake up some morning

and find out that Leslie Van Houten

is your next-door neighbor?

Now, she's gonna be somebody's next-door neighbor,

and you know what she's done

There's people that have done 50 times worse

and they've gotten out

They're being used politically

They're being used to sell crime

You've got to have a scapegoat

Got to have the evil people

If they really had remorse,

they would waive their parole hearings

so that the families of the victims

don't have to relive this experience over and over

narrator: For more information

on "Manson: The Women,"

go to oxygencom