12 November: Charles Manson

Charles Manson was born on this date in 1934. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. Manson was born in a Cincinnati hospital to an unmarried 16-year-old named Kathleen Maddox. She didn't identify the father, nor immediately name her child, so Manson was registered as “no name Maddox.” He got the name Manson after Kathleen was briefly married to a man called William Manson.
2. There's a story in which Kathleen was said to have sold Charles as a child in exchange for a pint of Beer, and only returned home when his uncle went to find him. This may or may not be true. Some sources said Manson himself used to tell this story; others said he always denied it.
3. He was involved in petty crime from a young age, spending more time in prison than out of it. In fact, as his parole date approached, he's said to have begged the authorities not to let him back into normal society as he didn't think he could cope, but his pleas were ignored.
4. He was married twice, and had a son. At 21 he married a woman called Rosalie Willis who he'd met while out on parole. He seemed genuinely happy with her and was set to start a new life with her and their unborn child in California. His big mistake was stealing a car in which to drive there, so he ended up back in jail. Rosalie stood by him for a while, but eventually divorced him.
5. In prison, Manson read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and also discovered Scientology. In 1961, he identified himself as a Scientologist on a prison questionnaire. When he wasn't teaching himself methods of mind control, another of his pastimes in prison was learning to play the Guitar. A notorious bank robber named Alvin “Creepy” Karpis was a guitar player who used to teach other inmates how to play the instrument. Karpis initially thought Manson was too “lazy and shiftless” to put in the effort required, but was proved wrong.
6. Manson not only played the guitar but wrote songs as well. There's even an album of his songs called Lie: the Love and Terror Cult. While it wasn't a huge success, there was some interest in it after the Sharon Tate murders. Guns N’ Roses and Marilyn Manson (who named himself after Charles Manson and Marilyn Monroe) have both covered his songs. He even wrote a song for The Beach Boys. He was friends with Beach Boy founder Denis Wilson for a while; Wilson was into group sex sessions and such. Manson wrote a song called Cease to Exist which was released by the Beach Boys as Never Learn not to Love. While the two had collaborated on the name change and tweaks to the lyrics, Wilson failed to credit Manson and so the two became bitter enemies.
7. Using techniques he'd picked up from Dale Carnegie and the Scientologists, Manson collected a string of followers, mostly young women, who worshipped him like a god. They were known as the Manson Family and lived on a ranch where the women were treated like domestic servants. They later moved to a yellow house which Manson dubbed "The Yellow Submarine".
8. Manson was obsessed with The Beatles’ The White Album, in particular a song called Helter Skelter, which he believed contained subliminal messages about a race war which would soon take place in America. This was despite the fact that, being older than most of his followers, he actually preferred the music of Bing Crosby, Perry Como and Frankie Laine to the Beatles. Manson decided to kickstart the race war by sending three of his family members — Tex Watson, Susan Atkins and Linda Kasabian — to go to 10050 Cicelo Drive and kill everyone they found there. Manson believed the occupant of the house was a record producer who'd got in the way of his music career. The record producer had moved out and was renting the house to Polish director Roman Polanski and his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate. The rest is history.
9. While Manson was convicted and sentenced to death for this and several other murders his "Family" carried out, Manson never actually killed anyone himself. In fact, he wasn't even present at some of the murders. He was convicted as a conspirator. Before the death sentence was carried out, however, California abolished the death penalty and so Manson ended up with a life sentence in prison instead. He remained there until he died in 2017, aged 85.
10. In 2014, Manson announced that he was engaged to a 26-year-old woman called 'Star', who he claimed wanted to marry him so she could display his body in a glass case after he died. It didn't happen.

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