It's almost impossible to believe that the innocent boy in this photo grew up to become one of history's biggest monsters.
The boy, pictured here as a fresh-faced 15-year-old, is now known as one of the most sadistic criminals the world has ever seen. From the very beginning, however, he was surrounded by crime.
Born to a 16-year-old mother on November 12, 1934, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the boy soon found himself in the care of his aunt and uncle in McMechen, West Virginia, at the age of four. His mother, Kathleen, had been arrested for assault and robbery and sentenced to five years in prison.
## The Boy No One Wanted
Kathleen committed the robbery with her older brother, Luther, who smashed a bottle over a man's head at a gas station before the pair stole his car. While Luther received 10 years in prison, Kathleen received a lighter sentence. She was imprisoned in the West Virginia state prison in Moundsville, with the boy regularly forced to visit her, despite frequently objecting.
When Kathleen was paroled after three years, the pair moved to Charleston, though by this point the boy had started skipping classes. Kathleen, now an alcoholic, would disappear for days at a time, leaving the boy with various babysitters. Unable to handle his issues herself, she decided to send him to reform school.
Reform school didn't suit the boy, who bounced from one institution to another, constantly finding himself in trouble. He would later claim that at age nine, he set one of his schools on fire.
## A Life of Crime Begins
At 13, the boy was placed in the Gibault School for Boys in Terre Haute, Indiana. The school for male delinquents was run by Catholic priests and focused on strict punishments, including beatings with wooden paddles and leather straps for even minor misdeeds.
It wasn't long before the boy fled Gibault. The first time, he returned to his mother, only for her to immediately send him back. The second time, he fled to Indianapolis and began committing burglaries to support himself. He was eventually caught and sent to another juvenile delinquent school in Omaha, Nebraska.
Only four days into his time in Omaha, the boy and a classmate acquired a gun and stole a car, committing two armed robberies on their way to the classmate's uncle's house in Peoria, Illinois. The uncle turned out to be a professional thief who took the two boys on as apprentices. Two weeks later, however, the boy was arrested and linked to two further armed robberies.
A spell at another reform school, the Indiana Boys School, saw the boy endure the most traumatic period of his life up until that point, reportedly being raped numerous times by other students as a staff member watched and encouraged the sexual assault.
The boy would run away from school on 18 occasions. He was eventually arrested in Utah, en route to California, for driving a stolen car across state lines. A psychiatrist evaluated the boy as being "aggressively anti-social."
## The Man Who Could Pull People In
In 1952, the boy was arrested after being discovered raping another boy at knifepoint. While serving time at the Federal Reformatory in Petersburg, Virginia, he was caught committing "eight serious disciplinary offenses, including three homosexual acts" toward other inmates. Soon, he was transferred to a maximum security reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio.
The plan was for the boy, now a man, to remain there until his 21st birthday in November 1955. He would actually be released early, in May 1954, following good behavior, and went to live with his aunt and uncle in West Virginia.
Less than a year later, the man married a hospital waitress and headed for Los Angeles with his pregnant wife in a stolen car. After being caught, his parole was revoked and he was sentenced to three years at Terminal Island in Los Angeles.
The man's son was born while he was in prison, and his wife and son visited regularly until the visits ceased. He discovered his wife, Rosalie, had begun living with another man and received a decree of divorce in September 1958.
It was around this time that the man began displaying the ability to pull people under his influence—an ability that would soon become his calling card as he embarked on one of the most disturbing crime sprees in American history.
Two months after his divorce, he was pimping out a 16-year-old girl before marrying a prostitute, whom he then moved to New Mexico with, along with another woman he also intended to prostitute.
However, his plan to set up a prostitution ring was short-lived. The man was arrested again, this time for violating The Mann Act—a felony related to interstate transportation of women for prostitution—and was returned to Los Angeles to serve a 10-year prison sentence previously suspended for trying to cash a forged US Treasury check.
During his time at McNeil Island penitentiary in Washington, the boy in the photo began to become more monstrous. He engaged in hypnosis with fellow inmates, including actor Danny Trejo, who has since discussed the sessions in interviews. His ability to hypnotize would become even more significant once he was released to embark on his grisly master plan.
## The Chilling Prophecy That Changed Everything
The man's mental state had unraveled by this point. He began amassing followers and prophesying that The Beatles were speaking directly to him through their songs. One song in particular, "Helter Skelter," would form the basis of his monstrous masterplan of the same name.
The man told his followers they would reside in a secret underground desert city after an apocalyptic race war in which the Black population would eviscerate the white population. A white supremacist, he claimed the Black population would not be intelligent enough to survive alone, allowing his "family" to rise from underground and rule over them.
## The Fame That Never Came
Prior to "Helter Skelter," the man had sought a different kind of fame. He obsessed over becoming a rock and roll star on the West Coast's burgeoning music scene and even befriended Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. But no fame or fortune materialized. Feeling dejected and rejected, resentment set in, and vengeance was soon to follow.
## Ideas Turn Deadly
The boy in the photo was now a man leading what he called his "family." He had taken in panhandlers, teenage runaways, and other social outcasts and impressionable young people he believed would be easy to manipulate.
In August 1969, the man and his family put the first part of his maniacal plan into action when they butchered famous actress Sharon Tate, then wife of director Roman Polanski. Having established himself as a guru in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, he proved himself void of love and full of pure evil, ordering his family to savagely murder the pregnant Tate.
One of the man's followers, Tex Watson, claimed the man instructed him and fellow family member Linda Kasabian to "totally destroy everyone" in Tate's house and to make the murders "as gruesome as you can."
Seven people, including Tate's unborn baby, were murdered that night, shot and stabbed multiple times, with Tate's blood used to scrawl the word "PIG" on the wall.
## A Name That Became Synonymous With Evil
The boy in the photo had become the devil incarnate, ordering some of the most gut-churning murders in American history. His name is now synonymous with evil, known the world over: Charles Manson.
Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor at Manson's trial, perfectly summed up Manson's legacy: "The very name Manson has become a metaphor for evil—and evil has its allure."
## A Haunting Legacy That Will Last Forever
The Tate murders and the LaBianca murders the following night, which claimed the lives of supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary, have remained a sickening part of pop culture for nearly 60 years.
Manson was imprisoned for life in April 1971, originally receiving the death sentence, though this was changed to life after California's death sentences were ruled unconstitutional in 1972. Along with his convictions for the Tate and LaBianca massacres, he was convicted of first-degree murder for the deaths of musician Gary Hinman in July 1969 and Donald Shea in August of the same year.
Applying for parole on 12 occasions, Manson remained in prison for the rest of his life. He eventually died in 2017 at age 83 following cardiac arrest brought on by colon cancer.
Often viewed as a Messianic figure by his followers, Manson maintained a stranglehold on pop culture for decades after the massacres. Marilyn Manson took his stage name from Manson, while British rock band Kasabian took their name from getaway driver Linda Kasabian.
Manson has fascinated people for over 50 years, with countless books and documentaries produced about him. He was interviewed numerous times by major international news channels, drawing constant attention for everything he said, including controversial statements and the swastika tattooed on his forehead.
While he may have finally attained the fame he always aspired toward, Manson would never be known as a rock star or celebrity as he wished. He became the personification of pure evil—a world away from the 15-year-old boy in the photo.
