Trial of helter skelter

Overall, the film has a made-for-TV look and feel. Production design, costumes, and makeup are credible. As Manson, Steve Railsback's performance is What makes this film worth watching is that it is a true story Manson had no qualms about killing innocent people.

And he sought to sublease that evil to weaker personalities, like Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, Leslie Van Houten, and other members of his hippie clan. And that power over others in turn fed his megalomania. Manson was a cultural scavenger, a junk man without conscience. He and his "family" subsisted on food from dumpsters behind supermarkets. And at one point in the film, he even says he wouldn't mind prison chow; "it's better than eating garbage".

What a statement. It says a lot about him and about his followers. Lechuguilla May 20, Details Edit. Release date April 1, United States. United States. Massacre in Hollywood. Lorimar Productions. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 3 hours 14 minutes. Related news. Aug 23 Rollingstone.

Contribute to this page Suggest an edit or add missing content. Kasabian also offered her account of the night of the LaBianca murders.

She testified that she didn't want to go, but went anyway "because Charlie asked me and I was afraid to say no. Kasabian proved a very credible witness, despite the best efforts during cross-examination of defense attorneys to make her appear a spaced-out hippie. After admitting that she took LSD about fifty times, Kasabian was asked by Kanarek, "Describe what happened on trip number Testimony corroborating that of Kasabian came from several other prosecution witnesses, most notably the woman Atkins confided in at Dormitory , Virginia Graham.

Other witnesses described receiving threats from Manson, evidence of Manson's total control over the lives of Family members, or conversations in which Manson had told of the coming Helter Skelter. Nineteen-year-old Paul Watkins , Manson's foremost recruiter of young women, provided key testimony about the strange motive for the Tate-LaBianca murders--including its link to the Bible's Book of Revelation.

Watkins testified that Manson discussed Helter Skelter "constantly. So, in retaliation-this would scare; in other words, all the other white people would be afraid that this would happen to them, so out of their fear they would go into the ghetto and just start shooting black people like crazy.

But all they would shoot would be the garbage man and Uncle Toms, and all the ones that were with Whitey in the first place. And underneath it all, the Black Muslims would-he would know that it was coming down. So, after Whitey goes in the ghettoes and shoots all the Uncle Toms, then the Black Muslims come out and appeal to the people by saying, 'Look what you have done to my people. This would split them in the middle and a big civil war would start and really split them up in all these different factions, and they would just kill each other off in the meantime through their war.

And after they killed each other off, then there would be a few of them left who supposedly won. Then the Black Muslims would come out of hiding and wipe them all out. By sneaking around and slitting their throats. When we was [sic] in the desert the first time, Charlie used to walk around in the desert and say-you see, there are places where water would come up to the top of the ground and then it would go down and there wouldn't be no more water, and then it would come up again and go down again.

He would look at that and say, 'There has got to be a hole somewhere, somewhere here, a big old lake. Then we started from the 'Revolution 9' song on the Beatles album which was interpreted by Charlie to mean the Revelation 9. Then later on, I believe it is in It talks about there will be a city where there will be no sun and there will be no moon. That there would be a city of gold, but there would be no life, and there would be a tree there that bears twelve different kinds of fruit that changed every month.

And this was interpreted to mean-this was the hole down under Death Valley. That was in there, too. It was supposed to get back to the , people. The Family was to grow to this number. See, it was all happening simultaneously. In other words, as we are making the music and it is drawing all the young love to the desert, the Family increases in ranks, and at the same time this sets off Helter Skelter.

So then the Family finds the hole in the meantime and gets down in the hole and lives there until the whole thing comes down. He is supposed to be the servant, see. He will clean up the mess that he made, that the white man made, and build the world back up a little bit, build the cities back up, but then he wouldn't know what to do with it, he couldn't handle it. It is all over.

When the trial resumed three days later, the defense startled courtroom spectators and the prosecution by announcing, without calling a single witness, "The defense rests. In chambers, attorneys for the women explained that although their clients wanted to testify, they were strongly opposed, believing that they would--still under the powerful influence of Manson--testify that they planned and committed the murders without Manson's help.

Returning to the courtroom, Judge Older declared that the right to testify took precedence and said that the defendants could testify over the objections of their counsel. Atkins was then sworn as a witness, but her attorney, Daye Shinn, refused to question her.

Returning to chambers, one defense attorney complained that questioning their clients on the stand would be like "aiding and abetting a suicide. The next day came another surprise. Charles Manson announced that he, too, wished to testify--before his co-defendants did. He testified first without the jury being present, so that potentially excludable testimony relating to evidence incriminating co-defendants might be identified before it prejudiced the jury.

His over one-hour of testimony , full of digressions, fascinated observers:. You made your children what they are. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up. So I did the best I could and I took them up on my garbage dump and I told them this: that in love there is no wrong. I don't try to judge nobody. I know that the only person I can judge is me. But I know this: that in your hearts and your own souls, you are as much responsible for the Vietnam war as I am for killing these people.

I have no malice against you and no ribbons for you. But I think that it is high time that you all start looking at yourselves, and judging the lie that you live in. And you can project it back at me. My father is your system. I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you. I have wore your second-hand clothes.

I have done my best to get along in your world and now you want to kill me, and I look at you, and then I say to myself, You want to kill me? I'm already dead, have been all my life. I've spent twenty-three years in tombs that you built. If I could, I would jerk this microphone off and beat your brains out with it, because that is what you deserve, that is what you deserve. What they did, if they did whatever they did, is up to them.

The Helter Skelter race war theory today remains the most commonly believed version of why the Manson murders of took place. Terms and Conditions of Use Cookie Policy and Consent Contact form Helter Skelter. If you do not agree, please immediately exit the service. This website uses cookies to personalize content, provide social media features, show advertisements and analyse traffic. She met Manson at age With the full approval of her parents, Lake immediately began a sexual relationship with Manson and joined the Family.

Manson relied on this cover. His follower count grew, and in the fall of , Manson packed up the Family and moved them to Los Angeles — toward his dreams of Hollywood stardom.

In Hollywood, Manson began to work his music industry connections. Universal producer Gary Stromberg granted Manson a recording session only to find Manson unprepared, unreliable, and untalented. Manson was especially successful in manipulating Wilson. Though Melcher, a record producer, put off the issue of whether he would sign Manson, he stayed friendly with the Family. During this time, Melcher also dated up-and-coming Hollywood star Candice Bergen, who was renting a house at Cielo Drive.

Both Wilson and Manson frequently visited Bergen and Melcher at the house. In response to the snub, Manson allegedly threatened to kill Wilson. These threats, combined with his general lack of talent, his violent temper, his flagrant racism, and his tendency to rant about an upcoming race war, had all contributed to Melcher finally shying away from helping Manson with his musical career.

Manson was aware that Melcher and Bergen had moved out of the house at Cielo Drive. In fact, the house was now being rented by filmmaker Roman Polanski and his wife, Valley of the Dolls actress Sharon Tate. So in August , with his paranoia increasing and his commune under apparent threat, he ordered a group of his followers to visit the address and kill everyone inside. Ostensibly, Manson ordered his followers to commit the Tate-LaBianca murders because he was trying to jump-start what he purported to believe would be the coming race war between the government and black citizens — in particular the Black Panthers, whom he hated.

But Manson also wanted to distract the law from other crimes. Two months later, Manson had urged several of his followers to steal money from a friend of his named Gary Hinman. He grew up as a child actor and worked on several films as a young adult. Beausoleil also starred in the first version of the film as Lucifer, though he then allegedly stole and destroyed the footage, so that now only a short cut of it remains.

At his trial, Beausoleil claimed that Manson was the one who actually killed Hinman, though he later changed this story. Beausoleil received a death sentence, which was automatically commuted to life in After his imprisonment, Beausoleil continued to fascinate the public; Truman Capote interviewed him from prison , and he continued to make and release music and art, even gaining permission to hold live performances. Gavin Newsom rejected the decision.

Beausoleil remains in prison at the age of But Beausoleil was arrested for the murder and taken into custody on August 6. Manson now feared that Beausoleil would crack under pressure while being interrogated and implicate Manson in the murder of Hinman and the previous shooting of Crowe.

Two other Manson Family members, Mary Brunner and Sandra Good, were also arrested at the same time for using a stolen credit card.

Manson believed he had killed Crowe, but Crowe survived and never reported the shooting to the police. Once there, she threw herself into activism, doing volunteer social work for an urban welfare program and working for a racially charged city council campaign. She and her boyfriend, Wojciech Frykowski, spent most of the spring and summer of house-sitting for Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate at Cielo Drive. Even though Tate returned from overseas work at the end of the summer, Polanski invited Folger and Frykowski to keep living there through August.

So they were all hanging out in the house together on the night of August 8, Wojciech Frykowski: Frykowski grew up in Poland and studied chemistry. Steven Parent: year-old Steven Parent graduated from high school two months before his death at the Tate-Polanski residence. A native of Los Angeles, he loved music and playing the guitar. He was working two jobs over the summer to pay for his enrollment in community college in the fall; to supplement his income, he tried to sell small electronics and mechanical devices to friends, including his friend William Garretson, who worked as the caretaker of Cielo Drive.

Parent visited Garretson at the house the night of August 8 in order to try to sell him a small clock; through total bad luck, he was driving out of the gated residence the moment the Manson Family members entered.

Though he reportedly pleaded for his life, Tex Watson shot him four times. His salon grew into an international hair company before his death. Sebring was 35 years old when he was killed at Cielo Drive. Though he fathered three kids, his first marriage disintegrated after the war.