Charles Manson: Serial Murderer and Cult Figure :: Charlie Manson Family

Charles Manson: Serial Murderer and Cult Figure Charles Manson is known as one of the most sinister and evil criminals of all time. He organized the murders that shocked the world and his name still strikes fear into American hearts. Manson's childhood, personality, and uncanny ability to control people led to the creation of a family-like cult and ultimately to the bloody murders of numerous innocent people. Charles M. Manson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on November 11, 1934. His mother, Kathleen Maddox, was a teenage prostitute. Manson's father walked out on the still pregnant Maddox, never to be seen again. In order to give her bastard son a name, Ms. Maddox married William Manson. He soon abandoned the both of them. Manson's mother often neglected Charles after her husband left her. She tried to put him into a foster home, but the arrangements fell through. As a last resort she sent Charles to school in Terre Haute, Indiana. Mrs. Manson failed to make the payments for the school and once again Charles was sent back to his mother's abuse. At only fourteen, Manson left his mother and rented a room for himself. He supported himself with odd jobs and petty theft. His mother turned him into the juvenile authorities, who had him sent to "Boys Town," a juvenile detention center, near Omaha, Nebraska. Charles spent a total of three days in "Boys Town" before running away. He was arrested in Peoria, Illinois for robbing a grocery store and was then sent to the Indiana Boys School in Plainfield, Indiana, where he ran away another eighteen times before he was caught and sent to the National Training School for Boys in Washington D.C. Manson never had a place to call "home" or a real family. He spent his childhood being sent from one place to another, and trouble always seemed to follow him. His mother's negligence left Manson without a home and without much of a future. Manson turned to crime to support himself, and he soon became very good at it. When just a child, he became a criminal and spent his last years of childhood in a correctional facility. After his release from the training school in 1954, a new period of Manson's life began. He went to West Virginia and soon married a girl named Rosalie Jean Willis. She became pregnant and Manson had a child. This was Manson's first real family, but he