Cult leader and mass killer

Born: November 12, 1934;

Died: November 19, 2017

CHARLES Manson, who has died aged 83, was the hippie cult leader who became notorious around the world after orchestrating the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969.

A petty criminal who had been in and out of jail since childhood, Manson surrounded himself in the 1960s with runaways and other lost souls and then sent his disciples to kill some of LA's rich and famous in what prosecutors said was an attempt to trigger a race war – an idea he got from a twisted reading of the Beatles song Helter Skelter.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Manson maintained during his trial in 1970 that he was innocent and that society itself was guilty. "These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them; I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up," he said in a courtroom soliloquy.

The Manson Family, as his followers were called, killed five of its victims on August 9 1969 at Tate's home: the actress, who was pregnant, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, Polish movie director Voityck Frykowski and Steven Parent, a friend of the estate's caretaker. Tate's husband, Rosemary's Baby director Roman Polanski, was out of the country at the time.

The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were stabbed to death in their home. The killers scrawled such phrases as "Pigs" in blood at the crime scenes.

Three months later, a Manson follower was jailed on an unrelated charge and told a cellmate about the bloodbath, leading to the cult leader's arrest.

In the annals of American crime, Manson became the embodiment of evil, a short, shaggy-haired, bearded figure with a demonic stare and an "X'' - later turned into a swastika - carved into his forehead.

After a trial that lasted nearly a year, Manson and three followers - Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten - were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Another defendant, Charles "Tex" Watson, was convicted later. All were spared execution and given life sentences after the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972.

Manson was born Charles Milles Maddox on November 12 1934 in Ohio to a 16-year-old, drug-addict prostitute mother.

Shunned by mum Kathleen - who briefly married a man called William Manson - the nascent sociopath spent much of his early life in prison.

"The only thing that my mother taught me was that everything that she said was a lie," he claimed.

It is thought he never met his father, a colonel.

In 1955, he moved to California with a 17-year-old lover in tow, settling into a routine of theft and incarceration in San Francisco.

Caught in a swirl of hallucinogenic drugs, belief in the apocalypse, and an impending race war, the deluded narcissist recruited burned-out, malleable, middle-class followers.

The Family, as they became known, lived on isolated ranches - one in Death Valley - and grew drunk on Manson's claim to be a prophet sent to warn of the coming "Helter Skelter" ethnic conflict.

The charismatic visionary would pump his slavish followers with LSD and re-enact the crucifixion while they were tripping, former cult members said. Whatever he believed, they would too.

At its height, The Family reportedly had around 100 members and was a mix of both men and women.

Manson was married twice and had at least two children, although the real figure could be higher.

A besotted woman, Afton Burton, dated Manson when he was in jail, and applied for a marriage licence when she was 26 and he was 80 in 2014 - although it expired.

After months of failing health, he died from natural causes at Kern County Hospital in Bakersfield, California.