Manson has endured as the face of evil for nearly 50 years
LOS ANGELES — Other killers snuffed out far more lives than Charles Manson did in 1969. Yet he has endured for nearly a half century as the personification of evil, even in an age in which mass shootings leave dozens dead at a time.
Manson, the hippie cult leader who died Sunday at 83, horrified America more than a generation ago with the way he seemed to have turned young people murderously against everything their parents cherished. That horror continued long after he had been locked up, in large part because of the demonic image that crime experts say he cultivated with his bizarre behaviour and his searing, wild-eyed gaze.
“He had that maniacal look that was always so striking,” said James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University in Boston, calling Manson the most notorious killer of all time. “Manson was memorable: his voice, his appearance, his mannerisms, as well as his crimes and the ‘crazy Charlie’ act he put on.”
Manson was convicted of orchestrating the slaughter of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six other people over two successive August nights in Los Angeles. Prosecutors said he was trying to foment a race war, an idea he supposedly got from a misreading of the Beatles song “Helter Skelter.”